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...

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 8

a baby seal singing “a kiss from a rose from the grave” or something

quay-side: possibly,

a container ship of consular Dutch tulips—

i’d sooner

be a frantic fragment—

art not loved

w/in the maritime requiem of this rainy afternoon—

in the cartography

of found language...i.e., she later

became addicted

to potassium bromide, and the marriage

deteriorated...

(i squint, unaccustomed

to this indirect sadness) the only fire familiarized

was in the disputed shrubbery

of some ‘Leaves of Grass’—

the transference

was probably a boat, or a metaphor abt the Titanic—

i think i was supposed

to love you, i guess—

but i was frustrated

i sd, ‘what nice incarcerated gardens’

then i mowed

the unresolved dandelions into detonation

in the backyard

for a happier splotch of how-beautiful-we-fucked-up colour

as beauty had won its casualty—

i daydreamed i was on Alcatraz

& a seagull sd, “let me entrust in you a story,”

the intimacy, if i trust you

(i love you so much, historically)

sensually cascading

the holy schizophrenia of fresh-cut flowers

as interpreted

as a shark attack—

the blood in the water, whispers, such harrowing solace

where did you sleep last night, justin?—

i find a tornado

in my heart palpitations

its thesis

is a Koala bear having a wet dream in a Motown song—

no! — i’m sardonically crippled

i find an apothecary in my anorak

i’m fidgeting w/ the amenity that is a slice of orange

a toy periscope

bargaining for a ream of light—

my face feeling like Piano Piece #13 (for Nam June Paik)

torn up by ghosts, the presentiment

this is how memories are crowded clean

teeth shattered into proof, presumably...

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 7

if i imagined Joseph Burgess as a sonnet in Ted Berrigan’s “The Sonnets”

...it was too late, i had already begun

to stash 60-watt light bulbs up her skirt;

dear Harry, it’s 3:21 a.m., stop singing “Cocoanut Woman”

what we need is < Anne > to be a little less difficult.

it’s time to unholster these fairytales:

her shoulder blades of prom photos & butterfly knives;

her heart of backgammon moves in Braille

hidden in the dialogue of “Days of our Lives.”

but it’s hard when her disarmed smile is a woodcut

of a Joe Brainard ‘Nancy’ tip-toeing via

Tulsa nightlife: filth, gin, a slut;

it’s the Stations of the Cross as a palindrome’s trauma

that reconciles the stiletto afterglow of such hallowed, histrionic clouds.

& i’m awake b/c my heartbeat is too loud...

***

inaugural video of Justin, Etc. reading to things: 

 http://youtu.be/ntxKW_ZC9Hs

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 6

dramamineFlowers in the wartimeWater

enemy artillery w/ nineteen-seventies newspaper objectivism

like a Fragonard

or a roaring BYG-Actuel aside—

everything is as it is & as it shd be in a time of happiness:

unbuttoned neck

w/ ascot, & a Great St. Bernard Pass Sidecar;[1]

a French-cuff shirt

replete w/ mismatched cuff links;

(no comment;)

a living room full of verbs & a drove of doves reading back issues

of men’s magazines—

everything is & this is Our Lady of Our Lover’s

Best Friends

(in autumn & other discrete Tuesdays)

listening intensely

to This Magic Moment by Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman as sung by the Drifters;

here, intentional fallacy,^[2]

along w/ the Death of the Author & the well-trimmed

rhododendrons give a polite scent

as someone mentions

a long-lost musical from the Great Depression—

the last words spoken

as a man w/ a pocket trumpet plays a dirge against an old rugged cross

as concussion grenade

sighs “wound my heart w/ monotonous languor—”

the distant dreams

w/ All The Things You Are as my new Desire gospel;

slagging through

jazz Mass enthrallment skronk:

The Voice & The Maieutic, a song for a Breuer chair doing penance

in the corner curve

humming Nearer My God to Thee—

O’ Love Song

this is where Sheridan sais, slashing through the ballade light,

“this is a poem for ******;”

A Desire named ‘Streetcar’ where the str. light

(spindled through the window)

sais Kuutamo Metsässä;

the barricades where the strep throat smooth jazz takes five;

a song for extinct or exotic birds

Aco Dei de Madrugada

after the Hospital of the late-evening’s Goodbye’s...

a horizon at the touch

of yr voice

---

[1] Grand Marnier instead of Cointreau

^[2] this is a story abt the hypotnenuse of a ghost

come on in and take off yr skin and rattle around in yr bones # 5

            “Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in”

            the bloodstreams of paramedics •• at the 7-11 as they look out of the windshield toward a cityscape •• near the waterfront •• of an alligator in a tweed suit •• writing “Dear Diary” poetry full of Congressional Hearing jargon & rhetorical questions •• why isn’t palindrome spelled the same way backwards •• trying to forget skeletons in the closet •• (i.e. youthful frottage w/ movie studio glossies of Shirley Temple or flirting w/ a zebra mascot during a K-Mart grand-opening weekend) •• the recollections uncovered •• unpredictably •• like they were found in a pocket of a topcoat •• hung on a wooden hanger that belies the snug harbour •• of disjointed lines •• in a hypothetical poem called “doubting Joseph Burgess” •• it’s like Postmodernism in reverse •• a semicolon is just a broken bone •• that limns the tension w/in the lines •• so here we are concealing concessions •• “i plead the 3^rd, senator” •• (as there’s no escaping this box w/ no sides) •• how can we abdicate our dreams •• when there’s no shelter w/in the double-agent charisma •• of a penguin martini-drunk & reading a first-edition Roget’s in the back of an ambulance •• at the boat ramp •• tumbling for an answer •• w/ the tragic melancholy of a sterile white stretcher •• reframed as an analytical question •• “what evidence can you list that wd substantiate the claim that ‘a sterile white stretcher is tragically melancholic?’ •• each of us must have, at one point, looked past these latent emergencies •• Aucun chemin de fleurs ne conduit a la gloire •• as the synonyms inside a one-time pad •• start to hum an updated jazz standard •• (b/c the idle time between calls of EMTs are like Salvation Army brass bands) beginning a different set of surreally existential enquiries