Put Your Hands In
Page 3
stop it again tickle
BIG RED BOOSTER
Dusting the pantry nobody washed but all touched
chair where the man of the house sleeps fist-handed
traveled all his days so as never to save the Earth
suspended supermodel at his side actually a scholar of Proust
opium a La-Z-Boy predator joystick operator
needs to sleep like a tumor beside his woman
we don’t need fields to fill the drug store only plants
uniform wings sweat socks
pixels slump Arizona sky never shows
hedges empty of natural birdsong
retired officer watch suburban streets fill with deer
the empty streets of my home town almost mute
the deer out of it at noon as if in one headlight
ALL YOU CAN
This is so good it’s fucking disgusting I want
to eat these fries until I die of it just spooning
garlic aioli out of a rubber tub damn I like
the taste of your spunk your sperm your juices
down another taco I eat I’m going to burst
get me a tongue one with everything
and some rice to stick to my face like a girl
on a UNICEF coin box mid-eighties fucking ice cream
mainline ice cream with pickles and pork
mixed right into the scoop dirty pizza Halloween
slices like swallowing a row of crumpled ones
another helping of tartare tuna or steak
if I stop talking call 911 but if not let’s hit
the meatball shop and BYO Bailey’s
bags of coke buds that goddamn cake
at the wedding was insane let’s order another
and never get married just have it for a week
let zits fester what may this is end times
I’ll see your pot brownies and raise you
every variety of oyster at Prime Meats
dim sum tomorrows
wanting you wanting you never full
of wanting you wanting me wanting you
know I know you want I want to you know
I want you
FOREVER BACKPACKER
Leash me lead me to Miami
vinyl singer signs a lover waits for me
it gets heavier when we talk about wives
what we talk about is veins
funny come in stories where a stranger
injects romantic heroin
between sheets staining them
opium green nobody understands anything
they are baffled by dreamy fascination
but we think it’s not a transaction after all
it’s person person you know you’re getting warm
we’ve crossed into slave
states French history French kissing
tongue wrestling triangle trade
crotch honey palm sugar simple syrup lip
sell it all at South of the Border
if you can find it and drag it back
and you can because I’m a boner with a rental
the motel room’s distracting blaze
I wanna be your dog but a terrier room
perhaps a Great Dane Pit Bull service
strong dignified and dumb and proud of my pride
practicing lost national anthems under the breath
our Rough Guide so so out of date
THE GREAT-UNCLE DEAD
Poetry is the cruelest month
posters by thousands folded by machine
mild reminders to take note
of something harmless and bland
as sugar packets, restaurant mints are free
April, May, Tiffany, Annie
it’s that time of the month
hand in your virgin efforts neatly typed
not the first you ever
but you can count on your fingers
would be hitting send even now
the lately dead the recently not with us
it is hard to rhyme dementia with
she was the sweetest woman
not training me all the time like mom
do you know what I mean by training
it can be the littlest thing
sometimes I was surprised a specialist even existed
like posture but with Gram I rode bareback
skied the steepest slope at Gstaad
she is so dead now probably rotten or rotting still
it’s been almost a year she’s not here
it’s easier to love her now she’s gone
remembering the strange Belgian candy
even her snuff habit seems cute
or well quirky she was from another time
she said she snorted cocaine in the fifties
and I believe her she looked so tiny
in that outsized diaper bikini by hotel pool Havana
the pictures she kept in a gold box
just fool’s gold leaf on an ordinary wooden box
the oils and drawings were more demure
a bit off compared to the moldings
dust on the hard candy
once she tried to get me to shout delightedly German words
but I couldn’t pick them up I mean that’s not me
I’m as modern as they come
I sent Topher a pic of my pierced clit
just shaved and immediately regretted it
half of his school knows I have a ring
if they knew I took it out the next day
and the skin grew back I look at it and you can barely tell
it feels different still if you know what I mean
I don’t think Gram would have done that
if she were my age, now, or maybe
she would have but she would have taken a real picture
and put it in her gold-leaf box and would never ever
have shown Topher with the lights on unless he was especially nice
and what’s wrong with that nothing
what’s wrong with being rich and overqualified
for the second-tier philanthropic society you chair
the best of everything my father said really shouting
the best of everything I’ll give you
no one plays his hi-fi anymore
except me when I’m alone in the place
it’s clean as anything Maria cares for
but you can tell the knobs are stiff
the platter creaks when you settle a record
we have everything Fleetwood Mac ever
including white label bootlegs
and all the Stevie Nicks solo
when I lie there I like to wear one of my father’s hats
my feet on an ottoman
just singing don’t blame it on me
blame it on my wild heart
Gram had a wild heart she did
some people thought she had a cold heart
and maybe that’s true and it was a wild heart too
NO KEY TO THIS ONE, NO TUNE
falling slumped into grown bones hurt can’t stop
stretching contacts thinner by night
a sour sound greeting jokes mimic of drum kit
to say you got it is to say not enough
make dance to postcard spill apple rebus
clean clean hardwood the cherry trim
stirs appetite but one knows no food gift
will go uninspected unjudged the wistful fool
scorned into the taller grasses or gazing grain
tripping macchiato at door next morn
don’t knock rooms around and raise no dust
let it hide in the most positivist tomes
there there a little rain gets Irene higher
she seems to want a part I have
beyond good and bad actors a part is a part
hysterical rhythms lift tail ends of lines
she’s not laughing not not laughing
> so old but better to be mellow with a sting
go wash the floor more stories later
just drafts words blow here there
bowlike lips on my cock aghast tomorrow
her face so composed no one in the pub knew
a secret life long contemplated burns away just smoke
giving off a last puff of purple
what towels stack neatly in dust
what tattoo ink finally dries
dissolve to a far shore where money multiplies
and we are starving crawling living
like flies apparently open to warmth and dung
bring us drugs they do then they bring us food
the brain of the jukebox a little addled
complex person what emotions he hides
his orange face in green green eyeshade
douchey guys make clatter at the bar
a Taurus spills reggae at the curb
a schizophrenic college friend comes to mind
posting photo of an iris on Facebook not his own
someone Photoshopped the fuck out of that big blue eye
we’re all wet with sweat and so is the most annoyed
girl pasty white hot and bored the world the end
HOW TO GET TO APRIL BLUE
enter gentle mantles varnish an apology
we’re here we’re orange falling engines bless the streets
just living for no one reason livid computable silent
digital wrist can’t get off tiled steps
arcing paths of lives so storms can break
fast rocks and pop conference room garnish
projects launch with a sigh doing lines on a CD
these games I spy must tonight be fun it must
many will suffer and die do not know why
lens yourself for change you carry good curves
private joker say it out loud do a pole dance on the train
it takes forever to get an ice cream too heavy to carry
you just give up stranded foreign accents make pass
so you compose yourself against your face your lies you know
too well aluminum countertop pots stand on foreigners
youthful introspection just a slab of neck
a ruler to measure the poem for a prison frock
or a heavy bass guitar strap filigreed
moist moist moist moist moist vagina upside-down cake
make it white whiter correct bias darkly
trajectories in gulfs or suburbs for you
down down down down the red carpet stairs to the loo
pay by hand and get away through airport fast food
and white cube galleries the point if there ever were one
when it is right to cry during the camera interview
seemed to me the best reply blank paper
ROOF GARDEN HERITAGE SITE
brutal concrete struts
take us down
orphan’s homes
sharing beds I think thinking you
you and you
woke later hungover fed clam cake
crowds know how you make it why be specific
bound to slither into dry carcasses
becoming no mummy but Braille nonsense
because you can’t even grasp getting-around Braille
to teach us of outlying suburbs stores spots
finding no radiation curse leave it
feed servers’ children nothing just steak tartare
or gather to loiter not talk grip cold gloves
you are a squeaky gate pretend you’re Gertrude Stein
but thin and sexy will fuck anybody
as one season melts the street literally
it brings other purer kids to soft park
picture cleaners pouring cleansers in gutters
a few weedy lots what bounce in the wind
you stand at the fence a Camel in your pucker
wolf man poster rained straight into a timber pole
what is a serviceman a servicewoman
to the pure joy of hopped-up children
flinging overhead rags or plastic bags
it takes parks and muscles I suppose
to sit seeing patterns hardly random
hardly plain come closer sit near us
feeling wrung turn pixel knobs
AUTO-BRIGHTNESS
weather vanes piled by curbs
mirrored in café glass
gone scavenging noon
plastic witches I am wanting
cleavers left in the Halloween sky
my hands reach to house mother blue
effectively only in gesture
such trash as hits you
when yesterday’s toxic fluid
your digital watch fades to
blank warm Casio again now the mute is on
dog pissed sidewalk come down
you bringing this neighborhood aura where you are
from where daylight taps cornices
dust on closed blinds where was
a law firm a campaign a psychic
turn toward country in any direction
to step directly into earth
stairs here go every way
apocalypse gets a sick day
files updated on a soap bubble’s skin
calendar page objections roll
the down your neck back sticks
in my palm if you have time
in the clean quiet room a man said
keep doing this just this this
and that man was me
cover your love in pleasantries
ink up your back and the girl at the party had
an frightening cartoon killer there
it works like baseball or thinking of your aunt
gestures gaits to say surrender
hardly enough for solid
sleep or pants she and you are so hard
your teeth are so fragile
that you are easy
BUFFALO NICKEL, TOOTHBRUSH, CRUDE
hardly have I always worked fall
gymnasiums down tinier
townships eventually tears up
over underlip of Shirley boss
knew she was pulling clambering bodies
sweat rope damp mats energy drink
hung walls there to disappear
behind but still at center
hub puberty strife fuck my life
I own a share of lugubrious gropes
fade gray milk mulch what that bubble
blew its pop bought round this world
blaring terror I terrorize others
families languages nobody understands
suburban towns fade to digits
by baring all and terror I
go where memories go over into fear
the instant a head snaps
making way for adroit photonegative
Instagram settings saplings weeds
kernels seams are the common enemy
if the world is going to end
you come eat poison and it is
pills and preparations you take
I am talking about myself
in an empty room
when nobody’s looking
listening to a seventies album
momentarily impossible to get right
chirping beetles helicopters rats
fields need be gone fallow
to fertilize even a ten-foot plot
without the smallest gift to science
let it go make yourself look cool
the last person afraid of the lens
I will be a spokesperson then
shoving shameful carts and eye charts
crispy snacks coasters and gin
late precarious learning you can’t scratch
any other way is another short wait
for a ticketed dancer a big win
the next day finds you splashing blue
from a still pail
dumping some crude oil
on top of it to prove it
slotting in toothbrushes past prime
finer use for neon green
slot some loose change there
it is your coined coin
NEW MAKE
what comes next is
possible to theorize one
period emerging now
explore late ailments
see shells or pounds of ruler
also a lecture at Choate
spurred her ken for new
nests that break ice
got the germ of moribund style
what is it that Joe wants
to free poetry from
deliberate space of wail
conveys a need for hugs
one more future among none
not quite forgotten now
easy to get heated at a lectern
after drinking television looks
better be stumping for ease
that offspring will steal
like lovely stickers peeled
from white shapes that held
tells you she was born built
as much as born to slip
into a car driven by a diver
you and she do not yet
perceive as form critique allows
for just some laughter not waste
pretense unforgiven hidden patience
every tentative second awaiting buses
means you are wanted
like a wanted man is wanted
eyes deliberate blur past posters would I
lick off your lipstick and rouge
HOPSCOTCH SMUDGES
The day you left
Do not leave
I cried out why
Any unsolicited female
My heart froze numb
Advertising material
My mind blank as
On this property
It were baked Alaska
Newspapers and magazines only
Vanilla noggin rocking
No dogs allowed
You stuck kiss to my ear
Do not feed
As if caught in a conch
The sea will not make any more
Passionate whispers
Boring art
I locked those secrets by a slide
Security provided
Hung with ripped phone cords
Guardian solutions
Rippled abs
Long gone forever
We deliver
For you
To you
For you
GAME SHOW THEME MIX
Orange and violet chipped
Here and there milk might damp