January 2012
38 posts
7 tags
In Which The Poet Totally Regrets Dreaming
After an hour of twirling
the bullet-holed ceiling around
my finger, I realized the satellites
sarcastically told me I was nowhere.
I ran out of the cafe to find the city
folded into a paper bird and everyone
was a scratched lottery ticket flake,
soaking in staid puddles of old snow.
My ex yelled at me for drinking
all of the juice and I forgot to pay
the bill. I flashed my teeth like a...
6 tags
Today Is Going To Be Ruthless
You must be born again
and again and again and shake
yourself to life — separation
is natural and unless you treat it
as a joke you might as well throw
yourself into some abyss.
That’s what I really meant to say
when I spoke about black hole irises,
a hollow look that is serious and sucks
the vitality out of all the light
bulbs in the room. But of course
I also chose to...
7 tags
We wait for the moment of clarity
too long, beer gardens taking precise
measurements of our friendships,
everyone waiting for tips.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
I Don't Understand Saturday Poems Either
There’s a wild apogee of understanding
when the moon is suppose to rise,
your black hole iris fills with pigeons
and please-keep-off-the-grassy heart.
What’s more wild to us than concrete
and your thighs that ungive to the sea
and laughter? It’s cold enough for tea,
but mild, moon spreading about
in grainy mustard light, undressing
ourselves for us like a cannibal....
8 tags
Wooing a Motionless City
I told Pritchard I’d write a poem using Motion City Soundtrack and Wu-Tang Clan lines, and I hate myself for it.
I’ve said before that the future freaks me out,
bringing all sorts of ruckus in like the true
lives of dinosaurs and the 37 Shaolin chambers.
What secrets will be left if all time turns
fragile, our grandkids becoming digital
archeologists and breaking every steady...
11 tags
In Which The Poet Admires His Lack Of...
I’m afraid of how simple it is,
to injure eternity by thinking about it.
The present is revisable the moment
we enter it, but getting there is dangerous,
roulette with a six-tongued polyglot
who can only be understood in smoke.
I assume the future will be more vertical,
that every corpse planted since our ether
nights will bring new banana trees
so we can keep making dick jokes...
11 tags
Excerpts of a State of the Union Bender, with the...
Keep me at the oiled outer reaches,
me in my place where I used to like
how I would think. There’s a kick-ass
section of this that’s medically necessary
and economically imperative that I teach
it to you. Down with the man! we all say
with beer spilling from our mouths,
down with chips outnumbering dips!
the one percent an infinite snack,
the cancerous blob of avocado envy....
7 tags
The CIA Invented Dinosaurs To Discourage Time...
My good will is tied up in fossil
fuels, lock the garage before
the avenue leaks in. Yes, I’m
paraphrasing the roar
of an El Camino, I wanted my body
to look sleek, racing stripes
from the end of every split hair.
Every year that doesn’t have my picture
in it is likely to not have happened -
youth is a myth the future tells
to keep me from, you know, up and
dying. Who is...
3 tags
beatnikdaclassic-deactivated201 asked: can you please follow me or, just give me criticism on my poems? please
8 tags
I’m not speaking to myself except to prove
that adaptation sparks a node of violence
against what’s unfit, like speaking to one’s self,
especially so early in the morning.
Half of the world makes a game of standing
on my throat, hence my heart strayed
and laughed while I couldn’t
catch my breath. I could speak easier
if the message was simple enough to convey,...
7 tags
The world flitted its eyes here and there,
but I could only eavesdrop, never interrogate.
Instead, the world rested its trajectory along
a new word: autopsy. I let my skin play dead
while all that had been me shattered.
I desperately want something fireproof.
It focused on random templates of rage
corrupted by not fitting together.
Adaptation was incitement to violence;
how many options...
7 tags
A New York That's Hardly Working
imachinatedpoetry:
Home. Garden. Cottage? Honking subject to fines and ball points. Another hard hat maze, please watch yourself gap toothed meter maid in the bright neon traffic. The best questions are the ones that eviscerate the answer’s soul and the best shoes in town, guaranteed. Of course there’s felafel, it’s America, goddamnit!
-C.S. Henderson
[by TheTargetBird]
7 tags
Reject 35
If love is the defacement of unselfconscious
materialism which has guided us to paint
the house using sledgehammers and pretend
orange is the color most likely to sing,
then maybe that weird smell exists
wholly within our noses and the world is not
the burst pores of wistful fandago
like we’ve been joking about all year.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
Words require almost nuclear energy
just to be thought, let alone breathed.
That’s why I like to deal everything in
with images and say “shit” instead
of what I mean. I’d tell you I love you
enough to burn down the avalanche,
but that requires a new set of principles
in which to angle light into the room -
we have too much furniture,
too many places to sit and...
6 tags
The Ugly Moorings
I.
Let’s talk about how I find each city
to be a bivouac for harried souls.
Let’s flip over my desk for even thinking it.
Let’s spook the repertoire of my fist
into collapsing on itself.
II.
Dreams are a good excuse
for skipping work and for song,
but really they’re just apologies
for reality’s post-Romantic stress.
III.
In a dream I keep having,...
5 tags
11 tags
582 Love Sonnets to the Rock: 7
After the fantastic idea mentioned in this post by TheLazyLazarus
The wind’s bulk of grit
skims into the cavern bed,
my teeth are tired from chattering
all the time and Buddy Guy’s solos
in “Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me”
unwinding each fleck of nail.
I laughed the first time I heard it
was exactly how I wanted
to tell you that when I restoked
the ashes of...
6 tags
In the end, harmony stuck together like it was wet. It became intimate as if hawks were circling it, the day riper than oranges for lunch.
(Read this poem at 930, when the day is a leftover and pushed to the back of the fridge. Make sure it grows its mold as if it were once good enough for a lunch.)
-C.S. Henderson
8 tags
A Dream of the Dragon Libertarian Eating Liberty
Every laugh comes at a hard angle
the whole paper world sitting
unlit in the fireplace
there’s a lot of cold out there
if we just read the newsletters
I’ve read and got discouraged
by everything so this must be
hell wrapped in fur
upstreaming my cab.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
6 tags
We name things because they change on us
but I don’t understand the past. We named hell
because it is. Just is. Try to retain it with smashed
fruit and car batteries – where are the trees
and ocean, where is my wheeze? I need to sit.
So I will sit.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
7 tags
Young Rivers and Future Hearts
“we can spend our days building ships
breaking them apart at sunset”
-Sam Stein
I’m not sure I understood
what was noble or free about the soul.
I felt something ghastly twist
around every rock, I felt a scarf
twist around my neck, I felt
the rain in pixels and loam
in my heart. What is great
about the future when it vomits
in the stairwell before the party begins?...
7 tags
Montreal
I bought a down coat.
I brought a down cast.
My brow a downed ship.
At sunrise we erect it:
the sun and a flock of light and the sea
on which to set a ship and the Galapagos
with its dinky finches and vampire
myths and paper and ink and the idea
that two can go together and a letter
and another and another and another
and a symbol with eyes to read it
and eyesandeyesandeyesandeyes...
8 tags
Reject 34
If love separates the darkness
with explosions of confetti and a hint
of grapefruit, treats your bed like a countryside
walloped by cadavers and cement,
and asks to spend sleep
rubbing off each others’ dry skin,
remember that the ruin value of a howl
is more beautiful than the wolf.
-C.S. Henderson
Digital Chapbook #3: Kinski!
lavosxii:
Poetry about actor Klaus Kinski circa the filming of Fitzcarraldo. A lot of people talk about mud. Herzog wants a foot job. A colonial illness infects the crew. A lot of laughs and adventure. Available here
Hey you! Yeah, you! Read this!
7 tags
Notions We Rarely Use
We lived abandoned like musical
instruments, always in half-
light of sleep and warm frozen spaces
chiseled into hallways. Every hotel
was a birthday cake for candles
like us. We wanted to be aware
like we were hunting, wanted to catch
and fold morning light.
We yawned as partners with every porch dog in America, wondering
at night if ghosts burned wood too.
-C.S. Henderson
4 tags
A poem my mom wrote
There once was a fellow McSweeny
Who spilled some gin on his weenie
Just to be couth
He added vermouth
Then slipped his girlfriend a martini.
*I love my family. Like whoa. New Target Bird poem later today.
6 tags
In Which The Poet Gives Up For A Moment
I am tired of writing poetry all the time,
always balking at my own language,
looking for a new way to communicate
a good morning or that it’s cold
or that I’ve had one too many
but give me the keys anyway.
It does not make sense to me
but maybe I can get enough speed
and space between us, and a breath.
To hell with poetry.
To hell with its boring stiff suits and galas.
To...
7 tags
I spent last night chastising
stars with songs written
in dust and playing on
spurts blooming like I clean
the attic. This morning
is a ragged black tooth
ache sky, and cups of coffee
are nestled safely in me
like a grave. Shadows
are unfolding on the highway
and prayed to in distant heaven
like we could have
a bird’s nailed to our feet.
-C.S. Henderson
6 tags
The lungs hurt in apricity
Try to manage a smatter
Of fan mail - you’re breathing
So well these days,
You keep so many wishes
On your eyelids,
Your cataracts are the most
Beautiful clouds and I see
Rabbits run brilliantly through them.
-C.S. Henderson
11 tags
In Which The Poet Fucks Up At Work And Instead Of...
If not finishing today’s Sudoku
is the biggest problem faced,
then perhaps spilling coffee
into my lap is in order. I dreamed
of two gibbons reaching for the moon,
who pulled it down and left me asleep
for 37 years and a wistful elation jolting
in and out like a firefly. It’s noon but not
really because saying it’s noon takes me
a bit farther away from it. Unjointed...
6 tags
"Not Just Light" published in decomP magazinE →
So, one of my favorite Target Bird poems was published in the latest issue of decomP magazinE. Check it out. You can even listen to me read it, if you want.
And since the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, I’ve added a “Publications” page to The Target Bird. There are links to some older poems that have been published, and one that was published this year. Also, the link to...
7 tags
If only light were what we contained.
I wept at the corner of the bulb.
You were the last non-me to walk
through undark, the last liberty
of toes that could tip over hope.
I want to fill every pore
with a cigar, ember
porcupine, until I am
a bag of smoke.
-C.S. Henderson
7 tags
I am lost, I am
where everything silent became
as useful as a pomegranate,
where everything became
a bloody seed and a bore
and a bulldozer in the meadow,
where everything in the second
stanza was brave and jaunty
and real cool and June-hot,
where everything settled
at the bottom of the brook
and was sifted and cut
and kept me up all night,
where everything got dingy
and reverted to empty...
9 tags
I Am Unconnected
I am unconnected.
I am unconnected.
I am happy my feet still lift
and my stomach can handle
a Coke now and then.
I am unconnected.
I am happy my hands don’t always
have to hold a pen and I don’t
have to wear a scarf all year.
I am unconnected.
I am happy I’ve made it
this far as an ant
on an ant in an ant in an
ant among ants in everything.
I am happy...
6 tags
I wanted to write to you because the apples
have released all spectral arrows lingering
in the bounds of noise (light and chemicals
and the rustle and plop of trees bursting
always into the street’s periphery are another
way to cloud the city with something fresh
and unphilosophical and not maintaining
a million nails’ worth of sexless spire), and so
winter is really here but...
8 tags
Ways I Wish I Hadn't Wished The New Year
“Am I hung over? Very well then I am hung over, I am large, I contain scotch.”
-D. Pritchard
Happy new ear!
Happy ew year!
Happy we year!
Happy new tear!
Happy new year in 3 hrs
haha I’m already here!
Happy mew year!
There’s always new things
popping up, what good is a year?
I would have said I avoided it,
but I didn’t. Onwards!
-C.S. Henderson
