THE MOMENT OF THE WORLD

The better words we have

are the feathers on the wings

of effervescent angels

who'd prefer the poets of the earth

to cease staring in the mirror

of their self-assigned appellation

and leave the library, the desk,

that place where the muse goes to

wither,and walk out the door,

Take the elevator down 

and then a train out of town over mountains a

nd state lines to cities for that perfect cup of coffee,

that lingering kiss on a stranger's lips,

the waiting for traffic lights

at odd intersections

and with not a clue

about which way to turn

in this unfamiliar confusion.

Our angels might take 

their feathers back

if something isn't done.

Imagine us finally 

in the Day of Miracles

with cats and dogs

saints and shitheads

having civil meals,

tending to each other's wounds

and not one of us

gets the itch and tickle

to write a word or two

wholly inadequate as witness

but scribed at the moment

of the world,

not above it.

That would be shame.

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not the voice that comes
from the steam

nor the tide that turns
at the drop of a dime 

into a newspaper machine.
not a name that fades in the ear
when you turn a corner

nor a name that comes through the
earpiece of your phone that
rings at the dinner hour.

not a lover who misses you
after all the years in jobs

on a far coast where time zones and
temperatures are closer and hotter

that the hotel sheets
are to the mattress where you stare
at the door to the hallway,
the shadows of feet passing in

the middle of the night,
you wonder what your lover
has to say,
not about this meal you're eating
or by what you're reading

but instead about how you're living
in this world when
nothing seems real enough to
count on as if life itself mattered,

i say all these things come back to us
always in the moments when
we're required to be
the selves we've always rehearsed in

mirrors, at home, imagining interviews
and interrogations,

i think of the way your lips grew puffy
the first time i made you cry,

the way your hand traced the words of
the book you were reading

before setting it down
to dress for openings, dinner,

where ever we might be going,
the masks crack and fall to the floor

when some meaningless phrase is said
and suddenly, powerfully

it’s clenched fists in public places,
the world is removed just then and too loud as well,

it's all those things after all,
every last cough and bottle of beer we balanced
on the fireplace, there's nothing i ever had

that i don't miss, you were everything
in front of me, passing by and gone
like a road sign that couldn’t be read.

SHE LIKES A WITH A SHAVE

She likes a man with a shave
and a room temperature IQ
who can trips over his words
‘though he hasn’t spoken 
for weeks and months and more.

He is both Popeye and Bluto
brawling on avenues
and twisting streetlights
around the neck of the other
over a friendly
dispute over which one of them
is going to pay the bill.

He is also Leopold and Loeb,
Abbott and Costello,
matching pairs of
the same dark impulse
to play in traffic
and keep score besides.

He trips over words
he hasn’t spoken,
he is hit by buses
he didn’t see coming,
he is always flat on the asphalt
staring into what remains of heaven,
circles of planets, stars, and singing birds
and some notion that
he might have been someone named
Roland Barthes getting pulverized
by a laundry truck
in a city where words
are loud as car horns
screaming in configurations
that cannot be untied.

She likes cartoons
above all else,
cute animals
destroying
hungry wolves and
wretched vermin
endlessly in variations
that allow them to
eternally return to
the sparely drawn
desert-scape where
the only laundry truck
within 1,000 miles
in any direction
will find them
and collide with their heads
and flatten their bodies
like sheets of wax paper
just as they
are about to claim their feasts,
amid all their famine.

What goes around
turns out badly, she thinks,
I need a man
the way a man
needs a shave.

NOTICE TO ENTER

Wrap these sandwich slivers
in a paper napkin, place it
in a crumpled plastic bag
from the 7-11,
leave it by the dumpster
that's been locked
for fear the flies might escape,

Go to work
and bill every citizen
whose accounts are in arrears,
take an extra twenty minutes on
your hour lunch,
sing a happy song,
buy tickets online
for a reunion concert
of a band whose original members
are dead or are quarreling
with those who've passed on,

Pass on a chance

to get with the girl
two cubicles behind you
because everyone
is  suing everyone else
for bad pick-up lines
and suspicious gravity
around the waistline,
return emails drink more coffee,
call your sponsor,
plan a trip on Trivago
and then cancel the purchase,

Regret that you gave up smoking
because that was the only
good reason to leave the office
and hang with the inventory boys
at the loading dock,
ask an intern if they've
ever heard of Woody Woodbury,
ask the intern
if they remember the theme song
to "One Step Beyond",
update your blog
with 500 words on
why the good things
in your life
are being forgotten
or turned into
theme parks,

It's still twilight when
you get home,
the plastic sack
with the sandwich halves
is still next to the dumpster,
the napkin discolored with
the grey stain of congealed mayonnaise,
the bag is covered in flies,

And on the
black security door
of your apartment
is a notification from the management
announcing a date and time
in which they will need to enter
your space
to inspect your pipes,
your comic books,
all your bullshit,
all of it.

JAZZ CAT DREAM POEM

The armies of the night
might as well be
stray cats on a fence
having choir practice,
a twelve-tone scat fest
improvising new
metaphors for hunger
as a grey, lunar ash
covered the backyards
and corners of old buildings
that haven't been
entirely seduced by the dark.
I sat up,
a head full of conquests and amours
receding like retractable cable,
reaching for something to fill my hand,
harmonica? shoe?  Lunch Poems by O'Hara?
to be frank,
I turned on the radio
but kept the room dark,
ad-libbed Coltrane extravaganzas in the cool shadows,
got up and tripped over my shoes,
on the floor, I heard Benny Golson
stomp at the Savoy,
sweet tenor notes and
rhythms that made
skip the elevator
and take the stairs.
then there was static,
the radio was silent,
so to speak,
the darkness became deep,
the cats had found
another dark window to
haunt.
i saw your silhouette
as you sat up
in the bed
and asked 

what the matter was
and I said I was dreaming
of moons and music,
serenades under many stars
and thought I heard
you laugh,

and
then realized
after getting to my feet
that
you were not there,
still absent,
somewhere beyond
the window drapes, the city’s skyline,
the night itself and the day that follows.

POEM ABOUT POETRY WITH PLAGIARIZED FIRST LINE

Poetry makes nothing happen
other than making our tongues
wag at one another and our
brains send words to our limbs
to suggest a proper hand gesture
to underscore a swift lyric response
and to undercut the boogeyman
peeking around the corner
of the door frame
because one of us started humming
a light and sprite tune
when the slim collection
was closed by two calm hands
and all came to rest
sweetly in the lap.

Poetry makes nothing change
except the key the music
is played in,
the time signature
that now follows the whim,
not the metronome,
the temperature
between the ears
that rises and falls
as the senses are engaged, inflamed
and then deflated,
poetry does nothing
except make the rooms we walk
into fit us a little better
than before the first stanza
was read, exclaimed, declared at length,
these verses do nothing at all
that wits alone can measure.

Poetry is a bouquet from
the angels or our better regard,
a sharp stone in every pair of shoes,
a lover's sigh,
a boss's grunt,
a wall of wet paint that dries too slow,
friends who understand
too quickly and
grasp not a word
you've said,
assuming of course,
something rhymed
or cursed with irregular
lines mattered enough
to stop the clock and arrest our attention
with handcuffs of wonder and what the fuck was that?,

Poetry makes nothing happen,
poetry is what happens,
and nothing ever happens around here.

Top of Form

MUSIC FOR CASH REGISTERS

I could sing all night
if the lights never changed
and if the radio played this song
again and again,
it’s a riff that rubs me
the right way in traffic
it’s a chorus making downtown
a party of long ribbons
and tap shoes,
the motor purrs and growls
with each keyboard grunt
and grunting guitar,
this car just rocks
when there’s no one I have to
return it to.

This is the curse of
owning things
that merely own you in exchange,
Cars, toasters, handguns and
and magazines hug your
face with a deep kiss of need,
What I receive is nameless
and elusive, some music, some smoke,
dry ice vapors and a wallet that
floats away,
that’s how light it’s gotten,

Money is air, invisible but potent,
I owe money I’ve never seen
to people I’ve never met,
Like you, shuffling your debit cards
and saying prayers that don’t seem
to soar as high as interest rates
or blood pressure,
you should be dancing
for all the coin we owe,

This moment, right now,
on the street that vibrates
with orders on how to drive
when to cross and what to smoke
the thirty yards from the public entrance,
the world can stop and we perk our ears to
listen to an imagined needle scratching
the surface of percussive vinyl,

The bass line and the grunts of soul singers
are all the advice we need; they called decades ago
when we started to toss our cash out from
Wall Street Windows,

They advised

Do the jerk, baby,Do the jerk now!