I would not I would not I would not believe I would not believe not believe not believe would not believe believe in believe in a believe in a snowman believe in a snowman in a snowman a snowman who does not dance.
2008 Š copyright Tom W. Lewis
1 turning tornados for the exile Not yet, where the multitudes wait for no end of the cycle the cycle demands the ruse until it’s all a golus. Holy holy destroy who drew all from the year, only only is the superstructure not a promise a land, not a promised land, but a wan tale told too much. The congress of Jews is doomed. Thin holiness contained the multitudes cease only cycle demand now. Where the year, the resting angel counts first allowing outways, turning the beholding. Time to me and make breath he mountained, he was maintained. The fissures, retures, not tense exits to its found the house inundations. Sinuously rebars breath, is born and enlandering, counts as long. Its foundations do not extend the house. 2
2 She Drew a Picture On My Hand 1 Aid in drawing, aid in drawing a litle picture (squeeek!). Rate this government where the statement knows what to do. Moby-Dick thought he had enough time. Colonel Sanders thought he had enough chickens. The Marketing Department thinks they have the right plan. And what was that? What was it every person meant? Does the wash pack a punch as well as yesterday’s takeaway? The expectation is that this agency will keep track of who is a donor, who is a donut. The detail is on how hot everyone keeps their database. The perspective is gauged in this operation’s moving parts. A little picture is drawn at the start of every life. A little squeek is born under the mother of every mouse. A little is enough for everyone to get started. The partners work almost totally in isolation. The partners name themselves. The partners define each new need. As perspective is gained, the significance of timing can be allowed to fade away. Triumph determines mastery. If there were asters in a vase on that table right now, the scene would perfectly mimic a moment out of the Old West. 3
A new statement now is forwarded. A brave name now retracts from identity’s fringes. People change, and demographic research indicates that’s nothing new. Where the government is on top of its game. 2 This girl walks into a room and the Marketing Department votes on its new campaign. This girl walks into a room and nobody recognizes her accent. This girl walks into a room and behaves precisely as expected. To bear out their astronomical equations, the Mayan culture sacrificed every priest resident in Las Vegas. To breathe takes a kind of equivalent action in the external environment. To baste, where bathing would do, is hubris. So the break comes when all expectations have been exhausted. Moral imperfection was deemed the cause for the crankshaft snapping while the car moved through a fast-food restaurant drive-thru. The look in that duckling’s eyes seems to portend murder. She raised her hands in church and felt the Holy Spirit touch her fingertips. He makes a name to hang around his neck at night while he’s asleep. Folding in the words for everyone is everyone’s responsibility. In the words that citizens encounter, nowhere do they get definitions for “contribute” and “enlargen.” The nitty-gritty is a stark contrast offering each government a purpose and a result and longevity where extreme conditions draw everyone in.
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3 Couldn’t Hit the Muse Side Melpomene lost her sandal in the mud Terpsichore stubbed her toe Satanic mudras of the Underworld Every finger snaps and defends Unreadably dense in an hour’s time That’s what they said in the forecast So black, so black. We couldn’t see cloud And the urine-colored past is gone The apparent action was only for show As Clio cartwheels into our barn How clean must your hands be to throw a rock? When it is little the work is pure O screaming Sybil in leaf-piles, utterances On Helicon the woodbine weaves women’s figures Tire, wave and wrap so much in the heat And so too the telephone cords, winding, flapping “Or yourselves abundant.” I hope this means me And Calliope says, “the work is in the doing” Something will hit her in the divinity so right The hills sing and break at her terrible delight 5
4 If you aren’t God, why do you keep on looking at me? And this noise. When the curtain is drawn, what shows? No one is hiding behind. But the noise hides its own source. This is the mirror you gave me to break. This is the last image. The slight discomfort and aural sensitivity will be temporary. An approach to this kind of naming convention is all we will ask.
5 Torque named any in pop apricot fast, too fast for any—because more are erased in provocation? See, the meat ran, you know, for the wanted god of it is too much to have—it’s only how. This love couldn’t prophesy for all the clouds. It’s a torque to turn in, and by this leopard wrench where the line they drew, the angels were creaking and run under by what happens in the tone that we drew. Everyone you see knows it’s the timing, the now of ranching squared by the mean of acres. ‘A’ heard his grammar, wanted his own merry mutter when the clouds were ready. My face breaking got the good side by the berry dropping. Poor poor poor poor. Ask. This came out of mind. Broad Zen. Tells you nothing. 6
6 Qawwal for the Shortest Day of the Year this card speaks at 4:30. torn in the snow from razorblade tires. must be sitting around for a reason. scared to go out like rabbits. pushing the dictionary around like it was a kid. the subcontinent covered in bitumen, so real. that was the dream I didn’t have last night. mystic pattern in the quanta: I reach my hand into open air, draw back and my fingers are wet. the dark angles of the morning, such showpieces for the sacrifice of another charismatic cult. I draw a circle in the abyss. hermeneutics, cold like ashes, like hesed in the dark. the free gift for the living in this world of heat. the qawwals and sacred chants of Polynesia stir the Africa of the hidden heart. Hamlet with his hands, a street with two One Way signs. 7
where the men seemingly speak of the Virgin, the eyes of listeners wander to frozen sidewalk and a lobster with binding force, the claws of wild sea, upper waves untamed. this god is slow to save. when the fruit-bearing tree sheds no inner light, of what use are its seeds? a wondrous book of oppositions, disinformation and wilful contradiction.
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7 Why do gods come in comedy teams from the Golden Age, why do they always come in threes? Something about the triple threat, variations and permutations, possible with three cosmic beings? Larry, Moe and Curly. Groucho Chico Harpo. Osiris Isis Horus. Joseph Mary and their kid, old what’s-his-name from Nazareth. and originally in Greek tragedy only three leads performed—
the rest was taken up, acted out by the chorus. 9
8 your shade breaks across my park plans. your touch has a lot on its mind. your expression eats at a steakhouse. your building guard says “maybe� and offers alternatives. your evocation dropped its pants in the back room. your cut sounds like a house falling. your dribble has a qualifying time. your respect posits another character. your meeting has no time. your seat paid the captain. your associations save for the next round. your love takes nobody home to mother. your idea reached an ending. your YouTube account happens to be my childhood nickname. your dirty window offers me no respect.
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your repetitions abrogate sanctity. your film has no second plot complication. your diversion tames The Taming of the Shrew. your holy card holds a bag of shards. your play says what you mean. your feeling turns the sky to its own command. your road chastens the physical nature of metaphors. your summer widens in bad shape. your immateriality has a digital camera. your waiting takes its best shot.
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9 (after Sheila Murphy) she was breathed in the world they made her a being but her eyes shimmered sacrifice costs your awareness as the manger has weighed them down they had but to wait for her—for what size she was amazed that they could not feel more than a tiny lost watch and they lost their strong children turn there—something to keep her awake to a world not felt that made tiny children she sacrifices what her eyes shimmered for amazed that they could turn there to the manger
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10 Effortless anthropomorphism. Put
to the tiger.
the tiger’s medallion on the shrine
Saying it does make it so.
Burned the gold coin on
the Ganges riverbank in December.
Take that you paleface devil
from Santa Croce della Potato! Therefore be of good cheer, for imperatives and hortatory subjunctives are
on special this week — three for the price of one. Gnomic aorists don’t know how to keep a properly appointedhome.
And surgeons named
Galahad rarely become stars in Bollywood. *Gorilla grass — these are the wild sons of the Palimpsest.
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11 A dream of Washing Bears “No, this isn’t what you would think.” “He was bent on the table, in the middle of the table, like an apostrophe.” “We won’t be able to stay there after the next time.” “Hell hath no purpose but to simply freak you out.” “Here you have it: the blue sky as testimony. That walking over this piece just, how about it, a stereotype?” “Can there be any more challenge in keeping off-balance?” “Heaps of praise are coming in—or, if not that, are passing out—from all corners of the nation.” “The craftsman melts down gold as part of his statement of identity, existence, as he performs his craft in the present.” “Washing bears, washing bears—and God created washing bears, too.”
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12 Ode to the memory of Olof Öhman, discoverer of the Kensington Runestone I buried the donuts in that well. I fathered Forex, for a change. I battened with crepe in yr name, on the tongue of shedding books’ covers. The spurge was in season. Over on that shore they laugh at us and kiss the ground, draw their own blood across stone, under the roots of the tree. They suck neep roots too, after a bad dream. Swedes!? Never heard of them! But I shook whoever I found out there, in the snow, looming where salt farms falter without subsidies. And they said this Christian viking hadn’t the guts to marry Cortica the pagan pumpkin-maiden . . . Well I showed them. AND I cut down their little pagan poles with my sawsall. Here’s fuck-all in your fertility-god’s eye, creeps!
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(the mystery of the Kensington Runestone can only be understood through a deep knowledge of cultural identity and late-19th century immigration to North America) I made the rocks sit I made them stand I was passing this way and thought that a careful push would pull up something of value. we were looking for passage, we wanted to rage, the tone to rip through with feed back, distortion. islands of technology and symbol positing their own necrescence.
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13 Noting nothing marks the Xmass mess “Eight words / Four letters / One prophecy That witnesses the true coming of God On Earth / and the Defeat of Heretics (Hell’s belly shall swell with their blood)” Noting nothing marks the Xmass mess (a sacrilege) same as sacerdos, the Mason in his always effortless patience sends telegram by wishes over the hud, the skin, the hide virile: Marching orders from the front apron: officiating when (who he?) met, seems prophet-sharing (non-Mormonically) as Wuz, so certainly Fuzzy was, barely. The Phantom Respect desk is unmanned, again. And their Wikipedia site tells that JW’s must shun the apostate. If / then — over and out — observation is judgment. Anderson Cooper is idle, hits the esc key on his asthma puffer, again, again, without relief Of his media-fashionable symptoms. He was 16 when the world moved south, after Esperanza Mendoza seemed sure to take the chair of Jehovah’s Witnesses Int’l, Latin American Bureau. “Hiya, Planet IX! We thought you’d be back in time for the 7th Coming of the Bitch from Babylon!” Me so sure this is the sequence I could barf, I could throw stones at Mars — “but the pursuit of other worlds is not for you,” I heard Elder Hinckley say, before he winked out. (Everyone gets more moon during an eclipse.) Turn the page of the Book of Worship. Withstanding faith comes at a price: the yellow brain yolk turns soft, (gears &) proteins experience organizationlike a dilemma, when your prayerbook changes from automatic inspiration to a manual. 17
14 prairie harp You say anything it’s not enough— Blue-Sky Special. Arms & the Man. Leukocytes father a broken hasp, taking songs out of the harp. Reliance lay on mules to bust the path clear, after dynamite and men’s bodies had taken too long to break the earth. If you said anything special about war, it sounded like a rock-and-roll spectacular for the secular Right. Then, it was about sticking it out, about togetherness in adversity. That prairie song you got in your heart, were you going to sing it, now, when everyone’s hands are broken thanks to their own worthlessness? (variation:) You say anything it’s not enough— Blue-Sky Special. Arms & the Man. Yesterday’s reliance lay in mules to bust the path clear, after dynamite and men’s bodies had taken too long to break the earth. Now, if you say anything special about war, say, it sounds like a rock-androll spectacular for the secular Right.
Then, it was about sticking it out, about togetherness in adversity. That prairie song you got in your heart, were you going to sing it, now, when everyone’s not hearing so good, deaf from the news and their own work? 18
15 pal around with the lions and bears shepherds drive me simply mayhem wild hangovers of need and desire nothing abstract here, we have a limted amount of time to glue our edges down before the storm comes
16 the sea of sleep Sarpedon asks
grain and hand less farmers
why the sea of sleep
scratching their caps, headless
is comprised of waves and
conservatives couldn’t get
compromised by dreams—
traction (but they still won
not of thinking? the exit hadn’t
the election) brain candy
a clue where to enter, we came
for the eye strained ex
up with a plan but it involved
ecutive, es ophagus eats
arriving after our departure.
out tonight while tiger
a Macy’s parade all glittery in
takes the stay of ex
a cornfield with seas of waving
ecution pers onally, this once. 19
17 The Road Ahead Is Full of Smaller Cars (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/business/24ford.html?ref=business) There and not somewhere else In the past, say, or in promises Over the hill. And smaller fantasies. Together we play. Let us play. Let’s give back what we need. The road ahead is full of slightly more Than we can eat in a reasonable amount Of time. Mess with your plumbing For a dollar. A good rate for filling up Your pipes with joy. Together we are Priests and dignitaries of motion. Go lightly on your way, pouncing cats, In name of petroleum reserves, aloud. There, the whistling bird upon ore Mountaintops. The road ahead lies Paved with scratch-armed fathers. Think twice before you mess with a dollar. 20
18 Picabia in a Pornographic Spy Movie Set in the Mountains Outside Lima (after Lanny Quarles) Picabia said, “Pick a card, don’t touch the pawn,” to the hobo in Hobart, IN.
“Hubba hubba.”
Jokes with whores and holy women sashaying to their tables, loaded with sassafrass batshit globes. (These hausfraus are Tao.) Pornstar acrobats playing chess on other naked contortionists’ chests: “Don’t tell me where you stuck that pawn, Dearie.” Dikasts of the skin trade. “A Dick Artist’s Guide to Ixtapa” was the volume Picabia took down from Fuji-san’s jammed shelf of Ojibwe fiction. “The price of fizzle, that’s fate.” Danaan pilgrims on the banks of Academe: Akkad was a fad for these drooping kids, either every time they chirruped for Kythera or else said “yes!” to the dawn of pairing,
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“AKA, your agent for all things sedition,” akin to the nape of her spy-lover’s neck, Picabia pats her back, taps his fat sack. “Fate sure has a way of making friends for me.” Pieces of potato, picked up at the Odeon, able to “age! age!” in the Latin way, a gilgul for likenesses, or eidolons for actresses. She was one, not a spy, as Picabia parsed. Prattlin on the prism of worse habits, go, exit, sore-ass gods of the Inca mountaintop! Picabia drifts in fog of foreign africations, of posing predestinations pissing out time like punching a hole in burlap to see out of again, clear sky pick up and run patches blind this is another mountain machine.
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19 Our strong sun is not ash Our strong sun is not ash. Terebinth, myrtle, limewood— All suck the mist as men’s Hearts do, intense flavors Only in fleeting time or old Wind spirits’ season. Save The wise, who in counting Secrets shake the tree, unwrap The gods of their mysteries, The terrestrial aspect wound On a pole eaten through, form Feeding worms and men Warmed by the same sun As angels tell of, hand upon Hand, expressing the gods’ Countenance with a little motion.
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20 I will not smile will not attempt to smile, in all photo portraits— portal of the unstilled soul, passage from stormy wave inhere to inner topography, falsely deferential exter. You try it next time and see if you like it. A sham perf. of sound and light, like the Annual Eck anckar convention, and the old Klemps in wheelchairs humming H U H U H U H U H U H U through their nostrils ‘til it rolls out in rivulets down channels in the floor of the sanctuary. yeah, light and sound. yay, sound and light. yo, sight and loud. the aging population of cultists and wackshit denizens of extra terrestrial council-halls stir the pot and pass the plate and forget their own creation’s a mode of false expression, a making of life out of raw inanimate forces, a made Frankenstein’s mean place holder humping the midwest’s hills where headquartered. God has no zombie manifesto for what will happen next. it’s all a surprise, see?! about that, we pulled the plug on beautiful this morning and it is suggested that you close your eyes through this next stretch in the road. isn’t it a promising effect, eyes on hands and hands making contact with noumena over and over lidless painting possibility? better the auras and the light shift of mankind’s regeneration through this experience into action—boogie-woogie— chakra therapy—alien hot-stone massage—palliative gluteal…
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what was the brochure’s language? sciatic thong tightening, heave over there’s the spot it loosens where the spring got wound up last week, passage through secondary genethliacal hall ucinations, or other real or induced psychospacial phenomena—the end is nigh, draw me together, draw down the powers from Aer, draw me another picture, Daddy!
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21 Clarity’s denied by rascals. Charity’s depicted by saints with their arms bucketdeep in the paint-barrel. Terror to the Sun—pox materia. This morsel we drammed for skinny pickings while spring began to distract the monastery, before the vikings came. My community is a pillar of light, the pillar of conception, of conceptualization. If you dream of God, of the Sun, this is nonpresent—post-entity—but we can paint it on our walls. The sainthood is democratic (if only you knew that word). Wet-behind-the-ears, meaning that dislodges the terminal, breaks the sky open for its own skin. The black apostle couch ing nevermore in his own cell. That one’s tusk is good for bleach and moonsand lightbeams. This one onthe wall behind is special: the last best friend of Jesus. We are all furtive sparks in this cloistered zone, cut off with deliberate denial from the universal man. Reckoning chance with a basted heat of memory, with a little frustration thrown in, hazing loiterers for the husky Savior—too much parsimony, Wanderer. Terror from the Sun, is our teaching. Cowering in shade along the colonnade, but paint is soul. Augustine, your bleeding good from abomination is a means to clarify the palette and cleanse the smeary brushes in the studio. The good erodes.
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22 (after C. Olson) I’ll pay for gas I’ll pay for oil, I said, not to be confused with wingéd words of epic, of drones, too. the culmination that they wrote before an historian settled on his throne, away from land or on the coast somewhere, not his homeland. he watch but no mythologies appeared, even when the invaders from the East had come three times to make beachhead, and three times were rebuffed by stout locals. now, there’s a story. can’t make anyone’s supply of durable goods or liquid assets more valuable in the retelling of our stories now. 27
23 Spenseriana Caffeinata The deerfly terrorizes while the lime tick stains the tablecloth. The Buddha of windowglass meets the blue-green angel. Where the nameless Tao buys tobacco from gremlins, and sexless Anchorites with frog-heels of tornado spiral and wash out the tidal blow (paralyzed, at attention), there the maintaining girdled virgins of the spare tire glade stomp the optional howler, the stately monkey-king and his consort—Regina Vulneorum—under leaves. Buffed out like a grey palm, the kitten-purr form races across the rasping windowshade. All speaking no English for a year, all serving at the Temple of the Groves, all mothy mouthed and sloth-brained, breezed by goddess and gorged phantoms, shadowed like the mayfly, the night-bat, the moon creatures coming to give libation and vomiting out in stream and valence— All wind, all wind, all nirvana. Call the station of service before the woods cross the stake, the gall bag of Jack-in-the-Green blooming, blowing waste 28
on the house-gods’ roof-shrines and acroteria. All parrots and mittens sprung through air after seething pagan liturgy. Houses are again crumbling the toast of domestic goblins, taken with the sighs of dreamed spectres, all shaded, under moss, with mushroom and gale. All the sailors come to shore with nets rattling on the sides of their land-wagons: gaping, gabbing, necks ajar and feet clenched, the doors dropping hinges left here for threshhold encounters, with the songs of sprites and shining albedoes, god with spikes that shimmer and condemn form, every semblance of it, the breath of horse the hastening of fast laps each counting spots and dapples, the source of language, the counting of syllables, the sliding riverbanks containing round stones and salmon like a fairyland brain in millions of wet diamonds over the rocks, Mother of Wounds or Mater Littorum— Encounter, reckoning: the air stills the scene shifts the light dims the fading comes the space widens the lids shut tight and then the shades go to sleep.
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24 (got to clear my head with the good air out with the election pants) — after J-P Kervinen A bole in tree is ebola’s leftover namesake, forever forever pressing sage into my bleeding palm, the floe of excrement how to remember? Oh wait, there was a tree in the middle. heavy glue melts in summer, eat her apron before night at twenty-four-seven heartbeats a ledger, robot in time to sopor. cold now. Utterly nearby. Eat your habits. Take me to your rabbits. consequently in the show no leapfrogs were injured, not where the audience could see ‘em.) (Got to clear my mind up) Oaf ‘er fiven right phone for oh wat I press I know and copt oti katalanvano pos dodekastrophe, dis an dat an dive high leprosy list and lilt, TIAs and overdrive, teal seal spiel pile. Save and sabor, sopor
wash
let me clear
mind
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25 Repetition 1 Repartition. Reportation. Reticulation. Reticula. Restipulate. Restic. Reach ick. Rest ark. Krave ast. Aste. At. Repetart. Repheart. Reap ate. Rate. Reasticula. Ream. Pesticulation. Rep. Steep art. Rest. Peet aste ast. Tees. Past. Late. Plastic nation art rep Etition. Hate art. Peat. Statement. Haste.
2 Want. Preen. State. Particulate. Solvent cast. Come ready mixed. Stewardship. 31
Hate. Hole. Stingy swab paste search certain teeth Able wanted sort Kraft American knife Portion repetition seal tornado see Want apple tart. 3 “Art the Rat”—L. Friedlander, 1982. False “Let’s open.” Kanji. Speech fistula Reap retch cake past pattern seep Am you trying to rep. Arms patient Am you heartfelt ways patient treat Archi Medes waiting for a ride. 4 Whistle. The piece of paper. No hands. Pasture. Touch Imprecise. Livid. The sift Ortigure / or figure. 32
Ambulopod. Age. Lipomanure polyp. Has Numbness. Everybody goes Somewhere. “Where” Strange number. “Where you?” Licorice air. Privacy. They had a verb for something dialectic These days. Clomps. This rep. Pause to. Satan sez. Terrible. My staff is piano. Live by bread and notes alone. “I have to go Look in the newspaper some days to tell What day it is.” Nataraja dances mayhem.
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26 awareness / nonawareness “the epitome of cool� golden spikes crossing the center like a relaxation exercise found on vacation no lack of laying about, no lack of imagination here skins beat shirts on the schoolyard again, again with the accusations and affronteries so how else can you gauge when it’s enough circumflex of whenever the system gapes wide with forgotten tropes and moonbeams, restless cabbage-hearted acrobatics lulled away from the burning wreck these are our prisms delighted to make a statement, delighted we have this opportunity to man the barricades this once 34
before the bell tolls seven inside that sounds like an apostrophe but then shutters its eyes underlying (undeniable) reality come to think of it, this is a critical position to take that’s an unholy alliance for all to see, while the Shoeshiners’ Union’s on strike, whistling Dixie while the sun shines for the intrepid and the lame—impossible to gauge the effect this negligence might have on so many American visions whistle harder—the Gold Rush to commence soon waves pearlhandled pistols, loaded serving trays, armored Albigensian Bibles at the Southern Cross time and the placating thereof 35
marshals the breath with a heartbeat, staring apotropaically into the sunrise again after a long beat of waiting and shaping separations from word-to-word, a dialysis of remembered vocabularies hex signs will get you there, maybe rustic ladders if you’re quick enough to notice two things lie below the surface of the skin, like bacteria: selfloathing, and poetry nothing more is maintained after appreciation’s spent thereupon ideals rubbery in a back pocket take shape where earlier the whistle on the street was a tinkle in your neighbor’s garden tang of Ashbery: words to live by 36
(if only we knew what they meant!) yet one of us is tossing words into a cloth bag and removing them one-at-a-time this job is real, as long as you owe money to someone a wave . . . naked to the circuit— does that rob my pattern of its specialness?
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29 we get so many messiahs in this garden. they go goat-herding up on the hill where criminals die on their crosses. some even see visions of the deity. others come down with cold tablets, signing their ways barefoot in act of God, with laws they proclaim are divine. if we’ve got the spunk for it, we stone them and break their rules down in a pit— some die in the quarry, never seen them rise from the dead, no matter, not yet.
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30 Grandiloquent passions—happens to be my #1 fallback position, after assuming a “lock-and-load” stance, anyway. You’re half right: got the guns you’ve got the feathers. Wasn’t this ordeal already supposed to’ve happened? God does not erase his work, not even his pencil sketches. What time is it? If you can’t manage expectations, then what good will your social craft be? Nothing major, nothing epic. No, I mean I don’t want anything big, no big deals here. We’ve got names, we’ve got obligations, we’ve got . . . grandiloquent cut lines. You in the market for meaning? Hold it—hold it! This is unique, a special moment caught in lead seals and the broken pieces of another family’s story. Ancient sounds of pottery shattering, liquid spilling on stone floor. Hold it! God doesn’t erase his work for no one. So if this statement is true, where does the next act take place? (An airport? A flooded town?) When you don’t write with words it’s a shame you pay less attention to spelling, typography, design. I wouldn’t be the God of Writing for all the gel pens in Japan. 40