Manie Sans Délire

1.
These are the nearest answers I
could give. I find the sand uneven.
My cheek pressed into the grain and
eyes looking out over the expanse
on miniature dunes. The background
growls and waves, crashing and this
is why there is not a home, a place
to park, where I could be if I wanted
something without definition or shape.

2.
I’m starting to look like something
that should not have gotten out of bed.
Jeff Magnum’s voice stuck in my head.
I want to force the seaweed from his
hand, replay the whole death scene,
have it looped ear from ear, a reel
that just missed the hearing
and build upon the promise of being.

Ira Glass

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Likeness

The answers are between each letter,
like lines of glue being apart from the finger
that holds those prints so tightly.

A sound, responsible for the first person
who knew their name.

A word that is existence.
I step toward the lips.
I home that I have stolen.

Interferon

If I keep this up I might have answers
Interferon. An article, that which interferes
Not an antidote, but an object. I am the
analog. The answers that bring the fruit
from the tree. A branch angles falling up
or down, can I reach the weight of the sun or
lift the spirits in the ground. In the air
breathing. In the air breathing. What
separates us? The skin of fruit so easily
peeled and wasted, the part you cannot
abide, hidden among the seeds like fingers
pressed into the Earth.

Imagine a world without zero, where
the math doesn’t count and Newton
falls without stopping.

In the world of pins and needles, your
mouth, mouth, may break upon the words you
speak. The tongue dissects the beads
of moisture, pressed deep into the sockets
where your teeth were. The heart shatters
when it hits the floor. I walk sideways with
my teeth jangling in my cheek. The fabric
of my pants, hugs the knees, each fold
pushed and pulled, like ridges in the sand.

Finishing a . . .

I’m beginning to think in 140 characters
like a post modern breath — I can’t

Complete whole sentences. I am a thought
finisher, a program drifter

–

I’m adding letters to words that don’t
belong, as if I’m writing the world’s

But you’ll see meaning in the moon
and ponder the warmth of craters.

–

I could craft the answer green, between
level headed miscreants who abuse gasoline
rags filled with the propane that was caught by
a dreaming web of cotton, that white
supernova of unfinished string.

A thread that does not connect.

Noam Chomsky

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.