For a moment the soft thuds seem to come from a giant heart
And the last door without a sheer gully all the way to the top
Laid the butcher paper under the dawn of justice
Folded my tongue with the shove of a ship
It’s the night like a chin on the knees
It’s the morning like a fruitless scroll
Great cartridges of white ice a phrase of speech
Kept the horse pointed toward October’s foam
Waiting crossed the apple-scented smile on a mouth’s corner
Steps into the sunlight of upper thigh
Your back a new moon striped in Venetian blinds
Susceptible to the earnest whisper of normal slaughter
Hang on the scarf of the skeleton of snowflakes
A pheasant’s memory a lacquer of rush
Diamond domed for the pillow clearing to appear
Always emptying air through tree leaves
Where she went with the light of the door opening
The moment kneeled on a top-sheet with shining lakes of cum
Higher hills whose saliva is a radio signal
Rains flesh back into the woods under the pillow.
**OUT NOW** ML 003 - DUCK, SUCCOR poems and odds & ends by hans f. wagner
Exhumed Stars
Alfred Hitchcock was found with
Houdini’s stomach
Marilyn Monroe was found
in a perfume of whitecaps
Bela Lugosi was found with
the bends
Kobe Bryant was found with
a way back in
Geronimo was found with
a maple leaf on a chain
Carl Sagan was found with
new findings
Borges was found with
Wet Naps
Philip Lamantia was found with
spiral shoes
Billy the Kid was found with
an ultralight backpacking tent
Thomas Jefferson was found with
Please Kill Me
Carl Linnaeus was found
inside a snowman
Eric Dolphy was not found
Amelia Earhart was found
trying to write poetry.
The Corner of the House Too High in the Sky
Shattered onion doesn’t really happen, but that could describe the sun. The jar on the hill is lifted and replaced with a recording device. In the mulch, a bug. We stared at it while talking, then realized it was made of rubber.
For all the thoughts the morning hours contain, coffee drowns me in the real trick. Following the thought to a smooth curved cream ledge, I can throw a knee up and slide down more slowly. From there it’s a matter of raising a finger. Staying squat in the tallgrass, I give up, rise, signal everything to come out.
The situation the highway passes was different. This highway was installed by a museum. Lights climb the staged trees. Big transparent ice falls. Swallows before bedtime, inducing the crystal sleep. Winds seem to squander figures against the sky. A detached bread raises, and re-attaches between plate and mouth. Just beside it, the knife results not to be believed.
I sat on a hill and got progressively more clear. I confronted myself with the curtness of a liquid nitrogen frozen racquetball. Thrown into the canyon of painted hands. Shattered, every ledge here lived, now untouchable. I want to live where it snows against great peach bags.
What am I doing here, or over here, or wherever you find me when I get buried in time? I’m thinking of a plant that starts to speak, not metaphorically but actually. I am tired. That doesn’t mean I want to die. I wanted to die before but kept waking up. This isn’t a story anymore. It is what really happens.
Elvis
without a microphone
looks much like anyone else,
except sideburned.
