Caves & Bats

Insects in the forest / some do not return
donut-shaped rings / eluding keen birds-of-prey

diamond mine mind / espousing bonesmen's talc
clatter weird honey / honest honey top / exposed
vast bats exposed / a sitting "duck" bar tab

nightly onslaught / barely (the cat's population)
bats bat bats / the day-shift catamarans

Meal-Tab for the cave crab

3 million wrinkle-lip bats live here.
They produce something vital: vials
of slim rancid bar tab: guano
300 feet deep. Read about it.

This cave thrives on bat droppings
there are pelicans in this shit mansion
cockroach eating bats and crazy mice
getting high in the caves.

Your Vulva or Your Money

First off--yes, there are pirates. Been reading about
it (tee hee, Ramsey! Egyptian god-of-note) in the
Times "Sunday Styles." The point is (a question)

explain this: why are wolves ourselves? ...

Back to: your Vulva. Is it Vulcan? How does it want
to live--cleanly? Five baths a day? No ma'am,
not in America; You are no Hepburn's excuse.

Arctic Wolves

are also girls; there's almost a burglar
outside your window, lurking; I want
less doors generally. Wolves do not bathe

nor would I ask it of you. One man's murder
is another manslaughter. Wolves are daughters
of Native American boneyards; he named it

America because Amerigo. Exxon & Costco,
and the wolves with the oxygen pull. Flash
lights in the closet honey. Your wolves or your money.

Salad Bar Gangsta (Pt. 1)

new bag of grass
snakes in the lawn
sheets ain't gone
just dirty laundry songs
hoes on the washer
fucking with only heels on

how do you feel?
thanks for asking, mon,
rather like a wheel
rolling over discarded tongs

like an eel, full of
mystery and murky bongs
loitering in the deep
I done swallowed all these thongs

If it weren't for the pink child's bike, this wouldn't be borderline offensive

Dancers in the grass, pt. 0

(dale once thought: these high school
dancers are on you like your pants are)

But what I meant to say was:
never become a pinnacle unless you're
agreeable to us peninsula (plural)

we stick out like rural celeb vets
tripped out on acid
drinking from rancid streams
carrying corn's vain dreams
of dedicating without belonging
to the earth of thronging
things green, red and yellow
not monocultures of culture mono

grant us mano but deliver us macho
who think corn is bullshit;
we should plant prairies.

Standing in the reeds

red bull waits in the rushes
to be scrubbed
& awake like GOOD MORNING
us let's make big, make everything
open into another something
even bigger, a tired lizard
or a snake playing poker

TIS DALE

'Tis Dale! Mike Tisdale!
I cried upon seeing
his scruffyvisage

making buckets like coopers barrel
hunched over liked a miner at lunch
with a weird chinstrap a-munch

White-ass seven-footer
Chopping blocks like a shoplifta
Popping out on D like
a Jewish mother's eyes


Surprise: he can hit J's
like my bros and I can blaze:
all day like no way
other than the highway

all day, I say
again like Mike Davis prays SI never features him
again, because then the next
game, he won't play
and Tisdale gets all the fame
but we'll win the game.

Then, the next game, Davis
plays more, and we lose. Let's booze.

What happened from 4:50 to 4:57 PM the day prior, long and unedited

Quick play
Me or my
Surrogate, a game
Like a berry’s bush aflame
With all the world’s halls
Empires emblazoned like lame
Ducks going out
For the long one, just human, we’re just human
That’s all
Like gourds along the road
Ripe with emotion
Limiting ourselves to sharp angles
And broad strokes
Like bored storks, cleaning up our clockwork
Is like going home empty-handed, empty
Or at least without an idea
Of how to behave properly.
Yes, you’re right, I have never forgotten
Exactly how to imagine the world becoming
A smooth, glassy siphon
And sucking itself out into
Something restrained, it has become, a well-crafted game like
Bass fishermen going nuts
Getting creative on our asses
Getting their butt’s out of heaven’s way
And weighting it down like
Overblown cannon, outdated mongrel
















I have nothing left to vent about
This language is suddenly inaccessible
Just because it’s starlight doesn’t mean it is not soft
Like loaves of broken stardust
We arrange our bodies into strange envelopes and ship them

(It is not over, it is not even past
The past, that is, like a thermostat on a ledge
A collegiate athlete reaches for sunscreen
And he’s found the ground again, a whole
Shipyard of these strange characters
Not believing that anything is wrong
It’s just the culture, it’s all the culture)

If you worship the broken sunbeam,
Something is bound to alleviate
All the pain within

That pain which
Opens doors and clothes the urban poor; that rain which pokes
Its head out of the door
As if it’s saying good morning,
I had not realized I had spoken,
The morning laughter revisited,
All over again.

Gallons of dross
Poured onto the cement in hopes
Of some clever elves arriving

(at half-passed noon
Our half-amassed crooning
Has awakened our interiors and
Bespeckled disaster like Midnight!
Time’s up!)

These rolling peninsulas just unroll
Sometimes
Like clowns creating quiet
In the dark noobs of their own quiescent closets
Hoping for a stranger to linger
Or lend an arm, shop, laundry bin

Artichokes laundering themselves before mealtime;
Dusty helmets meet the breeze;
Forget about this:
Drake character, you’ve met before;
Spirits loitering like celery paper
Scribbling in intangible vegetables letters
Messages you had already received but not opened, not read, not cared about

Everything you had hope for
In a breed of crazed zombies
One type is right
The left-footed booby traps of
Nathaniel Hawthorn heritage
Opening toilet lids and pooping until
There is no tomorrow
But there always is, and it comes
ONE DAY
ATTA TURK

Super People of Dynamite City

France is thronged with knights
My ants are pregnant
Nights like wine grow with weight

<>
Your nights are my drapes

<>
Your thighs are my bright lights

<>
Home in the rain
Coda in the range
Toad bins enraged

<>
Your boobs are plants

Your window brooms

<>
Fascinating bubbles

<>
Steakhouse wine-stars
Super-people of dynamite city

<>
Freak show party
all over the dome-show
party party party
all night long
Danny had a sock fest
with his money in the tabloids
ate his own chocolate, looked in the mirror

<>
it may be your party
it may be my country

<>
quit wasting my time
i'm not a minority
monetaries are bombastic
who's got a big one
bigger ones are c l o n e d
twin boners are coners
cyclones in the moth
mouths
moths and fire-fighters
are blighters
mighty
mightier
might

<>
Name a celebrity. The blond anchor on CNN, for example. I would like to strangle her while fucking. Not to hurt her, of course. Just to assert my dominance. If you think I'm weird, then you've never seen pornography.

<>

gravy dads

gravy dads rave about their gravy

like

look at my soon porous son
poor us, suns-a-scant, sun skin
sun-skinted half-amassed, placed
placards in gusts at halfmast
have to blast that Shi'ite shit
too Sunni? to joke about muzzled
Arabica means
to make light of beans
& what we're talking about?
coffee

opens doors and hello
newspapers unfamiliar faces
familiar celebs, celery bogs, eat at the Ritz
if you a Jew
you cannot fool my, Carlton,
Fisk-tisk, a brand new task
a flower-making basket
splish splash i was taking a bath
in Bath
so un-Roman, regard my Ba'ath,
regard my temple, regard my empty
box of dead people:
that must mean they're still alive
so grow wise
and descry
poverty that is
stated: i might as well be wasted
if i'm not currency
currently working
murky

composte

I keep it more real than realty
torn born-again amigos like imbroglio
selling plots like Oh No, Yes Go
stop on red, flow growing green on grow
Legos floating into place so

catch me
selling fiction like pulp painters,
sculpted duct pipes exclaiming
GAS [comma]
T-H-I-S I-S W-H-A-T I A-M
many parts becoming whole again
on the roll again, buttered as cluttered
rooms of clergymen grooms: Yessir,
I stole the grain bin, robbed the bank,
except that it stank
there they stored rotting things
instead of money. It wasn't
a financial institution,
but an illusion. The pious
inscribe sacrament in their bodies
and need no cobwebs to
hide their dead.

Getting to the part about the cottage

[superfluous intro:
spinal bifida, which i at
first spelled wrong:
is it still a disorder?

sorry, no laughing matter]

like dispensed chocolate
already tastes good:
that's called a paradox

a pair of ocean-smooth
sandalwood sandals sit
on your cousin's sand-blasted
deck, overlooking the Connecticut
River, the deepest river in New
England, apparently.


Largest of its size,
I'm told, without
a major settlement near
it's mouth.

A silty river carrying
mud all the way from
Quebec. But naturally
muddy, like the original
Old Muddy -- The

Missouri, of course -- but without the Army Corps of Engineers
feverish channelizing.

All the silt made navigation difficult. Hence the important
wetlands and lack of a major city. Not easily
navigated, especially in the olden days.

The Connecticut. Where my cousin bought a house
two hours from Manhattan.
That's what I meant to focus on.

#43: NOT a boy

Darren Sproles: No Child Left Behind

D. Sproles lumbered into the end-zone
looking all the world
like a 12-year-old.

Unfortunately -- for the Indianapolis Colts, that
is -- he is a grown man, juking and steaming
his five foot, several inch frame into the end-zone
not once, but twice. And the second time, it was
for all the marbles. Game.

Borneo Grass Snake

Aurora borealis, she said, like a fawn nudging brown mushrooms
for worth. "A young creature, we'll say, testing it out,
maybe a magic spell lesson, bad or good, maybe a sniff
gone awry, maybe nasal curiosity." Whatever the reason,
Angela was taken aback -- Aurora, the goddess of dawn,
had awoken. "Your job!" she grieved, her countenance
lowered to the refractory dining halls below her tower
quarters. "You cannot possibly make breakfast in time
for your orb's precious ascent."

"That's true," said Dawn, "but I'm not hungry."

EVER

Lonely little love dog
that nobody knows the name of

give your life to be that

switch switching off voluntarily
like a man returning his car keys
to his mother
in a fancy restaurant:
"You were right about
her," he says.

"Yes," somebody recalls, "but
haven't we been down
this:::::road:::::before."

Which is funny, you see,
because we hadn't
ever been there--

Coffee Might / Gun Spring

now you truly know the secret, but so does everyone,
they all watch you in the theatre.

Mister Toad, His Wild Ride, Et Al,
Dear, That is, I should say,
This is my title: capitulation
To the rude girls outta town
Back coming from; this is your homeyard
Which should be a word
Calcify or strength / Brush or floss

Where there are fish
There are bigger fish

Like gasoline I’m distilled
Into various aliquots / burn my palindrome
A MAN A PLAN A CANAL, PANAMA
Central American tales of fire
And losses worse than coffee blight.

i hate my name

twenty-five years ago, whats his name,
came up from below.

never going back again, a dancing fool,
flies around like a grocery bag.

now he's walking on the phone lines,
tapping two-time, making friends and enemies and disconnections.

i heard his sister has a big kite, likes to soar high,
to steal the earth from the satellites.

now when we go out daylight walking, we know they see us,
so our bodies wear our brightest colors.

yes that's the price we pay for drinking, from the fountain,
that no one told us not to play in.

it stinks that all our foes surround us, call us by our name,
for they are the ones that named us Larry.

i wonder when the stones and rocks will rise up, sing hallelujah,
then do away with both scissors and paper.

no one has ever heard that mountain, scream in ecstasy,
our ears are too full of children.

so take the time to wake the lover, winking at yourself,
finding only what you hoped was not there.

now you truly know the secret, but so does everyone,
they all watch you in the theatre.

PlantNap

magic...
the call of horses & foreign porches
purses pursuing purchased Porsche's
and handmittens lingering in nightlights
slug seven times trailed
like Doug paled in comparison

to his firstborn newsy timeline
plot, forage, deceive
a twisted mister / spraying water / plantnap

occasions such as these broccoli
for the unholy knee

knells departing and quickening
threads of music strong-licking
every last corner of the noses.

Christmas Eve

(C H R I S T M A S
eve is like dreaming about
sugarplums & fairies faxing
jingle.

Smoke coming from chimneys

impossible yule log
descends from glowing clouds.
Is this fire? Or reindeer's
nose... modern magic in the tale
and the short bobbing trail of
magical snowflakes
that follows Santa
wherever he lurks.

Santa lurks not. He jollies.)

GRE vocab surfeit

Now they're training us like picayune pygmies
wearing pj's... meretricious words to take in
brains like testicles, when the pith is hidden
by the pitch: the ball's path is specious, capricious;
it is, in other words, a knuckle-ball. Given to
freakish notions and whims. Given generously?
Why, that's munificent. Salutary, for example,
means healthful, also salubrious. But dare I be
pedantic? Betraying a scholarship lacking in
common sense and relative motion? Which is
important - the relativity - for even a taciturn
mouse (not a peep) inures fracas when seemingly
saturnine rats prove mercurial, all along, the
truth obscured by an opaque window that fronts
-- what windowed effrontery! -- the rat's
capacious home.

INS Mysore, MV Gibe

We're getting away with Somalia.
Pirates at night grenade lights soar/
bones into a dark globe. Morse code.

What's more cold than a pirate, straight old
like an island rum fermentation pro-vi-sion.
Robbin hoods like I'm chillin with my goods.

Trying to be those number one guys. Coasts
grow towards you at night, coves come
under your girl's blouse. Some impossible

Blagojevich, toy czar us. Wasn't the last one
a tyrant? The man tyrannosaurs in black
gold bands; black neon snow seas, Aden.

Ethical Pragmatism

Ermine Daughters Swap Coats

maybe not more moon-caverns tonight.
tonight, i'm going to tell it like it is: I fly
kites all day likes i am told to. it is the only
job available to me in my county, but by
Jingo I've got to be the best kiter in the
bromine!
painting in which we live

the pain painstakingly entertaining
the idea of shining less brilliantly, and
then it expands, it enlightens, in brands
its demands upon everyone surrounding:




yes, this is the birth of my conscious. yes,
this is the birthright of my father's father's
father. this is the weight of a million gray
cabooses letting out their steam, perfect
unicorns, urinating in the shadows

exploding prose so that nobody knows
what to fucking think
well, get a drink, puke in the sink, fuck in the pink,
clean chicken off of bones
in public

as at Rendez-Vous, World Famous Ribs in Memphis,
TN, Since 1948.

No More Pomegranates?

Which is more interesting: Word-babies or baby-words?
I prefer the former, like the fruits of a dictionary tree
like::::orange:::::ads::::::spur::::::sprees of citrus shopping,
days on the blackberry, distracted from the task at hand:
buying--well, berries, of course, grapes, lettuce, I could go
on, but I won't.

Ok, i lied: POMEGRANATE. Lie over. The only time I
raw:::ate:::one

was in Andrea's kitchen in Palo Alto. It was sexual and weird,
the fruit, that is. Her boyfriend prompted me to see it akin to
cunnilingus, which isn't gross per se, but IS pretty weird
when actually eating

in semi-polite company.
No more pomegranates for me.

fern / cancer / daylight / boydrapes

layers of ferns elongate in perfect harmony
to make a fern-layer. you already knew it would
happen: all your house plants have been quarreling
for years now, and it is high time that
somebody does something. green plants? green
quivering bodies? "no locomotion," botany
department memos read. they have to remind them-
selves of these things: no muscles, no brains, just
green cells making life out of the sun like ingenious
brainless chordates. chords ate in the music luncheon
what they spoke of: feelings and scales. on this level,
all the meatsacks are empty, and speak of longing for
protein and something more substantive then a word
that means mealtime in every walk of life. sun. carbo-
hydrates, getting high on forks before being eating
or getting distracted by sunscreen and cancer-fears.

Watching Apartheid TV

Does nobody blog any longer? Is it wrong to
take pistol shots in anger? (At the dangling
participles just now participating, at least,
) I smell something, honey, like minced meat
oats suit the money men adventuring like
day-glo boybands in bondage wear
:::::trying on their delicate torture gear
"How do I torture you?" One eager stag
asks another. "Here, I think you twist this
sprocket... Oh yes, that's it," he trails off,
murmuring incantations

of slain vegetables like broccoli who hold
no malice towards those who eat legumes.
(Think beans.) And boyband toilets where
the business gets down, and the million drab,
indrawn, loathsome places where ordinary
things happen to extraordinary people, but
nobody listens.

mint eater: take 3

the blogger buzz

is that the full slug cinema,

the orchestra (like they had

in the old days) exiting its cartoon doors earlier

this morning. from here, i

can see everything:

your wallet, her sidecar, your dad's

people. your jubilee is not yet over,

is it, father? or do you wonder

how we got over

train tracks

like mints in a man's mouth;

this isn't just any man, it's

a mint eater.

Dragon Fly Agony Awareness Day

(To be spoken aloud,
sternly)

Dragon Fly alert:
Dragonflies warn fish
of approaching fisher-
men.

"They're coming,"
the message goes.

In return, the dace
(meaning carp)
don't eat glittering
darters (meaning
dragonflies) during
courtship.

It's an unspoken agreement as old as
the fish are.

Big Greg

If you were to approach any middle-aged female and ask her about legendary post presence "Big" Greg Ostertag, they might tell you a few things. And those things would probably be insightful and perhaps perverse, but what they would fail to mention are Big Greg's humble beginnings. Let us flash back to March 6, 1973, the day that Big Greg was transported into this world via vaginal technology.

After Big Greg clawed his way out of that damp womb, his mother could tell he would always be husky young gent. From a very young age he actively peddled cereal variety packs, Ring Pops and cock rings. His bartering skills showed promise and he certainly had an affinity for the Super Mario Bros. animated series on PBS.

It wasn't long before Big Greg, shunned by the kids at school for his flat-top and horrendously long sperm stick, found refuge at the local arcade: Aladdin's Castle.

Day upon day upon night Big Greg could be found battling with various miscreants and scat freaks for tickets. "I want to buy the big Dumbo!" he would shriek, his voice exuding 60% agony and 40% excitement. The goth kids and grunge stoners would stare at this monster, now standing at 6'10" at the age of 15, wondering how they could "go all Gulliver's Travels on him and shit." Green Jelly and Jesus Jones poured out of their headphones like invisible rays of rancid milk before they all finally agreed to take dumps on Big Greg's Minnesota Northstars Starter jacket as it laid unsuspecting in the corner by the Skee-Ball machine.

And that was when Big Greg's life changed forever. As he stood outside Aladdin's Castle on that fateful day, feces smeared on the "N" on his jacket in such a manner that an average bystander might confuse his allegiance with that of the expansion Minnesota Backslashes, a man walked up to him.

"Do you party?" the middle-aged man asked Big Greg, wearing a tan Carhartt jacket with tiny flecks of what appeared to be semen.

Big Greg sniffled before replying, "Fuck yeah, pimp."

An instant friendship was born. Before long, Big Greg and Cum Jacket were spending all day playing the basketball shooting game at Aladdin's Castle. Big Greg became so skilled at the game that Cum Jacket hooked him up with a scholarship to play at Texas A&M, especially since Big Greg was also really into agriculture and mechanics. That plan was spoiled, however, when Big Greg and Cum Jacket committed several fairly serious acts of felony battery on the shit culprits on their last day at Aladdin's.

The two fled to the state of Kansas, where Big Greg quickly became a Jayhawk. He played and stuff and was eventually selected 28th overall in 1995 by the Utah Jazz. Finally Big Greg was rich. He proceeded to buy a brand new Dallas Stars Starter jacket (they moved) and began to dabble in homosexual affairs. After 11 unremarkable years in the NBA during which Big Greg averaged 4.6 points and 5.5 rebounds per game, he retired to a quiet life in Dubuque, Iowa, where he currently munches on mad bean pies and tugs his gonzo dick with reckless abandon.

-- Billy Boklit

Tribulation, especially

Everybody misses somebody.
Everyone leaves
somethings like velvet dresses
and other things valuable
we covet like unthinking eyes
forgetting sorrow, dancing
in the mind's eye even
dreaming of the days
which will soon become themselves
--they have to--they say: oh, what
a tribulation!

Tails

Where do they
leave

or do they rather live
like prehensile tails
acting human-like.

Yes, I have observed
trumpets of varied origin;
I have rumbled through
many-vined valleys
shaking them likewise
to their very fiber.

<>
Fibrous roots make elemental
kits; every flower is favorable.
<>

Mentally, and, “by chance,” are
the same thing.

Silly boys
slain pulling weeds

of dusty toil hey!
Finger blood dark red
inside my healthy finger.
Stay that way. Be safe. Finer.

What kind of food have you grabbed?

What kind of fruits have you snagged

from the fruit vagabond? Yessir.

Got those thorny kind from down

by the well. The eaves displayed for

us, dispelling thus / our doubt evident

fearsome people are people still

people still moving like decibels

through different apartment's bevels.

Yes, I excell. At Quiddich over the

naked wrangling well (where the

under-thumped are indifferent,

finally, Estonia, quelled) and

find frompy friends at the frat

house. Sometimes I slept at the

library. Sometimes I slept at the

countertop. Some nights I hooved

it to the country shop. Nice shows

there. Nice shovels; they dug well.

He whom is Doug has dug smells,

like electricians light up the night:

when I see big cities I think about

advances in construction technology

and electrical engineering. These

things become very extraordinary.

Goblin Eggs / Maple Syrup

Two New Hampshire youth--Helen Smith, 14, and brother Mason, 11--look upon the Granite State's first pair of goblin eggs. The sprightly vermin would hatch later that day and eat the entire Smith family.

Seven Muddy Children & Dad

I always boasted--
"I have a great picture of
Seven Muddy Children And A Dad.
And they all laughed at me! Oh!
Oh, How they laughed!!! But now
I'll show them who's
boss, and make their
premature laughter echo into
blinding light, good morning:

Nightslug Deputy

Snail's Deputy Reports

November (Snail Month) Report 1

Dear Snail,
I am a nightslug who unloads chimneys
into the gray, pottywatered Pollywhattamee,
hence it's naming.

Sprees are common here; Winners and
losers alike tamper together in the street
of their night's meaning, like
whimpering lovers... and perpetuated
appetites linger.

This is the land of plenty &
live-longer dads, vitamins,
babies. Wives and (optional
) fjords abound.

Pollywhattamee ain't perfect,
but it's home!
...to us nightlugs, anyway.

Amigos Forever

We're Americans, goddam it!
We should never be without marijuana.
Celery city and dice bikes
of brains made velvet by said
plantations. Amigos.

Celebrity Blog Diet: CELERY

Nancy eats a single carrot and one stick of celery
per day. Isn't she a beauty? 100 pounds, scant
lack of perfection, nice buttocks. I could see biting
into the thigh of that.



Hi kids,
This is Nancy. Nancy likes brooms.
Nancy likes to fuck. Nancy likes to fuck brooms.
I'm sorry, I know it sounds rude. There is just no
other way to put it. Simply no other way.

Live from Stand Firm

Stand firm, Stanford--for you are the Cardinals,
full of bulls-eye-students and blondes and Asians
already come home. All ready home.