What She Said to Me

She said:

The line
breaks make
all the fucking difference.

She said:

I'm so sick of poets
extolled for standing still
or doing nothing
with such great skill.

She said:

Don't worry 'bout me,
baby.

I got nothing to give.

She said:

This ain't no down
the throat drink
I'm asking for.

She said:

Merry Christmas,
bitch.

Buy This Rare Edition of THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU

Seattle, WA & Fayetteville, Arkansas: Mill Mountain Press / Lost Roads, No. 7-12, 1977.  First Edition. Softcover.  Very Good +.

First Printing. A Very Good+ 
copy of Stanford's magnum opus,

published the year before he committed suicide.

A 542-page stream-of-consciousness poem,

written in one sentence. This copy has a section

torn from the half-title page, as if to write a note

to Stanford himself! But it is gently read.

(Oh, that all our spines would be

gently read as this copy of Stanford's magnum opus!)

The spine has vertical creases and there is something crossed

out in marker on the inside rear cover,

but overall (and despite the flaws)

the book is in very clean, collectible condition.

A cult

favorite

among poets and slowly

gaining broader recognition after the 2000 reprinting.

This book is quite scarce and rarely comes

(or stays)

on the market.

Additional photos available upon request.

Shaking the Candy Tree

The girls jumping rope sang

I had a little bird.

Her name was Enza.

I opened the window

and influenza.

When my mother took sick

I wanted to crawl in bed with her,

but it wasn't aloud, don't you see.

Billy Sunday sang

Let's pray down this

epidemic of sin.

And there was fun in that for me,

until it became too painful.

The mailman brought the flu to our town.

Momma's fever rose so high

her hair turned white

and fell out.

I kid you not.

She opened her eyes,

and it was daylight.

She opened them again,

and it was night.

Better to do the wrong thing,

my father said,

than nothing.

When my mother died,

the shine went out of everything.

You know this epidemic,

though you have forgotten what to call it.

Jimmie's not here

is what my best friend's mom said. 

Where is he? I said.

Let your mother tell you, she said.

For the first time

and forever

I understood that we are not safe.

Nobody is safe.

You know what I mean,

but you don't remember its name.

Author Reading 

Strange Matters Regarding Which the Contrary of the Truth Sometimes Is Believed

               “For they are concealed things; none of them has been

                set down in any book.”

                          —Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed

Our dark sayings are a well, the waters of which lie at a great depth

and cool, a text for understanding obscure matters. This, too,

is literally what we say, may our memory be blessed.

There is a drowned pearl, but we do not see it and do not know it

is no longer in our possession. We dropped it down the well.

We tossed it as a wish into the water. May we find our wishes—

words fitly spoken—waiting for us in a parable of many words, 

not every one of which adds  to the intended meaning.

Maybe some words embellish like filigree traceries. 

Maybe some do not. We understand this well, for we cast 

our voices across the waters, and they refer to other words 

in the great complex of words. We know this.

We drape our words in the attire of a wily-hearted harlot,

riotous and rebellious, her perfumed bed, her alluring speech

and lips enticing husbands from their wives. The outcome

warns against pursuing pleasure and desire. The proximate

matter resembles the proximate matter. How can we

submit to our words?  Sacrifices of peace we owe ourselves?

This day have we paid our vows? What subject do we sing

by our words? We have decked our couch with coverlets,

but our lover is not home. If we admit our spoken words 

are typically adulterous, yet we do not inquire into all 

the gestures of such parables, nor should we wish to find

significations corresponding to them. Sometimes it is enough

for us to gather from our remarks that a given story is a parable,

even if we explain nothing more.  

Do not hasten to refute us, for that which you understand us to say

might be contrary to our intention. Rather, thank God—oh blessed

name—and be content with what you have understood.

Hey, Baby, There Ain't No Easy Way Out

Tom Petty & the Heart Breakers knew
the distance between heaven & hell
is in the handcuffs of the hanged suicide.

The voice of America rings out loud & clear

in this unique anthology of great

American poetry

is what I read to her

the first night we kissed.

No shit.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody

must've kicked you around some,

& so on.

She stole a bottle of her bruised mother's best

Patron, and we tipped it under Crockery Creek's dead bridge.

We listened to Tom Petty & the Heart Breakers

on the 8-track in my old man's pickup.

Oh, Jesus Christ & Holy Ghost & God Almighty—

we got down with that music.

Ravenna, Michigan, was cold & wet that spring.

Going home past midnight, the pickup kicked

& slid down muddy Rollenhagen Road.

Oh, sweet Jesus,

the washboard roads of my youth

gave me a school bus hard-on twice a day.

Each morning walking high school hallways,

I held my books across my zipper

like the groin-protector I wore

years later patrolling alleys in Iraq.

She wrote things in her diary

I can't think about right now,

but she wrote things

I read after her mother found her

hanging in the garage.

I saw her dive

naked from the high banks of Crockery Creek.

I saw her dive

& kiss that destiny.

Don't come around here no more.

Hey.

Give it up.

Stop.

Don't come 

no more.

Mario Vargas Llosa Says the Gulf Coast Is Open for Business

He says Not

the melody of a tune

but the chords beneath it

the under-half of my heartbeat.

Two saxophones fight

he says

like dogs on a dirt road.

Two saxophones fight

like Magic and Bird on a parquet dance floor.

How different sounds

unexpected notes

melt in a broad delta

he says.

Rivers of music mingle.

Sure enough

Vargas Llosa rings a doorbell

in Vicksburg Mississippi

and who stands in the doorway

wearing a real thin nightgown?

Tom Waits akimbo and singing

How the angels gonna sleep

when the Devil leaves the porch light on?

Vargas Llosa says it's how it goes

when God's away on business.

Go Figure

And aside from collapsing a few

Personae into each other—

Anyone can love Romaine Brooks’ work

If not her—how big a fascist bitch

remains to be seen

 

Natalie was the one

Who financed Pound

And she was one

Quarter Jewish—

 

Go figure

Gertrude was a big fascist

Supporter and Eliot and John Dewey—

 

Go figure

 

Figure

Today’s neo-Nazis

Or Neo-Nazi America

How Can I Love You Romaine Brooks?

The stout party was Gertrude Stein

You said and  Picasso was there

Toting his quick avant-garde guitar

You said it

Belied the most normally reliable walk

Home each night

That's the night we met

Romaine Brooks

My sister Janis Joplin was unborn yet

When we met

Romaine Brooks

After Gertrude Stein got her hair off

She was a proper Roman emperor

You said before then

With all that hair-flop back of her head

She was uptight California matron all the way

Wonderful cucumber sandwiches 
In spite of everything

When you walked the streets of Paris

Romaine Brooks I saw you

Wounded by sensuous everythings of the moment

Possessing and caressing

Dressing and compressing now

I swear I saw you

Expressing entire worlds of now

O cripes Romaine Brooks

You took off the top of my head with your art

Do not follow the cow you said

The wife was a love story

Shoved deep in the pocket of her blouse

The full tits and the song

The ways of reading your paintings

Did I tell you Romaine Brooks

That my little sister Janis Joplin was not yet born

When we met?

O sweet Jesus

Cry baby

Welcome home you don't you

Want to cry baby cry cry baby

Welcome you home

Searching for the great sentence

All these years these misplaced decades

Finding only quaint words for everyday life

Right there

O good God though

Good-good-good God though

Settling for the everyday uninspired lover

Right there in Von's Bookshop Lafayette Indiana

Where we last met Romaine Brooks

Where I showed you my scars

Told you my final lies thin fabrications

Janis Joplin would one day buy baby

You never fished though

Except at your table

Where we fished

After you held up something

More than you were prepared to give

That's not when I fell

Fell in love with you

Romaine Brooks

Yes it was and you know

All I got was twenty-five fleas off two tom cats

You left behind

Beyond its tortured anthology the day we met

Left small rabbit turds along the sidewalk

O Janis Joplin my rough sister

Would one day sand that song into soul

Your life belonged to you Romaine Brooks

So we could own our own our own whatnot

Because you asked all the right questions

You suffered that terminal period of writer's block

Just like my sister Janice

Maybe five minutes before you died

O how you loved Ezra Pound and James Joyce

I hated you for that

Because you like Pound were a fascist

And Joyce was a such a turd

Close behind you

I closed behind you

Closed every door behind you

There are many ways of carrying out sabotage

Romaine Brooks I love you

Fascist bitch