February 2012
25 posts
6 tags
Can The Interstices Be Written Into?
I would have muttered “breeze,”
but there’s nothing promising about it
or a crumb of wall to escape it. And then
there was the day we named the clouds’
shapes “shiftless” and after their onomatopoeia
blowing through the roofs.
We ended up with all sorts of words
that tried to set first for the insurance claims.
They assured us
they had it under...
5 tags
582 Love Sonnets to the Rock: 8
After the idea mentioned in this post by lazlazlaz
What existed here before we
were able to measure
the residue of unhappiness
in the shapeless carats of diamond
sized city? The question outpours
a million glassy eyes caught
in spontaneous howl and gnaws
at our clamoring enamel.
Could we have made a thing
exist as a thing without form,
the difference made between the soft
lingering...
7 tags
In Which the Poet Naps in a Garden
The catalog of forms gnaws
at me in inessential melancholy,
praising postcard cities over the present.
Why do you do this, catching what memories
are erased in words by surprise as if you haven’t
already lost them? Or is it that as you sway
cocooned in a hammock you do not think them,
conjecturing that memories do not exist outside
an indivisible existence galloping out a network,...
5 tags
In Which the Poet Arrives, Dwarfed in a City
I do not expect sleep to pursue me in revolt
of sincerity and the wooden palettes
I was forced to put up after the whole house
started imbuing outside with a sense of grief.
My doctor said the only unironic image he’s seen
in his days of practice is a man weeping outside
a supermarket for all he could never get
himself, or officially, “the heart’s broken feet.”
To...
4 tags
Waste Management
Both sides of the road are lined
in guesses, and better to leave
them dried up and corked to save
sentiment from spoiling them.
It’s not that my legs are tied
as my hands often feel, that being
unable to push my way past the moon
when it pants with its tongue out
and whines unfetchingly doesn’t mean
I can’t run away; it’s not that at all.
Except, I’d like to...
4 tags
Straight against the cross light
I confuse and clutter the merry
tickets for admission into
this cold afternoon - feels
instead of rot-gut radiance,
spilling onto my lap
in beer and frost.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
Time Management
The minute I start talking about being
on a bus headed to Boston
I’ll have to address what bled
and has been drying for the last 5 years
and left the Newbury brick tainted
in corner store shutter manic-at-closing
metal tinge when I breathe: in some half
window of night, the irreversible
spatial investment of the body
interjected from its dream jungle of concrete
forms left...
5 tags
The Consistency of Nostalgia 5
Everything is gray outside and beautiful
packed in grocery bags and concert
jungles of dreams bulletting out of my gut.
I keep shattering the landmarks of the city,
I thought the Chrysler building would be OK
if it fell off the coffee table — it’s a matter
of having to rely on something internal
like a compass or smoke signal or heart
murmur, something obviously brittle
and...
5 tags
The Consistency of Nostalgia 4
The lifespan of a fact is how long
it takes to roll out from under
my nose, it’s a shame I have to
apologize so much for that —
I think it might be more helpful
to crawl into the snow than let
the sun throw mucusy tissues
and UVB all over me and make
it OK to get sad in the winter
as long as I remember the Demerol
clouds are just a trick of light.
The weakest part of the...
7 tags
Reject 38
If love has held your body close
like the horizon’s scream and meant
to dissolve the sledgehammers
of wistfulness that pound each great
holiday song into the gardener’s bed
but instead sang to you the revenges
that trot over today like the grapefruit
at breakfast, constitute your want
into a pinpoint of light, wrap it
in cellophane, wait for it to elate
in its dust and...
thoughtsbetold asked: who's your favorite writer and the reason?
5 tags
I tried to raze the ceilings for creating
the appalling gap between me and the cosmos,
but fell asleep in its rainstorms. I wake up
and am forced to interpret and reinterpret
the trees and door knobs and bags of chips
and think its ludicrous to have to think
so much about the world’s forms.
Later today, I’ll pick up the sun,
but then I don’t know what to do with him,...
5 tags
Reject 37
If love is between laundry folds
and metal ores yet to be separated
and shimmer as an afternoon banjo-
plucked porch light clack of teeth
in a vaulting kiss over the high bar
of our desire for one another
to scream when dark crumples
around us, then we might as well
shower while we wait.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
Reject 36
If love stuffs the horizon into a box
in a box in a box in a box in a joke
and mails the world off in a concession
to the rising prices of everything
in malls and stores, making Valentine’s
day an impossible feat to weather,
let’s give it an award for at least
sticking with us long enough
to let the inky bruises green over.
-C.S. Henderson
5 tags
The Consistency of Nostalgia 3
The rainbows terrorized the bread crumb
city, reminding it of the serpentine flood laying
it its hole. And so it invented decay to ward
off the heft of its sky. A taunted god is a mean
drunk and calls throughout the night.
Things separate in order to appear, the city
had to leave to let the cranes and scaffolding
rise in layer cake and steam-blowing stacks
of muffin hovels. It tries to...
5 tags
The Consistency of Nostalgia 2
The whole idea fell apart, ascribing clouds
to the cult of objects, which only begets
a culture of objects and its poor analogs
of exhaling and shitting (an arch has about
as many calories as the whole land
of bison and I can’t fathom adding a second).
I try to retreat from the stones and
only imagine the arch, but without
the stones imagining an arch between them
they might as...
5 tags
The Consistency of Nostalgia 1
the pitch of the city throws the clouds
into nothing — treating objects like
culture evicts the culture of objects
leaves a ring on the table
and capitulates magnificence
into the moment trash is put curbside
analogs of breathing and eating
are unreliable narratives
wishing looks good as a diorama
but there are some misplaced trees
and a tear in the corner
leaks indiscriminate...
4 tags
Saigon Still Stands With Cleveland, Laughing
Shitty little pyramids sprouted out
of the sand like acne, leaving
out adolescence where everyone
can mock it. How shoddy
the angles, how boring the shape.
Snap the twig blue sky
for the moment to release
its motion like tea,
filling the pockmarks burrowed
by all of our rocket ships.
(Why do we expel
ourselves into a sea
with too many
dimensions to cup?)
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
We were waiting for an awareness
of want, bundles of ghosts folded
into half-light notions we’d rarely
use if we weren’t all of a sudden
tired all the time and focused
on sillier talents like juggling
or frying eggs. The ground is small
and how do we even know what
we want when we have to contort
so much to stand up to the other?
That little lyric moment when trees
ignite...
5 tags
The slub of dopes bound
to the ogre spike of dreams
wept at the poor return
of the city, mimicking them
in their desire for signs.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Nostalgia remembers its consistency
as burning copper pushed to the breast,
running through a forest of unachieved
branches and recovered the height of the future
in technology foreign and unpossessed.
There was a realization that dreams
erase the impressions not fully worked up,
and that elsewhere is a negative mirror
thrusting ripeness back into its idea,
waiting a life time of dreams...
5 tags
In Which The Poet Remembers His Childhood
I.
The one that operates death
stacks me in LEGO bricks
until I’m a pirate ship.
II.
Everything smells like aloe vera
and has the excitement of the first spring
of an unhooked bra, the wind repeating
everything like it birthed
a new set of teeth.
III.
There are shards stabbing
my feet, eyelashes mast
catching all vision at my back.
There’s an ebb, to move
away from...
7 tags
An Initial Offering To Face You
Perhaps it was the angle of teeth in the light,
or the trip-up of the circle’s continuous orbit about itself,
or the new sound of freedom blaring in a metallic 17 second
clank that convinced the slack-jaws that a bad man’s
life is fun to lead. But they left a note by the bed,
a monster of 21 faces scribbled and laughing
at how much we left at the table when we decided
to poke...
My poem, "A Woman Is A Woman", published in the... →
Read this young man’s poem, please!
4 tags
Spit-shine Eternity
or at least wipe off the dust.
It gets old to always stare into
the future as if it’s looking back
(if a mirror reflects all
mirrors does it reflect
itself? Know your
paradoxes!):
Cleaning every memory in salt
water and fear drowning;
wishing for steak but hating
the wait of a heating stove;
loving everyone and drinking alone;
getting drunk and still loving everyone;
getting...
January 2012
38 posts
5 tags
In Which The Poet Totally Regrets Dreaming
After an hour of twirling
the bullet-holed ceiling around
my finger, I realized the satellites
sarcastically told me I was nowhere.
I ran out of the cafe to find the city
folded into a paper bird and everyone
was a scratched lottery ticket flake,
soaking in staid puddles of old snow.
My ex yelled at me for drinking
all of the juice and I forgot to pay
the bill. I flashed my teeth like a...
4 tags
Today Is Going To Be Ruthless
You must be born again
and again and again and shake
yourself to life — separation
is natural and unless you treat it
as a joke you might as well throw
yourself into some abyss.
That’s what I really meant to say
when I spoke about black hole irises,
a hollow look that is serious and sucks
the vitality out of all the light
bulbs in the room. But of course
I also chose to...
5 tags
We wait for the moment of clarity
too long, beer gardens taking precise
measurements of our friendships,
everyone waiting for tips.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
I Don't Understand Saturday Poems Either
There’s a wild apogee of understanding
when the moon is suppose to rise,
your black hole iris fills with pigeons
and please-keep-off-the-grassy heart.
What’s more wild to us than concrete
and your thighs that ungive to the sea
and laughter? It’s cold enough for tea,
but mild, moon spreading about
in grainy mustard light, undressing
ourselves for us like a cannibal....
6 tags
Wooing a Motionless City
I told Pritchard I’d write a poem using Motion City Soundtrack and Wu-Tang Clan lines, and I hate myself for it.
I’ve said before that the future freaks me out,
bringing all sorts of ruckus in like the true
lives of dinosaurs and the 37 Shaolin chambers.
What secrets will be left if all time turns
fragile, our grandkids becoming digital
archeologists and breaking every steady...
9 tags
In Which The Poet Admires His Lack Of...
I’m afraid of how simple it is,
to injure eternity by thinking about it.
The present is revisable the moment
we enter it, but getting there is dangerous,
roulette with a six-tongued polyglot
who can only be understood in smoke.
I assume the future will be more vertical,
that every corpse planted since our ether
nights will bring new banana trees
so we can keep making dick jokes...
9 tags
Excerpts of a State of the Union Bender, with the...
Keep me at the oiled outer reaches,
me in my place where I used to like
how I would think. There’s a kick-ass
section of this that’s medically necessary
and economically imperative that I teach
it to you. Down with the man! we all say
with beer spilling from our mouths,
down with chips outnumbering dips!
the one percent an infinite snack,
the cancerous blob of avocado envy....
5 tags
The CIA Invented Dinosaurs To Discourage Time...
My good will is tied up in fossil
fuels, lock the garage before
the avenue leaks in. Yes, I’m
paraphrasing the roar
of an El Camino, I wanted my body
to look sleek, racing stripes
from the end of every split hair.
Every year that doesn’t have my picture
in it is likely to not have happened -
youth is a myth the future tells
to keep me from, you know, up and
dying. Who is...
3 tags
stallingsdecree asked: can you please follow me or, just give me criticism on my poems? please
6 tags
I’m not speaking to myself except to prove
that adaptation sparks a node of violence
against what’s unfit, like speaking to one’s self,
especially so early in the morning.
Half of the world makes a game of standing
on my throat, hence my heart strayed
and laughed while I couldn’t
catch my breath. I could speak easier
if the message was simple enough to convey,...
5 tags
The world flitted its eyes here and there,
but I could only eavesdrop, never interrogate.
Instead, the world rested its trajectory along
a new word: autopsy. I let my skin play dead
while all that had been me shattered.
I desperately want something fireproof.
It focused on random templates of rage
corrupted by not fitting together.
Adaptation was incitement to violence;
how many options...
5 tags
A New York That's Hardly Working
imachinatedpoetry:
Home. Garden. Cottage? Honking subject to fines and ball points. Another hard hat maze, please watch yourself gap toothed meter maid in the bright neon traffic. The best questions are the ones that eviscerate the answer’s soul and the best shoes in town, guaranteed. Of course there’s felafel, it’s America, goddamnit!
-C.S. Henderson
[by TheTargetBird]
5 tags
Reject 35
If love is the defacement of unselfconscious
materialism which has guided us to paint
the house using sledgehammers and pretend
orange is the color most likely to sing,
then maybe that weird smell exists
wholly within our noses and the world is not
the burst pores of wistful fandago
like we’ve been joking about all year.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
Words require almost nuclear energy
just to be thought, let alone breathed.
That’s why I like to deal everything in
with images and say “shit” instead
of what I mean. I’d tell you I love you
enough to burn down the avalanche,
but that requires a new set of principles
in which to angle light into the room -
we have too much furniture,
too many places to sit and...
4 tags
The Ugly Moorings
I.
Let’s talk about how I find each city
to be a bivouac for harried souls.
Let’s flip over my desk for even thinking it.
Let’s spook the repertoire of my fist
into collapsing on itself.
II.
Dreams are a good excuse
for skipping work and for song,
but really they’re just apologies
for reality’s post-Romantic stress.
III.
In a dream I keep having,...
4 tags
9 tags
582 Love Sonnets to the Rock: 7
After the fantastic idea mentioned in this post by TheLazyLazarus
The wind’s bulk of grit
skims into the cavern bed,
my teeth are tired from chattering
all the time and Buddy Guy’s solos
in “Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me”
unwinding each fleck of nail.
I laughed the first time I heard it
was exactly how I wanted
to tell you that when I restoked
the ashes of...
4 tags
In the end, harmony stuck together like it was wet. It became intimate as if hawks were circling it, the day riper than oranges for lunch.
(Read this poem at 930, when the day is a leftover and pushed to the back of the fridge. Make sure it grows its mold as if it were once good enough for a lunch.)
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
A Dream of the Dragon Libertarian Eating Liberty
Every laugh comes at a hard angle
the whole paper world sitting
unlit in the fireplace
there’s a lot of cold out there
if we just read the newsletters
I’ve read and got discouraged
by everything so this must be
hell wrapped in fur
upstreaming my cab.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
4 tags
We name things because they change on us
but I don’t understand the past. We named hell
because it is. Just is. Try to retain it with smashed
fruit and car batteries – where are the trees
and ocean, where is my wheeze? I need to sit.
So I will sit.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
5 tags
Young Rivers and Future Hearts
“we can spend our days building ships
breaking them apart at sunset”
-Sam Stein
I’m not sure I understood
what was noble or free about the soul.
I felt something ghastly twist
around every rock, I felt a scarf
twist around my neck, I felt
the rain in pixels and loam
in my heart. What is great
about the future when it vomits
in the stairwell before the party begins?...
5 tags
Montreal
I bought a down coat.
I brought a down cast.
My brow a downed ship.
At sunrise we erect it:
the sun and a flock of light and the sea
on which to set a ship and the Galapagos
with its dinky finches and vampire
myths and paper and ink and the idea
that two can go together and a letter
and another and another and another
and a symbol with eyes to read it
and eyesandeyesandeyesandeyes...
6 tags
Reject 34
If love separates the darkness
with explosions of confetti and a hint
of grapefruit, treats your bed like a countryside
walloped by cadavers and cement,
and asks to spend sleep
rubbing off each others’ dry skin,
remember that the ruin value of a howl
is more beautiful than the wolf.
-C.S. Henderson