326
ripping off James Galvin's "Blue or Green"
some poems come in with a shredded noose around their necks and ask for pancakes.
some poems are papyrus in a skiff in a dry riverbed.
some poems are armadillo ladden thorned taloned whale-rams.
some poems wait on street corners for their man.
some poems are not poems insomuch in that they prisms.
some poems go like fourth grader loses tooth in gym class.
God is disappointed in many poems.
some poems were lost the first time i wrote them just like this one.
some poems are formal in that they know when to not say maybe.
some poems are formal in that they know when not to say at all.
some poems make my dick hard.
some poems can scare a deer into jumping into barbed wire.
some poems hunt fox and pigeon.
some poems are the best and worst dogs you ever had.
there is a poem that can kill a shepherd. one can kill a barber. one can kill a day-trader.
some poems are aeroplanes not airplanes.
some poems only occur on ballcaps or bumperstickers.
sometimes idiot politicians accidentally say poems.
some poems are sometimes. once. never. twice interdimensionally. thrice.
some poems are a tight necktie.
some poems flat-out refuse with violent vigor to be tree or bird poems. go figure.
some poems ask you how it feels to be shit-kicked.
some poems have never seen rain before and don't care to.
some poems never got written by Jesse James but they should have been.
some poems are quiet the first time they ever see her.
some poems outright refuse to tell the future.
one or two poems you will meet will attempt to swashbuckle.
poems do not give power point presentations.
i met a poem once that would beat you with a broomstick.
some poems insist on being called thoroughfares and not roads. oblige 'em.
some poems want to be outfalls but they are stuck as lakes.
some poems study the science of speleology.
some poems don't believe in luck and pretend to long enough to trick you.
some poems ask you straight to your face why you killed yourself.
some poems radically defy Olber's paradox.
some poems are goatsuckers and they fear them in Puerto Rico.
some of these no-good-for-nothing poems need to be deloused before you read them.
some poems are a bitch.
some poems will only eat food from a diner that serves barbecue.
some poems can give you a stroke.
some poems will never tell you their daughter's names.
i saw a poem tap an aquifer of the most pure water and then drink it all before we could taste it.
some poems insist on calling a rusty pocketknife a rapier and you best let them.
some poems like Easter better than Halloween for some bad reasons but cool.
some poems taste like litchi.
some poems prefer furry toilet seats. i don't read those.
some poems are the two or three matches in the jumbo box of matches you get at mega-store.
some poems are paramours.
some poems just say Wyclif Wyclif Wyclif Wyclif over and over and over and over.
the T-square can measure a poem once or now and not.
some poems have eyes like the monstera - the swiss cheese leaves. they know less is more.
some poems have come back from hell without their eyes and need your help.
some poems are rubber bands in summertime.
some poems operate under the scope of all trace of things. incredible fish they are.
some poems had to bartend for a while to afford their rent.
some poems need a can-opener.
some poems never wash their socks.
some poems never left Chicago.
some poems crochet on airplanes to hide their uneasiness in marriages.
some poems haunt underwater photo-shoots.
some poems are in toto.
certain poems agree to just become a part of the transcendental clonoid and you don't read them.
i had a poem turn into a blouse one time and it had a bullethole in it. no shit.
some poems only travel by pedalo.
all poems are satyagraha. of course they are. and this advances the English empires.
some poems play football with leather helmets on and tumors wandering their skulls.
some poems never go to hell! it's amazing!
some poems come scarless to you to remind you that they were not born from hurt.
at least one sidewalk you ever walked the full length of in your life was a poem to somewhere.
every ant on the planet is a type of poem. a mirror of everyone also typing.
out of all of the grocery bags i have placed under my sink for three years, at least one's a poem.
some poems are eyebrows.
some poems zip kabang.
some poems ride railroad cars across the country like remora.
some poems drop a cool pail to the bottom of a well and draw back up for you to drink.
some poems only wear white t-shirts.
some poems don't like the avant garde as they churn butter. it's kosher.
some poems are only about sails. some poems are only about storms.
some poems are a haystack or a kayak.
some poems are hot air balloons, the first ones ever, from Peru.
stupid poems suckle.
some poems rely on SIGINT. scary shit.
one poem i read was the Piltdown man. that was a let-down.
once my stepfather shot a poem into a horse with colic. she was a Palomino.
once a poem was snowy mountains drawn with crayons.
once truth threatened authority and then it had to hide after that as poems.
some poems are Eskimos of the worst variety.
rotting tigerlilies are poems. so is sea salt.
some poems chase tail.
some poems have tail or tails. or try to chase tail, those randy bastards.
some poems are coins never to be tossed or spent.
some poems think it's gay to be fucking waterfalls.
some big-hair bands never leave New Jersey - are those poems?
some poems refuse to be victims. readers find this vague. insplintering.
some poems are desklamps and they feel they need more love you know?
some poems only talk to Clive Owen. some poems don't blame them.
some poems smoke weed until they are over it. the it is up for choice, what-not.
some poems collect scarves and hovel bunkers and hover silos.
some poems evade radar by flying under swamps.
some poems smoke so much wed their lungs are green but they don't hurt nobody.
some poems are a changed diaper.
poems are O-mouths in ecstasy. the good ones. the ones we want to see.
and such. and so. perhaps. ergo. and so on: these are not poems, hack.
as a matter of fact, if "perhaps" appears in your writing then you are not writing a fucking poem.
soon some poems will eat shmores with a shmoe.
once a poem went into a graveyard and after all the usual shit it got kicked out to go live.
some poems imagine that.
some poems no shit. no shit - for real.
some poems do ceremonial dances and have no feet. they hover-tate.
some poems in my blood won't let me quit this poem.
some poems are virus eating me bloods.
some poems are a pizzle.
some poems are a messmate for fucksake. then they drink sake.
some poems like this won't cease.
my wife asked me how to end a poem tonight.
i will never tell her how. i will tell her they have no end.
she thinks me cruel. she thinks me an authority.
some poems sleep in a house and fight between poets.
some poems know more than those involved.
some poems are just the dried beans in the quiet waiting cabinet.

328

i would call her a rotor
not an oar
or sail

she creates in me
a need to move
away

because of the energy
i give to her, i'm
paraplegic

so invent gears and gears
ways of maximizing
kinesis

she sniffs out the oils
disturbs the turn
and i am back

to my inventions
called her
or she

those two machines
can't be built
they are

the things
that all machines

are built for

331

i was once a legend
then i was scrapmetal
then i found a map

i was once a carwreck
then i was a cartographer
without legs in a swamp

i was once a pole of the earth
bored and reverberating
i walked away from the factory

i was once a manufacturer
a metal melder
an invention no one loved

i became a local hero
missing a few fingers
always able to give directions

note
unparalleled diversions is from a series of the same name that the poet has been writing. The poems in this collection get their title from the original series where the poems are simply numbered.