“Stuart Highway, Northern Territory, 2009” is supported in part by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston, and New York State Council on the Arts.
I had to stop stop
I was stoned I was stoned out out
I didn’t
I didn’t zoom oom
I was in an other way
an other place
before me
Down the line
down the sayable line
Who toughed
the tufted brush
Hard who had that landscape
membered
Their alma critics
suffered a sayable thing
We happy helpless gathered
our jars a door
our mouths
tiny rottens
Had to click the blue blue
Hop on pop ops
I had a killy mcfinger
too oo
I had a girl
on a yard on a car
Rooster beasty taste me
Tumble to the forgettable
That’s the red spot
right there stop spot
The red spot I mean
the red stop—
in the bush
Who ain’t got no blue left no
crumble
Who ain’t you took to
yet
Her pass-
port pho-
to, this ch-
anges every-
thing
I know you too
too well ell
to leave you a
lone with a figure
finger
Blue signage in the breakage
someone stop age
ageing today
A brown cluster is you
husked happy
inside big hilarious
I’m starting to see things
I’m not sure I’m seeing
I know that one
is coming at me
Let’s stay inside the game
shall we
You take that brown
I’ll take this
We’ll call it
“Personality”
Pray for me mister
for I have thinned
things down a bit
on the sides
Attack of the figural painters
Attack of the hidden containers
Attack of the muscadine cokeheads
Attack of the forty-five signage
Attack of the canted perspective
Attack of the dashing blue beasties
Attack of the door without closure
Attack of the men
of the two-fisted too fast
men
Woman—wummin—I
told you to get yr blue ess
down here and sign my check
and kiss my cheek
and signal my beginning
and tell me what to wear
and give me a wedgie
and stifle my guitars
and stipple my sassafrass
and wheel my loungecar
and wipe my crested elblow
and abscondify my monies
and salute me how to salute
and watch me do this
and that
You were a sign
in the distance
going fastest
Hard day for shorts.
Yump.
It’s leaning time.
Hand pocket hand pocket
pock pock hang.
Peek a blue dailyness
about it, the gets.
Mudded crusty butte
Springs.
Too much land much land
in here.
Had to be
interrupted.
Usted.
Back away
from the smokestack
old people
might get turned
Does no one say
good bye
no more
Where is that man
a come for
Hot cross the mouth a prosey situation sold it to the wilds tilly till the white spotted lines on the faces add up to yours and your situation. Alice here the first time comes, she the second comer. Talk to me over the round numbers. Take a beating. And I mean home with you.
Walk this way, 30 clicks. I can see me from afar now, momma. I’m eating dice again, real big. I’ve got the gape tooth eye sucker in my face, poppa, what is your table made of? Who told you you could get this close?
Back away back away let’s see your back away. Too much rhythm on the highway equals meat. Too much meat meeting street. Too much of you, too much a me. Too mean to give it up, take it back, climb the tree and spy the hole halo whole around your body. Ground.
Who said come to play like that. Play like that. Tan like that. Who said walk the line like that. A blue blue corner on the earth. A split slit goer walking backwards. We are going in reverse. Don’t stop us yet, we are almost not not there yet.
Mrs. Aptitude: We don’t want no incidents. We want a medium amount of incident.
Beauregard Yella: It’s about the way we get along. Get along. Long.
Mrs. Clean: Jonathan, take that tooth out of your mouth this instant. Wash that gravel with your face.
One more series
of nowhere
anyone is climbing
for free
Just give me
one more series
I’ll carry
the weighted
broken things
Have you ever heard the one about the spaceship and the goat?
The racket and the lexicon?
The gangster and the grass?
The pocky and the aeroplane?
The cutout and the string?
The wrestler and the twig?
The plunger and the fist?
The straight shot and the broken glass?
The network and the organ?
The tie dye and the rollercoaster?
The distance and the tree?
That’s a lot
of puddles.
Can’t have too
many.
It’s just that it
sits there.
So wicked.
Slick.
There goes the A-list
into the forest
Here comes all
Niagara
We’re all falling into
a painting
We’re all smashed smashy up
against it
It’s good good good
goody good
Here here here here
here
So long seminal
building blocks
DNA smoothee
It’s been a line line
line time
How could it not
have folded