sew a wick into a book spine

1. cop helicopter
carving grooves into the blue + cloud sky
out my window
circling back

2. you can call me roughrider
anytime

3. every shuttlebus boarding these days
i cannot help but think of a zipper
coming together
as the crowd eventually funnels down to two lines
merging at the door

4. shadows of pigeons lined along the arm of a stoplight
at the intersection of washington and dove

5. LANGUAGE WORLD
store sign
all capital white letters
perched on secondstorey roof
i remember
the store in minneapolis that charley used to work at
only their sign was in neon instead of flat white
SEX WORLD

6. honey in a tiny glass jar
was it from holland or sweden?

7. she used the words
slew and bevvy
in the same sentence
she must be
channeling joolie

8. discussing
the difference between
permission and foreclosure

9. sew a wick into a book spine
and sell it with a box of matches

10. the january we froze
trying to hold class in a room
colder than the air outside

11. never apologize from the stage
she says
unless you’ve set someone on fire
and in that case
say
‘how can i help you?‘

12. sticker on shuttlebus windowlever:
watermelon.
contains cannabis.
for medical use only.

dear egypt, dear tunisia, dear vendor on fire at the governer’s office

(click on images to make them larger)

 

including but not limited to

in honor of thresholds

in some moments, there is only silence

prominent ugandan gay rights activist
murdered (because of his homosexuality) today in his home
with a hammer

david kato
your name
was never meant
to be remembered this way

digital rupture

1. plastic chair
office-carpeted
colors of a bowling alley
feet don’t reach

2. front yard #1:
cosmos patch in bloom
front yard #2:
white gravel as landscaping

3. this is kindof an artificial situation
he says
and references
putting pressure on a poem
pushing hard on its multicultural edge
a situation where i have to act like i know
what is going on

4. ralph waldo emerson said
we are all quotations

5. and once
there was the widow ching
a female pirate
in command
of over 1,500 ships

6. he says
but most miracles are
very bad

7. no food or drink allowed
in this room
if any of us
could have anything
wouldn’t it be to feel
just a little bit freer?

8. for 10 minutes
we break through
the digital rupture
me: stationed at the shuttle stop
you: in pipe-laying bootcamp

leggo my ego

 

1. our clocks no longer tick
but they still keep track of time
rae tosses out
like bread crust
to parkducks
pondfloating

2. just past the
tuesday campus farmers market
and before the frozen yogurt store
a kid
handcuffed behind his back
maybe 20 years old
a cop on either side

3. i want to pull the cops in for questioning
and tell the kid
who doesn’t look particularly humiliated anyway
that it’s going to be alright
that even though those guys are the ones
with the guns strapped to their belts
his power
his posture
is still his

4. art
is not
comfort food
babette tells us

5. you have to be selfless
with your art
she also tells us
and i scribble this phrase
for the second time this week:
leggo my ego
(which i discover
after googlesearching
is also a dead milkmen song)

6. we meet here
under the sky as blanket
stars as stitches not sewn through yet

7. he offers this phrase:
aggressively casual
while photographers
like the seagulls around us
flock with sunset-set cameras

8. he shows me
the score for
perfection factory
explaining
how the percussionists
paint the belltree as the piece goes on
which means
it arrives
at a more fixed scale
by the end of the piece
(later
i realize
i forgot to tell him
how much i loved
his choices of titles)

9. after the images
of  a chop saw
and walk behind saw
you say
and we will set our manholes
on either end of the run