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I’m rigorously religious in my approaches to breakfast—crack the egg, toast the Eggo. Patient I pour our dark coffee into a dove white mug. We will
be old soon and gum what’s scrambled in the way our now young minds inefficiently consume their runny consternations. Let us
squeeze the ripening orange for juice, wipe sleep from our mouths, clear the moths of morning, dear. THE MOSQUITOES
She jumps to the tickle of wings as we pour our coffee, often I’m of tenderer skin, hers peeled like a grape from around her nails, by her
nails. She is done ailing, a bell peals in the throat of a close bird, a monkey, a closed in porch. I sour our
coffee with milk, heed need only so much as touch must suffice, surface under the mosquito net wet with ardor. She is so little here sometimes
so riddled with distant riddles she says play faintly on the leaves, ply bark for song, even
as the clouds let loose their baffling contents, she hears sometimes the wings of small things
the mosquitoes and yet she is still content enough with coffee
or an arm around her stomach, some other
warm, soundless offering.
I’m divided By My
Interests, which are like a knife Simple
To say we flay Ourselves in an act Of uncertainty
Better to say—what the throat thinks we drink, like fish
Rising up to the light for flies, or even Like flies rising up to a light For curiosity’s sake Knock, turn, the night opens Its breezy eyelid & we All fall down
Invisibility has so Many eyes
I was a FedEx delivery
boy in a starched blue
outfit. I had been
assigned a monkey
assistant who knew
the basics of English
language. Headquarters
were shared with an up
& coming local politician.
During the big Spring
fundraiser we set free a rare
green bird. From the winding
boulevard, all the buildings
looked vast & ruinous. The bird
flew to them. My assistant
pointed a hairy, bent finger
towards the sky, angered.
“They’re not even good-fake!
They’re just fake. This studio
is the worst!” I just stood there
looking at the fake sky, smiling.
Singing karaoke with the former
President, I forgot my lines and my love
she could not remember them to me.
Out in the fields there are extras
from a movie about extra
terrestrials haunting the kids
or maybe hunting, no way
to know. It all happened
at a rager on a farm outside
Hollywood. I was there.
No, really, I was.
It is the future & my friend
the artist, will only work
his constellations and colors
on the backs of closed doors. Dogs
must mutate if they are
to survive themselves. We believe
there is something looming at the bottom
of the lake, but our machines keep
breaking before we can find
out what it is. The repairman thinks
it’s a sham, but says, “If you believe
there is something looming there is
something looming.” REMEMEBERED DREAM 59
We were forced to abandon
our home for defaming
a certain celebrity, forced
to shove off in an ailing
hovercraft all bedecked
in last year’s Christmas
hoopla. My Great
Grandfather was packed
in ice among the rations.
Out at sea, I bumped
into an old girlfriend.
She was still angry
about stuff.
My pregnant sister in a fit
of inspiration & labor names
her unborn child after
(water breaks) the brand
of shoes she is wearing.
It was an interactive country
club money making conference
meeting. A heavy cardboard
placard, made to look
like a painter’s easel, announced:
“Repetition is the Blessing.”
Free coffee beamed in
its bright silver canisters
along the window overlooking
the impinging green
of the golf course.
I called it “The Propeller”
and it won me first
prize in the annual standing
broad jump competition.
First prize in the annual standing
broad jump competition was a week’s
stay at an exclusive Hollywood
retreat. Mud baths, Swedish
massage, veal stuffed with lobster
stuffed with some kind of tropical
fish. I watched as Harrison
Ford, dressed like my father, pitched
his new virtual real estate bonanza—
proposed name:Vermontana.
I lost a billion dollars of someone
else’s money in the empty
eyes of some hard-boiled
girl in a tennis skirt.
She almost ran me over on her riding mower.
I hadn’t seen her since High School.
She was still living at home.
She wanted to know if I wanted to get stoned.
Her hair was exactly as I’d remembered it.
For her work at the shoe store she was paid in shoes.
Her real name was unpronounceable.
She gave me a Superball the size of a human skull.
It contained only swirls.
REMEMBERED DREAM 111
The girl who’s missing
a leg thinks I’m pretty
nice. We accompany each
other to the evening
lecture on Degenerative Phantom
Limb Syndrome (DPLS).
On the ride over she
decides I have four distinct
moods: anxious, vague, excited
and lost. Oh yeah, I am
also missing a leg. REMEMBERED DREAM 112
I was bobbing for embarrassing
pictures of myself at the 4th Annual
Alumni Embarrassing Picture Bob.
One of the most embarrassing
pictures pictured me bobbing
for embarrassing pictures the year
before. Boy was I embarrassed. REMEMBERED DREAM 150
It was 2003, the year
of the great Polar Horse
migration. Winter had
been hard and our igloos
were in a wild state
of disrepair. In preparing
to film the stampede, we had
underestimated the throng
of rogue horse thieves.
They’d do just about
anything to get their hands
on a healthy Polar Pony.
Dissatisfied with the farm
life allotted to us, we
hid in the fields and jumped
the first low flying biplane.
When the authorities hauled
us back to the farm, we
hitched out the next
day with a traveling nut
salesman. N
full skull
in the decanter of day, lantern of night, high
moon, lower
sun, the morning light that dives
and lies still, lives and dies on the brow
of those mountains
Poems by Chris Martin
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