“a face / from the ancient gallery”

today i got up so late i

decided to take the bus to work. a knot of people,

a white dog dim in a totebag, squint vaguely west

where the bus’ll be rolling in. a crossingguard

motions across the way: a fenced-in schoolyard. older kids

running with games or late again. chatter dins. then pipes up

a loudspeaker, megaphone. my eyes search for what my ears can’t.

laughing baritone: it intones:

the killer awoke before dawn

and i think,

music. they must have the classics on. unfazed,

the playground games continue. he put his boots on,

the pendulum swings again, and eyes at the busstop

begin to flick uneasy. he took a face

from the ancient gallery and he

walked on dooown the hall

maybe a principal. a ranter? but as if it happens every day,

they begin to line up to go inside. the voice,

smug, deft, as if quoting shakespeare. as if

for them it might as well be shakespeare. dusted off

from the shelf:

more figurine than figure.

tchotchke

i tear through the crossword

and i can tell you where i was

and in whose voice

i first heard each answer.

and

i don’t know

what’s cooler: my friend at work requiring

the spelling, or me being able to letter out

tchotchke

on the pink post-it.

reliable source

seven days of
work yet. rain and chill. there’s
on the news a shooting per day and yet
another trend:
why the same headlines? i remarked
last night, sleepily, to a constallation, freckles on
the boy’s back. i mean,
why are they always finding crack in babies’ cribs?
he may have found a reply, but i was already somewhere
between dreams and tall ships. there’s so many
gaps in reporting; shoddy, infuriating. but then
i never know to ask the right
questions
’til i see the photos after:
or i ask you.

age

…How about the 78-year-old grannysmith types you hear about who

down you with their motorcycle or off their spouse? Who

haven’t so much as batted a fly all their lives?

Shall I  become a senile, psycho old bat, too?

470 years from now I’m going to drive

my large, rusted hulk of a spacecar

[through whose windshield

I'll be barely tall enough to peer from]

really slow in front of you.

[in response to melsie's post]

drosophila

 

[image courtesy http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/041013_longevity_flies.html]

Sometimes when i read one word or glance at a captioned image,

another word, as if in spoken translation, pipes up

to replace the original. Today I read an article vindicating a supposition

I’ve had, that we weaken our immunity through

overuse of antibacterials. That antibacterials essentialy don’t do

what we really want

any soap to do, which is cleanse.

The subject of the study was the ever-studied

fruit fly. The article refers to the creature as “fruit fly” down

to the captioned illustration. But then it was as if a skinny hand raised

in the back of a classroom.

“Drosophila,” it corrected.

Ah, that’s the word. Thank you

elementary school science monica.

get well Fidel

My online news perusal is dictated by my place of employment, while my newsprint perusal is dictated by how much I wish to spend, and how much paper waste I am willing to justify throwing away. So, typically, my day goes like this:

After logging into the network, the MSN homepage pops up. I click on any enticing headline, usually by the Associated Press or Reuters, and the network’s internet filter immediately intercepts the next page with the announcement that I will be able to look at “News and Media” for no more than 60 minutes per day. Knowing that time’s-a-wasting, I don’t bother seeking reliable, incisive news sources/stories. I am happy to get any news at all. For local news/shootings in my environs, I log into Philly.com which boasts the two-headed monster of both the Inquirer and The Daily News.

Today I learned that an ailing Fidel Casto has ceded power to his hermano menor (I found and read the Spanish language version on MSN), that a key figure in Inquirer/Daily News publishing has ceded power to a next-in-line, that Tastycake Co. may be moving out, and that it is very hot outside. I would deign to provide specifics about these stories, but to do that I would have to reread them. Unfortunately for me, my 60 minutes is/are up.

I am a huge fan of free newspapers. The Metro provides for great daily lunchtime reading. And, as it is a slender publication, less paper waste will end up in a city landfill.

receptionist schadenfreude

again the company’s

phone system choked. receptionist

schadenfreude

catch a breath

here it is again

form who

ok, then don’t worry about Form B.

You never heard of Form B. If you ask me I’ll say,

“Form Who?”

a lock, a poker sausage, a head

Ich liebe spam!

German spam messages in my comment section. Obscene?

Ein Schloss, Ein poker Wurst, Ein Kopf.

 heheee….

press to deploy

unauthorised exit

i duck from theatre

before picture’s end. flickers

popcorn, tears, and on…

kalender

 

the year explained

i average one bitty artpiece per year. happens

in spring. maybe for a show; i wouldn’t care

otherwise. this time, i dropped a tiny plastic compass. front severed

from back, needle flew off. For it’s re-assembly, i retrofitted

the four directions in calendar fashion:

north= june

west= september

south= december

east= march

some further assembly, and an entire silver sharpie later,

i created a three-dimensional, 5″x5″-ish blueprint/model

of the turning of a year.

it progresses in a circle, counterclockwise.

while the piece itself draws favourable remarks, the logic

pinning it together (the year as a counterclockwise circle)

encourages almost universal ridicule

like a ptolemaic system

or flat-earther. i tell them, picture it

the way you observe the sun in one day:

east=morning/spring

north=noon/summer

west=evening/autumn

south=night/winter

incipit

do you wish to continue?

NJ vs BTK

All politics aside,

Every time I see New Jersey Governor John Corzine in the news:

I can’t help but  think of:

[BTK serial killer]

but oh, did you hear?

They opened the casinos again.

don’t ask him anything

“Well…I left mine’s…

at Fabric Row…”

 –street cleaner, 5th & Bainbridge

ask him anything

“You see this gentleman here? We call him

‘Mr. Movie.’”

 –overheard outside Cosi, 2nd & South

plurality

NOW OPEN

Cigar,

Cigars

[shop sign, rte. 309]

modern technology

giveth;

modern technology taketh away

collapsible [lyric]

ten years

collapsible and limitless:

have nothing to say; have too much.

on the shoulder of the road

a collapsing house. the girl

who’d had so much to say.

in every window wraps a tree and every

lawn of grass. they say

that’s what killed her. slogans

like oxygen. have

nothing to say, have too much. cast

her hand in everything.

cringing

gerunds should be excised from the opening lines of poetry.

a notable exeption is, “Turning and turning in…”

if you are Yeats, you are allowed.

collapsible

i see that ten years are

collapsible and they are limitless. i  stop

on the shoulder of the road to be peer

to that collapsing house. the young woman

who’d built her empire and then died. in every window

grew a tree and every lawn of grass, in the sardonic-

slogan 1990s, was painted with opinion. they say

that’s what killed her; she had too much; said too

much. she cast her likeness in everything.

byramid

a three-dimensional formation having a square base and triangular sides and composed entirely of empty beercans, which may or may not hold the sarcophagal remains of ancient egyptian pharaohs.

barma

one’s sucess, or lack thereof, in catching a bartender’s attention for another round on a friday night.

catching the eye of said individual right away, despite the fact that he is at the other end of the bar and you are very short, may be described as “good barma.”  

drunke schoen

thank you {hic!} for all the drinkies

resurgeon

opener of old wounds

explanation

stray lines: this

is how i have to say

architexture

a structure incorporating great tactile dexterity.

“guitar” intro.

my mother had a guitar, dreadnought, unwieldy, coppered over with treetrunks of steel strings. it was like a piece of furniture, since it leaned on the furniture. it had four stages of life.

small pub. typeface

“and remember, you are the resistance

to the resistance”

“biblioteque Rambo”

fashion or decor statement

uncategorical imperative

can’t Kant.

today philadelphia

today philadelphia

never.

nocturnable

able to be knighted

inventions

• fin-de-siecle phonebook 
• waste-of-time-machine
• Other Noodle soup
• thrft store called: Nothing New

headline amalgam

“Romantic looks for her

Depression & obesity”

– on msn homepage

morning pentameter

i changed my socks and now

i’m late for work

explosive

 

“you’re holding an

heirloom,” busstop man

pointed, moved. “the

satchel-bombs. carried

in a bag like yours. must have been

from the second world war! you pull it

out and–

–BLAM!–

throw it into the enemy

CAMP!”

director of h.r.

“i’m not married to anybody! except

for my wife”

 

greetingcard

without you
i am
ridiculous.

musical continent

“they probably
make their own
instruments
out of tigers
and trees.”

–b. meehan

parse/parsec

[in atomizing, analyzing, framing a light-year]

not all is

something is not/ all is not

neophobe

n. one who is in the habit of tacking ever more phobias, like donkey tails, onto one’s own ass.

melt down

and after it all has melted

where would you find me again?

–i too awake each morning

grasping for a breath

afternoon in the square

a precarious chemistry:
configurations of people
who she is and

where she is,
and whether she should
or could.

afternoon in the square,
like flies in a tangent
they alight
and scatter.

cause and effects

cause and effects
and my hand in them.
lightning,
and if i listen,
thunder.

penny royalty

she was told, seventy two hours.
they drilled two holes in the door
for her numberplate.
she swallowed a first dose. found
a robert johnson record.
and was able to expire a minute
of sunlight like nothing happened.

when a=1

a drink or a-and-a-half

neologisms

Nihilogism. see also: Vocapillary. A narrowed vocabulary or word selection. An inability or unwillingness to utilize novel or unfamiliar words.

Outre’tainment (ou. tre’ TAIN. ment) from the French outre [unconventional or bizarre. shockingly unusual] + -tainment.
Tabloid-fodder. Amusement for the masses, or lowest-common-denominator. Shock-entertainment of the Fox Network variety.

Cistern Chapel. 1. A place of worship devoid of god/believers. 2. A church whose roof leaks and is steadily filling with rain.

Vestigidecimal. Used to describe fragments of fractions. Numerical dust or remnants.

Archaeaviation. see also: Aviopteryx. The dawn of flight, esp. human attempts. Antique, cumbersome, pre-Wright-brothers-era mechanical or dirigible aviation gadgets.

broken compass

we’ll always

point at “North.”

but it won’t

be “North.”

omnivore carniverse

a fluffy display window
in the cold. i think they sold
stationery, suitcases. white quill feathers and
pseudosnow.

not where i am

not where i am is
bounding out like a dog. there’s something
animal in the wind’s flinging
of the liner from a trashcan.

what would hello

Hello Kitty doll

I take a poll:

what would Hello

Psychopath look like?