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