KETTLE

KETTLE

the kettle
switched itself in
wanting to discover
something about
the physics
of hor water

and me,
not
to get too critical,

invariably in
hot water myself
and thus everything
surrounding me
that has me
penned in here,
likelyto go
off at
   a tangent,
reach boiling point
explode into metaphor

as
fire is my element
and elements
cannot be
destroyed just
changed, or replaced

feel myself combining over
issue of who has
what is needed, is eager
to give, to whom
of counter
inclination is
burning, bursting
with enthusiasm free and
eager to
give

or same, same,
weird as that sounds,
enough to take me way
past my
   threshhold, over
limit
   beyond containment itself

and so
I leave chains, splitting and
shredding, breed
such a kerfuffle

you, guiltless though
you might claim, bystander
though you might be

are simply
swept away, sucked
into my dance

know what it feels like
quintessence
      of Sun
to have
become

to have been
(if but for a moment)
the light
of a star

my kettle
my cauldron
my
    sweet devastation (we
secretly
seeded with)

all
you might ever
                     hope for
ultimately

scrawled here
on this backboard

board
black as
the Universe but
such an
elegant hand




SHINE

SHINE
“Speaking to me.
They wash and
tub and scrub.
Agenbite of inwit.”
     James Joyce, “Ulysses”

are you
warm

warm
inside

full
of insight?

agenbite
  got
your tongue?

cat-like your preen
sunlight making
your fur
(if you
had fur) warm
as toast

questions to ask
before quietus

perhaps it fades
perhaps it
annihilates in
a gathering of stars
on the pavement
in your own
backyard

too little light
but now
all the suns

thought it was a summit
but it was
the sum
of all spectacle

THIRTEEN

THIRTEEN

woke up
in the middle
of the night
to watch Alan
Dershowitz
debate Glenn
Greenwald

over the absolute
necessity of surgical strike
bombing
the shit out
of Iran

which Dershowitz won
hands-down handsomely by
ultra cogent argument
and
persistent
interruption

and being
a Harvard Man

this being the University
that refused thirteen
students
their degrees

woke up
to watch
Alan
Dershowitz

in an alternate
universe where
they had removed
all the universities

Dershowitz
talking the same old
safe-talk
     shibboleth

the clock
somehow gone wrong
gone
hopelessly
intertextual

telling me it is
no time
for peace
for lying secure
in bed
thinking
poetry

already
on the verge
of striking thirteen

LIVESTREAM

LIVESTREAM

I was
a walking stream
of consciousness

a stream of consciousness
walking with a cobra-headed
hard red-wood stick

treating myself to
a slow circumnavigation
of the heart of the farm

on YouTube meanwhile
much screaming & pontificating
about red lines being crossed
and slippery slope
to no tomorrow

tactical nukes even
as we speak ready for
testing
   being wheeled into position

men in their Strangelove
think tanks think
it’s just
  a game of brinkmanship
serious
high-stakes bluffing

and me in my Cassandra moment
thinking about the pressing
of that button
to remove the surprise
from smugness in person

it’s wonderful, what
it can do, what platform
it affords for
all career launching

a prestigious degree wreathed
in ivy league ivy

how in such hands, how
safer than safe their
algorithm would
wish us to feel.