Two Poems Taking their Respective Stanzas

You can score it when you try to break it. If the edge is serrated you'll make it. When the what wore the how out; a knot tying bow; bought the dough but don't know how to bake it

Salted pretzel alighted a lark. Flash! The soda ignited a spark. Now I scrape off the ash (When I asked for a dash it outpoured from an unherald'd hark).

Keep Up with the Switches, Decide to Unquit Elsewhere

I want to read her from my known-poem-thrown poem--it picked a topic when the West was unshown (A bit myopic now that best been done grown). Grabbed a ticket to the train stop packed poem--Don't care a nickel bout my suitcase misstown (Awake at trainstop lights and her blue cell phone). Ate an apple of the mistracked switch thrown--Plopped the top off of a three stacked cream cone (Into alligator pursed-lips dial tone). Warped the siding off my new wall all lone--Fear alighted when the seam seamed missewn (I mistinkered 'til it sprung past mine own).

My eyes grew tired of reading for content. I decided to try it anew. If the form was the content all along then what the fuck was I doing searching so hard behind the form. I needed a new structure so I invented a new way of approaching the form that was already there, like climbing into bed up the fire escape. I began to read for the font. For the sounds of words in my head. For the sounds of words as I mouthed along. But somewhere along the way I lost how those pieces fit together. A disilusão. So I grew bored and saw the houses as spackle and drywall and not for the families that I no longer imagined inside. My life and those of the friends I had still played out in the roles of audiences in the theater of books and televisions and KDWB and yet those politicians I see on the news still represent me to the extent they now do in a feedback loop of state highways and streaming video and over speculated upon housing, spangled with the thought that we're pilgrims and birth-righted both. If Obama's a foreigner, he'll survive. At worst a special on VH1. Malia will get her time in the sky. Atticked until we burst. I couldn't find a job so I found one that I don't like. Feeling obliged to something I don't want to do. Quite a first for the former word reading boy I once were.

CIT down and take your pill
it's a hard one to swallow
But with a heart some sizes smaller
than it'll take to save Christmas
We'll find some way to inject capital
Back into the roast beast.

distort

When I hit the net there's no need to pack
Never need for doing laundry you ain't comin' back
I spike you center court like a heart attack

Dipped and douséd dumplings
Wanton disrespect
The hors d'oeuvres ordered plainly
Then drowned down in neglect

In glacial, sparkled windows
Reflections, looking through
The brainstorms overreaching
'til the moment they're unknew

Maintenance, maintenance, grabbing at straws in the dark
I perambulate with a baby in tow
and we gracefully pass through the park
The onlookers gawk as we go on our walk
But their kids always circle like storms
But who's keener eyes: those judging outside,
Or the ones in the midst of the swarms?

Karaoke karaoke, a sideways syllabic achoo,
I just had a lisp that I lost late last night
with the hay season what will I do?
My medicine's gone, like night unto dawn
I borrowed the time and it's blue
I knew knots to tie, yet nothing that I
Could lace up and call it a shoe.

Help me out, I'm in a jam
that oozes orange and sticks
and so I'm stuck, my pores are crammed
No way out of this fix

I need a job, I need a house
A doormat to defile
With rushéd footsteps, back-brushed hair
to join the rank and file

A boredom dawns with each new day
the next quite like the last
A boredom wanes and goes away
but then returns, alas

I saw on teevee, one Glenn Beck
Advise us not to squirrel
Away our hopes, "instead suspect
of ACORN" said the churl

Yet the more I linger in this state
the less of it I'm sure
how much my privilege will pro-rate
and how much I'll abjure

But now my moocow as self doubt
begins to ring her bell
It seems so childish just to shout
over the noise, to quell

For now this marmalade abides
and may just feekr on
I'll learn to live with syr'py tides
Until one day, I'm gone

Be bored as we may
the great grand grind
ain't gonna to help any
In fact, it's only
fixing to get worse
Like a backyard tire swing
Rehung with discount string
Whose moocow light enough
to stay aloft and sway?

'Cause my moocow came crashing
Down to earth,
Like the lord Bob Saget
Handed me a camera and started it rolling
And I turned it inward on the herd

A Key Change and A Time Signature

Two miles away from making bail
and six cigarettes short of party
A soft yet accentuated smell lingers
just beneath your lip
like a milk mustache that
you just forgot to wash

Half a centimeter of fingernails
from the last clear thoughts you
pieced together, two more minutes
and you'd have written yourself a book
but instead you've got two used
ticket stubs and a couple small salsa stains

Which color transit do you stub your ticket
for now? When you can only count the people
you know in this city backwards, penned inside
your overcoat and more decay exposing
itself more with each chatter

But as long as you're at least one sunset
from finding her again, and two missed
meals from those deep deep pangs, stand
up and move about, because your blood's
beating out still that slow waltz
When she's been tangoing away
for about six or seven of Trebek's Champions,
those finding the questions to ask
when they've been given all the answers

I gnawed away and yawned, betrayed
Belied beside my flooded eyes
Its piquant flavor made it hard to savor
And then fresh milk's our only savior
My moocow gleams at astral scenes
Does maths and finds the astral size
In light curves greyed by errors made
They're lacrimate in the prospects of a
Tender ending, fender bending
Losing teeth and faith in faeries
Distrusting dawn to show more than hide
Or that my reign will affect a great abide
So chew
Or you
will fry

A pimple popped with an audible thwop
as it smashed against the mirror
And I stained my sock in a precocious dollop
The fell well below it's target much atop
The end, culinary career.

Maw Maw, More Manitobas

Gary gave a dollar to the man who took the bills
but the bottom of the bookshelf fit me think
of fastened thrills of a brand new opened novel
with the creases be all ours, so I took my money
backwards telling time atop'a flowrs when
a moocow was a baby that is when we called her calf
My initial thought about her was to bring her to the
aft but the starboard side awaited an arrival of her too
when the cows are born a sailing there's not one thing we can
do to decide for them their future undirected by the stars
lanterns astrolabes and compass cannot fixate them as ours but
the time ol' badge of songcraft and a mellifluous voice of
a solitary siren sending sounds without a choice whether she
can stand the tempest wit'a battled verse 'r two or if she must
stay on firm ground wit da tunes that we all knew, yea while we
were all escaping Gary grew an inch or two as Adamastor
played billy-goat (boar) in aborting all my crew

Chartered Bocks

A Diner at Dinner
R.A. Stevesson

He penned a poem without thinking of it so
A beast, unleashed, dividing
Onward it spread like toast
on bread
chars, burns
all coinciding

He sat off-put in his brandnew authored soot
Unpleased, knockkneed, time-biding
When came alas a fresh
backdraft
Ash tost,
and slowly gliding

And by his seat, landing flatly at his feet
Afresh, abreast, deriding
Were thoughts construed, betrayed
renewed
Or lost
in their colliding?

Willies Wondrous Wandrings

Will went on wondrin'
Since the moocow wouldn't say
If they'd e're throw in the towel;
'nstead told him to choose the way

Yet Willy wished she would've
Because broken to the bone
Coward willy couldn't mount for
What it took to pick alone

As fate drew near
Young Willy's fear
turned reason on its head
the boy called out,
"Although you doubt
that I won't soon be dead,
my uddered friend
may meet her end
save that I intervene
I shan't think twice
'bout sacrifice
On forward, clear and keen"

Any deep down inside young Willy
He had held his only choice
For when fine friends find fair trouble
Even willies find their voice

Bishop Brown

Bishop brown
came to town
Saw our flag
and he's torn it down

How did he look
when he hit the horiz'
Smelling of Juniper
Flames in his eyes?

He spoke long on truth
And could kill with a joke
Bowled-over, buggy bound,
Bent-over, broke.

Watched how we spit
and the street sweepers too
threw out a line
for the boys cleaning shoe

Snarked, snaking, sermonizing
Splitting betw'n
Strawberry milkshake-maker
Cheira of gin

Now with his passing
Like a cloud on the sun
Five degree droppin' weather
Feigned yet fecúnd

Moocows are mooing in
Green-greying fields
Rowing 'ways out of city
Bemongst the yields

Porch apricity and still my bones are cold

My moocow, don't tell her, is starting to get old

Make haste or, like Leda, new amnions to support

Keeping one steep step ahead, lest his power and knowledge

and forbearance

Smack yours brains

And keep your moocow in the barn

When pastures snow over

Obtuse and purblind. My moocow cannot moo. My lightened sigh and sight-eyed buys the thing we said we needed. I want of a way, like my moocow wants of pastures, ne'er sighted amongst growth that we can sow. A penchant for production. A make.

Revisitation of the thibehind. Flood back, crank that shit. The prince speaks in stereo, imagining what silence looks like. People talking in misplaced units, minutes for length, two miles from making bail, Eric was on the Road with the appreciative deceased. Eyes in the back of his head, calling the ringleader out. My nose is running, yeah? Here's one for you, "505-2814," coming back from the ER. Two days in a row. And what is this street, a stereotypical autumn scene? A obelisk of balls, automatons on the prowl. Clouds of butterscotch, I need a pick me up. The clank and shutter, inhale and get more: greasier, softer and more ductile. Cumin beings in the salsaria. Some of us get to bed at ten, and it feels good, dammit. Knowing upon whose treadmill we run. Waiting for the letter, creating the past, the love lost, the bonk and brull. My knees buckled and my shinbones laced. We'll see how We feel about it tomorrow.

October publishes August's poem

A Poor Remembrance of His dream
R.A. Stevesson

The conditioned air, receded from poor
Henry as he sits, he steams
And stives himself the way
He learnt from books and balls
And gin—against the roof, his mouth and
Moonlit summer’s flair for the abrupt

Ending things, spoke less much, he
Never meant for collision or coll-
apse, but Temptations harbored and
led him to await his next viaticum
Brooding at the Visions that escaped
The summer’s heat, burnt and belied

His eyes checked nothing, the stars
Would not align and the nigh-knocking
September stuffed the days,
Anxiety replacing the sundry happi-
Nesses that busy Henry found in
Friends and beer and brats and balls

From the lost scrolls of Bert, ca. April 2008:
Herpes has DNA, just like you. What makes you so special? Opposable thumbs. So next time you go bragging to the moocow that your genes make you blue, remember that the moocow has them too.

My moocow needs to awaken but my alarms don't rouse for sleep. Four more forward things press my snooze, forewarned of schisms in my dreams (of utopian pastures, wherefore my moocow needs more food and the shade of trees). You both protest too much. The broth is settling still, the bursted bubbles bale my lost sense of urgency, no boils or hail helm my anxieties, which brood on softer sinews in their complacent undulation between cud and other rumination. My moocow says she doth hear anew what you would have her chew. Poor Henry and Slim Jimmy sit stooped under the eave of the school, looking past the yard and upon one moocow Henrietta Decker, nee Bogglebottoms, who bursts with lactate and laconiac surmisions. She looks back wondering whose cud they chew.

Let us be Frankensteins and my moocow will be too. Ports of call, one last time before the lights go down, all aboard so we can watch this new batch of tricks. Honeycombed and enjambed as we drip from our seats, masking our music in mosaics of feet, on front lawns, porches and bathrooms we steel ourselves. I buy a cookie (I make a sound) and spank your earlobes. Waxing my moocow so that she will outshine you all.

Too Fish

These many marvelous Madeleines

They fill my thoughts and flood my brain

'Til can't but barely understand

What's lost or simply out of hand

Beyond my reach, above my grasp

I claw for clues but cannot clasp

Nor button tight, drawn up for night

What's naught but buried 'neath the plight

Of whims and hems and tears and throes

My Chuck Shaw meringue-ments

Belied but Malones

Hanged up on an operator, tosséd

beside thy zero-bellied bones

Milk milk milk with a carrot [non-orange] where the betas fight out on your sister's back porch. I ate and I drank an excessive ecstat but munificent mead made my moocow quite black so she sank down the moor with her boggle-down hooves making time with the boy and his dog and his shoes while he puppeted twice as the kids watched his show. My understanding of this is too quick for the page; my moocow looks back on yr lost golden age. Agates too, aggrandized, make mantles quite nice, so I shore-searched for days to appease my new wife while the moocow she milked to ease all the plain.

Mooncow

Hownow, moocow? Whence the spirit, wherefore the milk? Ym and yr designer sweatpants; udder disappointment. Tools of the trade made to split with blade, I spit and I shit and I bit my maid. Why do you care where the moon hits your eye? Is not the same moon still above in the sky? The light is not his, my moocow's not mine, the grass that she eats lives off the sun's shine. I listen for clues in the grey noise of spring, but autumn's since come and the cowbell won't ring. My moocow sits and sighs and sings, mooing and mawing and mewing the things that she lost but then found with her silver-backed months and the rise and the fall when my moocow walked up but couldn't come down.

Somebody else milked my moocow.

Stunts

Watch me while I fly.

Chambers

In Philadelphia, there is a department store that houses one of the world's largest pipe organs. Much to the ire of the organist, stockboys pay no heed to the sound of the instrument and wheel carts through the main atrium in the middle of the songs.



The Mice - For Almost Ever Scooter

Arby's

The 10th person to email dayxx169@umn.edu with the subject "The Arcade Fire's first album is the good album" or "Beach House, more like Suck House" wins a free Arby-Q!!!

Jeans

With pants like these, who needs enemies?

Ten moocows in a barn

I took my moocow out to dinner the other night. She said that the bread was too dry. I asked the maître d' for a table for three, but she placed us in a booth in the corner.

Advice

Tom Jones (no not that one) once told me to pick up after myself, that other people needed the counter space. I replied, "silly moocow."

I'm here

Guys! I'm here. Sorry for making you wait.