Poems

I wrote poems about paintings, unicorns, dreams, poetry, poverty, maybe-soon-to-be defunct companies, ice cream and math.




Views of Venice

In paintings of places
we claim we don’t see
cloud of enameled reality
adventuresomevoyeutourism
mildewed past produce sadly.

All Keeping Up Appearances
all regress to the mean
what’s real / localized blind me 
whatever,
claim / gondoliers in the vedute.

In paintings of places
hopeclaim to see / a reality
insurance claim / a structure for me
I need a skeleton / hang my things.
I need a ship / bring pretty things.
I need a port / loves and cares about everything-me.

(Little dabs to intuit in the veduta:
a figure so ideal./?
a composition so composed./?
proportionate proportions./?
the concept so considered./?
and the perspective,
at what distance propre view?)

We’re all Keeping Up Appearances,
(and we all regress to the mean)
what’s real / we don’t accept to see
whatever,
claim / gondoliers in the vedute.

Dead as a doge / we-are-of-course-alwaysdodging death
you sink weight thru the ground
Dead doge / I am am I beating a dead dog
ah, dreg the canal, paint peel the palazzo,
bomb the biennale, it’s all that we’re good for.

Throw the ring in the water
hope for the best
it’ll never happen
and we’ll never guess.

In paintings of places
I see
something not in the scene.
And I see it in your eyes;
you/not you,
now, to me/not me.

Mildewed water lines?,
no, it's Canaletto
San Giorgio Maggiore:
from the Bacino di S. Marco 
1726-2010. 

Exchange Program

I once slept
with a unicorn.

This was when I did
high school exchange
in the Federated Territories
of Unicornia.

Its horn
was thick.

We lived together.

It came in
my room at night.
I held its horn.
I jostled its timbers.
I made it rainbow.

It left before morning.

So its parents didn’t know.

Then it spread Rumours about me.

So no other unicorns talked to me.

Its horn
was thick.

But,
anyway,
I heard recently
from a mutual acquaintance
that it just graduated Unicornia State
with a major in International Studies
and a minor in Human Management.  

Ice Cream Etiquette

1. One should always
    read Sartre
    while on one’s
    30 min break
    from one’s retail job,
    sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts,
    drinking water out of a free cup,
    with the Gin Blossoms overhead.

2. However, one should never
    be seen doing so.
    It appears ripe w/
    disjunctive meaning,
    an impropriety few
    wear well.

3. If approached by
    a service industry peer
    and questioned as to,
    ‘What book are you reading?’
    The mannered individual will reply,
    ‘Oh, this book or whatever.’

4. It is proper to not
    purchase D’ D’s wares,
    with a possible exception
    for a small black coffee.
    Sartre is most palatable
    when one deprives one’s self
    of material pleasures
    (e.g. croissants, munchkins).

5. If the aforementioned is
    not, for any reason, possible,
    stay in bed until 2:43 p.m.,
    look at your carpet, and eat
    ice cream.
   
    It’s preferable to do so
    with a sugar cone.

Sleeps 

Sleep is a

'your body is a wonderland'

that I can access by myself.

Waking up;
momentary ascent/descent.
Closest to fathoming
fleeting perfection - but
proximity allowed only
by impossibility.

The Snooze, 

(oh, frenemy,)

a capricious bureaucrat
unsure of where I belong.

And, for a moment,

I can look at everything I wish - but
just glimmers, like localized blindness
to all things, pretty and happy.

Then his humours ill and I am in my bed again.

Just looking at the shitty carpet.

Wondering why I am still alive.

AA 2003(?)-2010(?) R.I.P.

We are the only people
in the world,
ever,
who will know what it was
to wake up,
after champipple & weird sex,
and see a boy in pink,
vertically-integrated briefs
outlined in avocados and bonsai.*

*It was nice, actually.

Instructions For Angles

Be angular

Be drawn in math books

Make people think about you

Add up to something

Brose & Broetry

I know the names, honestly, of 15-20 poets.

I want to keep it like that, like a puzzle.

I'll never have to solve it.

As With Earlier Periods

It's bigger than hip-hop,
yet smaller than can't stop/won't stop.
It's about the size
of the whites of their eyes.
It's the size of a lot of people who died,
a lot of people alive,
of us in between
who aren't seen,
they can't make us out for the trees.
We drive home each eve and commute right back,
forcibly set on that track, so all we can do is think and think and think back. 

         There are people who can think and speak but they can't hear. 

And we're still here.
And we’re still here.
And we’re still here.
And we’re still here.*

*'The lower classes, as with earlier periods, were segregated from the aristocratic and mercantile 'society', and led lives far removed from the relative luxury enjoyed by the other classes.'