Stars on Your Shoulder

These mornings
bring me
the stars on your shoulder
and soft murmurs of protest
as we rise.
With you
the gentle things
come upon me,
funny things too.
You become batgirl,
catwoman.
What??
I smile
even right now.
Do you know
I watch you cross
Third Avenue
every morning
you get off
this bus?
I see you
studying your
rose red phone
for news
from
antebellum
ancestors
way back,
roped in
stands of kudzu,
drinking Pims
and dancing.
These mornings
bring me you
and the day
is just waiting
for the hour
when I see
your smile
coming down my street.

Blue Dress

She's going
to look for
a blue dress
downtown.
I'm heading
into the basement
to wrestle
with
crow black ribbons
of feedback.
El-King will
apply rhinoceros tonic
to the open wound
on the side of
the passenger whale-shark.
J-squared
has the double kick drum podium
to expound the absurd
with wobbling plastic eyes
and crumbling monster cookie
crumbs.
She's going
to meet me there.
My heart is filled with helium
when I think about her
walking down Second Avenue
through the Rendezvous door
and into my arms.

360/12 Bells Of Rhymney

This is for
the twelve string
who makes
my ears ring.
I loved you
the moment
I heard your compressed
sheets of church bells
pealing from
grey grill cloth
across the years,
across the room,
under illuminated
manuscript curtains
from 1965
to a dull decade
decayed.
Which one?
Four or five?
"I gotta know, babe
all about my fortune
down along my
restless palm..."
You still root me
to the spot and still,
watching the chimes
gurgle and wink
down winding
streams of mercury
in permanent,
warm smiling
sun.

It's So Same

The green bus is white
and runs on money.
It catapillar crawls
a winding track
through the homes
of our petty
nobility
to the bank
and the jail.
It's so same.
I am a rabbit
covered in soot
with
a cigar box banjo
and a book of jokes
I can't read.
Every morning,
I come up from
the rabbit hole
and take my seat
on the express
to the ant hill.
It's so same.
They hold their noses
and stare.
The muffled whispers
of groaning grown ups,
younger
and older
translated from
a queen's english
to rabbit
sing fascinated disgust.
I'm sorry everybody.
My parents were human,
this I swear.
I am this way
because I've
never done
a good thing right.
We ride along
the currencied rapids
to the mill.
It's so same.
Half of this town
can buy me,
sell me,
skin and eat me
before they're
toilet trained.
What difference
does anything make?
A rabbit is not
predator.
A rabbit is prey.
It's so same.

In Good Company

The young, old fool

shadowboxing the rain

says he's lost 

everything he never had.

He stole a book

full of aristocrat's words

and fed his bad seed

to the birds.

When in good company

his holy bucket 

can't hold an ear.

Idiot tongue untied

and true.

He sings off chroma key

and blue.

The rest come in 

the wrong places.

What else can he do?

An organ grinder's

monkey  

fell off 

the midway wagon. 

Now he's outside 

the dining room window

playing the fool

for cigarette butts

and shots

of embalming fluid.

He shakes his head

and claims it's all a mistake.

Says he can reason

and wear a tie

but his card house

is held together

with wishes 

and scotch tape.

When the summer ends

and the organ 

goes to storage

he sleeps in a doorway

and eats 

in the alley

studying 

cat philosophy.

The billboards shout;

everybody's going on vacation,

everybody's having them,

everyone's nobility,

in the movie version of

the surprised fighter's 

autobiography.

He could never accept

that it took 

10 seconds

to make 

a decision.  

He lost his title.

He lost his girl.

He left this town.

Now he paints

crushed beer cans

on the side of

broken bottles

in the desert.

Every night,

he tells the dial-tone

on his unpaid phone

about the stars in the sky

and shame 

and lies.

 

Rise

Look at your game,

girl.

Warm nights, 

open windows,

the mouths of homes

gape blankly.

The stilled street

dyed sodium vapor sepia,

casts black speck shadows

of hedge leaves

swaying at the stale

breeze of our passing.

Creepy crawling

through 

spaces, 

assumed to be private,

assumed to to be safe.

"Leave a sign,

something witchy."

 

Her Caliphate

Lie down darkness. 

With me

warm

under majlis sheet,

imperial purple,

curtained,

under Abbasid moon,

sky wrinkled dark

with ghost edged clouds

moon kissed 

with dead

sunlight.

Crawl through my veins,

you are a growing

warm glow.

You are

spikes of poppies

and 

spikes of saffron.

Come the darkness

I fill my eyes

with burned black sand

and lie down

for you.

So many nights,

so many thousand nights.

I will lie down.

I will always lie down

for you.

Swale Channel Chariot

I am Phaethon

of Victory Heights.

Two dogs

on the leash

and

a red skateboard

bear me through

the suburban swale streets

back between the lake

and the highway.

In the morning quiet

the sun is still yawning.

On the dewed asphalt

the rusty trucks gargle

ball bearingly

to the ride cymbal ting

of dog license clapping.

The falcon chicks 

in the hollow top fir

have fledged

and flown.

They whistle-chirp

stinging notes

in the treetops.

Maybe I'm Thor

on rubber tired chariot,

goat driven

by Ava Tanngisnir

and

Shirley Tanngnjostr

Varg! Varg! Argawarga!

Something small is moving

in the swale channel

and I'm 

coming down

on one 

and a half

knees.

Now I'm more

creaky achy

Nestor

and just 

a tad bit 

embarrassed.

We're a Railbird

We switch mounts.
Ride for another barn.
Go out for a finish
in the money
on
a stalker/closer
running off the pace.
In this sport
things change.
The sprinter
we used to sit atop
in goggles and silks
has gone east,
to pasture and stud.
The trainer's stopwatch
stopped;
paramutual leavings
couldn't keep clothes
on his wife and child.
He threw his fedora
in the trash
on the backstretch
and left the track
for good.
But we're a railbird,
always here,
hustling another mount,
looking to get back
into the starting gate
and race.
We do it
for the love of the game.
Our first works
on the new mount
weren't bullets
but through two turns
a familiar rhythm
bind us tight
and our fractions
start
to hum,
sting,
sparkle
and jangle.
We'll be up there
coming into the stretch,
looking for an opening
where we
can put on the whip
and gun it.
Win, place or show.
We're a railbird.

Lawyer Mill

A droogie o' mine once said

"All I do is work, feeling glum."

Yes, yes.

Oh, what a thrill.

I need the terror.

Sometimes it's like
the dreams of Rommel

or Montgomery of El Alamein

played out in the pushing of paper

and

sometimes

it's like

humping a cheese grater

that's been occulted

for several years

in a glacier.

Attached are PDF files

of supporting documentation.

RBQ drew the study of our

visages under internal and external pressures.

The second piece

explores

the Lacanian jouissance

one experiences while

resolving client issues over the phone.

Rabbit on, my dear children.

Rabbit on...

Brute Rebirth

Greek fire fountains

over the vine twines,

scatter the scalar

and vector the scalers.

I Cluniac 

reformate 

and 

formation

do grab 

the sheaves of stars,

hung on party lines,

bundled in fasci,

paled of settlement,

lockstep lost

and prove their points

through your pierced side

on nights of broken glass.

In contrapasto 

and Franco Falang

we

red and blacked 

the wine soaked 

hills at the foot 

of elephant trailed

peaks.

Our night does

strain to the strength

and breaking cubist

filaments,

in monochromed manger

from the wings 

of proud condor legion 

do 17 E-1 into 

sleepy market days.

What fire and catastrophe

do threaten the ship of state

stove in 

bicameral division?

Under the eye

of the arch autarch

who urges action,

in acrolith image 

we point to the sky

and in the name

of the general will,

stoke the boilers

with bones 

exacted from 

the atomized,

one by one

in total embrace. 

Look Around

Get up
under the sheet metal sky
and get moving.
Every day peels
a vellum page
out of
a book of seasons
and throws it
on the fire.
Can't get
that one back.
Can't get
any of them back.
Let them go
and find another.
Every tomorrow
meets its end in yesterday.
Take more time
because that's the only
thing you've got
to take for your own.
Let go
of the hooks
that rope you down
in soul draining struggle.
Look around.
You are moving
in the constant swirl
of an unfathomable gyre,
an exploding lotus bloom
that never starts beginning
and cannot end.

Local Buoy Does Good (Locally)

Hey cats und kittens!

Lookit here:
http://seattle-powerpop.blogspot.com/2008/07/doll-test-mosque-alarm-clock.html

They like the Doll Test Mosque Alarm Clock thingie we made.
They said "Scott Five has come into his own..." we over here know I've
been doing that since puberty.

tee hee hee...

We Walk

Let's see.
Summer Sunday
we walked from
Wallingford on the hill
overlooking Lake Union
and sky scrappered downtown
through the neighborhoods
of Ballard
to
Salmon Bay.
When we walk
we hold hands
and think of stupid songs
to plant in our thoughts.
From Fisherman's Terminal
we walked north
over the drawbridge
to the Locks
and further along
to Shilshole.
One fine day
I can report.
We had a beer
in the sun
and salt breeze
overlooking the water
at Ray's Boathouse.
It's was a pretty white affair
full of bleached, capped teeth
and money.
Good for a laugh.
Then
we started back
from Shilshole
up Market Street
with stops
at
a bookstore
and
a grocery store.
Our haul;
a book on Medieval History
and that Flashman book
with some
Coronas and crab.
Back homeways
we caught the
Sunday wrap up
from Emerald Downs
and Del Mar
making a fairly substantial
mess
with our pototo chips
and crab.
We walk
and talk
and then
I feel good.

Easement

Drawn lines
bread lines
lay lines
fine lines
bow lines
dots and lines
lay 'em out there
and let 'em say
who you are,
where you're
coming from,
what you want
and what you
can't take.
When they get crossed
make sure
they know it.
Then,
little by little
things go softly
and sure.
A certain smile
can drop by
and stay awhile.

Locked Up / Away and Racing

I'm leaving

the clown factory

and

going to

the track.

I Can Hear the Boo Birds Singing

Sexson, Yankees reach deal
Struggling slugger gives New York right-handed bat

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/371185_sexson18.html

Don't Join

How strange.
The angry man leans forward
into the summershine sidewalk
looking oh so Mark David Chapman.
He looks like he's stateside
but inside
he's permanently
patroling the streets
of Ur,
between Tigris
and Euphrates.
He's been cultivated
to maximize
third party potential
at the expense
of his own.
All the waste
is all the wasted.
Does he know why?
Probably not.
When he got flag fever
it wasn't his problem
because that's the
true gift of freedom;
the freedom
to defect,
to stay outside.
Don't join.
When the gates
of the temple
were knocked down,
it wasn't his problem.
Now it is.
Now it is.
Does he know why?
Probably not.
Dollar Bill
and King Capital
sent him overseas
to rake the land
for milk and honey
to fuel
the binge
that can never stop
until everything stops.
It's not my problem.
Is it yours?

Dreams of School

Lately
I've been
going through
a series
of dreams
about school.
Dreams of high school
except
I'm me
now;
two score
and one.
I'm me now,
in the
back then,
but
just as
alienated
and lost
as the earlier
version of me
was
in the past-present.
They
steal my books.
They
spit in my food.
The now me
couldn't do anything
about it
except don robes
of blanketing dread
and panic.
Just like back then.
It wasn't a happy time,
Then.
It's not really a happy time
now.
I didn't learn much
in school.
I had to do it all
starting at two score
and ten.
I'm behind you.
All of you.
I don't care though.
Little by little
understanding is coming
to me.
They.
Me.
They
Me.
It was there
so early.
Cleaving the universe
in two
when there isn't
really a two
there.
They.
Me.
They.
Me.
This binary
isn't doing me
a lot of good
in the present present.
I've got to try
harder
to find the
reasons
why
I made the world
into my own
false image.

San Vitale in Ravenna; Apse Detail

I want to be lost

one of a myriad

gold flake tile

bringing the liturgy

to life

in timelessness

here...

Low Function

Low function
leaves you
flying too close
to the ground,
where gravity binds
a struggling flyer
to the coral reef shred
of each passing tree,
and the promise
of dashed dreams
on the unfolding
landscape of rocks
anticipating
the absolute certainty
of a fall.

American Exceptionalism

James Jimmy told me,
"It's all about way of life.
It's all about freedom."
Yes it is,
and we invented Way Of Life,
and we invented Freedom,
and
we
are just like the wolf
who dips the first
flesh lusted maw
into the kill,
and the little boy
who was never told
the word "no."
I hope
the rest of you
know how much
we enjoyed
the first
and best
of this world.
It makes us
hard on hard
to know
we got there first
and you should
probably wake up
to the fact
that we
will make you
eat shit
and say
it tasted good
before
we ever
nightmare dream
of coming down
off corporate
cum-stained pillows
of speculation
and usury
to
remotely entertain
any shred of an idea
about sharing
the husks of nothing
left
to live on
with you.

She Sleeps

I often wake up
at night
and just watch you
sleep.
Your eyes closed
and mouth graced
with a serene smile,
the sad struggles
of the day flung
far from your peaceful face.
I just watch you.
For me
the night has always brought
processions of regret
and dread
but every time I jolt awake
fresh from a terrible dream
I see you,
so beautiful
so calm
and near.

A Friend of a Friend of the Working Class

"he like the french perfume / he like to sleep 'till noon"

It's Just a Ride

Mantra

Get one.

Do it.

Ditchie Suxson

Yer out, "Big Sexy."

Split Finger and Knuckle

My two favorite pitches
in all of baseball
are
the split finger fastball
and
the knuckleball.
The split finger
rushes up to the plate
hard and then
dies like a springtime robin
pellet gun shot out of the sky,
wings stilled
and falling in a mirrored arc
of the earth's curvature.
This is a favorite pitch
of the set up man
and the closer
who work late in
the game
and want to make
death sure
the lid stays shut.
The knuckleball is my favorite
though.
It's drunken trajectory
can render a bat
dumbstruck and shouldered
like a oar hoisted out of the waves.
It doesn't spin.
The seams are motionless
as the ball creeps off the mound
and stumbles into the
arrest of the catcher's mit.
There used to be more
knuckleballers kicking
the rubber up on the hill.
Charlie Hough
Phil Niekro
Tim Wakefield
Jim Boughton
all played with
the drag of the wind
and threw pitches
that looked like
moths square dancing.
It doesn't have to be thrown hard.
Rotator cuffs don't have to be shredded
and a knuckler
can go longer on the hill
and further down the calendar
without going under.
R.A. Dickey is a knuckler
maybe Richie Sexson
would still have a job
if he knew how to float
them
instead of stand at the plate
or first base
like a wooden dime store indian.

Analytical Comments

Enthroned on the porch and lit up, the critics have put down their opera glasses and have held forth on this blaugh and it's contents. Prithee, mark this well...

"I went there and read some of your shit. It's like some kind of fuckin' poetry for girls. I don't wanna be readin' shit like that and feelin' all funny."

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!!!! What the fuck are you sayin' dude! You're not gay, are you?"

Nilsson Schmilsson

Idol is not an icon

so begone 

your judging stare

and your jury sun.

I've only just begun

to begun,

and it's all

a silly dumbshow

that adds up 

to none.

Don't you want 

to show me to see,

the way I have to act,

the way I have to be?

Don't you want 

to show me the way?

The way I should talk,

the way I should say?

Early in the mourning

we ain't got nothing

we ain't got nothing

we ain't got nothing 

but 

the blues.

Mercy Mercy

Holy gold glitter
mother and son.
Theotokos,
saints
and angels,
transfigure the black firmament's
starshine
into new light.
There you are
bathed in radiance
shining up at me
cradled in my palm.
I can take you
into the darkness,
into the unbelieving
and senseless world.
Your forgiveness
and love
shield me from
the hammering stares
and serrated words
of so many others.
On this uncertain pilgrimage
you are always there.
Icon in my hand.
I must not make
you an idol.
You hold no magic
or dilute the nature
of the divine.
No.
You are
a slender thread
to a singularity
beyond words,
thought
and time.

The Catcher On The Mound

Fingers hurt and cracked.
Ears ring and burn.
Throat strangled and raw
but
I'm still smiling,
friends, brothers and sisters.
It's good.
It's good to see you smile.
It's good to see you shake
and bounce
up and down
in unrestrained joy
to our toybox music
leaving every
graying doubt
and fretful memory
out on the street
amongst the ashes
of fallen fireworks.
Thank you.
I'll keep this with mine.
I'll keep this
for when I need it.
For when things go wrong
like when the birds
stop singing to
streaks of dawn
or when
my meaning and my words
don't meet
and
for when
the catcher
is the pitcher.