Helmet

You and your helmet are lost at sea again. No one's looking for you because they know you're soft and chewy, and that one day your hair will be more famous than you are. Pretending to be a soldier helps you pass the day on the raft, except imaginary bullets keep hitting your realistic spine. They can be picked out and thrown at the sharks, who mime rending you into torn pieces of paper, then eating your spitballs. One day when a battleship arrives, you tell the concerned sailors to keep travelling to their AA meetings with those sea mines. You won't give up your dream of being a starfish, too crusty for any one's mouth, lit up in Hollywood signs with your hairstyle, the second banana, mentioned below it.

Classroom

You are in a class by yourself, the only student being taught by the universe. You must write "I Think, Therefore I Am" two million times on the blackboard. A black hole steals your lunch, and the branches of philosophy argue so hard over your toy brain kit that you just hand it over to them. In P.E., you can't climb to the top of the food chain, so the predator above you chases you around the gym. The worm inside the instructor's apple grows a halo and invites you to the afterlife. The hours of an atomic clock show meltdown at the end of school. When everything fails to blow up, you push through the crowded bus stop to your new mother, who puts you in a stroller and coos at you, till you giggle and forget everything you learned.

A Thankless Job

The announcement emphasized the job would be thankless, that whoever took it on would suffer boils and pimples sweating out the details, but that no one would even send a "Get Well" card or even a note to his or her grieving spouse after the toxic elbow grease explosion. Nonetheless, a line rode around the block in the shape of people. The applicants set up tents with poles of interest, ranging from high ones that contained castles to low ones that protected only slugs from the rain. During their interviews, guys puffed up their chests, which suddenly glowed red with heat, and women shook their hair, which spun the air into gold. After a few minutes of their performances, the interviewees would be shuffled out of the room, placed in rockets, and launched into a nearby galaxy. A telescope showed their crashes into empty moons. The interviewers always sighed, then. They wished the perfect person would walk in the room, except their magic lamp wasn't working; the last genie who'd inhabited it had gone on strike. They had to run him over with a tank.

Read

The only chance poetry will mean squat to the public is if writers start creating poems that are dangerous to people; little hateful, evil pills not meant to be swallowed, yet people will want to do so anyway. Poetry has to stop being nutritious, the health food of the literary world. As soon as poets have a PMRC of our own and politicians are warning kids of the danger of verse, that's when we'll be back on the right road. Until then, we're carrot sticks and granola.

When You Sleep With Yourself

At first myself didn't want to sleep with me. Myself had more letters, for one, and always occurred in more elegant sentences, fancy places me wasn't allowed to go. Additionally, the writer never was sure whether me should be invited -- whether it was John and me went to the score or John and I -- in which case, I made the country club and me didn't. Myself always announced itself to the room, desiring others to fawn over its six characters, oddly debonair, end-rhyming with shelf (of awards) and not much else. Me, on the other, had two puny symbols, absurdly simple, rhyming too commonly with pee, wee, and fee. I think it was their differences that finally attracted them. Me was mopping up the paragraph, the janitor of the party, and myself noticed its hard, compacted meaning. They kissed in these lines, made love before a question mark arrived to ask what would form from their union. That's the story of you, who I'm writing to, who needs to know every being is made of divided selves that love and hate each other, that wish to die, that yearn to be born.

I Now Disagree

I now disagree with everything I've ever said. When I stated, "Wombats make good lovers," I really meant, "Wombs are for mothers." When I exclaimed, "Get me some ice cream, you little brat," I actually yelled, "Rub on some skin cream, you lovely gnat." Gnat, of course, is the universal term of affection for a person who revs your motors faster than a speedboat in a feather pulling competition. If I tell you "Gnat, you are one sweet mosquito," it translates into, "Honey, you're my sweet potato." You know where the butter goes, don't you?

Nice Little Interview With John Ashbery

Here is a nice little interview with John Ashbery: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/magazine/14WWLN_Q4.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin His discussion of not being interested in personal aspects of his own life remind me that I'm more interested in the surreal and the made-up than my own life. I have written some o.k. poems that have autobiographical starting points, but I think I'm stronger when I go farther astray.

Instead of Reading This Blog

....you could be feeding a family of five with just pennies in hay ....you could be writing the next Great American Regulations on Interrogation Methods ....you could be dutifully calling a loved one you really don't care for much, but the guilt's too much sometimes, you want to be able to look at yourself in the mirror, you really do ....you could be developing a strange growth, one that's not almost out of diapers and into big boy pants ....you could be teaching a butterfly to read, a school to sleep, a hippo to fly, a balloon to sink ....you could be learning a useful trade, like "mortician," "air-conditioner repair person," or "genius" ....you could be sleeping, but with one eye open, because you never know, the other eye might be faking and have some evil ideas ....you could be home by now but you obsessively must count the number of steps from the Metro train to the gate, and they must always be even, always, always, always ....you could be writing a poem, as I hear there is a big shortage of poems, known as black and white gold, Amherst tea, Whitman's diamond mine, Eliot's secret invention, Ashbery moolah

The Jerk Who Knew He Was a Jerk

I mean, what do you expect? I was dropped multiple times on my head as a baby, but I stood up and chewed off my parents' legs and drooled in their nostrils. In school I told the teacher who left fake poop on her chair, but it wasn't John Smith, it was really me because I really had to go. Her apple had a worm in it anyway which looked at me funny. At work I steal office supplies and sell them to terrorists who want to deliver irate letters to newspaper editors, along with packets of you-may-already-be-dead-contagions. I was born a jerk; you know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. That's what makes America great. I'm a moron and all you can do is wait several days to purchase a handgun to plug me full of bottomless pits, while I already have one loaded in my holster, which is covered in glued-on silver stars, just in case I need to make you see the black hole of my revolving chamber.

The Businessman

Once upon a time a stylish businessman slowly evaporated from the sidewalk. First his suit vanished like cream inside coffee, then his briefcase dissipated into wet fog. He tried to run back in his building, but his legs melted and his feet drained away. His body turned into a halo that walkers thought was the signs' neon. The only thing left was one black shoe, which a hobo ate on his way to train tracks. As soon as he digested it, he was filled with great ideas: a new start-up company, a market that hadn't been exploited, a stock he could manipulate, countries to run behind the scene, love to shove back inside the clouds.

The Awesome People

Awesome People are indescribable So, this poem will actually be about Other folks, who know of these people And hope one day to talk with them, Or failing that, to breathe their air. Because they are Awesome, more Handsome, more beautiful, more Intelligent, more new and improved, More not-improved-because-how Could-they-be, other folks place Maps of their bodies on walls in their Homes. During the day they pray To kiss pets like Awesome People Do, with just enough tongue, and During the night they want to order Cocktails the same way, with lots Of lemon and no date rape drugs. If they touched Awesome People Their trick knees would pull rabbits From their joints, their backs would Become fronts, storm the battle of The sexes. Meanwhile, Awesome People dream of torching fame, Tearing off neon "As." They fear They'll disappear if audiences don't See them, like babies who see moms Cover their eyes, believe it's they Who've gone away and start crying.

Contests

Busy submitting poems to journals and entering this contest, among others: http://www.92y.org/content/discovery_nation_poetry_contest.asp. If you love me, you won't enter and give me a chance (:

Tangle

A tangle of neurons is confused. Hadn't it just been admiring its dendrites in the mirror, or lounging around the house in a baseball cap and bathrobe, scratching its cerebellum? It had heard the swoosh of a blade cutting through something hard and living, felt woozy, then it found itself going back to memories of masquerade balls and criminal doings in the dark. Those ended quickly, and now the light around its cells fade. The light bulb above its knotty nerves, once brightly lit, cracks underfoot. It's a wedding of the body and the ground, the mental spirit and the rain, wind, and earth that come afterwards, under the moon, sweet as honey.

Skin

People's skin don't make it right. You must select the channels loaded into your discus plate. A scope of your ankle determines distances throughout the lemon flavors. Fabric desires clothes worn by fools in a deck of cards given to business clients. Plastic terminal in the airport flies anxious passengers like leaves into whirlwind destruction. Flacid climate heats up in midsummer springing on tigers. You live in times noticed by surveyers of population unrest and insecure about economic warnings. Missiles detonate like langugage bombs in a cult's clarity. People's skin shaves off in a meat slicer, defended by attorneys, gloves fitting a lady's hand.

Resolutions

1. Lose about 8-10 lbs. 2. Start weight lifting/strength training. 3. Particpate in a D.C. poetry slam. 4. Continue medtiation and/or yoga and start doing it on my own. 5. Write every day. 6. Take a dance class. 7. Write a play. 8. Keep myself more organized. 9. Participate in more volunteer/singles activities. 10. Find love (around me, everywhere, girlfriend, etc.).