"calibration"

There is a small bird in my bed. I sit next to the bird. I touch the bird's head. The bird has no feathers. The bird has lips. The bird has a beak and the lips are on this beak. I touch the bird's lips. The bird says, "Calibration." I am in my car on a bridge in Portland Oregon. I am on every bridge in Portland Oregon. The bird is sitting on my car. It is night. It is snowing. My car moves from side to side. The streetlights shut off. My headlights shut off. I can't see so I slowly bring my car to a stop. I am afraid I might drive off the bridge into the Columbia River. The bird paces on my car's hood. I can't see the bird but I can hear the bird. My car implodes.

geoduck dream

There is a sad puppy bouncing on a trampoline. I am on an easy-chair. We are in church. You light your pipe. I say, "Not in the pews fool!" Outside, it is snowing and dark, and there are many hills covered in snow and I can see them all, despite the dark, because of moon-light, maybe. I drive a truck. You sit in the passenger seat with your pipe. You say, "I wish I had a scooter." We stop at 7-11. Your girlfriend owns the 7-11. We ask her for free candy bars. We eat some candy bars. She chases us with a knife down Lake City Way in Seattle, Washington. We jump to Oly and hide in the Library building, on the top floor, next to the computer lab. You get tangled in the wires and pulled into a recycling bin. I ask the student-aid about duplex printing.

highway

I must cross a busy highway. Many cars speed by with no more than an inch between bumpers. There is a great roar and the sky is orange. I take a step. I take another.

colorado

we, who go whoring & cross colorado in panel-vans that rob north carolina & denver & seattle, are in the new poem w/ the president & my secret hero & her daughter, to position the court for guests who eat paste in movie-houses, who row in the summit, in the hole, or w/ waitresses for subtle & remote upliftings

of underskirts, of edges, of expert highways, & especially of johns, & side streets of hometowns, where the day is a stadium of secret gas, where only discussions of newspapers are on hand w/ extensive dirty films, displaced vainly & hoped for

manhattan is improvised & reorganized & hungover w/ the third steel, heartless & terrified on the highway, & jumped by the unemployment office, by the grid, by the post office, that has all the night in its head, the shoe in the river basin, or the snow-bank.

the notes

I am in a jungle campsite near a small waterfall. I am eating french fries. A man steps forward. I can't see the man. The man is in Wisconsin. I realize I am in a jungle in Wisconsin. The waterfall reverses. I am on top of the waterfall. I am the man watching me stand atop the waterfall. The waterfall re-reverses. I am me again. The main pulls a notepad from his back jeans pocket and slowly writes notes. I read the notes. I say, "why are you writing that?" I read the notes again. I am the man, but now in Ellensburg, WA, at a gas station. I read the notes. The gas station explodes.

hidden in the shed

_my friend destroys ear
w/in the television
in shirtless puberty or
the ninth line leaves clouds
_my friend contains
the mud & possesses the batteries
or the previous night i suppose
we have hidden in the shed
that enjoys acute smells of tools
& in that moment
we withdraw the risked apart
to document the toilet &
i was instantaneous
& w/out water
_my friend I am friend
or employee & each one us
is the mission
or the reasonable copy
w/ certain attack charm
i say _my friend
you are certain attack charm
i say _my friend
am more than
batteries & interlopers sometimes

'complete'

On my desk, in my cubicle, in my office building, on the twentieth floor, my boss sets a bowie knife. She steps back slowly and stares at my forehead. She pats the gun at her waist. She says, "You must stab every person in the office across the hallway." She hands me a badge. "It is official," she says. I say, "I can scrump ten thousand hallways until batch dawn twenty-three." I say, "I am." I'm in the hallway with the knife. Every man has Gene Hackman's face. Every woman is Gene Hackman's daughter. I'm in the other office. My boss is in her office. I am watching my boss fill out a report on her computer. Her computer screen is black. Her cursor is yellow. She is using outdated unix-based software. She types, 'complete'. I am on someone's desk. I have the knife in my hand. The blade is very long and very shiny. Gene Hackman's daughters are crying. The Gene Hackman's are resolute. I am Gene Hackman. I am resolute. I stab myself, then my daughters. My blood is orange. The carpet is orange. I stab Gene Hackman. I stab myself. My boss is in her office. Her computer is old and noisy. She presses a button. The button is labelled 'enter'. The computer screen says, 'execute'. There are many dots on the computer screen. The office building is an office building and I am on the twentieth floor and I and every other Gene Hackman and every daughter of Gene Hackman are carefully dead.

the squid is an octopus

I have been tied to a kitchen chair with twine. Near the window, is a car battery and jumper cables. I try to reach my cell-phone but it is stuck in my waist band and my waist band is six miles away. I walk through the tunnel which is also my elbow and carefully sit in a puddle. Dinner is ready and I'm supposed to be home but all the terrorists have teamed with the girl scouts to cover me in squid. I swim from the squid but am tangled in tentacles because the squid is an octopus and the octopus is a luxury sedan from Finland. I am not in Finland and I am not alone.

swordfish

I am floating on the Atlantic Ocean in a raft made from human legs. I am afraid of the swordfish that circle me. One leg moves.

then toenails

It is better if I remove their tongues with vice grips. I remove their tongues with vice grips. It is noisy. It is better if I remove their fingernails with needle-nosed pliers. I remove their fingernails with needle-nosed pliers. Then toenails. I am in Omaha, Nebraska. I am on television. I watch the commercials and then watch myself with pliers and vice grips on television. My friends and family watch with me and together we cheer all forms of tool use. My brother says, "It's what seperates us from penguins!" I am on television watching my family, friends, and me watch me watch them through the television screen. On the wall there is a diagram that describes proper finger-breaking. The television tries to turn off. I stop it. I am afraid to turn the television off. My brother tries to turn the television off. I remove his fingernails.

ants vs. Gene Hackman

I am surrounded by clones. When I close my eyes, they are giant ants. When I open my eyes, they are Gene Hackmans. There is a jetplane far away to the north. It is climbing high with bombs. I am in an elementary school library with the ant/Gene Hackmans. I am nervous because there are so many ant/Gene Hackmans. The library is on fire. I think, 'these Gene Hackmans are clones and are not the real Gene Hackman' and I write this down on my notepad and put it into my back jeans pocket. I wade into the crowd of ant/Gene Hackmans swinging my axe. I butcher arms and legs and heads and throw them into the fire. The ant/Gene Hackmans all scream and yell and cry with Gene Hackman's voice and skitter left and right but the can't escape the library because of the fire and I am swift with my axe because these clones must all die. I am covered in blood and it is drying on me. The jetplane approaches. I throw my axe into the fire and jump out a window and land in the ocean. I swim away very fast. The jetplane is following me with bombs. I am nervous. I dive down under the water. I am surrounded by floating corpses.

"I am an am me"

I am in an office building surrounded by cubicles. Within each cubicle is a laptop computer. Upon each laptop computer is an outdated unix-based software program. I have two choices at the prompt. Up or down. The future of the office building hinges on my choice. A voice behind my says, "This is not your tranceiver station clump." And then, "I am an am me." I do not see her. I move from cubicle to cubicle. The acoustic tile ceiling is very high and gray. There is fluorescent light but no fixtures. The window finds me with a pick-axe. I stop.

"carriage by thirty-two"

There is a copy-machine in the room and I am standing across from it with a rifle. I teleport to another room. Here, also, there is a copy-machine. I approach. Behind me, a girl says, "Don't lick paper it is poison I am toner cartridge carriage by thirty-two times can eat linoleum." The copy-machine is gray and plastic and I push 'start'. The machine hums and moves and copies pile in a tray. On each copy is a picture of a circuit board. There is no light. I jump atop the copy-machine but there is nothing and I fall a little. I am in a library. At a nearby table, my brother sits, reading, with half a head. He turns. He hands me a script. He says, "You should be reading from this one." I ask him where his head went. He is a polar bear. I run. I am in my car. I can't disable the emergency brake. It is foggy. I steal a candy.

"Tnxysqqamtt"

I am wearing a bear-hide costume. I look like a miniature bear. At the grocery store, I am pelted with eggs by a snarling gang of prep school students. I say, "Everyone has a uniform sometimes eleven darlings." Teleportation is real. I teleport to downtown Portland, Oregon and watch Madison/not-Madison step into a book store. I follow her. Inside, every book is called "Tnxysqqamtt" and has a picture of a dead seagull. I decide to destroy everthing. It is gray, above and below. I swim through a thick static and blink. I eat raw eggs for breakfast. Inside each egg is a tiny flash of light. When I finish eating, the light flashes through my stomach. I write a story about the light flashes. I watch myself writing a story about the light flashes.

Gene returns!

I am in the parking lot of a shopping mall that is also a small independent nation. It is an island. I know this, but the parking lot continues to the horizon, though, even at that great distance, the parking spaces all seem to be the same size, approximately twelve feet wide by twenty-five feet long. There is no fore-shortening effect. Each store inside the shopping mall is bigger than WalMart. Each store only carries one item. One store has shirts, another has yo-yos, others have water, animal crackers, televisions, islands, small donkeys, etc... I am not me and wearing a uniform with blue lapels. I enter the store that sells people. All the people look exactly the same—like slightly chubby Gene Hackmans. I walk to the cashier. She stares directly at my lips. I can't talk. She stares, then hands me a stapler.

me/not-me

I am watching a boy. He is me/not-me. He is digging a ditch in Utah, in the sun, near a dark lake. I approach me/not-me. I say, "I want a goldfish." Me/not-me continues to dig. I stab me/not-me and hold the shovel. We are in Antarctica. The sun reflects strangely off the dense ice. There is a loud crack. We are on a large suspension bridge in Antarctica. We walk away from the middle but here is always the middle and me/not-me starts to laugh crazily. I stab me/not-me. He laughs more. We are still the middle. The sun switches off. We can't see backwards or forwards. I am afraid to move. Me/not-me continues forward laughing but is always right next to me. I am on a train. I've never been on a train. I can't see me/not-me. I feel a tremendous loss and sit quietly in the aisle. The conductor asks me to move but I don't move and the people on the train pull me into the luggage compartment and close the door.

I took a nap

I have murdered a polar bear. I am stalked. At the zoo. The polar bear is revived by Gene Hackman. Gene Hackman makes us all wear basketball uniforms. He says we must pass the ball forever. "Don't shoot! Don't ever fucking shoot!" Gene Hackman says. I go to the department store and live in the elevator. I steal a wheelchair. I eat sunflower seeds. My sister tells me that Gene Hackman is our real father. He murders me. He decorates the walls with my guts. It is night. It is morning. I watch Gene Hackman decorate the walls with my guts. I put them back inside me. Gene Hackman pours a glass of wine. Gene Hackman kills a zombie. I am not a zombie but I am dead. I am my sister.

circa Lex Luthor

There is a polar bear in the post office box. I must remove the polar bear. I argue w/ a man who doesn't look like Gene Hackman but nevertheless is Gene Hackman (circa Lex Luthor) about the most efficient polar bear-removal-method. The post office box is tired and I fashion a crude bomb from Gene Hackman's leather pants. Then I am in Bolivia preaching the word. I look carefully at the sun. The sun is a kitten w/ its fur on fire. Then it is night and I drive my car to the Safeway parking lot. I buy a bushel of bananas. I distribute the bananas to homeless teenagers. Then my car implodes and I take a Greyhound bus to Akron, OH. Everything is very flat and bright/dark. I steal a street sign and the police chase me in their cruisers. I walk so fast that the cruisers fade quickly into the distance. Then I am in Canada and I drink coffee alone.

my brain is a transparent cross-section of democratic caterpillars

my brain
is new kitten disposal unit
engineered to free prisoners
& tender employees
of the pentagon
submit suitable rent samples
or personal credit reference
for uninformed nihilists
conceal bravado & unload the bomb
trade for handy organs
[lung, heart, appendix]
& self-cleaning toilets
i need risk reward cost benefit analysis
pickaxe stainless codes
& top donkeys
protect from bin failures
from machines
my medium of daily monitoring
express unkind deliverance
from minimalists
bent on sustenance
there is
no such apparatus
my hero extension
thinks about possible air
creepiness of hallways
before she says
"okay, vacuum"

my gulley brain is fed & right because of my new improved kitten disposal unit engineer-ed to frees prisoners & scour the body aluminum w/ un-bendable signs that assass-inate the omnipresent beds w/ sequences of tender stops. could no employees of the pentagon submit suitable rent samples before we accept the creepy weakness or fountain mice included w/ divers but uninformed despite personal nihilists & nixed panel snatch attic search. conceal bravado & unload the bomb for handy organs & self-cleaning sur-face toilets sized as walls to attract ass monkeys for risk reward cost benefit analysis or pickaxe the reticent to remind stainless codes & top donkeys of the matron curfew concept. protect yourself for bin failures from the com-forting machine from tabled eyeliner in the space apart our new medium of daily monitoring. this puncture ex-presses my unkind deliver-ance from ornithologists bent on minimalist eye sustenance. no such apparatus as my hero extension. mind only that out here we need to fight. think the possible air the creep-iness in hallways before she says "okay, vacuum" before she returns the craft supplies.