gorilla
poems by leum
i Holy Trademark ii piano sonata palimpsest iii asemic haiku logomachy chrysalis iv width manifold cough crescendo diminuendo pleasing news, soft decay upon my fingertips, my lips nothing they sing, they say Marie alchemy when you look at me On the next page a dog constantly biting at my leg. The Requiem of the act of self dusk violet ampersand violin infinitum villanelle veil Wyoming sepia from a stone. lavender magnolia rosetint hydrogen guerilla dusk my past into dust the Capitol Circle Apple abstruse oneiric susurrus couplets. noon moon lion like claustrophobic apples in pineapples while a hominid persona polyphony infomania parage incarnates
for Amberlee Marie Shashaty
i constant overuse of binary formalities, byproducts of product consumption, tertiary confounds within the limits of paradoxical contingencies, pending circumstance of blatant placement hidden by its duration and market reasoning, notes followed by corresponding melodies, images with their slideshow memories, a single dot in a set of constellations, the consolation given from corporate gods, you shall have no other gods before me.
Holy Trademark supernal Sri Lanka labia lint servitude, for for not I was Abraham not far from Abraham St Joel sounding the alarm coffee-swirl sweep-picking dandelion stream stress strewn streetlight strawbell farewell screwball straddle forward strings meeting at a certain point at a certain angle.
ii what do you consider victory? green lilies spread across a wasteland of red roselet, this talks right, that performs right, left, take the next left, petals getting heavy, rest. quiet of the raindrops on the window glass. a street untouched by advertisement. to resolve the resolute from the ruined unrequited rush, scrubbing the dishes of your first love—unjust, jostled, unanimous.
piano sonata palimpsest I but you, the milk of the moon menagerie meditations mumbled humble of marker mock-cop pulling out of the gate vultures over a cemetery in front of my complex compact contextual contracted contact redacted bail-bond posted belated notice of a pernicious pavement pace with respect to peace, space, palace, plate, mace mass, massage masks, contradictions & candle catharsis, crystal actuaries, daily dairy estuary sanctuaries, sanctioned contractions bonfire bona fide goldilock plank at the edge of a crescent. Alas, a pardon of my sins, a Mexican rest stop restaurant closed for rent by the courthouse quick sold time stone drowned dossiers do soul’s soils solely sow, says doughty solve smite site suite sure of, of the, her lovely lively lonely likely robins preening on a Verizon store sign last libel some guy stole store-smoked be with you in just a moment secretary smile. Don destitution testifying to the sky’s jury. Sabon Garamond typeset, you say verse but said tango, a black robed angel here with my skull carried like a newborn my byzantine viscera, my lichen ambrosia, my yesses and noes on top of a cheesecake holding in cast sunlight between my hands, the motif walking into the sundown epistle.
iii There you go again, with your ritual of frustration, imitating insect decomposers & their feed. I have become what I couldn’t be, a plaintiff in your cult of imaginary fault lines. Gatherings cancelled to the wind-pull of a chime. I am thankful for the atrophy of our prayers, like my father’s ignorance to the calm meditation the new moon’s disguise as the full moon brings to my lycanthropy motion. I have stolen the parchment of my children. A heavy brick of cement my neck holds. No star in sight in a cloudful Goodwill. Lord, help Him & save Him & guide Him toward eternal light. At the top floor, barking at your door.
asemic haiku logomachy chrysalis coarse dioramas morose requite halcyon apartheid harpsichord prometheus rhapsody omniscient relinquished encore neopolitan banana bread & republic recalcitrant hyetal benign repose perspicacious repo tumbleweed retribution sacrilegious litany sacrament canon yoke conversations opus opting trowel talons fallible oculus cicada proverb corpus modulus rain seeping through the holes of my umbrella stratus shroud gluing milkweed wings on Frenchtown streets, one moon darker than the other.
iv You have started a war you cannot escape from. Bought a pack after being invited to an empty house. Lines packed with symmetries of dissonant coagulation. Do you like me better in my clinging apparatus stage or would you prefer my centipede legs crawling on your skin? I have longed for too many days without water. Blizzards reign from my scalp. A mass of the world’s sins on the backs of the most complicated. An encroachment upon the living dead, all a bunch of sinners. Exasperation of my expiration. Small birds skipping from tree to post, crossing the street over green-light traffic. You best get off my street, boy— you’re a car wreck away from losing your jaw to a hook-line hanging from the sky.
width So this is what my life has become, a series of dead ends & recapitulations, a series of hashtags and generalizations, a metaphor for the weary hearted, and for those who do not wish to be touched, a similar simile like a twelve dollar key lime pie made fresh with a sprinkle of sage from my fingertips as the sun goes down on my hips.
manifold marigold merryweather houseplate syndicate baby proof fire escape ordaining adornment adjourned jack in the box twist and pull lever savvy pulley handle sunscreen suddenly bell ring popper noise fight dropped stop before the last thrown rock is skipped across Lake Michigan.
cough with too many wishes to count, the sky misses the absence of weight— assiduous oblivious obsessive oxidation, a mug holding the voices waiting to be drank.
crescendo diminuendo Clouds galloping their mountains in the treetops ahead, raising and lowering their hooves to the wind’s cue. The night’s wake, the day’s wane, full the shore of the ongoing tide; accumulations of exclamations ready to melt in a sky of mines. What to say to you that has not already been said in silence. In my isolation, I consider the facets of rearranged similes and their assimilations over a handful of civilizations from a proverbial standpoint into a state of correlation, I hand my speeches to a congregation of dragonflies, I expunge the vale of ordinary flavors in favor for a sunset’s view of the sunrise, I know not what I want but know I want. I am uncertain you have captured on your lens the lexicon of my frustration, the alphabets I use limited in their devotion to the divine languages nature languishes. No longer will I be a conflagration of leftover sentences, the pebbles I set down at Lake Michigan an induction to an inspiration of skipped stones on the riverbed of our current humanity, an instigation planned to be longstanding. A monk sits crisscross on an empty lot braiding the sun’s golden locks. I, a walking statue weighing tears against the grail of inferences, desolate ashes bleeding from my palms.
pleasing news, soft decay Love is a quantum picture of decipherable mechanisms flying overhead like the astral geese flocks moving on in fixture to become waves of automobiles with their headlights on rummaging through the gray paragon before night.
upon my fingertips, my lips Years comprised of tears and gears, fears hear, my dear. Days be like this, borrowed and begged back. A paradigm of fashionable flashes of settled shifts. A recitation of fathomable restitution. The old French Town bus driver lady with long nails tells her guest to leave his seat open for an old fool on the wheelchair. Nature, the roughest juxtaposition, a teacher whose lessons of leisure are licensed by the state’s springs & forests, parks & reserves a reserved parking spot. I mettle through the reaves of solemn disparity. The death of one’s kind is a gift to catastrophe. I can comprise avenues to alleyways. I have written in shorthand runoffs of yellow indigo dried petals. Fragments of a painting do not concern me, the erased sentence does not pressure me. To be damned in love saves clarity. Charity, like a bucket of sacrifice, comprehensive, the immigration list of tic-tac-toe holds open the door meant to be kept closed. I wish you luck in obscuring the rose tinted kaleidoscope. Darling, I wish the world the end of the
rainbow.
nothing Life is nothing but a rhombus attempting to become a circle in a matter of minutes left on a chess clock surrendering to the sky with a white golf tee. She is nothing but the eye of a storm staring at my feet on the ferry headed to lightning.
they sing, the owl’s hoot a bass note in a line of alto voices for the daily morning choir. who died first, the poppy seed or the soil beneath? we finished our nights as fledglings do, in unforgiving meadows.
they say Tallahassee is home to the erratic, the pneumonic, erotic, self-loathing deprecating wildfire Florida has to offer. Your name is a city etched on a canvas with graffiti. I know this now because I’ve been there before— not what they say, a map of words— no, letter to letter, a state of mitigation in contrary to a litigation from the state. I can feel the conundrum of my blood pulses, each beat yelling at the streetlight, I will not be a slave with a briefcase, I will not walk in tandem with an army of footsteps morning & night, the same rhythm played on the radio, talk show hosts guiding the orchestra of the daily commute from the American Dream to a nightmare. The mark of St. Thomas is on your lips from kissing the vigil of Christ, Virgil by your side, a virgin holding your hand as you welcome guests from Hades. The sewers below your feet begin to ice over. The clouds above freeze in place. You are no longer the song of your father, your mother has given her farewell, cracks on the pavement the scribbles left by nails.
Marie I am the sun & the moon, the eyes of the sky, you are the earth & its creatures, faces in the tunnels underneath the crust, passion flowers pressed on our cheeks. I long to be the metal heated by molten coal, I express hesitance in my metamorphosis from human to surreal. My myth has been written in millennium, I kiss the plated gold sterling cold table, leaving my lipstick dry on the sand encrusted dust. You float when you speak, you talk in your sleep, your hair is the flag I wave, when I put down the knife I pray. The feet you chose to wear are constant and the same goes for property deductions. You are tax exempt & I am postage stamped. You are the headliner & I am the opening act. O literature, you are the butterfly & I am the bee.
alchemy when you look at me for Tatiana I have painted magnificence upon your back. Do you not see it? Contour lines marked from your shoulders to your neck, deliverance from severance, inimitable as reference to the brushed stroke on the arch of your spinal harp. I played your puppet strings before as a child in the mid-sixties, one-sided, tremolo continua tremolo. I place there a banquet of Saturn’s cornucopia capricious on the kitchen diner table for you. When we leave, my love, we realize ourselves on all whom we touched. You sigh alone the fire from your chest, dragging along the headless bodies you lost lives ago. A heavy mug of rainfall you kept outside last month overflows. I’ve here a crown of thorns if you’re so inclined. How much I long for the stream to pour from my eyes, the roots and canals trailing rivers forward to you. I’ve left the sink running to wash the floor of the phrase, we are who we worship, indomitable, inimical. O, you didn’t know? You’re already dead; and the relevant boat on the Styx has just passed with the last rest of sogging time.
On the next page The sun in a crimson night sea innumerable ways of seeing her. The sky and her wardrobe stockpiled with assets & price raises. Infinity wearing nothing but limits, the benefit of a startup. My star leaving me when the time is right. Ivory nights, marooned clouds, violet seas, black as the shadow of a painting.
a dog constantly biting at my leg. The geese land in Lake Ella after a long trek from Crawfordville, white camellia petals pushed by the breeze, her silhouette in a fog in love with Death, a black dress holding white daisies, stems pulled by the fingers of the Moon. Did you pull those flowers from the garden? You sink into the lake holding red roses covering your eyes, I hold up my hands in surrender to the city scape, pink and green waves crashing onto the purple shorelines of existence from the waters of nonexistent sentences. Your hands touch the cold ground in prayer, the Sun King’s benediction exuding organic chemistry in oratio imperata. I have been kissed by girls with golden lips. I sang a ballad for the Lord, a dog constantly biting at my leg. All the colors of the land black in the dusk. It can never end if it never began.
The shadow of a willow tree sulking on the side of building twelve following you to your room, the burning bush now a candle from too drift a wind, playing checkers on your skin with the pupil you see in the mirror, ahead, the end, a canopy of Spanish Moss overlaying the background of Black Dog’s star, a cat sitting on your car, drinking coffee from a mug with Amelia’s sun touching your back, all in the night’s white light.
Requiem The game is conversation. We make it as we go. And every night before bedtime, we kiss goodnight the dead knowing just how damn well cold the dead can get. Each phrase an incantation. All the candy-wrappers the years have to offer put on the top-most cabinet, please. A short roller-coaster ride after, and we all fall back to sleep.
of the act of self dusk real desk seal deal my legs over the edge of the cliff the end of the film like living in the sequoia wilderness self care the careful act of biting into an apple the first morning of the last month before purgatory dawn self care about biting fingers off dusk by dusk
violet ampersand violin infinitum villanelle veil The gorge river an amphitheater in the canyon As a bridge in lost sheet music to past aeolian Morals, a cross hidden in a gas station’s ruin, & a martyr breathing in the berating city’s ruin. At the moment in the land of judgment Nailing hands to our crosses individually Calling out Sanskrit words to a rattletrack Made by the drifting shadow of a pigeon, The moon’s ran by the wolves of Apalachicola Yet we greet Monroe St with a hint of worship. The capitol is moved daily by capital letters & My geisha longs to find her sunflower samurai The postal office mailed last year. Twelve thirty-six, eight gunshots And the cops are getting closer To the projects for an ivy orgy A long ways away from the Beaches and springs of Wakulla. Random siren glare in the eye twitch Running dialogue hands behind my back Iroquois proboscis prognosis ode to an ode Mad gypsy moth salsa-dancing for the light Enjoyment of the huntsman spider on its web Said spun, This is not the way the world runs.
Wyoming sepia from a stone. My eyes are Victorian paintings, my nose a blurred figure skater, my lips the ink continually worked on. When shall I replace you, my muse? Hoots to the church chirps to the far barks, the crow always caws close. From the absurd since the beginning of time, blood from a stone. Fat free and cat friendly, every day has already said goodbye. What death dealt colder than the weather spares me now? Beaches the siren dialogue of the eye behind my hands, eyes the rooftop lovers separated by a page longing to lock a kiss with another. Coniferous prima parte, speak I and but sweet dreams my tomorrows. Plexiglass slideshows coordinated deplorable polyester table box chart in a graph drinking the streetlights off with buckets of acrylic running to ask the canvas what next, trepidation, or respiration mezzanine cloverfield dust covered the dregs of Wyoming.
lavender magnolia rosetint hydrogen once upon a comma consider the sedition of the standing bark corner dunce stool you o i here lies loved and moss the last sentence saboteur soirĂŠe. given bones, taken flesh like chlorophyll water tank designs. depart the tire fleeing from Kissimmee roots wheeling in wind to Clearwater wildberry acres adjacent to acquittal billboards of cafĂŠ con leche americano cappuccino award ceremony saison stout simulacrum. Parkland Pulse Las Vegas Sandy Hook Columbine flowers dancing in a masquerade macabre ball. television trash praying to an azalea skyline. like turning a sheet of music upside down to read the notes, alto the new bajo, tenor exactly where it should be, rain seeping through the cracks of a thunderstorm awake and ready to hear, the black keys always leaning up against the white.
guerilla supremacy lilac lotus capitulation as if epithet an obituary sitting idle next to its own epigram mint on the condition an epitaph by ridden by hydrolysis of its sommelier kin consumerist minute maid band aid gorilla consortium. maxim escapement scaffold chronology of eviction summons flung to the front office iridescent facts I admit. TV broadcasts glitch seminar supple swallowtail & moan monarch debris by the Volusia bus stop yellow lily sightsee why the nimble stratus nimbus cry passing New Leaf and heading to lightning. This humble siren friendly biting an apple the city’s calling, wolves nailing space.
dusk my past into dust Apalachicola barks solely the sunlight moth springs through lost dialogue. I want to write a lithograph confessed of impertinent exorcised professions I want to become railroad blind blue sunspot zero stop avenue signed in geothermal sign sheet longing day sutra buckets with beginnings free mumbled longing servitude glare sins of ivy behind my canvas courthousing my BOH crescent runs at typeset time, the secretary crow beaches sunlight judgment lively holding gingham tallahassee helicopter powerlines my meditations on the pivot of a bridge & to edge shall the cemetery dawn letters mad breathing individually the martyr to my morning restaurant living milk capitol point absurd cast words. A dandelion. Victorian Mexican Valencia vacant lot but full the chair. Mumbled hands running streetlight eyes getting tomorrow’s desk lovers biting from pernicious weather belated purgatory sure self cake the certain graph to far sanctuaries my farewell, my benign, my sandy covered Goodbye sky’s dusk at canyon sundown lovely, asks the dandelion.
the we were very much too warm afternoon. I am destined for air conditioning my shortcomings forthcoming the world we failed, and here you leave y aquĂ te vas, respuesta final my final response, jubilant monstrance getaway car calamitous commercial boulevard plantation parkway the streets we gave our goodbyes to as well as as though crosses meeting here, labia contractions music a moon And I the black samurai the rooftop seal plank stop skull hidden eyecare of drinking closed to contact sweet past of overdrowned lips a figure web.
Capitol Circle Apple Hefe character brick door setting stratosphere chiasmatic cylindrical cynical viagra migraine playback rewind feature shot all I got after my loads of playing hooky. How many yards are in the Milky Way and what is that in years? How many boxes fit the rings of Saturn and where to move the plastic ocean? A marginalized plaintiff and the partitioned flags of the districts of Upper West Virginia candid invitation right winged conventions considerate with delinquents and prophets voted twice for Mamma, no we can’t protests. Meanwhile, rifles lobby for shooting rights, an acknowledged Loki doodle election poodle bamboozled chocolate fountain face covered drag dripping in sweat and fucks of gasoline fake new Russian boy toy spy tumblr sucks stayed the weekend, slipping the poll results. How tallied the chalkboard suitcase of souls? Sick days facial radiant on rocking riots but teachers gotta teach and birds gotta preach unfriended by the senate capital house seats & black kids don’t get radio choir time to sing so it’s good live lipsynching media coverage whenever Fox and CNN have dinner together apparently. Church & State the same sentence given to folks in a recent presidential speech, toast soggy Ramen homeless street tears black wine Federal Trade Reserve drinks from cooking pots hanging from blonde trees catching rainfall drifts in cascading branches like an espresso machine, tweets wild & free. Rhyming comes easy when talking steam bull money.
abstruse oneiric susurrus couplets. I saw the moon drowning in its mercurial tears and did not light the porch on fire. The sun is my witness to the hospital visits each minutes makes to take a minute away. Leopards, jaguars, panthers and tigers drink from the same bank of my sweat. Hammering hammer-ons forever the fool paintbrushing lips topsoil red. You are the lighter of my conclusions, platinum venison undertow star. Once you, once than, once all of us in Babel. Smote praxis I and so. An anathema demographic vociferously indefatigable. Providence born from an open portcullis east in acclivous sky-west onomatopoeia, pulled by morning vermicelli skein with neon benediction jasmine knots.
noon moon lion La guitarra me llama nutella granola rootbar blackened orange the root of my gold eternal plateau of beetle terrariums a wart hunchback whale in the room projecting concern onto project notecard daiquiris ore chair meta train catatonic infrastructure collapse The sun is shining the sea and carpeting the moon whether not late blooms of white weather follow the ending roasts of salmonella grill encampment BBQ beach bar views The moon is smiling words of waxing eyes of god fleeing your tongue lisps of waterfall drainage dredged aisles cyanide and bye-bye What would my childhood say daycare rendezvous in zeitgeist parody the only therapy for label introductions albeit I’ll admit barrel aged vermilion frank frankenstein held my fishing line dramamine days stripped of my skin Would you please hang up my tremolo cells against cells loan-shark red & corn-starch ready culture-strike match casa nuova blanca in sito Gone the while from the weight of my waiting lustre of the séance for your maelstrom lettering wisps of willow nightlight fireflies I begin in ice-cream snow-cone egg rotations balanced on te lleva la lluvia fences dripping hoppy cold-brew pour-over liberty city echelon hopscotch goodnight gingerbread tea inside central park tree-root outsourced free-market reams developed into pantomime annunciation pronounced inamorato lo que ves en vez de un beso y era ahí que te vi tomando mi vino cherry bark loquat sweetwater osmosis moon dressed in leaves hoot relieved statuette motherboard.
like claustrophobic apples in pineapples Quintessential Machiavellian entropy dish subtitles proselytize to closed-caption ears of corn backlash backwash backtracking backward backpacks spread in backyard backgammon blackjack playing blackface backstage with a backhand to Blackhawks another nickname for backup headstones. And it was then I decided to be the valley and not the skyline full of pens and bones.
while Why do we run away from love? From which hate? Happy we are spared and bought by the notion of another dollar less spent for our neighbors. We all have a common enemy: fear. Shall we feed the pigs once more our leftover refugees? Look me in the eye when you peel my skin. And what did you learn from graduating, how to write a better thesis on trees? Teach me to sing, not to rip out your teeth. Please do not rhyme with my heart. By far, I am not what I am. My name is moribund, distraught by the ostentatious right with their rights pointing ardent at what hellenistic left, hedonistic with hermetic bills. The bells are typewriting the last sentences to be read on banners and protest signs. Yesterday, in arid afternoons, we ran the cold factories of ink and more. Tonight, we drink our apples seedless. Tomorrow morning, we raise a different flag, one with only a stripe and star.
a hominid persona polyphony infomania parage incarnates for all humanity now & ever aphonic bodice of hubris given a hyperbole today sat down while tomorrow standstills landing to take off whatever weather sojourns adagio winds free-bowing bows to the sea modulated bee steps on zodiac exodus mosaic day by day I told you dandelions I’ve been handing out my eyes to passersby how you were once a blue butterfly’s nest envisaging an allegory bloom myriad of dunes it would be best not to walk eternity twice at ease, fringe cadaver of nilpotent saplings dripping hot amber honey sweet red sweat incubus incursive caprice to a verdant afflatus apartheid at the dawn of dusk where wanted ripped honey, where waiting tore attention, sequin sockets usurping labyrinths nightingales codex into comets manifest axioms of ether glass suns collapsed cosmic conduits expressing l’appel du vide hourly fools, blind and hands tied behind our eyes la vida y la muerte, tan similar, tan diferente rather, poetry is like Einstein rather, with woven worlds at our fingertips rather, we build pyramids for kings purporting to be gods, aneurysms of theology BC and after the flood of ingrate narcissist hush, allegro fatal fortissimo etude free-falling austere my verboten rest said verbatim down to the last letter sent the words etcetera and etcetera
Š 2018 Luis Eduardo Utrera Morales All Rights Reserved leum.com @leum__ @wildbrokenman