THE PERFECTION OF MOZART’S THIRD EYE

&
Other Sonnets

Halvard Johnson

chalk editions
2010
 text © copyright 2010 Halvard Johnson
cover © copyright 2010 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

Acknowledgment of prior publication at the end of this eBook.

http://chalkeditions.co.cc

For Lynda

2
 Table of Contents

Maglev Sonnet / 11
Revolutionary Sonnet / 12
Sonnet Zork / 13
Pestilential Sonnet / 14
Unavailable Light / 15
Sonnet: Twilight in Turkey / 16
Sonnet: Portrait (in Photo Captions) of Chaim Soutine / 17
Elegy Just in Case / 18
The Jinx Is On / 19
Emergency / 20
Short Story Sonnet / 21
Sonnet: Lento e deserto / 22
Political Sonnet / 23
Amnesiac / 24
The Sky Called “Despair” / 25
Sonnet: Hard Trills / 26
Due Diligence Sonnet (Downsized Version) / 27
Some Save Themselves / 28
News of the Day / 29
Inviolate Obituary / 30
What’s Up / 31
Toxic Assets Sonnet / 32
Sonnet: Snowdrop / 33
Sonnet: The Defiant Asking of Questions in the Face of Permanent Ontological Uncertainty / 34
Postmodern Financial Crisis Sonnet / 35
Angst No Prerequisite / 36
Best Possible Light / 37

3
Sonnet: Time to Seek Help / 38
Morning Sonnet / 39
Sonnet: Turkmenian Nights / 40
Unseasonable Facsimiles / 41
Bloodbath Sonnet / 42
Sonnet: My Dog Sunyata / 43
Avoir Besoin De / 44
Sonnet: What American Voters Want / 45
A Lone Gunman Is Dead / 46
Cheeseburger Sonnet / 47
Sonnet: Long Drives in the Country / 48
Sonnet: Your Emergency Preparedness Kit / 49
Sonnet: Afflictions of Writers / 50
Outlying / 51
Hotel Aquí / 52
His Nonchalance / 53
Sonneto Incognito / 54
Urban Sonnet / 55
Wavelength / 56
Sonnet: Younger Poets / 57
Horse Led to Slaughter / 58
Sonnet: Sudden Hailstorms / 59
Sonnet: Milwaukee, City of Rumors / 60
Retrospective Sonnet / 61
Sonnet: Whimsical Children / 62
Sonnet: Permission Denied / 63
Sonnet: They Call the Wind Sudoku / 64
Calling All Lexicographers / 65
Axiomatic Sonnet / 66
Sonnet: Body Under a Running Stream / 67
Late Arrivals / 68

4
Just to Say / 69
“Dark Peruvian Forces” / 70
GWOT Sonnet / 71
Jeffersonian Melodramas / 72
Morphine Wreckage / 73
Today the President Ate Lunch / 74
Northland Graves / 75
Adventures on the Hippocampus / 76
Night Letter / 77
Sonnet: Far Afield / 78

II The Sonnet Project

Centcom Briefings Sonnets / 80

Sonnet: Marching as to War / 83
Firefight at Palestine Hotel / 84
Sonnet: Success / 85
Sonnet: A Guy Was Talking / 86
Synaesthetic Sonnets / 87
Sonnet: In an Uncertain World / 89
Sonnet: The Story Thus Far / 90
Mad Cow Sonnets / 91
Sonnet: Old MacDonald Had a Farm / 97
California Sonnet / 98
Chimayo / 99
Sonnet: How Are Things Going? / 100
Sonnet: No Dice / 101
Sonnet: Drought / 102
Baltimore: Moon Caught in Powerlines / 103
Sonnet: Abandoned in Despair / 104
Psy-ops Sonnet / 105

5
Sonnet: Autonomous Retreat / 106
Sonnet Cycle / 107
Pastorale / 108
Sonnet: Surprisingly, Vertical Industry / 109
Sonnet: I Think Continually / 110
Sonetto: Buona Fortuna / 111
Sonnet: The Light Within / 112
Sonnet: Democracy in the News / 113
Sonnet: It’s Better to Turn on the TV / 114
Double-sonnet: Methane / 115
Sonnet: Democracy Red in Tooth and Claw / 117
Sonnet: Benign Virus Appears to Block Bush Strategy / 118
On the Hustings with George: Two Sonnets and Part of Another / 119
Sonnet Written in the Light of Fiscal Realities / 122
Slow Curve / 123
In the East Room / 124
Sonnet: Getting on with Our Lives / 125
Double-sonnet: A Test of Wills / 126
Mini-sonnet: For the Families / 128

III

My Strange Amoeba / 130

Sonnet: The Week That Was / 131
Contiguous Humiliations / 132
Sonnet: Spontaneous Separations / 133
Arbitration Sonnet / 134
Sonnet Industry Shorts / 135
Sonnet: Bridge Over Troubled Markets / 136
Sonnet Incorporating a Poem by James Tate / 137
Sonnet / 138

6
Stipulations / 139
Found Sonnet: On Red / 140
Tango Bouquet / 141
Bachiana / 142
How Pink Was My Monkey? / 143
Sonnet: Climate Control / 144
Sometimes a Penis . . . / 145
Landscape Near a Landfill / 146
Autumnal Sonnet / 147
Death Panel Sonnet / 148
Sonnet: This Music Does Not Mean / 149
Superbot Sonnet / 150
Sonnet: Nothing As Yet To Report / 151
Miracles Sonnet / 152
Seven Years Later / 153
Sonnet (Italian Style), in English and Vietnamese / 154
The G-Rated Sonnet / 156
Lost Methodologies / 157
Kitchen Sonnet / 158
Sonnet for the New Year / 159
Sonnet: In Fine Fettled Sleep / 160
Trading Meaningful Glances / 161
Autonomous Retreat / 162
Sonnet: Restraint in G Minor / 163
Found Sonnet: This Document Contains No Data / 164
Sonnet: Aro(here)und / 165
Sonnet: Religion in America / 166
(Com)promised Land / 167
Arsenal / 168
Sonnet for the Criminally Insane / 169
Final Deprivations / 170

7
At the Treeline / 171
Sonnet in Elliptical Orbits / 172
Sonnet: Norwegian Moods / 173
Say No More / 174
Sentimental Sonnet / 175
Local News / 176
A Brave Story / 177
Sonnet: Unspecified Horrors / 178
Sonnet: Faith-based Initiative / 179
“Your Eyes Stray” / 180
With No Known Regrets / 181
Another Long, Sad Story / 182
Time to Seek Help / 183
To This Day / 184
Afternoon Sonnet / 185
Sonnet: Clouds of Knowing and Unknowing / 186
Barn, Slope, Tree / 187
Sonnet: Sellinger’s Round / 188
Sonnet: Cruel Remainders / 189
Musikalabend / 190
Sonnet: Calm Headlands / 191
Some More Anthropology / 192
4 Subprime-Mortgage Sonnets / 193
Dialogue Sonnet / 195
Sonnet: Backward Glances / 196
Sonnet Kit CXLVII / 197
Saga Sonnet / 198
Etiolation Sonnet / 199
Neural Loops: or, The Ascension of Osama bin Laden / 200
Sonnet: Unpacking My Toothbrush / 201
Sonnet: La Malcontenta / 202

8
Sonnet bureaucratique / 203
Sonnet: Much Better Now Thanks / 204
A Little Story / 205
Sonnet: The Perfection of Mozart’s Third Eye / 206
Spam Sonnet / 207
Boolean Nights Sonnet / 208
Sonnet / 209
Sonnet: Your Lips Soft as Lard / 210
Sonnet / 211
Sonnet: Gracing Light / 212
Sonnet: Karachi Dawn / 213
Romantic Sonnet / 214
Suspicious Car / 215
Raymond Chandler Sonnet / 216
Sonnet: Tropical Forest with Monkeys / 217
Sonnet: On the Way to Gare St. Lazare / 218

IV Appendix

Shakespeare Lite: The Sonnets (I through XVII) / 220

9
I

10
Maglev Sonnet

A high-speed magnetic sonnet went off its track

in northwestern Germany on Friday, killing at least
one passenger and injuring several more, sources said.

Officials at the scene described the sonnet’s first stanza

as being totally mangled. “We must prepare ourselves
for the fact that those lines are not living any more,”

said one critic, who shall forever remain nameless.

He was talking to emergency officials. Besides those
first-stanza lines, two other quatrains were missing

and feared dead. How fast the sonnet was traveling

at the time of the accident was not immediately clear.
Eighteen tropes are still trapped in tangled wreckage.

The accident is another blow for magnetic levitation

after a fire last month in a Shanghai-bound ghazal.

11
Revolutionary Sonnet

To horse between the news article and the fiction

of the nearby Vázquez Mountains, by order of no one
in particular. The later murder creates an imaginary

fable, as told by American college students who will

conclude tragically. Small revolutionary episodes,
profesores unwilling to return to class after their long

lunches. Truncated ethics of resistance. Of the corpse,

no sign. Purity aureoles of central personages, less stable
than imagined. His doctoral thesis shows impostures

of the ruling junta, mysteries solved with doubtless

technical skill, manifesting ideological functions of text,
very much like creatures equipped with their own lives.

Lacking both doctrinal force and novelistic substance,

his story (of inverse sign) does him no palpable honor.

12
Sonnet Zork

You are standing in an open field west

of a white house, with a boarded front
door. There is a small mailbox here.

Within the mailbox lies an envelope

containing a white powdery substance.
The envelope’s stamp has not been

cancelled, and a message from the PO

says there’s still twenty-two cents due.
But who, when you’re dead, will pay?

Who will pay when you’re dead?

13
Pestilential Sonnet

(after a poem by James Cervantes)

The President prays to his helicopter. “Why me, O, Lord,

why me? Some folks sit on the fence, waiting for the voice
from the whirlwind. I gotta make my own wind.” Small
needy voices in utero whisper to him. The President prays
in his helicopter. Grass bends in his breeze. Dogs run away.
The power button is carried aboard by an aide. It doesn’t
simply vanish when the President sets foot in his helicopter,
heading for his weekend of prayer at Camp David. History
seems to take a time-out as the President flies from one
place to another. It gets up from its place on the couch
and visits the fridge and the bathroom. To his dogs on
the White House lawn the President shrinks to the size
of a gnat in the gut of a huge whirlybird of prey. Picking
at his scabs, the President soars above the drought-plagued
farmland below him. “Why me, O, Lord? Why on my watch?
What next (he wonders) locusts and frogs? Babies dying
in their mothers’ rooms . . . I mean wombs. Why me, O,
Lord? Why make it so hard for me to get the words right?”

14
Unavailable Light

The dancing just isn’t what it seems to want to be.

Superior investment results bring added dimensions

to our whole pie. Already obvious, her remarks,

mice in her ears or not, had begun to be famous.

Even her appearances on Wall Street Week had formal

virtues beyond, and separate from, their subjects.

Dow-Jones figures dance on our screen toward what

seems a dining table surrounded by intermittent

regulars. Beside, or perhaps leaning against, a red-plush

sofa in what appears to be an investment councilor’s

living room is a well-groomed Irish setter. Lessons

in living fashionably with a pick-up parked in one’s

driveway continue on, until we are well out of earshot,

out on that limb we’ve grown used to calling home.

15
Sonnet: Twilight in Turkey

Hey, is that thing running? Yeah. Turn it off. Okay, it’s off now.
Okay, where was I? You were about to say something about influence.
Oh, yes. All right then. I remember once taking this hovercraft
from Hong Kong to Macao. You know, just going over there to spend

a few hours at the tables. The hovercraft had the feel of an airplane
taxiing along a long, very long, runway but never lifting off. Many
writers were aboard. I don’t know why. Near the far rail the poet
John Ashbery was deeply in conversation with Gertrude Stein,

who, for some reason or other, was seated in a wheelchair that had
been pushed aboard by Alice B. Toklas, her constant companion.
Basket had been unleashed and ran freely around the deck, making
a pest of himself. Can we talk about music? Not now. Not ever,

in fact. But isn’t that Harold Bloom sitting over there, pondering
influence and all its imponderables? No, I think it’s Stuart Davis.

16
Sonnet: Portrait (in Photo Captions) of Chaim Soutine

Outside the farmhouse in Le Blanc, Soutine and Paulette Jourdain

pose with the dog Riquette, who belonged to the cook, Amélie,
who may have lived over a slaughterhouse in the Vaugirard District
where Soutine may have bought the beef carcass for his paintings

inspired by Rembrandt’s “The Slaughtered Ox,” 1655, which

Soutine studied carefully at the Louvre. In the mid-1930s Soutine
and Madeleine Castaing stand together in casual clothes in an un-
identified town. Soutine in an open car with Élie Faure and his

daughter Marie Zéline at Faure’s home in Prats, summer 1929.

Faure’s young son Jean-Paul stands nearby. Henry Miller moved
to Villa Seurat on the day Tropic of Cancer appeared. The center
building is No. 18, where Soutine had an apartment and studio

on the second floor and Henry Miller lived on the floor above him.
Soutine, in a relaxed mood, with his cigarette and a glass of milk.

17
Elegy Just in Case

A public life is what he led. Baseball, not books, gave him

ballast. A ball launched out of the Polo Grounds in 1951
lodged in his head, which fondled its curves and seams
when there was nothing else worth thinking about.

Holy relics of memory, taken down from the shelves, change

hands quietly, among the finer calibrations of kinesthetic
fervor. Mystery or metaphysics. Could you choose just one?

Next to impossible, an over-the-shoulder catch on the centerfield

track. No longer any need to say what might have happened,
rolling down the drainpipe of history, truly lost for all time.
Taking discontinuity for granted, he angled for the sidelines,

watching it go, its generosity noticed only by those not blinded

by the late afternoon sun. Over the fence, in his neighbor’s
yard, hearing a strange sound, wondering what it was.

18
The Jinx Is On

I still feel like I’m in a dream. Misdirection and other

anxieties overtake me. Americans in Erbil arrest
Iranians at an increasingly rapid rate. The jinx is on.

Space probes on Mars, they say, are looking for

the wrong forms of life. Good dreams, not nightmares,
for the first time in years. Everything here is alive.

I’ll try less clonazepam and more of the other stuff.

Sentenced in absentia for crimes against pizzeria
managers, he took refuge on Mogamigawa, a Japanese

oil tanker soon to collide with the USS Newport News.

Zoo animals on Prozac, it’s been found, still chase
their tails for hours on end. Lawyers representing

detainees at Guantánamo, now on a federal hit list

despite good-faith efforts to have their names expunged.

19
Emergency

“The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.”

—Gen. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan

One cup of green tea has no sugar, sodium, or fat, and roughly
one half to one third the caffeine of coffee, emergency teams
responding to terrorist attacks have found. Extraordinary
measures require extraordinary powers, all potentates agree.

This time of year, animals are so busy attending to their young

that they often do not see oncoming humvees. Busy sacking
judges, heldentenors often fail to hit those high notes, bringing
on violent retaliations by clacques in the gallery, above the law

in so many ways. Ousted conductors, kept under house arrest

until they see or hear the errors of their ways, prepare brochures
to recruit militant violists who can be trusted to obey their oaths
of allegiance to the Lahore Philharmonic or whatever gang of

instrumentalists they choose to ally themselves with, under mar-

tial law applying equally to strings, brass, winds, and percussion.

20
Short Story Sonnet

His license for fuzziness expired, Beckham turned to direct

action. Vagaries of time and fashion overwhelmed his innate
good humor. One admired the worst things in him, as though
he were some neo-clinical monkey. Kidnapping adolescents
became his “thing,” turning ransom money over to favored
causes: Zimbabwean rebels, and so on. Ten cases of eggnog
abandoned by a food bank provided some sort of sustenance.
Somewhere along the Limpopo River, Mugabe’s thugs over-

took him, ran off his “boys,” and began to make clear their
demands. Late one night, a chest-high mud wall providing him
some cover, he made good an escape into South Africa, where,
meeting a wandering troupe of American evangelicals, he came
at last to find Jesus. Back in the “world,” as Americans called it,
he blissed out in Brooklyn, shoelaces tied and ready for Heaven.

21
Sonnet: Lento e deserto

Lopped heads keep their crowns above water, suitable for eating
abandoned songs. Aphotic members of the family read riot acts
to Sousa marches. Reservists razz dentists wielding drill instructors

and tongue suppressors. Troubleshooters’ ascetic sidekicks (magma

cum laude) duel beside peevish peers. Yerba maté notwithstanding,
his chest was covered by a carpet of soft fair hair. As the small store’s
customers lined up in numerical order, his wife collapsed, and he

shouted, “Is there a ventriloquist in the house?” Numbingly familiar

retirees, mountebanks and obstetricians, other-directed as ever, pursue
teensy weensy annoyances across some neighboring field. TV stations
plunk down hard cash for new episodes that will enhance our pneuma.

Birth parents watch idly as their children vanish into young adulthood.
Whimsy, having no immediately obvious right to exist, seeks out those
of similar dispositions. E pluribus unum—a dream once dreamt.

22
Political Sonnet

The Benited States slides into inflexination and extreme

wastes, time-consuming work with thoughtful, angelical leaders
to develop an ecologically grounded approach to Palestinian
rights. Broadening the base for thoughtful, though never anti-

podean, B.S. policies. Similarly, engaging evangels in foreign

policy discussions can lead to surprising climate change that
disproportionately affects the poor, and that Christians have
a moral duty to rail against, help deal with. Meanwhile, slave

raids against unChristians in southern Alabama have gone on

to focus more on U.S. exceptionalism than liberals would like,
and they, most likely, care more about the counterintuitiveness
of B.S. foreign policy than most surrealists prefer. But angel

power is here to stay for the foreseeable future, and is sometimes

even necessary in this wicked or, some might say, fallen world.

23
Amnesiac

Back in the late ’40s, or maybe it was the early ’50s,

I found myself in Paris, seeking a valid expiration
date, or maybe to sell cars to Francis Picabia. I tried

to remember that you didn’t know much about him

and his paintings, or about me for that matter, but all
we could agree to call to mind were those damned

Horse Spirits by Baiocco. In those days, I was still

a teenager, as, you know, I am today, my palm
still warm from the grasp of Eisenhower’s hand

during a Yonkers stop on his presidential run. His

ungloved hand slipped into mine like the promise
of some kind of future, Paris not far from our minds.

Butane lighters had not come along then, and three

on a match was quite enough to get someone killed.

24
The Sky Called “Despair”

Come build in the empty sporting goods store

across the street from the infirmary. Come help us cook
and baste turkeys, while children play at snapping up stock options.

Trucks arrive with their loads of sand and alabaster, slipping back
toward the first page of the newspaper’s style section, publicly
embarrassed by our thirst, our fits of spite and anger.

We, giving thanks to God for pushing down wholesale prices

in November by the largest amount in several years,
look to the ref for his signal, only to see him down on his knees

before a thirteen-year-old cutie from another school, far across town.

Faux light leaks in at the cathedral’s windows, helping keep phone
connections affordable in low-income, high-cost parts of town.

And (oh, yes—thank you for the reminder) let’s not forget our deep-
space, extra-terrestrial probes, just returned to Cape Carnivoral
after many years—addressee unknown, returned to sender.

25
Sonnet: Hard Trills

Rolling r’s in Spanish is not as easy as rolling

drunken sailors on shore-leave in Lisboa, nor
as hard as rolling cigarettes with one hand tied
behind one’s back. Gathering maple sap for

sugar may be easiest of all if you watch your

footing in the snow, and your Portuguese
might come in handy if you’re ever in Macao.

Even humble pebbles need to watch where

they’re going, even when it’s only to Roslyn’s
house over by the forest by the ocean and

its shore. Baboons come in around line eleven,

but don’t hang around for long. Nixon invaded
Cambodia and Kent State University but never
took on Oxford. Let’s all thank him for that.

26
Due Diligence Sonnet (Downsized Version)

When looked into closely by regulators, the most relaxed foot

is the pyrrhus—no stress there at all to speak of. The most stressed
out is the spondee, which is, in fact, a trochee. And trochee, natch,

is an iamb, as are dactyl and cretic. When suddenly, wandering

among the amphibrachs, a bacchius refused to allow shareholders
to review its books. The nervous foot market kept seeking bailouts

and other trochees, or, as some call them, chorees. The government,
an antibacchius to be sure, came riding to the rescue. Blue-ribbon
commissions sought out underlying fundamentals (primus and

tertius paeons) and, by the final bell, dactylated . . . down again.

27
Some Save Themselves

Some save themselves and then, having saved themselves,

go on to save others. Some save themselves and, having saved
themselves, deplore the inability of others to save themselves,

without federal assistance. Some save others without even

bothering to save themselves, though saving themselves
might have been the better idea, considering . . . well,

considering that all those saved by others might have

saved themselves if not others. Some save themselves
although no one offered them any assistance, although

saving themselves sometimes meant they could not go on

to save others. Having saved others, some save themselves.

28
News of the Day

An adolescent 41-year-old feels like he is in the dream

of a Brooklyn pizzeria manager moonlighting as a diplomat
representing the United States of America in Erbil, Iraq.

Six Iranians working in Somalia for Sen. Joe Biden deny

having invaded either Syria or Venezuela, but confess to
plotting against Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party.

Former Ethiopian dictators hold their annual reunion

in Bayreuth, Germany, retiring to a nearby bierstube during
the second act of Die Walküre, unnamed sources say.

Muslim villagers in India who had changed their sons’

names to Saddam Hussein file papers to change them once
again, this time to Barack Hussein Obama.

Martian expeditions to Earth failed to find signs of life there

because they were looking for the wrong kind of life.

29
Inviolate Obituary

New York City high-rises cling to their average day,

so you felt obliged to look after them. “A pleasant surprise,”
she snickered. “Happy Birthday, Sister Maurice!”

Ashbery’s reading was SRO, so we went for a walk in

the basement of the Museum of Online Publications, where
half-timbered houses gave quality sap unassociated with

our pain preference, a landmark of sorts. Repeated trips

from Milwaukee to Chicago shed no new light on our problems.
On Bleecker Street, the fabled Zito’s is now out of business.

With nobody around to gainsay whatever she might say was

the truth, Claribelle had a field day. Ever since that morning
we learned (there’d been no way of knowing) that we

could move undetected around the encampment, seeking

lost hymnals and prayer books hidden by the high grass.

30
What’s Up

Duddy wakes up from a nap and takes things seriously

for a change. Luther’s mad as hell cuz he can’t change
Jews into Christ-huggers. Junior’s out chugalugging

Gatorade laced with vodka. Mom’s in the kitchen

roastin’ taters. Uncle Joe’s up on the roof, banging
his head on the skylight. The dog’s asleep on the bath-

room floor. Auntie Vanessa’s putting on her face again.

Wherever we go we is with us. Nobody knows the color
of sky. The trouble I’ve seen. Uncle Moses has taken

to parting his hair in the middle nowadays. No one to

blame but himself. Melanie’s sister’s hung out to dry.
It’s the best of times, the worst of times. Tempus fidgets.

31
Toxic Assets Sonnet

Pedro found his reservoir of goodwill for his fellow

humanoids contaminated—or tainted, if you will—
by perennial and hereditary diseases. Exalted beings

all, they chewed their nails in anticipation of defaults

and market plunges, holding onto their faith that what
goes down must go up. Nervousness and its neighbor,

panic, often had cookouts in their unforeclosed back

yards. When the going gets tough, the tough broil
burgers. At any other time, the heady air of despair

would have provided a tonic. But now, today, Main St.

knows even smart Canadians cannot ride to the rescue.

32
Sonnet: Snowdrop

After his teacher’s “official” death, an anonymous woman

(lithe, limber) in Berlin took him to task for his usurpations.
Three days later, he was captured by wonderment. Severing
ties with hostile regimes rarely served useful purposes, and

often led to war. Clear-eyed reflections led to a new sense

of telepathic defiance, as time-lapse photography showed.
The daring of local publishers was rewarded by subpoenas
to appear before compromised Congressional committees

teetering on the verge of reelection. Not a candidate for saint-

hood, he managed, at best, a tepid rejoinder. Humiliation
and want were his cousins. Burdened by history, his Pollacks
found to be fakes, he continued to write splendid chapters

for his catalogue of memories, mistakes. Analytical vectors,

he knew them only too well. Morals old as folk tales.

33
Sonnet: The Defiant Asking of Questions in the Face of Permanent Ontological Uncertainty

I want to know why so few of us wonder why so many of us,

when asked “Who is it?” after someone answers
our phone call or after we buzz an apartment from the lobby,

respond with “It’s me,” (I know, I know, it should be “It’s I”—

we’re nobody’s fool), never doubting for
a moment that whoever’s answering that phone or that buzz

will know that it’s us and not some other “me” who might
have placed that phone call or rung that buzzer,
are surprised, if not agitated, when the answerer up

in the apartment or at the other end of the line, says “Thanks

so much for your time” and hangs up the phone
or releases the intercom button, not even dreaming that we

might in fact be the me he or she had been

expecting to call or even drop by for a visit.

34
Postmodern Financial Crisis Sonnet

Stupid as an act of God, the ethos of postmodern

focus gave way to regulation. Its own response to
the threat of fundamental freedoms, all devils dead.

No longer willing to enjoy its multiplicity, its emergence

as a market economy, it fails to roll the dice. It fails
to confide in its confidants. Spendthrifts forgo

the possibility of self-affirmation, the reconciliation

of opposites. The ordinary financial self-revelation
fails to reveal much that is new, much that might

help to understand the moral commitment behind

bourgeois machinations. So long as they last,
crises like the one we currently find ourselves in

run their course, carving out trenches that deepen

into canyons “beyond good and evil,” as is said.

35
Angst No Prerequisite

I wanted to explain the muffin allusion, but Hurricane Dean

rode in to the rescue. Negligible monetary compensations
flooded into the area, just as national guard troops took it
on the lam. Nicaraguan streets resist Hellenization.

Unemployed Colombian drug czars compete with rabbits

for our neighbors’ lettuce, as all of Yokohama grieves.
Siding and roofing from houses blow through the streets,
getting on everyone’s nerves. Ezra squats outside, sitting

on his heels. Culturing turnips brought curious neighbors

to their windows amid howls of execration, bulldozing
all further thoughts of rapprochement. Plastic sheeting left
nothing to the imagination. Socialists flocked to the polls

for the first time in decades, as anarchists jeered. Poachers

made off with the last few heads of unquarantined stock.

36
Best Possible Light

Intelligent controllers agree that telecentric approaches

to the early Beethoven sonatas yield more pleasure
than twelve-course banquets ever did. When the best

of friends sit down to simple meals of lab-bound pathogens,

exciting opportunities knock on every locked and bolted
door. The cooler atoms allow themselves to be captured.

And if we can’t have that we’d have to wonder why. Or, if

not, why neighborly persiflage now fails to mend fences?
As always, conveniences morph into necessities among

those who know better than let hotheads prevail. Dance-

like melodies from the oboe answered by superheated
rising fourths from the violins. And yet? No exit strategy

will compensate for those stupid missteps at the outset.

So we’ll soldier on until, one fine day, all is copacetic.

37
Sonnet: Time to Seek Help

The brain, while necessary, is not sufficient to avoid

common errors, which, as always, are only a stone’s
throw away. Making Up One’s Own Bed is required
reading for anyone with an interest in modern poetry.

Confident diagnoses suggest that Buckingham Palace

guards blink once every ten minutes like well-oiled
machines. The entire process can be easily performed
without ever setting foot in a gym. And so say all of us.

If your apartment’s so large you can’t ever find what

you’re looking for, then move out and get a smaller one.
If fires break out without giving you warning, it’s time
to seek help—two or three sessions a week might do it.

Keywords: sonnet, brain, necessity, error, stone, poetry,

diagnosis, machine, process, gym, apartment, fire, help.

38
Morning Sonnet

Daylight preening before the mirror, the lonely

planet planned its morning. Incantations mixed
with imprecations on the dance floor. Beyond all
doubt, our bathroom facilities could be improved.

Next door to us, South Ossetians have moved in,

still living on borrowed Russian time, dancing
their troikas and korobushkas, both fast and slow,
all night long. Silent and invisible, Brenda

writes her letters, even knowing full well that

her Guantánamo pen-pals will never write back.
Brenda tells them of the ancient mound builders
who once lived near her home in Kentucky.

Night-dreamers wake to find all was vanity. Day-

dreamers turn out to be truly dangerous.

39
Sonnet: Turkmenian Nights

Using grammar to manipulate his xenophobic readers,

he sealed the borders. Long plane flights and jet lag,
both things of the past. Road warriors morph into arm-

chair travelers visiting countries no one has ever written

about. Awkwardness, a constant throughout the book,
sadly only an average book in a genre of which it is

the only member. England’s designs replaced by those

of Russia. Permafrost nearly done for. Polar bears, same.
Wolves in Poland moving south for the winter. Later

than ever before. Diplo-wonks at a loss for words.

40
Unseasonable Facsimiles

So deeply buried within the culture, these twins,

these eyes that each mirror images of the other.
Cult classics from the ’60s reinforce our ideations,
encouraging, if not requiring, some sort of closure.

Not that he was scared to fly. He’d done it before,

a thousand times, earbuds hidden. Toxic chipsets
scattered all around, landmines for the rummagers,
pomo replicators, even in plastic suits and gloves.

Copiers coping with rivers of information, always

reminding the family matriarch of her roots that
need dyeing. A pair of Roombas roaming around,
impossible to tell one from the other. Expansionist

sentiments, left on the living room davenport, slip

down behind cushions, pocket change for the ages.

41
Bloodbath Sonnet

Fish? I don’t remember. Yesterday’s newspaper provides

little guidance. Missile strikes target the dog runs in city
parks, collateral damage notwithstanding. How many dogs
must die in order that democracy prevail? Who even counts?

The professor’s list of ten top American movies provokes vio-

lent action on the part of both Israelis and Palestinians. Rage
runneth rampant. What, no Alfie? No Godfather? No Welles?
Clinics and hospitals overflow. Acrid smoke fills the air.

New list to draw up: Top Ten Bloodbaths of All Time. Rwanda,
yes. Only machetes used that time. The Holocaust, yes. WWI, yes.
Mustard gas, yes. Hiroshima, yes. Nagasaki, yes. Bosnia, yes. Cam-
bodia, yes. Amer-Indians, yes. Darfur and Congo, yes, yes, yes.

Start reaching back. Start looking forward. List stretches both

ways. New ways of death dealing death. Old ways good enough.

42
Sonnet: My Dog Sunyata

Having a bite—falafel or maybe a slice of pizza (extra

cheese, no meat)—I watched the dog outside, leashed to a utility
pole, sitting quietly, waiting for its master or mistress, whatever,
reminding me of my dog Sunyata, who never failed to amuse

me whenever I took notice of him. “Here, Sunyata,”

I would command, and he would unfailingly obey, come
to wherever I was and sit there, looking up at me
with his brown eyes. My dog Sunyata hated the president

as much as I did, rolled his eyes and growled whenever

he came on TV. My wife had taken to leaving us alone
at such times, knowing that to do otherwise would invite
retribution. Streetcars still came and went in those days,

taking their power from overhead powerlines, as though

power were something just there to be taken.

43
Avoir Besoin De

Our tour of French idioms begins here in Avoir Besoin De,

about quinze (fifteen) kilomètres south of Aix-en-Provence,
a delightful town whose streets are lined with ancient
plane trees eagerly awaiting the latest word from the Sidney
Olympics. First we’ll eat, then we’ll go to the theater.

Puisqu’il ne vient pas, the above referenced vehicle has been

returned to this administration by the Postal Authorities as not
able to deliver. Stéphane both began and finished the relentless
transformation of Avoir Besoin De into a demotic poetry
incapable of omitting or suffering anyone long who is not amenable

to drastically altered circumstances. So, let’s start without him.

The outriggers of time, poised on the horizons of our indubitable
venture capitalists, presage a revolution in poetic taste, awaiting
her pleasure—her total nakedness at the hands of others.

44
Sonnet: What American Voters Want

They want their candidates to talk to God, of God,

and for God. They want them in church every Sunday
morning, shaking hands with insurance agents and
car salesmen, taking the pulse of the public in public.

They want God talk, glimpses of core values, hints

of Apocalypse to come. They want to judge character.
And they want characters to judge. They can spot
fakers, so faking it won’t do, and would-be fakers

should at least know their Bible and carry it with

them whenever they get on or off a plane, whenever
they show up for town meetings, or picnics on the 4th
of July. They want nothing to do with atheists.

Lips that kiss their babies must be lips that launch

prayers to their Maker every moment of every day.

45
A Lone Gunman Is Dead

The university, struck. Classes cut short, one in critical

condition, others in critical thinking. Monumental pro-
portions overwhelmed everyone. Chaos erupted. Ambu-
lances hustled, bustled. Some victims shot in classroom.

Critical conditions at multiple locations, spokeswoman

transported to microphones. Gunshot wounds and injuries
reported and treated. Worst school shooting, some said.
Four patients transported. One person killed at 7:15.

Lots of students going crazy, running around. Gunshot

wounds and other tragedies. A residence hall near a drill
field and stadium. Twin shootings, worst in US history.
One person killed and others injured, then, two hours

later, many others. Only one gunman, on a rampage.

Killed 32 people, not counting himself. Single shooter.

46
Cheeseburger Sonnet

Subtle gradations in flavoring as one moves from layer

to layer. First, white bread sprinkled with sesame seeds,
coated on the underside with (your choice) catsup,
mayo, or mustard. I’d opt for mustard nowadays, all
other things being equal. And then some relish or (my
call) sweet pickle slices and a square of white cheddar.

In the center, a patty of hamburger meat—on the lean

side, if you please, and, let’s say, medium rare—pinkish.

The bottom layer is, as always, disappointing—just

the other half of the bun that the top layer of the burger
was the upper half of. Sans sesame seeds and tasty
slatherings of mustard, ketchup, whatever. And yet, it’s
the base upon which all the rest is built. Without it,
a burger’s just another slab of meat with bread on top.

47
Sonnet: Long Drives in the Country

Carved from the trunk of a tree, Carolee often wondered about

the rainwater that just might, one day, polish rocks. Just causes
still worth launching air strikes for appeared on every hand. Not
yet exploded, Iraqi schoolchildren practiced death by hanging
just like Saddam Hussein, while residents of Pasadena made
do without guacamole for a while. “Obese people like chewing,”
someone said. “We’ll have to break them of that.” Meanwhile, he
made himself more and more indispensable to the parish priest.

Others spent their days down there hanging around with some
of those malinchistas, while we took long drives in the campo.
That very same week, she began crawling to the law, begging
for mercy even before any charges against her had been lodged.
Abu Dhabi, needless to say, seemed more and more attractive to
all of us who had the good sense to keep our bags always packed.

48
Sonnet: Your Emergency Preparedness Kit

What you’ll need in your kit, of course, depends on the kind

of emergency you plan to have and where you plan to have it.
If you’re in France and plan to have an emergency on the road

be sure to take along a corkscrew, five bottles of wine, three or

four baguettes, some fine, pungent cheese, and a red and white
checkered tablecloth. In much of the rest of Europe and in Cali-

fornia, mostly the same. In Latin America, much the same. But
in Canada be sure to have a charged cell phone, and in the US
a fistful of credit cards, and your Triple-A card. A six-pack of beer

would be a comfort. In many parts of the world you can rely on

friendly locals to pull you out of a ditch, give you a push, or carry
you, your wife and kids off to a nearby clinic or hospital. In case

of serious injuries, it’s a good idea to have several units of blood

for each of you. And in Texas, of course, you’re on your own.

49
Sonnet: Afflictions of Writers

Attached to both sides of the hat

are totally tasteless jokes. You enjoy
the moment with your family, the pleasure
of knocking things down and

destroying them. The writing, its simple

lonely cry, no copyright infringement
intended. Profiles of leading Russian
oligarchs strewn about in your gardens.

That space, that vacuum—impressive

as well—building a hole in my belly.
It was a dream in which I do not appear.
The censorship begins. Small birds

attract lightning to the expanding garden,

which you, of course, are free to use.

50
Outlying

In the muscular pubs, logistically difficult

blemishes reigned. Presentations cross-
referenced and free of error. Eating his words

at a nearby table, Detritus Ransom spelled

out his plan. A state of permanent ambush,
he claimed, was what was necessary.

Indebtedness biased against the insolvent,

the poor with their awful rifles and handguns.
Catacombing the city, prerecorded messages

spread with boysenberry jam. Appallingly

ostentatious, the cemetery’s cypresses
pointed their twiggy fingers. Soyuz rockets

rocketed off into the bathysphere. Rampant

diseases spread their wares out on the table.

51
Hotel Aquí

At the Hotel Aquí we sat and wept. Promised a jacuzzi with ozone,
a “shower Finnish,” we found that neither of these worked. At least
they didn’t work properly. The ads once again had misled us, and we
set out to explore methods of extracting our revenge. Sábado came

and went, and, if things didn’t get worse, they also failed to improve.
Even private parking in individual garages did not raise our spirits.
Right across the street, the Tokio Hotel seemed to be laughing at us,
our daily if not hourly disappointments. The beach behind it, out

of our reach, was littered with sun-burnished bodies, with rotting

remains of last week’s coco-locos. Our bus trip was canceled when
the engine of the bus threw a gasket, and no one seemed able to
fix it. So we returned to the bar (too loud, too light) and drank our-

selves almost into a stupor, returning to our cramped little rooms

either too late or too early, even for the mariachis we’d already paid.

(for Michael Rothenberg)

52
His Nonchalance

Disambiguated after all these years, his regard for her remained
tethered to his highest aspirations. His Paris-based operations
thrown into confusion, he decided to take his first vacation in years.

Swapping medication for meditation, he checked himself in to

a Zen monastery in Kyoto and began to rake leaves, knowing
that to do the job too well might find him replaced by someone

older or younger, less ept than he. He thought of Schubert,

his dying of syphilis, of Mozart in that common grave. He gave
some thought to Schumann’s madness, his leap into the river.

Afterthoughts came swarming. His reluctance segued into

recalcitrance. Nothing ventured. Never any rain.

53
Sonneto Incognito

If one reads without worrying, it’s utterly

gorgeous. The sort of gorgeousness one
expects from high-end trade publishers.
The right vehicle for the right job—that’s
what we need to keep in mind, no matter

what. Done as well as humans do it, small

wonders come down the pike, one after
another. Systematically changing one’s
perspectives until some final arrangement is
suddenly arrived at when we least expect it.

I think of Robert Merrill’s Escamillo and

shivers run down my back. Divergent
impulses—yoking them together. Decisive
moments we sometimes live to regret.

54
Urban Sonnet

Here in the city, perfection grows in everyone’s backyard

like a weed. The nearby abyss makes sea-monsters
of us all. Having no legs, a dozen eggs stumble by on
their way to work. Subways open their mouths to them.

Swathed in blacks and pursued by grays, we rush down

to the savage harbor, drawn, as always, to the sea and its
myriad ships, its rough and tumble. Sky holds no terror
for us. It flowers before us, above us. Opening up a great

hole in the night. The reddish hand says, Stop! The bent
little man bids us scurry. Our Screen Actors Guild cards
are sometimes enough to get us half a day’s work and
a lunch. Enough for now, but what about tomorrow?

Promptly at seven, give or take ten minutes, the curtain

ascends, revealing undreamt-of dreams, fresh as daisies.

55
Wavelength

With opacity drifting across their sunset, Mitsui and Jim spill colors
across the floors of their loft. A column of flame shoots upward

every half hour. Beyond the serrated glass, the knife-edged sky casts
brilliant squares of light on polished hardwood floors. Now silvery gray,

a tall, thin window comes into view, turning at right angles to the total
blackness above. Suddenly it is no longer dark. A speeding freight train

roars out of the fireplace, and passersby barely notice. What you see
is what you get, essentially. The center of the universe, we’ve found,

can be anywhere we want it to be. Gradually, as the day wore on, the light
became more and more pronounced, subtly altering the contents of our

space. Faith, hope, and envy flashed above the doorways and people die
of exposure all around. Consummate rockers, masters of the violin,

bypassed by the art world, just get off the train altogether. The train becomes
a very small thing down the track, impossible to catch.

56
Sonnet: Younger Poets

Younger poets in particular institutionalize their milky

tremors, seeking (all of them) to narrow their tessaturas.
“Not finally arrived,” she murmured, cryptically. Profound
emulations, notwithstanding. Divine fecculations give

rise to more generous impulsivenesses, weeks—indeed,

it sometimes seems like months—after neighborhood
progressives launch campaigns against procedures too in-
vasive for words. Even ghost tantrums leave some

room for wiggle. He, only a marginally better person,

as Alice naughtily suggested, her rumored invasion can-
celled or, at least, postponed for some indefinite period
of time, wrote cheerfully satirical sagas of spiritual

formications—syn- and antonyms joyously bounding

together along paths less taken, in deeper thicket.

57
Horse Led to Slaughter

To vote down the enemy, we charged into heavy artillery fire.

Minimizing casualties, our number-one priority. Exposure
greater than ever before, even after our ports and our borders
were secured against acts of terrorism, against foreign incursions.

Trying to understand, after all these years, why search-and-rescue

teams always had to fight their way uphill and across treacherous
moats just to win hearts and minds that were not disposed to
being won. Enemy cameras watched our advance from the top

of the walls, behind the gleaming coils of razor wire, unable

to distinguish our regular troops from flesh-and-blood human
beings. The arrest of suspected fifth-columnists cheered us
for the moment, and we fought our way upward and onward,

across the pyroclastic flow, ground so hot our boots would melt,
thirty-four barefoot runners from the Seychelles, the last to fall.

58
Sonnet: Sudden Hailstorms

I once spent fixable years or so living in Japan,

and when I firmly arrived the whole country
went off on vacation—to Guam, to Hawaii,
to the Philippines taking their Walkmen with them.

In an oil-based fresco I once saw, peasants, both

male and female, danced their wily dances, and when
that was over the playoffs began, down at the debased
seaside. Small children kicked over their sand castles

and took up their thesauri, looking up this and that,

finding new words for, say, third basemen and such.
A poet came by—could it have been Stephen Spender?—
frenzied eyeballs rolling. When asked by the poet,

they all agreed: the influence of Tate and Ashbery on

younger poets was lamentable. Then sudden hail.

59
Sonnet: Milwaukee, City of Rumors

Running down rumors along Milwaukee’s dark,

Brucknerian boulevards, streets, and alleys,
in the urban half-light of America, half-hoping
to find some truth in them: the rumors, say, that
the Brewers will move to Havana, taking all
of the city with them. Ah, the sunlight, the salt
sea air. But no, that one evaporates as soon as
one catches up to it, leaving the others, the one
that very late at night, just before dawn in fact,
early morning joggers by the lake can see Ed Gein
walking the beach, something round and wrapped
in newspaper beneath his arm, looking for a waste
basket empty enough to receive it, the one that
Lake Michigan will be rebaptized Lake Wisconsin.

60
Retrospective Sonnet

Our breakfast was ruined. We worried about whether or not

we might have won had not the Chinese intervened. Our push
to the Yalu River fell into disarray while we were waiting
for the milk to pour upon our cereal, cream for our cup of coffee.

And what if the British had not been preoccupied with Napoleonic
wars on the continent of Europe, what then? What if two oceans had
not protected us for all those years while we struggled to build our
nation, our empire, our city on the hill? What if the hunters had not

come out of the forest, what then? And, as if the past were not enough
to worry about, the future brought even more worries to our breakfast
table. What if the kids, the children, proved impossible to domesticate,
impossible to place into schools that would assure them a future we

might have wanted for ourselves? What if that swing vote on the Supreme
Court had swung the other way? What might have happened then?

61
Sonnet: Whimsical Children

Failing to open, no matter how hard the rain,

the umbrellas they carry. Talking back to their

parents, no matter how hard they beat them.

Beating their heads against pillows, no matter

how long they’ve been sleeping. Speaking in tongues

that can barely melt butter. Listening for words

they’ve never read before. Finding what’s under

the rocks in the garden. Posing new questions

for which their parents never have answers.

62
Sonnet: Permission Denied

Your slideshow took me back to London, dynamite providing

occasional relief. Tableaux and historical fodder akin to
our visit to the military academy at West Point that summer

(you remember) when both of us were young, Venezuela not

at all on our minds in those days. Many eyewitness accounts,
mostly gleaned from science journals willed to local libraries,
stood the test of time. Be as frank as you like, if you please.

With the horizon at maximum eclipse, people looking for re-

lationships cruised the internet, supermarket bulletin boards.
Bird squawks and dog barks filtered into the concert hall.

Exploding eyes of houseflies reminded us of home, down by

the sand, where the sea starts. The twins were standing tall,
posting your photo on the wall at Saint Vincent’s, negotiating
twists and turns of destructive love. Pretty to think so.

63
Sonnet: They Call the Wind Sudoku

The peace server is down for maintenance. I’ll not

even comment on aesthetic realism’s right to be known.
Most parents say that if they had it all to do over again
they wouldn’t even bother. It’s all connected. Take

my word for it. Blame the patriarchy if you must, but

pass the ammunition. We share the stage with elderly
Australian bocce players on steroids. “Haydnesque”
is the only word I’d choose if I had to describe it.

Having found your name in the directory of the African

diaspora, I cling to it as though my very life depended
on doing so. (I’d like to take a moment here to thank
my many micropatrons for all the nickels they’ve sent.)

One small voice is all it takes to affect the economics

of popcorn pricing. Once ruthlessly ambitious, but now . . .

64
Calling All Lexicographers

Lord knows I’m tired of chewing on all this

just to learn how snowmobiles bundle themselves
up in grammar. Their full or adult-sized Times
severely stressed, too stressed to say they’re sorry.

Spewing abuse far from love, but at least

brumal. Subscriptions all lapsed. Ice crevasses
beneath you, beneath me. But seduction splits,
as if truth itself were at stake. Subscriptions

dropped, or at least at risk, bears drop their plans

for hybernation, fight amongst themselves—black
and white against brown until alliances shift.
Learning it all over again, tongue against teeth.

Then crashed, abbreviation alleviating our need to

spell things out, avoid undue, toe-tapping rhythms.

65
Axiomatic Sonnet

While we can all take inspiration from those disabled dolphins,

being laid down as a general axiom is not the pleasure that it used
to be. My rule is “Do not start to run until you know what it is
you are chasing, or what it is that is chasing you.” Stet. Or did

I mean to say, “Stat”? While the rising tide lifts all boats, it is ax-
iomatic that not all boats are equally seaworthy and that those
of the poor more often tend to choose sinking to swimming when
they’re down to their last two options. Her closed, convex body

cuddled close to his while in his ear she whispered, “Tithonus rising
drives away the night, and hoar-frost flees the meadows.” Adopting
an axiom, of course, is no laughing matter, especially when living
in a country without universal health care, where stitches in time

don’t save nine, where oil and water sometimes mix, where some-
thing ventured doesn’t necessarily gain much at all, if anything.

66
Sonnet: Body Under a Running Stream

Amusing at first, but then not. North by the Tigris

until we reached the Spirit of God, hovering over the dark
waters, finding more in common with them than we’d thought.
Diverting their water to other, less amiable purposes,

bounded on the north by the Book of Genesis, on the south

by the Gulf of Aden, four angels caught in our crossfire.
Those who arise each morning and put on two faces,
facilitating a more effective dialogue, not surprised

by reports of new atrocities gathered in the face of fresh,

new press restrictions, persistent rumors of imminent
withdrawals, counterpointed by PSYOP projects
that invariably failed to accomplish their purposes—

to persuade, to change, to influence,

to interdict, to dissemble, to re-elect.

67
Late Arrivals

Late to arrive, we found all the city’s hotels to be full,

a convention of Russian orthographists conducting their
orgy-porgies everywhere, jamming the elevators, filling
the bar stools, pinching the bottoms as they passed.

Later we learned that to join their number, their union,

their guild, all one need do was spell John Ashbery’s name
correctly and buy them all a beer. Almost as much fun
as having Lyme disease, someone said. Sardonically.

Of late, Tashkent has been really difficult to live in, what

with all the rules governing matters as trivial as the proper
disposal of bottles and bottle caps. Taxicabs (unmetered)
full of unrivalled dignitaries armed to the teeth with the

latest weaponry smuggled in from Turkmenistan and other

blatant violators of worldwide nonproliferation agreements.

68
Just to Say

If reading in the dark is ideal, why should I want

to understand? I am entirely edge now, ready
and waiting, a continent adrift on a sea of magma.
The door to the page unopen, undifferentiated

quantities, each bleeding into another. The lap cuts

strides wherever it goes. I’ll read any poem
with Norway in its title. Turn on the lights and then
turn on the lights. No sound to assign, or arraign.

A cave in the room, its library of books, pages dog-

eared for emphasis. In writing, while taking the
greatest task, something remains to decipher
the heap of Japanese novels by his bed. Equivalent

rejoinders to those gloomy forests of Indiana,

their darkness ideal for the reading of your words.

69
“Dark Peruvian Forces”

Dark Peruvian forces led to ideologically inverse signs,

carrying out the aspirations of an American college student
who concluded tragically that revolution was discredited
for all times and in all places. Narrating historical events

two and thirty years later that would leave more than ever
in exile, their doctoral theses at the mercy of the excesses
and “imposturas” of the junta. Her truculence, it was thought,
served her well, even far from known tourist conflagrations.

Back when the US was owned by Eisenhower and the Dulles

brothers, imaginary fables rose up to speak for those who knew
him, who respected him and then betrayed him, whose walks
led to clandestine meetings in the lemony afternoon of the park.

Younger than leftist, she’d made excellent New York connections,

notwithstanding increasingly frequent bouts of apoplectic aporia.

70
GWOT Sonnet

President Bush’s Global War on Tenors ended today

with the long-awaited capture and sinking of Luciano
Pavarotti in the Bay of Biscay, which sent warnings
of a possible tsunami to much of the North Atlantic
world. The demise of Pavarotti climaxed a decade-
long hunt for the legendary singer, often thought to
be hiding in a cave somewhere in the mountainous
regions along the Pakistani/Afghan border. Thought
to be the most dangerous tenorist since the heyday
of the notorious Beniamino Gigli (1890-1957),
Pavarotti, with the advantages of modern technology
at his disposal, “tenorized immeasurably more of the
operatics world than Gigli could’ve ever dreamed of,”
President Bush said today in a Rose Garden photo-op.

71
Jeffersonian Melodramas

Wheel of brie tightening around her neck, sprouts

wailing in their bedroom, Bernadette’s life would
suddenly take on new meaning. Monks next door
awakening as usual at first light of dawn, praising

their maker for frost-free refrigerators, distracted

by demoralized swans swimming their moat, clam-
oring for nordic breezes. Crucified husbands rise
once again from the dead, venture out into the ranks

of assimilated nationwide jaycee members. Bare-

knuckle endeavors with Idaho franchises in offing.
Stoutness halves readiness, as once was said. Nipped
in the Budweiser, alternate jury members toe lines.

Shiite militias advance on Kansas City, unless some

stepchild of warships ventures forth to do battle.

72
Morphine Wreckage

Gun crews seemed good and were in good spirits.

When shooting begins, changes are inevitable.
I have no preconceived ideas, no desire to have made
the second-greatest film ever. Slowly, the ship

moved into dry-dock for hull inspection. Several

prospective jurors were released due to “unfortunate”
experiences with police. Scuttlebutt was thick
in the jury room, the jurors trying to piece together

a narrative from contradictory elements. She goes

below, and her fingers trail over the door lintel
as she passes from view. After the first showing
they thought their careers were over, but much too

much anguish has been spilled by those who quickly

judge writers by their middle names alone. Stop.

73
Today the President Ate Lunch

Today, the President ate lunch. Today, the President

challenged the UN to show its backbone to
Iraq. Today remains of shuttle astronauts were identified.
Today a Texas woman was convicted of killed her
husband by hitting him three times with her Mercedes Benz.

Today European business fears Iraq fall-out. Today our

country’s chief intelligence officer warned that the latest
Osama tape was “an exhortation to his followers.”
Today North Korea wants more arms and aid from the US.
Today long lines mar Canada’s low-cost health care.

Today Brazil warns on trade negotiations with the US. Today

inspectors begin destroying shells. Today New York
will sue two big drug makers on doctor discount. Today lack
of attack readiness was laid to financing delay by US.

74
Northland Graves

Arrested oilmen lie side by side with disciplined

car-poolers and CCNY defectors. Flagstaff tongue-
suppressors don black and avocado-striped zoot suits.

Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. Bob’s

choice autographs of Singaporean bishops tempt
more than one to succumb to envy and covetousness.

Avocets leave handwritten negotiating points in wet

sand gilded by as yet unsunk sun. Callahan’s Mrs.
in cahoots with her brother bilked nonagenarians

in southeastern Catatonia of lifetimes of savings.

75
Adventures on the Hippocampus

Around noontime, we landed on the hippocampus, when squirrels

were hungry, leaping from the tree branches down onto the arms
of passersby, snatching away peanut butter sandwiches from them
and biting, often, the hands that held them, snacks between classes.

By lunchtime, we could usually no longer remember what we’d had

for breakfast, and yet were almost certain that we had had something.
Memories clouded by . . . well, by eleven o’clock at the latest, unless
a skill at finding shortcuts helped us all become better taxi drivers.

Subcortical inputs rushed around the campus—heads with their

chickens cut off, by Talibansters with scimitars where their iPods
should have been. Counterdemonstrations by Students Against
Islamic Knowledge disrupted both pep rallies and frat hazings.

But, by late afternoon, this often murky history has had its sense of
relevance restored, on its way to class (Brachiation 101—elective).

76
Night Letter

Annette closed out her formal career by singing

her AIDS Madrigals in recital, leaving the two
of us feeling like we were beggars or lepers out
of the Bible. Carolina mornings, I had noticed,

separate print text from hypertext in more efficient

ways than do others, with the risk of maximum
return—fire in the air, fire in one’s shirtsleeves.
Through the threatening dusk, we intercut short

pieces with scraps of monologue, as projected

images, high on the wall, showed scenes of quiet
desperation, porch-sitters passing paper fans back
and forth in the gathering dark, the others jogging

off to work like everyone else. Water would be nice,

but, drowning in metaphors, he signaled his distress.

77
Sonnet: Far Afield

“Blast Ameriky, I say. . . . I tell ye, ye wouldn’t have been to sea

here, leadin’ this dog’s life, if you hadn’t been snivelized.”
—Larry, a seaman in Melville’s Redburn

and yet near at hand, our wanderings took us away

to a far field, unexamined, as yet, by brain sturgeons
or heart transports. My own views, if I may speak
rancidly, never quite jellied on that point. How does

one spell “spellcheck,” for example? And why doth

Ragnar Kjartansson sing for days on end in an empty
lot in Chelsea? I mean, what’s in it for him? Or for us?
Gudrid, I know, made many trips to what wasn’t yet

Ameriky without benefit of clergy, indoor plumbing,

or radiocarbon dating. As older adults now struggle
for each breath, online answers to their questions easily
can be found. Too late, some say, but, hey, every dog

has his daisy to push up once he’s dead. And that goes
for females too, whatever we rudely called them once.

78
 II

The Sonnet Project

79
Centcom Briefings Sonnets

#1

(In progress) — entered Iraq to remove the regime.

There is much pain there. Across the vastnesses
the coalition remains robust, with 49 countries
between us, small birds carry messages. The sky,

supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom. We continue

wanting, above all, to be blue, to remember those who
have attacked regime targets over the last 48 hours
in Baghdad and several cities throughout the country,

as everlasting fire pours through space. Men dying in

precision attacks against surface-to-surface missiles
as Republican Guard forces return, to feed them, bear
their children. This is a strike against an Iraqi television

service building in Karbala, and it was attacked two nights ago.

This is a Ba’ath Party headquarters building in al-Hillah.
This is a military headquarters building in western Iraq.
A little too much beauty is so hard to bear—a fuel truck

in a revetment near al Kut, an ammo truck near An Najaf,

targets of opportunity, as this next video shows.

80
#2

The first and final image is of an ammo dump near Baghdad,

which illustrates our approach to reviving the Iraqi economy
by planting trees all around, using the combined waters
of Lake Huron, Lake Superior, and Babylon to flourish them.

Where centuries twist toward the light, and special operations

forces have also been effective interdicting movements into
or out of Iraq, single-purpose vehicles wheel along at a nice clip.
There is no future for the regime or anyone who supports it.

We’ve made that statement clearly a number of times, and we’ll

continue to say it. We’d be happy to guarantee that they have no
future. Will they fight to the death? Probably. We’re seeing that
in a number of places. Alarms have passed. The sun travels on.

Those who are indeed in the open have everything to lose

and will lose it. It’s better to err on the safe side and destroy them
than to do otherwise. We want to ensure that no capability can
come up, especially from western airfields. They were in the open

and they were attacked, and the trees often vary in both color
and substance. Flame more or less comes and goes.

81
#3

Ground truthing by Centcom has now suggested that both

the Tigris River and Euphrates River basins can be rendered
suitable Chinook salmon spawning habitats once sediment
sizes larger than fines can no longer adversely affect sac fry

emergence. Still, we continue to see brutal acts by the regime

and the forces loyal to it. One example comes from an outpost
in front of 1st Marine Expeditionary Force a day ago. And the
story goes like this. During the daylight hours, two vehicles

approaching a psychological checkpoint were taken under fire

when they failed to stop. At the same time, our maritime guys
continuing their work of keeping open the waterways found
some mines in the shallow waters of Khor Abdullah as they

continued expanding the channel way. Those mines have been

destroyed, making the salmon stocking project a definite go.
The maritime component continues to search any vessels
remaining to ensure that there are no threats. Dangerous work,

but important work, and it’s necessary to ensure that anything

that’s in the ports is safe. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you.

82
Sonnet: Marching as to War

Conscripted Russian oil tycoons, marching off to do battle

with Chechnyan rebels, copyrighted by their respective owners,
no infringement intended. Flags, trademarks, and logos
not to be used without prior permission given in writing.
Despite the latest asbestos alert, we’ve no need to worry.

Please cancel my silence, that age-old impulse covered

in blood. What needs to be praised, celebrated, reiterated,
is the elasticity of our downward curve, as if attempting
to register how hard we have tried to imagine the historical
ache, the pain passed down for all to feel, unless otherwise

specified. She gifted us with her softest ululations, as if

what came after were as snacks to a banquet. History
screamed out our names, the names of the unloved dead.
Otherwise, a perfectly average—averagely perfect—day.

83
Firefight at Palestine Hotel

31 minutes ago — No quagmire, but still some questions.

The censorship begins inside the heavily armored tank if it
is placed correctly. To err on the side of caution whenever
practical, classrooms were filled with hundreds of crates

of grenade launchers, hunkered down in their homes by a wife

and two children hoping that peace would prevail. Critical questions
a hundred flights up? Brides stripped bare by their bachelors?
Coalition forces sound sirens again in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

Knew there were journalists there and ordered a return volley

anyway. Media march to war, and my very bones sweated.
Classrooms were filled with a lull following an evening
bombardment. Ourselves with ourselves. Told reporters that

after a lull following an evening bombardment. Rifles and rocket-

propelled grenades reduced to a line in a sonnet, if it is placed
correctly. Journalists warned of the danger that combat may lie
ahead, can injure or kill. The commander knew that journalists were

there, inside the heavily armed tank, amid hundreds of cartons

of leaflets, trying by any means to seize the offensive, win the peace.

84
Sonnet: Success

“A successful man is one who makes more

money than a wife can spend. A successful
woman is one who can find such a man.”
—Lana Turner

A successful man is one who finds a wife who can live

on less money than he makes. A successful woman is one
who can avoid being ensnared by such a man. A man
who successfully weds such a woman is one who

most successful women go out of their way not to meet

or to date or to even hang out with. A woman who spends
more than her husband can make is one whom I’d love to meet
as long she spends much of it on me and that husband is not I.

A man who succeeds in wedding such a woman is a man

who weds pleasure and torment at the very same moment.
A woman whose husband cannot support her is one whom we
nowadays call an average woman. A man whose wife cannot

support him is truly in deep kimchi when he cannot support even

himself, not to mention those kids they both forgot to have.

85
Sonnet: A Guy Was Talking

A guy was talking to his cell phone about a girl

who once had made a call to him about a guy
who, listening to his cell phone on his way to
work, had heard a story about a girl who’d
heard that I had heard a story on the way to
work about a guy who was wishing they had
all been more forthcoming about the whole
affair, feeling that even in public there were
things that they wanted to keep private and that
had they been any less forthcoming there might
have been nothing to say after all, after all was
said and done. Hello? You’re breaking up on
me, you’re breaking . . . Hello? Can you hear me?
Can you hear me NOW? Hello? Shit! Hello?

86
Synaesthetic Sonnets

#1

grunts, groans, howls and shrieks,

frontal lobes concerned with emotion,
superficially dissimilar things, deep links,
howls of system, dusk of syntax

neurobiological basis of metaphor,

emergence of language, embedding of clauses
within larger sentences, purple like a toxic herb,
first shape the hammer’s head

guttural utterances produced by the right

hemisphere, he was green with nakedness when
she knocked, joining words into phrases
and sentences, on a seed and attach basis

87
#2

and sentences, on a seed and attach basis

she knocked, joining words into phrases
hemisphere, he was green with nakedness when
guttural utterances produced by the right

first shape the hammer’s head

within larger sentences, purple like a toxic herb,
emergence of language, embedding of clauses
neurobiological basis of metaphor

howls of system, dusk of syntax

superficially dissimilar things, deep links,
frontal lobes concerned with emotion,
grunts, groans, howls and shrieks

88
Sonnet: In an Uncertain World

On an airplane, I saw the face of imperialism reflected

in your eyes. The shrieking eagle wheels, Damascus
down below—brown on brown. I’d read your piece
in Foreign Policy, but hadn’t believed a word of it.
We’d find a way to commemorate the average man,
you said. This is unreal, I thought. Let us pray for this
man, sang the eagle, stunningly. No sentence of banish-
ment that can not be reversed upon appeal to a higher
court. The dead continue with their swimming motions,
graced with courage and long preparation. Naked as
ever, naked as air-controllers unprotected by unions.
An alternative view: exterminate them like mice, don’t
mourn them uselessly. The furniture of home—our un-
expressed fondness for it, whatever the dictators do.

89
Sonnet: The Story Thus Far

He was driving his wife’s Camaro on the water-clogged

highway, when along came a spider and sat down beside him,
instantly calling into question certain attitudes of his that she
had come to deplore, to despise, to wish she’d never had

to put up with. Meanwhile, basking in an altogether different

garden, his young friend was making choices of his own,
tunneling through mountains that hadn’t been there earlier
in the evening. Distinguishing between topsoil and other

attributes of the garden’s topography seemed completely

beyond him. A suspect finds the victim’s involvement
to be entirely a matter of his own choosing, assigned
as a visitor to a small room high in the tower, unreachable

by staircase or ladder—the impossibility of it all seeming

to be a challenge, more so at least than another night of TV.

90
Mad Cow Sonnets

#1

The general onslaught, long-expected, is now at hand, so

nowadays it is wise to carry your paper money in hidden
pockets, at least until you reach Baghdad, serenely green
amid all those miles of burning sand. Cultural consequences

of lapsed faith—America reawakened to the winds of change,

three runs behind in the bottom of the ninth. The skin of
unbelief stretched out upon the infield grass, the rebuilt ball-
park—a refuge in an uncertain, violent world. Today’s

special, some imitation of light. Organic pizza and sand-

wiches on the deck by the harbor. Fishermen still emptying
their bilges just off-shore. Environmental issues remain
unaddressed, though disgruntled fans find injury-plagued

teams no longer give them what they had long taken for
granted, take potshots at them from the sun-baked stands.

91
#2

Gwethalyn felt like staying in bed for the day, but something
we have no word for aroused her suspicions. “We have nothing
on for Friday night,” Lou said, frequently. Odious comparisons
normally dispensed with, the privy’s details did not bear

looking into. Relinquishing, forgoing, forswearing—any one

of those terms would suffice. Even with her jewels locked away
in a safe, Gwethalyn could speak nary a word of Hakka,
though she often writes small books for nestlings, hers and others’.

We are waiving the waiting period for you while we seek

more definitions for “weakness” your penchant for chocolate,
for example. “I feel like a cold beer now,” Lou often said.
“Strange, you don’t look like one,” her usual retort.

Gwethalyn’s friend Brittany, once a province in northwestern

France, now ensconced in a former lighthouse on the Maine coast.

92
#3

Major-General Onslaught felt like staying in bed for the day,

but something we have no word for aroused her suspicions.
We have nothing on for Friday, at least until you reach
Baghdad. Long-expected expectations, now at hand,

amid all those sandy, burning miles. Cultural consequences

did not bear close scrutiny, so nowadays it is wise to carry
your odious comparisons only in hidden pockets, at least
until you reach the bottom of the ninth, possibly your last chance,

as Gwethalyn often reminded you. America’s reawakening,

put off till the very last minute. Planes full of twenty-dollar bills,
flown to Iraq, our “refuge” from a turbulent, violent world,
our penchant for chocolate and cold beer. Relinquishing,

forswearing. Taking potshots from the dugout at our new

teammates, bobbling grounders, losing pop-ups in the sun.

93
#4

The long-expected onslaught, as generally understood,

began at the bottom of the ninth—lapsed faith stirred up
by winds of doctrine. Imitation light, burnt sand into
glass, hardening and darkening the skins of the players.

Politicians still empty their bilges just off-shore, wrapping

Ace bandages around tired knees, hiding jewels
and paper money in secret pockets in their gabardines.
Lou’s comparisons (made in the privacy of his privy)

seemed frequently odious. Forswearing, forgoing. Serenely

green, the infield turf was watered by the tears of sailors
doubling as baseball players, awaiting orders to put out
to sea, their local teammates tripping over bases, losing pop-

ups in the sun. From sun-baked bleachers, disgruntled environment-

alists take potshots at them. “What’s on Friday?” one of them asks.

94
#5

“Teach the world to love baseball, pizza, and cold beer,”

Gwethalyn says, still not out of bed, “and all will be swell.”
Her old friend Brittany forks a pickle from a jar and grins
her toothy grin in spite of everything. Something she had no

word for hardened, her smile—relinquishing, forswearing.

Around them, the general devastation, a scent of rat the pols
hadn’t warned them of. Bobbled grounders in the bottom
of the ninth, ace pitchers’ arms all wrapped in bandages.

Gwethalyn and Brittany hid their jewelry in secret pockets

even Lou didn’t know about. Lapsed faith in paper money,
still serenely green, while the infield grass burned for lack
of water. Brittany’s lighthouse, long decommissioned, stood

on its rock nonetheless, awaiting the long-expected bottom

of the ninth, the fluke broken-bat single up the middle.

95
#6

Not privy to the details of the conspiracy, Gwethalyn

spends Fridays in her bed—forgoing, forswearing.
The general devastation stinks, as she says, to high heaven.
Lou didn’t know her faith in paper money had lapsed.

Two men out in the bottom of the ninth, and the batter’s
got no eye. “Nothing on for Friday night,” Lou says. “We’ve
still no name for the Baghdad team, that slipshod bunch
of bobblers,” but the waiting period had been waived.

Amid the general devastation, decommissioned lights

stood at the rocky points of land. “No one at State speaks
Hakka,” it’s been said. Disgruntled eco-mentalists petitioned
government for strict enforcement of established rules.

Groundskeepers tended the infield turf. Type in any word as

you think it sounds, and we’ll take a shot at locating it for you.

96
Sonnet: Old MacDonald Had a Farm

E
I
E
I

E
I
E
I

E
I
E
I

O
O

97
California Sonnet

Here there were rumors of Lakers, their names inscribed

on the insides of eyelids, backs of t-shirts and jerseys.
Palm trees branchless nearly to the very top, and then ex-
ploding against night sky high above the LA River, rushing

seaward through the dense undergrowth of our imaginations.

At the intersection of Pickford and Hayworth, we stood stock
still, expecting . . . well, what? Do you remember? Some
tour bus, I guess, touring the streets named after stars. Two

days before, we’d been slipping the ashes of your husband

into the calm waters of El Pacifico, just off the jetty down
at Marina del Rey on the Sunday morning of Fathers’ Day,
scull crews and yachtlings gliding by—and there! That dark

shadowy thing in the water! Was it a skate? And then there was
that new boy, the boy of your boy, patting the plastic of the bag
with the ashes of your husband inside, saying goodbye to Grandpa,
as urged to by his mom, your boy’s girl, her Aussie parents down

from Cupertino, five and a half hours by road. And after all that,
brunches for all at Bamboozle, just out of the sun for a change.

98
Chimayo

The glass woman played by different rules

inspired by great works of literature. Sophist-
icated tales of Bodhisattva, their hands-on
approach to voyeurism, to expressivity
in their near-sighted devotion to calligraphy.

Radically shifting cultural values, painted-over

scenes of New Mexico’s hill towns—Chimayo,
Truchas. Blood and semen oozing from walls
of the houses there. Open, stage-like plazas

utopian logos and rebus-like commentaries

evoking the conquering Spaniards, that dog that
reminded us somehow of a chair in the blues
and reds of the canyon. Colliding diagonals
with their simple geometries, wanting to laugh.

99
Sonnet: How Are Things Going?

How are things really going in Idaho? A tricky question, at first, inherently
difficult to answer in terms of counterinsurgency warfare
and nation-building efforts. Small trees (and large) blown down,
their “client areas” damaging roofs and garages, cars parked in driveways.

Highly partisan debate dominates the breakfast-table chatter, the latest

violence there, beyond the window for all to see, impossible to ignore.
More than 50 neighbors affected by this latest storm, this newest trend dom-
inating news coverage for miles around, overshadowing more in-depth

analysis based on government information. Of course, this being war,

the rivers remain largely fluid, despite our best efforts to get a fix on them.
New charts shed light on evolving situations, and that’s better than
nothing, let me tell you—better than a filtration system that no longer works.

Winning Idaho hearts and minds, and lowering crime rates in general, remain
our goals, even with water services at 80 percent of pre-war levels.

100
Sonnet: No Dice

“The government (it was leaked) will not negotiate tariffs under pressure,”
the President said, from his home in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
He jotted down names of concessionaires who will not negotiate,
assuring us that the water and light cuts of the past few days

will be thoroughly investigated. “I want them to know that they

can tighten every screw that they want to, but that I am a president who
has arranged to do what must be done,” he averred. At that very moment, three
cartographers happened by, checking their power grids. The dean

of the press corps, as usual, was silent—her secretary, less so. Possible supply
problems over the next several months went unnoticed until the very last
moment. Tariffs congealed on the windowsills. Directors of some multi-
nationals endorsed new slogans for upcoming ad campaigns, caused

at least indirectly, by inflexible and implacable news reports. “Still, as we have

predicted, we have no credible evidence that cuts were caused intentionally,”
some said. “How would it benefit us to strangle all those Argentinean towns?”
one asked, rhetorically. “In order to mine, we must cut down some trees.”

And, even as they spoke, Maine voters, who knew a lot about felling
trees, voted down the building of a million new casinos.

101
Sonnet: Drought

In this one we see the farmer you saw on TV talking

through dry, parched, cracked lips about the unfairness of
it all, of how the upstream counties and states always have
first dibs on the river’s water whenever the river has water.

Behind him and the interviewer is a plate-glass window beyond

which we see a city street corner, traffic whizzing past, pedestrians
pausing to preen and reach for their cell phones when they see their
images on the monitors above the window on national TV, and

he looks oddly out of place, sitting there in his boots and denims,
jabbing one finger at his ear whenever the earpiece feels like it’s
about to slip loose. He shares his fears that the government’s
about to reduce the price supports that keep him “afloat.”

He grins and makes little airborne quotation marks with two fingers
of each hand. Outside, on the sidewalk, pedestrians lean this way
and that, trying to let themselves be seen beyond his denim jacket’s
shoulders. When his moment is over, he thanks his interviewer

and expresses the hope that we’ll all understand his problems
and needs, and that we’ll all do our best to save the family farm.

102
Baltimore: Moon Caught in Powerlines

“always a longing for mountains in me”

—Zoltan Kodaly

From our decks and rooftops here, the only mountains we see
are the ones on the moon. Backyards and gardens, garages
and row houses, a steeple or two, and far, far off,
between the trees and a couple lower, nearer buildings,
a high-rise office tower by the harbor—these, plus the moon
and the clouds and, in the bright city night, a star or two, are our vista.
No frogs here, but crickets and birds and barking dogs. Helicopters
and planes, including those high-up glittery ones too near the moon
to be heard. Sirens and other vehicular traffic on nearby streets. Sometimes
sounds of voices coming up from the sidewalk, especially on cool spring or fall nights
when the air-conditioners are turned off and the windows stand open.
The silent moon makes its way from one side of the house to the other,
sometimes waiting till breakfast time to plunge as far down
as the powerlines, struggling to break free of their net on its way to
wherever it’s going, mountains and all.

103
Sonnet: Abandoned in Despair

First, there’s another. You watch her strap on her logic

from one day to the next, and try it out on the cat. You
figure out another way of looking at her then, without
even trying. Eyes swollen from seeing, you look once

again, shoulder straps gently draped across her arms.

That summer, fucking someone else before she came
home from work, inches away from exhaustion, despair,
you or another. It’s not that you were not hungry. It . . .

104
Psy-ops Sonnet

There is much pain there. Across the vastnesses

between us, small birds carry messages. The sky,
wanting, above all, to be blue, arches its back,
as everlasting fire pours through space.

Men dying in burning houses wait for their

women to return, to feed them, bear their children,
mend their clothes. But even on the best of days,
in relatively stable orbits, men tremble before

women only average in appearance. A little too

much beauty is so hard to bear when souls are torn
to shreds, an infinity of detergents stretching them
to some breaking point, memory prospecting and

mining, leaving deep flooded shafts among heaped

dishes, appliances, lying in ambush in kitchens.

105
Sonnet: Autonomous Retreat

That hole, that vacuum, with talk and print—all oil

mergers suspended until further notice. No use to cry
outside and scream inside. It was all a sin click
here, until the storm bursts, and house is shut and still.

We share the luxury of seeing it all, building the scrub

of future sugar. Having lost and forgotten everything,
the music must play forever—allegro, ma non troppo.
Unexplained bravura, place of safe laughter.

On the reasonable shoreline, white in the air, white

in the trees. Father of wavelets, come lift your arms
with us. Given this kind of city, sand beneath our feet
like broken glass, pieces of orphaned wreckage

tossed up by the storm. Russian oil mergers suspended

by thumbs, between wetlands and the suffocating sea.

106
Sonnet Cycle

abab cdcd efef gg

bcbc dede fgfg hh
cdcd efef ghgh ii
dede fgfg hihi jj
efef ghgh ijij kk
fgfg hihi jkjk ll
ghgh ijij klkl mm
hihi jkjk lmlm nn
ijij klkl mnmn oo
jkjk lmlm nono pp
klkl mnmn opop qq
lmlm nono pqpq rr
mnmn opop qrqr ss
nono pqpq rsrs tt
opop qrqr stst uu
pqpq rsrs tutu vv
qrqr stst uvuv ww
rsrs tutu vwvw xx
stst uvuv wxwx yy
tutu vwvw xyxy zz
uvuv wxwx yzyz aa
vwvw xyxy zaza bb
wxwx yzyz abab cc
xyxy zaza bcbc dd
yzyz abab cdcd ee
zaza bcbc dede ff
abab cdcd efef gg

107
Pastorale

I see your body gutted and burned

like an old church fallen
upon evil days. The road passes by
your head on its way to the forest.
And among the trees I see mother
washing her hair in the water springing
up between the rocks. She turns
to say nothing to me. She is silent.
I take her at her word. Running now,
I feel the light branches lashing
at my face and arms. I see the sun-
light falling through the leaves
and landing on its feet. No angels
sing more sweetly or less loud.

108
Sonnet: Surprisingly, Vertical Industry

Beautiful of fronts, perfectly accumulated along impossible

obliques, staring at a woman’s chest. Genderless stillness
floating among them, upward from their mouths until both set
and subject, dozens of shops, an elementary school, a two-
tiered mall, with more media savvy than our father ever had.

Hard to imagine its baggage, its pleated and folded pages,

those that had first made his reputation. The promise of inter-
national attention subtly alters those of us mounted on posts,
on concrete or stucco, so long identified with urban blight.

Blurry pink child’s play, their massive renditions exemplified by

snowy forests, the man’s spectacles carelessly discarded
near a woman’s groin. That series of suspended lines, pulled
vertical by shafts of light, already on view in an adjacent room.
The words we learned: “demure,” “contemptuous,” “empathetic.”

109
Sonnet: I Think Continually

I think continually of those who are truly great

Chinese poets, or might have been had they not been
born somewhere else, in some other time, wanting
but not wanting to be Chinese, to float tiny little
poems out onto tiny little streams and then get drunk

as a skunk, hours into the newest of new millenniums.

I think sometimes of those who are always left out
of my thoughts, the ones I find it hard to imagine—
their pleasures and miseries, their songs and their sufferings.
I sometimes think it’s almost enough to have thought
of them, but then that peasant behind the door,

the one with the sledgehammer, raps me on the ankle

with it just hard enough to say, “Hey, I’m still here, you
bastard. Just because you read Chekhov doesn’t mean
you’re better than I am. You don’t even read Russian.”

110
Sonetto: Buona Fortuna

Let me not stay you from making your self-

Appointed rounds, O epistle-carriers.
Do not go postal into that good night,
Tho old age ain’tcher av’rage purdy pitchur.
Stunned apparatchiks wander lonely in
Our lonely crowds until the cows come home
And all our pleasures prove intractable
As bankers’ hours in that fragile light
Wherein all musics flow together into
One, two —no—three grand allegations of mal-
Feasance by those CEOs we’ve come to love
And trust with sacred fortunes and men’s eyes.
O, Fortuna! What luck that we have found
Ourselves too pleased for words to stop us now!

111
Sonnet: The Light Within

In the beginning were the logos, flags as transitional objects.

Our deaths went on and on, infinitely varied, all rights reserved.
The book launch was cancelled, not postponed, as once we thought.
Thanks but no thanks, no infringement of copyright intended.

Strawberries, drops of wine, the dew—all slated for demolition.

Somehow his thoughts made sense in Japanese language only.
The nettles, until today, belonged to their copyright owners solely.
I collapsed to the floor as Europe and its cities were leveled.

Alone, you let the terrible stranger in, one of infinite grace and power.
No hospital beds. Beds. No hospital beds, no hospital beds.
Left to his own devices, he knew not to waken.
It’s not difficult to take a snooze in poems, the good doctor said.

The lamps go out singly, syllable by syllable, in autumn rain.

My newspapers crave what they cannot have.

112
Sonnet: Democracy in the News

“Washington is a brothel where the privileged princes

of perk and pork enjoy themselves while ordinary folks
elect a new piano player every four years.”
—John Quirt

The central purpose of journalism, it’s been said, is to confuse

and divide the citizenry, to speed them in and out of stores.

Ultimate decisions are made by the market, or by its elected

CEOs, making their way among the tables of books on display,
their eyes glazed over. The country is formally rural, with clump-

ed-up cities along its riverbanks and coastlines. Conrad’s “At sea
we are all equal” morphs into “We are all equally at sea.” Crates
of chickens and live pigs are delivered unto our legislators each and
every day. The notion that the citizen is the ultimate sovereign brings

tears to our eyes. Where is calm Boccherini now that we need him?
Unorganized citizens without dishwashers live below the radar-
screen of corporate enterprise—unserved, unused—mowing their

lawns, living their lives. Autoworkers morph into waitresses, and

walk their dogs toward evening, plastic bags in their pockets.

113
Sonnet: It’s Better to Turn on the TV

It’s better to turn on the TV than to curse the darkness.

Beware of swarthy men (or women) carrying almanacs.
Report any suspicious activity to 1-800-ACT-FAST.
Resistance and refusal mean advice and consent.

When you meet the Buddha on the road, arrest him.

If we don’t reelect Bush, the terrorists have won.
All roads lead to Guantánamo, aka Gitmo.
The only thing we have to terrorize is terror itself.

If we reelect Bush, the winners will be the terrorists.

Business art (Andy said) is the step that comes after Art.
Snipers up upon the roof, corn be heavy pretty damn soon.
The devil finds work for idling hands up on the deck.

If one spreads butter on both sides of one’s bread, one

need not worry which side’s better cuz there’s butter on’t.

114
Double-sonnet: Methane

I.

It’s hard to know where to begin. Kenny started growing his own
methane out behind the house when he was in his early forties and has
continued to this very day. The little methane bushes he ultimately moves
to rows in the garden, but in this climate they need to be started off

in a greenhouse or at least a solarium. During the winter these would

need to have some form of heat, no? So, my job is to tear down the knotty
pine siding and burn enough of it every day to keep the solarium warm on
those frequent days at these latitudes that we don’t get any sun. He plants

his little methane bushes in between the rows of lemon trees out back, the ones
we keep alive over the long winters here by firing up the smudge pots. Once
Kenny’s recovered from the animals and the pool and the narcotic analgesics
he’s had to take every four hours, he’ll be on his feet again, out in back, tending

his little bushes. Much of what Kenny says is complex and interesting, but around
here we have lots of those little old half wine barrels you find sometimes at home

115
II.

and garden stores, so knowing where to plant him when he’s not up to snuff
is never a problem. I wish I could see your house. It probably has some of those
pipes and ducts and things running all around from the water-heater to keep things
warm, and one of those slatty wooden things in the corner of the kitchen that make

the room so cozy. Now, it’s come to my attention that a rumor (sort of) has been
associated with my name and the end of my fifty-year marriage to Kenny. It seems
that some of you are under the impression that I had affairs behind Kenny’s back,
not once, not twice, but many, many times over the years. Even that I cheated with

Betty. But I want you to know that Kenny and I never had affairs without the other’s
knowing and approving and sometimes even participating. So, there it is—the idea that
I went behind Kenny’s back is absolute fucking false. I hope this clears up the confusion
in anyone’s mind. I did not cheat . . . not ever, not even after Kenny died and all his little

methane bushes had long since been plowed under. Not even after Kenny died and all
his little methane trees had long since been plowed under. End of story. Really.

116
Sonnet: Democracy Red in Tooth and Claw

When my mother asked me to go with her to sell the house,

I thought at first she was just a tad loopy, considering that our representatives
are supposedly guided by the citizenry, that gardening isn’t quite as good
as it used to be at relieving our stress and anxiety, that there are still

folks who smoke by lighting one cigarette from the butt of another, who
personally observe events, and then make up their minds. She’d spent a lot
of time watching large birds swoop to pick off smaller ones at the feeder
one by one, and thought that public life, either in business or government, must

be pretty much the same as that. At least, I thought, she didn’t rely upon
the press to be informed. In fact, whenever she’d see TV images
of bombs bursting in the air of Iraq, she’d said, “See? Those are the seeds
of democracy being planted.” She’d call the green of night-vision lenses

the green thumb of liberty. And I never knew exactly how much irony to give
her credit for. “Extremity at the edge of terror”—her last words on the subject.

117
Sonnet: Benign Virus Appears to Block Bush Strategy

Few White House interns or trainees seemed to have any interest

in editing out clichés or overused visual effects. In fact, very few of them
even came to work wearing a decent suit, or seeming to care
about what happened next. In the screening room, right-wing oil barons

awaited test cores shipped down from Mars and the start of yet another movie
based on superhero comics. “These bad guys are bad,” mused one, as the action
got under way. A news team with meat on its bones waited in the corridor,
yes, one of those corridors of power we’ve heard so much about

for them to emerge. “What did you think?” asked one, thrusting a mike
toward one of the suits stepping out. “Did it make you feel deeply about
anything at all? Did it make you think?” One said, “That sadist
in the mask he was really cool.” “Evil,” said another, “went down

to its traditional defeat.” In a conference room down the hall,

the trainees twirled their mustachios as they sought new ways to break
up the logjam of judicial appointments that caused their president
so much grief. “Ben Affleck,” one sniffled, “would know what to do.”

118
On the Hustings with George: Two Sonnets and Part of Another

1.

George’s thoughts in ’04 include the deployment of a missile defense

system that will protect us all from researchers using stem cells
derived from frozen embryos. Democrats, of course, see this as a transparent
attempt to capitalize on Al Queda’s attack on the World Trade Center.

Slowing down medical advances, along with setting back patient care, is high
on his list of achievable goals, even in an election year. And banning federal
funds for such purposes would be only the first step in leaving his mark on
the country and turning the dark historic page begun with FDR’s rise to power.

Whether George can guarantee for himself a second, and perhaps even third, term
has become a matter of intense international debate, and yet doing so is an essential
step toward providing defenses against 21st century threats. George thinks his offer
to go one-on-one in a series of televised debates with Ralph Nader demonstrates

that he has nothing to hide, that his response to the 9/11 attacks earned him a statue
at Ground Zero, wearing a hard hat, hand on the shoulder of a fire-fighting fellow hero.

119
2.

Despite variations in interlanguage morphology, George speaks well of his opponents,

declaring that the right to speak freely, if feebly, is what America is all about. His left-
handed reading of Scripture in a voluminous burial mound of rubble stands high among
the icons of American oratory. For many here (is this computer broken or what?)

George sees nothing unusual or reprehensible about inviting Tang Yao-ming, Taiwan’s
defense minister, to be his running mate, especially since his current vice president,
Dick Cheney, is nowhere to be found. “We’ve got to expand our thinking,” George says,
when challenged, “and if the Constitution contains some impediment to doing so . . .

well, then, we’ve got to change the Constitution.” In a number of regional and national
publications, George has expressed his belief that the phonetic and phonological bases
of reading and writing should no longer be beyond the grasp of third-graders anywhere.
Nor should the colonizing of outer space be postponed any longer. In his new book,

The Autobiography of My Mother Barbara, George once again decries the use of stem cells
from the excess embryos at fertility clinics. “What if I . . .”

120
3.

“had never been born? What then? What if the hunters hadn’t come out of the forest?
What would have happened then?” Industry needs our help in a lot of ways. There’s no doubt
about that, and George is aware of the need. He’s also aware that God intended marriage
to be a man-and-woman sort of thing, and that if He hadn’t He wouldn’t have made sex-change

operations available to all of them. “I like to test all truths against the principles of revisionary
aesthetics,” George often opines, when asked his views on Spenser’s Faerie Queene, “but
I’m always too busy leading and being president to read that sort of filth.”

121
Sonnet Written in the Light of Fiscal Realities

Last week Gypsy played to 84.5 percent of its capacity

at the 1,447-seat Schubert, with a gross of $574,301, its best
in a month and one that put the show healthily in the black
for a week. The renovation of Lincoln Center was first

announced as a $1.5 billion, 10-year upgrade of the entire

campus, but the plan has since been reconceived in the light
of fiscal realities. Lenny’s plan to cut costs by depositing
his household trash in the dumpster behind Sweet Sue’s

was thwarted when the Shandaken police car pulled into

the alley beside the restaurant just as he was about to make his
generous contribution. Considering that his cousin, once a visiting nurse
in the mountains of West Virginia, told him of old women keeping

warm by lying on beds of rotting potatoes, he decided that the cost

of heating his woodsy little cabin by kerosene wasn’t very high at all.

122
Slow Curve

One person’s prayer, another person’s blasphemy. Together with

his snoring and his association with the Japanese Lunchbox Hoax,
this was almost enough to put her over the edge. “I know that neither
trees nor elephants are black holes,” she would have said had she

had the words to say it. She was up to write her letters at four, when
the clouds had not yet lifted from the treetops, and then she’d spend
most of the rest of the morning with her collection of Gerard Depardieu
autographs, the ones she’d purchased on eBay, the house around her,

shuttered and still. Outside the house, the streets were cordoned off
with ropes, as though that would protect anyone against anything nowadays.
Around lunchtime she turns on the news. The camera catches a newscaster
who doesn’t realize he’s on the air snarling, “This computer broken or what?”

before grinning sheepishly into the lens and launching into his recital of yet
another morning’s disasters. And, from there on, it’s all downhill.

123
In the East Room

Look, I know that this has been tough weeks in that country,
but the road is still straight and we will not waver. Our commitment
to freedom is as committed as ever and we will not waver. We
will stay the course over the course of the future, whatever it brings.

That country will be a peaceful democratic country or I’ll know

the reason why. We will defeat violence and terror wherever it raises
its ugly heads. We will show our resolve by staying the course and
not wavering in the face of terror and violence, and our country will be

safer than ever because they can live in as much peace and freedom as we
ever have, serving the cause of liberty, and freedom, and democracy, and so on.
We will take resolute action wherever feasible and prudent, and in the interests
of the safety of our people and those around the world, in Asia and in Europe,

who have come to know that we are as good as our words when it comes to
staying God’s course, and not wavering, as we determine our unwavering resolve.

124
Sonnet: Getting on with Our Lives

(though more vigilant than before) we watch for rough patches in the road
while taking care not to impede the progress of emergency vehicles
or unduly stress the negative in such a way as to upset the wife and kids

why just the other day the wife was sitting outside on the porch-swing taking
note of the activities of the latest insurgency to spring up in our neck
of the woods but did she get upset and raise a ruckus about it no no not her

the kids went on playing in the yard in their own sweet innocent ways not
yelling or screaming or crying even when mortar shells landed next door
doing I might add some slight damage to the greenhouse windows out back

though I must say the wife got a bit irate when those marines drove their humvees
into and out of the front yard leaving a couple deep ruts with their wheelspins
that ran right through her bed of verbenas and nasturtiums nicely edged by hostas

within a week however there was a nice little note from the regional commander saying
how sorry he was about any collateral damage that may or may not have occurred

125
Double-sonnet: A Test of Wills

1.

“Okay,” said the President, “we’re going to have a Test of Wills here,”
so we went out and rounded up all the Wills we could find, and herded
them into the Press Room, where we sat them down in long rows
at desks with paper and writing implements for them to write with.

“Okay now, listen up,” said the Prez, once they’d all taken their seats.
“We’re having a little contest of Wills here, but, even though there’ll be
winners and losers, not one of you Wills will be left behind. I guarantee that.
Okay now, pay attention, and put on your thinking caps. The first thing

that I want you to do is write down your full name on that piece of paper
in front of you. Last one done is the loser.” “Not fair,” said Will Shakespeare,
who was sitting with Will Durant just to his left. “That’s right, that’s not fair,”
said Will Durant, who was nobody’s fool, and who’d seen Charlton Heston

disguised as Will Penny on the other side of the room a couple rows back
right next to Will Smith. “And that Gary Wills over there, he’s not even a Will.

126
2.

He’s a Gary. Doesn’t even belong here.” “Awright, awright. Just take it easy,”
said the Prez, relieved that he hadn’t been called on his ringer. “Just write your
names, and we won’t time you on it. Now, do it, and lie your pens down when
you’re finished.” [scribbling sounds all around] “Okay, now, raise your hands

if you’re willing to die for this country,” said the Prez. Most of the hands shot
up, but Shakespeare said, “I’m not even American.” “That’s okay, bubba,
you’re part of the Coalition of the Willing.” “Right, OK, forsooth,” said the Bard.
Then he stuck up his hand, thought for a moment and pulled it down again.

“But Your Highness, I’m already dead.” “Oh, horsefeathers,” said the Prez.
“Let me rephrase the question. Put your hand up if you’re willing to die or die again
and again for this country, American or not.” All the hands shot up—except for one.
“Okay, what’s your name, fella? You ain’t bein’ helpful,” said the Prez, all red-faced

and flustered like. “My name’s Will Geer, Mr. Prez, and I just ain’t on a war footing,”
said the [your choice] cowardly/curmudgeonly/heroic/foolish/patriotic old man.

127
Mini-sonnet: For the Families

“Dear Mrs, Mr, Miss

or Mr and Mrs----:
Words cannot express
the deep personal
grief I experienced
when your husband,
son, father or brother
was killed, wounded,
or reported missing
in action.”

—after a found text (by Joseph Heller)

128
III

129
My Strange Amoeba

Notwithstanding its ability to reproduce by simply

separating part of itself from itself and sending it off
to pre-school, it wasn’t all that different from other
simple life forms, say clarinetists or performers on

the oud. It’s not a question of bricolage or muscle

thumb, but rather watching where one falls. Nervous
improvisations in adjacent precincts. The constant
lap of water on the shore. Aromatherapy, one

option we’d given no thought to . . . until yesterday,

that is. Playing near the edges of one’s world, one
finds, even there, mandatory vaccinations. Relatively
fixed, in this most neurotic of worlds, despite our

most fraudulent endeavors, we await our ends with

just precisely the right amount of equanimity.

130
Sonnet: The Week That Was

China and India were preparing to rush to the moon

a Polish man who had been comatose since the beginning
of Communist rule. Paris Hilton, unable to deal with reality,
breaks down in tears. Miss America booed in Mexico City.

Hundreds of lifers in Italian prisons demand to be put

to death. Macaques attack homes of Indian robots. Retired
orthodontists to face firing squads for unlicensed practice
of calligraphy. Damien Hirst sells own skull for $1 million.

Elephants attack and rob motorists on New Jersey Turnpike.

Vladimir Putin orders Aeroflot flight attendants to lose weight.
Cindy Sheehan abandons anti-war movement for a life of
Turkish baths. Yemen more peaceful than USA, study finds.

USA military commanders tired of dying a little bit every day.

Jack Kevorkian threatens to aim missiles at Washington, D.C.

131
Contiguous Humiliations

The daily restrictions and humiliations of the occupation,

the relentless bombardments. He said that this area
would be territorially contiguous and edged with verbena,
allowing Israel to annex yet more of the West Bank.

Hopes for peace don’t have to be lost under the baggage

of both nuclear and conventional weaponry, the relentlessly
perceived injustices and territorial disputes of the post-
Taliban phase of Middle Eastern history. An evaluation

of strategic training camps—the shames, the rancor, the

resentments—of human rights abuses that did not stop
at that point. The counties of Kent and Sussex, having
been found closest to Europe’s mainland, were subject to

constant surveillance, despite the defeatist mentality of

mosque trustee boards in that chain of little towns on the coast
of Northern Jutland between Hanstholm and Hirtshals,
connecting by-pass roads in Afghan areas near the seashore.

132
Sonnet: Spontaneous Separations

Mixed together and held in abeyance, jostling emotions

mind their tilt and twist boundaries until, going their own
ways, moving across irreversibility lines, they acquire new
properties, losing more and more electrons as they travel on.

Green-blooded and blue-tailed skinks now restricted to

xeric uplands, barring major accidents or electrical inter-
actions. Milk droplets pouring from a cystral chalice,
acquiring different charges, abandoning all hope to enter.

Shaken out into a taxi or limo, sand artists carry with them
their mandalas and mudras. Static prevents our reception
of previous messages, whether blue or red. If public opin-
ion mattered, if it influenced policy, then stealth aircraft

would be much less important, with scattered and temporary

exceptions, now that our tribal balloon has descended.

133
Arbitration Sonnet

This Sonnet is arranged, sponsored, and managed by Amazing Sonnets

in the state of New York, USA. The laws of the state of New York
govern this Agreement and all of its terms and conditions, without giving
effect to any principles of conflicts of laws. You agree that any action

at law or in equity arising out of or relating to these terms and conditions

shall be submitted to confidential arbitration in New York, New York, except
that, to the extent you have in any manner violated or threatened to violate
Amazing Sonnets’ intellectual property rights, Amazing Sonnets may seek

injunctive or other appropriate relief in any state or federal court in the state
of New York, and you consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in such
courts. Arbitration under this agreement shall be conducted under the rules
then prevailing of the American Arbitration Association. The arbitrator’s award

shall be binding and may be entered as a judgment in any court of competent

jurisdiction. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, no arbitration
under this Agreement shall be joined to an arbitration involving any other party
subject to this Agreement, whether through class arbitration proceedings or otherwise.

134
Sonnet Industry Shorts

I have a feeling I’m not the only one, but my headshots

have never been up to industry standards. Using those

of others, however, raises ethical questions I’m not yet

prepared to answer. My crown of sonnets entitled

“How I Learned to Salivate” garnered prizes galore

but failed to find quick publication. And my Harvard

degree didn’t help, though I was slathered with advice

by seasoned adults, well-meaning though they were.

I know, let me tell you, the dangers of getting stuck on

selling an image both youthful and exotic. The work,

after all, is the thing (as I’m incessantly told). Yet, if

a sonnet tree falls in an empty forest, does it even

make so much as a ripple on the cowpond of my asp-

irations? Whatcha think? I really wanna know. (:D)

135
Sonnet: Bridge Over Troubled Markets

Specialized endeavors: threading the cat, pummeling

pomelos. Dollar mixed in quiet trading. Ethicists
fault both parties in ongoing scandals. Retreating and
yet treating them as well as can be expected in wartime.

Roiled water beneath the bridge of dreams. In such weather

one should be careful to wear a cap. Journeymen in trucks
devise new routes, detours around flooded roadways or
downed bridges. We’d thought the king was dead, but now?

Shaping themselves to new tides and winds, the rocks sit

solid at the shore. Futurists graze out in the north pasture,
not far from here. No sense of urgency there. Everything
in its own time. No thing lasts forever. Even comets come

and go. Small disturbances rattle markets without leaving

a trace. Epitomes of brevity, we each await our turn.

136
Sonnet Incorporating a Poem by James Tate

They didn’t have much trouble teaching the ape

to write poems: first they strapped him into the chair,
then tied the pencil around his hand (the paper had already
been nailed down). Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over
his shoulder and whispered into his ear: “You look like
a god sitting there. Why don’t you try writing something?”

The ape, deep in thought, swatted idly at his ear, thinking

Bluespire’s buzzing to be that of a mosquito. The pencil
he held seemed archaic, too crude an instrument for his
thoughts. Bluespire had always been a pest, wanting the ape
to do this and do that. Always jotting down notes, as though
anything he learned from his observations might somehow
advance his race, his species. As though humanity might
somehow be saved from its fate by just any old ape.

137
Sonnet

I just received word Thursday, when I got back from feeding

a bird on the head of the daughter of a local Ph.D. candidate
bound and determined to marry a poet named Jerry, whose
microtonal little road movies never got much beyond their
opening credits, but which, even so, were very much liked by
the board of the Paris Review, an august body with a pedigree
that goes farther back into the catalogues of bogus small-press
publications than any other, of your planned demise. I’m hoping

this reaches you before you take the actual step, the actual leap
off into the darkness of wherever you’re going, the girl at her
curtains, hanging on to her double secret, her index of forbidden
literature, one possible if erroneous interpretation being that
projects like carnivals never go exactly as planned, unless
of course you take those “fortunate accidents” into account.

138
Stipulations

Ghostly instead, they chronicle their most

horrid neighbors. Standard ground-based
tools put an end to night skies everywhere.

Newspapers promise more accurate obits

whether their subjects are living or dead.
My mother was thirty times more sensitive

than my father on all but the most august

occasions. Mac Low said, “Every text
worth reading is a manifesto.” I say,

whoop-dee-doo! Fat lazy dogs forever!

139
Found Sonnet: On Red

Many think of red as a cheerful color, one good to use

in a dark room. But the average red, used in large quantities,
absorbs the light in a most disheartening manner, making
a room seem smaller than it really is. It makes ugly, gloomy

shadows in the corners, for at night it seems to turn to a dingy

black, and increases the electric light bill. Red also severely
strains the eyes, and many a red living-room causes seemingly
unaccountable headaches. Not that red should never be used,

for it is often a necessary color, but one must remember that

a little of it goes a long way. A room, for instance, paneled
with oak, with an oriental rug with soft red in it, red hangings,
and a touch of red in an old stained glass panel in the window,

and red velvet cushions on the window seat, would have much
more warmth and charm than if the walls were entirely red.

Source: Lucy Abbot Throop, Furnishing the Home of Good Taste

A Brief Sketch of the Period Styles in Interior Decoration with
Suggestions as to Their Employment in the Homes of Today.
[New York: Robert M. McBride & Co., 1920]

140
Tango Bouquet

Hes and shes, God thought, what can I do for them

that I haven’t already done? Once we boarded their
veins up, they had nothing good to say anymore.

Tawdry mimosas sprang up on cafe tables everywhere,

and no one seems to have noticed. If brains were
muscles, then all minds could be lifted up.

Something with something always gets along for two

or three days, circling the plaza, first one way and
then the other. Eyes plucking the birds from the sky.

Someone’s corsage hung from a flagpole, dipping

and waving in the biscuity breeze. Stores open
till ten, now that darkness upon us has fallen.

The disjuncture of what men seek, someone said.

Or maybe the word was departure, someone thought.

141
Bachiana

Europe within, a have-based father, though more from

local to treasury once. At visual three, who knows?
Punctuated quite, that reading. Critical as any which.

Whose forebears spoke of “hearing some Book,” and yet

resisted its subjectivity. Sociolinguistics, sculpted alive.
Scores and manuscripts with some poetry in them, lying

about everywhere, everything. Harmonious inventions

springing from grandmother’s tonguebook. Conference
calls of the imagination. Catch-can phrases breed feudal

elaborations and exonerations, images on and off now.

Overarching themes putting rather some good in. Previous
expressions fund holiness. Articulate relationships trump

first-person narratives, not the first to spurn Hovercraft

values. On his nexus night, proud values seek absolution.

142
How Pink Was My Monkey?

The backdoor to rumors stood open.

Out, out, brief aquifer! Explosions
of visible wealth raised our expectations,
the sanctions industry notwithstanding.

In the wake of a new rash (mixed metaphor

noted) of school shootings, new attempts
to deprive us of our God-given right to bear
arms were beaten down. The Queen’s arrival

at Churchill Downs timed to coincide with

the touchdown of super tornadoes in Kansas,
no end to the parade of hatboxes. Baghdad
hopes to use oil revenues to bring Saddam

back from the dead. Bush/Cheney responds

with threats to clone Reagan and Nixon.

143
Sonnet: Climate Control

Sunlight abounds through multiple windows,

a factoid that allows many a lesser writer to acquire
a far wider reputation than he otherwise might.
Climate control is state of the art, but when you

think you’re dead, please don’t call an ambulance

because the paperwork involved is overwhelming.
Modern writers with automated feeding still need
an airflow system that will essentially expel air

containing no odor. Writers making good use

of the warm air from veal barn exhaust fans enjoy
happier results (and longer careers) all around.
Strong editorial shoulders put to Samsara’s wheel

yield Kudzu Award winners by the score. No odd-

ball positions, please. Silent Zen singing only.

144
Sonnet: Sometimes a penis . . .

Penises have numerous identities. For example, a corona

is a straight penis measuring some 5 1/2” with a rounded end
that goes in the mouth. Coronas then descend in order of size
as follows: petit corona, tres petit corona and half a corona,

coming in at about 3 1/2” in length. Similar in shape to the corona

but slightly longer is the Lonsdale. The Ideales is a thin, torpedo
penis measuring some 6 1/2”. Bouquet and Londres penises are
similarly thin but shorter. One of the most popular and accessible

of the penis family is the panatela, which is slim, about 5” long

and is sometimes distinguished by being pinched at the mouth
end. Once it had a finished top that had to be severed before
pissing or fucking but this is not the case nowadays. A cheroot

is usually beefier than a panatela, and shorter. In Britain

a small penis open at both ends is called a whiff.

145
Landscape Near a Landfill

Addicted to fog and roiling seas, to dark Moroccan streets

and scorching deserts, we wondered what she saw in him.

Obligate anaerobes mingle with pearly everlastings, and yet,

theory weary true believers produce more words every day

than wannabe muses dared to hope, black jobless figures

at historical lows. How many words must a man put down

before you can call him a man? Mom and pop therapists
convene in Decatur, Illinois—deep clashes of intuition,

bad news for novelists. Our steam engine, the microchip.

We hitched our star to a falling wagon, depending on

your point of view. Generous Americans dropping peanut

butter and jelly sandwiches on Afghan wastelands, miles off-

target. Dangerously prolific, modernism’s project comes to rest

at last in a field of biblical prophecy, finally open to question.

146
Autumnal Sonnet

An undesecrated flag flew over the ballpark, where outfielders

napped and baserunners took desperate chances. Such talent
as that had not been seen since the beginning of the eclipse.

Opportunity stood on our doorstep, hand raised to knock. Embryo-

genesis, our middle name. No-fly zones at the ready in the backyard.
All sorts of guys came by for drinks, or looking for free hand-outs.

Among the missing, we were always at a loss for something to say,

something at least sympathetic, if not moreso. A designer
of aloha shirts camped on the median strip across from the end

of our driveway. “Will work for food,” said his sign. Some said his
parents had married for love, but none could have known for sure.
Youngsters congregated in the front yard, choosing up sides.

We older folk kicked back in the bleachers, basking in the early

October sun, taking our game to higher levels than ever before.

147
Death Panel Sonnet

Obama killed my baby. Obama killed me, baby.

Obama killed my gramma, my grampa, my mama.
Obama killed my papa, my sista, my brudda.

Obama killed my tax cut. Obama killed my bonus.

Obama killed my tax haven. Obama killed my medicare.
Obama killed my pay raise. Obama killed my clunker.

Obama killed the GOP. Obama killed democracy.

Obama killed the USA. Obama killed me, baby.

148
Sonnet: This Music Does Not Mean

To be running may also be more important to you

than those usual villages ten versts from the capital.
What is it like to be clean? We feel okay, but fickle.
Art is such effort, we often used to say, playfully.

Monitor flickers over air vents. Malformed addresses!

The server grows impatient, trusting another to follow
her directions without being so negative. Korzinkina,
his new-found wife does not mean to be remembered.

She flings words at the Presidium, and her spanks

are not gentle. When she takes her shirt off, rigorous
development ensues. Complete cosmic snapshots
at our disposal—black holes colliding, during a crisis.

Noting the coils, thinking I’ll never be good enough,

the march on Red Square begins to enter the abyss.

[partially from a text written (maybe) by Lewis LaCook]

149
Superbot Sonnet

This is the sonnet that will worm

its way into the dark interior of your
body, your soul. It will check out

your psyche for both strengths and

flaws. Its pale artificial flesh will
slither a zigzag line into recesses of

heart and mind that never see the light

of day. Essence of silicone looking
around, not taking no for an answer.

Upon emerging, the superbot sonnet files

its report: “Eerily lifelike” it finds you.

150
Sonnet: Nothing As Yet To Report

Rows of chairs spread out in front of an American

flag. All things ordained to one end. His way
of saying he’s glad to be back. He’s done nothing
improper, is what he wants to say.

Worn-out arguments about what “American” means

(as though words should have one meaning only).
Something’s happened, but I’m not sure what.
Blinking TV lights—on, off—just like that.

Dance mixes. The reinvention of state government.

Was that a risus sardonicus he wore on his face?
Whatever science has to say about your troubled and
exalted life sounds good, until we consider uncertainty

and all its ramifications. Anything vaguely sensitive,

sure to raise even further questions, doubts, qualms.

151
Miracles Sonnet

Frida Kahlo, after a long overland journey, arrives at a conclusion.

Frida Kahlo dons a helmet and an asteroid belt and goes to a ball.
Frida Kahlo appears to many, despite their rising cost, in corn tortillas.

Frida Kahlo’s success at Sotheby’s surpasses all expectations.

Frida Kahlo takes Diego to task for leaning much too far to the left.
Frida Kahlo takes questions and answers prayers after her press conference.

Frida Kahlo expects nothing less than the best from her admirers.
Frida Kahlo rents the far side of the moon for her newest exhibition.
Frida Kahlo overtakes Mount Fuji as world’s most famous icon.

Frida Kahlo replaces Virgin of Guadalupe as Mexico’s most famous icon.

Frida Kahlo chosen by Obama to follow Clinton as US Secretary of State
for remainder of term. Frida Kahlo arrested at MOMA for illegal entry.

Frida Kahlo enters Guinness World Records as most popular saint’s name.
Frida Kahlo adopted as mantra by billions of Buddhists worldwide.

152
Seven Years Later

Has it really been that long? murmured the president.

The terrace into the courtyard of Castle Bleach.com
had been built during the time of random vicissitudes,
months and years of war that had battered down ramparts

meant to withstand ages of unfounded criticisms and

congressional oversights. Over at Foggy Bottoms
they tell me we ought to do more diplomacy and less
brush chopping. Honey, stop fretting and pacing

and come back to bed, said mrs. president. You know

that tomorrow you have to start writing your memoirs.
That new Nintendo’s doing well. They never give you
credit enough for that. Maybe you should start blogging,

take your case right to the peoples. Great idea! exclaimed

the president. The internets is really the place I wanna be.

153
Sonnet (Italian Style), in English and Vietnamese

line one and so on

line two and so on
line three and so on
line four and so on
line five and so on
line six and so on
line seven and so on
line eight and so on

line nine and so on

line ten and so on
line eleven and so on
line twelve and so on
line thirteen and so on
line fourteen and so on

154
Sonnet, kiểu Ý

hàng một và vân vân

hàng hai và vân vân
hàng ba và vân vân
hàng bốn và vân vân
hàng năm và vân vân
hàng sáu và vân vân
hàng bảy và vân vân
hàng tám và vân vân

hàng chín và vân vân

hàng mười và vân vân
hàng mười một và vân vân
hàng mười hai và vân vân
hàng mười ba và vân vân
hàng mười bốn và vân vân

tr. Linh Dinh

155
The G-Rated Sonnet

I’d like this sonnet to be as sweet, as tender and sexless, as any

love scene featuring Diane Keaton and Steve Martin. I’d like it
to be as dulcet-toned as Anita O’Day singing “Skylark.” I’d like
my sonnet to be full of children, yet void of conception, preg-

nancy, and childbirth. Their ears would be ears that have never
heard “foetus” or “fuck” or “pudenda.” Their family newspaper
would report only engagements, weddings and births. Images
of war, of broken and mutilated bodies would never appear there.

No names of the dead, please. They’ll all remain nameless, unless,

of course, it’s Grandma or Grandpa, or, sadly, little Rexie, who
never lived to be a full-sized dog, or that small, nameless kitty we
found in the backyard that day and which Junior ran over with

his scooter without meaning to do so. Like gray-haired Martin, this

sonnet shakes its head in dismay, raises (briefly) its eyes to Heaven.

156
Lost Methodologies

We begin, with the hope of making it in the movies, to arrive,

hopping off the bus at the bus station, beginning our hunt for
a good screen name, one that goes well with Mulholland. Am-

nesiacs all, we are cast in leading roles, but cannot remember

our lines long enough to finish the briefest of scenes. We forget
both our names and the names of the characters we are playing.

Embroiled in a classical quest—emotionally, then sexually—

we can’t be sure what the writer and director have in mind, since
we only get snippets of scenes, and those in a scrambled order.

Actors who play our younger selves hang around a soda fountain,
eager to be introduced to a wider audience, while we’re being made
up for our death scenes. Wild-eyed Canadians look on as we ready

ourselves for post-production interviews and commentaries that

will fill out the film’s DVD version. And then, at last, curtains.

157
Kitchen Sonnet

One evening, as I was making a chicken sandwich, I suddenly

thought it might be a good idea to make you want to love your
kitchen as much as I did once, back when all was shiny, coppery,
and new, when pots and pans had not been ruined by a series
of slovenly house guests who were not only sloppy about taking

care of utensils but failed to clean (ever!) the apartment or water

the plants you whispered to so tenderly as you ministered to their
needs, watering them two or three times a week and each month
loosening the earth about their roots, getting whole fingers down
there into the dirt, breaking things up, letting in air and light.

So, after replacing all the destroyed cooking ware, I began to

make unreasonable demands when it came to our meals: I said,
“Let’s provide calorie info for all our meals. Let’s cut carbs.
Let’s eliminate all trans-fats. Let’s start reducing our sauces.”

158
Sonnet for the New Year

Pleistocene campfires flickering in the distance, deeply

rooted slogans chat it up with money barons. Medical
malpractice suits us just fine, thank you very much.
For instance, well-delivered apologies salve all wounds.

Partial reconciliations break step when crossing a bridge,

miraculous transformations no longer expected or offered.
Higher disease rates unrelated to education or health costs
speak volumes to our well-tuned ears. Biology urges us

to seek out music in the company of other people. Yahweh

and other loud cell phone talkers gather to break bread to-
gether, airwaves atremble with salutations, with greetings.
On everyone’s lips, prospects for reelection, for theatrical

productions that do not close in a month or less. And soon,

all spats aside, someone texts us a toast, and all follow suit.

159
Sonnet: In Fine Fettled Sleep

Between the artificial hills and the more pragmatic

wavelets, back in the analog age, mathematical proofs
proved worthless. Some angular deflections invited
trisections and later even quintisections, among other

impossible feats. Foolproof analogies calibrated our

volt-meters, reminding us of the First Law of Baseball:
There’s no Game Five after four have already been lost.
Humdrum solutions to perfectly humdrum problems.

“Das ist kein Mann!” sings Siegfried italicly, Brünnhilde

resting yet in fire-shielded sleep. What’s most remarkable
fails to surprise us any longer. All true theorems are trivial,
as she once sang. We joke about this with co-workers,

but never to the boss. And yet, keeping the door open just
a crack allows x and not-x to sweetly cohabit the room.

160
Trading Meaningful Glances

Longing for something to proofread and for temperatures

within reason, they packed their bags and moved away to,
well, not the sea, but some quiet place in the eclipse zone.

In-crowds gathered above the house, the solar heating cells.

The Oxford presidency was up for grabs, and her long-confined
triangle was on its way to Bermuda. Finding sanctuary

in a church was a stop-gap measure, the best that that time

had to offer. Their memorial plasmas properly southern,
they found that their words eclipsed only a fraction

of the sun’s diameter. Threats and rejections were balanced

by the Palme d’Or their in-flight movie received at Cannes,
yet people looking for relationships found they had to take

some risks. Archaeoastronomy was on everyone’s mind,

from Guangzhou to Charlottesville, even in September.

161
Autonomous Retreat

That hole, that vacuum, with talk and print—all oil

mergers suspended until further notice. No use to cry
outside and scream inside. It was all a sin click
here, until the storm bursts, and house is shut and still.

We share the luxury of seeing it all, building the scrub

of future sugar. Having lost and forgotten everything,
the music must play forever—allegro, ma non troppo.
Unexplained bravura, place of safe laughter.

On the reasonable shoreline, white in the air, white

in the trees. Father of wavelets, come lift your arms
with us. Given this kind of city, sand beneath our feet
like broken glass, pieces of orphaned wreckage

tossed up by the storm. Russian oil mergers suspended

by thumbs, between wetlands and the suffocating sea.

162
Sonnet: Restraint in G Minor

The gentleness of force taming the lion is restraint—

a minor rain, clouds redrawing heaven above the blowing winds.

Trigram to clouds require natural force only the minor restrain,

the wind of force gentle without the right time

release restraint, therefore together themselves gather to be not clouds

that come to success and progress, indicating force, positively viewed

below earth, felt clouds of the shadow, the air is in the rain of promise,
blowing continuous winds, gentle, yet living to spring, awaiting all things.

Maintain cloudy example, and it will follow a man as wise as the clouds around him,
spent well is the time of flexibility outwards, displaying inner strength.

Everyday, outwardly manifesting skills in one’s developing stillness

are measures forced by the world to change the time to take action.

Gentle though this will be, the best way to overcome obstacles is rain,
determination firm enough to be long-lasting, restraining persuasions yet to come.

163
Found Sonnet: This Document Contains No Data

While searching without a proxy server from Beijing,

receiving search results that link to dajiyuan.com,
peacehall.com, and other dissident sites are insufficient
to trigger the “This document contains no data.” response.

For example, searching google.com for Gao Zhisheng (高智晟)

also brings up a full page of links that are inaccessible from
within China: Epoch Times, Renminbao, Boxun, Radio Free Asia.
That’s exactly what is so nice about having google.com.
It still indexes pages that are inaccessible from inside the GFW.

Once you have the link, you can use a proxy server to get there.
What gets me a “This document contains no data” error? Well, from here,
not Jiang Zemin, Bloody case of Shanwei, Zhao Ziyang, June 4th,
Falun Gong (all in Chinese)... So, basically nothing. “No data” may have

been a temporary stopgap, and when the sky did not come crashing down
because of Freezing Point, someone decided to open it back up again.

164
Sonnet: Aro(here)und

A . . . I was going to say “my story,” but I think this applies more or less to
all stories . . . story begins with its very first word, unless, of course, that
word is placed elsewhere than at the beginning of the story. Take the word
“a,” for example—an old word, but still a useful one, a halting gesture
toward a “complete” utterance.

Around here, she was saying, we do things differently (altho

the way she said it (i.e. “differently”) led me to think
that the word should be placed in quotes. She, after all, was prone
to overstatement with just a hint of intimidation. Her mien
was almost overbearing, the verbenas in the garden

just beyond her window to the contrary notwithstanding. In a landscape

that almost called for swans on a stream beside a small cottage
with a cheery plume of white smoke ascending skyward
from its red-brick chicanery.

165
Sonnet: Religion in America

Always a major force, this should not be cause for panic.

Passionate devotees of justice and the improvement of others,
eager to reach out across sectarian lines. Bitterly disagreeing
with those who say one man’s religion is no one else’s business,

we see ourselves as a chosen people, duty-bound to slather

our values over all and sundry. Faith-based initiatives,
those thousand points of light, shifting the balance of power
dramatically. No cause for panic. Improving the world

can be both fun and profitable, recasting Americans’ sense

of themselves in a light that glows about their heads and faces.
As important to life as death is, it should never be our only, or
even our main concern. Let’s leave that to others, the suiciders,

the collaterals, the ones not invited to the table. Fundamentally,

we’re all fundamentalists, this “wrecked vessel” home to us all.

166
(Com)promised Land

Nothing more debased than these money farms

with their even rows of ones and fives and tens,
etc. Which leaves us where? Riding the rails,

sorting out various slaps and slams until questions

arise from which there are no exits. On the face
of it, the driver you showed to them terrorized

his riders with anthrax until taken out by some top

officials of DHS, who just prior had been lunching
(or perhaps launching) at a private golf club nearby.

Bin Ladenized Muslims knew what was up, since

Britain enabled fast-acting somnolence to devour
its shadow empire. No political scientist or historian

has ever run for president, unless perhaps it was

Wilson, and we all know what became of him.

167
Arsenal

Unlawful attempts to upload or impose rhyming or metrical

schemes on this sonnet are strictly prohibited and may be
punishable under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986
and the National Information Infrastructure Protection Act.

Now that you understand the rules, the arsenal is open today
so that you and other employees may have an opportunity
to introduce your wives or husbands and children to the world
of work. Arms and munitions are what we’re all about here.

Children involved in paramilitary ops such as the Brownies,

Cub Scouts, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts are especially welcome.
They can earn badges by learning to identify ammunitions
and weaponry used in defending American freedoms all over

the world. This one-day experience will provide children with

new insights into the world around them, world without end.

168
Sonnet for the Criminally Insane

Nobody’s perfect, I suppose, but still there are limits,

aren’t there? Who’d want a world full of happy, gum-
snapping Christian Americans, fast-tracked to Heaven?
One lifetime as a Gila monster’s enough for anyone.

Right? Being an extremist may not yet be a crime, but

it’s surely a more than effective branding strategy. Hate-
filled drivel makes millions in the current climate of
opinion, conservative market analysis shows. Soapbox

oratory of those constantly fed up with this and that,

of Nazis, both neo- and crypto-, of flatworlders, of end-
timers, and other loonies. Negative karma outweighs
several lifetimes of do-gooding . . . I mean who can

now say who’s the offender, who the offendee in an age

that denies hurricanes (Katrina included) ever happen.

169
Final Deprivations

Save me from the censorious widows, offshoots of the noble

branch, the “big tent” of American Protestantism. Imaginary
fables, their truculent in-laws. But why focus exclusively on
facts the average American grad student might be expected

to know? One hopes that they might someday exceed one’s

expectations, but doesn’t hold one’s breath. Ideological
functions—every text has them, so let’s be clear on that.
Trujillo’s barbarity tests the ethics of the left, although some

create small revolutionary episodes that put the right to shame.

When complete, our investigations leave five heads rolling
on a Michoacan dancefloor. Who could ask for anything more?
Finally, we didn’t know whether they’d been kidnapped

in broad daylight from lower Fifth Avenue, or raptured up,

the usual crowd of infidels looking on from a nearby lobby.

170
At the Treeline

Exacerbated trees lined up along the far horizon,

spelling defeat for the nearby townspeople, ready
at last to speculate openly on their failure to elect
competent ministers and sheriffs and deputies.

Dismantling the silences around them, voluntary

amnesiacs filled in missile silos and adjacent
barns, as though no one were out there to threaten
them, their way of life. Rifts between generations

became more pronounced, threatening their pre-

consumerist idyll. Yet still, we take our daily
bowlful of lies and, adding milk and a sprinkling
of sugar, force it down. Leaflets fell from the trees.

The sky above, as hostile as ever, its deep blue

more incongruous with each passing moment.

171
Sonnet in Elliptical Orbits

Snoozing under the Brownian tree near the path (not

yellow, but brick in an interlocking pattern, something
like herringbone), spending an hour and a half or so
in a sleepy rural train station, piles of building tiles
just outside the door. Counter-intuitive measures all
around, grapes purple, almost black. And garlic chutney
vada pav for all of us, just to see the vampires stayed
away. Having wanted to visit Madras before we died,

we hurried back the way we’d come, clambering over

rocky outcroppings, stopping only rarely to examine
the life in the ponds and cesspools we came upon.
Tilting ourselves over, we saw them there, the crawly,
creepy things in their green sauce, eying us beadily
eying them eying us eying them eying us eying them.

172
Sonnet: Norwegian Moods

Ole sulked in his tent as the battle raged without.

His once-boisterous manner seemed to have vanished.
Among his cousins was one Thordan, known by all
as Thor, the Thick-headed. Ole mourned for Thordan.

While the fear of death drives some men to suicide,

Ole was fearless. Yes, foolish, as some would say.
The walls of the besieged city were covered with signs
that said, “Post No Bills,” the irony not lost upon Ole.

Known as The Childless, Ole had moods as various as

the morning’s weather, shifting from rain to sun
and back again from moment to moment. Disastrous
feuds claimed all of his fortune and most of his time.

Feeling words were beyond him, Ole lashed out or fell

silent, went raiding or watched some TV.

173
Say No More

His instinct was to blurt it all out, to take the chance

of saying too much. Never much good at getting
stoned, he took to pacing the deck, to hanging over
the rail and watching the water give way to the ship.

Belowdecks, all was sundry. All was as it was the day

before, and the day before that. Unrepentant vicars
danced the nights away. After seven or so days at sea,
he finally began to work on his new tetralogy, the one

he had dreamt of all along, despite the wishes of his

grandparents, his parents, and the good, honest people
of Entgegenwärtigung Town, who all, of course, had
wished him well. The work went quite well for several

days, until it went less well, and then finally stopped,

repeating the last few lines over and over and over.

174
Sentimental Sonnet

Something, something, something, she says.

Something was, was going on, was going on
there at that time around where we lived then.

There was the one where Divine picked up dog

poop around the corner from where we were
living then and ate it, fresh from the sidewalk

by the church around the corner from where

we lived, the one where Divine got himself, her-
self, rosaried right there, right there in church.

Something, something, something, she said,

was going on around that time, something
going on, right around the time we were alive.

There’s gotta be, gotta be someone who cares.

There’s gotta be someone, someone who cares.

175
Local News

All the distressed harmoniums

with more than enough holiness
about them to charm the ladies.

Not merely polite, more beautiful

than she remembered, less exclusively
devoted to matters of the spirit.

Forever carrying bags into small

rooms, having to choose between
Cork and Killarney. A little bit

older, and back to sea. His father

was a sailor, so he said.

[after texts by David Hopes and H. Palmer Hall]

176
A Brave Story

Understanding the universe and the potential for life in it,

Nikita Khrushchev, in a secret speech, denounced Stalin.
In 1935, the military zeppelin USS Macon crashed and sank
off Point Sur. To this very day, it lies there, on the ocean floor.

Sarah’s pet ant grew to the size of a bus, and yet . . . and yet. . . .
Genocide in Darfur? Need you ask? Dubai, some say, has sold
its soul to the company store. Blocked from speaking in New York,
he took to the hustings in Nebraska, reading Reading Lolita in Tehran

to any who would come and listen. When things go badly, the public
does not take well to wars of choice. We know that now. Sadly,
we knew that then as well. Is flying around the world any way
to warn us of the dangers of carbon dioxide? These days, he lets

it all hang out, there in the classroom. Merely a tool of the neocons,
he hid his tutu and slippers from hostile faculty. Praise be!

177
Sonnet: Unspecified Horrors

Take a life like yours. Echinacea does nothing

to cure your latest cold. Trademarks and logos
borrowed without attribution. In other words,
not in the lifetime of President Pigg. Pipelining

collected terms you object to, imagining the beach

during January, when all have returned to the city.
We try to assure that the biblical prophecies anent
World’s End will be fulfilled in short order, so

don’t waste your efforts on massive reconstructions,

unless, of course, there are short-term pay-offs to be
enjoyed. The tree bends over the old man, but he
hasn’t noticed. Who would have thought the levee

might break? Who would have thought that could

happen? You, sliding down into gunk now, farewell!

178
Sonnet: Faith-based Initiative

Coming home, I see my next-door neighbor at his door-

step licking the door. Every other week or so this happens.
He stands there licking and licking and licking, pausing

every so often to wipe off his chin before going on with his
licking. Cheerily, I wave to him, saying, “Still haven’t found
that key you lost, eh?” He grins and then makes a sour

face at the taste of the door’s varnish. And I ask, “So

how’s the wife?” And he says, “I’m praying she’s still alive
when I’m through. Last time I saw her she was fine.”

“Give her my best,” I say, “when you’re in.”

179
“Your Eyes Stray”

Your eyes stray over to the verso side of the book

where you learn that short-term prospects are not
indeed good. The hero wanders into a labyrinth
of desire that would have daunted Casanova, or at

least given him pause. The grass is always greener

on the other side of the street, as it’s said. Mellow
as ever, the summer wends its way autumn-ward,
one fedora almost as good as another at covering

that bald spot. And the war strays over yet another
border on its way to wherever it’s going. Insurgents
mount incessant attacks, no matter how much we do
to assuage them. No, sir, the pastorale is not dead.

Willows trail their branches in blood-red streams.

The sheep on the hill wear their furs inside-out.

180
With No Known Regrets

Proust consciously drifts from one dancehall to another,

modifying Etruscan ruins as he goes. Forgetting where
the bathroom is, he urinates in the foyer, as much to annoy
his hostess as anything else. Ambiguous rejoinders

trim any sense of goodwill that might have arisen, hollow

attempts at camaraderie, without pointing fingers. And yet
distractions proliferate, jumpy quarters rattling in his pocket.
Tense, frothy nights in sprawling neighborhoods nudge him

along on the first few steps of his journey to Golgotha,

that hilltop of intangible punishments. Disingenuously,
Kate reminded him of his obligations, both to herself
and to their children. Paranoiac wrongs smoked clutch

flares, unteachable slumbers snuggled together in warm

bedside manners, breaching the levee, as we’d been warned.

181
Another Long, Sad Story

“Omissions are not accidents.”

—Marianne Moore

The smallest bird might yet contain no less than a psychic

invasion of the United States. Syllable by syllable, clawed
and handled, your magnificent disdain. Time & tide, etc.

Rien á declarer. Without hope of blooming, the flower

lifts itself up from the sun-baked ground. Cement clouds
hang in the offing. The panic has just begun to spread.

Sick with grief, we celebrate their birthdays long after they

are dead. Loosening masonry along the shore, we take
long walks by ourselves or with others. Come back, Shane.

I have a descriptor now, a paragraffito. More wired than ever,

though not on a continuous basis, we offer mortgage calculators
by the gross at a discount that will pique your interest. Please

contact your administratrix for further information.

182
Time to Seek Help

The brain, while necessary, is not sufficient to avoid

common errors, which, as always, are only a stone’s
throw away. Making Up One’s Own Bed is required
reading for anyone with an interest in modern poetry.

Confident diagnoses suggest that Buckingham Palace

guards blink once every ten minutes like well-oiled
machines. The entire process can be easily performed
without ever setting foot in a gym. And so say all of us.

If your apartment’s so large you can’t ever find what

you’re looking for, then move out and get a smaller one.
If fires break out without giving you warning, it’s time
to seek help—two or three sessions a week might do it.

Keywords: sonnet, brain, necessity, error, stone, poetry,

diagnosis, machine, process, gym, apartment, fire, help.

183
To This Day

Literally dancing, the real heart

played out on the big screen
at gunpoint.

The sidewalk chanting

to curious thousands
just three or four years later.

A fact-based drama,
complete with sidekicks
and back story.

Bad teeth, bad

skin, bad everything.
Death house interviews.

Bungled bank heist.

At gunpoint.

184
Afternoon Sonnet

One afternoon, my lady and I, we laid ourselves down

for a nap beneath skylight windows that looked up
at blue sky. Drowsing off as she read, I felt I was at
an afternoon movie, walking down the long walkway

until we could see stadium seats stretching up and up

as though forever—all empty. We sat down, stretched out
our legs, relaxed, taking it easy—thinking, oh, how nice,
a private screening all to ourselves. Nothing like it. Then,

of course, the bag lady arrived, choosing, as always, to sit

just behind us, rummaging in her bags all through the show.
The rummaging turned to a whirring of wings, a humming-
bird up above me, trying for light and air, finding only glass.

Perched on a broom, it flew off when I carried it out. Now

dozens come every nap time, each crying out to be saved.

185
Sonnet: Clouds of Knowing and Unknowing

Expecting fathers and their favorers—long used to knowing

what to do, what not to do—consider medical evacuation
to be among their least attractive options. Familiarizing
ourselves with alternative travel plans might be wise to do.

Local laws and customs are no longer beneath contempt,

proper subjects only for writers and for travel agents
swimming against the tide of online reservation booking.

Handbooks of popular proverbs and sayings yield only

revisionist maxims such as “Don’t swap wooden nickels
in midstream” and “Necessity’s mother knows no laws.”

In the meanwhile, we were fiddling when we should have

been faddling. Promising stock options were allowed to drop.
Another of Peggy Lee’s sad songs. Her death was natural,
much to everyone’s relief. Not macht erfinderisch.

186
Barn, Slope, Tree

From the outset, one unfolds uncertain itineraries from among

decades of indifference. Not that these are numbered

itineraries having each its map and code.

One scale, or slope, unfolds, noting that almost nothing happens

exactly as expected decades earlier. Unique needs lead toward

an Instability not having much to do with forensic science

and its forever off-target aspirations. Necessarily, that’s as it

must be with itineraries, numbering now in the millions

if not more. Thinking about where we go and how we get there

almost describes the uncertainty of our narratives. How

distinguishing oneself from another might one day provide

some sense of incident, if not occasion, the narrative itself

emerging from our hesitations and contemplations,

always beginning, never arriving.

187
Sonnet: Sellinger’s Round

Sellinger sells seltzer down the other side of town.

Up one side and down the other, Sellinger makes
his round. A ramble with almost no restrictions
whatsoever, freely available to sundry and to all.

Cherokee kvetchers camped by the shores of Lake

Tathagata Lokeshvararaja used anyone at all to
achieve their ends. Nearby, where villages dwindle
into scattered farms, and cities seemed surrounded

by groves of masts, cityfolk, with their medieval

prefrontal cortexes at the ready, strolling all about.
Timetables for trains were of little use in those days,
but flags of all nations hung from those masts

at the harbor. The age of neurodiversity had just

begun, obsessional declivities all around.

188
Sonnet: Cruel Remainders

Unless otherwise specified, no infringement intended,

all collusions pipelined into our hemisphere will, until further

notice, be tax-free. Respectable owners no longer need fear

eminent domain or undue appropriations (look up under

“honeysuckle”). Collections of like terms, although you may

object, are subjected to editorial scrutiny and often revised.

Imagine January, spread out before us like a beach, the sanctity

of that moment. We were always unsure (depending what “un”

meant) who really owned the key of C-sharp minor. Sound

penetrates the walls, and the whole thing threatens to go nuclear.

Hundreds of flights up, all was quiet, except for a slight rustle
as we unfolded our lies. The singer’s nose grew longer as he sang,

every verse in three languages. Phantom oil rigs dotted the Gulf,
the maps to them unlocked. Unsold books attack Alaskan shores.

189
Musikalabend

Lest we forget, the evening was young once,

when Stepan sat in his living room watching
and listening to his pornograph, not for a mo-
ment regretting what was going to come next.

His neighbors, the altered bassoons Kate and

Franklin, had just taken off for Europe, where
they were scheduled to perform at the Salzburg
Festival. A verst or two away, Larisa’s mon-

grel was licking the sidewalk, trimming little

tufts of grass that spring up every year in cracks
between flagstone slabs. Armed conflict ensued,
despite vigorous steps by assorted diplomatists

bent on rewriting history before it had ever even

happened. Oboes colloquize by the frog pond.

190
Sonnet: Calm Headlands

Security news is grim, but, revisionist history aside,

we have nothing new in our buffer cache. Tamil
tigers occupy most of the known universe, empiricists
in full retreat, safe now only on this calm headland.

Redeployed, the armies of the poor pursue the issue.

In their floppy sandals., they seem contentious and yet
conscientious, bio-weapons at the ready. No simple matter,
that dedicated band of shock troops. The imaginative

dropping of information from rickety aeroplanes,

those unexcised by the budget knife. O rapid Republic!
This planet’s a risky business. Fallacious manuscripts
burgeoned among the world’s libraries, now often

closed, except for Tuesdays and alternate Saturdays.

Dead souls up on the roof, praying only for peace.

191
Some More Anthropology

And yet tribes of gentle Tasaday remind me of primitive

falseness, of blunt manners and dysfunctional Gentiles,
regarded merely as poets parking their cars wherever
their innocent hearts desire. The apartments of exiled

dictators in which rooms set aside for lost Jews shelter

inventors of land mines and booby traps. Harping on once
familiar diatribes, non-existent Tasaday come out of their
forest, stunned by the waiting limousines, their soft

purring. Hotels and car-parks of the rich transformed

into naïve outposts of brutal mythologists, babbling
of exclusionary clauses, of forests and palaces bereft of
meaning, of privileged preserves heard faintly in the offing.

If she can be trusted by neither of us, no one is sure of her

survival instincts, once her most conspicuous feature.

(after Michael Heller)

192
4 Subprime-Mortgage Sonnets

i.

talent for vanishing

dance suites

repossessed pulque
bars, luxury-class

rigors of cold
climate

who’s that on tenor?

ii.

backroom brawls
back in the news

raunchy endeavors
under review

local calls at long-

distance rates

empty before filling

193
iii.

away all boats

ask me about

red houses all

in a row

tonight’s rock
concerto

cancelled

iv.

glossy enlargements
no extra cost

some ice cubes

on a blanket

your house or
mine?

Hungry, a country?

194
Dialogue Sonnet

First, do you mind if I record this as we speak? No,

of course not. Okay then, let’s salivate together.
Reaganite goo has spread itself all over this primary
season, don’t you agree? Well, one might say so,

but it’s early in the century, and the campaign will drag
on for months and months if not years and years. We
will all come to regret our first thoughts, our early
prognostications. Progressive enervation, eh?

Yep, right here in Enervation Nation. Don’t you find

all of this . . . well, shall we say a little Mozartean?
To be sure. But left hands barely hear what the right
hands are doing. Robbing St. Peter to pay St. Paul, eh?

Just so. Thanks for coming in today. One last thought

for our listeners? Just one: Beware the blowflies of fame.

195
Sonnet: Backward Glances

Sometime after the twentieth of the third month

they went on their way, having spent several days

writing poetry and saying goodbye to their friends,

wearing parenthetical expressions on their faces.

Somewhat confused about the exact dates, their

accounts could not be reconciled. Early enough

that darkness still lingered in the sky, they noted

that even the fishes’ eyes had tears in them. We’ll

text you often, they promised each other, as always.

196
Sonnet Kit CXLVII

[Some assembly required]

lines, 14 a’s, 43 p’s, 18

quatrains, 3 b’s, 2 r’s, 33
couplet, 1 c’s, 13 s’s, 35
sentences, 3 d’s, 18 t’s, 44
words, 107 e’s, 56 u’s, 8
letters, 466 f’s, 8 v’s, 8
capitals, 18 g’s, 9 w’s 8
lower case, 448 h’s, 35 x’s, 2
periods, 3 i’s, 32 y’s, 10
commas, 14 k’s, 4
semicolons, 3 l’s, 15
hyphens, 1 m’s, 13
apostrophes, 2 n’s, 27
o’s, 25

197
Saga Sonnet

These events took place in the United States of America

a long time ago, in that dark age between the reigns
of Lingnar the Flat-nosed and Umnox the Lame-brained.

In those times, weeds were allowed to run wild, liars

and braggarts held forth on all sides, and everyone, without
exception, was tall and handsome and blond. To come

to blows one had only to smile in the direction of another.

Custom decreed that house-guests be slaughtered as they
slept, so the strongest among us were most insomniac.

Our women bore children to men not their husbands, to those

even blonder men who came to visit, but not to stay for long.

198
Etiolation Sonnet

My wife turns herself off after a few seconds. I’ve wondered

about traffic noise, but so far it’s been okay. Dark elongates

move beneath the leaves beneath the eaves, then grow to full
size and turn green. Reaching the light, dim caliphates pulse
much more rapidly than normal. A lot less fun, but easier

is not to invite friends over at all. Internodes of common parlance

self-reproduce until food reserves are all used up. Light too dim
to be useful makes us wonder where all the birds have come from.

Their ruckus in the coming or onrushing darkness rattles our cages.

Yet on those long, warm summer nights, one yearns for a backyard
rainbow, one that your drunken guests cannot turn off by accident.

Our internal clocks set to explode at the slightest vibration, we lie

awake in the quiet dark, our tendrils fading ever closer to the light.

199
Neural Loops: or, The Ascension of Osama bin Laden

With diagrams of loops, rolls, and new, virtual cherries,

his slightest neural twitch, reflexes over welling tears and frantically

longs, looks, looms, team-teaching the Taliban, cheesy cherubs tersely

scattered through no-man’s land’s neuter rambles.

Tears teased out from neural shelters, rally after early lapses
linger in the woody valleys, distant Atlantean Plain.

It’s entirely new, and the virtual bar to which I applied myself
cranked its way out of that blue-green digital sky, pulsing

synapses, firing blanks. By now, it, by definition,

added blue and green to our agenda, something of the gambler’s

excitement lingering in the air. Trading a few hostages

for apple-trees, the most fleeting. Nymphs, most days of the week,

just too perfect to be believed.

200
Sonnet: Unpacking My Toothbrush

Long an anti-dentite, I’ve search high and low for post-

consumerist dentistry, coming to believe, after many
years, that such a thing may not indeed be possible, or
even feasible. Traditional relationships leave open few

avenues, aside from this thicket of language, that even

are worth exploring. Digital dentistry seemed, once, to be
promising. “Open, please. Now rinse.” But the tooth
lodged in my forehead continued to cause problems:

blinding headaches, for example. My parents’ first

teaching to me: “Watch where you’re going.” But then
how I navigate, more than what I create, became more
and more central to my living. Quantity trumps quality.

Even at my age, I have more teeth than I will ever use,

more fat than I shall ever, ever come to chew.

(after Kenneth Goldsmith)

201
Sonnet: La Malcontenta

Nowadays, she is away a lot, away from home, from her kids,
who’ve learned to deal, to take care of themselves and each
other. She loads her little truck with her wares and drives off,
waving into the rear-view mirror. She tweets them from little

towns in the countryside where she (on good days) sells her
wares, comes back empty. Her oldest son in Afghanistan, she
tweets him too. He always says, “im ok mom,” but she wonders,
and wonders how he could be. She voted for Obama too,

but now she wonders. On the road a lot and sometimes over
night if the truck isn’t empty, she’d like to be home with her kids
but business is business, and if she doesn’t sell, the kids don’t
eat. There are men . . . well, yes, there have to be men, right?

The kid in Afghanistan, he tweets her with “hey mom im dyng.”

It’s the last one. She tweets him a hug and a kiss.

202
Sonnet bureaucratique

While the office is closed, take a hike from Normandy

to Montmartre, read your partitions to any who will stop

to listen. Catalog your umbrellas, including those you

have never used. When you run out of room for pianos,

stack them up, one upon another, the topmost upside

down. Move your precursors from left to right on your

screen, backspace ad libitum. Choose times of low

income to reduce your spending.

Yo, Dada. Yo, Mama.

203
Sonnet: Much Better Now Thanks

Children singing in the streets, words I don’t quite

understand. Electioneering slogans from some
other land. Short walks along (or across) Lake Michigan.
Emasculations devoutly to be wished. Not easily
offended, she radicalizes her permutations.

Play of light on water. Ducking each time for cover.

Fat volition makes me light the fuse of aspiration.
Long-tailed grackles, their ancient explosions.
Table set for hymn-singers and retired clowns.

Past trapped villages among last year’s debris.

She knows what she knows when she knows it.
No, Sugarplum, four people can’t play a nonet, not
even if they double their efforts. Living amongst
the fragrant conglomerates—living at its best.

204
A Little Story

We cannot just sit here and say nothing, so I’ll tell you
what—I’ll tell you a little story. Once upon a time there
was a little president who thought he could be bigger.
He tried and tried to grow himself but only got him smaller.

He sent out folks to find folks littler than him so he could

make them like him more. But they, they just didn’t listen and so
he had to kick their butts. Then they, they only hollered, and he,
he smallified some more. I’ll smallify the world, he said, and

then, if’n they don’t line up with me, I’ll smallify them more. I’ll
rubble-ize their houses and turn their lunches into ash. I’ll give
all of them nicknames that’ll wither up their butts. But they, they
didn’t listen, and he just grew him smaller and smaller,

small ears and little eyes and all. By now, he’s only visible to Hub
ble. And naked eyes? Well, they just don’t even see him anymore.

205
Sonnet: The Perfection of Mozart’s Third Eye

Most English morality plays are replaced by TV sitcoms,

Ignacio mused. New teenagers, our willful daughters—
callous imposters. Suitcases beneath their beds, packed
and ready to go. A man just like him discovers immunity

to prosecution. Inconceivable break-ups: ninety-year-olds

in assisted-living “communities” divorce their wives of decades,
marry younger women still in their eighties. Highbrow toddlers
with cerebral palsy wonder if there is more to them than their bodies.

Mozart sought and found perfection in most that he did. Death

to Mozart! Unhinged by the experience, Ignacio turned to faith.
His good fortune, to be lovable as well as pathetic. Salamanca’s
university heaped honors upon him, held him against his will.

Death to Anglo-Saxon realism! he cried. The original half-hour

he craved, but without special treatment or easy sympathy.

206
Spam Sonnet

A la recherche d’un emploi? You won’t ever have to explain

your flaccidness to her again. You can have the meds you need
for 70% less. Looking for a new foundational opportunity?

Do you want scientifically to debunk the Bible? You can view

this message as a website here. Hi man, was thinking of the old
times and thought of you. Sign in here to chat awhile. Replica

watches, direct from manufacturer. Spanish fly! This may solve

the only real problem you have. Anyone with sufficient work
experience can become a CEO. Do you prefer to spend less,

get more? Don’t let food be your greatest concern. Nothing

heals better! Beautiful Russian women are eager to meet you!

207
Boolean Nights Sonnet

“boolean night and hurtled paths”

—Alan Sondheim

Do not crawl gentle into that. Good night and good

night. I prithee, search out the dead cell phones, bid them
rise. How useless of us, how endlessly we barrel
down the nation’s highways, as though dawn never

cracketh. Rumble strips rouse us from our naps, our

circadian tricycles. Our meditations safely lodged up
on the shelves above the sink, we close the shutters,
let senescent rabbis shuffle the deck and deal. Late-

night mail arrives, nth delivery of the day, but, down

the river there, mail comes early or never. Gathering
tribes have got all day to sort things out, to compile
their dance suites, their lists of obligations to future,

unformed generations. We’re out of luck, my friends,

but something yet might happen—tomorrow or tonight.

208
Sonnet

Decadent cuisine spreads like wildfire from the kitchen

to the upper decks. Sunbathers by the pool dip their chips
in the salsa, take a break from their fasting. San Diego
basks in the sun, as fence-builders move along toward
the east, securing the border against encroachments
by hostile cruise ships. All destinations on sale now that
fine wines are served in half-pints, buddy. Two days left
before we leave port, adventure-bound acupuncturists off
on a spree, leaving the seven-county disaster area behind
in the capable hands of the National Guard. Some redheads
were Neanderthals. Or was it the other way around? DNA
testing does have its limits. McCain vows to follow Osama
to the gates of hell, that half-million acres of smoking ruin.
No air-conditioned medical tents there, one can be sure.

209
Sonnet: Your Lips Soft as Lard

Apricot ears pinned to your oblate head, hair

balled in a bun at the nape of your neck. Eyes
like dungeons, lids at half-mast. Oh, stop now.

That last was too much, too redolent of swampy

waters near the shore of the sea, birds stopping
to feed in that migratory way that they have.

Blinded by recalitrant moon emerging from pen-

umbral maroonity. What next (or what nest) then
my luv, my lubricatory evasion, my turtlefox?

Intelligent satellites wanting to know, b4

more toxic spray comes wafting our way.

210
Sonnet

Over here on the right, self-pitying molecules await

night transportation to the northern border, furry
tunnelers and plumed waders arriving at the prom
in stretch limousines by Hummer. Ancient instruments,

more frayed than ever, dedicating one song after another

to Olga Korbut. Bank robbers dressed to the gills,
pleading not guilty despite having reached plea bargains
just the day before. Snaky swimmers annoy Beethoven

with lusty cries of “Ignition!” and “Lift-off!” Wind

landers rust in the desert, not far from Palmdale.
Monument carved from a single stone, not subject
to law of supply and demand. Speculative investors

in search of safe havens place much of their trust in

kindergarten productions of Sartre’s No Exit.

211
Sonnet: Gracing Light

At the far end of the massive site, the sun is stropped,

and yet three murals of quetzals and jaguars bestow
a quiet dignity to all who come upon them in the late
summer. Items of daily life preoccupy the old museum.

If you’re in the mood to accuse someone, now is the time

to do it. You never know when you’ll be in this neigh-
borhood again. The peppery taste of the local food
lingers in the mouth all evening, too bellicose for words.

A snatch of Boulez comes wafting up from the beach

and loiters there, hoping you’ll listen for a while. A man
in a hood observes from behind a nearby panel truck,
an aboriginal or mestizo of some sort. Incredibly, even

though under the knout, these people smile every day,

play with their babies after coming home from work.

212
Sonnet: Karachi Dawn

Wars of choice going badly, stories ending sadly. Brave books

reduced to tools of neocons. Jetsetters fly around carrying
photos of themselves they wouldn’t want published while alive.

Blocked from speaking, candidates for public office study sign

language, blame, as always, the Jews. Reckless use of natural
calamities to bring out the terror vote, to instill yet more fear.

Çatalhöyük had no opera house, and yet its non-streets were full
of garbage. Dreams of his Basque ancestors auctioned off
at Sotheby’s. Where are the Margot Fonteyns of yesteryear?

Tragically forgotten, the likes of Beethoven and Shostakovich

might even have cast light on our species, our society, our
individual lives on Earth. Well-known, the dangers of carbon

dioxide ended more as gallows humor, while influencing friends

and felines, even those “Siberian purebreds” in Moscow alleys.

213
Romantic Sonnet

Disappointed with his new guru, he brought

forth new crystallizations of unanimated speech,
created disorder amid variegated flow. His worst
point, his cluttered desktop. Hers, her overweening
devotion to helping others. Turning up in Krakow

after three years of Beethoven studies in Tehran, he

often seemed somewhat disoriented. Took to dark
mentionings of Saudi America, of oil-driven machi-
nations, of an esthetics devoted to vowel sounds.
Chicago’s lakefront still cooler than the rest of town,

after all those years resting among collated facsimiles

of all its meatpacking endeavors. Smoke pouring from
its smokestacks, a badge of honor for the city. Here’s
what rheostats can do for you! Her signage said, “Slow
down when flashing.” His penis said, “Click to enlarge!”

214
Suspicious Car

Whenever I’d pull out of the driveway, my car

would say, “This trip isn’t going to end well
for me, is it? I’m sure it won’t this time.”

My car incessantly worried about this and that:

Do I have enough oil? Is there enough gas
for the trip? Are you still stashing drugs

in my trunk? It thought it ought to be

consulted on times of departure and arrival,
on routes and destinations. How would you

feel, it would ask me, if you were in my

position? If you were never told anything ever.

215
Raymond Chandler Sonnet

Wharfier is duskier in some weird way, sometimes

leading you to ask where all the steeper moments
went, your best girl sitting there with a drink in her
hand like some stoned Bambi. Overdue bar tabs
languish in the fading light, the onus on you—yes,

you. Duruflé’s Requiem on the jukebox yet again.

Evens and odds duke it out in the dusty parking lot
as plastic dactyls scurry by, bristles erect, catching
a ride to some party in another part of town. Beatty,
the doornik, opens one door and then another, tips

hat for tips. I step away, wanting, among other things,

to be elsewhere. Clots of dust in the shadows warn
whoever’s around who can still hear a warning.

216
Sonnet: Tropical Forest with Monkeys

When you take your monkeys fishing in the forest

it’s important to remind them not to leave their fishing
poles behind. Animals, as we know, often have human
traits and characteristics, and vice versa. If they express

fear of the forest, point out to them that the jungle is not
as deep as it once was. Farming and lumbering and strip-
mining have now seen to that. Have your monkeys express
their thoughts and fears in little balloons above their heads.

Consider having them write little screenplays that, once home,

they can act in as well as direct and produce to share with
a wider audience. Bringing along journals and making entries
in them whenever they have a spare moment is never a bad idea.

Monkeys, whether macaques or langurs or gibbons, all enjoy

trips to the forest. They always have a good time.

217
Sonnet: On the Way to Gare St. Lazare

Missed my train and had to wait five minutes for the next one.
Enjoyed a brioche with marmalade at the Irish pub.
Planned a Japanese meal with Mike and the rest of the guys (and gals).
Fell asleep briefly in a bar so dark one could easily fall asleep in it.

Learned to say “I need to have sex with you right now” in French.
Got up late again this morning. Haven’t been sleeping well.
Met Georgina and that Corsican guy at the Louvre.
Stayed inside because of the rain. All-day rain. Again.

Went to check emails. Nothing from home.

Wandered over to the art school to meet my friends.
Had another chocolat chaud. That must be thirty or so now.
Started to catch up on my reading. Again. New book this time.

Got some food at a lovely restaurant with purple and red chairs.
Sat inside, hopping outside to take photos.

218
IV Appendix

219
Shakespeare Lite: The Sonnets (I through XVII)

From increase, that die, but decrease his memory,

But eyes feed’st fuel making lies thyself cruel.
Thou ornament and spring within content
And niggarding, pity be to thee.

II

When brow and field, thy now will held,

Then lies where days to eyes were praise.
How use if mine shall excuse proving thine,
This old and cold.

III

Look, viewest now another whose renewest

Thou mother, for womb disdains husbandry.
Or tomb of posterity. Thou thee calls prime.
So see despite time, but be die thee.

220
IV

Unthrifty spend upon legacy nature’s lend

And free then abuse the give. Profitless use
so live for alone thou deceive. Then gone
what leave, thy thee which be.

Those frame the dwell will same and excel.

For on to there, sap gone, beauty where?
Then left a glass, beauty’s bereft nor was
But meet leese sweet.

VI

Then deface in distilled. Make place with

Self-killed, that usury which loan.
That’s thee or one, ten art if thee, then
leaving posterity. Be fair to heir.

221
VII

Lo, light lifts eye cloth sight serving majesty

And hill resembling age. Yet still attending pilgrimage,
But car like day the are from way,
So noon, unlooked son.

VIII

Music sadly sweets joy. Why gladly or annoy?

If sounds by ear they confounds in bear, mark another
Strikes ordering, resembling mother who sing,
Whose one sings none.

IX

Is eye that life? Ah! Die the wife,

The weep that behind,
When keep by mind, look spend shifts it.
But end and it, no sits that commits.

222
X

For any who unprovident grant many,

but evident for hate that conspire,
Seeking ruinate which desire. O, mind!
Shall love be kind or prove. Make me that thee.

XI

As grow’st in departest and bestow’st, thou

convertest. Herein increase without decay.
If cease and away, let store harsh perish. Look more
Which cherish, she thereby thou die.

XII

When time and night, when prime and white,

When leaves which herd and sheaves born beard,
Then make that go since forsake and grow,
And defence save hence.

223
XIII

O, are no live against prepare and give.

So lease find were yourself decease when bear.
Who decay which uphold against day
And cold, O, know you so.

XIV

Not pluck and astronomy, but luck of quality,

Nor tell pointing mod or well by find, but derive
And art as thrive if convert,
Or prognosticate thy date.

XV

When grows hold moment that shows

Whereon comment when increase cheered sky.
Vaunt decrease and memory, then stay sets sight,
Where decay to night, and you as new.

224
XVI

But way make Time, and decay with rhyme?

Now hours and unset with flowers much
Counterfeit, so repair which pen, neither fair
Can men, to still and skill.

XVII

Who come if deserts, though tomb which parts,

If eyes and graces, the lies such faces.
So age be tongue and rage and song,
But time, you rhyme.

225
Acknowledgements:

Thanks go to the editors of the following publications in which some

of these poems have previously appeared: Newtopia Magazine, Salt River Review,
Puerto del Sol, Snakeskin, Otoliths, E.ratio, Black Box, Sugar Mule, Exquisite Corpse,
Brooklyn Rail, Verse Wisconsin, Arsenal, Eoagh, Antique Children, 21 Stars Review,
Unlikely Stories, Ars Poetica, Masthead, Aught.

“Synaesthetic Sonnets” appeared in G(e)nome, a chapbook of poems available

from xPress(ed) Espoo, Finland, which also first published The Sonnet Project,
most of which appears in the central section of this collection. Other sonnets
collected here have also appeared in Guide to the Tokyo Subway, Tango Bouquet,
Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones, the Poet’s Corner at Fieralingue.

226
Also by Halvard Johnson

Transparencies & Projections (1969)

The Dance of the Red Swan (1971)

Eclipse (1974)

Winter Journey (1979)

G(e)nome (2003)

Rapsodie espagnole (2003)

Changing the Subject (with James Cervantes) (2003)

The Sonnet Project (2004)

Coyote’s Engines (2004)

Theory of Harmony (2004)

The English Lesson (2004)

Guide to the Tokyo Subway (2006)

Tango Bouquet (2007)

Organ Harvest with Entrance of Clones (2007)

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