politician snaps
photo with tourist
a politician is not a celebrity
they are educated
and entitled by money
briefed –
puppet
a
hand continually up his
arse
snap photos of hotel cleaning staff
a soldier –
policeman –
your mum
Every month – tears.
I’m late again. Hurtling up, tingling,
certain. Then boom,
a stained fall.
Cobalt dye injected,
gelid plastic intrudes. More likely
to win the lottery, doctors say.
I dig deep for the railroad switch,
Rio streets, Chinese orphanages,
all accounts cross-checked, doors and windows
cranked open for scrutiny. Then this,
this fluttering,
this clear fuchsia line.
We realize the No-Man
No-Woman land
Between Warm/Hunger.
It’s actually the No-thing
That held us in bond
Without a concrete tense
Straddling the precipice
Between Life & Death
As a valid chasm.
Warm & Hunger are
On the same plane
As receiving blanket
In one hand
A basket and shovel
In the other
Seemed together
As ephemeral ghosts
In our miserable
Existence.
Wakey, wakey
Rub eyes,
Screw Mrs.
Grab clothes
Empty bowl
Swallow cuppa
Work, hustle
Crew’s waiting
Invade house
‘Alright mate’
Abuse bitch
Ransack jewels
Split earnings
Liquid lunch
Push, shove
Smash glass
Smack bouncer
Make escape
Doner, chips
Upchuck gutter
Give finger
Drive home
Fondle Mrs.
Kill lights
I wait outside the Port a Potty for the 7-year-old boy
inside to finish, and when I go in, there is boy pee everywhere.
It is like the first few moments following the monsoon.
It is a 360 degree bombardment, nothing was spared.
I used to be a boy, I know they have a powerful stream
but even standing up they are so close to the seat,
you would think they could aim for a better result.
Or maybe this is intentional, a kind of declaration.
Powerless in the greater world, they let loose their stream
behind the pulled latch, grim determination on their pusses.
I daub the area with toilet paper and gingerly lower myself
onto the damp, like a sad clown making way for the next act.
Walking through plastic ashes
Declaring independence from brain tendriled webs
I saw through lies
and took a dive through liquid time
swirling in mind gyrating concepts
mechanical horse-head warriors
battling in golden Trojan form against
spectral spectrum soaked reptile gods
from the 5th dimension swallowing
chrono mind time of being
carving out electromagnetic weapons of mass regeneration and conversion
from empty space
with the potential for forever
piercing the sky with sonic boom war cries
feathered helmets sketching the nature of fallen clock-faced minions
in fighter jets
crashing and burning in the logic of nothing
slaying for everything
in the senseless sense the human calculator
in the dollar bill business suit and tapeworm eyes stood revealed
someone not quite unlike ourselves
wondering and wandering among the willows
unweeping
For some time they sat in the cornfield
And spoke like dull mice
About what would be done.
When the sun, a ruined fruit
Ripped the dilute garden growth
And spread a red alarm over tall shears
The eldest was heard to say
“Bury them in the cellar.”
Skins of lice lamented
Over the pulsing stalks,
Their drones blanched in the air
Curdled and hot.
The house was distant and brown
Weeping a creeping shadow from within,
That seemed to warn: ‘Keep Out’.
A blaze from the forgotten.
Old plastic swing swung over the perimeter,
A goodbye, flinch.
The sky was high and blue.
In the giant shoots
Lurking softly and surreal,
Two ducklings on the gilded shore.
The sea was swimming with flushed young men
Severing feathered heads
With long silver scissors.
Pointed thorns in a paper box.
The woman roared like the man.
“Stop”, said the girls
With frilled socks.
Once the heavens were purple
Like a bruise, the corn
Grew cold and wet.
The house stood waiting, a deadened bulb
With a swift march
They advanced through the field,
Cutting stems.
go on, fly
in cobolt sky
doing things you can’t say
random anyway-
out of sounds and words
above the hounds and herds.
see beyond
cold concrete stood on clay,
inside absurd wronged
images dismay-
and cast off doubt about
the mask we wear without:
for what is self-
displayed to others on a shelf
to touch and read the label,
or buy and taste with pleasure on feasts table-
while holding back
the secret self, for someone we lack.
So I’ve spent all damn night…
Trying to say this right….
Trying to get the right words
To Write this wrong…..
With you it’s always a fight
You think your always right
Well times are changin
And you might just be in for a surprise…
I was a fool, you were a bitch
Fell in love, and I woke up with a twitch
A broken heart and an empty pack of cigarettes
I should have known it was too good to be true….
Been sitting here all day…
Trying to get out this stain
You left on my brain and
find a way back from your insanity
Now I don’t know wrong from right
Can’t stop trying to fight this
I can’t seem to find anyway out….
Maybe it’s wrong tonight…..but it feels so right.
Let’s forget about tomorrow and just be here now…
So I was a fool…..you were a bitch
I fell in love, you gave me a twitch
A broken heart and an empty pack of cigarettes
So many times I wanted to quit …before it ever got to this
But I was a fool—-you were a bitch…..I fell in love,
Woke up with a twitch, a broken heart and an empty pack of Cigarettes
You put my broken heart in your empty pack of cigarettes…
Windfall: a ten-dollar bill
on the library floor next to
the drinking fountain and
with about four dollars
in my wallet and another
fifty in the bank I
could really use it but
I looked around and asked
a man going out if he
had dropped it and he said
no and I thought
I might have said yes
since who would know
but then I noticed
his small daughter
tugging his pant leg
and staring up at him
and then I thought
of my two teenage sons
who miss nothing
and felt a pang
at their absence
and also at my
imagined dishonesty
wondering how many
moments in one’s life
pivot on seeming luck
or grace like found money.
In Between Hangovers 