Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;

I lift my lids and all is born again.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,

And arbitrary blackness gallops in:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed

And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:

Exit seraphim and Satan's men:

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,

But I grow old and I forget your name.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;

At least when spring comes they roar back again.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

                                                    -Sylvia Plath

The Rhythms Pronounce Themselves Then Vanish

After they told me the CT showed

there was nothing wrong with my stomach

but my heart was failing, I plunked

one of those weird two-dollar tea balls

I bought in Chinatown and it bobbed

and bloomed like a sea monster and tasted

like feet and I had at this huge

chocolate bar I got at Trader Joe's

and didn't answer the door even though

I could see it was UPS with the horse

medication and I thought of that picture

Patti took of me in an oval frame. Sweat

itself is odorless, composed of water,

sodium chloride, potassium salts,

and lactic acid; it's the bacteria growing

on dead skin that provides the stench.

The average life span of a human taste bud

is seven to ten days. Nerve pulses

can travel up to a hundred and seventy miles per hour.

All information is useless.

The typical lightning bolt

is one inch wide and five miles long.

-Dean Young

Not yesterday I learned to know 

The love of bare November days 

Before the coming of the snow, 

But it were vain to tell her so, 

And they are better for her praise

-Robert Frost

Another day, another dollar
I got mines, aint got nothing to borrow
Fuck a role model, never had one to follow
Lot of cottonmouth rappers, I'm a hard one to swallow
Here's another hard one to gargle
Fuck your life, that's the motto
I'm nice with mics, Cus D'Amato
Drug related, blunt guts all up in your condo
Hate a noisy woman, why you all up in my convo?



Let me hold something, look at you killas, like you owe something
Stole something, give me my paper, 'fore I blow something
Right now, give me my fucking shit, chicka-blaow
I want it right now, give me my fucking shit, chicka-blaow
Shady niggas hiding the loot, you see my baby needs shoes
And the record label tryna recoup
I want it right now, give me my fucking shit, chicka-blaow
And I mean right now, give me my fucking shit, chicka-blaow

-Clifford Smith (Method Man), "Gunshowers" from Wu-Massacre

Beyond the ridge to the left, you asked me what I want
Between the trees and cicadas singing around the pond
"I spent an hour with you, should I want anything else?"

One grinning wink like the neon on a liquor store
We were sixteen, maybe less, maybe a little more
I walked home smiling, I finally had a story to tell

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
My brother told me he saw you there
In the woods one Christmas eve, waiting

I met my wife at a party, when I drank too much
My son is married and tells me we don't talk enough
Call it predictable, yesterday my dream was of you

Beyond the ridge to the west, the sun had left the sky
Between the trees and the pond, you put your hand in mine
Said, "Time has bridled us both, but I remember you too"

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
I dreamt I traveled and found you there
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting


    -Iron & Wine (Sam Beam), "16, Maybe Less"

at work i wonder

if i should take anti-depressant medicine

finally, i decide, no, i shouldn't

- Tao Lin

Requiem by Kurt Vonnegut

The crucified planet Earth,
should it find a voice
and a sense of irony,
might now well say
of our abuse of it,
“Forgive them, Father.
They know not what they do.”

The irony would be
that we know what
we are doing.

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.