Now I Lay Me
I sleep when I’m tired, wherever I am
I croon to the fridge when I’m hungry, no matter whose kitchen
an open door to growling darkness & uncertain floors
neath a chalky mist of disconstruction
Why am I peeing gasoline
how far can my clothes escape when I’m out of my body
if you’ve never made love to a sidewalk
if the rains never left so many holes in your hand every gesture’s
orchestrated
i could unravel into a pavilion transporting you to an unnamed
mythology
leaving you dazed & lubricated, slightly taxed &
spiritually attuned
When I do an upright somersault crossing 4 lanes the pigeons turn
into gift cards;
a halo of applause I’ll redeem for the days first window
like a police car turned into a fruit cake we keep regifting
as the buildings add more floors the street must trim its budget;
as cars get wider & more must park tween fewer lines
got my armor from the u-pull-it & prepare to slay the
petro-dragon
One song for the exhaustion over taking us
one song to convince the sun to forgive again
Arriving
the hand would knock, would find a knob to turn. a dour door
diorama—
just finding a tree wide enough these days, of goldilocks density,
straddling the bow and the rib, tension when everything is still
things you have to bend to get in, be it room crowd
or university,
to get into my old uniform, out of the many-form, the mostly blue
and loose
the synergistic contact field of costume and identity,
the same song on another frequency requires different moves, a
bump in volume
is that snow, glitter or some unexpected coagulate of the air and
what we put inside it
shower before bed and wake in new clothes
as the less dogs go outdoors the more they run in their sleep
scratch to open, squeeze and turn bringing knee to nose
focusing on an upside-down pine inhaling the studio through
polypore windows,
cellular alveoli, dervishes of constant transport
the wind owes nothing,
the wind collects but has no pockets, no skin to bruise
that cloud with a hanging dog penis whose end unfurls to a
starfish
swallowed by the ocean that spawned it, what clouds can do for
teeth,
what wind can do to efficiency--wait until the door stops to
enter;
hesitation may indicate contraband.
did i get the address wrong or is this the right house in the
wrong city,
the area code in my pocket, the impatient streets this map
ignores,
why do i have to be the moving part and provide my own
lubrication,
signing a maintenance contract is waiving your rights,
replacing filters i never had, adding belts that clash with my
atmosphere
turn the key, press the pedal, close your eyes and scream some
song--
a big cup of electric guitars the only caffeine i need
Hunger
Town
4
medium cost the same as 3 large
depending
on who you’re feeding, where they’ve been, what we started with
not
counting the drinkage and druggage, gasoline fumes, winter or summer,
what
we can shoot along the way, whether they cut the pie into 8 or 10,
the
radius of the sun bringing down several trees with its double axles
randomly
studded smoke-tread hanging from the vine like clouds from a sprinkler system
i
pulled up for chicken but the suit was too small,
a
transgalactic pickup trying to dot an asteroid,
share
the protein as you want--that’s not my hand inside the glove
sprouting
feathers like an instant forest convincing us growth is easier,
the
weather is our puppet, water just happens
eat
what you can catch, what you can afford, when no ones looking
don’t
let those pizza crusts go to waste, whats the interest rate at the food bank,
free
the seeds, a fence means youre paranoid, a road means youre running away
banished
from the local coz the cows no longer speak your language,
like
changing channels but you cant change back, someone replaced the satellite with
art,
electrified
oil in unsettled water as the pool liner evaporates in rapture
koi
ghosts reclaim their skin from the lungs of the neighborhood,
herons
we all have to pay for, this close to the river i dont want gravity to know
grass
explodes sidewalk
the tallest not always first to go but soon
or anyone out in the middle
who would think of going against the
stream and the wind
random invisible furniture
when the feng shui is perfect the
building transcends
rivers reverse,
clouds pulling up,
we
ascend mountains and get elemental, broader-spectrumed
how
is a thunderstorm like a drive through restaurant,
carwash
re-automated to deliver, hot and seeping, we are not what we eat:
food
is fuel, work is paycheck, nothing this tasty is given away
For
a couple decades, Dan Raphael has been active in the Northwest as a poet,
performer, publisher and reading host. His next book, Everyone in this Movie
Gets Paid, will be out summer of ’16 from Last Word Press. His current
poems appear in Big Bridge, Peculiar Mormyrids, Caliban, Tip of the Knife and
Streetcake.
