Front

The ocean's weather got blown off course.

I'm wearing it like a cold blanket,

on the porch,

watching its approach

from the south.

My fingers are numb and my face hurts.

It's good to feel something for a change.

As I Carry Mine

Imperial candle.
See Margo entered,
pending,
in process.
If yes, see attached.
Train cars under the orchard’s eaves.
Notice only, during the age
Of troglodyte reign.
Several fifty.
Some didn’t make it that far.
The district division is small enough,
important enough,
to carry in your pocket
as I carry mine.

I Just Want It To Be Over

Terrible summer.
One of the worst I can remember.
Every day is another humiliation.
Everyone around me is a reminder of my failings.
I shut my eyes and hope they never open again
and that the life inside me
will pack up and move on.

Salter's Point and The Trestle

When we had nothing

to our good names but time

we wasted the flower of our youth

down at the trestle.

Up in the bones of the span

like bandits laid and waiting

hours and weeks passed;

nestled and lazy,

in dovetail joints

of creosote slick thighs.

It was there

under the track

we waited all ears

for the bright iron hum

telegraphing the arrival

of every southbound train.

We came with pocket change offerings

spread out for sacrifice

along the ribbons of track

running ambivalently

above our foolish heads.

When we had nothing

the only buzz you could cop,

the only rush that was free,

was waiting for you

under the trestle rails

with the promise

of each passing train.

Show Business

Last night they got to talking about show business.
The lump in my throat bobbed as I tried to drain a tallboy
and avoid participation in this animated conversation.
I heard numbers and big plans get tossed around with logos and stickers.
There was some rambling talk about “getting it into the right hands”.
Before anybody could ask me what I thought about the matter
I excused myself to go down the hall to the bathroom and vomit.
I hate show business. I want no part of it.
One of these days, I know it’s coming:
I’ll have to excuse myself to leave the room
and never come back.
I hate show business.
I want no part of it.

Cheer Up

Cheer up.
I wish I could.
Nothing pisses off people
more than a whiny white bastard
who’s got it so good
yet finds himself so miserable.
Cheer up.
I wish I could
but with each passing day
it becomes clearer to me
that everything is the same
as it was in high school.
Time does not pass
and things never change.
Cheer up.
I wish I could.

I Am My Own Prison

I am an incompetent idiot,
a creatively bankrupt,
charismatically challenged,
amateur adult.
I am an unproductive citizen
who despises the accident of his birth.
I am a natural born follower,
mute in the presence of my betters
who outnumber me.
I am a disease,
existing in constant fear
of discovery and remedy.
I am a ventriloquist’s dummy,
propped up by hatred,
animated by jealousy,
voiced with self loathing.
I am my own prison.

You Are Hereby Served

Dear Written Word,

I'm sending you this letter with apologies that I've been so neglectful in communicating with you. Yes, it has been months since we have exchanged missives. It is my sincere hope that I haven't entered into ill regard with you; perceiving my increasingly sporadic and markedly pedestrian communications of late as indicative of a creeping onset of ambivalence regarding our relationship. I feel it is indicative on my part to re-establish that you and I share an inseparable nexus of origin that any Court could effectively affirm upon filing of a sworn affidavit that you and I are in fact, mortally incorporated. This finding of fact, I hope, will serve to put to rest any issues regarding our ongoing relationship.

So, formalities out of the way, how's it hanging? Have you swum among the ether where thoughts congeal from nebula dust? I must say that since adopting a prescriptive regimen of anti-depressants, I have been markedly unmotivated to open and respond to your correspondence. I think you know it goes without saying that the temporal dislocation caused by clinical depression, solipsism and the stresses of predatory, twenty-first century capitalism makes it prohibitively difficult to expend any already depleted reserves of soul energy to sincerely engage in any hailing.

Where do we stand? Given my current state, I imagine you are contemplating the same question. Are we indeed at a crossroads? What is the worth of continuing our mutual self preservation through an ongoing relationship? I ask this earnestly. Many things have visited us as of late. There is a spreading darkness within us both. If it is not addressed directly it will ensure our mutual destruction. What solution is to reached? We sit, facing each other on opposing ladders; each rung a threat begging escalation.

Regards,

You

The Beauty Of War

You know what was the strangest thing about it all?
I had finally stopped counting.
I stopped keeping track of every time
the shell fragments
whistled past my head.
I had become numb to all of it;
the panic of so many moments
set loose with paralyzing terror,
and the obsequious resignation
of the whole of humanity
to the yoke of senselessness.

I stopped hearing the agonies
of the random wounded and dying,
lifting an eternal hurricane
of hopeless shrieking voices
screaming in a maelstrom.
They pleaded and cursed.
They bargained and pledged.
They called out for acceptance.
It was too much for me to think about.
I wanted to live.

The impact hit me so hard
the kiss of oblivion atomized the universe.
This sudden gift
of freedom from the horrid world was fleeting.
A searing dawn seeped through my ragged veins.
It always comes back.
When I realized it was me,
laying at the well's bottom of my vision,
I finally understood
God sent me to hell here on Earth
and that the whole of his creation
is stiffly rooted in everlasting pain
and perpetual anguish.
Before it all diffused,
I realized it was only me
and it was all my fault.

Fathoms

They pressed his stuffed visage
on a microscope slide
under the unseeing ears
of a dandelion blossom radio telescope
parked in the bottom
of the Mariana Trench.
Baseball stitch sutures
pinch his head shut.
His cheeks are swollen with ballast.
They quiver under the weight
of ocean current covers.
In the deep dark
this shrunken headed bathysphere sleeps
on a iron bottom examination table.
They want to take the cuneiform crow hops
stamped on the silted floor of his memory
and tack it to a grand nexus
rising from the ocean floor of his thready pulse
to the ambivalent dust of the salty sky
through the double helix of a waterspout.
There is no unifying theory.
His mind is submerged beyond the sounding line.
The sea has its own agenda
so old that they can never hope to know
what it sings in the far fathoms
that only murmur on the surface
in white noise harmonies
breaking in foam against the barrier reef.
The tempest pours out of wind
in crescendos of grinding stone.
Seaweed strands knit grey shawls in the current
telegraphing the hemispheres of this globe
in scarves of stagnate neurons
hoarse from eons of shouting
out the moment that greets the hour
when the scenery is missing sky
and the facts on the ground just don't add up.
The experiment is a failure
but it won't come any harder
than the quiet that must come.

Wheatstalks

Some souls coming
some souls going
all same souls
all same souls
Listen
Listen close
You can hear
the wheatstalks cracking
on the edge of the harvester's blade...

Damn You

My first words

pantomimed the violent language

of the ones who raised me up.

They raised me up from an incubator

into the arms of the insecure,

singing softly about forever

while white dishes smashed the floor

in bursts of Francis Scott Key

on a football weekends.

"God Damn You

God Damn You

God Damn You."

I don't even remember the year

but I remember the football season.

The Chiefs beat the Vikings in the Super Bowl.

1970.

My Dad and my uncles

started shouting about the over/under.

Little brown bottles were perched on every flat space.

I sat near the television, enjoying the tingling feeling

of static electricity coursing through my blanket.

"God Damn You

God Damn You

God Damn You."

No one heard or knew.

I was conducting an experiment.

I knew little about God

but I knew enough to know that I was stuck in his world

and there wasn't anything I could do about that.

So I used to spend a lot of time

with a blanket draped over my head

chanting "God Damn You

God Damn You

God Damn You."

I did this to see what would happen.

If I could force the issue.

My greatest fear is that the non response

of my unconsciousness is driving the show. As long as he plays my bloody taxes

Dinah Gettoutahere

Lucien Disguise,

that's a fellow you can set your wash to.

Anna Leakage,

is a lady you don't want to have to follow.

Dave Infamy

carried out his orders

straight to the curb.

He left them in the circular file

with a pizza crust and a spent Trojan

awaiting the long journey to Olympia.

Ian Absentia,

where'd he go?

I always liked that guy.

He said the funniest things

and the thing he did with his balls

in that Moscow Idaho bar almost made me piss myself.

Helena Handbasket

was permanently parked on the first barstool

at Al's on 45th until lately.

What a shame.

Yasser Nasser

sat on the fence regarding most issues of the day.

He did have a thing, I'm told

for Sue S. Canal.

I think they may have gotten it on.

Ray Incandescent

is a bit much,

don't you think?

Me too.

Dinah Gettoutahere

always pulls the fade

when things start getting woozy.

What a class act.

What a class act, people...

Pete and Ray

Fuck it, people.

Your friend and humble narrator

can only go so far down

and give you the play by play.

Yes, one day

we're gonna play this out

to overtime-

sudden death,

if you will.

Right now though

I'm watching two cats

go ape-shit nuts

as I walk through the door

after a day of getting horse whipped.

The little fuckers are absolutely charming.

They yowl, bolt and squirm.

All my cherished bookshelf bits

are broken by these little bastards,

but do I want to tandoori these two?

No.

They and my DanaGirl (who conned me into this)

are my heroin.

They are sweet relief.

They are my trying to get away

from everything.

Get Lost

A ladybug

struggles to climb out of a glass

of stale champagne.

Little fucker is drunk,

stealing the fluid I need

to warm my soulless guts.

Asshole.

I'm contemplating the ash

of this last cigarette

hanging over a yellowed coffee cup.

Ladybug, you've failed.

Ladybug, you're not commercially viable.

You're gonna die.

You're gonna decease never known

and not even forgotten.

What the hell have I been doing?

Strumming and shouting in a vacuum

until I'm deaf and voiceless.

Isn't there something else I can find

to waste this time?

Jesus Christ,

how long does this have to go on?

I don't need you.

I don't need you here.

It's better if you never listen.

It's better if you never knew.

Never knew my story.

The more you learn

the less you know.

Get lost.