First Edition, First Printing

Cover Art Jeff Bosworth

Copyright 2005-2012 Weldon Gardner Hunter
Published by Small Ghosts
September 2012
Weldon Gardner Hunter
The Stella And Pony Years
| I|al1. |s|aa1s
Love, Ameritech Style
Poem
Autumn Grillin
Hemlock
Tom Veitch at Bosmans Hotel, 1060 Howe Street
Vancouver
Little Half Way
Ethan Hawkes Novels
On Birders Day
The Glengarry Tape
Poem Containing One Line From Kenward Elmslies Spite
Fence Memo
American Summer Hardcourt
Trafc Islands
Formula Off
The Stella and Pony Years
Late Autumn Grillin
II. Light From Emerging Markets
Whitewash
Meditation on Eating & Dreaming I
Light From Emerging Markets
Springtime Grillin
Lake Poets
Disposable Income
Birthplace
Going-To-The-Sun
Semi-Ofcial Poem
The Divine Entire Gravy Boat (A Poem For A Hangover)
The Entrance Into North Vancouver
Mascot Races At Annacis Island
Seasonal Affective Disorder
My Evening With Marcus Eastside
Readymaking
Othello Workstation
Typecasting
Know Your Entrances, Know Your Exits
Bullshit Creek
Go To The Sea
Summer Grillin
III Room For Cream
The Situation
Valentine
Lubbock Created Woman
Sharon
Title Disaster
Goldilocks
First Aid Kit
Shanks Pony
Room For Cream
Here Come The Hotstepper
A City Learning To Eat
Green Apples
Campus Sex

|\ I|-s- \|- ||.|a|1 a-|-s \l|--ls
Poem
Anticipating a Trip To IKEA
Tundra Removal Cream
The Oxygen Donors
Safety
Spencers Birthday
The Gibeonites
What If I Thought About Who I Was?
Sealed Air
Red Shirt
Poem
Fainting Goats
Books In The Bathroom
The Intern
Verbs Little Used
Historys Mean
Mayan Calendar
Joel Lewis
Where To Stop
| I|al1. |s|aa1s
|at- \m-||l-.| \l,|-

The trains are running
The factories are operating
and we have no means of knowing
what power is working
on those humid nights
when the fans are revolving.

In cold weather
cracks appear at the corners
where the walls and ceilings meet
The lights play erratic games along the tile
and toxic asbestos blooms
on the bottom of the tub.

If you do not surrender
When next we emerge from the darkness
It will be to extinguish all life from your planet.

But that doesnt mean were pessimists.
Poem

It is Samoan hour,
the heron in me is moving.

Karamazov Oleaves,
sturm my lifestyle.

On strange earths,
as-if solstices appear

in gliding backgrounds,
out of the coral

from which nymphs weave
some of the most radical trends in art.
\alama a|||||a

Thanksgiving 2005, Vancouver, for James

1.

On a change un peu notre line-up ...

2.

And so are you tired of living amongst the plebs & plates?

3.

Well re up the Weber every autumn to blister our chiles

(4.)

in the tonalities of Mole Hill, instead of the fall of a leaf
T-m|a.|

Its difcult to tell where havoc hics
a scarf, a puff of inhaler

everything so terribly
hickory-dickory-dockery

philosophers injury,
so swollen & hobbled

driven whistling,
moving never
Iam \-|l.| al |asmaas Tal-| |1|1 Taw- \l|--l
\aa.aat-|

In my hotel room
I discovered I kind
of like instant coffee
and I found a
vending machine that takes
only nickels and dispenses
full meals in pill form
PLUS it makes lush
portrayals of the countryside
and prints them in
solid vivid colours onto
hard-backed cardboard postcards
and so from here on in
art will warm my shivery legs
Little Half Way

for Alex Gigeroff

Fresh trees should have
ridgetops like smoke,
iron branches in winter.
I built a tall re and fed it
with these boughs (wind
has torn like that for me).
The spiraea moonlight dove
into the scene and illuminated
a birdshit eck on my hat.
The old people moved near
to another. The woods
were oven-warm.
|l|aa Taw|-s \at-|s

The immensity rises in all directions
& the infrared lists of the little enzymes
make a garbled oratory
no worse than the sober colleges in my forehead
|a |||1-|s |a,

the participants
may end up
far away from
all the animals
I|- a|-a,a||, Ias-

The Kilmarnock
lift top potty
We have a man who argues
only superlatives &
images that pick up as
in Saul/Paul we see a man
as a punishment
He is a spirit also
set on re each gentle
young ewe, no laurels
or praises or tributes are
available

As you can see, not
everything in the sky
is accurate
I looked up at the sun
(yeah yeah)
trying to ll mine
with moods --
like a game of chess
on a frozen screen

Dragons, & fairies, &
wit & drollery
I was feeling rich
but I couldnt afford to go --
though with a good fuck
forgetfulness might come
|a-m 'aala|a|a, |a- ||a- ||am |-awa|1 ||ms||-s
\s|l- |-a.- 1-ma

Rows of cracked buildings
lean against the Great Lakes

the hiss & rattle of spray cans
chill of light fumes from the cove

frigid air tilting the sunbeams
head rst into the sooty bricks

a black wave of geese,
the stars, the big bands

oat past spikes of jagged glass
to the point of the crumbling edge
\m-||.aa \amm-| Ta|1.aa|l

Hit the ats sneaking around east
Back & forth, those birds rule nuthin out
Just saw my tender, bruised, male body
ashing jujitsu moves on the court
All that said, I decided to go
for the unlimited possibilities
of free verse, so my serves were
obviously out of sync and I lost my grip
The john was full, up to the corkboard,
then I picked up a stray cat, way up there
in the rain: Ted Atkins asked who was it?
And I threw my hands in the uorescence
(they threw in the bar nuts), and answered
Ryu Ta -- it means northern lights
I|al1. |s|aa1s
my amazement has trouble connecting
repeat that in social setting

sickly yellow lights didnt blaze in
snow? No shock ... you forgot the breaks

in the marble oor. Is it the brightness
of being cussed out & possibly shot at?

Dorothy has a green streak through all
the trafc lights, bringing a dark &

ironic aura next door. The towns
creative diplomacy. I could be

doing anything, so I write death,
but anything is negotiable.

Now cottonwoods explode
on the trafc islands.

Since distance equals velocity times
my genital landscapes,

if you wait too long for the light to change,
youre guaranteed to get rear-ended.
Formula Off

The teenage mothers at centre court
spy plates of huge sh chargrilled
or chapters of an invading armys
esperanto Playboys --
these are the sullen pigments
which seek the unied source
at the heart of each
technological step
or in a thought experiment
which posits that
there are two Winnebagos
with Werner Herzog in them
-- the sound of reality
dropping on ineffectual ideas
out in the night
in the brown of last year
stuck to the spindrift pages
and haunted Gabrielle Allon, art
was wrapped inside
The Stella and Pony Years

Trafc on the raised freeway
ashed and a hummingbird buzzed away.
Bumblebees hummed in an azalea bush
which rose out of the spicy sage, and a
sea cap with bird tracks on
it came into my eld of view.
The serious birder started dgeting
at the appearance of gaulin birds,
gardes-boeufs, lists of ruby-throated
warblers, as I slashed his tires,
a world away.
We both never knew a ne time
for bird-watching, or parking-lots:
true savants on idiot dunes of sand!
The eld will be rewarded
in some otherworld, Primeval-dumb,
song soft lilting hardcore.
|al- \alama a|||||a

South facing area - cloudy
Fulford Harbour, where harvesters
and bard travellers lm a grill
television show. Sitting somewhere
at the picnic table, amidst the
paper plates and plastic cutlery,
mug warmers, is Da Visci, the man
everyone wanted to know. He
found the party because he had
made the sketches of it, including
clover elds, groundnut trails, and
warm drinks made with sweetbriar.
Also, the comfortable lodgers, the
duck pond, and the pine spot
in the damp green woods, in the heart of him;
the words, the winds murmuring
cubist poetry, and the nonhero
kind of lines in a colourful painting
that was part of the fourth century.
II. Light From Emerging Markets
\||l-was|

I guess the spirits messed up
this season, but I am not about
to go & call them on it.

So many creatures, totems,
and fetishes --its like nding
the right search term and running with it.
The Jungle Lords of Copyright,
taking pens, pencils, Starbucks
cups, Rickys soccer team;

everything, in an attempt to
protect themselves. But theyre
ruining North American criticism.

Lose all respect, and then you
too can balance on the edge
between the poem & a hole so deep.

The rising of scales, the Poem
in Action, not to drag it down to
the deplorable condition of information.

The good isnt bad. Its
strategic. Theres some good shit
in here, may it proudly proliferate.
1-1|lal|aa aa |al|a, ` ||-am|a, |

facilitate harmony and prosperity for
potato chips I almost never do, for
in the universe, there are specic
episodes of designer dreams -- but
others are convinced of a kind of feudal
rearrangement of law & order & space
& time in the universe -- its what they
take to school and unload from their
backpacks, along with the potato chips,
but theyre never the kind I like --
likewise, I may never get to know my
own dreams, though theyre startling in
their little gram packages: visualizing
a soul is not like buying potato chips,
& no saturated fats are found this corner
of the machine, whether or not some of
us are scientists and some poker players
Light From Emerging Markets
Products unwrapped in space
are tracked with techno beats
that slowly frazzle, then icker
forth across the screens
collecting light; they work
like the stars shot by
shooting stars, with wild
imprints (craters) in their
own images that grow faint
when the desire to see them wanes
\s||a,l|m- a|||||a

for Prianka

if you neglect to stir
and love is in the air
then forget your chorus, man,
why dont you shed your parkas,
denims and vests de quichantes?

Pretty girl plays her
tennis sur terre battue
moment and I meanwhile
open a can of
printemps whoop-ass
on ya


soleil, I am au revoir,
fresh off a strong start to spring,
the new really new
Lake Poets

I saw as a child, the ideoretinal
touch of the beautiful in every little thing,
elds of green damask unrolled
beyond the spheres of the brightest lights,
the various elements of nascency unshrouded,
a world naturally made in evocations.
This innocence became an eerie trail,
one that would grow outwardly deeper
until it struck a balance with nature.
I could never decide if this was
agreement or territorialism.
In predictable times, this accord was
needed to dene the irregularity of
the adventure I had chosen. Soon,
however - in turbulent blooms - these idle
beginnings were halted by a queue
of graceful arbours that achieved fantastic
virtuosity. This is how simple details made
a questionable young man, dominating a stage
which had been shortened: a bench in
a swan-lled park. Here, a cold nger
stirs in the ash-grey lakewater and
unleashes unreality in courts so deep
they seem to shriek, the means of keeping
order by reecting consciousness
in the slowly rufing, paperless surface.
||ssasa||- |a.am-

I opened my door to chili
with a layer of red grease
which would never really
accumulate without a big-

ger budget. On the table I
placed nger bowls; peel
the shrimp and dip em in!
I hired sexy cheerleaders
to migrate about the room
with sweet bean and onion
lling - a big honor in our
princely junior year! I told

my pals, Lets make this a
tax write-off! - even tho
my job pays me three pinto
beans a week. Id heard the

fries being criticized more
than I normally like to hear
but no more! were just sit-
ting around, not burning or

stretching! Obese Walkers
Start Your Engines!! There
will be no more calories to
count at the end of April!!
|||l|s|a.-
An old coach road runs through
the soggy patches of land, islands
between storks nests. The road
used to be dotted with
old dairy barns and pasture-
lands, letters of praise
lining the doveways. These inlets,
where once the highway was, was
also where my gym class came to play.
If you are walking out there
of an evening, listen out
for search warrants, those nearly-
endangered tawny creatures
of the west. The air
carries a slight huskiness
that tickles the corn. I remember
every syllable of the gin
I drank, causing me to blend
in with the barn wood,
then listening to still life.
aa|a,IaI|-\aa

The person advising you, stretched out
against an everlasting meadowland, in
between two fairly big people,
claimed any hopes of an armrest.

But when a pretty young girl
in a checkered shirt takes you by
the elbow, down to the road, you
are happy to become a burden to her family.
\-m||l1.|a| |a-m

I hadnt realized
how beautiful
city workers
are when
theyre
slack-
ing
off.
I|- ||t|a- |al||- a|at, |aal '\ |a-m |a| \ Taa,at-||

Description: vintage bamboo waves
Heat Doctor Fu Manchu in
melodious rounds in the divine force
of a messianic vision to be:
microwaved beans over which slivered
almonds had merged with the local avours
and divinely done away with gravity.
Clarity, prismatic colours, and toast,
hues of fresh ideas and juice,
coffee steaming to just the right degree.
Anyone acquainted with the minute wonders
of Minute Steaks breathes in
in the greasy, soaked-in
splendour, and for value, just to ll
you up, there is a tenderness there as well.
These are the last words you read
on your stained, laminated menu
as your eyes taper off
& hang there in the air.
I|- |al|aa.- |ala \a|l| \aa.aat-|

Seen from the boat, the greenery
spreads around the houses, even
just around the tugs. The colour
that nature screws around with

includes unobtrusive clapboard
blue. I cant help but notice
this stuff. Unsure vistas divid-
ed by short distances. A shove

out of place, a small displace-
ment: some coconuts thrown
from the bridge oat by a big
heap of lemonade crystals. The

wind you wouldnt wear your
Maple Leafs jersey in. The
pauses between the boats throbs
push your knees into blubber.

On land there are wine lists,
tuna melts at the Quay.
1as.al |a.-s \l \aaa.|s |s|aa1

Symbolic Root Bear Disguise (AM)
at the muddy owstation
constitutes at present
the only modern case of being
truly uninhibited:
Animals who wear clothes
but dont yet speak a
humanoid language
communicate via the
vibrations of the extra layer
of felt on their bodies -
It sounds like velcro tearing
over a furioso Coltrane solo
and it gets us sexily agitated
\-asaaa| \ll-.l|t- ||sa|1-|

When Stacey took off,
the letters that spelled
things would slow down,
the fan palms outside our
home on Venables became
ridiculously heavy with
moisture, and when I tried
to cut a fart, only a sad,
lowing wet sound issued forth.
Our friends had to sort through
the slush. I since have had
intimate relations with all
these friends, and I plan to
continue to do so in the
future, as sort of a shifting
companion piece to all my
unfeeling poetry.
1, |t-a|a, \|l| 1a|.as |asls|1-
In mediterranean restaurants full of Carlsberg,
then drinking pisco at La Vomita Nautica until 0100,
our position was maintained until we reached a state
where we could literally feel the drink chiseling away
at our basic constitutional rights, parameterizations
in our pint-glasses drilling us quickly into slobbering
senselessness and a piss-your-pants cognitive,
parsing drunken sentences on whiskey-soaked 30s doorsteps,
chatting up crack hotel attendees, the Andean brew
feeding defocus and deposting us into the mystifying
lattice structure of the downtown streets, the bitch-of-a-
time-getting-a-taxi streets ...
Readymaking

the way one encounters the dense
forest murals in the rec-room w/
faux-cedar panelling is much like
the reaction to a wasp or bee sting

a public owers and shuttles across
the lots between the empty spaces &
kitchen islands, although the route
still lacks the hard augmentation
it needs. its a straight, clean break
(like the garage) & the appliances
control and interlock and improve
all the manufactured ambience:

the builders managed to wrangle
many items from a supply shed
behind the civic arena, which was
easily assimilated into the plan

& put to use in the narration --
terminating downwind as all the
nascent smoke in the air gets
a purchase on the local agri-

business and a smooth piece of
equipment rifts the earth into
basements, commuting conifers
into vast suburban circulation.
Othello Workstation

The pendulum is shifting,
in other words, it is in
no way shifting, but did
you ask nicely and hear
why it was justiable
to shift? The open-rooftop
lounge is the signature place
for sunlight: there is no high
articulation as a penalty
for being breezy. Its a no-
mans-land, a conditional
no-go for the proposed
tennis court, and the
requisite images on the
wall are penitent. An
architect today exchanges
constraints for gameplay,
symbolically coping with
the multiple models then
in use. The design is made
of warm sugar wood, a
beautiful culvert for
reality and non-technical
certainty.
I,s-.asl|a,
for J
The blonde allure eludes me -
my early sexual trysts were
merely leafy avenues set out
by my voluptuous mentors
according to the rules of
impersonal investigations -
es war nicht die erste Blumen
of my unrealistic youth cult.
Since those days, I only fall
in love (desperately!) with
women who not only resemble
Adrienne Barbeau, but who
also possess her sensuously
intransigent mouth. I put
my foot in mine, nally
howling parenthetically
in a Zeus-styled toga.
|aaw \aa| |al|aa.-s |aaw \aa| |\|ls

Ladylike conceptualisms, manly discriminations.
Jesse James never sat with his back to the window,
but he also never took his eyes off the schoolmarm.
The idea of a raunchy relationship without regard
to the notion of polish left our generation all just
whacking away on Dads recliner, at least early on.

Its like we started paddling hard to make it out to
Make-Out Point, but when we got there, there were
just a bunch of huts stocked with acne medication.

Now, Im not going to make excuses for being a late
bloomer, but my current experiment with candor does
mean that Im going to name a name or two, and

I know that some of you (Heather!) are going
to hate this more than my sweaty hands or my
bad habit of gazing weirdly at your decolletage.

However, Im not opposed to making myself a better,
more respectable person, with the mien of a young
Victor Mature, but just wait a few months when

Springll stick its tits out, and then I hope that
youll be here, and you & I can be pretty and cocky
together, juicy roles that well rotate regularly.
|a||s||l '|--|

was probably never cleared -
4441 pages not cleared
of trees, the direction
and degree of each having
its back around the hills
- they continue even where
several deep sections link
ink and eye movement:
the outer northern,
the speechifying eastern -
it cannot, by passing itself
off as Indian bingo,
supplant the rivery
hornblende that accumulates
quasi-industrially
in these sunwashed swellings
aa Ia I|- \-a

Today has been lled with
impure thoughts about
keeping a journal of
my impure thoughts. After
drifting through inter-
planetary horse archery,
I come back and nd the
ocean is still slamming
the seawall. Any sane
person would welcome a
gas cloud of serenity
over these artsy lms which
bunch up in the middle of
our year-end, best-of lists.
So, nding a pathway of
high-order multiples, I lay
down and watched the sky
leisurely unfold its
up-to-date creations, while I
leak oil. 3 or 4 people go by.
I am on the ground partly
because I dont get attached
to periods.
\amm-| a|||||a

1.

I am at an internet cafe on Pender Street in Vancouver.

2.

Im hoping the game doesnt get rained out.
3.

Et, assez bizarrement, cest Summer Grillin qui est arrive en tete!

4.

Goodbye for now, nomads, my babies ...
III Room For Cream
The Situation

Lets say the person sitting next to you (maybe
your lover, a blonde even!) does not agree
with your decision to get a danish, dont --
for heavens sake! -- retaliate. To court them
and win requires more than a bit of art: just
brush their hair lightly with your ngers (that
should always be your default setting), then
bend them slowly over the side of the couch,
as Lord Ives did Wang Ken, in that beautiful
old romance we read as kids, and so progress
slowly through the subterfuge of backdoor
lovemaking, as if time and duty did not enter
into it, and whisper the passage of the petit
madeleine huskily in their ear, substituting
your favourite pastry as each thrust becomes
more forceful.

Thus I teach you the pear-tree life of the geisha,
which you will always want to eat from.
Valentine

I planned to compliment you
(cant say as I have con todo
que se va hoy), and to say that
it wasnt kool to make fun of you,
which I did. We just said
our good-byes the way pirates do,
with our hands making jerking
motions and our lips saying, See ya.
But now that youre gone,
youre starting to hit me like
the water in Acapulco: an
invigorating choice of fantasies,
all of which Im reluctant to ingest.
Does that make sense? Listen! -
theres a bird at your door
(theres a bird doorbell at least)
and it has a silver ask of vodka for you
& a starling song of our future debauchery ...
|a||a.| '|-al-1 \amaa

You stole everything from me --
Lubbock needed beauty.
It needed to get it on
and shake its communal ass
Or go mad from loneliness --
So Lubbock created Woman.
Sharon

She embodies most of the beautiful concepts
in any composition.
Shes a Raelian
and she takes on the form
of an internal landscape
that merges with my cubicle self.
We get late lunches
which she pays for
because of her felicity.
If my furrowed brow gets too close
to the end of my glasses,
she pushes them back up
and resettles my hair (shes seen
my drivers license photo
& knows theres not much there.)
And when smoking weed
seems like a rst choice
rah-thah than a last resort,
thats why she & I have this thing
called the Old Biddy System (which
I just invented right now
& shell know nothing about.)
The only thing that can propel her
into leaving is all the inactivity
in this town. She can carry a tune,
and you can share it with her,
but youll have to do it quick,
because she always changes it so fast.
I|l|- ||sasl-|

I cant blow bubbles, cant chew gum,
chestnuts roasting on an open re confound me,
but I cant just dismiss nicotine replacement
as long as there is a heart in my chest
and a phone card in my jacket pocket.

As for the speed of islanders,
they are reacting to you while you speak
by changes in their formal demeanor, and if
all goes well -- theyll probably be very impressed!

Even if you learned from my mistakes
and my non-verbal cues,
you never said anything about it. Then
again, youve always seen the ip-side
of our affair. But come on, who do you think you are,
a perpetual foreign exchange student?

I have the responsibility to clarify
the contents of my heart & mind,
something I used to do daily.
Now Ive put that routine down
in favour of TV shing shows.

Like Tennessee politics,
youre logical, and very assertive.
Im ip & glib,
arch & frank,
ink & smudge,
smash & grab,

paying scrupulous attention to
the subtleties & mannerisms of
your body.

Oh yeah, I cant wink either.
aa|1||a.|s

All the bears have fallen into the
shoemakers hutch on Halloween
night, they were out partying &
forgot which house she lived in.
First Aid Kit
Down by the spare bedroom
emerging from a stairwell,
I surprised my cat.Theres
a big scratch on my leg.
I pressed strawberries
gently into the wound,
while a whining pet ambulance
accompanied me
to the medicine cabinet.
\|aa|s |aa,
for Gerry Gilbert

what do you hear in the city
that gets very wet in a rising tone?

where the rain is falling in gusts
& you see the Fall in the gutters
in fact the blue & grey of the sky
comes out rather explicitly in the falling water

I take my shoe
& give it a fuckin good shake

if only I could keep
from moving this heap of limbs

I went for a walk in the Supply District
but all I could nd were leaves & planets

the kinetic resurrection of
commerce has eroded the streets

the roads get stoned
the avenues come to visit

the stars twinkle like salted sh
the sun is a glittering lyric hibiscus
Room For Cream

The day always starts out with dawns crack
I wake up bright-eyed & well-read
near-mint
bed-head
light general wear
ripple on back near spine
cover laminate but slightly shrunk
the icy mist outside hovers
we start training -- one monk at a time
unbelievable amounts of danish to deplete
power percolatin through a democratic people

its cold in here
breath mist rolls over formica
the warmth inside of me
melts into the jittery air
we use to blend our coffee

the morning is a series
of small xed pictures of cloud cover
& chimney puffs
all of which reect
Kantian thought about the way we wake up
who knows how many holy people
still dig in the woods
the gist drifting wordiness or madness
they would probably all agree
indissolubly laughing

that special feeling is present again
& the Hibernian blue sky
will soon step in
& well begin
our wonderful gorilla trek
in Gutenberg forward motion
pushing ourselves downtown

I touch my tie
centering it again
sliding thumb to tighten
then grasping an already-wrinkled paper bag
with the rest of my breakfast in it

free newspapers make us better commuters
after nding my seat
the slump sets in
but soon a lively symposium
will separate laughing matters
from serious business
into talk doubly brightening

into wakefulness
as readable as the early morning light
T-|- 'am- I|- Talsl-ss-|
Heavily-cologned
slick R & B
is not dead but
its popularity has faded somewhat

I miss the subtle thrusts
(sigh!) accompanied
by a sudden twitch
or two of my left feet

In the new ordinariness
we can appreciate
the folk festival
again
Give me a
hiccuping hillbilly anyday:
the arched body
hanging from the coatrack

Music is not
a universal language
as some people
pitch:

its a milkshake
of frozen lumps
and uid sounds which
storm to clarity

(It seems
that every cut
is a clarication
these days)

Just because you like
ddle music
that doesnt make you
a Celtics fan
There is a way of
seeing a song
on the open-mike circuit:
it begins innocently enough

with some strummed
acoustic chords
and doesnt
stand out

But it recalls
all the fragmented
songs youve written
at the lake
It has been miniaturized
and diluted
and at every tune
it whistles freely

So now I want
to dance in circles
on something other
than my own hind legs

Maybe someone could
put me in a red
wheelbarrow & wheel
me onto the danceoor?
A City Learning To Eat

When something good happens
my waistline inches up a fret
if I ever decide to tread lightly
it will be a civil marriage
between reduced body fat
and a moonlight aubade
seeking the good life
you can actually buy a thermos for
though probably exorbitantly priced
so the best method Ive been told
is to follow the lifestyle

the ides of cooking my own food
corn on the cob side of Murphys Law
beautifully nocturnal cheese slices

you can actually get
a million free packets of ketchup
at the front counter of cultural necessity
I didnt poison myself with Tums just now
so that you could tell me
that Italian food is some kind of new frontier

whatever the ethnicity of the wedding
there is always time for jello shots
and a sentimental slideshow

you cant spell leftovers
without lovers

when we go out dancing
the DJ never packs a lunch

he is the DJ
he is also a condiment

thats why we see him on the table
at Dennys afterwards

trying to think of recipes
trying to think of rhymes

its hard times
a|--a \ss|-s

Now here comes another Monday in B Flat
body warmin
lips a-glowin
sex-sympin
pants hangin on a branch

change the viking weather
a minute percentage
it was so fun to be out
surrounded by apple orchards
in the early morning
and attempting to stuff
more than one apple in my mouth

the apple tree is here
to help keep our trust in times
lacking in the cure for blue balls

what if I fall over it?
the tree, that is

then remembering my
successful makeshift washing tank
has produced strong results softly bent

the customer service attitude is
not evident enough
they were eating drinking
without regard to us

(I mean whatever happened to the
kind of neighbours youd bring pie to?)

you seemed only too eager
to slap some ass in the nads

there is no time to nd a new place for art
we should cut it down chop it up
remove the stump
and refertilize the area

pour out what you need
or freeze it for posterity

like if Newton had been invented by Einstein
there might not have been an apple tree
and we wouldnt have gathered them apples
euphemistically
'amsas \-\

You remark at dinner
while seated next to that
silly old gentleman youre now married to

that the plum sauce
though admirable
perhaps errs on the side of richness

This is an example
of the occasional robustness
by which you express yourself

You can barely stand on a corner
of the First Arrondisement
without being accosted for your Parisian beauty
actually youre more of a Jewish poststructuralist princess
one for whom without Dasein
there could be nothing

I keep trying to raise
the temperature between us
using Hobbesian sex appeal

I dont get attracted
to just about anyone
with a slim body and a voluptuous stock portfolio

like everyone else
Ive been annoyed by the occasional pop-up
during self-stimulation

but Ive yet to discover porn
that truly represents
the women of the academy

waiting most of my adolescence
for a girl in glasses
lit by euphoric sunbeams
I want to get a picture of a water hyacinth
party under it
and then hang it off my balcony to amuse you

and then sleep with you
as a literal afrmation
of the inuence of alcohol

awaking to
the quiet yoga aurora
of the dormroom morning

love ok up harp life
|\ I|-s- \|- ||.|a|1 a-|-s \l|--ls
Poem

A troubador within existing agencies
who has no precise counterpart

works well because he seems to contain
the birds bound homeward

isolating these transitions
amidst new spaces of enchantment

and retains the hope
that his routines will explain much of the rhythm

or hell be just another angry man
on a public road
\al|.|sal|a, a I||s Ia |||\

Sometimes the urge
to increase ones burden
turns out to be just right

thinking at an oak table
with a napkin dispenser
from the electron microscope era:

I have furniture
I need drink coasters
Tundra Removal Cream

Im saving up
for a rst down

The rst down
payment

on a down-
lled jacket

The freezing air
never really

overtakes
downtown

A bird up
your sleeve

if you want
to wipe your nose
So march home
in the snow

o my children
march home

march home o
you children

march
home
I|- |\,,-a |aaa|s

My grandad owned Silver Dollar horses in the 30s,
they surged like gasoline differentials.
In company with another young fellow,
he had turned a corner and drifted into town:
greasy hair, an odd and old walking stick,
a veneer of emotional independence,
his hands agitating a dusty hat. It was
a tacky little town then, with high, imsy,
spindly plants, no Premium Service yet.
He found a lover in a frail bark by the lake,
built a green house out of broken bottles for her.
During the Depression, there was very little
business, maybe only a few removable collars
a week, but their gardens adapted and developed
according to the demands of clay and silt
and heaven. They put in a river, unfathomably
cold, named it etude Americaine. And on a warm
sunny day, they took a risk and jumped
into the water, a burst hive of wild bees
who levied their honey ...
Safety

I think the point is relevant enough
to reiterate in the safety of pixels
that sometimes it gets so hot
you could almost fry an egg on the sidewalk
\s-a.-|s |||l|1a,

The inexplicable is expressed
by the blue rose I found at twilight.
At rst I couldnt see it.

You take a bowl lled with
a type of soy sauce used for eating soba
to show me reality,
but it actually seems like the opposite of reality.
I|- a||-aa|l-s
Got cottonmouth from the pot
at Englishman River falls
peaking 100 RPM later

under the blue sky
picnic tables emerged
out of some tulips

growing in
a meadow
force majeure

near bears foraging
through the Agrarian
Essays of Wendell Berry
an bees and crickets
(admit it, you like it!)
mimic our urination

below the low-angle
orange moon watching
the fat raccoons

searching through the brambles
thick with toxic gooseshit
and hypodermic garbage

and the evening nally falls
asleep on a lthy, yblown
blanket found in the streets
\|al |l | I|aa,|l \|aal \|a | \as!

I had a great idea, really good.
(I love watching an idea grow up
from a tiny Lovecraftian seed-
ling into a giant underwater oak
between coral reefs.)

What I thought was this:

Being at home is not a simple matter
of becoming-being-at-home or xing
up a rhizomatic omelette that even
the dog under the table wont touch

Its more a matter of evicting all
of your proprietary feelings towards
your loved ones, who are, at worst,
asbestos, and, at best, the ocean breezes

I still hear the hum of the sum of my appliances
and this proves to me that I am still alive as such
Sealed Air

Late 1970s, the idea of bubblewrap
was in the air; an actual promo shows
an entire nuclear family exploring its
many uses: a drink cozy, a padded shoe
insert, insulation, a guest bed, a
murder weapon?

anyways its not on the net and
my Sprite is making a troubling noise
Red Shirt

Look further down
and you see
someone writing this:
the secret to
immortality might be
great sex. At least it
makes the sky
more beautiful. My
heart rips open
its red shirt
to reveal itself
to you in
all its gory
glory. When it
is in such
a condition it
is no longer
t to wear.
Poem

Having to talk to people
who really liked Waking Life
There is no escape
There is no magic bullet
Imagine for a moment
that there is no REM sleep
no coherence or narration in your dreams
and apply that to the current situation

I just reached over
this World Cup season
to touch your hand
& it wasnt there

no rest of you
|a|al|a, aaals

You want to make it look like youre in bed.
The bed exists solely as proof that youre not there
in the physical sense. The bed is a decoy,
just like that drowsy look.
|aa|s |a I|- |al||aam

There they are, randomly arranged
with no regard to Dewey Decimal &
most likely askew on the top of the
toilet tank, or on a shelf, protecting
the toothbrush. There might even
be some magazines hiding in there.
They have to be within a boarding-
houses reach. They catch you with
your pants down.
The Intern

I would work on the donut and the surrounding inside of the donut.
- Ball State Urban Planning Professor Bruce Frankel

A remarkable family
which weighs over three thousand pounds
on a vain attempt at a vacation
mistakenly asks Michael Ondaatje
to take their picture

as for me
Ive seen the Grand Canyon
but I have never watched a Woody Allen movie
in this riveting gift economy
there is plenty
Machivellian whiskey
Hausmannian boulevards
Von Trapp family-style line-ups
yet it is still indescribably
North American

the voice of the future First Lady
visited me in an Almighty Bean
the voice told me
to play max coins with a $0.25 denomination

I was getting a bit annoyed with the voice
I decided to never use opiates again
and sleep with my head on the ground for 40 nights
studying the impression
of a company logo
on a white diet pill
before I drifted off
every evening in Nevada

sex was getting more realistic
in the Ford Taurus

I wanted to tell someone how valuable their call was

the voice told me to believe in Jesus & become an apostle
but I did not

it told me to live in the moment
so I rethought the whole thing

therefore
is it not surprising that
all this thinking about the voice and thoughts of voices
brings on these exhausting spiritual approximations?
as a result of which I can only think of things like spheres
so I need to get back to real world solutions
I cant think of words, strengthened all the time
by some unseen force, composed in some t
of ardor or philosophy, resonating
or having any inuence on bodies
or anything else that might seem so ill-tting

you know what I mean? it gets
even better with less concentration
\-||s ||ll|- |s-1

Sometimes when I spray colloidal silver in my mouth
I lose hold of the back of my neck during yoga
the sugary toxins being released from my personality
can be felt in your body for up to a week

Like the time I breathed in a midge
(I think I coughed as a swarm ew in front of my face)
-- that was unpleasant!

It wasnt the most famous impact in the universe
and it went unobserved
but Im never in range anymore
since they nerfed keg farming
T|sla|,s 1-aa

11 years into the new millenium
still jacking off
the way it was done
in centuries past

judging from what ive
seen so far
the rest of the worlds
on the same page

white clouds,
Pabst blue ribbon,
signs of wonder
that never change
Mayan Calendar

The sky is falling, pretentiously
and a good man is hard to nd
symbolism in. Im 19. Vancouver.
Tree hugger. Azure conditions
all over the world. Language is
a tactile, beautiful tool for show-
ing you the shitty world were in.
Large white rockfaces with gures
clinging onto the edges, Cliffhanger-
style, are our letters. Isnt it amazing
that our words even reach each other.
Isnt that amazing.
!a-| |-w|s

all these poets.

writing books

in the shadow of

the palookas.
\|-|- Ia \las

Eight is okay
if you need eight
if you have four
you need a few more
The clocks at home
are all ahead
the new hours start
this weekend

dont rule out more chapters in this saga
you know how I get sometimes

a town in New England
has missed
the deadline

in the event of
a stopped clock
the time you get
gets even
longer

the faraway hush
of passing cars

above the culvert
the hiccup of a manhole cover
what you need to realize is that
when you knock on wood
the world reminds you
its made of steel:

temples and irrigation

I wound it into a ball
on Saturday

as the bee slips
into a ower
that tells you all you need
to appreciate, to extend