Tractate of Graceful Clouds and Gay Phoenixes

1.
Two sick moles lie under the surface, struggling for breath, thin and depressed, unable to root mountains down or hear lizards sing.
“Why?”
“Because people have found happiness in rushing around, have found beauty in withered things, and have found pleasure in killing even what they don’t see.”

2.
The final piece of ice on the Bernina Range cried too much.
“My time is up,” it said as it left.

3.
“When I was younger, I studied probabilistic turning machines and was confronted by the undecipherability of the halting problem,” jody2342 said. “Later, I learned to relax in the knowledge that my life value was 238,964 times that of Toño Vila the hat-maker in San Esteban Caterina (16P 307128 1513415).”

4.
No¹.

5.
After hauling the sea turtle up in their nets, cutting it into pieces and roasting it, Jai and Joi discovered that it was Vishnu.

6.
Wind dragon Great Fury, drugged on vinyl chloride and mirex, fell asleep at the bottom of the ocean; wind dragon Passive Charm, drunk on ethylene and propylene, ripped over the Northern Hemisphere, tearing up structures and destroying all life it found. Image of a bent palm tree, hair swept south².

7.
The sun, no longer worshipped, became angry at this neglect and burned up what was below, humans taking refuge in skyscrapers, huddling near air conditioning vents. The rocks have long beards.

8.
Each of the azimuths and the ecliptic divisions has its own affinity with the elements. Certain entities (huge bellies balanced on thin legs) smile in absolute contentment, being able to live out the Last Days in such style.

10.
A group of macaque monkeys on an island in Hainan beat their chests as the last leaves disappear from the sandalwood trees. The fire-keeping priests are long dead, but the animals will gather together dried up twigs for their own funeral pyres.

11.
The Rio Grande hangs itself from a big hill in La Cienega, New Mexico, plastic and experimental waste from Los Alamos spilling out its sides. Nearby an old cow lows.

12.
From atop a complex scaffolding of political systems and economic structures, men failed to see disappearance. A period of discord and calamity. The fortunate time for buying land has passed.

13.
The last tree in the Sierra Nevada, old Bristlecone Pine looks on.
“My body twisted and useless, so I survive.”

14.
Few Houses Mountain has many houses.

__________________

¹ Ralph was a man from Berkeley, stoutly Absent; Frederic from Paris, firmly Accurate. Neither could talk to rivers and lakes, neither understood the art of non-doing.

² During the end of the Dynasty, those in high positions will hurry about, never letting themselves or the people rest.

To do it she sits on the floor, and presses a talon against her clitoris, and then rips upward. Tearing up through her navel. Up to her neck. It’s the most intense orgasm, brilliant and chic, and she just absorbs it—lying back, arms spread, like a crucifix. Her eyes brighten. Then close. She bleeds out. Hardening. Paled. A carnivorous flower.

The back of his neck’s red, and badly wrinkled, and I want to touch it and make him young again. We sit down in the living room. And we talk about nothing. Then about her. His daughter. My wife. And I can see me breathing down on her. To heal her. I breathed all over her. At the funeral I imagine us together. And, in my arms, she’s changed into a corpse. And I’ve entered her. And I’m fucking her harder and harder. And my tears splash down on her cold white neck. The light’s dazzling. A garden of statues throbbing.

In the Louis Vuitton storefront windows there are birdcages. And in each one there’s a shiny handbag. Or a glinting shoe. And, then, the maimed raccoon in the park—hunched over like it’s about to crap. It came towards us. Slumped over. And rolled on its back. This happened over and over. And the whole time it looked like it was smiling. I didn’t sleep well. I dreamed I shot you and ground you into powder—and the wind just swept you away. Elephants were chasing me, too, I think, and I woke up frantic, and horny, and you ended up having a tiny climax. The tiniest ever. A diamond stud. In a giant cage.

a matter of degree

Exhibit A: This book hurts. Like it’s made of sand. Coarse sand. I can’t finish it, because it hurts so much. Sand running over my gums. Emotionally, physically. A durian fruit lodged in my pyloric valve. I just have to stop reading and sit by myself all slugabed in the dark with a tumbler of ice-cold, mint-infused faux-Darjeeling listening to Charles Mingus’s Ah Um, no, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and whispering my oh-so-calming mantra.

The first time: Oh yes, the new Chair of Graduate Studies. Yes, him. Can’t you see that he’s a minion of the University’s privatization plan? I don’t care if he is a “Marxist” mother-fucking editor of Radical Teacher. I’ve written a poem where he appears around town: at the Laundromat advising you on how to get your whites even whiter while he fondles your unmentionables (I struck the line where he licks your undies); at the grocery checkout—no, not Shop N’ Save, but Aldi—bagging your generic navy beans, and there’s a good chance you’ll find cricket parts in there. It happened to the retired classics professor with the glass jaw. He found the whole thing strangely thrilling, and I kissed him at the Halloween party. Yes, him.

II. I went on this, like, really life changing journey to the Taos Pueblo and I could really feel the power of the land there. Everything was so colorful—like living inside of Frida Kahlo’s head if she was possessed by a really wise animal spirit. A Pooka. Like Harvey the invisible rabbit. I took this jar of dirt because it has magic healing properties. Every time I start to feel sick I just sprinkle some of this dirt in my water bottle and hold a swig in my cheeks until it mixes completely with my spit and then I drop a little into my palms and rub across my cheeks while swallowing the rest with my eyes closed.

Alpha: It’s like the end of Finnegan’s Wake, where the two women narrating the universe weep in their Guinness like children—turn to stone—and then feel like the calcium-rich lampreys running thick through the Liffey jump into the effluvia of language permeating their own experience. That’s what this book you’re reading now reminds me of in a weird way.

Item C: What do I find funny? Sometimes when I listen to Ravel, certain movements take on personalities. They just have this jaunty sort of persona that reminds me, for some reason, of certain Dostoevsky characters. Especially Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, or the father in The Brothers Karamazov, you know, the one whose serfs choke him with vodka passes through a funnel. I always imagined him as looking something like Julia Kristeva with Rosacea. When I hear those characters channeled through that music, I smile to myself a sort of knowing grin. I’m very content.

For consideration: I like to add Toni Morrison, maybe Song of Solomon, to the syllabus to spice things up a bit. It’s not as good as Deliverance with that piggy-squealing ream action, but hell, I’ve been teaching that one so long I can almost see Ned Beatty getting all glassy eyed. What’s that you’re humming? “One toke over the line”? Yeah, I like that (singing): “One toooke ooover the liiine…” Ok, my eager grad assistants, let’s get back to the lecture class. I think those kids have had enough time to talk among themselves.

4. At first I wanted someone to ask him to speak louder. But then, the musicality of his voice, I felt myself being lulled in. He spoke so softly I loved having to really focus, like I’m in a small cellar trapped by someone whose footsteps move so across the floorboards that they may not be there are all.

&: We’ve got to take a stand now, my brothers, my pistol-whipping mutineers, against the administration’s limits on our constitutional rights involving photocopying. Bullshit capitalist marionettes trying to squelch the free speech of our mimeograph machine. They are brainwashing the undergraduates by the omission of knowledge and withholding the symmetry of the dialectical materialist critique. We’ll strike, we’ll refuse to teach, we’ll write a strongly worded letter that begins, “Dear Sir or Madam,” but then, get this, goes completely hard-core anarcho-syndicalist on their asses. Fight the father-fucking powers that be….boooyeee!

Article E: I put his handouts on my fridge at home. I look at them every day, each time I go for the milk or to grab leftover coq au vin. He’s been to prison before. I really respect that.

6) I think I need a personal drummer, some sort of iPercussion section to really tie me into the spirit world. Cause I think I am—you know—tied in to a spirit world, but not this one yet. I’m riding with valkyries, doing the star-scattered two-step in the vaikunta with Ndjambi when I need to just be rolling a phat blunt with Manabozho. Right? A repetitive beat could really focus my energies towards the eightfold path the golden mean the middle way a sort of laid-back nirvana where everything is brilliant whiteness.

*: No, it’s not ‘hate’ on the other knuckle, it’s ‘true’. My knuckles ground me and remind me what’s important in life. They’re like gravity stabilizers for when I feel myself getting caught up in other pursuits. All I have to do is look down and see ‘true love’. That’s what it’s all about. What’s that? Yes, sometimes I do wear gloves.

**: When I read Blanchot, it really makes we wonder, why write at all? I mean, why fucking write? Why construct a sentence if it’s only going to get fucking deconstructed? Do you fucking understand what I am fucking saying? There’s like no fucking point. And reading? Well, I guess that’s a fucking steaming fucking load of shit too.

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Spiritual Warfare

–for the Nintendo Entertainment System, by Wisdom Tree, Inc., 1991, unlicensed

Your enemies are not killed; they are converted.
Occasionally, a convert will leave behind Spirit Points,
which you can use to purchase things like fruits.

Each fruit has its own unique method of attack.
Pears, though weak, come in handy in the Slums,
since they can destroy large weeds and junk piles.

Vials of the Wrath of God: these are basically bombs,
purchased in groups of three or seven. Samson’s Jawbone
acts as a boomerang. You’ll need this to get the Raft.

To begin, enter the red door and receive an apple
from the Christian Helper. The basketball player
you come across in the Park is of no consequence.

Do not go into the Bar in the Shipyard; you will lose
the Belt of Truth and have to go to the Pawn Shop
in the Slums to retrieve it. Using the Raft, cross the lake

and search out the Grey-Haired Man in the Airport.
He is slow and weak; it takes only three Vials
to convert him. He will drop the Helmet of Salvation,

which renders you invulnerable to dynamite.
The Church is to the east. Here you can buy grapes
for 75 Spirit Points. Grapes travel through solid objects.

Once you have beaten the Man in Black Robes
and obtained the banana, pass through the Woods
and enter the Prison, under which lies the Demon Stronghold.

The demons are vulnerable only to the banana.
You will now be in a blue room (aren’t you glad
you brought that key?) with the Demon Master.

He can be defeated with persistence. You will know
you have damaged him when his color flashes from red
to a lighter red—an almost imperceptible change.

Andrew Jackson
finished off the Creek Indian
civilization after fighting beside them.
Why Andrew?
& he puts his finger in my nose.
To the gods goes my excess asparagus,
linoleum tabletop & coffee-bruised newspaper.
I say the mountain’s not coming.
I say “the traffic,” and shrug.
There’s just not enough Vaseline
for the whole room.
I do apologize.
If the presentation never ends maybe
I can keep this laser pointer.
Rabbit under truck tire
by the high school
already cold.
Socks up to my teeth.
Electric drill to the avocado.
Striped wallpaper behind a plastic folding chair.

It’s certainly not always the case
that infidels will stalk the dumb hallways
rimming the family manor
but we’d like to believe
our cheap picture frames & outdated
electronics are at least worth stealing.
There is an exercise inside everyone’s skull
that forces them to stop slathering
lotion on their hands and wonder
what we can’t know until next March.
The assignment now is to ruin the face
of your opponent with a grapefruit spoon.
There’s a certain trick to remaining
calm while a grizzly claws
through the meat under your ribcage
but no one’s ever lived to tell it.

Valentine’s Day is coming again, so i’m going to write a love letter. Anyone can use this love letter for their lover.

Dear Lover,

There are a lot of butterflies on the planet. But none in the winter. You are my winter butterfly.

I want to lick the inside of your belly button. I want to lick the lint out of it and then kiss you. Then you have the lint in your mouth. We are naked and you laugh.

[If you are a straight man or lesbian] I want to grab your pussy. I want to cup your naked pussy in my hand. Your pussy is like a leaf with dew on it on a July Morning. That means I like when your pussy is wet. I like your pussy more when it is wet than when it is dry.

[If you a woman or a gay man] I want to hold your soft penis in my hand. Then I want to caress it until it becomes hard and then I’ll call it a cock. I want you to do things with your cock that will make me moan and make strange sounds.

I want to eat candy with you and check our facebooks sitting close.

We need each other like poor people need food and politicians need votes.

We need each other like cell phones need signals and books need readers.

Right now I’m yearning for your genitals to be near by, for your laugh, for your arms, and your legs to wrap around me and pull me deeper.

I can never get deep enough into you.

I want you have my babies. I want our babies to look like us.

We will raise our children to be nervous and strange and to love music like we do.

I keep seeing your belly in my mind, your belly flat, I rest my head on your belly, your belly is soft and we watch a movie. A movie staring Will Ferrell. Everything is right with the world. We have good credit and our grades are good.

I want to fuck until both of our genitals are chafed and sore.

There are a lot of butterflies on the planet. But none in the winter. You are my winter butterfly.

Sincerely,
Your Lover

29

An hour passed, and soon
my mind, and yet, in the

mouth is in an order. One could
be one, it is true, sensibly

in mathematics. It cannot be
more. The expression is what

will say it is not telling
everything, in a certain

sense—that from the dark red
trees—all this makes that sun.

30

He was then outline, a single
form of wax or a little boat

with a sheet. The dead
instigated me and hovered round.

What there is of consequence
was not in the boat. Zapata felt

gratitude towards those shores which formed
a calm far more monstrous.

“The streets // resounding and empty // are rivers of shadow // heading
toward the sea // and the sky, threadbare, // is the new // flag // that flares //
over the city.”

MANUEL MAPLES ARCE

31

This state of active occupation
stood in the house and sometimes

with the blood from it. After all,
its productions and features may

be called a precipice.
Gaze on the trees, all the firmness

of deformity. A curve, no
doubt, of the church. And in it

no peace. “We have failed” they shout.
I grew feverish. It stood.

32

When he returned to us, he was
bigger, not merely a

petty experimentalist.
He did not feel for those

on the top of affairs
who could perceive his calm

in leftover bundles.
I sat up much longer,

conversing with his desires
like a flood of strangers.

The Destruction Loops, Parts 1-8

I’ve let my blood out in a steamy bath

I’ve jammed a butter knife into the toaster

Lied down on my back and dropped a shot put on my face

I stuffed balls of newspaper print in my mouth

And spelled the state capitals in alphabetical order

I allowed myself to be hypnotized at the count of 8

The snap of my neck like the snap of a hypnotist’s fingers

The hypnotist showed me the earth as the angels see it

The streets are a twisted maze and we are lost in the maze

We are born walking into the world’s maze

At the count of 4 you will forget your confusion

The bathroom is filled with steam and the mirrors are steamed over

You cannot see yourself or your face in the mirror

The maze is all right angles

You are born into a confusion of angles

You will realize your confusion at the count of 4

1 – turn right

2 – turn right again

3 – turn right again

4 – turn right again

You are where you began

You must make this circuit twice

You are no longer lost in this section of the maze

I hear the snap of fingers like the snap of my neck

I am alone in a great square in a gray city

There are clouds adrift in the swollen sky

The clouds are swollen with acid rain

The gray city is one of many on an island in the ocean

The ocean is green

Its green waters are a bath of acid eating away at the coastline

You cannot see yourself in the mirror

Soon the clouds will open up and let loose their rains

You will strip naked and let them eat away at your skin

In the morning your skeleton will be found by a group of hungry lions

The lions will have ribs like wishbones pushing out at their fur

And they will pick you clean

You have given them a fullness

The meat on your bones will have completed its circuit

You will feel that you have done the right thing

You will feel an angel place a heavy hand on your shoulder

You will close your eyes and count to 8

You are clean now

You have smeared jam on your toast

You are no longer hungry

It is warm here in the lion’s den

The Oregon Trail is a Chinese Restaurant on Christmas Eve

From Independence it’s a shit ton of miles
to the Kansas River crossing.

Child #1, Christopher, has a broken leg.
Christopher is sad he has a broken leg.
He’s like Shit, my leg hurts something awful.
He’s like Shit shit shit.

We ford the river but the river’s too deep.
We ford the river & you’re like Why
the fuck are we fording the river?
The oxen can’t breathe. The oxen can’t
breathe under water. They’re chewing
their tongues off trying to breathe.
Wendy, child #2, her face is a waterfall.

Christopher is vomiting from a fever.
He’s vomiting all over Wendy’s grave.

On the seventh day God rested.
Christopher has died of dysentery.

All The Ways I Have Failed You

1.
finding him under the piano
was not the most alarming part of
the day, that day
finding his waifish
six year old body
in my underwear and
costume jewelry was not
the most alarming part
either
what worried us all the most
was his inability
to pronounce the syllables
that didn’t really
exist anyways

2.
various things are real
the cloak he wears while
walking down lake street
the antipsychotic pills
i’ve seen them,
they are pink
his inch long finger nails
humming birds that move very
fast, yes we saw that together
your arch angels
the ones that tell you
that you are beautiful
okay okay
yes I will always believe you
they are real
and that time you
stabbed me
hysterical
screaming in tongues
that was real too

3.
hey juan?
where is zack?
did you leave him
in the courthouse
again?
but its christmas!
he needs to be here
for christmas
so we can
sit in front
of the fire
and build the alamo
together one more time

4.
the rainbow wallpaper
was mine
but we all knew
that all the rainbows
made of light
belonged to you
everyone could see it
especially father
because the secret
was hiding in your teeth

from I Don’t Mind if You’re Feeling Alone

Have you lacked power?

When you were in the mall, I was drunk, looking for the toilet, photocopies following me everywhere. When you were brushing my teeth, I was in the Oldsmobile, the cold water flushed over my face like a flash of light in the woods.

I could see you there, watching me with your ugly lens, my body bent into the ice chest like a baseball bat. The baseball bat wrapped out of a tree into the angles of my body.

At 4 am we’re crossing the street as if it were a river. Your eyes watching me like the eyes of a water beetle. I turn around twice, tabs of mint against my cheek.

I tell you how precise I am. I touch the neck of the steering column. I laugh to myself, folded like a gerbil. I touch your thigh which trembles with your bones. I’m trying to sand this down, dropping each telescope into a glass, carrying a small bag between my fingertips.

Did you ever wonder if you were crazy?

I walked and walked to understand blood oranges and avocados. I walked until perhaps I thought to keep walking north until I became a mountain. And when I became a mountain you looked at me in the morning, I was obscured by clouds, but you saw me beautifully—my new hair style, a pair of pants, my tie perfectly knotted.

Did this seem normal?

Feels like a film. Mostly rock stars, stairs, boots, coats. Shadows covering the street. Cold like a walk-in. I am saving the milk, breaking a box apart. Smiling at you. A leather strap across your chest, a melon beneath your arm.

Have you experienced any cravings?

Once, I’m like a twenty-dollar bill. I can’t find you anywhere. I go around and around. At the store I see a girl with striped arms looking into the glass at a bottle of seltzer. I go back to your house and find her drinking alone. You’re there too, smoking, staring through a kind of enlightenment, looking like a peachy finger, brush strokes of smoke crushed against your forehead.

What is an allergy?

Or once, I am in your car driving through the woods, hot air kicking in at us through the windows, we have dust in our mouths, I cannot see but watch the ghosts jogging on the roadside.

Your lover turns to me, her hair like the discarded shell of snake skin, and she tells me that I am small, that I am inside her box.

I close my eyes and watch soccer players silhouetted against a wall. I feel like a rapist. Maybe my throat closes up and I can’t breathe, maybe my heart rate increases, maybe I see the morning in her chest, coming at me like headlights through the trees.

Are you convinced that your life can hardly be successful?

Please understand, I tried to find the perfect place to sit.

I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I sat on the floor, folded back the cover of a coloring book. Your tongue came later, after it was in Charlie’s mouth, after it licked the gummy insides of a shot glass.

I still worry about my breath.

I sat under the pool table, then on a rock in the yard. You might have found me like that, your hands running across my shoulders and down my thighs while I thought of my grandmother with her hands of crucifix wood.

Later, with the crucifix in my mind, I would remember that I was wearing fishnets and high heels, that you were moving not like a whore but like a drapery. I buried myself in you, a game of hide and seek.

I went upstairs to sit in the folding chair, tried the recliner, walked home, frustrated.

I furiously wiped the surfaces in our kitchen. You came home late and found me strangling around the apartment like a weed, a muted cooking show on the television.

Are you on your way?

It was late. You had spent all day like this. I cut a lemon, put it down the drain. I wanted to break you like an axle. I went outside, drove my fingers through the bark of a tree as if my eyes were made of trees.

I thought you only cry at night. I felt like breath, I took off my sunglasses. I thought you will never change and drove into the mountain hoping for a truck to come between us.

Do you understand that self-knowledge is insufficient?

I was worried I wouldn’t wake before the fish started swimming. We had been around your yard all night, started in the grass and went through the cellar door as we began to hear them waking.

One day, you said, the fungus just started going away at your brain, saw them coming up from the ground each week, watched the gardeners hack them down.

One day, with your eyes flushed like the burn of a cigarette, you said you woke and couldn’t get your feet down on the world.

They came down later and called us fucking freaks.

I was on the couch in a trench coat, my heavy boots dug into the cushions. I rocked back a little bit, thought about walking outside across the street, into the stream near the train tracks, into their pink sky.

4.13.5

In the mother fucking sound and the mother fucking light, in

The iterations of thunder, the bass so high

It hurls you into the grass, all these bitches lying

On their beds, touching themselves, waiting for me

An algorithm of trees exploding in your face, shaved from soap

In a prison cell, in a pair of yellow finches

Alighting from the high power line, all these dudes

Lying on their beds, stroking their cocks, waiting for me

Leached from the circuits in a baroque array of evolving graphical

Representations of a black economy, a cancer, a subverting process, O Christ!

Only imminent, you cannot be found, waiting to subsume, fuck up

Them cities, bring murder into the bridal chamber

And armies copulating in the killing field mud

Delete all images of yourself, crash

This party, sink this continent

To petrify latitudes of soy and corn—

To perform plastic surgery on everyone—

Make us wear our guts like streamers

A clarity scouring the berserk horizon

Murdering the letter ‘B’ from the alphabet

No name for you ever had it

I will not break down my tent

You are a lamb

Panacea

We live with glass flowers instead of flowers
that wilt light. Dinosaurs once owned the scene.

I hardly need to mention them to catalog
their numbered bones. A clock flashes on.

I’ll tell you how it will work. Nothing
is more likely to lead to an H-bomb

than the specter. We live in the air death has—
a tightened belt. The individual is some thing

we share until it hurts. I’ll tell you
how it will work. I would leave with you.

The path of life is strewn with bones
and the question is stirring. Nothing recounted

could assure intent hangs a lantern
or hope finds a horse.