SHAPE

Shape the hammer in your sock habit
claw napping , flake a corn
Gasp; Left lit a window from the frame,
vending an oyster for its pearl
haw damper than a list, you
flay page, cop tent ative the loom
fuzzy face, foci of facts: dead
beauties (of whose delicious [tactical pause]
typing at the craw loomer what you caging lathe
the tubmarine or sending coughing
fragile wind shimmers, but straight
right compands clarity of clicking heartbeats
hah, falls inside your pants like a greasy nickel
just eat your long top meat your
sweet white meat (proudly she stands, erect
as a picket fence) the only things that grows
stumble, flatly heaving through the grass
blunt heap of steaming clod hall
the sodden remembrance of you, ritually
wrapped in scenes so green so
lockerhead I never foldered you, shorted than
was tumbled flablike toward the stunning tree
his abandoned grin shouldered little twin
lesson nates shining in the hot white air.
The bloomed ham hell hair
held once heat heathen exhaustion he breathed
heaping all the gravel in a bowl
who will carry the coffin? asks the griffin
gripping the plate of limp ham the
corn hair plucked in the wind
        says Moon-smoothly it makes a dream's
way of sounding hypertoxic
dog-fed, lunar, lap-tied, sugar
blunted, smoldered in the tuna salad
to walk on water? the riddle is
(besides, of course, green) was gruntly
severed like a loaf you treasured.
Drive the clock to ground suddenly
jerks the body forward, and in a sometimes
place of surer dark boxes slathered
with a ringing phone and wheels
of string—
       the woman leaning
from the window puts my hand
on her
       bodyscars

Half the smoke is cream,
potent catalyst, empty shafts of air halt,
the truss speech coughing in a corner
green screen drawing graphs, two times
pi e flatter dope guzzled, laugh
shadow on the beet; I am already
sprung outwards (how a god must have
wept
wept radioactive sand falling on the
lake your face
dirty as infinity smeared
death's cheeks or
ham clustered in the sink ah
flight of swords!
dancing down the green street tiny
sharpening sky
growing in the cream-throated garden
where the hair ice flows!

The long loops swim
with the short love letters...
that is, of a day, a lap, a
glass of milk, lung crawl space, a
tube and phone, road reverse,
reverse road, she runs backward
away from the castle, drawkcab
yawa morf eht eltsac light spins, a
cab sinks in the mud, your bloodbody
cracking open, your face imprinted
with mudclouds, you say
nothing, but a thing no
t strings gleam in the head
lights streaming a pale
glister ham loom gashed with
foam and lice, the hair ice should follow
you inward.

Slake the hammer, clod your
clock rabbit law, the gasp and lisp
of pretend[ing] monsters ("fuel")
shifting in the toilet a scintilla
of last night's love a reminder
of last night's winning dinner a
cage of lustered water
filled with hats and combs
and spongy brown clumps I wd
never leave entirely to you and
sweating. Flags snarl in the
trees out there I said your
hair folder to where I said
your bodyscars fold and sodder
flack happy like a codfish like
a lugging engine, trip your face and
dry your ears with a soaked
sheep. but only, perhaps, like
daylilies and ink spilled in your
hair something clanking in your pants
our jagged hands blind dig for horizon-wet
ness, bones damp sponges
and a frigid french-fry rolling in the
dust beneath the seat
dancing in the resurrection
music a coca-cola pummeled hard your
uvula undulation, unless,
focused, frantic, framing, fac
simile, froglit from be
neath the treeline hopefully bind
four frames of a festering bed
of vertigo oops slopps your
hat spins for hours your
mouth was full of eyes
and your ears
were full of hatpins
prick
ing the hell out your of head
hacking the interglacial
sky.

Bees clean your face I
thought the clam calm drained your
clubfoot knocking on the shower wall
and no skilled hands
or the silk of your tongue
come rearing out the tree
sap before the warm rock
washes the soapsuds from the north
flinging jugs among rocks damps finger
clung loot rant test the redduhs
retsil breath a corner heave my cor
pse ahead heave my car
over the lake over the rocks
drowse the breeze be very clever
at imitation speak or don't
speak, browse ham or don't
seek, fly drops or steam
the wet cubes, the trussed
blunders blurring
proffers sun as angelwing dances
around the building a cord of flesh
hanging by the fan book ash

already zeroed in to inexorable counterclock-
work meat I taught you to sit and sharpen
your breath

pages leaving in the wind your
groped face guttered and
banging in the clock

says a short talk dreamwalks
through your moonface back luggage
filled with drains your meat mist combed your
tie leg dancing in the sky yellow hair
corner low-hanging
clouds in variegated directions tangled
laundry falling in the alleys
sleep beneath the garage your
long oil mouth gathers
things shackled and cuffed
unrolling and paradoxical
haired and hell-hammed
hooped and humping clangers
smoking in the parking lot ah
drapes and wurst! begins to shred
like this shrugging batteries in that
remaking of what was once believed
was once relieved before the bowl your
cat was scrawling in the light rising grey in the
window spattered with salt

and holy excrement the greasy nickel
clanking down the altar before the room
of chairs with the sun flung
shot the hairs and gasoline you
lit and turn, split and form, pencil
shavings, supercooled cumulous
color slant wish cloture dressed the
drowning sky muddy with
your shoes which I measure with tape
worms while she stares out of a painted
face ham hair swishing in the wind how
did your seizing fall your thripping shadow
grunting on the windowsill oozing just plain
oxygen on the shrill white paper a mind so
bendy he ended up looking a bit overcome.
But claimed, asleep with head on the road, his
single shoe filled with blood, three crows
twitching in a tree

with breasts like leaking babies and a rush
of pure winter, lungs collapsed, the
"peaceful" laid out to dry, your facial rotting
under pungent moon, indigo hands patting
body down dry ladder beneath your
back to carry you the rung ice melts
in ham hands balancing oxygen
molecules that I use to keep contrast
from claiming you with crude instruments.

This was ringed with gruel and breath this
was hung with slivers naked with a toothache was
a root of collected gum and following sadness came
cavity-kill whose job was to upset order tespu
redro boj collected nasal receipts clogging the drains like
hair or gravel a frigid french fry falling far down
dangling precepts (you never know who might
be listening) empty skull
shading right through you
fork stunts
boot
truss your face

orange-and-out the magnetic circle form
Less establishes and releases energy
between the tiny clauses slip
shod, ankles, angst, traced the hand across the ice
across the shape of the hammer in your sock
habit
at
stringing and restringing the rigid wires the
condom filled with razor blades stretched
tight against your cheek
where the formfilled forms and you once killed
her just by standing next to her, all the accumulations
of letters, the only sun that shone with premonition?
BACK: to the endless diurnal rise and set slap sunk debt
tube whipping in the current your tummy stun nuggets
drop ping s lake butt er dizz y (foaming in the h ole

what's that bee do ing say ing , I want to re turn
to normal my shoe will arrive as foretold I will lose
your slappy hand happy hand the world is a tomb
this is your room this is your comb your
tooth ah cheese sweating in the sink your tumbled ham!
Placent a not es colder than a spoon--this is magic! it is passionate
at the margins of a phrase so minute (out of whatever it is)
as if a chicken's neck had twisted sideways
spurting staples your penciled feet clacking back
wards bright with stones and needles
O taste and see savor hungry plucking fruit--what's in it? a hump
on my back inimical pardon me clamor me stammer
me uh tent ation flan ker dop ler hasn't, what you,
tread depend the shoulder asking the day of the week
he acts out bending the trap
door "a son" says his man "who never makes a left
move in his life who thought the dollar was wrong" know the orange

sickness we think this is was nadir or just plain
sloppy luftlife speeding back the mattress factory clung the
noom butter lack clustered to girls who live in the bottom
of mountains; my trouble, doctor, is i see a monster, threadbare
and dashing to the seven color void where the wind whispers
breathlessly the lunar blacktop streaming with your
offal, milk leg knife blabbering in your stomach the girls
squealing in the stone too excitable I tell you nobody watched
this before to turn my hands over and have them be utterly empty--
to be defined by 14 flowers or 14 gates like
wind locked inside the hall where the shapeless skirts
smear the walls with preserve-my-shape-I-am-coming-home
I have unrolled the black thread invested in the silence of this
place so it sounds like a good-bye was it high was it
clouds slumping toward the hill

John M. Bennett & Michelle Greenblatt Oct 2005 – Jan 2006