Nice Ice

It started last night, chunks of ice appearing on the top of the waves. This morning, a lovely band of ice off-shore, something I haven't seen in a few years, and remember well from childhood.

In between the ice and the shore, the slate-colored waves try to move, but appear to be in slow-motion.

Ice is good. Really. Look it up.

Language and Personhood

You must check out this video on youtube about how an autistic woman relates to the world.

Link

Physics

dark matter draws me home
a collapse of sorts
says the scientist
a matter of folding in

the universe is tug of war
between going out and staying
home and it has made a black
hole in my couch

it’s not anti-matter I’m
after but dark energy
to push me past
the event horizon

or just to the event
where I wear the same
black dress and henhouse smile
money passes hand to hand

and everyone expands
I eat mashed potatoes
from a champagne flute
people peer over my head

for the next best galaxy
as they would a rusty
tractor left in a yard
the valets won’t touch

my pick-up but they don’t
know it’s from the future
or the pre-earth past
fueled by material so dark it’s

invisible, a divining rod
in search of water where I live
at the end of a one-way
street in a white house

when I enter home
crawls into my lap
and the scene, you know,
goes dark

Dream

I wonder if this one is in the dream interpretation books? Last night I woke up suddenly with this phrase in my head:
All art is about real estate.

Or maybe it was:
All art is real estate.

Letter to the Thieves

Dear Thieves,

Okay, keep the copper plumbing, the mountain bike, the scanner, printer, Pentax camera, digital camera, telephoto lens, roller blades, TV, VCR, the foreign language VHS tapes, Mitzi's earrings, South American jewelry, my irrelevant Sundance pass, the fur coats, the Shop Vac, and even the timers on the lamps.

But it would be swell if you returned the sewing box full of love letters. Or just the love letters.

The family heirloom quilt made by my grandfather's womenfolk on the occasion of his fighting in WWI--I'll buy it back.

And I'm just wondering:
what the hell are you going to do with the dildo?

Cleveland Promo (2003)

A promo Andy Timithy did in 2003 for Cleveland, Ohio. It was rejected by the Cleveland Visitors Bureau. Music by St. Germain - "Pont de Arts"

South Side Lament

from Lamentations 1:19
…gave up the ghost in the city


Pauline the old rodeo queen
walks Biscuit at 7. She addresses
the end of the leash:
Which is you and which
is the snow?

It has been 100 days
since Daniel saw his mother.
She swings on a tiny
rope around his neck.

George curses the impetigo
behind bullet-proof glass.
His legs brought him
from Lebanon, but will
they take him home?

Her giant glasses telescope
into the future because
Mrs. Duda does not need
to see the past engraved there
on her wrist.

No more eggs for the third
shift workers at Rowley Inn,
no more third shift workers
killed that. But it’s still
open 23 hours a day.

The dismantled Hulett ore
unloader: so perfect a machine
said the operator by God
it must have been made.

Sisters Dale and Dreama
up before dawn. Dale dips
metal tips into toxic barrels.
Dreama serves buckets
of city chicken.

The girl upstairs named
herself Raven. Of course
she named her pit bull
Misery. Misery, she calls,
time for dinner.

Men stand in confetti
piles in the parking lot
at Sam’s Dairy Mart.
Drifts of lottery tickets.

The cockfighter stops
for gas, his birds scream
in the truck bed, trading
one cage for another,
with blade.

Pierogi and kielbasa
at Sokolowski’s, beer
and butter beneath
the bridge they want
to rebuild,

a signature bridge to take us
to the same old place,
or make it beautiful
to leave. Cleveland gave up
the ghost in the city,
carpetbaggers all.