“‘God. I ha’ seen God with’s hat on, 
a-walken down Henley Street,’
saith Gilbert”

the family idiot
but what’s peculiar
his how familiar
his wisdom be
his ingenuity

(the quote is from Nothing Like the Sun by Anthony Burgess)

(after Terrance Hayes)

One word may separate
what I want to say from
what you end up hearing.
I may never know what
I should have said, may
never know I should have said
something different. Or maybe
you should actually listen,
get that dumbass out
your ear.
I’m a mad scientist, a different
and modern Jeckle and Hyde;
I’m two opposites at once.
(The word I’m not saying here
is “schizophrenia”)
I’m into making
solutions, potions, concoctions
and cocktails; and I really like
slapping paint on canvasses of
canvas and other appropriate surfaces.
But I’m a scientist-artist
obsessed with poetry, so naturally
I try to uproot all the barriers
like the broken concrete sidewalk
next to the avocado tree in the Arboretum.
I want all literature
to be artistic, bring people
to the present depths of post-materialism,
a grenade or Bushmaster of enlightenment,
but I am aware that Poe
banished the didactic from poetry,
I know that music makes the song.
How do we get people to be
better readers? In any case,
there are a hundred other words
I could be saying but am not at the moment.
It could be that a couple days from now
I will happen to reminisce on this meeting
in one of my many contemplative moods
and craft some response that will most likely
end up as a flat palm holding water,
what is missing being the key
that turns something beautiful into
the carnage of voodoo.
And other speech you or I forgot.

Little egoist change
happens over the Internet,
like engaging in civil discourse
with a friend
on a Facebook status.

Words themselves are not
conventionally malleable.
Whether it be a fork
or Neo’s spoon
that he doesn’t know is there
and so your word
is the screwy one. 

All affixing the pragmatic relevance
of conversational exchange
and sometimes I feel like
the world would be
a much better place
if I was a bit meaner.

She is to me
like a pristine white napkin
in a sandstorm.
A hazard that’s classical.
I’ve never preferred
conservatism so
earnestly.
She’s a field laden
with a sheet of fresh snow
and at any moment
a disaster could happen.
Like I am a big
brown bear about to
terrorize the meadow.
That area where her sacredness
knows of no barriers,
conjuring images of hips
undulating. I wonder sometimes
what Cupid sees, whether
he wears a blindfold or not.
What attention does he pay?
The trouble is
I have no fear
of getting close to her.

We could frolic
and fondle
in the Great Barrier Reef.
The deep ocean
for a weekend, fortnight, year.
Spent in Sydney
with my Canon. 

Black Opal’s “Playing Eyes”
drowning you in sight.
Our hands folding over
corpuses, amidst bikinis
and swimming trousers.
I felt your wet skin
in the warmth of
sin-heated water.
So many tastes afterward
my tongue ran across
such delicate surfaces. 

Remember
when you bit your lip
at the hotel watching
TV advertisements?
We lived in radicalism
of idealized conservative consumption.
Do you have such imagination
as to remember?

What is it
that awaits for me
beyond the trees?

A mother goose
tense with wisdom?

A grey bunny
impressed with meaning?

Or a future lover
smiling behind voluptuous
lips and inching forward?

Me, Underneath.
You lock yourself in a prison
A kind of self-coercive emotional entrapment
A fragile stack of playing cards
Me, underneath, arms stretch wide
A foundation of flesh and feeling
Atlas could never shrug
And you’ve never heard me sing

What is uttered was thundering
to the dozens, shushing but
ushering the lusting husbands,
busting shuttered hundreds
out of the hussle and bussle
of troubles tussled upon us. 

What sort of
satire do you
carry? Can
you bulge
any aspect
of metaphorical muscle
or display mental fitness
for the sake of sophisticated humorism?

When our days become anthologies,
each of our arts like a flower
in a diversity of blooming configurations,
we do as much as possible and think deep,
respecting the weights and obligations
of experience the wide gymnasium of life-weight.

Society
is not
the only thing
that anxiety
is dissipated in. 

Can I talk to someone
with whom I can sink
my grievances somehow? 

I could make this about speech
or text; one sentence
of mine will mess
your mind up.
We could compare conceptions
of intelligence, contemplate diversity
to any and all levels of abstractness.
What does it do us? I don’t know
but you could look for us.
I refuse to. It’s for others to decide.
All that I know is
everything inside me.

Tell me a quiet
Joke while you smile, flick
Your cigarette and sip
Your diet coke
In a respectable anarchy
The presence
Of immaculate description 

I came in blasting
Into room like poetic
Uttering fluid description
Of Will Ferrell’s “Elf” 

Like what is
The primally classical?
Recently interpreted
The combination of Whitman
And Wordsworth
You crunch on
William Farrell’s butterfly
A  television-computer
Displaying the antics
Of James Caan’s tricks 

You ask ‘what’?
High and on Champaign
I utter
Your contentment and satisfaction
The development
Of your political praxis
The plot of
Your forever-continuing
Happiness