The Spider Songs of Mr. Spector: April 2011

April 30th

(And with this, my 2011 April Poem-A-Day is complete!)

I came traveling on roads

through rows of eucalyptus,

must have done so,

more than once I looked

like a fool to be traveling

through eucalyptus

I came with bud caps

caught in my shoe treads,

came with the jagged

eucalyptus smell

Of course I am like the trees

bent over by wind and heat,

able to be chopped at the root

and grow back again,

but I am also like the road,

and the traveling,

and like the looking over

of my shoulder,

very much like the looking,

but very much like the trees.

April 29th

neopolitan

the number of three

molded together

wooden spoons

more efficient even

would be a paddle boat

swans are vicious

angel ducks

french butter pretzel

mustard honey salt

human

bites

April 28th

Stonecrusher Mortlock loved

Margarita or Manzanita

sharp as chiming birds, whoever she was,

Margarita, Manzanita, alight

She was a thin one,

knuckles and chin,

so below her body weight she came back up

the other side,

curved as bat wings,

hooked and round as a barrel cactus

Her areoles were red as sunstroke,

aloe smooth her limbs were glinting,

bold as lime

she burnt campfires

into being when she spoke

Stonecrusher mortlock was a landmass

to her weaverbird, a slingshot

to her needled nest

Like most men afraid of the desert

Stonecrusher Mortlock clung to her boundaries

April 27th

under rhodedendrons

and the dirty white smell of leaves

my sister and I played

by the side of the house

where my uncles stirred soup

for my grandma

in a dark and yellow room,

on a soft brown couch,

my grandma wore sweatpants

and pastel turtlenecks

the air under

rhodedendrons

is cold and dry,

unstirred

I know there was a playground

a short walk away-

the pavement there was

uneven, and in my memory I am

inexplicably, to be so young, sad

April 26th

First the windmills

white as wings

spanned across the hills

We drove and drove

beneath them, turning

folding into trees,

green and flashing past then opened,

freeway,

into town

The drive through downtown

Santa Cruz, pastel air

on ropes and anchors,

front brick fences

low and cracked,

Leaf yellow,

mustard bright,

sun spilled flowers

on the shadowed porch

If we ever went in winter

Only spring and hammocked summer

I cannot go there anymore

April 25th

an anchor

kelp with warm

sweet brown mud eyes

looped along

the anchor

given eyes

moved

it tugged hard and short

a horse to its cart

jerked its two prongs along like

curved shovels

until the chain broke

drew its long and elegant

face away from the the water,

the shining chain,

drew above the high tide line

leaving a switchback pattern

like a salamander abandoning its tail

so heavy and iron

and with so many eyes

the anchor rested

wondered what

it is about humans

the rushing in

to capture stranded fish

in the drawback of a tidal wave

April 24th

world tent

mountain peak

grass sky

coniferous

below the line

rainwater flashes

on branches

drops of solder

save your father

days

water

the smell

of the churned up ocean

antediluvian

jellyfish abyssal

tentacles serpents

eyestalks like periscopes

save your father

round white fish

bobbing

having eaten all of the sharks

round white mouths

save your father

April 23rd

parting 3

by the resevoir we piled

underneath the picnic table

on the pier my legs stuck out

and burned crisp as red

i may lose friends as easily

as apples from an open bag

good god

but I am glad to be

so fully written

April 22nd

parting 2

your vitamin deficient face

caffeine pills in a tin mint box

your cat fetched me yellow dust

and white pills in a crunched bag

dearie I don't blame you

except for what you did

no wonder the bed moves so much, his penis is tiny

you slut you slut you slut

April 21st

parting 1

satisfaction in fresh

that comes from me

red from me on tissue, woman

she sat in the white stall

next to me and told me

is was like a bullet

the cotton tip just damp and barely

red like a rubbed ankle

it shouldn't hurt so much

she said

just put it in

I know

the cotton just barely red

the tip just barely

my body

said I know

what to do stop

listening

foolish quiet body

that thought too much

of me

the applicator still

attached plastic

grips the base and corded

string the waste

I thought was my fault,

never hers

April 20th

Isaac

the engineer

who never speaks any word but

hydroponics

Daniel

the 1839 explorer

blocks the path

runs

Isaac's face is three blue lines

and Daniel dies so easily

I haven't spent much time

being a brave man

April 19th

A girl on the bus told me

that when her mother peeled up

the carpet the carcasses

of insects fluttered and shifted at the disturbance

and that is why she does her homework on the bed

For days I itched to cut away

a corner of my room

to check for insects moving underneath

like botflies in the skin

And felt each day go by like

another ant travelling my nervous skin

until I put my scissors down

at thinking, my grandmother is ashes

and cannot move again, even at the quaking

movement of the earth, the shaking

of a rug, the threat of a vacuum.

April 18th

Proof of Magic

What's up

doc. Blanc

in TV interviews, and later in his autobiography

declared

doc asked

coma Blanc

"How are you today, Bugs Bunny?"

Blanc

as Bugs

spoke,

Blanc

woke.

April 17th

gear, mother, teeth

gear

with a small number of teeth engaging

with a larger gear; a shaft or spindle

cut with teeth

engaging with a gear.

mother

cut with teeth; a number of teeth

teeth

I will engage you

until the last teeth.

gear

cut teeth or pinions

or cogs which mesh with other teeth

in order to transmit

teeth

which mesh

mother

which mesh; which transmit

mother

I loved you first

and will love you until the last.

April 16th

In a brickwork castle in a valley

choked with pine trees

is a tower filled with water. It has

a tiled roof

with windows at the top with

thick rust bars inside them. It

is attached to our wing

by a door and

a sign saying

never.

The tower is filled

with water

and sharks

whose teeth mesh together

surrounded

in stains of lipstick. They

breathe water and tear

their soft bellies when daylight

is too much.

We have never felt

their teeth but their teeth

are inside

our silent bodies.

April 15th

Ryan with fever won't sleep but

lies shallowly within

himself,

within his red throat,

distent cheeks, his hair

greased and flaking,

within the room is

hot and tissue litters

the floor and the bed and his hand

I believe he is waiting

to replace himself,

within himself

he is curled and watching

the fever roar through like

a gorged lion, he waits

in a cave, within himself,

with his head on dry sand and eyes

half closed he lies still

and watches

the lion, ropy tail,

pacing the cave entrance

starving itself out,

he lies still in the cool

arid cave and waits

to come back.

April 14th

Jim the worm grunter

is on the dirt before sunrise

he mists water on the ground as a charm

his profession is weak

as his knees in the soil

Jim's only skill is rubbing

notched wood against an iron spike

calling worms with judders thick

and porous as rolling drumbeats

the first worm of the morning

the worm occurs, thin and pink as an inch

he dances, twists as if pained,

or as if struggling to shed his skin

as if imagining

himself greater,

a snake, so much bigger

and more beautiful,

with a face and teeth and scales

for its raw skin, a throat for hot soup

and bird bones,

slicker and grander,

so much stronger, more perfect,

even, more real than himself.

April 13th

We kiss light, we write long,

we press buttons that gather bright learning

We sleep late, we hold slow,

We rotate together across many floors

We speak to wise women in desked rooms

We sit on a couch, we sit in a chair

We hide in the bathroom with knees to our chest

We walk in green and gnat full evenings

We catch gnats and chat plans in our teeth

We are frightened and we are small

We kill kings and eat them with wine.

April 12th

Poem by Ryan

this is a poetic poem it's poetry

it's the poemist poem totem poem foam poem

i'm a poet it's the i'm gonna show poems

a poeting poetry poem

okay that's the first verse

i'm going to pee now

you look so good

love you

April 11th

The doctor was built like a fist

or an overstuffed chair,

wore a pink shirt,

told me about his morning and right away

offered me a prescription to Valium.

He asked me my height and where I was moving,

asked me if I wanted Atavan, like that was normal,

like I was normal, like I could be cured

like a housewife is cured,

turned into a soft and colorless footpillow,

turned into a throw rug

or an uncurled hand.

April 10th

The towers we passed had untroubled walls

and speakers, huge like open duckbills crying.

My dad told me a good story about them,

better even than morthbrood or triffids.

As I slept the car became

a train throttling

through a city lit with fish globes

fish hanging belly up

on the sides of buildings, as if sprouted there,

like ingrown hairs.

A city of fish with hatchet mouths,

fish pricking out their orange and terrible roe.

April 9th

A long time ago I lived

in a house with a man

who was being hunted.

When shots came

through the window

he led me upstairs.

In our house

many doors deep

we took the augur herb.

I saw my skeleton

wearing my shadow

come out of me.

Her huge skull

moved slowly on her neck

as she turned.

She told me

it's only starting

to get bad.

I was so glad

to feel his skin

when we woke up.

We went downstairs

for a bowl of onions

in a sweet sauce.

He told me

to keep my mouth full

when running.

My mouth full of salt

the shots rang

behind me as I ran.

In maple trees arching

I ran in my skeleton

and on my shadow.

He will feed me blueberries

on our wedding day.

April 8th

Emily went to the same market every week,

where the cashiers in black button

down shirts took her card and charged her

no money at all. Emily sloped into scurvy

as the weeks curved their way down the year

and the cashiers did not say anything

because they were students, and Emily wore

fingerless gloves she'd taken the fingers off of herself

with her own hand. She held out her card

every week with her left hand and

took it with her right hand that did not wear a glove.

Emily went to the same produce section every week

where her left hand took round citrus fruits

and placed them in the cart. Emily could not bear

looking down to see her cart emptying,

as every week her right hand, under

the sightless and mute shadow of her left hand, took

the fruits out and put them back in the bin.

April 7th

I flew round my cardboard table like a migration

through yards of calico in patterns like

light through fingers,

the red of closed eyelids, blue

of shadows under eyes,

I migrated through my eyes and noticed at last

the stitches I left in my little road

to the places I went back to again

and again and I flapped and scissored my way

through doors that in time I saw

were only painted on and could be

split into pattern pieces when squeezed

between pivoting blades and stitched into

new doors with little rows side

by side like houses I've nested in

and migrated to again

and again I returned to worn flannel and bedsheets grey

and white as untouched wool until I noticed at last

that those places are only painted on

and that in some places in me I am only painted on but in some places

in me I am cutting calico apart in places I once thought solid as houses,

I am splitting miles of calico and stitching

my long road and I am

migrating deeper.

1.
I'm tired of you, Ginkgo biloba,
I'm tired of you. That's why you died out.
Because I was tired of you,
of your single room broken into many single rooms.
A doubled house, a house with two people in two single rooms
who touch against the same one wall.
I no longer care that there is someone else
pressed against the other side.
I’m tired of you, Ginkgo.

I’m tired of you, Ginkgo,
I’m tired of the people who touch the wall between them,
two people that touch the wall at the same time
and touch only a wall.
I’m tired of the way the wall feels, over touched.

I’m tired of you, Ginkgo,
as at times I’m tired of myself.
Tired of my leaf blade,
of being a sacred tree.

This is why you are extinct, Ginkgo biloba.
This is why. Because you never want to touch
or be touched.

2.
Ginkgo biloba you are the loneliest harbor.
I am tired of your delta shape, fanned
like a palm frond, like a palm
pressed to a wall.

Ginkgo you are the steadiest delta.
I am tired of no water moving,
like a snake would to escape its skin
or a body to escape a bed.

3.
Move along the water or in the empty
unloved air of your room.
Cough, throaty, deep in your chest.
Cough reverberantly. Cough a hollow sound.
Cough, Ginkgo biloba.

A ginkgo leaf pulled between my two thumbs
and my mouth pressed to it makes no sound.

So move through the hollows of your many rooms
like sound through an open mouth.