from Downtown Brooklyn #6 (1997)

UNTITLED

my my what a big mouth you have is a nice way to begin
this answer to you begin over & overture perhaps
there is a better way but for lack of it begin reading here:

my my what a big mouth you have it
is bigger than your stomach

mine eyes all aquiverink and I am concern-ed zat someone is slippink me caffienes

let's see: the memory of childhood is the closest thing I can find to an
oasis anywhere in the vicinity of my tender cactus, turnip

& you don't interpret your work very well I will, though it is frightening
to run the risks that arise when one is out of range of metaphor--ahem
& you don't interrupt, please
enunciate clearly when you tell me that, watch: rising intonation a
jutting hoot engraving a line in the air with my nose and deference to desert imagery

she likes flamingos but not palm trees and you are from Florida
so I try to tell myself that is why oh you don't like Florida so
I try to tell myself that is why you don't like the palm tree but
my nagging nags at me and wittily suggests you just don't like palms
or more specifically you just don't like what they suggest--water, water

everywhere, but not a drop

my my what a big mouth you, um, I have
to go now

I need music now for breath--phew

my tendency is offending me you?

I am running away from the command that
commands me to trivialize myself and I
go out to deposit money in the bank account and only narrowly escape
falling into the pit of eating the last bite of lunch oh
America your portions are sickening why oh why must I be
a tomb in lore who can tell

the arrangement of stanzas makes itself noticeable and soon the devil's
dictionary erupts into presence instead of hanging in the backstage area

basically I'm wondering whose yes was tentative or if I suggested there was a sign
a semiotics of road signs in a landscape without roads carve them yourself

hmmm bunny cow sniffing dog

animals constitute an inimitable section of this pie neither can they be described nor
can they be fully appreciated without climbing inside their brains for a look

hmmm you make face so I am sorry

this apology thing is starting to get on to grate on ones nerves and he's wondering
how to figure out where that shit came from without repeating the same old same old
mechanisms

creak

I never noticed before that you can't see through flame but you can't--go on try--I dare ya


DAY IN DAY OUT, IS YOUR
HAIR OK DOES YOUR SHIRT MATCH
MY EYES IN THE FUTURE

that squirrel there is a
symbol of the inability
of grand institutions to
do much of anything about
anything

--grey-black flash--

I offer you a banana and the
day folds in on itself
in a sign of completeness
is only only natural

the authors with their cars can
never change my mind
about this:

the shadow of the sky slips
on over leaving
us behind

I am reminded to keep staring
intently focusing
digging out pieces

the night is broken the beer
is locked away in this
little town on the edge
of everywhere

glimpse him hiding behind that
bombed-out truck
likcing his lips and
motioning towards us
a tour guide here in
the not so famous
museum of the
inevitable

droning electronic technology
wanders down the hallway
to soothe a dying girl

the streetlight comes to let
there finally be life
buzz
and then
dies away to build
up more
momentum

getting going in the morning
early
early

do your exercises: pick out
the peaks out the window
one two three name them
never forget, you were there
once give them names, their
names, feel yr feet upon
yr continent

sitting there in yr chair
you still feel the rocks and leaves
under you like
a trampoline
in yr stomach at the end of the day

the notebooks are almost
all full now soon they'll
stop producing them and we'll
be stuck with only each other's
eyes to write upon

listen do you hear it

the breathing of the skin of the
friend sitting next to you