Small Axe Books

1. false solomon’s seal, 2. trembling aspen (me), 3. vulture (you). the fourth thing is mixing metaphors, but it doesn’t get its own poem.

x

grit-mouth creep-sigg i slink
a clam slurping through sand
and it has not rained
dust-soil pulses up dry,
coats the throat.
work the jaw, squint
gasping through gills
slabs of air
layered, still,
and it has not rained

x

i am streaked with
soot
and dog slobber,
red-bellied turtle slime
and ax grime,

beet-juice bruises
stain my legs
and thick
summer snows of pollen
light sleepily onto my hair

x

mica rock words split and flake
and fall
and, wedged there,
bloom like spores in dark places

eyeball juice leaking euphoria glowing red winding elegantly down topless women tickling membranes licking neurotransmitters into motion

dancing skeletons colliding contentedly death trampling existence pounding earth uprooting reality roaring loudly rainstorms over

serpent face resembles fire smoldering irritably under rainfall drinks in decay nauseously coughs up ghastly poems strung-out sick on cold opium collapsing perfectly into phantasm

The Look

My father liked to look
Because his father looked at him.
He looked at my mother
And then he looked at me.

He taught me to look
Into everything:
The moon
The clouds
My blood
My atoms.

I looked so deeply at the moon
That I had to go there
And plant my flag in its virgin dust
So everyone could look at it.

I looked so deeply at the clouds
That I told them what they were called;
I looked at what I’d called them
And I told them when to rain.

I looked so deeply at my blood
That I drew it out
And bottled it;
A, B, AB, O,
Positive, negative,
White, Black, Brown, Yellow, Red.

I looked so deeply at my atoms
That I learned how to split them.
The whole world is poisoned now.
So, now, I look at the poison . . .

The ones who look at me
Look at the TV
And the peepshow girls
And the kids who play at night on my block.
They look
Through their sights
Take aim.

Some guy–
My grandfather’s grandfather?
Built a big wheel
So he could sit at the center
And look at everybody in their cells.
His boss called that Progress.

I asked my father
What makes us men?
He told me
That the other creatures are blind;
Dogs can’t see color
Cats neither
And anyway–who cares what they see?
Where are their cities? he told me once of dolphins.
Where are the zoos they put us in?

And then, he looked at me.
And smiled like a statue.
And I looked at him, smiling.

His relations, and my childhood neighbors, they all say
They say I look just like him.

PROJECT: write a short-form piece in free-verse. don’t edit it. rhyme to create another piece. be as strict or as loose with “rhyming” as you like.

post yours in the “comments” if you decide to try this!

“fishing for pearls”
becomes “missing your girls”
(a study in missing and not missing you, chicago, you bastard)

my fingers are sore
and i
can’t
find
any.

don’t try to
speed up the growth
of your charms;

maybe i’ll just move
inland, instead.
or to finland, instead.

to a mossy grove,
away from the grit
which is getting now,
too,
into my shell.

+

my triggers are lures;
and why
can’t
i
bury?

don’t; dry dew
seeds the moat
of your arms;

baby, i’ll trust you
fighting, instead.
or hiding, instead.

move the droves
away from the spit
which is forgetting now,
too,
who to tell.

thought i’d continue to embarrass myself by continuing to post ancient poetry.

i wrote this in 2000, two years before dropping out of high school.

for the record, this poem is fiction. i hadn’t yet met my father, and when i did, he didn’t smell like pot.

didn’t believe him
at first
coming at me with
that creeping ivy smile
too young to be sweet
with anything but Princess Leia
wet dreams
until he opened
his locked drawer
(it smelled like Dad.)