lit brut

the neobrutalism of the plastic
pistols on the graves,the siege
of mecca & the death of cowboys
in the snow,the anthem
of the marchers in the street &
pipelines bursting at the seams:we
stumbled into this,a clean,well-
lighted hell,& every plaint now ends
'we have a pill for that'.

for a friend & teacher dead now 30 years

still working out the act of making,the process,
gerald.remember when you taught me
how to carve a villanelle?form as curio &
artifact,like string quartets or rock
n roll,but now we have this pencil,all we have,
this scrap of hope that somehow something
from your teaching will return.maybe a dirge,
a memory of your face,a pale rider on a yellow
horse,remembering how pretty you were.your death
can't be contained inside a villanelle,or any poem.

here lies my friend,my teacher,whose last words
were a muffled laugh,a whimper of despair,
an ironic 'oh god' like a prayer.

lines may 25

a sex memoir in a block of prose would be easy enough
to swallow:i remember the eighties,& youth.a few
brain cells survive the sonic assault,the alcohol,
cocaine,aluminum can hash pipe fun.i remember
you,& you,but decent recollection & honesty
do not coincide.you women who shaped me in your hands
& licked up my lies,i think you are all still living & deserving
of peace.

poetry is dead,or should be:

words are sounds freighted with ideas.words
connected form commands.'bend over.fetch.kill.'my
words are words of liberation,but everybody thinks
that.some words create beauty/called
poetry.poetry is dead,or should be.
these are lines of tension.

paris 1968

badiou marching contra pacem,hand-in-hand
with mao & plato/sartre hawking broadsheets
on the street/tel quel spinning candy
in its turbine:where is their world now?i
spy it in the library between the shelves
of shite,glimpses of another country:some-
where there's a city built on seven tasteful hills.
somewhere we will meet.

lines may 20

the marks & drips off the edge of the canvas
were more interesting than the picture,
according to the artist's statement.she thought
about hanging the dropcloth but no,she took pictures
of the dropcloth & made a video destroying
first the original canvas,then the dropcloth
then the photos of the cloth.we watched the video
at the kunsthalle near the rathaus in kreuzberg then
went out for espresso.
                                   the watercolors
on the wall of the bakery:figures.one,
an old woman with her walking sticks
like a cross-country skier,i had a hard time
with her at first but by the time
we were finished with our coffees
my conception of the world had normalized.
i had grown fond of the brutal little woman &
considered buying the comfortable,
unremarkable watercolor
for 30 euros,unframed.


.....



the asian store down the alley in steglitz
where we bought rice noodles & cilantro
& the vietnamese woman's english
was better than my german &
we filled your backpack up with rice
papers & bean paste & mae ploy chicken
sauce & outside the sun shined,was
that a dream?my eyesight had returned,
the operation at the charite putting the world
back in my head for a few more years
& i would make dinner that night,able to see
the rice papers as i rolled them up,
no longer cooking only with my fingertips.it
wasn't a dream though it feels like one
today,here,on the other side of the earth.

lines may 19

we saw the heads of presidents up
on a rock & walked around
where custer lost.then pecan
shakes at stuckey's.
my memory
of america is straight
& gray like the highway
across that flat banality.


..........


we have a pill for that,the blood
that runs like current through
the wall,the sound of other voices
& the call of night.it can be fixed.
stillness without practice & peace
without victory.

lines may 18

the problem with this picture is the border
where it ends.


.....



lines written in blood on the streets of athens
lines copied from the foreign affairs' contents page
lines without borders
lines without tenure
the call-&-response opening ceremony of the 1000th international
lines whispered in your ear like my fingers between your legs
lines in the water catching hell.


.....


text has been tight from the beginning when
we pressed the word into brick or tiny-printed on papyrus,
impressed,compressed to save space.vowels dropped,sensible
enough,who needs them?but you have no authority,you
ancients,you

have no authority in this text.



.....



while baking bread with tesla & arguing the future
of a common currency with soros i saw the future
of fascism like muscle under a skin of stone,flexing
in response  to the matron of maastricht:blood
inside that smooth white rock.

lines may 16

anthropomorphize yourself:leave the animals
out of it.they're not here to speak to you
in secret code,the eagle has no opinion
on the justness of your coup.respect the blood
of the lamb by not spilling it.humans:
get over yourselves.

lines may 12

stained glass futurism,hershey bar
colonialism.europa we will rape you
like a cow:mytho-magic dulles
bros,from frankfurt into gitmo

we've trained our black sites on you.
i smell a new world odor.


.....


spray paint.whitewalls.interactive
sensors call your phone.smart-
gouache.tactile.metabolizing
sulfites in the wine.critics.
bunched up.finding words
to clarify your dream.patrons.
outside.
             looking for the stars


.....


the decorative.the gestural.the knife
in my sciatic nerve.the shoes.the self.
the giggle from the far side of the room.


.....


beauty:is
discredited
in visual art
only at the level of idea.
the plastic arts
exist
in the world
of ten thousand things.

but words are dull,ideation
a soup of gray
in the bowl of your head.


.....


the non-motif,resistant to convention,degree zero
behind the code,the black word on the white page,
the spark in the brain struck:bells in the distance.

lines may 11

rhymey slangy singsong limey:your
'meaning torqued by artifice'
spangles on the page.like
similes.smiles.smelly emojis for the formal
set.i like larkin as much as the next white
male but:he's dead,his time has gone.mine,
too.

.....


when it became too painful to read poetry i
took to reading criticism:the best lines pressed
between blocks of pleasant prose & then
it(or i)became a bore to read the books
of criticism & i took to skimming reviews
of books of critiques of poetry.i have never
been so well read.

lines may 10

phenomenology


1.

everything i'm reading reads like everything i've read.
all the charms of sycorax are messing with my head.

2.

i was a genius before all the drugs.
i climbed a mountain in my skull.

3.

no matter how forcefully i push this mop
i can't push it through the wall.

lines,may 9

language is a misunderstanding that grovels
to assent.we come to a pack consensus &
my pack butchers yours.i write its history &
feed it to the children like communion.

.....

reading a paper on density in ceramic plating i
anticipate words like a telegram stop
or words like a dark age copy run together
for the sake of space & stripped of punctuation stop
mathematical formulae illuminate the text stop
a new & better war machine will be built,wealth
will accrue stop

.....

her work is a pattern that communicates.a
grid of color.a color field of breath.her
breath is a work of color that:i tasted
the sun on my tongue as her breath
entered my mouth,my lungs.

dear nsa

the manifesto has been stripped
of all consonants.false flags fly from
foreign flotilla.sex without sin indicates
the banality of fortification.an aggressive
defense allows one to play the sicilian
for the fool.reference the band anthrax
& you will find your reader:a
lonely apparatchik glances once

lines, may 8

what is to be done with dada.
why have we sacrificed ourselves 
to sense.does the wind spell pariah:
a product of the trench & chlorine gas.
but now.but now
the poetry of precarity must resign
itself to transparency.
it's a long way to temporary.

i've made war on myself long enough.
dada-breached defenses compel surrender.
i will let you unlock my phone.
the peace to end all has begun.

portraiture

the artist who painted herself
into a corner became:a 
caricaturist,a capitalist,
a crier in the square,became
a he:meat hanging in a gallery.

technik,ja,& a craftsman's pay,
portraiture persnickety
as language:the syntax of the eyes,
the mouth around the grammar,
the mother tongue inside.the bones 
of money in your hand,manipulation
of the spine:

sit
& let me please you.

lines may 7

coded


the compression of data
between two bricks,lines
of code:binary code/genetic code/programming
code=cartography:writing is a map 
to an unknown country.code
is a lyric when it becomes a flower.




triolets:


freya's offspring.
kinder on the bus.
ss hair & vacant eyes.


absent sister:doppelganger.
notes in a higher register.
our voices overlapped.


whose flesh in this bread.
blood on your skin.
explicitly political.


you have a sad religion.
mine is a color. 
a bright line in the night.

at a museum

space behind the frame.
i admire your use of space.
but that's actual space:
quasars&whatnot.
dip a finger in the gravity well,
angel,& hold my hand:we
will go out for drinks,after,
if there is an after,&
enchilada plates at that place
on kaiser wilhelm strasse.

.....

writing is a map that brings
another country into being:

.....

the surveillance state.

the eye of the lord looks down on us.
he speaks in the tongues of our mouths.
his tender mercies give us the commandment
to worship.

art installation haiku

a clean room in white,a red brick
on the floor:my heart


we brought a tree into the gallery.leaves
grow when you whisper.
it bears fruit.

words without meaning are sounds

the base of the world:a desacralized
tongue.grammar without meaning.hearts
pledged to violence.liquid youth:
your hand in mine is a performative gesture,
a suspended monorail.

words in the air are dangerous:
sharia law in wuppertal,marxists
in your closet:stripes on plywood 
like fabric,textiles that are too textual.
blood is thicker than your watercolors.
words without meaning are sounds.


.....


haiku

the balloon in my lung,the bullet
pops.pink mist.


.....


my seaweed is radioactive.my oils
are exhibited at moma.my true
love went riding with the foxes.when
ever the sun slants on the sidewalk i
stop.

death of the reasonable

inaction,consideration.our legacy:
enlightened beasts in tatters.questions
of alterity,allowance for the other.
our enemy is boldness.we have reached
a state of purity & will die for it,if
not from without,within.action,belief,
triumph of the willful:the death
impulse is here:
anders breivik,pediga,idf,ukip 
trump the decency of gentle men,
& only women can save us.