Decisions

this one or that one
over here or over there
how now never
maybe baby someday.

movie, nudity, food

naked watching Sopranos
at one thirty after midnight
thinking about Baked Lays &
suicide & the sewers outside
filling with a gray sluice of
rain mixed with trash & dirt

nude watching Vanderbilt
men's basketball

home alone without clothes
watching Home Alone, then
City Slickers 2--The Legend
of Curly's Gold

Meet Caleb and Ashley

I've been a bad door, opaque
and impenetrable. But what are doors for?
Tomorrow is for living, today's
to plan, yesterday was the moment.

Open the future and glance back
at your driveway if you have one.
The moment now cannot exist.

The door, the door--the door of
Caleb's awakening.

Walking through one, meaning opening
it, he knew all was about to change,
and in the next moment, it did.

In my dream I icefish
and count my companions as
carefully as my drinks at Cupertino's
(a bar named to remind us Northerners
of warmer, more innovative climes).

I invented the iPad in my sleep,
years ago, but I didn't write it down,
& forgot. I invented Caleb
just now, thus jotted, but until I say
more, he's just a brownstone
unknowable, smooth as a doorhandle.

Be my Caleb, I'll say, to a
subliminal power, who'll raft in
a suite of characters that make a
wraith a man, & figments into
full-blown legends and college theme
parties where nubile blondes shall
use the occasion to dress more
revealingly even than Ashley, the
saucy waitress from chapter 2,
who's role becomes much bigger
than imagined.

I don't think this makes sense, but I did write it, after all.

Elongated substrates
make gates from hedgerows
& bullets of arrows. Aaron

told me that in Autumn;
now it's March and spring's
just beginning to
leap through the woods.

Arrowhead lake, the way she
said it, meant she loved me.
I didn't tell you not to
leave me be.

Forgotten Title

I've been a bad dog
I want to know the truth.
What do my dreams mean?
Cause they have been weird.

Restless times call for desperate measures
treasure the hours you are alive,
and awake.

Spirit.

In my dream I icefish
it is surprisingly loud and warm
and I am doing quite well.

the youngster's song (too personal)

i'm a sad frog
beneath the hills of the mudswamp
& the leftover rations for the needy
i skate upon piles of remorse i
don't need these plans i do not
need a horse i do not need a party
i do not need a closeup i need a book-away
i need to burn all these books away i need to
carefully count my creations i need to
carefully arrest my hesitations i need to
look at all i've done i need to realize what's done is done
i need to dance i need to pray i need to strive
harder without striving harder just doing i need to listen to my soul i need to live like God intended i need to believe i am capable of my best i need to love myself i need to leave well enough alone
i need to avoid unnecessary idioms
i need to avoid swimming in shoals of uncertainty
i need to love
i need to move on
i need to grow up
i need to hang on
i need to blow myself away from time to time
i need to be green like pastures of insane purpose
i need to slide away
i need to come back
i need to find peace
i need to be myself.

sad poem

there's a man in burlap
sick of being there, sick
of being examined, like a
dead football brain, sick
like a dog, a dying one.

i am tired of my cold school
the old wool things in my closet
and the goddam festering belch
the closing door at sunset.

there is a flute in midwinter
that plays songs of despair
tongs or spoons chiming in
like ghosts of mid-air
tang, the drink--spilled (crazily, then sadly)--or the bird
(happily recalled, now tearful)

   brings to mind [some party?],
   the icy sadness that follows the present
   punchbowl now meltwater
   then a chore, to clean? -- now something
   almost precious to remember; throw it away,
   it's just a dirty paper tablecloth

<>

 gnats on overcoats eat expensive holes,
      in wool; drugs,
being taken by everyone present. being taken
to the rodeo, i haven't   been, but want to
i want to be ;  i want to   be taken ;   i want to
   go 

   maybe, (also)
my body, you know--it's a wonderland, my
boys, you've heard, precious as woodlots,
   (hello foresters) (they are)

   i think it's
drizzling,    every day, (i'd tell them) i have
to keep hammering the sturgeon
trails (rivers, roads) until my back is split
and everything broken, spills
out, gilled and fucked out.

Washroom

Debbie wants a different dog. "Yep, an alternate animal," she confirmed in a telephone call with her editor in Budapest. "I have no clothes on. I'm literally nude." Every time the buttons are revealed he pushes them without thinking, and snorts rails of turmeric before her very eyes.