You came dressed
in hesitation and hope.
I greeted you like one
does on a Monday.
By then our weekend was warehoused
in an unlit corner of my coxcomb.
Unwittingly your awkwardness
exerted to ignite it.
One day in a another situation
you will be exculpated.
Growing up is a skill.
I took my time.
Thirsty for blackness searching tunnels
tasting empty wells. How many times?
Ten times ten times ten. Ten thieves
have stolen our souls.
Lost in ignorance with plastic eyes and
cosmetic sneers, they find illusion
in their own reflections.
Seven times seven times seven.
The shards of their mirrors are crushed.
Slivers of glass will be their food.
Many are lost to poverty stranded in
pools of despair. They crouch in
corners, eating the air of distrust.
Three times three times three
faith hope charity.
Which is the greatest of these?
Do you know true charity?
Tracing old constellations to find
nourishment. Though I have heard
the great silence, stood in golden warmth
filled with pure light…I am not yet free.
One times ones times one.
In wild hunger and thirst,
starved by sorrow, dressed in tears…
searching for comfort.
I’m tired of the slipstream,
I need…
clarification
conversation
not a war
on the seafloor
with
carnivores,
as for who should be
president,
I lament
my feet are in cement
I don’t know how
to lobby-
my knees are too knobby
I’m tired of watching
debates,
I need a new hobby
After Joni Mitchell
I live in a paint box
squeezed between rusty cans.
Crayons pile up.
Brushes irritate my nostrils.
The box is flung open,
Olivia throws out carelessly everything.
looking for her balloon.
Flat on the floor
Run over by mice.
A hairy hand throws me back,
winds me.
A brush in hand
I paint the floor
from a split open pink can.
Crayons draw green purple circles
The baby laughs and throws up.
At night the garage is quiet
except for the red Rambler coughing oil,
dreams of another cross country.
Marveling at the Grand Tetons
and the majestic Pacific shore.
Eat shit, roll over and die,
I face my day with every cast of the die.
Ah, don’t ask why in the mirror I spy
this oddly even cast in my eye,
as if the mind hobbled in a cast. Just
ask to – to stay in God’s eye just –
flee my reverse face trapped in the glass,
while I recite this verse for a cast of one.
I – bar through fist – eye at infinity –
contemplate, through thin flesh,
the humdrum on today’s plate:
iced veins at the office,
marching in vain
to tedium’s fife and drum.
To the job I hate, never make me late.
Eat shit, roll over and die,
I fear my day with every cast of the die.
It is the vapor of something, I don’t know
a nebulous longing in the guise of an ache,
that rises to fill me up with your diamond eyes.
Anxieties have wings; existence is a drag.
The air is a constant lack, I breathe. Bones chime,
and fill the vacuous spaces inside my body;
the interference pattern of death and boners.
Sometimes, I want to buy me a lying drug,
telling me that I am living a Bollywood movie.
It sucks, but it won’t go forever.
Do I want to be comfortably fooled? Or do I want
to be naked down to my last molecule ?
I am not made in schools, books or churches. And
I am not going to drag the corpse of last few thousand years,
like I am told to. One of these days, I just want to
be a duck or a stupid pig. What are you going to do about it?
“Form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. “… Diamond Sutra
“Form is background. Background is form”….M.C. Escher’s Sutra
“Wave is particle. Particle is wave”…Heisenberg’s Sutra
“Matter is mind. Mind is matter”….Jung’s Sutra
“Nevermind”…..Cobain’s Sutra
I am going to have a slice of sky for the breakfast today,
to celebrate the oneness of sublime and junk. And of course,
you are not invited, because you and me are always one.
They were the women’s beer league
champions four years running.
Most were built like Bay City Bombers
after Raquel had left the team, all, that is
except for the pitcher, short fielder, and
second baseman, all of whom looked
like pixie dusted vestal virgins but were
known to scream like harlots when their
men went down hard where it mattered.
The MVP was part Calamity Jane,
part Blaze Starr, an authentic bad momma
who liked to play softball while the sun
shined and hard ball all night after post game
parties. “I’m the MVP all right,” she liked
to say in between shots of Ole, “Most
Valuable Pussy.” Made the police blotter,
the six o’clock news, and the DWI Hall of Fame
all in one night, driving so far over the limit
she was medically dead. Created a drive-in
door and window, totaling a car and a Stewart’s
Convenience store, in one go. Was quoted
as saying, after the EMT’s scoped her for
obvious signs of injury, “I never felt a thing.”
A pussy is a terrible thing
to waste, Alice tells her lover.
He is on his back, drowsy.
She has ridden him hard, taken him deep;
now he is tired, ready to nap.
With one hand, she caresses his cheek,
places her pouty lips on
his open mouth.
The two tangle tongues.
Like it or not, he is becoming erect.
Again.
Alice sighs happily,
climbs astride
as he grabs her hipbones
for another wild coupling.
She is swollen and moaning,
calling his name,
unfolding like a flower,
already wet.
The bone carver works
At the heart
Of the matter.
Weds mortal
To its other-half with
Tools
As lean
As acquired logic.
Some dream-polisher.
The calm dexterousness
Of race-formed
Memory
Appendixed
Aeons before
That horded
Tasmanic
Crossing.
Not for him the near Gods,
Haka, or reptilian
Myth. Just
White cloud strung
Between
Osmotic gravity
That grows
Within his fingertips…
A rare gift. Blood
On the tourist dollar.
{*North Island = New Zealand}
In the fairy-tale book, there’s illustrations by Rackham.
If the words themselves won’t give you nightmares,
I guarantee the pictures will.
Red Riding Hood is so innocent, you’ll fear for your children.
And the wolf is fooling nobody.
Not even the worst grandmother has teeth that sharp,
snout that long, hair that thick.
But that’s the point of childhood isn’t it.
Start with the nightmares and grow from there.
Aren’t we all grounded in witches hauling themselves
up towers on a princess’s long gold hair.
Or dragons in caves. Or giants smelling blood.
By the time the warnings come around
to strange men in cars, kids from rough neighborhoods,
we’ve shuddered from clutching trees, invidious gnomes,
larcenous beggars, talking toads and, worst of all,
little boy and girl devourers.
The predators, the tough kids, just add to that
roaming band of evil-doers.
And later in life, the ranks of ogres thicken…
co-workers with a sharp knife for your back,
women who cheat at every turn,
so-called friends who rob you blind.
And that’s not even taking into account
bad drivers, clumsy fork-lift operators,
hunters with lousy aim,
and politicians who would send you off to war.
It’s a dangerous world.
It’s a dangerous imagination.
I’m reading my child a story.
I’m showing him the illustrations.
He won’t sleep well.
Nor should he.
In Between Hangovers 