I'm moving.

at least i am trying to.

am migrating to wordpress: http://nohelpforthat.wordpress.com

it's a bit more chipper looking than this blog...not sure how i feel about it yet.

FOU, for me and for you

fou

a great new online journal.

my favorite line so far is from Bob Hicok's "Focal point of repeated ekphrastic stanza":

"He came down from the mountain to magnet a note to the fridge,
'I’m not coming down from the mountain.'"

Story

The girl aligns all the objects in a room. She takes photos. Heralded in the corner, she pushes record and answers unheard questions into a pink and green box. The girl changes colors. She sleeps in bathing suits and thinks up instances where someone she does not know stops her. There is driving. There is no time to look at what’s leaving. There is no time to read about it in a book or underline its shapes. The pink trim speaks to the windows. It swallows up the corners but lets small buckets fill up below. She sleeps on damp blankets and doesn’t move. She dips her hand over the edge and reaches for familiar shapes, unsure if she is lying next to someone she knows. In the grey house there are two beds. One of them is close to the floor, where once she found four hands. In the house on the street with no name the bed folds open and withstands little pressure. Her body as light as it could. She has thinks about water and then packing and then about giving it all away.

Everything's hanging ever so gently

Automobiles
& search lights

& intimacy sulk
down the Mississippi,

redeeming narrative
structure & direction.

If this is “I” here,
then this is not “I”

there and if we skim
along for long enough

we will outlast
what rivals our

warmly brushed faces.
Patterns menace liplessly

in the grown light,
in rolling side steps

& the indelible warmth
of all or nothing.

A lark, is a lark,
is a lark, lonely

on a empty top
& wants things

that are still
without names

on this flowing penitentiary,
wants to recollect

one isolated image:
a kitchen with high

chairs, a counter
that one can climb.

The Dream Counsel

Folding chairs and folded paper

taciturn born anticipation

slinging thread crossed and knotted

covering no one, when no one is near

the open glade slides along a metallic edge

a man makes a lake to cool off the land

the ghost show stars 10 little fingers in a plastic case

pink and orange hollyhocks toned by geography in the back yard

the alignment of beetle shells on bark

toad-padded sidelines, their chins pulled tight

acquired by burnishing perimeters

red and swollen and careening

the roaring civilian incident

action waits to be retrieved from those who know better

The Smell Hound

Chirping from behind the refrigerator

door, degrees varied in warm bodies

& pitching luck caught in garbage cans.

Concession made for larger skeleton hands.

There is either feeling good or feeling bad

or running with explosives duct taped

to your legs, circling around brick buildings

& glazed over by practicality.

Today

The historicity of plastic molds,
dollar bills, their edges yellowed
to the wall. Festivities occur
regardless. The long flaying
peacock feather. Small paintings
like walls of crooked teeth, their eyes blinking.

Today

Straight lines wrestle the crowd.
Hints of deterioration in grass work flumes
and the placement of boardwalks by salty air.
A project of unforeseen misfortunes
acquiescing in the bathtub.
We match outfits and stand close together,
our feet bunched up in tiny shoes. The superb
clank of lovers, their sugar moon in the sky all day.

Today

Reduction of inking and emptying,
each day a different motion stretched.
Hands swings forward forming blush
on little cheeks and each day the glass
is cleaned and the log is lifted
a little higher than the knee, a thousand
buoyant mornings that ask the same thing.
Rendered cuff-links and paw tracks.
Altercations under building awnings
with gold poles, having finally arrived.
Careless meters, the diagram fraught
with conciliation, a constant who-done-it
brazenly rewound and rewound.
Exposition works better than remembered.
The syllable of each word, each naming.
Cherubic plastic scenes, the eyes suggesting peace.

Red Fortress

Red fortress, I’ll expose to you
my undersides, my concentrating
mastery and derelict non-futures.
Carrying electrical direction as
a frame entering the ordained position
where we are caught. My legs
and the washing machine, a metal
coil and windows below as headlights
return. Barracks expanded slightly
with side streets but always nosed
in the same direction. Guiding ceiling
and descending steps, having touched
another and certain you would never be
able to pull out. Diction and sarcasm
are a constant predicament. I was certain
you only existed when I was there,
disbelief in your alacrity, your ability
to be seen by others. Fair tenderness
opposes inability. I have other ways
to conjure remarkable flooring and the idea
of hair and shaped chin. A weight
looking down upon the hollow,
feigning repose. My back wall against
introduction allies what is intentional
and what results from chance:
the whitening of extension. Serenity
articulated and refined through
fingers like industrial boxes in the distance,
releasing what they have successfully
altered. Journeys and shoulders
and nudge-nudging, a repetitive chorus,
an octave according to blue, according
to the box it emanates from. A constant
intake of ways to get out of here. Ownership
is achieved in bunches and bellows
from the height of a shelf, arms stretched
upward at nothing. Hands open wide again
and again in their well-exercised routine.

Today

Lightly, without a bottom:
a present, a particle, a plastic bag.
My important impression, intently columned.
Post forward in hope of response.
Vestured space immune to nothing,
approached by nothing.
No colors, no collective baggage.
Nothing to pass down to smaller hands if smaller hands are created.
Reoccurring travels passed the same street signs
because this is the only way home and all you do is return there.
Concrete carousel, a battle of tires versus will.
Instruction has moved the body and the seasons
and the way we cloak ourselves at the table.
Vantage rings over an impersonal place and everyone answers,
everyone says hello and wonders what will follow
as efficiency is brushed over our backs, the fabrication of know-how
needing to be trimmed and postured.
Inarticulateness has resulted in many losses,
many residual handshakes and partings.