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  • The pencil they gave me

    The pencil they gave me
    was covered with paint. I scraped at it.
    Artisan, whole-leaf paint chips
    dropped off
    in spidery clumps.
    And now I can see, it is an artisan pencil.
    Made by a man in the mountains of Peru.
    Separated out from the base of a Peruvian Pencil Tree.
    Peru.
    It is a savage land.
    And there’s my friend, the legendary artisan
    with his Peruvian pencil-carving knife, its handle
    snapped clean off
    from the root of some
    mountain vegetable.
    Most of the knife is edible, in fact.
    Even the blade.
    But only if you cook it long and slow.
    And who would eat such a thing?
    Who would eat the knife cooked tender?
    Someone with a pen, no doubt.
    Or a typewriter.

  • Welcome

    Welcome
    to the Golden Age
    of me flossing my teeth.
    An upgraded Age of Reason
    and now even the common man understands
    that the pale dots
    on my bathroom mirror
    are just pale dots and not some grim portent.
    At night there is light
    in this magical time.
    I am guided by the soft reflection of
    my polished mouth bone
    and these gums
    have never felt
    so fierce.

  • To you

    To you
who live
in states
that vote
today
I say:
Happy voting!

  • only the blink

    only the vertical blink-blink on the horizon
    gives any sign of
    all these emails
    passing
    in the blink-blink
    night.

  • They are slippery too.

    Teach a man to catch worms and perhaps
    he will be fortunate enough
    to find some worms.
    Or perhaps not. Perhaps
    they will elude him.
    Because worms are crafty.
    But give a man a worm, and he can split it in two!
    And then he will have
    two worms!
    I’m asking nicely now:
    Won’t you give a man a worm?

  • Being a Goose

    do you remember being a goose?
    do you remember flying in pairs
    your neck pulled long and straight
    warm feathering into the wind
    your boney beak bobbing
    far out in front to beats
    pulsed sideways
    by your partner’s heart?

  • Paying myself in song

    If I can
    just just
    make it
    three
    minutes more
    three more
    minutes
    more
    I’ll let myself
    hear another
    tune by
    The New Pornographers.

  • Call the Water

    Is it enough
to call the water
black to talk about
the swirls, the crack in
the floor of this Bay
    That steams up
sleep evaporating
soaking into
a newspaper headline
till it has mighty heft
    Is now a good time
to chalk it all up
this swirl and this crack
this slow-dripping heft 
    to some sort of
vague, tectonic displacement?
    Some foamy kerning surge?

  • Dance dance dance

    I am late
to this particular party.
    In fact, the party has rolled on.
And yet here I am. 
             Partying
nonetheless.

  • The weatherman says

    “The eye of the storm
    never hit land
    although obviously the eye wall did.”
    Obviously.
    Like now we’re all supposed to know what an “eye wall” is.
    Meanwhile: I’m having these dreams
    where Mr. Roarke was originally
    Tattoo and he’s saying
    “The Plane, The Plane”
    in rolling tones with a sweeping hand.
    And then he gets promoted and the new Tattoo comes in.
    And the new Tattoo thinks “Alright! I’ve got a job with upward mobility!”
    But he’s wrong about that.
    And those white seaplanes keep dipping down
    slowing to a stop
    while the eye wall of Tattoo
    becomes dark, clustered, clumped.
    Obviously.
    As he floods on the inside.