brothers
we can be closer
with each new brutal realization
our agonies bind us
and there is comfort in the revelation
of experience
each new dawn we go the machines
hopeful of change
the end of the drudgery
this earth is the lasting battle
there are no winners
yet soon,
there will be sleep
in the long stretching veil
peace in endless night
our final moment
to rid the mortal coil
the cutting of our noose
the factory job
swinging doors
explosions in Spanish
never a subdued moment
sexy (las bonitas) crimson queens
eyes that hold mine
smiles of veiled lust
shiftyseductive
tousled hair and bronze skin
irreproducible beauty
chemicals
then i developed a bad complexion
and caught myself trying to shave my eyes
what a gem of contemplation
new beginnings
all the old rituals are waving goodbye
the sense we can make of the world
dulled
slower to think and act
while we propagate our demise
evolve and pass to the perimeter
of society
and its still, green ocean
full of television wars
news broadcasts
lessons for the new morality
get out
let’s carry ourselves away
the skin of our teeth
the rotting moment
after the darkest hour
outside, the apocalypse
drowning in bodies too small
brains too large
who'd have thought
we could be taught to run circles
'round ourselves?
in the staggering stillness
after door slamming
gunshot
the amplified click of the telephone
the oncoming collision
we wait
for lives to unfold
winter
my intentions are weaving themselves
thinner and thinner
harsh realities loom consistent
covering the sun
january, february,
some good tidings, please
this winter has claws
i shred before my very eyes
history
time is slowly drawing up the seeking net
we run so many circles
to avoid the dark embrace
at seven
he wished to suicide
the devil stopped him
at nine
he wanted to fuck
the angel at sixteen broke him
at twenty two
he wanted to fly
then reality walked in
they exchanged frowns
loathing each spaced moment
lovers
they're all saying goodbye
to the sad eyes and troubled looks
to the time it took to right the wrongs
the unbalance, the feel of dying time
the momentous shaking spasmic rush of the lust
"i love you because i want to fuck you."
it’s all the same dance
men or women
create the same loathing
i’m as rotten as the world
the green infections spread
with everyone dying of the same disease
greed, envy, lust, doubt
we're all dying as slowly as the day
our own ways
with our own reasons
you can turn back, and come again
but all the whispering roads bring no peace
it is lost in its empty asylum
while people get obscene
on television death,
teenage fuck bombshell whores
that promise the world and
lie
on their backs
in sweet whispers
enchanting, killing hole
you’ve eyed me again
family confusion
thoughts like shifting seas
ride the rhyme
the funeral procession's begun
lying in wait
unclear memories
unclear feelings
muddy situations
blackened love mixes with old hatred
we all churn and dance together
getting burned
damned
all named for one another
sickly lurching family,
whose silence do you mourn the most?
mine?
or yours?
one
every philosophy is
man dreaming the truth
whether, junkie
or yogi
bodhisattva
or psychedelic
we dream our self-law
our self-life
unconscious directions
to the flow of our existence
trap
half dawn with dung mushrooms
dreaming awake
violent fantasy
wicked carnal sex
'always watch the woman's orgasm'
become one to the howling peak
of desire
then, pause for speech
'need a rest?'
"don't stop"
once a day i fuck her
or once a week if she gets sore
i told her i studied tantra
it was enough
to take her virgin mask
and display the snake underneath
greedy eye
stay awake with the cocaine words
opium time
slow fractal memories
watching the weekend wane
without a shot in the dark
sex with fitness
the next great drug passion
the virgin whore we all dream
the knight untouched for her to scar
the lady in distress
needing to feel like a woman
the endless greed we suffer
for want of close lust.
engulfing
eviction
in a land where lunacy grows on trees
and mad little boys rule the world
i compose
a lonely household
rambling statues of memory pass before lidded eyes
lying in a cold room masturbating fear away
to an endless porno drone
"did you know i can unhinge my jaw?"
rented space
cluttered with rented dreams
but they can’t evict you from hope
no matter how torn open you are
or how much rent you owe;
the eternal things are at rest
composed in death
singing their twilight tune
to block out the reasons
and we are all what we all are
no amount of jerking off can bring that back
torn notions and catastrophic rhyme
rubbing shattered glass in an open wound of time
the meanings are all false
and bewildered
lost shadows chasing sunlight
waiting
all this adolescence
made me black inside
went a bit mad
started wondering why
all; turned in
curled arachnid legs
a legacy of loss
we remind ourselves
never letting slip
the deep press of horror
the sweating run
beginning again and again
keep looking for a way out
the setting sun day
the final eclipse
two
"Joe???"
i heard her petulant whine coming from the bedroom
"yes?"
"will you massage my back?"
"sure, just a minute"
i climb off of the couch and walk to the bedroom door
there are small rustling sounds of covers and clothing
i remember for one sweet moment, her arched back,
perfect breasts and wish that all the fire i knew for her was real.
i turn the knob and step in, she swivels her head to face me
"you have big feet" she says
"it’s not so bad" i tell her
she’s wearing black and white striped panties, like old prison clothes
i hop on the bed and roll her over, straddling her butt so i can’t see them
or her bare breasts.
"just your back?" i ask
"will you do my butt too?"
"sure"
i begin to knead, lightly at first and growing steadily more intense as my palms find the knots in her muscles, spasms from dehydration and a fluctuating methadone dose.
"is that enough pressure?"
"mmm"
she twists and moans throughout the procedure, half wailing,
"it’s better than sex!"
but she doesn’t know that, for sure.
i keep my erection to myself, much to my own displeasure.
once her back and buttocks are warm and loose i dismount,
putting my shoes on and arranging myself.
she says, "thank you Joe, that was wonderful."
then smiles at me with her child’s face and perfect brown eyes.
i think, 'i love you, but i can’t fuck it up by wanting you this much'
i swallow all of it and say, "you're beautiful"
she says, "it’s not so bad"
i take a mental snapshot, turn and close the door behind me.
back in the living room, my girlfriend is smiling through her scowl,
grinding her teeth
"i want to get out of here NOW. are you hungry?"
"sure, but it’s not so bad" i say
she purses her lips white, then,
"what do you have in mind?"
"nothing particular"
post no bills
notes in my head state
"attack as needed"
these sore and biting thoughts
i wish them gone when they
will not end
and beg for their return
when my mind sits silent
ahh- for more razors
to run across the edge of my psyche
talentless and timeless
these black rolling madness clouds
are my damnation
and salvation
airport sunrise
it is the deep end of morning
blue-black sky and sodium lights
meld into one free discharge
there is nothing else beyond the window
even the wind is silent, waiting.
like a child who needs lifted
to be able to see,
the sun lurks, straining to peer
over the edge of the dawn
voices of the winter
in winter
the wind sweeps the snow
silvery ghost tongues
raking the asphalt
carrying our ancestors voices
the weeping of the long dead
crystallized
whipped and dragged
voice after voice
lament over lament
twining and curling
a cacophony of whispers
for the ancient summer
and the far off spring
insecure days
the black cat and the fifteen year old disregard me for my strangeness
the girl with the crooked nose love me so hard i want to cry,
but i can’t appreciate her reasons.
mind is filled with pictures of women so beautiful that scorn my passing
am i ugly? is it my clothes? my eyes?
or just an inability to speak?
i am so old i have no pick up lines, no confidence
always beating myself with what i believe i do not have
lost in the awkward house
my compatriot upstairs next to the matron
embraced and warm, at least
with me as baggage
broke
no will to work
all these drugs,
yet, no music.
there were three chords tonight
but never black enough to suit my mood
when i want the smooth surface of the bottom
strummed out, picked out
notes so awful
("i want, i want, i want" petulance song)
to make it bleak
blank
black
lost in despair
like me
sweet dissatisfaction
white lights swirling on black glass
wondering
remembering
the fucking doesn’t affect
it’s just me and they know it
horrible ecstasies of wanting
virgin fires
tight holes, black like midnight
hell has overrun me again
only to be left gesturing
calling for us to join
the fire of clock ticking
of year passing
of death writing
note after note
singing despair
the first wave of intoxication
sweeps me over
left wanting a better mind
cleaner visions to jot
for the mass consumption
stomachs to taste the fillets of my life
speculation through the haze
a choked out silence
a vagrant crying
lost in the wilderness of his own mind
some thing to ease the pain of living
a monster of pills
drugs to heighten awareness
and pull away the world
like staring at ants through a magnifying glass
with room for judgment
in between
the eye and the glass
the haze and the world
our endless dance
despair growing roots from our feet
to slow
or end
this wild racing
after the dream
life begins with leaving
reality is dust clinging to concrete
silent windless prayres
sung in tobacco voices at two and three
carousel of my childhood
divine indeed
the hours keep tickin' down
got a razor in my pocket to shave off my fear
the squirming in my guts is so loud now
like i was getting married in a few hours
tired, like, soul exhausted
a blue ball of doubt
wish i could deafen myself
put out my right eye
start cursing and never stop
bring my focus down
a pixel wide
all these fucking angles are hurting my eyes
hey!
someone wakened me from an impotent dream
somewhere on the way to happiness.
i lost my faith
set fire to my heart
with hate and kerosene
burned my whole world to the foundation
erased everything but the outline
limbered up and started again
my way
fucking MY WAY
my way or the highway, bitch
shut up and get out
"you need some faith" she said
maybe if she hadn’t told the truth
i'd have changed my mind
self hatred
underestimated
overimposed
minded fully
not
a
chance
in
hell
to ever
feel
anything
again
to love is a blue dream
woken from in a cold room
cluttered with dirty clothes
and bare walls
driving home the point
twisting the blade
waking up alone
from a blue dream
meta
ghosts sprout wings in my brain;
thoughts returned slighted
there is poetry screaming to get out
ask
teeth grinding race to the end of the day
feel
the sirens are closing in
the wind is howling in a vacant lot of unparked dreams
hear
the house on the hill tell its stories
share its burdens
shiver
with warped panes of glass
thinned from age
tell me your tales of things past
walk
in corridors of time
high on a windy hill
evolve
in our virus state
consuming
we write, sleep and talk
never communicating
just screaming
where is the endless rapture
the sacred dance?
our souls are whipped
submitting
we crawl away
to our daily dungeons
eating the drudgery
we become black
insides endless and deep
as the night
stale dream
suicide americana
young children
blow out their brains in the midwest
fear is capital for respect
the evolving glory will not save us
from ourselves,
sick minds,
sexual disease
the breeding of the next slander race
the unappreciative loin-sprout
we'll kill them with unappreciation
silence them with gestures
you terrible sluts of time
when did you fuck away your souls?
young lust
a human animal
a wolf caught too many times
on societies killing tree
we fuck in the open
under the stars
growling
some beast in the pit of the stomach
calls,
howls to a new crescent moon
teeth bared in the hunt
lost in the endless caress of the night
dreaming with freedom
hackles raised in the chill
adrenal pump-pump
of strained muscle
synapse screams
to become one with the prey
snarling a love song too old to be civilized
fangs and claws
griping the edge of lust
panting to ancient, wild rhythms
curling in passion's blast furnace
dancing wildly to the chaotic,
frenzied death of orgasm
business
grey listless suits
bargain for each others souls,
wives or bank accounts
hey, emptiness,
let’s give the world a hand
god, to blank out these fastidious
lives
useless ticking of existentialist hearts
the hectic signs of drunkenness
lashing the faces of the old
the nearly dead are teaching us
to find gainful employment,
yet, they consider themselves failures.
it’s fucked up
the way you gotta do things to survive
creative orgasm
spawned high
in a deep blue heaven
spilling into mind
fraught with wanting
desires fighting pain
a conglomerate state
of confusion
wrapped in warm tissues
goddess of liberation
heart's soft palpitations
lament terror
feed back memory
plays tunes
on a sharp line of minor
hope is vanity's soothing caress
first night
do you remember how old you were
when you first looked out to see
the torn edge of the night?
the perforated dawn rippling with life
the moon still chasing clouds across the sky?
they left him there
to burn down a memory
floating just at the crack of twilight
a foot above the ground
eyes flying across deserts singed with fire
and i saw it in an instant........
death spans longer than life
a life is a moment
a fuel, spark, orgasm
shouting:
fuck me in all ways
sore and unyielding
take me like a little child
a dungeon toy
split
like thunder in the rain
(a boy then descended the walkway toward life)
desolation
an all consuming pattern
destroyed on the head of the dancing pin
with angels watch'd
distended tongues
crucified images
and things we won’t see until tomorrow
(for a time he's lost)
weathered old-necked faces shine
like hardwood in the dawns laughter
now grey eyed and hazy
he needs words
to fill the space
dumb awestruck letters forming
thoughts in a span
days are littered about
smelling of butane and ashes
(the boy stumbles)
agony replaces defeat
tired and alone
breathing shallow
in the two a.m. rain
bathing in a year's shallow grave
of sooty time's questions
revenge
we are the destroyers of our destinies
the corruptors of our own minds
we own space
we own time
freeing ourselves through the same puppet strings
some grasp in discontent
cut yourself free
walk alone, the solace left behind
a dirt road paradise
dreaming in a continuum of vagrancy
wander afar, braced by nothing
walk away from the box of your own mind
(how'd you like a taste of insanity?)
how would you like to eat your own shit of suffering
in the quiet of the three a.m. ?
clock ticking its madness in your ears
tear off your right hand and shove it in your laughing asshole.
breed nightmares in the day time and show them to the world
let them learn to hate themselves
like it was just yesterday, that it 'wasn’t such a big deal'
let them go to the mirror and shave off the sound of their own screaming
let them bathe in their 'i told you so's'
oh vengeance
these festering wounds only grow
find medicine
find it within
trip style
working on a tripstyle prediction
time
a mind
someone’s dream
all these nasty vibrations
collective energetic malfunction
turns into
burned out buildings
the edge of a city
picking through memories in the aftermath
an aged look passes across eyes where i once held my smile
look awhile
hey,
look awhile
so i turn over debris
counting on shadows to obscure
to thwart memory
it doesn’t seem so long ago.....
a gasoline fit
jangling at the end of a nervous arm
set to douse
and bring to flame
the end made a powerful beginning
but the last light in the attic went out
with a popping, hole in your head sound
the fire knew best
trying to corrupt the pictures memory made
but only succeeded in a ghoulish rendering
of the truth
don’t look in my eyes
you won’t like what you see:
a giant rambling city, filled with crime
got carried away
burned a beautiful sight,
now, the last bastion of a soul gone grey and listless
well,
times come
kingdoms come
how you gonna get by?
bad trip
her mind got filled with christian death
and once the screaming stopped,
a white hot silence left after the dying day
collapsed inward
and all fell down the winding road
to bruise and decay
which the feet of an idol claimed.
any useful sound was not made.
in the demon dawn we sang,
a notion of filling vessels with water
there is a clap-trap metal body
scraping, screaming, gnashing its teeth
devouring the minutes faster after midnight
give the dawn this ring to wear,
my day is done
i’ve other songs to sing
and lives to lead
observation of the city at night
dogs barking like omens on the wind
in a black leathery night
choruses of baying hounds
reach through glass and wood to chill me
the lone cricket sings its monotone song above
the whisper of hand moving across paper at four a.m.
there are smoke filled mirrors in glass houses
children who will smile and awake to gunshots
the poor man's tax bent back
creaks
to the wino crying 'Jesus' in the alleyway
tomorrow
standing on the westering sunset
turning grey in all directions
a funeral march plays just for me
heart is beating madman’s time
and five a.m. is just comin' along
tapping a miserable tune
all out of time
teeth clicking at odd intervals
eyes just rollin'
in seas of biting promises
school
all their names were rotten
festering sores
on a memory
of when their ways were as the light
piercing the darkness
the mind a beacon of eyes
one last whisper before the end
freedom stalks
a taunting dagger at the end
of someone’s crimson wet dream
memory is displaced
a rock thrown
through the window of mind
breaks the world into
one thousand glittering pieces
smoke
an arrogant-vile gesture, like spitting
carbon and blood wrapped tissue
bright eyes get dull and colorless
tobacco dreams
burning down a hallway scattering dust
of smoke and phlegm
behind the dreamer
long grey freshets pooling in rooms
stained the color of malaria
a skeleton's cough with twenty bones in a row
spelling a slow death in blackened lungs
a spell of youth gone awry
the rebels know what to do
smiling a skull grin
slow suicide
clasped in sharp teeth
the utensil
the pen points
an accusing finger wrapped in plastic
it knows of the grand design
the irresistible pull
times dagger, ready to plunge
through the stark wasteland
and draw new blood from a tired rhyme
its spell only broken by the words we speak
reprehensible, tawdry lines weep
tales bleed
the pen is swabbed across a page
the color of hi-beam
sixty mile per hour death trap
we're caught
and glare blinded
dead before the impact
caustic black blood spilling amidst the lines
cards
so truth played us all a hand
gartered legs with hidden aces
waiting to trump a last trick
drunk and blinded
we stagger
and in an honest clarity
see all the masks littering the faces
of our dear ones.
playing cards to find the truth
or rule ourselves
judging our reflections
in pools of corruption
cataract eyes steamy with the haze
of lies, butchered in telling ways
truth's razor cuts deep
with a twisting agony of realization
a stark white cloud
lifting life, dream, maze
dark fertile cloud
drifted a lazy circle
out of light
to run for days
on a fools errand of lost focus
running down a gutter in the rising dawn
menstrual flow
a monthly ritual of scientific intrusion
an insertion damning the crimson tide
the life giver has much to bear
seemingly unaware of the change
hot tempers and mental fits
disquiet
and when she says she's starting
she means all sorts of things unreasonable
but it’s really for the best
'cause a man couldn’t be the maker,
creator, selfless and giving warrior,
and be burned at the stake once a month
ravings
the attempt at caring
the lying sweatiness at confessional
the entire loss to grasp the obvious
it’s a long way to the end of someone’s day
night stealing across the sunset,
a masturbating virgin
unsure, yet,
so close....
we burned our eyes on the scene
the scent of first kisses in the air
a couple takes animal tranquilizers to go dancing
one gaunt, one portly, starving one another,
dead patient
waiting for the collapse
i must get up everyday to greet the seven o'clock puppet show
at the local poet's 120. it’s sad and sickening,
even their art is mechanical and derivative.
everyone the implementive strategist, the untrodden boundary.
'we are ALL great' they squeak, but all the fear and
bullshit aside, we are laughing at ourselves and hating
each other for some perceived slight.
our pale-beautiful lives drift through a haze of jargon soup
never lighting on a last conclusion, a final truth.
admitting failure, an incomplete gesture at best,
loses momentum and falters
on mouths lost in soupy grins.
lives like a pile of violins
singing a cadence for rotting minds
and the soulless
the wind that blew across our lives
like freedom
we wondered if it had been there at all
or was just some left over monologue
of dead men's dreams
whispering quietly
of change and ending
a voice full of mocking birds smiles
suicide day
the son of a world gone grey and listless
mourning a statuette
arms outstretched and dying
the little boy told me god took his mommy away
so, i say, 'fuck god'
and god says, 'fuck you'
neither of us noticed the injury
the little boy looked afraid
like he might have swallowed some poison,
and looked to the clear sky uncertainly.
‘whose god?’ i ask, and stroll away
i fuck up everything i see
and there are finks everywhere
the fruit of our self deception proves useful
once realized
a matter left to discussion in darkened rooms
a promise made over a candle flame
will not last
a flickering intrest
the mistress fans the fire
a poor observation, 'I love you'-
a mindless desire
love thyself
if lacking
before work
the early drunk is best
better to drink close to sleep
deaden yourself early
to the fast moving world
and instead of running
just
drift
white
the slow tide
inexorable
as the cold blue movements
in winter's ocean
the more warmth i look for
the colder it seems
the morning sun is spiteful
and the white wind wants me dead
every year
this slow tide of without
drowning me in debt
freezing isolation
perfect immolation
leavings
we lead ourselves in a tormented circle
of tiny deaths, miniscule cellular division.
legs spread, thrusting
a long tunnel through our movie-reel lives
one thousand kisses to ease the ache of parting
there is no preparing
for a life so fooled with lies.
blessed are the meek
who without the strong would have nothing
to compare themselves to
no heady righteousness to seek
one lie
the angel with shifty eyes
afraid of the silence
filling the small room
with her empty horn voice
retreating
i blow a kiss
full of dead promises
listen to this
learning why
children have to be convinced
to trust
adults convince themselves
to be shrewd
life,
a long twisting insect
of half-truths
and 'perceptive' differences
vampiricly drained
getting older
i never thought it was possible
to lose my youth
now i have to deny myself
from acts
wanton moments
who would’ve thought i'd
pass such a test
were are all the kissable mouths?
drinking in a bar?
sleeping in another's bed?
this convenience store diary
to line my days
i am constant lonely
an amphetamine mess
from the night before
nodding and dying.
wake up long enough to exercise
and sleep till i have to return to
the hateful work where i sit
remembering the price of cigarettes
twelve years ago
using my lunch money for smokes and soda.
lives marked by our habits
things make less sense in the wake of the years.
wanton princess
devouring my sexuality
with her youth
a white linen sheet
to cover my carbon existence
for a moment i feel giddy
as sixteen
playing Russian roulette
with another dark angel
in her basement
beside the piano
with her fathers pistol
to my temple
i really wanted to go...........
(she and fate had a deal though)
every time i chased death
it seemed to carry her face
and lately,
when i can’t even see myself,
i hear her laughing.
i see age, failure, a ghost.
i am a memory clouded with time,
a trauma i could give to you,
a living example,
the horror of the truth,
the misery of knowledge.
no longer a human, person, being
merely the sum of experience.
i am what i am,
worse,
i am what i say i am.
pouring
sit here thinking
the rain might wash it away
the replete tragedy that living entails
the doomed note we sing
on days when the sky is grey
and we don’t wanna work
just play the almighty wet-weather
sex music
that first put us to the map
it’s an ancient musing
first told
last known
the friday night wind with secrets spent
endless strings of consequence
and reaction
unexplored possibilities
and we haven't yet begun
to taste life
somewhere between the expositions
some great trick lies silent
whispering to only a few
motion sickness
home
the name of a place i'll never find
just gotta keep rollin'
keep filling in the holes
with razor cuts
and dime-store porn
the sickness comes in seconds
his smile is full of black teeth
eyes a gleaming fire
madness burning
everyone is frightened
wet between the thighs
of their soulless places
practicing for marriage
chasing dependence.
when did love pass from me?
one day
someone will find all my notes
print twenty leather-bound mss
while i rot in a shallow grave.
maybe my skull will grin at the irony.
little death
i like to trail
callused tips of fingers
near the base of her spine
kiss her there
letting the small hairs pull
at my lips
as i drag them upward
gooseflesh rises
hands trace ribs
women love to be touched
as we were newly dead
feathery soft and yielding
warming to the moment
we fuck
like animated animal corpses
strings and stuffing and jerking
it wears me out
conceit
all the women are wanton and afraid
willing us jesters
to further push the envelope
to fuck
even the least of them
tastes lust
they deny themselves
the warm, wet liquor of thighs
stomachs
a tongue sliding slowly
down the feathered nape of necks
and fingers
the rake of teeth on collarbones
the closeness of coming
sex in waves
soulfucking
startling
defiant
pure
never learn
all these years passed
still shocked, disbelieving
making faces in the mirror
at god and loss
all those damned fairytales
always at a loss for words
too breathless
to hear the happy ending
tantra
the divine ecstasy
grind like climbing
twine the soul-shouting massacre
in small moments of dying
we gloat, minds full
thick with wet desire
lovers
child of the moon
will you come into my arms
to learn the impassioned
ecstatic dance?
will you show me your soul,
this pathway,
the light that glimmers and
draws me nearer?
will you show me what is beautiful,
climbing to the stars?
child of the night
will you vanquish me with kisses
in your eyes?
let my soul stand naked
before your beauty?
the world was ending
but i am stirred
the earth on fire
but there was you
smiling
god, just smiling
you set me free to flames
Friday, Saturday, Sunday
weekend philosophy
of lonely marketeers
flesh merchants
alcohol and beauty
they make it sound so easy
but i stay alone
dreaming across the telephone
a Weeping Virgin,
The Enigma
refusing always
refuting the game
naming reasons
not to play
pain
the everlasting love of suffering
the salty stinging song
physical is real
sensuous ringing
the notes of needles and flesh
agony, sweet and low
guitars with sex
wooden women to fuck,
until the screaming subsides
i gotta get mine
trying to find the sexual,
circular, doorway
put your cock in the music
massage each fret
a stranger’s clit
straining
to complete the primary passion
tap the essence before the thrusting
and bursting
what will be left
after this mutual masturbation?
more fuel to feed the lust
more space to breathe in
all these lonely moments
you can have it
did not ask for what was given
just one smile
but bargains were arranged
promises spoken
tossed in the wind
and ripped away
then the carnival began in earnest
riding out past ridiculousness
just to answer the telephone
the friendly voice
the winning smile
it’s all facade
stucco to hide the cracks
how long before my sanity
shows, and breaks all their backs?
these lost children
sixty on the freeway
and they pick me,
the blind, to lead.
define Irony
this or that
show me misfits
and i'll give you gravestones
replete with epitaph
and all the fallen angels in between
too young
such innocence of desire
i would quiet laughter
with thrusting
a cock in the mouth
of bright-eyed angels
to climax across
perfect breasts
erect nipples
to prove the essence
the steel of me
taut skin
smooth, unblemished
the wish
to enter the purity
of sensual abandon
a mass of arms, flesh
friction of light caress
the steel of me
pushing madly toward
climax
lost in the shouting,
ecstatic desire
to learn the oneness
souls intertwining
godlike-passionate
nineteen
i wanted her wild
free
a stampede of sex
and sweet straining
breathing matched
an orgy of conceit
drawing in the purity
of being desire
being fuck
within the grasp
of a young saint
almost wedded
our time was but an instant
clutching
like blind people fucking
searching for the penis
the vagina
to put tab A into slot B
because of sex
there was love
then distrust
then disgust
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Sunday, September 16, 2007
The road to hell is paved vol 3
bike show
pills and grass
liquor with strangers
life will strengthen or destroy you
"just don’t get greedy"
certain keys will open any door
to a constant, mad calculation
watching me pay my attention
a momentary wait in the february cold
inside
there were chrome monsters
many known perpetrators of domestic violence
jerking their wives and children around
outlaws and angels from hell
a survey girl says, "if you fill out this form,
i'll fuck you til you're blind."
its all in the eyes
it gives me a sick lurching depression
i cant say a word
everyone here belongs to something
or someone
i stumble through the day and leave quietly
why bother?
long hours on the phone
the day is a long eleven-hour pull
we need less work! more pay!
i doubt if that idea works outside of theory
too many blind masses leading themselves
we are taught to enjoy this
to be strong, develop character
suffer for the quick reward
suffer longest
suffer so that you have no doubts
about who is on top
and starve anyway
drink it down
this is the burned out end of american culture
the bars on saturday night
we all sit and converse
saying nothing
praying for help and time to give ourselves the world
what should become of us?
our lives riddled with emotional holes
lies and half truths we tell ourselves
rarely stop the bleeding
these are wounds we must reopen every day
without peace
to be lost in self loathing
corner table
so far gone from themselves
they start yelling
its early on saturday
the bar is half full
the buisiness loser set at the big table
watching television
the alcoholics at the bar
watching thier drinks
the new drunks are in the other room
watching pool and the asses of girls
they seem to come for company
i sit at my corner table
trying to be alone
watching them
......no wonder.......
society and i
slowly poisoning ourselves
happy only in degradation
incompletion
all the dizzy promise of looks
some aproach is necessary
and then you see her taste,
a bungling settlement
you become aware of why she smiles at you
just friendly
because she can
because safety is in the glass
the man at her side or
just outside the door
she knows the unreality of your anticipation
and knowing she holds the keys
she flashes a smile and
kindly
locks the door
I win
strange old hookers on the tv
freaks in torn jeans and painted clothes
bat at one another in fake bloodless battles
noone gets hurt
somehow, its disappointing
the hooker at ringside leaves with the winner
american happy endings
you lose, i get the hooker
drivel
horrible drivel
this country and i, all headed for the bad end of it
bar poem
sitting here writing swill thats worse than what im drinking
i bring books to the bar
comment on the surroundings
tip the barman outrageously high
figuring he feels as alienated as i do
acting so strange
im bound to get beaten before the night is through
staring at the singles in pairs
stylish i guess
preferring anonymity
lost in thinking and bearing out the lines as though they mattered
but i wonder how they get together?
couples
living in a haze of lies
comfortable and soft never confronting the truth
they all look alike
or at least dress to please the same television program
the same heights to make up for egos and lousy sex
me, my striped shirt and idiot hair
feel there are no chances to please
"all the slots are taken, sir, you'll have to wait in line,
outlive your karma, and let them find you."
juke
the place hasn’t even started to jump
its eight o'clock
the room is a strange gaggle
boys at twenty-five still debating on manhood
where do all the beautiful women hide?
i never find them
my friends dont tell me im ugly
but i suspect
my spiraling dying nature
drives the timid glances away
one for tomorrow’s hangover
at the end of the night i'll walk out of here
sober enough
to find a key, a doorway up the stairs to the plastic bed
and hating myself to sleep
maybe
there will be a beautiful ending in this story somewhere
im all beaten out
with paranoid stares
and believing the moment matters
pure ugly
nice guys finish last
how true the old axioms are
whether they oppose or not
some ring true
shes over there drinking
i cant get a glance
but the night is young
when the crowd gets ugly its time to go
now, thats a monstrous implication, isnt it?
and lined with fate
ill be here too
what you get
all ways i get lost
caught up in the passing moment
full with expectations
and i cant go the easy way
its not right somehow
looking for a chance that wont come
a happy ending that doesn’t exist
something tangible
not something i have to force myself into
loving the suicide
sometimes we fall so hard and fast
drowning in the wind
sometimes we flail fight or laugh
trying too hard
becoming the things we hate
just to fall in love
to heal only to leave
oh, to be untorn
unscarred
crowned and uncurled around a newborn world
blotter dream
when old, will i remember these years?
only stories left, maybe, filmed with lies
will i remember the persons and places?
or will it be
flames
everything in alanis morrisette flame green
insta-paranoid reaction is mightier
than pistol to the face meaning
whose script?
ancient fools
grasping at all the dead
everything we do is selfish
how do you end the cycle of humanity?
burn that shit with good acid
a Tim Leary cure-all with madness
no way
what?
who, me?
im nobody
tearless vague eyes burn the insight of hatred
the far off lie is so many times told
that now it comes on with a truth too bold to just fade
where is the mirth that wandered the high fields?
you will only see the time going
and thats the paradox
we will hear all the crying
and turn inward for solace
alone with our hate, we'll starve for love
a nameless tragedy of silence and hope
in the astral present we wind
amid and with
it
and all the world
just a little longer
a depression in life
black and rolling
inside the morning of four a.m.
awake with paranoid, shaken dreams
insecure moments
failing at it
i fuck up everything
'hood
when you get close to my neighborhood
there are stripped cars
old mexicans
shattered glass in the streets
every day is a constant push
against the rising civilization
the corner store girls hand out change
that reeks of semen
we are forged in this constant rush of life
images and work
its strange, with art,
how the world darkens or grows brighter
stops things from turning grey
best fuck
i put myself inside her with my broken ribs screaming
skinned knuckles staining the pink sheets
my nose bled two perfect spots on her pillow
half dead and beaten to shit
but still, she wanted me
still, i performed
always wanted to reject these scenes
the punishment too great to leave dormant
she wanted to fuck me with my soul at the head of my cock
spewing my spirit away
to lock up tight in her secret places
the split stitches on my scalp dripped and ran blood
in the canal of my spine and off of my heels as i stood
to turn her over
the sheets were pink and crimson
looking like rape or murder
there are small still frames of the droplets and smears
on her upturned ass
she wants it hard
harder
and my ribs grind
the world goes dim with each thrust
i dont even hear her climax
im still trying to beat her into submission
i cant come or even breathe when she crawls away to clean herself
the best fuck of her life, she says
guesses
this sunny day
like the others
escaping in the warmth
trying to empathize with myself
the homeless
the other injured
where does the time go, once spent?
seems like the ultimate horror in life
is only to have lived through it
with all the flailing mass as witness
singularity
on these stone-lonely moments
i miss you most of all
i sit silent and dreaming
wishing for a touch, a whisper
you sleeping near
soft rush of breathing and tender flesh
warmth that grows
flashing across the seas of discovery
alone, i float
to unknown distant shores
far arden
come to me once more
and collapse
in dreaming seas
when they see
they starve with thier smiles
opening the aching wound
mixing the fire
glistening teeth and lusty mouths
eyes that never stop hating
they will not be held
this she smiles though, appraising
hair: too long
beard: day old
clothes: dirty
hands: callused and scarred
from working,
she blanks and passes
the girl at the counter will not make eye contact
but shows off her full cleavage
the tiniest intersection of lace
between the cups of her bra
exposed for everyone
my heart beats heavy and i cant speak
only want action
sex and tongues
hands sliding over flesh
bodies that grind and mesh
my dry mouth wont open to propose
i consider
she's up to her eyes in that lust all day
and doesnt even realize its her fault
the boss
flat beady eyes
hair receded and combed
exhaust pipe chrome
capillaries in sagging jowls
burst from the drunken wallow
self pity or shame
pain
the playground bully grew up to be the boss
bucktoothed and spitting, "oh Yeah?"
yeah, i remember these people from the past
i grew up outside thier social circles, observing
trying to find out who I truly was
i already knew them
now i see them still, everyday
the bully, the jock
the prom queen
my first fuck
the faces change
but the souls speak like memories
outside, i still watch
they sit hunched and jowly
bleeding eyes and leper tongues
not understanding
hating instead
freedom
me
concussion
life stopped in the instant of collision
i woke from concussion
strange to myself
a stranger in my own skin
i became unknown to the woman who gave me life
one shattering impact in the october sunset
i was left naked
unclothed of self
minus identity
minus all the comforting fictions
my ass soaked from the ditch
my mouth cursing far away in a dreaming slur
coming back from the tunnel into the sweet light
hours had passed outside my knowledge
the ambulances
crushed cars
my head reeling and reeling
as if i were lost forever
spiraling out in the void
common ground
we wanted to be priests
or killers
later there came the realization
that they were one in the same
or opposing polarities that attract
freedom from life
or freedom from death
both dispensed
with blood of savior
or of self
last chance
his smile as wide as the sky
and hands to match
the large dark shades were placed
in a breast pocket
"that love, boy, that LOVE is a bitch."
his brow furrowed tightly
showing sixty years of labor,
prejudice and lessons
he said "baby, straight now,"
locked me in his gaze
"you may as well go on and blow your brains out,
'cause that love, she just gonna kill you SLOW."
working musician on the 9 to 5 bitch
the days are not a flow
merely a stumble
so much to correct at night
with the slow note
as queen
sex
bleeding
crying
all bouncing through my head
setting trembling desire aflame
the afterglow fuck rush of living the music
difference
where do women learn their grace?
where does the sun speak to the sky?
are the days as empty for everyone?
the slow lurch of work
the greedy eyes
hungry for sex
the feminine form
lush breasts
open thighs
to gaze on beauty furled under clothing
she is like the spring mountains
these days
i am dry desert winds
obsessions
sometimes the thoughts are deep as the ocean
loud as the break
the rhythm of life lets us down
or drags us up
deep into one year of forced celibacy
i can see sex in anything
and feel excluded from it
the ways women publicly reveal themselves
with high fashion
men are unimaginative out of necessity
(that’s what im told)
once again, im speaking from outside
looking in
a little piece to you
a dedication of my sanity
the world flies by
and you speak
"hello...."
there is no welcome in her gaze
no tortured silences for me to endure in her eyes
downtown
women always sliding
strutting
through the steel morass
men walk
or scream from bicycles
at slow moving crowds of black women
its beautiful only when couples
find abandoned bliss on a street corner
or drawbridge
they stop only to stare at the polluted canal
It’s the only nature in the street
how beautiful is ignorance
how much beauty is made from the same
for Christian
Arizona
Colorado
California
Illinois
missouri, i am
child of the earth
blood of mountains and desert
sleeps in my veins
the springs in unspoiled places are my thoughts
as the wind over the plain
my soul flies
it is when i am free
smiling or dying it will always be so
the places i call home are not named
noone tells their stories
they live in memory of the laughing spirit
pure
free
seasonal voices
the breeze is coming
across the lake and up the canals
stretching tight the clouds at the far horizon
steps in the sky
like crumbling stones of athens
broken off or edged out
by the masons of far-off autumn
coming closer on this summer night
giving a gentle reminder
in the voice of the wind
Spanish lesson
that’s all there was
sweating toil
language and the ride home
with a woman my mothers age
her breasts were so compressed
into a tiny dress that
i thought the seams would burst
and embarrass the world
once, she tried to make me
drawn into a kiss with the strength of a man
its scary shit, let me tell you
especially when she's looking down the side streets
for places to park at three a.m.
her english didnt improve
neither did my spanish
every night i thanked her for some unknown something
trying to apologize at the same time
for my lack of usefulness
oh, man
stoned again
just watching the people walk by
a daily vouristic ritual
wondering why some things never add up
i suppose its reasonable to assume
(that damned word)
so, maybe its not reasonable
but men and women
seem drawn and held
by long snakes of lust
yearning always to be close to the fire
held in the white hot flame
the velour chamber
dark and warm
with close steel walls
always moving up
stopping too soon
to complete the dream
watch this world
sit here with the telephone
noone to call
the virgins are running in my head
and im screaming
in the hall
Violence sits quiet
on a sunday afternoon
ive been down its road before
and it only ends in flame
bleeding all the while
'cause im cutting on myself again
i just cant seem to smile
past the gun inside my mouth
it will take awhile
before i can turn my back again
the time is always nagging
in this elegant psycho haze
the lies seem to be dreaming
all the things i never said i'd be
she slaps me in the face again
the game, for her
never ends
but she says shes only mine
this time
my afternoon
the damned walk a fine line
of newspaper fiction, media dreams
my brain vomits words, strings
melodies get lost
forgotten in my midday sun
as they all sleep
here i am pushing two a.m. again
with the haggard lines
running across this page
and pushing the time ahead of me
to get where im going
man-whore
i think i sucked him off maybe five times
and it wasnt for heroin or lust
it was for rent, goddamn it
and i needed to eat and get drunk
at least once a week
to watch his tight, fat skin stretch
and his tiny cock scream and jump its dead orgasm
his head in my lap
toothless gums raking my length
thinking he was doing me some favor
some reciprocation
the first time he gave me one hundred dollars
(to get home for christmas)
when i arrived
everyone seemed to want me to disappear
with my native jewelry
long hair and beard
all my talk about open mindedness
disagreeing with their god and their mind
well, i guess i could take my presents
my appearance, all my mixed up views
and crawl straight back to hell
so i did, and i got semen on the roof of my mouth
a junkie girlfriend
(and another on the side)
the end
they say
its all in the end
bingo bill
he was kind at first
like a new lover
catering to everything
reeling me in
but i hate that shit
so, soon it was just
his seminal fluid in my mouth
a forced bitter orgasm
that i should be under the hands of a man
his voice, above all, in the hangover mornings
yelling that i've got 'no respect'
saying he's figured me out
but cant break my will
what a sick and unsubtle dance
first
every time i think of her
its needles in the back
of a spine that wont stand
up beside heaven and the hell of it
every time, i see the world ending
the profusion of this dust
the chalk white taste of love
sticking like erasers in my throat
'give yourself away at any cost'
is an anthem shared
in the misery tones of desire
it is the endless unbirthing of
who, in time forgets his name
and fades
to not knowing who he was
or why
he comes only in the vigor of the night
fast lane
our speculations increase with our age
win and lose blend with
the specter of past existing
and present knowledge
each day we fight the increase
dream better tomorrows
and grind, grind away
we work and grow old at the pace of machines
clocks and cars
gasoline pumps and salesmen
gritty unreasonable
too hard and bitter to care
this life makes us fools
before our art does
can i hate myself through tomorrow
fast enough to breathe at the end?
escape
we live next to a hallway of lights and stars
the orange-grey blur of the deep city night
the concrete outside the kitchen window
holds the expressway up
reminds me of the prison yard
the anxiousness of enclosure
it is sunday and the screaming week awaits
machines and false smiles
doing anything to evade the memory of the city
after the mushroom
back just after i left
caught in between losing time
making effort
and letting the voice scream loud again
too much vocabulary
too much instant mix work
cant see the way through to hope
laying down, all i want is my poetry mind
a piece of flesh to soothe my appetites
but i settle for darkness and jerking off
so fucking lazy
unable to pick up the pen
scared of what i might reveal
as if something i might see
could cause my eyes to turn black in my head
my brain black behind my eyes
my soul in torment
lost again.
too many roads between here and home
dead god day
today i met a lady who smiled at me
and touched my hand
(even though it was dirty and worn)
she said things directly to my sweaty face
as if i needed to know them
she's from michigan city, a place i used to know
and she's got hippie style, only
she has joined the believers and gone off preaching
she tells me so matter-of-factly
like i might think the wrong thing if she's not clear
i'm not sure what scares her
the possibilities
or me
"happy easter" she says
but by then her blonde hair, florida tan
and stunning smile have
removed thoughts of dates and holidays
as well as the fact she has a husband
i dont even know its spring anymore
and she guesses as much
retreating from my eyes
and spring and easter
self pity
so, ive declined to this
soft tonguing lies onto the page
trying to alleviate the loneliness
of without her
i dont know what’s worse
giving up
or losing
up all night
talking to the seamstress across the hall
(she's forever patching and after me)
playing classical pop until three a.m.
i call in to work
its a hospital day
they're actually starting to feel like home
there's no more chills and creeps
every time i see a nurse
i meet a girl in the parking lot
she has one kid and wants to be a singer
bums most of my cigarettes
in exchange for long looks at her monstrous bosom
and sexy brown eyes
but she's spacey, liquid
about two hundred and twenty pounds at 5' 3"
so i realize i must be shallow
give her a wrong number
tell her, "take care"
and smile to break my face
tired
tried to put on my ball-batting face
but got a whine instead
all my guilt was tied
in cords on the living room floor
so i danced the madman's dance
eyeless and afraid
grinned through my scowl
ate the shit they fed to me
by and by
we grow older
some of us stronger than steel
old as unbreakable faults
these things cling
in the masquerade
so you get honest instead of angry
crazy
and put your balls in the vice truth brings you
lost another one
where did i wander since
that phrase caught me
in the shower
or the middle of a fuck
ripping the moment to shreds
with 4 or 5 very certain words
to run and flail through the house
nakedly digging for pens and paper
only to lose it all
and write another poem
like this
burning out life for awhile
let this run around inside your head:
kill everything you see
make virgins from whores
like what you see
stop rhyming
stop time
feast on the things in which you find endless value
say you’ve lost your freedom to speak
get famous
furious
lose contradictions
forget lies
learn life
get wiser than is rational
grow old
pass on
vagueness kills the poetry
old words and rhymes
kill poetry
"kill poetry"
"i have"
i have kill poetry
i have killed poetry
problems
the lady across the hall
a job that won't fit into anyplace
a girl with no sense of timing
always coming and going
a tease that i mismarked
(my eyes aint so great these days)
the over glutinous misanthrope from work
i say that i'll call but never do
four women having run circles around me
are no longer sure of what they want
but they always turn me into whatever they please
without ever asking me who i am
letch
a plane cuts the silence of the may summertime
the children are populating the pool
on a sunday afternoon with their mothers
(who look sexy)
in rainbow bikinis and latino skin
like an endless perfect tan
c'mon
put away your children
your husband
succumb to the perfect lechery in my smile
someone come for the light behind my eyes
to learn an endless pleasure
give me one straining fuck to complete the day
voices
locked in time
out of mind and reasons
pavlov's dog outside the window
the mountain rising up behind the house
can't be satisfied with trivialities
bored scenery
theres too many of us
crowded into this small green space
too many voices in the house
on the television
and in my head
but i might
i fear to be drastic
a knife to my wrist
a gun in my mouth
to bleed or blow away the liquid poem
the lonely hour
the vast reckoning
we build a terror of questions
bitching to get a grasp
arguments to avoid truths
women slice through our lives
with white hot confidence
sure of thier right to be loved on sight
i fear to be drastic
to tell the truth so well that opinions break to pieces
or hearts to shards
to stick through us in cutting embraces
sinking with fear
claws of logic
truth
rending tendons and muscular
denial
its clear
that there is no way out but
foreward
faster
til youre catching the sun, losing the
way
plunging deeper
to the river's beginning
to witness the
soul, fading
out of sight away from the mirrors and the
introspective
eye
lashing with doubt the interior of the
mind
casements for the head, stones for the dead
running
farther still
out to the place where you fell
red eden
washing away with the rain
changing
the pain of awareness is my ventriloquist
wooden mouth flapping arguments
cracking information
a constant smiling without meaning,
except, 'i lost again'
or 'life, don't prove me right this time'
if tomorrow is a new miracle,
will it erode the shores of today?
my father fears my poems
my mother will never hear them
i am wooden and turning to stone
will the liquid of childhood dreams
make this less real?
ready for anything
more spewing insults
more crowded space
agoraphobe and claustrophobe
verdiphile: a poorer vision,
to wait out the life i dreamt.
the velour chamber beckons
for sperm and raw friction
in the steel mirrored ceiling.
sunday without sun and solitude
cigarettes on the front porch
a moment of clean vision
the subversion of desire for peace
or truth
moments without pain
when it arrives
drowning witticisms
with the foreplay of imagination
jumping in the candlelight
nova of creation
the stars are flying
in the blanket of the sky
minor cataclysm
a catharsis
we will burn to be free
yet, wink out before tasting the truth
outbursts
among the sounds of the forlorn morning
there are outbursts
close to death in the upstairs hallway
a minute from leaving
sticking through the parody of myself
emotions exposed and glimmering
i am beginning to hate more than myself
break down
remember when i cried
in your room
on the park bench
trying to piece together the whys
twisting the knife of memory
the pieces are as many now as ever
maybe im missing a few more
giving myself to whoever would ask
not sleeping, i dont eat for days
still a heap of punishing logic and little else
think ill never get better than this
pen
moment
place
word
no better than the soft lies
we use to alleviate our lives
school days
the beast will eat us with rules
make us fat and slow against
the tide of time
opulence, like disease
kills slowly
forsaking peace and all else
false circling faces guide us
we rage-blinded,
impotent and dying
square off to the world
raining blow after blow
the beast never falters even an inch
in its slow sickness
we pummel at nothing
smashing fists and skulls on brick
a gesture of futility
or of life inching inevitably toward death
fever dream
women i cant even fuck in a dream
wearing teasing half panties
showing off a small slip of protruding hairs
all this rubbing
friction for flames
fingers and tongues to loosen
engage
orgasms exploding
around my delirium
but i cannot enter one so fresh
yet so dirty
crimes i cannot commit even while sleeping
depression
drained of conversation
words
meaningless strands of words
nothing thought provoking in the music
or the impending phone call
and i haven’t figured out which is more pathetic
the words or the silences
both are leaving me empty
there is almost no more to say
and less to think
just a slow bunching of will to push
for the next entrance
kesey's movie
sickness- its a little like imploding
sucking into yourself so deeply
that you begin to exit
days pile up
dirty clothes in their sameness
pill, work, sleep, collapse
the blue room with a pallet lain
for sleeping away each mundanity
under the blue light
writing or cursing all that is valid
the things we've built this world to be
i pity the star in this movie
the supporters and seconds
even the cameo actors,
who eclipse us for a moment
to remind us
that, like us, they were once walking the
guilted road toward greatness
but the scripts were written
without approval from any of us
and everyone complains about their roles
atlas
collapsing in the blue room
on the pallet of blankets
between the attic door and the library
its enough room for myself and a guitar
nearly dawn and ready for sleep
eyes fluttering closed and open
waiting for the hiss of a heater
a word from a friend to warm
me for dreaming
neither comes
just the cold dark of sleep
awakening to the cold dark of six p.m.
winter breathing through the cracks
around the window above my head
the blue light's still burning
i grab the road atlas
thumbing through until i see the dot
that indicates my dwelling place
back and forth
flipping pages
from where i have been to where i'll be
one book containing the whole distance of my life
every road and decision ive taken
the space it will take a lifetime to write out
pills and grass
liquor with strangers
life will strengthen or destroy you
"just don’t get greedy"
certain keys will open any door
to a constant, mad calculation
watching me pay my attention
a momentary wait in the february cold
inside
there were chrome monsters
many known perpetrators of domestic violence
jerking their wives and children around
outlaws and angels from hell
a survey girl says, "if you fill out this form,
i'll fuck you til you're blind."
its all in the eyes
it gives me a sick lurching depression
i cant say a word
everyone here belongs to something
or someone
i stumble through the day and leave quietly
why bother?
long hours on the phone
the day is a long eleven-hour pull
we need less work! more pay!
i doubt if that idea works outside of theory
too many blind masses leading themselves
we are taught to enjoy this
to be strong, develop character
suffer for the quick reward
suffer longest
suffer so that you have no doubts
about who is on top
and starve anyway
drink it down
this is the burned out end of american culture
the bars on saturday night
we all sit and converse
saying nothing
praying for help and time to give ourselves the world
what should become of us?
our lives riddled with emotional holes
lies and half truths we tell ourselves
rarely stop the bleeding
these are wounds we must reopen every day
without peace
to be lost in self loathing
corner table
so far gone from themselves
they start yelling
its early on saturday
the bar is half full
the buisiness loser set at the big table
watching television
the alcoholics at the bar
watching thier drinks
the new drunks are in the other room
watching pool and the asses of girls
they seem to come for company
i sit at my corner table
trying to be alone
watching them
......no wonder.......
society and i
slowly poisoning ourselves
happy only in degradation
incompletion
all the dizzy promise of looks
some aproach is necessary
and then you see her taste,
a bungling settlement
you become aware of why she smiles at you
just friendly
because she can
because safety is in the glass
the man at her side or
just outside the door
she knows the unreality of your anticipation
and knowing she holds the keys
she flashes a smile and
kindly
locks the door
I win
strange old hookers on the tv
freaks in torn jeans and painted clothes
bat at one another in fake bloodless battles
noone gets hurt
somehow, its disappointing
the hooker at ringside leaves with the winner
american happy endings
you lose, i get the hooker
drivel
horrible drivel
this country and i, all headed for the bad end of it
bar poem
sitting here writing swill thats worse than what im drinking
i bring books to the bar
comment on the surroundings
tip the barman outrageously high
figuring he feels as alienated as i do
acting so strange
im bound to get beaten before the night is through
staring at the singles in pairs
stylish i guess
preferring anonymity
lost in thinking and bearing out the lines as though they mattered
but i wonder how they get together?
couples
living in a haze of lies
comfortable and soft never confronting the truth
they all look alike
or at least dress to please the same television program
the same heights to make up for egos and lousy sex
me, my striped shirt and idiot hair
feel there are no chances to please
"all the slots are taken, sir, you'll have to wait in line,
outlive your karma, and let them find you."
juke
the place hasn’t even started to jump
its eight o'clock
the room is a strange gaggle
boys at twenty-five still debating on manhood
where do all the beautiful women hide?
i never find them
my friends dont tell me im ugly
but i suspect
my spiraling dying nature
drives the timid glances away
one for tomorrow’s hangover
at the end of the night i'll walk out of here
sober enough
to find a key, a doorway up the stairs to the plastic bed
and hating myself to sleep
maybe
there will be a beautiful ending in this story somewhere
im all beaten out
with paranoid stares
and believing the moment matters
pure ugly
nice guys finish last
how true the old axioms are
whether they oppose or not
some ring true
shes over there drinking
i cant get a glance
but the night is young
when the crowd gets ugly its time to go
now, thats a monstrous implication, isnt it?
and lined with fate
ill be here too
what you get
all ways i get lost
caught up in the passing moment
full with expectations
and i cant go the easy way
its not right somehow
looking for a chance that wont come
a happy ending that doesn’t exist
something tangible
not something i have to force myself into
loving the suicide
sometimes we fall so hard and fast
drowning in the wind
sometimes we flail fight or laugh
trying too hard
becoming the things we hate
just to fall in love
to heal only to leave
oh, to be untorn
unscarred
crowned and uncurled around a newborn world
blotter dream
when old, will i remember these years?
only stories left, maybe, filmed with lies
will i remember the persons and places?
or will it be
flames
everything in alanis morrisette flame green
insta-paranoid reaction is mightier
than pistol to the face meaning
whose script?
ancient fools
grasping at all the dead
everything we do is selfish
how do you end the cycle of humanity?
burn that shit with good acid
a Tim Leary cure-all with madness
no way
what?
who, me?
im nobody
tearless vague eyes burn the insight of hatred
the far off lie is so many times told
that now it comes on with a truth too bold to just fade
where is the mirth that wandered the high fields?
you will only see the time going
and thats the paradox
we will hear all the crying
and turn inward for solace
alone with our hate, we'll starve for love
a nameless tragedy of silence and hope
in the astral present we wind
amid and with
it
and all the world
just a little longer
a depression in life
black and rolling
inside the morning of four a.m.
awake with paranoid, shaken dreams
insecure moments
failing at it
i fuck up everything
'hood
when you get close to my neighborhood
there are stripped cars
old mexicans
shattered glass in the streets
every day is a constant push
against the rising civilization
the corner store girls hand out change
that reeks of semen
we are forged in this constant rush of life
images and work
its strange, with art,
how the world darkens or grows brighter
stops things from turning grey
best fuck
i put myself inside her with my broken ribs screaming
skinned knuckles staining the pink sheets
my nose bled two perfect spots on her pillow
half dead and beaten to shit
but still, she wanted me
still, i performed
always wanted to reject these scenes
the punishment too great to leave dormant
she wanted to fuck me with my soul at the head of my cock
spewing my spirit away
to lock up tight in her secret places
the split stitches on my scalp dripped and ran blood
in the canal of my spine and off of my heels as i stood
to turn her over
the sheets were pink and crimson
looking like rape or murder
there are small still frames of the droplets and smears
on her upturned ass
she wants it hard
harder
and my ribs grind
the world goes dim with each thrust
i dont even hear her climax
im still trying to beat her into submission
i cant come or even breathe when she crawls away to clean herself
the best fuck of her life, she says
guesses
this sunny day
like the others
escaping in the warmth
trying to empathize with myself
the homeless
the other injured
where does the time go, once spent?
seems like the ultimate horror in life
is only to have lived through it
with all the flailing mass as witness
singularity
on these stone-lonely moments
i miss you most of all
i sit silent and dreaming
wishing for a touch, a whisper
you sleeping near
soft rush of breathing and tender flesh
warmth that grows
flashing across the seas of discovery
alone, i float
to unknown distant shores
far arden
come to me once more
and collapse
in dreaming seas
when they see
they starve with thier smiles
opening the aching wound
mixing the fire
glistening teeth and lusty mouths
eyes that never stop hating
they will not be held
this she smiles though, appraising
hair: too long
beard: day old
clothes: dirty
hands: callused and scarred
from working,
she blanks and passes
the girl at the counter will not make eye contact
but shows off her full cleavage
the tiniest intersection of lace
between the cups of her bra
exposed for everyone
my heart beats heavy and i cant speak
only want action
sex and tongues
hands sliding over flesh
bodies that grind and mesh
my dry mouth wont open to propose
i consider
she's up to her eyes in that lust all day
and doesnt even realize its her fault
the boss
flat beady eyes
hair receded and combed
exhaust pipe chrome
capillaries in sagging jowls
burst from the drunken wallow
self pity or shame
pain
the playground bully grew up to be the boss
bucktoothed and spitting, "oh Yeah?"
yeah, i remember these people from the past
i grew up outside thier social circles, observing
trying to find out who I truly was
i already knew them
now i see them still, everyday
the bully, the jock
the prom queen
my first fuck
the faces change
but the souls speak like memories
outside, i still watch
they sit hunched and jowly
bleeding eyes and leper tongues
not understanding
hating instead
freedom
me
concussion
life stopped in the instant of collision
i woke from concussion
strange to myself
a stranger in my own skin
i became unknown to the woman who gave me life
one shattering impact in the october sunset
i was left naked
unclothed of self
minus identity
minus all the comforting fictions
my ass soaked from the ditch
my mouth cursing far away in a dreaming slur
coming back from the tunnel into the sweet light
hours had passed outside my knowledge
the ambulances
crushed cars
my head reeling and reeling
as if i were lost forever
spiraling out in the void
common ground
we wanted to be priests
or killers
later there came the realization
that they were one in the same
or opposing polarities that attract
freedom from life
or freedom from death
both dispensed
with blood of savior
or of self
last chance
his smile as wide as the sky
and hands to match
the large dark shades were placed
in a breast pocket
"that love, boy, that LOVE is a bitch."
his brow furrowed tightly
showing sixty years of labor,
prejudice and lessons
he said "baby, straight now,"
locked me in his gaze
"you may as well go on and blow your brains out,
'cause that love, she just gonna kill you SLOW."
working musician on the 9 to 5 bitch
the days are not a flow
merely a stumble
so much to correct at night
with the slow note
as queen
sex
bleeding
crying
all bouncing through my head
setting trembling desire aflame
the afterglow fuck rush of living the music
difference
where do women learn their grace?
where does the sun speak to the sky?
are the days as empty for everyone?
the slow lurch of work
the greedy eyes
hungry for sex
the feminine form
lush breasts
open thighs
to gaze on beauty furled under clothing
she is like the spring mountains
these days
i am dry desert winds
obsessions
sometimes the thoughts are deep as the ocean
loud as the break
the rhythm of life lets us down
or drags us up
deep into one year of forced celibacy
i can see sex in anything
and feel excluded from it
the ways women publicly reveal themselves
with high fashion
men are unimaginative out of necessity
(that’s what im told)
once again, im speaking from outside
looking in
a little piece to you
a dedication of my sanity
the world flies by
and you speak
"hello...."
there is no welcome in her gaze
no tortured silences for me to endure in her eyes
downtown
women always sliding
strutting
through the steel morass
men walk
or scream from bicycles
at slow moving crowds of black women
its beautiful only when couples
find abandoned bliss on a street corner
or drawbridge
they stop only to stare at the polluted canal
It’s the only nature in the street
how beautiful is ignorance
how much beauty is made from the same
for Christian
Arizona
Colorado
California
Illinois
missouri, i am
child of the earth
blood of mountains and desert
sleeps in my veins
the springs in unspoiled places are my thoughts
as the wind over the plain
my soul flies
it is when i am free
smiling or dying it will always be so
the places i call home are not named
noone tells their stories
they live in memory of the laughing spirit
pure
free
seasonal voices
the breeze is coming
across the lake and up the canals
stretching tight the clouds at the far horizon
steps in the sky
like crumbling stones of athens
broken off or edged out
by the masons of far-off autumn
coming closer on this summer night
giving a gentle reminder
in the voice of the wind
Spanish lesson
that’s all there was
sweating toil
language and the ride home
with a woman my mothers age
her breasts were so compressed
into a tiny dress that
i thought the seams would burst
and embarrass the world
once, she tried to make me
drawn into a kiss with the strength of a man
its scary shit, let me tell you
especially when she's looking down the side streets
for places to park at three a.m.
her english didnt improve
neither did my spanish
every night i thanked her for some unknown something
trying to apologize at the same time
for my lack of usefulness
oh, man
stoned again
just watching the people walk by
a daily vouristic ritual
wondering why some things never add up
i suppose its reasonable to assume
(that damned word)
so, maybe its not reasonable
but men and women
seem drawn and held
by long snakes of lust
yearning always to be close to the fire
held in the white hot flame
the velour chamber
dark and warm
with close steel walls
always moving up
stopping too soon
to complete the dream
watch this world
sit here with the telephone
noone to call
the virgins are running in my head
and im screaming
in the hall
Violence sits quiet
on a sunday afternoon
ive been down its road before
and it only ends in flame
bleeding all the while
'cause im cutting on myself again
i just cant seem to smile
past the gun inside my mouth
it will take awhile
before i can turn my back again
the time is always nagging
in this elegant psycho haze
the lies seem to be dreaming
all the things i never said i'd be
she slaps me in the face again
the game, for her
never ends
but she says shes only mine
this time
my afternoon
the damned walk a fine line
of newspaper fiction, media dreams
my brain vomits words, strings
melodies get lost
forgotten in my midday sun
as they all sleep
here i am pushing two a.m. again
with the haggard lines
running across this page
and pushing the time ahead of me
to get where im going
man-whore
i think i sucked him off maybe five times
and it wasnt for heroin or lust
it was for rent, goddamn it
and i needed to eat and get drunk
at least once a week
to watch his tight, fat skin stretch
and his tiny cock scream and jump its dead orgasm
his head in my lap
toothless gums raking my length
thinking he was doing me some favor
some reciprocation
the first time he gave me one hundred dollars
(to get home for christmas)
when i arrived
everyone seemed to want me to disappear
with my native jewelry
long hair and beard
all my talk about open mindedness
disagreeing with their god and their mind
well, i guess i could take my presents
my appearance, all my mixed up views
and crawl straight back to hell
so i did, and i got semen on the roof of my mouth
a junkie girlfriend
(and another on the side)
the end
they say
its all in the end
bingo bill
he was kind at first
like a new lover
catering to everything
reeling me in
but i hate that shit
so, soon it was just
his seminal fluid in my mouth
a forced bitter orgasm
that i should be under the hands of a man
his voice, above all, in the hangover mornings
yelling that i've got 'no respect'
saying he's figured me out
but cant break my will
what a sick and unsubtle dance
first
every time i think of her
its needles in the back
of a spine that wont stand
up beside heaven and the hell of it
every time, i see the world ending
the profusion of this dust
the chalk white taste of love
sticking like erasers in my throat
'give yourself away at any cost'
is an anthem shared
in the misery tones of desire
it is the endless unbirthing of
who, in time forgets his name
and fades
to not knowing who he was
or why
he comes only in the vigor of the night
fast lane
our speculations increase with our age
win and lose blend with
the specter of past existing
and present knowledge
each day we fight the increase
dream better tomorrows
and grind, grind away
we work and grow old at the pace of machines
clocks and cars
gasoline pumps and salesmen
gritty unreasonable
too hard and bitter to care
this life makes us fools
before our art does
can i hate myself through tomorrow
fast enough to breathe at the end?
escape
we live next to a hallway of lights and stars
the orange-grey blur of the deep city night
the concrete outside the kitchen window
holds the expressway up
reminds me of the prison yard
the anxiousness of enclosure
it is sunday and the screaming week awaits
machines and false smiles
doing anything to evade the memory of the city
after the mushroom
back just after i left
caught in between losing time
making effort
and letting the voice scream loud again
too much vocabulary
too much instant mix work
cant see the way through to hope
laying down, all i want is my poetry mind
a piece of flesh to soothe my appetites
but i settle for darkness and jerking off
so fucking lazy
unable to pick up the pen
scared of what i might reveal
as if something i might see
could cause my eyes to turn black in my head
my brain black behind my eyes
my soul in torment
lost again.
too many roads between here and home
dead god day
today i met a lady who smiled at me
and touched my hand
(even though it was dirty and worn)
she said things directly to my sweaty face
as if i needed to know them
she's from michigan city, a place i used to know
and she's got hippie style, only
she has joined the believers and gone off preaching
she tells me so matter-of-factly
like i might think the wrong thing if she's not clear
i'm not sure what scares her
the possibilities
or me
"happy easter" she says
but by then her blonde hair, florida tan
and stunning smile have
removed thoughts of dates and holidays
as well as the fact she has a husband
i dont even know its spring anymore
and she guesses as much
retreating from my eyes
and spring and easter
self pity
so, ive declined to this
soft tonguing lies onto the page
trying to alleviate the loneliness
of without her
i dont know what’s worse
giving up
or losing
up all night
talking to the seamstress across the hall
(she's forever patching and after me)
playing classical pop until three a.m.
i call in to work
its a hospital day
they're actually starting to feel like home
there's no more chills and creeps
every time i see a nurse
i meet a girl in the parking lot
she has one kid and wants to be a singer
bums most of my cigarettes
in exchange for long looks at her monstrous bosom
and sexy brown eyes
but she's spacey, liquid
about two hundred and twenty pounds at 5' 3"
so i realize i must be shallow
give her a wrong number
tell her, "take care"
and smile to break my face
tired
tried to put on my ball-batting face
but got a whine instead
all my guilt was tied
in cords on the living room floor
so i danced the madman's dance
eyeless and afraid
grinned through my scowl
ate the shit they fed to me
by and by
we grow older
some of us stronger than steel
old as unbreakable faults
these things cling
in the masquerade
so you get honest instead of angry
crazy
and put your balls in the vice truth brings you
lost another one
where did i wander since
that phrase caught me
in the shower
or the middle of a fuck
ripping the moment to shreds
with 4 or 5 very certain words
to run and flail through the house
nakedly digging for pens and paper
only to lose it all
and write another poem
like this
burning out life for awhile
let this run around inside your head:
kill everything you see
make virgins from whores
like what you see
stop rhyming
stop time
feast on the things in which you find endless value
say you’ve lost your freedom to speak
get famous
furious
lose contradictions
forget lies
learn life
get wiser than is rational
grow old
pass on
vagueness kills the poetry
old words and rhymes
kill poetry
"kill poetry"
"i have"
i have kill poetry
i have killed poetry
problems
the lady across the hall
a job that won't fit into anyplace
a girl with no sense of timing
always coming and going
a tease that i mismarked
(my eyes aint so great these days)
the over glutinous misanthrope from work
i say that i'll call but never do
four women having run circles around me
are no longer sure of what they want
but they always turn me into whatever they please
without ever asking me who i am
letch
a plane cuts the silence of the may summertime
the children are populating the pool
on a sunday afternoon with their mothers
(who look sexy)
in rainbow bikinis and latino skin
like an endless perfect tan
c'mon
put away your children
your husband
succumb to the perfect lechery in my smile
someone come for the light behind my eyes
to learn an endless pleasure
give me one straining fuck to complete the day
voices
locked in time
out of mind and reasons
pavlov's dog outside the window
the mountain rising up behind the house
can't be satisfied with trivialities
bored scenery
theres too many of us
crowded into this small green space
too many voices in the house
on the television
and in my head
but i might
i fear to be drastic
a knife to my wrist
a gun in my mouth
to bleed or blow away the liquid poem
the lonely hour
the vast reckoning
we build a terror of questions
bitching to get a grasp
arguments to avoid truths
women slice through our lives
with white hot confidence
sure of thier right to be loved on sight
i fear to be drastic
to tell the truth so well that opinions break to pieces
or hearts to shards
to stick through us in cutting embraces
sinking with fear
claws of logic
truth
rending tendons and muscular
denial
its clear
that there is no way out but
foreward
faster
til youre catching the sun, losing the
way
plunging deeper
to the river's beginning
to witness the
soul, fading
out of sight away from the mirrors and the
introspective
eye
lashing with doubt the interior of the
mind
casements for the head, stones for the dead
running
farther still
out to the place where you fell
red eden
washing away with the rain
changing
the pain of awareness is my ventriloquist
wooden mouth flapping arguments
cracking information
a constant smiling without meaning,
except, 'i lost again'
or 'life, don't prove me right this time'
if tomorrow is a new miracle,
will it erode the shores of today?
my father fears my poems
my mother will never hear them
i am wooden and turning to stone
will the liquid of childhood dreams
make this less real?
ready for anything
more spewing insults
more crowded space
agoraphobe and claustrophobe
verdiphile: a poorer vision,
to wait out the life i dreamt.
the velour chamber beckons
for sperm and raw friction
in the steel mirrored ceiling.
sunday without sun and solitude
cigarettes on the front porch
a moment of clean vision
the subversion of desire for peace
or truth
moments without pain
when it arrives
drowning witticisms
with the foreplay of imagination
jumping in the candlelight
nova of creation
the stars are flying
in the blanket of the sky
minor cataclysm
a catharsis
we will burn to be free
yet, wink out before tasting the truth
outbursts
among the sounds of the forlorn morning
there are outbursts
close to death in the upstairs hallway
a minute from leaving
sticking through the parody of myself
emotions exposed and glimmering
i am beginning to hate more than myself
break down
remember when i cried
in your room
on the park bench
trying to piece together the whys
twisting the knife of memory
the pieces are as many now as ever
maybe im missing a few more
giving myself to whoever would ask
not sleeping, i dont eat for days
still a heap of punishing logic and little else
think ill never get better than this
pen
moment
place
word
no better than the soft lies
we use to alleviate our lives
school days
the beast will eat us with rules
make us fat and slow against
the tide of time
opulence, like disease
kills slowly
forsaking peace and all else
false circling faces guide us
we rage-blinded,
impotent and dying
square off to the world
raining blow after blow
the beast never falters even an inch
in its slow sickness
we pummel at nothing
smashing fists and skulls on brick
a gesture of futility
or of life inching inevitably toward death
fever dream
women i cant even fuck in a dream
wearing teasing half panties
showing off a small slip of protruding hairs
all this rubbing
friction for flames
fingers and tongues to loosen
engage
orgasms exploding
around my delirium
but i cannot enter one so fresh
yet so dirty
crimes i cannot commit even while sleeping
depression
drained of conversation
words
meaningless strands of words
nothing thought provoking in the music
or the impending phone call
and i haven’t figured out which is more pathetic
the words or the silences
both are leaving me empty
there is almost no more to say
and less to think
just a slow bunching of will to push
for the next entrance
kesey's movie
sickness- its a little like imploding
sucking into yourself so deeply
that you begin to exit
days pile up
dirty clothes in their sameness
pill, work, sleep, collapse
the blue room with a pallet lain
for sleeping away each mundanity
under the blue light
writing or cursing all that is valid
the things we've built this world to be
i pity the star in this movie
the supporters and seconds
even the cameo actors,
who eclipse us for a moment
to remind us
that, like us, they were once walking the
guilted road toward greatness
but the scripts were written
without approval from any of us
and everyone complains about their roles
atlas
collapsing in the blue room
on the pallet of blankets
between the attic door and the library
its enough room for myself and a guitar
nearly dawn and ready for sleep
eyes fluttering closed and open
waiting for the hiss of a heater
a word from a friend to warm
me for dreaming
neither comes
just the cold dark of sleep
awakening to the cold dark of six p.m.
winter breathing through the cracks
around the window above my head
the blue light's still burning
i grab the road atlas
thumbing through until i see the dot
that indicates my dwelling place
back and forth
flipping pages
from where i have been to where i'll be
one book containing the whole distance of my life
every road and decision ive taken
the space it will take a lifetime to write out
Thursday, September 13, 2007
The road to hell is paved vol. 2
Chaos of vision
kick down the windowsput some tunes on the radio
open the hole and let the words flow
down
inside i'm so afraid
to fail
to dream
still chasing the chaos of vision,
incomplete.
passing present
in the spaces between the moments
of the passing present there are stark revelations
of passed mistakes, future lives
a heart beat
a heartbeat
never ceasing
pounds on the walls we erect
to pass the judgment of life,
the incantation of time.
vacation
we exhaled
our delusions and dreams danced away
in the breeze.
out on the ocean
the moon a signpost
in the scattered scars of clouds
our kisses were fraught
with her terror of rejection,
my will to possess.
close, under all this beauty
who could not fall?
Find inspiration
the new beast children
digging me for sex in the a.m.
I back myself away
tension twisting round itself
to the radio tunes
or the voices in my head.
driving now, through the highlands
in central Appalachia
cemetery road flashes by
with angry dreams,
stupid poems.
I'll spend the whole day smiling though,
trying for something more than friendly,
more than interested.
but I suppose these strange women
know me well enough on sight to guess what ill expect.
Frame
Outside now, and it’s cold
autumn in august
Pennsylvainian mountain seasons
I exchange with the house matron
rambling, because it’s my way,
but, I always talk too long,
and too often.
she doesn’t get me
and I don’t pretend to care.
unscrupulous,
i’m dying by degrees
my love severed
trust tolling empty.
monday will bring its new job
and another truckload of work
i’m as ready for life as ill ever be
i’m easy
Were I easy, I would find a BIG lady
with a BIG ass (the kind with dents)
and flopping tits (enormous)
and I’d fuck every hole she offered
loving the degradation of it all.
(BIG women need lovin' too)
especially from uncaring guys.
sure, it would make so much SENSE
until we came, spewing out our intentions
plainly for each other to see.
then, dressing quickly
no longer wanton
just ready to get somewhere to forget
the sloppy tits and ass that brought you to bed
a beast with a beast.
led by your cock to the bitter end
Illumination
God
I thanked the sun this afternoon.
a week so grey the temperature dropped
by 10 degrees.
with my back to theses mountains
staring west, the sun sets
pale golden
casting clutching shadows through an upstairs window
it’s the only illumination in weeks,
years, maybe
and I think if things stay this way
just waiting for the sun
I shall shoot myself before 30 days are up.
but I doubt in 30 days
it will make more or less of a difference.
i’m as old as ever right now
I know as little as ever
in the face of the sun.
thanks again.
Fuck me
another fight, leg fracture
my neck torn and swollen,
a new job in the wings
new hatreds on the march
I have stopped noticing whether or not
people like me, or really care.
I just go on ahead,
prostrating myself before all the pretty eyes
and kissable mouths.
(the FedEx girl, the racquetball queen)
burning for one penetrating moment
and hating what will not let me in.
Sleep schism on sex
pacing, pacing
racing my brain to the dawn
there's a girl one thousand
miles from here planning time
to spend with me.
here I am, pacing, thinking, pacing
just wanting to fuck
dreaming tits and eyes to gaze into;
come through
I am a beast walking in my own shadow
Trash
so,
I sat and wrote at my convenience
needing only nicotine and depression
smoking both to the butt,
letting my beard grow, wearing unwashed clothes
sleeping on borrowed time
digging into the sheets with my girl now and then
and whoring everything out to this pen
and this page
my whole existence spilling out
over the edge of my brainpan
mixing on the clutter of my desk
to create poems better discarded
like me.
Monogamy
straining for the next orgasm
handfucking myself to completion
hating the discharge
without the smell and slick of woman
the gliding-dancing wet
to close over
in mock consumption
I am tortured by memories of real sex
sex beyond myself
relishing flesh
sweat and scent
my cock is dying of boredom
Corroded
I’m making a calculation,
throwing up my hands
at the place
people, lies and magnitude of
thus.
tempering a hot magenta steel within me
come for me, you fuckers!
I will overwhelm you with words and intellect
a conundrum of semantics!
I wade in this shit of life but it does not touch me
I am far as the stars now
too much of the fruits of good and evil
to pass any more judgments
ive eaten them like layers of my own prejudice.
but, I would sell the temple,
watch the cities collapse as the economy falls,
a green apocalypse in dollar signs
and bottom lines.
Muse
I light a cigarette butt and look into my empty coffee cup,
kick the muse down a notch and reflect;
she's best when coming out like molasses,
black and sugary like the pain from razors
best when she tells the brutal truth
to me, at me or the World
not caring who hears, only that its finally said.
she looks at me.
"failure" she says. "liar"
"lunatic" "cheater"
I nod my head in time to the truth
"martyr" "racist" "deceiver" "coward"
every shot through my arm, my third eye,
always right on the money
I pity anyone at whom she takes aim,
noone ever holds up
at last
waiting in silence
while my head ticks off the phrases
"I should’ve" "you should"
"you are" " I am"
ultimatums, edicts judgments
all these absurd absolutes
none of them real or even serious
once you contemplate the extraordinary dissolution
caused by the addition of the solvent "truth"
it makes our beliefs as unreal as our lies,
our grasp as infirm as what we hope to catch.
yet we spin through this cascade of years,
inflicting ourselves on one another
our words multiplying like viruses and
our actions as meaningless as the end.
contradictions
I have made staring into the hard mirror of truth
my disease.
a flail to beat me with, and you as well
if you come too close, looking over my shoulder.
It is self immolation
when I turn to flee I just smash back into myself again
no where to run behind my eyes.
melodramas in the key of real life
what a sad and horrible farce
the ex-junkie girlfriend that I couldn’t fuck
but got the best massages
the ex-gangster me that never existed
the tired reality that I was farm-bred
white bread, a wimpy little kid who never fit in
and got fucked and fucked with by the other boys.
I was always too sad and sick to fight,
nearer to a girl, looking back.
so I dreamed for me a past,
one day at a time
perfecting a lie that got too real to avoid.
I remember her calling my name when it caved in
she was in the tub on her methadone naked and shining
in the midst of wanting and hating her I said
"don’t you see?" " i’m as broken as you are"
that’s the most truth that ever passed between us.
these things happen
I watched the full moon rise in a tree
ate sparks from the fire that tasted like blood
thought of my lover and my heart in too many pieces to fix
the door slammed in my face
I ran the strings till my fingers were a sore and lined mess
smoked resin
"I could die," (someone would reap my head)
"smoke another cigarette"
its 4am, me, the ragged clouds,
a candle for the moon
final draft
death whispers
always in my right ear
"winter's here"
the cold white to whip the word
and life from me
the leaves dying faster and the days are too
the cycle ends, maybe for good this time.
well, to hell with life anyway, I never pretended to live well
bury me with paper in my mouth
a pen in my eye
a guitar string lacing up my spine
lessons taught by girls
1.
looking at the pieces with no will to put it back together
better to be numbed, empty
a girl observing my dilemma said, "I can fix it"
but she had a bad schematic from the start
and I was inside out then, cracks showing, pieces missing,
"I can't help you" she said, pushing me to the waiting arms of a new mistake,
"fill that hole."
but we couldn’t love and one christmas eve I cashed in my increasing loneliness
and walked.
it was a long winter until the strawberry blonde catholic complex, who said,
"Fuck ME" and cried in my lap for an hour after I did, her virginity being too much,
I guess, for the likes of me.
I was dying in it then, unable to make it work.
I said, "I think i’m settling, its not that I could just care less.........but I doubt it."
harsh and angry at this chiseling of my heart
I then picked up the pace on my own, throwing myself into each waiting chance
then leaving
with ice pick words and unpaid debts pouring from out of my mouth.
2.
heart is still broken, years in the process
not black, but grey-green, the color of bad meat
just begging for a last resort
a silver barrel to suck until the leaden orgasm blows all the confusing moments away
a mind free from unwant and untame and undone
lips and eyes now the entrances to a new mausoleum.
the good man
father was a healthy man
never too sick to work leastways, and never in bed past 8.
he walked the line just like the song said, had no weaknesses for women
or, really much of anything.
he left home at 8:15 and returned home at 5:30. always first to work
and the last to leave, and when saturday morning rolled in,
while most fathers slept late, watching football or golf in the afternoons,
he was up wrestling me from bed and headed to the family farm.
(his second job)
I remember him mostly in his little LUV pickup, going to work of one kind or another.
except sundays, when the seven of us would all pile into our blue ford
and head for church.
its a simple life, sure, if you’re a hard working tough son-of-a-bitch
and you don’t give in easy.
I used to wonder, at six o'clock when the evening news was watched
and my father sat in his orange recliner knocking back a beer or two
what went on behind his silent eyes?
he already knew what there was to do and what had to be done,
and I never heard him complain about that, so what was it?
we five children always had clothes, food and sometimes money
when we needed it.
every night, all seven of us circled the dinner table
five school-crazed children
and two tired parents busy with keeping us alive.
I would
bring the rain: insomnia
my brain screaming for sleep,
for someone’s death
an entrance to the silver-gated madness I locked away inside my other lifetime
where are your barbs to prick at me now, o life?
slobbering slave-saint, hoarder of minds?
I am called to another priesthood,
into the nightmare sleep
the draining dance.
I would kill what I am
I would take this from me
with the truth
sums
life is emptying this pen,
the outpouring of notes
my head bleeds darkness down my spine
with a grimace for the cramping taste of blood in my mouth
I hate, I am
I am what I hate
could it be less real?
will memory blot and fade this rising horror?
or will it grow?
for time has lost its meaning
running blind, I am a rush,
a speed, greater than my tongue
I am no heroin dream or
a space in existence
I am a hate filled life for the laughing hole in my head.
work
the faces of people become clocks
their teeth ticking out syllables at the dirt job
sweeping the floor of tomorrow
biting at the tiles of decay
one last cigarette;
RUN.
till the moment is chiming in time to my death
till we crash together again
everyone doused in gasoline promises
and primed to burn with a match labeled
"gain" or "profit"
staring into the mirror of our flammable denial
days awake
without sleep
it’s like dirty acid (you know what I mean)
like
copper and hexes
a divine moment in the innermost chamber
closest to who you really are
all the horror and pieces of reactions
the denial with which we swindle the truth
muddy and howling
the blues is slowly dying
played by fat white men: inarticulate
as a style instead of a way
it’s getting mixed up with gospel and dead eyed women
and dying of boredom
its tiny organs still pump
in the dark corners of back alley bar bandstands
and someone is still singing
blue slavery
the dark and stormy literature of displacement
words in the fire
truth is on a pike in washington
the populace mourns
weeping on black veils and lapels
no surgeon can excise this cancer
the greed and laziness is in our bones
we the people
too grown in comfort to worry
until it hits home
then people will gather screaming,
"What’s to be done?"
but our blackjack politicians have already
played the tune
it is up to us now,
to dance.
no more doomsday poets
WELCOME!!
( commentator shouts through a megaphone )
Our country's vast land holdings were first acquired through attempted genocide!
we have: CIA death squads! Patriot Acts! Original Sin!
be careful what you say, God and the Government are listening in!
to avoid messy investigations it is best to do the following:
do not buy, browse or check out from your local library any of the books from lists A-Z in your 'good american guide' and also no music from categories 1 through 50.
you CAN join supremist groups, militias, political organizations, or churches
but from list A1 and A1 ONLY unless you don’t mind harassment!
you may purchase and hoard any weapons of your choosing,
but DONT KILL ANYONE!
and Remember: we celebrate racism and genocide at LEAST 4 times a year so,
LOOK OUT! your people, beliefs, sexual preference, or ideas could be singled out next!
So, enjoy your stay in the United States of America!
land of the FREE
home of the BRAVE
(don’t loose your 'guide')
Let genocide and racism reign!
toll the bells of inequality and classism!
(if unused to the caste system please read page 172 in the 'good american guide’ or GAG, for short)
Certainly hope you’re not dark skinned!
ENJOY YOUR STAY!!
mirror
wiping off my cock
the coarse towel pulling at my skin
grabbing at the snarls of hair
it reflects that,
like tearing at ones self
the wet shuddering embraces of sex
are of the same substance,
gripping and realizing acts mostly,
when deprived of completions.
one questing death
the other, life
each seeking closure of the immediate temporal world
each escaping the gamut of idiosyncratic existence
yet
we will all embrace one as surely as the other
no matter where the soul flies in between
how you get there
to have a woman
who craves
sex
long and punishing
like the dark light from past lives
a gag for her second mouth
so she may howl through the other
we could blow away all this accumulating dust
with a cataclysm of flesh
each thrust pressing the sweet intersection of her thighs
my soul stretched over my cock
we dance in cotton sheets
made from yesterdays and tomorrows
dreams
unclear
Fifteen-year-old sex queens
are trying to jail me in a town fifty years ago
nerves are tingling with the threat of lynching
(i've done nothing)
Adrenalin is better than amphetamines
for looking over your shoulder.
i’m a sore thumb in this hick town
sticking out all over
impaling social stigmas
while the nymphs are burning
unquenchable
noticed
I must smile best
when my heart is boiling black
my teeth tightly gripped
as though they could pay for themselves
with the song of their own dust,
when I walk, footsteps cracking the pavement
taste of blood sweat on my tongue
poisoning the thoughts behind eyes that can FLASH hello.
this is how I can become noticed
beautiful
mixed weird features split by a grin
exposing the void beyond
waiting?
dark hindrances
evil plays
with school children and knives
to cut away frustrations
a solid chop of effect.
doubtless, effort will kill in time
what hate and the world cannot
it is a very certain mode of living
beyond death we do not understand
before it, we only await its arrival:
for a final rebirth
ending the disease of self-inflicted wounds
Self-taught
a sick comedy;
life is
constant infrastructure
lie upon lie
onion peels or flower petals
sometimes a truth, blatant as a sore
pricks through the layers
too obvious to escape notice.
we’ve been taught to regard them as defects
to be cut out with bad egos
instead of embraced
like ourselves
whys
stringing the words along a phone line
between NE and mid W
between my heart and hands.
my mouth seems impure
cursing, stuttering
the fluid express of pen across paper
is more exacting
more real
Truth, she says is why the words are enjoyable.
I say it’s the only reason to write.
on burning out
we're searching for immortality
in these words and notes
something to carry on after we shed this meat sack
and spring for the light.
how many will burn out trying?
we are a strange breed of human,
eyes that light up like a child's,
we still believe
beneath the tragedy and the layered scar of living.
most of us will age
reading poetry in small coffee houses
disc jockeying at local bars or radio stations
still trying to mingle with the college crowd
and making like we truly once held the scepter of greatness
within our art.
only friend
here I am
running out of time again
ready to move one last time before the end.
suicide is creeping up my spine
supplanting ideas
that only leap to death
scratching to get out of myself
out of life, i’m out of life
really just running back to the end of another cycle
why debate?
why care at all,
when death sits, mocking?
right in the room
winking at me under a knife blade
or through a dusty smile of pill teeth
i've acquired but one frantic acquaintance
in this melee'
even this news is a black wave
no light for miles,
it’s the sightless season
just me and the mourning fog...
anything else?
all this life could just fall away
lost in one thousand miles of driving
between here and ever.
will I remember how to be tender?
do I love,
or is this pumping cardiac
arresting only the dust within itself?
I feel filled with a grey residue
clouding every emotion I could show.
to say 'I love you' is to spit
and some piece of me knows it
it’s as though I were
freshly born
a new kind of beast
other than
or more purely
human
crisp clean white
each new page presents its problem of empty space,
the mass and energy of words to sprawl across the expanse
like buildings, trees, an animal now and then, oceans,
things eroding.
and when to stop
spilling guts or whatever
into the hateful white space?
what I learned in Pennsylvania
people and their loves, ideals and truths
are shallow puddles to be stomped in and cursed at, mostly.
never believe anyone can separate emotion from reality
that’s a lie in and of itself,
most people just want to hear a lie they can believe
instead of a truth that makes them uncomfortable, anyway.
race, religion and ideology are mostly just tools for
racists, bigots and politicians,
no one else with any sense cares, as long as you're cool.
friendship and brotherhood are stronger than
delusion, time and any pettiness.
don’t take advice; it only breaks the habit of thinking for yourself.
(which I thought was at least half of the point to begin with)
problems don’t change with travel, but sometimes motion
and change give us the tools to solve them.
depression is only as useful as dying, it solves life too, but much slower.
kindness is rare and often is only intention and expectation in disguise,
both of which, basically, are just excuses.
it doesn’t matter where you’ve been it’s the lessons you learn.
and when its time to leave don’t plan too much,
sketches are plenty to get you by and the more times that the plan fails,
the longer the wait.
a reason
time is a dying thing
closer to life than we humans,
struggling to rise
some hate it or merely ignore its passing
like strangers on the downtown walks
but that swift razor
shaving our moments and days
swiftly will sever our lives
surely as this instant you are breathing and beating life.
so, the suicides are just beating time
and life goes on
with
or without you
appliances
the ice cream freezer growls every hour or so
as though it would rather have been
a stove or an alarm clock
I suppose even the appliances get discontented now and then
modems with 'garbled information'
toasters that burn everything for days
at any setting
then miraculously
begin working as if nothing had been wrong at all
and gas ovens that turn themselves on murderously in the middle of the night.
growing older
sitting here
stirring memory, imagination
looking for a key to the verse in the soup of thinking.
moving for so long
I can’t seem to remember my last real bed,
or caress.
i’m losing pieces of myself along this wandering
im dead
or dying
my emotion gone stale like the film on your refrigerator top
dusty grey
and just collecting
to be a degenerate
I want this,
rolling and sweet
the taste of an unfamiliar pussy on my chin
the smell of soul slow sliding through my lungs
and nostrils
a new scent for delusion soup,
new breasts to distaste
a woman's voice for me that’s closer than a telephone call.
nubian girls are calling me to fuck
to torture orgasms from ourselves.
flushed with want, and I deny, deny, deny.
put on my granite eye
my coal face.
running away
self worth is questioning self importance
interrogators warring
using every psycho-
analytic trick
stuffed in notebook pages and receipts,
up alabaster sleeves.
they drive a red-faced torment
inside the thickness of my skull.
I'll consistently ask questions to which there are no answers
the lines so fine as to be lost
in the microscopy of self evasion
say it aint
the beds we lay,
like our ideals
are shallow, inconsistent.
believe until there’s no reason left,
turn on yourself,
turn on
but then that clarity is never so peaceful
once you discover the horror of being ultimately human
and desperately trying to rise
not again
winging it back to the hard nosed republican atmospheres of my ancestors
driving across states is to reset not only the time
but the calendar year as well.
in the middle states, once again heathens,
we will break the backs of their minds
and their judgments.
terror stricken mommies in suv's and
gutless suits with stomachs for necks and ties to prop them up.
what’s left
bare the ritual blade
cutting from myself the cross of loathing
i’ve so longed to hang upon.
ill pack and leave to avoid one more confrontation
with myself and reasons why.
I am,
but the deliberate staining of my years.
in my minds eye there are pale guesses
that i'm one more average disenchanted fool.
when realization finally sets in a tired frantic mind
the only cutting left
is the cord.
afterglow
we should stay awake
after
smoking cigarettes
interlacing between us snakes of our charming
till we greet the dawn eye
slipping sleepy and golden through the trees.
weather
rain, (i can tell your wet footprint outside my window)
while I try sleeping for a change,
is cramped and old.
as if this region were taken over
by aged and soaking spirits chanting for crows.
the morning fog rolls over as they
whisper and squelch under its cover
ancient and weeping.
sky,
plod me unevenly to sleep
crow
writing to the crows
cackling at me
from the abandoned house across the road
having claimed it for themselves.
each morning they laugh
while I write critiques of my spirit.
ask a question and the crow quiets,
having found a different glimmer
in the grey shadow of morning to mock.
(leaning at the window, concentrating, I could nearly see the future in his eye)
another crow, further up the hill
began to laugh.
coming words
I masturbated and words fell from out of my cock
rolling down the hallway
to wait for me under poor sheets
ambushing me just in time
before I could sleep
disconnection in dreams
I dreamt a strawberry haired girl
with roly-poly thighs and
I was throwing my money away in department stores
then running back to get it.
my brother, taking the nutmeg from the cupboard,
was obviously leaving forever.
I started an argument,
rolled and fucked across my childhood kitchen,
down the stairs and out into the lawn.
then I was back where I am,
and there are girls shaving
naked feet propped on doorknobs
showing pussies and breasts not fully filled.
the Mexican from Chicago made me,
and noone trusted me after that.
insomnylvania
awake
but my mind is screaming for sleep,
spinning dreams, arguing with itself.
I toss, grumble with the covers
attempt to become dormant
but the mind is pulling me back.
I read the wilderness
instead of raising the shade to look at it.
the sun is too much,
devouring unprepared retina.
the ground has frozen and thawed,
spilling a brown soup everywhere.
anyway,
nothings good or even realistic in this kind of
weather
it’s difficult even to find yourself.
how I get it
just need to relax
shut the eyes and it comes
blue-black waves from wordy unknowns
to master or brutalize myself
in diary or poem.
intent is a clinging constrictive horror.
ego has one
self, another
commanders of my mind
war within the frame of a page,
words for weapons.
memory of version 1.0
the wind sweeps the lot of dreams,
schemes
things averse to me.
bringing a child
gladly running towards home
the enlightened sun falling,
crowding the houses together with shadows in the neighborhood.
a small chest heaving
father at home
mother cooking
the grass in the front lawn waving hello
like an acid dream.
it’s almost flying;
riding the wings of a youth just remembered
decisions, decisions
humanity is falling on me like rain
eroding me slowly though,
steel instead of stone.
flat shedding this skin
draped over my meat
too long trapping me
with modes of thought
time
right now, i’m just balancing
on the thin edge of;
back?
or
beyond?
if only
we should be...
...summer in new york
...winter in l.a.
...playing on bandstands
...all of us poets
...in Europe to gaze on dark gargoyles and ancient churches
...Venice
...fucking dark whores in lavish beds
...satin unity
...sultry significance
frozen
winter is howling in my poem mind and
outside the window.
snow, driven to crease the landscape
like a workman’s hand.
I wait in the cold silence for meanings
barely a whisper from the pen
never an outcry
the state of american religion
americans will fight,
and write trilogies for their lamb of hocus pocus
their son of dog.
"i'll fight for Jesus! and my right to own guns!"
seems the popular refrain
automatic sin machines with bible turrets
BOOM! BOOM!
360 degrees of christian guilt complex
leveled at the world.
god has sent spies for the end times to reel
in information
death tolls, earthquakes, solar flares and particle storms.
christ is returning from the tomb to judge the constitution.
"do you know Jesus?!?"
-- ah, fuck yourself
i'll never tell.
they’re screaming for an end coming swiftly,
even though 2000 rolled by without a shudder.
black beasts, a whore from the sea, 666
a mark on every hand.
some people need a sightless season
eclipsing everything
turning all of us
into the demons in their heads.
relations
father, an enemy that will not fight me
mother, a wraith with tombs in her brain
dead areas for memory, my name
sound again the death knell, family
want forgiven from all of this
but its only sliding through another day
the wounds are still open.
returning to my memory,
there are long forgotten chains that bound me young.
a piece shriveled and died in a grade school urinal
and i’m still digging the moist earth of my mind
for its absence.
which?
a father and his son
a car, mother driving
father in the passenger seat
with cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
their blue baby,
dying silently on a regular day.
like a hammer in the face,
that’s crushing.
I wonder if (my birth)
it was
a wave breaking along the beach
or a wall
for breaking a man
getting out
truly now winter,
the branches are lined with cocaine snow
the bitter earth
mother receded
tucked neatly in a cave of under
murmuring spells of safekeeping
spells of death
memorizing
spells for spring
when we will be raised
high on mountain tops
where the earths crust folds back
to reveal our mothers jewels
hiding
finally found
the mode
the neural gear
the strings between the voices
where I hid myself.
leaving,
I was leaving.....
going to a more certain and safe place
to lick my wounds and heal.
(the contradiction was swiftly becoming too much)
but
last night I woke from dreaming
just like me
leaving, leaving
its time
to roll down off the mountainside
like a bad rain
vitriolic and angry
casting curses at memories
of children
cold houses without beds
ragged snarling women and their noisy dogs
rubbish peddlers
whore daughters of Pennsylvania sleaze culture
grey skies
and evil dreams
come off it
your bickering bitch
your bleeding christ's rolling eyes
a mortal wound weeps from the side of a native humanity
for the memories of lies
for a shamans wisdom
for an ancestral fire
for a god to trust
for a raped silence in a valley of graves
so far away
childhood summertimes
when work stuck to you like glue
when we were just mad boys
out for thrills
mile per hour highs
and basking in the sun
through t-tops
shouting (sometimes obscene)
at the passing girls.
now,
jade and turquoise
vibrant
but striped with black
we seek the ease
of a warm fuck
low rent jobs
cafe' waitresses
dead men’s dreams
sometimes
we burned for love
but it did not wish for us to enter
the keys of my heart too twisted to fit the lock
looking into her eyes there was nothing
black restless holes
spinning their vacancy back at me
is this all I need?
a dull fuck
an anvil mind to grind and bang against
to kill the shrieking windstorm of my own misery?
that’s the only real question
and the only answer i'll ever need
highest point
there was a sign on the interstate
'highest point east of the Mississippi'
but that was bullshit
there wasn’t a green anchor to be found
in a sea of filthy autos
strained diziens
hell, you'd think there'd be some pot.
but grass was as scarce as smiles
and more takers than I had ever seen,
like a whole countryside sucking us
and themselves
until
like cocks that wont come
we were cast back
rigid, raw and wet
ready for the next ride
blank truths
carving out ancient spells of protection
from my ancestral conscious
the scissors of the fates are too dull
to clip the cords of a friends biologic disharmony
(we dream the same dreams and do not wake from them)
the dust of insomnia littering my blue eyes
strong soul and listing mind
in a fog of sleepless waves
family value store
quiet is rare
there is always insipid shouting on the lower levels
dog children out to get fucked
sex is a confusing hammer
to bludgeon relatives and parents
the 10yr old got a boyfriend,
but they don’t speak,
so she'll be pregnant by 16
barking at some other male
some newer father
to bring her treasures,
riches of answers and whys.
cycles, circles
they never run out of lives to spin 'round
sick
brain's a rambling mess
comedies and killings
wrench out the same laughs.
rape@ ten o'clock,
so what?
it’s getting tiring to give a shit.
another atrocity, always
whether its here at home,
or living in the television.
even apathy is rotting,
swelling and putrid.
There’s no place left to dream
only the unavoidable now
nearer to
death is close enough
without a constant reminder
suicide dolls
waving knives in the face of their own apathy
pill queens
porn kings
a living, bleeding guess
try to see that "things aren’t supposed to be this way"
but repetition and delusion
are clear and straight courses
walking
by degrees
into oblivion
this is it
so, this is life
a thought, a light
a miscarriage, a move
a reconciliation, a word
a gesture, a heartbeat
we get confused by all this
blackened from walking continually
through the fire
outbursts from ourselves and loved ones
tormented by desire of unattainable things
we walk in circles in our heads
never faltering, never fathoming
the freedom beyond what we know
discomforting truth
telling the whole truth is to
overcome everything
expectation, your own selective perspective
gazing at the intention of ourselves this way
usually, is uncomfortable at best, but necessary
for the element of change to rip across the screen,
shake things up, and get the pen moving.
it’s only hard because we already know it too well.
it’s all the bad decisions that have hacked us to pieces
and a knowledge that we do it all to ourselves.
on fitting in
our lives can be rent
by impulses alone
if you want to fuck too much
or too often
if you cant stand the entrapment of your own skin
and you’ve gotta travel.....
all the things that make us individuals
tend to push us through society in the wrong direction,
out to the fringe
where our thoughts go farther than they should
where you attract all the lunacy you could ever want
and where you either
meet your end
or find the beginning.
impatience
bright white flashes of adrenaline
anger
aching teeth and migraines
this seems to be all that’s left
of the cool mountain summer
lazy days when sleeping was still legal
and drunkenness wasn’t yet the escape.
now charity is crippled
and wears a martyr's crown.
demands are made and never met,
everyone's so miserably unfulfilled.
the leaving just isn’t coming soon enough.
sleaze
disregarded
by cunts and drunks
so pathetic,
to have to pump liquor into women
to get wet moments.
sex used to be easy
now, it’s like 'waiting for the rain'
or maybe just 'standing on the gas'
because the years are flying by
and either the hands that are outstretched
are too blurred by the speed
or i’m just staring in the wrong direction.
perhaps
it has always been as unbeautiful as now
wanting
could there be one more sweet dose
of mouths and thighs, naked buttocks and ripe necks?
anything more than this headache
and these fruitless chains of moments?
fifteen year olds try to entice me to prisons
twenty two year olds to rings or insults.
if my face were a package
i'd leave it on the interstate.
there’s nothing left to point at blame
this loneliness could be less final
the road to hell is paved
there is nothing more honest
than a friend
drunk on pity or haste.
we do as we please
but get in each other’s way.
we go back to beginnings
fade and reappear
in ourselves and to each other.
we are dreaming ways out
and tender moments
but this damned life keeps rolling
between intention and action, selfish and selfless
irony of agony
sick of hating
sick from needing to
unfilled
emptying still
over the broken ends of faults
ragged cigarette butts of misery;
smoking memories
family
blame
endless mocking doubt
chained to all these things and still
trying to fly
engage the enemy
living is torment
caught in the separating mesh of truth
the dry dust ruin of life
my shovel is discontent
scoops of self-hatred
and blood red moments
line the ashen trench.
digging in for siege
on mouths that open only to lie
and biting at the words that repeatedly
flee its open sore
draw
the wet sea night
criminal complacence
asleep in my bunk before the afterglow expired
I came
across the black satin of her dress
and for a moment
felt rather presidential.
oh god,
the amount of lingual work
that went into conning such a whalish mate into bed
so humble as to take any offering
self esteem crumbled
into the wake of our vessel
a poor moment
out in all that richness
weakness gave way to hatred
noone wins these fights
in the name of the bothered, the dumb and the goat
here is the great benediction:
liars, thieves,
screaming dog faced women
nasty children, gutter sluts
mouths that swallow themselves with semen
persons with wrist-watch faces
advertisements
for abortion and misogyny
are window shopping on the main avenue
let us think it,
oh god,
let us play it away.
make sure you’re close enough to the highway
to be able to sleep.
last days
the sodden muck of northeastern towns
where things are kicked across the line of reason
one more day of wet hole valley sinking
one more hour for the screechers in the house
fat laden whores who force instead of kiss
families of clowns
marionettes
bible abusers and hallway minds
lights out for you
sleeping, dying, gutless place
lights out for the lot
mistaken
the fifteen year old knows everything
the ten year old shits herself in sleep
the mother keeps trying to get fucked
by a shade with coffin eyes
(but she made all that up)
two brothers, or stranger,
arrived instead
putting hatpins through dramas
dancing, themselves, with newer ghosts
setting fires
running, mad
frightening the hill people over breakfast
in small cafes.
the farce could only be collapsed this way
while assuredly and silently leaving
nightmares
rotting chancre faces
cracked wounds
skull crushed mothers with exposed brains
split penises and rotting vaginal caves
bullet bodies with piercings the size of fists
leaden flies buzzing in the thunderclap of automatic weapons fire
nails through my shoulder
the smell of human meat
shredded faces and empty sockets
the dead crawling to life
I, the dead,
I
rotting funeral wives
grandmothers satin scent
these dreams
most hated of things
sickly quick babies
grey green hearts
my chest bare of reasons
a hole of rotten in my left breast
slighted walks with candlelight demons
childhood rape seasons
death mocking in corners
a cat on my back
and an owl at the door
locked into dark weeping places
life seems a prolonged hallucination
greed
an angry virgin at eight
sanctified
crossed thrice with semen at nine
fires stretch the span
between then and now
too awkward ugly to make the score
head is swelled or pinioned shut
timing is always reading 'out of order'
oh so lustful
greedy
for life to become a kingsnake charmsong
sirens on every block
singing sex for three or more
fucking rain
dancing on a stone plate at the forests edge
weather whips through
seemingly unguided
the heave and rush
of wind and rain
fucking against the earth and trees
scouring with slow, wet friction
licking and streaming sweat
down the back of the mountain
everywhere in common
travelers are kind
when you know where they’ve been
thirty-five year olds with eyes like
brown lights
they are going to Chicago
or new york
they know the places you’ve seen
your eyes know each others memories.
a nice meeting
Hispanic and African friends you never knew you had
and likely will never see again.
after the night shift
a black cat napping on the seam of my dreams
its two o'clock
a long scene from seven days working
is spinning on replay charging up the spinal socket
outpouring strange dramas,
expectations, nightmares
and visions got from leaving.
looking out of the window at the silvery wet day
still clinging to bone trees.
dwarf mountainsides are crying the roads full
of bad water;
veins over ash
she is upstairs looming
a shrew
a widow
shadows dancing grimly and with purpose
behind her eyes.
flat, blank holes
windows for the voices in her head
write with the thinking
a crow scales the sky
(the cat's ear flutters)
clouds pass in the cadence of the wind
slashing at the rain.
(somewhere, its Time)
here is becoming a memory
as the raindrops joining the stream.
as the clock’s ticking
as the rain tattooing the voices of word-
music across the void of mind
as fingers circling wood grain,
a new clitoris
a comrade in terror arrives
to invade the slinking kitchen stillness.
low voices, nervous smiles
another voice to wreck my head
orbit
the mind seems locked steering circles around itself
a state of absorbing mourning and mixing
revulsion and horror.
but often still, a quietude arrives
a moment of beauty
stabbing awake and painfully aware
can remind you
of what you will never possess.
falling slow
vapors in the love eye
hours for the slow fire
dance and weave
(our lifetimes are never expected
to burn this hotly)
kisses for the mouth which cannot lie
the snake that will rise and die
a way out
space for time
stealing from the sleeping
treasure words and violin minds
the lure
reel the words in slow
be careful not to get caught on the i's
don’t stumble over the idea of your own self-worth
change up your lure now and then
to keep them guessing
and don’t ever try to be what you aren’t
inside the white walls and prison bars of the page
dreams
transmigrate across space
prod the ethereal body through loopholes of consciousness
you can fuck your way to the end of the world
separate the strands of fate between your lover’s legs
force the hand of death and carry your will
across the threshold of time
leaving all the shouting masses
to resound across an empty eternity
yes, even then
riding past the no vacancy signs at eleven years grown
pedaling a bicycle out into the deep night
the stars are still fresh
and the spring midnight smell is long and secret
even then, looking for a place with no streetlights
the thought being:
to strip naked
instead of pedaling,
to run
bounding across black silent grass
face smashed upward, drinking the sky
"you never were level headed", he said
"well, to hell with convention," I said
"and the last fleeing gasp of boyish dreams"
the battles
death is a face we wear all too often
facing into the fire
these half-creepy whores and mongrels
serve only to incite the blood-lust
"Fuck or Die!"
we all scream together,
and try to take their heads
as they cut for our balls.
the verdict, either way,
(death) is the same.
physical or spiritual
emotional or empty
the long roads down all lead
to the same hell.
realization
our desires
insignificant reminders of our own inadequacy
no self image
no love
blackness bound
ego dying, growing smaller, more corrupt
self discovery is
mental surgery
cutting open brain doors
peeling walls of thought away
to reveal a place without boundary.
the maze is seemingly unending
the way back is lost
in the forgetfulness of history
green
desert sun and granite mountains
sparkle and glow in the cool dawn
green warriors, dressed for marching
call booming cadence to be heard for miles
the instructors give pride one day
and strip it away the next
there is the 'Chinese television watching position'
the pairs and pairs of blood spots on the marching pad
we escape to bars, bottles and women
once twilight arrives
anything, to convince us we're real
and still capable of feeling something
until,
sitting at the bar,
alone
never speaking to anyone
just drinking
blacking out
drinking
waking up cold in parking lots
you suddenly realize
'you’re in the army now....'
and all the whoring, drunkenness and fighting
are just dreams
extensions of a mind vitally warring for singularity
zoom out
floating over the white foothills
looking for the immediacy of creative momentum
spark-hot lines for troubled desire
wrestling the demons of
god, law, prison, death
I go to fuck away the now
I go to skin moments
flesh fires
fighting excess while drowning in it
two faces
one glares
one growls
the first, intelligent enough to know hate
the other evil enough to know lust
then grafting realization across the eyes
we see what we are
what will happen
what we will never have
we see that we walk a thin line
between insanity
and dying
empty metaphor
an ancient tool stirs the clutter of my mind
knocks over a shelf
breaks clay pots
pries free another door
so the night can seep in
black and familiar
you cannot run from it
even while it consumes you
so know this
sun whores
you pity thieves
the night will soon follow
in the echoes of dawns treading
agitators
awake to the blasphemer's bathroom shouting
witches, thieves, lesser demons
they all bleed the same at six a.m.
they are agitations of hormones
like menstruation
only, it happens at least twice a day:
the bitch in heat growling
(her cubs bring unapproved strangers in
to fuck under the winter moon)
they snarl and shout
I get up from my pallet, thinking,
'none of this means a goddamn thing,
it’s an incomprehensible puppet show'
marionettes with obscene eyes,
they spin and scream the 'f' word at each other
faster and faster
louder and louder
until the strings bind them up
or they fall to pieces
ridiculous thinking
the surmise of dreams
taunting,
desires weigh out truth in white powder
watching from a distance that’s more than safe
detached from beliefs
needs
habits
it is outside reality
or, at least what people construe
mixing
blending everything back to a common 1
until it makes more sense than sanity
pornographic intermission
cute Spanish noses
warm Asian eyes
looks push
with a fever against my mind
wet pictures of hair pressed flat
in short slashes
across the small hilltop of a pubic bone
between the valleys of intersecting thighs.
fingers piston into vaginas and asses
furies of lust
dark red cries
spitting 'fuck' for orgasms
then
Grind
face and pelvis
lips and teeth
clitorises straining to complete
jamming cycles of thrusting
full cocks parting wet secrets
as, dying, they scream their own
going back
loves gun is leveled at my head
we race for friday
to get out
the stale smoke house
northeast hick towns
unappreciative women
ghouls for children
we seek warmer climes
better disasters
excuse
arguments never have rational endings
its verbal fighting to expel our selves
vain and angry
we seek knowledge
unconvinced of truths obscured by reasons
only too sure
of ourselves
this wintertime
and these rotten expectations
for, the bad versions of us
are continually yelling out of our faces
lingus
a kiss for the sweet, wet rose
a feminine ace to trump the suicide king
with dark enclosure.
we reek with desire
chins coated in slick candy
tongues lick mouths and necks
flushing and straining
minds tasting the flavors of nerves
kisses for heel and wrist
fingers and the butterfly
pulsing, testing
the flex of wings that bring bliss
exquisite torment
these things are to get,
to know before dying
before the crash
waiting for tomorrows barren womb
and the strawberry girl with rape fantasies
she learned to love under her father's hands
strawberry and the Two Year Lap dance
both hardened products of father’s cocks
they came with pleading eyes
sometimes crying because
these were love songs to me
something to feed a black-mouthed mind
they were coiled, suffering knots of people
only beautiful while unraveling
where I got it
exhaustion as inspiration
riding waves of sleepless seas
hanging over the darkness
interacting with its rich tide
it knows me
and I know it
this way, we are, at least
friendly enemies
I have produced a razor of self awareness
to shave off slivers of myself as offerings
as bait
to bring it within reach
to sip its turbidity
and breathe in its acrid perfume
freeing and binding
in the same frozen instant
the ride
corpses of trees in the snow
of Ohio skylight driving
with the burn of leaving
emptying my mind
memories of rages
evaporating in long trails of exhaust
(and if they are a pig, we must be sure
at least, to maim it)
we worry about our futures
(which are unknowable)
and on the ride strange threats carry diseases
across the telephone wires of our pasts
curse
spirits claw at the air
fingers dance across the dawn windowpane
leaving cold prints of passing
uttered words
are spells
freezing to the air
hanging
marking the time of our departure.
in the drawer of the blue room
is a present
for unlaid cunts and demonlings
I hope you find that which you crave
I hope it eats you alive
come and get it......
the knife of my cock splits you into blonde nothing
a ragged cry in the night
a lusty bitch to bite
at the peaceful moments of midday
you
who suckled one daughter to destruction
and another to dependence
you
with cocks for dreams
large enough to fuck holes through your head
how ravenous now, you soul sucking beast?
are you striding across the stained rug
to stretch yourself over the bedpost?
mashing your clit with the binding of books until there is blood?
what could you know of a wanting so heavy handed?
you were exposing yourself for dimes
perhaps now you could fuck for a dollar.
where were you when all this happened?
entertainment
it’s late and the television is on
I hate it for all its prepackaged moral conundrums
but it’s packed with stars who’ve long since
burned their way through the media atmospheres
and are still groping for another close-up
me, i'd say,
"give me the drug wave of celebrity,
high and hard. I'll run the needle till even my veins
are pointless."
then, instead of popping up
for the next three decades to play across old dramas
ill eat a bullet on Adams st. bridge
in five o'clock Chicago traffic.
at least then all the sympathy won’t contain embarassment
be careful
many places and people will pick you up
strapping you with words
like 'artist'
'poet'
'musician'
now, they will not pay to hear your work
or words
or to see your newest producement
instead, once your seeing or living has gotten old,
they will say 'he has lost it'
these meanderers
between the experience and the telling
never seem to perceive
that
the struggle and the blood
the painting and the singing
is not for them
long term
sometimes the agony of it grows old
in the wet weather night
the girl sleeps on the sofa
tired and drunk enough to let consciousness
fall through the cracks
even with this ancient pain
which glows and rattles in my skeleton
and mind
I cannot give up the word for sleeping
it seems a waste of twenty or thirty years
in the end
years to spend drinking or smoking
listening to fear shout its endless rebuke
curiosity has led me this far
now,
will it lead me to the end?
crazy
an author is - regardless of credits
bukowski was lucky
Hemmingway strong
Thomas unscrupulous
and Matthew (who i’m sure you haven’t read)
was great
when he had enough caffeine and wine
or was on roller-skates
spitting stinging strings of words
so quickly that you'd forget the first
as he shouted the second
but the emotion always came across
even when (on roller-skates) shouting
"Hooray for Ice cream!"
none of us in that smokey, filthy poet hole
had been published
but we read our poems every thursday
and I think we all secretly hoped to one day
be as mad and free as Matthew
One day it all ends
all of our lives
society attempts to dunk and drown
the individual in seas of conformists
in the schoolyard and the classroom
the majority has selected names for you
goading
daring you to be anything but different
in the workplace you tend to fit
because, well,
there are so many miscreants already,
what’s one more?
but in the end even the false belonging of toil
fades
then you begin to cut a path
finally on your own
families come and go
lovers turn away and sprint back
to join in the running crowded circle jerk
but who could blame them?
we only do what we know,
and only if we venture past the stopping point
often enough
are the memories of the high-strung jangling mass
defeated
by the open road
faces we have not seen
and landscapes you’ve only tasted in dreams
kick down the windowsput some tunes on the radio
open the hole and let the words flow
down
inside i'm so afraid
to fail
to dream
still chasing the chaos of vision,
incomplete.
passing present
in the spaces between the moments
of the passing present there are stark revelations
of passed mistakes, future lives
a heart beat
a heartbeat
never ceasing
pounds on the walls we erect
to pass the judgment of life,
the incantation of time.
vacation
we exhaled
our delusions and dreams danced away
in the breeze.
out on the ocean
the moon a signpost
in the scattered scars of clouds
our kisses were fraught
with her terror of rejection,
my will to possess.
close, under all this beauty
who could not fall?
Find inspiration
the new beast children
digging me for sex in the a.m.
I back myself away
tension twisting round itself
to the radio tunes
or the voices in my head.
driving now, through the highlands
in central Appalachia
cemetery road flashes by
with angry dreams,
stupid poems.
I'll spend the whole day smiling though,
trying for something more than friendly,
more than interested.
but I suppose these strange women
know me well enough on sight to guess what ill expect.
Frame
Outside now, and it’s cold
autumn in august
Pennsylvainian mountain seasons
I exchange with the house matron
rambling, because it’s my way,
but, I always talk too long,
and too often.
she doesn’t get me
and I don’t pretend to care.
unscrupulous,
i’m dying by degrees
my love severed
trust tolling empty.
monday will bring its new job
and another truckload of work
i’m as ready for life as ill ever be
i’m easy
Were I easy, I would find a BIG lady
with a BIG ass (the kind with dents)
and flopping tits (enormous)
and I’d fuck every hole she offered
loving the degradation of it all.
(BIG women need lovin' too)
especially from uncaring guys.
sure, it would make so much SENSE
until we came, spewing out our intentions
plainly for each other to see.
then, dressing quickly
no longer wanton
just ready to get somewhere to forget
the sloppy tits and ass that brought you to bed
a beast with a beast.
led by your cock to the bitter end
Illumination
God
I thanked the sun this afternoon.
a week so grey the temperature dropped
by 10 degrees.
with my back to theses mountains
staring west, the sun sets
pale golden
casting clutching shadows through an upstairs window
it’s the only illumination in weeks,
years, maybe
and I think if things stay this way
just waiting for the sun
I shall shoot myself before 30 days are up.
but I doubt in 30 days
it will make more or less of a difference.
i’m as old as ever right now
I know as little as ever
in the face of the sun.
thanks again.
Fuck me
another fight, leg fracture
my neck torn and swollen,
a new job in the wings
new hatreds on the march
I have stopped noticing whether or not
people like me, or really care.
I just go on ahead,
prostrating myself before all the pretty eyes
and kissable mouths.
(the FedEx girl, the racquetball queen)
burning for one penetrating moment
and hating what will not let me in.
Sleep schism on sex
pacing, pacing
racing my brain to the dawn
there's a girl one thousand
miles from here planning time
to spend with me.
here I am, pacing, thinking, pacing
just wanting to fuck
dreaming tits and eyes to gaze into;
come through
I am a beast walking in my own shadow
Trash
so,
I sat and wrote at my convenience
needing only nicotine and depression
smoking both to the butt,
letting my beard grow, wearing unwashed clothes
sleeping on borrowed time
digging into the sheets with my girl now and then
and whoring everything out to this pen
and this page
my whole existence spilling out
over the edge of my brainpan
mixing on the clutter of my desk
to create poems better discarded
like me.
Monogamy
straining for the next orgasm
handfucking myself to completion
hating the discharge
without the smell and slick of woman
the gliding-dancing wet
to close over
in mock consumption
I am tortured by memories of real sex
sex beyond myself
relishing flesh
sweat and scent
my cock is dying of boredom
Corroded
I’m making a calculation,
throwing up my hands
at the place
people, lies and magnitude of
thus.
tempering a hot magenta steel within me
come for me, you fuckers!
I will overwhelm you with words and intellect
a conundrum of semantics!
I wade in this shit of life but it does not touch me
I am far as the stars now
too much of the fruits of good and evil
to pass any more judgments
ive eaten them like layers of my own prejudice.
but, I would sell the temple,
watch the cities collapse as the economy falls,
a green apocalypse in dollar signs
and bottom lines.
Muse
I light a cigarette butt and look into my empty coffee cup,
kick the muse down a notch and reflect;
she's best when coming out like molasses,
black and sugary like the pain from razors
best when she tells the brutal truth
to me, at me or the World
not caring who hears, only that its finally said.
she looks at me.
"failure" she says. "liar"
"lunatic" "cheater"
I nod my head in time to the truth
"martyr" "racist" "deceiver" "coward"
every shot through my arm, my third eye,
always right on the money
I pity anyone at whom she takes aim,
noone ever holds up
at last
waiting in silence
while my head ticks off the phrases
"I should’ve" "you should"
"you are" " I am"
ultimatums, edicts judgments
all these absurd absolutes
none of them real or even serious
once you contemplate the extraordinary dissolution
caused by the addition of the solvent "truth"
it makes our beliefs as unreal as our lies,
our grasp as infirm as what we hope to catch.
yet we spin through this cascade of years,
inflicting ourselves on one another
our words multiplying like viruses and
our actions as meaningless as the end.
contradictions
I have made staring into the hard mirror of truth
my disease.
a flail to beat me with, and you as well
if you come too close, looking over my shoulder.
It is self immolation
when I turn to flee I just smash back into myself again
no where to run behind my eyes.
melodramas in the key of real life
what a sad and horrible farce
the ex-junkie girlfriend that I couldn’t fuck
but got the best massages
the ex-gangster me that never existed
the tired reality that I was farm-bred
white bread, a wimpy little kid who never fit in
and got fucked and fucked with by the other boys.
I was always too sad and sick to fight,
nearer to a girl, looking back.
so I dreamed for me a past,
one day at a time
perfecting a lie that got too real to avoid.
I remember her calling my name when it caved in
she was in the tub on her methadone naked and shining
in the midst of wanting and hating her I said
"don’t you see?" " i’m as broken as you are"
that’s the most truth that ever passed between us.
these things happen
I watched the full moon rise in a tree
ate sparks from the fire that tasted like blood
thought of my lover and my heart in too many pieces to fix
the door slammed in my face
I ran the strings till my fingers were a sore and lined mess
smoked resin
"I could die," (someone would reap my head)
"smoke another cigarette"
its 4am, me, the ragged clouds,
a candle for the moon
final draft
death whispers
always in my right ear
"winter's here"
the cold white to whip the word
and life from me
the leaves dying faster and the days are too
the cycle ends, maybe for good this time.
well, to hell with life anyway, I never pretended to live well
bury me with paper in my mouth
a pen in my eye
a guitar string lacing up my spine
lessons taught by girls
1.
looking at the pieces with no will to put it back together
better to be numbed, empty
a girl observing my dilemma said, "I can fix it"
but she had a bad schematic from the start
and I was inside out then, cracks showing, pieces missing,
"I can't help you" she said, pushing me to the waiting arms of a new mistake,
"fill that hole."
but we couldn’t love and one christmas eve I cashed in my increasing loneliness
and walked.
it was a long winter until the strawberry blonde catholic complex, who said,
"Fuck ME" and cried in my lap for an hour after I did, her virginity being too much,
I guess, for the likes of me.
I was dying in it then, unable to make it work.
I said, "I think i’m settling, its not that I could just care less.........but I doubt it."
harsh and angry at this chiseling of my heart
I then picked up the pace on my own, throwing myself into each waiting chance
then leaving
with ice pick words and unpaid debts pouring from out of my mouth.
2.
heart is still broken, years in the process
not black, but grey-green, the color of bad meat
just begging for a last resort
a silver barrel to suck until the leaden orgasm blows all the confusing moments away
a mind free from unwant and untame and undone
lips and eyes now the entrances to a new mausoleum.
the good man
father was a healthy man
never too sick to work leastways, and never in bed past 8.
he walked the line just like the song said, had no weaknesses for women
or, really much of anything.
he left home at 8:15 and returned home at 5:30. always first to work
and the last to leave, and when saturday morning rolled in,
while most fathers slept late, watching football or golf in the afternoons,
he was up wrestling me from bed and headed to the family farm.
(his second job)
I remember him mostly in his little LUV pickup, going to work of one kind or another.
except sundays, when the seven of us would all pile into our blue ford
and head for church.
its a simple life, sure, if you’re a hard working tough son-of-a-bitch
and you don’t give in easy.
I used to wonder, at six o'clock when the evening news was watched
and my father sat in his orange recliner knocking back a beer or two
what went on behind his silent eyes?
he already knew what there was to do and what had to be done,
and I never heard him complain about that, so what was it?
we five children always had clothes, food and sometimes money
when we needed it.
every night, all seven of us circled the dinner table
five school-crazed children
and two tired parents busy with keeping us alive.
I would
bring the rain: insomnia
my brain screaming for sleep,
for someone’s death
an entrance to the silver-gated madness I locked away inside my other lifetime
where are your barbs to prick at me now, o life?
slobbering slave-saint, hoarder of minds?
I am called to another priesthood,
into the nightmare sleep
the draining dance.
I would kill what I am
I would take this from me
with the truth
sums
life is emptying this pen,
the outpouring of notes
my head bleeds darkness down my spine
with a grimace for the cramping taste of blood in my mouth
I hate, I am
I am what I hate
could it be less real?
will memory blot and fade this rising horror?
or will it grow?
for time has lost its meaning
running blind, I am a rush,
a speed, greater than my tongue
I am no heroin dream or
a space in existence
I am a hate filled life for the laughing hole in my head.
work
the faces of people become clocks
their teeth ticking out syllables at the dirt job
sweeping the floor of tomorrow
biting at the tiles of decay
one last cigarette;
RUN.
till the moment is chiming in time to my death
till we crash together again
everyone doused in gasoline promises
and primed to burn with a match labeled
"gain" or "profit"
staring into the mirror of our flammable denial
days awake
without sleep
it’s like dirty acid (you know what I mean)
like
copper and hexes
a divine moment in the innermost chamber
closest to who you really are
all the horror and pieces of reactions
the denial with which we swindle the truth
muddy and howling
the blues is slowly dying
played by fat white men: inarticulate
as a style instead of a way
it’s getting mixed up with gospel and dead eyed women
and dying of boredom
its tiny organs still pump
in the dark corners of back alley bar bandstands
and someone is still singing
blue slavery
the dark and stormy literature of displacement
words in the fire
truth is on a pike in washington
the populace mourns
weeping on black veils and lapels
no surgeon can excise this cancer
the greed and laziness is in our bones
we the people
too grown in comfort to worry
until it hits home
then people will gather screaming,
"What’s to be done?"
but our blackjack politicians have already
played the tune
it is up to us now,
to dance.
no more doomsday poets
WELCOME!!
( commentator shouts through a megaphone )
Our country's vast land holdings were first acquired through attempted genocide!
we have: CIA death squads! Patriot Acts! Original Sin!
be careful what you say, God and the Government are listening in!
to avoid messy investigations it is best to do the following:
do not buy, browse or check out from your local library any of the books from lists A-Z in your 'good american guide' and also no music from categories 1 through 50.
you CAN join supremist groups, militias, political organizations, or churches
but from list A1 and A1 ONLY unless you don’t mind harassment!
you may purchase and hoard any weapons of your choosing,
but DONT KILL ANYONE!
and Remember: we celebrate racism and genocide at LEAST 4 times a year so,
LOOK OUT! your people, beliefs, sexual preference, or ideas could be singled out next!
So, enjoy your stay in the United States of America!
land of the FREE
home of the BRAVE
(don’t loose your 'guide')
Let genocide and racism reign!
toll the bells of inequality and classism!
(if unused to the caste system please read page 172 in the 'good american guide’ or GAG, for short)
Certainly hope you’re not dark skinned!
ENJOY YOUR STAY!!
mirror
wiping off my cock
the coarse towel pulling at my skin
grabbing at the snarls of hair
it reflects that,
like tearing at ones self
the wet shuddering embraces of sex
are of the same substance,
gripping and realizing acts mostly,
when deprived of completions.
one questing death
the other, life
each seeking closure of the immediate temporal world
each escaping the gamut of idiosyncratic existence
yet
we will all embrace one as surely as the other
no matter where the soul flies in between
how you get there
to have a woman
who craves
sex
long and punishing
like the dark light from past lives
a gag for her second mouth
so she may howl through the other
we could blow away all this accumulating dust
with a cataclysm of flesh
each thrust pressing the sweet intersection of her thighs
my soul stretched over my cock
we dance in cotton sheets
made from yesterdays and tomorrows
dreams
unclear
Fifteen-year-old sex queens
are trying to jail me in a town fifty years ago
nerves are tingling with the threat of lynching
(i've done nothing)
Adrenalin is better than amphetamines
for looking over your shoulder.
i’m a sore thumb in this hick town
sticking out all over
impaling social stigmas
while the nymphs are burning
unquenchable
noticed
I must smile best
when my heart is boiling black
my teeth tightly gripped
as though they could pay for themselves
with the song of their own dust,
when I walk, footsteps cracking the pavement
taste of blood sweat on my tongue
poisoning the thoughts behind eyes that can FLASH hello.
this is how I can become noticed
beautiful
mixed weird features split by a grin
exposing the void beyond
waiting?
dark hindrances
evil plays
with school children and knives
to cut away frustrations
a solid chop of effect.
doubtless, effort will kill in time
what hate and the world cannot
it is a very certain mode of living
beyond death we do not understand
before it, we only await its arrival:
for a final rebirth
ending the disease of self-inflicted wounds
Self-taught
a sick comedy;
life is
constant infrastructure
lie upon lie
onion peels or flower petals
sometimes a truth, blatant as a sore
pricks through the layers
too obvious to escape notice.
we’ve been taught to regard them as defects
to be cut out with bad egos
instead of embraced
like ourselves
whys
stringing the words along a phone line
between NE and mid W
between my heart and hands.
my mouth seems impure
cursing, stuttering
the fluid express of pen across paper
is more exacting
more real
Truth, she says is why the words are enjoyable.
I say it’s the only reason to write.
on burning out
we're searching for immortality
in these words and notes
something to carry on after we shed this meat sack
and spring for the light.
how many will burn out trying?
we are a strange breed of human,
eyes that light up like a child's,
we still believe
beneath the tragedy and the layered scar of living.
most of us will age
reading poetry in small coffee houses
disc jockeying at local bars or radio stations
still trying to mingle with the college crowd
and making like we truly once held the scepter of greatness
within our art.
only friend
here I am
running out of time again
ready to move one last time before the end.
suicide is creeping up my spine
supplanting ideas
that only leap to death
scratching to get out of myself
out of life, i’m out of life
really just running back to the end of another cycle
why debate?
why care at all,
when death sits, mocking?
right in the room
winking at me under a knife blade
or through a dusty smile of pill teeth
i've acquired but one frantic acquaintance
in this melee'
even this news is a black wave
no light for miles,
it’s the sightless season
just me and the mourning fog...
anything else?
all this life could just fall away
lost in one thousand miles of driving
between here and ever.
will I remember how to be tender?
do I love,
or is this pumping cardiac
arresting only the dust within itself?
I feel filled with a grey residue
clouding every emotion I could show.
to say 'I love you' is to spit
and some piece of me knows it
it’s as though I were
freshly born
a new kind of beast
other than
or more purely
human
crisp clean white
each new page presents its problem of empty space,
the mass and energy of words to sprawl across the expanse
like buildings, trees, an animal now and then, oceans,
things eroding.
and when to stop
spilling guts or whatever
into the hateful white space?
what I learned in Pennsylvania
people and their loves, ideals and truths
are shallow puddles to be stomped in and cursed at, mostly.
never believe anyone can separate emotion from reality
that’s a lie in and of itself,
most people just want to hear a lie they can believe
instead of a truth that makes them uncomfortable, anyway.
race, religion and ideology are mostly just tools for
racists, bigots and politicians,
no one else with any sense cares, as long as you're cool.
friendship and brotherhood are stronger than
delusion, time and any pettiness.
don’t take advice; it only breaks the habit of thinking for yourself.
(which I thought was at least half of the point to begin with)
problems don’t change with travel, but sometimes motion
and change give us the tools to solve them.
depression is only as useful as dying, it solves life too, but much slower.
kindness is rare and often is only intention and expectation in disguise,
both of which, basically, are just excuses.
it doesn’t matter where you’ve been it’s the lessons you learn.
and when its time to leave don’t plan too much,
sketches are plenty to get you by and the more times that the plan fails,
the longer the wait.
a reason
time is a dying thing
closer to life than we humans,
struggling to rise
some hate it or merely ignore its passing
like strangers on the downtown walks
but that swift razor
shaving our moments and days
swiftly will sever our lives
surely as this instant you are breathing and beating life.
so, the suicides are just beating time
and life goes on
with
or without you
appliances
the ice cream freezer growls every hour or so
as though it would rather have been
a stove or an alarm clock
I suppose even the appliances get discontented now and then
modems with 'garbled information'
toasters that burn everything for days
at any setting
then miraculously
begin working as if nothing had been wrong at all
and gas ovens that turn themselves on murderously in the middle of the night.
growing older
sitting here
stirring memory, imagination
looking for a key to the verse in the soup of thinking.
moving for so long
I can’t seem to remember my last real bed,
or caress.
i’m losing pieces of myself along this wandering
im dead
or dying
my emotion gone stale like the film on your refrigerator top
dusty grey
and just collecting
to be a degenerate
I want this,
rolling and sweet
the taste of an unfamiliar pussy on my chin
the smell of soul slow sliding through my lungs
and nostrils
a new scent for delusion soup,
new breasts to distaste
a woman's voice for me that’s closer than a telephone call.
nubian girls are calling me to fuck
to torture orgasms from ourselves.
flushed with want, and I deny, deny, deny.
put on my granite eye
my coal face.
running away
self worth is questioning self importance
interrogators warring
using every psycho-
analytic trick
stuffed in notebook pages and receipts,
up alabaster sleeves.
they drive a red-faced torment
inside the thickness of my skull.
I'll consistently ask questions to which there are no answers
the lines so fine as to be lost
in the microscopy of self evasion
say it aint
the beds we lay,
like our ideals
are shallow, inconsistent.
believe until there’s no reason left,
turn on yourself,
turn on
but then that clarity is never so peaceful
once you discover the horror of being ultimately human
and desperately trying to rise
not again
winging it back to the hard nosed republican atmospheres of my ancestors
driving across states is to reset not only the time
but the calendar year as well.
in the middle states, once again heathens,
we will break the backs of their minds
and their judgments.
terror stricken mommies in suv's and
gutless suits with stomachs for necks and ties to prop them up.
what’s left
bare the ritual blade
cutting from myself the cross of loathing
i’ve so longed to hang upon.
ill pack and leave to avoid one more confrontation
with myself and reasons why.
I am,
but the deliberate staining of my years.
in my minds eye there are pale guesses
that i'm one more average disenchanted fool.
when realization finally sets in a tired frantic mind
the only cutting left
is the cord.
afterglow
we should stay awake
after
smoking cigarettes
interlacing between us snakes of our charming
till we greet the dawn eye
slipping sleepy and golden through the trees.
weather
rain, (i can tell your wet footprint outside my window)
while I try sleeping for a change,
is cramped and old.
as if this region were taken over
by aged and soaking spirits chanting for crows.
the morning fog rolls over as they
whisper and squelch under its cover
ancient and weeping.
sky,
plod me unevenly to sleep
crow
writing to the crows
cackling at me
from the abandoned house across the road
having claimed it for themselves.
each morning they laugh
while I write critiques of my spirit.
ask a question and the crow quiets,
having found a different glimmer
in the grey shadow of morning to mock.
(leaning at the window, concentrating, I could nearly see the future in his eye)
another crow, further up the hill
began to laugh.
coming words
I masturbated and words fell from out of my cock
rolling down the hallway
to wait for me under poor sheets
ambushing me just in time
before I could sleep
disconnection in dreams
I dreamt a strawberry haired girl
with roly-poly thighs and
I was throwing my money away in department stores
then running back to get it.
my brother, taking the nutmeg from the cupboard,
was obviously leaving forever.
I started an argument,
rolled and fucked across my childhood kitchen,
down the stairs and out into the lawn.
then I was back where I am,
and there are girls shaving
naked feet propped on doorknobs
showing pussies and breasts not fully filled.
the Mexican from Chicago made me,
and noone trusted me after that.
insomnylvania
awake
but my mind is screaming for sleep,
spinning dreams, arguing with itself.
I toss, grumble with the covers
attempt to become dormant
but the mind is pulling me back.
I read the wilderness
instead of raising the shade to look at it.
the sun is too much,
devouring unprepared retina.
the ground has frozen and thawed,
spilling a brown soup everywhere.
anyway,
nothings good or even realistic in this kind of
weather
it’s difficult even to find yourself.
how I get it
just need to relax
shut the eyes and it comes
blue-black waves from wordy unknowns
to master or brutalize myself
in diary or poem.
intent is a clinging constrictive horror.
ego has one
self, another
commanders of my mind
war within the frame of a page,
words for weapons.
memory of version 1.0
the wind sweeps the lot of dreams,
schemes
things averse to me.
bringing a child
gladly running towards home
the enlightened sun falling,
crowding the houses together with shadows in the neighborhood.
a small chest heaving
father at home
mother cooking
the grass in the front lawn waving hello
like an acid dream.
it’s almost flying;
riding the wings of a youth just remembered
decisions, decisions
humanity is falling on me like rain
eroding me slowly though,
steel instead of stone.
flat shedding this skin
draped over my meat
too long trapping me
with modes of thought
time
right now, i’m just balancing
on the thin edge of;
back?
or
beyond?
if only
we should be...
...summer in new york
...winter in l.a.
...playing on bandstands
...all of us poets
...in Europe to gaze on dark gargoyles and ancient churches
...Venice
...fucking dark whores in lavish beds
...satin unity
...sultry significance
frozen
winter is howling in my poem mind and
outside the window.
snow, driven to crease the landscape
like a workman’s hand.
I wait in the cold silence for meanings
barely a whisper from the pen
never an outcry
the state of american religion
americans will fight,
and write trilogies for their lamb of hocus pocus
their son of dog.
"i'll fight for Jesus! and my right to own guns!"
seems the popular refrain
automatic sin machines with bible turrets
BOOM! BOOM!
360 degrees of christian guilt complex
leveled at the world.
god has sent spies for the end times to reel
in information
death tolls, earthquakes, solar flares and particle storms.
christ is returning from the tomb to judge the constitution.
"do you know Jesus?!?"
-- ah, fuck yourself
i'll never tell.
they’re screaming for an end coming swiftly,
even though 2000 rolled by without a shudder.
black beasts, a whore from the sea, 666
a mark on every hand.
some people need a sightless season
eclipsing everything
turning all of us
into the demons in their heads.
relations
father, an enemy that will not fight me
mother, a wraith with tombs in her brain
dead areas for memory, my name
sound again the death knell, family
want forgiven from all of this
but its only sliding through another day
the wounds are still open.
returning to my memory,
there are long forgotten chains that bound me young.
a piece shriveled and died in a grade school urinal
and i’m still digging the moist earth of my mind
for its absence.
which?
a father and his son
a car, mother driving
father in the passenger seat
with cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
their blue baby,
dying silently on a regular day.
like a hammer in the face,
that’s crushing.
I wonder if (my birth)
it was
a wave breaking along the beach
or a wall
for breaking a man
getting out
truly now winter,
the branches are lined with cocaine snow
the bitter earth
mother receded
tucked neatly in a cave of under
murmuring spells of safekeeping
spells of death
memorizing
spells for spring
when we will be raised
high on mountain tops
where the earths crust folds back
to reveal our mothers jewels
hiding
finally found
the mode
the neural gear
the strings between the voices
where I hid myself.
leaving,
I was leaving.....
going to a more certain and safe place
to lick my wounds and heal.
(the contradiction was swiftly becoming too much)
but
last night I woke from dreaming
just like me
leaving, leaving
its time
to roll down off the mountainside
like a bad rain
vitriolic and angry
casting curses at memories
of children
cold houses without beds
ragged snarling women and their noisy dogs
rubbish peddlers
whore daughters of Pennsylvania sleaze culture
grey skies
and evil dreams
come off it
your bickering bitch
your bleeding christ's rolling eyes
a mortal wound weeps from the side of a native humanity
for the memories of lies
for a shamans wisdom
for an ancestral fire
for a god to trust
for a raped silence in a valley of graves
so far away
childhood summertimes
when work stuck to you like glue
when we were just mad boys
out for thrills
mile per hour highs
and basking in the sun
through t-tops
shouting (sometimes obscene)
at the passing girls.
now,
jade and turquoise
vibrant
but striped with black
we seek the ease
of a warm fuck
low rent jobs
cafe' waitresses
dead men’s dreams
sometimes
we burned for love
but it did not wish for us to enter
the keys of my heart too twisted to fit the lock
looking into her eyes there was nothing
black restless holes
spinning their vacancy back at me
is this all I need?
a dull fuck
an anvil mind to grind and bang against
to kill the shrieking windstorm of my own misery?
that’s the only real question
and the only answer i'll ever need
highest point
there was a sign on the interstate
'highest point east of the Mississippi'
but that was bullshit
there wasn’t a green anchor to be found
in a sea of filthy autos
strained diziens
hell, you'd think there'd be some pot.
but grass was as scarce as smiles
and more takers than I had ever seen,
like a whole countryside sucking us
and themselves
until
like cocks that wont come
we were cast back
rigid, raw and wet
ready for the next ride
blank truths
carving out ancient spells of protection
from my ancestral conscious
the scissors of the fates are too dull
to clip the cords of a friends biologic disharmony
(we dream the same dreams and do not wake from them)
the dust of insomnia littering my blue eyes
strong soul and listing mind
in a fog of sleepless waves
family value store
quiet is rare
there is always insipid shouting on the lower levels
dog children out to get fucked
sex is a confusing hammer
to bludgeon relatives and parents
the 10yr old got a boyfriend,
but they don’t speak,
so she'll be pregnant by 16
barking at some other male
some newer father
to bring her treasures,
riches of answers and whys.
cycles, circles
they never run out of lives to spin 'round
sick
brain's a rambling mess
comedies and killings
wrench out the same laughs.
rape@ ten o'clock,
so what?
it’s getting tiring to give a shit.
another atrocity, always
whether its here at home,
or living in the television.
even apathy is rotting,
swelling and putrid.
There’s no place left to dream
only the unavoidable now
nearer to
death is close enough
without a constant reminder
suicide dolls
waving knives in the face of their own apathy
pill queens
porn kings
a living, bleeding guess
try to see that "things aren’t supposed to be this way"
but repetition and delusion
are clear and straight courses
walking
by degrees
into oblivion
this is it
so, this is life
a thought, a light
a miscarriage, a move
a reconciliation, a word
a gesture, a heartbeat
we get confused by all this
blackened from walking continually
through the fire
outbursts from ourselves and loved ones
tormented by desire of unattainable things
we walk in circles in our heads
never faltering, never fathoming
the freedom beyond what we know
discomforting truth
telling the whole truth is to
overcome everything
expectation, your own selective perspective
gazing at the intention of ourselves this way
usually, is uncomfortable at best, but necessary
for the element of change to rip across the screen,
shake things up, and get the pen moving.
it’s only hard because we already know it too well.
it’s all the bad decisions that have hacked us to pieces
and a knowledge that we do it all to ourselves.
on fitting in
our lives can be rent
by impulses alone
if you want to fuck too much
or too often
if you cant stand the entrapment of your own skin
and you’ve gotta travel.....
all the things that make us individuals
tend to push us through society in the wrong direction,
out to the fringe
where our thoughts go farther than they should
where you attract all the lunacy you could ever want
and where you either
meet your end
or find the beginning.
impatience
bright white flashes of adrenaline
anger
aching teeth and migraines
this seems to be all that’s left
of the cool mountain summer
lazy days when sleeping was still legal
and drunkenness wasn’t yet the escape.
now charity is crippled
and wears a martyr's crown.
demands are made and never met,
everyone's so miserably unfulfilled.
the leaving just isn’t coming soon enough.
sleaze
disregarded
by cunts and drunks
so pathetic,
to have to pump liquor into women
to get wet moments.
sex used to be easy
now, it’s like 'waiting for the rain'
or maybe just 'standing on the gas'
because the years are flying by
and either the hands that are outstretched
are too blurred by the speed
or i’m just staring in the wrong direction.
perhaps
it has always been as unbeautiful as now
wanting
could there be one more sweet dose
of mouths and thighs, naked buttocks and ripe necks?
anything more than this headache
and these fruitless chains of moments?
fifteen year olds try to entice me to prisons
twenty two year olds to rings or insults.
if my face were a package
i'd leave it on the interstate.
there’s nothing left to point at blame
this loneliness could be less final
the road to hell is paved
there is nothing more honest
than a friend
drunk on pity or haste.
we do as we please
but get in each other’s way.
we go back to beginnings
fade and reappear
in ourselves and to each other.
we are dreaming ways out
and tender moments
but this damned life keeps rolling
between intention and action, selfish and selfless
irony of agony
sick of hating
sick from needing to
unfilled
emptying still
over the broken ends of faults
ragged cigarette butts of misery;
smoking memories
family
blame
endless mocking doubt
chained to all these things and still
trying to fly
engage the enemy
living is torment
caught in the separating mesh of truth
the dry dust ruin of life
my shovel is discontent
scoops of self-hatred
and blood red moments
line the ashen trench.
digging in for siege
on mouths that open only to lie
and biting at the words that repeatedly
flee its open sore
draw
the wet sea night
criminal complacence
asleep in my bunk before the afterglow expired
I came
across the black satin of her dress
and for a moment
felt rather presidential.
oh god,
the amount of lingual work
that went into conning such a whalish mate into bed
so humble as to take any offering
self esteem crumbled
into the wake of our vessel
a poor moment
out in all that richness
weakness gave way to hatred
noone wins these fights
in the name of the bothered, the dumb and the goat
here is the great benediction:
liars, thieves,
screaming dog faced women
nasty children, gutter sluts
mouths that swallow themselves with semen
persons with wrist-watch faces
advertisements
for abortion and misogyny
are window shopping on the main avenue
let us think it,
oh god,
let us play it away.
make sure you’re close enough to the highway
to be able to sleep.
last days
the sodden muck of northeastern towns
where things are kicked across the line of reason
one more day of wet hole valley sinking
one more hour for the screechers in the house
fat laden whores who force instead of kiss
families of clowns
marionettes
bible abusers and hallway minds
lights out for you
sleeping, dying, gutless place
lights out for the lot
mistaken
the fifteen year old knows everything
the ten year old shits herself in sleep
the mother keeps trying to get fucked
by a shade with coffin eyes
(but she made all that up)
two brothers, or stranger,
arrived instead
putting hatpins through dramas
dancing, themselves, with newer ghosts
setting fires
running, mad
frightening the hill people over breakfast
in small cafes.
the farce could only be collapsed this way
while assuredly and silently leaving
nightmares
rotting chancre faces
cracked wounds
skull crushed mothers with exposed brains
split penises and rotting vaginal caves
bullet bodies with piercings the size of fists
leaden flies buzzing in the thunderclap of automatic weapons fire
nails through my shoulder
the smell of human meat
shredded faces and empty sockets
the dead crawling to life
I, the dead,
I
rotting funeral wives
grandmothers satin scent
these dreams
most hated of things
sickly quick babies
grey green hearts
my chest bare of reasons
a hole of rotten in my left breast
slighted walks with candlelight demons
childhood rape seasons
death mocking in corners
a cat on my back
and an owl at the door
locked into dark weeping places
life seems a prolonged hallucination
greed
an angry virgin at eight
sanctified
crossed thrice with semen at nine
fires stretch the span
between then and now
too awkward ugly to make the score
head is swelled or pinioned shut
timing is always reading 'out of order'
oh so lustful
greedy
for life to become a kingsnake charmsong
sirens on every block
singing sex for three or more
fucking rain
dancing on a stone plate at the forests edge
weather whips through
seemingly unguided
the heave and rush
of wind and rain
fucking against the earth and trees
scouring with slow, wet friction
licking and streaming sweat
down the back of the mountain
everywhere in common
travelers are kind
when you know where they’ve been
thirty-five year olds with eyes like
brown lights
they are going to Chicago
or new york
they know the places you’ve seen
your eyes know each others memories.
a nice meeting
Hispanic and African friends you never knew you had
and likely will never see again.
after the night shift
a black cat napping on the seam of my dreams
its two o'clock
a long scene from seven days working
is spinning on replay charging up the spinal socket
outpouring strange dramas,
expectations, nightmares
and visions got from leaving.
looking out of the window at the silvery wet day
still clinging to bone trees.
dwarf mountainsides are crying the roads full
of bad water;
veins over ash
she is upstairs looming
a shrew
a widow
shadows dancing grimly and with purpose
behind her eyes.
flat, blank holes
windows for the voices in her head
write with the thinking
a crow scales the sky
(the cat's ear flutters)
clouds pass in the cadence of the wind
slashing at the rain.
(somewhere, its Time)
here is becoming a memory
as the raindrops joining the stream.
as the clock’s ticking
as the rain tattooing the voices of word-
music across the void of mind
as fingers circling wood grain,
a new clitoris
a comrade in terror arrives
to invade the slinking kitchen stillness.
low voices, nervous smiles
another voice to wreck my head
orbit
the mind seems locked steering circles around itself
a state of absorbing mourning and mixing
revulsion and horror.
but often still, a quietude arrives
a moment of beauty
stabbing awake and painfully aware
can remind you
of what you will never possess.
falling slow
vapors in the love eye
hours for the slow fire
dance and weave
(our lifetimes are never expected
to burn this hotly)
kisses for the mouth which cannot lie
the snake that will rise and die
a way out
space for time
stealing from the sleeping
treasure words and violin minds
the lure
reel the words in slow
be careful not to get caught on the i's
don’t stumble over the idea of your own self-worth
change up your lure now and then
to keep them guessing
and don’t ever try to be what you aren’t
inside the white walls and prison bars of the page
dreams
transmigrate across space
prod the ethereal body through loopholes of consciousness
you can fuck your way to the end of the world
separate the strands of fate between your lover’s legs
force the hand of death and carry your will
across the threshold of time
leaving all the shouting masses
to resound across an empty eternity
yes, even then
riding past the no vacancy signs at eleven years grown
pedaling a bicycle out into the deep night
the stars are still fresh
and the spring midnight smell is long and secret
even then, looking for a place with no streetlights
the thought being:
to strip naked
instead of pedaling,
to run
bounding across black silent grass
face smashed upward, drinking the sky
"you never were level headed", he said
"well, to hell with convention," I said
"and the last fleeing gasp of boyish dreams"
the battles
death is a face we wear all too often
facing into the fire
these half-creepy whores and mongrels
serve only to incite the blood-lust
"Fuck or Die!"
we all scream together,
and try to take their heads
as they cut for our balls.
the verdict, either way,
(death) is the same.
physical or spiritual
emotional or empty
the long roads down all lead
to the same hell.
realization
our desires
insignificant reminders of our own inadequacy
no self image
no love
blackness bound
ego dying, growing smaller, more corrupt
self discovery is
mental surgery
cutting open brain doors
peeling walls of thought away
to reveal a place without boundary.
the maze is seemingly unending
the way back is lost
in the forgetfulness of history
green
desert sun and granite mountains
sparkle and glow in the cool dawn
green warriors, dressed for marching
call booming cadence to be heard for miles
the instructors give pride one day
and strip it away the next
there is the 'Chinese television watching position'
the pairs and pairs of blood spots on the marching pad
we escape to bars, bottles and women
once twilight arrives
anything, to convince us we're real
and still capable of feeling something
until,
sitting at the bar,
alone
never speaking to anyone
just drinking
blacking out
drinking
waking up cold in parking lots
you suddenly realize
'you’re in the army now....'
and all the whoring, drunkenness and fighting
are just dreams
extensions of a mind vitally warring for singularity
zoom out
floating over the white foothills
looking for the immediacy of creative momentum
spark-hot lines for troubled desire
wrestling the demons of
god, law, prison, death
I go to fuck away the now
I go to skin moments
flesh fires
fighting excess while drowning in it
two faces
one glares
one growls
the first, intelligent enough to know hate
the other evil enough to know lust
then grafting realization across the eyes
we see what we are
what will happen
what we will never have
we see that we walk a thin line
between insanity
and dying
empty metaphor
an ancient tool stirs the clutter of my mind
knocks over a shelf
breaks clay pots
pries free another door
so the night can seep in
black and familiar
you cannot run from it
even while it consumes you
so know this
sun whores
you pity thieves
the night will soon follow
in the echoes of dawns treading
agitators
awake to the blasphemer's bathroom shouting
witches, thieves, lesser demons
they all bleed the same at six a.m.
they are agitations of hormones
like menstruation
only, it happens at least twice a day:
the bitch in heat growling
(her cubs bring unapproved strangers in
to fuck under the winter moon)
they snarl and shout
I get up from my pallet, thinking,
'none of this means a goddamn thing,
it’s an incomprehensible puppet show'
marionettes with obscene eyes,
they spin and scream the 'f' word at each other
faster and faster
louder and louder
until the strings bind them up
or they fall to pieces
ridiculous thinking
the surmise of dreams
taunting,
desires weigh out truth in white powder
watching from a distance that’s more than safe
detached from beliefs
needs
habits
it is outside reality
or, at least what people construe
mixing
blending everything back to a common 1
until it makes more sense than sanity
pornographic intermission
cute Spanish noses
warm Asian eyes
looks push
with a fever against my mind
wet pictures of hair pressed flat
in short slashes
across the small hilltop of a pubic bone
between the valleys of intersecting thighs.
fingers piston into vaginas and asses
furies of lust
dark red cries
spitting 'fuck' for orgasms
then
Grind
face and pelvis
lips and teeth
clitorises straining to complete
jamming cycles of thrusting
full cocks parting wet secrets
as, dying, they scream their own
going back
loves gun is leveled at my head
we race for friday
to get out
the stale smoke house
northeast hick towns
unappreciative women
ghouls for children
we seek warmer climes
better disasters
excuse
arguments never have rational endings
its verbal fighting to expel our selves
vain and angry
we seek knowledge
unconvinced of truths obscured by reasons
only too sure
of ourselves
this wintertime
and these rotten expectations
for, the bad versions of us
are continually yelling out of our faces
lingus
a kiss for the sweet, wet rose
a feminine ace to trump the suicide king
with dark enclosure.
we reek with desire
chins coated in slick candy
tongues lick mouths and necks
flushing and straining
minds tasting the flavors of nerves
kisses for heel and wrist
fingers and the butterfly
pulsing, testing
the flex of wings that bring bliss
exquisite torment
these things are to get,
to know before dying
before the crash
waiting for tomorrows barren womb
and the strawberry girl with rape fantasies
she learned to love under her father's hands
strawberry and the Two Year Lap dance
both hardened products of father’s cocks
they came with pleading eyes
sometimes crying because
these were love songs to me
something to feed a black-mouthed mind
they were coiled, suffering knots of people
only beautiful while unraveling
where I got it
exhaustion as inspiration
riding waves of sleepless seas
hanging over the darkness
interacting with its rich tide
it knows me
and I know it
this way, we are, at least
friendly enemies
I have produced a razor of self awareness
to shave off slivers of myself as offerings
as bait
to bring it within reach
to sip its turbidity
and breathe in its acrid perfume
freeing and binding
in the same frozen instant
the ride
corpses of trees in the snow
of Ohio skylight driving
with the burn of leaving
emptying my mind
memories of rages
evaporating in long trails of exhaust
(and if they are a pig, we must be sure
at least, to maim it)
we worry about our futures
(which are unknowable)
and on the ride strange threats carry diseases
across the telephone wires of our pasts
curse
spirits claw at the air
fingers dance across the dawn windowpane
leaving cold prints of passing
uttered words
are spells
freezing to the air
hanging
marking the time of our departure.
in the drawer of the blue room
is a present
for unlaid cunts and demonlings
I hope you find that which you crave
I hope it eats you alive
come and get it......
the knife of my cock splits you into blonde nothing
a ragged cry in the night
a lusty bitch to bite
at the peaceful moments of midday
you
who suckled one daughter to destruction
and another to dependence
you
with cocks for dreams
large enough to fuck holes through your head
how ravenous now, you soul sucking beast?
are you striding across the stained rug
to stretch yourself over the bedpost?
mashing your clit with the binding of books until there is blood?
what could you know of a wanting so heavy handed?
you were exposing yourself for dimes
perhaps now you could fuck for a dollar.
where were you when all this happened?
entertainment
it’s late and the television is on
I hate it for all its prepackaged moral conundrums
but it’s packed with stars who’ve long since
burned their way through the media atmospheres
and are still groping for another close-up
me, i'd say,
"give me the drug wave of celebrity,
high and hard. I'll run the needle till even my veins
are pointless."
then, instead of popping up
for the next three decades to play across old dramas
ill eat a bullet on Adams st. bridge
in five o'clock Chicago traffic.
at least then all the sympathy won’t contain embarassment
be careful
many places and people will pick you up
strapping you with words
like 'artist'
'poet'
'musician'
now, they will not pay to hear your work
or words
or to see your newest producement
instead, once your seeing or living has gotten old,
they will say 'he has lost it'
these meanderers
between the experience and the telling
never seem to perceive
that
the struggle and the blood
the painting and the singing
is not for them
long term
sometimes the agony of it grows old
in the wet weather night
the girl sleeps on the sofa
tired and drunk enough to let consciousness
fall through the cracks
even with this ancient pain
which glows and rattles in my skeleton
and mind
I cannot give up the word for sleeping
it seems a waste of twenty or thirty years
in the end
years to spend drinking or smoking
listening to fear shout its endless rebuke
curiosity has led me this far
now,
will it lead me to the end?
crazy
an author is - regardless of credits
bukowski was lucky
Hemmingway strong
Thomas unscrupulous
and Matthew (who i’m sure you haven’t read)
was great
when he had enough caffeine and wine
or was on roller-skates
spitting stinging strings of words
so quickly that you'd forget the first
as he shouted the second
but the emotion always came across
even when (on roller-skates) shouting
"Hooray for Ice cream!"
none of us in that smokey, filthy poet hole
had been published
but we read our poems every thursday
and I think we all secretly hoped to one day
be as mad and free as Matthew
One day it all ends
all of our lives
society attempts to dunk and drown
the individual in seas of conformists
in the schoolyard and the classroom
the majority has selected names for you
goading
daring you to be anything but different
in the workplace you tend to fit
because, well,
there are so many miscreants already,
what’s one more?
but in the end even the false belonging of toil
fades
then you begin to cut a path
finally on your own
families come and go
lovers turn away and sprint back
to join in the running crowded circle jerk
but who could blame them?
we only do what we know,
and only if we venture past the stopping point
often enough
are the memories of the high-strung jangling mass
defeated
by the open road
faces we have not seen
and landscapes you’ve only tasted in dreams
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