Flood

the flatfaced apocalypse sneaks upon our heroes

while they eat a modest meal of figs and club soda

flood, lake Michigan, bring the bay to a stop

and see your threadbare crowds at a standstill

the test has to be bodies drained patients

a kind of sample group that gives thought

less blood and we are still right here

waiting to be fed any sort of process meat

then no love is empty no touch is meaning

less no kiss is left without a true smell

right but look at the hemispheres there’s

a way to see yourself alone with stars 

Addition

hello [1]

come in [2]

sit down [3]

would you like a drink [4]

---

[1] A greeting

[2] An invitation

[3] A command

[4] A question following a command 

Earth Forms

Good, he says, to be

here with you all

tonight             I’m

here to discuss

hieroglyphics

with you             dogs

often see signs

in the grass

circular            they

describe them

with cries of

derisive             talk

explosively

selling nighttime

sonatas                        hark

to loving stones

to altered tracks

to destruct            but

there is not one

of you who don’t

also feel            shrine

Stuck

Sticking close to the wall. Day drags to snapping still stones. Welcome, Vertigo.

Winter canon

the wolf is my painting

the wolf makes my accusations

the wolf makes my midday meal

the wolf cleans my bedroom

the wolf lights my gnostic candle

the wolf crumbles my affect

the wolf crushes my mandolin

the wolf builds my empty parlor

the wolf counts my half-hours

the wolf dreams of my couch

the wolf burns my kitchen

the wolf hosts my fish frys

the wolf holds my teeth in a cup

the wolf asks about American sadness

the wolf prints my ticket to Peru

the wolf shines my filmy moonlight

the wolf stages a mocked march  

the wolf eats my apple in the field

the wolf bums my smokes to strangers

there it was not

There was a painting in the room I woke up in. A guest was just leaving but I didn’t follow them. I licked the wall and then realism went out the window. 

while cutting a curtain

I drank chocolate
milk this morning
while watching lake
ashes spray against
your window

rising

when she called
substance and
feet blew

away

an antifesto

Not attempted this in awhile, and my awareness of the internet's illimitable expansion and mixture of timespace leaves me at the mercy of unforeseen consequences. Writing is the distance between repulsion and compulsion, a cry from the throat and pared calculation of affect. The tension for the writer is the balancing act of freedom and constraint. Spirits wane, forms appear, power drains and regenerates.

So, perhaps this blog is an exercise in drains and regeneration. Studies in dissociation, you might call them. Whether poem, prose, photograph, aphorism, all trails between the real and unreal--now a shifting architecture for all to see.

This is an antifesto. Not a series of thoughts or artifacts, but the acute collision between object, sense, word, and the continuum of action between them.

If a voice, then a company of shifting presences and absences.

If a presence, then an unwilling misrepresentation. Who's there?

If an absence, then a vision of presence. Who's not there?

And who should be?