REALLY

FUCKING

PRETTY

At the very top of the world

you can’t see very much

mostly you can just see

places that are close

to the very top of the world.

Hearing that I’ve been there

people are always eager to talk to me

they ask questions like

“I bet it was really something, right?”

and they ask me to tell them about it

and I give them answers like

“The very top of the world was alright,

but I prefer Albany.”

They are almost never satisfied with this

some are so unsatisfied

that they become determined to journey

to the very top of the world.

When they return I ask them how it was

and they give me answers like

“The very top of the world was alright,

but I prefer Sacramento.”

After a while of this

I started telling people,

when they asked

that the very top of the world

was better than it was,

I started telling people

that I was thinking about going back.

And some of them became determined to journey

to the very top of the world.

When they returned I asked them how it was

and they told me

that the very top of the world

was better than it was

they told me

that they were thinking about going back.

Now I’m sitting at the very top of the world

and I can’t see very much

and I’d prefer to be

in Albany.

The wanderer roams for ten months out of the year

and rests during the other month.

Iconoclasms

I was in the middle of a

seminar I was giving about

the seven bridges you must

cross and the one bridge you

must burn to attain true

love when someone in the

audience interrupted and

asked about my qualifications

about why should I know

about this and I pulled out

the tabloid my romance

being the most well

documented the most well

photographed of the

decade, but the audience

member was fractious

and stood up and walked out

in protest. I don’t know if

they were protesting me

or true love

or what the difference would be.

The farmer’s boy had never been off the farm

in his life. Since you can only dream of the things

you’ve seen, the farmer’s boy dreamt of corn stalks

with cows’ heads. When the farmer’s boy would

lie in a field and look at the clouds, all the

clouds would seem to him to resemble sheep. The farmer’s

boy knew every fish who lived in the duck pond,

he had caught each of them at least three times,

even that old, shy, fat catfish, and always threw them

back. The farmer’s boy had a rock collection, he would

keep every interesting stone he turned up while

plowing the farm’s fields; one of the stones looked like

a pig. Another looked like a duck.

AUTUMN LEAVES

and winter shuts the door behind it.

The War

When the war came Casey’s brother

signed up quick to do his duty.

It seemed like it was only the day after

that two officers showed up to present

his mother with some medals and she cried.

It seemed like every mother around

was crying with some medals.

Then the war came closer

and soon there was no sugar

and then it crept closer

till you could hear it from your bedroom,

but you can act like it’s not there, easy

if you just turn up the dubstep.

The Handsome Mouse

“Please, won’t you psychologize me?”

he pleaded.

We wouldn’t and he started acting up,

yelling “Squeak! Squeak! Squeak!”

until we had enough and went

downstairs to watch TV.

Murder/Arson

Twelve detectives examine a crime scene

There’s been a murder says the first.

Yes, to cover up the arson says the second.

There’s a lingering smell of burnt cash says the third.

They were trying to cover up the counterfeiting says the fourth.

But where is the body? Asks the fifth.

We are detectives says the sixth.

I have a badge but no notebook says the seventh.

I have a notebook but no badge says the eighth.

We are all covered in blood says the ninth.

One of us must be lying says the tenth.

Not all is as it seems says the eleventh says the eleventh.

Yr flesh’s turning into miniature cattle.

The miniature cattle realize they are on

a giant & stampede off and out of sight.

This mostly happens under yr clothes.

The girl you’re talking to @ the bar is

kind of impressed by this ostensible

magic, but later when you bring her

home she is less impressed by the

exposed sinews and veins that populate

yr form and says maybe we should just

sleep with our clothes on. She answers

yr text for five days, then stops

the problem with your whole life is your floors are dirty

every headache you’ve ever had could be fixed with a mop

Greeting Card Poem

We walk around with greeting cards

introducing ourselves to everyone we meet

Our greeting cards are decorated

with unnecessary representations of flowers

All of the people that we know have received

one of these greeting cards.

We fill the cards with unnecessarily

specific information about ourselves

so no one comes away with a wrong impression of us,

but our writing is also long winded and verbose

so no one comes away with a right impression of us.

During our downtime we watch reruns

on daytime television, or, if it is not our

day to have the A/C

we hang out by the pool.

Topics that we have exhausted include our mothers

There is only one taboo subject during our downtime:

our greeting cards.

We talk to the children at the pool,

and, as stand-in authority figures, have meticulously

documented

the top 50 cannonballs of the summer.

Each of the children from the pool have received

a personally addressed greeting card

detailing precisely what they can do

to improve their cannonballs.

These are always mailed to their home addresses

in order to avoid downtime conflicts of interest.

The Wedding

At first sight some of the

children were most drawn to

the pony ride, a few however

tumbled over towards the moon

bounce where other laughing

munchkins in face paint were

somersaulting etc, with cotton

candy halos round their mouths.

We should turn around they said

that’s not the way

but they were wrong

that was the way

Parrot

The cries of the Arctic winds

blend with the shrieking of the ice.

My friend told me she bought a parrot.

I thought about that on top of the glacier,

shivering.

The Grey Palace

I live in the Grey Palace

sometimes my hands smell like feet

and not even when I’ve just put on shoes

sometimes long before

or long after

sometimes from the balconies of the Grey Palace

I watch the stars or

passing cars on the street

in the springtime

the new greens leak into the Grey Palace

and the old greys leak out

In the basement of the Grey Palace

there is a slide

that goes to the center of the Earth

Hanging Out

I was in the treehouse by myself when you came up

“can’t even let me be lonely,” I said.

“What’re we gonna do?” you asked, so I got out the telescope.

“I’m tired of looking at the naked ladies,” you said, so I

aimed it at the fat man’s window and we watched him,

his belly lolling out like a panting dog’s tongue. He had

a naked lady over, though, so we got bored and stopped watching.

Since there was nothing else to do I brought out the liquor.

We took turns drinking straight from the bottle.

Neither of us spoke as we passed back and forth

until your grasping hand didn’t grasp quick and it

slipped and spilled.

“Even though you’re here I’m going to be lonely anyway,”

I said, so you passed out to make it easier for me to

do it. I didn’t even have any old love letters to read

or burn. I talked to you while you were sleeping.

I told you all of the things I didn’t like about you.

Then I felt bad so I told me all of the things I did

like about me. Then I looked through the telescope

and the naked lady had left the fat man so I watched

him, his belly lolling out like a panting dog’s tongue,

all by myself and it wasn’t boring.

Though I’m not sure how it ended up under the couch cushions,

I couldn’t help but appreciate the new family dog

The Sing Song Days

On the sing-song days we sang together,

all of us. the sing-song days were good

cleaning-the-dishes days

and also good

decorating-the-house days

since we could just sing what we were doing.

Sometimes we had quiet-all-together days

which were much better than quiet-separately days,

when everyone just did quiet-things on their own.

On the quiet-all-together days

whoever woke up first

would wake up every else like it was Christmas

with a shh-finger in front of their mouth

and everyone would have to wear slippers.

My mother died. The War came. We’re

getting a divorce. Jesus and The Buddha

are helping me cope. My hair is falling

out, the kids don’t call, I’m putting on

some weight.

Song Goats

Up in the mountains

you can hear the song goats sing.

The song goats sing the

same songs over again

over and over

the same songs.

People from the nearby mountain

villages go up into the mountains

to go crazy.

One villager went to teach

the goats a new song

but came back crazy

singing the song goats’ songs.

I THOUGHT I SAW THE SUN SHINE

“We do not believe in miracles,” one said.

“We like to hear the sounds of falling snow,” said another.

“We imagine ourselves within an infinite afternoon,” said a third.

“We breathe on frozen glass, put our eyes to its thawed circles,” said a fourth.

“We do handstands in green grass in summertime,” said a fifth.

“Our whispers always echo.”

“Our birthdays make us anxious.”

“Our parents don’t remember us.”

“Our nights are soon forgotten.”

The last was silent.

Half a lemon

if you were a houseguest

and i were a host

i would feel bad

for having left you in the fridge

for two weeks.

Grumble

Shrimp & Tuna

You will be costumed as a tuna

i will be costumed as a shrimp.

our costumes will perhaps be made largely

out of paper matche but also partly

of fabric. Though my costume will

appear larger than yours, because

i am the larger of us, we will act as

though we are the size of our

respective sea dwellers

and i will act like you are a giant

and run from you

and hide in the shadows eating dead things

and you will be caught on

one of those lines that

require multiple men to reel in.

And your body will be eaten by cats

and my inedible tail will end up on

staten island under a diaper.

After the War

There wasn’t much left.

it looked apocalyptic

maybe it was.

You smeared ashes on your face

your arms your tattered clothes

I wore an apron that said

Kiss the Chef

“Those ashes from all those burnt

down buildings are probably going

to give you cancer,” I said.

You laughed and asked if I wanted

to play hide and seek.

You won every time

You blended in perfectly with the

burnt down buildings.

Skinny Love

we are starving

to death

and you are hot for me

i don’t have any energy, i say

looking at the dirt

we will die soon anyway

you assure me

i am only a sack of bones,

i tell you, but you don’t care

and start saying dirty things

in my ear

i am hot for you too

i can’t stop thinking about

biting off a piece of your ear

or leg

The Number One

I am a traveling salesman

everywhere I go is exactly the same

in the exact same way

Every night as I am waiting to

fall asleep in some motel I am counting

to one million. Every night

I resume where I left off

the night before. When I get

to one million, I start again at one.

My favorite number to count

is 37,563, but I also highly

enjoy 137,563

and 437,563.

The Haunted House

down the street

burned down

or did it?

Significant

in the postcards you wrote

you dotted your i’s with dots

“everything matters—or nothing does,

is some peoples’ point of view”

you said in the postcards you wrote

Dead Horse Fucker

What do you know of gallop?

Yeah, in a field. Where else?

Under sky.

With my footprints in the mud I spelt out love.

A hoofprint next to mine; love.

Heart Beat Frantic

We are playing space bandits;

I am the bandits robbing your caravan.

The sound of my magnet boots on

your ship’s carapace

makes your heart beat frantic.

The strobing lights of space cops

are planets behind us. “Give up your

precious cargo,” I yell, “those space

cops will never catch up.”

“Drats,”

you sigh, looking at Sven, panting,

a hundred feet away.

“What are you carrying,

anyway? Open it up.”

“Instantaneous

Transporter Devices,” you say,

unzipping your backpack to let Sven

through.

“I won’t go out like this,”

I tell you, pulling my space blaster

from its holster.

“Not like this.”

I shoot and we are ripped from

the caravan.

I float around your

backyard for two hours,

staring

into far off galaxies

until the stars comes out.

The Falls

You are standing on or in a waterfall

and you are beckoning to me

and I can hear my mother’s voice

in my head saying

“if someone jumped off of a bridge

would you jump off of a bridge too”

but this isn’t a bridge

it’s a waterfall.

The Stage Donkey

“He’s just a stage donkey,” you said.

“He won’t just carry stuff for you,

it’s not in his contract.”

So I wrote a script.

Act I, Scene I

Donkey carries things.

Refrigerator Love Story

A refrigerator is an end of a love story

shared lives shared shelves

they say

we shop at a store at the top of our street

to keep our shared shelves stocked

A Marxist-Leninist walks into an analogy

where the train is late and everything is scarce.

The night is dark and sitting on a cold bench

the Marxist-Leninist struggles to stay awake.

To fall in love is to trip into a hole.

While doing some shopping we discover

Our favorite cashier has quit the job

“Will we ever see you again?” I ask

“No,” says the cashier

A Marxist-Leninist falls asleep on a train

and misses their stop. Then Our favorite cashier

gets on the same train and sits next to the

sleeping Marxist-Leninist.

The store at the top of our street

is now understaffed. Their new hours

are as short as winter sunshine.

We wake up after dark.

Our end of a love story has empty shelves.

Our favorite cashier and a Marxist-Leninist

leave the country and become adventure capitalists.

Their trail is a locusts’.

We keeping digging holes in our back,

then our front, yard. But to trip

into a hole is not to fall in love.

Two adventure capitalists are wolves

and the world is their caribou. They buy

a banana plantation in the Caribbean.

We went to the store at the top of our street

and bought a bunch of bananas. Putting them

on our shelves we found a note attached:

“I told you you’d never see me again.”

The Orphanage

we barely see kids anymore

once they have parents

maybe on a birthday

or running into each other

on the street.

The Hoarse Race

We run around the track

screaming as loud as we can.

Our friends watch from the stands;

one of them is taking bets.

I scream I can’t do this anymore.

This is useless. I’m tired of screaming.

My wife comes down from the stands

and tells me

that she is leaving me for Frank.

At first I am elated that she

put her money on me, but,

as her and Frank’s silhouettes disappear,

together, into the horizon,

I am less and less certain.

The end of the world blue sky.

cloud in days? Who hasn’t seen a

Easy connections, but faster to change, the

birds hop, where is metaphysics? A one dollar tomorrow, our

jackets stained with mud, out from once again we arose.

Time now, “your face is obscured by shadows?” ha, weaver

and choice. I am trying to find my way into and out of

the forest.

Direct and inmistakable, here will change

“Where are you going?” She asked me

and I didn’t know how to reply

I thought

of saying

“nowhere” “to the cloud cuckoo land of color wheels”

“a happier star than this” “where the weather suits my

clothes” “hell”

and instead walked to the bathroom and climbed

out the window and up and onto the neighbor’s roof and

onto higher and ever higher buildings until I reached the

moon.

After we realized we couldn’t make the hole any

deeper we began to make it wider and wider.

“If you

average the weight of every sidelong glance you ever

got you’d find out exactly who you were” he said

No one

ignored it and no one spoke.

They sat in silence.

A cat yawned.

I was talking about kissing a baby

You were tying your shoes

You were tying your shoes for a very long time

and when you stood up

they were less tied than tangled

It would take you weeks to unknot those tangles

We ate hot dogs together under a tree

You got a lot of mustard on your shirt

I couldn’t stop thinking about it

It was too much mustard

I couldn’t hear anything you said

for the rest of the day

I couldn’t talk to you for weeks

I couldn’t talk to anyone.

Your peach tree is barren,

it has not grown a single peach

in all the years you’ve had it

a few cherries,

some pears,

a passion fruit

have appeared on its branches

like adopted children, but never any

peaches

You keep cultivating the tree though

and one day you find,

growing from a low branch,

a field mouse.

The people on the streets,

I looked into all of their faces.

None of them looked alike:

I made a love radar, but,

I can’t tell if it doesn’t work or does.

Helen walks around with wet cement.

Occasionally, when she sees something she likes,

she’ll smear some cement on it.

Helen would like to be made out of cement herself,

she thinks, some days.

Helen’s liked a lot of her neighbor’s things.

Her neighbors’ve put up a fence.

They were appalled when Helen cemented

their cat. Their cat didn’t seem to mind the

cement too much.

Helen mixes cement in the mornings in her

underwear.

She is quite attached to this morning ritual.

It is when she feels, even if only briefly,

that she has the most control over her life.

In the garage next to the old bikes with

flat tires, gray-blue light straying in

through two small windows, Helen might pause,

for a moment, over the bucket

with a soft glow in her eyes

and her face will relax, just a little

until she comes back to herself

and finishes mixing the cement

A flight, a flying. There are no terrified.

Tintanabulation

One after another are years, and snows

coming down quiet to quiet. The throughrushing rivers thawing

and freezing; your boots fading and breaking, all your

footsteps are gone, sand or snow or mud, are gone now.

You are not always even into imagining, some days the twine

ball in your head sits on the floor under furniture, with the

dust. You would like to sit still so long you were covered

in dust. You would like to be at the end of a rainbow,

covered in dust. You would like to carry around dust with you

to dust the things that should be dusty.

i will count to ten on your soul

until you remind me of my mother and I cry

until i think of dying flowers in pots by the window

that i don’t know how to save

until my voice gets soft as the ground

after the snow melts

whenever i celebrate your birthday in my head

it looks like a child’s party

everyone wears conical hats with white elastic

and bright balloons conference in corners

and i feel embarrassed

i wish i could draw on the sunset

with my finger,

i don’t think i have anything on the Creator,

and the sky would like like amateur hour,

it would be like

pounding on a piano i don’t know how to play

i will count to ten on your soul

until the birds come back in Spring

until the water gets warm

and the leaves drop

The Case

It was a classic murder

whodunnit.

(the detective over

breakfast eggs, toast, drinking milk

felt it coming)

At the detective office in the

morning the report came in.

There was an heiress.

There was an old lady with furs.

She had a small dog.

Someone had an aristocratic

British accent.

It was the detective.

The detective was assigned the case

but with a caveat from

the detective office sergeant

"Don't guff this up

if you pull another one of your stunts

I'll put you in the evidence locker."

The detective was a good and thorough one

but possessed some unfortunate behaviors

including certain opportunistic interpretations of

'the protocol'

and perhaps a few matters

skewing towards vigilantism,

which were disparaged in the force -- as was assignment

to the evidence locker.

Already at the scene of the crime there was another

detective.

"Some place here, huh?" the early-arrived detective asked.

"Amazing how much blood there is everywhere"

said the

disparaged detective.

"Amazing how much everywhere there is."

The mansion

was abundant.

They gathered, bagged, photographed

evidence.

A bloody trail led through half the rooms

and terminated with bloody handprints on the first few steps

of the imperial staircase, as if the deceased had

stopped

trying to hold themself together and begun trying

to pull themself up,

to apparently die at the bottom of the stairs

where an oriental rug slowly absorbed a large

pool of blood.

Another detective arrived while they worked. They greeted each other

somberly and divided up the workload.

"I'll dust for fingerprints," said the first detective.

"I'll write up all the evidence," said the second detective.

"I'll line up the witnesses," said the third

"from shortest to

tallest."

They agreed to reconvene in

the ballroom

where the third detective

would line up the witnesses.

Two more detectives had arrived and

were standing in

the ballroom

when they reconvened. All the detectives lined up

from shortest to

tallest.

"We could dance if only there were music,"

said a detective.

Just then four detectives walked in, carrying their instruments,

and started playing.

The first detective waltzed with the heiress.

The second detective flamencoed with the old lady with furs.

The third detective fox trotted with the butler.

The fourth detective tangoed with the maid.

The fifth detective jitterbugged with the lawyer.

More detectives arrived as they danced.

The fifth detective, being the most acute, saw the problem.

Handing off the lawyer to one of the newly arrived

detectives, the fifth detective said

"I'll go fetch more

witnesses"

and ran out.

The other detectives stood against the wall

waiting

for their dance partners.

"I don't really dance," said

one.

"It's all in the hips," said

another.

When the fifth detective arrived

with the new witnesses the detective band felt a renewed energy

and launched into

a hip jazz number.

More detectives made their ways into

the ballroom,

following them were more witnesses. Everyone was dancing.

Detectives dipped and twirled witnesses.

Witnesses dipped and twirled detectives.

Everyone was dancing.

"You know who would really enjoy this?" asked a detective.

"The detective office sergeant."

So they called him up,

told him to come on down.

He arrived in a fabulous pair

of dance shoes, and began to tear it up

he later admitted

he hadn't danced so hard since his sister's

wedding

One of the detectives was a close friend and confirmed

that the detective office sergeant had indeed been the talk

of the wedding. The dancing lasted until well after midnight. It

was hard for

the detectives to sort out

whose shoes were whose

the detectives all being the sort who

wore nondescript shoes.

The witnesses mostly found their

shoes without any trouble and trickled out.

As the last witness giggles faded away from the manor,

and the sound of the last engine pulling away faded too

a quiet came over the ballroom.

"Detective!" called the

detective office sergeant, over the hush.

"Yes, sir?"

responded an aristocratic British accent.

"I'm giving you a medal."

"Thank you, sir."

Then all of the detectives walked home barefoot

rather than put on the wrong shoes.

L/only

We are afraid

will you comfort us?

No

you must learn not be afraid.

Were you never afraid?

Are you never afraid?

Know thyself,

there is comfort in love.

When will we know love?

& will love know us back?

or will love know our backs?

Do not tell us, do not lie, that you cannot walk out on love.

what of those absent fathers?

what of those scorned lovers?

How can we stop those stories from being our stories?

I don't know.

I don't know.

We hear that love is always different.

We hear that love is always the same.

We hear our heart beat when we cover our ears.

I am nauseous to tell you anything

you are yet like clay.

There must be something?

There is sun and there is cold.

There are good days and there are others.

If I told you more I might be lying.

There must be more?