a killer poem from Cotton "Chuckles" Mather

Great wars,
sacked
cities, kings
in flight


or chains.

a consequence my reading is Rilke of

A dog barks and then it rains.

so that one wonders what it might feel like to have one's backup singers

cartwheel
on behalf
of

one's mysterious
song

poem

lines blight free
in compact balance,
a balanced form,

of form, balancing
its formal strengths
made in the mind's

hand, the mind's
manifest, ledgers,
journals, vols. 17-21,
years 1955 to 2009.

the skull or sky is this evening

obdurate

the roman pettiness of poet to poet demonstrated

you know who you are, get over your vastation of ego



Xaniphonius appointed
several malices to me
when I had none

I offered apology
even so he fumes
the effect of which

is to create the malice
I did not bear him
but am now inclined to

the poet of Cold Mountain

admits to himself
almost all his profile visits
were visits he made

it is absurdism that is, in cases voluntarily entered into, a banishment and an

an exile from that place where existence means Being-Inside-The-Other.

Bartleby liked to be stationary

in the end
we all do

on second thought

I kid the funny man,
armed and bewhored

I want to practice the writing of simple sentences using simple language in order to express thoughts reduced to an essential meaning

and thereby
destroy the piercing beak of ego

rock, paper, scissors

broom

how to write real swell dialogue that is winning all the way to the bank

he sd, gets
me smokes and a
bottle
of cheap bourbon

she sd, fuck
you and see you later
sucka, this MFA
is walkin

Oh, he sd, what no
coda?

fragment

I thought it a good idea to trim the sycamore branches back from the porch
then changed my mind and thought it better to sit within all those arms
made from bark and leaves fluttering like green eyelashes. At times laziness
is its own reward. This is what passes for thought these days as I worry
about all manner of strange things, not least of which is a possible internet
scam I may have fallen prey to. Cold Mountain is good for one reason that
is obvious: creditors and scam artists find it hard to reach me and once they
get here they quickly see it's a lost cause. My shack is an awful prize to
waste sweat on. Besides, hawks soaring above a lake's edge and owls outside
your paneless window at dawn is more than enough to make you laugh
like a newborn. Words measure only what is empty, nothing else.

poem

a rivet
riveting

in praise of

rock smash of
sledge-hammer

poem

Let me be held
by love

or by any one
of love's presentable

handmaids.

final exam

a) Love is like a bleeding hand.

b) Love is sometimes like a pair of bleeding hands.

Discuss either a or b. Risk mutual exclusivity.

Show all calculations.

delerium city cab ride

One day you take the weather of
its change. You go, I can't stand
this any more. Your pal, Dionysius
the Aeropagite, won't lend
any money to
your archaic cause.

The meter is running.
There is rain. You don't recognize the
streets or the unfamiliar
fare. You

go, close the door pal.
Drop me off in front of the
radiant hemlock grove.
Like pronto.

sliced my hand at work today

I need a new
job, something
less cutting