Society gentry unload Great Danes
for a bite at the designer doggie bakery
in the heart of homeless Pioneer Square—
palaces of neon toys and metered movies
zoning would push off into the sticks
while Seattle busies with aerobics to see
how the next rows of shoulders turn out.
After the crackdown we ditch the hotties
and eat alone, waiting
unless you can tell the mayor
to her televised face
you miss discount aerosol spray
dripping buffoonishly in obscene alleys.
Gaudy signatures remind one of the virtue of humility
lest the animals wandering in us
creep out the girl walking in those guys
while those others mark up the map
like new breeds of deeds and trust by bus line.
One only wishes, while the open garden makes open rebellion futile,
for every lovely girl we’ll find a boy who’s nubile.
And while half of what we say is half empty
half the salmon are half up river for nothing
and for every island lost to global warming
somewhere higher another McDonald’s is forming.
So we summon shaman to police the perimeter—
and say Sorry! What we’ve done to our earth is shoddy . . .
and go on sewing echoes to empty bodies,
the friendly market waiting at an undisclosed singularity
ready to upload with just a finger,
while in accord with the committee,
we remain calm, left to linger.
Tuesday, 21 August 2012
Saturday, 27 August 2011
Harvest Light
By August the corn patch was unflappable.
We'd weeded out litters of cats napping between stalks
but at what price? All polls ran against them
and we emerged hand in hand in the shade
of sycamores, auditing locusts for daily functions
of annual patterns. Their curse-resuscitated syndrome
drove in beehive clouds anticipating typhoons
then broken, rolled off like false eyelashes on natural beauty
to titillate the next superpower watching from a noisy café.
The board would like all the loose ends tied together,
no mess-ups this time; no prints nor random patchwork
in the apple eye of 7-11 cameras. As we speak
logistics are assembled in all consuming languages
buttoned up or barbequed according to folded instructions in fine print.
The key is steering clear of the same centre
like a jockey ducking in a tunnel that only the horse can see.
Children grow accustomed to the rules
as if they were DNA rather than a ploy
to extract what rises to the horizon each time one tries to outrun it,
always studious, as mothers still shoulder us,
translate mother tongues to ground our vocables
from the blood mists of warriors parting Euclidean flesh
in the rainy season--historically of course--all that’s all folks.
What can we do but build canoes and rafts
or face house arrest? The plum blossoms flower a code
across the land: the boy is king, mapping the land
in surprise emissions, a general strike in the clouds.
But there is no one to touch as the light wrinkles away
into the waves and we bid adieu, nestle in to man our stations.
We'd weeded out litters of cats napping between stalks
but at what price? All polls ran against them
and we emerged hand in hand in the shade
of sycamores, auditing locusts for daily functions
of annual patterns. Their curse-resuscitated syndrome
drove in beehive clouds anticipating typhoons
then broken, rolled off like false eyelashes on natural beauty
to titillate the next superpower watching from a noisy café.
The board would like all the loose ends tied together,
no mess-ups this time; no prints nor random patchwork
in the apple eye of 7-11 cameras. As we speak
logistics are assembled in all consuming languages
buttoned up or barbequed according to folded instructions in fine print.
The key is steering clear of the same centre
like a jockey ducking in a tunnel that only the horse can see.
Children grow accustomed to the rules
as if they were DNA rather than a ploy
to extract what rises to the horizon each time one tries to outrun it,
always studious, as mothers still shoulder us,
translate mother tongues to ground our vocables
from the blood mists of warriors parting Euclidean flesh
in the rainy season--historically of course--all that’s all folks.
What can we do but build canoes and rafts
or face house arrest? The plum blossoms flower a code
across the land: the boy is king, mapping the land
in surprise emissions, a general strike in the clouds.
But there is no one to touch as the light wrinkles away
into the waves and we bid adieu, nestle in to man our stations.
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Lofty Fog
The whispers from below reach Midas (who just text-messaged)
tone-deaf or not, the balances play out
a prudent policy to let things slide,
despite talk of yesteryear.
Ah, yesteryear. We used to read poetry
about the rearrangement of the senses.
Now they download The Songs of Experience for Dummies
and in the city oracles crash on a dime, and it's normal.
Students don't blink at it. Everything dwindles
and no one wants to hear about
the narrow escapes, how grandparents
swam raging rivers (yawn), how all the bridges
were barricaded or blown to kingdom come (looking at watch),
or left breathing through straws heroically
in electronic swamps gurgling methane—
the settling of accounts long awaited
and all too common in the valley.
In the valley no one notices babies
left to cry off the devil inside
under soft neon stars inflated just beyond doorjambs,
fostered safely for the lofty fog to burn off.
tone-deaf or not, the balances play out
a prudent policy to let things slide,
despite talk of yesteryear.
Ah, yesteryear. We used to read poetry
about the rearrangement of the senses.
Now they download The Songs of Experience for Dummies
and in the city oracles crash on a dime, and it's normal.
Students don't blink at it. Everything dwindles
and no one wants to hear about
the narrow escapes, how grandparents
swam raging rivers (yawn), how all the bridges
were barricaded or blown to kingdom come (looking at watch),
or left breathing through straws heroically
in electronic swamps gurgling methane—
the settling of accounts long awaited
and all too common in the valley.
In the valley no one notices babies
left to cry off the devil inside
under soft neon stars inflated just beyond doorjambs,
fostered safely for the lofty fog to burn off.
Thursday, 6 January 2011
Old Town Starbucks
They cancelled the Americano—too Italian near Scandinavian docks.
Generations later pastors still call on decorum
to undo lavishly Vatican wallpaper zoomed out of focus.
How nice it would be to fold the coasts together
so the spare interior might grow to the water and light
breaking the strong silent types side by side Hollywood housewives,
just as Makahs on the northern tip of the Olympics
after 70 years of being endangered try their harpoons
at the latest swell of whales—
remembering how to skin a whale is not easy:
what to do with all the blubber on the beach?
Make a Makäh eau de cologne?
The toddlers enjoy training wheels
and the gathering sound effects of red bicycles
scraping the sides of double-parked Mercedes.
Yet here I am seeking caffeine sin extras, a modest tall Americano for here,
the cheapest item off the menu, I must want room for cream then?
as if I were my great grandfather, an immigrant miner
too old to shovel but sturdy enough to man the dusty elevator shaft.
Where is your accent? I say, from yon sticks, where everyone builds
along roads they just invent as they go along
to the peril of those walking their horses and salting roses to ward off the deer.
Sometimes roads will accidentally bump into one another
and if there’s no room for proper cul-de-sacs
or they are broken through with the right codes and lawyers
you end up with thoroughfares, and corners along crossing paths
where others apply to change the zoning to cash in on a gasoline stand or grocer.
But, I’m really from even further out, forest fast disappearing
like the spotted owl looking in through the out door, unruffling itself
and spreading its wings to fly back from the horizon.
Here in Old Town there are few trees.
The mills took the good ones long ago
during trade in rubella blankets clearing the land of locals
and planting others around the new boarders working literally for nickels.
The trees here had rings wide enough to remember more than anyone living
and making the newbies nervous, coming from the burbs,
here to vie for views of the bay, more reasons for pruning more
to finally begin to relax, circling on riding mowers with self-mulchers,
scattering whatever grows back, trimming the edges
keeping things from shifting
so we look forward to a bright day flowering.
Generations later pastors still call on decorum
to undo lavishly Vatican wallpaper zoomed out of focus.
How nice it would be to fold the coasts together
so the spare interior might grow to the water and light
breaking the strong silent types side by side Hollywood housewives,
just as Makahs on the northern tip of the Olympics
after 70 years of being endangered try their harpoons
at the latest swell of whales—
remembering how to skin a whale is not easy:
what to do with all the blubber on the beach?
Make a Makäh eau de cologne?
The toddlers enjoy training wheels
and the gathering sound effects of red bicycles
scraping the sides of double-parked Mercedes.
Yet here I am seeking caffeine sin extras, a modest tall Americano for here,
the cheapest item off the menu, I must want room for cream then?
as if I were my great grandfather, an immigrant miner
too old to shovel but sturdy enough to man the dusty elevator shaft.
Where is your accent? I say, from yon sticks, where everyone builds
along roads they just invent as they go along
to the peril of those walking their horses and salting roses to ward off the deer.
Sometimes roads will accidentally bump into one another
and if there’s no room for proper cul-de-sacs
or they are broken through with the right codes and lawyers
you end up with thoroughfares, and corners along crossing paths
where others apply to change the zoning to cash in on a gasoline stand or grocer.
But, I’m really from even further out, forest fast disappearing
like the spotted owl looking in through the out door, unruffling itself
and spreading its wings to fly back from the horizon.
Here in Old Town there are few trees.
The mills took the good ones long ago
during trade in rubella blankets clearing the land of locals
and planting others around the new boarders working literally for nickels.
The trees here had rings wide enough to remember more than anyone living
and making the newbies nervous, coming from the burbs,
here to vie for views of the bay, more reasons for pruning more
to finally begin to relax, circling on riding mowers with self-mulchers,
scattering whatever grows back, trimming the edges
keeping things from shifting
so we look forward to a bright day flowering.
(Appeared in Mannequin Envy)
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
WikiLeaks shows how postmodern indifference has indeed functioned as an instrument of global capital
One thing that can be gleaned from the WikiLeaks phenomenon is that the capitulation to postmodern vagaries (a position it seems stubbornly taken and reasserted most curiously by my former mentor Steven Shaviro), itself can be shaken when new revelations -- truths in the sense of undeniable historical enunciations -- shake the glamorous blandness of the postmodern. Indeed we see that the postmodern status quo -- "who knows what the truth is, let's have fun with it all" -- is broken, as is business as usual. This is new: usually corporate media tries to ignore any non-sanctioned information, yet it cannot brush aside such newsworthy tidbits and succeeding chaos that turn the wheels of the corporate media itself. Facts that shake markets are both intricately bound up in the mechanisms of global capital and can no longer glibly uphold pretensions of being removed from real economic concerns (a growing gap between rich and poor accompanying globalizing economies, including the US) and environmental destruction through global warming, dam construction, and general pollution, etc.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Typhoon Megi
has nowhere to go: a focused holding
over last year’s losses, not to laugh at, a pattern
clearing the Sea of Taiwan, heading ashore
as a cold front at Okinawa condenses
the turbulence: more rain off the Pacific in a day
than in Carson City in a decade,
and you say the door has closed
too hard, answers too slow to come.
When the train stopped for the flooding you were right
not to take roads leading home, now covered in boulders and mud,
buses trapped or fallen off the coastal highway caved away…
Angry tourists from abroad complain in standard dialects clear and harsh.
The hot spring hotel has no hot water and you call to recall my faults,
my unbearable neglect. I want to go to bed early
before the day’s fatigue takes us down.
My cell phone is down to the last red line
after 2 a.m. I am difficult to get to know, granted –
forsaken by givens like the gods,
overwhelming happiness leftovers from old battles and empires
still divvying their grids of species in the present
folding the world away for a rainy day, living for a rainy day.
It is a pleasure to be stuck in the rain,
but please – spare me, clouds of mercy, storms I can’t see.
My friend says there’s a hot spring around the corner.
We soak, talk about how it’s not working.
He shrugs. We all want to be good, to go along.
Doors close in long accordion patterns
following us in another us for losing ourselves
though already taken, over the years, lost loves:
the older the more there’s just remainders remaining:
couples never broken from innocence into the light:
abandoned movies given in to their own automatic motions, leaving
habitually: a world so large now it crosses its fingers in series of series
so serious, politicians are already pushing for a new highway
to open up the last backwoods, where I live
and you will never return, for a door, some keys passed between us,
and a storm. I will try again tomorrow to go home to Hualien,
to let go, open my heart more, be lost again and taken down.
over last year’s losses, not to laugh at, a pattern
clearing the Sea of Taiwan, heading ashore
as a cold front at Okinawa condenses
the turbulence: more rain off the Pacific in a day
than in Carson City in a decade,
and you say the door has closed
too hard, answers too slow to come.
When the train stopped for the flooding you were right
not to take roads leading home, now covered in boulders and mud,
buses trapped or fallen off the coastal highway caved away…
Angry tourists from abroad complain in standard dialects clear and harsh.
The hot spring hotel has no hot water and you call to recall my faults,
my unbearable neglect. I want to go to bed early
before the day’s fatigue takes us down.
My cell phone is down to the last red line
after 2 a.m. I am difficult to get to know, granted –
forsaken by givens like the gods,
overwhelming happiness leftovers from old battles and empires
still divvying their grids of species in the present
folding the world away for a rainy day, living for a rainy day.
It is a pleasure to be stuck in the rain,
but please – spare me, clouds of mercy, storms I can’t see.
My friend says there’s a hot spring around the corner.
We soak, talk about how it’s not working.
He shrugs. We all want to be good, to go along.
Doors close in long accordion patterns
following us in another us for losing ourselves
though already taken, over the years, lost loves:
the older the more there’s just remainders remaining:
couples never broken from innocence into the light:
abandoned movies given in to their own automatic motions, leaving
habitually: a world so large now it crosses its fingers in series of series
so serious, politicians are already pushing for a new highway
to open up the last backwoods, where I live
and you will never return, for a door, some keys passed between us,
and a storm. I will try again tomorrow to go home to Hualien,
to let go, open my heart more, be lost again and taken down.
Thursday, 26 August 2010
六月の川柳 Two senryu from my trip to Kyushu this June 六月の川柳
Japanese originals with English approximations.
込む駅をお洒落優先一歩一歩に
komu eki o oshare yuusen ippo ippo ni
[So slow stepping through the crowded station--all the fashion queens]
身がみられお腹をきつく仲良く気
mi ga mirare onaka o kitsuku nakayoku ki
[Given a looking over, I suck in my gut, hoping to make friends]
June 2010
込む駅をお洒落優先一歩一歩に
komu eki o oshare yuusen ippo ippo ni
[So slow stepping through the crowded station--all the fashion queens]
身がみられお腹をきつく仲良く気
mi ga mirare onaka o kitsuku nakayoku ki
[Given a looking over, I suck in my gut, hoping to make friends]
June 2010
Saturday, 7 August 2010
Global Positioning
The symphony gathers talk dying down.
The smell of bugs burning on dusty lamps
reaches the balcony.
Children speculate which came first:
peanuts or peanut butter.
To keep the water moving
cymbals opened to bassoons and cellos
and traffic stopped in a swoon…
and mommy released the brakes….
You wonder if you’re the only one
gone bananas with such gut precision.
Time to shake oneself up to a plate,
any place making your soul feel so big it swims out with the ball.
The smell of bugs burning on dusty lamps
reaches the balcony.
Children speculate which came first:
peanuts or peanut butter.
To keep the water moving
cymbals opened to bassoons and cellos
and traffic stopped in a swoon…
and mommy released the brakes….
You wonder if you’re the only one
gone bananas with such gut precision.
Time to shake oneself up to a plate,
any place making your soul feel so big it swims out with the ball.
Mosquitoes
—after Chen Chien-wu 陳千武
For now the standing water stands down.
It’s all over, in no one’s honor.
United, the buzzing charming,
divided, viral advertising.
The angelic hum no longer lulls us
all landings have been sprayed
and under control.
We put our souls to the wheels of motor cameras
and promise broadcasts across the land
as standing water stands down.
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Sonnet
We used to raise antennae like mold
taking flight from an alabaster landscape
then lean softly with the wind
as if history had been blown up.
It used to take us hours to wind down,
making winding up as much a surprise.
The day never ended.
Now all we do is wind up.
Who’d dare touch the earth again,
not the stony essence running through it?
We’ve been hacked, on suspension,
no one ever looking, always watched.
taking flight from an alabaster landscape
then lean softly with the wind
as if history had been blown up.
It used to take us hours to wind down,
making winding up as much a surprise.
The day never ended.
Now all we do is wind up.
Who’d dare touch the earth again,
not the stony essence running through it?
We’ve been hacked, on suspension,
no one ever looking, always watched.
Saturday, 29 May 2010
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Slip and Drivel
The letters sent up never arrive
though arms and legs wave about.
Please stop summarizing what you (think you) see
was only seen on TV.
Running in place builds up currency
and leaves leveled lots northeasterly,
possums flooding sprung diameters
burrowing and backing into factory relics,
tumbling under any rhododendron or stilted hedgerow
parceling the heartland.
The apples rolling on the floor are rocking on the floor
as the father recedes into his constitutive colors.
Unreal sister:
traveling salesmen sweep you off your feet.
If you like the idea, it's yours.
I prefer not having hanger-ons hanging.
I return to my unfolding mirrors opening into smoked florescence
all for my hair.
But it pulls away like the pinup in a crowded house
at the discretion of whoever does the dusting.
I ordered more photos from the firm holding our negatives
as if the digital age hadn't caved it all in escrow
to spores hammering into a very old age
recombinatory life making its way indefinitely.
though arms and legs wave about.
Please stop summarizing what you (think you) see
was only seen on TV.
Running in place builds up currency
and leaves leveled lots northeasterly,
possums flooding sprung diameters
burrowing and backing into factory relics,
tumbling under any rhododendron or stilted hedgerow
parceling the heartland.
The apples rolling on the floor are rocking on the floor
as the father recedes into his constitutive colors.
Unreal sister:
traveling salesmen sweep you off your feet.
If you like the idea, it's yours.
I prefer not having hanger-ons hanging.
I return to my unfolding mirrors opening into smoked florescence
all for my hair.
But it pulls away like the pinup in a crowded house
at the discretion of whoever does the dusting.
I ordered more photos from the firm holding our negatives
as if the digital age hadn't caved it all in escrow
to spores hammering into a very old age
recombinatory life making its way indefinitely.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Abstract
The mechanisms are in place.
We order coffee to go and return to command centers by-the-minute
bank on the price range with smiles from another era.
The corruption is structural and the flower girl selling flowers is passed over.
Boys take out the garbage unable to see the ascendancy laying claim to them.
Tips for good service keep the arms market out of anyone’s hands
the game safely in automatic profits grandfathered in for home theatres
mobilized abroad where no one listens.
It's hard work inventing alien slime worthy of walling out,
uncircumcised enemies in hooded full-length suits.
The happiness seems almost ghoulish now,
one nation under Windows, emptied emptiness
unto others, backed up by loud, firm affirmations in low tones.
We order coffee to go and return to command centers by-the-minute
bank on the price range with smiles from another era.
The corruption is structural and the flower girl selling flowers is passed over.
Boys take out the garbage unable to see the ascendancy laying claim to them.
Tips for good service keep the arms market out of anyone’s hands
the game safely in automatic profits grandfathered in for home theatres
mobilized abroad where no one listens.
It's hard work inventing alien slime worthy of walling out,
uncircumcised enemies in hooded full-length suits.
The happiness seems almost ghoulish now,
one nation under Windows, emptied emptiness
unto others, backed up by loud, firm affirmations in low tones.
Monday, 8 March 2010
In Vietnam, Thinking of Iraq
Is it enough to list specifics and lose ourselves
in the godlike complexity of broken microchips
as we screen our broadcasts walking along nature washing up?
It's one thing to throw up a slogan
and drag a population across a border, an ocean,
it's another to oust the invader—always in bad taste,
the proverbial imperialist oinker.
The details sprayed on the bricks are not sweet recollections
but convictions, a moral economy not bombable,
and to be paid off
or be reborn a fly or damaged squirrel or at best a deer to be hit by a Winnebago.
The functioning of parts is still bound to the beholder
in remote control. The spirits of the dead still fly just as far
and will seek out the controllers of drones and smart bombs.
The chain of command will not sleep well.
If wrong, we are doomed.
(Ho Chi Minh City, February 2010)
in the godlike complexity of broken microchips
as we screen our broadcasts walking along nature washing up?
It's one thing to throw up a slogan
and drag a population across a border, an ocean,
it's another to oust the invader—always in bad taste,
the proverbial imperialist oinker.
The details sprayed on the bricks are not sweet recollections
but convictions, a moral economy not bombable,
and to be paid off
or be reborn a fly or damaged squirrel or at best a deer to be hit by a Winnebago.
The functioning of parts is still bound to the beholder
in remote control. The spirits of the dead still fly just as far
and will seek out the controllers of drones and smart bombs.
The chain of command will not sleep well.
If wrong, we are doomed.
(Ho Chi Minh City, February 2010)
From One End
I tell my friends, what you expect to find
at the end of a dead end road turning to dirt
along a crumbling beachhead?
Crushed glass of tossed beer-brown bottles.
Scraps of plastic and Styrofoam from fast-food beverages.
Thin plastic vendor bags of bones licked clean, tied in a knot—
heaped on upside-down steel barrels.
Dogs sniffing around can’t find them.
When a concrete hotel shell built itself off the beach
the interior vanished in insurance flames.
The retaining wall hollows out, the road is next,
lined with bald, bandanaed Norwegians loitering on Hoggs
with beer cans in hand and open carburetors
carrying them away. Most of the retirement colony is sedate,
lots of strolling husbands and wives and trailing maids or lovers.
Sometimes the lover rides with the husband on one scooter
and the wife takes chase on another, putting along to avoid collision.
I saw a pretty young American with a chubby gigolo in tow.
The rule of thumb: the escorts walk behind
(like servants, or wives in some cultures),
while those in love go hand in hand into old age.
(February 2010, Cha Am, Thailand)
at the end of a dead end road turning to dirt
along a crumbling beachhead?
Crushed glass of tossed beer-brown bottles.
Scraps of plastic and Styrofoam from fast-food beverages.
Thin plastic vendor bags of bones licked clean, tied in a knot—
heaped on upside-down steel barrels.
Dogs sniffing around can’t find them.
When a concrete hotel shell built itself off the beach
the interior vanished in insurance flames.
The retaining wall hollows out, the road is next,
lined with bald, bandanaed Norwegians loitering on Hoggs
with beer cans in hand and open carburetors
carrying them away. Most of the retirement colony is sedate,
lots of strolling husbands and wives and trailing maids or lovers.
Sometimes the lover rides with the husband on one scooter
and the wife takes chase on another, putting along to avoid collision.
I saw a pretty young American with a chubby gigolo in tow.
The rule of thumb: the escorts walk behind
(like servants, or wives in some cultures),
while those in love go hand in hand into old age.
(February 2010, Cha Am, Thailand)
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