In which I post the closing yodel sonnet of Uncontainable Noise.

 
Another Hundred-Line Drunken Cowboy Sonnet
 
Poetry’s led me here, this far:
rethink the ocean floor:
trunks of pirate treasure,
necessary as red weather,
unearthed near the wreck,
brought to the surface,
up the ladder, onto the schooner,
crowbarred: metal casings,
gunpowder, bottles, bricks,
sticks, a single bazooka,
and pieces of a thousand
thousand Lost Yodel Sonnets:
Here’s the scene at Annie O’s
A RHETORIC OF RAPTURE AND RUPTURE SONNET
More than thirteen ways Murfy says of making a
Frenzy Dismemberment Bacchus
From the dark place, the Other in you understood
as desire packed and rolled in a theory you can
explain, a trophy you can dangle from your pony
yer self-pitying sonnet blather
And back always a pouring in and
The throwaway country line liquor and love make
Your journey will make more sense if you understand
Whassamatter white boy you
YOU’RE SUCH A BASTARD YOU BASTARD DIVORCE SONNET
genius pages drifting wrapping around
Ethnicity Absent Object
Erotic because taboo, empowering because
it marks moments of rebellion, autonomy,
because mutinous (cunt: she who refuses twice)
your myths. Tonto’s the name you give your savagery
bomb
ROOSTER CROWING ROSE AND BOTTLE ROCKET SONNET
Blood in the water like smoke like gestures
these nightmare measurements of masculine worth
bleeding through lines sign of death health sign of all signs
GEORGIA O’KEEFFE WAS JUST PAINTING FLOWERS SONNET
Say hairtrigger tigers in really red weather
ten times. Say you hit delete and start all over
CACOPHONY MOUNTAINS AREN’T HIGH ENOUGH SONNET
DEEP AS THE WRECK AND PUSHING UP DAISIES SONNET
something apart from you, you know it’s in you
The I of all this first-person declarative
or exclamatory insisting
She takes your left hand and puts it between
Across a table, against a wall, through a door
cock, cocking, cocked
MAN RAY’S FLOATING LIPS UP AND KISS KING KONG SONNET
in my bourbon dreams
and halfway through the sonnet
and halfway through the sonnet
SOMETHING YOU CAN PUT IN YOUR PIPE AND SMOKE SONNET
Your first wife and her wife and
History throws need on a potter’s wheel and works it
into desire
I’m the one at the table a little too loud
RAS THE DESTROYER EXHORTING TONTO SONNET
A maze ain’t a maze if you can find yer way out
like it was
piss and yawp and howl and scrawl and
FELL OF DARK ANOTHER PHRASE I’VE STOLEN SONNET
but if you don’t give folks a way out it’s nothing
but a wall folding in on itself like entrails
and if that’s what yer going to do you better
have pretty pictures to look at along the way
AIN’T NO WAY YOU’LL SHOOT YER WAY OUT OF HERE SONNET
gin and bourbon and beer and wine and vodka and
HOLY GHOST HOLY COW TALKING IN TONGUES SONNET
TIME GETS WEIRD AND THERE’S NO DAMN WHERE TO GO SONNET
FREAKING FOR NO PARTICULAR REASON SONNET
Call it everything I’ve been aiming, shooting for,
call it the white picket fences of forever,
call it my lot in life, the burden I’ll carry
like bags of feed from truck to mouth, the July
fields where Annie O and I hope to sow our seed,
the babies we’re planning to birth and raise under
a godless sky, in the open space of no myth
or a book of new myths, all of it bleeding like
MEAT-AXE DAY AND NIGHT TILL YOU GET IT RIGHT SONNET
But it doesn’t have to be that way, Murfy says
NOT IF YOU KEEP TO THE GOOD STUFF COWBOY SONNET
and remember what’s important that the family
you come from had arms like hams and eyes that could kill
a man and you love your perfect parents sisters
and the women were strong and bad whiskey passed like
PASSED LIKE ONE LAST HARD PISS OFF THE BACK PORCH SONNET
And the family you’re building with me, Annie says,
isn’t a building, isn’t a bottle, its neck
your neck, its mouth your mouth, its body your body.
The family you’re building with me is a yodel
jumping with blood noise, liquor through my veins, rivers
howling, drunken boats shooting rapids like rapture
YER BLOOD NOISE THUMPS GUT TO LEG LIKE CRAZY SONNET
YOUR BLOOD NOISE IS THE NOISE BANGING MY HEART SONNET
MY BLOOD NOISE IS THE WILD VOICE IN YOUR EYES SONNET
OUR WILD VOICES COME SCREAMING TOGETHER SONNET
COMING TOGETHER LIKE HOLLYWOOD UR-SONNET
What we’ll drink to:
handfasting forever this:
happy endings that.

For an interview in which I talk about music and sonnets, see my 2010 interview with poet Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum at Poem of the Week.

For more yodels both like and not like this one, see Uncontainable Noise.