Bleeding Out

I am his mortal wound,
the dark marrow thread
embroidered
into the twists
of his double helix.
He is the puppet
I will bleed out
over time.
I have so much
to undo
and so many
bruised realizations
to unfold.
My work is sundial slow.
A series of broken faces
framed in the mirror
is my exhibition.
Every earnest promise
and yearning word
falling into a despairing
sea is my song.
I am his mortal wound.

Other Shoe

I ride
the East Greenlake
Express
sitting behind
a wax paper
mannequin
who can't
stop moving.
He is affected
with lonely
animation.
His sad hum
is a bandage
on the sliced
fingers
of his heart.
He's lost.
He's lost
his love
because
he remained
blue opaque
when asked
for definition.
I listen to the
defeated measures
he drifts
over
the river rock
heads
of our face-forward,
expressionless
companions.
The other shoe.
The other shoe dropped.
She's not there.
The ringing
in the chiaroscuro
candled auditorium
of his head
takes an aisle seat,
and tears up
our transfers.
We will ride.
We won't
get off.

When You Smile

You've got ten fingers

on two hands

and

a pair of 

ben franklin's

to know

that you're only

dim

deaf 

dumb

and blind.

What are you gonna do...

Jack of All Trades?

Master at None?

On Christmas morning

did you ever

see the faces

so excited,

waking up 

and 

programmed

just to know

that

you are not

invited?

Dummy, can you

hear me?

No.

I try to sit

and talk with you

but you 

haven't heard me

anymore.

It's alright (again)

it really didn't mean

a thing.

A new bullet

has got

my name

on it.

Walk away wounded

with

the prize;

shaking

and delivered,

hit by a truck,

and

smarting.

A Revenant in the West Edge

Night shakes its
heavy chain
and the gilt
is pulled off
the West Edge.
Under faded
daylight skin
of the town
they stir
inside woolen
chrysalis'
rusted with
dumpster runoff
and agates of
shit.
Their time is now.
This is the true land of nod.
Down where the
fairy slips
turning a trick,
I saw him.
He used to have
a name
a girlfriend
a Vespa scooter
everything two-tone.
He decided it was better
to sell short
and trade the balance
of his tomorrows
for a quick trip
down the drain in his arm
to the dead heart of God.
All that's left
as his rotting corpse
shambles past
wrapped in bleeding pupa
is a needle point tattoo;
a black tar mark of Cain
burned
into the unseeing retinas
of his revenant yellow
eyes.

Your Seattle Mariners

Those Two / This One

Who are they?
Those two
who after all
this time
are still two.
They snatched me
from an incubated cloud
plugged into the arms
of Emmanuel General
and lay me down to
weep in tiny
Hawthorne house.
Because I am here
is this where I belong?
When the dreaming thread
is lost
I find myself sitting
in highbacked chair
briefly unrecognized
by my china cabinet tarnished
reflection.
A newspaper breakfast table
in Orchards, Washington.
Because I am here
this is where they belong.
Home has never been home
for me.
I am the stray dog stayed too long.
Who were those two
who screamed and cried
across the hall,
introducing a little boy
to the dark end of everything?
I'm not the only one
who is moving through
the walls of the green house
on 86th Ave NE from
the visible to forgotten.
Those two and these four.
But I won't be able to feel
or remember anything
except
this one.
This one stands outside
looking at the tall tree
that was snatched from
Mrs. Granpre's 3rd grade classroom,
freed from choking
black bucket embrace
and placed in the yard.
Because it's here
this is where it belongs.
This one has already done
what this one was put here to do.
This one and those two.

PLFC

Goose-step strings of chords
same sing a g-major march.
Slap back,
pick scratch,
feedback grass-blade whistle
and then
your friend
jumps out the apartment window
to his
end.
Your dear friend.
Square secret
and keep it that way.
But we all knew.
The drone hid well;
under the red Rendezvous,
behind the stripper's jewelbox,
in the locks of Ballard
and in the dried blood
organ key groan.
The unreliable narrator
drove straight home
from the El Paso Graveyard
with a soaked oil railroad tie
and a can to paint it white.
They want to hear him.
The fucking bastards
want to hear him
say 'Mandrake'.
The leslie speaker shakes her hips
and the narrator
reads the happy totals.
It's too late to be humble,
one boot propped up under the
Key West sign.
It's too late to be great again.
The golden age of smelterville
is here.

I'm in Trouble

Never Aim To Please

Never Aim To Please by Bash and Pop

I never aim to please

couldn’t shoot straight

with a point of view

Never aim to please

shooting nothing

gaining nothing

is all I do

 

Take me as I am

and I take what I want

and leave what I can’t stand

 

I never aim to please

couldn’t shoot straight

with a point of view

Never aim to please

shooting nothing

gaining nothing

is all I do

shooting nothing

gaining nothing

is all I do

Tommy Stinson - 1992

Missoula Last Kiss Summer

Paintbrush comb the riverside

The coal fed banjo wire whines

Missoula Montana puppet show sky

unties candlewick trails

in prairie grass 

Drumstick telegraph poles

get bowling pinned to a pegged odometer

facing east

Goodyears hug each mile goodbye

on the last black double tracked tape ribbon

 

Oh brothers hear my brother play his song

here in the tavern 

here in the town

Grab your best girl grin

and your beer barrel paycheck

cross over the cobblestones

and sing with us

it's the final night

of the last kiss summer

Fiddle bow bass and kettle pot drum

dance us past the rusting trawlers

across the drawn drawbridge

over the dead Salmon Bay

and into the colorless morning sun.

 

She's A Tree

Hey,

did you come

down here

all the 

way to

the bottom 

of me

all 

of the

way

with 

me?

Quiet.

Be quiet.

Hear 

the yellowed 

fingers

of the 

spider web?

Don't breathe.

Don't breathe.

Don't breathe.

Then you can

finally rest

in 

peace

with me.

I can't.

I can't hold

on.

I can't hold

on

to you.

I didn't know 

you were me.

I couldn't

I couldn't.

Perhaps, though.

What if I...

Why can't I...

I'm so

very 

hurt

and 

uncertain.

After The War

Seashell shocked
with insides soaked
in Irish whiskey
you advance
on Pacific Northwest cold front
twilight.
The landing craft lights
of the badger hole bar
glimmer and dimmer.
Five hours crossing the channel
of goodbye
leaves you on a smeared beachead
where every footfall is
a fucking Hillary Step
in a shallow world white out.
Rain shower ordinance
ventilates your skull
and pulls the human
right off your
slapped dumb expression.
This is what it feels like
when you can't feel.
This is what you give
when the flags and bunting
get billeted to the furnace,
the dress blues are sent home,
and you're engaged to
lay out the last full measure
in her foreign field.

Nothing.

After the war.
You'll lay low.
Keep quiet.
Get acquainted
with emptiness
as you
slip through
the last links
on a chain
holding a
Hand of Fatima
and a broken
purple heart.

Dum Dum Boy

"What you gonna do with your life?"

NOTHIN'

Can't Put it Down / Can't Turn it Loose

This weakend
I walked into the sunset
nice n scoobied,
totally in the land
and God saw fit
for once to hold up
the frayed end of the bargain.
The Fucking Eagles.

http://www.myspace.com/amilliondollarsworthofmusic

All the way from T-towne
(that's Tacoma, for the uninitiated).
It's where rock n' roll comes from, riot?
Our smelly lady has pumped out
The Ventures,
Girl Trouble,
The Sonics
The Sonics
(why not mention 'em
twice?)
and the Fucking Eagles.
They shook up the Sunset
and then they tore down the Java Jive.
Yer friend and humble narrator
couldnae sit still,
had to get right up
in the 100 watt line of fire
and shake it
like a pilled-up
red rooster;
working the sweat soaked room,
showered in pabst and bushmills.
I can't put it down, cats n kittens.
I can't put it down.
Scaught's never gonna leave the garage.
It's time to put the guitar down,
pick up the maracas
call up the Sutherland Girls
n put the devil back
into the pants
of all creation.

Ain't That Lovin' You Baby?

He put the knife down

finally.

His pried fingers

ached.

It took extra effort

to pull them apart,

hennaed with watersheds

of cooling rage.

The choruses of panic

and certain supernova finality

fade out,

get gone,

go real rearview-mirrored and reverse

with every new nothing

blue bonnet baptized

into thought.

This is act one, scene one

of the real thing.

The understudy is sobered up,

skulled,

crowned,

and shoved into

the stage center sun.

Move.

He walked out the door

and rode the 355 express

to the Winslow ferry

shape singing psalms of awe

and

greased in the kill.

Right now he rides

back and forth,

sun blown,

wind burned,

and showered

in sprays of

creosote and diesel.

The hole he hides in

is only the pocket

of his pants.

The alibi he will give them

can't feed a goat

raised on broken glass.

The wind on the observation deck

squeezes the tears into

the corners of his eyes

and says,

"you are alone

you are not free."

The kangaroo court

she nominated,

benched,

and stacked

awaits his return

dung beetle determined

to hang every

silver suited stranger

that ever fell

into her arms

from the southern sky.

Straight Freak Ticket

There wouldn't be a Scaught Five

without our Ron Nine.

He made me go home,

put it down ferrabit,

clear it out

n think about 

how it sounded...

All right, yeah. All right... Freedom's right between the eyes. This is the one.  Time always stops and God kisses my ears, lips and hips...

I think this happened while yer friend and humble narrator and some principal characters were tripping...

Out of Focus with Kevin knockin' out tasty business...

Out of Focus

In the gyre of an open eye

so much spins,

so much turns

inside out,

wreathed in coiled concertina

and soaked in 

broken glass.

The foreign fuselage

you find inside you

sold time

and bought distance

to get 

so far gone,

so out of focus,

in the veins of your memory,

in the cells of your soul.

Sometimes

become other times

and

fixed points dilate.

Warm folds familiar

become

blue cool blue; 

down

beat

in 

4/4

with tremolo.

This is a modulation. 

We are a world painted shut 

by sheets of static

and kilocycles.

Class A idiosyncrasies

run through greenback alnico.

The speakers are loosed

but the ride still 

bleeds through.

This take is not the master.

We are still rough.

Blistered fret fingers 

need roll off 

of high-end presence. 

Time to nuance

and play the space

between the notes.  

Delta

Triangle Song by Thin White Rope

I am feeling just a little down
Nothing I can wrap reasons around
But I can ignore it if I look real hard
And make perfect triangles out of every three stars

Sometimes I make burns on my arms
To move the feeling from my heart to my arms
And I'm driving and it keeps me awake
I have so many more triangles to make

Now that I have planted a seed
Maybe those triangles will form without me
Surround the world in their crystalline ache
and freeze heroes into glassy mosaics

Guy Kyser - 1990

Go Drink The Sea

Sixty years,
bright olive orchard anniversary flags,
milk and honey,
and
al-Nakbah.
The land at the edge of sea
will never give voice
to the rage
ambitions
and sorrows
that feed the prickly
sabr
growing
in grey cinder block
barrakiyats.
Nor will it sing and
dance at the milking of cows
and harvest of apples
in green field girdled
kibbutzim.
The land does not know
waqf,
aliyah,
zionism,
The Balfour Declaration,
feda'iyyin,
the Dreyfus Affair.
It cannot.
In the time that passes
it will sleep
while blurred notions
of joy,
hatred,
pride,
family,
God
and home
draw lines
on its arms and legs,
lace their fingers
around the throats
of their children,
strangle
and weep.

One Hundred Flowers

Yestermorning
I find myself here
again
in the land of the sun.
My life's passenger cups my
ears and tongue kisses my
tardy brain with bell ringing
permanence and certainty.
The one marriage
built to last;
my ringing ears and I.
The radio sheep-bleats
come into focus.
Further down the rim
from this bed
one hundred flowers
were pressed into
the flat earth's
scrapbook.
The radio chalkboard scratches
out field notes
on a function of
friction and gravitation.
A neutral event
reaches out
to cradle loss
and tragedy.
"We were sitting in an office
and heard what sounded like a truck
passing
before the shaking started."
The radio transmits me
translated into english
straight to me
right between the eyes.
We live on the rim.
We shouldn't forget
the ground is floating.
I remember.
It came from the south
and sounded like a rusted
dumptruck dragging a chain
of inescapable dread.
It passed right through
the classroom.
Above and below.
Then the ground
broke it's promise
to be the floor,
to hold up our feet,
to be where we left it.
It wasn't there.
Gravity
helped us find it,
inches that seemed like miles
below where
it slept for so many years.
The walls can't keep their
promise either.
They vomit shelving
and the tambourine ring
of breaking things
accompanies
primate panic
manifested in God's toys
shrieking under
swaying light fixtures.
But stepping out of
the unsound
and into the open
underneath
impassionate clouds
I saw tidal energy
animate the ground
in waves of beautiful
rhythm
and I fell in love
with everything.

Can We Have Our Bomb Back?

Shiite amal militia, dood.
We load the amps
drum cases
n gig bags
into the rolling
money pit
so they can
soak up the smell
of stale beer and
dim bulb b.o.
in Georgetown.
Thank you, mister soundman.
I'm fresh faced illuminated now.
What would I do without you?
Who will be there to play
his band's demo
to a load-in empty room
at gas giant / comet collision volume
through the shit encrusted P.A.?
Who's gonna show me
how played out
and wimpy me n mine are
by not giving me any fucking
monitor mix?
I saw you.
I saw you unplug the amp.
The amp you insisted I use an extension cord for
that you ran back to the outlet
by your piss soaked,
bedwetter rawk music
soundboard.
You certainly showed me.
Mastrubation,
Popcicle eating,
reading,
walking,
thinking,
fucking,
laying in and listening to baseball
while smelling
rain soaked grass
through the open window,
playing guitar
n singing
on the porch
without silly cunts
playing games.
Those are just a few
of the things you showed me
I could have chosen to do
instead of waste
your precious time
and soil your enlightened ears.
Sorry we hurt your bar, mister.