unsculpted, intrinsic

Susie Q’s vibrator, pts. 1 & 2


Cliff Notes and chartreuse
sullen notes on a 1914 Steinway Grand
nude, framed
in stolen fabric and/or Fear 
playing SNL ’81
forever in debt to divergent motifs
“i’m Peter Pan!,” or “eat my fuck” 
blithe regret, nostalgia
nihilistically disillusioned 
in my early-middle age
of assignations and whimsy
temporary residence in another fairytale
of ennui and of old lovers
abstraction, and psychological insight
adult truths
beneath my bespoke skeleton


“in order to understand, i destroyed myself” 
to trombone and drums 
a few prayers 
rattled off on an old macchina da scrivere
laconic, insular
on the sleazier side of Sunday
reversing into the subsequent
it’s possible it’s too late to attempt 
to make any sense
every opportunity shrugs off sincerity
the tenebrism of the implication
weary, woebegone
six schooners of King’s Ransom
i took a floret and transfixed it through 
the forearms of my Lord
facing myself as the light adjourned

"Poetry is a form of desire devoted to the impossibility of its own fulfillment." -- D. Beachy-Quick

three.new.poems


01 /

owl always love her

white lilac trees and champagne balconies •• a grey rain takes reign •• it cd be we’re so elegant, dressed as we were, in our rags of hymns and ghosts •• b/c where you go, i go too •• i am probably in Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland •• then i am in the drawing room of an old New England house across from Wesleyan •• listening to a young spinster play piano •• watching square-peg girls in love w/ their best friends’ boyfriends playing effeuiller la marguerite •• part flamenco, part ineffable •• [stark staring, i love her] •• nevertheless, i am reading a textbook on how to design airports, or an insulation manual for post-war tract housing •• nevertheless, i am drawn into another languorous world, and the wasted time waltzes back, sometimes •• these crippled symmetries •• i put my ear to her chest and listen •• [but where did she come from?] •• smoke off crumpled paper in the ashtray next to a dining room table littered w/ guns and bespoke balloons •• materializing light •• a Rotring Xonox Graphic as it depicts “owl always love her” in a tattered Leuchtturm 1917 •• i came to see everything as a willow of white phosphorus at the end of the red carpet •• a bolero or a French film acting out the cognitive dissonance of trying to dwell in a handful of worlds concurrently •• a funeral parade of roses •• like a man praising a woman’s beauty to her •• classically brilliant and erotic •• a sparse landscape w/ bird skeletons as resonance for inner emotions •• [Between 2 Battles, The Warrior Has A Well-Deserved Rest At The Soft Breast Of His Beloved Lady And Dreams Of Other Despairs And Victories] •• somewhere in between bleeding broadcasts of the evening news and the nightly Top 20 •• there is a mild sadness that permeates everything •• i put my ear to the ceiling and wait for the transmission’s tenebrism •• it’s enough to give a lapsed Catholic nightmares •• then i am in the attic, reading •• “when i thought abt it, it seemed to me that the human heart was a very primitive instrument” •• i remember there was the time someone installed a transistor radio in their heart and the chambers filled w/ blood •• coming back from the country after taking the cure

02 /

the high sadness condition evoked less arousal than the low sadness condition


a vice-versa'd golf umbrella
all skeleton, Maybelline eyeliner-black
placid beauty
an orchid, or a tumor, or i forgot;
a sad expression
surprisingly suffused w/ colour—
the wilderness of our time has been exorcized
white moth whiskey; 5 o'clock cocktails
i come to you, as always:
ballerinas creaky on wooden floors...
nude, repairing a revolver;
sledgehammer symbolism, sure
the heart is just 
a series of on-ramps
chasing sunsets to forever elude the sunrise—
yet, to find oneself unable,
low-voltage, too, a quiet hum...
i immediately fell in love 
w/ that picture;
my heart is ramshackle, he sd, rural
stapled w/ swill
just as inextricably stitched up 
w/ a crooked cobweb, an American Dream
abscessed w/ guilt…
not glamourous or stark, it has to be 
love at first sight:
sheared w/ arrhythmia & bramble
i had it framed
drinking aftershave from the bottom half 
of a matryoshka doll—

03 / 

to refurbish a skeleton's ribcage into a stereo cabinet

                                                               for Justin Jones

imagine roaring lions, drugstore kites, and Carry On Wayward Son

telephone booths, Old Master oil colours, up escalators

a sword fight w/ outboard motors

imagine sharing a 2009 Black Label Claret w/ a street arab

[as i've been damned more than once…]

or anxiolytics, Mt. St. Helens, bright orange Bantam paperbacks

classified black ops files

a Westinghouse Mosin-Nagant M1891 → Kill The Moonlight

[as his heart is decidedly in the right place]

imagine argyle-sweater sadness, a prie-dieu

the iconic door of 10 Downing Street

perhaps then we’d have the first intimation of Our Lady of the Flowers

[as such, the tragedy]

rooster-tail bass flute, Fentanyl, stillness and nostalgia

the Meth of a Rockette’s Kick

imagine J.C. Leyendecker’s “Couple Descending a Staircase”

an Oldfield’s Rarebit yearbook c. 1914

[as it’s everything i’ve decided in a moment of passion & interest]

red light districts, or Hollywood Babylon

Mary Miles Minter, thin Martinis, and Armchair No. F 51 by Walter Gropius

imagine E. Manteca on a Wednesday night in January

an overturned Ferris wheel

a pawn shop, porn mags and jazz records

or insert Justin Jones’ favourite bombastic 70s rock song here

[as i’ve begun to look out the window onto E. 17th Street]

benign, damaged beauty

perhaps then we’d know what it is to stand in awe of the post-whatever malaise

a weathervane, aesthetic wilderness

ylang-ylang, mercury thermometers, or Iowa as a verb

[as i’ve Iowa’d the fuck out this poem]

spellbound, shadow boxed in kissy-face, of art and erotica

a watercolour from the bombshell’s wee small hours

or a gentleman in lust whispering, “aw-shucks”

[as i've considered lechery]

Boris Yeltsin, a Rieger Orgelbau pipe organ, and vintage telenovelas

one’s heart in a bulldog edition

a New York Times A1 story

a photo in which she meets the murderer in an art gallery wearing a low-cut dress

remember, the guns and lovers came after

plastic explosives, periscopes, geraniums, and Mexican summers

[as it’s like when a young boy falls in love & steals a photo of his crush]

or “though pink elephants i wd see”

a E.R. Squibb & Sons Morphine Syrette, as all it took was one look

a silhouette of profound upheavals

a backlit Cibachrome photo

[as “i freebase the carousel in my sleep, no less”]

ticking off marauders, Tetragrammaton, and outdated Yellow Pages

poem for a nurse smoking a cigarette against a police telephone box on 8th Street 


maybe memory, in the thin, soft blue light of a medevac helicopter
time was hidden, hemmed in red, evenings at 1950s jazz clubs 
        & '20s debutante balls and such;
i am suspended under the barometer of an incense-stained crucifix―

the mood of the dry martini at the precipice of one's heart: 
        portraits of lust and false-heartedness
in these elegiac Happy Days suburbs, words pinned like butterflies 
        in a museum case...
her heart to sorrow; one is left wondering if the girl actually 
        exists or if―

as if i were a kite, words failed, dragging a dead deer down 
        a diary's spinal column...
yesterday's wake of ramshackle boat sheds, of heron-haunted estuaries
and its mise-en-scène; that is, say "i love you" again, 
        loudly enough this time―

tonight, Old Farm Pure Rye Whiskey w/ a well-water back, the last 
        summer rainstorm before shanghai...
transistor-amp guitars & rickety piano squalling out a steeplechase;
it's a beautifully horrible resolve; a kiss frustrated 
        from a Mills & Boon mass market paperback


if it's morning now, 7 o'clock, stethoscopes & tourniquets; 
        uninstalling IEDs from a chest cavity
white knuckled & stationery-deaf from a Gustav Mahler symphony

endless early-70s FM calibration in contrast to modern erotica
lampshaded at the thresholds of verschärfte Vernehmung, 
        breath hushed like a dead chandelier