David Breskin

poetry

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home / Poems

by title ∧ ∨

by first line ∧ ∨

Neither soybeans nor corn can
The rain pleading its way down the driveway, exploring
Steep-walled and stark stands the cold canyon: absence of Nels and Yuka.
Sitting at my desk, with a thick wad of recycled
This is not a river. This is not a vase.
To marry,
There was only one of him.
Sometimes a head hole
Across the steel-corseted George Washington,
Beep beep beeping backing-up garbage
Airplanes skid off runways in Toronto it's true but
My father’s head
0 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1
Ectopistes migratorius: done perfected the art
Basalt, scoria, obsidian, tuff.
Must it be so bleak between you and I?
A Rose Garden prayer for more gold and God
To start, stir-fry collateral damage.
One thing I know, you gotta stay the course.
Scooter, straight talk real fast. Don’t think Angler
Mile after mile, we occupied ourselves.
Now hear this! You’ll eat hot lead to stay free.
Like men these women. Dirty rotten bitch
In our Great Dismal Swamp, cold black water
Under palms, sour breeze of poolside blowback
You like U.S.? The Green Zone? If you talk
I’m naked. Don’t finger me with your threats.
We would like to befriend Viewers Like You.
Come play! Be our treasured guest at Gitmo.
There’s no god but God. As-Sal¯amu ‘Alaykum.
From my trembling lip, Praise be to Allah.
dear BONEDOG some escape huh? that’s WACK SHIT
Deal’s a deal. Cross me, I wanna see blood.
A videoconference. Our coarse kick-ass
Pacifists try to bulldoze sweet revenge,
When it comes from charged platter, you won’t know.
Ain’t sposed to lay a stain on your parade
We know you’re dreaming so hate to wake you
In the chaos of phase space squats
Food is the gun that plows the poor.
Today on Broadway, we huddle from wind
Lateisha Terrell can’t find the hundred dead
Under thirteen stars and a pearly slice
Someone named Bond paid 53.9 million dollars
Ninety dollars an hour in Angola
Driving out of town, fast but not too,
The gross national product of Congo
is the headline fit to print hard by an ad
Ernie Johnson in our studios will explain
After landslides and three days’ walk to town,
Impossibly still except for the bombing,
The slowness of graves in unburying
The tintinnabulation of the vegetation
Delicious day of tent and rain, the wind
Does a river flow backwards like the blues
The burnt rusted wreckage of crumbling
Like the dreamy housewife shrieking
Funk so deep you were half the time
Even Nat King Cole, so smooth
Blue cranes among kudu,
Hitler, Pippen, Barkley, Shakespeare, Payton.
Say you’re wild dog or sleepy cheetah
I could use the stapler to staple
Like a boy on his first flight
The vodka-cut artery spurts blood
When all the leaves fall from the banks
The memory of bean soup to the man
is the day she needs me to help her move
Jaguars jump with the grace she pours malts.
Your brain can only be as big as my
The black bow at the small of your back
My drive to his flight is filled with oldies
Lemon flowers and lotus ponds, temples
Comforting friends say there will be others
Up the slow river we walk like children
The emptiness of accident
When we commit the boy to the clinic
A few years back I taught him ball: the drop
Everything falls: Rome, leaves,
You’re a real morning-after pill
Riding the old train I used to ride when
My mother is weeping over my grave.
Will it cause the dead to dance?
If you don’t work, you don’t
Rivers fat with spring sliding by
The way wind beats us down then pushes us
Trumpet squeal, rose stink, pepper flame, needle
None of it matters. Take a look at a contour
Bidders frothing at their bits to own the texts
A package can change your mind
I’m going to break, I’m going to break my,
Kisses on noses and whiskers on mittens,
This appliance is constructed to process
Saraband of anagrams, symbols bow
It’s so _____ no one can ________ much without
A cool shandy on the sweating screened porch,
Sliding pig iron loading dock doors under arches
Not dead weight but live load: the hernia
A perfect stranger, he arrived with a suitcase,
My wife tells me I’m fluffy. Rivals beg
A breath, a sigh, a breath, a sigh—you loll
Adrift on a cat’s-paw of chords, swizzling
They don’t like you. They’re just using you like
Not quite coked beyond the caring point,
Sitting up all night, watching the weather
The way falling planes at night believe
We got the fax by yak: Weather turning
If childhood was a plump freckled mess—
I will take you to the rivers
Who mooted the question of place, a home
Every Monday you check into the grand hotel
Like the Kenyan woman who killed her kids
Queasy feelings my friends will testify
After the Rambler, so mechanical and sideways
Everyone’s got one. How she
The way some people shape themselves for other
Having a child or having an affair
Who owns a letter? I’ve burned them, boxed them,
This is a frustrating type of song
Compulsion. Not a fragrant garden stroll
The tongue of fog that licks my walls
The ocean of thought at the bottom
He tickles the cactus with small fingers
The radio clears its throat of morning
Her body now an overpeppered stew:
Fat Qawwals spin a deep circle of praise
Young lady in a battered, swirling palm, clinging to certain facts: first
Instant karma flashback of hooch ambush.
Sometimes, you gotta shush vested interests
Hey Atta you missed your last flight dead man
Rapid Dominance: severe Shock and Awe.
Gassed Kurds, mass graves—accomplishments as king
Melting glacier about to calve. Mercy.
Try to balance the flop sweat of three dots
Tell you a thing or two. If I was you
You look so well. The years don’t count, my friend.
There’s no end to the surface of a sphere.
Open, still a phat dazzle on a’a and pahoehoe.
Sunday night voicemail: I’ve been humbled by circumstances.
Excise enough pests and a silent spring is natural.
Alone, in a room of my unmaking, I process flux.
Necessary advances so damn fast, driving stat needs.
From Arabic at first, we bow to serene averages.
Blind men touching, we reach for tenebrous contact details.
There was that one funny time you caught your fucking neighbors.
We snuggle between coasts, licking our cocoon of good health,
Soon as I was expelled, I knew I’d be coolly alone.
Returns cluster ’round a golden mean, sipping common broth.
Stand up straight. Look sharp. You can’t much duck permanent justice,
In the twilight, wild-eyed Appaloosas weave open range,
Endonyms, Exonyms, Indians, abstractions aplenty.
Free-range organic criminals produced bodacious tales.
Through hard frost, the glow of a bright Hunter’s Moon blurred the edge
A blank white space on maps to dehumanize Parts Unknown.
The pioneers are now easy to dismiss. Go figure.
As if to measure treasure, we study parts per trillion
Coffled, tortured, stowed like spoons, cartage of Middle Passage.
As sweet saddle to earth’s bucking curves, the much discussed bed.
Is there a sadder word in all the world? Tall sail of hope.
So easy to lampoon: brave men run in my family.
Meanwhile, in the real world, everything was on the table.
So upright we became, so fast, fearing a brisk damnation.
I will put those critters in their place. I will turn the world
No amount of empty blue can hush my obstinate voice.
I see the best minds of my pack siring the myth of life.
It ain’t all caw-caw. We got speech, culture. Bestowing crow
Knockdown-dragout tween arched guitar and fatback drums, a bass line
Ash tree, bay tree, bead tree, bean tree, beech tree, slanted, growing.
Embarrassed at first blush, shy vegetation made public.
Opened, sprinkled, twirl of seeds on a’a or pahoehoe.
A suction of rotors squeezing
An eco-sensitive minimalist, he tagged his targets
Police Japan trying to curb unsavory trade.
Smart money swaggers into the room and eats
Of course there’s always a girl
Another planeload of baguettes leaves France.
In dreams, your breasts are perfect and skin
Kill only things you understand, all else
You. I sensed you in the sweet vulgar smell
Unzippered speech of children,
Bindlestiff with bonebreak skin and laptop,
The pane of glass exploding like the sheets
Trekking in Tibet I meet the Dalai Lama.
When humans watch the sky for holes, then kiss
Sympathy, to begin with, is a problem.
Sometimes failure is just failure and not
All the crummy things that happen
A bluebird in my garden pecking
The way lightning touches a deer’s antler
Machete elbow of camera slashing pictures
A young man on a French beach
Five men on their knees in the sand, arms lashed
Let us cross over the river and rest
In the stony glistening woods, we gathered
A spiky purple ridge is all that’s left
Like a horror movie just before the girl
The facts don’t lie: women have been chopping
Forced water must be blown, warning lights
The Spanish have dismounted and still stand
The river’s applause fades round the ridge
Lying in the rotting sun, shining white,
Lamp black, flesh tint, scarlet lake, cobalt
If you could kill anyone and get away
Like I said
How much they owe you? Boy: fourteen, gawky,
The actress imploding in the strobed flash
Qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm makes no sense yet
Mr. Full, I’m Mr. Empty. Rub my bones
Thrust then blur, ripe speed, a gentle pricking
The static frizzle between sense and nonsense
Knockdown-dragout tween arched guitar and fatback drums, a bass line
The guitarist goes home to the old home

by last line ∧ ∨

done. It is done. We are done.
sum. And options list what we can become.
Intelligence. Poignance. Nascence. Quintessence of Nels and Yuka.
sweetie. And that man has a name.
of the ravished viewer, thinking, attempting thought.
after many an empty winter and many a false spring.
There, there.
go puzzled gremlins.
this town echoes like an empty stage, and dims.
forever and forever and forever.
we've got such a soft embrace of bay to gentle truest landings.
quite right.
b l a c k n e s s o f t i m e a n d s p a c e
the interruption, please return to your meats.
This may be the first time you see me well.
Well sung, true. All we seek ’tween you and I.
up your deathstyle. Carbon, gore, gold and god.
just liquefy collateral damage.
be kind. You know, like, when they weigh the course.
Been there, done that. But—don’t dare blink. Angler
a country while we occupied ourselves.
yourself a meal of regret to stay free.
Spoiled fruit, sent back boxed. Crusty rotten bitch.
for our Trojan Horse war: bold Blackwater.
is this so if we globalize blowback?
fucking Ariel Sharon if you talk.
you spin, spin. Don’t vulgar me with your threats.
We know how to transcend Viewers Like You.
it’s our goal you’re not depressed at Gitmo.
Glorious, Al-Mâjid. As-Sal¯amu ‘Alaykum.
lost erratum slip. Praise be to Allah.
gotta go now—S.O.S.O.—go repack shit.
sun to rot, tree to drop. There will be blood.
Be confident! Stay the course! Kick Ass!
The heart’s perfect palindrome, sweet revenge.
we are going to shatter. You won’t know.
impolitely rain rain on your parade.
river is our river. We heartache you.
The living rank among the dead.
the sky into pieces—from his wheelchair.
Public Space No Purchase Necessary
the Angels loudly eat what’s left of the sky.
it’s not cancer. You drunk free flying home.
small doses of that poison, as with television.
turns your mind against itself. Sleep through it.
victims jumping over fences, like sheep.
steps now. A salute. One last wave. Back to you.
to customer needs. A new production record.
back harder. Vote early and often. Use two hands.
swings him around, smiles, and lets him hang.
universities and the birds won’t care.
flesh of conquistadors in their glinting beaks.
the broken highlife shuffle of who cares?
while fat dogs lay low, growling dreams of meat.
wet memory of fear and hope, and hope.
for hire. That water always finds a way.
into the big teeth of the planet.
bankers in suits, with polished horns.
still: black, unforgettable.
Everyone is making a living.
Dolphin, Monkey, Bat, Snake, Fly, Elephant.
in your heart, abandoning the building.
ourselves. Tonight, we dine on shards.
a new song not yet on the radio.
comes too fast, off its tracks and grinding.
alone, and disappearing.
holding up the day with her soft, large hands.
come marching down the hall to get her.
The walk-in closet in her head is more of a problem.
Your brain’s bigger than daddy but not me.
down, touch yourself, and give birth laughing.
I hope his scrotum hums with tiny fish.
tokay. The gecko speaks the simple truth.
tell us you were making other plans.
means a miscarriage, never a birth.
and the emptiness of accident.
These forms you must fill out. And these. These too.
stoking the bright furnace of hospital.
and land without looking back.
slowly then, dirtying what’s left.
pressure, under time, memory’s diamond.
on the set, and she takes her pill and she wets herself.
eager, big-eyed, coming up for air.
okay? But after that, what next?
listen to it get dark get dark get dark
in ones and twos, becoming twos and ones.
of sweet and sour. Water, water everywhere.
has a shouting chance if you yell quieter.
would be awesome, but that’s the price you’d pay.
sizing, stock, gloss, shrinkwrap, identity.
ranch. Out his cage he will glide glide like new damage.
and blooms, without fruit or purpose, except mine.
freely twisting. Rain is not a theory.
in school. Memorize the dates by test time.
the urge to fill themselves out, then change shape.
Tomorrow, and the cool shandy again.
Chamfered corner and steely ellipse intersect
comes clean, all silky and albescent . . .
on this night, walked downstairs, and dove in smiling.
I’ll see you at my funeral, snickering.
glad panting, made a name for yourself.
swabbing the decks of his expectations.
you liked yourself enough to make work work.
well—scouted. A clean run starts with a good line.
handshake of wink, sleep, and winter wheat?
me, you, and us—every damn and blessed thing.
I’ve forgotten the past, I’m in the moment. Cut.
support system ticking in its treasured chest.
for your wagon train of questions.
beneath your plane, migrating and singing.
of your emotions. Again, again, again.
waiting for the invisible collision.
special kids in nasty orthopedic shoes.
ours, parked, blue, waiting to fool us home.
average. There were candies at the funeral.
You’ll never miss the water till the well runs dry.
your child, this infancy of your desire.
an evasion executed by fantasy.
you, the empty stadium of all your wanting.
Plead the poverty of an empty bandstand.
some vague possibility of parole.
dry, and laugh about the damage.
with dinner to the same house he lives in.
to the floor. Bells ring drinkers in. Doors close.
in the face to the parade of the indented.
seas. Every day we wake up or we don’t.
small and steady, barely there, gripping, holding on inside.
heads, harvested in fleet stagecoach ambush.
bulletproof vest. Don’t quash vested interests.
get crunk sorry to disinvite dead man
elasticity of sheer Shock and Awe.
elephant insists on a last tusking.
Of All Bombs), Daisy Cutters dissolve mercy.
the barren, bleached silhouette of three dots.
high-fiving bomber crew, if I was you.
Travel & Entertainment account, my friend.
There’s no end to the purchase of a sphere.
there’s time for one last ghazal on a’a and pahoehoe.
your witty death and life, subtitled by circumstances.
throats with knives. Knives are stainless. Everything is natural.
sip, digits clicked to the bone, chasing the leopardess flux.
resistance. Two terminals fulfill all rheostat needs.
office tower morning. Pre-mujahedeen averages.
Stoked, I am gasping for fissiparous contact details.
size of Sasquatch. They’re an afterthought, your fucking neighbors.
of avid expectation swallows the spoon of good health.
there’s plenty of juice and well-enough joy fully alone.
Wahoo (WAH) 12.24▲....Salmon (JUMP) 8.58▲....c’mon broth.
and bashful promise. You want to fuck permanent justice.
stoplit drags, we forget to remember we’ve open range.
Accommodations. Vacancy. Reservations aplenty.
backwards and all the fish moved south, nibbling fictitious tales.
a wimp’s thesis, Frederick Jackson Turner auteured the edge.
staggered thumping drumbeat progress to downsize parts unknown.
the certain, people filled with narrative bliss. Go figure.
perfectly and exquisitely broken hearts per trillion.
are unlove. Rising still, fresh seepage of Middle Passage.
of a deaf man to a blind woman. Now there’s a robust bed!
food and poop, spit, taste and work, we live for the all of hope.
brothers. You better find ways to have fun in my family.
using our instinct: to pleasure, away from woe. Things change.
a cozy vaulted nest. Mapmaking was on the table.
The ultimate inside job. Don’t dare tsk-tsk damnation.
the wiles, the nads, the art and the oomph to adjourn the world.
O, dat fear, don’t make me weep. Speak now, inviolate voice.
shape, supernatural, brilliant, clawing keen to death of life.
rook, raven, piapiac, sing jackdaw. Yo! Get going crow.
Still, moving still: lookout for hope, alive in the superunknown.
for a conference call of birds and moths, transplanted, growing.
Binary arithmetic operation made public.
not even a millipede on a’a or pahoehoe.
a disease: vengeance of the vanquished
for the mind, and snuff the mirrored candles like hit men.
in its fine milky wallet
at its elder parents, out there somewhere in the gloom.
to flense the leviathan.
full when they’re really empty. Nasty news.
There’s plenty of fuel and the ceiling’s lifted.
beats a quail in the bush, red foxes leaping.
I smell old doctors who can’t see dying.
from the inside out, he dreams.
at getting clean, permanently, like the sun.
are upon us. Never say it.
properly creates suffering for us.”
stay up late, drink like there’s no tomorrow.
The bottom line can’t be read but shows my name.
injustice. Nothing recedes like success.
dripping with syrup, a trampoline of waffles.
of quickening terror is the jokester.
for church. Everything inside something else.
beep of a backing Starbucks truck ends his story.
or so. Reduce a dimension. Serve cold.
can’t be long. Bloody hot. The tide is out.
and kick back on their beaches with their whores.
cushioning the flesh of our bright darkness.
Some of us will eat it. Some of us won’t.
exposed—finally ready to return home, the same.
to have, take him home in a doggy bag.
how every revolution describes a perfect circle.
the army band still squawking up the square.
bites of dictators and dissolving stones.
of everyone’s grave imagination.
the traction crackle of a fading painting.
them, in a sense. The way they consumed you.
Those pantyhose came off?
childless vacations: shame’s plangent harvest.
Not One, But Two!—in self-cleaning ovens.
buffs the silver with her hot and bumptious breath.
of the tennis net. Resole that old soft shoe.
not talking, words feel like food in your mouth.
found when lost, now a deep blue florescence.
Still, moving still: lookout for hope, alive in the superunknown.
hammer, pluck, chord, gouge, pedal, ring, sustain.