The Stupid Bus

for the 33 Everyone must get

on the stupid bus
going in the wrong direction

in one big loop
instead of here to there.
Everyone must get

used to absurdity
on the stupid bus
going in the wrong direction.

It’s like a joke nobody gets
delivered like one
everyone must get,

How you could have walked
a mile the right way instead of
going in the wrong direction,

if you didn’t sweat, and if
you didn’t have so much to carry.
Everyone must get

on, so there’s camaraderie,
and plenty to see out windows
going in the wrong direction.

Anyway it’s an unacknowledged truth
that to get going at all-- you, me,
everyone-- must get
going in the wrong direction.

City Eater

All around us
the red brick houses sizzle
like steaks in the heat,
their layered slabs of rust the
russet grain of muscle, their concrete
interstices the grey fat marbling
the meat.
The gutters seem to swirl
with gravy, and the potholes gobble up
the buttered crumbs that fall
under the table from a cornbread
sun.
The skyline’s highrise incisors
flash, full of cavities a hunger

for the spun sugar of clouds has
fostered.
 One by one
those cotton candy cumuli dissolve
into mirages on the highway’s tongue.

The Dance

The wind does not command
the tree. The tree does not dance
until a handsome wind asks. The wind
slips a single finger against the small
of the bark-laced back. The leaves
lean their cheeks against the billowing
shoulder. The two spin in the low
glowing of the sun’s chandelier
as wallflowers wink from other branches.
They keep dancing for what seems
like forever, a graceful gust
around a wooden waist.

Then, when a couple hundred
years of songs have passed, the strong
arm dips,  the supple spine
reclines. Verdant hair touches
the forest floor as roots
weightlessly upturn into the air.

DIY: a song of myself

“Listen to
yourself.

talk to
yourself

and others
will also.”

-- “Poem Written in by Dreams by W.C.W.” via Allen Ginsberg

Often, I have sparked arguments keeping my thoughts to myself. I like to keep to myself. I keep myself as one keeps vigil. I keep myself as one keeps chickens, in the coop of myself, where my self can glut on the good seed of myself and couple with the cock of my self. I pray long hours to myself at midnight, in the dark night of myself.  I brood by myself and hatch my self, myself. When they remark how quiet I am, I know it is the beginning of a great conversation-- they with themself. Yes! I am full of myself. I want others to be too. Things must be full so they can overflow. A selfless self is like a chapel without a chant, or a coop without a cluck. Nobody should be left selfless, if only for the sake of song.

Substitutions

When I quit smoking,
I started carrying a pack
of cards. I went all in.
I put out aces
in ashtrays everywhere.

And when, in the evening, I peeped
in the lamplit windows, I saw
a bouquet of white roses, giant
and brighter than the moon.
Deer in Diana’s headlights,
my dreams devoured me.

Spring came, I grew sick
of my friends. I gathered
cherry blossoms, listless and lovely.

Among the unfeeling grass,
I married them.

10 Ways of Looking at a Dogwood in Bloom

I
Deliverer of envelopes
without their letters, or letters sent
backwards. Unlicked, unstamped
unaddressed, unfolded, unwritten.

II
Shards of porcelain and the shadow
of the nurse’s cat as it escapes
across the green shag.

III
Refurbished brooch
an heirloom bezel boiling over
with new cabochons. Soon
to be stripped again.

IV
A reason.

V
A catch-colt loosed, casting
its dark limbs like lots
in new snow drifts. Hoof-
scythed skyward, flakes fall
a second time, on its back
like a burial.

VI.
A reason
but not
a pardon.

VII
A garden of moss-stained
gravestones, over which
hover ghosts of gone-by
butterflies. A catbird
leaves a nest
in lieu of flowers.

VIII
A collection of all words
that go at the end of letters:
sincerely, love, all the best
p.s., yours.

IX
A gift delivered like a pardon.
A pardon delivered like a child
stillborn. Not awful
unto itself.

X
All the best, yours.
All the worst,
yours.