All Things C

In some dark curve
Those limber tones
That bounce in fresh patrol
Those shadowy flecks of sand
And powder and soft as the day we were born
Perhaps softer than that
Oh, C
With your guitara
Your matador cape
Your puffy cheeked exuberance
Never quite sure of what you should believe in
What should be questioned
Why it should be the way it was
Sublimely soft C
After leaving your skin behind
Your polish and garb
All the things you were
Silent tsunami
Rolling under it all
Why did you offer
What can't be accepted
Only later to give so carelessly
In the flaming patterns of decency
Left scathed
Scraped and dented
All the things that should have been
All the things, C
The harmonics of your golden identity
Your falling into that well
Between two continents
That left you scarred
With so much elegance
So much nature
Rich natural C
So much so
You own it
Own it all
All that is that is C
All that is not
Is not worth addressing
Not worth undressing
Not worth the papyrus they soak into
Two circumstances as gifts
To carry all the weighty packages ever to plague
Aching scapula
Tender shoulder
Salty neck
The meat in the cheek
So succulent
As to make the trip worthwhile
All that is left
A box with stolen light
A folder in a drawer
Scribbled into the corners of some mouth
C
Listed on some faculty showing
Maybe donated into some museum collection in Algiers
Grown bubly
Marked and fruited
A different lanscape, C
Anytime can be your time, C
It's always going to be right there, C
Always and forever for all of time in all circumstances and every
which way, C
Gather it when you need it
From those who can shed
The shaded impotence of your overdrawn likeness
The murky remainder of all the deeds that balance
The shucked wheat that speaks of you fondly
C
--
10.27.09

What's Hot

What's hot
Priests who tweet
Asians on Asians
and winter flip flops

What's not
Poetry
Halitosis
Pre-exisiting conditions

I read the news ticker today
on Today
Fires started with cigarettes
Terrorist grows beard
TV host to become TV judge

News fed in sixty characters or less
Laws to keep teens out of tanning beds
Hubble telescope spots space serpent
Susan Orlean cancels appearance

On the rise
Body fat
Garbage
Production

On the decrease
Vegetables
Yokes
Cobblers

Know This

If I should not return
Know that I have willingly let go
To join a greater good
In hopes of adding to the sweetness
That makes it all move
In lightness and dark
In the spirit of all things simple
Pure and happy
Know that what I would leave behind
The only thing I would want to carry away
Your love
Your bold happiness
In the face of all that is complex
And challenging
That you claim with grace
A simple satisfaction
Know my only regret
Not to know family
With mother and child
Wife and home
As a father and lover
Know that you have given me enough
To last a lifetime
All of it so precious
That any fragment
As complete as the whole
Makes me humble
Gives me heart
Cures my soul

If I should make it back
Just know
That things will roll on
We will laugh and cry
In frustration and comfort
In understanding and with intuition
I will continue to love you
Lap up the joys of fatherhood
Learn more
Forget more
See more
Feel more
If I return to you on Tuesday
Know my flights were successful
And I thank whatever larger power
Nudges this to be so
Or allows it to be that way
And, if perhaps
This is not the case
And everything is willy-nilly
The universe has no order
And chaos is the prescribed theory
I still believe in the triumph of truth
The pursuit of goodness
The kindness of the soul
And the simple finality of that
In and of itself
It is unreasonable and elective
And that is acceptible
This too
Is all because of you
Every fraction
As great as the whole
Your love in pieces
Carries the message
In perfect harmony
Across any medium
And all that come after us
From us
Are better off
Than before us
Because of you
My love
My heart
My destiny
Know this
--
6.28.09

Your perfect life

Your perfect life finds you
It steps on your face
And grounds your teeth into the ground
Nothing you are doing now
Will ever be the way it should
It is you perfect life
And it is not scared of you
Can not say the same
Foolish self
Foolish troubles
Foolish pain
It all goes away
With all the perfect lives
And simmers into a soft soup
For the pleasure
Of the majestic
Sucker
--
6.22.09

The Movements of Love

My love for you goes on
Endless
Just as a storm
Is like the very first
It carries us
To this very day
Those drops
Collecting
And vanishing
Only to reappear
In full blossom and array
As if celebrating
Their oneness
Dispersing again
To remember
In a playful sense
Where they came from
And where they are looking to go

--
Gary Memi
<mobile>

Waiting, standing, notes

In 11 minutes - they'll invite me to stay
In 9 minutes - I should find a seat
In eight minutes - I will rock the casbah
In seven minutes - we'll eat words
In 6 min. - the illusion of legs will unravel
Five minutes from now - I will hide myself away
4 minutes from now - you won't know me
3 minutes into the future - you will eat minced words and hide legs in
seated invitation
Two minutes - I've got to catch a train for goodness sakes
Give me a minute - to breath - soak it all in - epitomize - luxuriate
- fall apart slowly - I will join myself - sanctity - efervescence

Refusals

Your institutions bore me
Go get a job
Let me buy you a glass of wine
I laugh at pretentious jokes
All flarf aside
I relish in your poetic pickle
Monitoring the flux
Manning the gate
Help me help you
Your lesson plans
And history
Of some dead process
You bore me
And make me sick to my stomach
Like sauteed spinach mixed with tapioca
I hope you haughty experimentalists
Find the right match
In me
I'm your man
I will join your lack of understanding
And graciously agree
With whatever she said
She the cat
She the in seperable diversion

--
Gary Memi
<mobile>

Honorary Meritus Emperium

Your deep math
I'm just not that into you
And you
No respect for me
Cannot hide your distaste
Except in formulas
Prescriptions
Elbow nudges
Winks and
Slavery eyes

You have enslaved everything else
But words
So holy
In virgin eyes
Need shape
And so you name yourselves
The shapemakers
The examiners
The portal authority

On a rock
In San Juan
A polka-dotted baby
Dances with her arms up
Together
And then down
Together
Hips moving naturally
To the emotion
She is looking to convey
Somewhere sketched
Between wave and sky
She is explaining:
Catch me
Get me
Before sky or cloud
Wave or ocean
Sucks me back into some space
Space that she came from
More recent that you or me
She remembers slightly
The draftless rumble

Too caught up
On your word's worth
Too clever for the coming ease
The clubhouse is riotous
The monkey cage has a rattle
That could
With enough shaking
Bring the whole thing down
A showery opera of bolts and nuts
Screws and wire
Bars and dischord

But your math is stinky
Like fancy cheese
Being cut into small blocks
and covered with plastic
and labeled
with barcode and number
Price and weight
Price per ounce

There is a man in Texas
Who had raised his son
On fresh goat's milk
Straight from the tit
His six foot two inch
Two hundred and forty pound
Junior varsity
Third in the district
For lifting four hundred and thirty pounds
His math is perfect

Your challenged ladder
With broken rungs
Answers your prayers
Upholds your foul numbers
Your elementary fractions
Beats per minute
Latin for faggot

All our reflections
Are mirrorless
Against white foam
Taunting us to return
Or journey outward
To see if we have what it takes
To break words into sangria
Split sounds into guano
Grow grass on top of meaningless verbs
--
4.25.09

--
Gary Memi
<mobile>

Shadow

In shadow of the nose
Hiding face with face
Giving break by switching sides
Sharing space with arm
Face to pit
Arms overhead
Keeping even
With four o'clock sun
Even with carbon
Stuck in the arm
Burning in sun
Blacker than not
Hairs are fair
Skin is fair
Even black shorts
Are not as hot
As charred skin
Or injected skin
Or ink on skin
Face is face
To save it from the sun
Is to save it for another day
Another trip
Another towel
A beach or pool
A desert or hike
Another naked return
To the crispy center
Of everything we stand on
And stand for

--
Gary Memi
<mobile>

On spotting Giovanni Ribisi circa 2009

Leaning over railings
You get smaller
As you get higher
Begging the perspective
Of the eight people dining
In the courtyard
Below
Begging the perspective of a stair climber
Retrieving coffee
From an ancient convent
Which is like a monestary
Which is like a beautiful villa
In the heart of an old city
And not for lack of rum
These tacks would set on chairs
And follow the stars
Dotting small doting bricks
In straight projection
Finding comfort in cold tile
And shuddered window slats
Hounding the root of evil
And praying for Giovanni Ribisi

In lighter news
The rain that is projected
Onto our devices
Must be wrong
So says Denise at the corner of Trickster and Permutable
When it says rain
It means a possible drizzle
Late in the day
A pause from the sun
Time to reflect
On Giovanni Ribisi
And how he might look climbing the stairs
Instead of you
Oddly staying the same
As the camera obscura
Flips him into a thousand lights and darks
And we paint him
Into the scenery
Just enough to make us feel sloppy
The convent nuns
Praying for both of us
All of us
In a triangulation to gods
But not the Spanish ones
They come later and with guilded promises
Like value, continentality, and soul

Besides the ramification of getting smaller
Part nova
Part turtle
I am sure we are all happy
That we are happy now
With stock in the afterlife
Becoming like stiff soil
With rocks in the way of anything that resembles fingers
Save the worm
Who always gets his man
Split sides and slime aside
We forget to mind the trees
But not here
In learning our roles
Or actually relearning our ultimate part
Finding in ourselves the magic that is Giovanni Ribisi
Accepting the loose banisters
Knowing that we too will break ribs on winding city walls
Drinking the free coffee because it is good
Walking away from people that compare this day
This place
This corner of experience
To anything other
Than today, here, now
Shedding our inner non-Giovanni Ribisi
No matter how painful
Each folded-over wrinkle of slough
Like an elastic band around the ribs
Donating those corseted shell pipes
To science
Or not
But never
Not today
Not getting smaller when we walk upstairs
Not getting bigger when we come down
--
4.24.09

House

Never quite sure what I wanted
I settled on house
While my friends make a tour of Italy
My wife and I eat soda bread
Even when it's fresh, it's poor

Not knowing the payoff of travel
Other than to say what I've done
I make a living and let it consume me
The alternative is too liberating

Sometime from now I may snap
Like a great oak in a summer storm
But it would be just like me
To go and think myself worthy of oak
In the meantime there are dishes to be done
Dirt can be a worthy adversary
When it sneaks inside
--
3/16/09

The Bleeding Pig

The bleeding pig ran around the room in a circle
Counterclockwise
The men didn't notice their cuffs were drenched
The women hid the wet hems of their skirts by shifting their waistbands
Clockwise
The kids were overjoyed
Socks red and heavy
For this was how we celebrated our independence

Cloven, pawed, finned
It never really mattered what the gods thought
Only when an act came down
Did we scurry away from the carcass
All of us to our respective holes
Shivering with shame and forgiveness

In the meantime
A silverfish peels through the sawdust floor
Everyone with two legs is pleated and pressed
Wanting the party to be over
Or at least for there to be more pig

The men prefer to count the pigs
Forgetting which ones are which
The women have to prepare the threshold
Infringe upon throat
Pray for speed
Forever waiting for the one that can run forever
Countrclockwise
The kids never notice either way
--
1/12/09
Sunrise, Jabberwock, Monterey

Youth

Blinking youth
Flashing projecting overdesigned youth
Frilly curtained proud of something youth
Making my coffee serving me my food youth
Visiting grandma more than she remembers less than she wants youth
Keeping their pants on while they talk about church youth?
Not if they know what's good youth
Dirty springy budgeted youth
Planning hoping electrified youth
Bubbling over glinty excited youth
Getting fatter settling in youth
Not reading enough youth
Pleasantly surprised youth
Not doing what you did youth
But just enough to spoil the movie youth
--
1/10/09
Fresno, CA

Why Jen Won't Die

Her face is turning
Was the upturn
Now the upkeep
Holding her back from forthing

Why Jen won't die
Is simple in theory
All the crows ask
And know the know
Deep inside their chocolate spectrum

A fazing and aging
Adding words where things think they know
To know is so bony, human
One of the ways
Jen won't die

Taken out of complex
In smooth black limousine
We say, "Lincoln"
and "stretch"
and you know what we mean
Another fabric for Jen not to wear

In an open grotto
A blaspheme turine
There are chevrons and cantilevers
And all along
Jen won't blow
Dinah won't know
A blanket on the sand will characterize

We pail in comparison

Some Ed Heck composite
(why Jen won't die)
In cartoon colors
But sanitarily
Slip away
in flecks of amber legs
and mosquito eggs

There are tiles and blotches
To round the edges
Flavor the eyes
With waxy marbled golf surface
An ancient crusty
slavey cinnamon
Jen will die
when we let her

And blue is the new blue
Some lost recipe
To recoup the danger
Scare out the oils
Push forth the pork
So we can all get back to what's good:
A morning opinion
A sensible adventure
A Jen that won't die
(every time we turn around)
--
1/9/09
United flt. 6229 serving DFW to LAX