An Interesting Place: Poem 06/30/2021

Misplaced Train 

Constellations jostle in vertical commute. 

I'm toping this graphy with each mal lap

round, I love how it takes hours for rain

to hit the streets in the Loop. The needle

whorls round, giggling gallantly until 

the subway gates appear, ice against

darkened windows, the stars shuffling home. 

Heat Index: Poem 06/28/2021

Frozen Sweet Wagon 

Pendulous bemoning from the tuba. Hats off

to this, tempest parading between my front

door and the corner store. I shuttle without

regard for the color of the leaves, cocooned

in salient salts - summer fills the air with water,

fish meander out the backdoor gutter. Many

faceted, this remainder of the band, all brass

gravel and copper kettles, lollygagging tuba

tail minding the arrhythmia. Legion tune 

marmot mammoth, assimilation of the beholder. 

Nightly, I assemble the band, whistle fabled

teenage scream only calico rodents snatch.    

Lilly your ears, plug your wonton gapes with dirt -

come morning the band dissipates, leaving tuba sheared,

nude.  

Song 06/26/2021

Early Bird

Flopping across the city atop a giant flapjack.

Might as well be a lilly pad - I don't eat traversing

peaks such as these. 

Fur coating the lilly thickens. 

My skin leaks, pore clouds wafting past the last lit

windows. A stray peep

sends marmot pad caterwauling through foggy streets 

until my innards erupt pratfalls and grease. This

city's best days 

are saved for the folks who get trapped here. 

Checkers: Poem 06/27/2021

Had a solid first day of work. I didn't get to work at the top of the Tower, but everything else went swimmingly. 

Leaf Checkers 

Twined, heaving, I sniffle watching the four winged 

beast flail the whole yard long, appendages snapping, hulk 

posturing. Repeated reimaginings of your perceptions until 

sleep is hilariously distant. Not a tittle poetic about it. I'm 

raunchy as I am undersexed thusly I only strut when I pout. 

I let the balloon return to Apollo. I drink warm syrup

from a glass green bottle, a thousand stalks outside 

the van turn from green to copper, I bumble into bars

leaning humble, pretrofied bees serve as beads round

my throat so I don't choke when I write about you.    

Clean Spell: 06/24/2021

Banishing

My face forests, fiber wells into shafts,

I dream of murder and murmur while 

awake. My jaw swells from disuse. 

This room will never recover from me. 

Potshots falling limply, staining my shirt. 

Someone pulled the tarp over the public 

pool. At the bottom goggles, forgotten,

later remembered but the pool had moved 

on, back to the ocean where curiosity belongs. 

School of entropy and custody. Month wobegon. 

See what fish I'l be once I ingest all this filth,

clean my room every now and again. 

Towers: Poem 06/23/2021

First day on the new job, or rather orientation. Willis Tower is beautiful, and scuttling around the building filled me with a fearful joy. I attempted to put my feelings into the poem below: 

Empirical 

One morning I will wake and fear you,

already the nausea mutes disbelief. Prometheus 

would sweat and blush, feeling himself rise past 

Olympus. Zeus strikes the building a hundred

times per year. One nightmare about your majesty 

and counting.     

*******

My heart flickers ever onward,

mousey, I dream of you still,

Tower One. I dream in you.  

A Tercet: 06/22/2021

Forensic Tercet 

Forensics, wistful wonton gluttony

of a family never fully formed. Mortar

erodes under cascading calendars. 

Shortening of the Days: 06/21/2021

Post Solstace 

Summer's zenith hiccuped into oblivion. 

Wind twisted the light into fractals, I watched

the city rise from cardboard to concrete, a childish

backdrop explode into vintage reality, my wonder

too Christlike to notice. Map missing a compass. 

Eve Ditty: Poem 06/19/2021

Solstice Eve Song

Hollow point punctuation dethrones

the page. Academic acrobatics replace

the trampoline with syringes, junkies

built the pyramid. 

Whenever the cat gets scared 

I feel guilty. 

Not Another Fragment

Fragment

Removing my fingertips before leaving the house. 

Let no one know I've moved you, massaged your

heart back to health. Your fingernails sour my breath,

leftovers from resersials for this moment. 

 

Solstice Nears: Poem 06/18/2021

Offhand Context (Summer's Almost Plump)

Queer colors of a day near charitable. 

I'm as forgiving as the economy allows,

starry eyed enough to plant flags where my

love lies. 

Powder keg lungs, asphyxiate my bow, 

buckle my knees for the late night show. 

Tilt my crosshairs to May's alert populace, 

boy whipped,

butler to bride's maids, never the banquet.  

Thick Air: Poem 06/17/2021

Chicago Postcard, Midsummer 

An explosive detonates across the city, 

loud enough for me to hear it. Every 

summer Chicago flairs the sky, burning

flags above the towers and shy houses, 

smothering stars and declaring war. 

If crystal were pure I'd look

damned, newborn Eve swaddled,

logging the Styx. Summer has me trapped. 

Solstace, you can't coordinate fast enough. 

Without weeds, the gardener's life runs amok.  

Poem: 06/16/2021

Link Fragment

Hanging the mobile before the baby's been hatched,

aces, rockets, there's dust on the planets, rust in the

tin. Consonants pave continents, consequently bloodthirsty

conquest distorted by optimism - history for the forgiving. 

Why stagger when you can sit? 

Where? Poem 06/15/2021

Ladybug Chess 

Flyleaf refolded about the jacket. Spine 

creaks, enjament guides me to ellipses. 

There are books I write if you read. 

None as good as this one, permit me 

to sever your bookmark and bury it outback,

you lilly lauraute mid dew. I manage all

doubt, assign it roles about the stage, gait 

guiltily before powder slits, eyes peep

power garbed bandwidth. Steel water

wheel me, tug & lurch, borough me outback. 

Window/Yard: Poem 06/14/2021

Invisible Fence 

Whatever the reason, I'm out to pasture,

the beached sky above, I near bovine 

pleasure as the street stretches to a close. 

Spluttering bot lurches open, I tumble

guilt-a-whirl down my street and make

violent small talk with caricatures until

the dampness of the filter makes me gag. 

Lake water laps everything here. I sigh,

gothic melancholy wholly unintended. 

Why

am I

so tired?    

Summer, Dark: Poem 06/13/2021

No Lie 

Dayless, I refute summer while welcoming

the soggy nights, soaked in my own sick, 

sobbing "this is the life, I miss you all but

this is the life." Who knows what the

upstairs make of me. 

Kicker of it is, I'm having a hell of a time. 

Bejeweled: Poem 06/12/2021

Untitled Fragment 

Coronation - I feel the throne creak under

my girth. You will mark me by the trail of

makeup and honey, tears and shorn flowers. 

I keep shards of old love letters strung about

my neck, arching my back and turning

my ribcage into an engagement ring, 

filmed with dust. 

Moon Ditty: Poem 06/11/2021

Another nautical ditty, albeit a short one. 

The Moon Paid No Mind  

Tribute elasticity to summon the wizened 

tyrant. The cards fornicate openly now, astral

clarity hardly dim after waking. Rather the inverse,

waking life is distant as the tropics, though here 

the heat hurts so. Icebug come night, drift into

sleeping ships and rupture the gentle lovemaking

of the non-believers.  Soon this particular 

patch of ocean will never be silent, defined

by ruby tides until it lurches into quiet. 

Waiting to hear back from a job, spent the last 20 hours watching torture horror flicks, avoiding negative thoughts. 

Tyrant Hum 

Logistic hibernation nearly complete:

I juice suffering, swaddled rib crackingly

tight inside late morning, the sun persistent,

unemployment flaccid, loyalty malignant. 

Everything I engage in makes me sick - 

my pet tasks most of all. Keeps melancholia

at bay, the scripted suffering, celluloid carnage

keeps me sane as all round my dreams become

reality and my hope cloys to sour mist.  

Vermin: Poem Fragment 06/09/2021

Vermin Fragment 

I have the same eyes as before,

twice as many appendages and no job. 

I fright myself for many hours shadow

watching my digits on the wall. 

Another Complaining Poem 06/08/2021

Too Hot Lament 

Quagmire bullies the afternoon into soup. 

I can't inhale this blotchy air and smoke, I'll 

suffocate if this goes on! Selfish Apollo 

poxes the afflicted with his summer tax!

The frosted hearts deserve deep shade, 

wouldn't compassionate populists say?

I wouldn't know, squeaky wheels top 

ground gears, I appear a beached tadpole. 

Jove save me, the world becomes a waiting

room each year, chariot clattering hours 

upended. I need clammy, trancelike sleep,

impressionable murky cities beneath grey suns. 

The hotter the summer the harsher the hum.

I Heart Logan Square: Poem 06/07/2021

I Don't Have Hope, I Have Infrastructure 

Things are looking up, up, up,

up past the curvature of the building,

obsidian windows defying any deity

safe arrogance. 

Bable elevate me - it is my trade after all. 

One wish could domino, ambitions

crescendo, elastic and empathic once

more. A friend calls.

I recall what once was, tumble & collapse

among the daisies out back, list ways to

dismantle a bivouac.  Come up 10 short. 

I miss. 

I can't remember what. 

Swine on the Swing: Poem 06/06/2021

No Riddle 

Grifting childhood dreams, curdling feminine wiles

into pig slop I sell for a $5.95 by the freeway exit. 

I destroyed my innocence in exchange for eternal whimsy. 

Cavernous abattoir, lake swept and scraggle kempt,

I remove twigs from my innards and strike them into 

matches. In between black patches I catch snatches of 

wurms, oblong displays of equivocal divinity - 

I blaspheme. I see nothing save memories of my

beloved, syntax that once fell, not wurms, winged

swine or any other cryptid. No visions - only 

diction, cellophane transparently muting tactile

meaning - It's all in what's been lost, folks.  

 

Gaze: Poem 06/5/2021

Idol Observations 

Waiting on my bones to empty of marrow. 

Clockwatching, frame bolted with grass blades. 

Clouds flirt and I contort with green protrusions 

hoping the nimbo-fuckers burst into June sleet. 

Leering tyrant, head honcho with antlers

anchoring my body to Millennium park,

I pester the anthill with my hideous  

guffawing. Predatory preparation in 

perpetual coronation, delevated mantle.    

What I will upon this lawn yellows the blades,

sharpens the songs of the birds. Wind carries

the syllables, smothered, into the architecture.  

 

Two Poems: 06/04/2021

Welp 

Waterhole, obscured and famed, 

bucket lazing from the cantankerous chain, 

accept this runt as penance for my wishes. 

Untitled Afternoon Poem 

I married a church once, paraded about

on stilts with the father trumpeting 

Deep Purple until the walls tumbled

into billows of salt, then flung the steeple

though my sternum - I nearly married a church, 

but the steeple missed my heart, left me gaping,

heaving brimstone into my lungs.  

Foghorn: Poem 06/03/2021

Cricket Shanty 

Blistering outside. Nothing crisp in

bubbling bayou soup. I lay inside, starve

stovetop simmer, soul selling to keep

myself from leaving. I love these moltan

welts, moss topping abysmal screeching, ice

cream truck holds the blue flame of winter

beneath the haze. I cling to that

eerie cloying iceberg melody, deep in

the northern homescape, come winter

the bodies cease to smell. Why chew with

your mouth closed in a city stacked with desert?

Whoever I kiss falls back into mirth. 

Swing and a Miss: Poem 06/02/2021

Another day of applying for jobs and setting up interviews. In the midst of that bland chaos I managed the poem printed below:

Copycat

Wailing off into the sunset, 

"look ma, no reason for any of this,

just amoral bliss..." pockets yanked

into elephant ears, snickerdoodle 

nod I miss or forget it, no

single person exists save the target. 

I cross my fingers twixt their hairs & trigger 

golden applesauce across our history. 

Narrative, shrewd judge, thwacking upon scales - 

It's the folk's they don't pay, unincorporated 

pestilence gums the cogs, soiling the pyramid.

In the dark, fear lays strewn for the seizing. 

Incantation 06/01/2021

Shoot Me 

At the piano again. Legs agape, 

stadium bouquet a throw away from

the apartment gates. 

Wish nothing save oblivion. 

Love nothing save the ideal line. 

Ride none save levithan. 

Idle time lapsed in tide pools, 

The wind turns canine when I whistle. 

In childhood I traded my heart for a thistle. 

Beyond medallions our emblems 

emblazoned embody all deities 

without comprehension.