On The Nod

I hear a distant drumming twinkling like stars in the night

behind the lids of my eyes.

She told me that she never loved me and I knew she was right.

I knew she's was right .

I found a fix to the problem and I'm now

on the nod can't you see it?

I found a fix to the problem and I'm now

on the nod... believe it.

The world is full, the jig is up, there's a breach in the hull

and we're out of luck.

I couldn't care, I wouldn't dare and another thing;

I don't give a fuck.

I got a fix to the problem and I'm now

on the nod can't you see it?

I need a fix to the problem 'cause I'm now

on the nod... believe it.

on the nod... believe it.

on the nod... believe it.

I

Howard Marks

I keep my channels open nobody knows where I come from.

My mind's a gadget it's imploding like a nuclear bomb.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

I'm mister nice, you're in check and the end my arm.

They hold me up in customs and they pull my bags off of the plane.

Dope sick in Hong Kong cause my drugs are on the red eye to Spain.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

I got the looks that make officers set off alarms.

All my connections they are turning on the drop of a dime.

Feeling the heat inside my bloodstream flowing into the wine.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

Some can't prove it.

I'm mister nice and I'm one step ahead of the man.

I'm mister nice and I'm one step ahead of the man.

Permanent High C

What I been doing

steeped in sweet sweet.

What I been doing

steeped in sweet sweet whine,

steeped in sweet sweet drone.

What I been doing

steeped in black black.

What I been doing

steeped in black black clouds,

steeped in black black tones.

The constant sound

The constant sound

The constant sound.

What I been doing

soaked with powerful.

What I been doing

soaked with powerful wine,

soaked with powerful ohms.

The constant sound

The constant sound

The constant sound.

What I been doing

bleached all in white.

What I been doing

bleached all in white whine,

bleached all in white bones.

Message For "The Bug"

Christ,

here they come again.

The nightly medicine show.

Broadcast towers of the ferris wheel

spinning fortune in front of murdering eyes.

Every whispered message never heard but known

is the word "Rise" painted on a wall in Krenwinkel scrawl.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch,

it's been a long, long, long time.

Alex and Dennis tore up the highway,

stoned in the desert foothills in search of fast pussy.

It was them, your Honor.

It was them all of you, yes you.

The world of television

is just the mirror image of your lies.

The prisons are benedictine monasteries

keeping safe your truth.

Out there in the lock up

is your salvation.

Piss stained glass windows in the barred clerestory

shaft the light in blades on the sacraments;

desire's excrement bleeding self interest.

Godly greed in fear's name

virtue and lust.

Mickie Most

I came down with a case of the blues

and passed out millennial illness

to the millions.

Some guy on a bubble

points to a chart and calls it golden.

Lead us to the incision and let us in.

What?

You'd tell me I'm in the wrong

when I tell you the truth.

You wouldn't believe me

even when I lie.

They bottled up my vision.

It's in your prescription.

In the slaughterhouse

they shit in the mouth of the cattle

and call it meat.

Ha ha, said the clown.

Is it bringing you down?

Is the night being tight on romance??

Let me take you to the movies for the blind

projected in braille across a belt sander.

They'll rub your face in it

and you'll come back for more

until someone sweeps up

the broken teeth and hair.

The Wronging Tent

Under the Wronging Tent

I knit the firmament

of has been not yet

wet dreams.

I see the damage

assess the wreckage

aspirate effluvium

and fart in helium.

Under Stanley stand next to me.

Inexplicably aye-aye can see

stutter step Studer

on a reel to real

tracking the trace

of her trains trailing

holding, beholding and whole ding

what case was in any case,

valise coliseum when you can't

call it like you see 'em?

Whenhaps you fine yourself

standing at attention

in misdemeanor,

overturned by the jug

and a peal,

leaf binder bound

to pursuant and purr sued,

you can start buying me

more light bulbs

than you can use.

Scattered, Smothered and Covered.

Driving south,

Hawley's Island, South Carolina.

Sweet Palmetto minarets

swaying like a nightgown skirt

under a Ramadan state flag moon.

Black Dog and (She's so heavy)

are singing through the Georgia woods.

Roll up on Heavy's Bar-B-Q

off the Crawfordville exit,

brunswick stew breakfast

and napkins of bleached white bread.

Around Rock Eagle,

I found where I could get my deer processed

and was asked if I accepted Jesus

every quarter mile.

In the South I just love

driving around and around,

dabbling in depression,

and some boiled peanuts.

Hey, honey...

I'll take my highway

scattered, smothered and covered

with some a glass of sweet tea.

Cringe

I wish for just one minute I had a small portion of my best friend's sense of self because he is empowered with such a strength of purpose and stubborn resolve in so many instances that would make mere mortals shrivel with embarrassment.  How many of you would dare approach someone in a bar with a pick up line like, "You smell like my ex-wife"?  None? Right.

My best friend is quite funny.  Obviously.  Anybody that would drop a line about someone smelling like their ex-wife on some girl in a bar has to be guided by some meta sense of humor, yes?  I thought so for many years until one night in a basement comedy bar.  My friend drug me there to see the culmination of several weeks instruction in stand up comedy.  He signed up for a UW extension and I promised to come see his 'final exam' on stage.  Everyone in the class got five minutes at the Comedy Underground.  Moments before he went onstage, he whispered to me that he had a sudden burst of inspiration and was going to improvise.  Up to this point, the students who did their routines seemed to follow a pretty safe pattern of doing joke routines related to their gender, national origin or physical appearance - not knee slapping, but serviceable.  Batting cleanup, my best friend took the stage.  This is what he said:

"Hey everybody, I'm a Washington State public servant.  It's a really boring job but you know what would be really funny?  If Arnold Schwartzeneger was the governor of Washington State!  I wonder what his State of the State address would sound like."

I knew right then that he had gone waaaay off into the trees and this was just the intro to his routine.  We had made fun of Arnold and his Austrian monotone since the Hans and Franz 'Pump You Up' skits ran on SNL.  Oh god! He was really going to motor down this old, dusty road.  I watched awestruck with dumb fascination.

"Theeese eeess dah state of dah state address fore dah state of Washingtonia! First oofff, teechaas who say they huv und headache doo not huv und tumor!"

Huh? "Kindergarten Cop?"  CHRIST!  No one is even booing him.  If I farted right now, I would be shamed.  He rambled through some more crap and began to sweat.  A good comedian always has a parachute.  A good comedian.  My best friend isn't even a comedian.  He's my best friend.  He never carries a parachute.

"Duh deficit uv duh state vill be TERMINATED!!!"

Nobody said a word.  Nobody even said something like "You suck!"  Everybody watched my best friend die up there and I could really feel it in the room - complete and total empathy for a poor soul who stood up to do stand up and instead died and when I mean died, I mean completely died.  

"Vote fuh me, Ahhlll be BAAACK!"

My best friend then threw his arms up and strode off stage.  No one laughed.  No one heckled.  Everyone including myself saw our mom, dad, dog, cat and car die up there.  All that was left was murmuring silence.  To this day and after several disagreements that have nearly led to fisticuffs, he still holds onto the delusion that he killed it...

 

From This Point We Are Strangers

Viva the psalms of rage.

Viva uncertainty.

Viva the mold.

Viva the broken promise.

Viva the gulf between you and me.

Viva your anger. 

Viva our shame.

Viva our parents.

Viva old age.

Viva in sickness.

Viva the greed.

Viva my tardiness.

Viva your hate.

Viva the lies.

Viva mistakes.

Viva escapism.

Viva death's door.

Viva paranoia.

Viva the uterus we came from.

Viva mistakes.

Viva loss and endless need.

Viva envy.

Viva my hatred.

Viva circumstance.

Viva the Pima County Sheriff.

Viva three strikes and you're out.

Viva geography.

Viva indifference.

Viva the family tree.

October 2009

Feeling like I slept in a trench
at French Verdun, December 1916.
The back of my head is burning.
Somebody's nursing a grudge
a little more kin than kind.
Everybody's got a white whale
they can't forgive I suppose.

Our Past Mistakes and Present Form

Form.
The inquisitorial process of matter.
Externalities constantly molding
past, present and future tense.
Words.
The byproduct of electro-chemical impulse
and human musclature.
Formless in the space between us.
Given shape by abstraction.
Given shape by the inquisitorial process of matter
that allowed our wandering paths to cross.
Let all my words to you
mold bonds of love and affection
past, present and future.
Form and truth.

Let's Go Bowling!

The pin monkey's dream

is filled with panties soaked in lane grease, 

seven-ten pick ups and alley gutter taints.

His asshole sits

on the rubber tongue of the ball return

thinking of You To Eternity eternally.

He dreams you got the splits

to pick up in his second frames.

Your socks are sleeping where he shits

when you're typing in the bowler's name.

(don't forget to return them to the front desk

after you've rolled your best)

When your ball gets stuck

and you press the button near the fan,

he's back behind the pin setter 

pulling his pin setter pud

and wishing that you won't 

and he can. 

The Doll's Face in the Mirror is Speaking

The express and the local
came down Latona
stacked up like a Burlington Northern
eight articulated coaches long.
They hissed liked snakes
on the wet asphalt.
Two busses blew right past me,
the drivers looking worried,
the drivers looking south.
I boarded the next express
with the driver looking worried
and the driver looking south.
He hit the gas and swore under his breath.
We ran the red light at 45th
and ran the next two stops
packed with bewildered commuters
whose faces soured into impatient rage
as we flew past them.
The bus driver continued to worry and swear
and the jilted riders continued to spit and curse
as we drove on towards downtown and their empty desks.
I smiled at each one of them from my perch above the wheel well;
on time, smug and dry.

Once

Once

I was stretched out

on a lazy boy recliner

in my sister's clammy basement

looking in the rearview mirror

at all of my regret, shame

and hysterical foolishness

streaming out behind me 

in a steady white line of lies.

"If there's a justice in this world...

hey, how about that?"

the stereo commented.

"You're just dirt."

I saw all my worth summed up 

in an endless stupid stream of ribbon

uninterrupted in its pursuit

of someone running in fear

hunched up as if teeth were snapping

eternally at exposed haunches.

Once

I was driving up the interstate

hauling corroded alkaline batteries

to the hazardous waste smelter.

The muscles in my neck shook with exhaustion.

My fingers felt like dumb lead sinkers.

Cars flowed past me like platelets floating through an asphalt vein.

I watched that endless white line

running out behind the wing mirror.

I don't know how many miles passed

before I recognized my defeated face

staring straight into the loathsome magnets

of my tired eyes.

Once

I saw myself

moving along

wanting to stand still

going nowhere.

Vociferating Optimism

I'm a flea bitten Turkish rat
in a packed coliseum
being chased by a cat.

They pulled my brain out
through my nose
with a fishing hook
and a plastic hose.

You're a nearsighted optimist
on a podium
in need of an optometrist.

I run through a maze
with elctrodes stuck in my brain.
The researchers monitor
my pleasure and pain.

They beat up their friends
with the jawbone of an ass
They mistook them for foes
from their forgotten past.

I drink from a spigot
and run on a wheel
and let others tell me
what I think and I feel.

They purchased the kingdom
with anger and hope
and now run to keep out of
the rifleman's scope.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TBTL RIP

KIRO Radio 97.3FM has decided to cancel my favorite radio show, Too Beautiful To Live. Aptly named, eh? Anyway, their resident film critic, Tom Tagney, wrote a very nice epitaph I am including here...

TBTL, Why It Mattered

The KIRO radio show TOO BEAUTIFUL TO LIVE has attained its own apotheosis. The show whose very title dared to foretell its demise has now completed its mission. TOO BEAUTIFUL TO LIVE has indeed died.
I am not here to bury TBTL however, but to praise it. Its 396 shows now constitute the complete "TBTL Collector's Series" of programs and, in retrospect, the most compelling question may not be "Why is it suddenly gone?" but rather "How did it last as long as it did?" I'd like to believe we live in a world in which something like TBTL could survive but the evidence points to the contrary. So instead, I'll just appreciate the fact it existed at all.
TBTL was the most original, innovative, and intelligently off-the-wall show I've ever heard on radio. Where else are you going to hear butchered impromptu readings of famous movie scenes, regular visits from a grammarian, an in-house a capella re-enactment of a modern opera, an Oscar show in which food from a nominated film is cooked and consumed live on air, a week's worth of Spanish and Latin lessons, a spontaneous dance-off to music designated as impossible to dance to, in-studio imitations of Bob Dylan singing Christmas songs, and hundreds of other wacky ideas. And who else but TBTL would organize a listeners' prom, a roller skating party, and nights out at the Opera AND a Mariners game?
Often described as the radio equivalent of the TV series SEINFELD, TBTL really was a show about nothing. And in its seemingly haphazard investigation of "nothing," it proved to be, more often than not, about "everything." The genius of TBTL was that it recognized the profundity of the mundane. We all have to live in the mundane world, of course, but articulate dissections of our mundane lives can actually produce clever and entertaining insights. The personal stories shared each night by host Luke Burbank, producer Jen Andrews, and board-op Sean De Tore were more humorous than earth-shattering but the point was they were always very human - the kind of daily victories and embarrassments that make up our everyday lives.
TBTL often hurtled headlong into the inane preoccupations of pop culture as well. Their WHY IT MATTERS segments would debate everything from the silly to the sublime (e.g. an early show took on the significance of those Karate Kid movies, a late show examined the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino.) But no matter how deep it dove into the superficial, it would always, or almost always, emerge with a smile and a wink. After all, this was a show run by smart and culturally savvy people. Burbank is an especially quick and literate host who can drop off-the-cuff references to Tenzing Norgay, Soren Kierkegaard, and Jeff Koons as readily as he can to Zooey Deschanel and Jemaine Clement and he often does so in a single conversation. And Andrews was always more apt to cull material for the show from, say, THE NEW YORKER than she was from TMZ. For me and much of the TBTListan nation, I suspect, it's that high art/low art tension that best defines the show's appeal.
TBTL always reminded me of a slice of lemon meringue pie. At its best, it was the perfect combination of sugar-spun fluff and tart flavor. When taking a bite out of TBTL, you had to make sure you tasted both the meringue and the lemon, or you'd miss the point. Too many people, I'm afraid, couldn't get past the meringue in the show to taste the lemon. But if you stuck with the show long enough, the lemon would always out.
Rawr.

You Lie!

I went to see a doctor from the Third Reich,

to help me fix my golden spike.

Working at a clinic in the far Aleutians,

cooking up final solutions.

The stars in the sky,

spell in letters bright and high,

"You Lie! You Lie! You Lie!"

No Shit, Shirley

William Golding said he was trapped in a bone box.

I think he said that.  I might have been dreaming.

Carson Palmer said somebody is going to die on the field one of these days.

He said that.  I read it in Sports Illustrated.

Hildegard of Bingen said "not tonight, I have a headache."

Boy did she ever.

George Clinton said it sounded like Rural Funk to him.

So he sat down and he got his harp out.

McAuliffe sent a message to Luttwitz at Bastogne

it just said "Nuts".

I don't know how that translates in German.

Eddie Murphy said to just sing and women will throw their panties on the stage.

They never do.

The Gracchi got tossed into the Tiber for trying to get the plebes twenty acres and a mule.

There ain't no rule for the company freaks.

Herman Melville said it was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled him.

No shit, Shirley.

"This is you"

A Flagpole

A flagpole on a schoolyard in summer

stands up useless and lonely.

It flies no colors.

It stands for nothing.

It communicates its isolation

in random pings of dismal sonar;

the metal clasp at the end of the cord

grasping at nothing, 

strikes the base of the staff. 

It goes unnoticed

by nearby telephone poles,

standing together at safe intervals,

connected by lines of communication

filled with meaning and purpose.

Daily Nightshade

The garden gave birth to an eggplant.

Out of the black soil

it grew like a shiny bowling ball.

It hid from me

under the plant's broad leaves

tucked away behind

the riot of tomato plants.

I picked it yesterday

along with some ripened

tomatoes and zucchini.

I brought it to my sweetness

and she made something nice.

Purity, Accuracy

I May Make It Look Easy, But

It's a lot of work being a damned fool.

White Trash and Yellow Garbage

We're in it for the money, honey.  We're in it for the money... and flies.  All I can see is soggy shit quivering with busy files.  It looks like diaharrea made out of american dollar bills; washed up into one miles long, continuous booger, stringing like a slug trail down the sand.  I can't remember.  I can't remember what time of year it happens.  The Oyashio.  Or was it the Kuroshio?  The North Pacific Gyre?  Koshiama.  He would know.  Nobu Koshiama.  I don't really know how my Dad knew him.  Jesus Christ, that guy could fish.  

Years ago the shit that came out of money's ass looked completely different.  It came ashore in the form of glass floats and bits of fishing net.  Japanese fisherman, currents, gyres, the Coriolis effect; matter interacting with itself, all observed, written about, given a name and cataloged.  I'll bet you didn't know it was all for sale.  It sure is.   That's how all this japanese trash started showing up on Klipsan Beach when I was a kid.  You could walk along the receding tide beach-coming for laundry detergent bottles with faded and salt bleached labels in Kanji.  I'd walk along for miles in the washed up kelp grass and sea foam.  I'd save the best bits in a beach fort to show to my little sister or Dad.  

My Dad would bitch at me to put it back and stop being so stupid.  "Don't play in garbage, Scottie! Stop acting like White Trash!"

The Ocean As The Ocean

The ocean sounds like true night.

The ocean sounds like the first time you heard your parents fight.

The ocean sounds like a million gears turning 

each with several missing teeth.

The ocean sounds like a two stroke motor, 

quilting the nighttime air of your neighborhood

on an open window, hot summer night;

you walk shirtless up the blocks

trying to find the sound that hums in your jaw

but it's not there.

The ocean sounds like the meaningless voices

of everyone who's ever lived and died,

stretched out on a great roll of electromagnetic tape

that leaves you speechless.

The ocean is everything you've known

and will never know

in your last minutes

of everlasting regret.

The ocean has always been there.

The ocean is waiting.

The Ocean As A Parachute

It was getting to be afternoon.  Sand had gotten into my mouth, past my braces and the wires clamping my jaw shut.  I had no choice but to swallow the stuff.  My fingers compulsively flew up to my face, massaging an aching jaw.  I worried that my face was still too puffy, swollen, ugly.  Who was I kidding anyway?  She wasn't going to show, the girl I had run into walking her dog along the beach the previous morning.  Her golden retriever had bounded across the dunes straight up to me and stuck it's wet, sandy muzzle straight into the crotch of my khaki shorts.  She apologized as she pulled her dog out of my groin.  

"It looks like I peed my pants,"  I remarked, trying to make funny out of awkward.  She looked up from the faux piss stain on my shorts.  Her hair was short.  Her eyes were brilliant blue.

"What's wrong with your mouth?  Have you got something stuck in there?"  

I had managed to make it for two weeks and some since the operation without stooping to writing my words down on the scratch pad I had been lugging around.  My dad gave it to me.  He got fed up with trying to decipher my nasally mumbling and impatient gesturing.  Whatever.  It sounded perfectly understandable to me.  What I wouldn't do for friends and family, I now did for a girl.  I began scribbling.

"You had surgery on your jaw and it's wired shut?  That sucks.  Hey, how do you eat then?  There's not much of you to begin with.  You might blow away with the wind!"

She was right.  I was skinny; skinny when I went into the O.R. and even skinnier when I woke up.  Even before the operation, kids told me I had this huge, peanut head stuck on a pile of flimsy twigs.  The swelling in my face exaggerated this to great effect.  What the hell though.  I wasn't going to dither about what we were talking about.  I just wanted to keep on talking with this pretty girl.  I continued with the pen and scratch pad.

"Milkshakes, huh?  So everything has to go into your stomach through a straw?"  That's wild."

We walked along for a bit through the dunes.  She talked about her high school and studio choir.  I wrote down that I played guitar my school's choir.  That wasn't entirely true.  They let me play a three note thing in a Beach Boys song at some ham dinner thing.  Still, I had to put something on the table.  Adolescence was working some serious shit on me.  I was not a real good looking boy; not by a long shot.

"We're staying up here so I gotta head back in.  Hey, why don't you meet me back here tomorrow at 11:00 in the morning?  We'll go down into Long Beach and get something through a straw."

I couldn't stop thinking about it for the rest of the day and long into the night.  So I made my way out to meeting place and waited, squinting through the salty drizzle.  At first I thought I had gotten the time wrong.  Hurry up and wait is a way of life in my family.  An hour or so later, I remained at the spot.  I drew in the sand with a stick and tried to look like I wasn't a rube being set up.  Finally, it sunk in that the whole thing was a joke.  Fuck.  Yet again, I came out on the other end of an interaction with somebody and wound up so embarrassed and humiliated that I wanted to fucking die.

 I started out towards the surf when I heard laughter in the dunes.  Two female voices.  I couldn't make out the words.  It didn't matter.  I could tell by the tone they were mocking me.  At that point, I was overcome with a powerful urge to walk straight out into the surf and drown.  With my eyes fixed on the roiling breakers of the Pacific Ocean, I headed west.  The chilly water soaked my shoes and socks, wicked up my levi's and squeezed the breath out of me.  It felt right.  I would just keep walking until the waves knocked me off my feet.  Eventually the salty water would fill up my lungs.  The ocean would consume me and all of this would stop.  About waist deep in the surf, I felt those loathsome feelings recede inside me.  They couldn't stand up to the ocean.  My clothes were soaked and heavy but my body felt light and innervated.  I turned toward the shore and headed home.  It would always be here, pounding against the beach, constant, waiting.  I chose not to drown myself that day.  Just a little bit of oblivion would do.  Walking back home in my soaking clothes I smiled.  You gotta be prepared.  You gotta know all your options.

What I Did On Summer Vacation

I went back to Ocean Park on the tip of Willapa Bay.  I went back to the little tourist trap called Long Beach, Washington, in the Southwestern most part of the state.  The Long Beach Peninsula is a hangnail of sand that separates Willapa Bay from the headwaters of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean.  It's a really odd and mostly inhospitable place to boast a tourist trap town.  The wind and rain, a result of northerly locale and Oceanic climate, are almost ever-present. Despite this condition, folks have been coming out here to vacation since they put the Clamshell Railway in, back in 1890.  People chance the weather to walk and drive miles and miles of long sandy beach retreating into a mesmerizing expanse of beachgrass and dunes.  My family was one of those families who used to regularly vacation there.  My dad took us because his dad took us.  You either went fishing in the rain or played cards and board-games in a trailer or fishing cabin.  This went on for years.  It doesn't go on as much any more.  

Well, I went back because I needed to go out there.  I felt like I needed to go back and wander around in the dunes, eat steamer clams and drink warm cans of sand grit beer.  My dad and mum were going and invited Dana and I.  As usual, I scheduled this in such a way as to keep Dana off the roster. So, I drove alone along the mostly two lane, winding stretch of highway through rump mountains and towering Douglas Fir down to the ocean.  The towering forests don't go on as much any more either, though.  The Weyerhaeuser Timber Company owns most of this part of the state. The clearcuts along the highway have became more frequent over the years.  Driving through one is like driving through Tunguska Explosion or the aftermath of a hurricane.  They put signs up along the highway that basically say "Hey, we know this looks bad but we're planting them back."  I don't really know why they do that.  

I went back because I've been there a lot over the years but not so much anymore.  There are some other places I've been to and then gone back.  Ocean Park is where I've gone back the most. 

A Good Night's Sleep

We were all of us boarding a plane
headed east to Casablanca.
The airport was a casino
with endless staircases
and cocktail waitresses
in those skimpy outfits.
I kept looking for Floor G
going up and down
in my bare feet
trying to find my friends.
Floor G was the ground floor.
Everybody was waiting,
even you.
When I got to the gate;
no ticket
no passport
no problem.
The pilot was a famous comedian
he led us to a hotel room
in the bottom of the 747.
There were already people there -
blue movie stars, lights and cameras.
They were in production.
The plane took off on the freeway
and flew low and slow.
The countryside was filled
with pretty Dutch girls and Guernsy cows.
Nobody noticed that but me.
Everybody was preoccupied with
the pornographers.
A girl from where I work
started to sob.
She missed her husband.
We tried to comfort her
between shouts
and magnums of Veuve Clicquot.
The plane suddenly landed in Greenland.
They gave us a rubber map of the town
and pointed at the sky
My father was now the pilot.
He told me we could go no further.
The Armies of Greenland were holding
an atom bomb test.
Instead of watching the mushroom cloud,
the Armies of Greenland mobbed us
asking for autographs.
They thought
we were professional basketball players
and we were.
After the atom bomb test
we re-boarded the plane.
As we were taking off
I saw a friend of mine named Vanderpool
recycling cardboard at the base of the control tower.
When I told him we were leaving for Morocco,
he said that the people were brown
they spoke no English
and beer was haram.
They made him General In Chief
of the Armies of Greenland

The Golden Bough

Ahkenaten on a Golden Calf.
Nazi tigers pull the royal chariot
and everyone watches
this our vir triumphalis.
It is our will manifest
in bacchanalia and regicide.
And so we put the sun in its grave,
and his children on the moon,
so that we may live and die
under procession of the seasons,
forever subjugated to the divine right
of the kings who rule us
and who in turn we kill.

You Can't Trust A Man What's Made of Gas

The Money Has Died

I was in the basement

with a book on alchemy

and a bag full of ivy.

That's when the call came in;

the money has died.

"What do we do?"

I asked.

They told me,

"Go stand on the sidewalk

and bang this drum

until they grant sainthood

because the money has died."

The money has died

and from here on out

it's all in black and white;

watching cakewalk and silicon

while the green arounds us wilts

and blue above us boils.

Funky Shoes

Gonna take a ride.

Gonna take a ride.

Gonna see some.

Gonna see some.

Popcorn in dog shit.

Popcorn in dog shit.

Play on.

Gonna take a ride.

Gonna take a ride.

Gonna see some.

Gonna see some.

Popcorn in dog shit.

Popcorn in dog shit.

Play on.

Prayer For The Gunfighter

I'll say a prayer
for the gunfighter
armed with a holster
filled with stones.
He rode into town
low and lazy
in the saddle of the sunset
with the changing wind
at his back.
I'll keep in my thoughts
those eyes that never meet mine,
always searching for a place to hide,
one step ahead
of the hanging party's gallop.
He looked into the chambered weirs
of the tourist fish ladder
and remarked to his sister
that the life of a salmon
is nothing but everlasting struggle.
He would know
having gunned down so many ghosts
only to have the sky in his head
burst with the faces of countless others
all taunting him to draw.
I hugged him goodbye
as he rode out
continuing his flight
along the outlaw's trail,
free and clear
from the voices of the mob
and the gallows pole.

Like Italy

The usual things are happening;

awesome and not awesome.

The usual thoughts are not happening.

I can't find that badger hole

in the tall grass of my memory

down which I hoard the hurt

of every perceived failure.

Bedtime comes earlier

and dreams are filled with

dogs and cats and horses.

My shoe is untied

so to speak.

Every time I kneel down

to shore up the knot

it's a boot soaking in

gentle waves of Mediterranean ocean,

like Italy.

Lost In The Trees

In the out of the way
we sit and watch
the sea planes
and strollers
pass this porch
on a warm June evening.
The soft drum roll
of the rickety rocking chair
serenades a mute storm
roiling behind forest brown eyes.
There is a conversation,
there is an arugment
there is an endless roar
of mouthless voices
but the few words spoken
are measured breadcrumbs
leading back
to the one
who is lost
in the trees.