Poem: Unanticipated Natural Array

 
Buried amphora
Hairline cracks
Black and shiny in patches
Dulled in others
Dirt gently brushed away
Diagrams revealing
The rage of Achilles
Drunk in love on the beach
Stomping away
To sit
To brood
He’s the hero aggrieved
Let the motherfuckers die
I don’t give a shit
He hisses
Sitting in his tent
Staring at the sand
Digging with his heel
His bloody selfish useless jealous murderous hideous rage
Is all we need remember
Picking at it
Scraping through it
Burnishing
Polishing
Take your vase and clean it
Put it on a stand of wood
Simple
Centered
Black lacquer
Lacy coppery embellishments
Remember the wall
Of pitted tiles
Enamels wearing thin
Showing through their colors
Your empty heroic vase hollowed with
Ancient air breathed in a tomb
Now pick some flowers
A wild bursting bunch of untamed color
Leafy stalked and bent
Gather them
With an eye toward an arrangement
Shifting them and tugging them
Into a shape that pleases
Cut off the stems
Thrust them into the vase
So they spread out
In an unanticipated natural array
And turn the vase
Slightly
Then look at your colors
And your history
And think of this
Thuggish brawling clansman
And how he would
Have driven his foot
Through your vase
Exploding flowers
Against the wall
To drop
And whither on the sand
And would have kicked
Shards of clay aside
Like corpses
Into a ditch

cimail (June 7, 2008)

Poem: Alongside Too Soon

 
On a highway
At seventy-five miles per hour
I see a truck
On the right
Its side is fabric
Beating and waving
In the wind
I want to film it
As I pass it
But I cannot
Reach my camera
In time and I’m alongside too soon
The dark shiny waves
Ripple and slap
While my air-conditioning
Quietly cools me
And I kick myself
All the way downtown

cimail (May 29, 2008)

Poem: k*nt

Missing u in a perfectly
Good kunt
What’s happened when u
Can’t get a kunt in edgewise?
What kind of hole are we in
That we can’t say kunt?


Cardboard ridges
Make my red marker bump
Words come out
Crooked
Summon the leadership
The call of the cult
Will of the crowd
Can’t hold it closer
For photos
To post
Like you meant it
Flat on my chest
Like a badge
Or a stiff
Unwashed
Shirt
Unsheathe
Your jostling baton
Ask me again
To put this away


The artists
Are bedding with troops
Shooting
Through camouflage lenses
Taking fire from roofs
That bullet’s a bunkerbuster
Coming in fast
Bend way over backward
So the orders cum down
Boots hit the ground
There’s safety in numbers
Bombs in the road
Kick a door down
Shoot up a house
And go with it live


Security apparatus inuratus upuratus
Pushing probes
Swivel heads
Fingertip scanners
Retinal mapping and
A busted up head
Show your receipt jerk
Or you cannot leave
We are authorities
And we work for the safety
And convenience
Of all


And by the way
When did the howling stop?


Since I don’t owe rent
And school’s out today
I can stand in a crowd
Like a forum today
Mildly retarding
Your reclining submission


Like a cock-jerking
Butt-thumbing priest
Asking you at least
To think about God
As you go on your way


The Queen’s a ceremonial kunt
Jagger her leashed bitch
Dylan’s a carnival show
As rebellious as a busboy
Because you can’t
You can’t
You can’t
You can’t
You can’t say kunt

cimail (May 24, 2008)