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i’m happy to let you all know i’ve published my newest book — ordinary language. it’s available at amazon and lulu.com. (if you need to on amazon, search for "ordinary language zeltzer"). hope you all enjoy it! — david 
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i wait for email that never comes from the glass eye on mars
the open martian eye hides the rocket blasting a plague of robots to the roses in my pocket but i wanted to be free so i walked down Aniara and no one with clothes dies on any other spaceship so i fly past her planet with a little blood on my fingers and gently stroke her trembling crimes as she eats flames between planets where no planetismal will creep in her lungs and cry for her flaming heart for the forgotten world of days tangled together in this ancient firepit where men and women stream like gas and dust from passing stars their thrilling dreams of gas and dust like snowflakes fall on distant hills and melt as droplets i can’t touch in my uniform i look carefully in the car window
and order the driver to learn all the sky and earth out the car window where senators flying out the car window violate butterflies charging weary voters suck from the radio a flowering universe that knows the old stories miles and miles before time bled from our wrists until empty and eaten by the adoring goddess we die like mama in us blow wind transit diaphine venus
her grin is measured lights out stars leap clouds to view the ghosts of seven samurai in new haven where butterflies gather and grass is teeming with neural nets learning how to make deep fog to hide me from the planets i hold in my mouth the tiny meteor fragment of aldebaran exhausted follower of women careens through saturn's brilliant rings my lover dreams her breasts float up like smoke bloom starry flowers dead I travel lifetimes never see the empty space you made with all the dancing river tongues and endless strokes caressing dawn’s abandoned grasp of light or radio dead I travel the sun shrouded with muscle
in a time so small it lies forgotten among songs and stones in my pocket it was dark so flowers ungrew into seeds and salamanders became wind you were a song once too i heard you on youtube but forgot the connection and my pocket grew quiet there is no air down there my mouth fills with warm tea my fingers reach across the planet children in bright costumes grow from dark seeds hidden in air airplanes fly across the page violated by my pen with loud booms floating like language we spoke at birth before we were kissed and held up to the light i once jumped out of an airplane.
yeah, i was with others who all thought the air would save us, even though it had no eyes and hands to hold us tight and close, loving each of us who dared to trust the ropes and cloth that could have been laundered and folded neatly by some woman who never watched television or ate pizza. i asked many times but no one told me about the little dog inside me who fell out the window. we barked and howled, but not all the way down. there was no siren, no alarm bell, only the grassy hills and an arrow on the ground pointing at something. i don’t remember anymore at what, just like the professor down in front trying to explain something. i was wearing a white jumpsuit, and i made sure to use the outhouse often enough so that the jumpsuit wouldn’t change colors at the sudden mad moment when i let go of the strut and saw the wing get smaller and smaller. the wind nearly blew off my glasses. i now know why paratroopers in the movies yell “geronimo!” when they jump — so no one hears the little dogs bark. i think i saw a white flower when i got done with falling. i looked around to make sure i wasn’t on fire. later i heard tall grasses tell their adventure stories. it was so long ago the trees don’t remember how many times i looked carefully at the dirt when i practiced dying. i captured an asteroid cold
as a lilac’s garden so cold a woman's flower has no scent careen a rocket among children preening with their eyelids the bright stars sinking deeper in the sad mud of this nation i wander and rocks stop lying tailless crystals burrow in the flaming sand and disappear like me who leaps over cars and trucks and spray-paints a poem on spain, france or chile a poem thin as someone flying in a hole in the ground with a child's wing a poem i stole from a lilac petal floating cold and lonely among the stars wandering in oaxaca a photograph
of yosemite lies crumpled in the pocket of a nurse who wraps the wind around her mamacita’s neck. the nurse warms the wind so it won’t remind her of the sea, or the time when horses were some other animal changing slowly into long-lost street musicians who cry and holler at the hollow sky until all the couples tie themselves in knots, ancient and silent, lost men and women coated with oil that seeps from a symphony in the park, before it was written on all the leaves, fill a cup, smear it on a telescope lens and see an asteroid aiming carefully at a wet and glistening shell in the sand. no one sees the hungry
hardwired angel naked children see the petals no one says goodbye children bought you every ocean dream and no one sees the petals please say goodbye long ago the words command the sand the bones the water the children laugh lie forget your name and bring you peaceful canyon dreams mother’s drumming bones no one says the blood every ocean fallen with the petals says goodbye no one sees the baby no one laughs no one says goodbye — san jose february 2015 i put my ear to the brick
and hear no crashing waves only birdsong overwhelming the piazza with avian thunder confusing the wayward tower shrouded with scaffolding of unhurried tourists cold and wondering what is the pain of lifebreath hurrying through veins of viper eyes relaxed and reading omens of night without stars poison at the mountain top streams rocks watered-out campfires a cool breeze through the trees befuddled and snoozing the murderous hands slice crusty loaves of bread and never give hunger a second chance — oakland november 2018 |
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