The Big Game Is Every Night
i.m. Jason
Molina
being young enough to know
enough not to keep
reburning
the Civil War, should i give up
on giving into disbelief? maybe
stop letting chains binge
on charms of my lover’s mouth?
in a pink pink pink
punk swoon love
adjusts
its difficulties, readjusts
its power as you can
make a mirror warm
as you fall back into your
love of one more thing
as vulnerable clarity
through their going
some return to you
through the impact
of needing, being
kneaded through
alms that steady
the blush, to skim
the lake for good vibrations
small and unhidden –
slow going, but it is
going
Resistance –
it’s a big game
& the big game
is every night,
a mountainous rose
swells of diamond surfers,
dub sparks
on the moon’s hood,
glittery wolf
at the brim of her kind
Year in Streaming
hands as
full and in-
complete as dancers
denying the
inaugural
summering
down
clovered in
rosemary
could i burn
through
waxing rainbow moonstone
in a
spiral, crocodile
the child
& siren align
wave by
wave
but at what
difference
and roses.
allllll day.
“will you
stop suffering
for
like, a
minute?”
breaking into the river
for
everything at once
is stone
ground down to powder
thrown, a
tumbler brought closer
through all
you’ve never had:
to teach
myself to rest is
not to
squander,
to
quarantine is linening this madness
lighter off
as sun hit
cymbal
gonging to
ask by swan-
swank
humming
back when we
were still
planets to a
plum,
an anxious
fissure casque
Poem on Ted Berrigan’s Birthday Placed in an
Old Pair of New Balance Sneakers and Left on the Stoop at New Balance Factory
Outlet Store Brighton Massachusetts
my name is [your name] and I am your
constituent –
The shoes of
the fisherman are some
jive-ass
slippers.
The shoes of
the fisherman’s wife are
The shoes of
the fisherman’s ex-wife
are some
hive-mass
trip-ass tippers.
With the
city with the country
and its
daddy issues
Not even the angels
want to wear
my red shoes
from the
overflowing
brim of a
high-
mind
american moral
bargain bin
I’ve walked
too far with
ghosts of
old balance –
power,
its
stultifying molds
it’s been
hard doing anything
lately with
a dream of keeping it
together,
tender not fragile,
a childhood speaks to
its riot,
understanding
fear, taken
out of
context,
fails both sides
of the
divide,
that which
is made to
laugh behind,
return in,
from
to emptied
out busking
anger, past
trips i hung
up on
pleas of
displacement after the block fire
pleas for an
end to being a bystander
please for
being “the literary one”
at the
office, tasked
to explain
the difference
between
Roman vs
Greek tragedy
(this one
being
neither –
there there
there empty
stand me here,
or
here here
here &
we aren’t going anywhere
being
neither
violet thrush,
nor sunburst
as Shoeless Joe
sits
til the end
of the anthem,
stands
before a
game that’s already begun
11.15.2016
Wrong Shirt
Before a big production meeting some businessmen, presenters
and clients alike, gather in the public restroom, primping and adjusting,
rehearsing phrases in the
mirror like so many hot-air hand-dryers. Some
invisible Pan removes their shirts and flings them in a cottony mountain on the
restroom floor. The men, now each stripped
of their carefully shaped
professional identity, desperately sift through the pile of shirts for their
own; however, the relative similarities in the cuts, sizes, and colors result
in various mistaken identities. A few discombobulating false starts result in
discomfits from a too tight color, a too long sleeve, an errant pattern, an
unfamiliar stripe.
Despite frantic obfuscations, the men collectively pull
together. By the time of the meeting, any attempts to impress the potential
client, or intimidate with hard-lined
negotiation tactics, proves ineffective,
as each man from the bathroom looks around the table, out-of-breath, face discolored,
silently terrified that at some critical
negotiation point, they may be exposed
by a savvier, more opportunistic man at the same table, who might break their
silent pact – though troubling the line, if one were
to be exposed, the whole
outfit would be implicated – that every one of them at the table was wearing
the wrong shirt…
High Contrast
After Gabor Szabo
( 1) Breezin’
(after Grenier)
wind as slight a yellow
butterfly
above her
shorter
“we alter
things
we haven’t
made ourselves”
( 2) Amazon
Overheard:
“can
you stop suffering
for,
like, a minute?”
the consensus is / an engine
is dumber than a gun & that’s hard.
What’s “move forward”? Anything can
call an apse an apse.
What’s that BOOMING out there?
What’s “an economy”?
Grease the rose of reason?
( 3) Fingers
Of
an out-of-range-
quaker
sculpting with color
the sites
of former theatres
to project
all forgotten loves
on the scrim of
your closed eyes.
Hold on
to what you have –
so little.
Of.
( (4) Azure Blue
If a flag to fault
for-
giving Saints
the choice
to stand for
for
or not
“attention now
wistfully drifting
into distance” (Sotere
Torregian)
(5)
Just a Little Communication
brah yelling
from the blue of
his passenger side
FREE RIDE!
FREE RIDE!!
at the bus stop queue
not. sure. do you
think
he means
his privilege
like a tooth that glistens
mistily
whistles, as
it loosens, falling
back from the top of the order
(6) If You Don’t Want My Love
while bootlegging
The World Series
search results for
“how do you say
‘how do you say’
in French”
returns: translated
slang for French Kissing
as “to roll a shovel”
& i can dig it
comment
dites-vous
“racist Indians cap” ?
Final Score:
Bad Guys 1,
Good Guys
aren’t keeping score
(7) I Remember When
I remember when this place used to be
a City Sports.
I remember when this place used to be
a Strawberries.
I remember when this place used to be The
Globe Corner.
I remember when this place used to be
a Hilltop.
There, no longer
Here, & ever
More, the body
Passes by. King
The mind with
Laurel.
Witch Hazel.
Money Tree.
Pink & green &
How to dance
An avalanche.
Peace Lily.
