smile

the numbers on the receipt, do not add up to the number of branches
stemming from my ears.
the man staring at me from the photo looks creepy.  but he's really not.
shh
when i drift off into sleep, sometimes my plastic globe creaks and my curtains rustle.
is there someone in here?
the arches whisper
the doorframes giggle
and the floors groan.
smile

the world is alive, and envelops us like a tepid, glittering worm.

-Pamplemousse

the forest

Why is it, that in the gaunt, velvety depths of the forest,
where the old Black man dwells, you venture out alone, as a child, as a 
poor adolescent with rudimentary materials, and a fear of the ghosts and ghouls
that haunt the wooded paths, you venture out to seek the river of truth
and wander through the meandering streams.  why is it that you have no fear?


well, you see it's quite simple really. me being a warrior of a gang of lance-wielding bandits,
i ain't afraid of anything.  the forest scares my weary nerves, but the river, oh the river.  it beckons to me
and i know that when i hear it call, that i am right.  ol' jim here is with me.  i am not alone.  that black man you be speaking about.  well, you see, i'm not sure if you mean ol' jim, or that satanic devil man.  i've heard stories 'bout him sneaking around this island.  but i ain't afraid of him! i ain't afraid of no one.  because i am a lance-wielding bandit.

-Pamplemousse

3 a.m.

in the newborn hours of the morning
when it is still the old age of my night

i melt away the cocoon that envelops my neck
and from my lungs springs a new creation

in polar opposite to my pedestrian self
this beaded centaur gallops to the outskirts of my mental forest
and infringes on the wild and the spectacular

clawing at the whispering dust.

-Pamplemousse

I Like My Job

God beats us all the time in factory efficiency
profit margins.  He owns all the tree bark,
His version of laissez-faire capitalism
is hte only true model--
at least, it's the closest to theory
= an old idea
The ultimate beaurocracy, as everything
that exists
sits under these little rules
Love and gravity,
Nobody can mind either
He is the wind between each wooden eagle
painted on top of the totem poles,
even the ones who believe ice cracks
below the fire
just Because
I am Inuit. 

Try laws  Try moving  Try cracking  Try
even Try ice cream;
tongue. 
Cook, clean, wield power, find red hot buttons
60% of the energy in coal is lost to your
lung-air. 

The rule has always been
Try harder. 


-Citron

Structuralism

What an endeavor! 
Lego blocks were not meant to be pried apart
into so many wonderful rules,
instead, the little goals have
little assembly fingers. 
destroy their wholeness as creators
as they destroy, pry apart lives they lead
like so many colorful blocks. 
A leaf will never look natural
in your beautiful orderly science museum--
which is, after all,
a structure too. 


-Citron

The novelist- psychologist

If I walked in tomorrow
with pieces out my brain
You all would be real nice to me
cause its okay that I'm insane.
You know what makes a novelist? 
A person who just gets
that everyone is missing brains,
that noone's opened yet. 
So long as your head looks real whole
we all assume it's evil-ity
But maybe they can't change cause they're
missing the brains,
Does this make me a novelist? 
Well maybe now I will be. 


-Citron

4 + 3i

Math is not true in life
things don't exist
but to solve issue they
mathematically pretend to do.

equals
people,
          and insofar only true
          to the universe
          in that there
          are people
          there.


-Citron

babushka

hanging from your amiable line
your designs seem almost serpentine
and your borsht filled eyes seem sad
to see my door succumb to fad.

why would anyone name their child dolores?

-Pamplemousse

musings

i.

looking in the mirror in the middle of the night.
i always do that, no matter how tired i am.
perhaps i want to ensure that i am the same
as when i looked in the mirror before going to sleep.
that Time has not come and stolen away a score
from my smooth, unwrinkled brow.

ii.

you know how rock has layers?
and by looking at a peaking cliff, with ridges and impressments on the side,
and stripes of different shades and textures,
scientists are able to determine exactly what happened
in the years when those specific layers were on top?
what if the brain had layers, and one could dissect a human mind to see the passage of time?
what if one could physically see the angry years, and the happy years?

would not the mind be a fascinating timeline

iii.

can one cry with no eyes?
can one smile with no mouth?
can one understand with no body?

why would strong emotion be reliant on strange looking masses of cells.

-Pamplemousse

Greece and the Ruins of Missolonghi

Dear Goethe,

I have three subjects: 
women, politics and you. 

The women say I'm too poor,
the politicians say I'm too romantic,
you are forty years my senior
by the time I am important
you will be dead, as will be Fraule
and all the beauty in all the women
in all that house I did

This is why I paint. 

Sincerement,

Eugene


-Citron

salt + vinegar

Vinegar potato chips
have never been tasty
and give you bad breath. 
Today, that's all I packed for lunch
because it was early
and convenient.
I used to wonder at people
who lived like this. 
I'm glad it's only lunch. 


-Citron

Dear Gustav Dore

You're obsessed with Hell,
Gustav Dore
What a sad theme to
illuminate!
Factory children and
Where
there
parents
dwell
was your chosen
close-to-home
kind of Hell.

Frankly, I'm quite concerned. 
Are you so afraid to burn
or rot or freeze or not?
Then you drew all nine
circles described by Dante,
You're obsessed with Hell,
Gustav Dore. 


-Citron

(haiku)

Watching faded colors peel
"I painted that doorframe"


-Citron

foresight

tomorrow do you want to have a good day or a bad day because foresight is okay because i promise you notice days when they are present and words when they are being just figured out letters come in the post and you send them back but always like licking stamps so that someone else rips this open.


-Citron

Television

What have I left to do
she cried softly to her
empty living
room.

Nothing.

Nothing, The answer
was nothing,
so she bought herself
a television.


-Citron

I guess you can say I'm all that I can hold

I guess you can say I'm all that I can hold
I guess you can say I'm everywhere
and everywhen, everything
I've ever
been,
at least all that I can hold
I'm a piece of you too, a piece
of you is in me--
you're all my socks and earrings
cause we have lots of holes
stripes Germany bellybuttons
you can go in all of them
and I will try and hold.


-Citron

I usually anticipate boring answers

I asked the Frenchman whether
weather?  Whether my grammar
weather the second line was
correct-- he looked at me
quite seriously, like Baudelaire
he said it matters not
if I only sing.


-Citron

Stunted

No matter how tall I get
The floor drops with new weight
the sneakerview still


-Citron

Colons

Poetry:  is for the little bits
But no:  real living person cares at all
Not to say there's much in real.
But to make:  the bits:  a little bitter
The deal:  is we put poetry
and these:  truths in the batter
Cakes and fruitcakes
Books are all bakes
Not to say they should. 
Let's go. 


-Citron

in the bay

i left you in the bay
not wishing to see you again
and knowing that i never would.
you will die in the dark maelstroms
that have opened merely to accept you
into their caves.
i will think of you from time to time,
when i breathe air that you can never breathe again.
these clothes you wear,
i will remember them always,
though they are fogged from the dampness inside my eyelids.

now, i must pretend to be grieved,
to be anxious and distraught at your departure.
i will try to cry, or maybe it will just happen.
the tears will come eventually
to flood the prickly vines that have grown over my cheeks.

-Pamplemousse

three thumbs

three thumbs all lined up in a row
running through the streets
in the palid vanilla light of the moon.

-Pamplemousse