I summon up Panofskv from his bed
Among the famous dead
To build a tomb which, since I am not read,
Suffers the stone’ s mortality instead;
Which, by the common iconographies
Of simple visual ease,
Usurps the place of the complexities
Of sound survivors once preferred to noise:
I stumble down around torn peaks
“Fit the right suit
to trick them all.”
the questions fall
around allure. Poems floated
from the hearth
sparks
The neck
of the flask
pitch black-getting bored
jacked
also madness, insidious
intended ghost
(days late)
I cross green & white flowered seas
Valentines, May Day
I cut out the “Heart with Snowflake”
Myself but it is not mine, Forget
This bloody coat bloody shirt, I
Think it is the writing that makes
Me sick, The scores and scores of
Incidental music, this nosebleed all
Spring all wet, I’ m positively angry
with the Impertinence of it! I’ m
Sewing up the kinks in this film, I’ m
Trying to! I’ m trying to burn a light
Between, There’ s a light and I cable
my voice on it but it rips when I trace
Anything! WORKS ON PAPER, THE SHIP
OF DEATH “Oh build it!” Sings the
In a year the nightingales were said to be so loud
they drowned out slumber, and peafowl strolled screaming
beside the ruined nunnery, through the long evening
of a dazzled pub crawl, the halcyon color, portholed
by those eye-spots’ stunning tapestry, unsettled
the pastoral nightfall with amazements opening.
They said to me no, don’ t take any, no, don’ t touch, that is burning
hot. No, don’ t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that
hurts.
They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it
struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of
black straw, spotted with old traces of blood.
Translated from the French
I took back the night. Wrested it
from the Chinese, many of whom
were shorter than me.
Two billion outstretched Chinese
hands, give or take a few
thousand amputees.
A cheap knockoff, the night
proved to be — Nokla
not Nokia on the touchscreen.
Well, even Old Peng gotta eat,
Confucius say. Or maybe that
was Cassius Clay.
I will pull an airplane with my teeth
and I will pull an airplane with my hair.
I write about cats. Cats, when you read this,
write about me. Be the change you want to see.
I’ ve legally changed my name to Whites Only.
Changed it back, I should say.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME made me
the man I am today.
That, and the University of Phoenix.
Old man, take a look at my life.
Charles Simic, in the gloaming, with a roach,
take a look at my life. I’ m a lot like you.
It turns out there’ s a difference between a detail
and an image. If the dandelion on the sidewalk is
mere detail, the dandelion inked on a friend’ s bicep
is an image because it moves when her body does,
even when a shirt covers the little thorny black sun
on a thin stalk. The same way that the bar code
on the back of another friend’ s neck is just a detail,
until you hear that the row of numbers underneath
I
The bartender
Has eyes the color of ripe apricots
Easy to please as a cash register he
Enjoys art and good jokes.
Squish
Goes the painting
Squirt
Goes the poem
He
We
Laugh.
