Raw Poem Post

11/13/05 1:13 AM

Untitled Prose Poem 10

A nun walks into a bar with a pair of komodo dragons on big, dog leashes. The dragons seem like a great safeguard from all of the college football fans in their drunken Ouija board circles. The dragons seem like they could talk if they didn’t have so many teeth. The dragons seem like, if they came in stainless steel, they could be used to unite all of the elements in the room. The nun orders shrimp and shiitake kabobs with chutney mayonnaise and roasted pistachio boysenberry muffins. Before she lets the dragons eat, she salts and peppers the meal vigorously. The dragon on the left whispers to the nun, and she demands a half-pound chunk of aged asiago. The dragon on the right whispers to the nun, and she demands a plate of smoked turkey with couscous pilaf. This goes on for some time before the nun realizes that the bartender just keeps handing her peanuts, martini olives, and pickled pig’s feet. The dragons don’t seem to mind. But it has been shown throughout the centuries that the skin communicates subtleties that the tongue cannot decode. This is why the nun strokes them so. This is why I am no longer allowed to tend bar.

Raw Poem Post

Mjoll

Mjoll is a heroin addict who conceals her addiction from her husband.
Mjoll moves to a different town without contacting his creditors.
Mjoll can haul two sacks of grain over the hill.
Mjoll didn’t get any Christmas presents this year.

Doctor Mjoll steals jewelry from his stepbrother.
Mjoll is napping now and won’t be able to play.
Mjoll’s helmet is on display at the Museum of Nocturnal Soldiers.
Mjoll spends two or three weeks a year living in a houseboat.

Mjoll can’t do his own taxes.
Mjoll challenges some raccoons to a foot race.
Look how Mjoll has worn out his front paws.
Mjoll insists on knowing the name of the captain of this ship.

Mjoll, won’t you just try one bite of the goulash?
Mjoll often shares his thoughts with the audience in terse monologues.
Mjoll, the city, is named after Mjoll, the ship, that carried
Mjoll, the soldier, to his final resting place.

Mjoll will return from Singapore within the hour.
Mjoll, in this hand-colored etching, appears to frown at himself.
Mjoll’s hands thundered through the iron-braced door.
Mjoll tells me where my mistakes are and asks if I would like to try again.

Mjoll, hungry as he was, entered the city and devoured everyone he met.
Mjoll outlived Shakespeare, however.
Mjoll begged and pleaded until the gardener let him back in.
Dear Mjoll, money, in this case, can do anything it wants.

Mjoll writes about time-travel.
Mjoll was like a vine planted in the cracks of a parking lot.
Mjoll made a bronze lion’s skull and mounted it on his staff.
As Mjoll veered the truck onto the sidewalk, he saw it was Mjoll he was going to hit

Suppose Mjoll wants to serve a rack of parrots for supper.
If Mjoll is tethered to a fencepost, he will strangle himself trying to get free.
Mjoll can no longer fit into her favorite pair of jeans.
Old man Mjoll will pay us to shovel his sidewalk.

Mjoll, indeed, is put together like a dream, and Mjoll’s treasure is a dangerous mirage.
Mjoll held his hand out to you, why did you not bite it and run?
I, Mjoll, hereby testify that these facts are true to the best of my knowledge.
Mjoll has his own paper route.

Mjoll wonders how long the cephalopods will take to get back to the water.
Mjoll ascends from a frost-thickened tree.
Mjoll’s sensors, as usual, have to be set back to zeroes.
Mjoll has turned his eyes upward. This is what the moonbeams command.

The Gift of Hand-sewn Leather Goods

It was one of those parties where time stretches out like a yawn and stretches some more, without any end in sight. By the time I got a chance to introduce myself to Young Werther, he was Worn and Ancient Werther. He went on about the leather goodies he sewed by hand: knapsacks, studded horse whips, and those little sacks filled with dog teeth that the kids kick around under fluorescent lamps by the dumpsters out back of the taco joints around here.

Years passed.

Werther continued to send me those leather goodies. Every year on Bastille Day, I got a package in the mail--no return address, only “Worn and Ancient” scrawled in the corner. Sometimes the thing in the package was a steering wheel cover; Others, a glove with no fingers or a beaded loin cloth with a matching belt. With each gift, with each passing year, the leather was softer, more pliant, and rich and deep and varied in its streaked and mottled browns and tans. On September 3, 2002, I received a package that said "250th anniversary of the Gregorian Reformation!" Inside the box: a leather rosary complete with polished hematite beads and a matching cinch sack to keep it in. That sack nearly melted in my hand. Boy, oh boy, did that leather feel good on my raw, rosary-calloused fingers. No packages came after that.

Years passed.

At some random party (Cinco De Mayo, I think) I got a rare chance to corner Werther.

“You outdid yourself with that rosary,” I said, “What will you come up with next? See-through leather?”

Unfluttered, he said, “Actually . . .”

“Give it up, man” I said, “How do you get that leather so soft?”

He wouldn’t answer, just stretched his lips over his wide, blunt teeth.

I was cocky: too much wine and gorgonzola on my breath.

“Seriously now,” I said, “I think I’ve nailed your secret.”

“Do tell,” Werther said, pulling his pipe from his jacket pocket.

I fidgeted so much you could just say I was dancing.

“Human skin,” I said, all giddy to watch his face change.

He just tapped the pipe stem against his teeth and said,
“Actually . . .”

Years passed.

Raw Poem Post 13

11/19/05 10:27 PM

Untitled Prose Poem 14

Why is someone not turning off that damned car alarm? Two big owls in two different trees mumble prayers across the parking lot, and I can’t get all the words down. The trees have shed all their leaves and show us their slender gray arms—bunch of pretentious interpretive dancers playing a game of statue. The most indispensable soldiers know some cloaking spells and could pull them off if we had a few more pints of Hildegard of Bingen’s blood. The existence of monstrosities can be evidenced in these five ways:

1. A person cannot sleep without being visited by tiny fevers.
2. My cheeks have lost all of their color. My tongue is turning to asphalt.
3. His Majesty launches himself into the courtyard: hooks for hands, hooves for feet.
4. Roland shouts from offstage, “Bolt the door and snuff all the lanterns.”
5. When a car sneaks past the farmhouses, even the gravel won’t sing out.

Raw Poem Post 12

11/28/05 12:58 AM

Unfinished Prose Poem

Created for those who can’t see without blinking, the mansion has flesh-like walls that expand and contract when it breathes. Tiny white hairs grow in the cracks of the stone floors. The eastern slope is lit by orbs that appear and disappear without explanation.

Raw Poem Post 11

11/11/05 1:20 AM

Prose Poem X

It was as if the banality of the poet’s life had become a snowflake moray eel whose mouth opened to reveal that the snowflake moray eel was just a costume that a regular moray eel was wearing to impress some fellow monstrosities of the sea. At least he could leave behind the flimsy metaphors and lunge into the next sentence. He could simply lament his days, as many poets before him had done. No! There was no song in what he was doing here. He had, after all, started this one out as one of those rambling French things that results in a paragraph--no stanzas or metric lines. He had in fact titled this dull thing that had thudded out of him like a stone “Prose Poem X.”

Raw Poem Post 10

11/20/05 11:06 PM

Untitled Prose Poem 12

Granite outcroppings to the south protect our village from the vapors that ride the swell. Hoarfrost cracks the helmets of cops, soldiers, high-steel riveters. The main source of protein in these parts is the larva of giant, prehistoric dragonflies. Our scientists deny the existence of giant, prehistoric dragonflies. We have no maps of the gray centrifuge that shimmers beyond the mist. Some call it the Crucible Sea. Ancient writs and scripture prevent us from constructing pilings or docks. And yet, giant, prehistoric larvae cling to the pilings. Quartz cliffs stand up to the waves that lunge at us from the West. Every few weeks a Seer emerges from a tomb, a catacomb, a limb or a bomb to tell us that the cliffs are losing the battle. On hearing these pronouncements, we feed the Seer, tell jokes to the Seer, and fill the Seer’s stomach with wine. Then one of us has the Seer by the legs and another gets the arms. One, two, three . . . and the Seer is launched to the waves. Once in a great while, we’ll get a Seer that can play the horn or the sax, some cool jazz or maybe some Latin stabs. These Seers are granted a permanent place in one of our hotels, restaurants, or saloons. We can all take a foreboding omen a little better with a stuttered bumblebee high hat, some brush on the skins, and a smoky walking bass. Mountains of moss and lichen obscure the North. We have no word for the East, but it looms there nonetheless.

Raw Poem Post 8

11/11/05 1:23 AM

Untitled Prose Poem 9

Sister Osiris, a famous medium, is known as the wisest woman in our city. What she can do is she can taste the spirits of the dead. We have her on a television show where she goes into haunted buildings. We have her going in there at night pretty much alone. Jerry, the cameraman, goes with her, but being with Jerry is a lot like being alone. Last week we had her go through the north door of St. Milton Hospital. When she came out of the south door she said, “sunflower seeds, cracker crumbs, tungsten, floor wax.” This told her that four spirits haunted the place: a boy and girl--fraternal twins that died of tuberculosis, a janitor who hung himself beside a single light bulb that still dangles in the boiler room, an elderly man who wandered from his bed one night and tumbled down the terrazzo stairs. One night in the Trocadero Hotel, Sister Osiris said, “cinnamon, alum, gun oil,” and we knew she had found the ghosts of the Finney family, murdered in their sleep by a bumbling hit man who got the room number wrong. We blew the show when we decided to have her go into the old State Psychiatric Hospital. She came out of there clawing at her tongue: “black match sticks and piss.” Someone was smart enough to throw a blanket over her. We wrestled her into the station van and rushed her to the emergency room. Then someone noticed that we had the camera but we didn’t have Jerry. Sister Osiris couldn’t taste anything after that night, and we rarely saw her after that. Jerry, too, no longer haunted us.

Raw Poem Post 7

11/7/05 11:54 PM

Untitled Prose Poem 8

A dog can’t smell anything anymore because he put his nose into a boiling river. Never mind how the river came to be so hot. This dog is just about ready to give up hunting for good, when he hears some elephants stampeding. When he goes to investigate, he gives out several barks that mean to say, “Here I come. Don’t be in such a hurry.” He soon realizes that he is back at the river, that it is not elephants stampeding, that the river is tricking him with its throaty gurgle. The dog puts his head into the river to see if perhaps the river has internal organs. Of course, the river, hot as it is, burns out his eyes and ears, but he doesn’t yelp. He is, after all, a dog with so much fortitude he can barely feel pain. The dog visits some doctors who tell him that no, it is not fortitude but massive pain tolerance. The dog has abnormally high endorphins pouring from his brain like a waterfall. The dog, though he has lost three of his senses, is happy until the doctors grab him. “You are the perfect candidate for our mission,” they shout into his ear, “The first dog to be fired into the heart of the sun.” The dog hears none of this. He only feels them petting him, holding him, scratching under his chin. He thinks he has found new, loving owners who have taken pity on him. Finally, he says to himself, I will come home from the wild.

Raw Poem Post 5

11/7/05 3:45 AM

Untitled Prose Poem 6

It has been revealed to me that several, microscopic human beings live in the fluid that keeps my brain from banging against the inner surfaces of my skull. If you could look in there and see them at work and play, you might think of the underworld of the Ancient Greeks: souls whipping about asunder. This condition is not unique. In fact, almost every other person I know has a similar situation going on inside. On receiving this information, some have attempted dangerous self-surgery in order to drain the fluid. These types have no sense for holy symbiosis and are so selfish to consider themselves the only being that inhabits their bodies. Me: I am as lonely as I’ve ever been.

Raw Poem Post 3

11/4/05 11:54 PM

An Imitation of Steven's "Disillusionment at 10 O'Clock"

Faces fixed to skulls, skulls
clamped on shoulders.
Not one nods,
Not one leans to shake hands,
Not one leans toward me,
Not one leans to say "Where?"
No one says, "Back again?"
With lifted voice
Or shine in the eye.
My hometown won't wake,
Mistaking my soul for the night-light.
What is not is, just this: the tap-
tap of screen door against house,
played out by
just enough wind.

Raw Poem Post 2

11/2/05 10:52 PM

Untitled Prose Poem 1

Rasputin took a bite out of a salty plum. He clamped a little flap of plum skin in his front teeth, while the flesh of the plum slapped down into his beard. Rasputin spat the skin and flesh and said, “For Fuck’s sake, who salted this plum?” This was before Rasputin’s testicles had descended. This was in what they called, “The High Hat and Sax Days.” Of course, everyone in the marketplace found Rasputin’s odor to be tangy and effervescent. But holy?—p’shaw.

Untitled Prose Poem 2

While setting traps for the one they call “the God-Bear,” Grigio trapped himself. The concussion of the two [Check This] coming together fractured Grigio’s left thigh. How wonderful to be this deep in the wilderness with the ecstatic fever of shock as an unforeseen bonus. How long had he been there by now? Perhaps two Christmases had passed? Or maybe those had been the eyes of God-Raccoons lighting up the trees during those earlier winter months? No. No. They were Christmas lights. Look at how the coffee grounds of my dried blood stick to the tiny bulbs.

Untitled Prose Poem 3

I have tallied it several times and am certain that this is my third prose poem. Someone is out there where the mist meets the blocky rocks, trying to distract me from my tasks tonight. This someone is doing a pretty good rendition of Puccini’s “Vissi d.arte,” but I won’t try to follow that voice. I won’t count on that flimsy mist holding me up again. You can bet I’ve learned my lesson there.

Untitled Prose Poem 4

As far as quantum particles are concerned, I find the anti-chronoton to be most appealing. It does, after all, sweep backwards, erasing the scattered vapor trail that its positive pal, the chronoton, leaves behind it. Or was that in front of it? Must we not remember to un-undo anything?

Untitled Prose Poem 5

I am still very unsure about what the word “diaspora” means. That’s a lie. I am not just unsure. I don’t even have a guess. And yet, this “diaspora” and I love each other like a left boob loves a right boob.

Raw Poem Post 1

11/01/2005

The Paper Boy

He tied his shoes. The morning cold
pressed his innards flat. He squeezed
himself into the double-sided pouch
that said “Cloudless Gazette” in big letters.

Some of the letters had worn off:
“Cloudless Gaze”. He would ride
into the traffic today. He squeezed
the merest dab of toothpaste out.

He scrubbed his front teeth, fixing
on the maniacal, foamy grin he met.
He would wolf-lunge the traffic, moose-tramp
the traffic, flail the traffic.

He rinsed and spat, took the stairs
with leprechaun toes,
and flexed his fingers
into his fat blue plastic gloves.