Wyoming (Prelude to Montana)

Maybe it's the cows,

twisted by science

into hideous monsters with

too many limbs

and bright lips

that whisper uncomfortable truths

or maybe it's the clouds of pink

and swooping and gloss

and their sickly wads

or maybe it's the bird

of each fence post

that tries to sell you a telephone

or peck out your lungs

but something about Wyoming

makes me want to be a ground

or a warhorse full of light

that heroics into bluest space.

Poem for Early Morning

In this valley 

I am shimmering with angry and joyful fur.

The grass is so soft that it can rip off your arm

and you won't even be mad

and your arm will mix with the river.

You will be happy for your arm and it's new life in the river

among the fish and the dead monarchies.

You will want to climb the mountains,

but you cannot. 

The mountains aren't real.

They are just some milk cartons I left there.

You will want to drink the water but it is not real either.

The valley is not real.

The ground is not really there nor is the sky.

Only the juggler is real, tied into his pole

singing of pigs.

Bears

Inside my head

there are a lot of little bears.

With their little hammers and chisels

I can feel them building little towns

and little walls out of little rocks

that I left for them in my ears.

Maybe they will go to war with each other

or maybe all of this will subside.

Either way I just wanted you to be aware of what’s going on with me right now.

Wizardry

I smashed the green orb

and crawled into the blue one

like we discussed.

In there, all of my downy yellow feathers

transformed dutifully and efficiently

into earthworms.

They are giving me some useful spells.

Montana House

Everyone is getting together in the big house on top of the hill.

We are discussing what to do about the water,

which refuses not to have legs.

It is not present at the meeting

I excuse myself and head for the bathroom.

Inside, there are some foxes gathered around a campfire.

They are speaking mostly in Icelandic

I am pretty sure.

To the south there is a vast amount of trees.

To the east, there is a small cottage.

Inside the cottage,

a normal egg cooks in a frying pan and it is beautiful

and it is unlike anything you have ever seen.

At the exact moment it is finished cooking,

the spaceships take the cottage away with them

and upwards and all the trees collapse.

The audience cheers.

It is all very confusing for me.

Big Sky

We are all in the same boat

these sad townsfolk and happy I

and it is very large.

Large enough to have its own bodies of water

and its own boats

and its own trees.

Some grand illusionist

has convinced us that this boat

is floating in some sky and not an ocean.

A boat trapped in a boiling sky.

Desert trees against an empty sky 

A red egg hatching in a very black sky

We cannot catch the rabbits and the deer

with our silly traps.

The blue rabbits in a friendly sky

The pink deer in a sky of finality

Poem For Late Morning

In the forest, 

the animals have important business to attend to

They have important meetings to go to.

Important animal shoes to make.

This requires a large amount of invisibility

and cloud-like movement

and the occasional execution.

I am a ladder with no paint on.

The ladder emerges 

from a pot of boiling red mud.

It flies horizontally over a forest.

There is a bird of prey on one of its rungs

giving it directions.

I am forced to concede on the elk issue.

Like you said, you are not an elk.

Having seen a real elk

I don't know what you are.

Really, I don't think I ever thought you were,

just the question had handed a pair of scissors

to the silence and it made me nervous

People/People

1.

In the Sears

a washing machine pops up 

from its hole in the ground,

hands me a packet of seeds labeled "people"

I plant them out back

in what the refrigerator tells me later 

is poisoned soil.

It is ok though.

The seeds turn out fine when I check on them later

businesswomen and firemen like normal.

There was one odd child

with translucent skin, but he ran away.

2.

In The K-Mart

a geyser of people erupts

They are all wearing clothes

of different colors.

Some are wearing hats.

There is one boy who wears

a bicycle on his shirt

It is whispering

Its eyes are clear

Its arms are radiant

It is whispering

It is whispering

Mammals

A bison evaporates

venomously at an eagle.

An eagle melts

at the cavernous bison.

In the midst of it the stapler cries stop this

and dives into the river

and contortionists into dead pine trees

where they feel very elk.

Weather

You have the new hide

and the old chain

and neither one is a flower

and both are a rainstorm.

It is a sweet rain

that erases frogs.

There are even blackberries in it.

So many leaves have been caught

by your sticky skin.

Poem For Early Evening

1.

I am in the water

reading Jacques Prevert.

A fly comes into the water.

I brush it away with my hand.

My wet hand makes the book wet

to my chagrin.

2.

Me and the water

are in a fly,

reading Jacques Prevert.

Jacques Prevert stands there as the fly disintegrates.

Then walks into the trees.

3.I am in Jacques Prevert

with a fly and we are both

reading the water.

We go into the water,

me and the fly,

and build some houses down there.

4.

Jacques Prevert and the water are in me.

The fly joins them.

None of them are reading anything.

Soon the houses come, the trees come

a deer comes 

and she brings some wild grass

and the clouds come and the children they come

and the men and the women they come 

and the brewery comes.

Later snow comes

and it brings some people with skis.

A lake comes to my left arm.

A bear comes to my legs.

Some kind of very faint important planet

comes to my head.

Psycho Fishing Chapter One: How to Scream at Trout

Everyone is a clock.

I am only eyes no the top of a head

I am the leather strips on this lamp of trees.

The air could be said to be bashing this lamp into my skull.

My skull could be said to be a rhinoceros. 

I am a literal rhinoceros 

who has climbed onto a bridge

made literally of chewed gum.

Aesthetically, this is very nice.

That is what all of the fishermen on the bridge think.

They are attacking me literally with lamps.

The air is literally setting all of them to 7:08 pm 

and laughing which makes me very nervous

because I don't know what that means,

but it seems pretty important

I do have to congratulate the pamphlets;

the scenes of nature are pretty nice like they said.

Now I feel bad for not believing them.

And shredding them and making them into shoes

that then combusted.

Psycho Fishing Chapter Two: Using Your Enemies as Bait

In a puddle a basket exists

very slowly and does nothing else.

Above it, a trout is rocking back and forth.

Below it entire cities have escaped notice.

They put fish in the basket every so often.

The basket could not be described as receiving fish.

It does nothing.

They found me in the basket once.

I had fallen quite a long way

and had memories only of wax.

They are building statues of me now.

Daily I tell them please to stop.

It has started to be more of a begging.

I don't know the coordinates, 

otherwise I could tell you where to send the missiles.

I am sorry.

Poem For Late Evening

In the evening, 

I am a normal sized pig

in a town where everybody has accepted 

the four mysterious holes in the sky

and moved on with their daily lives.

Suddenly a windshield named death

flits cautiously down and perches on my head.

It offers me a bug.

I say, no thank you

I already have this bowl of tulips.

Up on the mountain

there is a an eggplant

covered in bees.

The mountain is actually your face 

and the eggplant is your nose.

Prophecy (Postlude to Montana)

Everywhere, there is a tree-husk 

Filling her mouth with cotton

and standing on a rock

These are things that hover

and point left.

Follow them on your bicycle.

They will bring you to the cliffs that you need.

The cliffs that have been given to us

by carrots

The sun that is attached to your string

will hit the other sun

and the red door will open to horses