AGAIN AGAIN
a wrinkled fold obscures my dashing nonsense from an unfair audit,
its limbs engulfed in sacrosanct invitation to glory,
redeemed on lamplit avenues throughout a receding daylight.
there’s much more room to breathe.
I relinquish every tired motion to a heavy wind w/ no hands,
lambasting my happiness against worlds of wonder.
will I raise the bank?
our construction seems to halt at all the offerings in front of us.
time?
free beings?
a wondrous consequential moment resulting in resounding death & bright light.
I know you’re out there,
like something hidden for a long time now brought out into safety,
as light & moist as if fresh born.
how do you do it?
the calculations got me in a pit & now there’s hardly a way out of it.
my engineering never let me down before;
I expect to make a mothball out of the situation.
a timid color snakes up from in between the grass,
waving its long tail across my eyes.
it flashes brightly & sticks its tail into its mouth,
rainbowing vividly all the while.
FORTUNE FELLER
this incomplete ballad
will retract all the invisible lines
in its arsenal,
causing strange ruptures & swells.
we circle around its center
in rapt admiration
& unspeakable understanding.
because destiny is like a blind camel,
trampling the lives of men,
innocent & inhuman.
we walk slowly over hot sand,
following illusions to their demise.
we stop infrequently,
& when we do,
it might have never happened.
so we shimmy up the poles of this structure,
riding downwind to the archipelago.
we’re gently caressed by the wind
that supports us from underneath.
are you looking for it?
are you investigating vividly enough?
to arrive means enduring a terrible crash.
but it evades us,
keeping itself a safe distance away.
we are known for our crudeness,
& these dark halls
don’t need our assistance.
they’ll crumble as we long for them,
an interminable ocean away.
STRETCH EVENT
this trapeze w/ legs
swings insatiably
to another hemisphere,
weightless in its volley,
translucent in ascendency,
opaque on the way down.
this whirlpool filled w/ spikes
excites my degradation
in a sweeping, symbolic gesture.
my teeth are running marathons in my head.
this corpulent candlestick
denies many a tempter
as it achieves redundancy,
hidden in its rows
from any terrible justification.
crisply, it submerges the will of the other
into a perfect darkness,
silent in its grandiose beauty.
this limping hampshire
raises its knuckles brazenly
at impending opportunities,
cloaking its brown
in a wonderful ready-rod.
I’m frustrated in opulence
at your method of assistance,
it does me no good.
is everyone deaf?
this must be a game,
it can’t be sincere.
a tortured simulation’s just as good.
WATERFOUL
do we swim below the skin of this bleached-out art?
I make waves into puddles,
diminishing type & tremor on the line,
caught along in all the awesome terror.
I sprinkle out small resources
to attenuating lemongrass,
a miser in the tiling of the walls,
a 3d object folded up & flat
whenever loose groups accuse
this makeshift undertaking.
there’s a chirping in the silence
that fills it up like water,
bits of sound filling every contour
of the narcoleptic landscape.
some number of brazen exits
dot the lost geometry
of these future ruins.
they must have served their duty,
both reliable & mocking,
the thing you never wanted to use
but insist upon owning.
it’s a contract agreement
born from tedious mutualism.
the one bears down upon the other.
I’ll end up apologizing in advance –
before you get a chance to speak.
we’re both adorned
w/ patience & dandelion necklaces.
I’ll see you from across the frothy bay.
WORKING FOR ARNOLD
one delayed brigade
sold my sparkle
for a mystery,
my lustre for a darkness.
this rock lair does not
diminish the intention
of a bomb in the mail.
problems are all we’ve got left
in this gnashing technicolor curiosity.
I’m unplugged from my boundary
in electric applause,
caterwauling in an excess
of grace & stupidity.
we water the animals helpfully,
wide awake while making angels.
I swear that everything is too old
and it’s fading like sunset.
to not reach my abundance
would not frustrate me;
a simple verse recited
juggles all the town.
propped up to form a cover,
this convalescent snowscreen
builds reactions in its stable.
this destined core,
this reach of wonder,
it silences us slowly.
we wander its parameter
as we extinguish all the fireflies.
they look pitiful in the dark.
PRICK M’THUMB
in fractured sideways beams
of intensified hush,
a swelling demiurge
engorging like a peach
does thrust its lifelike
spitting image in the towel.
a circular, while sitting,
thing, caught up in why
the steel plays baby-faced,
rotates, calm aboard
a tingled spire.
I’m left to all my bureaucrats
in sashayed faces,
thimbling a natural disorder
in the ranks.
the twenty times
that this occurs
are enough to achieve
a post-haste celebration.
let’s leave the lumber
where it’s lost in the daytime.
I never ever had a hope
as long as this, once.
HUNGER RADIO
will I lick split & go aping my way
like thermal patterns? directing a loose
wayward miracle into docking position
as an entire massive supplement
to desirable behavior. will I make my
rattle to a siren scream below
any timed temperature or narrative arc
in my pattern? I let slip come
loosely & liquid across varied
memories of labyrinth nexus
corporations & vanishing hallways
in mist & fog, shrouded unkindly
like namesakes underwater in
tanks of containment, rigid antechambers
that stain my sunburn w/ the
heart of the moment. its brilliant
exodus allows much tinier fates
to pass thru without snagging
their timber against the grating.
I delivered the hunger radio to the
newspaper stand as an offering,
imagined windows closing behind
me & shifting me from view
in reverse, a strong tincture &
theoretical accomplishment, we did
it old & newly. this bowl
reverberates w/ lots of sound,
& glows like one ashamed to have
once been acquainted, & then
forgotten or at least ignored
in time, at the edge of
a radial area, cast to the last point of breaking.
THE GREY VIOLIN
ten times the number of things in this
room is a secret number that untidies
the floor of the basement from forms that
need to be signed, set up & ready to go.
it couldn’t really be done now, segments
of circles stuck in the wheels of a
continuing moment that cannot be
stopped long enough to be deconstructed
unless they grabbed hold of the earth
entirely, grabbing tiny w/ their
metal claws, hooking into the grooves of
the ground which they hold on to as
the track starts to rotate upwards
& over, circular & slow in a
grand type of lumbering slowness,
impressing a feeling of greatness
& massive monumentality to all the
quiet monks sitting on pillows w/
their shaved heads on the white
beach by the bay.
there blew a terrible wind out of
a violin painted grey in the lobby,
encircling the square room in
cold silence that could not be
broken by beeping or vibrations.
there is no fish tank. it’s a
human tank! the pictures of words
are cut in half. egg yolk & tinsel
drape a lovely blue portico,
unripe moonrises detest a tame
sarcastic embolism, especially
under the circumstances, & who
could ever be quite so rude?
there goes the beeping again, &
again the grey violin. it’s split open!
STAINED LIGHT CANNISTER
track me back to my point of origin,
the awful & great game of fairness
that is not entertainment. the biggest
problem is denial, & in the final
stages this becomes physical.
me, jesus & my doctor were busy comparing
printouts of our discharge receipts in
the stairwell, gone are the days
when this was just between my accountant
& their bothered third party.
I need a baseline cascade to
employ my social mobility, bringing
me home in the fourth generation,
crazy as hell in a puff of
smoke & hi, ho silver! there are
signs & symptoms to agree to.
mary & mallory dragged me to the door
yelling “sign this!” & they were getting
ready to go broke, victims of a
catastrophic illness. it’s easier
to die than to stay well.
thrust a stake thru the heart of
a chronic offender who will be very
upset when he hears the news.
tolerance was our first major warning.
it was an early sign that was
better than the others, given the environment.
this is when things started breaking down on me.
what could I do besides get to shaking,
pulling together the islands of fiji?
“THERE’S A BLIZZARD IN THE RAINFOREST”
dan the bandit wrote a ballet. it featured all the latest homicides & wacky creative kindling. did you reckon to venture the fly on the wall as a transportation obstacle? if you lay down on the sunflowers they start to grow sideways. twelve matadors later the latrine is starting to sprout, jack-in-the-box turn-cranks deliver satisfactory molecules to the alien scientist. “this latest discovery is less than satisfactory,” as awards & medals rain down from the ceiling as applause. “is there anything else like this out there?” the lab technicians were busy lighting candles on the balcony & trying to summon ghosts w/ sincere promises & if we’re being frank, by begging.
the executioner was late & when he finally showed up he was drunk & on fire, he had shaved his head sullenly & was now filling balloons w/ chocolate pudding in the dark. his cook had fired himself so as to never have to serve a single hair-pie to the masses any longer. the electric cables fumbled w/ the fable of a place that’s been lost to memory. sometimes we try to hide from the things we did as children.
sloppy jim, the doctor, had his hazards on in the elevator. “there’s a blizzard in the rainforest!” he screamed as he ate his jello. the runts & realtors of the torn had all come to say goodbye, waving their frowns inside an hourglass. the delivery radish wanted polka-dots on the radiator, & the delegate from cyprus recycled all of her overalls. remember when I said that you still had spraypaint around your mouth? I lost the keys to my persuasion in a situated sand dune, burrowing like a mole thru the sand.
a wildchild handkerchief came sliding sideways down the glass hallway. it finally reached the frog in the american flag sunglasses, pouring hot coffee all over the thermostat. I cast a spell on evil marvin from the payphone on maryland; the icicles around my nose keep growing longer. I had a honeymoon w/ a dustbunny, & I’m finally happy to be starting my new life in the everglades! hugs & kisses, can’t wait to meet your cat.
-shooby
CATALOG OF DAUNTING WILDFIRES
think of the grand scheme of the
world – it’s really slippery but it’s
not easy to miss – we could look
in a different direction, or directly
at the sun as an elevated perspective.
what kind of profession do you want
to adopt when you go to australia
for your psychosis exams? I would
force myself to take things seriously if
I were you. your name sings
in the yellow choir – there is a
reason that I embrace flytraps
& ziplines – we order from
the catalog of daunting wildfires –
I don’t want to benefit something
w/ the wrong intentions – the old people
of this city are washing their
tireswings w/ acid rain –
there’s no pinball in the aquarium –
we went to a weird festival where
the audience smashed guitars against
lamborghinis – what a funky state
of affairs! there were all these cool
missionaries lining up at the
middle school, putting starfruit
in the food processor – the table sugar
melted onto the ceiling tiles – if I
had a heart I would name it
trevor, & we would sing a
country duet.
Colin Ferguson 