he who looks for god finds him where he wants

there is this old white building on 18th street
and there are no windows until the top two floors
and all you can see are staircases
and i see nothing suspicious in this.

i had been standing on a bridge looking at it
and beneath the bridge were a series of trees
with plastic bags stuck in them
flapping.
which i mistook for several people
waving at me.

somewhere without language or streets

there was a notice in the paper today:
a man was found
wandering the texas desert
in a dark double breasted suit
and baseball cap.
we could not comment as to if he preferred suspenders or belt.
he has been seen milking rusty spigots
and listening in on mailboxes.
he is more or less free to a good home.
and he has the bearing of a man
who has invested in a burial plot.

later, several german doctors
began to congregate.

they claimed once he was either fat
or had various things to hide.

he has been seen carrying a heavily annotated t.v. guide.

he said dark was the night, cold was the ground
when asked what he meant, he responded
it was like your feet were in the icebox
and all the lights in the room where turned off
and not necessarily in that order.

va bene

i went in to kiss her
then she heard a dog, barking
and tried to howl back.

later at john's
she crawled up his leg
while roy orbison sang
and there seemed to be no end
no end in sight.

that night, while walking home
the air smelled thickly of gasoline
and it was fantastic.

the sound thinking about a noose makes when it's not your neck

on the sidewalk:
a dead pigeon, open chested;
several empty cartons;
various things
waiting to be metaphors.

a thought:
were things more effective when we could hang people
and certain folks in authority
would just look the other way?


recently, I have gathered certain data that claims
all of this has happened before
and all of this will happen again
but the ice caps are still melting

forcing polar bears to land sooner
on emptier stomachs
thus escalating the possibility of polar bear – human conflict

would the aspca object to the hanging of polar bears
if they ate the president?

perhaps a better question:
will dinner be ready soon?

there is word it will be.

when we get to the table it is bare
and someone had thrown our collection of fiesta ware
into the street
in a box
for certain employees of the city
to take away at a pre-appointed time.

we are furious!
we feel someone has gone too far
we want justice
and someone suggests a hanging.

they
(who are they?
where did they come from?
who says they get a say?)
scream WAIT
THEY MEANT WELL!
ALL IS NOT LOST!
LOOK!

but we are exhausted.
we are so exhausted we don’t even want to build a gallows
or make dinner.
we look to our phones
and wait for the chinese food place on the corner
to call us up
and offer several suggestions
about multiple things.

our stock is rising, emily

we sat on our hands for days
thinking it would get us somewhere.

a very pretty girl walked by

who wore boots that either sounded like a herd of cattle
or rapidly approaching gunfire

and asked us what we were doing
and we all felt ridiculous
and took to our feet.


months later,
at the school dance,
we held her close
and she pretended not to be offended by our erection

and suddenly everything was wonderful
and smelled very clean.

blizzard of '96

I had this dream
that I stood on the top of the comcast building
which is probably the tallest building in the city
and made it snow
by unrolling a giant carpet
that was 15 feet deep
and made of snow
leaving the blizzard of ‘96
looking like your little 12 year old cousin.




**********

you once mentioned
that cornflakes had ruined your life.

I thought about this often
that winter I stitched several t shirts together
to make something like snow,
and draped plastic over the sidewalk

until certain things could run their course.




**********

now,
the other day I salted the walk
so that I could feel like the sort of person
who salts their walk.

and I don’t know where the snow went.
it was there, and then
it was all a river of ice
which is nice,
when it’s just something you look at.

from somewhere upstairs next door
a girl held a flashlight on me
unceasingly
for five minutes.

the sun also rises and it sets too

there are flood lights in the windows,
we have strung this damp underwear from our building to the next,
in the hopes that things will become cleaner and clearer
as the night goes on.

I got your letter
which raised several questions,
like “who says you forgot what the stars mean?”

I told you how the other night
I left a walkie talkie on
to see if anyone else was there.
tomorrow I am trying to build a bridge to connect something
if this seems vague it’s because it’s more about a bridge
than the two points."

possibly,
I should have asked when you were coming home
but I am trying a thing where I place my faith in gravity
and other events people have proven with science.

photo booth

she walked to the photo booth and waited patiently
for someone else’s portrait to come out of the machine.

she moved on down the sidewalk
whose lines she viewed as several demarcations

the sky looked like the spots of the first drops of rain
on a 60 degree day in february.

she walked past two men in overcoats
observing someone
unnoticed
from a great distance.

everyone was off somewhere
gathering intelligence.

several smokers
were huddled in a corner
smoking,
once of whom was heard to remark

many people seemed beautiful once.

it was at this point that the portrait arrived in the proper slot.

it was the summer

he came downstairs form the carriage house
to see everyone in the backyard, gathered around
everything they had ever lost
which they had made into a bonfire
to teach some lessons.

nearby, the president was heard to say
things were afoot in soviet russia,
which is what we would call indisputable.

someone had just come back from nepal
where, he told us, they were constructing
artificial glaciers
to help with irrigation.
we thought of cranes hoisting hand-made blocks of ice
carrying, on occasion, various things lying around the house
or wherever it was that they’d gotten the ice.
of sherpas standing around atop the glacier,
guiding the ice home,
staying with the blocks, making them comfortable.

could this be done for us, mr. president?
we all wanted to know.

he thought for a moment, behind his sunglasses
which reflected the fire

we said
can things be done for us?

he looked into all of our hearts and said
keep your distance
keep serious.
look, coming up 76,
a convertible.

and he was right.

this is a poem about a story i am working on

the protagonist. i haven't gotten to it yet. our hero horatio. his job.
he makes ice cream
in a small office
inside a large building
belonging to a large corporation most likely in the field of telecommunications.
by hand.
for the board of directors.
he used to be an artist
he meets an art historian. she says she is only interested in the past.
he says it is funny you should say that, for all my art is there
he shows her the storm machine he is building on the roof of his apartment.
maybe he does.
he definitely shows it to the army corps of engineers.
i do not know if anything will really happen between them. but i want it
to be about that possibility
the feeling of that possibility. and the army corps of engineers