the stupidity of men: volume one

my first grand-daughter is being born tonight.

my wife is at hospital,
welcoming our little Annabelle.

what did I do?

I watched every version of powderfinger on youtube
until I wept like the baby to come.

while you were sneaping with the others I got my education

i. it's so nice to lie among the living

my stirring, buried in triplicate in your broken zipper,
died a little that day, awkward of the rustic chrome,
and patiently exploding with an bronzed innuendo of why:

it was, as science says, a matter of degrees,
but mostly in a purple mist of irony, captive

in view of the violent fruit to come
I would have been a fool, then, to disagree.

ii. to wait for blueberries and skid into view on a falsely tiled floor is a cherished pleasure to some

then I saw you exiting the melodious factory,
the bronze chimes in a metallic haste towards

your felonious smile and your poisonous pocket bulged
with the ribbed beige cartridges from a sinister east,

the left-handed chimes in a hoison haste
so immaculately born of harmonious boredom:

then,
even then,
you agreed I was a fool to disagree.

iii. before the glorious separation devolved to pearly worship

I'd be lying if I said that I did not look down
when we circuited the alabaster dome outside
the echo chamber of black gates and whiteness

where sounds were ok, maybe just a faint gray voice

that was, if not professorially golden,
at least annoying to an erudite degree.

adding the swirls of rainbow sherbet helps
because green and orange and lemon matter
almost all the of time:

of that I know that you agree.

iv. then, bang! zoom!

anti-abstruse ranting in a pink and vehement form,

actually more abstruse and certainly less tame
than the sprouting seed from which it came:

after I had taken my time to target the moon,

should I take the time, now,
to re-explain my explanation?

and would you, ever, agree?

the naturalness of nature is a tube of lipstick denied

something skittered in the dark and crispy dawn
and startled me from my rose-colored meditation.

hey, man, I was intent on something that mattered
obsessing on the uni, the sweet and orange indelicacy
of that sweet and slimy and wonderful dream,

judged, now, in absentia
by a person that no longer matters:

oh!
that!

syrup dripped its orbs of ghee into matters planetary that

and, excuse the phrase, were parabolically and crayolaically melon-

but there was butter and honey and sugar powdered, so,
in a feverish and sweaty dream, I decided to stay a course
in which I was not chemically challenged:

it was just what the hayseed imagined.

I do things I do not understand: volume infinity

I had a daughter who bounced upon my knee,
she was the light of my life with her giggling glee.

one day she smiled at a boy from another tribe,

so me and her uncles
took her to a barren place

and

buried her to her neck
to prevent indecency

and

threw rocks at her head
until we were sure that she was dead.

we have cellphone pictures and video
if you need proof that I'm a man.

I have decided to expose my deferment

i. it makes sense when you consider the pleasures of transgression

then they brought the heavy oxidized cannons, erect and
rising through a green mist of mud that oozed downhill-

it was, after all, necessary,
and they did have scriptures and all that shit,

and they brought it
and they brought it
and they brought it,

hallelujah.

they brought it to an previously obvious place
that I never, idiotically, expected, duh?
and, to emphasize my stupidity (in case you missed the point):

I cannot say that I was surprised or even cognizant
of the absurd and ribald bloody scene that drew,

in the modern sense of the gerund cutting,

an audience of ten.

ii. I need to buy new glasses

man, I am just trying to see.

iii. in the interim, someone asked me about the afterlife

just to be clear,
man, I am just trying to see.

ectasy found in a seaside market

there was little between our rough geometric god,
dreaming of pale supplicants in chessboard robes,

and the encouraged benediction
of smooth white pebbles
that tumbled onto the silver strand
in a chaotic foam of shelled joy;

who could not sense the saline grace
of that warm and briny rhythm,
the rhythmic perfection that erupts
from the incessant sand of eternity.

champagne, the descant of marvelous claret
and a frivolous mink with an upstaged shout
that, seductively, stole the freckled show:

it was the day a million of me
met a million of you
and echoed a million harmonies
that, in harmony, echo still.

a hair is such a simple thing

then I noticed that one of your rebellious golden strands
had flown awry from a crucible winged with the wilted brass of quills,

had pierced the imagined golden fabric of my pompous fleece
with a sinuous mythology that was tenacious
and prompted, to a ticket holder entranced by teal,
an ancient head of expertly burnished copper-

then that almost bronzed and autumn needle
suddenly, in refracted sunlight, opened

into a kaleidoscope irresistibly imagined and,

serendipitously shadowless,

waltzed so dreamily into such a blond captivation

that I am captured to this eternal yellow day
by a flickering prism of luminous mineral glass:

periwinkle, burnt sienna, forest green-

when I am feeling confessional, especially,

I am still confused by the red and violets

and

I embrace, as always, periwinkle,
but not so much the continuous bland reflections
of that new and awkward chrome-

I have heard that, occasionally,
for the want of a better watch,
time fritters away in a perfect rhapsody:

I heard also, reluctantly,
that there are things,
especially blasphemous,

things that are mortal
mostly to the young.

it's such a blue thrill to split the sky

i. the fair weather that grew into a silky redemption

our gate into the moss that day
was trilled in a perfect coloratura,
demising at will the bark target
that was grilled by rusty willows-

pink but secretly unmentioned:

the munificent weeping of impatiens
in a necessary press towards bloom
as to my blush became the saintly dew.

you might call it paradise,
I call it something more.

ii. every evolution has a modicum of unfortunate offshoots

then came a calligraphy shorn of boredom that never faded:

our foundry unspoiled and grave where carved tablets lounged
in a soothing sienna mud that reeked of bubbling, spiky abuse.

I was so high I could see the planets.

iii. it only sounds like growling when I mean it.

there was something barking a gray language of granite oppression,
a voice that dragged with sisal ropes across the canine floor
and tore into the seductive sway of elms and oaks and maples:

it had the darkening violence of an unexpected autumn storm-

I had only expected leaves.

iv. the circle is sometimes announced by the chimes of innocence

twigs were hurled until our nostrils reeked of blood-
times were so much different when the sun arced low
and a horrified pack of shills went monkey, totally:

for a split dream moment the falcon aspired
under gray flurries that huddled with the Valkyries-

to wait for the freeze is, often, to be frozen still:

I still yearn for that sky-blue pop.

I don't really like saying anything

it's so lamely obvious to sit here,
an aging ham on a cold veneer of knotty pine,

chrome tubes austere in the Bauhaus style
hoping to support the paunch of gravitas
that seeks, in its Laconian chill,
the awkward lacuna of now:

then, of course, that moment,

thrusting forward trying to spurt this

po
em.

I could have been a trunk

the lichened limb had spread so slightly freaky now
downing itself upon the brisk green slope with a tender growth-

that made me think of an arabesque that swirled serene,

when,

someone whispered in my ear about purple perambulations
and a sudden swoon turned this sour world into a swirl of joy:

it's hard to blame the classics even when four becomes five.

is it really that easy to die?

birds crash into windows

i. why lemmings have no wings unless supplied by plastic

there was something necessary about the flocking of the birds
and their frenetic quest for the ripe twilight drip of overripe berries

causing an anomalous pace of crashing that seemed, if not anomalous,
at least thickly innocent and bloody and raspberry obscene
for the feathered camera with its lashing snap of obscure eyes:

there are many forms of tethering and all of them are broken.

ii. looking before leaping has its own demise

glass walls are more dangerous than brick
and the mirror is the greatest horror of all,

it is glaring and habitual,

or so I've heard from sages more learned than I,
through lenses ground by the sandy glee of you:

in that moment
by the shore,
you leered,
just before the dawn.

iii. it's hard to retreat from the crowd

an observer might merely chant from the obvious vade mecum,
the richly pebbled leather that goes unquestioned
until the brick-red crayon becomes itself a brick
or becomes a brickwall and the illusion dies too late:

alligator piping is out of season, again?

oh, coco, coco, coco

give me a sign with one of your prehensile digits
or I shall never strut again until I see you sign
a simian prayer of lonely and eternal peace.

iv. mentioning the cage would be too trite

I've got my dark glasses on
is one way of saying that
the world is too much with us:

it gets kind of boring
when the speakers want to blast
into the great want of ears.

it all boils down to taxonomy and hegemony

i. for the incessant requesters of context, we begin again

there are them that want to name the things
and them that want to rule the names,

sniffle, sniffle, sniffle-
boom, boom, boom:

it is only a recurring dream when you find the exit recurring.

I am so glad that that is settled.

ii. stopping the wheel with a peasant's shoulder

when syntax is a fait accompli, the semantic will bite your ass-

hard.

and it will hurt:

like a crocodile dictionary which,
incidentally,

consists mainly of canonical entries for claws and fangs,

and skin that defies those moisturizers
that were hyped in loud and lemon green
when we splashed around the pool:

has anyone seen my swimmy wings?