Sunday, March 20, 2016

dirty martini

it’s like drinking the ocean
w/out choking
if life ended now
it’s just time
ask me how
the whole city’s doing
edgar allan poe is fine
in moyamensing prison
they love him
in the deli corner
of acme, muttering
provolone til the parking
lot is buried in snow
you can dig your car out
next week
here’s a pack of tokens
and some scratch-offs
if you were born after
this day in 1912
you can bring the lovers
back together
one’s walking into ray’s
one’s walking home right
now, probably a different
lorraine than the one
you know but all motion
is a crab, snockey’s closed
and stays open
in my heart
which is late
to the tongue—take
my tongue and paint
their doors before
they’re home, paint
their steps like
the bruises
you return to
as if employed
by orange peels
to the curb
you owe nothing
to the taste of
the weight
of desire, the city flattened
by rent as the rent dies
for our sins and the roads
bleed out

chase scene

Tuesday, March 8, 2016

baptism

a factory makes facts
you show up
then you’re gone
red clouds eat
the snow
inside me
like a footprint
june is purple
drums are rooms
for infinite need
the lungs walk out
in four decades
52% of wildlife gone
where to park
that stone whale
in a moon of notes
i get by
like the news
under hums
in the shape of a squirrel
a man may form
and fall from a tree
an apple
flashing the sky
between our huts
fish teeth
are a secret
baptized
w/out a bus
to splash into
your eye in the skull
of a penguin
clocks out the city
like a dad who sighs
up the stairs
gray whir of traffic
underlining the past
it’s all for us
minus the job clown
on your shoulder