stonewall to standing rock

who by the time it arrived
had made its plan heretofore
stonewall   it had not a penny
thats not true it had several pennies

can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending
instead just tell them to honor the treaty

what can poetry do it
cant not not do nothing
it must undulate w/ the 2:30 pm dance music the sole
patrons at stonewall

there was a shooting in ohio today
the music made me feel a little anxious it was
hard thumping dance music a notch
upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life
the optimum tempo for cpr
I consider downloading a metronome real quick to test it to tap it out but
I don’t want to be ‘anywhere near’ my phone
meaning it’s in my bag on the stool 2 feet from me

there is an amy winehouse video on no sound at least
I think it is amy winehouse
she is at a funeral black and white
there is a stuffed bird slightly obscuring my view of the tv
it looks like a kind of tall pigeon w/ mottled brown
and russet with a white ringlet necklace and black dots
is it a carrier pigeon I wonder I sent
a text to jocelyn at standing rock several texts

are you still on the road
ariana and i r gonna go out there in december
sending love to you
tried calling bt yr mailbox is full
send a sign when u can xoxo
howdy.  thinking of u w love.
hope all is well.  send smoke
signal telegram carrier pigeon 
send love to my twospirits at the
winyan camp.

last night we prayed for her and for zephyr and l. frank &
the twospirits especially at standing rock
there’s no sign of that struggle here but they are selling tshirts commemorating
the other and the six days of riots
led by transwomen of color they later tried to whitewash in that terrible movie
like it was all these hot angry upright downright forthright white gays so ready
for the revolution 
and now people are treating standing rock like burning man

a drink called goslings
videos by the pigeon misaligned with the music
the smell of booze in the air made both of us recoil slightly I saw
or felt it

I’m here to make a poem I was already paid for when I had less than $2 in my bank
account (and I joked I would go right to the bar and buy everybody drinks ) not even
enough for a subway ride and I used the 58 cents I’d gotten for busking for the first time
alone in the long hallway between the library at bryant park and the orange line trains by
the ovid quote ‘gutta cavat lapidem’ water (or a drop of water really) hollows out
a stone.  lapidum a stone or rock ariana once described cd wright’s style as ‘lapidary’
I loved this as a description of writing like the hieroglyphics are
literally lapidary and I told my grandmother about it as we
were driving from mescalero to albuquerque she knew all about the
plants and the names for all the rockforms mesas or buttes or
ziggurats and I said how do
you know all these she said by long observation and
I used to study geology in college I wanted to major in it
but they wouldn’t allow women
to major in the hard sciences then so she
began to study religion
tho she already had medicine

ricky martin on the beach
or is it someone younger sexier
the grand canyon splitting apart
is it an ad is it a video
even the sands at the beach
are bouncing with the beat
the tempo has stayed very similar this whole time a tick
up I suspect from 100bpm

if s/one is mocking let it be tender

                                 for T. Peterson


so what if the magistrate calls you dude
for all the petrogaff in helsinki
what is the idles, the ides to you
the hottest month on record


if s/o is making a mockery
& yew liable to get thwarted
one needs a quiet room
who hands out thir fucking pronoun paradigm at parties??!!


if s/o is mocking
let thir hart be tender
harted. if one can be
not-deformed.

elegy for kari edwards

                                for memorial at Zinc Bar, 23 June 2007, NYC

		I am your sugarplum fairy commodore in chief.
			—kari edwards

		conturbabimus illa.
                                (Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus 
		[let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love])
			—Catullus V.II

damesirs of fishairs
princes reginae
I don't need this botheration
guilded toe in a gendered pension
embedded narcissism
skirts can or could not be worn w/


intentional disgrace
getting oh-aff
I sleep where I sit
gog and magog
ope myopia


sweetness and delight do
it for sidney, as starlover did rue
on star, thir mistress cloying
the lack, with thir poesis toying


twill never hurt
regina prince
alack, areft
locks beset
candle agrove
a buck in a corridor


as like with likeness grace the tongue
and sweets with sweets cloy them among


conturbabimus illa
let us confound them


beasts implored and character impaled
agathas breast in a 14th century pincer anon
7 heads w/ 7 comings on
horns on their horns
wings at their feet and at their wings


well you have three seconds to live
bespeckled apprentice
freckled daylily
a penny uneasily
pleaded myrtle


iron bootblackening
at the speed
we levatate con
there is no missus
I am among


limbed elms
colluding with doves


nor tide nor tail
angels w/ svelte angles


the rub and tug goils
languid as jersey
too early for supper


etc was their pimp
and whatever their sucker
shitslinger
master cleanser


w/ corporate coffee
and torture pâté


my present page
in l-l-livery


old glut
of a beast's spleen
the glory over
lordling socked ajaw


nassau ablog
by fairly a sweepmate a swoopster
bedevilled in gullet
swashbuckld by proxy


homosexuality eh?
red river andaloos
funny albeit friday
all the dork-rock


gender suggests
we levitate avec
held captive
patrón, bothermonger


ah myrtle
why sie is taken
my mind
impertinent parasol


glossy wit promise of salt
caint leave thir cellphone alone
ipode eterna
satellite viscera


muscadetted papillon (that one)


strident
17 stallions
with horns on their heads
and horns coming out of the horns


a papillon
that one


a buck in a corridor
conturbabimus illa
let us confound them


all ridded of giggling
anthropomorphia aghast
DL in the bowries 
the tee hee ambigenuity
of amputee-wannabees


googling tee hee
silly faggot
dicks are for chicks
dicks are for chicks


wicked hee
to bury my heart at
my heart was in my knee

last swan of avon

socalled swan of avon
n/t but a beaurocrat
buggering the buttercups
goy from the waist up


now soldiers're the ones making offers
and fucking caravaggio posters
maybe the artist had bothered about melancholia


suddenly xe finds xemself walking down
some dark corridor


california was truly the promised land
for a minute there
video marlboro
to show us


shoppingcart in dingy water
and then turn melancholical


sign reads no squatting
switchd on the cathode ray
at yr coronation


the bomb droppd w/ regular monotony
leaving us wanting


        a to zed
dampened a grid


satyrical deliria
pan's ballet
in a black tutu


who have the inclination
but even whose   necromancer—
firelit but dried—
—commandeering meadows—
protests were pathetic