delinquent blogger updates

I will make my home

in a southern state (a blue state,

but warm enough to burn cheeks

red)

a home where we’ll name our

hurricanes

like children

watch them go:

Kyle breaks every window on the first floor

Emily smashes the car

the next year Victor floods the basement

a foot and a half of

ocean and rain

and busted pipes

(as long as they don’t break our hearts)

we’ll hang their satellite pinwheels

on the refrigerator

and sigh

they’re only young so long

before they’re gone

taking the basketball,

the cat,

and the

sound from the wind chimes

I’ll be old here

among orange trees, fruit rats, and the smallest

geckos we’ll ever see

darting

under

Spanish moss covered trees

dying like

ballerinas

covered in silver ribbons

pirouetting off a dark stage

gentle and beautiful,

quiet

like sleep

There's no place like Kansas

There’s no place like
sunflower fields as far as the eye can see
the great plains where
people of the south winds
once hunted buffalo &
houses could fly from black & white
to colour.

There’s no place like
oceans of wheat
bending in the breeze
equidistance from
the Pacific & Atlantic,
a convenient central point
to start maps from.

There’s no place like
sharecropping in circles
and negros who speak of rivers
flowing from the state in
rural flight leaving
6,000 ghost towns
to the wind.

There is no place
like home.

a return to old projects: A celebration of 50 years

50 years ago they
were married,

Brooklyn NY & a
church with dancing.

Two years later Hawaii
became the 50th state.

Now they visit
in celebration of passing time

& bring coconut banks &
hula dolls back

for all their grandchildren.

Coded Death-Threat Written by Small Cousins After Thanksgiving Dinner, Maryland

Dear, Googs
sweat honey iced
tea you have
backwards octopus
Zach

on the Oberst's refrigerator

crayon, washable in looping squiggles,
not quite a rainbow, not quite a person
but a family none the less, together.

taken down.

connect the dots ripped
out of a couloring book
after learning how to count.

taken down.

a tracing of a hand, fingertip
feathers yellow, red, &
blue with a beak on the thumb

taken down.

an A- state spelling test
Mississippi & Missouri correct
but Coneticut caused problems.

taken down.

I want to be a fireman, I
want to be an architect, I want
to be a musician.

taken down.

a bundle of receipts, yellow &
white, crumpled & signed
to keep track of the money going out

taken down.

my family is reduced to names
on a shopping list, one square of
wants & a hope for a phone call.

for the sake of continuity, this could count as PA--a poem called: The Student Union

The fountain in the Alumni Plaza is
shut off. Its faux-riverbed dry.
All the pennies have been scooped out,
wishes spent.

Six sickly trees have given their all to fall
& trampled
dusty remains
gather in the fountain’s base.

The only rumble now is passing traffic,
& the shuffle of students steps on
a mud line cut through dying grass,
always rushing five minutes before, or after class in

shields of iPod interference--sound tracked
bubbles--& cell phones stringing invisible
electric laundry lines for all to hear:
(insert cliché here)

The students stacked in trailers
behind Lytle Hall will soon move
to the academic forum; a giant glowing
17 million dollar fishbowl filled with

goldfish eyes in 200 seat amphitheaters,
the teachers
will never have to
learn my name again.

The dry recycled air echoes
recycled ideas pounded into
five paragraph containers
reused in the library, wasted computer printout

pages, all grades
the same--one
pen stroke pass
or fail--like
finding a parking space

five minutes before class.
We are (the new) Penn State
repackaged in another field, in
another ground broken ceremony

high-rise honeycombed dorms,
where a single room is now a triple
in a numbers game of how many students
can we jam in one place, for one price

& still get away with it. Better yet--
put a food court in the forum so
they can buy Freedom fries. Please just
keep the Republicans away from bake sales.

The turned up corn fields give again--
the illusion of space--like
the fairgrounds on a weekend,
& diversity is half the population

taking a bus back to the city,
taking a truck back to the country.
Monday thru Friday we walk in streams but
never pool into a student union,

it’s just myspace now, faux
facebooked friends & waiting
for the season to slide by,
a fountain filled again.

Californ-I-A

"you gotta see the west coast,"
she said. her acrylic nails were
red and the color slunk into the
whites of her eyes. "there just
ain't nothing like the blue sky
in california." a cough hacked
from the cracks in her chapped
red-lined lips. "you gotta see
those people. they got these bright
white teeth and blue convertibles."
"something about it," she said.
"god bless america, you know?"

Maine

Nine hour drive
Hot and heavy June
With no air-conditioning
We drove with the
Mass-holes
to get to you.

Bozeman

In 2063,
first contact
between humans
& Vulcans will be
made in Montana.

here we IDAGO

Idaho protects black cats
& keeps their Satan worshipers
on a short leash.

LOOK AT ME ALASKA

In New Jersey we live stacked
1,134.4 persons per square mile,
frozen in a block of humanity.

In American Russia, where no
road leads to the capital,
1.1 people per square mile

breath fresh, Alaskan Air.