Arc of His Slow Demeanors

Clark Coolidge

1.

I didn’t respect him exactly but I collected his sensibility

sun on gouged hull of the same pitched home

he never tooted but fronted

on a new loop to the belt in a carry

the neighborhood wideners wouldn’t shun

so neither of us fell for whose blinders?

a soaking we didn’t?

a melting back from the gladness tax?

He would have chosen a diamond over a mirror any day

the mustard pumps removed from his cable socks

the better to mix an alarmist with the least of collateral bettors

mimsy were the clasps to his carbons of will

in a living room if had half a mind to

rope from here to sausagery

velvets in his background

looms for vetted sailors

felt crowns doffed in the forgetting

I wouldn’t be writing this to him if I knew anything veteran

are you sorry and only then do you brighten?

I’ll bet he was the Kellogg of his math class

rolled off a brass asbestos and to the windward

they never had galleries in that landlocked burdenroad

sky was his mention and pardon

the trust woman clanking off for slaghorn stanchion and points Viennese

Did we ever quite meet up?

I doubt the drift of that

flags forming on the upper staves as I watch

harmlessly getting his own goat I only wish

was a lot of trouble about the gray brakes

worries lashed together into habits to be stepped off

I’d make a wince of his ceiling belts to the public transom

You get a throat for that door I’ll stopper it

slopes off after January, maybe March

maybe then April won’t rain so much

curtains to contain a backyard in wires

glows where you don’t notice

won’t afix the phallus it’s wrinkled the first collapse I notice

this before bass drums calmed the beatifics

he stripped the blue bead from his pen

gallant of us to stand about wasn’t it?

before the distances were Galatea

A hum before the ship flagon wall scavenge

this the color I thought bronze was

turned out a fluvial wash or supersonic pan

we all wheat up through the stove

my manual said eat while a beam improves Benny or Andy

makes as if a final ear to the level exits

tweetmowers for saturday

Hi-Fi still to be penciled in

In which I discover the second war through

powdery flowers in my vagueness

following him on impulse nights to pinch

everyone at the least of them

the pleasantries of quietude to even construe a thing

But would he hook a harm to me?

I preferred Reg Butler and his batman sets

later rock rimming by the soft quotient

gone oval to the cemetery malinger

so out of him in this ground

pendant one less cigar or other

I’ll make it hobbling on one lung

and a Pepsi gentian

A Za-Rex commotion in the attics of pebbled-glass

jugs with finger grips you’ll toll a long time from

he’d pasteboard up from plush vespers if held neatened to a priest

but never a marmalade of such novel disparage

the morning ran to batteries and a blockade manacle gun instead

the marriage of games never to be lost

or found either, he had cellars full of the strain

misnamed railings, a couple of terrific beads

his head like a warning collector

mine a beaming limiter

Were you my ace in the malefactory, no

the casings came later, ocarina with armholes

prices after farming’s forgotten

and the fame of the old wood’s made out

then I really rang it up, didn’t I?

argued over the obstacle gun and baywindow switches to the carbarn east

or skip the blimps to south, one

it makes no odds that Yankee wisdoms make them on everything

stop telling me things, then it would brighten

Coughed the hose out from under the gulf of the whole house

silence of a blind pew

storm load sliding off gradually

the pill rolls and Vaseline sundays

coil of the codfish template

the gray snow lateness on car tracks in Brilliantine

I thought it was time nobody knew anything

but a touch of the spear minted clear

He sat by windows ate back to

sundays repapered the mood

rooms escaping to a spare

I would rather have hollowed my own then

open cabins by flush chain keep

his nose to the empty box he faced

a sharp or flat exemption

so paid less to load his production

I couldn’t stand the side of the house

bordered by tickle of the manual families

shoot down a load of bricks while dutying

bring your strings into pall

Beyond his bed door seemed

like not much was being entered

meanwhile I summered

was there the journal to tell about it somewhere?

certainly not Bogardus Waterfall Trail

the portions brought from Paris

the dawn chimes in his lower caste chest

peeping from the case I made

go home instead of dessert

the silver briar substitutes

Wish he’d got so far off I’d remember it

hindered by fin & haddy pan dowdy

and cans of limestone hedge pack solvent

the soots turned wasps as they came

he gave up smoking not minding

really raising the family guard

at early table as he thought to us

didn’t I mind all your names?

2.

He was eager to see wood sawn beneath his nervous

the house had moved over in the night

left a felt marker where he left

the plectrum of old stump continuous

mirror lamped his own clothes till conscious

the member of the desk set travesty

loaner of the wide hips a corollary

then gas escaping from a sound

He was up but never till

the sides of his housing came together in consideration

desert he knew not

not even west

and then we waved him

I keep thinking he was born in a knee-high cabin

wasn’t everybody’s?

and now all the placements are loose

Needs learned from fire engine captains

lolling on the south side

there were women in those windows

but pretending fronds a partnership

near to drome havens and the gasometer

down forever in indulgences and backbone

had his limiters and so do I

blink

Stop sounding as if you, and others

charming combiners and no notions of the loup garou

an entablature of savior

young mental wander home and strike

the doctor coming out of Maidsville in a trance

look down, these are the blackening onions

he never, he would not

Hornets a swing to the salacious

pinhole barriers in every one after all

the wall, the tubs, the sack of Truro

and name you Marge and in the going bituminous

a ribbon drips from the viol

I’d have to frame you in the front window to apologize

pacing it out in tiny lifetime gales

Sumerian to the winners but in the losing Trojan

won’t mention the imperious Perseus

red cutlets of the Gaul

then his wind let up, he was pressing

and further blows of insect at the galleon wall

seal with silicon

the hole but not him

Go to cufflink school and how

this won’t be printing out from you

no one to hoard those basement hours

a perimeter to every scab

you have to stop weathering to live

chorus or no baton

Dreamed of getting his own security goat

but such too plain over with

daydreamed the window was in liquid spillage

coins out of plaster as you watch

along the corridors or wrist release a special swatch

velvet in intent, the purpose conspicuous

the helmet on loan from a clown

In the attic in a chest there

is an alien predella

place of worms as long as the Waste Land

should anyone be of such a shag-cut intent

my father watches

telegraphs his pauses

But he was never ready

as if his doorways on loan

rather a clubfoot treater comes to market

watering cans and Studebaker rules

was in his study

he didn’t have, why not

the burden too emeritus?

Trotted in shorts through a garden of hornfels

they don’t have them anymore

now one arms doors and watches for creases

his glory was in not being a whiner

lollygagger, dreaming toad in a rile of the spurious

those gleams and hastes

these goal lickers each asserting the metal

then a partial head leered out

Group of young undergrowth parting the waterfalls

member of which he was never

in the days the carnivals grew together

and oldman slim dons

dark threads to fiddle and crane

comes to the pitch of twelve shoes

spinster lab by ice cream socket

new market new position whatever

and elbows grown spent as they’re clad

he knew the man well

Feldspar chips in that cream anyway

close to the alternate spelling of gong

and nightwear

and gracelessness

and small things

the father had to come home I guess sometime

rounding the chain gate get shut of his day

His hands have the look to care

for one of the fractal acids

locked to advantage that way

spiral shoals under varnish rules

a click of a meeter palming the governor

treating his sound to the bad end

the one his master dad said grease