Mont Clare There were stockpiles of grain during the Holodomor And waves of emotion a thousand miles offshore If I let all the heat out when I open the door Then what has everyone been praying for? 4 in the morning, on Armistice Day Eve Your grand uncle Elgin was poisoned in his sleep His lungs turned to paper while the delegates convened Now, 102 years later, it’s occurring to me That I don’t wanna live without you The skyline reminds you of the lives you fell behind June of ’72 when all the water left the line The stain upon the stucco, the bruise upon your mind You swore that you loved them, but you kept it all the time Every single memory that I ever cured or preened The only way that anyone is ever truly seen Silent night, daytime dream Are you there? Were you waiting for me? Me, with my plaster on my lath And my heather in my grass Towing that path Of least resistance Two teeth missing Still insisting I don’t wanna live with you Oriole Well Play to 11, stay out all night Wear on your tendons, swear on your life Venture investors shuttered the plant You’ll get a bachelor’s at 11 percent Somersaults in a singlet Letters in a ring, purple and white Consolidated Rail Hot on your trail, every night It’s open waters when you’re in your brain Wouldn’t you rather be constantly entertained? Dam at the Black Rock, under Tunnel Hill Ladder lets the brook trout do what you never will Somersaults in a singlet Letters in a ring, purple and white Consolidated Rail Hot on your trail, every night Wolfington Ain’t my memory supposed to serve me? Cause it laughs at me instead Saying, Your pipe dreams tested positive for trace amounts of lead You oughta rip em out and put em in a pile on the lawn And sit tight till the coast is clear and the evidence is gone Otherwise some Tuesday morning it’ll be 2002 And you’ll be made to ride the Wolfington across the Pipe & Tube Sat beside your baby sister while some psychopath frustrates her Asking, Who the hell is Jesse and what the fuck’s a revelator? Well, I’ll show him. I’ll just toil in obscurity Commit commercial seppuku on the sword of insecurity And chalk it up to artistry and piety to craft While I act like all the damns that I could give are cut in half And wonder, What if self-awareness isn’t based in worldliness But an impotent, postmodern reluctance to exist? And, What if I’m not captivating when I take myself to task, But exhausting, like a hand that’s raised before the question’s asked? In middle school I learned an endless apology That I recited and resented, and became a part of me Now I’m 32 and I’m begging you to buy it In a pledge drive for my ego where the tote bags all say, Fuck you, Greg Hyatt The Bohunk In ’32 they triturated you while you were praying on a land bank In ’71 they dipped your first son into defoliants at Don Mueang In ’83 the NLRB was all but pissing on your wingtips Donald Dotson and the interests screwing you into a vise But in your mind, you’d already gone to where the porches rot And there’s a heart in everyone soaking in soda pop Do you like that tassel taped on the bludgeon of power? Do you like your summer in the autumn? If there ain’t nothing been trickling down, how come you gathered around the bottom? In 2010, all your money was spent, you hit the reverse on your mortgage Moved your bandsaw into storage, kicked your grandson out of his room But in your mind, you’d already gone to where the porches rot And there’s a heart in everyone soaking in soda pop Rabbit, Run Long-knighted, short-sighted Mayweed of the Median Bomber moon conceding to the dawn Side cycle, the turnpike’ll Shake your hand and heart If I just knew where to start then I’d be gone Am I still on your mind? You ask me that all the time. And now I’m never falling back asleep. The ladder’s in tatters Stranding me downstream of What I used to dream of in the aughts Flare jeans, square screens Meg White made of Legos I watched it with the dagos down the block Am I still on your mind? You ask me that all the time. And now I’m never falling back asleep. Proto-neo- Classic-modern man Just tell him where to stand and what to eat While he runs through on Street View Till his finger’s got a side stitch The road is just black itch I can’t reach Could I lean on what I seek in the corners of my dreams? It could feed the candle quarters till it’s easier on me Endless Panel Blues Everybody’s clothes look so uncomfortable And their jobs all sound made up But apparently, I’d give a shit what’s a block chain whiz if he showed me his paystub Isn’t he awful pleased watching me cower at his crypto-babble While he asks me fuck all questions? Is this a goddam talk show panel? And am I the host or is he the host, and when do we break for sponsors? Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain Everyone laments gentrification But we’re standing in Kensington Confusing Alex Haley for the guy who climbed El Capitan While the sound system promotes the wisdom of some peckerwood songwriter Who learned to play the blues from the Mel Bay Guitar Primer So, is he the guest, or am I the guest, and when do we break for sponsors? Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain Everybody prefaces their every Word with, I feel like… And I’m, Of course you do—that’s why you’re the one saying it tonight Lord, am I meant to resent how they live so deliberately Because my life feels like this thing that’s just been happening to me? So are those cameras on or can I finally drop the act? Cause I gotta piss like a racehorse in the rain Poor Kid You might wake up one Tuesday morning wanting to shave your head Or take a shine to American Beauty-era Grateful Dead Or start sleeping in cars and get given to the drink Or tie up all our savings in a roller rink But every zephyr was once a typhoon And butterflies come kicking out cocoons Yes, if you wait long enough that blue sky’ll rain Which is to say, I’ll always love you Even if you change You might decide to be a Ghostbuster reenactor Or do a photo study of old nuclear reactors And insist on the kids and me tagging along You might grow tired of making love to ‘Bang a Gong’ But every zephyr was once a typhoon And butterflies come kicking out cocoons Yes, if you wait long enough that blue sky’ll rain Which is to say, I’ll always love you Even if you change British Museum Bloomsbury center, October 10 Two brunettes moving hand-in-hand Spoils of empire, pearls out of the Mouth of the world’s savagery Love all day, love all night Wish I may, wish I might Wintertime on the Metro One brunette in the hedgerows of her mind Where’s my great granite cipher That once decrypted my life for me when I was 17 When I’d go home on the weekends, and hit my feet off the deep end And try to keep in the wheezing when I’d go inside? The white man’s burden is to break your heart In two Feather-light and fancy-free In a B-roll dream you saw in me At the Grand Bazaar, way in back Just a barrow boy fencing artifacts Hampstead Heath, summertime Two brunettes sharing sherry wine Neither one face like mine Stranger Becomer Oh, the night is upon us And the sights that the window promised Lapse Into mirrors black Where the moon breaks into The outline of your head as If your mind were the fence out at Peasant’s Pasture When it captured That stray Bleu du Maine, If upon being wrangled It had caught black and blonde, like the Funk and Wagnall Spines That once had lined My room like a tomb Then the sounds of early Townes on an Orpheus abound While they’re putting Pancho down underground And it ends how it started Play pretend with a quarter-hearted Kiss From some supplicant To some lord you abhor While that line you were drawing Like a blind got to finally falling Like The balkanized Land I abandoned With the rain through the basin With the train blowing by my station When the sounds of early Townes on an Orpheus abound While old Lefty’s leaving town unrenowned Then I go away and become the kind of person Who has nothing to say when you tell me that you’re hurting And that nothing seems to help Except drinking from the fountains While walking through the valleys all alone Future Flower Stalks If you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you I just pray you’ll be out seeking exactly what you want Not heeding all the bugle calls of other people’s hunts Or feeling bound to yours truly or your mother Should your homeland never call your name as clearly as another Of course my heart would turn to rust, like a bike left in the rain But I’d drive you to the airport and you’d never once hear me complain Because if you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you Of course you’ll meet a million people with lips to lay this claim And hands to help you rearrange the letters in your name Out of love for you, or perhaps for themselves The struggle comes when you’re too turned around to tell Where the line’s supposed to be or if it’s a line at all Though if you ever track it down won’t you give your old man a call Because if he ever needs someone, you’re gonna be the one who’s there for him I just might be dying slowly while I watch the parking lot Waiting on some demi-urge to slide me in a slot See, I, for one, was too ashamed to see my outlook tested So I just defaulted to whatever I thought was expected Until in the most stunning way, you gave me all the help I’d ever need to justify not quite living for myself That’s why if you ever need someone, I’m gonna be the one who’s there for you The Basement of Babylon I used to wonder, If the world’s ending, will anyone bother to tell me? Then Oscar Alberto Martinez Ramirez pulled on the ropes in the belfry I think I’d expected there’d be some grand outro, or mankind’s credits would roll But in the great end, from 8 states away I hardly heard the bell toll My neighbor tells me, the world isn’t ending until that’s happening to him And he laughs when I half-jokingly scold him saying, Vanity’s a sin But hold out, if you like, for that perfect goodbye to look back on what all we had As for me, it’s enough—a daughter face down in the mud with her arm around her dad