Dan Raphael

 

We couldn't take our hats off
                       (for dick bakken)

today everyone is wearing a hat
and most of them aren't sure what to do about it.
i seldom find a hat that fits & then theyre too hot
as i usually have steam coming through my face
making a mask that conceals my features--
"he was a big man with glasses" is all i'm remembered as,
but they'd remember the hat i'd never owned, which i was afraid to spend for-
a yellow vinyl cop or band hat, like sergeant peppers,
with visor & slope to the back,
a flat round top that could hold solar panels to power the fans
to cool my head enough to keep the hat on.
maybe the bones in my head have copper running through them
to carry water so hot it becomes what it carries, distilled,
roiling with nowhere to go, making the bones uneasy & brittle,
bones expecting to remain unheard, ignored as structure
that has no opinions to share
but if we thought about, as mountains might,
so full of stories, taking that first thought which wants more
facts    choice    what's next?
         what if we go there?
til somethings gotta give--an eruption or an underground river
beginning to warm til the blind fish fall asleep & flow out into the light.
the river telling them to open their other eyes, the eyes on their wings,
the filters in their gills full of sparkling stones, exploding questions
imitating sperm & egg, so the fish shimmers with minerals
making the river seem like a roofers roof
made from the scraps of all his other jobs that cover the asymmetrical shed
built from the scraps the carpenters take home--
with all these colors who needs electricity or plumbing;
with all these colors we'll soon have enough feathers to cover the windows & doors
from all those curious birds thinking the roof is a mirror

 

When the Drummer

things fall apart when the drummer opens so many doors
in his/her/our spinning wheels--
             how can they spin with so many chambers
with so many beings and designs
like a touch sensitive channel selector with 7 to the 7th channels
within the face of the blue fanged  smiling demon
whose eyes are varicose as a planet I useta think I was swimming inside
like some micron sized night in my eyes,   IN my eyes
    stuck on this ocean without rafts or islands
buoyed by the light coming in,   embodied light,   light w/ at least 7 musicians orchestrating with their feet,
     eight footed guitarists exhaling strings
             to define their bodies like spandex, a guitar you can wear
let me slip into something musical
  when Im blue I wear national steel
     hoping to find a lap, at least a bottle neck

giving shape   taking shape   putting fences around an undefined space
figuring the perimeter of whats never still
the perimeter of your body       the area of my skills
      breathing thru strings,      singing through hair
        so many tiny voices with independent ideas about melody and pitch
       why do they think that way
                       unparted but bundled             as if bleach would eliminate distortion
                                 so I scrub assiduously to clear potential antennae,    potential mouths
  drawing directly into the brain       diffused in my bloodstream,
     my electromagnetic noncorporeal blood
carves a shape into something soft but firm
    for repeated imprints
           break the symbols into tableaux,     liberate details from the background
    getting beyond the initial layers of media's alleged memories:
what adheres because it connects
         describing what i'm not but could become
        as the air is just another geological layer where some waves travel better than others
     where motion cannot yet be perceived
           the peach tree at the heart of peach
the world the peach is
             held up by what the tree was      what trees can do
     to propel  the beat of the heart in the tree of my hand
                 flowering through the seasons each chord bridges/ opens into

I repeat and return, I embroider into minors
I cast a net with so much space
only the birds ready to dance
the fish singing to the stars on their scale
recalcifying the ocean in the glass
I sit at the bottom of
like a lemon seed

 

Highways Speak

how highways can speak to each other
      across county lines         through the asphalt in our veins
stretching across thousands of scalps
ready to be preened, plucked & polished

smoke beginning as a circle becomes ghost rain,
rain that hasn't eaten for 28 days.
       a designer paper coat
lets the chest find its way home, hungry red lights
with bat-shaped filaments flaming a doorway for the two-dimensional--
a pattern of internal convulsions, lines of colloidal green
trying to carve a synapse in the hesitant water
rising from the soils dreams, escapist soils immobilized &
subject to more than pressure--made to grow in frothy haloes of cascading arrival
forming sinuous naivete
rotating to hide what's disappeared:
when the lights right i smell the bones circular disputes,
swarming birds mixed through weightless coral-coats
where lightning slimes coz it cant stick

the citys aflutter with edible zinc
flat metal fronds growing spontaneously from wheat a century ago--
the dynamic opposite of a smelter
giving the suns rays luxury accommodations on a subatomic shore
where atoms ripple into sudden solidity, making everything nearby disperese
then settle like a thunder storm on a newborn freeway

(junk genius, 2/2/1)

 

see who

 wanting to see who jumps out
after the night not followed by morning.
i can still see but lights not how
finger mists flowing along the undersides of leafs
start data-fying what comes thru in the 7th gastric tavern
as the streets get narrower than my hips beginning to bur
with friction, hundreds of tiny wheels waking from 50 years disabled

asleep in this volcano
hanging on metallic vines stamped in the micro-circuitry
i wash in dehiscent vacuums
no way to undermine where the blueprint peers through the skys seam
a day not ready to uncluster, to let go of
grapeshot seeds wedging the teeth as wide as an abandoned ballfield--
only 4 bases and no one can touch them all, gloves pulling the left hands
toward the hot steel girder reluctantly emitting decades of forgotten dogs

a light cuts through as if a birds lifetime in 10 minutes of kamikaze phosphorescence;
a rain of spent no-deposit birds
where morning is reduced to 3 simple commands
to continue sleeping between keys
like butter resculpting a radiant waffle of opportunity

the cows inside every meal
don't talk bout what the sun does, how the windows are whiter than the popes soul
the windows to our repression
turning sweat into splinters & teardrops of solid grease

as the air is full of vermicelli sticks
confusing the breezes, enriching the absence of daylight, foodlight
          a stomachs winged percussion sent behind the clouds
til theyre heavier than the hair of buildings     cities     highways;
a cloud for everyones headtop, the micro-climate
across our newly bald skulls
effervescent with reflective options
when you stop to taste the luminance
it can seem youll never exhale again
the thick golden light giving the skin more information than ever:
decades of phone numbers admiring their interrelationships
so you know how many raindrops per second, what percentage
are living beings, are some idle message that mutated down the spectrum
where its thick but clean, where its salty in constant transition,
geyser suddenly become a tree cascading thousands of mosaic leaves
evaporating around us

(trio 3, 10/24/00)

 

everything orbits rice

i got in the car & fell through the floor
i opened the driveway but couldn't get out
the odds were rising that i'd soon be food
holding my breath in all seven hands
to carom within the hyperactive billiard table i woke from
       skinless         radiant          confusing for the wind to coil through

i gull across the river, i monkey beneath the bridge
zizzing on the median like a rhetorical saw-blade
taking every slice as potential prophet

my unwoven clothes keep unfolding when i turn
places i didn't know i'd break without bending, dank apostrophes
giving night more ways to fracture, to partially collapse
leaving scooplets to fill with unplanned moisture
unable to traingulate spontaneous legs

i hover with my mind, taking the beards from everyone i see
sipping just a little marrow from each tender jaw
entranced by other eyes welling with pudgy questions

everything orbits rice
compressing til the horizon wells with electric milk
eroding the mountains into a deck of 2 hundred walls
showing their inner strata erasing sunlights stale conspiracy

i want to meet fire had on, bathed in the projectiles of consonants
hungry for vowels--a six-pack of e & o
after each tuneless dance red fish blinking    rapacious & agulp

no hands escape unfurled:
a flag with my name in micro-fibers to prevent imitation
unable to wick properly the wind crowded by pulsing apartments
whose steel is molting into butterscotch embraces
wistfully reaching for the softest traffic

soon everyone of the streets will be talking into a camouflaged vortex
sifting key words, brand names, words that shouldnt follow one another,
sentences that smoke when the light turns green

(Rob Scheps trio; 11/24/01)

 

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