thunder like so many handclaps

They sat there in the darkness and watched the storm move on the television. Many things depended on this storm. The thunder clapped around them, and he jerked a little bit and didn’t notice; and she smiled at that a little bit, but all he noticed was the way the hair felt as it grew back in along his chin. What he felt most of all was where it didn’t grow. How he’d seen a movie the other day where the only soundtrack was the space between people, and he thought how this was the same thing we each of us hear every day, and that it is amazing.
The thunder clapped around them, and they sat there together on couches.
He asked her if she wanted to go out to the bar, and she would have said, “No.” She’d say, “Do you want to go to the bar?” He’d tell her, “No.” They’d just keep watching the storm.
They watched the storm until they were both so covered in hair they looked like Cousin It from the Addams Family. He got up to get and gets razors, scissors, and trimming devices. He worked until everything became as it was before.

a cold smell

I saw a dead pigeon today
it was grey
and its legs were clutching its chest
and its wings were clutching its chest
and it looked like a cartoon dead pigeon does when it all goes stiff
but with its head back and to the left.

I saw a man who manufactured women’s clothing
holding a camera steady
with the aid of a personal assistant.

he was filming some home movies
which seemed riddled with death
and I yelled at him hey! can you see the death???
but he could not, so I looked for a pink hat,
or a book depository.

but these were not leads,
and I was not a detective,

and so what if most of my dreams are about waking up?

LIV

because nothing is ever as easy
as just letting it go,

my love says do you think
jennifer connelly’ll even pick up?

I say she is as likely as the last girl I called
and we all have a laugh at this

because she did not pick up either!

one day my love says
’you will float your phones and your internets
and your need to reach out in the dark
like so many newspaper boats on a pond,
in a room, filled with things we don’t need’

I wonder about this and scratch
at the follicles slowly growing on my neck.

LIII

my love is sometimes wracked by guilt
and fits of handsomeness.

last night I dreamed there was a fire escape
out my window
and a pretty girl let me follow her down.

today I think about writing my own crossword
and decide that I am going to call up jennifer connelly
and she is going to ask me out on a date.

my love shoots me a look
like the way cold smells
like the way a lighthouse looks
to a sailor
intent on synchronized shipwrecks.

if I thought it would make a difference I would punch you in the mouth.

everyone is full of hints
or sets of instructions they have written in blue ink
on the insides of their fingertips

so if I start to go at your nails with a sharp stick
or the clawed end of a hammer
please remind me that I am sometimes foolish
and that many things occur inside my head.

afterwards we could maybe stop speaking
and make conversations with our hands while
in separate parts of the room
because it’s okay if I can’t see what you’re saying
I’m sure I’ll get the gist of it
the next time you look me in the eye.

and I hope that this december warm front means more of the above, because if my winter can’t be pretty it might as well be fucking loud

the other day I met a man who claimed
he had recently become several aerial views
of various wrong turns
and former one way streets

and the sky was gray and everything was gray
which is what sometimes happens when buildings are covered in glass
and nothing about this was upsetting
it was all vaguely comforting
like flannel sheets or hot chocolate
or the idea that there is nothing we can do about global warming
and it all went dark by 5 o clock

and I got a note from my mom that could have made sense
it read
'electrically well-coupled cells.'
which I am sure are everywhere
like in street lights which have gone yellow
like apples after you bite into them and just leave them on the table,
or anti lock breaks, or alarm clocks that reset themselves,
or in the bodies of various people that have been struck by lightning
and bowled over by thunder

serving as a stern warning
to those of us who recklessly carry umbrellas.

LIII

i am going to call up jennifer connelly
and she is going to ask me out on a date.

my love shoots me a look
like the way cold smells
like the way a lighthouse looks
to a sailor
intent on synchronized shipwrecks.

so i went out
to a party
to a bar
to a body of water
to an automated teller machine or liquor store
or some other place where things go on and come to an end
all at the same time, like childbirth, or if napalm was also a form of fertilizer.

LII

my love never falls
my love has extremely good balance
this is what my love is saying to me, right now.

i say so what? i say ‘I fall all the time, every day’
say ‘due to a problem with my inner ear.’

once i fell in a lake, and instead of drowning, my inner ear just said hey, come on
over and the entire body of water went in to visit with my inner ear.

my love looks at me oddly, briefly
then says i was just being cocky!
we all have inner ear problems!

i say i know. that it is ok. that i have been practicing my prat falls
& burying trampolines all up and down this city.

my love looks at me, and i look to the cars which are like trees in a still life
my love asks me how do you spell the sound of snow not falling
i draw an umbrella on the table, using ice shavings, and give my love a look.

ottawa, canada

from here, all the skyline
looked like a bunch of uncomfortable steps
that didn’t really go anywhere.

I looked at my phone like it might light up.

like “won’t somebody out there
listen to my last prayer”
like this was the sort of thing
that had both a beginning and an end.

and won’t somebody out there
listen to my last prayer
high ho silver o
deliver me from nowhere

I looked at my phone like it might light up.

I had a habit of just throwing clothes on my bed
and leaving them on it for days.

I thought about getting up just then
folding the clothes
and putting them away
and making that a new policy
like raising the minimum wage
or lowering the voting age to the draft age
or the proper way to spell the way cold smells.

we got married in a fever it was hotter than a pepper sprout

I saw a dead pigeon today
it was grey
and its legs were clutching its chest
and its wings were clutching its chest
and it looked like a cartoon dead pigeon does when it all goes stiff
but with its head back and to the left.

I looked for a pink hat
or a book depository
but these were not leads
and I was not a detective.

I have not lived near earth where churches grow
once or twice I’ve bathed in mountain water

I haven’t talked to you for periods of time
best measured by events:

dante-getting-a-wart-in-his-mouth-from-eating-his-foot-skin time

our-new-garbage-disposal-is-called-the-badger and would-you-like-to-see-it time

that-time-they-asked-why-the-price-of-corn-was-going-up-and-i-said-al-qaeda-and-no-one-laughed time

because time is just a series of events
and all of them everything

and so what if most of my dreams are about waking up?
we are all practicing for something
like a phone call
or a good nights sleep
and all of it everything.

LII

we have been talking about falling
and my love’s skill with the balance beam.

i say to my love
i fall all the time and at least once a day

i say: due to a problem with my inner ear

once i fell into a lake and instead of drowning i put all the water in my ear

so i am sorry if my balance is not as good as yours.

my love looks up, says hey
says ‘i was being cocky

we all have inner ear problems’

i say don’t worry about it,

that i have buried trampolines
all over the city

just in case.

LI: ‘we have gone underground and come up for air and we are making our home’

i am growing my beard back
for strategic purposes

mostly related to hiding.
my love tells me i should just build a fort

out of bed sheets out of cardboard
out of the apologists for nitrites
and the reasons lazarus tried to dig his way back home.

i ask my love what they are talking about
my love says ‘it’s just something i heard once’

my love is always saying things like that.
once my love told me george washington built a cherry tree

that abraham lincoln wore a false beard
‘oh, for all sorts of reasons’

i press my cheek to the window and feel various things.

L

i say to my love,
you know how it feels
when you get into bed

and you’re still cold,

so you tense every muscle
and move as much as you can while keeping flat
until the warm comes?

i say to my love i fucking love that.

my love looks through the paper
says nothing at all.

i scratch 'your love'
into the carpet
with my big toe

and see how long it stays there.

cough cough cough

last week I saw a woman walking
reminded me of an old wallet
the sort you keep things in and forget about
could’ve been a violin for that matter

which is something I should pick up more often.
another thing I think about picking up but right now: the phone
but I don’t because of a past experience.


now I know better than to assume
I can sleep through the night
or that you will answer promptly,

or that sitting upright will help a migraine
but just rest your head on a cold windowpane
and think of it like a picture frame,
and the cars like so many landscapes,
and if you happen to glance my way momma
don’t like at me like I’m not coughing.

come all without, come all within

we are planning a trip home
and to all the places we've been told
we can never go to again
we are hiding our secrets
in plain sight, in the post office,
because everything has got to go somewhere.

we are asking you to meet us at the bus stop
because we are not through here yet.

did you think we were finished?

these telephone poles like so many rows of birds

I sit at the kitchen table,
and look out the window like it’s a portrait frame.
I drag my foot on the linoleum.
I try and pick the steak out of my teeth
with my tongue.

earlier today, an army of men
with trash bins marched down the street

I got up and joined them
I didn’t have anything with wheels
so I just dragged a sense of remorse around with me.
it made the same amount of noise
and held a coyote once we got up to girard.

.

about the coyote,
the exploding man was holding it
by the scruff of its neck.
he was afraid to explode so long as he had this coyote
so I held out my sense of remorse,
and it went right in.
he said 'boom',
looked at his feet.
we kept going.
we didn’t have time to wait for the coast to clear
or exploding men to play their parts.

.

up above, we look to the skies
expecting the telephone poles to take off
and crackle at us.

the wind sounds like the sea
I mean that it is loud, and active
and that you can feel it with your eyes closed.

the man in front of me wears a beard like a face
and is in love with a girl
her head shaped like the moon
or an eyeball.
he talks about their courtship
about cutting meat with a butter knife.
he turns around and asks,
ever try and pick steak out of your teeth
using only your tongue?