I Fought a Newt

I fought a newt
on some wrought iron rungs
hauling bloody binkies
down Crater River
batshit sky black as stones
I got diamond knees
I’m in the summer knoll of my heart
hard times in goop
a tug in my soul
in a moaning sky
trying to rust my nuts
I’m trying to dust this eel
I washed your homer
take me in your blank wheeze 
highwave stomach
take me and shave me
take me on your train
suck shyly the light now
feel better you fools
I put a burger on my lips
I put my blessing on your body
I tear apart
invest in gaiters
hands in a bag of salt
shoo na na
shoo na na
singing about oh your node of style
model of the constellation
a confession
hosed out a tree
you shoot a laugh out your noodle
I love that in the night
skin turned on a seismic whale
to smote the scarecrow
I saw long-haired men from a frigate
shoo na na
shoo na na
oats when it was hard
raw and loud
crowning the mystery
counting the names missing
somewhere deep down at the school where I worked
with the basement crowd
and the queues in the nightmare 
I’m the nightmare now 
the judgment jails
the hooves and scarves
it’s all awry
I hear the falling of the pillar of the anger moon
and wake the sarge
to the hate in the house
on love.gov
we’re riding and we’re not scared
of people’s dark sticky bullshit
sometimes smoke seeps in
while I drive through town
and over by Walrus Mountain
I queue by the shadow
a comma like a shotgun
coming into the mystic swollen gravel
my dreams and I
see your face
a movie in the night
ahhh I need you by my side
I can feel the bullshit in my bones
it shits you
I can feel the bug shitting
the CIA trying to bug this house
at times I can swing the axis
I lift up a little ghost
stick sticks in the soil
the hounds are heavy with greed
you can almost feel your muscles pray
I’m breaking up 
missing the feel as much as a lonely crater
and though your bone
and my heart 
fed all your favorite ribbits
all the suppers come to an end
me and you fall in love again
fall down the riverbed
there is nothing
all the subtlety in the world
me and you
drinking forties

Difficult Vacation

The winter was summer
icicles melted into intricate forms
like they were having a contest
then disappeared entirely 
I attempted prayer
and received exactly prayer back
a kind of wild humming
and though it was sunny
and fragrant around the pond
and though you loved me
I could not see your face
I moved back home
and home felt much more far away 
though I lined up everything I had with such care
the wind came for my mind like a balloon filling
I wanted to breathe into it 
or be equal to it
and in this way spent the season

Meteor

The sky for now
will let me stay here
blue to midnight blue
I did a whole lot
of research trying to learn
when I could pretty much just take
a very simple walk
I was talking about before
I was talking about before now
previous to this
all wound up in the kitchen
something absolutely hysterical
showing up via special delivery
after all these years
to stumble finally on how
to write another poem 
a stupid little kindness 
with my 5pm beer 
in the golden hour
a christ-like sort of blinking going on 
and the birds and the soft breeze
I’m thinking about the way these things all
have trajectories purely of their nature
or so it is suggested to me
by the immutable laws
of these uncounted spheres 
in both orbit and rotation
in what I’m sure has to be
unending combinations
so what’s my nature
what can I take
and what can I not
and tomorrow at high noon
it will be low tide
and I will talk out loud
as far as I can
into the boisterous sea

Seth Landman is the author of two books of poems: Confidence and Sign You Were Mistaken. He co-hosts The Dungeon, a podcast about movies, and All Our Pretty Songs, a podcast about 90s rock music, and he publishes a newsletter about the NBA called The Windmill. He lives in Massachusetts.