do the fakers drop out


Jennifer Steinkamp/Jimmy Johnson collaboration titled Loop

every stain of panic
- by david lerner

my faith in god
is so hard and pure
it scares me

who am I
to write a million poems a second
and trade them for bread and fire

who am I
to have friends whose eyes I can
always find

whose features glow
with infinite cool
even when their hearts are
burning

my faith in god
is so hard and pure
I don't understand it

I dont know why
I have a map
to long lost colors

why each fresh desire

every stain of fresh panic
is fuel for a torrent sky

my faith in god
is so hard and pure
it makes me uneasy

sometimes I feel like a
secretary taking dictation
from five lawyers at once
all felony cases

one misspelled word and we all go to hell

yet I'm awesomely polite

many are called
few are chosen

and some
just stumble home....


nineteen ways of looking at a women
-- by david lerner

and her wind full of promises and desert
and her glitter of her wild and tender mind
and her broken watch
and her window full of exotic curses
and her ineffable drugs
and her poisoned wisdom
and her busted serenade
and her thin gold heartbeat
and the shrug of her silence
and the watchfulness of her smile
and the edge of her stillness
and the chill of her turning away
and the rustle of her winter
and the black silk stockings of her disbelief
and the charred elegance of her thinking
and the cold charm of her obsessions
and the briliance of her longing

poem of the profession
-- eileen myles

language interests me
more than life
I just want to see where it goes --
explaining tonight I get
on a train to enter a big party
dance go make love to you
go mail a letter tomorrow
go invent cigarettes.
stop I want to turn the wheel!
so slightly to the right
examine evening through late day
or morning glimpses --
um apologetically in the rush

of color teevee, hot poem
by her who writes songs
enhances action
in the embrace of a tall cowboy
I think I see the snow
"alive burden"
I think we both are looking in
the Window.