What it means to run

not the
thumping of rubber
on the concrete or the
swollen inhales, the pangs in the side,
thud thud thud inside the chest,
not even the "hey guys- catch up."
this is when fear enters the bloodstream
and you turn
and you get
the fuck
away.

Jim Dodge - Unnatural Selections: A Meditation Upon Witnessing a Bullfrog Fucking a Rock

Ed note: Read this in high school, reconnected with it today. I'm thinking funny is the new Iowa

Amalgam of electric jelly,
constellated neural knots
in the briny binary soup,
as surely as stimulus prods response
brains are made to choose.
And through a major error in pattern recognition
or a significant cognitive fault,
the bullfrogs brain has selected
a two-pound rock
as the object of his rampant affection,
a rock (to my admittedly mammalian eye)
that neither resembles
nor even vaguely suggests
the female of his species.

He does seem to be enjoying himself
in a blunted sort of way,
but since the rock so obviously remains unmoved
one suspects it's not the blending of sweet oblivions
that fuels his persistence,
but a serious kink in a feedback loop--
or perhaps just kinkiness in general.
The less compassionate might even call him
the quintessentially insensitive male.

Assuming a pan-species gender bond
and a common fret,
I advise my amphibious pal,
"Hey, I don't think she's playing hard to get.
That's the literal case you're up against, Jack--
true story, buddy; stone fact.
And I'd be fraternally remiss if I didn't share
my deep and eminently reasonable doubt
that she'll be worn down
however long and spectacular the ardor."

Ignoring my counsel
as completely as he has my presence,
the bullfrog continues his fruitless assault
with that brain-locked commitment to folly
which invariably accompanies
dumb, bug-eyed lust.

But, in fairness,
whose brain hasn't shorted out in a slosh of hormones
or, igniting like a shattered jug of gas,
fireballed into a howling maelstrom
where a rock indeed might seem a port?
One can only conclude
that such impelling concupiscence
serves as a species' life-insurance,
sort of a procreative override
of any decision requiring thought,
thought being notoriously prey to thinking,
and the more one thinks about thinking
the thinkier it gets.
Therefore, though the brain is made to choose,
its very existence ultimately depends
on the generative supremacy of brainless desire--
for with all respect to Monsieur Descartes
you am before you can think you are.
Dirt-drive compulsions riding powerful desires
render any choice moot, along with
reason, morality, taste, manners,
and all those other jars of glitter
we pour on the sticky and raw.

The hard truth is we never chose to choose:
not the brains we use to pick
between competing explanations for our sexual mess
nor these hearts we've burdened with our blunders
in the name of love.
Do whatever we decide we will,
the choice isn't free;
we live at the mercy of more pressing needs.

Thus, urges urgently surging,
we mount a few rocks by mistake.
A bit more embarrassing than most of our foolishness, true--
but so what?
The power of the imperative
coupled with the law of averages
virtually guarantees enough will get it right
to make more brains to be made up
about exactly what steps to take
toward what we think we need to do
on this stony journey between delusion and mirage--
when to move, where to hide our dreams--
a journey where we finally learn
freedom is not a choice
a brain is free to choose.

Fortunately, my warty friend,
the soul is built to cruise.

The Death of Kenickie

the skin
sags sags sags
away from his skull
and reveals nothing.
oh kenickie--
et tu?

my language

it sits on my tongue
a dead weight on a thin string,
the same iron tang as blood
but oh--how sweet.

Funds for Writers

For grants, contests and more:
http://www.fundsforwriters.com/

There is something comforting about the number of grants for writers who have financial emergencies.

Valentine (fragment)

January spent and another winter looms,
shroud of February on a Virginia afternoon.

matt's nightmare (fragment--stolen for good not evil)

I stand on the edge of the lake with a rusted city to my back. My mother is there. I think she is crying, but it's only the waves and the waves keep coming.

Keeping Things Whole, Mark Strand

In a field
I am the absence
of field.

This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

January: Hinges. (11/80)

the sisters speak in their broken german tongues
outside oak doors, wind and herr knocked. the jamb
is just an iamb. i am broad and nonlinear. i am
inexplicable, a face not unlike yours. you are
changed in snow puddles and frost mournings.
the high singsong notes between alley ways
like wailing cats are how i knew you. turn
the screw. shards of bitte, a hollow
resonance, resonance nonetheless. i can turn
if you'll open the way: a long road, no words,
gilded cold, no words.

Parsnips (10/80)

It is struck on the back of a head;
a word and the way the tongue moves.
Like the flicker of a snake--"Parsnips"
without meaning, out of mouth into the pot.

Debbie (9/80)

Debbie, you
chased me and I
was right there.
you tapped
my knee
"come to
my bed. rock
my body hard
all night long."
you lost yr
speech.
are you a man
killer vixen?
was it the tats?
it's only ink.
if so,
you can roll
the hell on.

A Supermarket in Virginia (An Ode to Brian Fitzpatrick) (8/80)

What thoughts I have of you today, Brian Fitzpatrick,
for I overpriced garlic jellies in a white room with a pounding vein in the head
and in exhaustion I turned to Michael Macdonald's smooth soulful sounds,
dreaming of your iTunes.
What baritone! What beats! Pastel polo shirts in the lyrics, floating yachts in the bass?--and you, Loren Poin, what were you doing leaning in your white linen suit?

I saw you, Brian Fitzpatrick, bearded, disgruntled student choosing chorizo out of the fridge.
I heard you telling that story about your math teacher touring with Jane's Addiction. Of Showbiz Pizza. Of when what bulb blooms.
I followed the voice in my memory as I stacked jars in neat rows, talking about television shows and irreverence, and thought of the most amazing Meatloaf air-band ever.
Where are we going, Brian Fitzpatrick? Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I hear yacht rock and dream of an odyssey and feel absurd)

After reading too much Charles Wright (7/80)

The kicks of dog dreams: chasing a fox that never was. His saliva spills out from his jaws and his paws gathers up the dirt of air as he gallops. "How imperceptibly we become ourselves." I could chase this--what I know is us: in this place, the absence of this place: immeasurable space: incommensurate emptiness. You are the silence between words: an unseen glance : recognition. Lost for space, for the hair between our paws, I can stick my snout into the opposite, to the bark of trees, the scratch of long reeds along a field in which we stand foreign making a void. What I know is untouchable warmth.

In the evening we dream of brighter times (6/80)

In June my mother caught
my sister on fire.
There isn't much to say about that
except the way moths
attracted to the light hung
about the flame
their thin wings
only a blur
against violet dusk.
Is it heartless
to think her a bonfire
the way her hair
lit up to the treetops?
Or so cliche--out as bright as she came?
We buried her charred.
The clear wings of insects stuck to her lack of skin.

Haiku (5/80)

So. In poetry
Self-consciousness is humor.
Five syllables. Butt.

Boring (4/80)

The river never forgot the ghosts
of the twin beams of a Ford pick-up
that reflected two moons on its surface.
Inside the cab, a hand on a breast,
the stink of fermentation--
long gone, though the cans remain
lodged in the river's bed
and the sick sweet stink of alcohol breath
blows through the air.

Eggs. (3/80)

Early on we learned
each part has its purpose so
we separated whites from yolks.

Nativity (2/80)

Two or three years ago I saved the house
smelled and put out the fire. My mother
gripped me to her breast, said, "God bless"
soft and hole-filled like her grandmother's quilt
draped across the couch: This is home.

Precision. (1/80)

A definition that creates:
except the space that opens
only to close as we pass,
it has been still for months.
The long necks of yearning;
open jaws, waiting.
Across a love worn chest
looking not for answers but
for this, which cuts like--