The cherry-topped table, round and oblong,
makes scurrilous reference to time long gone
when every woman and every drink
was a sign to his inner swine to think
that never until now had his power full grown
to possess that which is owed to him alone.

Dust bunny cadres under a cross-stitched quilt;
could he find a more suitable vehicle for his guilt
than the dead skin and hair bits that hide beneath
a bedding once used, bringing unrestful sleep,
but derelict now, as life grows weary,
no energy left for sin? Oh, so dreary
the time that is left us, corrupted and without
the space to live outside suspicion and doubt!

when he sat up, and when he lay down,
when he put up his Christmas wreath;

when he looked out the window, to see something he heard;
when he opened up Webster’s, to look up a word;

he could look at a bug that crawled on a leaf,
or put on a hat, and call himself “Chief,”
but no matter what, I’m sure you’re assured,
all that he did, he did like a bird.

The boy’d been alone every day of his life,
he had no one but himself to play with.
The boy had no name because, being alone,
there was nobody there to give it.

This whole fucking project would be near easy
if he just fucking knew what he wanted.
But I sit here and sat there and spat on the windshield
and not one drop of rain got us further –
just falling with shadows cast on the seat
tiny dimples in unblemished upholst’ry
Remember when she sat there?
The veins of a leaf are the roads that I drive on
and nature has no destination.

The office is there, that nodule of cellulose,
that auburn spot is my house;
patches of green are businessless, nowhere,
stuck in between nature’s paths, preset and programmed,
perfectly carrying out an order
that no one has given and no one has heard.
For all its harmony and collective activity
no intention can be found, no free-will or proclivity,
for nature know no destination.

The leaf is trapped on the glass in front of me
the tinkling and cracking of drops in late day
the flat light and grayness make the green all the more
And where was I, when did she sit here?
I missed the office and I’m driving away.

2

I want to remain in a constant state of hunger
until this thing blows over.
I need the weight gone, and climbing to the top
I need the air, the water, and the desire.
The tower will not stand.
I told him I was going, and he told me it was nothing,
but he had not the youth to permit it.
So I left that day (the sun greeted me out
on the green lawn near the dusty yellow road.
Amazing how grass in a desert wind grows
when you water and water and water.)
Now the road chokes on dust and me with it,
I can’t see the way for the bees.
And nowhere, not nowhere, can a man sit down
if he is not in a constant state of hunger.
Rest is a motion, a noise, a momentum,
unchanging as it carries you onward.
I would like to get off, driver – but he looks away,
and through Arizona we leave behind the day.

We live not within the splendor, the world the world adores,
we live among the many things that things alone could savor.
We live among the wood, with oblong corners and nails and knots,
darkened grains are stories formed within the lofty, lumbering lots
and nightly lighted on our wall; our own short lives
do but despise the time the lines remind.
But this candle – see the candle, see her light it just for me.

A carpet floor, a carpet warm, a carpet that we found.
Before our door, the words make clear: you are not welcome here.
There is only so much carpet, see, the world to go round;
if we guard not goods and places found,
we haven’t the wealth to buy it.
But notice now a cinnamon smell, an odor over the musk,
over the dust, the pine, the reconscu alofting in the air –
we smell the sweet smell of the candle now,
that she lit just for me.

We live amidst the spiders,
up in their corners, hiding away,
patient and dinner will come-
We live in plain things, things that are what they are.
The robes we wear are fashion-free
and warm against the cold,
and the does often, unbidden, come, with the dampness
and the brute-strength boars of sickness, death,
But there, the perfect candle, she lit it just for me.

Close together, we warm our hands, on the body each provides;
these hands – was it these hands? These hands, they do not cry –
they haven’t the memory – time slips by unrattling, for them.
But I remember, I looked in the candle, that she lit just for me,
and I thought, “I should leave, to go outside,
the trails out there to walk,
to find the place where I have not gone – before I too have died.

When I was squatting in Philadelphia, I had a friend who created a hoax Myspace page for – well, I can’t say, as he has continued the hoax to this day. He managed to convince the roving bands of traveling crusty punks (all of whom, surprisingly, use Myspace) of his clever deception. That my friend had not only created one of the boldest, most outrageous parodies I had ever seen, but managed to pass it off as genuine, inspired me to try a hoax myself. I imagined we could create an entire universe of Philadelphia lore, that, like his creation, paralleled reality just closely enough to convince the indiscriminate reader. I also had an ulterior motive: as a squatter who wished to remain hidden from roving bands of crusty punks, I sought immunity through rumor. I created an alter ego under my nickname, Normal Guy. (You have one guess who it was who gave me that name.) Among other things, Normal Guy is 6′8″ tall, and own a rottweiler named Maxwell who roams Camp freely (where Camp is the area surrounding my cabin) and attacks any person unfortunate enough to cross the nearby train tracks. The deception apparently worked, at least to some extent: the cabin shown on Normal Guy’s page is in fact the cabin of my campmate Pat, and to this day the travellers mistake it for my own, leaving my cabin virtually unmolested.

The following is my favorite of Normal Guy’s writings. It is a poem for his Taiwanese girlfriend, Xiu Ng. (Nice name, don’t you think?) It is the first poem I have written in many years:

Poem for Xiu

No form opens out quite like a woman
your body next to classical chemical texts
in an old library, but they are all
open to the same page. Moth and butterfly – both
come from the worm, but I do not know what
to think of you. My bookshelves are full, and I know
nothing worthwhile. Your body next to mine,
beside the bookshelves. We both come from the same text
and we read back and forth to each other,
each in the same tongue. I’ve read the first page of each
one, every one of these books. But you give
in no order, and I take the pages and fold
them up in a drawer with pencils and odds
and ends. You would never know where to look, so you
ask. And I read you the first page. And we
come together
under the shelf
like children playing a desperate scenario
and we are there now
and we are not leaving.
Not for anything.

You can read the rest of his stuff here: Normal Guy’s page