Sampled Biography, and: Wheels of Steel, and: Seven Days of Falling, and: Winter / Weird Fishes

Sampled Biography

for Stacey

Knock Knees

In the picture, they rub togethertimpanically, hodgepodgeof too-high tube socks and too-bigteeth going all directions.Like magnolia petals if you'venever seen the flower.

Atlanta Trees

Piney enough, sure.Tall enough, sure,but not so tall as to foresee

misnomer in Southern Belleor that what we can really seeof the South will have to do.

Gaither

Your nanny is broke down in the picture,but the stories speak of a differentwoman—mean mother of a drunk,

drunk mother who meansto show you all the thingsyou shouldn't know, Georgia peach.

Voice

Potentate of firsthand smoke:gruff when riled, grufferwhen content. All the thingsa voice should be, pranks and morepranks, diction and some moreof that imposed stuff—Pinyin of the South.

The South

Another unfinished afternoon:time's ribcage gummedwith cobbler and hypnosis.

What I Love

The inertia I can't see, but was told is.Annotation of morning's vertigo, point Aand point B and the hair it leaves.If momentum can be rephrased, light thereis light wherever, pinioned on the gravityof your question-mark eyes.

Ramification

Woman, I've got the blues, like an uglyof cat-gut and malt liquor.Maybe uglier. Woman,all the roughage in the world won'tset things straight: no jailhouse blues,no frozen dinners clockworked on the table.Sovereignty co-opted from your homeplace,just you and the words I love.

Wheels of Steel

I got me two songs insteadof eyes—all swollen and blacked

out like the day after a lost fight.Two jigsaws spinning, buzzing

the backdrop for woodshopor emcee, bar mitzvah or afterset.

It's Run DMC rocking withouta band, but not without me.

Two rims spinning after the carstops. Baby, I'm the little lenses

in the bifocals if they were on pulleys.I'm the Wizard of Oz if Oz

was a fish fry in July. Call meMaster of the Cracked Fingers.

One song spins forward, the otherback to repeat itself: Every day

I'm hustlin'. Every day I'm hustlin'.Baby, I'm the layaway payment

on a Ferris wheel. My songs orbitparking lots and rent parties

like the crazy lady's eyeswhen she finds out her lover man

already left. One of my songsspins backward, while the other

plays forward like sugar mixingin to make the grape. My songs

are the pinwheels for this paradeof moonwalks and uprocks.

Seven Days of Falling

Today, I'm assimilating like margarineinto hotcakes. I'm getting down

like Danny Larusso after the against-the-rulesleg sweep. So low, I'll be a flower

in the lapel of common decency.Factual, the same way "Zanzibar" means

sea of blacks to anyone who isn't fromthere. Where is Juan Valdez,

his burroesque dependability whenyou need him? I had a friend who minted

tee shirts with Juan front and center,an afro instead of a sombrero, a power

fist in place of a smile. The inscription:100% Columbian. I'm going the way

of skin—radio waves, thoughtslike ear-to-ear transmissions grounded

into the ozone on the way from mindlessspace to forgetful Earth. Man, my skin

doesn't need me any more than moldneeds cheese. On this day of cellophane

lunchboxes and hand grenades reshapingmy palms into their own militaristic orbit,

there are only oceans to catch me.On this day, something needs

to catalogue me: a hall monitordoubled wide by ambition,

a goldfish with thumbs hitchhikingtoward a fishbowl full of dub.

Winter / Weird Fishes

after Radiohead

Every morning, you loiterlike a middle-aged sugar mamaonce the sun's up, hopingto be more than a meal ticket.You are a skeleton, wishingfor the plaster attentionof being broken. Winter,this is your intervention.The kind of stopgapwhere the breakers break...