daring farmers

Have you heard what they're saying 'bout handing it over
The deed to the town that we built
King Mayor shook hands with a cannonball dozer
He held a straight face in a jar of composure
And dozens of smiles on stilts

City Hall plays it off like a boon to the public
Or a sweet gravicembalo tune
It harps a chord but we're still not so sure of it
In our sinking tub sits some sinister couplet
If we get around to it, maybe we'll snub it
But not 'til the late afternoon

See, there're fields that need drinking and whiskey to plow
Through the windows, the cleaners can't see
'Cause their kittens need mending while spectacles meow
An optometrist spans the marquees
Opera singers wrap broken-up knees
While the surgeon is felling the trees
Lumberjacks strain their backs washing windows for free
Only stopping for sopping their brows

Look closer, blackgrocers discount custom errs
While the greensmith is shooing hoarse throats
The barber, a raiser of pneumatic chairs
And dullest of shaviors, leaves his patrons scared
He's tearing back towels and paring down hairs
Since your loss is his ware, he sells your own scalp bare
For a quartet of quarters and notes

Our astronomers work on a cure for the gout
While the doctor admires the sun
Sal Fisher mixed his dough with light sauerkraut
Sheriff Baker spouted a sweet seed of doubt
While honest Judge Gard'ner toss'd rolls 'long her route
And the paperboy wrestled a trout
All the roughs in the gangs are so pure and devout
While the parish gets garish and starts up a bout
And for rhymes of our reasons no-one figured out
The things we did never got done

Still, this was our home and was soon to be bought
A hefty sum someone would pay
For shingles and cellars, exemptied-out plots
If only we'd close our hotels and tell-nots
And the hunters give up their fair game and last shots
The cooks and gamblers and what's in their pots
(Though unkempt record-keeps kept the things they forgot)
We just have to unravel our rotted-knot spot
But I think that I'd rather we stay

din or party

everyone pardoned their pudding and cup and let it off with a small fine
everyone waited for the snail to sup, then ate him with mustard and wine
everyone had a balloon to float up and anchor with licorice twine
everyone toasted to Butterscotch Krupp, but made him camp out with the swine

la damn air sang

Onward i crawled, along the shore, caked in muss and salt. / And I'd wreck. "Land!" she calls. No, a wet-hot mirage, sour sand.

Lo! Hear how hollow harps blow hard, hide from hanging forever in lower winds. / Whine high, level, heal now a wild, misshapen world. Harbor horror, grow fond of.

"Eat ardor! Need this!" yells the bush-bare herd. / Harder to breathe, hardened by shell tissue.

A mud-dry lung under fierce tar. / Merciful green, a ruddy tundra.

Alive, ground-drunk on root-beer. / Or bone-naked. Or gut-run. Or devil.

and now you do

I've been telling lies about you.
I've been telling how you always knew how I could never tell what things were true.
I never could.
But you never knew.

soda bra, booze zoo, barbados

i unwound with the wind and it grinned and so did i
so i lay under the sly
and my eyes they closed and my breaths they slowed
and i thought that i could finally rest
but the air grew lean and mean
at most fear
chalky mothballs fell down from space to sew me a cold quilt
quickly falling degrees sickly stalling i'd freeze if i didn't get up and get home
but the bitter breeze begged i bide by its bed
it asked i not leave it alone
so i wrapped my arms around the wind and closed my eyes
and a snore was bore in my shaky chest when
just
then
the sun snuck in on a puddle and whispered a pin-drop plan
i cupped my hands about and it began to roll and rotate and revolve around the white earth
the wind and snow below bellowed chagrined oh no don't go
but i went
and
wintersplintersprinterdriftliftswift i stormed away

we melted all the frost
the sun and i
and our puddle grew into an ocean
and so the sun found sky and i found boat because neither of us could swim
and it felt good to be a-float
but the crew was screwy
they amassed and assailed
they decked me
i was bound nowhere good with thick rope and grim expressions
and heaved with haste into an urgent sea
i cried out until my lungs were shipwrecked airballoons and the seasalt mined my eyes to the veins
i was about to lose my change
just
when
i felt a poke poke poke from the sea sea sea and the fish started talking to me
the eels taught me how to swim like a snake and the whales taught me how to hold my breath and breathe through my brain and the seaweed came forward for me to feed
the waves showed me how to break fast on which sand
and
splashdashcrashbreakrakewake i waved goodbye

i wokeupon the desert parched and piping
the sun-bleached sandbox shook my hand and looked me as straight in the eye as it could and neither of us could stop shaking
an informal heating i just couldn't glare myself away from
i swelter and melter i gasp and i choke but the grasp can't be broke
and there's no sign of shelter
it welcomed me to itself and it showed me around pointing out grains one-by-one
and displaying how the heat made the sand look like ponds and rivers
even though there wasn't water forever
it went on about how far it went on for
and my skin began to wrinkle and crinkle
and my eyes went dry but i felt
a
gust
of
wind
on my skin
then it hurry-came and the dust and the heat got all turned-out-oh
and as the madland brushed off to fetch its distorted dunes
the wind and i went
and
blewgrewflewastrayawayhooray i deserted

couldn't careless

The house is cold tango whenever we lift the subject
So put a knife through the window and a hand on your mouth
And your hat in your hand
The clouds come close to killing after sun'sdown
With their hands in their hair
Both the willy-nilly and the willing avoid the rain's pound
Keep it a secret from the stairs and the attic
Or what have it
Some small sum of sound
The mice cry boldsong and tip-tap tall canes
And profane tails belie full bellies
The kitchen-in-a-basket halts a hand-off to your bend
Where a lovin' oven trying patience pends
So put a bookcase in your jacket and stuff it
Put up your mitts and tough it out, scout
Keep your buttons from drowning
Set your facers to frowning
And hold your own hand this time 'round

handshoes & horsegrenades

• Hows of warship, yesterday,
• The sun was shrunk and also shrining.
• Bananafish spoke, "Tell us, pray,
• "Give us a sliver'd silver twining.
• "Far be we to disappoint
• "We're sure as shores that queensland hemp'll.
• "By the shorn did we anoint
• "A bulletpoint through the right temple."

affront rows eat

The house in which I've lived since I was six
Is made of lumber all in none-by-fours
The candles are all longer than the wicks
And all the tables are made out of floors

The closets are much larger than the rooms
The walls are paper-thin and single-ply
The chimney doesn't even reach the flume
And ev'ry door has only got one side

The coatrack rests upon a pile of coats
The 'fridge can heat food better than the range
The sink could sink the bouyantest of boats
The sofa has an appetite for change

The water has a sort of sandy taste
The stairway dead-ends where the ceiling starts
The bed's the size of half a pillowcase
The cabinets are mostly shopping carts

The roof is a suspicious sky of blues
The clocks all stopped at ten to ten to ten
The radiator always blows a fuse
The cellar is a dugout in the den

Yet you may yearn for younger of a yurt
Or dine in dives with living rooms not dead
But if the home is where the heart can't hurt
Then here I'll hang my hat and hold my head

(excerpt from) the immomal man conversations (pt. VI)

Holy hands! I worked a quick dinner and sent it off to morning!
You've got too many hardy-hats, how will we make a fast break for it? Or of it?
No way but the right way.
I'm afraid of points pointing at each other.
An empty belly and a good rest of the night should set you atease (sic).
A full bell does ring awfully.
So like a tired tummy, to tick the tock.
So go look-a-head.
And fill your money.
And munch your bankfast.
We've poked out the economy's eyes
With our party's surprise.
And our eyes went runny for mummy.
Crybaby.
Sweet lady.

Related.

And relieved.

swear jargon

Sometime after I was born, I found myself working at a druggist's in Applesauce, Illinois
A girl came in one day and I thought she looked like the sun in the moon
She said she was named after a flower that was called Themubarabara
She bought a pound of licorice and a doorstop and told me that I ought to join the circus
After I left, I realized that she just wanted the upstairs room that I'd been renting

We traveled through the canyons and across the prairie
We took bottlecaps we'd found and linked them together with lengths of tumbleweed twine
To make shiny, aluminum vestments with which to reflect the bitter sun
And we dragged behind us long, black cloths to gather the ragged heat
So we could wrap ourselves in them at night to feast away the desert frost

There was the frontwagon, with the tent captain perched on top
Standing only tall as half-a-day but with the girth of a week
Like a penny on a halfdollar
He has a fine hat and he knows it
He smiles like a whale, fingering his watch fob and eying the brim

Next came the trim-truck, where the barker and his wife slept
On a stack of mattresses surrounded by piles of the smaller animals' cages
The barker's wife throws hardware and does real psychic readings for nickel tickets
She used to be a professional stabbist and has a lot on her mind
Her husband just shouts a lot

The fourthcarriage was filled with water and nothing else

Behind that was the quilted lady, standing by the front window-glass
She's peering out and thinking bitter thoughts
It's her buckboard that's supposed to trail the trim-truck
Not the damn water carriage
She clenches and unclenches her quilts and she fumes

Doctor Gompers was in the anvil-shaped brougham
He never talked to anyone in the train
But the barker's wife said that he's constantly doing liquid maths in his head
He's trying to make a topical salve to cure the bumbles
At least that's what he calls it, she said, in his head

Then there was the big animals' cart, it was enormous
It had nine wheels and was shaped like a scared H
Still, it wasn't big enough for all the animals to fit inside
So it was pulled by five lions and pushed by the elephant
And the smell was three times its size

I was in the next one, with you, getting messed up
We'd swiped one of the doc's tonics at the last stop
And we were mixing it with my bronchitis medicine
We swept up the sawdust in the towns and the branches in the forests
Right now, though, we were just laughing and laughing

suspiciously delicious

Salsa + Anything = Salso

pistol in your genes

Let us drink deeply of wine and handle all of our electronic devices with the untroubled wild of children.

We are going to blindfold ourselves and run with great velocity across the many streets of our city in the mid-day. Join us without hesitation, or feel left out as you watch us with your keen eyes.

In a manner of auto-cordiality, we invite ourselves to feel pleased with "it all."

We may cheer.

not saying that it is isn't the same as saying that it's not

I used to be a prescriptivist but up I gave it.

suture self

Cars come in from Ramses as we lift the logs.
Hard parish told us to work faster, or we'd never see a dime.
Wrung-strut they'd be, if they knew we'd never built a thing in our lives.
Or had never actually seen an actual dime.
But to be fair, we woulda wrenched out cries and death if we'd known how hollow our bones had grown.
Instead, we gripped our idle tools like they were extra fingers.
Figures.
We think too much of flight.
We throw our lunches at the birds.
That's probably why we moved from the top to the ground.
And fervently, and as much as we could, changed the rain.
We railed our ropes and laid our ladders to run down.
It started to rain up.
And that dried the ground, so we couldn't set concrete.
And we couldn't make a foundation.
"The whole thing'll come crashing up," we'd say, "the first wind we get."

starving chain

We were held up by a new town that had settled on the tracks
The engineer fought the mayor in a high-stakes handsome-off
Our hopes were lower than high
So I told the Blue Muslim to move the barber's chair or else we'd have to open the fifth gate
And ask the furnace what's the buzz
What's the buzz, fire and gray?
The news was good, talk of circle paths and underground bridges
And frigid horizons, to keep the food fresh and far away
Rumble, bumble, mumble, said the engine
Tumble, crumble, humble, said the hill
Escape plans, getaway hours
Ample, sample, trample, said the busy
Not a sound example, said the still
Everyone was out the windows by now, short of port
Eyeing and disembarking, since the doors were locked
At this new pretty limits dock
We covered our ears with newspaper and shoveltwine
And set up our shoes for a stretch
The all of us, squaring through buzzing and humming of lights
And new water mains and new houses built on old dirt
And old houses moved, to lean on fresh earth and block new wind
The engineer stayed and became the new mayor, he was so handsome
And the other mayor stayed and became the old mayor, he was good-looking too
And we walked and we walked and we walked
And the sky said blurry, scurry, hurry
And the wind said swoosh, whoosh, rush

delirium tremendous

Any opening in the ground, any relic of distress, would've looked good to him. As long as hedge-holes were bounded and porchlights were rounded, he thought, nothing would be around long enough to look as bad as it was. But the terra stayed horribly the same. Following robes was proving easier than arborescent ascent, but dropping down would be a good way to make going back not his fault. And the man he followed had shown a sudden turnabout, trading questions for answers that were pithier and less revealing than the surrounding horizon. With wide paces, the holdcart made short steps of foot. It was morning porridge to keep up, but the direction, while straight, seemed to take longer than the distance it held.
"How far did you say it was? We've been walking for...where's the sun been?"
"I didn't," the bishop replied, "Sun's always been where it is. We're the ones doing the moving, as you'd notice." There was a new air in his voice. His breath was more in it, that is to say, from it, out of it.
"And how far would you say it was? Is?" he retried.
"Far enough to be farther away from here than we are. Close enough that we'll get to it before we've passed it."
The sun did rise. This time, though, a part of it near the ground was blotted out.
He was relieved, but not much (more like an alligator's head from a crocodile's body than like a penny from paper), to see another figure in the distance. The silhouette was dragging the rising sun, coming straight for them. After what seemed like some time, long or short, the figure was not two dozens lengths from them, inside a shouting area. And shout the figure did.
"Ho, foldvest! Where've you?"
And for the first time since he'd met with him, the bishop held tracks.
And it seemed that no-one had a thing to say, for just then.

claws for feat

Early morn, the sun had sunk
In stature 'fore a bird.
Dead was I, and also drunk
But still I gave a word:
"Good to you, please caw and sing,
I want not see you go.
Please stay a while, rest your wing.
Hello, little crow.
"The world is hard, as for I'm proof,
It beats you 'til you've stopped.
From death I tried to keep aloof
But, under it's hoof, dropped.
"A useless bunch of bones and skull,
So stoic, on the street,
An eyesore and an obstacle
Beneath the horses' feet.
"I can't swift-swing a hammerin'
Or hold a sail from tear
Or holler that I'll be 'round then
Or now or here or there.
"No hand-kerchiefs I never had
For goodbyes to be wavin'
to brother, sister, mom or dad,
Jus' you and me here, raven.
"Can't shake from me the lot I got,
Like water from a duck,
Or ever be what I was not,
As such is all our luck.
"But nothing will be wrest from need
While I lay here and rest.
To you I leave myself to feed
Your belly and your nest.
"No sin'll take me 'low the turf
Nor grace that I have took
Will carry me above the earth,
Just you can lift me, rook.
"Though I be breathless, weak and still,
No spirit been released,
You have a job for me to fill.
I fill you now, deceased."

ad-in

Once weres a woman of honest brung-up
A lover of music 'n law
Bore well in Texas, near Teaspoon-And-Cup
She learn'd all the things that she saw
Wen' to Los Ain't-Ya-Just, stomped grapes and then
Jumped herself over the bar
Left for a barkeeper in Michigan
Settled down, once 'n for our
Made up a coupla well-meanin' kids
Named them from names from before
Kept them in line while they did what they did
Taught them no less than what's more
Spent years as daughter, wife, mother and friend
Proffessor'd in which what she knowed
It felt like she'd always stay were'd she'd had been
It seemed like she'd never'd've go'd
"I've stuck around long as I guess I could stick,"
She said with a grin 'n a cough
"You can' serve abreast if yer hell of homesick."
Then, soon'r than most, she took off

Smog of The Immomal Man

Hold, assail and see.
Pleased to sing for your sputter.
We're drinking from the hose.
And coming to blows.
A blown nose and a shown show.
We utter.

Holy sails at sea.
Pleas to sling arms and mutter.
They're thinking of those.
And coming in from snows.
The bones grow and they groan low.
And flutter.

neither hear north air

Tangling and strangling, he struggled with the noose
Participle dangling, and just his syntax loose

fellow knees

You can't unring a bell. Just like hunting, he headed off, up and east after he'd reached the top. Heartattack headaches and a bull with a roostercrow in it's belly, not knowing where he'd left it. He'd found his jacket in a coatshop for literally a song (though not his own) in Lost Dog, Arizona, a horrible little burp of a town consisting of a man-made lake, sundry sun-dried shops, a bar not worth a hot bug as far as ambience goes (but with a bartender who made one mean Alaskan Bear-Taunter) and a general sense of shallow, affected ho-hummedry, in that stilled violence kind of way. His hat was a dirty little piece, ugly in style and roped two cars too short in size. He had a cane with a compartment in which you could fit about a gram of gravel or what have you, but he'd left it at home. He'd been walking and scaling and de-scaling in a spanking-new pair of Australian wingtips that had been shot to hell and tossed back. Take off and sling it around, like the blanket. They were just tops now anyway, so it'd have made sense to feed them to the sunset, he supposed. Feet spats. The trousers, however, had held up as good as next day. For the life of all, he couldn't remember where he'd gotten them.
It was a good time to be alive and walking, as good as any time. It was somewhere before now and after before now. He'd started off early and was expecting to finish up or maybe get back late, or early, or at least later than he'd started. Nowhere had there been an unpleasantry or rough patch, if you didn't count all the cities though which he'd passed or all the areas in-between the cities. No time like the right time. He was trailing, now, behind the spot in front of him. His gaze had laid anchor down at his troubled shoes and his mind had been herded to the idea of either tying laces and bindling, or kicking off. A bishop made of key's horses passed by and he looked up.
"Summer: some time we sought it. Heaven's hands and help us if we bought it," dawdled the foldvest, not quite adressing him directly but, you know, addressing him.
"I was looking for an address in a place," he ventured, liming old lyrics from ago chats in the past cities from the weeks and other lengths before.
"Inside or at?"
"Inside, never mind. Say, you wouldn't happened to have an extra shoe or two, would you?"
"What was the address? Or, if it still is, what is it? I've no shoes."
"That's all right," he was dissapointed but forgot he was, "Gorilla and A Peach, Hammerdance...something, oh-two-oh-two. In the west. No, the east. In the east. To the east. East-er than here."
"I live there," hummed the bishop, "We'll go."
"But you were heading south."
"And now I'm heading east."
A hurt bank is better than a lost mile. He headed down after the bishop (who'd gotten about seven legs ahead of him), scared of the words you said. No tanks could take him, though, after the last miles.

adjective noun

Much has been written, in story and song, of the night that the Tea Room came down.
No cheerier a place in town could be found.
Making smiles from frowns, turning bad days around, its spirits will fly and your troubles will drown, so come down to the spot most renowned.
Dry-Ice Finnish croons with a grin, "Let your troubles be loose and unwound."
The mirrors on the walls reflect candle-crowns and the light is set abound.
The walls quiver, mirrors shake and the glow dances around the room that will soon come down.
Heels click and hips rub and they shake to the sound.
Their hands clap, their feet pound to a rhythm that makes the foundation unsound.
And sweat pours in drops as big as your head and heat stalks the place like a hound.
And while the whole crowd is clowning around, something moves, something shakes underground.
"Moonlight is sunlight and it's noon tonight, so in lunar rays let us be gowned. On this night, on this mound of ash-gray and mud-brown, to the Tea Room I welcome you now."
He cries, "Come crowd around here, deep downtown. Where the 'Tea' stands for 'Tonight' and the room spins 'round. Tonight we're all falling down."
So go put on your hat and a pair of dry clothes and come down, come down, come down.

head over-heals

There was a man of likened age
To those whom we call sage.
And when he grew to something-two
We knew just what to do.
We threw him in the fire, to perspire and retire
From all the thoughts we thought he thought we knew.

dock holiday

He had hammers to hinder hot holsters and basins to bark back bold boasters.

She held hearts in her hands to hang houses and built bird-beds to bleed birch and blouses.

They hung hats from their hair, halving heather and banged bolts back and bent, bedding better.

They hollered, "Heaven's hands and help us for the horrors that we hide between borrowed beds and bug-bites we believe we can abide."

ice cream soup

He told a story never told
With melon goats and jungle bears
Of larceners and alpine gold
You should've heard the sight

A trafficker in oyster lead
Of honest height and double-hat
Would mix a glass of Turkish Thread
And Middle-Of-The-Night

In Needle Haystack Lion's Paw
The town of nearly seven towns
Just north of Tallfist, Iowa
A cactus fought a kite

In caravans of ampersands
A surgeon on the runaway
Is slapping knees across his hands
To cure an apple blight

The ghost of Captain Shakes-The-Moon
Survivor of the Nickel Wars
Had holed up in a sawdust dune
With Persian Satterwhite

Aboard the six to Cornglass Lake
A saboteur was jumping off
He'd glued the hinge and cut the brake
And bound the enginewright

Archduchess climbed the minaret
And claimed the sun had eyes to spare
While all the men sang Bassinet
And Muddy Meadow Bright

The never-told tale wasn't penned
No-one could find a pad or coal
It took a week to comprehend
And five months to recite