LOOKED LIKE LAUGHING

clutching a tiny
little prayer-book
in which in every margin
i have scrawled
a poem
to the tide of your
tallow mane

-

you & i
in different keys
our intervals all
inversed & distorted
(you swim over
endless codas,
while i am climbing
ledger lines
up to heaven)

-

I am ready for love
ready for feeling
stoned/alone
in the room with one window
your eyes only composing poems
which peek over the
horizon lines

love is mutual
dutch-ovening
so don’t let any
chinch tell you different
I feel bad for them sometimes
because it’s wonderful
to do the lindy hop
on the mattress
it’s wonderful to sail
through blankets
and by god
it’s wonderful
to lick navels
under the sheets
and sometimes
you’ll give her weeds
bound by string
and you’ll laugh
because this poem
will never be serious
if I include the word
‘glutes’ but we’ve got love
and a fart is nothing
but a prank in the best light
definitely worth a smooch
on the forehead
and breakfast
at midnight

to the house on 8th and 14th court
built with new money and old methods
sitting on a bed of weeds, gnats dancing ‘round my calves
where termites are tenants and floozy cats their friends
with white wooden shingles and shutters like selsun:

houses like you were built with the promise
that it was, and continues to be, June in Miami;
give us wealth and we’ll give you marsh, they chanted
while they poked the soft earth and picketed a board that read

                    WELCOME PLEASE WELCOME
             BIENVENIDOS LOS BIENAVENTURADOS

hello, Yes, hello, women of weak temperance:
here you may wear your pearls and your halter dresses —
allow the amber of your shoulders to glimmer under the sun
and live like a heroine as you amble above branches of palm

and if men be brash and scared and hungry for a name,
step this way, you Rockefellers-to-be, for Yes, we welcome you
no down payments, no credit, no fear of the Prinz Valdemar
no need to put coal in the fire or a coat over your golden frame

              QUÉ TE CUESTA, SAY THE TEQUESTA
     SURROUNDED BY BEAUTIFUL MATURE OAK TREES
         EXQUISITELY LOCATED BY THE MIAMI RIVER

pretty, Yes, but the room arrangements no longer make sense
closets lead to corridors lead to caverns lead to corners —
you’re 87 years old now, your bones wiggle and rasp
the floors sturdy as dentures and windows thin as rice paper

this damn stadium is out of place, as is this love and this town
but it’s still June, the lore goes, so long as we’re above ground

— from our freshly squeezed ROARING FITS OF SUMMER issue

morning spark told me today would be an odd one,
just like the others, and surely did i find on my walk
all kinds of shattered glims spilt happily in the stretched
fabric of sunlight and blue.

do you know what i mean? these are the goofy-gumballs
spinning ‘round my skull and i love them can’t keep them out
i can’t help myself! these are the grinning gem thoughts,
cruising-to-Van-Halen-boys, that drip all around me,
out of my control, twisting shifting and bright-
and who has filters for these but me?

But you too can diamond-dutch a sidewalk and tear
through technicolor medianoches at midnight, pocket full of rubies,
listening to The Posies, brave enough to say something silly
and serious like

what does Aurel Schmidt do?
besides get jacked off to?

I sold an eighth today to two men from Koreatown
and thought it entirely ridiculous could barely believe
it was me looking down at me from the ceiling see
I was gone my mind’s been elsewhere I’ve been
surfing prism mist fuck a prison sentence are you serious?
who on earth could ever contain this? 

that night 
when cold was a dream
and thirst was infallible 
i wandered 
in a desultory silence 
absurdly hopeful 

i passed a newsstand 
boarded and bored
all aboard and abroad 
and quietly foreclosed     

yet still 
the sign burned brilliant white 
black letters fueled my casual gait 
past vacant storefront windows
acting as mirrors 
acting as vocation 
acting as truth 

i stopped
turned left face
and said 
     get off yr high horse
     and splash me four fingers 
but the mirror never replied 

the wisdom never arose 
the effort never finalized 
the recognition never came 

so i just kept walking
south

(that Uschi)

This is fastfurious vin diesel jeans
heart attack highway Heidelberg haunts-
this is twisty shouty tummy alien aches
and how hasn’t this before and how will
this again. 

What do they call this a schloss? From
now on my heart, my schloss, like the halls
in Schwetzingen, wide warped and wonderful.
I wore white patent leather
loafers you rode purple pastel bloomers
and bloomed escapes age sixteen kissing
frenchly
behind drapes.
 
How hasn’t this before and how will this again
that’s the trick and glitzy spin, futile memory of men,
the margin of love seems razor thin.
 
Ballsy blotto blackouts in the bahnhof
saw Uschi Obermaier winking wildly I told her
sloppily though songingly that her brazen ebullience 
made me weep with happiness, made me burst with
sameness and careen nightly skyly and bright-
 
I told Uschi with silent confidence
that I was tilled and new and no one
could klettern über mein Herz
but cable cars are pouring from you;
you and your “hi”s three at a time.

what would I give
to dance with a young J Trav
Thunderclap Newman’s
‘something in the air’
is playing
and all I can think
about is a good pair
of thigh-knee-shin-hugging pants
for your supple frame and my hands
grasping the hem of my very own
and us dancing but really
jumping from cinder block
to parking lot bumper
how fun it is to romanticize Publix
and the Dollar General shopping plaza
kicking Arizona Iced Tea tin cans
into the gravel with these
monochromatic oxfords
that fit a little loose on my heels
remember that these and cherry colas
are for doo-wop summers and that
the same shoes and pumpkin
spice everything are for motown
winters but what’s missing now is a box
of Russell Stover chocolates and
a small memo pad maybe some
mocha suede elbow pads
and a voice recorder to store
a couple of laughs or at least a reminder
of how the air smells when
a thunderstorm passes ‘something
humid and like smoke but the car exhaust
doesn’t help’ but the real gravel lies
in our throats and the real dirt
has gathered under our palms
from sitting on the pavement

who knows how long I’ve loved you
you know I love you still
will I wait a lonely lifetime
if you want me to, I will
— as sung by DJ and Paul himself

NOODLES should live up to their pulpy spelling
they ought to be more than long edible straws
just as the word ELEVEN, I’ve always thought,
ought to be a descriptor beyond its numerical value:
her hair is eleven, as in it is not quite long enough
to hold by a single fist, or the word eleven is eleven,
because it slides off the tongue — eh-lay-ven, 
like smooth alabaster, the softest V, an oleaginous E;  
what a fine adjective it is, deserving of a penny
in a box of Altoids, its very own ring in the coffer

meanwhile, noodles are like currency in your pocket
to be withdrawn as needed: one for every packet of
honey mustard she requests from the cndmnts counter
despite the fact that you hate the taste and the smell,
but for her, you will, and you get two noodles in return;
noodles, you will receive, because they are treasures
in the form of dough and tubes, doubling as telescopes

NOODLES will remain jewelry fit for a preschool queen
stringed along together with yarn like a medal of love
because that’s what you and I and us are about, really,
as we continue to see outside in our pink heart-shaped
goggles; and for as long as this pasta money is all I have
I will keep making garlands of red ziti and yellow bucatini
to adorn your neck as you bang the keys of our Kimball; 
keep yelling ‘noodles!’ to me, dear, so the two Os may fill
the tiny bubble wand pinhole between your pursed lips

each sidewalk’s edge
like an unfurled page
of the book you kept
bent in your tote-bag
after leaving it soaked
on the patio one clumsy
mimosa two days ago.

each restaurant’s face
gutted gladly and laughing
watching your first embrace
with fresh palms interlocked
madly and bursting with blush.

each payphone so silent
just napping in triumph of
endless ageless days where
only your love can grow older
caressing groups of brunchers
gliding by tall blonde girls
who smile while pinning their
ears to their shoulders. 

happy happy happy, Happy Happy to you
to men and women who want and are weary
to you and above you may the Happy drape

to Dr. Starr, with yer brain teasers and sleight-of-hand tips,
your legs so svelte and hair so slick, this one is for you:
thank you dearly for making a chum outta me

and I, laughing humbly
and you, consoling me
assuring me I subtract like 9/10 mathemagicians do
& believe yolk is the plain jane white stuff of eggs
& pronounce m-a-c-h-i-n-e like an Irish surname

thank you for stressing that if we do what we love, 
as you do, we’ll surely get to stay a little bit longer

and Happy Happy to you, kind human!
tonight we celebrate with a road rally down 87th!
I’ll sit atop the peak of the hill at Amelia, wearing brown 
crocs embellished with bugs bound in golden goo,
and I’ll join my lagomorph buds, basking in the unwavering
zeal of living the day-to-day, Happy to know you exist

simple like saturdays
before it’s mowing lawns in tennis shoes
and a quick snack then hinge-fixing before noon:
 
in a fever dream
i thought odd things
like surfing alligators
up the moat to your home.
 
and every sign on the freeway,
every letter on every building,
had been replaced by my own thoughts.
i saw a billboard in bunker hill
that read “i want to eat fourth-meal with you”.
 
i sit in the arts district
whispering ‘petaluma’ ‘petaluma’-
trying to find words that sing
as the sparks do in your name.
 
the gliding, hungry fashion chix
walk by in a cloud of camel blues
and one with a murmuring radio
does what’s what and turns it up:
 
but the disc jockey is me
and for once my voice sounds clean
as i say “all my favorite songs are about you”
and then i
spin the hits-
 
the fog it lifts,
i’m doing the twist!
and you’re smiling at me,
or about to.

the buzz saw cries through mist
and coughs bone, bled, burrowed
along, shaking hands with curly
brillo clouds in my gut melting
precious metals into hawk shit,
tickling copper bound electricities
pinned to decay and keratin.

i can not
answer
the phone.

i do not
know
why. 

goodnight you sickly and fat
swilling night-on-the-town rat,
you beautiful bile-on-her-gown rat.

how brave your festering boils raised
relentlessly, shouting and spitting
your insides without fear.

what the fuck do i care!
you would chant at me
and though i am you and you are
us i could never truly embrace
the rust.

us creepy crawly nasties aren’t made for the long-term
and he left shelled gorgeous gropers like roadside litter
rooted and rallying evenly spaced mile markers
speckling and sparkling during nightfall,
wes’ needles and scraps shoved into his soiled
pant pockets while he grins into stars left parts of him pasted
in the drawing room on hillhurst in tamates in wurzburg
laughing his throat wide fucking open-

wry smile
secret trial: 

.38 special
meet temple.

Rest, finally, In Peace
Wesley Carls
November 11, 1963- June 8, 2012.