THIRTY-EIGHT POEMS UNDER ONE HUNDRED WORDS

100 POEMS

UNDER 100 WORDS

by

Bill Yarrow

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1. Excommunicado 2. Lunch Poem 3. Tariff Happy 4. Bone Density 5. Nan Sequiter 6. Not That Kind of Pain 7. The Tomb of Baudelaire 8. Chapel Access 9. A Journey of Seven Thousand Miles 10. The Lost Boys 11. Prowl Car 12. Self Alaska 13. Sin Curve 14. A River Runs Through Me 15. Meet the Beatles 16. Down Ballot 17. Pain 18. Son of Uncle Sam 19. Cranshaw on a Boat 20. It Can’t Be, It Just Can’t Be 21. The Rest Nowhere 22. Augustinian Prayer Sonnet 23. Abra Cadaver 24. You Can’t Get There from Here 25. Bees in the Eaves 26. Pink 27. Song of Unself 28. The Way It Never Was 29. Kansas City Underwear Festival 30. The Death of Sherwood Anderson 31. Precipice of Questions 32. The Tapeworm of Selfish Mammon Eats All the Goodwill in the World 33. Bow Wow 34. Julia 35. A Piece of Him 36. Sin Embargo 37. Ratatouille 38. Auto Imperative 39. Eli in the Middle of the Night 40. Language Out of Water 41. Before the Door 42. Parabola Tango 43. Visiting Our Slab 44. The Rinsed Messiah 45. Inmate Words 46. Sermon of Lilac 47. In My Hometown 48. Black Squirrel Poem 49. In the Seagull Colony 50. 1962 51. Not Enough Sin to Go Around

52. J’Recluse! 53. A Thousand Books 54. A Brave Night to Cool a Courtesan 55. Every So Often 56. Anthropometamorphism 57. Villon, Stop Following Me Around 58. Laundry List 59. The Vig of Love 60. Metro Retrofitting 61. Spontaneous Tranquility 62. Mother and Son 63. Machete 64. Couplehood: Year Seven 65. Abraham 66. Absence 67. Anniversary Waltz 68. Get a Grip 69. Five’ll Get You Ten 70. The Exit Towards Fire 71. Go, Unlovely Trump 72. Bare Ruined Palace 73. Holy Week 74. Peterson Park 75. Satan and the Moon 76. The Sober Boat 77. Mad Love 78. The Separation 79. Fealty 80. Kicking Out the Enjambs 81. Manet Nightmare 82. 8 New Ways of Looking at Waffles 83. Stendhal Nightclub 84. Emptiness and Absence 85. The Famous Writers I Like 86. Just the Facts 87. Pruning 88. Skirmishes with Wastrel Invaders 89. Collect Enough Fragments, You’ve Got Yourself a Poem 90. Not a Villanelle 91. Turbulence 92. Epithalamion 93. Sacrifices of Famished Promise Made to Apology 94. Artefact 95. Crete 96. Theorizing Salsa 97. Go, Bid the Soldiers Shoot 98. The Concord of this Discord 99. He Holds an Expired Visa and a Monday Grudge 100. Something, He Wrote

EXCOMMUNICADO1

1.

they tied him to a louver and piled up hickory sticks

the flames gushed through the slats

and then burned down the house

not every punishment proceeds

without a hitch

2.

in walks the ghost with wireless hands the hacksaw complexion

the jackoff heart

Gabriel in a zebra suit

3.

like a dog's first whiff of cinnamon integrity is confident

it can annihilate perfidy

4.

here's what can be glimpsed:

a rose degraded to a thorn

a man etherized on a couch

all the hymns of Hymen sung to the music of crucifixes

5.

the moon is our conscience

we shall not wane

1 99 words

This poem appears in Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015).

LUNCH POEM2

Reading the New Confessionals is like eating skirt

steak marinated in tobacco juice.

The tang's wrong. So the clouds vault justly

over the economy of molecules

and a maroon Jules Dassin materializes in the fog.

What price Edward Gorey?

Fax me back to 1929, the year of bluster, mortgage,

and William A. Wellman's Beggars of Life.

If only the lipstick sun would drift back

into this poem, drift back…

but return, alas, is a hopeless trope

and the inarticulate cutters will never allow that.

Neither will the rash vases of the stainless moon

endure the bitter cinching of delay.

2 99 words

A version of this poem appears in The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016)

TARIFF HAPPY3

Be subversive in your chores.

Knock at the door of indecency and demand to be let in. Factor in your calculations the weight of longing among the self-assured.

Do not fob off.

Keep a second set of books for Raphael.

Inculcate imprudence. Wash with emotion, then with good soap.

Expose those for whom freedom is greed.

Scour the future so as to inure it. Keep lists.

Change the air in your protocol every time you crave a tattoo.

Lock your knees at funerals. Hands off the secret levers of the world.

Watch out for the kids of Narcissus.

3 99 words

This poem appears in Wake Me When the Narcoleptics Arrive (Cyberwit.net 2020).

BONE DENSITY4

The Fauves are visiting. Come to redesign

the patio, they have upstaged the heart. They have brought with them their own music

and solemn gondoliers. Madame Fauve,

with a twisted braid, is dancing. So is

the decadence in the wall. I applaud the thoroughness of the measurers, but

cannot sanction their pervasiveness.

The Fauves must leave. Stat. I have an appointment with deadness at 3 PM.

They say they understand, but I sense they don't.

I have offended the sorcery of art. Ah, Art! Ah, Liquidity! On the bulkhead of the horizon,

clouds collect, indifferently, like restaurant fish.

4 98 words

This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).

NAN SEQUITER5

Nan couldn't follow. She was a leader

by default. She'd organize the orphans, the waitresses, the paralegals, the instructional

designers. Anywhere she saw a mob, she'd

leap in and take control. Inherently coherent,

there was no mess she couldn't manage, no chaos she couldn't tame. I met her

in Manhattan and I became her greatest

challenge, for I was recalcitrant to order, reason, logic and sense. She looked at me

and saw someone wrecked by recipe, ruined

by lunacy, consumed by juvenile nostalgia for a manufactured past. Well, that was

twenty years ago. Now I only make sense.

5 98 words

A version of this poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).

NOT THAT KIND OF PAIN6

What kind of pain is it? Stabbing?

Shooting? Throbbing? Tell me. Is it a radiating pain? Does it burn? Point

to it. Is it a pain or more of an ache?

Does it feel muscular? Is it constant

or occasional? How severe is it? Is it infrequent or recurring? When did it

start? What do you think you did?

Lift something? Move funny? Is it relieved by exercise? Better lying down,

sitting, or standing? Does applied heat

make it better? What about ice? You think maybe it could be stress related?

No, different. A different kind of pain.

6 98 words


THE TOMB OF BAUDELAIRE7

Listen, Svengali, all the museums

are on fire and the Abbé Farouche has asked me to tell you this: who

polishes the aberrant embraces it.

So here's the plan: write an essay on masculinity. Make it puerile and

opprobrious, but do not let it recriminate.

Fashion it of the loosest most recent mesh.

How sketchy are cities without futility!

The votive truth may resonate but what about the vain marble of salty Beau d'Lair?

O, Popery! El Hombre has left us deficient as a frozen shadow, as the staunch tutor who,

poisoned, resuscitates but refuses to revive.

7 97 words

This poem appears in Against Prompts (Lit Fest Press 2018).

CHAPEL ACCESS8

Every tunnel's a piercing, every road's a tattoo.

The billboards are wrinkles, road signs are scars. Cranshaw said he saw eternity last night

wearing a sarong and smoking a cigar.

“You're full of it, Cranshaw,” I said

and stared at the fraudulent broken line that stuttered in front of me. Madeleine

in the back seat touched me on the neck.

"Why so ornery?" she asked. "Why? 2008. 2009. 2010. That's why," I snarled.

What was eating me? Continental drift. Urban

sprawl. Cranshaw! His smarmy teeth and mildew jitterbug. His checked suspenders

and dragonfly belt. 2011. Maybe everything.

8 97 words

This poem appears in The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016)

A JOURNEY OF SEVEN THOUSAND MILES9

I had studied the prohibitions carefully.

We had been warned not to eat any raw fruit, but when I saw the bowl of apples

that morning at breakfast, something

ruinous came over me. Greedily, I grabbed

an apple and cut it into fourths. The taste of what is denied us is sweet, and so are

the careless acts that spell our doom. Love

must have seemed so as it steamed out of the primitive soul. In the land of amorous

gods who balance on bubbles of swift bliss

it is the elephant who most knows about restraint.

9 97 words


THE LOST BOYS10

They live in Colorado and Washington state,

Alabama and the Carolinas. They squeak by on sad inheritances and pristine discards.

Every day hurts, just a little, but not enough,

so dreams billow in and smother ideas.

Meanwhile, the body does its daily dance alone. It's a neutral life, frighteningly fun.

One fills one's lungs with schadenfreude.

Two finds the missile hidden in the boot. Tomorrow will be incandescent, but

if it isn't, who will remember to regret?

Day bleeds into day and eventually clots into a life. Remember what Eminem

taught: let your longing be your GPS.

10 97 words


PROWL CAR11

They picked up Delmore for reverberation.

I'm heading over to 23rd and Oregon to post the petty codicil for bail.

Desiderius was busted for sawing off

his ankle bracelet. I thought he knew better. I warned him. He wouldn't listen.

They're rounding up the hyphenates. I texted Vargas-Llosa and Cabrera-Infante.

Did you get a hold of Valle-Inclan?

Kit? Found drunk in the street

again. Talking smack to a Czech

girl who said she knew him. Well...

the moon's out over Miami. Mischief

has marked the bone marauders for doom.

Under every sparse tongue is a skeleton key.

11 97 words


SELF ALASKA12 "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us" (Franz Kafka)

Was there, he wondered, some parasite,

some infiltrated germ, some totalitarian pest, asbestos fiber, cancerous

particle, irradiated isotope, sliver

of glass, peach pit, foam nugget,

stray hair, impinged corpuscle, magnesium wad, metaphysical

quill or arrant stalk moored in him,

or what? Why was it so difficult to move toward anything? Was his will congealed?

His doctor recommends an Arctic cruise. He travels to a frozen stream, a frozen

lake, a frozen sea. He photographs the

awesome ice. A glacier calves inside him.

12 96 words

The poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012).

SIN CURVE13

Sin? Nah. There's just kindness and hurt.

The sun kills the grass. The wind hurts

the leaves. The sea ravages the shore.

But nothing in Nature goes to Hell.

Neither is anything in Nature kind.

Kindness and cruelty are human add ons.

Everything eats everything else but only

human beings make a big deal out of it.

(The volta cometh.) Maybe you need

to be a premie. Maybe you need to

grow up in Westport. Maybe tutoring

is in your future. Maybe debate.

Maybe a wife, nasty, brutish, and

short. You know, the life of Hobbes.

13 96 words

A version of this poem appears in The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016) and Accelerant (Nixes Mate Books 2019)

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH ME14

enfeebled

by a velvet sound Babette is a shadow

on the rail of the bridge

over the blackened

odorless currents of the Colorado

some touristy city where the accounting

professor from Cleveland

is taking her hands out of her pockets

and handing her his binoculars

these may help

but it’s music

that’s making

its fast brash way into her heart

which numbers

over a billion wayfaced dark intruders

and it’s music lighting the temerity

of the colored paving stones

the abandoned butter boats and the gridiron skeletons

of corporate safe houses

flattered with tiny bats

14 96 words


MEET THE BEATLES15

I was twelve years old in 1963.

The Korean War had ended ten years earlier. WWII eight years before that.

Kristallnacht seven years before that.

Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocuted in 1927.

The Titanic sank in 1912. In 1968, I was buying comix at head shops in New Hope.

In 1972, I was swimming at nude beaches in Big Sur.

In 1978, I was parking cars and writing eulogies. In 1981, I was changing diapers in Rego Park.

In 1985, I was grading papers on Darwinism.

It's been fifty-two years since I was twelve years old.

15 96 words

This poem appears in Accelerant (Nixes Mate Books 2019).

DOWN BALLOT16

SHE votes

based on hair type HE lives off the largesse

of women with slim hips

SHE works from nine to three for a cosmetic dentist

HE spends his afternoons

wandering the Zuma hills

SHE developed shin splints

from running after her children HE can't get over his triumphant puberty

in New Rochelle

HER new man will have a Yale lock

on his conscience

SHE will train him to be the cashier

at her church

HIS childhood barber is running for office

in Milwaukee HE would contribute

but the down ballot is never a sure thing

16 96 words


PAIN17

I hold it in my hands as I might a tomato,

roll it across my palms, look for pale imperfections, toss it in the air.

Its mute newness amuses me.

Without warning, it gathers to a greatness

and rescinds the amnesty of breathing. It rockets across the corpse we are not yet,

indicting the criminal skin. I become

a pachinko parlor, the ozone layer, a desert fire. Everything I understand

is in danger. Even the mathematics

of eternity is in jeopardy. What's left of salvation is covered in gelatin.

There's a buttered emptiness awaiting us.

17 95 words


SON OF UNCLE SAM18

He doesn't drink, but he has his

intoxications: strength, sugar, sleep, sex, surprise. He's hooked on the pinball

excitements of adolescence. He's the one with

a moustache loitering on the monkey bars. He's the

one who just replaced the lifters on his Impala. He's the one whose girlfriend needs a wholesale career overhaul. He

can see the future, but it's not a future that will come true. He

works with his hands, but that takes brains he tells his nephews. He's over forty and he still eats red meat. He's got sand in his socks.

18 95 words


CRANSHAW ON A BOAT19

We are floating on the Chain of Lakes

eating Rice Crispies out of a bucket. The sun is a soft lozenge medicating

a bright red sky. Water skiers hold

onto their slackening ropes like love

itself. On Party Island, the icy drunks have seized control. Cranshaw has

his hand inside Margaret. No one

is shocked; he was born brazen. But when he starts in on the Jews,

Arnie gets mad and pushes him over

the side. We let him tread water, then swing around to pick him up. Justice?

Remorse? No, Margaret wants him back.

19 94 words

This poem appears in The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2015).

IT CAN'T BE, IT JUST CAN'T BE20

The body has shifted into reverse.

The heart is inside out. The teeth live in the gut. Both feet are in your

mouth. You cough out of your nose.

You sneeze out of your butt. Your

ankles have grown nipples. Your elbows protrude from your cheeks.

You are growing hair on your spleen.

You have ears between your legs. Nothing is where God or biology

ordained it to be. But still you get

served in restaurants. You're still allowed to drive. People nod to you

kindly when you pass. This could

go on forever.

20 94 words


THE REST NOWHERE21

A screaming comes across the brain

interrupted by a webbed memory: a man in brown with a rolling gait,

stubbornly strong, a dull ghost

(until spoken to), dusty and disgusting,

squinting towards wisdom. He holds his candles upside down and ambulates toward

the great chains of his being. Stethoscope,

please! Silence! No pulse on the body's horizon. I know too much about delusion

ever to be deceived. Love's funny that way.

When all else fails, look to the consolations of misanthropy. Up ahead, there's a signpost;

down below, the rich ricochet of loss.

21 93 words

A version of this poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX 2012)

AUGUSTINIAN PRAYER SONNET22

Studious, yes, but hardly smart

her breasts were larger than her heart He kissed her tits and thought of art—

Memling, Cressida, Jean-Paul Sartre

of marriages which fall apart

when whores are put before Descartes of guilt which stains but does not smart

of sad bullseyes that long for darts

and so he took her bra apart and took her breasts into his heart

into his mouth, into his art

the taste less sweet than it was tart an act more foolish than was smart

which Christ had warned him from the start

22 93 words


ABRA CADAVER23

The body is an endless safari

filled with rhino sightings and encounters with antelope.

Who hasn't had a brush

with a lion, been torn by a tiger, been thwarted

by a warthog, mocked by

a crocodile, disdained by an indifferent giraffe?

It's a jungle in here, so stifling I can hardly breathe, so humid

mushrooms have begun sprouting

from my warmest hallucinations. At the same time, I feel crawling insects

colonizing my immaculate dreams.

Forget the growth! Forget the pests!

Forget the beasts!

You, you—you

are the rain forest

deep inside me.

23 93 words


YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE24

You're in Brooklyn, a place of cruelty

in your youth, a place of probity in your dotage. You sit on a bench

vacated by Jamaican nannies

under which portly pigeons nuzzle

wheat squares discolored with cheese. Around you, kids, insulated from the stink

of commerce and contract by the odor

of rude commotion, are high jumping to untenable commands, running toward

invisible rings of safety. The sound of a broken

bus incites the nervous squirrels. Twin bumblebees alight on a dusty water fountain. The cohesion

of the day falls hard into vast contrivance.

24 93 words


BEES IN THE EAVES25

We write in darkness. We love

in alleys. We breathe into beige paper bags. Anything to mollify

the confusion. Anything to simplify

the math. I am beset, even by rest.

And when I close my eyes, the world is still macaronic. I feel for the wolf

about to be trapped in the landfill.

I feel for the crab about to scamper from the net. I feel for humanity when

the brightness of sick knowledge falls

from exorbitant air. But remedies abound. There's a remedy for everything.

And a remedy for every remedy.

25 92 words


PINK26

Among the cherry trees, they fell in love.

Later that month, he took her out for deep pink soup and pale pink tea. Together

they peeled and fed each other pink fruit,

ordered expensive pink beef, went on

vacations and viewed pink sunsets on paradise beaches. His memories

included pink medicine, pink taffy, pink

panties, pink lips. Hers included pink bubbles, pink slippers, pink horses and

pink sheets. Neither could imagine a heaven

untinged with pink. They were right: the afterworld is splendiferously pink,

the exact color of a child's new wound.

26 92 words


SONG OF UNSELF27 after Walt Whitman

I cerebrate myself and singe myself

and what you illume, I refuse for every good Adam betrothed to you will to me betray

I chafe and incite my soul

I bake and chafe in my disease my speech, every item of tongue foams in this soil-

free dust

earth's parents … whose parents …

arrrrggghhh … I now sixty-seven

sixty-eight, sixty-nine years…

chagrin besmears me, increases

till death, old shoals in obeisance

nothing suffices as harbor

but a permit to claw at every yawing chasm

exuberance is beauty … lesion of enthusiasm

27 92 words


THE WAY IT NEVER WAS28

when he talked to her

she cried

and when he walked with her

she cried

and when he slept with her

she cried

and that in short

was the story of their love

*

so one night she walked down to the fire stream

to drown herself

and at the same time he climbed the water tower

intent upon jumping from it

*

from the top he saw her enter the water

like a straight knife enters a sheathe

just before she sank

she glimpsed his falling silhouette

against the bleeding moon

28 92 words


KANSAS CITY UNDERWEAR FESTIVAL29

Wordsworth = sword throw. Shakespeare = hearse speak.

Every so often, I am a sackful of happiness.

But when I am happy, I never write.

No demon, no poem.

Ultramarine today, scarlet tomorrow.

The colors have nonce money left.

Better my heart, unperson’d God!

In the palace of unhappiness, small lives are mortgaged to the limits of geography.

In the goblin corridors of capitalism, defenestrated clients howl for ardor and Eve.

They honeymooned in Theresienstadt

but held the funeral in Thélème.

Secret ageing man: he lived not wisely, nor too well.

29 91 words


THE DEATH OF SHERWOOD ANDERSON30

He was on a cruise ship eating hors d'oeuvres

when he swallowed the green toothpick which punctured his intestine causing the

peritonitis which corrupted his blood and

catapulted him into an alien grave. Or was it

bald sadness? Unhappiness upended by misery? Desolation made grey by despair?

Whatever the cause, he died, like the Bible in

Mauritania, like a mouse in a vial of ammonia, like a retired coal miner on vacation in the Alps,

like novelty in a nursing home, like streptococcus

in outer space, like panache in sundered life.

30 91 words


PRECIPICE OF QUESTIONS31

He stood with the bride of quietness

on the precipice of questions and whistled the music of the spheres.

His bride wore cropped pants

and a paisley top. She was the summer of 1979 and the winter of his discontent.

He talked to her of navigation, excavation, irrigation, nolo contendere. She heard him

with impunity and a sawtooth grin.

Above their heads, birds watched planes

stumble through maneuvers. A war was on.

He enlisted her fierce indifference.

What can be manufactured in the time

jettisoned by the flashing of the past?

31 91 words


THE TAPEWORM OF SELFISH MAMMON EATS ALL THE GOOD WILL IN THE WORLD32

She caretakes, he takes care She is inclusive, he feels occluded

She takes on all comers, he takes on all commerce

She's out on a limb, he's still on the lam

She has a Bachelor's in Niceness, he got his Master's in Tasks She hurt her thumb in yoga, he bumped his head in law school

She begs to differ, he begs to defer

She collects curios, he licks Oreos She works all the angles, he walks the perimeter

She flies east to Cape Hatteras, he drives north to Cape Cod

32 91 words


BOW WOW33 "In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand at the mongrel dogs who teach" (Bob Dylan, "My Back Pages")

As the semester shrinks down

to December or May so do my students who begin as proud adults

then little by little lose in stature

and maturity becoming arrogant

adolescents, petulant teens, bullying middle schoolers, frightened first

graders, willful small children, tenuous

toddlers, and finally infants, whose diapers I change, whose noses I wipe, whose needs

I feed, but whom I do not put down for a

nap. No! Sleep is no good for you. Wake up, little Suzies! Little Todds! Little Vanessas! Get up. Grow up Rise up. Take charge.

33 91 words


JULIA34

One day she took a lover, a Québécois

mortician, who mollified her spirit as he mortified her flesh. She found her escape

in a letter from her sclerotic brother whose

neurosis demanded companionship. She'd

fly to Escondido to be his renewal. On her way to the airport, her cab was rear ended

by a bus. She suffered three broken bones.

Six months later, she was teaching theology

to refugees from EST. Her brother was in rehab,

his prognosis good. She felt healthy and happy. No clouds anywhere. Pseudocyesis does that.

34 90 words


A PIECE OF HIM35 for Gil

People who lose a leg to battle

or disease often describe the feeling of having a phantom appendage,

experiencing the sensation

of still feeling the absent limb.

When I lost you, I lost a piece

of myself. I haven't felt whole

since that day. It's not that I can't go on; I can. It's not that I can't

think straight; I can. It's not that

I can't focus; I can. It's that the future is now incomplete. It's

that with your radical vanishing,

the dignity of infinity is diminished.

35 90 words


SIN EMBARGO36

I like badness. Don't all the really good

films have the word "bad" in their titles?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Bad Day at Black Rock. Bad Lieutenant. Baadasssss! The Bad and the Beautiful. The Bad Seed.

Evil's another story, a story

whose orphan narrator is misery, married to pain, son of suffering,

sibling of spleen. I have seen evil.

If you have too, you know there's only

one sure proof way to get rid of evil.

Retrieve the ragged dagger. The night

is just weak enough for insurrection.

36 90 words


RATATOUILLE37 "The good years shall devour them" (King Lear V, iii, 24)

The body receives its embrace but

only by the anti-body. Effete angels, stoic guardians of suffering, circled by the birds

of perpetration, look on in translucent hopelessness.

Spurred on by anesthetists, I fall on the mercy of the corpse.

The world enforces the larceny of living. A widow vacations

in the Alps, falls in love with her concierge. Across a desert, a Bengali widower walks a crooked

mile. Bring spices, an incensed container,

and, for the sacrifice, a decorated carving knife.

37 90 words


AUTO IMPERATIVE38

I drove to you in April

and you loved me all through Illinois

I drove to you in April and even when the fender

was destroyed you loved me all through Illinois

I drove to you in April and even when we lost

the radio you loved me all through Illinois

without the radio we drove in each other's voice

and you loved me all through Illinois

without a radio without a fender

in the car I drove to you in April

with you beside me all through Illinois

38 90 words


ELI IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT39

I stood beneath the mountain

in a flank of malefactors. The sun stood in the sky

like Eli in the middle of the night.

More than once. More than twice. Three times God called to me from the thunderstorm

of good and evil, but my ears were filled with songs

of wounded birds and the howls of dying dogs.

I stood in the city, in the fields,

in the stillness of a regnant rain. Silent among the slaughtered beasts,

I stood like Eli in the middle of the night.

39 89 words

A version of this poem appears in The Vig of Love (Glass Lyre Press 2016) and Accelerant (Nixes Mate Books 2019).

LANGUAGE OUT OF WATER40

All of speech is just like life—maddening

in its small colors and declivities of spirit and beauty. What we need is less hysteria,

less flap. Words are words. They come out

unannounced. A slim process, hardly

mysterious. Even our teeth understand how we speak—but not when we speak

in torsion, tongues, or brute translation.

The problem's feeling—its misery and muteness. Not to mention knowledge,

hot, wild, which saying's helpless to abet.

Talking's a kind of commonsense angling: language is a fish, truth—a broken net.

40 88 words


BEFORE THE DOOR41

You just can't believe your key

won't open the front door anymore. Determined to prove reality wrong,

you board a flight to Budapest

and walk wet streets in search of

a keyhole you're convinced exists. And when you find it on the side door

of the Nicolae Bakery, your wry heart,

rapt with vindication, laughs heartily. The key works! It really works!

But you don't enter. You don't dare.

Time passes. The seasons alter. The world gives birth to triplets.

People drop hot pennies into your hat.

41 87 words


PARABOLA TANGO42

Once in a fit of pique

she poured vinegar on the anniversary roses

which withered in his seeing. In

retribution, he became incontinent.

That made her, she who misunderstood love, love him more, and him,

he who misunderstood marriage,

respect her less. Is there a recipe for lasting happiness? Look, perhaps, to

applesauce. The apples of attraction.

The sugar of indulgence. The water of conduction. Everything improves over

time. Everything. Everything in the world.

Except the orphaned garden. Except the consolidated body.

Except last week's fruit.

42 87 words


VISITING OUR SLAB43

Watch this space: sanded, painted, and polished

like a braggart, calibrated like an artisan pipe

bomb. The future in camera. What goes away can't stay away. Neither can one Google redemption

but go ahead and try. Pretend the marshlands

aren't haunted. Pretend the buzzer won't beat the half-court shot. Pretend happiness.

But as you gather the gorse of your longing,

as you reticulate your infantry, as on the way out you huddle your missiles yearning to bereave,

leave us the legal recipe for the accelerant of hope.

43 87 words

This poem appears in Accelerant (Nixes Mate Press 2019).

THE RINSED MESSIAH44

They are come—The Men Who Rue Infinity.

"What is the function of the empty mountain?"

ask The United Dreck of Amalek.

Flâneur! Flâneur! Flâneurs of rinsed spirit

Paparazzi apparatchiks from the Kingdom of Dubeity

What percentage of eternity is this our earthly life?

The hard clouds breed insolence into the fruition

of nutrition.

Dear Psychomachia, who is Deep Threat?

infected investing

the return of the oppressed

analysis by paralysis much doodoo about

everything

*

*

*

Induce me Induce me There's a uterus in your future

44 87 words


INMATE WORDS45

in White Heat

there’s a character

who reads lips

using a mirror to see

the mouths of prisoners in other cells

that’s how I feel when I talk

with you

except I don’t

need a mirror

to see your lips

except that I don’t

know the first thing

about lip reading

except that I’m free

not a prisoner in a cell

but that’s how I feel when I try to capture

the inmate words

that attempt

their daytime

escape

from the lithe

penitentiary

of your mouth

45 86 words


SERMON OF LILAC46

I.

Our text today is "The night was a cool bowl of lilac darkness"

from Look Homeward Angel by the American writer Thomas Wolfe

II.

The night was a lilac bowl of darkness The dark was a sky of lilac coolness

The bowl was a darkened sky of lilacs

Lilacs bowed in the sky's cool darkness

III.

The sky was a liquid bowl of darkness

The dark was a sky of liquid lilac

The bowl was a lilac source of coolness

Lilacs genuflect in the darkness

46 83 words


IN MY HOMETOWN47

in my hometown pinhead Joe

plays mumbly-peg alone with a sharpened spoon

in my hometown manila

is the flavor and cul de sac is the address

in my hometown the Catholic girls know all the words

to “Louie, Louie”

in my hometown the post office

serves Doritos

and lime beer

in my hometown yellow

Ford Falcons

people Old York Road

in my hometown all the crosses

on the mountain are upside down

in my hometown the Thalidomide baby just turned

sweet sixteen

47 82 words

This poem appears in Blasphemer (Lit Fest Press 2015) and Accelerant (Nixes Mate Press 2019)

BLACK SQUIRREL POEM48

Without contrition, egregious black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and fracture the crystalline trees.

Without conscience, disorderly black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and scratch the ingenuous sky.

Without remorse, pedantic black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and spill the upper boulders in the sun.

Without shame, incendiary black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and append the tenebrous dusk.

Without thinking, outré black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and petrify the involute world.

Without regret, audacious black squirrels

inhabit upper Michigan and unionize the local rodents.

48 81 words


IN THE SEAGULL COLONY49

They put my mother in a suicide bed

and rolled her in and out.

We’d spend a few minutes

together in the TV room.

I’d ask her about her childhood.

What does it matter? Stop hocking me. A madwoman in the sentient ward

befriended me.

Mister, could you change the channel? Change the channel? Please?

I tried to change the channel:

the channel wouldn’t change.

I felt like a character in a Kafka story written by the ghost of Anton Chekhov.

49 81 words


196250

if you drop a quarter

into a sewer, there's no way

of getting it back

save finding a long stick and putting

chewed gum on one end

and poking for it

that is, if that's

your only quarter and you really need it

(yeah, you really need it)

for you can't wait to see

the air-conditioned matinee

of Damon and Pythias

with your brother

but on the way there

your mother dies in labor and you

remain an only child

50 80 words


NOT ENOUGH SIN TO GO AROUND51 for Ray

Inevitability: it's what's for dinner.

Step lively through the arrogance of landscape, step decisively across

the minefield of joy. Tread independently

the airport road. Treat your neurons

with respect. Do I have a second?

It takes only one grain of sand

to sabotage the aperture, to desolate a lens. Place your glasses in a vial

of acid. The frames dissolve apace.

When information fails, there

is always information theory.

When the future falters, there

is always the redacted past.

51 79 words


J'RECLUSE!52

The diagnosis? A lesion. Of

enthusiasm, Fitzgerald said.

The sallow wing of the shadow of madness, according to Baudelaire.

For Nijinsky: Love, aka God.

For Groddeck, It. That's all. It.

What do you call it, you, who look

at me with impossible eyes, you, who

call to me ineffably from the fog, you, irredeemably Braille, who run toward

the many savagely ravaged by rage,

who, seeing hope's aloneness, caress, who, despite death's best intention,

—for there's NO alternative—persist?

52 79 words


A THOUSAND BOOKS53

I gave away 1000 books. Books I hunted.

Books I savored. Books I cared for. Books I marked. Books I taught.

Books I browsed. Books I amassed.

Books others gave me. Books others

sold or abandoned. Books I kept.

I stuffed them in collection bins,

filled discard shelves, solicited readers, advertised them, offered them,

boxed them, marked them,

hawked them, mailed them, promised them, carried them,

scattered them, delivered them.

Once I thought I was made of books.

53 78 words


A BRAVE NIGHT TO COOL A COURTESAN54 after King Lear III, ii, 81-94

When iodine coffee is promoted by aging surgeons

when arsonists masquerade as first responders

when phantasmagoric nuns mock the lisps of addicts when Internet juveniles arouse the spleen of gamblers

when the library asylum is redistricted by radio politics

when adjunct bank examiners call on extortionists for help when the rooftop pool is overrun by media beetles

when evangelical bobcats weaponize the electorate

when legal Satans unhook Christ’s suspenders then shall the whorish country bow down to trumpery

54 78 words


EVERY SO OFTEN55

Every so often I do something

Every so often I remember something Every so often I write something

Every so often I think something

Every so often I feel something Every so often I write something

Every so often I say something Every so often I touch something

Every so often I write something

Every so often I forget to do something

Every so often I neglect to say something

Every so often I refuse to write something

55 78 words


ANTHROPOMETAMORPHISM56

I have known a head become

a callus, matriculate, stop shaving, move to Vegas

I have known a mouth become

a gland, install a flange, sail to the Western Isles

I have known a bicep become a tear duct, argue its authority,

sabotage the badinage

I have known a skin tag become

a pustule, take up the flugelhorn,

extrapolate the Florentines

I have known a heart become

a kidney, vibrate, grow

wings, fly off into the piss

56 77 words


VILLON, STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND57

Villon, you've got to stop following me around!

It's enough already. I'm not going to tell you where I've hidden the loot. Touchez pas au grisbi.

Villon, get the hell outta here!

My work is dangerous and you're an orphan. Go back to the reformatory and paint with oil.

Villon, I'm not going to tell you again. Shoo. Vamoose. Scram. Take a hike!

If I see you here again, I'll beat you like a dead horse.

57 76 words


LAUNDRY LIST58

• Water all the flowers in the graveyard

• Avoid the blisters in the casserole

• Of the serious and the serene, marry Mademoiselle Bagatelle

• Make sure to get enough sueño de la razón

• Keep a safe place at a safe distance

• Squeegee the walls of the shower of your mind

• Don't confuse the virtues of bananas with the virtues of banana bread

• Give God two weeks' notice

• Straighten up geographically

• Retool. Refrain. Repudiate. Retreat

• Do the left thing

58 76 words


THE VIG OF LOVE59

Love's expensive. Who can afford it?

So you borrow from the bad guys, lay your body down for collateral,

but the vig's ridiculous. No choice

but to pay and pay. Every day it's

just a matter of interest. You'll never even scratch the principal.

But love's a gamble, right? Sometimes it

comes up red. Other times, it comes up black. Go ahead. Put down all you're worth.

Hope for the really really big score.

59 74 words


METRO RETROFITTING60

Fax me back to the locked storeroom

where I'm kissing the hickeys on your back while across the hall albino Flora sleeps in a narcotic haze

Fax me back to South Street listening to the dumpster

trumpeter, standing like licorice in the rain, as fetid officers assemble for the raid

Fax me back to running in the florid dark stumbling like redundancy over stumps

in a stampede of buoyancy toward The Hotel Elsinore

60 73 words


SPONTANEOUS TRANQUILITY61

A shallowness: the surface stamp of who we are.

Immured to moonlight, the sea craves no human bones. What had he held? A palpable ghost impervious to time.

The eternal becomes diurnal. The circadian becomes quotidian.

No roughness will she inhere, no fission inhabit; she is deaf to dumb implacability. O, who has made

her sleep so deep? She is inevitably dispersed, existing

only as song, rising sharply out of magma and wave.

61 73 words


MOTHER AND SON62

I flew in and spent

two weeks with the sentient patients

while she slept nearby

on a mobile bed.

Awake, she resisted

all questions, refused

to talk, shunned her past, shuttered

her early life.

I needed to hear

answers, information,

but my request was tardy by more

than a decade.

A fat madwoman in the next ward

befriended me,

so I engaged her in animated blather.

It was not the same.

62 71 words


MACHETE63

aspirin and Band-Aids in baggies

astronauts with flags on their swimsuits addicts with raging colitis

none of the above

blandishment heaped upon Girl Scouts board games invented by florists

beachcombers drunk at the drive-in

none of the above

magnets left in a chapel

manatees shunted in tunnels mystics sedated with sulfur

none of the above

wellness empowered by ampoules

weather defended by dancers

whimsy unharnessed to outlook

none of the above

63 71 words


COUPLEHOOD: YEAR SEVEN64

She feels like an overheated car making a left turn into a fire pit.

He feels like a Mexican intestine.

She feels like a meatloaf donut.

He feels like a metadata omelet.

She feels like an aneurysm in someone else's cancer.

He feels like the impossibility of stumbling upon two emeralds seven miles

apart.

She feels like the torn tendon of mistaken ambition.

He feels like a feline supine Christ.

64 70 words


ABRAHAM65

I came late to sunrise. The hills were lit

with goats. Everything shimmered in small steps. I closed my eyes.

The Kinneret sits back in its water

waiting to be made to shine. My blood is like the sea.

Jerusalem against the sun. People draw lots for the shadows

and put down spears.

I walk toward walls.

The late sun enters my skin

like the blade of Isaac's knife.

65 69 words


ABSENCE66

I am desperate in these seconds without you

I am frightened of miles and time I withdraw into the dark imagination

where things are defrauded of their meanings

by a world of total frivolity

You anchor the real You make love to the true

I am bound to you in consecration

You alone have given me weight Without you I would rise and disappear

into the vast insensate sky

66 69 words.


ANNIVERSARY WALTZ67

She prayed that he would live forever

He worshipped her exuberant lips

She loved the size of his mustache

He rode the highway of her thighs

She climbed the hill of his condition

He biked the path of her delight

She broke his dreams against her fears

He cut his eyeteeth on her tongue

She planted the vine of his desire

He watered the garden of her heart

67 68 words


GET A GRIP68

There's a hole in my brain

out of which pour all my good impulses and so I sit

at the Table of Behavior

next to the Witch of Logic

who kicks me whenever

Lady Compassion bats her eyes at me, so heed this:

whosoever talks with me

talks not with me but with

that part of me that I resent with all that's left of my heart.

68 67 words


FIVE'LL GET YOU TEN69

And ten'll get you zero. Today's

the big race, but every day's the big race. The track's muddy

but be thankful you're in the running

at all. BANG!!! And they're———off! You're in the lead. No, you're falling behind. No, you're pulling ahead.

Hang on! You're hard against the rail.

Steady, steady on your feet. If you slip and twist an ankle, we'll have to shoot you.

69 67 words


THE EXIT TOWARDS FIRE70

the world is black: I ignite

my eyes and arouse the false darkness to jealousy

alone at the flash point

our longings expunge the artificial light

ostracized time grows small and cold as the ambition

of a flame

dark smoke billows from

the ovens of our hearts: what

counsel can be found in heat?

lovers are arsonists looking

for matches: beware asbestos:

it's indifferent to combustion

70 66 words


GO, UNLOVELY TRUMP71 after Edmund Waller

Go, unlovely Trump—

tell the horse-faced Putin you will play his rump

and bow to his delirium

with expectations of asylum.

Go, unlovely Trump—

dupe of exploitation,

cesspool, human dump— bid farewell to the irked nation

for your treasons are unwelcome.

Small is the worth

of bluster from facts retired:

I bid you go forth and suffer, undesired,

and not blush ever, you, eternally unadmired.

71 65 words


BARE RUINED PALACE72

These halls, these walls

Naked sacredness is too much to bear

Not bronze nor silk nor bone nor pearl

The cool embrace of the saffron air

The marble imagination transports the driest soul

Every encounter is a dance, every secret has its key

Black kites screech in the varnished sky

Rhino hornbills palaver in the trees

The future is bejeweled

The past is unembossed

72 64 words

This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVox 2012).

HOLY WEEK73

you in Gurnee

watching the attacks on television

I in Seville

the plaza filled with scourges in the hands of hooded men

you in the sun room contemplating the clematis

as it climbs the garage

I opposite the bright cathedral

contemplating God

in all His disguises

one day I will take you to Grenada

and you will see

how beautiful the Alhambra is

73 63 words


PETERSON PARK74

The bungalow was unlocked. The screen

door was unhooked. The trout on the counter was deboned. The deciduous

trees were in a state of virtuous

uncertainty. Fallow thoughts bubbled

into the blistered brick. A stew of insuperables cooked on the portico by

the balustrade. Tenement emotions befogged

the windows as they encircled the balding home. The lawn wept in its insolvency.

74 61 words


SATAN AND THE MOON75

1.

Satan and the moon are made of cheese.

That's what my wife taught my kids.

They all dropped out of school.

2.

Don't believe what you are told. Invest

in what you can't see. If you watch TV,

watch it inordinately, but turn it off in December.

3.

Patrician vicissitudes run ransack

with benign alignments of the brain.

Never never never feed the publicans.

75 61 words


THE SOBER BOAT76

I am the Advil of my beloved

and she is my Aleve and when we are tender

that's just codeine

a bouquet of bombs rains down upon our cathedrals

but, look, they are pristine

as on the day our egos had them built

on a hopeless boat

in a sea of sameness the belief that change will come

sustains us

76 59 words


MAD LOVE77 "There's blood on your cheek, Galatea” (Dr. Gogol in Mad Love)

The time they drove through Delaware

listening to Poogy, planning the future

and she sat up like a Chagall bride, told

him she was afraid. “Of what?” he asked.

“Of an icy life,” she said. No fear of that,

he assured her, and she believed him, madly.

77 58 words


THE SEPARATION78

Wrote Yeats: "The intellect of man is forced

to choose perfection of the art or of the life."

Who was Yeats to posit that separation?

I pondered Yeats.

I pondered my heart.

I pondered my past. I pondered my children.

I pondered my marriage.

I pondered my future.

I concluded:

Life is rich pudding.

(Life is rough soup.)

78 58 words

This poem appears in Against Prompts (Lit Fest Press 2018)

FEALTY79

tomorrow’s work I should go home

I wander toward the midnight dock a neon sine curve stabs my eyes

I clutch my hollows like a brick

The future holds my brother's pain my darkest fears by hopes inflate

a black gull dives a painter's gloves the cobblestones deny the clouds

my wants and needs are not aligned

79 57 words


KICKING OUT THE ENJAMBS80

Another day, another dolor. I

can be iambic when I want to be! For heaven's sake, the forgotten man has

been forsaken! The forsaken man for

gotten! For heaven’s forsaken! Looky,

everything’s très mystique. Usury for you? Misery for me. Agita for

breakfast? Telos for dinner. What price, tag?

Wake me when the narcoleptics arrive.

80 55 words


MANET NIGHTMARE81 to Osric

The tall, thin ectomorph sat

on the verdant, green grass

as the unclothed naked woman

on the Sunday-picnic blanket

poured white cow’s milk

into a vodka shot glass.

Overhead a two-winged bird,

flying fast, moved quickly across

a stuffed, cotton-puffed,

robin’s-egg, light-blue sky

as two swimming swans swam by

pale white in the whispering wave.

81 55 words


8 NEW WAYS OF LOOKING AT WAFFLES82

1. the mind (in its righteousness)

waffles

2. the conscience (in its scrupulousness)

waffles

3. the heart (in its cupidity)

waffles

4. the soul (in its annihilation)

waffles

5. the tongue (in its appeasement)

waffles

6. the skin (in its lethargy)

waffles

7. the body (in its luxury) waffles

8. life (in its delirium) waffles

82 55 words


STENDHAL NIGHTCLUB83

soon enough

the orphans will unsheathe

their pistols and the hash fields

will be emptied of sparrows

soon enough

the cobras will unhinge

their jawbones and the pampas

will be lonely for muskrats

soon enough

the microbes will unlock

their cell walls and the bloodstream

will be noisy with forfeit

not soon enough

83 53 words


EMPTINESS AND ABSENCE84

The difference between emptiness

and absence is the difference

between happiness and vice.

Like a group text, one informs

the other. Like an ovarian cyst,

inside one is the other. But not

as a debt but as an invader,

a malevolent congregant,

snacking with false benevolence

on the confident host from within.

84 52 words


THE FAMOUS WRITERS I LIKE85

The famous writers I like

as human beings were mostly monsters

More than a few

were totally reprehensible

By and large, the famous writers I like were not people

I would have ever liked to meet

Where can you find a real asshole?

Check out some of the famous

writers I like

85 52 words


JUST THE FACTS86

skin cancer

walks along Zuma Beach at noon

lung cancer

goes down to the City of Hope lobby to smoke

bile duct cancer bellies up

to Gill's buffet

bone cancer

rides through Runyon Canyon

on a gravity bike

at the hint of a cure

a thin crowd collects

on Figueroa Street

86 51 words


PRUNING87

in the orchard

below the mountain rain was falling

geese flew west from the lake

like prayers ascending to clouds

dead branches lay in aisles of apple trees dead twigs

feathers from dead birds

the world was silent as a psalm

though there were rifles

to protect us from the calm

87 51 words


SKIRMISHES WITH WASTREL INVADERS88

There’s a shifting emptiness in necessity

next to the mystery farm in Greensboro.

There’s a missing indifference in resistance

alongside the pathology garden in Missoula.

There’s a nagging malaise in ambition

hard by the transport park in Wichita.

There’s a hopeless happiness in renewal

close to the enterprise boulevard in Flourtown.

88 50 words


COLLECT ENOUGH FRAGMENTS, YOU'VE GOT YOURSELF A POEM89

1.

The sun's corona. Empty boxes near the firehouse.

Red birth. A bird's lost wing.

2.

The bitterness of littleness. Apples in a pile.

Early love. A spider, swinging.

3.

A father's harshness.

Twelve bills unpaid.

Leaves in a crevice.

A dream unwrapped.

4.

The future:

its dizziness.

Christmas cookies.

A dollhouse all alone.

89 50 words


NOT A VILLANELLE90

screams in the blonde

polyp air then peroxide nausea pushing up

ringed fingers tarpaulin

tested flesh moldy rose

perfume privileged tits porcelain privacy surprise

porcelain privacy surprise perfume privileged tits

tested flesh moldy rose

ringed fingers tarpaulin nausea pushing up

polyp air then peroxide

screams in the blonde

90 48 words


TURBULENCE91

Give all to turbulence. Give all

to risk. Let the rich membrane rip. Turn the volume of raw

squawking up. Invite riot.

Seat tumult at your table.

Punish politeness. Decorum is a villain, moderation an assassin.

The only chance for happiness

is to excommunicate all calm.

91 46 words


EPITHALAMION92

they talk but they don’t really talk

she says

they fuck but they don’t really fuck

he says

you've been together forever the boomer says

marriage? marriage is passé

the millennial says

that that is is wrote Shakespeare

whatever is is right opined Pope

92 44 words


SACRIFICES OF FAMISHED PROMISE MADE TO APOLOGY93

when she says she's lonely

he hands her last week's TV Guide

when accidentally he steps on her hair

she accidentally misplaces his keys

once upon a time, twice upon a time

two lovers lay upon a candied beach

93 39 words


ARTEFACT94

The only thing I have left

of my maternal grandfather is a small hand-held mirror

made of ivory.

It sits in the upstairs bedroom dresser drawer

like an only child

I have yet

to see myself in it.

94 38 words


CRETE95

Nighttime: we trade untruths

for bones. You lead me through a garden of plaintive

ostentation. I look for the stark

cardinals, but you show me otters,

skunks, and possum. In the vinegar of darkness, we are made vivid.

95 38 words


THEORIZING SALSA96

Janet and I

had the tilapia

fish tacos and

talked about God

God ordered the veal

cutlet and was rebuked

by the vegetarian Politburo

The beer had a divine odor which

attracted the wasps of mortuary remorse

96 37 words


GO, BID THE SOLDIERS SHOOT97

In life, we slurp the casserole.

In art, we taste the dessert.

In life, we spend unceasingly

In art, we keep the account.

In art, the gun is fired.

In life, it hangs on the wall.

97 36 words


THE CONCORD OF THIS DISCORD98

-Love is a bottle

unopened -No, love is a skein

unwound

-Love is a portrait unpainted

-No, love is a road

newly paved

-Love is a rushing

of blood -No, love is talking

in tongues

98 35 words


HE HOLDS AN EXPIRED VISA AND A MONDAY GRUDGE99

What recalcitrance of personality

occludes the possibility of love? I see so many knitted in demons.

Somehow the world survives, just barely.

The brides are smiling, but for how long?

99 30 words


SOMETHING, HE WROTE100

Mayakovsky wrote

In the cathedral

of my heart

the choir

is on fire

I just love those lines.

I just never realized he was talking about

ARSON

100 27 words


THIRTY-EIGHT POEMS UNDER ONE HUNDRED WORDS

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