Inconveniences Rightly Considered Read online

first time that story was told, three-thousand believed.

  Came once as a babe.

  Came twice (from the grave that time, three witnesses)

  When He comes for the third time,

  it'll be the third time

  for the last time.

  "was

  is

  is to come"

  sounds like the sounds of trinity.

  Hail Mary

  they caught me laughing

  chuckling to myself on the two train

  headed from Brooklyn to

  Upper West Side

  couldn't hide it,

  but I tried.

   

  Some old cat flopped on

  caught me off guard

  buckled over on the two train seat

  head in my hands

   

  he stroked

  not long ago

  paralyzed half his side

  half his life

  Plummeted like buzzards do

  wife, three kids, house and home

  now, though once a metal worker,

  left to plead with

  unions for a lame job called

  "time keeper"

   

  six ones in hand, beggar's plan

  no one raises a buckled brow

  after a bushel of minutes

  one more, one more gives

  maybe he'll live

  gimp through

   

  maybe not.

   

  he had a line, a rhyme:

  "thank you, God bless you for your generosity

  I hope your kids, your family's well

  and thank you for your generosity?"

  he left.

   

  some hag named, 

  i dunno - Martha?

  ragged on him:

  "They're all like at,"

  to an audience of three

  "I see one every Thursday

  trying to get to Babylon

  told her I'd drive her

  buy her a ride

  to get to her dying mother

  Butter mother's still dyin

  every Thursday.  Fuggitaboudit."

  chorus (hers) laughed

  tailing her path to 42nd

  time'll square'm out

   

  maybe not...

   

  next stop, a blind woman got on,

  - true story

  come on with cuppa change:

   

  "I wasn't born blind, but I am

  now thanks to my mother.

  Hail Mary, full of grace.

  Can you help the blind?"

  she shook her change.

   

  "Hail Mary, full of grace.

  Can you help the blind?"

  she shook her change.

   

  "Hail Mary, full of grace.

  care to help the blind?"

  she shook

  seized

  on the ground there

  in front of the three

  no change

  another stoned

  no

  hailed

  Mary

  , yes they refused

  to flinch

  for fletchers that feather

  The darts of their coming deaths.

  My Consolation

  Boethius claimed badness or the wicked

  Or evil is a disease, even as weakness

  Wanes the body. Well, then, I

  Am so sick, my friend. See my shakes?

  See my quaking? Soothing balms

  Of wiser words evade my mind

  And its dreaming machine. A dry and an arid

  Landscape was seeded along the trenches

  Of my river valley, my rain cisterns

  Than once evoked green. Why has the grain

  Gone to be ground? The golden things moldy

  And silence from sound? Spring will heal

  The deserted and the dead: drink oh bulbs,

  Come up in an anthem and empty the silence

  Of all of itself. Evil is a disease

  Like a weakness wanes us. But the weak things heal

  And errors are evened and even corrected

  And minor minds made Major.

  Curtain Call

  Beauty came to me

  in the still dark of the day

  shining as a caretaker

  slitting her gown in play

  I found a freedom in flame

  the burning of my youth

  I covered it all in a kerosene fume

  And wrote with a match as I do with a plume

  And carved out her name on my tooth

  Before that the people would cheer

  When I danced for their praise and coins

  Each song and each melody turning their ear

  And I changed for their girls, for their boys

  upon that black-thorned limelit stage

  I stared my death in the eyes

  If I danced one more dance with the fury that's "Lance"

  I'd impale my own self with my thighs

  So I stopped moving each little limb

  And I patched up my tambourine wounds

  With the sealing of lips how a whisper was heard

  And it moaned over crowds and their swoons:

  Each empty stare echoed the sound

  And every eye watched it in awe

  I dropped every instrument, silent in crash,

  And I joined them by buying a ticket with cash

  And my heart felt as washed as with caustic potash,

  tearing up all the sights that I saw:

  Beauty came to me

  in the block marks of the play

  shining as a caretaker

  And nude-stripped for ballet.

  I found a freedom in her flame

  the burning of my youth

  I covered my mind in a kerosene fume

  And wrote her with matches as I had with my plumes

  And called out her name, told the truth:

  both a whisper and YAWP ambled up

  to the foot of the blackthorn's dead stage

  with the still of the audience hearing it clear

  And I'm one of them now by my clap and my tear

  While performing though dead like a British life peer

  There alone on the stage like a black marketeer:

  I perform what I learn while backstage.

  Passive Agressive

  I'd rather take warhammers to the face

  Pickaxes to the kidneys

  Straight-slander & libel

  Murder of my firstborn

  Rape of my mother

  Blasphemy of my good-intent and

  the word:

  "No."

  Than let these whisperers sweet-talk my face

  Gossip behind me while

  Stealing my cars and

  Pouring sugar-water all over my desk

  my books

  my laundry

  my looks so that I

  Awake in the morning to find not a sunrise or feigned

  Sweet calm of morning dew,

  not even sweetness, but

  Ants

  --ANTS--

  Eating everything.

  Beyond the Mountain for a Week of Weeks

  Aftertastes

  I've wondered at the flavor

  of the tastes of hidden things

  I've licked the air to savor scents

  unknown – from palate, wings.

  I dipped my thumb in The Thick Of It

  and stuffed it in my cheek

  and held it there till it dissolved--

  tobacco, so to speak.

  I bite into unbitables:

  like loss and cost and death.

  The tang of loves unreal and gone

  as my monastic breath

  reminds this old saltlicking stag

  (whose senses ever gray)

  that tastes be
hind the tastes exist --

  stagehands behind our play.

  I'm waiting here till every food

  tastes equally of dust,

  then all those tastes behind the tastes

  will bloom and make us blush.

  Fallen Autumn Playhouse

  originally published at  SP Quill

   

  A hardwood floor below the lamps

  of yesteryear's array of scenes

  I yield to wind--escorting leaves

  through double doors we've opened here.

  The theatre of yesteryear

  brings sweat and chill and feverish cue

  malaria of memory

  when lines forgotten plague my dreams

  of song, of line, of love life lost

  unmattered now, for untouched scenes

  have whispered in with whispered leaves

  and formed a novel, gold frontier:

  an incalescence in my heart

  restarts my spirit, paints the hue.

  Hysteria's no emery;

  my quiet soul's at peace with me.

  Greenwood Cemetery, Midwinter's Night 2015

  solid ice erected a sheen over

  thousands of shipmasts, hundreds of spires

  I looked again through black wrought iron

  spikes beyond their frozen ocean wave

  to the light some faced – others ignored –

  beyond the second wall of steel.

  orange warmth washed over mistless masts

  stark-set against blued half-things, vapors,

  half-trees, half-stones, half-beasts there roaming

  over that frozen wave of bones.

  Above, Diana cloudless waits, her

  dogs loose, her virgins hidden, weeping

  for those taken too soon – said simpler:

  for all taken.

  The sea of the dead, they've moved each night:

  I notice McCullin further down

  I notice Harris on higher ground

  or do some stones share names?

  But tonight -- everynight -- frozen

  bones-made-stones-made-masts from where I stand.

  I can't unmake the dead, their deaths.

  I can't unsee their ends. So Progress

  for those few I see fighting the wave

  of ice to light is not a fight. It's

  gifted. And we who stand behind grates,

  behind black iron plates watching all the

  roiling waves of the Styx – clips, slides, snips,

  negatives left on the darkroom floor –

  have no more to say or show or score.

  So we watch. We watch the dead play down

  into frozen darkness, their motion

  off stage left

  set in stone set in ice,

  frozen momentum

  or ride the rigging up into light

  tower and its thaw.

  Dark Towers

  At the end of every alley their stands

  A timeless tower. Top of the Rock

  Rises rustic and rearing tomorrow's

  Artisan deco amateurs and their visions

  Of gilded ages. Glimpse it at the end

  Of an alley or walkway. Empire is there

  At the end of Broadway or as the aim of Macy's

  Herald Square. How did the Trade

  Center's Tower sneak to the end

  Of Avenue Six? Ask how Long

  Island City ends in the Tower

  The King of Kong climbed in the old

  Black and white. Bear with me

  As I ponder the pillars -- the power of the Dark

  Towers we Rolands take as the aim

  Of our journeys' end. James said that faith

  Without works wearies, wilts and then dies

  So we take in the towers and the turns on the road

  And we recognize no roadway map

  or landmark and it leaves -- the little old

  Thought of a road trip or a voyage

  That we sit back and savor as one

  Would a cruise to the end of alleys where stand

  The timeless towers. Tops of the rocks

  In the crags where we cower and call out for aid.

  Bible College as Told by a Liar

  A cold shower

  A packed vanity

  Two snooze slaps

  An alert friend

  His own sound

  The light of his desk

  A clean pain

  An empty class

  That fills up some

  A cold prof

  Who must check

  Out of his own lesson

  He calls role

  I write on

  Prayer's an epic fantasy

  For the Christian ficitoneer

  Spirits rise

  To the right

  In the periphery

  Adrenaline: the fear

  Endorphine: the comfort

  Who is the ghost?

  Who carries the ghost?

  What on earth always remains in our periphery?

  And am I still on earth?

  "Schaubert!"

  I look up.

  "You're off in your own little world again. Tell me: what was the difference between Brother Lawrence's and St. Benedict's positions on prayer?"

  I pray before I answer.

  I answer before I check out.

  I check out before I write some more.

  Burritos.

  Underfoot -- the skin -- the clover

  -- it's winded -- the orange

  In the sky as the last sunbeams squeeze through Kansas dust storms

  Tulsa smog

  I return having spun silver lies

  Into things made in the image in which I'm made

  And therefore true

  The fish I caught was thirty-three feet long not because it was thirty-three feet long.

  The fish I caught was thirty-three feet long because I was the one who caught it.

  To catch is a marvelous exaggeration of human passivity.

  Catch for us the foxes

  The White Stag calls:

  "Come and catch me."

  His antlers had to be at least thirty-three feet long.

  A hot shower

  empty vanity

  no snooze relapse

  And dreams of things to come

  That come true

  But who is the fourth man in the furnace?

  Fantasy's an epic prayer

  For the pagan reader

  Spirits rise

  And am I still on earth?

  To the right

  In the periphery

  Endorphine: the fear

  Adrenaline: the comfort

  Who is the ghost?

  Who carries the ghost?

  The Solemnity of Elemental Weaves

  The Ballad of the Silent City

  I.

  Before the sounds of summer came

  Among cold Rocky Mounts,

  The City of the Silent grove

  Was spun (by one account).

  Before the cries of citadels

  Besieged by brigand bands

  The City of the Silent grove

  Signed sonnets in the land

  Decades on Amerigo's coast,

  Scores of centuries spent,

  White horses crashed upon his shores,

  On the Still City went.

  Still City knew the Union

  When brothers drove apart

  She heard the shot heard round the world

  Saw Chinook Ship Monsters haunt New World

  And hushed her bleeding heart.

  For the end of their world came long ago

  When pirates stole their bay.

  Like children of an afterbirth,

  Now we who walk on sand, on earth

  Came long after judgement day.

  Yes the end of the world was long ago,

  But not what the Chinook saw


  For the whore on the seven hills will rot

  By her own damned martial law.

  When Rome unwrapped her pax Romana

  On her margined fiefs

  She set herself up for rape and pillage

  By foreign peasant thieves

  Oh it came upon a silent night

  It came on a midnight clear

  That in the borderlands of Rome

  Where asps and locusts make their home

  Our coup d'etat appeared.

  But when every roadway bends to Rome

  When every state declines

  Poor people rise to take the throne

  White horses chew thawed cannon bones

  And the city-state resigns.

  For a wind blew down from the northern lands

  To freeze their molten blood

  Unleashed from her ancient bulwark cage

  By nameless terrors beyond age

  She brought a frosted flood

  Where warriors stood upon the gates

  To shield the city's lost

  Their migrants painted on their brink

  Archangels passed onto others, drank

  Their sacrament of frost

  For wind blew o'er from the eastern lands

  To topple anchored spires

  Roused from his ancient slumber cave

  To wake the dead, upend the grave

  To the tune of grisly choirs

  Where mourners kneeled afoot the hill

  To rue her dead by the wailing will

  Nor'easter twisted every sound

  To bleat like the weep of a basset hound

  By cyclone, squall and gale.

  For a wind blew up from the southern lands

  To burn away the chaff

  Stirred from his gilded feasting-hall

  Annoyed and armed with his mace and maul

  He sounds the cry of the curtain call

  Where mockers mocked their wounded peers

  Inside the palace pyre

  South wind removed the flaming sword

  Hidden in Eden once sheathed, restored

  Let loose Beginning's Fire

  When ashes settled, snow on sea

  When twisters slowed to sighs

  When hoarfrost melted, flooded rivers

  New earth dried, now baptized

  When those left hidden in the caves

  Some camped on mountain peaks

  Remembered what incited all

  Rome's storms and rising creeks

  They wrote it down upon the scrolls

  Passed down to us today

  A Jewish child past the Roman border

  Born upon the hay

  But that, I said, passed long ago

  'Fore pirates stole the bay.

  Like children of an afterbirth,

  Now we who walk on sand, on earth

  Came long after judgement day.

  And every native of the land

  And every painted face

  Renewed a vision that tidal rose

  At the spearhead of their Anglo foes

  Which silenced every space

  Between the death of Chinook babes

  And wind-blasts of the whore.

  A silence settled on the isle

  Up from the sand in a twisted smile

  To still the City's shore.

  II.

  Once was wood fort of the frontier's men

  A bulwark formed of tall

  Timbers felled from cold virgin woods

  By lumberjacks sprung from Titan axe-men

  Stood strong, the wooden wall.

  Late by the gate under gleaming moon

  One wise man brought to us our boon

  He whispered our unsung fear

  His twisted words hit twisted ears

  Of the counsel of our doom.

  Yet we don't speak of silent things

  Spoke under night's gray light.

  We'd rather nod or point or stare

  Or kick folks out forthright.

  That wall grew up from wood to stone

  From stone to marble halls

  From marble grew an obelisk

  To mark our starting stalls

  One chipmunk ran around its base

  Five cattle came behind

  One general's legion followed them

  Then cars and trains combined

  Our street ran by the sharpest stone

  But it had a nameless face

  Until one gambling troubadour

  Who grew up run aground, unsure

  Wrote "Wall" upon the place,

  They made a sign from the polished timbers

  That once preserved the fort

  He wrote four letters in the wood

  First one for winter, "L"s for  good

  The vowel for anyone,

  Our people flocked to city gate

  Before the obelisk

  To bid and bet and stake and risk

  For family, love, or fate.

  The Wall-street ran across the river

  Over the western shore

  It turned into an interstate

  And gained its own rapport

  The crowds, they came from Baton Rouge

  From Vegas, Saint Louise,

  With tickets, tickers, ticked tick-tocks

  For money labeled "free."

  Deep beneath the obelisk

  Which marked a massive grave

  Where bones of Titans carved with wood

  Marked for the others bans and shoulds

  Howling to all "BEHAVE!"

  A noiseless stir awoke the woodsmen

  Under our credit crypt

  Boring holes their hoard arose

  When breached streets surface, thorn of rose,

  Tranquility unzipped.

  Now in the room upon the floor

  Within Wall's sepulcher

  No man nor woman nor their child

  Stood in trading rooms tamed wild

  From silence, we infer:

  Where once the sounds of wealth pealed out

  Into all city streets

  Now quiet rests the heaving chests

  Of lovers who know the stillness besting

  Gambler's loud receipts.

  III.

  Before our Dark Knight haunted Gotham's

  Trasylvanian wings

  Before horse racers chase big apples

  While warm sirens sing

  Before the Fort of Worth could gamble

  All night, dirty, cheap

  We knew our city's moniker

  As one that never sleeps.

  But I have slept above the town

  Where horns and pigeons flee

  Where screaming victims' cries grow still

  Under the churn of the tower's mill

  Beneath a storm cloud's knee.

  At morning, at three, with no souls out

  I woke to look below:

  The cars lay dead, the kids in bed,

  The sewer rats left much unsaid,

  Streets smooth like fresh-turned snow.

  I jumped out from my window pane,

  I fell ten floors in secs,

  Past dozing grandmas, snoozing dogs,

  Beyond the peace of subliming togs,

  fiancees having sex.

  As I fell, then I looked down the avenue

  To north, to south again

  No lights poked out of the black alcoves

  For the city gagged itself in droves

  Unlike frayed Baharain.

  I cried out to the quietude

  Which bore me to the park

  I stood among the sleeping squirrels

  Nestled in the dark

  Then flying up among the treetops

  chanced upon a grove

  Which others named, "the place of titles"

  I just called it "love."

  One lone Hawthorne inside our park

  Drank up rare central soil

  Its rich life shined
out in its bark

  Shaded calm like the tight-lipped lark

  Beyond all other foil.

  Tapped thrice did I upon the trunk,

  Waited three seconds more.

  This tree had known to give the names

  Of the world, the elements, the games

  That all of us play ashore.

  But Hawthorne kept a silent stare

  Shut up his whispered mouth

  When asked I for the name of Gotham,

  She pointed west by south.

  So flew I down to the Island's point

  To listen up some more,

  Yet hearing now the city's voice

  Known by all run ashore:

  She is not like the Vegas whisper

  Not like the NOLA bands

  She speaks not like a Texan's swagger

  Not like the Cali hands

  Before the sounds of winter came

  Among warm Appalachia

  The City of the Silent Grove

  stays quiet:    ...  ...  ...  ...

  Before the cries of citadels

  Besieged by bitter bands

  The City of the Silent grove

  Signed sonnets in the land

  Decades on Amerigo's coast,

  Scores of centuries spent,

  White horses crashed upon his shores,

  On the Still City went.

  IV.

  (an interlude)

  Oh hear the sound of the wakened beast!

  Oh see her rise from the coast!

  She knows I've called her to her feet!

  She knows her silent toast.

  Oh hear her wait for the coming calls

  The woes have not yet passed

  Let her fall, let her flail to the wailing wall

  For the silence, still, will last:

  V.

  The King of England landed

  With troops armed at his side

  His standard scarlet-branded

  By the anvil, polished, sanded

  Leave the wounded flailing, stranded

  On the heels of his wake, his pride.

  The Lords of Norseland mooring

  North of the island point

  Ten thou ships collided, shoring

  With their breakers ripple-roaring

  One by one I called them, "boring!"

  Charged he south to make a point.

  The Aztecs marched from southernlands

  Glazed skin, soaked from their sun

  Gold-plated armor will withstand

  Poisoned darts, feigned shows, and slight of hand,

  The brazen battalion's cold command,

  And the ever-gattling gun.

  Unspeakable foes came

  From west, fog, mist, murk, drizzle,

  Hammer down upon our flame

  Malign the others, kings defame,

  Beauty of subtle bleak war-game

  Seared flesh stank from the grizzle.

  Met all four foes and my life there

  Upon the silent isle

  Quadrumvirate hemmed me in

  Yet on my lips, a smile?

  The King of England gasped a breath

  The Lords of Norseland panted

  The Aztec tow-dyed huffed-blew out

  The Black Cloud disenchanted

  Prepared all armies for their speech

  Drew up they words for telling

  Composed they rhetoric for slander,

  (Thought they themselves compelling).

  Yet stood I there beside the tree

  O. Henry in the forest

  We muted out our words from them

  And with our muzzle, held within

  the words they hoped would stir us.

  And when they spoke, I sucked it out

  The whole lot of their voices

  Inhaled I every vocal chord

  That curses or rejoices

  And when they saw the silence here

  A grove primeval, virgin,

  The Quartet throng let tacit deference

  Sing all best left unsaid.

  A full half-hour heaven hushed

  To hear the island's prayer

  Their hearing washed us, living flush

  World's foursome turning tail to rush

  Mail, horses, sabers, buckles brushing

  Past taciturning air

  And I and I flew back to home

  And I then dreamed of war

  And I heard crashes on the coast

  White horses on the shore.

  VI.

  Awakened I inside my bed

  Stirred not, to bind the heat

  It shifted under piles of sheets

  Hoping to find a way to flee

  Warming my chest, my seat.

  Succumbed I too the restless wind

  Aside my covered core

  Breaking out humidity

  Upon my shameless nudity

  My mind ached, tired and sore.

  Leaving out front still city's streets

  Pajama pant-legs long

  Vast puddles licking at my cuffs

  Climbed the cold to scarf, to muffs

  Heard I their slumber song:

  Multitudes passed my striding

  Walking past in droves

  I went downtown among the lights

  To see fare, shows, bar-brawling fights,

  Ten million treasure troves.

  If you were there along with me

  And waited several years

  You'd only just begin to mind

  That sound that hit my ears.

  Ten million people in five miles,

  Ten million five beyond,

  But one sound shifted in that sea

  Of people moving busily

  On our side of the pond.

  A decade past, it holds the fort

  A century, the wall

  Deep in the soil ten thousand years

  You hear the roar? The call?

  The song sang long before the White Horse

  First hit Britain's rocks

  The anthem of our generation

  Preservatives and liberation

  Pandora's music box.

  Stand with me in the corner now!

  Stand Times Square, Wall, our park,

  Hear rat, ant, true man, rosy sow,

  Heifer, eagle, lion's growl,

  Both mockingbird and lark:

  Sing onward, isle! Intone your noise!

  Belt out your eld refrain!

  Listen, my friends, unto her now--

  I'm telling you her name:

  VII.

  (Once the seventh part existed, now it is no more. I wrote it, turned it into braille, pasted it before I'd copied down this section's words into some other file. So when I used a lesser font, it turned it all to dots so disconnected, so un-brailled, the meaning there was lost. I tried five online tránslators, I tried it note-by-note, but when I finished I had lost the sound of what I wrote:)

  VIII.

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  Halves

  To-day:

  Half-day through Salem

  saw them at my reception

  Yester-day:

  rushed through a half-day

  a wedding day

  with him there

  Half-Christmas-day

  they drove to me

  six-hundred miles for a

  half-day.

  Three of us

  wish the snow had kept them.

  Even frozen them like Han Solo.

  Does that make me Jabba?

  Before all that, who knows?

  Today's letter came

  (three weeks late)

  "Happy Birthday son.

  I'm proud...

  I'm happy...

  I'm sorry...

  I love you,"

  Cried out the other halves.

  Mist Drizzles in Brooklyn

  A drizzle in downtown Duenweg is something

  Like my wife waking and the water of her shower

  Misting me while I make my chin

  Clean with the cutting. The crisp mist

  Is a walk by a wayward water fountain

  Or a splash pad. Spread the mist

  Over the evening and aim it at me

  And my head for an hour? The hell of The Mist

  Is in taking its time and turning her loose

  With a hose in hand. The Holy Lady

  Of the mist maybe makes light of

  Freezing her folk -- I found Niagra

  Dipped and deafened in the dark of wax

  And a yellowed ice. A yard in the mist

  Is a play date. Place it over

  The plodding pace of Park Slope

  Or the Manhattan miles or make Brooklyn

  Meander aimless under the years

  Of her mistings and maybe she'll make the nightly

  News in drowning our novelties slowly.

  Concerning the Halfway Mark by Turkey Creek Where I Parked My Bike and Turned Off the Noise

  As water when in droplets formed

  falls winded down from leaves

  when rain returns cold fire upon

  two breathless, dusty forms

  as liquid courage quickens lungs,

  roots feet upon hot hearth

  invokes our subterranean fire

  by song, by spit, by drink

  as chill Noreaster wets her brother

  Southern Wind's dull heat

  begetting the brimstone pillars, hail,

  the whirlpool's aery twin

  as boiling baths break grime with steam

  as stew evapors three

  as books can ground an untamed blaze,

  break blizzard's bite, stop sea

  as salt, as watered wind, limelight,

  as sun breaks burns to rays

  as wave, as particle, as bright

  as solar winds in space

  as lack of water, air, no heat

  as absence of a sphere

  of water falling through thin

  air to ice the burning bear

  she blows.

  Awakes forgotten storms

  from willowed memory.

  She rains them down upon hot flesh--

  our break from trails or sea.

  Clothes

  My wife wanted me to write a poem

  For my shoes and shirts. Shucks kiddo,

  I got the good ones from the great dead

  Guys that gathered our growing need

  And fed it feebly forward to their memories,

  The gratitude of their garment garden's scent

  And aura and ether. Evanescent --

  Mutilate, the moths, these musk ox

  Wools and weather wear like the camel

  Hair I happen to eat honey and locusts

  While prophesying inside, or the petty boots

  My grandpa gave me that gave when the dry

  Rot ripped from the right foot's heel

  Or the tear in the tread of the third pair

  Of tennis you bought me. Turbulent styles --

  How fashion is fleeting. Feast, I, on the

  Strips and strands of styles abandoned

  in the gutter of God. Grace is when the

  Clothing merchant's kid disowns him

  And strips and states, "Save me, Our Father,"

  And the priest empowers the prince of cloth

  Who leaves them looking at his little naked

  Asscheeks and he enters an overcast winter

  To find his faith flowering on the ground

  As a robe and a rope -- rending there

  A uniform for ages of open-handed

  Friars whose fashion is feeling the cold

  That the hoary homeless helplessly endure

  The elements that sublime almost elementally.

  Black Market Milk

  Were I to film a movie,

  a documented show,

  I'd make its name, "Black Market Milk"

  so everyone could know

  that once upon a time there lived

  a people of the land

  who walked on dewdrop-laden blades

  of grass and soggy sand,

  who churned their butter, washed their bread,

  who fattened up their sows,

  who threshed their grain on threshing floors,

  and milked their dairy cows.

  These people, older native babes,

  sucked straight from utter tits,

  like fathers fondle helpmates' breasts

  in nursing time, in wets.

  This somethin' only fathers get--

  that taste of gentle mom

  when naked in the darkened vat

  of master bedroom, mime

  and mouthing like their offspring did,

  like Denison would say:

  She offered him her mother's milk,

  he made a milky trade.

  Both Amish men and Mennonites

  exist outside the law

  by charging nothing for their milk,

  (still less to use their saw)

  but few are Amish in the land,

  and fewer still before

  Columbus crashed the Native party,

  steel upon soft shore.

  But still they traded milk for music,

  mayonnaise for mead,

  mint for metal, dark merlot,

  then marble, marksmen feed,

  a pound of orange marmalade,

  molasses, mead again,

  then back to music for the milk,

  closed circle, grace and sin.

  A thousand years would pass before

  the dairymen would find

  hormonal additives to blacken

  up their dairy kind.

  So now to get the mother's nectar

  free of toxic touch,

  to find the milkman set to barter

  milk for wine and such:

  First buy yourself a skiier's mask,

  a camo gilly suit,

  then let your money trade some hands,

  prepare yourself to shoot,

  and armycrawl your way to farms

  at midnight in The States,

  exchange the goods for lady's fare

  (be sure to close the gates).

  Then, when at last you're safe at home,

  when no soul dares to wake,

  drink up, drink up as ancients did

  the raw, unfeigned white lake.

  Is Your Mind Meaningless? And other thoughts to mind in ordinary time...

  On the Instance of My Wife Sleeping in

  She will sleep till her spine revolts

  And then kick herself for caving to the accrual of fatigue

  Type ones take as the normal

>   Day to day. Devastating

  How the body rebuffs, rebuilds with scraps

  Of remnant rests. I renig on the scoffing

  I have aimed at her ovum and beta

  Cells and their shames. Somehow I sank

  Into thinking the thunder I thresh was harvest

  For the helpless hers and the hardened organs

  That needed a donut nightly or the shaking

  Up that empires owe themselves

  Here in the hateful harrowing of Great

  And Vital Virtues. Evict my malice

  And let me let her be lost in the sleep

  That body and brother and bare nation

  Require in these queer and unquieting times,

  Oh God Almighty. Grant me a willing

  Spirit to suspend the insane impulse

  To delay the light and leave her to rest

  Like an intimate elf or an injured sleeping

  Beauty basking in the broth of a time

  When the weak were welcome and wondered strong.

  Five-Pronged Eyes

  You saw me in the kitchen washing all your dishes

  Cutting my hand; I bled upon your counter

  In that bloody mess, soiling your wishes

  As bland, crimson rags silenced our encounter

  Dishes screamed onto red tile shattering

  Your eyes, your cold gazing for the battering.

  You saw me in the vineyard plucking grapes

  Joining harvest, each one told rain's love story

  From which we agreed Houdini can't escape

  Bottling vintage juice for wine's old glory

  Corks would shoot off to the moon, shimmering

  Your eyes, your warm stares now simmering

  You saw me soon holding Enid's baby

  In that hospital rocking chair's slow dawning

  We met each other's eyes thinking "maybe...'

  That young boy interrupted us by yawning.

  Blue cigars inflamed, then subtly searching

  Your eyes, which cannot hide your heart's lurching

  You saw you through a ten-foot ancient mirror

  I came to stand behind you, fully aiding

  All your image, pulling you all the nearer

  Yours is one which never seeks the fading

  Crystal surface captured every moment

  Your eyes hesitated at shame's torment

  You see us through an album full of photos

  Each shot caching past days from our history

  And when you reminisce (your face aglow)

  You prove our love, our shrouded mystery

  Faded frames revealed the thoughts behind

  Your eyes that walk the hidden trails that lead back to your mind.

  I see your eyes in five mottled prongs

  Which form a trident of your liquid gaze

  that forms the noble, evanescent songs

  Which, when we hear them, start love fresh ablaze.

  Jaded names are ours within the scene

  Your eyes direct, each second caught between.

  You saw me in the kitchen washing all your dishes

  Cutting my hand; I bled upon your counter

  In that bloody mess, sifting your wishes

  As sand, crimson rags--pilonce soaked in color--

  Wishes pleaded with the red tile bartering

  For prizes meant for the dreamers and doddering.

  Twoem

  The following poem was posted on Twitter under the name "Twoem" with the handle "@ReadTwoem" between July 26th and July 27th of 2012, obviously long before my wife and I quit social media. To my knowledge, it still exists on the internet under that name. Each line was posted as a single tweet, one hundred and forty tweets in total.

  ReadTwoem: a #twitter #poem by @lanceschaubert

  One forty I wake, stomach's in pain--ulcers usher in fissures again. Try taking alkalis, take pills, but mouth won't consume, yet articulates

  Words flow from adrenal heart along my bloodstream into lungs, vibrating vocal chords, which vibrate columns of air and come out like words,

  When I hear me speak to myself in the second person invocation possess eight savages, two brutes chained to two wrists, the literature labor

  First I type in [user]TAB[password]ENTER or longer process of registration for more online real estate & tweet reverberates, song and siren,

  My first shares all-too-personal info about gastric abscesses, medication, choking precautions, left no room for rhetoric, but I'm warming up

  It comes- something like #poetry but not, creative limitation to the beat of $140million or something-can medium subvert itself from within?

  I disregard doubts as all artists (if they participate in eventuality) & I rage, text & verse, lunacy: mechanical terra firma, soil & tools,

  What comes surprises me, a chance at something undone, at undoing something done wrong, meaning in restriction, in forcing lines into limit-

  wrote this one first on my smith-corona to prove it's still done. no power in my house except AC (that may still be weakness) comfort crutch

  so I type a few to prove value as Hemingway or King would've done in his early days, for I'd refuse myself apps, open windows, notifications

  I refuse this mirage of connectivity in this desert of woven, webbed hard drives, at least for the time being, for this breath, intermission

  There's me, a ribbon (that's no metaphor) and letters forged from iron or perhaps aluminum, permanency as if to say, "When punched, then meant

  Not only does ironed typography transfer straight to print, subverting processed words, but they burn, they engrave both onto wheel and page

  So yes, I still rough draft whenever possible on my typewriter, for the value's in slowdancin with the words, in not writing but typewriting

  This'n in pen-green ink, moss & vine shoots conquer concrete & her digital cousin. Artery of exnihilo power: blank page & order out of chaos

  I took pictures of my poem and that makes it meta I suppose, though such a thing's value is in the vegetation to follow

  Meta for meta's sake's like oil change for oil change's sake--proof's in the pudding, value is in the vegetation-that's what I meant, I think

  That we might see the tropes, systems, forms we find swell or form something substantial, that happens like layers of mold in the coffee pot

  Layers (not just one) plurality of mold, mold upon mold, films stacked- Hollywood archive of decomposing greats-mixed metaphor and spectrums

  Anthrax on black on green on white on grits on brewed water below, sedentary or anthropomorphic layers of rock, statues buried and born-time

  proves inevitabilities & disproves ideas of proving those soul-things, those layered forms, those poetries. For what is soul is undefendable

  It's unattackable, unattainable, inconceivable (to the extent that cult films come to mind at the mention of the word) No we few who #poetry

  , #Poetry hermetically, cloistered off, lobbing chocolates like Molotovs over these city walls. We few canaries stuck in our mine a'tweeting

  I believe poets still lay breadcrumb trails that lead from the witch's house to the woods, we work language into katas: IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

  but Hansel and Gretel favor houses built from objects that cause root canals, tables loaded with torture devices, something a little more...

  _____ _______ _______ _______ __ __

  |____| |_____/ | |______ _/

  | | | _ | ______| |

  I plead the fifth, your honors, and in pleading chose that precise moment when I will testify against myself in favor of the cause, the word

  #inspiteofthepresenceofabsurditieswherepeopleinsistonmakingeverysentencesearchablequantifiableorotherwisecommentaryonwhatneedssaidorpoetried