from 434 E 17th Street out

a mini book

*

title:

from 434 E 17th Street out

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subtitle:

thereupon comes apologies or sorrows

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preface:

curious ennui, gestural vertigo

however an eulogy of tequila & quarantine

aspectabund

on the other hand, discriminative affections

of madonnas & bijoux

Koré in heaven, Justin in solitary squall

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in any event, belle tournure, not something always already constructed

this tension between being here, becoming there

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i told Milo his meows reminded me of a meadowlark

coughing up blood in the dark…

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this is a chance meeting

of a typewriter

& an umbrella on a rocking chair

in a brandy snifter

Bob Fosse dancing on the blade of an ice skate

in a raindrop

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the scrawl of my grrl sprawled in bed

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if every mother's son is romantic

then i awake to Mary Magdelene moaning mourning birds

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perhaps

the lurid claims of the marvelous

shipwreck 

& the intangible

buoyancy 

& the intangible

will someone plz. tell me 

what i have sd

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the ethical ambiguity of this terrific "imagination"

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while folding fitted sheets

listening to Laura Smith sing "I'm Gonna Kill Myself"

i wonder which is worse:

the lonesome church bells or the lonely train whistle

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my happiness is a raindrop in wool mittens; naked lovers 

forgetting narcissism in the epiphany of eroticism

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commentary:

similarly, the erotics of such nevertheless isolation

so one arrives, finally, at pleasure

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when my baby's beside me i know

i know i won't be lonely one more day

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in the span of so-many books 

i have invented a fire extinguisher: a memory of autobiography 

scuffed like graphite on tracing paper

the depth of narrative eschews the carburetor

a comfortable solution, 

the repossession of the exterior by the interior

, unacknowledged

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exposition:

brown plaid flannel

pink suede shoes

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my breath bled a bottle of Bordeaux; my shadow 

slipped into the asylum of a scarlet begonia…

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jazz, eventually

the imprimatur of a geisha in a dollhouse

razor-fan torch ballad

either way, the rip cord, frayed

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Norma Fraser sais

the first cut is the deepest

Fern Kinney sais

together we are beautiful

Imogen Heap sais

goodnight and go

it was raining

& i wielded my tongue of scotch

like a hypodermic needle

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weltanschauung, of sorts:

i had a dream D Suar & i sang

Charles Aznavour's "Je Bois"

a heart imbued w/ sudden nostalgia

we turned our ghosts loose amidst the gravitational pull

of our respective sirens

it's true everything abounds

it's just beware 

the hidden razors in the rendezvous

of one's self

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if access to one's past is through a surreal sentence (def. 4b)

then this thought is a still life of an ironing board

clearly, you are better off if you know the extent of yr injuries or damages

yet, can one extend this consideration

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non-referential:

ha ha ha

fuck if i'd know

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i shadow box the museum butterflies on the wall

a whale in my heart can't prove this

sometimes i think Full Metal Jacket

in a decompression chamber

and i thought i moved on from ribbons & custom boxes:

last night or selected poems of Paul Carroll

perhaps i translated doubt wrong;

there was still this tremour in the holy

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proclamation:

AWAKE AND BE FINE, YOU FUCKER

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vociferously, this fever is an atelier of ferns

a cylinder of contemplation;

Nosferatu & Lolita debating an evening 

of existentialism

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a pang is just distortion exiting the heart

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i may be right, i may be wrong

Dorothy sd something like "beautiful goddamn friend"

an egret shuttered like a photograph out of water

how succinct the bright streams

the comfort we feel as we bayonet 

out of the barricades of our fugue

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the protocols of a sad song

an accidental translation of this evening's acroamatic asymmetry

an eyelash against a breast

to borrow another memory of yesterday's effectiveness

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i'll see there is no ikon

there is no plausibility

in hindsight, i guess

one finds their archangel

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commentary:

i am not above the mitigating descent, yet

let my atonement be displaced in ascent

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in January and difficult, surreal images

watching patron saints take quiet pages

tonight, i'd say fuck you like a grace note

watching the first quarter moon garrote 

the pinned butterflies on the microscope slide of blank paper

in the rubberneck of the typewriter's absurd candor

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i bleach the scalpel 

in a vial of perfume

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searching for a signature

homily, etc.

the transcendent signified

in a flat of angles

a careful consideration

of my place

a reflection of this 

particular intersection

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exposition:

sunbeam through rainy leaves

this afternoon

a hurricane lamp against the imperative 

wounds

"Fuck I want to be bound by devotion!        Tortured

by passion!"

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whether the implication can be drawn that

Vicodin & viognier

can hush the blood of this cold

from being a mere reduction of Thanksgiving's 

simple absurdités 

belies the psychological possibilities...

a hedgehog in tap shoes

w/in the formal elements

of a red heart in a church

- - -

more important

than the replacement of anxiety w/ whisky

is the redevelopment

of our belle tournure

Ceravoloing through our love affair

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proclamation:

i will never undress like an adieu

b/c i can't help falling in love w/ you

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imagery conflates eyesight w/ a pair of binoculars

this is true, w/ a subtle, particular tenor

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wearing cartography on one's heart-sleeves: 

Arkansas makes me want to hold you

to the microscope of my heart

curating the calculus of distance

like a star-strewn rampart

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once i started walking

through the synchronized swimming of her love

it came to caterwauling chemistry

how do two tableau through the spiral stairs

drowning in the eddy of heartbeats

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Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Ti Merz

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pretty little angel eyes

you're astride something

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i walk through these empty pages

and strewn among the company of hope

i find you

naked, i guess, uninterpretable

as we contour into our own map

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 11

            candle wax on the green grass

                        or

            the periodic multiplication table of elements

                                                “The wires in the rose are beautiful.”

                                                “Imagine this as lyric poetry.”

           hurry up, we are, perhaps, dreaming •• of Central Valley countryside or downtown Oakland, Ca. basement apartments •• Deutsche Grammophon conductors •• interpreting “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” in thrall, imaginably •• to Looney Tunes femmes fatales— •• no, that’s probably a faulty emotion •• we most likely need San Francisco city council meetings •• as seen fuzzily •• through a pair of 1950s Rembrandt VHF/UHF bunny ears •• or snow falling on weeping willows— •• the slender legs of Tina Turner dancing the Varen’ka •• O, how we become startled •• to find ourselves in our own personal snug harbour of such renowned, ridiculous reverie •• correspondingly, i put a songbird •• in my throat to wreak havoc w/ the voice-recognition software— •• this is crucial •• b/c it is there we introduced the lyrical “i” •• as in: I SHOCK MYSELF •• taking a Stihl FS45 weed trimmer to a bed of geraniums— •• yet, i never thought this day wd come •• reading Blaise Cendrars on the Trans-Siberian Express toward Vladivostok •• or, chasing a ground squirrel across a golf course in an April rainstorm— •• “O, where will you find me now?” •• my lover whispers •• of something collapsing & being built simultaneously •• as she pulls a Tijuana Bible •• from her Frederick Mellinger of Hollywood Marabou Peignoir— •• the catalog says it’s 1964 •• so i name a blue heron Deep Throat •• & rent “All the President’s Men” from the old Video Station on Wilshire Boulevard— •• the palm trees erupt, O what a tremendous time we’re having: •• Emily Dickinson analyzing Donald Barthelme short stories •• Charlotte Rampling reading Dick Tracy comics from the 40s •• on a St. James Chaise from J. Robert Scott— •• but the typewriter ODs •• as i shove the aforesaid flower wreckage into a 1929 Pierce-Arrow radiator •• thinking of ekstasis & the angriest man in jazz— •• the tiny particulates dusting •• my copy editor’s Duckie Brown wingtip shoes— •• a Lefaucheux revolver & a Rand McNally World Portrait desk-top globe •• i heard everything disappearing •• “i want to make mistakes & fall in love,” i whisper •• thinking of her pretty blue dress as it liberates the lust •• of many a wallflower •• one can speculate that his romantic hopes were unfulfilled •• as she tells him to slow down— •• it’s the serial crises of imagery •• envisioned as hand-to-hand combat w/ dinosaur fossils •• as i adjudicate the brass tacks of another dream— •• “O, the wine tasted like a marching band in the rain,” i thought •• as i had poured another glass of McManis Viognier •• everything i will have done is symbolized in the past-perfect future •• a paper full of treble •• it’s the matter my pop culture references will be forgotten in a couple of years •• i.e., Willa Cather w/ her Beats by Dr. Dre headphones

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 10

            disarm you w/ a smile

            fist fight in a grocery store •• theories on brevity •• this is verifiably a pome abt telecommunication systems •• concerning the extraordinary patterns as seen on re-runs of Rubicon on AMC •• (w/ a strategy borrowed from Charles Simic) •• or today feels like how Casey Kasem felt when he first reflected upon the day that music died •• b/c in the snowdrift •• there was something, but it wasn’t consolation •• the decimal points of white noise reifying •• a prospect of flowers •• i imagine a cleaner from Cosa Nostra taking a vacuum cleaner to white noise •• blood dislocated all over the daytime •• Melrose Place on Fox in the shape of Our Lady of the Flowers •• my U-turn at 3:27 a.m. •• shoving the Aurora Borealis into my eyes •• or a little house on the prairie •• into Freemasonry •• w/ Prince and the New Power Generation’s “7” •• as a suggestive soundtrack for jungle fever in Jerusalem •• how irresistible, really, a Playboy Bunny in a snowsuit •• (by the will of Zeus •• undress!) •• else, the silhouette of a stick figure named Pluto •• as it contemplates •• euthanasia or Elton John or existentialism or eroticism •• that one Metallica video w/ scenes from Johnny Got His Gun •• on Wednesday afternoon, Sappho seducing Eros •• humdrum & a hacksaw •• harbouring the august of our discontent •• i presume •• “i will just never describe you” •• the heart of a crocodile w/ Pomp & Circumstance •• i admit •• “you are beautiful, if you wd only be real” •• it’s just the rainwater edged against yr breasts remind me •• Lady Day consulted the idea of fire for me •• as i was gorgeously lost •• clocking the wrong dreams w/ sympathetic research & hysteria •• my sleep deprivation •• implicated in the squadron of silhouettes •• a thousand discoloured letters like injured birds •• somewhere an owl hooting in amusement •• to flapper phonographs w/ Jesus hummingbirds •• berserk like Ping-Pong in a garage •• or a Crusader quantum-leaped into the future •• onto a Pop Warner Wiffle Ball field •• she whispers, “you sir, are certifiably 5150” •• but i’m too tired to argue •• or articulate why i wish •• to bring back the word “affine” •• so this will just have to exist •• then again, i may be convinced something is categorically wrong •• i.e. sleeping w/ somebody dreaming of someone else •• i need to stop being such a romantic •• walking past a baby blue jay in the public gardens •• eating opium w/ Pluto’s mistress of the moment •• this lady’s name is too much •• i think her stare is perfume •• i think, the inherent philosophical error of a lit match •• might salvage the subconscious •• the sibilance of which •• may as well be the national anthem of Canada •• playing as a typographer’s picas sprout from my torso •• to wit, i saw a police officer click on their Mag-Lite •• and having lost my way •• i can believe that •• as the sunshine bores the daylights out of me

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 9

a hummingbird hiking up its skirt

...Civil War VHS

a blank canvas of snow, morphine & concrete

scrapbook nostalgia

acrobat bone chaos & absurd conceits

w/ narrative contexts:

wind-swept blood clot fire plug embellishment

old-timer jugband tunes

& FM Braille shipwrecked against personal experience—

an incredibly beautiful exorcism;

a refurbished boatshed

where Theodore masturbates to “The Story of O”

w/ some scissors & glue

as well as a little help from Elsie, probably...

a priori whispering

kamikaze butterfly anatomy operating theatre collage

a textbook perspective

educated w/ box wine & owd-feshioned spelling bees

archetypally, in principal

our clothes on the floor in a b&w summer vacation

photographed by Reed B. Bontecou, MD

w/ a star-spangled banshee

enslaved to ceramic doll frottage—

the dreamy eroticism w/in the petite stabs at seventh heaven

celestially horrific

avec birdcage elevator orgasm imprimatur

paralytic, nevertheless

blatant Caravaggio ex cathedra mise-en-scène...

uncouth exit hyperbole

there isn’t enough melodrama

out of left-field

to outright Norman Rockwell sexual resonance—

empirical, jejune

imagine cherubim or dove plastic surgery

handsomely ferocious loveseat transcendence

yet macabre in the meantime...