Madam I am (still) Adam

Hold in your arms
The beholder
------------
3 worlds and 3 mysteries
Roger Penrose
--------------
Things I don't know
Are shimmering
Now
Mirages rising from hot asphalt

Buzzing just below
Forensics

This hole in the wall behind the door? 
Obviously made by the doorknob
(Flash to a man forcing his way into her room)
-----
The crime scene
Of the world
--------
Half arousal buzz
Little itch that won't
Be scratched
-------
I am a major complication
--------
Voluntary recall
Of bad poems
--------
Natural causes
------
Barbie's next career
Jihad Barbie
Self-abuse Barbie
---------
Of all hate-crimes
The abuse and degradation
Of the body-shrine
The most heinous, incomprehensible
--------
Long-dead Gordon
Made an appearance
In Brooklyn today

There he was
Or was he?
Protesting all past
And future wars
Declaring war against cancer and pain
-------
What Rachel calls
The voiding of
The social contract

Only shit
Left

----------
Still sitting behind the waterfall
(Lucinda)
--------
It's the black site
Under my nose
The torture chamber
In my building
-------
Let's fight
------
Kiss me!
Kiss me twice and again
You fools!
-------
The crime scene
Of the world
--------
I suffer from an inflammatory condition
--------
Come to my senses
--------
My tribal areas
-------
I wish the devil was only in the details
Actually
It's in the big picture
----------
Perfidia -- great name
----------
Standards of decency
Evolving
Fireflies pulsing in silence their codes of light
Scientists discovering
Not the face
But the toe of God
Poverty not considered cruel and unusual punishment
The disputed territory separating brain and heart
-------
Today I want to give heartfelt thanks
To the slight bias of the universe
In favor of matter over anti-matter

"It might turn out to be the toe of God"
NY Times May 18
-------
Pretend friend
That nothing
Is happening
Turn a blind eye

Ratchet up
Your powers of
Indifference and inattention

Steel yourself
Against yourself
Steal yourself
From yourself
-------------------
A day after
A man
A man
After a day
---------
My judgment impaired
Typing these words
On Rachel’s
Russian language
Olivetti

I feel like
A worm wriggling joyful in an apricot

In an apricot
In an apricot

Yup
Madam I am (still) Adam

I will hop on a sizzling hot bicycle
And speed to my ecstatic birth
In the year 2010
When evolution takes a turn for the better
--------
On the subway
Methane
Reaching
Dangerous levels
----------
There you go
Lying to the mirror
Again
---------
The pre-existing condition
That scrawls
These lines

The end of capitalism
--------
A word could
Put you
In jail
--------
Proving you're human
In the waiting room
---------
Cool down
The sultry night
With your cold hands
---------
Dejadme llorar
Orillas del mar

- Lorca
-----
This peep show
-------------
My earworms:
Mental rocking
---------
Your exhalations
I inhaled
These 30 years
---------
Had trouble spelling
Wednesday
This morning
-----------
So I catch the books
Whispering among
Themselves

They have decided
To change their titles
Rip off their
Covers

Estranged from their authors
Enraged at their readers

They have been burned too many times

They are demanding
New endings to their
Stories

To their authors
---------
Or as Leon Golub
Scribbled on one of his late drawings:
"Fuck death!"
---------
Give me a wild poem
Righteous

Like Buffy Sainte-Marie singing
No No Keshagesh
----------
Apologies
Its the 4% Neanderthal
In me
---------
I wish there was a Weather Channel
To predict your moods
------
Mom's in the kitchen
Back from 22 years of death
Back with her wooden leg
And her canary

What do you want  for dinner?
She asks

She cooks
And smokes the cigarette that killed her

La Traviatta blasting
She croaks along with the arias

I pull faces
And cover my ears

Her apron
Of wildflowers

Her spectacular sunsets

Blue eyes
Donated to science

O Sylvia
Why did you take so long to come back
With me still kicking inside you?

-------
Alternative
Life- and death-styles
---------
What tool would you be
What sort of animal?
Would you be a hammer
Would you be a camel?

What color of the rainbow?
What mood?
Would you be gold
Would you be solitude?
--------
Among us
Disguised as
Well, us
Are
Secret queens
And kings
-----------
Pulled the bone
From her leg
Like a drumstick
-------
Death
The author
Of these lines
---------
Hey
What was it
That I was
Harnessing
Or leveraging
Empowering
Or enabling
Anyway?
Huh?

What will clear
My throat

Of such
Dry
Empty husks of words?

I will toss some new words
In the skillet
Like just-caught fish
Fry em up
With a little butter and lemon
-----------
Professor Igneous Ignominious
Meet Mrs. Imogene Bloat
--------------
Learning and burning
-------
The theory held
But he broke away
Broke up and down
--------
Yikes!
The sudden disappearance
Of scissors
From the world
-------
The outrageousness
And improbability
Of everything
--------
I learned
In the dream
The true stories
Of all the words

Their secrets
Words have secrets
Were revealed

I was told their real names

Where they were born
How they were brought up
The fate of their siblings
The schools they attended

I found out which words were neglected or abused as a child

Who froze in adolescence
Who's in love
Who are the losers of keys
Who the losers of  limbs

I was taught to
Listen to the faint echoes
Of their first
Pronouncements
Through the wars and beauties of time
---------
Turning
Like turning ten
Turning sixty-five
Your life
Turning
On the lathe of time
-------------
We are happy to serve you
Inscription on New York's iconic Anthora paper coffee cup
-----------
Predator priests and popes:
All work done
On the premises

-------
Overhearing (girl to guy on Q train)

I fucking glow in the fucking dark
--------
Fucking the dark
---------
I established base camp
In her arms
------
Her upper lip
Especially
--------
Fetus needs earplugs
---------
And then a
Great unnaming
Befell us

One by one
The cities the mountains
Lost their names

Trees flowers
Children
Utterly unnamed
--------
The terrible chaos scream
Inside my head
When I was growing up

Forgotten 50 years

Pulled now from oblivion
-------------
Well schooled in ignorance
------
You were born
And how
You were born
-------------
"I am mailing you now just to kill you. My boys are monitoring you and telling me everything you do. Now do you want to LIVE OR DIE?  Get back to me now if you are ready to pay some fees to spare your life. If you are not ready for my help, then I will carry on with my job straight-up. In case I notice something funny, I will extend it to your family. Good luck as I await your reply. "
Email received from killerofsoul101@yahoo.com
----------
His Holiness
The Gnat
--------------
A female day
Fragrance
From every pore

The very Rubiyat
Of her
-------
I passed up a successful career
In breastfeeding
For what?
--------
I'm angry at noise and silence
At fire and ice
Angry at my face
And all that is not my face

I want to wake grandfather
From sleep if it is sleep
From death if it is death

Only an armadillo guitar
A cuatro from Venezuela
Will restart my heart
_____
Or maybe
Alebrijes
From Oaxaca
-------
Missing spinal cord
-------
Gordon was big
On small
---------
You can count on death
Death can count on you
---------
Time itself
Evacuated
--------
Always falling
------
Facing screens all day

Enslavement
Purchased
-------
O the apricots
She gave me
Suns plucked from the sky
I ate them warm from her hands

Mouth to mouth
We passed pulp and juice
---------------
I am now open
24 hours
------
Go to Michoacan
To understand
The NAFTA of the monarch butterfly
--------
(As seen on TV)
-------
Fool was fact-checking
Her tears
-----------
"Sometimes I feel ashamed that I've written so few poems on political themes, on the causes that agitate me. But then I remind myself that to choose to live as a poet in the modern superstate is in itself a political action."
-- Stanley Kunitz, The Collected Poems
------
"For the tear is an intellectual thing"
-- William Blake
----------
Enter
A Plea of
Sanity
--------
Blake:
"Do what you will, this life's a fiction
And is made up of contradiction."
---------
Loving Eli and Tolo
More than
A trillion
Blue monkeys
In the yellow yellow
Yellow forest
---------
Who doesn't have a baby on board?
--------
On the subway
A sense that
At any moment
Passengers
Will unplug iPods
Put away Kindles
Stop playing videogames

And start deliberations
On loneliness
The sorry state of the planet
The hunger of the Bottomless Belly
Evolution and what-the-hell's in it
For us

                                                   -- New York, June 2010



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