Some Lies

Departure at Terminal Similarity

Sunrise,
Fritz Lang, 1999

“I, in one of those buses filled with people you could never imagine to see at the beach, wonder and wander aloud about the conservative danger, have in my hands a black plastic dustpan,
And I, busboy,”

I, bus boy,
Isaac Asimov, 1933

“have, in my hands, gathering dust, Pan, pipes, flutes, small Greek children drinking in queens, playing the Gypsy Moroccan lingering melodies left-turning hat wearing face of God seeing, playing through the coal black speaker system who is allowed to talk to me, against some corporate policy or another, who is allowed to talk, first I throw away the food and it begins:”

The End of The Night,
Nikos Kazantzakis, 1934

“in ink spills from the plate she left trying to eat with a smile food becomes the reflection of shopping, strip mall full choice menu’s on the highway by ways of the gas guzzling emotions, choice cut stripper drinks with aesthetic-sized vision-minister server give me a tip, get back to the fucking country she says”

And I’m Back Inside The Apothecary,
Theodore Dreiser, 1935

“Dustpan with scratched black edges (plastic broken looking glass gatherings backward narcissus [a whole more vast than the Nebraska sandlot and the empty distance to Mars] leaning back half tasted caramel tart of drastic youth): two girls voices at the edge of the restaurant: what if the wow-ness is over and its like boring, they did it at the beach, how could he ever like me, like I’m not going to do it at the beach, I used to love shopping, lets go to Dexter and transfer to the 358”

Congressional Record, June 18, 1936“Pan, dusted moment: sweet worth less nothing, scribbled in the air of the diners who thoughtlessly thought no one could listen enough to hear their sweet worthless nothings (you never loved me, you little fat fuck, how could you, I never should have been [we hold back laughter] can I get a new fork, I can’t believe you are treating me this way on my birthday, why are such a bitch, what, you asshole, I don’t like roses, [every breaks up after a number 4 with a side of eggs] I think I’m pregnant, that’s not possible, if I had known you, are you done eating that, you should watch your weight, how about you watch my ass walking, oh like the day we met?, when the world was so much younger, the day had so much more potential energy for regret, I just want you to say something, something more than this silence, this sweet worthless nothingness that never should have been”

Untitled Screenplay,
William Faulkner, 1937

“lipstick lids left when impassioned embrace was the opposite of hate [baby vomit filled shoes, does he miss them?] discarded memories too difficult to keep all these swept up notes tossed in disgrace, forgotten retainers and tourist maps now gathered in plastic black bags with holes, a mop, and bleached floor washes away those infinite shapes made by drops from angered tears held back in the back of heartbreak:
or
more precisely,
an evening of preludes,”

Napkin Conversations And Stained Remains On Formica Floors,
T. S. Eliot, 1938

“When She Kicked It

before walking out on him at five
and her coat check and check
passed by
the front door horseman
so desperate to unbreathe
such suffocating supplication
and its complacent continues,
the parabolic curve of his clean
clean eyes”

Lipstick On A Half,
James M. Cain, 1939

“glass of wine, is there any less hope any where in this vast moment becoming history? Maybe in that tossed phone number of unsolicited intent, adding up, as always, to a negative. Maybe in the pencil left by the old lady who tips a dollar every two beers on the third Saturday of every other month. Maybe, in the detritus of wonder, where all chaos goes, is the great hopeless form from which all desire crumbles like coffee cake remnants uneaten, maybe may be”

Into The Trash, A Hat,
Muriel Rukeyser, 1940

“the wet sweet smell of a small dark spot whiskey’d away by a colorful beach towel, the smell tells me it’s covered in a teaspoon of bleach and this night will soon end as I wander outside the outline of my simple book of a job with a listless lean and wait against an exterior wall, just out of the street lamp with it’s fake gasoline smile, against and beyond the pale, wall, listening to the last cellophane caller making notes in their departure about the service and the smile and the closing music getting louder, closing past eleven, and there inside sit that last couple of two
peephole
in silence coming to their end in a bottle of red to go off into the black night, where”

I Am Waiting Outside, Eye in Their Eventual Departing,
Steven Spielberg, 1941

“the nicotine swirls in lines out of wind
against a hundred backgrounds
of milky shooting stars
and distant red lights of airplane flights
back inside my mind, the mice are making
another midnight run around
the unlighted restaurant of night
hoping for some unbleached spark
dropped off the half-eaten
dinner role
under table 6,
feeding his children poetry good night,

The Small Rain Down Can Rain,
Wilfred Owen, 1918-1942

Venom and protein,
in her bed again.

I Was Born Within The Union

I was born in the war within:
in the telescope of modern space.

I was born in the radio universe,
a moment
from an age of gold
Upon me;

War runs across my life.

In the unforgiving

I was brought
To my knees
To see my feet;
And what God there was,

I have been, born
Again in the security

Of exchange,
Dressed in warm
Camouflage,
Outfitted with a job,

Sent in to the endless waste
Land to witness

The Union

Upon old schemes of Babylon.
My soldier-sold red sightlines
Will wear no moral
Thinness. No skin
when I'm done.
I will wear a burden
like open meat,
This pack of wolves
will come to me
and we'll go into
the land of poetry
and ancient

lovesongs,
Psalm-leaves

across my eyes.

Sonnet #2

You’re in the amber lucid reflection
Where I drown down in a light translucent
Well of sorrow. Below a buffalo,
Between eternity and cynosure,
Where the radio universe discloses
Ink’s withered visage as shadowed
Oscillations to thee in five-foot steps
Laid out as clumsy, odd, osculate steppes.
Can I call you Green, Elisabeth? Or
Is there another color in this look? For
To shed my thoughts upon such ear soft down,
To pray a book of hours in your sweet sound…
Or have I been waterless yet gifted
And mistaken politeness for a thread?

The Reign of Illuminations

Under the Empires of the Sun and the Moon
the Earth returns
Its grey,
everything raped.

The dolphin sound squeezed
From lips
Breathing after everything else
are to clay,
as everything ashen
are to the day.

Soldiers of ratio and risk,
weigh the Iraqi and the moment
within the wait
(everything illuminated
now fades).

What seemed to be
truth
was deceit,
and what was truth
lays dead,
forever abstract
to the West.

Sonnet #1

I dissolved in this minstrelsy: your blood
Beautiful smell falls within thoughts of us;
Tea’s pass in winds of opportunity.
These inklings of orphan lines before your
Clay skin drapery, adorned with snakes
Where no earth is passing beneath me, just
Unrequited looks over lunch and hair.
If I could only speak the eye musing
Heard in your voice: warm light filters my gaze
Into you: river grey eyes, drowning stars!
How many of these tea ceremonies
Have ended with your head coming down on
Nothing but your own shoulder! My dear friend:
Is love bound to ending silence? Harm? Care?

Orpheus After the War, v2

Orpheus after the War
was a thought upon the Beach,
A veteran with a dispense and a reach
In to your dress, love is gone.
If there were no war,
Milk would drift down your sorrow,
Lifted from skin graft
And inhaled
Under the dandelion sky.

Our early March was
Evergreen coated in snowflakes,
aching backwards
And arcing sideways,
You moved like glue
On a window screen.

Where can I go now
But to the memory of
Driftwood hands stained
In this comfort of ink?

Goddess, in a psalm kennel of adrenalin.

Water foam shoreline
Inhales the roots of wood,
Your arms,
A corpse among
Vibrations: the sound of the ocean.
Lonely din and hum
of memory,
Cold in a crowded waterfront.
Blackbird sky, gasoline eyes,
A city of crowds
And magnetic density,
A shelter for warmth tonight,
soup made of hot dogs
and leftovers.
Homeless and waiting
for Thanksgiving kindness.