I´m sketching peanuts and vegetables. They keep growing little arms and legs. Everything takes on a human form for some reason.
Montauk
Maria, John and I have been out to Montauk to look at the lighthouse. On our way back we stop at a little bar by the docks. I order my first oyster and chase it down with a chilled beer. I become filled with a warm love for the Atlantic.
Crows
She tells me that all the thousands of crows in Long Island sleep together in one communal nest. At least it’s a nice thought.
In the street
The Luma Restaurant
Tropisms
I´m sitting at the edge of a small artificial lake outside The Palace of Fine Arts, when suddenly a large seagull crashes into a tree and hits the ground not seven feet from me. It swiftly gets to its feet and waddles off a short distance to stand with its back turned to me.
I discreetly try to sketch the bird, when it turns, embarrassed, and asks me not to.
Väddö Island
Sidewalk Café
We’re having coffee at a sidewalk café in Trapani, Sicily.
I’m sketching on a pad. A man from Tunis stops at our table and asks me if I’d be willing to draw him a wolf if he bought me a beer.
Pirated Goods
It´s really hard to beat a track suit that carries both the Adidas and the Nike logo.
Primary School
The father of one of my classmates has hanged himself in the living room. Using his tie.
Travelogue
I´m about four years old and running a high fever. In the side window of a taxi I watch an inverted cartoon. Abstract day‑glo figures zooming around against a black background.
Next to the train station
Jacob and I sit in a bar close to the train station in Karleby. A drunk, who sits at a table next to us, offers us lollipops. We take one each, that we save for later. The man insists that we have more, and he tells us he is catching a train shortly. Somewhat later, when we remind him of the time, he wants to give us even more lollipops. All of a sudden he looks sad, rolls up one of his shirt‑sleeves and shows us a big swastika tattooed on his arm.
The Skeleton
My brother told me he had read that someone had found the skeleton of a gnome, in a wall of one of the old houses on Skansen.
Bookstore
Among all the books, is one that is small and black. So plain and small that I cannot take my eyes off it.
When I open the first page I am surprised. It’s a passport to the Kingdom of the Dead! Ready for use,
after sticking one´s photo on it. The text is in Spanish. I don’t buy it.
The Deli
A zombie works in the deli on the corner of Broadway and 149th W.
His hair is white, and he sells meat.
Jean’s Illumination
The funny looking figures – bodies flat
Pressed into stone wall and inky washy sky
Invisible to the hand that can knock over
A cup or curious dog and the tall horse that stares
Off into the tall trees transition of silk wool
And sniffing of clues of supper out the page
Whereby what’s that in the gravy, hmm, in the certain
Slant of leaking weeping god in gold in straw
In the wide glassless window too far from
All that the us and the her and the them they fear
And what’s that son, what’s that what’s the use
Of the rainbow flexing in her hand mirror
Gentle as sand is to move always subject to change –
Meet me halfway today.
Dear Ovid,
Tied down and impatient for vultures,
I look surgically across uninhabited land.
Hours later and the horizon is as clean
as a hummingbird’s jerk. I curse the plane
I jumped from, my porcelain ankles.
Cacti bowl shadows of mud at my pathos.
By nightfall it all still matters, just less.
A shepherd in the form of turtle
muses that this grassless terrain is heaven.
I say something that smells like onions,
and an oasis drifts past. Desert flowers arrive late.
Since they hadn’t cleared it with the moonlight,
they were sent packing before they could perform.
Backstage, they decided to hit the breeze
with all they got. And I for one was smeared.
Happy Hate
You can’t call me a taxi any more than I can call you a window already I’m as lost
as the earring my darling cannot find I had to ask someone to get me high for the first time
some people will just never figure out how to buy cool jeans there’s a happy hate in me
that cable television keeps getting more and more expensive
Restoration Hardware
Toothbrush, tweezers, nail file,
thick bristled hair brush with
the yellowish tint of having once
lived in the house of chain smoker,
the gift, perhaps, a well to do accountant
would have given their niece or nephew
for a graduation present, with teak
inlay and now the dark stain of being
owned by someone afflicted by sweaty palms
and an appetite for salty things.
Across Town She Sleeps
It is raining
lightly
misting
along with ten others
I wait
shortly
a bus will be by
my lower back
feels as if
I’d spent the day
in the garden
weeding and
mulching
pain causes
dissociations
dreams
I’m learning about myself
all at once
and then
not
at all
Modern Poets Magazine 