May 14

Chord Progression

In Western Culture
tiny coded clues tell
of the "if it sounds good
do it" Generation:
DAG GAD
it still makes sense
even if we don't know
what it means.

May 13

What Happened to the Heat Tonight

In New York June
is the cruelest month
when cool breezes sneak
up girls' skirts
sending them back indoors
for their wraps.

May 12

Broiler Mystery #1

Dan Nester was red
as a lobster on Monday.

A bright-like-neon clue.

More subtle
are the commas
in our speeches
at the end
of this holiday weekend.

May 11

My New Coleslaw Recipe

Corner purple cabbage
store sells red vinegar
for slow cooking in oil.

Your onion pepper
stoplight; your sugar
cinnamon shaker.

Allspice I tell you.
Ziploc I cry.
I smell salt.

I have thirty minutes

to write the 21 poems I need to complete MayPoWriMo. Then starts JuPoWriMo. June, I am told, is National Poetry Month.

My first order of business

upon becoming a rich and famous poet after I buy the moms a quiet place will be to buy Rob a ragtop Impala. For rolling on them summer nights.

Going to bed now.

MPWM 10

The Rattlesnake's Father

The rattler's daddy was tenths of a mile away when lightning hit Bandera and made everything crack real good.

This is old prose, a narrative even if a tiny narrative, more powerful than the poetry of thunder or of the beware-me rattle. Rattlesnakes are small but boy, they can holler.

And that's the way it was for the young rattler all the way from under a rotten log to a cactus two feet away, until he and his daddy were restored and dried off a bit, and then it was nothing more satisfying than a memory.

Here comes one now!

Shafer's Ninth.

In Texas Everything Looks Like This:

Sometimes folks in the Northeast
don't believe a word I say
about tumbleweeds, they think
that tumbleweeds only exist
in the big American mind.

But tumbleweeds grow and die,
and then they they set off
rolling across the Caprock
on a dusty wind. They are as alive
as any car or tornado, as real
as an old friend who fears snakes.

Freq of the Week

Don't miss Sandra Alland and Lourdes Vazquez at Frequency this SundayMay 22nd at 2:30 PM at 165 W. 4th St. and 6th Ave.

Love,
Shafer

Eight.

I Haven't Been Feeling Very Howard-Coselly About Sports

so I reached into my
swag-bag of adjectives
and pulled out "burned."

Ooh, that says it all right.

May 7th

Stripped Out Straight

Straight out of
the headlines
crazy mother
fuckers from
Compton to
Israel between
the Earth and
its atmosphere
here we lose
our wives,
here are new
religions, here
new inks have
told us so.

#6

Small And At Attention

Leave me alone
for no time at all,
I will immediately
negative space
all pervasive while
my small attention
asks for carefully
detailed no ones'
dreams.

#5

Salt Preserves

Across the wide salt preserves
of my kitchen breathes
the empty breath of my stove
wondering where I have been
all these months.

Oh stove I have been cooking
on another planet
where my likes and dislikes
are collapsed
beneath necessity.

MayPoWriMo #4

Big Plans Small Apartment

The molding slowly
creeps across the ceiling
and neatly meets in corners
for compliments
from the neighbors: paintjob
all the way to the edges
otherwise it's not a job,
but an experiment like:
Kevin, what do you think
of this one, or
Kevin, what do you think
of this one.

Yao Who?

Tundra

Your unforgetting elephant heart
befits the longness of your years.
I spent a long time thinking to myself
about your ears. They are short,
like a very small elephant. You
wrote on my face with crayon
and it hurt, but I was quiet. My chin
does not remember that waxy pinch.

OK

let's declare the Four Faced Liar the official Houstonians in New York City bar of Game 7 of the I-45 Shootout between the Houston Rockets and the Dallas Mavericks. There will already be a buttwad of foks there for the Derby (if you need Lucas's PDF, which tells you who not to pick, let me know) so it wont be any problem to turn up the Jerry Jeff Walker and segue right the fuck in to some Texas basketball. YAO-HA!

Just kidding about that God:

I think you're hot! And if you'll let the Rockets win I will say more nice things about you!

Avery Johnson says it's "global"

but we know what an I-45 Shootout means to the national state of Texas. I recommend that everyone out there bet heavily on the Mavericks, for I will be doing the same on my Rockets.

And if a lifetime of gambling has taught me anything, it's that God has a profound dislike for me.

Brian Wilson's or Bruce Springsteen's?

Wendy Went Wrong

Makin' it with anyone
who isn't me is enough
to make me pound
on the hood of my
suicide machine.

I never thought
my eyes could cry
but all of this
insolent New Jersey
sand is blinding me.

You are a glorious
mansion of a women,
I just can't remember:
best girl on worst
block, or vice versa?

Freq of the Week

This week's Frequency will feature Paul Killebrew, Travis Nichols, and Corrina Copp. Watch out world!

165 W. 4th & 6th Ave., 2:30 PM, Sunday May 8th.

This from Rachel:

Hello dear friends and countrymen. As some of you may or may not know, I will be turning 25 this week. I knowit's hard to believe, but yes, I am entering MY LATE TWENTIES. Such an occasion deserves some kind of celebration. Please join me at the LuLu Lounge for stiff drinks and musical tributes. It is located on N.6th street, in williamsburg, between bedford and berry, underneath the restaurant Rice Republic. I will be there, in all my drunk glory, on May 5th, around 9pm. I would be so pleased if you would attend. Until then, I remain fondly, Yours, Rachel Shukert

May is National Poetry Month!

Pecanesque

There are angels
sent from Detroit
to points South
and East and West
to save this world,
this America
where vasectomies
are reversed
with mighty microsurgery.

Delaware is full of angels,
and Oakland and Phoenix,
nearly everywhere
where girls are there are
angels too.

Ugly ones
with brown sweaters
and personality problems,
who steam off stamps
not to collect but to save money.

I don't need to go on a long trip
to find them, just close my eyes.

The New Yorker says the end is near...

...I say that I always wanted to live in a Thunderdome.


Espatially

B. was trying to trick
enough ohms
out of an old Buick
to power our modest little Thunderdome.

Big red clamps sparked all night
and lit up the outside of our tents.
Inside the older ones remembered television,
and the younger ones thought B.
was a dangerous god.

Dangerous little gods
are under every rock out here in this desert,
but electricity
is still the only thing that scares me.