metrical compositions

appliances and apparatus make me sing hymns, upsetting an obscure prophet. it dangles on the swollen lips of prisoner 1028, an ode to escalator walkers, entailing the kind of failure that leaves the steps in the opposite direction as still as the kind of failure that ends in death.

machines are making me itch in traffic, upsetting a girl I used to kiss. our kisses were a birdland in juggernaut volumes. can you relate. would you be my sudden relation if the world were ending like a worn-out vice, or the 1968 comeback version, a rendering where he couldn’t sit because the goods made him weak. we saw him there, even those of us who weren’t born yet, knowing there was nothing they could ever really take from him now. or us.

in birdland they’re singing sparrow songs, an utterance that causes some to bleed. don’t worry, they’re up to it, prepared with pillboxes, flight manuals, form 0364 — a request for better days. then the incident in the narrative again, empty ballpark acoustic. we step into sidewalk cracks, languish like millionaires who pray from door to door, and sing.

911

christ looks so much better when I’m high, with his stripper hair and his val kilmer gut. so I slip off my left shoe to loosen my chest.

she had a green quilted jacket like yours but it didn’t look as good on her. she didn’t have the matching eyes, the lunatic hips, the take away ass.

on sixth avenue we had a pool. aerosmith. “more than a feeling”. a diving board always ready to break. don’t leave me lord with my early floppy discs. irish girl cousins sunning topless. little chatterboxes. confessional hoaxes. my primitive phrases supposed badly, shimmering a chlorine spray.

malled. ten theaters without one good movie. still, we stayed all day throwing light. a water leak projected better than the story. than the wa-wa guitar.

at home depot someone said “that’s bad karma john”. “shane, shane, come back shane”. shane, the bad christ who doesn’t look better high. more like leather fading into months that go by without the urge. that special swoon.


let’s make categories:
sixth avenue backyard.
stripper christ/shane as christ/black and white christ
noise bands.
people who sit on the same side of the table at restaurants.
instruments designed to invade skin.
mike’s karma dilemma.
earlier technology.
movies vs. music


sixth avenue backyard:
irish skinny-dipping. kristine ward kept on her t-shirt but the water
saw through it. it was better than seeing her naked.
five years there was a baseball spot on the stone wall. don sutton. bill singer’s no-hitter.

stripper christ/
shane as christ/
black and white christ:
who cares about the color of his horse. syncopated eucharist. none
of us care if you come back, just quit looming when we’re tripping.

noise bands:
isn’t that the point.

people who sit on
the same side of the
table in restaurants:
are the same people who show up in all the pictures at weddings.

instruments
designed
to invade skin:
stripper jesus has a high voice and a pocketful of bullets. he
never walks anywhere.
in the backseat she says “john has the best scar”.

mike’s
karma dilemma:
the plus side. I was on the moon. one small step for a guy they
would never let forget.

earlier technology:
in 1990 the mac I bought cost three thousand. it had a cheap-ass
printer that kept on saying “I’ll be home soon”. I was lonely.
woven. a bookmark convertible. the best song on a good album.
synonym combat. lack of late-night contact when a girl with her
boyfriend looked at you that way.

movies vs. music:
composition eventually wins. additional manipulation. enhanced
recall. sex in the afternoon.

poem by jeffrey mcdaniel

The Quiet World

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly a hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

off the rack

little story about jack and diane on sidebrow.net

okay, it's a grady story, but it's mine. go read it.

me like the dik dik

"Dik-diks are shy and allusive, concealing themselves in brush most of the time. When startled, however, they take off in a series of zigzag leaps calling "zik-zik" or "dik-dik," hence their common name"

http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Madoqua_kirkii.html

off the rack

the writing flowed spontaneously, at a pace that was not mine, and it was on teresa’s calf that I wrote my first words in the local tongue. at first she like it and was flattered when I told her I was writing a book on her. later she took it into her head to get jealous, to refuse me her body, saying I only wanted her to write on, and the book was already in the vicinity of chapter seven when she abandoned me. without her, I lost the plot, returned to my preface, my knowledge of the language receded, and I even thought about giving it all up and returning to hamburg. I spent my days catatonic before a blank sheet of paper: I had become addicted to teresa. I tried writing something on myself, but it wasn't as good, so I went to copacabana in search of whores. I paid to write on them, and perhaps paid more than I should have, as they simulated orgasms that robbed me of all concentration. I rang the bell at teresa’s house, she was married, I cried, she gave me her hand and allowed me to write a few brief words while her husband was out. I began to besiege schoolgirls, who sometimes allowed me to write on their blouses, then in the folds of their arms, where they were ticklish, then on their skirts, thighs. and they showed this writing to their peers, who greatly admired it, and they came to my flat and asked me to write my book on their faces, their necks, then they removed their blouses and offered me their breasts, tummies and backs. and they showed my writing to other peers, who came to my flat and begged me to rip off their knickers, and the black of my letters shone against their blushing buttocks. girls came and went from my life, and my book became scattered, each chapter taking off in a different direction. that was when I met the one who lay on my bed and taught me to write back to front. possessive of my writing, only she knew how to read it, looking at herself in the mirror, and she erased by night what had been written by day so that I would never cease writing my book on her. and she fell pregnant by me, and on her belly the book took on new forms, and I worked for days and nights on end, without eating a single sandwich, locked in the little room in the agency, until I composed, on my last legs, the final sentence: and my beloved, of whose milk I had partaken, made me drink from the water in which she had washed her blouse.

from the novel "budapest" by chico buarque