Written In Kerosene and Star Fire
Chuck Creasy
Graven Images
consumed by futility, every mountain has been climbed
decaying in the corner, lies the carcass of a former
beauty pageant queen, her ribs the rungs of a ladder
by which her life departed, and the rest was left behind
consumed by greed, the shadow stalks the spider web
of institutional intrigue; the shadow's owner is in league
with the thief in the night -hear the creepy pitter-patter-
of the sinister agent of time that seduced the beauty queen
and fallen from a pedestal in a dusty reading nook
are the busts of all the sages we have read across the ages
the shards and plaster dust coating the floor and rug
with the curlicue words that have fallen from a book
written by a madman with roach eggs in his head
on the subject of tranquility as it writhes within futility
like his head, aflame with genius, as the eggs hatch more bugs
and he shits out his guts, vile, fecal and obscene...
these, the dying echoes of a crepuscular old hag
-once a maiden known as Justice, now a skeleton, she's just this
stinking monkey on the back of industry-
sew your eyelids shut so tight, salute the flag
but you still can hear the war machines out there in the night
as they struggle year after year; broken cogs and rusted gears
yes, we gave up our humanity
but refuse to give up the fight...
A Fisted Situation
blood on elder brother's hands
bloody heart of younger sister
blood on heaven's agent's chin
bloody fist i reserve for the elder
ripped out throat and fed entrails
blood in his piss, the punishment fits
a glove covering blood , healing heart...
Systems
flowing swift
functioning the mirror shows nothing
bladder soaked in wormwood circuit mazes understood
i over-stand i countermand grandstand curse the land
memory is heresy rewriting histories
blink face react recoil launch silo ocean boil
paralysis nations cease press the issue new disease
shadow moving properties ctrl.alt.del...
release
Leaded
crack in sidewalk sun-bake heat burn
olly olly oxen-free skipping rope turn
skinned knee little girls sun-bake heat stroke
fat boy basement so scared he chokes
wide angle lens view cracks and paint flakes
fingers on stair-rail scared and hand shakes
crayon drawings magnet on Frigidaire
skinned knee little girl sun-baked there
desire obsession mind overloaded
fat boy chasing dreams so sallow and bloated
stretch to the doorknob dizzy a bit faint
cracks in plaster walls lead in paint...
Eye-patch Jones
a cardboard tube to see you through
like billy the kid on calico floors
scratching dirty carpet eases my itch
the spider in the corner is a sassy bitch
cardboard cutout of tyrannosaurus rex
i save day and you give me sex
me Tarzan, you Jane, but i don't have a loincloth
doesn't matter girl, don't speak, take clothes off...
ribbons on barbie dolls and a different type of bike
y'know, in fifteen years they'll call you a dyke
we look so different, but so much alike,
pass me that turtle and the ball peen hammer
y'know, in fifteen years, I'll end up in the slammer
you make me feel so different, i stutter and stammer...
i exit that memory set, tightly lock the doors
just a cardboard tube to see you through.
El Shedai Bee Stings
armored of light in the sight, inside, within without
guile, cannot stand in the face of truth, but all the while
hammering a clarion at me, i will not stray
to a darker path, much easier than my set task
could have the world in the here and now, but how
could i ever face the purity of DEITY?
protector of innocence, guarding jealously against
corruption from without (sons of Cain) flaming mouth
of the whore ("mother" Earth) preventing sickened birth
i am not angel, i am human, i am more, my worth
proven by purer marks, lamb stands guarding me, while I'm counting
anti-army mounting it's attack, but this flock fights back!
Daydream Next
dream a little dream of me
intoxicated in your slumber
an angel that does not seem like me
a devil with a pedigree
for eating every inch of you
and i won't brag, it's what i do
in vast and sundry numbers...
hear those wings flap and hover
see the stars above obscured
by the silhouette of an infant lover
peeking in trying to discover
where we keep our aching hearts
for to apply his romantic arts
under night's black onyx cover...
but it seems his daydreams don't last
for a day and perhaps only a week
then become nightmares of sweetness past
tarnished silver, in plaster cast
to chip away to nothingness
(and more or less, more or less)
the next daydream we seek...
AEternum
aeternum
burnishes the surfaces of my inner walls
night falls, trees whisper secrets
through leaves and branch-rattle
with the voice of the wind
and you trace a path
of shining steps
pad lithely within
my whispered feverish dreams
you are become the sigh
night sigil, blind eye
seeing me as a tapestry
see me without flaws
no dichotomy at all
no schematics in my attic
no perpetuity of yesterday's shadows
i am the body
of the ghost of who i was
i conform to the mold you set for me;
as your hands slither their magick patchwork
of self-expression
they work some profound impression
open up my chest cavity with surgical precision
and almost luxuriously pluck at the plugs
the jack, the outlet in my heart's flame
torched black as a new dawn
brave the furnace and complete the circuit
completed strand of a new DNA
completing sequence of photographic yesterday
before it ever comes,
and this one never ends;
AEternum,
without end,
amen.
Reasons Undone (a season in the sun)
count the fingers, the hand is there
take it and follow if you will
i cannot promise sanctuary here
only to be this burning wheel
flaming device, turning soul
change, destruction, creation, my all
a golden brick in a tarnished wall
a splintered branch duct-taped whole
a galloping, glimmering brand new day
twisting, turning, delineating mystery
(even unto myself i am all i cannot see
and unto the world i am only, only
and nevermore, never less, just this,
a graceful turn, clumsy fist)
i never force my way along
i sing instead to lull to sleep
the beasts and men who block the path
(kiss the girls and make them cry
miss the mark and break their hearts
spinning sun wheel in the sky)
mountains part and oceans fume and foam
agent of change who walks alone
and still the world bows to my will
readily, yet unwillingly...
all the world, except you my love
and i wouldn't want it any other way;
how is there servitude when the master's gone away?
How is there such darkness in the hot light of day?
Dream III
i dream in polyphonic stereo monstrosity, i dream great darkened skies
i dream the night with a million million eyes, i dream the death of the world...
faces and expressions, truth gagged, and actions muted to become nothing,
nothing but the dreams that eat man's mind, i dream aborted things to live again, dead visions and wilted dusty rose petals, to trickle and coruscate as tears down cheeks, pale white cheeks of dead little clowns mourning love lost in crumbled chapels; all my lost little loves wielding sterile scalpels...i dream...
19
timid, shy, nineteen
and dead
rotting
from the inside out.
Stagnating Girl-wise
stagnating is the asphyxiating exhaust
billowing from the rusted tailpipe
of the junk car life became
the day my heart stopped beating,
the day the sun went gray and brown,
the day the ivory towers fell down
into a pool of my country's paucity,
the day she said it one last time, "i love you"
and then turned her bony back to me...
stagnation is the sifting dusty earth
filtering into a pinewood casket
of the singularity of my house
into which i was woven like a decaying basket
with the reeds blackened and cracking
all the faded stickers lose their backing
and peel off like a skin of used-up mottoes
and here am i, storing new/old memories on this naked wall,
entwined secrets in darker shadows within a hollow grotto...
stagnation is the Spanish moss hanging from dead limbs
in the skeletons of trees in a forest of misconception
my own ineptitude with other people is natural contraception
the sweet caress of soft, silent bodies
is some grime-crusted rag in the gutter
my body is a silent dead house on an unreachable hill
the front door, crooked on broken hinges
is an incredible amount of time to kill;
all the empty rooms whisper defeat behind the fractured shutters...
stagnation is the common currency in the land of the dull
dollar bills of damp, dead dreams, pennies the copper taste of blood
with my photo on the front, smiling through cracked teeth
there isn't much else for me to do now
than offer up some limp and pathetic grin
every time i see another picture of you
the destructive force of a distorted guitar
the shape of simplicity and beauty times itself
The smell of terror and a dead black star...
stagnation is my costume and mask, uniform and crown
the expression i wear like armour from sunrise to sundown
the compost from which iron roses grow
and the septic thorns on their stems
and the misstitched threads in crooked hems
rotting eggs direct from the cankered womb of a hen
rigor-mortis guests watching reruns in the den
and you, the guest of dishonor, fallen from your loft
your eyes as hard as calculus, your morals twice as soft...
Stagnation is the ceremony, the ritual of birth
the coming of new life in my personal necropolis
gravity inversis, it sucks, and it blows, ah! Who the fuck knows?
i awaken at gates to a citadel of grief and loss
overgrown with weeds and lichens, mildew and moss,
black, slimy moments of doubt clouding out my fonder dreams
my hand held by a perfect picture, an ideal of you and me
drowned in the brine of dust and time, bedtime fairytales;
no more nice little baby sounds,
To bed, to work, to weep, to die...
i can stagnate nothing more, i am empty
(That’s a lie…)
All Gone
time is the water that drowns you
when you live by this world's clock
a mish-mash of periodic smiles and tears
disappearing with each "tick tock"...
time is elusive, like air
you breathe it in, but can't hold it
we can't examine what little we're given
'til our whole life's completely unfolded...
we spend money so tediously sparing
but our time disappears like a breeze
wasted with televised other people's lives
and the last bit we have is a wheeze...
where the image continues forever
young, full of beauty and health
the moment is gone in a flash of memory
despite all the fame or the wealth...
and the time you lose can't be recaptured
the calendar's doom marches on and on,
the seconds still ticking, the countdown clicking
from dusk til dawn, til dusk til dawn til dusk til dawn
and on and on and on and on
and on and on
all gone...
Silence Split the Night
... i heard last night, as the dewdrops sang their morbid tale of journeying from nowhere to be here, trilled their thrilling, shrilling epic story of Exodus, i heard the telephone ring insistently, like the grumble of a bell tower stirring up bats and thoughts. but the phone was cut off a week ago... i swear i saw the night before, as the stars screamed out "infinity" and blazed the righteous hues of immortal screeching everness, godlike domination of the evening sky; i saw a gunfight over miss kitty on the TV. After the news; Gunsmoke went on rolling in its agelessness. and i yawned in blasé amour and switched the memory channel to the one where i sold the boob tube at the flea market... i spent the night alone in a guiltless house of cold, and i was bored and the silence split the night.
Apart
when words can so vividly define so succulently outline
when words can obscure or point the way
how can two people have not one thing to say?
When "love" becomes the bars of a prison, the perimeter of a box
when "love" bares the soul so there's nowhere to hide
then "love" is a stifling, wordless wasteland inside.
When emotions blur to some sick design, the hole in the heart is a danger sign
how do two communicate heart to heart
how to grow without falling apart?
A Perhaps
he was dead, they were all dead, as far as he could tell;
everyone has to die sometime (he kept muttering, "perhaps i won't go to hell")
a phantom world, swirling about the tops of their heads;
he was dead.
the eyes of his companions were soulless pits, it made him sick to be alone like this,
with nothing but the here and now, the there and then (the where and the when)
and the angel of death flying overhead, wailing like a banshee,
doom-saying...
and over dramatizing the whole affair, it all had the air
of an overblown Spielberg flick; made him sick, it did.
and every form surrounding, for all practical purposes, was a structure, a husk,
a walking slab of lab meat, it was so damn neat
how they were all so dead, dead, dead...
"perhaps i won't go to hell,” he said.
A Promise With Empty Pockets
where has the victory of the conqueror gone,
his countrymen's blood spilled, red life on the fertile ground?
and whence goes the midnight don Juan with the dawn,
he who never meant "love" as she felt it?
when all is said, all written, all performed,
mankind is a clay toy, by his own greed deformed;
wars are lost for ideologies and hot air,
death is purchased for a price we call "fair",
and then oh brethren, gaze into the hollow sockets
of what were eyes,
truths and lies,
and the grinning skull is a promise with empty pockets...
Awaken
an alarm calls out to silence
the silence of staccato dawnlight
the dawn's face is fractured in zig-zagged lines
and moonlight creeps in like dry white wine
spilling and splashing on faces frozen in fear
and wonder, the buttery dayfaces
of gawking cattle
staring at the mallet rushing at their heads
the frozen forms of the sleeping
in the flyaway land of the dead...
Sirenlure
sirens singing songs to me lured me to this destiny...sirens sing these ships to ruin
to beach themselves, to puncture hulls, on rocky barren haunted coastlines, in the perpetual gloom of the land of the dull; within the mind, inside vision, tempest-tossed on emotional duress, trapped in loops of childlike replay, remembering her and her last caress... formations of souls from the clay of riverbeds, introductions from the mouths of severed heads talking rot; and sirens in the shadowed wings take up all the empty spots...
Island of Rain in Sunlight
gray falls the rain sheets the color of your eyes making somber play
in acts and scenes the shape of my memory of you
cats' whiskers beaded with droplets
oh, mews, this overcast so you i almost cry
beauty in a spicule of moisture, reflections of the past
(were you? no, not first, and you surely won't be the last.)
a pregnant cloud becomes your face and i pause to close my eyes
to make a fateful wish
to recall us as though yesterday could ever come again...
but as the patters of rain cascade on windows making terse remarks,
i blink twice, look around slowly and come back to these words;
i always will be haunted by the island of rain in sunlight
i visited with you.
Do Dead Gods Dream of Love?
2:24 am., i peer up rather timidly, heavy-lidded
at the black nothingness there
filled with its diamond collection
scattered about
as though a child had left his toys out
and taken a nap
almost as if it were a great black velvet backdrop for a play
with pinholes poked in it
through which a bright light is shining
...shining
never burning out the filament within
and i suddenly realize, the firmament is thin
like a piece of letter parchment
but nearly blank and clean beyond
reproach...
where did all the stagehands go, up there above
and we, here below,
the actors go on playing out
rehearsed, rehashed
and rather pointless roles
but high drama it always is, the classic stories
of love, death, immortality, comedy, tragedy
(who's directing anyway?)
i wonder, through a haze of dulled pain and drugs,
if there is anything at all left to wonder
at 2:24 am., a frigid Monday morning
words intrude on a blank page cut by lines across its white face,
(somewhat savage in its regimented blandness,
but after all, the paper's utility makes it interesting for its potential)
what surely does it profit a man to gain the world
if he lose his soul?
toss a salad from the form of the tones in a mental mixing bowl,
and i wonder,
is there some giant hand at work on a great black parchment?
does it write letters of its owner's love
to its owner's lover in starfire?
is there some hideously gargantuan Dear John missive
scrawled across the early morning sky?
hmmm...
do dead gods dream of love or lost technology
in the blackest crypt of time's abyss?...
and the stars in their constellations form patterns
-almost like an alien script-
that it seems to me is so obvious that i wonder how we managed
for however many millions of years to miss it...
what do dead gods dream?
(voices)
(air)
(night)
(vacuum)
(nothing)
(loss)
(dust)
(bliss)(the abyss...the abyss...)
THE ABYSS.
Children's Wall
a wall was begun for me,
a tireless uncracked emotional shell
blocking out the world with a smile
it started as a snow fort in which to play and hide
but somehow,
somehow, i got trapped inside
and have wandered in the darkness for quite a while...
it may have originated in the jungles of Vietnam
or perhaps Japan when they dropped the bomb
a cold sort of fission in a steamy lab
fusing tombstones together like beetle carapaces
but the stones still show me the undying faces
and for a child who can't find a light switch or a door
it is terrifying, the agony of Sobibor
and quoth the raven "nevermore"
i keep tripping over bodies laid out like a map
every square inch designed
like an aerial view of Armenia circa 1923
or a Spanish village bombed by German planes
starving Jews reflected in frosted window panes
a wicker man engulfed in a purifying flame
lost, let me be,
stay that way...
…not found.
but hands groping to pull me into the light
are always attached to other strings
to people with agendas,
like salvation or unconscious mothering
and both are someone else's smothering
extinguishing of the only light i ever had
stealing my tiny lantern to replace it with some new bonfire
fueled by dead ideas and emotions, really just a funeral pyre
someone else's fuck-desire
but swine won't steal the few pearls left to me
so leave me drowning in my solitude, walled-in, stunted,
alone, but free...
i will crank up an old phonograph
and edit down my epitaph
"one of every one shall fall
and life will be the death of us all..."
and i think it is as easily stated,
"we are not aging, we are dying..."
here in the darkness, in the quiet
and the gloom, in the preternatural adolescence
of my multidimensional room
"words are unnecessary stains on silence and nothingness"
said Sam Beckett once.......
but,
he said it, didn't he?
bells
only bleeding, chiming bells
ringing, telling me of black angels singing
in my own desolate
Srebrenica...
Guernica...
exploding silently within me, around me
forever.
Grotto of Entwined Secrets
in a grotto of entwined secrets, lay your heart
out for the monsters there to devour
secrets of the id, hidden back behind the echoes
in little piles of dust and
well, really, really nothing
come alive to take your soul
and drown it in a black pool of the bracken
and detritus of what was done to you
and said to you (no matter what you choose to do)
-wrong! wrong! wrong! from the get-go 'til today-
small children in a sandbox trying to make dreams reality,
sculpting ideas in grains of temporality that blow away...
and the bully's heavy shadow stamps and tramples angels wings
into the dirt, into hurt, bites the shoulder of innocence
making marks that never leave,
crushes light and hope into darkness and despair and
"this bully thing has to stop...next time he hits you, hit him back,
as hard as you can, and he'll leave you alone."
so you hit him with a yellow Tonka dump truck
ICU for 30 days, the whole damn world flies away
as your eyes follow daddy who told you to,
as his disappointment builds and frightens you,
but you followed the rules as they were told...
so, every day in the grotto
is playing Russian roulette,
get your money out, place your bets,
some kind of human drama lotto;
chained to a wall of your insecurities,
choking on your poison and impurities,
hiding within a castle, a fortress of agelessness
flaunting only pain and guilt and loss
in a grotto of entwined secrets,
hung with Spanish moss...
Chinese Wishing Well
it is too cold and clammy here
in this night place
and it would seem i make my life here
amidst a swell and crush of strangers' faces
(they smile only when they want something,
and it never touches their eyes)
adrift on a sea of empty quiet
as heavens and planets roll by above...
"oh Lord," i groan (mumbled lines by rote)
"how long shall the wicked triumph on earth?"
four years in silence and separation
from a world full up with bad dreams
of places i don't go, people i won't know,
so much of betrayal i would rather not have
so much of joy and light i cannot see
though my eyes remain open
awaiting miracles or signs...
the pinpoints of white in the night's indigo velvet,
sometimes they make pictures of where i have been
like atlases or treasure maps
photos of lazy memories caught in catnaps
and kicking legs on windowsills of shadows
(i can trace the features of a cherub's face
up there in the evening array,
the girlish visage within a waterfall of dog's blood
rising to the surface of memories,
though this was not the woman i actually knew,
she does smile so sweetly as she once did...
but it never touches her eyes,
never touches her eyes, no.
i should have known right there and then.)
all this, the world, at the bottom
of some stagnant Chinese wishing well,
toss in, you strangers, the coin of the realm,
in drachmas, rupees, dollars and pounds,
in silence, lip-synced heresies, your dreams,
your soul,
pay me for the interminable pain
you have caused to be,
glaze-eyed, slack-jawed
addicted to the privations, isolation, the pathetic
and simple existence i lead...
gaze on, world, gaze on and on into
the looking glass reflection of
my life...
how are you feeling, here, in this
cool and clammy place i found?
are the accommodations dry enough
and do the servants service well?
are there any amenities lacking here,
come on now, truth to tell?
if there's anything at all you need;
by the side of the bed, just ring that bell...
it will appear, though slightly darker
and by contrast, somewhat starker
in this Chinese wishing well.
Sturm
foot steps like hammer falls, oh! count the nail marks on the walls
and measure heights...tiny desperate hands claw away at blitzkrieg nights
a fevered pitch and blackness cloaks fear-slicked streets of London town
hob's ende a horror there to greet the children, undone, and all fall down
reflected refracted image the darkened mirror cracked from side to side
as ash-filled skies outside of town (snow falls down) and Europa strokes her dying bride
mismatched, miscounted glass cracked and terror mounted
long knives and crystal nights...crossed bones, skull and blood lusting fatherland
meanwhile a reign of flame ashes flow in sewer drains, a deeper fear closer at hand
and Judas chokes on the dust of bones, scattered remnants, killing zones
women children hearth home the simple light of day
"run der vermin to der ground, let not vun slip avay!!!"
Distract
from beaten breast of bloated corpse
bellowed cry erupting snaps
the heads around of
everyone who hears it
-the gasp being last passing of gas and air
from the abdominal cavity of a once-beautiful maiden
named joy-
once the vultures resettle grisly perches
crowd returns its raving mass
to bass-laden hump-and-grind
pump in time
...its distraction from its own
Death.
Here's the Rope
i happened to look out the window
through the cracked pane at a howling moon
at the trees that could not see me
for the forest, at a tumbling black velvet
carpet of night studded with its polished
ivory teeth, i smiled for safety's sake...
took a shirt off its hook, took a shiver by mistake
turned to find the certain book, about how kings are made
a chilly puff of breathy sigh of maiden's breath
a breeze as cold as cracked ice
slithered on in like a syphilitic slut
through the hole in the glass, in the window, in the wall
and terrorized my room with flowers
(to which i am allergic...the pollen you know)
their bloody petals all razorblades in swirling hoops
that light evades as they circled to the floor
crossed the rich brown polished wood to
the oaken panel in the center of my door
and lo, she was standing there, naked as
her birthday -right as rain, I'd have to say-
a babe with no reflection, a cake with no icing,
a bland blood-soaked butter confection, a mask, a stranger
a mark in the back of your hand, a mark
in the center of my forehead...
and i dreamed all this as i slept in the street
by a dumpster in times square, in front of an Athenian
hot dog vendor...
it could have been anywhere at all,
but i now recognize the sweaty stench
of my own fear-soaked delusions...
so we met, the cracked windowpane duct taped
and notwithstanding, we were naked, we
were born anew, borne away on wind,
with no fear, bare of all but flesh, and
"the flesh is weak, the spirit willing"
i bolt the doors every bleeding night
to hold at bay the killings
but the world outside struts right on in
or is peeping through that pane like a tomcat
i can see its one large eye at the keyhole,
it raps ever-so-slightly at the front door
like an unrepentant and errant preacher who wants my soul
with its pockets turned out, so raggedy and poor
just a rag man selling its wares
it's the creaking vibrations in the bedroom
when i am not there to hear it
33, 45, 90, 360, hexagrammaton in the local skid row
number and letters and thieves and beggars
junkies in alleyways with huge, skunky blank eyes
glittering in dark corners like chipped
black onyx or hematite or obsidian,
strung out from personal rapes by the dark world
bloodshot, weary, glassy stares and
vacant collapses of veins and hope...
here's the rope.
Blood-bondage Debtor Whore
more greasy chicken, Kentucky fried at an all-nite
drive-thru window is a flaxen velvety rope
lard, lead, arsenic, credit cards, death in cathode rays,
suffer the nights and count your days
o, children of megatherion
lost in holograms and web-browser delirium,
I'll join you at that window in a cobwebbed bedroom
in a ramshackle cottage, in an alien birthplace
a little cabin in the woods that used to be,
the window with the cracked pane of glass
through which this wicked world oozes in,
through which climbs a whore in blood-bondage and owing debts,
through which Diana peeks with 1000 eyes through
bare spots in the trees of the glen
through which a thousand black goat young are creeping
as they leave the womb
through which crawl nightmarish madmen escaped and the
things that were once sealed in tombs
through which i can feel the wind,
her name is backwards and written within,
the mirrored image of my fears wrapped in muslin
the shattered fragments of my life in small flecks
of pyrite that i thought was precious and i still clutch deeply within
as i hear a faint whisper, the killer sighs her name...
i fear,
i fear,
i fear.
and she-shamed,
she crack.
Codependent
you are a swan with filthy plumage
i am a blackened, fractured mirror
you are a mushroom, poisonous bloom
i am a fungus, creeping nearer.
you are decay, a withering away
and i am the stench that emanates
you are dead branches, dripping blood
i am the toxin that exfoliates...
radiation, defilement, excrement,
the cement bonding love and hate.
a spit in the eye while spilling the lie,
the words of truth that devastate
you are a black hole, sucking everything
i am the vacant light, straining to escape
you are a studded steel glove upon a gnarled fist
i am the terror of helplessness, waiting for the rape.
you are the darkness of ignorance and bigotry
i am the fuel of decadence and complacency
you are the malignant growth of codependency
i enable you by showing you me...
glowing eyes in darker ages
the cement bonding love and hate
a vicious attack, a stab in the back,
and the twisted smile, all the while
is the caustic truth that devastates
Convolution
this heart is convoluted, almost buried, twisted up
into shapes and forms forbidding, forbidden, forlorn,
joyous, jubilant, jejune
never a straight line can be found herein
from point A to point B
(not that these places exist)
mapping a course in no-man's-land is
navigating through my inner space
i was lost, i have found, but who should i really be?
once restricted, now unbound, peering into mirrors
of someone else's soul,
hold the pose for just a moment and
i am staring back at me...
peel off the flesh, layer by layer,
masks that almost remove themselves
to reveal more fragile tissue beneath
an onion with an unending skin
and you can trace the tumors on my façade
through the thick/thin paper of reality
a convoluted whole of consecrated parts
a scrabbling, starving cannibal's soul
made of other people's hearts...
a soul like a book that
should never have been read;
so, i may have lost her,
but at least she isn't dead.
With Tongues of Flame
love of my life
i swore not another
could there would there ever be
as if you ripped out
of my side
sewed it all up and crawled inside
my head
(Athena and Kali reversed)
see the stress a-dancing?
hear the teeth of pain
chatter like chimps?
do i cut you to ribbons
with my tongue
again and again and
again?
meat grinder for the heart of you
shredding body, mind and soul
shall i pick a flower, kill more life
with actions
with words
as the world crumples us
to bloodless petals
and dust?
a kiss for you
with tongues of flame
to consume the betrayal.
Cordell Smith's Sin
a note swells to embrace
with the creepy sound of
Saturday morning in the seventies
as little boy watches dog on TV
hears footsteps in real world and turns to see
but nothing is there in the room
the smell of musty books and flowers
dream images shot in sepia tones
like a flashback to the forties
as little boy watches dog on TV
bible on the bookshelf, Scooby Doo on screen
screams of children locked in church
of blackness, a black mass
little girl locks basement door
and gives the command to undress
puts cock in mouth as per instruction
the sermon on the mount heard faintly above
little boy wonders if this thing is love
as little girl sucks his dick
minister rambles in monotone, dc-10 drone
born in red-and-white nightmares, unfair
but the bitch boy who was the wolf is dead
he was, after everything, only an altar boy, an attorney
as little boy watches dog on TV
something about jewel theft and man dressed as yeti
a man just like the minister
Sunday's sermon seems sinister
with brother and unto sister, sister
the images flicker there and freeze
a naked girl on her knees
as he was shown by others, so is he
and the memories burn and then blister
crisp, turn black and ashen and brown
(they can see right through the wet baptism gown)
only underwear in the sanctuary
interlocked images and memories buried
in an offbeat theme song for a cartoon show
but then, those memories have nowhere else to go
or perhaps a fat preacher would now be dead
"little girl in basement dies giving head"
such a gossip mill, what a tragedy
little boy watches dog on TV
creepy music interludes, spooky monster sets the mood
minister touches what is taboo
as little boy watches dog on TV
chasing yeti,
still chasing me,
still chasing me,
still chasing me...
(don't touch me there)
"zoinks"
Cornucopia
let go
i
melt
into your form
become
cornucopia of
giving voice
to the voiceless
a ring
and
i swear...
flesh
and bone
and blood
and soul...
this world
this flesh
this pain
this knife
this love
this life
this whole
this entirety
of beauty and might
of darkness and light
take a toll
in the pale
of night.
Black Awakenings
flies dying in black sludge
little girl dying alone with grief
no solutions, only a final relief
snap-necked and dangled
smile, oh star-spangled
youth in America's dream
of yesterday and a thousand
dull tomorrows
eat from a dish of regret and sorrow
what have we taught you but
to long for the brutal truth
but to lust for your end
from the dust to dust to dust to
nothing?
i come apart like salvage cars
and quicker than they rust,
the mirror is myself, repeating the words,
"nothing, nil, null, nihil,
nothing, nothing, dust and nothing..."
it is the air, the lack, the light
the gray sun filtered through
eyes of pure gummed-up glass,
grounds me to thousands of
cigarette "buts"...
but, but, but
nothing, it says,
and it knows all,
or next to nothing...
Cold Heart (and Night)
the ceiling, the floor, the crooked wall the terrifying angle of it all blank screen and ticking of an angry dusty clock the dream flies away, but the breath doesn't stop dying in the music, too warm outside the hazy wave of summer is no place to hide from droning of voices and buzzing of flies as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in and seals my heart in its fist. cold-hearted, cold hearted, cold hearted,
cold heart and night.
born of a woman, spawned of man
a staggering confusion playing out a role
with the mark of her master still in her hand
and a pool of blood choking up the whole
dying in the image, so hot outside
the hazy wave of summer is no place to hide
from the droning voices and blood of dogs
as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in
as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in
as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in
and seals my heart in its fist.
cold heart and night.
dope fiends, prostitutes were all once little girls
grown up to stretch the flesh to snapping
once innocent, once pure, now the whore of the world
just waiting for the beast that was napping
to spring to life and its flag to unfurl
down her distended, pale throat it is crapping
dying in the memory, so cold inside
the blister of the winter wind is no place to hide
from the whisper of voices and the lust of that sin
as a cold front, ice crack, frost closes in
on my cold heart,
and night.
11th Hour
speak, spoken, slowly enough
and yet too much...
i think, i thought, i was calm
yet not gentle enough...
syllable, word, phrase,
a twist of tonality
and it slips away like breath...
breathing, only functioning,
no hidden meanings...
but i spoke, i said, i did,
and you cower inside...
i never meant...but,
worlds in words a universe in a day,
a day too long for you; all I've done and never knew...
but remorse, a smile and a tear, murdered as all my loves
and disappear...
dust, and nothing...once something.
Cross My Eyes And Hope To Die
aren't you dead yet?
and isn't the grass uprooted,
the fish deboned and scaled,
the sky already bled pale;
and the toys pushed under the bed,
yet?
the gaslights are dim and yellow
the fog on my ankles is cold at times
and it's rare when the right image shows on the paper
it's a miracle when all the words flow and rhyme...
the sugary treats in the store window
look like a heaven
made of babies' bones and dusty clouds
but the achy remembrance
of the holes and erosion
linger with summery oppression
no matter how cool the autumn that follows
(like a beautiful blond, blue-eyed
toddler's teeth full of holes and hollows)
there are frogs in the trees behind the house
and in the dark they speak of older things
older than oil paints, brush rags, canvas
and circuit boards on rusty nails;
older than the house posts, and
the gods in books on the shelves...
the frogs are talking shit
about little wolves with red hair and freckles
green eyes and starry speckles
names and smiles
and miles and miles,
and miles and miles
of roads less traveled
and how far it is to get to God
where do these supposed gardens of paradise grow
on this earth?
are the gates of heaven
the gates of death,
the blue-swollen gates of birth?
what is between the birdsong joy of
waking dream
(the fundament is a pearl and its dressing gown is ocean green)
and the oppressive weight
of the wakefulness of falling
of trauma
of hand-me-down doom
of shit and harassment
of loss and want and grief and pain
of the relative nature of the shabbiness of things
how life, so like a cracked bell, rings and rings
with the hard, soulless pealing
of engraving machines
a clanging, grimed clarion
like a dead angel sings
and visions of blackness dance in my head
oh, where am i? where do i lie?
cross my eyes and hope to die...
on the last leg of my journey
stick a hypodermic needle in my thigh
balloons for the party, filled
with carbon dioxide, made of lead
a halo of tarnished gold
above the wedding bed
if i said love was something, surely would i lie
for it is nothing,
cross my eyes and hope to die...
Cross My Eyes And Hope To Die...Again
if i paint my heart's shape in the fog on a windowpane
show the inevitable directions with a rusted weather-vane
coil the barbed wire even tighter round our two embracing forms
you are not dead, this is good, embrace the cruciform...
if i open a black umbrella against the devastating maelstrom
melt down my emotions like an overheated cannon
if i say i see eternity within your wide and searching eyes
say you are the universe with the Tigris between your thighs
if i stammer out "love is nothing", then surely do i lie...
for it is monstrous and deadly, cross my eyes and hope to die.
Cupidity=Stupidity
in this brass age of logic and rust, cupid's white wings are tarnished with lust
his sweet little face is a scowl of mistrust, so let's leave his carcass gutted in the dust.
in this dark time of words of deception, love gets at best a frigid reception,
and cupid's heart pulses with malignancy, swollen and blackened and poisoned.
this world resonates with the wail of the doomed, sealed off their fates within cupid's tomb.
let's leave the fucker dead in this room, gutted and exposed like some obscene flower in full bloom...
leave him dead dead dead in the dust.
Deep Blue Twining
children laugh with their mouths to the side
butterfly tag and darkening days
comic book trades and bubblegum cards
hid and go seek with no hide
NASA and Skylab in days before back stabs
and sex meant a kiss on the cheek
snow in December, bobsleds and embers
and Santa never came if you peeked...
crawfish in hand and batman in heart
a breathless hot, summery, sweltering haze
hunting for June bugs in the overgrown yard
seemed summer would end before it could start
NASA and Skylab in days before back stabs
and sex meant the holding of hands
stolen in springtime, porno and grapevines
and KISS was the hottest band in the land
'71 to '79, '82, '83, '84, '85
everyone and everything just seemed so much more alive...
in the deep blue twining...
in the deep blue twining
i sit pondering and pining
for the intertwined innocence of youth.
Dead Feel City
never wanna' go back to New Orleans
i can smell the stench of a voodoo queen
night's so long and the day, unclean
i can feel my own death in New Orleans...
i don't wanna go back to New York City
a poisoned apple all polished and pretty
festering needle hole, putrid and shitty
i can feel my death in new york city...
i have no desire for Atlanta by night
crack-torn streets and sickly streetlights
basic survival is a nonstop fight
i can feel my own death in Atlanta at night...
i don't wanna be surrounded by the sons of Cain
a line in the nose or a needle in the vein
or a bullet-riddled night and an ugly red stain
i can feel my own death from the sons of Cain.
players talkin out their butts
crack whores and junkie sluts
gang violence and tawdry smut
doors and windows nailed shut...
concrete and cold steel
i can't think, can't feel
can't believe any of this is real
amidst urban decay and drug deals...
poisoned earth and toxic sky
crumbs for the poor from the rich man's pie
gotta' escape this beggar's lie
if i don't i may well die...
it's a dead feel city.
An Innocent Vein
if you're the peaches,
can i be the cream?
if you are the ice,
could i be the scream?
you know, you could be the wreath
of flowers at the grave
and i could be the stiffened corpse,
a cold yet trusty slave.
and you could be a wedding band
and i could be the finger
and you could slip off easily
but the memory would linger.
yeah, we could be a burning star, feeding
one another's hunger
we could rage until the passion's spent,
consumed by one another.
and i could be a bombing run,
all brilliant burning flashes
and you would be the broken ground,
blackened corpses, ashes.
and then you would be a hooded cobra
striking quicker than the eye
and i would be the wound you caused
from which we would sicken and die.
but...
if you're the peaches,
could i be the cream?
it always starts
in an innocent vein.
Dirt Under the Nails
creeping into my awareness
dirt under my nails
a growling garage for racing snails
and how does your stunted garden grow?
i was told i could grab the golden ring
if i held on tightly to all the dreamy things
sequences of sequins and the ballet of the gods
operatic nightmares of the old and dying
like an art form these charlatans practice,
shuffling along, swapping chicanery
sick and spying, accruing in the earth as build-ups of oil
like dirt under my nails tells me i am one of them (or not)
not yet hatched, not yet born into their sickly light
someone gave me a small book to fill
and i feel as though filling it is running uphill...
my legs are tired, and my back and my brain,
i need assistance before the duct tape wears away and the universe falls apart
and these sharpened, starving teeth come out of hiding
to slice the time i have been biding, to cut it to the very bone
so get me the president on the Bat-phone, cut the sibilant voices in the background
so i don't hear a whisper, just a blister on my eardrum,
superman and a red sun, kryptonite and "redrum"
tell me the beach towel is really a cape
and my superpowers just haven't manifested yet
i want to be what i could never hope for...
to fly off the handle at the speed of sound, to think faster than a bullet
pull off all those boy scouts' good deeds,
my theme song a dirge played on timpani drums
accompanied by low-end reeds
and the shadowy parts that darken my face will be fluttering bats, out of place
so it looks like Chaplin's mustache beneath my nose
and the flowers that intoxicate me would be orchids with black veins
rather than the stench of ancient genocide
on a cross, a spectre of myself hung and swayed
misunderstood by self-proclaimed prophets, and laid to rest in a somber mood
instead of learning from the words the spectre spoke,
they venerate a bloodied rood
(the more blood and guts, the more crass and crude,
the more these people demand that food.)
no more heroes, for the world is filled up with darkness and terror
in a furor, we claim to make no errors,
to portray perfection in every solitary word bubble
in every thought or action, so we need no heroic iconic tales
to bolster the soul, to fill the sails, and push us up to further reaches
we are, rather, stranded in our broken vessels,
shipwrecked and doomed on bloodstained beaches
refusing to read, we just look at the pictures, oh when do we ever learn?
i learned my lesson from watching mistakes made by the cartoons of handlers of snakes
now asps and cobras are coiled in the white house,
that monolithic elephant armed to the ivory tusk
to defend the nation against the threat of a white mouse
loose from the lab
with the wires still attached...
the "great experiment" is a Frankenstein monstrosity running amok
we are stuck, stranded once again on an island of our own making
an isolation of exclusion, believing in an illusion of originality
that we have created anything special, anything of worth,
anything not grimed with the dirt under the fingernails of thousands of years
of human failure...
in another steamy overrun village
in another part of the world that forgot it was part of the world
children whine for the same reasons as our own,
the glue cracks with age, maelstroms rage with thundering erosion, the poison of time
kills memories like blackbirds trailing dust on their wings as they fall to earth
gravity drags breasts, buttocks, shoulders, and houses into the grave,
and the faded signs on the edges of town still read,
"Jesus saves",
"rooms, only $9.99 per nite!",
and
"sponsored by the Nowhere, GA lion's club"
life for the village in which we live is another day in the process of dying
and being reborn,
and no one remembers who was at church last Sunday or 30 years before
who bought Holcomb's gulf station, or whatever happened
to the feed and hardware store...
the kids are too busy fucking and playing on the Wii to go to school
and the corrugated tin roof falls in as poppa and his buddies
slug back Budweiser and talk of titties
and play poker with Jr's college savings
and go on with their redneck ravings about how everything is the foreigners' faults
blame the government, or MTV, or video games, or the braves' recent loss
or anything at all but their own actions,
or inaction
for the inevitable decline of everything...systems fall apart, the center cannot hold;
the wedding ring is a down payment on divorce and alimony, child support and acrimony,
not the flash of golden years spent together in rocking chairs on the repainted front porch
of decades of devotion,
not the diamond-rock-hardness of determination to make something work;
the wedding dress is stained with nicotine and coffee rings,
with the impurities of modern life, infidelities of husband and wife
(the lifespan of new computer technology
is longer than that of dependability or
reliance on family values or loyalty)
and family is just a metaphor for communal living...
so where do we go from here when the beer mugs are drained on the bar on Saturday night,
the divorced barmaid is in bed with bar owner on Sunday morning shouting
something like a sermon in reverse, like "oh my Gawd!"
and the children wonder where breakfast is;
when the workaday world forgets the heroes, forgets the battle, is too wrapped up in
the chatter of wall street, and the rattle of fax machine death rattling to remember that
"one of every one shall fall and life will be the death of us all";
too busy uncrucifying itself to remember the lamb
to gingerly blot away the blood and tears
allay the fears and pull out the nails, to get human and get dirt under its
fingernails.
where do we go when the future fails?
1989
sleep is a black leather sound like wings
like a slow poly rhythm and backward masking
tape over eyes and mouth, Spanish moss on limbs
old negro spiritual hymns, sung in Cantonese in Beijing
in a greasy, soulless illegal opium den sipping chai
and sponging out the suffering of the flesh
undead, a slow unscheduled morphine waltz in a cobwebbed salon
autumn in Milan and Americana circus kitsch
the rapist mocking his prey before giving her what-for
and cutting her throat, hanging her like a pig for salt-curing
all the illnesses of childhood hung on a line to dry
"an eye for an eye", violent images are enduring
an elusive, shy pet monkey in the tree of night
skittering and scampering in playful preoccupation
with dreadful outcomes and cheap obsessions
an economy in slow recession and a waisted line from rapid inflation...
sleep in 1989, stayed there in isolation.
Antecherubic
flesh hook in the eye open wide eye convoluted light
human sexuality akin to urban blight reminding blinding
a spirit trapped a mortal act a portal snapped shut
like books inhuman stained of bloody aftermath
when, like dead angels falling, we choose a slighter path
black teacher, preacher speaking apostasy, heresies
congregate asleep but sneaking glimpses of what is to come
here's your bottle, baby, drink your milk and suck your thumb
pretend the lamb might know you, but you are blind, deaf, and dumb
awaken! for that time is far too near to be ignored
I AM sends no spirit divisive, of fear, but a sword
to excise the disease polluting life, stealing wealth
come to the table, let's explore your spirit's health
DEAD! in the water, floating face down, mesmerized
by serpents' lies, open your eyes, what have you believed?
well, cast it away, hear the Word, for you have been deceived!
names for light, all spoken backwards, inside out
elbows crooked, arms embracing everything we are not about
crablike, sidewise walking, traditions of men, dark smiles dangling
the bait of convenience, and stalking, dead spirits mangling
the meaning put before your face, the axis shall shift again
Katabole, lost in space, the rift you feel is within within
and though he wears a pretty mask, the cherub's not your friend
the cherub is a chimpanzee, turning flips to gain applause
the cherub is not in himself your end, but in truth he is the cause...
Back
i hear, in echoed splendour, somewhere in the back of memory
another resonance of doors that slammed on you and me
and so i take precautions, asking all the questions plaguing me,
yet each new situation puts me further from the thing i seek,
why is everyone so fucked up?
i think i have the answer, yes i think that you might be the one
but then i see the patterns creeping in like untold lies
i hear the words, "i love you", but you push me away
a flashback on a silver screen in a movie about yesterday
and i go easy on myself (just this one time)
and i pretend it isn't me (but it's all that's on my mind)
and a screaming, panicked voice reaches out to make me choke
and i can't talk to you with these hands around my throat!
i see, in painful replay, a mask of ice upon your face
mocking tones that sting my ears, yet put me in my place
and all i do could never satisfy your expectations
more than a love affair, this feels to me like masturbation
why is everyone so fucked up?
i think i have an answer, yes! i need to run away
as far as i can get from this self-destructive power play
a game of tug-of-war (my feelings seem so transitory)
if i only knew what for (but it's looking like the same old story)
and i go easy on myself (just this one time)
and i pretend it isn't me (but it's all that's on my mind)
Blood Ritual
when the eyes roll back in the head and the flesh
turns a pasty yellow, lolling and nodding on the neck on the shaking body
-rather like a dandelion swaying in thee wind on the tip of the stem...
on the tip end far side of loss of control-
look deep down the well of the yawning throat,
see who's pulling the levers on the dark side of the soul
when the body starts to bloat and every syllable is cleverness
never mind, ever heed that intangible kind of chunky mess...
as the roiling oiled coils of serpents fill the night sky above the now-prone form,
flames in tongues all leaping about and sibilant formulae issuing out
from the vents in the soil, in the loamy rotting earth as it turns,
the ocean of unconsciousness churns
the skylight, the window opens wide, a gate
in the nothingness that burns like a blistered,
bloodshot and red swollen eye...
it would seem like an upsetting, an untidy, sorrowful beginning;
tradition or corruption? the sinister bloodletting
is really the means to an ending
and the end.
Dollhouse Abomination
i see living porcelain an imitation of skill and guile so pale and perfect, you emulate life every curve is sculpted like your smile a spring flower in bloom in winter and you dance to the tones of the wind (the direction it blows defines how you bow) and your dress is so Madame Alexander circa 2003
painted lips and glazey-eyed
wide, and too doe-like
(who could slap the smile from the corners
of your mouth?)
all derived from proper breeding
all the costumed drama
of privileged living in the south
each hair so perfect placed
so the part does not reveal
the rows as plugs implanted in
your plastic skull
each blemish so carefully erased
so the rabble might not feel
anything but enchanted
(though the reality is dull)
pretty doll in packaged lustre
waiting for the boys to cluster
around you, untouchable fabrication
another dollhouse abomination.
Drambuie and Despair
listen to that!
oh my dear, my love! that is sweeeeeet
blissful deathly music
to my ears...
it rings on, peals on,
tintinnabulates
never hesitates
it resonates
so crystal desolate clear,
the silence within, so
pure and unsullied by the
schizophrenic warbling of
a modern world, full to the rim with
outmoded, eroded, long-gone
sentiments.
baby, that one's cool
and undeniably simple
complexity of nothingness,
gimme' some more
and an oversized shot
of Drambuie and despair.
Dreamers I (in the west)
in the west, we dream
dreaming cities filled with damned and dying marriages
weddings, chemical leaching of the soul
decadence of purity
as children we die, as lambs to the slaughter
hogs with throats cut,
we dream a daydream of comfort and joy
ease and abandon
temporality and the myth of freedom
in the west, tomorrow, we die
cease to be in our worst nightmares
the truth of the occidental
in the sun's glare we kiss babies
in the heat we murder nuns
under the cover of darkness we jerk off on corpses
and play out indecent fantasies with guns
in the world we have made
of glass and radiation, plastic, pesticides and steel
we sip cappuccinos
and watch it all fall into dust and eroded nothing
in the west, we die.
the Ourobouros returns like a wheel rolling over us
blood-soaked fealty, oh to pay, oh to pay
in the coin of older realms
kingdoms purchased with fire and blood
drugs like blood, addiction like love
blood in the food
to make us weep
tears and thorns in our rest
to make us kneel;
in the west we forget how to feel,
in the west, in the west,
we dream,
we die.
Doomed March
nothing seems real anymore
the concreteness of appearances is broken down
to the dust of mortar and the water in the mix
to the oxidized smell of rust and ozone
burning like the hair of a witch at the stake
burning, a flame for heaven's sake...
and screams and moaning;
nothing seems real anymore
or it is as the real in the unreal, or surreal,
my life is the rare pelt of a hunted animal,
rough, shoddy and awash in vermin...
the stake of wood, the wood, of ash, the ash, of flame,
the flesh on fire, the night blazing cold
and deep cerulean spotted with star fire;
pinpoints like open mouths of frigid luminescence,
screaming soft whispers, babbling nothing and everything,
whispering their secrets of entropy
-enigmas and omens, signs in the heavens,
weights and the scales, the measures of cruelty-
i looked upon the faces of the dead,
all meow-fearing, rat-infested, cat-ingested,
poisoned by gasses with nefarious names,
lye for the babies, jimsonweed nightmares, alkaloidal travesties,
an extermination machine in its hideous majesty;
the tangled masses of death socializing with himself,
the curly-locked heads of Jewish boys and girls,
the wigs and fibers made of those curls, the gold teeth melted down
with the wire rims from glasses to be remolded as medals for crooked crosses
and American flags, and babies' milk powdered, and frozen tears for tombstoned losses,
and graveyards crammed full of tiny dark wicks
of candles sputtered out for the lack of air, of fear and disgust and pomp and grandeur,
of all the dim gossamer of the swan's wing's allure,
Allouette, edelweiss and a
boy-painter named Adolf
Eichmann, final solutions, ablutions, Hitler
und Auschwitz...
headstone pavement like rotting teeth
in the sickened smile of Germany
"arbeit macht frei", alas, you never are free from this world's worst memories...
nothing seems real anymore, anymore
dead ravens perching above stalled civilization
like the carcasses of cars on a doomed highway,
the lost lover of a clock's face,
time run out as sand to glass
the pasty visages of children in shallow water
and butchery of entire villages in the night, by cowards
in twilight, in darkness...
caress the senses i spit and did not mean to do so,
but the spittle landed on a statue of the virgin dressed all as my bride or Frankenstein
i smelled only the copper scent of blood, i felt only onrushing words as floods
of locust and pestilence and the mourning of mothers and daughters
of the hurt i can cause, an unreal requiem, my heart stilled...
mount the back of a pale steed, grasp the mane and hold on for life,
observe the flesh like plaster-soaked linen
the bruises look like accusatory words, inflammation of emotion,
the wings of such fell birds of carrion,
see the staples along the ridge of burnt, scarred flesh, press for an answer,
loss and loss, and loss and want, loss and nothing and dust,
dust and nothing, raise your head, open bruised, purple eyelids,
see me see you, i did, did i kill you?
and so, on the hurting goes, like a march doomed to dust,
and the darkness grows, like a march violet rotting on its stem
my head falls to drop my chin on my chest, all of this world is a nest of rats
crawling with bubonic plague, and it is all my perception, dim and vague
and lifted from the ground on reeking wind
to fly at me in sleep, to terrorize my nights, so alone i chase down words
and more golden suns than shine in the modern world's sky
(where went the child of yesterday?)
in dust, i bury gold, in dust and nothing dreams unfold and nightmares come to light
creep like hair from stunted follicles...
dead infants weeping tears of ash are all this world has left;
tears of blood in a blistered eye,
cross my stupid fucking eyes and i can only hope to die...
before the world around me sees what the cat's dragged in,
ragged and torn, unwell, unborn
and bound to a cross the shape of decayed like a tooth in a socket,
opened locket, stop the film, burn it up, roll the press with no delay
awaiting silent photographs of children locked in pornographic veils
rent through by adult hands with echoed flutes piping pan's golden paen
but the fist is closed so tight that the thousand pipers hiding beyond the blue gates of
death and lust and dawn, they obscure the image truly there, the vile and over-bloated with
the screaming smile turned upside down, the priestess' blood-soaked wedding gown,
the grinning cannibalistic clown, the pool of hell in which children drown,
the worst side up and the upside down, the crooked cross and dictator's crown,
the leathery beat of wings at night,
unidentified scritch and loathsome bite
of some psychic leech devouring the light;
suit and tie vampire and vile parasite,
conceal the truest nature of human extermination,
confabulate the truth about immortal immolation
distort the leering image of the master with the whip...
forcing a doomed march.
Dancing in the West (dreamers II)
to pursue some life (night) be the life of the party
(oh, y'know party girls drop from rufies an da beat)
all the time life is just melting out your ears
(but tha dj keep everyone dead but on they feet)
nonstop feelgood mindfuck devotion
don't breathe drown-all chemical ocean
desperate overflow of painful emotion
not at all when there's a wall, a heal-me-feel-me potion
(but the best part is feeling good, ten feet tall)
but does it feel good, then why do it at all?
(there's truly no addiction, i just want what i want)
you want to be distant, distorted, pale and gaunt?
hmmmmm...
nonstop needitall gimme more device
a shot or two'll see me through, it feels so nice
(besides, you're just too bland, i need a lil' spice)
ah, this new generation can't even define "vice"
(i need chemicals to even start to relate to you)
addiction or dependency, still something that you do
(but moderation, don't you see...emotional, artistic?)
the girl in my dream world always becomes another statistic.
Drops In A Bucket (four years in coming)
did you have to leave so suddenly?
was it as urgent as all that?
i mean, i know suffering is only relative
but surely yours was not so great...
unless...
unless it was all four years in coming,
like you said.
Drops In A Bucket
hair smelling so funny to me til i met her
and sniffed at her neck
ever caught a whiff of roses, stale smoke and just
purely pearly girl?
my little girl smelled just like that
and now all i can perceive is the
rottenness of love
like a cold and foul discharge from a
stinking hole...
where she should be in my heart
like the decomposition of leaves in fall
from grace in the garden in the gleam of the eye
set firmly in the face
of this
occasional need to die.
Dying In A Dilated Pupil
the deadly drag of the smoke machine
the venom of bones in the coke machine slot
a dozen terminal teenage dreams
stumbling with pain, ready or not...
wipe my brow of sweat, seep up the blood
Jesus is in Gethsemane, still praying
while we're stuck digging up carcasses from the flood
read the iceman's lips, what is he saying...
that the teacher is a student of Karl Marx?
that the flame never was, without the spark?
that an unseen enemy hides in the dark?
that no revelations came from Lewis and Clark?
that the tap has run dry? that the chosen few cry? while the rest of us die
a death
in the form of a dilated pupil?
the pain in my side is a razorblade
it's how nightmares are made and come alive
with a sand pail and a plastic spade
i was buried in soot before the casket arrived...
excavations and radio stations
rotting teeth and castration by memory
the knives and icepicks of dental prostration
wielded by hands i could not see...
like the teacher is a student of Nietzsche and Freud,
like the flame was digested in the gut of the void,
like the enemy is yourself and must be destroyed,
like mistakes of the past, we can't seem to avoid.
and the well is bone dry, and the pariahs all cry, while the rest of us die
a death
in the form of a dilated pupil.
Engines of Destiny (dust in ye)
where
where is the roar?
where in the engine of the world?
coated in dust, the gears corrode
the machine ceases to turn
the deserts cease to burn
the world is frozen to a ball of ice
where...
where is that rumble?
the universe grumbles
the stars all fade
the lower lip trembles
as the father glides away
and atlas stumbles
i shrug and move along
where...
where is the drone?
where is the groaning in the walls?
a black look as society falls
a swift kick in the balls
a nail through your feet
and a star in your forehead
the machines are all dead
where, where, where,
where?
Pollyanna Perplexus
daughters of patriarchs, arkons of distress
the devil with swaying hips in a blue dress...
heron silhouetted blood-red setting sun, before she pirouetted,
pulls the trigger of that gun...too much to swallow, too hard, desire runs begging...
cum and blood on a hot pink legging and smiley faces disappear (except masks she uses well)
shredded by loss and fear, walking paths to hell,
no one can stop, turn, pull the poison out, refrigerate the rotting meat,
place toppled dancer upright on feet-
sets off in search, needs hearts and homes, returns to causing pain
(kicked dog gnawing old bone) programmed to feed on failure
tragedy, despair and shame
(knowing that she could be burned, she shrugs and eats the flame)
in her own spirit builds up walls of excuses and lies, lets no one near it...
needs hearts and homes, returns to preset heartbreak
(kicked dog gnawing old bone)
hears the truth, feels the earth shake
(knowing that she could be crushed, she leaps into the earthquake zone)
daughter of a patriarch; arkon of old age insanity and death
(daughter eyes reflecting daddy's lies)
she has her own betrayal on her breath...
breaks no cycles, follows chains and links, stares into the sun of obsession
then wonders why she cannot (will not) blink, eyes focused open and deeply horrified,
wonders why all the flowers and bunnies die (cannot swallow age-old pride)
her naive heart is mystified as, like bull in china shoppe,
topples the world around herself, knocks all the vessels off the shelf,
tramples them to blood and dust,
cannot fit it all back together, and goes off to feed
her exquisite lust...
Lemonade I (child’s drink)
A patch of dreary need in a can;
Catch a flock of floating images, hovering innocence,
A cloudy glass of lemonade
When you realize the day went broke
Black clouds of gnats skating icecapades
A sad sort of charades
(or just a joke?)
At your expense…
A high whine on the highway, just a mile from your home
It’s 3 am. within a sweating, smoking dreamland
Your life’s love sleeps beside you, but the silence
Sleeps alone.
Close your eyes, open up your mouth to scream, and…
Those undeniable Michelins on the interstate
Preach the new age doom of some teenage chick
Strung out on bad rock n roll, holding a guitar pick
Stuck out her thumb and pulled in her pain,
(I wouldn’t say stupid, just a little too thick
To be hitching rides out in the night in America’s rain)
She could never make the charges stick
Because once he’s pulled over and she pulls open the door
Pulls in her bag and puddles raindrops on the floorboard
He’ll pull up her skirt, rip off her shirt
Pull out his knife, take her childhood, pull out her life
And she’ll end up a pile of cold, dead hick
Dead in a ditch along the byways of a forgetful nation…
And so, and so I paint
At 3 am with a cramp in my hand
And a pain in my head like the rolling of stones,
I gather no moss, just a mess
And my paintbrush burns the canvas like
The frigid, sterile stars-
Mouths agape and silent screaming O’s
Of stellar isolation
(hey man, I feel your pain)
-1,000,000 light years above the highway
The way they were the night before
I’ve envisioned all the lurid details,
I think I’ve captured the horrible gore
Sort of like a painter named Salvador,
The striations in the muscles like
An unstrung fiddle
Hey diddle-diddle
Kitty cat-gut roosting in the crevasses
Stranded in a neurological band-aid
Painted on my canvasses….
Oh, the black flocking gnats are off to Capistrano
‘Cos the swallows have nowhere else to be anymore
What with forests disappearing
And hell! You can’t see the trees
For the forest of greed and profit
But at least the gnats can fill the vacant setting
Where this white boy used to keep an emerald
In the crown of my truly impressive failure
Like in the fabled song
I lost it when I looked down
But Bob Dylan was not outside out-of-tunely crooning,
It was a siren’s song that called to me
With words culled from the TV news
Like "war" and "famine" and "poverty"
All I have to show is a nasty bruise
And my pen still has some ink
Though it is mental, it’s emotional
And I never have to stop to ponder
Just write up another devotional to its dysfunction
Just place my bet on the cloud of frozen memory
Wafting from the stolen dreams
Corroding in the kitchen sink,
Ah fuck!
The bones of little Amy and Katie are beginning to stink
Under the loose floorboards, under the buckets and the bleach
Under the tons of sand I unloaded
On the shore
And like a thousand star-shot nights ago and ago and before,
I wink once more,
Tilt my nodding head on its crooked neck a bit
Say "what the heck?" or "oh well, shit!"
And if I think I hear some tires whining
On the highway a mile away from your house
I’ll just sip this clouded lemonade
Swat at the shadowy 3 o’clock cavalcade
Of gnats and choke down another shot
Of cigarette smoke and blank contemplation…
My childhood drink is sour again.
"If I cast my eyes before me,
what an infinite space in which I do not exist;
and if I look behind me,
what a terrible procession of years in which I did not exist,
and how little space I occupy in this vast space of time…"
-Blaise Pascale, "Penses".
Lemonade II (aged like wine)
When eyes fold shut as blinds in windows
And birds roost homeward and the summer wind blows
And maidens wait with whitest breasts
Upon the turret in the ivy where twilight nests…
In the cobwebbed corners of the mind of man
Perched within a patch of dreary need in a tin can
Ah, a tight fat spider awaiting careless flies
Catches flocks of fleeting images and lies…
Innocence floating in a cloudy glass of lemonade
When you realize that the day is flat broke
Black clouds of gnats performing insectile icecapades
A sort of gray charade (or just a mute joke?)
At the expense of the living
And that special tree has stopped giving…
A high whine on the highway, only a mile from your home
And at 3 am within a sweaty, smokey dreamland
Your lover sleeps next to you, but the silence
Sleeps alone.
Closed eyelids, opened gaping mouth to scream, and…
Those undeniable Michelins on the interstate
Preach of the inevitable doom of a teenage chick
Thumb hooked out, she’s a bit too thick
She could never make the charges stick…
Because once he’s pulled over and she opens the door
Pulls in her bag, he lifts up her skirt
Pulls out the knife and pulls out her life
And she’s just a big pile of cold, dead hick…
I paint at 3 am with a cramp in my hand
Tired through and through to the bone
My paintbrush burning the canvas like
The frigid sterile stars
-mouths agape and silentscreaming streaming live-
1,000,000 light years above that highway
With the orange halogen lamps drawing moths
Like the unfortunate teen hick chick dead in a ditch
Just like ma and pa said she would end up;
Oh, the stars on fire the way they were
The night before…
I’ve envisioned all the lurid details,
I believe I have captured the neon gore
Sort of like that painter named Salvador,
The striations in the musculature like
An unstrung fiddle
Hey diddle-diddle
Kitty catgut roosting in the crevasses
Stranded in a neurological band-aid
Painted on these canvasses…
Oh, the black flocking gnats are all off to Capistrano
Because the swallows don’t belong there anymore
With all the great woods disappearing
And, hell, you can’t see the fucking trees
For the forest of greed and profit and lies
But at least the gnats fill the vacant setting
Where this white boy once kept an emerald
In his crown of truly impressive failure
Like in the fabled song
I lost it when I looked down
But Dylan was not out-of-tunely crooning
It was a siren’s song that called to me
With words culled from TV. news
Like "war" and "famine" and "poverty"
All I have to show is a nasty bruise
And my starvation pen still has some ink
And it is mental, it’s emotional
And I never have to stop to ponder
Just place my meager pile of cash
On an ice floe in the cloud
Of frozen memory
In the sour lemonade that was served to me.
Libations for Lonesome
See her there, so lovelorn, eyes
Of passing fancy, fiery-sweet
As drops the rain in single drips
She speaks her name, tosses quips
Juggles light and, so effete!,
She gently, gently sighs…
Her mind made up, makes up her mind
Of two parts joy and one part sorrow
One part faith, one part doubt
Hides within and plays without
Lives today, but yearns the morrow;
Her giddy spinning leaves her blind…
Touch her world, feel it tremble
Precious drop in a raging flood
Pushed by fortune (or circumstance)
See her caper, watch her dance
Trace her pattern, but wear a thimble
Lest life spill out as sugary blood…
Her umbrella twirls, her mind, it races
To gallop forward in her pride
She cannot (will not) pause, nor wait
Always too early, or again too late
Never dare you ask her to bide
For, though she longs to be the bride
And though she grins and smiles so wide
She’ll destroy you from within her stasis
So, careful go if you would touch her
Take heed and take precautions
And take your heart within your hands
Wring it out upon the sand
Of a barren beachhead called "isolation"
As a sacrifice for a carnal vacation.
Cause For Cheer
Mr. Sunshine pops up over hill
Warms the valley below
Gentle spring rain stops falling
World alive with brilliant rainbow
Trees spread forth branches to sky
And clouds don’t hint at the storm
A nest in a tree, mother on egg
And a chirruping new life is born
Gurgling stream carries fish to food
And waters surrounding land
And farmer plows fields to feed family
With healthy dirt on weathered hands
And the warmth goes on shining
And life goes on living
And taking and taking
And the land can’t keep giving
So the crop burns away
And soil turns to dust
And the animals starve
And it’s all as it must
And the farmer curses the sun
For his family can’t be fed
And now those annoying smiles are gone
Because everyone is dead…
Hooray!!!
(heh)
Devotions
No praise for this world we have built from steel
No praise for its windows and spires
No praise for the pollution-hued sunset
As the burning red sun retires…
No love lost on poverty, corruption or greed
None spent on epicurean curiosity
No pearls before swine as the battlefields bleed
No love for temptation in its thick viscosity…
No home for the wretched, no shelter for killers
No quarter given to murdering thieves
No temple built for imagined deities
They all fade to mere dust as the composting of leaves…
No thoughts to spend on the passing of youth
Not an ounce of concern for a pound of flesh
Only stern reckonings for confounders of truth
But that day’s not upon us as yet…
So all praise to the Master, Creator, Lord,
All glory to the King of all Kings,
All praise and adoration for Father, my maker,
All devotion to the Master of all things!
A Besmirched Union
Off limits, don’t touch,
Don’t see too much
Don’t think too hard,
Just do and be
The text is somewhat sleazier
And everything is easier
If you never see more
Than what you’re told to see…
Great swaggering, sauntering
Image in the public window
Shakes hips, pouts lips
See the cleavage when it bends low
And you strive to touch its proportions
All your sad, pathetic life
And your heart is an abortion,
Though the image is your wife.
City Profile #1: Adonis
Adonis smiles, diamond teeth,
razors shredding sidewalks into segments
as his image shines upon the sleeping city
from the weathered billboard;
fade to blackened pools of shadows
between moth-eaten lamppost paradise
-a slick and slithering falsity, fashions beg for devotion,
supermodels starving in black-circled hungry lead and soulless eyes-
the city rumbles silence
(or nearly; truly, underneath, the soft velveteen Persian kiss of predators through its streets),
muffled death prowls and haunts back alley hallways
that stand in remembrance of dead teenagers,
idols crash to the pavement, littering oily evenings
with shards of unspoken summer nights,
vociferous tempest, swells and surges,
urgings of the masses on the doorstep
of the mindless fear of barbarity arising -vengeful-
from the ashes of yesterday's mock-civility…
"here we come, here come we; slogging through the blood of innocents;
arson, snipers, assassins of light, love and sanity;
we'll get you as you shop or sleep or fuck or pray!"
Adonis grins his sickly smothering obsession at the world
and the light squirming mournfully just bleeds and runs away
from the Korean grocers and angry black children with guns,
from riot squads and the LAPD,
from hidden mountain bases and brown poisoned seas,
slipping into box canyons in the hot blood-steamy hills
outside of Hollywood with a face like Sharon Tate
and the soul of Roman Polanski;
it's a Process you cannot see
-dead presidents' faces, Hell's Angels, motor oil, L.S.D. and Patty Hearst-
Lost Angels dead on a battlefield
as the final bubble in America's heart bursts…
City Profile #2: Diana's D.C.
Diana's widened wizened thousand roving roaming eyes blink never, ever and rears her arms as black as pitch back as coal to slap to reach to embrace this Never-never-again Land, agents of chaotic forces creeping through the maze-like masonic night world, cherry tree lined and lubricated with libations of the blood of light-skinned martyrs and defunct Cold War prophets, fueled with power plays and money games and no one man can stop it, for the glory of the Empire pulses on forever in green slitted dragon's eyes from a tarnished throne a thousand miles from square one and a thousand years with no setting sun and the highland hills hold the smoking gun…
"For what we do presage is not in grosse, for we are brethren of the Rosie Crosse; we have the Mason Word and second sight, things for to come we can foretell aright; and shall we show what mysterie we meane, in fair acrosticks CAROLUS REX is seene…"
and these bricks and stones all laid in foreign blood hide wisdom (or mere foolishness) we culled from ere the Flood, foundations, stations, and before we all were here; this time we hide in secret numbers, canted angles, tiled floors, and disappear. The marble and pomposity, the grandeur and the board for chess, tangs and yens, games of kings, king-making we to steal the relics, lock down gates, dress up all the sticks and stones like Barbie Dolls from Jupiter the Image falls; just an omen, just a stick and we power up to make you sick and steal more time from naïve hicks; perpetual homoerotic clique (like slithering serpents, we)…
A Season of Rape and the Wicked Prevail
Poets rhyme
And hunters hunt
The blood runs black and red
Through pages locked
In history
A long, cold fireless night and
A divine mystery
A tragicomic lopsided leer
A long walk off
A short pier
A woman shackled and shivering
To a double-edged, lethal blade
The bride of purity,
Small and quivering
Writhing within the rape
Of brutal eyes of
Smoke black skies
Of angels murdered
And gods assailed…
The sons of God plowed under
And the walls of the temple scaled
And pulled down
To dust…
Put it all down to Cain's lust.
Case #44: The Forensic Examiner's Wife
The radio waves are silent
For a season
So I believe her to be dead
Then the wire twitches
Long enough
For her to get back into my head
And her voice is whispering
Sibilantly
Of flowers and love and remorse
And I haven't the strength
To shut her out;
Such a sorrowful discourse…
The sun smiles down dispassionately
An imbecilic icon
And I photograph the corpse again;
A fly upon the Nikon…
Back in the lab, I work 'til dawn
Pretending I don't know her
But the sadistic tools of this forensic trade
Insist I let them show her…
The radio, yes, sits silent
No reason
To question my own mind
But you can't play doctor with the dead
For free,
Ah, God! I was so blind!
Poisoned Pill
Spend the lighted hours locked in reverie
Tear-stained rags of days, soaked with memory
(a fading midday silhouette on the wall)
Avoidance, isn't it simply impossible,
And the change of seasons, unstoppable?
(yet, there is your spectre, dead leaves in fall)
Rustle on by, crinkled like age and dust
Break me a little more, broken, as my trust
(a candle's flame sputters in wax)
Pain isn't memory, pain isn't passed
Pain is not history, too untamed and vast
(a fractured heart mutters all these facts)
Are you first to hurt, are you last to heal?
Find it hard to digest this poisoned meal?
Is it only despair, only defeat?
Step right into my house, have a seat…
Futility Oracle
This world and her daughters
Motion and gesture like inept actors
Plow up existence as they pace the stage
Drunk on torment, yet driving the tractors;
Beg for more pain and then move on
This world has moved on and here sit I, pondering
Alone in a void, as today's daughters
Make great voids of nothingness, a-wandering
Whisper dark words beneath breath again
Make hulking heaps of wreaths for death again
Climb on top, mount suffering like a steed
Sit that unstable saddle, and hump 'til they bleed
Refuse to shoulder human grief
Refuse the blame, then beg for more
This world is a vagabond thief
And all her daughters, oh, all are whores…
Prostitutes for shames all past
Hookers for today's depredations, lost tomorrow
(turning their tricks for the blood and violence)
Streetwalkers for loss and sorrow
(sluts for the smothering silence)
All they could beg, steal, or borrow
Locked down tight within earth, beneath earth
Selling the new morning…another stillbirth
Mummified in curio cabinets in dusty backrooms
In yesterday's emporium, hidden in the gloom
Priestesses of the here and now, building their plush tombs
Oracles of futility, prophesying doom…
Lust For Life
These children, so alive! Youth is wasted on them
They are dead…they pose for mirrors and prance to each
Other, they fuck for death and kill their mothers…
Despise the ideas they do not understand, and line up
To learn with gun in hand…no future, no future for
These lovely children; their misdirected lust for life
Will ultimately kill them…
A Russian Age
Age of reason, flow with rhyme
Mother Russia, Father Time
Empires sink in seas of dust
Barbed wire, landmines, all are rust…
Two hands build up what always falls
Multiplied by millions within camp walls
The slaughtered innocent, the dead in piles
And armored columns for miles and miles.
Age of winter, kills with rime
Mother Russia, Father Time
Empires drown in seas of dust
Airplanes, tank treads, all are rust…
The features flow, the faces melt
Behind machine guns and bullet belts
Accusations of the dead in Christ
Mute observations from a martyred life.
Age of reckoning in summertime
Mother Russia, Father Time
Empires founder in seas of dust
Bayonets, rifles and pistols are rust…
War is the practice of tearing down;
Tragicomic worship by pathetic clowns;
An altar of violence and stunted vision;
Pagan temples for a brutal religion;
And so does mankind force himself to concede
To the basest desires of the earthbound seed;
Poisons himself, poor suicidal weed;
Mothers mourn as their children bleed…
Age of the Scorpion, path of shame
Mother Russia's killing game
Empires sink down in seas of dust
Barbed wire, tank treads, all are rust…
Born of Water
From whence came we?
From whence came we?
Another age, an older place
For the glory of Heaven to see, to see;
Another world in another time,
For the glory of God to be, to be,
For the glory of Heaven to see.
To be baptized but not to drown
To be born into flesh and by Death ground down
To be baptized, and yet to breathe
While those also fallen still rage and seethe.
From whence came we?
From whence came we?
Another age, an older place
For the glory of Heaven to see, to see;
Another world in another time,
For the glory of God to be, to be,
For the glory of Heaven to see.
Born of water, to suffer and smother
Born to be broken, and to break hearts of mothers
Here for a day of trials, tribulations
Here to suffer swift death and then jubilation
Here to succeed where many have failed
Where so soon set aside we'll be cruelly assailed
Here to be hated as the One who was nailed
On a tree, oh! Anointed, and so shall He prevail.
From whence came we?
From whence came we?
Another age, an older place
For the glory of Heaven to see, to see;
Another world in another time
For the glory of God to be, to be,
For the glory of Heaven to see.
For Father and maker
For Son and glory and power and love
For to plead salvation
I turn self and spirit to the Most High above.
From whence came we?
From whence came we?
Another age, an older place
For the glory of Heaven to see, to see;
Another world in another time
For the glory of God to be, to be,
For the glory of Heaven to see…
Puddle Stain
Just a solitary moment of pain
Isolated in the brine of memory
Quantifiable loss you can measure in inches
A spike in a cross for the one who flinches
There's no flaw in the body, no glitch in the brain
Nothing to pinpoint, nothing to see
Crushing despair, every breath lodged in guilt
The love isn't there, just the blood I spilled…
Ate my soul like it was candy
Drank my anguish like aged brandy
Sampled every pain I could feel
Fed you well, my emotional meal…
A patent leather smile means nothing to me
Dermal expression for hiding your heart
The mask you wear never worked on me, honey
But if you shake it enough, I'm sure you'll get your money
You be what you think you should be
And while you're at it, tear some more lives apart
Crushing anger, every breath lodged in pain
The love isn't there, just a dried-up brown stain…
Worm Turns
Who watches hearts as they, consumed with passion, burn?
Who watches all things die; for everything there is a season…
Who watches every slight blow away and then return?
Who pulls the puppet strings of passion and reason?
What overseer is reflected in this human mirror?
I live with fear that I might never know its name,
I wipe away my grime, but the image is no clearer,
A stepping stone in time, a space on a board in an endless game…
Pausing to reflect on this
The pain contained in worry lines
Dark glass reflecting nothing
And these eyes, they are not mine…
Who bids the sun to rise on a world of sullen emptiness?
What shadow lord devised such a reeking trap as this?
Who bade that light should glow in this pit of petty selfishness?
Each face I see shows another facet of the abyss…
What master dominates and glories in suffering's wake?
Fixed in this intolerable state, we suffer and pretend we don't,
We travel roads of dust to death when we are not awake;
Tell me, "this will change, it must", but I insist it won't…
Babes that are born slithering
Flowers blossoming, withering
Foolish youth a-dithering
And again the fat worm turns
And the world, in passion, burns.
In Silence Drown
Who wrote the book full of dusty laws
That said you had to walk on clouds to be free?
Who penned the chapter, authored the verse
Who explained with Hemingway detail the curse?
Who told you that you could not be with me
Who set in stone, acid-etched and solid,
The rules you purport to be the best for you?
What mason with devious design made you lie?
What hateful pillar made my broken heart die?
By whose authority, these things you do?
Who stirred the surface of the ocean to foam
That you cast about as if nearly to drown?
Whose foul breath on the placid surface
Blew white-caps to dunk us, and to what purpose?
Who anchored your destiny and pointed it down?
Who painted all the flowers with gray and brown?
Who orated such a glum black Easter service;
Who painted a smile upside down on the clown?
What magus of tragedy moved his hand to the side,
To reveal bloodied secrets to you?
Who stole away in the night with my bride,
Leaving me holding an off white wedding shoe?
What Cinderella mythos breathed its foul life anew?
Why do these dark rolling clouds obscure all good I could do?
Clouds that roll on in an unrelenting tide
To drown, to drown, to drag me down
And drown…
In the silence,
In the darkness,
Still seeking the cause.
No One Will Remember Me
In the corner of the moon, a crater in the hallway
These shadows do not come for me, for they have been here always
Like flowers of dusty stolen dreams, they blossom and arise
A tiny breath of movement in the corner of my eye
And no one needs to tell me why breath becomes a task
For I would recognize her face, regardless of the mask
So terrible yet wonderful, an incarnated paradox
Muses, furies, faeries, demons, the big bad wolf and Goldilocks…
Death will come for me one day
When all the world has washed away
Death has come for me this night
Her tresses traced in firelight
Death will make me hers sometime
And cloak my face with frost and rime
Death shall have her way with me
And then no one will remember me…
Oh, don't doubt my words, for Death, she is a queen
On the surface, in the heart, on the pages in between
Not a goddess nor a devil, no succubus she
Merely female in vision, of what must surely be
I feel her fingers run down my throat
Dogs are howling, and murdered cherubs float
On the breath of a black and dead Sunday
And I know this bitch, she will come for me one day…
Death will come to steal my life
Like she took my children and my wife
She haunts the horrors of my dreams
Tells me she isn't as bad as she seems
But she smells of mold and age-old decay
Life had his shot, now it's her turn to play
Death shall have her way with me
And then no one will remember me…
No one will remember me
Just a small silly footnote in history
A shapeless spectre no one will see
Oh, no one will remember me…
Impact
Miniature rivulet runs up her back
The muscles shiver and tic
Like ants under her skin
I watch her sleep in exhausted dawn
Eyelids flicker a bit
Moths' wings at the window to be let in…
Watching her nightmare unfold, a parasol
Against the moon and stars
Light engulfed in a crack
Feeling the form on the bed as it falls
Peeling back layers, scratching at scars
Waiting for the world to impact.
Of Heart Attacks and Spirit Quacks
Little alabaster statuette
Cyclic, the moon riding biorhythms
No one to see in a room full of strangers
Smoky obsidian mirrors and razor-cut precision
Alabaster statuettes reminding of the dangers
Cyclic as the moon, marionette…
Pinocchio drowns in the whale in Nineveh
No more strings, ah, the puppet is a man?
Waving some arcane baton to drive out the demons
And all the rest is catch as catch can
Let's not have an early epitaph of incense smoke and semen
Just a gentle nod to the mastery of Shiva…
Recoup, recover and look around you
For the seas are boiling cold as ice
And the lobby is filled with nodding dead trees
Though there is only the smell of oil and spice
The sentiments are right there, rotting by degrees
Seems the nightmares of your daydreams have found you…
Heart Stopped Beating
My heart stopped beating today
And the soil dried up and the wind blew cold
And a mournful song rose up from the sick and the old
And my heart stopped beating today
And somewhere a child was disemboweled and stuffed with candy
And the flies on the top of the dung heap thought it all just dandy
And my heart stopped beating today
And the leaves fell from the trees in the middle of spring
And the groom gave the bride a June bug on a string
And it snowed in July and the flowers bloomed black
And bloody yolks replaced the centers of all the eggs that cracked
And the sky broke into a thousand pieces of dirty gray shale
And the minister burned his confessional booth and anthrax came in the mail
The guitar strings snapped and China fell into the sea
And the sun wobbled slightly and the earth shook with glee
And babies were stillborn today and the streets were slick with death
And the school burned down with the children inside
And the fire truck came but the flames had died
'Cos the world cut me off from taking a breath
And my heart stopped beating today
And ships sank in the harbor and men went to watery graves
And the pensioner didn't go to the bank 'cos only Jesus saves
And my heart stopped beating today
And the streets were deserted and the ghost town thrummed
And Der Beste Todes Macher, all he could do was hum
And my heart stopped beating today
Maybe because she walked out and didn't shut the door
Maybe 'cos she planned it all and gutted me there on the floor
But my heart stopped beating today
Just as it has a thousand times before
I am watching her back as she leaves me again,
Another archetype of perfection, fissured by sin
And those words that burn most boil up from within
"My God, she doesn't love me anymore,"
And I can tell because she is walking away
And my heart stopped beating today
All the pain and fear in my gut clenched tight like a fist
And the solidity of tradition blown away in a mist
And my heart stopped beating today
And towers of strength fell in dust to the sea
I couldn't help but see it, it was right there on the TV
And I kissed all the little girls, and I made them cry
When I said I couldn't love them, told them I would die
And told them all my wings were charred and I could never again fly
And how my heart was jagged, so they could never love me
Otherwise I'd cut their hearts and make the poor babes bleed…
And my heart stopped bleeding today…
…then along came a spider, I sat down beside her
And she wove a web that patched up the hole
(all gangrenous, infected, in my heart and my soul)
And whispered small words of great import to me
And I listened to each monosyllable so loving and carefully
But a pressure crushed my chest, and my ribcage caved in
And she sucked out my heart, and it stopped beating…
AGAIN!
Things Break
The rumble, the smoke
The last few words the dying spoke
The flames, the collapse
The responsibility upon the murderers' laps
The fathers and mothers
The mortal breath the cement dust smothers
The brilliance that died
The edginess in a paralyzed countryside
The red, the white
And the blue lit up in the choking night
The teardrop rolling from the eye
And our children asking us "why?"
And so what do we tell them in the lengthening night,
As the cold wind blows under colder starlight?
We tell them it was wrong, tell them they are safe
Tell them our freedom's ensured because Afghan villages are strafed.
Tell our children we were victimized by the people of a crazy God
And make sure not to mention the crusades, lest we be 2 peas in a pod.
We call them animals, we label them dogs
And say that our defense is as easy as falling off a log
As we carve our path through an ignorant fog
Sociopathic Ritalin nation, spazzed out on consumerism
Lie to our allies, each other, to our kids
And build another prison.
Murky
Look in the mirror one final time before shaking your head slowly and turning with the deliberate actions of an old man, stepping back into the gloomy half-light of the bedroom…cluttered memories, nightmares and a few dusty, cobwebbed daydreams populate the noontime twilight, no true daytime entering through the windowpanes -they are covered over with cracked black leather, a large sheet of it held firmly in place with silver upholstery tacks to block out the workaday world, to resist the unsolicited and unwanted advances of a world bent on eating itself (a species mad with its own irresponsibility and reveling in its prejudices). Do these things and you have stepped into my shoes, if only for a brief span of time.
It seems to me, at times, that my entire existence is composed of meanderings in my mind and wandering aimlessly to and from that aforementioned mirror; the reflection it returns to me not being that of myself, that is to say, not the self I remember me being…I peer into its depths at a safer world than this one, for no wars exist within it, no murderers run free, no lunatics on the loose, wreaking mayhem; merely what is placed before it, and then it is in the eyes of those who behold the reflections therein. Have you ever peered deep into the murky reaches of the pools within your own eyes? And if so, what sort of world was there?
Believing Everything You Read
How many children have to die
Before "I told you so" becomes "yes, I know"?
Before "take it from me"
Becomes a quiet reality?
Lou Reed whining "heroin…
…will be the death of me."
Has lost its sting, its shock
When he's still bitching on MTV
(an old-age, wrinkled living death is reality)
Always an anticlimax to teenage rebellion
When the pain of age tames the hellion
But they always come back, clichéd and so funny
"Turning rebellion into money."
Frozen Empire
Where was the burst of colors
Before it came to call, to call?
In the brush, in the canvas' grain
Unrefracted light, white on the wall?
A swirl of dreams in memories
A frozen empire built to please.
Where was that little lost girl voice
Before she let her arrows fly?
A place of throat, a place of soul,
A place where broken egrets die?
A black-gold sun on a blistered plain
A frozen empire jerks in pain.
Where was the endless tone undulating
(its broken resonance of heroin visions)
Before he banged it out of his cheap guitar
Bottled in imperfect pre-adolescence?
Daughter writhing in stained silk sheets
A frozen empire on creek bed streets.
Where was the hell unleashed by man
The discord, before we opened those doors?
Tied down, spread-eagled, naked
On dirtied threshing floors?
On a Friday morning at 6:55
When only half the world, or less, is alive
Staring a generation of dead genius down
Its blackened face and fearsome frown
Needle's plunge and teeth bared down
A frozen silken empire and a velvet underground…
Sawney Beane (Hungering)
See baby smiley gurgle and spit up on mother
See sister and sister and sister and brother
And brother and brother and father and mother
A kettle of starvation and a pillow to smother
And the sweet divil dancin' by the Tabasco sauce
Holding pliers and mint-flavored dental floss
Like some hideous painting by Hieronymus Bosch
No food in the cupboard, just shadows of yesterday
When crops grew lush and the bills were all paid
The crumbs for the rats but the rats died anyway
Oh look! Mummy's got another little one on the way
First was a false god all dancing with false promises
Speaking of fertility and longer john thomases
Then came the church with a cross and a prayer
And an article of faith that was only a snare
Copulation abounding (in marriage) but no birth control
(but if it dies in the condom, is it really a soul?)
So feed the new brood by the light of the winter moon
Their teeth all turn black like the back of a spoon
And both methods are sure enough to let in some demons
Just like Mum's vagina swallows up Poppa's semen
And spits out pink flesh, so fresh! Hypnotizing
(though it spits up on mother, it is so appetizing!)
When they hunger so deeply they would claw out their tongues
And contemplate abominations, like eating their own young.
The Last Tarot Card
Lying still and cold in its hole,
The flower that refuses to grow
Has firm hold on the roots of the weeds
Which eat it alive
And the flower is the child
That will not let go
The puerile and teary-eyed,
The brat and the mourning bride
Tears over cocktails for something not lost
And an eye-socket garden
To make the heart harden
A golden liquid sputum of flies
A grain has been bled
The cold earth is dry and hard
The trump of this grave
Is the last tarot card.
Last Flower
The last flower grows on a hill
In the shade of imagination
With no other neighbors to offer up life
With no water for its roots
And a drive to touch the sky;
The last flower blooms in mind.
The last candle sits in a window
Lit by the hopes of a hopeless child
With the cobwebs of waiting covering it
And the skeletal remains
Of the hand by which it was lit;
The last candle melts in darkness.
The howling of wind, gnashing of teeth
Weeping of the doomed, and rattling of chains
Flooded with the pain of a delicate refrain
Sung by the somber and the meek
As they shuffle off to memory.
The last sunset fell on an angel
And crushed its skull so the crimson blended well
With the dust of its tattered wings
And the wending despair
Of its halo's fading luminescence;
The last sunset fed upon the gods' essence.
The last song was sung by a madman
In a choir loft alone somewhere in Italy
He was blind and deaf, immune to the warble
Of his own toneless voice
As he crooned to be eaten by a devil;
The last song was a paean to decay.
And the last child was stillborn and the eggs last hatched were sterile
And the last man down was eaten, the last painting an inferno
Thus the last bomb dropped was Death, just like a hobo drinking Sterno…
And it rained hot lead for seven years
And the widow's eyes were full of blood-tears
And the womb of the earth is a barren waste
Well, this is just a minor taste
Of what our great intelligence can do;
The last choice is always up to you…
Hallucinogenic Matador With Feces
Warhol, Warhol burning bright
First crock of shit I've seen tonight
Fresh as the dew and twice as firm
Stiff and rolling, counting worms.
Faces, faces neon wet dreams
Does death really come in such
Abundant, lurid hues
Or more like a splattery
Jackson Pollock suicide?
No body count, but paintbrush mementos
Of ape-like, brutish panel-sex.
Dear teammate, dear player
Of the international art cartel,
Come see me shit, come see me piss,
Come see me cum on your daughter's face.
Jesus swimming in electric urine
And tygers chase their tales
In Haitian syphilitic dreams
And born-again Hermes, by Praxiteles
Sharing hyperspace and reading tea leaves
With Voltaire and you call it art,
And I call it shit.
Half-erased
Nowhere to go
Not a thing to do
Left with half-erased pictures of you
And when words won't come
The tears always will
Left to drown
Let me drown
Just another few days to go.
You grow on inside,
The night and my bride
You eat me up with a predator's smile
And my throat bared,
I walk that mile
But do you take that dare
Or just go on with the song and dance
For a little while?
Confection
If I am cut, I bleed, bleed poison and pain
If I look around too long, people fill me with disdain
I concoct a pastry of lead and futility in my soul
Slice the pie up evenly and then eat the confection whole.
If you touch me, I will burn and blister you
The acrid stench of charring trust and hope
But the sensation of mutilation is addictive
So you come back to the source to get more dope.
Devastation and ruin are the things of human life
Inhumanity and torment, misery and dust
We are butchers and barbarians, proud of what we do
We oil our blades with blood so they won't rust.
And I swim in this heady brew of monstrosity
Held afloat by morbid fascination and doom
I ignore the hands extended begging salvation;
I would haul them all aboard, but there isn't any room.
Children are our future? Who invented that lie?
The only future children offer is becoming what they know
And their education and entertainment is watching others die
Waiting for their own deaths, but the going is slow.
And though life is mere futility, continuance is an illusion
I cannot help but struggle on day to day,
To combat a growing cancer, to destroy the bland confusion
I'm dismally convinced there's a better way…
Yet, I watch with alarm as the poison finds another
And chokes vitality and life from the soul
And I concoct a pastry of hopelessness, brother,
Slice the pie up evenly and then eat the confection whole.
Korny Pleasure Palaces
Rolling eyes and lolling tongue in a face that will be
Tomorrow's skull
You, child, childish, puerile, smile
And you are nothing
But that rotten smile.
For all your beauty; flowing masses of hair
Cheeks dimpled and skin soft
(I guess it all would seem unfair
-to hold youth and beauty like
ale and a lamb chop, when really they
are a wet grave and a ham hock,
drumsticks, splintered crossbones,
poisoned water in a lake)
If you only had the head to understand
The nature of your short hectic
Frenetic, eclectic life…
The dances within which you pose and strut
The drinks you imbibe before you fuck
All facets of your childlike and grand design
Of nothingness and nihil, nowhere and dust
As you shatter to ashes the marble busts of wisdom
Prudence and moderation
With the malaise that is your very existence
In essence, children, cry for the knowledge of your deaths
Cry for the sounds of corrupted flesh
Whine for the sight of your wrinkled faces
Cry for youth lost in catacomb spaces…
Weep when you look at me,
For I am only a mirror
And as one of every one shall fall
And life will be the death of us all,
That death is drawing nearer.
Roll on the makeup like latex house paint
Swoon in a faked faint
In a cheap masquerade and cheaper disguise
But Death, my house cats, only has eyes
Only has eyes for you.
What's the weather like honey?
Shake your money-maker
While money (or the maker) still mean anything at all
….and you got voices in your head?
They speak to you from the air?
Truly, comb all the bugs from your head
And play those games alone
'Cos it’s nothing to me;
the drugs and pleasures of another
flesh-addicted Adonisian,
worshiping golden suns and phalluses
all alone in korny pleasure palaces.
Disturbia
Look into those human eyes looking into you
Vivisected, victimized, it puzzles over what you do
You can feel the pain, just the whisper of a belt;
Cringe at the twinge of agony, if you let yourself.
Every dogmatic enterprise rammed down your human throat
Is another tortured guinea pig, another butchered goat,
Another cow in the throes of terror, dying for your dinner,
Another inquisitor burning up the heretics and sinners…
The flesh of the mother is bruised and torn
Unnoticed by the killing machine just born.
The flesh of the woman is raped and beaten,
The flesh of the animal, taken and eaten;
Cannibal, animal, abominable porn.
Barbie dolls and bar-b-ques and barbiturate suburbia
Name the nightmare for itself…Cain and Abel disturbia.
Virus X
Children are zombies in a chemical dead zone
CFC's poking holes in the ozone
Chemical warfare in the land of the dull
Hypodermic of hypocrisy and an artificial lull
Experiments with syphilis to satisfy the rich
Let 'em die for "science", niggers dead in a ditch
Polluted rivers and polluted minds
The earth has become a toilet for all mankind
The deception was easy, a plague of diseases
But the press releases cover up the lies
Our cultural vomit; a target? We'll bomb it!
Then blame it on comets that burn up the skies.
Humanity is a virus!
Cloning animals, then cloning each other
Look at that as I stab you, brother
Infect the population with the deaths we discover
The Ebola rots you, the Zyklon B smothers
Rino 39, and Serin nerve toxin
Walls of gaseous death are the room we are boxed in
Never satisfied with having enough
Never relax 'til we've taken too much
And we can't give it back, this despair is forever
Artery, razorblade, all ties have been severed.
And To Kill
Long, silvery sliver of dullness, a boredom born of human remains
Piercing the flesh of my temple into the gray area within my head
A needle of pain screaming choruses like furious angels
Like poisoned morning stars, loud enough to wake the dead…
The air rushing from the vent like a prolonged wordless sigh
Continues its travels despite my wishes, mumbling banally of infection
And within the charged chaos of white pain and white noise in my head
Voices spiral outward like useless meaning from the golden section…
I listen to the songs they sing
Serenading me endlessly
Speaking harsh secrets of older things
Seducing me needlessly…
To love, and to live, and to fly and descend
To smile with my eyes as I fester within…
And to kill, and to kill, and to kill,
And to kill.
Vice Grip
Sneak your fingers into my head
For a peek into the core of me
To peel back layers of cerebral reaction
And gasp in wonder at tics of misfirings
In my frontal lobe…
A whole region of me lies wasted
(no more than so much organic cable
lying sundered and gnawed upon the floor of me)
a little virus ran thru me for 22 years
tasting and discarding bits
too heavy to take down in one gulp
beating my will to a bloody pulp
strewing my desires to the wind like cigarette butts
Ripping me, reaving, rending, gripping me, tearing
Me full of lacerations and paper tigers' gashes
Leaving me, like a plundered tower,
A wilting flower, a sweet dessert gone sour,
So very, very late, the hour
With little recourse and suffering flashbacks
(strange…all the things a person like me rehashes)
All the faces in the forms of which my tears fall
(you run, you fly, while here I crawl)
And smash my memories like piles of ashes;
A list of names on an alley wall,
Like…
Aubrey, Cassandra, and Melissa and Ted, Johnette, Dorian,
(erica and I playing eroica and fly…passed out on the front lawn…
and while I slept, then came the dawn; I awoke and wept,
for they all are gone…so far, so far like the
hours, days, years…crushed out in soiled ashtrays.)
It's almost ten twenty am on a Wednesday…
II
And there have been times that I laid alone in some sweltering room or another, the afternoon blazing by outside like a comet scrubbing a ringed bathtub, and I seethed with the inability to communicate this one simple idea, this one dying wish in my percolating head…I wish I could smell all those places and people again…the world was lost when I left it, abandoned it for THIS world. I swear there was a form of, if not precisely "magic", then at the very least some untouchable, incorruptible beauty, innocence, light and love there…everyone I knew and loved, all running ahead faster than they really should have dared to, to meet some perfect, adoring tomorrow they were all certain was there -and I with them- they with me…and running, wind inchoate in our hair like manes on wild horses of some exotic untamable stock, now all of it frozen; running-standstill, frozen-stop-motion forever in a hundred thousand shattered, scattered bits of rigid amber, memories unmoving, unmoved, but unforgotten…and unable to forget…voices carry and one piece of amber resembling Amy Mann whispers "why didn't you?"…in the hushed hurt tones of some disappointed little elfin girl telling secrets or gossip during a church choir rendition of an unlovable Smiths tune right after the heat of the sermon…what have I wrought with these withered hands, with this desiccated body, with this stunted mind that could ever contend with such memories, with the regret living on in my head? Running me through this rapid-fire slide show of all that is connected to it, that addiction demands that I view it all before I may have peace…I cannot view so much so quickly and for so damn long…
Jimmy the Percolator Sings a Song of Loss
Percolator death, percolator death
O, come drum up a jittery demise for me
My nerves all jangly and tangly hair
From a percolator death in a caffeine sea…
Iron lung death, iron lung death
Puff out your chest, make war on me
My breath in raspy gaspy gulps
From an iron lung death in a blue smoke wreath…
Double-backed death, double-backed death
Closes eyes and blindly rapes me
Flesh all crawling, scrawled with the words
Of the desire of the double-backed fleshly seed…
Heart burned death, heart burned death
Closets me from anything to do
Head all clogged, conscience flogged
By my heart in the flames of the memory of you…
The Deeps of a Dead Heiress
Ivory towers crumbling within, a sanitarium cavernous in guilt
Gilt, but the gold is brass, the lawn is crabgrass
The seductive ivy of yesterday still lingers in the shape
Of things that once were and never shall be;
Hamstrung and drowning in self-made futility
Morality traded for self-affirmation
Paraded on the surface of the face, a mask
Alcoholic libations contained in a flask
Of secret things done to convince a princess that nothing lasts
She lives in regret, dwells on the past
A human epitaph, her life is a dance
Filled with flesh desires and words with no meanings
Yet tell me I haven't a chance…
Failure…of systems, of life of everything falling apart
The center cannot hold, and all these are lies
Just tugging the strings of other people's hearts
Avoiding the truth as you look in their eyes
And life becomes boredom, lonely and depraved
-like a permanent tooth with a deep cavity-
Turning away from the only thing that can save you
And chasing after ghosts can only fuel the depravity…
A princess in chains of peculiar device,
Spinning, pirouetting, and falling on the ice,
Thinking, perhaps, if she has one more slice
Of a poisoned pie, she won't sicken this time
A shot of tragic remorse with a twist of lime
And the whole spinning mess comes to a grinding halt
Holding its breath to see if she'll lick off the salt
And finish a job so long ago started
When some thankless monster touched her
And made her sick,
Poor little princess, in her ivory keep,
Poor little princess, in way too deep,
Poor little princess, sucking dick.
What's New Pussycat?
What's new pussycat?
Is there a rug burn on your back?
Addicted to crack?
"No, not this time so let's do it again."
Got a death wish, pussycat?
9 lives is still thin,
And see through like apples rotting in a bowl,
Not all bad, but one had a cold,
So what's new pussycat?
Your teeth hurt today?
Nah, 'cos there's money in the US of A
There's things to be bought
And fun to be had
"Who said I was good?
I only know I'm not bad."
And everything isn't as bright as you thought
So what's new pussycat?
Gonna' pop off to visit that hermit you made
He lives in a corner outside La-La Land
You know, the one that would've given you anything, and
You spurned, like you burn
But have long since forgotten
'Cos he couldn't afford to buy your ass
And anyway, all of his teeth are rotten…
So what's new pussycat?
Does Jesus still save?
Or do you remember the name of the Savior?
Just a fading memory
Of learning the truth from an ugly old man
And because you couldn't deal with it all
You kicked him away like a rusted old can
And pretended you were his trusted old friend…
So what's new pussycat?
Oh…nothing…I see.
Get Off
She stood, transfixed, by the tie-dyed sky
It was big and wide (like her eyes)
And lidded only by a few gray contrails
Only half-lidded, lazy, bird-flitted and hazy
Sun-smeared behind clouds (like a Monet-painted daisy)
Jet-engined sky ship pushed on starry sails…
Criss-crosscut unending ocean of sky
Phone line wires, whorls and spires
(the hosts of heaven, tiny specks on the eye)
A photo-negative, opposite of the eleventh hour
Bright, shining as a blinding light
Horse-mounted figure, luminescent, clad in white
And her conscious mind rests all along the watchtower…
Days flash by, she has already been there
Room doors open on childhood flashbacks (don't go in there!)
And the hallway between, a razor's edge of today separating old and new
Epiphany, she stands in the air, arms wide to declare
"Look at me, I am sheer nudity,
my spirit is bare, so bare!"
He demanded, "where do you get off?"
She answered, "in bed, on top of you."
Job
Where did the passion run to, where has the glory fled
Hidden in suburban fears and stashed beneath our beds
A chemical chain reaction, pulling out one lonely card
And when that card house tumbled, it hit us all too hard…
Now the dissonance is melody, and the politics are profits
The anger bleeds out to apathy; hey man, "if the shoe fits"
No more Superman to save us, no Lois Lane affairs
The glory of the empire fades, and no one seems to care…
Football playing high school boys from snooty private schools
Play hyper-fast guitar and dictate what is "cool"
I see no difference between "punk" and the fall of Rome
(oh, you ran away for anarchy, and now you can't go home)…
I used to love the hardcore and my anarchistic stance
Posing fan boys in my scene, they never stood a chance
And the music was for fun, no we never got paid
But the most important part nowadays is we do this to get laid!
Chokers
Nothing flies away on the tail of the kite painted with stars and stripes
(and beer cans and crack pipes); the belt cinches tighter…
Policeman, soldier, or firefighter; babies grow up unstable and insane
Watching pretty boats and frilly dreams go down in flames
With nothing but ketchup at the breakfast table;
The welfare checks run out and big sister dies in drug deal drive-by,
Face blood-flecked and cheeks wet with hot rueful tears,
Freckles faded, eyes full of flies
Big sister in the coffin, swing low sweet chariot sung
Comin' for to arrest older brother, drug bust,
Mother's heart stung by darkness and confusion because
She carried her delusions that her babies would grow up safe
Because she raised them well,
But her babies all sought out and found hell in American streets,
Broken pavement and fell to the lust in the beat, the heat
Of a glass pipe, raised on payper view violence prime time
Pot highs and intangible thought crimes and anything unwholesome
To fuel their desires, urged to misunderstand and blast themselves
Higher and higher on anything that satisfies
Until the hunger dies until the chariots fly
Until the American pie in the sky is a mark in the eye
A blemish of discontent and the Veil in the Holy of Holies is rent
Yet again and the flesh within is mighty
Mighty thin…
Generation of sin-eaters,
Choking on the sin.
Short Sumer Vacation Under Bloody Oatmeal Sky
The noise of a thronging death-hued crowd fades to
Decaying and worm-eaten whispers
slicking my inner ear canal
With a sickening slug trail
of petty, carnal innuendo;
The greasy spots on the ceiling of time-worn edifice
Are spontaneously become oily lily pads of
Football heroes past and the once and future diner;
Like a cattle car packed full of the mooing, braying bovine horde,
The shrine to apathy is whisked off, clacking down the interminable
Tracks to deliver the wretched beasts to their private slaughter,
Ready for the meat market yet again…
Meanwhile,
I am no longer sitting in a cheap cookie-cutter vinyl-upholstered
Chair smack in the middle of a pugnacious, pungent purgatory,
Rather have I found myself in the imagination's
Eye of a storm known as
Seagram's Seven, or Ozymandias, or the
Gordian Knotted Tree of the knowledge of
good and not so good
And filthy ichor and the ambrosia
Of death and all the whore's charms…
I would close my eyes to the vision, but my eyes would yet
See beyond to the horror of being,
The terrifying knowledge, the crippling power of seeing
The being of myself as a meat sack, a hunchback,
A lunch pack for maggots and mushrooms
And all manner of things that creep in
The earth and its darkness, in night
I and all (but only myself, for here am I alone) are
Dead and walking, the walking dead
But here in this vermillion-tainted blood-dust-cloud,
I am
The noise of a thronging death-hued crowd
But here in this vermillion-tainted blood-dust-cloud,
I am
More or less and nothing at all,
I am the swirling vagabond hurricane of impending holocaust;
I am the hermit who dies of a fear of being alone,
See him over there in the vignette still-life cavern?
He has a photograph of Hiroshima to warm him,
For he is afraid of fire, and of people,
And so is the dual purpose served.
I am a 12 year old child in his college heyday
Making swirling, inane gestures to the academic gods
Of the intelligentsia sky
While copping a feel of the
Coed next to him…but little does this idiot savant realize
That his glasses have fallen off into a bowl
Of bloody oatmeal while he was
Looking at the potential future concerning Adolf Hister;
Neither does the boy nor the coed wish to recognize
The fact that they are corpsey and cold already.
And I am them both.
I thrum with the sludgy ashen revulsion
Of the girl who spies me across the room and is
Inevitably made wet between the legs by something she doesn't understand,
By the crystal balls sitting bloody and crusted in the hollow
Eye sockets of my skull,
For therein lies truth.
My body crawls with the spiders of a new and technological age,
Confused and sparkling with bits and bytes and
A mother lode, gigabyte pie-in-the-sky
Grey heaven Camelot
Of everything that has gone before
(like the brains of a Catholic president spattered all over
the back seat of a Lincoln and sparkling in the dull, fly-laden
Texas sunshine, so lethal)
And all that is to come…
I am bitten by the spiders and become Computo-fuk,
The god of the heavens man has created and blackened
For himself in his
Infinite folly and lack of vision.
My throat is scorched with the magma cum of virgin sacrifice,
A phallic volcano of fertility and virility and
State-inspired sterility;
The hermit's photo leaves its mark.
I can never again hope to run
Through the golden streets of youth, vigor and halcyon indiscrimination,
For innocence and unaccountability are washed away
With finality in a blackened-flesh baptismal font gore and
Perpetual enigma;
The inability to have ever understood the tragedies
With which I have been confronted,
The malaise I have witnessed, and the cankerous vilification
Of all my childhood heroes;
I am broken and sobbing on a splintery floor
Of realization and denial by the cruel sodomy of the universe
With all its many-legged, skittering, multi-armed electric-azure-hued
Terror toys, all some form of Vedic heresy
Come to crouch in my dreams
Come to feed on my aspirations
Come to suck out my vitality
And swallow the once-potent seed of imagination,
Rob me of the only happiness I have ever known.
These are my nightmares in such a metaphysical macrocosm
Beneath a self-injurious and perjuring microscope
Turned faces by force to the light,
The sick magenta and lime jello green light
Of a baby-fat candle glowing and spitting
From the guilty eye sockets of a jack-o-lantern
Known to many as the light bringer,
But to a select few as a paranoid and skittering
Prion number, curled upon itself
Like a cancer,
Like Ebola,
Like kuru,
Like a gurgling, babbling, bubbling
Sexy-dead-death sexy cauldron of
Love-gone-bad,
Like the six-six-sixties
And the creepity, rock 'n' roll, rocket-launch
Pocket pool with a haywire spool of thread spun from Uranium 238
And an atomic intuition
That there are some things we should definitely not fuck with;
A shit-stained, tyrant-tainted, numerological bell rung by men
And summoning Holocaust,
Apocalypse, Armageddon,
Apollyon, Abaddon,
Ragnarock 'n' roll motherfucker of a fantasy,
Dark and twisted, sister,
Created, written, prophesied, copyrighted, enforced, edited
And fulfilled by the mad little cassock-wrapped perverts
Of the Unholy Roman Bathory Smirch…
It's all been a terrible mistake, it must be the case,
Like Journey…
I mean, the '80's were fantastic and horrifying and beautiful
All at once, but every once in a great while
The decade would throw us a curve ball,
Like Journey, or Loverboy, or Milli Vanilli,
Or Ronny McRaygun.
But that's all gone now,
Except for the occasional dusty jukebox selections,
Or a VH1 special, or some World Book retrospective series,
Like this apocalypse they're so all-fired intent on
Realizing for us;
All a big mistake, right?
But if I open my aching, burning eyelids,
Will I be, once more, in a cacophony of college insults,
Smoke haze and greasy food in
A diner in a college town in Northeast Georgia
In a southern, nigger-hating, cross-burning, fag-bashing,
Fluorescent light, humming, buzzing hellhole?
Or are the flies crawling and scritching for me as well
As the boisterous cattle at the abattoir?
Are the flies there,
Crawling in the honey-dewy-tangy
Sprawl of blood-spray
Beneath the fractured skull of my
Childhood, imaginary playmate…
Myself?
Breath seeps in as if of its own will
And words flow out with intention
Cartography with lexiconic tools
Mapping out the structure of the paper
I am merely a vessel most of the time
For pushing though, inducing rhymes
And I watch the words there caper
Frolicking about as plague-bitten fools
A somnambulist of Erato's invention
I am the cauldron and I spill
To blaze a trail of moralist contention
And confuse an issue further than one should
Be allowed; someone should probably stop me,
But for the rhyme, the time and form
I build up words; then build the structure
I store them until I nearly rupture
And I spew them out as an angry swarm
And the hive of lex adopts me
As a definition, as a parent would
And hold me in this grave suspension
Not that I would escape, even if I could
I suffer from the oddest tension
At times, so sharp as though to kill
Seems the direction of this beastly will
To usurp me within myself
And put this pen to stranger uses
Than I would ply, even at my worst
Those words, again, would make me burst
I am eaten up with such abuses
Though less sublime, shot thru with stealth
A spider's web growing on a windowsill
I am a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph
I am a smile in an ancient photograph
I am teacher and student, but both in detention.
Nouveauld
Trudge
Trudge
Trudge
Grind
What can a bitter old man pigeon up today?
Meat off the bones of a young girl
The essence, perhaps, of a couple in love
Stepping stones to a greater curse of concrete and steel
Dead fall, autumn wind
He crushes brittle leaf beneath brisk, no-nonsense step
Hit with painless, ageless, deathless death
Rattle breath in papery lung
Waste it on a futile lad or lass
He's a rabid dog on a short chain
Beating a path in the dirt around him
A rut so deep he fell in
And decimated his destiny
Squeaking leather, creaky glove
Old arthritic bone chill
Makes of you a dinner
With his eyes
Consumes your mind
Music floats
Tinny in its
Resonance, haunting
On a crusty phonograph
On calliope
Through kaleidoscope
Notes from a swiftly corroding
Louis Armstrong past
Blow dat hawn boy, make mah knees jelly.
No thought of payment
Love bought and sold over fashion
He gets a grip and don’t let go
Teeth grinding
He takes them out
(Like ones that chatter when you wind them up)
No taste for tomorrow
No life for today
Only tears for yesteryear
Early in the day for cynicism,
(Here, have a bloody Mary)
Read those yellowed and aging passages
From letters and the backs of postcards
And photographs (a million laughs)
A tiny gypsy child
Life in his veins
For a few baubles and coins
Old lady grabs the bitter-old-man-hand
And
She
Swears up and down
That they must stamp upon the grapes of life
And together
Make a sour wine of regret
(For once, she is right)
And through the wispy white strands on his head
Through the passage of time
And gray, clinging cobwebs
Through the senile core of his loneliness
He agrees
For once she's right
No rest for the old and bitter
Only cold, regretful
Laughter
Wheezing like a squeeze box…
And daddy never sleeps at night.
Another Gray Day
I drift to my dreams
With a solemn promise to her on my lips
And awaken to a dream
Of her ice and cruel promise
To break me apart again
There seems in this darkness
No wonder nor widening of pupils in her eyes anymore
And what God hath joined together
Let no man, only woman tear apart
Tear asunder…
Boredom and fatigue
Is born of what was wonder;
A silence, a sadness,
The cocking of a loaded gun
With violence, of madness,
Another gray day is done…
Another fine, blood-soaked deed
Committed on love's battlefield.
An Action
Sometimes an action creates nothingness
Action as erasure, reaction, a void
A smothering sedation, bellowing negation
And the action itself is all but destroyed.
My actions in childhood were performed in silence
A muted ballet of ugly distortions
Negative propulsions, convulsions of violence
So that now I must greet all my orphaned abortions.
And when the chickens all finally come home to roost
I gather the eggs and plant them like seeds
Cultivate the offspring for further abuse
Punishing negation in my words and deeds.
I am clothed in the raiment of filth and shame
Punished for a childhood I didn't control
Condemned to wander through desolate blame
For the crimes of my child-self, I pay with my soul.
I was taken, stolen from the light to the dark
Kidnapped and bound in room filled with screaming
The rage of some monster set loose by another
To torment this child in her perilous dreaming.
And still do the faces so plague my existence,
Screams and wordless admonitions of guilt
Filling my head with a cacophonous din
Oh, the bricks upon which this foundation was built
Are the ones cracking open my skull like a shell,
Enforcing my world, defining my hell.
Meat
Life, the tooshort,
Short as a sawed-off in a pickup truck…
So full of signs and symbols
Like the flags we wave
In the face of humanity…
(blind patriots rich in their hatred of change
shambling home to crumbling shacks
icons of their nigger wealth.)
Life, so like a dream
Same as the 30 year acid trip
Of the amerikan dream.
Life, oh thy rituals!
Nuptials, confessional, processional…
(3 am Friday, backseat, love of the beaten generation…
2a.m. Saturday, bathroom tile, porcelain altar
the
great
god
BEERVOMIT…
8 am Sunday, go-pray-go-pay-a-shower-a-day-to-wash-your-sins-away)
Life, the institution
A cyclic endeavor to which we are committed.
Life is crrrrrrrrrrrrrrrazy!
We be lunatic head-hunters, witch-burning bigots
Ever-searching for the next victim,
Ever-lusting for the next scapegoat
To tie to the stake of our sick desires…
The freedom to speak, but not with conviction or erudition
The freedom to worship, but it must be the acceptable pantheon
The freedom to not fear, but don't look in the mirror.
Life is too short
Short as a sawed-off in a pickup truck…
We are meat, we are bounty,
We are hunter and hunted.
It's so full of surprises
Only what you take with you after
The fall…
A Record Review
This world, with all its gaudy Vegas glitz, plays far too loud…who exactly is it trying to convince anyway? And what could be so important for it to sell itself so short in the first place? I mean, it's like, "hey world, look…" girls with no charm or grace, no poise…no…no…ssssubtlety, they just don't do it for me. And the way you're coming off is something more on the order of a 45 year old suburban soccer mom with saggy tits, poorly painted up to try to pass as a twenty-something hooker in the French Quarter. The whole act is like a bad laxative…to quote Biafra, "it just don't move me, yanno?" But I have to admit to myself (as my booted toe taps out the screwy rhythm to some pseudo-industrial paean to alienation) the beat is rather catchy, though the melody leaves something to be desired.
The Resonance of Pointlessness
The morning sun reflects off dew as the garden spider spins a web
and the filaments entangle as he slowly twitches a leg.
Irises grow sweet in the palpable shade as tares approach to choke
(their progress concealed by invaders' torches' smoke).
The ivy clambers up the stone wall to touch the starry night,
undaunted -or insensate of- the wall's inherent might.
A mother suckles her newborn beast to spur it to maturity,
condemning her own existence by its hand with damnable surety;
an infection slithers upon them as the surgeon scrubs his hands…
even then was there a virus somewhere, pulsing in the land.
Dark cloudy firmament full and strobing with lightning and a threat;
old man departs a nightmare full of arsenic and sweat,
his memories remaining deep within to avoid encroaching light
-performing on the premise of "out of mind is out of sight".
Women, drowned in perspiration, surrender up their purity,
yet the men who pose and strut for them can offer no security;
there is peace to have if one would but know and not understand,
and all the while, an undercurrent of anger is thrumming in the land.
Demarcations to mark the stations of the mighty and the powerful,
each head containing a life of years, and all will pass as the towers fall;
yes, hats and crowns upon the heads of those who have a need to hide,
and decisions perch on trembling fat lips for those who cannot decide.
Covetousness comes a-calling with a bouquet of charred delight
(the tainted flesh of children who were corrupted in the night
by whisperers and sorcerers and rapists of the innocent,
masturbating in the sleepyheads until the dreams were spent).
The mighty with their miters and their sceptres fall asleep,
no longer cherishing the sanctity of the brethren they must keep,
and so the tiny lives of simple men are tread upon and sifted as sand,
leaving a giant's footprint of loss and chaos in the land.
See the cow chewing grass to pulpy cud, eat the brain in the grain and a mad disease;
the monarch butterflies flutter on by, sensing the unease.
Illicit lovers cower, embracing their shards of childish fright from the night,
but the morning sun rises suddenly as though the lovers, there, to spite.
The sanctity, however, of the act has fled from the congregation,
which practices a pale reflection of a blessed consummation…
and so the ruins of the temple gate are gray, yet rather grand,
but still the gurgling dead dogs' blood trickles through the land.
The piper pipes at the gates of dawn, and rats then croak
and rattle on, like frogs upon which children choke,
the unspeakable remains unspoken, and the king remains a pawn.
Oh, the milkmaid drops from sheer exhaust and leaves the lord to count the cost;
the ladies wait to fall into pyres (the wives of over pious Vedic liars);
the golden rings were terra cotta, and the drummers pound a dark wedding stocatta;
the goose that laid the golden egg, she laid pyrite, pulling bankers' legs;
like the one dear Sarah Bernhardt broke (the swans are dead, their corpses bloat);
the french fool had his revolution from swallowing foul dissolution;
the trees awither in solstice's despair, the nests ignite like sulfur flares;
the skeleton dancing, its voice a-chatter (representing Jacob's ladder…
or DNA, or Kabbala, points the bone at Shamballah);
the calling bird has frozen wings, intestines trailing like tangled strings
(and madmen baking leavened bread, all dead, undead,
and these are a few of my favorite things);
then comes the dancing scarlet whore, 'pon the back of the traipsing Beast,
the pennants and drums of another war
-the wound is healed, the doves are butchered, only then does the flesh cease.
The War correspondent, through his lens, views children starved and mangled,
and Famine in a foul temper, with his hunger does he strangle.
See the parents in Cabrini Green creep through darkness to seek out their kind,
while their progeny, at home alone, well the television rapes their minds.
(An assassin scales a steel and glass walled castle to kill a sleeping regent)
Virgins in their petticoats are no longer pure, untainted, chaste
(seems somehow they've all acquired their mistresses' dark tastes,
not knowing the vanities they purchase are merely paint and string and paste);
hear the note of banal pestilence out stirring in the waste?
The bull becomes the virgins' flesh, awaiting sacrifice
-a reeking bloody pool of gold and doom and the scents of foreign spice-
the hills demanding its castration and the devotees are silent.
In burnt and sundered southern lands hangs strange fruit from trees,
shamed, abased, and the stale wind of 1962 just keeps stirring up more hate,
fanning flames best forgotten, breathing "Mary" to the waste…
"oh, the time has come," the Reaper said, "to speak of many things.
Suicide by overdose and broken guitar strings,
Jimi Hendrix kneeling in a pool of heroin-laced vomit,
A cult of oysters passing away with the passing of a comet;
Of little girls with hula hoops, of Tiny Tim so pale and gaunt,
The timeless troubadour for certain, on the back of a dying elephant;
Flowers on the graves of a nation's heroes, wilting dead with fear
Arabs lost within their heads, pretending to King Lear…"
So, "come," he said to his birds of prey, "'tis time we all make haste."
And a tattered cloth holds the imprint of compassion in debated place,
a King-of-the-Jews expression on the cusp of Europa's face
(yes, he shined, for a time, as Helios in a daily chariot race,
and his image on the cloth, a pregnant myth we can embrace);
see how Pilate daubs away the blood in a muted, ugly gesture
(those wounded stains on the Vatican's pillow sham, sewn to elbows, grow maggots and then fester). Ahh, but blood is life, a river of power, a cordial drink with darkness laced,
and yet these impotent drag queens don't partake?, pretend not to know the taste?
And yet, the Architect (or Archon) has bade them and so they languor in its waste.
And the household of the householder is in disrepair; the maids, servants, children weep,
for the Lady ruts with the Devil and Old Scratch apparently earns his keep,
for she twists and turns and pirouettes in her dance with the sweaty sheets,
and she howls like a whore from her plague-ridden streets,
though she barely makes a peep.
And her adulterous lover holds her, clasping her frail hand to his breast,
weeps for the predicament of the flesh he once possessed;
see him gray and weathered as blank parchment, for all the words have been erased,
as is the meaning in life they built together as it's blown across the waste.
Mites and flies lay eggs in her flesh as she scratches at her skin
-a sigh drawn out at the loss of her at the tip of an artist's pen
(the beauty of that dark young man, himself, it fades like paint,
with age, though he draw his face anew each morning with his quill).
The artist raises himself from the tarnished world, from the dank and reeking swill,
places himself above it all, and yet, he's writhing on a heated grill
(and be not fooled by his pretensions, they only mask a drive to kill kill kill!)
And the fingers of the weaver speed across her ancient, groaning loom
to create the fabric of fortune or the mindless lemmings' doom;
the anxiety of the bride to be, and the cold feet of the groom;
but for sooth, she only builds herself another wasted tomb.
Leaves turn brown in the autumn wind, brown, gray, yellow, red;
a weeping eunuch finds himself lost in the cancer in his head,
for the son castrated ere he be born and sprinkled with baptismal water,
by his mother's fears, he shall repay her with someone else's daughter.
And that rarest feline, a woman who loves, she dies within her gilded cage.
The monk's hand cramps to a woodblock as he illuminates the worldly gloom,
locked within himself, his thoughts, and the cell which is his tomb.
And he accepts, so willingly, the bars of his cage, this spartan room
(perhaps he's truly covets his mother's spurning womb).
The incessant waves of the ocean crash to turn the shoreline into seabed,
but the sound isn't really there at all -California lies dead-
so now the countryside matches the morals of the people there instead,
and the spectres of those people have a watery maze to tread.
(and the time allotted is short enough and made much cheaper to earn a wage)
And so, we could question this all we want, until the body of truth is exhumed,
and the fact that science defends itself will surely be presumed,
for continually we have fucked ourselves with the falsehoods we've assumed,
and the fact of that truth will rape you from the day you leave the womb.
And this island of our captivity is a brief life and ignominious death
-addictions and self-restrictions, apathy in the calm last breath-
yet lethargy still allows us to scream our impotent outrage.
And then are the last few precious seconds of life uselessly consumed
by the resonance of pointlessness in a frigid, silent tomb.
Brake Release
If I went lost, wandered, battered within unyielding memories stumbling within a walled-in world of children's fears and adult hopes, mumbling like some homeless prophet with a tattered and damp cigarette hanging from his lower lip like a tumor, talking to his ghosts, his past; if I stepped right off the planet's face, would there be anyone to mourn? Would a single person care, would I wander lonesome as some windblown milky seed, blown by a lifetime of autumn's howling, hidden within the air? Would the lives of those I've loved continue as though they had never stopped, or possibly tick no more like a dust-encrusted, unwound clock; would my children call me "father", hoping I might hear and come running with a band-aid for their latest wounds, would I hear their whispered implorings as a flower's petals bloom brushing past my ear, unable to respond, incapable, scream as I might, of letting them know my whereabouts…lost within, sealed without? Am I shambling through some shadowland, these arcane etchings crawling like millipedes on the walls and floors, have i given away all my secrets and uttered appalling truth like poisoned poppies, a deadly wind against the door? Have I wrapped my soul in the vagrant gauze of who I was, of what I was, as a priceless diamond locked away from those who might see, might covet, and might breathe away what remains of me…can I ever be who I always was, can I tunnel out of that painful filmy mess, can I regain my ultimate self, my memories, the life I was living, the love that was stolen, the years that were golden, the reality belying the fantasies…release?
Equation
Labor and toil, the thick air boils
Cut it with a scalpel
Catch your spit and paint it red
Wondrous things you cannot do
A paintbrush full of brilliant hues
A wizard playing Tom Sawyer;
Whitewash the world,
Fill the mold with plasticine…
And imagine, just try to see
A porcelain figurine
Replica of me
As a counter-melody
Covered with hirsute spiders
And bathed with warm, orange juice sunlight
Waltz into my parlor, fly
Scrape the wound,
The bloody womb of all you love
So as below, I am above
Ready to drop like a bat cartoon
And tear out your feeble heart…
Oh, I am the worst you could ever imagine
Because I can pick your mind apart.
The Bounty of Womanhood pt. I
Shivers in the street, bare feet
She pulls a razor from her pocket
And looks to see who's looking
But all she sees are televisions through frosty windows,
Smells of turkey dinners cooking…
She has a premonition like a hateful nightmare
As she crunches, oblivious through the snow,
Of doves collapsing like sooty lungs
And a thousand burning angels on ladders
Making crackling paths up and down the frozen rungs.
Shakes her maned head to clear the hallucinations,
An etch-a-sketch in human form,
Clears the cobwebs of indecision,
And strikes off with missile precision
The pinnacle of an obelisk, for a final destination…
Shivers in the street, a replay, a reply,
Has she been this way before?
Flowing with ice blocks in life's chilling river,
He the maker, the taker, the giver,
Gives up to the world a virgin, then makes of her a whore
What strange gifts does the world deliver
What obscure shadows beckon from occluded doorways;
She moves off from moorings 1000 years strong,
And at least 21 years old, in the cold,
She bleeds from cunt and from wrist
Not her fault she has come to be here
It's the bloated bodies as they dangle and twist
The weak histories of entire races, in sensitivities, brutality,
Murder in dark, enclosed spaces and crimson searing tears
Salvation, like Christ, is a blooded endeavor,
The ties are all cut like the small life she burns away
She suffers alone, in darkness, dying for the hearts of men
Her heart is Wormwood, she suffers, alone,
The guilt of some fat bastard's sin…
Borne Away By Ravens
She licks her own mini-death
Off the bloodied stick that god provided
The demon squirms
The semen stained
Her scarlet baby in her mouth
The teeth are cracked
Her teeth are black
The fresh-baked bread tasted like heaven
This little dessert tastes like hell
The gateway all blood and silt
Between slick, black thighs
As she devours the witness
And sucks out its eyes
The penistick dances once more
And the love of fuck dies
(and the infant don't cry).
Browning Made Me Do It
Robert Browning was a helluva wordsmith,
He told me, more than once, just how I felt
In words so stretched in meaning
I could feel it in my toes and fingers
I could smell it in the air…
He told me how to tell you I loved you
And how I wanted the moment to last
But, alas,
I didn't read it until too late
And the meat of the matter was past
For some hearts are made of glass
And some daydreams are too pure,
Some flowers just don't last…
No shooting stars, no one-hit-wonders
No more trilling lark, Mr. Browning
Ah, but darkness pervaded words of love and light
And in his words I am always drowning
To gasp, to sink, to come alive and think,
To struggle and continue
To cast those ideas at your feet
For every nascent sinew
To blow away the dust of you
To begin, to create, then to
End you…
But only for a moment
And the moment's gone.
Built To Fall
Lying in state in a sober haze
Don't even try to count the days
Words hurt worse than a kick to the balls
You want to get closer, but you build more walls…
There's the cloying burnt rubber of cigarette smoke
And the heavy fog of the words she spoke
Now no one comes over and no one calls
You want to be social, but you build more walls…
Another gray day older and deeper in hate
You want to take a drink but decide to stay straight
And no one gives a fuck how far you fall
You'd like to love again, but you build more walls…
Everyone tells you you should act your age
Oh, but this is more than just impotent rage
So you're shut off like the television, feel so small
You want to come back, but you've been built to fall…
Butthead
He talks
As he walks
And walks forever,
The charges echoing
Like a mocking laugh
In the brain,
Like a bullet;
Head, afire
All consuming
Burns him out
Like a cinder
To an ash
On a butt.
Chronosuspension
There were never sure solutions for the troubles and woes
Just Gordian convolutions, knots that never cease to grow
Like a jigsaw puzzle with no borders, gobbling the tabletop
Some strange artistic pollution, does this music never stop?
There is no end to pathogens such as this pointless creativity
But sometimes Chronos does suspend these paths of ingenuity.
Circles Are Just Twisted Lines
Forget the flag, burn a politician; take down all the white Masonic magicians…they're all black, importing the crack, and if you're not too sharp, they're selling you the smack, with a needle in the arm, it's doing you harm. I got news for you brother, you're motherfucking farmed, like from birth to adulthood you're kept from the knowledge, pounded down with obedience then shipped off to college, as a daycare center for the rich white elite, where frat-boy mentality is racist rhetoric -date-raping gangs who keep it discreet and pay for their friends because they're fucking pathetic. It's a good-old-boy network to perpetuate corruption, a ground-floor training school for corporate seduction; success is the ladder, and you're on your way up it, but you, my friend, are nothing but a puppet whose strings have been cut 'cos they taught you more shit you don't need to know; the doors are all shut. Now you got that piece of paper but there's nowhere to go, 'cos the capitalist free market is just another lie, so you join the military and march off to die in a war, a war for oil. Spill out your life on foreign soil. Imperialist corporations taking the spoils…watch how the serpent further uncoils as you lose your life in a foreign land, face down, charred corpse, blood in the sand. You learned obedience in college from every reprimand, now you're dead from taking orders from the high command. So that's the story from beginning to end, and if you don't believe it, just ask your friends who all went to the Middle East and never came back, got their faces shot off in a furious attack in that war, a war for oil. They lost their lives on foreign soil, face down and dead in a faraway land; sad, blackened corpses bleeding in the sand. It's a vicious cycle, repeating itself, that uncoiling serpent eating its own tail. Deadly ouroborous of the one-world regime, death in the gears to oil the corporate machines of the IMF, UN, a beast with seven heads, unholy indoctrination of the Novus Ordo dead…class war or race war? Call it what you will, all a pack of misnomers from the fascism of state, instigating our basest animal urges to kill; Jewish, Muslim, black, white, all in servitude to hate. Just a liberal lie to keep us all still, as they milk us for children, more soldiers to kill…so we won't attack with a vengeance as a unified force and anyway, the words are a hollow empty refrain; ineffective, apathetic par-for-the-course that ensures the cycle will repeat again, like a wheel in the sky, like a window in your eye, like a shackle on your brain, and it drives us all insane…
Clay Pigeon
Launched from a pad of security
Flung to the upper reaches of sky
He fly
He fly
Never before felt so free
Always was denied
They lied
He died
Inside
Empty clay shell
Filled up full with void
A pigeon, tool, a toy
But now
Now they release
Unleash
A power there to flight
Beauty within
Of soaring, seeking, searching, lurching
Anti-gravitational, sensational
Fleeing a realm of weighing down,
Self-control, they say…
And as he, clay shell, filled with love of life
Freedom of flight
Sculpted from light
He right, he right
As he soars upward, no perigee in sight,
Believing, just hoping, feeling shackles unbind,
Just as he begins to really know, to dream,
A shot from earth, triumphant,
Ringing mock indignancy
And a metal-on-metal shriek erupts
As he shatters, he scatters
Now an empty shell, tool, a toy,
Just he, a clay pigeon after all,
Fall.
Goin' South
Oh my
I see we see eye to eye
And here, in gloom and smoky cacophony
I see we touch thigh to thigh
Too damn smart for your own good
Too damn dangerous for mine
Hey lady, put that shoulder back
'Cos I can smell you sweat,
I can smell you, sweeeeet…
Sweet like fresh air
When you're drowning for a breath
And in deep water
I wanna wanna wanna
Put you in my hand
In my mouth
And just hold you hold you there
'Cos I'm gone, I'm goin' south.
His
Thou art without form or foundation
Set loose, alone in a nation
Of transparent lies and alibis…
Thy nemesis is ever-wise
To the nature of thy frustration.
Thou must never let them deflate thee
Though they taunt thee and berate thee,
They shall demonize and analyze,
Peer into thy steely eyes;
They shall fear thee and berate thee.
No mother shalt thou ever petition
No father to peel away tradition
Thou shalt walk alone, no earthly home
Thou shalt, forever, in this place roam
And pray thee for thy separation…
His.
How Much
When did I become so empty in my heart?
When did the waste of life bite and not let go?
How much of me
How much of me
How much of me was lost in us
When we tore ourselves apart?
And the wind whispered about us to everyone,
And the sun had nothing but nothing to show…
Where did I place the softer part of me for safekeeping?
Where is the key for the box wherein it rests?
How much of you
How much of you
How much of you left intact
In the form of a young girl weeping?
And the rain sang about it to everyone,
And the sun illuminated disappointed wedding guests…
How many times can I sit alone with a cup,
Pulling these words from thin air?
Is the tragicomedy to continue unabated?
What empty words does the hollow of my heart echo?
I can barely hear the meaning anymore, anymore.
How much of us
How much of us
How much of you was turned to ash
When we couldn’t hold on any longer?
And the silence speaks my heart to no one
And the isolation just gets stronger…
What say?
Hanging On
Where are all the stars
By which I charted my life?
Gone out with a wink
Without a real goodbye
All hope departs
Like a window in the eye
When faced with the foolishness
Of greedy men,
It slips like sand through fingers
And what is left to us then,
But to weep helplessly,
Battle weariness within;
To hold on for a month or a day
And never give up,
Continue in anguished frustration
Continue in the silence for the fear of persecution
Continue in the solitude
Hang on through the torpor and disgust
With the mute raging of the just.
Head
Heads of industry…all heads and
Nothing more; no souls, no hearts, no spirit
Only hands to please the whore
Heads of state…all heads and
Nothing more; no souls, no heart, no thinking parts
Only vacant eyes upon the whore
Heads of the church…all heads and
Nothing more; no souls, no emotions, no Godly devotion
Only blaspheming mouths to suck the whore
Heads of the people…no heads
Upon their necks; no souls, no hearts, no caring parts
Just unconscious guilt and then genuflect.
Flying to Sheol
The soft black of evening, the stars whisper secrets
The dolly sheds tears, the daughter quakes with knowledge
Her father lies awake in fear of fear itself
And what lurks outside in the cold dead foliage…
The warm sun of the noon speckles the small boy's arm
As he splashes in a creek on the path to immortality
And the threat is invisible to the senses of a child
But he is poisoned and dying from what he cannot see…
Not for fear of fear, not for fear of death, but for
Some strange and foul anxiety can the pastor not draw breath
Not for love of family, not for love of home, not for
Love of anything can mother not die alone, alone
Can we all not perish alone…
The midday breeze stills itself, the sun is crossed by clouds
And the rain the evening promised never shows
The secretive sob of betrayal escapes the lover's lips aloud
And the storm of frustration within her broken heart and spirit grows…
The moon over Riyadh becomes red as the blood
Of the women and children sacrificed to Jehovah and Allah
The morning over Teheran and Baghdad turns to sackcloth
Black as the hypocrisy of "Islam" and "jihad"
Not for fear of discovery, not for fear of pain, not for fear
Of anything will betrayal ever refrain
Not for love of God, not for love of light, not for love
Of anything will the liar abandon his night…
The broken clock tolls nothing, the bells all chiming mute
The court is thrown together from the ashes of loyalty
The playing card faces hold monsters in monochromatic suit
The tarnished jury hangs the retainer to fallen royalty…
And not one person bats an eyelash, no one says a word
As his lifeless heart is torn from within its cavity
But the whispers of the actions of the judge are overheard
And the subtle repercussions show his honor's depravity…
Not for hate of false direction, not for hate of chemicals
Not for anything, the once-proud paragon of honesty falls;
Not for the death of marriages, not for the tarnished crown
Not for the death of anything is the golden fleece thrown down…
The golden dawn of wisdom, It's the wisdom of the grave
The order of the temple, merely more distraction
All hanging with delight on a rosi cros as deluded slaves
All members, with their numbers, of another fabled faction…
The shining path of illumination is humbly tread
By the layers of foundations, playing games with immortality
But after the chariots are flying and the sacred cow is dead
They are all still poisoned and dying from a thing they cannot see…
Loosing blood to Baal for the beast within this sea
Flying on to Sheol on the back of a multiheaded beast
Seeking nonexistent grails, His blood to feed to humanity
Toking up on foul black smoke to exclude them from the wedding feast…
Flute song Blown On the Breeze
How are you feeling? All of them ask
How tiring a question that can be…
How the fuck do you think I feel?
It feels like winter in July
It feels like the great paintings of the world
Were done in black and white and tones of gray
It feels like ashes in your cereal bowl
It feels like, it feels like, I feel like
I can't feel anymore…
What can I do? What could I have done?
What can I do?
Every box I go through
Is a grave full of memories,
Full of unfinished dreams,
The infertile seed of early child abuse
And the caustic, abrasive, velveteen catalyst
Of love…
This world is such a crazed place;
No time to breathe or see anything clearly…
Stop for a moment only, and the
One true vision you had is gone…
Forever.
Like that flute song
Blown on the breeze.
The Fantastic Icons of Love
I hold a bone in this hand
And I tread gently where I walk
With this bone;
It crumbles…
Dust
On rose petals
The peppered and dull,
Splintered stuff
Of life
After the fact of itself…
If I am not abundantly careful
I burn things up;
Flaming butterflies and sparrows
As though tattooed on the neck
Of my most-lost love,
The ashes settle on a bone in this hand
And I dare not
Set it down…
A frown or unkind word from me
Ah, it can rend the fantasy skyline
Of a world called Love
…such fragile things we are.
Milk For the Cat
She rests her hand upon my pillow
Making an impression there,
That my head pours into,
Like a warm crevice love-spot
Or a canyon.
And gradually I lose all sense of time
My clock runs down,
I lose my mind in the sensation
In the moment,
Her breath hot on the nape, raising hairs
There
An icy fire
-they stand to attention like bristles
on a steel wire brush-
Flesh like a mesh of goosebumps.
And under the hills,
Deep…buried beneath the cold iron hills,
The dead play little games with the worms
And they ask themselves,
They say,
"What is this? Vibration?
What is it? What IS it?"
Y'see, compassion is not understood
In catacombs, only slumber.
And in the city, the city
The dystopian love affair of men
And machines,
The beasts of night growl and prod
And prowl the streets,
Sniffing prone forms of the illegitimate and the damned,
Oblivious in their cataclysm,
Confident in their nihilism,
Fearless in their damnation.
Meanwhile,
Her fingers go on weaving themselves in my hair
Making an impression there
That life pours into
Like milk
For the cat.
The Girl Is A Woman
A war-torn battlefield, full of weeds and thorns and death
The strangest beauties are revealed with a whispered urgent breath
A seed planted and a flower grows where once were only stones
From the soil itself it flows, a senseless, full-of-meaning drone
The om of life is truly love, and bluebells crawl out of its maze
This tone of love cannot be silenced, temples to God cannot be razed
And so the flower grows alone and is nourished with patience
A handful of dust, moss, a bone, growing overlong in God's creation.
Fetal Matter
The baby died,
Or was it a fetus?
Consult the laws
Or the nation's leaders,
Or the library of Congress
Or your "factual" teachers,
Or your own fucking heart
It won't come from a preacher…
But you killed it dead
When you killed its mother,
The life -was it there?-
Well, now it's smothered
For her, it's choice
For you, it's murder.
It's shaky ground,
Should we go any further?…
But the fetus died
Or was it life
Ask the single mother
Or the loving wife
But not the husband
Who has no choice in the matter
It's not his child
It’s just fetal matter.
From Nowhere Past to Nothing Gained
Murdered children, eyeless, sightless
Nun deflowered and helpless and flightless
The clergy strangled in beds of lies
And babes carry guns but no remorse
Re-bar extruded like melted taffy
And frozen in place and time
Infinity and space, your true love's face
Bullet in the forehead and the powder of quicklime
Mass burial of ideologies
Gravestones pave roads less traveled
State of fear and hatred under construction
And the ruins of tyrants unraveled
The Reichstag shattered in dust and time
The bunker full of burnt, poisoned ghosts
Napoleon's palace sieged and sacked
And the Communards giving up the ghost
Burnt at the stake, defiled and forgotten
The corpses of history wrapped in cotton
The offspring of conflict, misbegotten
Conquest and poverty make a toast,
Over the blackened, charred bodies of infants
The fallen marble busts block up the entrance
Of civilized behavior toward one another
And another diaspora and then up go the fences…
Staking claims and defending the borders
Starving population put on alert
Uniformed, armed, lined up in the desert
To attack the defenseless as food for the masses
Bearing down on the starving under classes
Fuck the pen and the scholarly glasses
Divide and conquer, multiply the hurting…
Serin nerve toxin strikes down the enemy in black
Cities boxed in waiting for a prolonged attack
Drop the bombs on the babies, there's no going back
The silence in the streets is like a tomb
Protestation is killed by an overdose of dope
Patriotism is fueled by the murder of hope
The light is all gone, pitch black, we just grope
Like a fetus in a sterilized womb…
The water turns to blood, the great cities flood
Dump sites of toxic sludge, but the leaders won't stop…
And money is only dust, machines and weapons rust
But the war rages on and on, 'til the last bodies drop…
Hold Your Breath
A taste of poison on my lips
Burn in my lungs and a crackle of cinder
My lungs become bellows, my flesh is tinder
My thoughts are not often regret at the act
Of tapping the cigarette on the edge of the ashtray…
Other spirits of other people
Occupy the silent space
Consumed and strangled by the
Blue smoke exiting my mouth in whorls
Like fingerprints
Ventilation duct working in reverse…
I can hear the words of multiple conversations
And monologues
The whisper of desires
And the muttering of indecisions
(people are individual symphonies
playing in a much larger orchestra)
The maestro commands them all to breathe
So they suck in the death in the air,
The crawling suffocation of my addiction
As they inhale to continue
With that cacophonous concerto
That sonata, that paen
To their own deaths…
Hold your breath.
Holeheady
There were flowers on the grave
Of this perfect little girl
He put them there each week
As an anchor to the world
He wants to go on living
He wishes he was dead
He'll never be alive at all
For the corpses in his head.
Hollywood Occurrence
Fill the theater, prepare the crowd, roll the tape
From reel to reel, the soundtrack's loud, the actors lie
In every scene, deception, every nuance is a mental rape
Hear the cheering, jeering mass as they watch the romance die
The wounds begin to heal, then melt into another sore
Maggots scouring each gray convolution, the mind becomes a haunted maze
And though predictability is high (each time, you know the score)
The mind exists to harm itself with images from this murder craze
Turn on, turn off, blank out, become what you despise
Hanging on a hook, dangling off your unsure feet
These concepts have the power to so thoroughly hypnotize
These images have you drooling, perched on the edge of your seat
And Hollywood, unholy, is playing to your heart's defeat.
Become Death
I am elation
I have become my own happiness
Risen from a squalid mire
Of emotional decay
Just a glimpse
Of your face, your smile, your eyes
Sends me off to ecstasy
And I cry out at the cruel delay
For time is not on my side
Nor the side of any living man
Woman, child upon the earth
The time of death is set
But not the time of birth
And life, she can bless
And set me loose to roam
Become Death…
Crabgrass Roses
A rose by any other name…
Injured and bleeding open wounds, gushing from a gash
In the center of a maelstrom, an incinerating flash
Intuition of the future, intubation in the hospital
The gown is insufficient, quite revealing, unappealing,
Take her anywhere, away from here,
Take her anywhere, just away
See her playing games in fields of red tape
In pastures of her life's rape…
In a garden full of roses
See their lolling and bowed heads?
They smell of girls, they smell of red
They are scented with confusion, they are dead,
The unblossomed rosebuds…
Becoming poisoned tares tomorrow,
Bearing mute, unspoken pain
Bearing other people's shame,
Bearing, in their own beliefs,
A bloody baptism in blame
Bearing the petals of velvety sorrow…
A thorn of brutal malice in the side of teenage lust
And a golden engraved chalice filled with ashes, dreams and dust
A petal for the guilty and a petal for the innocent,
A circlet of vindication round the soul of every flower
Gone to roses, weeds and
Poppy seeds;
Ridiculous smile,
Smashed teeth, broken glass,
Brown crabgrass.
Why?
When I crack open my weary, swollen eyes
On those rare occasions when I'm fully alive
And not some primate swinging from vines of tradition
Struggling, scratching and straining to survive;
When I peer about me at the world's demise
There is no way conceivable for me to deny
All I see of the world's own perdition
And all I can think of to ask is "why"?
Why, of the suffering and distress?
Why all this death and its pointlessness?
Why, this destruction (ah, peace is a wish!)
Why is man so goddamn selfish?
When I dream at night and control slips away
The visions turn out bleak, dim and hopeless
I awaken, gasping and panting for air
At a loss for any way to handle this mess
I need to ask of someone, somewhere
Why can none of us see eye to eye
But all I can draw the strength to query
Is a breathless, weakened, pointless "why"?
Why, of the suffering and distress?
Why all this death and its pointlessness?
Why, this destruction (ah, peace is a wish!)
Why is man so goddamn selfish?
Where else do we go, what else can we do?
And how the hell do I interest you,
In going beyond all our convenient lies…
How long until you are asking "why"?
A Wish
Terminal velocity (plunging down a well of emotion)
I fall again eternally (sunken in a selfish devotion)
Lose something else each day (a whisper in the commotion)
Holding my demons at bay (lest I drown in memory's ocean)
Where is the beauty I couldn't help but see?
Now it's ugliness and want, shriveled carcass, sere and gaunt!
There is no glory or nobility (weakness!)
Anger barely held in check with civility (stress!)
The world around me has lost its mind (madness!)
But no one cares; they're all fucking blind (stress!)
Disconnected, disaffected, disrespected, walls erected
Wish I was dead, fucking dead!
Wish I was dead, fucking dead!
Ashy molten hematite (like a lost cause)
Replacing robot eyes (blindfold of the law)
Walking corpses at the five and dime (you're all zombies!)
A waking nightmare 'til the end of time (no one's free!)
Life's depressing so I swallow a tab
My wrists start crawling so I take a stab
Stared too long at a charred soul (stress!)
Too much self-abuse I couldn't control (madness!)
The mirror cracks but reflects the same face (stress!)
I'm not a member of the human race (weakness!)
Disconnected, disaffected, disrespected, walls erected!
Wish I was dead, fucking dead!
Wish I was dead, fucking dead!
In Streets of Gold
Streets…blood
Flood…shoot…kill…blood to spill
Bone…crack, but don't hit back
Watch the day break and roll down the wall
In straightjacket…antiseptic
White halls
The tile of "benevolent despotism"
And broken backs of staggered third world
Too many mouths say only "need…feed"
More genocide and historical revisionism
Recidivist prison system…big business on the loose
CEO's profit and babies get the noose
Of squalid cry out in night for milk
Nestle offers powder that kills pests dead
And gunshots ring out, don't wake them up
Meanwhile, Colombian drug cartels steal life
To fill another cup
Just can't get enough
SUV's and gasoline, oil wars in Middle East
China makes the chips for free
7,000,000 jobless/homeless here
In our own little third world "democracy"
Or socialism the color of dirty money
Color of the devil, devil inside
Procreate to feed our pride
(The lions' share) Kill the priest, rape the bride
Because their ceremony isn't quite
As nice as ours…white is right
And black cracked teeth are gold
In the US of A, no other way
Streets…blood
Flood…shoot to kill…blood to spill
Bone…crack, but don't hit back
Corpulent, table creaky and back is bent
Too many carcasses to feed us all
How far from paradise do golden apples fall?
Mapped-out infrastructures of mass McMurder
Every farmer is a cattle herder
Cows chew up our future in grain and grass
Then melt the atmosphere with methane gas
War is not for oil but maintaining social class
And all the wedding bands are made of chrome-plated brass
…suck down your medicine
it may just poison you
in streets of gold.
Not By Works
There appears to be, and it may be so,
This sense of twitching, an itchy wishing,
To make things go, to be in motion
Gears oiled by our graven-image faces
Drawn, like the molecules in a brand new potion
For bestowing life to some hopeless waste
(not in abundance, only small traces)
And not by works, but only grace does
Any of this matter.
Surge Trap
I pace the wounded, hallowed land, on eggshells do I tread
And yet my footsteps resonate, awakening the dead
Your hand in mine, approaching doors to unwittingly unlock my head
And do I see the phantom form of someone else in bed
Beside you, wearing rings of silver once upon my hand-
Is this the future I glimpse or the past again repeated?
And with a word and flick of wrist, am I easily defeated?
-ah! Cycles, cursed circles are poisoning the Land…
and so I pace the tainted wood, a tiptoed tread on you
Unearth caskets at every point; the past shall have its due;
I paint so delicately this canvas, so pale in whites and blues
A flash of green across it all, distracting me from you
As I see you there asleep, muttering someone else’s name-
I burst in where I am not welcome, don’t belong;
No partnership, no lasting foundation; a lark, a fluke, a song
-and you open eyes and ask me why the song remains the same…
No alpha or omega, just a collection of whole and flawed
I cannot live up to a better man; I suppose I haven’t got the balls
You glance and shrug and tell me you are overawed
But I can’t be your image of me, while I am scaling all these walls
Cold as ice and twice as hard, will your wounds never heal?
You say you are empathic, so why can’t you tell how I feel?
You turn me on; you turn me off, an appliance to be discarded
I never sought this sort of surge; I’m sorry and you harden
…the walls go up like a maze.
The Only Golden Thing
Fears alive shuck and jive jittering on the floor
Neck crawl mental urban sprawl polluted once more
Echoes jackhammer in my brain blood drain
Splattered on drapes inside my eyes again…the pain
Ah, God! The pain driving nails behind eyelids
This morbid fascination with myself on the skids
Et musica noctem nolumus repeat repeat repeat
Shut out beating heart emotions slowly pick and eat
Sense of senselessness? Since when am I allowed?
Shut out in burning cold again alone within a crowd
Ape men shoot me down for sport (the guns are rather loud)
Caper canter over kill alpha male and proud
The heart is stone, body brute, mind is raven "nevermore"
Fears alive shuck and jive jittering on the floor
Hopes are buckets of sodden butts and maidens all in a row
Only hell survives this place, only weeds to grow
Nothing more to know to know, nothing at all to know
Heart spatter nothing matters, gently rapping at the door
Neck crawl mental urban sprawl polluted once more…
She wakes up sees nothing here to love and simply goes.
Mirror shatters from reflection of me it sees
Only weaknesses it shows when I look deep
And she sees me for what I am and takes back the ring
Takes herself behind her walls, she was the only golden thing…
Tasks II
If I can live 1000 lifetimes in a day,
I would never find words enough to say
That the flames tormenting me are but embers
The arsons who set them all are unremembered
And the ashes and the scars have made me stronger
The spaces between us make me see the long run
And, in the long run…
I don’t listen when the world is calling
I prevent myself from falling
Because everything else pales in comparison to you
Do you hear it when the death bells ring
Do you hear the fallen angels sing
Or do I eclipse the world for you, dear?
When I am drowning, you’re the lifeboat
When I’m drifting, you’re my anchor
Toss yourself into a roiling sea
Drop yourself whole and eaten alive to be
The salvation of starvation
In the very deepest part of me
In the longest, darkest hour, in the heart of me
In the worm-filled wood,
Oh! A part of me…
Yet, alone you stand
And lie apart from me.
Tasks
If I died 1000 painful deaths
In the bowels of the darkened day
I suppose I might find the words
To blame it on the winter moon
Or perhaps the lash of the summer sun
In the hard clay over of that day
But the fact would remain
That the long awaited time couldn’t come too soon…
I don’t fall for the siren’s song of youth
I don’t feel the world’s toxic sting
These sensations are drowned in you
I never hear the bloody death bells ringing
For you eclipse the world,
My heart, a soul, and mind
I float in the liquid hallways of always
And while I float, you are the lifeboat
And the buoy of my innerness
The rolling waves are your black dinner dress
Live and, in life, the mess
Of eaten alive by me
You to become a deeper place within
Patience, and there is no larger sin
No smaller cells
Welcome to heaven
As you pull me from hell…
Cupid Crept In Black
If I take this little ball of personal grief
Sitting in my stomach's pit like a fat unwanted toad
Mold it into a shape resembling a golden spinning top
I could make it bear this load and the spinning wouldn't stop
If I make my face a mask of personal relief
Sitting on my skull like a sick sadistic rape
Mold it into a form resembling a target for a bullet
I could proudly wear my superhero's cape and you could never pull it
But in the dark, here in my room, the feelings all around me
Swimming in an oppressive ocean of blackness lick tiny black hole eels
I forge from dust, shape from nothing, your face all traced in purple light
I see it, I know how it feels, my chest is getting tight
I make my marks, here in this womb on soft walls in delicate filigree
Dimming all past emotions 'til my soul aches, my head it reels
I gorge myself on lust or something all too much like just one night
Cupid crept in black, he steals my tears again, the fucking thief!
Cupid Unmasked In Black
Well hello little girl, you raped me
Didn't you know? Couldn't you see it in my eyes?
You're a calloused little girl, do you hate me?
No, that's okay, I won't hear any more lies!
Well, sweet little angel, just like cupid
With a different bit of heaven between your thighs;
Oh, lovely little lady I'm not stupid
So today all the fucking romance dies!
Pretend Boys
When I can see cold dispassion in almond eyes
Brown flesh hued like rich stained maple
Ripple with a shiver of excitement at prospects
Better left unspoken, space unbroken by words
Giving away the mechanical click
Of the mechanisms of a calculating mind
Behind the actions
When I could peel the rigid, chemical smile off your face
Like removing stamps with steam and tweezers
Time out of time, I lose my grip
On a leash that reins in such anger
Approach the padlocked gateway swinging
To bruise a tender child beneath your veneer;
A rabid dog, uncaged, I, well aware of the danger
Well and fully conscious of pent up trapped in locked down
Rage…
…you are all the fucking same!
No taste, no talent, no soul, no culture,
Blocked off emotions,
Then feed on others like vultures.
Casting all your treasures before swine
To impress, curry favor,
To cajole and manipulate
And so the demands you make of the world
Further isolate you within
Your walled-off garden of poisoned blossoms
(a boneyard full of reeking tombs of memories)
Vile and pathetic
Plastic little flowers pretending to live.
In A Sense
Sometimes, looking up at my reflection in the moon
(somewhat like a milky white erection)
I see bugs under my skin,
An anemic, albino, anorexic twin,
And sometimes looking up at you
From beneath the covers,
I think of all my former lovers and cry
For why? For whom?
For a misnomer, none did I cover…
And because I missed and miss them all
That small piece of life
Each time I couldn't miss the knife
Swinging my way on some gray and
Shitty afternoon morning when
My childhood was aborting itself
On the bed of the night before
With some pretty little girl…
What a sad statement in a far sadder world.
Bleed
Like a mummy reversing its course
For a sarcophagus
I watch you all
Creeping and crawling with the
Bugs of your pain
Tongues swell and blacken
Tell only lies
Whispering such arcane secrets
Behind hands
Behind backs
You stab
Gulping bitter brews
Of stewing over
What you can't attain
Desire the touch
Of the drug of an everlasting sleep
Desire the sleep of the dead
Hide your lying eyes
Gouged out, blind
Cut out tongues, a mute reply
Pry black hearts from spurning cavities
But you know, I think
I'd much rather just watch
As you all bleed…
Don't bleed on me.
Bleach
I am bleached,
White as desert bones
The mind, it whirls in a lexical tempest on the world
Philosophy shackles, just a word…
For the thought and the word are one
Not quite a monster, an oversized pest
That Orkin can't touch
Gnaws a bone I realize is a process
One thought to the next,
I skip lithely, as though on stepping stones
I specialize in stories
Each syllable paints a face
On a canvas of memory
On a stretcher of emotion
The great lump of clay
Given to my care to work to a better end,
Take it all away and burn it!
Rob me of this weight
Before my shoulders simply break,
I beg away the wonders of insight,
Oh anything at all
Just a simpler life.
Black Star
You've
Taken me
Too far
To turn back now
Stolen
My spirit
You star
In black cowl
And
Here, dear,
It ends.
Binge
I am standing on this block of ice
Frozen in my actions
You seem to think I like to freeze
But I get no satisfaction
From all the pain I put you through
Like some junkie on a binge
But my shooting gallery target was me
And still you want revenge…
Bodhisattva of You
She whispers silence almost always in her dreams in her girlish sleep
She flutters, all gone, away, she hides her reality within her, deep
Don't attempt to touch this kindly bit for she has teeth and bites
She will burn you with a dying sun, a charred black star of night…
She seduces me needlessly
To live, to love, to fly and descend
To smile with my eyes as I fester within
To be some anti-incarnation again and yet again
Of a Bodhisattva of her words trickling out so heedlessly.
Better End
I saw a very small child
Running with abandon
In a field of explosive daisies
Inhaling the sweet poppy fragrance
Of death…
I saw a hale young man
Tripping hurriedly
Through a field of barbed wire thorns
Collapsing on the heather, bloodied
And torn…
I saw a hectic red obese man
Laughing up his sleeve at a snide remark
About money and men and war and death…
I saw a haggard woman, alone
Crying for baby's breath on her cheek
As its life poured from her in a trickling creek…
I heard the bass backbeat
Of a cannon's drear sonata
As it echoed its gluttony for fodder…
I heard the lonesome calls
Of dark birds circling above us all
Eagerly eying the battlefield to come…
I saw the sun
Become black as sackcloth
From the conquest in men's hearts
I saw a better end
In a shining shield of justice
In a booming voice of truth
In an enormous wave of love…
In the smile of a very small child
Running with abandon in a field of embracing daisies
Inhaling the sweet poppy's fragrant breath…
The pin was pulled, grenade was thrown,
Then death.
Beggars Can't Be Choosers
Atrophy and wither,
Beauty of love is a nest of serpents;
Cupid come not hither,
Love is a disease and serves no purpose.
Yet the ignorant and outcast
The grime-encrusted beggars
The lonely and the desolate,
Suckshit submissive losers,
They beg for love, eat abuse,
For beggars can't be choosers.
"Oh, stab my heart then leave me,"
Quoth these fools dramatically
"Thine love hath poisoned, let me die,"
Such tragedy, emphatically.
And so, the answer is a simple choice
Of how we choose to lead this life;
Cupid's just a dead orphan,
Not some madman with a knife.
Atrophy and wither,
Beauty of love is a nest of serpents;
Cupid come not hither,
Love, as life, has just one purpose…
A weapon, a tool,
A "fuck you!" to the fool.
Beautiful
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Black pavement cracks in cement gray concrete prison cell inmate no future no growth to nurture no reason just death out of season
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Mutations in so many variations psychoses paranoid neuroses I shit out guts junkies whores and sluts prostitution we all seek execution.
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Black smoke toxic phlegm and I choke sludge water everyday is a slaughter you grab me hand reaches to stab me I hate you because I don't relate to you.
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Beautiful!
Everything's so beautiful!
Get the pointlessness?
Azrael Shineth
Gentle and sweet do the icy waters flow
A tiny stream in the midst of a glen
Surrounded by the blooming sigh of 1000 orchids
And the gurgling laughter of the wind…
Drowning out reason and a will to live
The stream burbles on in seductive bliss
Lost in the forest as the fog rolls in
The dreamer blunders on in search of myth.
Harsh and bold, the cliffs rise in force
Rocky crags and shadowed secrets
Surrounding its dead with arms of granite
Divulging nothing in daylight…
Shrinking in its solidity all fear of pain
The mountain chuckles, sinister and silent
Lost to the landscape and the struggle of life
The dreamer stumbles over into twilight.
The angels of the void
Prance about the fallen forms
Of heroes on the battlefield
And maidens on the wedding bed.
They are bloated and succored
On the lifeless and the prone
And their master wears a
Tarnished, blackened halo on his head.
Azrael shineth as he walks among the dead.
There are birds of song in springtime
Trilling forth with living song
And a stand of lilies breathing
Purest life unto us all…
And the newborn infant, wailing
Dies so sinless 'midst the flowers
But the mother is a-sleeping;
The dreamer passes in the fall.
Each and every living thing passes
And gives new birth into the circle
The phoenix dies and from its ashes
Rises life, this is the way…
And the dreamer may protest
And raise his fist to curse at God
But the dreamer so realizes,
If death is black, then life is gray.
The angels of the void
Prance about the fallen forms
Of children in the fields
And the infant in his bed.
They are bloated and succored
On the lifeless and the prone
And their master's wings are
Blackened, tarnished, rotting and outspread
Azrael shineth as he walks among the dead.
Arrival
Clocks…all…around…me…
Clocks-tock-tick-tock…
I have just come through that door sir
Saw a light on and…
Well, I sort of walked into
Here.
No, I don't think you know me
I know, I know, but really,
You don't know me
I have just entered this circle of light
From that room over there
All broken stained glass windows
And the disembodied voices of chanting fools
The shadows follow us around over there
One tapped me on the shoulder
And pointed to this light
And it's a rare delight to be here, sir
But you don't know me
Well, see, I'm only here for a very short time
To steal some bricks from a wall of Cain
And take 300 years from the hands
Of a greedy father
To collect a basket full of tripe and tulips
And bulbs to be young again
I am not wearing my own skin
But a soft cheese sandwich and a bottle of mustard
Or custard and
That was the last time
I liked to make the words rhyme
Make the pages turn
And let the afternoon sun burn
All the souls that ever looked at me twice
But the flesh of an infant, the face of a stranger
The heart of a Redeemer born in a manger
I am not who I was born to be
I'm the quiet type you never see.
Quietly Leaving the Playpen
Life is the cycle, the smiley chain unbroken
The rules of the game played were tacit and unspoken
The faces in the crowd (you can pick out one at random)
Were your make-believe friends in the Spiderman fan club…
Not so much family as fairytale stories
Elaborate fantasies about exploits and glory
Little girls reliving raped childhood
And Boyscout failures who forgot how to be good…
Half the asylum are lunatics, the other half are lonely,
The other half are therapists, grooming pretty ponies
The other half play pick-up-sticks, while another half get stoned
And the other half all quit the game 'cos they watched us all get cloned…
All the toys in the record store were second hand excuses
At coffeehouse anarchy pumped up with violent music
Now the energy still sings to me and makes my blood run hot
But I'm over the revolution in the Land That Time Forgot…
A Path of Less Survival
Lily white voice like faded bleached velvet
Whisper blasphemy in the innocence of sleep
Terrible secret for us not to know, but
Sometimes tragedy runs far too deep
Façade of a martyr, unmoved, unperturbed
Resting upon the face of radiant youth
Hopes stir shallow, just below the surface
And the hideous ripples belie a darker truth…
Whispers and echoes resounding of children
Of nasty dark rumors and tasty black humor
Aged and wrinkled on papers in floods
Snap-necked grief of little girls and puppy blood
Smeary and rouged on lips of daughters
Marked with clumsiness as sigils, as padlocks
Long, thin magus-finger stirring deep waters
'Til a vessel of childhood lies broken and defrocked…
Stains, in the mind, hiding crouched in the convolutions
Irreversible twists in the shabbiest dreams
A playing field of black and red retribution;
A player is begat and the pendulum swings
So no one ever comes across still complete
No soul escapes unscathed, unburned
And the hallways resound with the padding of tiny feet
Daughters' eye sockets are pits and we won't return…
Between the Gulf and the Narrow
(A Straight and Dying Sparrow)
Omens on a dirt track winding around innerspace
A small game board to view as the sun goes down
Through the myopic scope
Of dust particles in late afternoon rays of foreboding
A cabin, a dustbin and a tree with no leaves
A slight breeze, but cutting to the bone
A broken, glistening razorblade
A beaming smile from a toothy child
And the pealing of a muted bell
Whistling in the diseased, malodorous darkness
Of four am
Anywhere, anywhen, nothing
Just an odd feeling upon seeing spectral afterimages
And water-logged feathers on the doormat…
Duck dying in tarry, black nightmare taffy
Of just a moulting sparrow?
Who knows what lies between the dark night's gulf
And the straight and narrow?
Drops In A Bucket (one)
Unclench the jaw muscles
Like opening a steel trap
To free a wounded creature
That has large, wet, black eyes;
And pain, real pain is a better friend
To me than you are
Because it's always there for me
-reliable-
To snap me out of frozen moments of
Guilt and regret
But your eyes only tell me of thick smoke
The scent of burning rope
And games once played then forgotten,
Like me…
Your face only tells me how things
Used to be.
The Sandbox Chronicles
He’s gone daddy gone
Long gone to the graveyard
Of tomcats and polecats
Aggies and cat’s eyes
Of sandlots and Tonka toys
Where elephants stand on dump trucks
And Timex takes a licking
And not one soul dares to breathe a sigh
You could hear a pin drop
Over the telephone lines
Washed away in the green glow
Of computer screens
He’s gone
Like, with the wind
Gone to see Dorothy in Oz
Lost in the big Bijou in the sky
Lost in his own little corner of the world
A tiny pocket of nowhere full of trinkets and baubles
Comic books and baseball cards
The Lonely Heart’s Club Hall of Flame
Icing on the cake of a bygone age
He’s a little boy
In a candy store
On the sugar beaches of breathlessness
With pudgy hands on the display glass
Running all the way
And never taking a step
Uphill; the charge of the second sight brigade
Teddy gone Bully in his mad parade
King Arthur on the prowl
Like some fading apparition in rags
Growling at the Round Table
Pounding on Excalibur
While Lancelot and Guinevere
Share a bottle of muscatel
In a steamy sex motel
Dragons in the lighted tower
Like a Colombian drug cartel
Errol Flynn on the promenade
Sings "yo ho ho and a bottle of nuns"
Laughing just to beat hell
‘Til tears squeeze from his eyes
Blood-food-sacrifice
The mummy’s walking
And the bogeyman’s talking
Whispering sweet nothings in the ear of babies and kittens
And Teddy’s still asleep
In the land that time forgot
Laying like a slain flower
Ballyhoo and Tommyrot
With the scent of little boy sweat
And the fog
Lost in the sandbox
Dying by the day.
And the moon is hangin’ out
Like some obscene silvery crimson egg in the sky
Dripping goat’s blood and Captain Midnite decoder rings
A bad moon a-risin’
Oh man
Dat band
Done come up around de bend
Trillin’ spook songs and ballads
On a ghost train to the sixties
Icy fingers chilling Teddy to the marrow
Nature had its way one day
But now dis here boy
Got the corpse of the world on his lap
No one left to talk about it
As the skeletons come tap dancing out of the closet
Like a pedophile with a book on child rearing
No more service station attendants
With "Ralph" tattooed to the pocket
No girls in miniskirts on the corner
With syphilis and legs to their necks
No "live for today"
No dream-time drugs for Stepford wives
St. Vitus dancing on your grave
Midas and Dionysus drunk with wealth and power
The Gordian knot of lust
In a noose about their necks
No more Howdy Doody for rich white kids,
Clarabelle doin lines in the dressing room
Just an extended visit to the twilight of the soul
A long season in the sandbox
Dying by the day.
Wholesale nightmare frightmare
Where
The dead men get up and "keep on truckin’"
Searching for the fateful albatross
Hitchin’ down that endless highway,
Scattered with the bones of trips gone by,
Where the Lone Ranger met the Grateful Dead
And the NRA refused to play
The Duke still reigns supreme
And Bonzo’s soakin’ up the rays and the Brill Crème
Fred and Wilma Flintstone gave Dino a leg bone
A baby boy
Got a nasty toy
Got the heebie-jeebies creeping in his chest
Crawling under his skin
Went to bed without any supper
Superman, Superman
Chugs them Cokes and wastes the cans
The Fly is tokin’ up on some fresh rolled shit
The mind is a terrible thing to taste?
The mind of a sick little Teddy
Left in the sandlot too long
With the stigmata in his baseball glove
Goes right through his hand
Got asthma attacks and the chicken pox
Measles, mumps and whooping cough
Sacked out, jacked up, jerked off
By a smelly old wino
He got it for free
And a dose of the clap to boot
It’s the last time he ever got anything for free
The gift that keeps on giving
Perking fresh coffee in his head
Too intent on taking life to realize he’s dead
Little Teddy drops the bomb
Makes a worldwide stink
Always skating on the brink
Sinks the pink
He’s no little boy anymore
Too long gone, too long gone
Gone too long in the sandbox
Dying by the day.
So the sun sets and rises
He’s too cynical for surprises
Ever-so-clinical he surmises
Nothing seen, nothing new
And Teddy winds himself up
For a final blow
Pride?
Ain’t got none
Grabbing for his popgun
Feeling like the top gun
Feeling up the girl on the bus
Looking up her velvet dress
There’s the bones of the monster
From a King Kong movie
Buried deep in the dirt
Of the crusty projection booth
Of his mind’s eye
Hurt, lost and lonely
It’s the only thing that counts anymore
Bela Lugosi comes creeping through the kitchen
Sipping Ovaltine like blood
Got his cowboy hat and six-shooters
He’s older than the flood
And sympathy in his eye
As she wipes away the Southeast Asian mud
Leftovers from the bar-b-cue cookout
Of the sixsixsixties
Seventies, eighties, nineties
The last quarter of the 20th century flipped in the toss
Genocide, suicide, genocide, suicide
Heads, you lose
Tails, you lose
Falls to the floor
Jittering, jiving, alive under the bed
Locked in the White House
He’s the doomsday weapon we hear of now and then;
Little Teddy whips out the tube of fake blood,
Like a swollen penis from a
Raggedy pair of pants,
Smears it on his face and says
"Boo!"
Scared you to death and laugh out loud
With makeup and grease paint
Turned yer hair white
You been away too long in the sandbox
Dying by the day.
Airhead
Artificial intelligence
Within your gaping cavity
Like the emperor’s clothes
In a gilded cage
Don’t point too hard
Or indulge your ignorance
Loose your tongue
Lose my love
Numbers mean everything?
How much, how many, how far
You’re a terminal case of obsession
A Machiavellian angel
Always
I always feel this way
Never consider tomorrow
Only yesterday
Phantom haunted
By the things I do
The words I say
I always, Always, ALWAYS
Feel this way.
How Much Stranger?
I am a stranger
You don’t know me
Nor would you care to
If you could see me
Oh, I wear the same shirts
And socks and shoes you wear
I wash dirt from myself
And comb my hair
But make no mistake
I am not me
An immaculate fake
I am not what I seem to be
I am not what you see
The creaks and pops
Of a stranger’s joints
Sound like alien speech
Metal, plastic, flesh and bone?
Listen for clanks and a screech
For I am a stranger
So very different from you all
I fire blanks into my head
While you shop at the mall
So very alien,
Isolated, bricked up in a tomb
Alive and dead, or undead
A shadow in the gloom…
I am a stranger,
Want some candy?
Myths About "Us"
I reek of filth and shit and rot
I am the cum of disease and stench
The suicide of greater causes
The defiled bride of purpose
The cankered face of deceit and mistrust
The nothingness of mold and must
The knife in the backs of caring friends
The lost and lonely, the bane of life
The pustulent whore who must pretend
I am the path of hopelessness
The impotent wrath of all pretense
The lustful leer of wantonness
As Philistines destroy each caress
I am the vulture awaiting the feast
Of the corpse of the freshly deceased
The unsheathed penis of the feral beast
The murderess, the addict, satanic priest
I am the death of all things sacred
The splinter by which the heart is bled
I am a ship of fools heading for doom
The claustrophobic dark of the sealed tomb
A fungus decaying all sanity
As the illogic of my existence manifests
A corrosive acid eroding stability
What all good souls detest
I am blackness and sickness and purity deflowered
The dead husks of planets of life devoured
The bloody lips of a face cruelly scoured
The slinking denial of the worthless coward
The hands on the clock of the final hour
The hell that tears mankind apart
I am love as I swallow your worthless heart…
I Jest
I wear the hat of a murdered clown,
Drop my pants and moon the room
Drop my defenses and bend down
To pick up my cluttered thoughts
Stand up once more, I wear a crown;
Jeweled tiara in the gloom
I blow out its light without a sound,
My world is darkened (as a tomb)
I turn around a bit too soon
And knock the whole thing down.
Incantation/Intonation
Words can be spoken like initiations
For harsh stones skipping across a pond
Like a verbal champagne bottle on the hull
Or a fight or a magic wand…
A hail of unruly bullets melting down
The raincoat house of protective isolation
Or something like hand grenades and
Hammocks
Sputtery little Volkswagen buses
With peace sign hubcaps
Drive-by rainbow-haloed thugs
With flaxen hair and leathery wings
Sandals and dashikis and
Diamond rings
Through the nose of
The bullshit
Catches the carp (perhaps I am too koi)
Then eaten by the shark
Swallowed by the whale while the singer strums
Drowned in the age of aquariums
Gurgling blue and stiff on the sandy shore
And so the words are the door
To bleach the soul
To beach the hole
For the whole vacation
-tempest-tossed initiation-
And several obscure variations
It all depends on the intonations
Of the words-
Like a star-littered black sand beach
-the ashes of incantations.
Dancer
Right…
Or wrong?
Right?
Rights…
Rights? Rights!?!
Punch the stars out of the night’s sky
Of your life
Like cardboard dresses
For a paper doll,
Doll,
Dear…
Dear…dear?
Do you hear what I’m telling
Do you feel you’re on the edge
Untouchable and flirting with a
Beautiful, a dangerous wonderful toy
Like a burst blood vessel in your brain?
I am afraid,
I fear losing
You to your
Lust for life, dear…
I am in an ecstasy of paralyzing
Terror
For your life
Featherfalling tiptoe beautiful windup dreamer doll
(all you ever wanted was freedom
all you ever needed was everything, all
all you ever wanted was to love the wind.)
All you were waiting for was a tragic
Graceless fall…
Chance
Another chance?
Is there a chance
Let us dance this seemingly
Beautiful dance run through neon hills
Let us pirouette with
Life inside a pill
Wear a mask of
Go be a good lil flower on…
(the fool on the hill sees her sun going down and the eyes
in her head cry the tears of a clown)
Doo Doo Doo dudu doot doot doodoodoo
Yeah,
That’s you crystallized
Glad I realized
Before my time was all gone,
You tarnished brass excuse
For a precious golden dawn…
But still, you’re the flower
It’s your power
Don’t get mowed down along with the lawn…
Dancer, doll.
Judaskissed
Hey, hey it’s okay
It’s been 18 months
And a motherfucking day
And nothing has changed
About the way I feel
Except for intensity
Of depression.
You had a point
Too truly sweet
Like a sugary treat
With icing
Like I could lick my lips after
Kissing you and
Know how heaven
Could be smoking a clove cigarette;
You’re the passion fruit of
My most disabled desires, my love,
It can burn, let it spark
Let your body roast
A delectable cinder, and never
Never rise all phoenixy
From the ashes…
But the mind’s eye movie of you
-like a stained glass image of Christ
in some ancient, incense-permeated
cathedral-
It would be there
To char me with a
Sad, pathetic insistence.
Oh, you remember me telling you
How emptied I would be,
How utterly and completely
Hollow inside,
How I would probably die
If ever you left me alone…
Leave me alone.
Yeah, you remember, but you took the flowers anyway
From the altar, cruel botanist,
And examined them until they withered,
Tossed them to the ground,
And froze them into a statue
Just ice, a meaningless husk
Of beauty undefined
That you could worship at your leisure
And spill a tear or two about
In wee silent hours of
Loneliness and morning.
To say you killed me?
Nah, too melodramatic,
An actor’s affair,
But the words in and of themselves leave the
Undesired effect of a
Literary understatement;
You didn’t kill me,
It was butchery,
Heartless, cold slaughter,
Belittled me in every way.
What little self-respect I had
You built that up,
You made me feel strong
You made me believe
I mattered…
That I was loved,
Made me see an illusion
Had me suckered with a falsehood
About romance,
A lie about love
A twisted misconception
About life and meaning,
You made this world real,
Gave it sustenance and life,
Made it grow within my heart
Then dug it all up with a
Claw like garden tool,
Ripped it all apart,
Tore it all up by the roots
From the newly shit-fertilized soil of my self
And gobbled the flowers
That were produced
With a zest and zeal
To rival Dionysian revelry…
Evoe!
So,
How does it feel to
Betray
Every belief you say
You espouse?
How does it feel to know that nothing
Not a thing
Has changed,
That the edge, raw and ragged,
Is gone from the pain?
C’mon, gimme just one more kiss,
Kiss me again,
Be the Judas you intended,
Beg for your death…
Judas
Iscariot
Crave praise…
Be shit!
Legendary Mind
I have a legendary mind, I tell ya’
But don’t take my word for it, see for yourself;
I got a library I’d love to sell ya’
Filled with 40,000,000 books, but only one shelf;
And the midget in the corner, see
You may have heard of his distant cousin before
‘Cos the hunchback’s related to Little Jack Horner
(He’s just in from Transylvania to even the score.)
There’s a little purple pipe that smokes itself
It got addicted to nicotine in a past life, or so I’m told,
And it keeps itself busy sorting the library shelf
(The pipe’s convinced it’s a burlesque show, but it’s only panning for gold.)
If you take fifty steps up the staircase
Your pants will suddenly become something a genie might wear
And it always puts a smile on the midget’s face
(But I find it a rather scandalous affair.)
And there’s a pathway that leads into the clouds
It begins in my study, at my desk within a very old book
It’s covered in what seems like funeral shrouds
But are really just aprons, and they all say "Kiss The Cook".
Well, the path, let me tell you, it’s one tricky old sod
It will twist and turn just to try to throw you off
It alarmed my vizier when it claimed to be God
He complained to the magi, but the wise men just scoffed.
So as the day ends, I add up my wonders
And put them back, one by one, in my legendary mind
See, they help me conceal all my foul-ups and blunders
And though I chase them all madly, they’re not that hard to find,
But there’s one that outshines the rest
And she glows like a furnace and fits like a kidskin glove
She is comfort incarnate, yes truly the best,
My promise, my tomorrow, my nothing, my love.
Letter From the Clergyman
Talking to Elizabeth today
I contracted a cancer in my brain
A tumor beneath my frontal lobe the size of Texas
And the severity of taxes
And I know because my telephone is
Radioactive…
Whilst strolling to the mailbox
To see who wants my money
And for what
I saw him in the telephone repair van
Across the street
Sipping steaming coffee and munching a croissant
Stuffed with roadkill;
He was watching me without seeming to
And I know because the NSA reads my
Mail…
And speaking of reading my mail,
As I went over the bills from one oil company or another
Proclaiming my payment delinquencies
Beyond acceptable standards
I found it in a letter
From an uncle I always suspected
A bug no larger than a dust mote
And I know because a goose walked across my grave
When I spoke into the letter…
Then Liz came home from her mother’s house
(Feeding soup to the sick old one)
And we had sex six times six times six times
And she gave me syphilis
Although she denied it when I accused her
And I know because I stole her blood and while she slept
I had it tested…
And this morning I brought her breakfast in bed
Coffee with cream and sugar and strychnine
Oranges with an injection of atropine
Toast with arsenic in the butter
And eggs a la curare
And I know she’s dead because she didn’t move when
I slapped her…
So now I have two more pills to go
Out of this bottle of Oxycontin
And I wrote this and mailed it to you
Because someone had to know
That the plot had failed
And I know you won’t go to the police
Because then I would come after you…
Love and secrecy,
Reverend Richard Chantworthy.
Living In Dreams; Undying Obsession
Stars in the black canvas night
Like slitted eyes of hungry animals
March onward in the cold sterility forever
Of the heavens…
Paths are set, begun, ended,
And repeated;
The conqueror upon the throne
Is ousted and unseated
And still there is a pile of flesh
Beneath my own.
The mountainous shoulders of the earth
Heave as if to shrug, "I don’t care",
Uprise in the swift advance
Of each successive wave of hope and loss…
Coins flip eternally in thin air
For the toss,
Despots and martyrs vie for the
Gore-slicked, treasured position of the cross
-and still your smile is stretching
to the limits of my own…
The wheels and the gears; the machine of death
Goes on and on, rumble and groan,
On and on and on,
On and on…
And we call this life
It is a waking dream
Where Atlantis never sank
And the cats were never thrown into bonfires
Or perhaps the glaze-eyed dream is a glassy view
Of the sunken city’s frozen spires?
Walk and walk and walk,
Trudging as through the taffy-carpet
Of nightmares…
Circuses never really end
And the cycles of the seasons
Follow the tolling
Of a heartless bell…
Shells on the beach,
Stars in the winter sky
As inexplicably beautiful is this dream we live,
As inexpressibly ugly and deformed
Are the deaths we must die
Life after life, lie upon lie
Drop a crystalline universe
In a naked, weary eye
And watch dreams woven into
Markers for early graves
Shallow holes, like eye sockets
In Middle Eastern faces
(Persian and Syrian sunny-faced children
bombed from home while the wind is building;
Hebrew and ancient, the face of a mother,
Mossad, masked in treachery, diasporal in night
Sabra, six-pointed, flexing barbed wire might)
All masks in a bloody crowd,
A moaning, beseeching begging mass
All bleeding into shrouds…
(But will we leave our own imprint when we are done?)
The palaces of our dreamlives stand empty,
Castles, all barren of life;
Kings and madmen -once staging their plays
In the twilight of history- have gone on,
Have dissipated like mist-shrouded mystery
Enigmas and paradoxes…
We are oxymorons of our life-dream obsession
Killing off our corpses
In a rapid fire succession
Distressed by all the signal codes
The sheets run red
And we rave in slippers and robe
To a face on a wall
In a house, down the hall,
Inside a cell, upon a hill,
Built upon the ones we kill…
Bricks are lives
Are the murdered brides
Are the planets and the stars
Revolving in eternity
And the face is our conscience
Is the doctor we believe we need
We pay the bill in blood and sweat
And continue ranting and slathering
In isolation
Wishing to be in possession
Of the keys, the signs, the symbols we seek
To end an undying obsession;
It lives on in the tales we spin
In the faces we paint
In the myths we create
In the legends we speak…
No immortality for the mortals,
Just death and a need to hide
Just a grave and a feast, a place is set
Now eat yourself alive, obsessed.
Lot’s Lot
The newborn raises his withered hand
To touch the bloated breast
Hanging like an unfed tick
From his mother’s chest
And the milk pouring out
To meet his mouth
Is dust, and so blinds him.
He lifts his fingers to grasp for assistance
Meets the coldness and cruelty
Of an insane world
And it instinctively lurches away
From his touch.
And, lying alone in a sere desert,
Created by his impotence
And the crushing impossible hooks
God gave him as hands,
The infant sees a woman approach.
She is young, yet she is ancient,
She is fertile, yet a nubile,
She is everything he ever needed,
Every pittance he ever wanted;
She is everything as she reaches
To lift him to her bosom,
And his hands go out to touch her face,
Only to turn her to a pillar of salt.
Lou Reed
Hey Lou Reed, you pathetic shitbag,
Jeanne shot smack because of you,
You fat, profiteering, jeering, shit-flinging chimp,
You useless yuppie fuck!
And now she’s dead
And you go on cranking out second-rate crap poetry
Playing twangy over-used chords on acoustic guitars
For backup
You’re past your prime, on stolen time
Haven’t learned a goddamn thing have you?
And Jeanne was so beautiful
So in tune, talented, and sad
And susceptible at 14 to corpse-fuckers like you
In your velvet-gone-to-khaki
And the underground you helped to steal
And sell to corporate executives
When you finally die, it should come as no surprise to you,
You’ve had it coming since
You defamed the name
As it passed your junkie lips.
A Lover’s Gaze
I would look into those pools of your eyes, my love
And call out beauty, tell all my secrets
If they would only look back into mine
I could smile for you for days dearheart
Until my cheeks cracked and I burst
And I bled you out like wine
I would love you as I always have, all being
Promise the world, not for the first time
If your heart were not withered, cold and dull
But as I speak the words, of my sweetness
Hands in the soil, head upon the cool stone
I know there is no life within a skull.
Lessons Well Learned
Cruelty is acquired, not inborn, merely taught
I learned cruelty by watching adult actions…
Spare the rod and spoil the child is as may be
But what if beatings occur for adult satisfaction?
If I never harmed another, where was my transgression
(If I kept only my counsel, and yet I was beaten…
then how was I, a fledgling babe to learn a valued lesson?)
Ah -I see, the world is always hungry and my flesh must be eaten…
But you say there was no such moral behind your fisted "love"
I misunderstood (was I much too young to understand?)
I understand that life is cruelty dressed in a velvet glove
Now, don’t turn away and flinch, for the design is far too grand…
(And anyway, the suffering is merely dust or the hourglass’ sands).
Maria Fatima In A Night
Practicing the art of light and madness
Screens illuminating pallid faces
Yet do all of us continue to run the mazes
For the cheese at the end of the sadness…
The rewards, are they truly so great?
Lacerated heart, inside I am broken,
By the silent lies we love to tell
(Simply a mask for the Amerikan hell)
Boarding fees are a false-smile token…
We distract ourselves with debate.
-such vicious games do we children learn,
to slice apart life with our wings…
within those bonfires, delicacy burns,
the incineration of beautiful things…
(That the game should have played for so long
no interruption, no time to review the "rules"…
which plays the part of an opulent king
and who is the microencephaloid fool?)
So, practicing the dance steps of electronik angels,
I watch the charade to determine its basis
Interject lines and hints to destroy this foul stasis
Tally up the crosses and the golden triangles…
Watching from my window in a burning house in the whole of it all,
Full of life, yet near to death
I await, in thrall, the breath of a lion
To immolate me with the judgment of Zion,
Yet all in all, I’ve no regrets as I am
Charred by a small mouse in a hole in the wall…
And we all fall.
Martian War Toys
You can see, if you look,
A model of a pregnant woman
(With prose, with fear, with child)
One of those see-through kinds
With the guts all defined
And a fine-toothed comb
Lying on the oak dresser next to it.
If you look inside
Like with a microscope
You can find a miniscule replica
Of that mysterious face
Serenely mocking our science
From the barren surface of Mars.
It was stamped into the plastic of the toy
By a mistake, by a machine,
Stamped with the legend,
"Made in Taiwan".
It should, by all rights,
Have been placed in the playset entitled,
"John Carter, Warlord of Mars."
Instead, it got misplaced amongst
The plastic "looks like this" of a human woman
In return for a plastic fetus
Sucking lime as with tequila
Like some horrid, alien mythos
Long-ingrained in the psyche of earthmen.
So many toys
All lined up to bat at a
Cosmic baseball game; we call them science,
Collectively discard them for
A brand new religion known as
Enhancement.
Computers perpetuate their trickery
Through their programmers,
All persnickety,
All never anything more than
A pile of microcircuitry
Or a face of human shape
On the war-scarred skin of
A planet outside our grasp.
And there’s the fact
That we can relate at all
To the Siamese of
This face as a fact of science
And the implications towards religion,
Like a yin and yang,
Like duality;
Like we learn in a classroom
Called life, from a clear plastic
See-through model of ourselves.
Me’s and You’s
There rests a clock
-making a small rectangle in dust-
On the surface of a shelf
In a room filled with miniature statuettes,
Each pose depicting another
Forlorn ceramic memory
Another outcast titan failure
An obsession with the past…
Above the shelf, in an aura
Of seconds ticking away,
Awash in the flow of waves
Of irretrievable moments stopped
And lost, all caught in nets,
There hangs a gentle portrait
Made of oily hues and crushed velvet,
A sadness-filled profile
Of the boy who owned the figurines
Perched atop the pedestals
Arrayed about the room,
And illuminated by spots of violet and
Lost dreams on tattered, ashy wings…
The portrait leaks a steady drip
Of ruined aspirations
To soak and stain the face of the clock
So that time yet another
Chance lost,
Another step regrettably untaken
Another path unfortunately unbroken
Each symbol just a token image
Optimal ways in which one views
A panoply from which to choose
A billion me’s and a million you’s.
Night Cowl Cowered
Screech, flicker, howl,
The night wears an ancient cowl
And poses and postures
Puts on a frown, such a wounded scowl
Pretending its painted eyelids
Are more than battered mini blinds
The night is a black Virgin Mary nightlight
And she blinds, the blackhole binds…
Swish, twisted hips
The night has a pouty pair of bloody mashed lips
From a spat with its gay lover
Pulled back covers and exposed the rips
In fishnet stockings
Peter Murphy’s soulless voice is mocking
The virgin dawn
"Dancing in church aisles, dancing on holy books…"
Pulsing night, blood vein
Bass desires look-alike Aladdin Sane
Pretty boy painted face
And the line for the unisex toilet is main
The night wears dirty robes
A slight infection (reddish) newly-pierced earlobes
Nostrils flared indignantly
Jilted, jaded, the night presumes to see what it will see…
Skulk, cower, spies
The night is a thousand melting eyes
Syncopation of paranoia
The night comes to most of us as no surprise
For the wind do howl
The night wears a shit-stained, cum-rag cowl
Hides her pretty face with lies
And eats up the city world with Bette Davis Hitler eyes…
Needy, greedy, reedy waif
Nowhere to hide within the night is safe
The night is a clown,
A poorly-thought-out white bred jackanape
Who prowls its own alleys,
A perpetrator of pedophilic rapes
A face from the ancient gallery
A pair of plastic fangs in a black velvet cape…
Smoke and sexual repression,
Fake smile, faked orgasm, fake "who-could-care-less" expression
The night is a gossip priest
Blabbing the time away about your confession;
A misanthrope hooligan
With a taxicab permit and a liscense to do harm
The night is John Wayne Gacey
With a tattoo of Ronald McDonald on his arm…
A ball-stealing lurker
Hiding children’s toys where they cannot be reached
Fluttered lashes won’t be besought;
The night is black hair with bangs bleached-
A bad bottle-job
An illustrious potentate, a Mickey Mouse nabob,
A greasy corpse with turned-out pockets,
A carcass that’s been robbed
And walks about
Begging change and oral sex from strangers
A sick little child
Knocking down the nativity and pissing in the manger
Stealing the statue
Of Mary and replacing her with a blow-up doll…
The night is the American obsession
With pop homogenization and all-night shopping malls
It is foul implications
In a blasphemous Bible printed in Pig Latin;
A fat whore asleep
On sheets of sweaty sackcloth instead of satin.
Oh, the night is pressure
Unfettered like buildup in a sealed teakettle,
It is wrong, it is right,
Jus a puling, surly night
A small child’s teardrop on a faded rose petal…
Merely the epitome of a sad, infected race.
Vacuum Moons
What words were once whispered
Into my child's fragile ear
As night closed in and the stars burned,
Hungry fire like
The eyes of necrotic red dragons?
-everything is nothing,
but there's value nonetheless…
don't worry, you're safe-
Whispered simultaneously from
A thousand tombs
From the hundred dead mouths of my
Mother's death bed,
My father's house
And his hollowed-out head;
I was comforted with dirty lies
By the speech
Of a gourd-headed scarecrow, all
Pumpkin smiling
And jittering in a wasteful wind
As it washes the world
A way…
Isn't perception a terrible thing, indeed?
My my my
My sweet thing,
Would that you would cry for me
(I need your tears to drink like an elixir;
my malady of dusty erosion, my
dehydrating disease of leeches and moonlight and sadness,
they require replenishment,
a refreshment of
salty isolation.)
Odors of sewers arise when I think
And the thoughts
-I thought of nothing for far too long
I thought they were there-
But the thoughts gum up the world,
The ideas are lost, pale, dead faces
Dumbly staring at me for
A ticket to some sad carnival,
For a socket into which to plug themselves
And, lo! Play a spoonish,
Moontime melody,
Monotonous its malady
As the drone of
Insects in graves
Gnawing bones,
They seek a port of entry
Into a sanitized room, cluttered only
By the breaking of
Wills and ideas,
Fluttered through and round about
By the bat winged
Paper scraps
Containing the things
We said as children,
The corpse-cold ideologies
Of persistence and insistence that we are right.
But right and wrong?
Just mislaid concepts
Presets to disappointment
At a later date.
Nothing…pervades thoughts
And ideas
And flight
As if we touched a sky of rough,
Calloused amber emptiness
I might divide my own attention,
My self
And combine with
The stealthy, hungering
Hole in that sky that the universe fills,
A black void ball
-like wax on fingertips-
The ashen faces of the porcelain dolls
Surrounding me on every side
Become the moons of other worlds
(Sometimes I can't even feel myself
in the vacuum of totality
in which I swim,
gasp, and drown.)
Cause Them To Pass Through The Flames
"So son, are you given to the gods of my fathers
but my hands are washed clean and my conscience unbothered
and the weight on my chest as I lie there sleepless
I pretend not to notice, but those black wings are sleekest
That brush my face, they are tarnished and dissolving
I pray for salvation, but there is no absolving
For my sins run too deep and they were all for the masters
(Though I worship their filth, I can still call them bastards)
So I rub from my eyes images of all the tiny disasters;
Accidents that have paid for the curiosity of the scholar…
Brush them away like dust and spend a few dollars…
As though I weren't to blame for it all
As if I were clean and pure and unsoiled
As if my crimes were committed by others
Like decadent words on some vandalized wall…
This is how we murder our sons and brothers
How we readily sacrifice daughters and mothers
Spill out the pure blood of friends and lovers
Praying in nightmares that no one discover
That we're pretenders to honor and the sheriff's stars are tinfoil…
Oh, yes this is the path we have mapped for you
Just another lost progeny, swallowed in mists
Loveless, joyless and blood red in hue
Another commodity, so easily dismissed
You must trust me, for all this I do is for you
Bow your head, I will terminate with extreme prejudice…"
Blew It
Life is a long, slow divorce from the real
As more European towns beget battlefields
And the natives there are captive to blade, blood and steel
And the trappings of peace just get in the way;
The world's on its deathbed and life is receding
The accused nod their heads, so blindly conceding
The youngest ones are learning how to be self-defeating
From 9/11 to Columbine to Timothy McVeigh…
And remember that ferryman? He won't take your money
Just laughs at you drowning, so uproariously funny
And those coins lie corroding, unused and uncleaned
The silos and missiles, so silent and gray
Yet the forest regrowing, so fecund and green
The universe rejoices and praises the day
That we gave up the ghost and mankind blew away…
For the Common Good
The memoirs of a dying race,
A species of death
In every word spoken or written,
A culture, a world
Succumbing to the grave
In entirely willing leaps and bounds
Presented with a pasty face
Of surreal hopeless hope
And a willingness to please,
Holes torn through the knees
Of fishnet stockings worn
By a whore
Of this manunkind race
We have the cum of death on our face…
Each kid in the hallway on his way to class
Is the invisible tombstone
For an unmarked grave,
Mourned by those too weak of will
To truly mourn anyway;
Each family man commuting to work
Another undertaker eating
The grisly remains of the stock and trade of
His livelihood;
Viral genocide for the common good.
Melted Meaning
Blood covers words, dried like rust on swords
Even the smallest combination of letters is a rape
Or wearing sentences and phrases like a cloak
Hiding emotions behind walls of grammar
Wielded as weapons like a ball peen hammer
Bars on metal cages with rubber rules
Meant for better works than this tragicomedy,
Intended for scripting opuses of divinity,
Not these pathetic vignettes
About the basest aspects of a killing species,
Apathetic asides containing verbal feces,
Fuck and shit and cunt and whore
Pot, crack, lying in your steaming vomit,
Dying upon a concrete floor
Living a lie vicariously through words…
Flowing non-stop like sewage down the toilet, flushed
From the mouths of addicts gush the terms of contention
Dividing the whole goddamn planet
"In a world of human wreckage"
"Wave of mutilation, comin' down"
Every single word spoken, just the burning, acidic
Tears of a clown
"Sound and fury, spoken by a fool, signifying nothing"
Egocentric self-inflated mantras issuing forth
From the brain in its amniotic fear fountain
This species is a factory spewing its waste into the stream
Of universal unconsciousness, the language of the spheres…
A purer purpose existing within, yet without
The languages themselves
A fiery, golden Pythagorean anomaly,
A solitary existence with a million million faces,
And all you can say of this endeavor is,
"whoa dude!"
Molly
An open eye sees more
And an untainted smile conveys
A connection…
Thin and beautiful
And unwavering,
Existing in the face of adversity.
Ah, but such simplicity
Of function, grace and aesthetics
Combined in a creation
Of perfection.
An easy word to say,
Said so thoughtfully in melodious
Tinkling of sweet bells and light.
What do I see
That binds you to me,
But the incongruity
Of one life with Life?
Step easy up to the plate
And take a swing
As the ball races your way;
It is your game, your play
Stand close to me,
Pick the words and say
What I most desperately want to hear,
Dear.
Monolith Seen As Silhouette
A slight trepidation at the knock
Yon tiny fires have me sweating in my own relived daytime shadow
It just crossed past outside the window,
An insectile baby hand goes reaching
And I must slap before it touches that coldness…
A rap at the window's pane
That tap is the locked secret I can almost decipher
When I peer hard enough into your pools
I noticed the smell, believe me,
Our physical bodies do have a tendency to reflect, as mirrors,
The festering seethe within our souls…
On a soulless journey, amongst machine-minded brethren;
I smile to ward off the frost in your gray, icy-piggish eyes
Your heart is a garden of weeds and stones,
I, the farmer, cannot ten it well enough for you,
I cannot break that soil, though my hands are blood and blisters
From the extraordinary effort…
How many Judases must hang, kissed, from
The trees in the clearings,
Before any of us learn not to trespass like that again?
I think all four of us could feel his neck crack,
Teeth shattering against one another like cheap pottery;
Today is a Sunday, oh the sun is out,
But it only bathes a sometimes world
In ashen gray hues almost vomitously accurate to the soul,
The sunlight, I mean, is always just the hue
Of the uniform tha tis the funeral shroud
For some forgotten confederate soldier…
A stumbled slumber from the shadow at the sash.
Murder the Children (infanatical)
Stare into the face of another you
(this perspective offers no solace
this lens is merely a twisted view)
A gray dingy torment, devoid of its colors
And the bright, crystalline display is dented
(a reversal of what little happiness I have known
and all the supporters of light have dissented)
All's a pale face of marble, a grimace cut in stone…
The blood has drained from the veins of life
And sanguinated this alien earth
It has poisoned the oceans with thick, oily light
Another day in the night of a stillbirth
My own arteries flowed with rivers of gold
Now are hollow and brittle as old bone
Severed, then knotted on nails, I unfold
To become just a sorrowful drone
A buzz in the ear like a gnat, nothing more
(I crouch, genuflecting forever,
for I may not move from this cold, marble floor)
Since the lines of my sad life were severed…
My Girl
Death,
That unavoidable event
She will come one day
And kiss you
With papery dry lips
Your eyelids will flutter
Your breath will falter
And you will swear loyalty
And follow her
To the ends of the earth…
Yeah, my girl is a fickle bitch.
That's Life
There was a child born.
He grew to be a man.
He did many things.
He died.
The things he did were forgotten.
He was forgotten.
The end.
Syphilis
He pulled out of her,
Rolled off
And asked her for a cigarette.
Putting the gun to her head,
She told him the syphilis
She had given him would do it,
Then pulled the trigger.
My Question For the Pope
My sister went to Poland
And got photographs of Auschwitz
The spectres of boys in yarmulkes
And the skulls of Nazi angels
Little blond devils with beady blue eyes
I felt nauseous, and I tried
I tried, but could not deny
"What is 'human'"
the question formed…
"about humanity?"
I was then deformed.
I look at photos of the Pope and wonder
The stories through history
Of Roman rape and plunder
But Poland still stinks of rotting dignity
And Austria reeks of soot and ash
And Yugoslavia's a travesty
The widening of a gaping gash
And Israel tries for bravado
In the face of the fascists of the day
But they shiver in the pseudo-friendly shadow
Of the good ol' USA
And I turn back to my magazines
And history books like dusty clocks
All running back, forward, running out
Like a Luger, a Mauser, a Glock…
And I see a younger Karol
With a young boys sienna-toned indifference
And ponder any implications
About Catholic complicity
Or duplicity toward these people of God
While the devil and the Third Reich shot their wad
I mean, the Church opposes abortion
Because God alone can say, well, okay,
So the Nazis did the same
But because it was up to the State…
And Mother Church burned Jews as heretics
Martyred them like Jesus
And the Third Reich burned up Judah
All because "der Fuhrer pleases…"
And I'm quite certain when I see photos
Of 12 year old Jewish kids
In corpsey emaciated poses
Dead from the indifference and apathy
Of such good citizens as you and me…
Some things are certain from my truly Christian point of view
But I've always gotta' ask the question,
"Well, what about all those Jews?"
Myths of Superbuzz and the Drone
Droning on in the death-throes sounds
Of jet engines
Dying,
Like there's no tomorrow
In a cloud of black smoke
I heard the explosion
At the tail end of the engines' roaring
Yet ever-onward
The jet went soaring
Shuttling more pilgrims off to
The tabernacle
Of great tick-bloated Kali
A crack in the eye socket of a bloodied sky
Spilling the sun like a blistered eye
Like a raw egg cracked
The yolk libating us in a drenching flow
Of afterbirth fool's gold
Worshiping alternately our technology
And the darker gods who stole our children's souls
To the pantheon of a half-forgotten
Mythology
Shrouded in the mists of myth and time
And mankind inventing half-lies
Yet why are we fascinated with skulls and bones
Why frightened to remain alone
And quiet,
Ah, why must we constantly bombard our minds
The squeals and whines of
Anything and everything we can
The only solidarity of man
Is the jet engine's ceaseless drone
Like a flood of cattle to the slaughterhouse
And that one of every one shall fall
For life will be the death of us all
Live slow, die old
Either way, you end up cold
And alone in someone else's dreams.
Neither (9/11)
Neither night nor any paradox of entwining shadow and light
Neither the rains of May nor October, and the mud of winter
Neither the sickness of the old and infirm, nor greed of grubbing children
Neither defenseless struggling of victims of rape, nor the cold eyes of the rapist, a rapist ape
Never in the silence of cacophony
Do the word of our elixirs shine
Never, for the wonders of light
Could the sightless become unblind.
Neither frightened animals, afraid in the storm, nor the calm hand of the vet
Neither gods of mediocrity, nor monsters of technology
Neither those we love whom we abandon, nor those whom we abhor
Neither the master, whose hand holds the quaking pen, nor the raven, quoth, "Nevermore! Nevermore!"
Never, in the silence of an ocean of war
Do the worlds upon worlds ever shine
Never, for the wonder of tomorrow's light
Could the wondrous be more defined…
Neither the crickets in horrendous unison, nor the birds of prey circling over
Neither the virgin on the wedding bed, nor the whore in her abandoned soul
Neither the windows of industry shattered by screams, nor the older agrarian shattered dream
Neither theft nor purchase; neither daylight, nor the moon; neither you, nor I, nor anyone
Never, in the beauty of a shouted reply
Does our world, our world ever shine
Never, for terrors of tomorrow and today
Could the terrible be more sublime…
Nero
Your reactions define you as ignorant and small
As your television pours contamination in your head
Your frustrations are outlined by alcohol
And the Soldier Of Fortune magazines you never read.
Pro wrestling, guns, racism and porn
Are the bars of the cell you're sleeping in
Never escape from the prison where you were born
Just wear the hood and burn the crosses again and again.
An aluminum can you call a home
Your toddler's life is a battle zone
A redneck, patriotic, Desert Storm clone
With conjugal visits on the telephone.
Go to a job that isolates you
You are only allowed the career of a rat
Work hard all your life like they tell you to
Then die for the profits of a fat bureaucrat.
And never realize the futility of your life
As you while away the days waiting to die
Child after child after wife after wife
With television reinforcing the lie.
The cops are your biggest heroes
Another working class zero
And just like an inbred Nero
You fiddle with life while Rome burns.
Night Blot
Sweet smile and a lovely smell,
All pretty little girls grow up in hell;
Fishnet hose and miniskirts,
A giggle, a twist and a penis squirts;
World revolving, night, night, night,
Blot out this human farce!
No grace, no grace, no saving face,
A mudball of monkeys suffocating in space!
Trains, planes and a clean dirt smell
All handsome little boys end up in hell;
World revolving, night, night, night,
Humanity here is sparse!
Nightmare Maker, Me
I am nightmare maker
I utterly destroy trust
I devour dreams like fine wine
And shatter hearts to dust…
(as I was taught)
And all of this is just
An introduction line.
Not Speak of the Spectre
Let us not, for once, speak of the spectre
That haunts, like a shadowy corner in a full and smoky room,
Every aspect of recent conversation
Let us, yes please allow us to pretend that Death is on vacation…
Let us speak instead of brightly lit rooms with pastel walls
Of luscious flowering beds and spinning looms and Santa Claus,
Of better times before the towers fell, before the darkness grew,
Before the cancer spread from hell, before he got his hands on you…
Let us walk a mile or two in wonder and plunder memories
Let us not release this smile, nor succumb to somber reveries,
Let us mark this day with rainbows, color outside the lines
Trace the morning with a white pencil and gently shade the design
May we speak of God and creation, art and love and life and breath
As we make our way around the carcass, avoiding the eyes of Death…
May we smother in our happiness for a brief respite from grief
And breathe contentment as a balm, and lift our arms to heaven
To praise our Creator for His mercy in this relief
Cast away this poisoned leaven and be thankful for the morrow
Let not our conversation turn to this veil of mortal sorrow
Not even for a moment shall we pray for aught but life
For this world is full enough with misery and petty endeavor
And that time will greet us soon enough with sickle in its hand
When the silver cord to this place of pain is severed
And we are taken beyond the shadows to the grandest of thrones
Let us not tempt his fiery sword; our peace and our protector,
And let us not, for once, speak of that other spectre.
Of Graveyards and Grapenuts
The fact of the matter dear
Is you are there and I am here
I am wearing your sweet countenance
And seducing pretty girls.
I have met a woman from Greenland
But she's not as dumb as you
-you might think you're pretty smart
but you still didn't get my heart-
So it's not as easy to get into her head
But at least as simple to get in her pants.
Of course, you must know I wasn't sincere
That I lied to you all along
That I only wanted you for your cunt
-I say I got the short end of that stick.
But then again, maybe not,
You were, as I have said,
A bit thick in the head.
But
The fact of the matter dear
Is you are there and I am here
I am wearing your sweet countenance
And fucking whores like swatting flies
Biting off clitori,
Nibbling nipples like cherries.
I am champing at the bit,
Chomping on my tongue
Stamping my imagination with
A big rubber stamp that says
"Censored"
And imagine my surprise
As I jumped back from my lover's arms
I saw your beady fucking eyes.
Yeah, you fuck-celebrity,
You get around
And a square, and an isosceles triangle,
So what?
Caught in the act of
Purging myself of a disease called love,
Caught with my pants down,
My cock shrivels up
To the size of a grapenut
And the smell of the
Severity of your gaze…
But the fact of the matter dear
Is you are there and I am here
And I am wearing your sweet countenance
And dressing up as a schoolboy,
Looking like the very picture of innocent
Admirability, as I cut the hamstrings
Of lovecats and spin
Their intestines into catgut
With which to string up my violin
Of human bone, and play
"My Heart Cries For You."
Call me sick, or depraved
-and you thought graveyards were weird?-
But it's like I already said,
You were always a bit thick in the head,
Stupid to the core,
Whore!
And my cock shrivels up to
The size of a grapenut
At the temerity of your gaze.
And I suppose, well I suppose what I really meant to say
Is the fact of the matter dear
Is you are there and I am here
I am wearing your sweet countenance
And trapping little ladybugs…
A web I've woven for myself.
Yep, it sort of makes me freak, the fact
That the same shit you pulled for years
And blamed on every man alive,
Well, I’m pulling that shit now,
And I’m smiling as I do you
Harder, HARDER, harder,
'cos the fact of the matter dear
is you are there and I am here
and there ain't a goddamn
thing on earth,
not one
that you can do.
Of Rotting Apple Pie
Alone I wept, as one we cried
For the realization of a slow cancerous death
Of something fine, barely tasted before it was gone
A magical twinkling twilight world gone in a flash,
And it never really existed,
But it did-
An American dream that was truly a dream
Yet lived by so many, so alive
And it died…
A place, a time, a trace in the sand
Of the face on a dime
Or I pledge allegiance and united we stand
An era of unreality, surrealistic change
Of a Hollywood bigger-than-life self
And the stage magician's toys of television,
Rock 'n' Roll and rocketships
Space Cadet Jones, Strangers in Strange Lands
Rod Serling, Howdy Doody and
Missile tests at White Sands
When Christmas was really only one special day of the year
Rather than two months of
Over-the-top gaudy ads
Pitching Madison Avenue lies, all leading to the Big Day,
And then everyone rushes on to New Year's Eve
To get drunk and fuck other people's spouses
As though Christ were used toilet paper
To be thrown out with faded ribbons, crushed wrappings
Dying poinsettias, and all the other pagan trappings…
Where the object of every adult male's desire
Was his wife,
Whom he respected like his mother
(and maybe just a peek at Jane Seymour or Norma Rae…
and neither of them had even
taken off their clothes in front of a camera yet)
When every moment was full of possibility,
Bursting with opportunity,
Excited by Ovaltine and '57 Chevy engines
Purring like the kitten starlets onscreen…
These tears were hot and full of bile
Laboring under the burden of
Having witnessed the end of an era
The downward spiral,
The fall from grace of greatness
Firmly rooted in God,
Freedom, justice, family, apple pie, and changing
Always striving towards the better
Despite the rotten apples trying to poison the fruit bowl…
Sugarbowl, Rosebowl, Pennant Race and World Series,
So damn much there to swoop in and claim, to achieve,
To live to be to dream to fly
Phil Rizzuto, Micky Mantle, Yogi Berra in Yankee Stadium
Playing like giants, like Olympian imps
For the amusement and nourishment of the masses
A much-needed secular pantheon I really never saw,
But the Dallas Cowboys,
And the Broncos taking Denver to the Super Bowl
Against all odds,
Now that was a sight to see…
And listening to some bunch of long-haired,
Painted-up boys from NYC singing
"shout it, shout it, shout it out loud" and
I wanted to rock and roll all night and party every day…
In my tree house out back in a huuuuge maple tree,
Seeing these unreal things that were really there to see,
These were my miracles, the things-still-innocent that counted
These were silver and gold…
Now gone.
All the purity washed away in liberal/conservative cynicism
Clinical bullshit secular humanism
Political correctitude and war crimes and whatnot
In Kandahar and Los Angeles and every other hot spot
Oh, the villains of yesterday call it "tough love" now
As they lead us all from "elected office"
To devour all the sacred cows and
Spit out the bones in the form
Of all our worst fears
To take the worst and make it real
Then slay that dragon and lose a little more capacity to feel
Anything for anyone, just another ant
Slaving away in a crumbling, dusty, dry anthill
No more costumed superheroes saving the day
Just pasty-faced freaks wearing costumes of their pain
Reveling in the swill
Waiting for the next kill
The next Srebrenica, the next Mai Lai,
The next Kennedy to drop, the next royal scandal
And the last bubble of hope to pop,
For the world to explode
For order to fall to ruins like the World Trade Center did
(oh where the fuck are those Satanists hid?)
For the next case of megadeath, for a nuclear winter,
All the slime and filth preaching hate
Have evolved from our own disillusionment with ourselves,
From the need for sex and drugs on the shelf
In the bathroom medicine cabinet and
The XXX movie houses,
Oh, the vermin bade their time, safe as houses,
Hiding on university campuses like mouses
To whisper lethal secrets into the ears of wounded children
And lo and behold!
Their method worked
And so have we analyzed our convictions and killed them
Built up altars to heathen gods,
Technology and greed
Our lust and our own foolishness, two peas in a pod,
Who is responsible for this new breed?
Why, WE are of course, but don't ever tell us that
Because it's more than we can handle,
It must be those Satan rockers on MTV
Or those super-predator teens I keep hearing about
Fuck the facts, Jack!
That's what we all CHOOSE to believe
And we, as a species, like to be deceived…
So, if all the sports idols are rapists, drug addicts, criminals
In a nut shell, well
It must be because they're all niggers, right?
It never has a thing at all
To do with wrong or right
Just heaping up the lies upon lies upon lies
Blinding with science those who already close their eyes
And slicing up the American Dream
Like a rotting apple pie…
It is done.
Of the Same Winter
Line of smoke
Random piano notes
Cut like paper in my palm,
A paper with no edges
And a prayer written on it
Saying,
"Please?"
Who do you think you are?
I know who I am,
But the mirror
Collapsing upon itself,
It leaves
The image you wish to see.
A future-full of dead things,
Life like tattered-shrouded skull
On a pile of dust
And beetles crawling
In and out of the eye sockets;
They wear black
Shiny carapaces,
These brothers of mine,
As do I,
And their purpose is without reason;
We are of the same winter…
And such a dismal season.
Of Winter
Line of smoke, blue and thin,
Random piano notes
Cut like a paper across my palm
A paper with no edges
And a prayer there upon it
In blood (rusted brown)
It says, "please, for we are cold."
And so who do you think you are?
I know myself,
But a collapsing mirror
Leaves a different image,
One you would prefer to see…
Perpetual summer, or
Premature spring,
Life bringing life full circle.
But the truth is a
Future-full of dead things,
Life like a tattered, shrouded skull
All upon a pile of dust
And beetles crawling in and out of
The staring, sightless sockets;
They wear black, shiny carapaces,
These brethren to me,
As do I,
As do I,
And their purpose is beyond reason;
A hollow belly laugh, a resounding decree
Is a lie, a prophecy
Lullaby
Lolling heads drooping,
We are sharing a season
We are of the same winter.
Old Men and Starrycolde Faces
Two men,
One in a suit, wearing a mask
Living in denial, dwelling in glass
The other in the rags of his profession
But the smile on his face
Hides none of the transgressions
Or the processes and ravages
Of an aging progression
Time marches on,
The sands runneth out
Like steady streams of words
From the mouths of children
And the time passes
Like the mayfly's life
The light goes out like pitch-black
So quickly are we turned to only our thoughts
That a thought lives longer
Than the one who thinks it…
The fabric of rags; tattered, worn, and wrinkled
Mocks the face of the one who wears it
And yet do faces, as a masquerade
Stare back blankly, in a chilling charade,
Coldly;
The stars have shone
Bright and frigid,
In the eyes of marble statues,
In the windows of the houses of the spirits of others,
In the distant circuitry we think of as brothers…
Oh, the vast, black and empty space
Of space stares at us and through us
Like our own ragged streams…
Could it be that time
Or money, like twin monkeys
On the backs of two old men
Weigh down the shoulders
Droop in Darwinian devolution
Stoop the stature
As surely as the uncomprehending
Cold and glassy stares
Of fellowmen
And androids?
Order of the Lamps
The sun-rising, bleeding-eyed horror
Of day escapes the bounds of
An artisan's order
For the night belongs to the bard
The darkness is allied with the sculptor
Of dreams,
And the day is the mundanity,
The gentle insanity of the fool.
Our Blood-Soaked Destiny
Marching ever forward,
The armed might of this earth,
To some inconceivable, senselessly brutal
World of eternal night,
Wherein dwell the inconsolable masses
Wherein are Frankenstein war toys
Wherein we stir cauldrons of lethal nerve gasses
Wherein we are destroyed.
An army of darkness and blight
Has scalped the planet bare;
Battlefields lay like open lesions
Upon the faces of war-ravaged nations in poverty…
The heaping mounds of the dead climb higher
In attempts to touch heaven.
And what message,
Were this monument to man's self-destructive compulsions
To finally reach its destination?
"Forgive us"
What a sad declaration for such hypocrisy
"Forgive this abomination…but we only wanted to speak with You."
The Tower of Babel
In its blood-drenched paucity
Tumbles to the earth in a desolate disarray,
A necropolis of ashes and failure…
If man would aspire to reach heaven's heights,
To achieve paradise, to know himself and his Maker,
It must be done through channels other
Than this tear-stained
Blood-soaked
Agony-ridden travesty of existence
We call "life"…
The charnel house must be brought down
And the leeches controlling the war machines
Brought to daylight
That they might shrivel and wither
To dust and blow away…
Never again to plague mankind.
Paranoid Stress Disorder
White antiseptic porcelain prayers
Filling cracked and blackened night
And tiny hairs clinging to the insectile underbellies
Incinerate the breathy prayers like napalm jelly
Or the burnt and charred gouges
Braided into a solitary arm
Blisters full of pain and isolation
Some strange, totemic charm
Bright, unwholesome illumination
Shines green as the water in the toilet bowl
Is as sickening as bacteria in the feces
Lurking intestinally to eat you whole
Such as this is the madness of kings
Instilled in us all from birth by machines
With loving caresses like funeral pyres
Turning the paranoid static higher
Germs of "reality" creeping through the window
Like crawling, frantic voices clawing at the light
An unconscious thought in the silence when the wind blows,
"If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night…"
Obsessive patterns of guilt in the form of a crucifix
Crossed by a star of David in the shadows on the ground
And grasshoppers perch upon the length of that cross
Spitting tobacco juice at the grief of your loss
The fresh scent of the woman by your side
Known from girlhood, grown into full form
Yet something there is dark and dead within your bride
A panicked revelation as you sense the coming storm
A racing thought of apprehension which stultifies the light
"If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night,
If I can just get through another night…"
Payments
Black tears on a sooty face
Who paid for the sad lack of life?
Who paid for nullified visions
Rendered in inky ash
And blinding titanium white light?
Who paid for the endless
Piles of corpses,
Who paid for the rot of the pit?
Who paid for this hell you call paradise,
Who pays for the stink of your shit?
The rows of doves fall from perches
And crows by murders take flight
Silver linings the crow besmirches
And the doves' wings are blood-stained white…
What price is set for the butchery of chastity,
What cost is upon the souls of men?
To aid the aggressor, or defile innocence,
Which is the worse of these sins?
And who paid for the endless piles of corpses,
Who pays for the stink of the rot of the pit?
Who pays for this joke you call paradise,
Who pays for this world full of shit?
Picture-book
Open the picture-book and scan the pages
What do you see in this fairytale world?
The middle class lie, the white myth of progress,
The serpent of industrial death uncurls…
No, no, no turn the page, that monster's not real
Only beautiful people with Camelot lives
No dysfunction, or regrets, no alcoholism,
No suicidal teens, no Valium wives.
And what to our wondering eyes should appear,
Than Santa Claus, Sunday school and manicured lawns?
The mention of homelessness and inner-city fear
Is met in the boardroom with corporate yawns.
The swords are crossed in fraternity houses
The girls are all safe as sorority mouses
The Constitution's null and void, the IRS cows us
The media crushes the rebellion it rouses.
We have the technology we've always dreamed
Who could ask for anything more?
We hold ourselves in mythological esteem
But secretly we've come to abhor
The insensitivity that computers engender
They are tools, like Elric's fell sword
Feeding on the souls of the users themselves
And addiction is the only tarnished reward.
But the picture-book lies, the picture-book lies,
Read between the lines for the truth
And then keep your mouth shut, there are ears everywhere,
And any criticism's seen as much more than uncouth.
Pieces of a Picture
Dream me a picture of no one and nothing, a painting of pureness, of true desolation, and bring me a tankard of barren emotions, of scorched sentiments and a rose petal whisper…
Show me the horror of touching another, and leaving an opening, extending a hand, and then tell me of beauty, of love and affection, of sweetness, then leave it all shattered and broken…
Sing me a madrigal telling sincerity, flaunting a purpose, and touting humanity; leave me alone with the shadows of words and then slice off your lying lips, leave me to see…
I wanna know why you lie to me,
I wanna know why you hurt me,
Why all your words are like razorblades,
Why all emotions are tumors…
I need to see beyond tenderness,
I need to see without tears,
I need to see beyond sentiment,
I need to feel without fear…
Hunger for truth and sincerity,
I fear no human can give it,
Hunger for love and am disappointed,
Hunger for death, and am bored…
Pincushion
Poked and prodded
From every side
Every finger becomes
An instrument for examination
Hypodermics and catheter
Tubes
I'm just playing the role
Of pincushion.
Preference (a reference)
Terrified by the giant's eye
Of the camera,
She takes off her dress
Slowly, like an orange peel
And a soapy aroma
Fills the sweat-smell prison cell,
A twelve-year-old-death-
She never got too much of life
-come the hammer and
Crushed her skull for
The world of old men
With limp dicks
Who will pay to see
Her die
And then pay to wash
The bloodstains off their
White and pristine suits and Bibles…
Pain has many faces,
Which one would you prefer?
Pretenders
Glass stabbed the flesh and gashed it pink and red
I look at the blacktop and the cracks
Appear far more painful
Like the gangsters shooting up the planet
Leave their fingerprints
Everywhere they float past
And the earth bloats
And the maggots and vultures have a fine repast
For the spoils of war
-set out like a 7 course meal-
On the face of the planet are vast
Never-ending, oh, nothing ever truly
Disappears
From the haunt of the shadows of memories
To the faces and smiles
Of children in the sun
To the tortured glow
Of our troubled alarm clock
Waiting to wake us to
Death
To suffering
To cauterization
To a rent in the flesh, all pink and red,
On the face or the hand
Of civilization…
We have always
Pretended too much.
Primal
The terror of life
Is a six-pack on Friday night…cock…gun…
Anything to lose the mind
So the carnal self can have a good time
(forget the lines are even
forget the rhyme
and reason with bony empty sockets, blind)
"Make my day
Blow me away!"
Mere words in shadow games we play
Loaded pistol, LSD
Carnality, carnality,
Brain-dead, virtual reality
Lost in such irreverence
Carnality, carnality,
The chant of life, the mumble of death
Cumming in the ass of consciousness
Like a shotgun
Bullet, shell, mortar rips the throat
Of civility to shreds
And silently we scream a little louder
In our heads
Morality takes a powder
'Til we're dead, dead,
dead.
Pogo
The rabbit twitches with toxins
Introduced on its rough-shaven skin
The kitten is choking from smoke
(the tobacco industry's sin.)
the dog is howling in torment
it's eyes injected with bleach
meanwhile on death row
sits another fat murdering freak!
They died for you
And your shampoo
But the guilty never pay.
What the inmate's got
Is three hots and a cot
And some far-off judgment day.
The monkey is screaming in terror
As they dump it into a tank
The lines of coke, the most tasteless joke,
And Proctor and Gamble to thank.
The murderers and rapists
And the child molesters too
Have more rights than the animals
That are tested on for you.
They died for you
And your shampoo
But the guilty never pay.
What the inmate's got
Is three hots and a cot
And some far-off judgment day.
Make them die from choking fits
Fill their lungs with toxic shit
Scar their flesh with razorblades
A better price for them to pay.
Leave my kitty cat alone
No leukemia in her bones
Ebola for those that sex-offend
Not for animals who can't defend.
Razormouthed
Sit in darkness and quietude
Suffer with my mouth cauterized
Poison blooms from within
Like a cloak purveying its black,
Spreading its disease and filth
Through my system;
It leaves me stunted and cold,
I am writhing in pools
Of my own shit,
Vats of scatological
Nothingness and derision…
I pule and beg myself to stop,
The lights and voices in my head
-the barbed wire words,
razors of inability to communicate-
All the useless insufficiency
Is turning my guts to a roiling pit
A cauldron of vertiginous motion,
And a prison within my own head.
If I could effectively blind
And lobotomize myself,
Feel the cold steel sharpness
Enter my brain and
Part the gray tissue there
Like Moses to escape old Pharaoh,
Then perhaps I could get some peace
Perhaps I could purge this disease
Of who and what the fuck I am.
No pain, no torment, no desires,
No love, no hate, no violence, no fear,
No more petty bullshit,
No more grand designs,
No more nothing
Ever…forever,
Amen.
The end.
Realigned
I need to see your smile to see your eyes,
to cut through Every tired lie,
to break all chains that bind me here,
to Touch your heart then disappear;
I need to know, I need To see,
to get back to what is truly me,
to crush the games, Hack out the fears,
devour you, then disappear…
I need to taste each drop of your pearly soul
Cut you up and eat you whole
Reestablish my control
Over the real and the designed
I need to taste every morsel of your lying heart
Rip it out and tear you apart
Only then could I ever start
To become realigned.
Rejoicing In Thee Day
Cocks crow and so approaches day?
Yes, as it thieves complicitous night away
Cocks then urging hens to lay
Fool's gold eggs before their slaughter;
Father is cursing the eyes in his head
For no red spots on the wedding bed
Calls her a whore and beats her instead
Of admitting she lost it at 9 years old…
Coins on the eyes
To bribe the ferryman
Little white lies
Feed victims to birds of carrion
The lies of the past
Are always unvarying
The truth locked away?
Yet still am I querying…
Cease-fire called on a field full of corpses
Bodies of young boys and entrails of horses
The general sees, but forever divorces
Himself from the evidence of murder before him;
Mad scientist wrapped in white lab coat
Never sees purpose to laugh nor emote
"For the good of mankind," is to what he devotes
His life, but the suffering lab rat is him…
Coins from pockets
To fill up the coffers
Youth sold off cheap
Always brings the best offers
Hypocrisy in history
And always so blatant
Eyes of our children
Were never more vacant.
"So son, are you given to the gods of my fathers
but my hands are washed clean and my conscience unbothered
and the weight on my chest as I lie there sleepless
I pretend not to notice, but those black wings are sleekest
That brush my face, they are tarnished and dissolving
I pray for salvation, but there is no absolving
For my sins run too deep and they were all for the masters
(Though I worship their filth, I can still call them bastards)
So I rub from my eyes images of all the tiny disasters;
Accidents that have paid for the curiosity of the scholar…
Brush them away like dust and spend a few dollars…
As though I weren't to blame for it all
As if I were clean and pure and unsoiled
As if my crimes were committed by others
Like decadent words on some vandalized wall…
This is how we murder our sons and brothers
How we readily sacrifice daughters and mothers
Spill out the pure blood of friends and lovers
Praying in nightmares that no one discover
That we're pretenders to honor and the sheriff's stars are tinfoil…
Oh, yes this is the path we have mapped for you
Just another lost progeny, swallowed in mists
Loveless, joyless and blood red in hue
Another commodity, so easily dismissed
You must trust me, for all this I do is for you
Bow your head, I will terminate with extreme prejudice…"
He is born of a woman, doomed to be man
Raised from his infancy to dominate and spread his seed
Burning all he touches, he stretches forth his hand
Destroying, devastating, thus does he breed
He is watching his mortality as it manifests before his eyes
His youth strewn behind him in a trail of broken years
The grass has grown much higher since he last thought he would die
Now he lies awake at night in a very mortal fear…
She is born unto her mother as a jewel in the darkest night
She is frolicking in childhood with no cares, burden or pain
She is entering into puberty and made to see the truth
That for the pride of man are the women always slain
She is living with her agony, her torment, her enslavement
She is a woman in a world filled with rape, plunder, gold
She is pregnant, as is her station, and her bereavement
Is that a daughter will be born to her, then sold…
Life is a long, slow divorce from the real
As more European towns beget battlefields
And the natives there are captive to blade, blood and steel
And the trappings of peace just get in the way;
The world's on its deathbed and life is receding
The accused nod their heads, so blindly conceding
The youngest ones are learning how to be self-defeating
From 9/11 to Columbine to Timothy McVeigh…
And remember that ferryman? He won't take your money
Just laughs at you drowning, so uproariously funny
And those coins lie corroding, unused and uncleaned
The silos and missiles, so silent and gray
Yet the forest regrowing, so fecund and green
The universe rejoices and praises the day
That we gave up the ghost and mankind blew away…
It's the age-old tale, the victory story
It's the worm crawling through empty eye sockets
It's the hollow death of the emperor's glory
It's a sly, seedy promise with empty pockets
It is bloated and gaseous on a skeletal steed
It's corpsey and black as it crawls from the grave
It's the boasting rapist still spilling his seed
It's the suffering existence of a lowly slave…
Repha Vaccine
Just gazing, peering at faces hung above my bed
Here in the twilight room I made in my head
All for memories, all for their loss
All wearing wings storm-torn and tempest tossed
Powdered with the dust of further broken dreams
Filled in seams and cracks, plaster and a prayer
And maps never help me, because I never find them there
And they never are all that they seem…
Dancing in purpled hues
Wearing paper shoes
In colder worlds with dimmer views
These little angels dwell…
Fading in and out of touch
Never do they say too much
Not even really alive as such
All flown beyond the veil…
And swirled about in foggy shrouds
They wail almost silently, I pray aloud
To remove them from me, with their sorrow and loss
To bind them eternal with blood and a cross
Dreams once-broken to become whole again
Words unspoken that were boiling within
And maps do not help, for they can't point me there
Just a fountain of faith and a pocketful of prayer…
Revolving Nightmare Cycle
She comes home from schoolroom hypnosis
Straight-faced lies in mind-numbing doses
"Don't talk to strangers, but your friends are worse!"
She's rolling and stealing money from her mother's purse…
And just what the hell is this child thinking
As she watches her mother drinking?
Barbie dolls with all the hair burnt away
LSD? Oh, that's sooo yesterday…….
Y'know I don't know anyone who hasn't tried smack
And most of the girls I know end up on their backs
And all these children are broken and roaming in packs
Like scared, lost animals that all fell through the cracks
But you point your fingers and scream about MTV
But the kids don't watch it, it's not about the TV
No, what they get is more about reality!
The failure of suburbia in 2000 AD
Rush off to your job, are you out of your mind?
No questions asked? What, are you fucking blind?
You liberal pansy, new age quack!
They see you gulping whiskey, so they smoke crack (don't you get it?)
Your children hate you!
Your children hate you!
Your children hate you!
And I don't blame them at all…
Your children are lying!
Your children are dying!
Your children are trying
Just to kick through your walls!
Is this world so jaded with hate and greed and rotten hearts
To look at itself and see it's all falling apart?
Preteen prostitutes on the streets of our cities!!!
"Well, y'know we'd help, but we need to form a committee…"
Committees are full of cowards and churches are full of pedophiles
And all most Americans ever seem to do is smile
And pretend there are no children eating from garbage bins
Just football, baseball, basketball, and the biggest penis wins!
Rush to the bar, are you out of your mind?
Oh, you trust your kids, are you fucking blind?
Liberal pansy, you new age fake!
You've made a whole generation hate!
Your offspring learn from everything they hear or see
So what did you teach little Billy today? Say!
Your children hate you!
Your children hate you!
Your children hate you!
And I don't blame them at all…
Your children are lying,
Your children are crying,
Your children are dying
Just to kick through your walls…
She comes home from running for cheese in the maze
Straight-laced she sits there and rots in a daze
"If you liked school, then you'll love work"
She thinks her boss is fucking jerk
As he grabs her breast, what the hell is she thinking?
Plays along to get ahead without even blinking
Just a Barbie doll with her heart burnt away
Wishing she'd thought for herself yesterday
But the nightmare cycle just goes on and on and on…
Roadrace Ratrace
Once again I lace up my heart
And hit the road with my thumb cocked
Like the hammer
To the trigger
To the gun that's gonna end my life.
I swear, if I see one more old man stare
In one more small town…
On days like these;
Y'know, how the rain just eats a cold path to your bones,
I feel as if the arthritis of this long, unending road
Will never go away.
My eyes grow weary of the load they bear;
One town, the leaves are turning
The next, it's springtime again.
And the years pass
As quickly as the seasons, town to town.
And even through all this
My mind retains its virginity
But the rest of me has paid a handsome fee.
The cheap souvenirs I gather from my travels
Age and rust, coated in dust
And the photos in my mind's eye
Yellow and fade with each passing day.
I round the bend,
My pack's weight comforting me,
And that last ride pulls up
Like the hammer
To the trigger
To the gun…
Morphine Into Love
Turning face to mask
Turning mask to face change
Flow like sleep and warm regret
Sex flowing in vein
Fuck and nothing to remember
Fuck and flesh is in vain
Spark of life in distant smile
Forming from chaos
Transform mile upon mile
Light year in a pill
Dropping down grab spinal tap
Into fluid, amniotic in womb
Darkness in a pill
Tomb within mother
Too many arms to reach
Touch nothing
Nothing that can be
Too many words to speak
Spoken, I hear nothing
Nothing that is me
For my darkness in a pill
Sex flowing in vein
Ad infinitum…
Dear You Put It There
There is a madness in me,
And dear, you put it there.
It grows larger each passing day,
And dear, you put it there.
A yearning to die, smash the reflection
And dear, you put it there.
If you had not said a word,
If you had not held my hand,
If you'd never looked at me,
Then perhaps these seeds would have died.
But, there is a madness, a pain in me
And dear, you put it there.
I give birth to failures, child of the seed
And dear, you put it there.
A yearning to die, a slighting inflection
And dear, you put it there.
If you had not said a word,
If you had not kissed my face,
If you'd never wanted me;
No bandaged heart,
No shredded trust,
No flesh of the spirit
Torn by lesser thorns.
Had you kept to yourself,
Then perhaps this bastard child would have died in the womb…
But,
There is a sadness, a madness, a raging vagabond desolation
A sick and puling insanity in me,
And dear, you put it there.
You never saw beyond your own
Little world of pain,
But my dear, you put me there.
I can never die, and the reflection remains,
Forever, I fear…
And dear God above, my love,
You've put me here.
The Four Day War
I fell into a spider's web that covered the world my dear
Never expecting, nor desiring, to find you waiting there
For a spark from you light set me free dear
And yet I am now further stranded there.
Entangles and enmeshed within my curiosities
And when I smell the air like then, I get only memories.
To be sure, memories I will cherish until they bury me
But memory is so hollow like just playing a part…
A trace of blue-eyed laughter of a child comes to me
A whisper as your ceiling fan gently hums to me,
A short sharp pain of paradise, four days within your heart?
A hellish price, I see, to pay for a lifetime spent apart.
Sainte
Incredibly beautiful
Impossibly insane
Head full of voices
Eyes full of flame
Heart filled with intent
Spirit filled with purpose
Child of love, your purity
None could hope to purchase
A princess of the powerful
An angel of the universe
Blessing for the innocent
For aught but that, a curse…
My image of all balm in life
My sainte, beloved, deranged
I've follow you to hell and back
My fallen Maiden of Lorraine.
Schoolroom Follies
Our children suck filth from a syphilitic source
Self-mutilation is just a par for the course
When Daddy's fucking at the office
And Mommy demands a divorce.
Monsters crawling on the TV set
Cross-dressed freaks, cocaine jet-set
Slithering, slinking, unthinking, unblinking,
But the anal pussy sure is wet…
Your teenage daughter is a prostitute
But then again, aren't you?
And your little boy sucks cock for cash
Because he doesn't wanna be like you.
Fuck the other choir boys
Yes, listen to the preacher
Miss America's dead from AIDS
A rotten apple for teacher.
The internalized image of the children
Is their belief in immediate fulfillment
And the role they play in adulthood
All depends on how you bill them.
You can only beat a dog so long
Because of how you went wrong
Before it bites the master's hand
In a serial murder swan song.
Selfish Ponds and Crooked Men
Forget the crooked man
Who walked a crooked mile
And all the crooked kitty cats
With twisted, crooked smiles.
If he became a straightened man
Unbent and running free
What would happen to other prisoners,
Crooked as was he?
The world turns on a crooked axis
The earth spins in its coil
And, as all crookedness exists,
It festers and it spoils.
Oh, my kingdom for a bathrobe
With the pockets full of lead,
Crooked comfort as a state of mind,
It can anchor me to bed.
Shame
Outside in an ocean of misery
The key to salvation is not in a book
For the starvation of children is caused
By the excess food the rest of us took.
We are pale and bloated like maggots
In armchairs stuffed with our excesses
And while we sink on our island of filth
The victims all pay for our messes…
A heart condition, what a tragedy
And your cholesterol is through the roof
Meat is murder for children and animals
How could you need any more proof?
Not like you give a fuck anyway
You're another fat rat on this sinking barge
You'd try to escape the easy way,
But believe me, they're not who you think they are…
Turn on the TV instead of having a beer
Trying to escape into someone else's dreams
But on the screen there's a nightmare
Blasting your euphoria with inhuman screams.
But you've got satellite to ease the guilt
500 channels of voyeuristic porn
You lose the remote watching ESPN
Meanwhile another starving child is born…
She Waves
We get spooked by the drive-by;
The world presents its corpses
But do we ever
Do we ever
Lose the love of that world
Does devotion to life die
From the 3 am rape
From the dead little boy in the ditch
Off hwy. 441 north?
Your glasses get broken
It's just a token
Of the helplessness and abuse
You get to eat for the rest of your life.
The children are beaten,
The animals eaten,
And does your heart dry up from misuse?
Fuck, I don’t know!
The cramp of the speed
And the spilt anemic seed
And the horrifying need
For humanity and understanding
That never ever is enough
-It never feels quite like heaven
or close enough to heroin
when the red hair brushes your cheek like satin,
when the softness of her pubic hair tickles your nose,
when her supple flesh encircles you,
and you know you both will-
not man-will
die).
Cum on baby, let's dance
Under the serious moonlight,
Filtered like bloody drip coffee,
Menstrual bean-blood-cycle
Of waves
(she waves goodbye)
Goodbye.
Silence of War
Oh when the saints go marching in
There may be no one there to greet them;
The wailing wall has crumbled
From its burden of tears
Turned to sludge from the nightmares
Of mothers and daughters.
The war will never be won,
Just leave more mute witnesses, the victims
With nothing left them
But the hot breath
Of a "divine wind"
Jihad and Kamikaze, Sabra Diaspora and Arab Intifada…
Oh when do these scars heal?
(they mutilated my hands mother)
And though their eyes cannot see,
They still hurt from the shrapnel
Of two tribes' hatred one for the other
The eyes are melted from the sockets
By the biological abominations of
One man's hatred for a nation…
The eyes become useless mirrors
To reflect the fear, the horror, the beast that is man.
Along streets carved from sandstone
They stumble in blank, unspeaking multitudes;
Armless, legless, sightless, entrails bundled like babies
In bandages…
Head caved in and he's still alive,
Smiling his unknowing idiot's grin,
Another warchild, victim of the rape
Of yet more aggression.
Silently
Silence is the unaccomplished chore of an orphaned noise
A tiny hiccup in reverse collapsing in on itself stealthily
Shamefacedly as though performing some embarrassing bodily function
Silence echoing a sandy, breathy sigh of resigned acceptance
Muting any attempt to utter a sound with a steely glare
Speak, and an unconscious, unforeseen heaven is there
Wavering like a heat mirage of final destinations and
Pavement oases; an occidental, barbarian's
Perception of a consumerist paradise pie-in-the-sky
with bells on…
Clean-up in aisle 5 and a blue light special salvation
(but the announcer is hushed quickly
by a sneaky little figure in gray that smells of
bodily functions and homemade clothing, marmalade
and Mom's best cherry pie cooling on a windowsill
in the still, sweet, secret, hazy autumn of…shh…)
Silence detonated in the city square,
In the township courthouse,
In the busy crush of ant-like urban commerce,
In the sprawl of redundant suburban blight
Just outside the city limits
(oh, it's a full house but there's nobody in it)
Climbing higher and further
-like a mushroom cloud at ground zero-
Without light, without sight, without sound,
Just a resonating silent hum, a blur of vibration
Felt in the soles of the feet,
A little portion of fudgey heaven dropped to earth
To wish us all a good time,
To tell us all goodnight…
And the only thing left at all
Is an unaccomplished chore
(freckle-faced and innocent, wearing the shoes of the boy next door)
Of an orphaned noise, a tiny hiccup in reverse
A smile, a sigh, a kiss, a lie, a curse
Silently…
Silver-tongued Devils
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
A rotting bicuspid is the core of the truth
An angry red hand print that flowers on my face
(a gentle reminder from Kali in my nightmares)
"Time heals all wounds," a disingenuous fall from grace
For time dissolves anything that it repairs
"Silence is golden," the crinkling of autumn leaves
Like the desperate decay of life after stillbirth
Like the husband devotes, as the wife deceives
Like my cooling body planted beneath colder earth…
"Do unto others," a maxim for all ages
Unless devastation is first done unto you
Not karma, nor the golden rule, but sin and its wages
Both sides balanced, then the maxim is true…
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,
But a rotting bicuspid is the core of the truth.
Love is not blind, it was blinded by lust
And love in the hands of babies is a blade;
Words aren't descriptive, merely destructive
Filleting the soul like a scream delayed
Honor is the prefab, the backstab, the lie
The word of a thief, a leer, a wink
Trust is nothing, your spouse with another
The lead that makes the helium balloon sink…
Loyalty is death on hold, a waiting game
And cruel, prolonged denial
Strength is addiction to a cock, a pipe,
Or a smooth, downward plunge in a vial;
"Til death do us part," is a lie for your mother
Perfumed feces to deceive one another
"I christen thee," a naming game for deformed babies
Offspring of filth, the contamination of rabies…
And every congregation screaming "hallelujah!"
To their god in their mythical heavens
Is a loaf of bread with a poisoned crust
Made of dough full of virulent leaven…
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth
But a rotting bicuspid is the core of the truth.
Vows are bacterium, infecting the host
With the permanence of a fever, the solidity of a ghost
Responsibility makes tunnel vision
Compliments spoken in reverse
Respect is a sweet smile to cover up derision
As your enemy utters a curse…
Promises, they are lies, and I've said so before
And there's a silver-tongued devil in every single
Fucking whore!
Sleep
Sleep
Welcome to my world
A morphine waltz
In an empty parlor
Sleepsleepsleep
Sleep
Sit for a short while
There's a phantom in the conversation
A little girl with a dead smile
Sleepsleepsleep
Sleep
The pages yellow
The formats mildew
There are stony grains
In my eyes…
Pardon me, I'll
Stifle a yawn
But I have to warn you
It's a thin disguise…
Sleep.
Smack Me
Never pulled the puppet strings
Of heroin dreams
So many times and I wish though
A needle to bury, an arm to sever,
A sweet dead lullaby
Of never, never
A wash of soft mumbley discounting,
An irresponsibility
A cracked, blackened, unpolished mirror
But it never shows the truth
Truly
Just sucking life from veins
And taking life untimely, unjustly,
Unduly…
Snatch
Open door, bare foot, insert
Slammed on toes, tag to the nose
Opportunity, clear as day
And comes the night to snatch it away.
Taken By
Rain
Only a downpour
It fits so well with the mood
Mind, sight
And my feet want to take me
To you
But my eyes don't know where to look
And my brain tells me
I'd just fuck it up anyway
But anyway…
The rain
Only a fucking downpour
Your name is so sweet
But it leaves a
Sour taste in my mouth
And what do I do to make it better?
Scream a bit
…to put through a shredder
on a Saturday night,
oh, babe…
don't leave me now,
Go away quickly
Escape while you can
Come back and hold
This boy/man
What the fuck is wrong with you?
I know you love me because you stay
You constantly run away
Trapped in between
And looking for more
Or less
Like a drowned rat
A puppy, luv
Needing and wanting and
Maybe love
But baby,
Loving
The drug
To burn it all…
Trip, but don't fall
And if you do,
Don't take me with you.
Tincturetrail
This pain inside is
The screaming, bloody mouth of justice
The garbled twisted lines of just us
The sins and hurt of lonely little girls
Eating away my insides
A trickle of acidic black froth
Running from purple bruised lips
The mashed-in teeth of a false smile
The caress of callused fingertips
The swaying of seductive hips
The love was there but burned away
Was actually passion in decay
A graveful of compassion
And a saucerful of secret addictions
A dungeon trimmed in ermine afflictions
A generation of children's lethal fashions
All rolled up into a gray-green ball
Poisoning my stomach's wall
The lining there steaming like elephant shit
Tiny moth wings flapping in a filthy pit
Of decomposing purpose
And defamatory prose and verse
Your liquid eyes are a dying rose
Your solid denial is a gaseous curse
A march down the paths of what ails little girls and boys
Is a tincture of broken glass and trails of broken toys.
Sphinx Riddled
Mask I wear of strength
Torn to ribbons, see my face
Measured depth, width, length
(Time is to eternity as place is to space)…
Becoming something much more
Than half of a whole
The walls, ceiling and floor
The foundations of my soul…
Deep cerulean and ashen sky
Heaven of my imagination
Unattainable paradise, but I try
To surf those currents, I drown, I fly
Climb out, start anew, safe and dry
Blinded by your soul but don't cover my eyes;
So much better than vague temptations
And more, I'm making my reparations
And some new life in this place…
I fall apart as the sun sets
You piece the puzzle together, restore
The original me, which begets
The love, the life, things held in store…
Another chain with stronger links
A manifesto "they" can't erase'
I've passed your tests, my lovely sphinx
I've burned my mask, behold my face…
Statements About Getting Over
I sat in my stale dark room for six months
Surrounded by my monsters, my children,
Myths in the dusk
Huddled under the monitor's glow,
Arms wrapped around my knees
And I wished, I wished on the glow-in-the-dark
Stars affixed to the ceiling
I wished on those stars that you were dead
Wished all my teeth would fall out of my head
Wished for the sun to burn its filament out
Like the bulb in my desk lamp
Wished you had never told those lies to me
Wished you had never played games
Wished you had never even spoken to me
Wished I could just bleed it all away
In thick red pools,
Wished you were not so clever and
I were not such a damned fool…
And anyway, sex is dirty and impure, so let's just kill instead
I can’t be satisfied, inside, inside, until everyone is dead
And you're slick with blood and hotter and wetter,
But don't look so apprehensive,
I think I'm getting better…
Steps
Tomorrow comes as no surprise
Smashing through my window
With the dawn
Leaving shards of coldness
Burrowed in my sleep-muddled mind
As a remnant of the night before
And so the coffee tastes like
The poison it is
And the toothpaste is like cement
And my mouthwash feels like acid
Burning away the death-breath of sleep
…I pop into my clothes
Like I didn't really put them on
And plaster a smile on my face,
The plastic of a credit card
Wander out the door
My shadow a grim reminder
Of how much I despise the morning
Shake out a cigarette
Torch another 14 minutes of life
And get on with it…
To Allay the Fear of Death for the Bride
Just tell me
If you get tired of the darkness,
I'll turn on a light or two.
Tell me, tell me
If the grave scares you to death,
And I'll paint a flower for you…
Of course, the flower must be part of a wreath
The wreath representing genocide
A beautiful part of the world murdered
To commemorate those that died…
But, tell me
If the images are horrifying
I'll write a song about dreaming and flying.
Tell me, tell me
If it all gets you down,
I'll buy you that snow white wedding gown…
Of course, the wedding gown was not for the bride
But a smock for the virgin sacrifice
And the ring on the bridal finger was merely
Another barbaric device
To remind us that death is an obstinate force
That life is a delicate balance
That flower petals beneath the bride's feet
A red carpet that leads to death's palace…
But, tell me
If you shiver when you look at the bones
I'll try not to leave you afraid and alone
And tell me, tell me
If you are afraid of the darkness
I'll turn on a light or two.
Tell me, please tell me
If the grave scares you to death
And I'll paint a new child of light within you.
Being A Black Goat
Why do raindrops hanging on leaves do nothing to move my soul to see beauty, and the rose or the orchid are merely obscenities are a mystery too easily solved; why the flesh of the children seems riddled with impurity and the glories of man's achievements are the loss of innocence, in my eyes, no great secret, no myth of black torment, just a torrent of the abhorrence, the malignancy of poisoned youth provided for me compliments of the sick world of adults…how easy it is to taint with misfortune and forced obedience, the meek and cherubic, the infants still in the cradle, to create, piecemeal, from the scrap fabric of bastard suffering seven generations removed, the seed, the weed, the stillborn lamb, the black goat choking from inhaling its own proclamations in reverse, a wretched, retching misery, a mockery of what a child should be…and when we are thus fabricated, do we wander through the world as an unfamiliar darkened room, liquid LSD in a fetal eye in the fetid womb, a bad trip from the outset and hallucinated normality envisioning the world so purely as though through stolen eyes only to approach the altar of adulthood, pick up the dusty spectacles there and put them on, to have the blurred, monochrome Monet world jump into sharpest focus, and then realize the lack of commonality between us all, the space there is empty of substance or purpose or meaning, or thought, or words, empty even of nullity, the eternal void times itself, squared; a reverberation of dead leaves and corn husks in the wind, and dust…this is the space between black goats as we sit down to a table, to sate a hunger beyond the stomach, a table piled high with desire, with poison, regret and fear, joy in trumpeting golden ears of corn, silent but for the aroma, a feast of smoke, stale water, nicotine stains and grief, a steel-jawed trap on the ankle of what freedom, what happiness a weed might know…no growth in a salted wheat field -even the crows have fled to the fatter prospect of death- gray withering, brown compost, black decomposition, dull mundanity of a suffocating train ride through black smoke from burning rubber, fenced camps and Germanic fanaticism ringing in the back of your head perpetually with the flies buzzing the carcasses of your loved ones, too weak and sick to fear the train's eventual stopping, resigned to that eventuality…nacht und nebel; to be the weed, the seed, the research project topic, buzzword on a thousand sterile pairs of lips behind white masks, it is to disappear in night and fog, no trace of who you are or were or might ever be, to disappear before the starting gun is fired, to be disappeared before birth, to be seen yet never be…
To Cross My Eyes and A Swirl of Flies
The time I skinned my knee
And Jennifer, that girl next door
I kissed her on the cheek
Had I known what the future had in store
Had I known it just the night before…
But no one ever tells you how it feels,
They never mention the tears
How we perceive youth as dull anticipation
Now, if I could roll away the years
If I could dry-erase the stultifying fear…
Crawl in spider-webbed sea
(on knees padded with scabs, but they creak)
through a black dawn
Of patronizing back slaps
And ill-conceived birdsong,
Of chirruping crickets with broken legs
(just the larvae of children)
And the souls of babies
(just the larvae of Shiva)
Smothered in their cribs
The night before…
Creep and slink to utilize
the services of a seedy vendor
selling poisoned apples
-Dachau, Sobibor, Sachsenhausen,
Auschwitz, Mai Lai, Hiroshima and
Much much more-
And another godless morning is
Crowned with the phallic glory of
A dead cock's crow
As the idols of the common folk
Smash on convoluted streets
Splashed with bloody rain
About a thousand floors below
(You can see their faces clearly
if you lean out the window…
a TV and a VCR
a sardine can and a Winnebago)
These are all gravelly voices
Of halitosis and undreamt golems
Crying and beating on
The thin film of reality to be let in
To our side of the war for
Roses, oil, and toys;
These are protestations of cog and flywheels,
The machines that are collapsing
Like a lumberjack in high heels
As they pound their rusted, impotent, time-worn rage
Into the form of my aching head
And cry for a new Asimov opus
Like dusty robot statuettes
In a dank and rotting vegetable garden
In the inky, sooty filth of London and Hong Kong
Of a secretive
And blood-red golden dawn.
All,
Oh, everything is loss and want
All the infants are pale and gaunt
With bellies swollen and protruding like boils
War toys in a brilliant cocoon
Militant brunch at the Whitehouse at noon
Loving mother and home fetus
On hands and knees, inching
That much closer to their own dooms
Children like insects scuttling
Beneath the shadow of a giant shoe…
The black dawn
Like a whorish ebony Madonna
Opens its cunt to this world,
This dying place,
And whispers a refrain that falls
On deaf ears
Save those of children with guns and
Hitler Youth knives
Hiding heresies in backwater hills
Of our ignorance and forgetfulness,
Drawing a bead on a moth-eaten death's head
Made of childhood stuffy heads
Musty dolls of Christopher Robin
And black, rotting flowers with the
Names of Roman gods
(and maybe they're both just two peas in a pod)
-do we control
or are we just
cut string and cut rate
puppets dancing to the hilt
of false and rather antique gods?-
The spots before the blank and staring
Eye sockets of our collective reaper image
Coalesce into targets spattered
With maroon and clotting blood…
Oh, dawn comes a-creeping
On stealthy Ethiopian priesty knees
Dive-bomb a Slavic world
And perpetuate the dusted proof
Of why our progeny
Are eating themselves.
Dust And Lies And Swirls Of Flies
Crawl through a black dawn
Of ill-conceived birdsong
Of crickets chirruping with broken legs
And the souls of babies
Smothered in their cribs
The night before
Creep and slink to patronize a
Vendor selling poison
And another godless morning is
Crowned with the glory
Of a dead cock’s crow
As the idols of the people
Smash on convoluted streets
Splashed with bloody rain
About a thousand floors below
These are the voices of undreamt golems
Crying and beating on the
Thin film of reality to be let in
To the other side;
These are the protestations of cogs and flywheels,
The machines that are collapsing
As they press their cursed tattoo of ash and age,
As they pound their rusted, time-worn rage
Into the form of my aching head
And cry for some new Asimov
Like dusty, robot statuettes
In a dank and rotting vegetable garden
In the inky, sooty filth
Of a blood-red golden dawn.
All, oh, and everything is loss and want
All the infants are born pale and gaunt
With bellies swollen and protruding like boils
War toys in a militant cocoon
Loving mother and home fetus
On hands and knees, inching to their own dooms
Children like insects scuttling
Beneath the shadow of a giant shoe
The black dawn like a whorish black Madonna
Opens its cunt to this dying world
And whispers a refrain that falls on deaf ears
Save those of children with guns and knives
Hiding heresies in the backwater hills
Of our ignorance and forgetfulness,
Drawing a bead on a moth-eaten death’s head
Made of childhood stuffy heads
Musty dolls of Christopher Robin
And black flowers with the Latin names
Of Roman gods-
Do we control
Or are we cut-string, cut-rate
Puppets dancing to the lilt
Of false and rather
Antique gods?
-the spots before the black and staring
eye sockets of our collective reaper image
coalesce into targets spattered
with black and clotting blood
oh, dawn, come a creeping
on stealthy Ethiopian priest-knees
dive-bomb a Slavic world
and perpetuate the dust
of why
why our progeny is eating itself.
Crowley Crept In Anyway
Four walls containing a room
A fifth one on top to capture the gloom
A plot of earth below my feet
Cleared and capped off with cold concrete
All the walls lack decoration
But the ceiling is brown with discoloration
And the tile on the floor is cracked and seedy
If I squint a bit, the walls start bleeding
From the gashes and scars carved with rage
From years of neglect and abuse
Strain my ears to turn another page
And the ghost of a girl makes an excuse
My composure is threatened by the feel of the room
While my eyes can’t pretend to ignore the doom
As, descending with patience, it floats to the kill
Blink once more and blood has been spilled
Until the whole world is red like an execution
This shit hits my brain like electrocution
But I shake my head and feel an incision;
A dull scalpel twisted and inserting more visions
How many children can starve on American streets?
How many freezing at night without heat?
How many snaps of the American rattrap?
How many die as I throw away my table scraps?
the angels’ voices sing in unison
from a cardboard, cutout heaven
hum of the power lines conveying the message
1,ooo,ooo prophets begging to be let in
The heater sits in the corner, growling
Telling me stories of Lovecraft and Crowley
The heat of its breath is the stench of the grave
And I realize only too well how this ends
Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus
Needle in the arm attached to a vial
A vial filled with false hope
The pain in world that it sees
Is a mental reflection of itself
But smack is how it chooses to cope
Oh, woe is the poor pitiful beast
Starving, ignoring the silver spoon
Meanwhile some third world boy or girl
Falls victim to another war
Innocence snuffed out so soon
Painful affliction, adopting addictions
To wash away the hurt it feels
But pain is relative to the social position
Rich little brat craving more attention
Groping for a cure to an illness that’s not real
But the selfishness of this private game
Is something it could never admit
Can’t face the truth, the reality
Rather have the undeserved sympathy,
And just drown itself in the shit!
Fuck Is Death and the Death of Time
I am counting on this last distress
My eyes to tell me to undress
I am counting on the flapping sound
Of wings I cannot see
Reliving a short sermon from
The script of the movie of a day in the life
Of anyone, but it could be me
And it might be you with a muted soundtrack
Dust motes flickering like glitter in the bluish light
Of an 8mm film shown in a sealed-up theater
Where the walls are painted glossy gray
And the bricks sweat and crawl like
Cinematic centipedes
Of memories of you or me
What’s a day, what’s a year, what is life
But an hour or two under the surgeon’s scalpel
A fantasy of rotten apples,
A bittersweet encrusting of lovely smells
Sweaty palms, funerals and hand grenades;
Victory wreaths and wedding bells,
And clouds rushing by in semi-darkness
Sad clowns sipping sour lemonade
And outright rejection in a jealousy parade
Crows of fluttering, panicky disaster
Swift as our dreams and as terrifying as nightmares
But more real than war or the flaming fate of moths
At midnight, outside on the back porch
Of some lonely, humble farmer;
Shadowy creation touches upon my soul’s remembrances,
Its windowpanes
Like the bony finger of a long ago lover
-some girl I fucked on a tombstone
and didn’t compliment afterward-
Where end the freckled cheeks and pale skin
The Muppet tufts of pubic hair
The softest touch of a breathy sigh,
The nudge of a rising bosom,
Of a heaved sigh, of a teenage-boredom-will-to-die,
Where goes the unutterable fuck-urge will
To let go of the torrid memories
And drop the photographs to the ground
Twist my toe and tamp them down
Let the faces flutter, halt and freeze
And just waste away in the pain and void
Of what I used to be?
Oh, dear God, am I still me?
Don’t Play With Dead Things
Love is glue
Is a white lace glove
Is a fish and a dead dog and a cigar
Wrapped in a sexy velvet
Stocking
The color of corruption
And naiveté.
Love is a glazed hazy faded
Thing;
A dead child
Hanged by the neck
From a rope
Of possibility
And annulment;
A nothingness, loveliest
Soft-touched-eggshell-headed
Fool drooling
Its own infatuation
With itself
On itself
Love is a dusty frog carcass
Next to a jar of formaldehyde,
And monkey skull on a dry-rotted shelf.
Love is a dog in heat
That humps your leg until it is beaten
Off with a billy club
And gassed
With Zyklon-B
Love is a dead thing
Struggling to live.
Dr Seuss Logic
No rhyme, no reason, ‘tis the motherfucking season
For putting holes in the fortunate sons;
And liberals whine and conservatives plot
But all we hear is guns, Guns, GUNS!!!
Oh, of course it’s the guns that are really at fault,
They have dangerous personality flaws;
And blame the gun makers for making the guns
Not politicians for failure to enforce the laws!
And these teenaged criminals, these gangsta’ thugs
It’s their fault, they should all be ashamed;
And rap music and sex on late night TV
And Trent Reznor and video games
Oh, the teachers are lax (they’re all paid with our taxes)
So we’re too busy working to raise our children;
(I wonder if Dr. Frankenstein, in the hush of the night,
ever wondered just what the fuck he was building?)
So blame the schools, the makers of rules,
Blame the media and freedom of speech;
But don’t blame the parents, or Suburbia
In the land of the Star-bellied Sneech!
Hey Death!
Every day at noon, the walls vibrate
Where we still have walls
And the faucet drips in the bathroom
There’s an out-of-order funk,
A perpetual artist’s gloom
(As if I could clear out some space
with a broom)
Or a brushstroke on a canvas
As a skeleton’s hand announces
33-years-old o’clock…
They always told me not to rock the boat
So instead, nowadays, I just mildew
Wishing I was with you
And maybe 10 steps from the yawning grave
Empty as Sobibor with a party inside
Just waiting for me
And my lampshade hide…
But then, there wouldn’t be the beat of wings
Feathery scritchings
Of puppets on pearly strings
The angels would be black with the rot of the pit
And your breath would smell, in memory,
Like rancid babyshit…
Because, of course, I don’t want to die
Just yet;
I’ve got a dream date with a
Matte black Barbie corvette
I have an appointment to get my hair set
Hold it in place with extra hold aquanet
Any old thing but to die
Just yet.
You’ve got a fast car, I could steal a rib,
Buy a gun and maybe get pretty far
Far enough away from the pharaoh shittiness
Of this spoiled paradise
If I could just baby,
Just baby,
Just roll the dice
Throw the bones,
Spitting on the microphone again
With the wire mesh part rusted
Like an old man’s erection
Like an old nun’s memory
But the microphone tastes like…
Aluminum foil
(keeps the fryers fresh in the freezer
so the spring chicken won’t spoil)
And I know it’s all down to
This mortal coil
(mine makes music if you twang it
juuuuust right!)
It all boils down to worms and soil,
And "go not softly into that gentle night
Rail and rage against
That poster of ludicrous clownage on the wall
Against tuna can tooth decay
And anything conspiracy theorists say
Against the stars and the moon and the dying sun
Against everything living, all
And no one,
Against, against, against you and I
And oh, goddammit, call it poetry or slammit
But I just don’t think I am it,
And I ain’t fuckin’ ready to die
Just yet!
My stream of consciousness hasn’t trickled down
And I still get that tickle from extreme displeasure
When the left and the right and the ups and downs
Look and the bones all shit-dust brown
And look me in the loony eye and
Frown, frown, frown.
I like toilet paper as soft as you are
And mysterious plots laid out for Bogey
An apple a day keeps the doctor away?
But I’d rather have a Cuban cigar,
Wish upon that morning star
Look the universe dead in the eye
And say
"I ain’t fuckin’ ready to die!"
Just yet…
Maybe tomorrow.
Come back then, I’m busy now
Serving up slices of someone’s sacred cow
Prepared with hominy and Tabasco sauce;
What the fuck d’ya think a that hoss?
Eat my fuck, kiss my ass, cross that tee
And dot that eye,
‘cos I said it before, and again, once more
I ain’t fuckin’ ready to die…
Just yet.
I mean, mom bought the coffin the day I was born
Dad said he was working, but I found his porn
Stashed away behind a photo of me
Hanging upside down by my knees from a tree
Sorta’ like a skeletal arm in a cloak
But more like a dying maple than an oak
And just like then I gotta’ have a toke
Of the crack rock of fear, of challenge,
Of death
Of the crack of the ass of a matte black Klaus Barbie corvette
But I ain’t ready to die…
Just yet.
I want my umbilical cord cut for good
Before my Jesus party comes and I go
Crossbeam, crossbar, hanging upside down
On a crucifix
By my knees
On a cruciform,
Reading up on daddy’s porn
And laughing every time some redneck
Uses the words "ho chi minh" or "clitty"
I see the pyramids as fucking shitty
A huge reminder 400 feet tall
That life is gonna’ be the death of us all
Sweet as molasses and pumpkin pie
But I ain’t fucking ready to die…
Just yet!
Another Masque
I’ve got what it takes, just try me out
A few skeletons in the closet,
But nothing to whine about
I can be Don Juan, kiss me sweet thing
Or Carlos Castaneda, investing time with mescaline
Mustachioed muchachos, gunslingin’ gringo
But I never could stand the Duke
All that macho bullshit just made me puke
And about a million Nazis that need to get…
Oh, waitaminit! This isn’t the "Sensitive Womyn’s Meeting"
So, uh…I sho’ nuff gots whats you be needin’
Kinda’ seedy, kinda’ sly, kinda’ pie-in-the-sky
Maybe if I’m sneaky, get a hand up your dress
And I can don another mask if I don’t pass the test…
Like with let my people go,
Whitey in disguise, with a law degree
In suburban liberal slums with a stutter
And a slight under bite with every word I utter
My culture is dying in the Balkans
Meanwhile, I got my BMer man,
So I can l-l-l-l-let my people go…
So you see how it goes?
Only the mask and the motherfuckin’ shadow knows!
I’m a clone, a chameleon, a digital TV
I’m the man of a thousand faces, and I got whatchou need…
Don’t look straight at the trench coat
Or the shadows will obscure it
Had to take a rickety bus to
Machu Picchu to procure it;
I looked at all that masonry piled high by primitive hands
And wondered how imaginary gods could instill such…
Awww, don’t go getting misty-eyed , foggy-headed and faraway
I thought I was in some venerable lodge,
Ancient and accepted, keep the secrets, duck and dodge,
But, uh…I can be Lon Chaney, I can be Robin Leach
Voyeuristic werewolf pawin’ papparazzi at the beach.
I can be Keats, Shelley or Byron, see?
Or Dylan with nonchalance and disaffected irony…
I can be any motherfucker ever walked this earth
‘Cos I’ve got what it takes, handle the snakes
Got the shakes and bends from trying so hard
To escape the fate, the force, the face, the place,
The name, the time and the date of my birth
I’m a mask…
And just another masquerade.
Hypocrites and Talkin’ Shit (Both like myself)
Are my words worth silver
Is my soul worth gold
Are my ideas merchandise
To be bought and sold?
Just a temporary madness to appease the masses
Or a contemporary sadness for cutting my classes.
Sister or brother or lover or friend
You wind up as fodder for my pen in the end.
But the sick part is
No one ever pays me shit
For telling the truth,
But they champ at the bit
To get up the ass
Of some new Kerouac
They pay for the pain
The rain and the black
Or the brown is the shit
Of the words (and you know it)
But for the sake of some pussy
You better not show it!
Slam! Slam! Do it if you dare
Take a chance on a fad
And get a fair share
If you got it, you’re hip
Oh, so primed to get fucked
In the ass with no grease
But they’ll toss you a buck,
Or the gods of the slam
They might validate you
Even if you don’t need it
To do what you do
(look, kiddies, I did it for two years
before you ever shaved…
and this shit ain’t about the poetry
it ain’t about the English language
or the usage thereof, it’s about
Slam! I gotcha’ with a dose of my hips
And the proper sneer in my voice,
On my lips…
And that’s fucking it!
It’s the same old thing
Bigger, louder, and
Straight from the ass;
Just like all words ever spoken
It’s passin’ gas
For the sake of hearing your own
Mouth run; for the sake of
A temporary glory.
But in the end…)
Slam is just another trend
It’s here today, gone tomorrow
Followed for an hour, a day, a year,
At best is stolen or borrowed
So, sorry to rain on the gay parade
Don’t mean to intrude on the sad sack charade
And don’t let me stop you, y’know sneering’s so hip
I wouldn’t want to ruin any ego trips
But the attitudes, posture
And repetition makes me sick
‘Cos I’ve seen it before
and it still sucks shit!
Sumerian Wedding
Boy, do we swindle
The brain right out of your head
(you know) Like anarchists are black
And communists are red or silly salmon pink
But don’t read and don’t think
(‘cos you might find the truth
fuck it up like Dr. Ruth,
like black is for death
and red is for blood;
there’s a reason those clichés exist!)
Ziggurat temples 3 miles high
To reach out to touch someone
Some strange deity
High, high, high order anxiety
Don’t bat an eyelash, for the sake of your piety
Just keep your nose buried in the
Truth according to the "gospel" of greed
I mean wealth, I mean weed,
I mean plant another seed
And see, oh how does your garden grow
With mortar shells and southern belles
And handshakes down each row
A grinning 90’s smiley face
Creeps up on you from inner space
With bones crossed behind it
You could have all the star charts
And still never find it
‘Cos Shamballah is hidden
Deep in the dark corners, like little Jack Horner
Plums and candlesticks
Checkers and chess
How much do you want
For that Sumerian wedding dress?
Oh, I could take a guess
And it would end with a 3
‘Cos it’s all about the shit we never let you see.
Astarte or Ishtar, what’s the difference
Both scarier than the redneck sodomites in Deliverance
‘Cos Easter ain’t just laying eggs in your ass
the bunny wants a step up this time
And if you wag your tongue, cover you in quicklime
An Albert Fish parlor trick
Don’t slip on the corpses, bloody and sticky
On the way to your chariot with a halo of
Swirling flies…delete the lies…
A swirly Q of new age butterflies
The sharpest flavor is the one that stains
A process begun as the game of kings
For greedy tyrants with massive hunger pangs
In trade for tridents and technological things
To build a private transport with russet wings
Slide through the ages in white sheets and slaves
(tastes like chicken, some say, some say…)
Passed off to laymen as a Passion Play
And don’t forget that Jesus saves
Pervert the teachings of that slain salvation
To feed the fires of pagan starvation
And plant geometry on cotton plantations
And man, we can raise a whole ton of cane
Chicken blood, feathers, HIV and pain
A cigar, bottle of rum, candles for Santeria
And underneath Denver is that master race cafeteria
The wedding dress is the marriage of human to black-winged feces
A filthy abomination to create a new species
In 90 degrees so the circle never turns
The four winds blow to stick us in a hole
But the bonfire, the virgins, the babies, the Wickerman
All the sacrifices still burn, burn, burn!!
So we can have our cake and eat it, too
Then run off to our hidden lair,
But then again, no one ever said that
Life our way was fair.
Confess
Think
For just a moment
Think before you say a word
Think before you pray
Think before you close those
Gray eye-shadowed lids
And turn to walk away
Think before the steel trap
Snaps
Shut tight in the core of your mind
And misunderstanding
Turn a blind eye to the outer shell
Wrap your thoughts and biases
In a soft rabbit skin, thin
Your emotions out with rose water
And sandalwood
I’ll light a votive candle
And a stick of cinnamon appleseed
If you will open your cathedral doors
If I will promise to be good…
Oh, the Lord is my shepherd
And I won’t say that word again
Won’t lose the way inside,
Won’t sin,
Will not,
Will not,
Will not ever do it again!
If you will look at me…
Just look, just pull the face away
From the mask hiding it
And show me the smile I had never seen before
If you’ll just spell your name once more
Give me the five letters
With the rise of your breast
Write them out in Sanskrit
And make me learn
To read along
I’ll write the hymn and then I’ll confess
Again and again and again…
Just remove the lotus petals;
And your shoes and clothing, fling them to the sky
I’ll inhale the beauty of God’s breath
In your form, oh what on earth
Is the question I cannot utter,
Stoned on your naked radiance
And all I can do is stutter
And mumble a word or a half
Like libation to a golden calf
If you would only drop the veil
And pick my name up with your lips
Erase my failing as your hips sway to the swirl
To the dervish twirling Hora
Of torrid liturgy,
Of you needing me,
Of man is clay and useless dust
Of forgive me for my selfishness,
My petty insecurity,
Forgive me for my lust…
Call It Stormy Weather (but the "blues ain’t just brown")
Is there a flag that flutters like a stutter, l-l-l-l-like a
T-t-tourette t-tourist in foreign wind
That represents, or truly is the freedom people want so bad
Is there a banner of hope to give you all the hope
You crave, all the stuff of my youth,
All the plastic toys,
All the shit you never had?
Is there a promise that won’t leave you and I
With a bad taste in our mouths?
Is there a way that we can meet all the needs
And burn away the horror of the
"Good Ol’ South"?
‘Cos, if there is, just tell me the colors,
I’ll paint them for you,
In my blood if I can,
Anything to prove to the world
That the only difference is how dark is the tan
Anything at all to show
That you are me, I am you, together we’re a man,
Man.
Is it black, green and red,
Or red, white and blue
Does the fact that I’m French make a difference to you?
Oh yeah, and did I mention I’m a little African too
(and a little bit Polish, some Austrian and Irish, and about one fiftieth Jew)?
Don’t you dare call me white and then smile at me
That’s a bullshit term of convenience,
It’s racial slander, well, I’ll be goddamned if it ain’t a hate crime!
Hate crimes? How ‘bout Leonard Peltier doing time
With no evidence he ever did shit
But then again, to the FBI, your innocence
Don’t matter one fucking bit,
And uh…..that’s whether you’re black, white, or…
That’s right, I’m also one thirty-second Cherokee
And about one sixty-fourth Chickasaw
So tot up around one twenty-fourth non-white
And factor that in to my racial jigsaw
Now let me seeeee…
My dad’s dad’s dad’s dad fought in the civil war to keep his slaves
But I sleep okay at night, because I’m descended from him
Illegitimately by his affair with a cotton picker
And uh, I don’t carry a whip,
I don’t own land, and you could
As easily call me "nigger"…
Now, my great-great grandfather left,
So we don’t know a lot
And what we do know, we learned in
Cobwebbed cemetery plots
No Mayflower heritage, no great legacy
Not even anything left that I could call a family,
Blood is only thicker than the heads that repeat that shit, and
The only genealogy is the brotherhood of man
So my great-whatever grandfather’s grandson
Moved back to Tennessee
And was a mildly mulatto, injun, mish-mash
Heinz 57, Jewish, peckerwood piece of white trash
But he supported his family
And his neighbors and his community
And all this during the Great Depression
Are we getting this lesson
(how the hell would any of us fare in those gigantic shoes?)
Then my grandfather, he started working at age 14
Then joined up for the "war effort", went to the Pacific,
Was fed xenophobic lies about the Japanese
-dirty knees, look at these, well on our way to
World War III-
He came back a fucking "hero", built his own house,
Labored for Ford as a working class zero,
Married his po’ white ass to my grandmother
(Vernie Dee, from -get this, I shit you not-
Stinking Creek, Tennessee)
He laid bricks and resisted the Freemasonic
Sirens’ song
For 62 years too overlong
And then had a heart attack in his car one day
(he called it a Camry, just like the Nikon in his closet),
A long, long, sad line of beaten-down
WHITEYS!?!
I am not white…any more than
You or you or you…or you my friend
And there’s only one difference anyway, in the end;
See, you can say Adam and Eve, creation, evolution
Or none of the above,
But it means we all come from one common ancestor
And there’s always the faithful, and of course,
The transgressor,
But the difference is, I can trace my past
And yet, none of it really matters (I ain’t kidding myself, the past rarely flatters)
You and I could say it all, hash it out over and over again
Because in the end, it’s all just really good storytelling
No breast-beating, table-pounding, bible-thumping
Or screaming and yelling
(And anyway, what’s the real agenda
That everyone is selling?)
I mean, hell, there’s parts that I have to make up as I go
A whole lot of trivia I’ll never know,
But that doesn’t make me any less than who I am
Nor the fact that God gave me less of a tan
Dark and light, daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers
You are me, I am you, together we are man…
And "kind"?
Well, that’s all up to us.
Oh yeah, don’t call me white.
Okay?
Where It Went
Do you see the tiger hiding under the rosebush?
("no,"says mother,"that is just a robin in her nest")
Oh, I saw him, it seems like yesterday
I cried and trembled, I shook because
I was so damn afraid…
-visions of desolate tomorrows
in a small boy’s wonderment and
fears for the memories of yesterwhen
and where-
But all those rocks are broken,
All those mean wasps are smoked out
The memories haunt me, but the house itself is silent.
I saw that purple and yellow monstrosity
Of a bicycle I loved so much
With its chopper forks and the banana seat
And the first skateboard I ever owned…
-in the seventies, y’know,
the skinny deck with the tiny trucks-
The one that got snapped in two and ruined,
And I remembered jumping off the roof,
Pretending I was superman
(beach towel around my neck like a Kool Aid Man cape)
And skidding in a knee-tearing wipeout…
Oh, God!
Where is youth?
Where have we all gotten to?
Yeah, it seems as if the act of remembering
Is in and of itself a ghost,
A revenant in the form of a syllable,
A shadow hiding in a word, in a sentence
In a lyrical turn of phrase
Like it could be reached out toward and touched
Like dust in sunshine rays…
In a book on a shelf
Or a lower lip puckered out
Tear-streaked stains on rosy cheeks
Minutes, hours, days and weeks
Of flipping through arcane volumes
Deciphering photo captions
Faded Biro ink on pages full of faces
And even the lingering smells
Of peppermint, cinnamon and
Pine…
The world just goes on dying
And the minutes remain the same.
And What Would Kali Do?
I see a screw holding up a plank
On a floor made of wood
(Linoleum’s no good)
It holds a white porcelain tank,
The porcelain tank is attached to the wall
Which is nailed to the floor
Which is anchoring the door
If I take out the screw, the whole shithouse falls.
I’ve got tools and a mischievous grin
Selling baseball bats and burning flags
To smoke up my drug, want a drag?
Now the cops all have constipation,
and who says we never win?
And the shithouse falls apart again
Fertilizes the earth,
It’s a part of rebirth.
Realization (by the Hairless Ape)
The walls are closing in and the air is shrinking
My veins are black where the mosquitoes are drinking
The functions all stop and the world disappears
And the lust of Time is fed by our tears
Every rip in the sofa, each cool, dark sigh
Is a book of sorrow for the human eye
The rattle of bones is contained in the flutter
Of the sad, terminal life of the doomed mayfly
Roses wilt in window boxes of shadow
The withered petals are the leaders we follow
A doom to mankind, a cheat to vividness
The world turns black, the world disappears
The functions all stop as the world disappears
And my veins turn black where the worms are eating
Each second of paradise is a miniature beating
The walls are closing in and the air is retreating
The vision is dead and the walls are bleeding.
The Problem With Staring Too Long Into The Abyss (Love)
Five years looking up at the cross-hatched shadows
In the leaves and branches of a moonlit tree
Mahogany and oak and maple
And it looks like "home", it
Holds the faces in its boles and bark
Of my great-grandmother
(who I only knew as a child)
And of my two children who died
Before life could strangle them
And of the two who life holds
In her icy grip even now;
All and anyone I have ever known
And cared for are become cicada carcasses
And ants and leafy veins
In a tree
Growing in the heart of
A blazing and alien Babylon
Under the scathing, screeching sun
-like a smiley-faced Kewpie doll-
Of some unwanted
And unknown cavernous land…
They call me Mr. Lullaby
In the locust-like hum
Of a forgotten tongue
(somewhat like Mandarin Chinese
and a smattering of Latin)
Clicks and buzzes and saddened,
Tear-besotted melodies
Speaking of ruin and isolation,
Loneliness, forgetfulness and
Death…
Where have the years flown?
Where did that stolen fire,
That human dream
To progress and ascend
Disappear to?
Into the voices of mere babes,
Of lads unsure
And touching the lacy underwear
Of the lasses in their dreams,
Only to see in the reflection
Of the mirror above the bureau of their 30 years’ time
That they were here before
And so was I
And so were an army of others,
Whose names are washed away
In a flood of dust
And mildewed soil.
I look at the newsprint telling me
Of the pain and suffering of
Some poor child in Turkey,
Or Albania,
And I remember your face…
Dear God, beauty,
What have you done to me?
I am hanging on a rope of
Possibility and anxiety,
Bound around the neck,
Hanged to death
In the tree of ashen, homey memory
With the faces of my loved ones
Looking up at me
Like moons.
Dust (lust is) Dust III
The distance, like a cold marble statue of leaves,
The failure to gild such gloom is on my part
The breath of words like "alone" on the wind
Is the weight of your loss on my heart
The gleam of the world is a microchip smile
It’s a scalpel to cut through dreams
And the embrace I miss, like an envelope,
Is a pebble, a rotting log, a frozen stream
Just a pointless face and a silent request
The death of love, the death I detest…
Carelessly, wind-tossed hair, a dare I could never take
And the curiosity of cats, a jest I cannot, but wish to face
A brassy tenor voice and never drive a car when you’re dead
I want a blindness to conceal my disgrace…
Where is lust, baby, but more
Dust in the wind?
How many doves fall purely, as sacrifice
How many words a remorseless device
And could those strewn phrases ever suffice
To be more than a lame excuse or an apology?
But the ache in my jaw is calling to me,
And so, and so, and so
It goes…
One in every one shall fall
And life’s gonna’ be the death of us all…
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky.
A Version to the Beautiful Face
When I found flowers on her grave
I wondered who had been there
For who else, surely, knew the girl I knew?
Names are only identification for
Different versions of the same face…
Autumn leaves and
Katie hung herself and
Cynthia was vicious and
Katherine is already three feet down
With another three to go
And working hard at it
Oh, and Pam was just a test…
How many flutes play at once
To still the light
Before the sting of tears
Is overwhelming me,
And raping what little I have left…
Every box filled with bones of lost mannequins
Is an entire set of memories
And experiences
I can never again access
And, oh dear lord!
There are thousands…
There are universes
Filled with the moaning eyes
And teary mouths
Of those who have gone before me
To meet that beautiful face
I so often fear to see!
Come back!
Goddammit!
All of you,
Come back.
More to Say (by the Hairless Ape)
Why stare at a pond,
Waiting for the line to twitch the death
Of an already cold fish,
Or at the windowpane in the door
When no one will knock?
Why keep an eye out for
The world to fuck your backside,
When its indifference is no threat?
Why care, why see, why pretend to breathe,
Why lift my lids or lift my hand to put
Any mark at all on my universe?
Why ask these questions at all, when
The answers are all more perverse
Than life itself?
It’s all theoretical, hypothetical, rhetorical
I don’t want an answer, I don’t need the grief…
The only sure thing is a shot of blackness
A broken-necked, dangling design of
Relief.
Children Playing Like Morrison
I am Texas radio burning niggers for the news
And the immaculate Madonna
Playing with tarot cards
Blasting out the Delta blues
Picking my way,
Daintily,
Through holly-bushy-jungleness
Looking for the ear America
Lost;
The kids don’t hear the rock ‘n’ roll anymore,
Just the Devil inside
The Drumbeat…
Rhythm of the damned-
-I am the vision of Mother Kali
Terrorizing children in desolate schoolyards
In the apathetic suburbs of the
Mind of an occupied American public.
I am the glowing tip of a cigarette,
Of a joint full of insecurity
And rolled by hand in
The dung of television and poisoned religion.
I am the man who was an inconvenience
As he was tossed thru the air
Like a sack of potatoes
And landed in front of
An oncoming subway train;
Oh, sweet rattle of revolution
Lacking substance or grit
On the stinking breath of the People,
Halitosis of a nation-
-I am mental retardation and
Sleep deprivation,
The changing of money in temples of filth
And the sweat on the backs
Of degenerate
Pieces in progress…
I am a muddy, one-eyed spectre
Pulsing a throbbing deathbeat
In the anus of detection,
I am perfection
I am multicolored, polytheistic,
And thoroughly American.
Castrati
Frustrated
Libidinous nothingness
Swells only in my mind’s eye
(that whole size thing is a fucking lie!)
Suck it in boys
And forget what you were told
‘Cos the teachings of the womenfolk
Perfected because they’re so damn old
The will to strive,
To be, to achieve
Is so diminished
To the point of nullity;
Castration, emasculation,
Every heterosexual woman’s wet dream…
Oh, yeah, she killed me
Because she could, because I was there,
Because it gave her such a thrill
Such a sense of accomplishment;
Goody for her,
She is great and all-powerful,
She stands triumphant
In the face of
Former manhood.
Hearts
The hearts of
Human beings are mazes;
Uniform of shape and size
To outward reckoning, shadowy,
Secretive, and blazing
With the sanctity of
Aloneness and individual
Mythology within.
The flame issuing out the mouth
Out of the belly of the beast
Is all creation
And damnation
Melded into the form
Of our fears…
"Do not touch,"
For fear of some relation.
Tend the Boneyard Well, Do I
"Oh, go on back to your boneyard," they tell me
In the hippest, I-ain’t-afraid-of-you voice
I present the image of a gray-cloaked doomsayer
During the Black Plague, on a street corner,
Stating the obvious
"Maybe if we fuck just one more time...
That painful rash will go away."
Mort de L'Amour, you embrace it every day
And then wonder why, though you don’t want to die,
It never seems to go away;
But I’m just stating the obvious,
You aaalllll
Have to die
Ssssssomeday...
And until you do, you’re merely sitting on a toilet
Taking a dump and "Mommy, what a good little brat am I"
Want your dicks sucked,
Want your backs patted
For shitting in public
Oh, I am so special,
I write about flowers
(In an age when flowers eat babies)
I sing a new song of love and of beauty
(Where the beauty is a jittery schizophrenic’s delusion
Brought about by your lily-scented flatulence;
And love, your shit don’t stink!)
I dream of so many sweet-breathed, haloed angels
(But these cherubs are killing each other,
The rotting black mush of their souls
Is a stink of unwashed ass).
Yeah, you’re soooo special...
Oh, but I am, for I sing of oppression and degradation
And paint my outspoken declaration
Of how you gonna’ set my peoples free
(But, uh, which peoples is it today, the
Ones with penises, or the ones without?)
The Man’s gonna’ get me...I mean us, if
We don’t stick together and feel my pain
(Oh, but suffering’s only relative, brother,
It relates to how each one sees itself
And how it sees the oppressor)
"Swing loa, sweet chariot, comin’ for to
Carry me home..."
(Oh, but the gods, they are gonna’ ride you and me
To a panting froth, and eat our confused
Self-deceptions and bloody carcasses...
There is no respite for being a good little chile!
Chile.)
Oh, I am special, my words are mystical,
Magical, the glue of the shaman, holding
The forks in the body of the artist,
Pinning down creative magick to any piece ov
Cork board that I, in my Doug Henning
Childishness can comprehend
(Using PBS imagery and "I love you, you love me
We’re a happy family..."
But you don’t know me!
And who wants a great big hug from the
Scariest apparition of the truth...
The truth that you will not recognize;
You only get a taste whilst parting thighs,
And rear back from the orgasm, covered in droplets of shock
As you look in the mirror and there’s a black cloud of flies).
So, I’ll mosey on back to the boneyard,
But now it’s only a two-step away from you
For one out of every one shall fall
And life’s gonna’ be the death of us all.
Pretensions and Masks at Mammon’s Ball
One little, two little, three little Indians
Four little, five little, six little Indians
Seven little, eight little, nine little Indians
Shot down by COINTELPRO
Mr. Mumia abu Jamal patient as Death
On death row
And Ji jaga Geronimo, and now
Abdullah al-Amin
What exactly have they done?
Nothing to date has been proven
And the courts are like Bob Dole’s bowels,
They ain’t budgin’ an inch, they ain’t movin’
Just baby boomer used-to-beens
Groovin’ on a Sunday afternoon
-I knew they’d sell out,
I just didn’t know how soon-
I guess you’ll say, what could make me turn away...
Money,
Money,
Money,
Give me more money,
It’s funny!
And more than just a little sick
How the yippies became the yuppies
Crankin’ out more snot-nosed puppies
Now their kids are all on smack,
LSD, PCP, Xstacy and Crack
The rifles fire at the student body
Of another Kent State
This time, it’s Seattle, and there can be no debate
That one was all about eco-rape,
Oh, God fuck us, we are all so damned sedate!!!
"Hey, did ya’ see South Park the other night?"
More racist jokes about white makes right
(Ostensibly, the subtext here is how fucked up certain elements of our society can be)
But how many Americans
Who are not in college,
Or part of some pathetic leftist organization,
Neither gay, witty, or
Intellectual with their wire-rimmed spectacles
Even know what "subtlety" or "subtext" mean,
I mean, the newspapers are all slanted to the left or the right
And written on a sixth grade reading level,
Never the truth, just what sells, right?
And, of course, we all have our Sony Playstations
Or Nintendo 64’s
Or some other 1984 device
To keep us pinned at home,
Apathetic, drunk and stoned, afraid to open doors
(Unless it’s Tomb Raider or House of the Dead)
Then, of course, there’s that thing we all love to do in bed
Now, don’t get me wrong,
I crave sex just as much as the next human machine
Who is not clinically dead,
But, my god!
We obsess, must possess, before we ever undress,
And when we do, it’s fear of an std,
Fear of being too small,
Being too fat, fear of cumming too soon,
Fuck it all anyway, it’s just fear of a cold and lonely tomb
But let’s make sure to center around tit size and penises
What fucking genius said,
"It’s not the size of the waves but the motion of the ocean"?
Well, somebody’s lying to somebody somewhere,
And I don’t care if I ever cum;
Maybe let’s just all learn how to better use our tongues
(And I ain’t talkin’ about talkin’!)
And maybe we could end this AIDS pandemic
And overpopulation
And, oh yeah, the second greatest neurosis in the nation,
Sports...
Guys wearing tights and short-shorts
Does not prove anyone’s manhood to me
(Just their eligibility
to sing for Depeche Mode, circa 1983)
Death is everywhere, there are flies on the windscreen, for a start
Reminding us, we could be torn apart...tonite-
Coffee, Valium, brown-nose the boss,
Job security is a computer-age coin-toss
PhD, doctorate’s degree, still might not save you from Mickey D’s
For that matter, they’re suing some homeless kids
I doubt that dumbass clown even remembers what they did
(Guess they gotta’ make up for that $5,ooo,ooo the courts made ‘em pay
the old lady who burnt herself on their verbotenly hot coffee?)
But it was never paper products at the Golden Arches
That was depleting rain forests,
It was all those damn cows...
Just like it’s cows that are killing us now
Like we could ever destroy the world
She’s a strong-willed bitch
With a sapient itch
About to scratch these fleas to
An early grave
A few million years gone by
And there’s nothing and no one
Left to save.
Nautical Erotica
Like the ocean, you breathe and heave
A sigh like the tide rushing out
Giving up secrets in a secret language
Of shells and sand and panting and sweating and
I like the way you ripple
When the razorblades in my tongue
Slice you from neck to groin
And your ocean floor is so supple
I suckle, I nibble, savor the salty clit
And the nipple
Like a fine Cabernet Sauvignon
Intoxicates so my head swims
I barely hold it above water;
And every stroke of my subtle lapping
Like fluttering leaves or waves gently slapping
Rocks and boulders
Rolling my shoulders, I push harder
To break through an elusive veil
To succeed in a realm where
Others have failed
I must know, I must see, I must go
I must gently rap, I must stalwartly knock
Upon the pearly, glistening door
That lies upon your ocean floor
I must wreck myself upon your shore
For I love what I do when
I do it to you;
I love you for less, I love you for all,
I love you for more and more and more...
See how I smile?
It’s a rictus…
And the "little death" ain't got
Nothin' on this.
To Die For Something
If I wanted to die for something
It would be a small child’s face
I could see my bones and sinews collapse
With no rancor, nor disgrace...
If I wanted to die for something
I could paint it in fine detail
Look to the moon for a funeral pyre
To set my course and fill my sail...
If I wanted to sacrifice myself
Upon an altar to anything at all
I have two children set as bricks
In my own private wailing wall...
If I wanted to die for something
It wouldn’t be your patriotic will
For dying is not something I fear
But I refuse to waste, I will not kill...
The Fear
Big white pale pie face in the window
Calculating groans in the trees when the wind blows
Tripping through a garden of death on tippytoes
Giggle like a child as it feels the fear grow
Down came a rain and washed it all away
Still in the darkness wailing for the bright day
Straining feeble ears to catch what it might say
The light from the candle is seven shades of gray
Up comes a sound like the lowing of a dead cow
Chill in your bones and you snuffle like a sick sow
The figures in the darkness come to you to take a big bow
The stopping of a heart, look up and you’re dead now
Walking through the streets never knowing what awaits you
Begrudging every step for the knowledge that escapes you
Feel the stares from the forest of steel, they rape you
Feel the beating of the heart of the city, it hates you
Jump to the beat from the sewers, they’re coming
Heads on crooked, naked babies are drumming
The whores, the marks, the disease, they’re cumming
The city is alive, in the power lines thrumming
Up comes a sound like the lowing of a dead cow
Chill in your bones and you snuffle like a sick sow
The figures in the alley come to you to take a big bow
The stopping of a heart, look up and you’re dead now.
Punchlines
Tom Waits croons psychotic melodies
Beating the walls of convolution and gray
Into a newly depressive emotion,
Squeezing my brain to your shape
And their desires, and our yesterday
And I smoke too many cigarettes
Trying to get the harsh Brillo pad
Feeling of nothing back.
Little girls used to use me for sex
And now women want me to love them forever,
But that’s a fuck-long time
And I don’t know if I know
What "forever" and "love" really mean,
Like, really.
Crush out the fire in the ashtray
Cough out the fire in my lungs,
Wish for gold and silver
And get some more cold, gray rain
And spend a few more minutes in isolation
Jazzing up my life with
A cloak sewn out of apathy and sackcloth;
I make you hurt with my words,
But they didn’t used to bleed people that way.
What can I say?
Tell me a joke and I’ll tell you about my life,
We’ll see which is funnier,
30 years of wasted time
or 30 seconds of dry humor…
Acids
I remember so many smoky rooms
With the eyes in the darkness
Cutting left and right at sharp angles
From beneath bleached, dyed, black bangs,
And aromatic foreign cigarettes
With faraway names like
Kretek, and djarum, and gloises,
And incense smoke,
Tripping like tiny starfish
In the night sky with the
Burnt out suns of other systems
And posters jumping from walls
As though they belonged in some
b-rater horror flick;
Fucking out the solitude and
Misunderstanding
In a quiet twilight
And reverberating isolation...
Which supposed god was it
That supplied us with the means
To create memories
And then ate the experiences
And the people
And the time
Which was all we really had?
Where did everything go?
Paris in One Single Night
I can hear the word "beauty"
And all I am capable of visualizing
Is a nude form fused with components
Of a William Gibson nightmare
Plucking the blooms of rotten moon flowers
From a decaying bush containing
The stench of burnt motor oil...
Cannabisian birdsong lilting from the
Branches of inhuman vocal chords
Transforming mundanity to arcanum
Organizational orchestral orgasm
Paroxysm of delighted dementia
And dimensional instability
The security of a leaky Freudian reactor core
Seeping the fecund ooze of wisdom
And the sere, arid irresponsibility
Of knowledge called by the name "truth".
Fill my bleeding vision with gritty deprivation
A hundred deaf poets, mumbling and slurring
The words of EE Cummings to a
Rich and muted stew of tonality,
A thousand clarinets buzzing with
Broken reeds like the hum of a nest
Of agitated hornets...
Sever me in a million tiny lacerations,
Pick apart the fabric of me
Molecule by aching molecule
And bury the dissected memory deep in your mind
To bear witness to your own cruelty.
Yes, you must allow the noisy confines
Of molested and interrupted reverie
To wash over and assault my being as I have done to you;
After all, we are only human.
Hard Case
Just when I think I have peace and self-appreciation
You come waltzing nonchalantly
Into my field of awareness
And tear down the castles of selfishness I have built
With all the tacky, disinterested
Crenellations, buttresses,
And the leering, mossy gargoyles of
Fearsome individualism.
You replaced the lump of bile in my throat
With a sugared coating of god-only-knows;
The heap of dirt where my heart used to be
Now grows the fragrant blooms
Of fecund and painfully
Picturesque apple trees...
What happened?
The hard case is cracked,
The platform of apathy is pulled away
And I fall again
For the same tired, cliched statement
Of bliss found within the confines
Of the obsessions, infatuations and
Emotions of another,
"I love you."
But, you know,
I don’t think I would trade
This achy, fevered illness for any lonesome stretch
Of good mental health
In the world.
Not even were it possible.
Xenophobe Black Hole
Black hole
Of you
Sucks dry
The world
Another leech
Another slug
Another psychic
Vampire
Embracing
Wholesale destruction
Of all opposing
Belief
You subsist
On you alone
Strip the meaning
Off the bones
Of the skeletal
Carcasses
Of those
You oppress
Nothing is left
For growth
Everything forbidden
Must be hidden
From you
Or it will
Cease to be.
Black Angels
The flowers you gave me last time I saw you
Are all black with time and the memory of you
I stared at them today for hours and threw them out
They were crawling with ants and beaten like me;
I’m sure you don’t remember the scars on my back
I’m sure you’ve forgotten the ones you added
I’m almost certain you’re a jaded young woman now
I know you’re a faded photo of yesterday...
So, where do all the roads lead?
Where does the dust settle when you stop running?
And did the needle put the wrinkles there?
Did the coke dull the sheen of your hair?
Tell me, little angel, was it me that cracked your halo?
I live with all these questions whirling around my head;
Day after day I get on my knees to pray to your memory
And end up examining the dirt in the carpet
Like a giant stooping to look at our world beneath his feet;
The dishes in the sink pile up like the time I waste
And the waste around me stinks like dead fish
Washed up in crude oil on a gritty beach
And a towel like sandpaper wrapping a soaked heart...
So, where do all the beaches end?
When does the sand become glass from anger?
And did his hands rough up the calluses on your heart,
Did his words put the bruised circles under your eyes?
Tell me, angel, was it me that cracked your halo?
The toilet runs with stale water and my brain runs with salt
Sterilizes the memories there and nothing will ever grow again
I seem to be taking precautions and locking the doors
Against a beast much bigger than you alone
I seem to be dying from insight behind the wall I built;
I won’t touch the drugs that can make me forget you
But remembering the sensational scars is a drug in itself
And so, I am the doddering king of my own realm,
I droop my head to watch my subjects' feet and my crown falls off
And how taxing is the price of my freedom?
Has time turned your blue eyes a beaten brown,
And has life bent your back yet?
And, angel, was it me that cracked your halo?
Chemical Equations
I feel a smile start at the corners of my mouth
And squash it flat like a bug
I almost grin at the idiocy of others
But I swore long ago I wouldn’t
Find humor in the weaknesses
And the nature of this species...
Just look at all these insects
Running on fumes
Empty tanks and empty brains
All melted down at the core
They’re burning themselves out
Like supernovas
Because
Awww, it hurts too much to think
For themselves,
And it hurts too much to feel
For real
And the shit of it is
That I can feel
And I can think,
And there’s not a damn thing
I can do about it...
Except fuck myself up
And play the idiot
Along with the rest of humanity.
Chemicals, god help us,
Are the real masters.
Fuck It
Fuck your age,
Fuck your race,
Fuck the disdain on your face,
Fuck you ignorance
And stupidity,
Fuck your ethnic purity,
Fuck your pride,
Fuck your wealth,
Fuck your state of mental health,
To think you’re better
Because you are white
We’re as different as day and night,
So fuck your riches
And prostitute bitches,
Fuck you whitey, in your satin britches,
And fuck you religion
And fuck your state,
And fuck you for making me fucking hate,
Fuck your cops,
Fuck your schools,
Fuck your government and all its rules,
Fuck technology,
Fuck discrimination,
Fuck your apathy and mental masturbation,
Fuck the media,
Fuck your money,
Fuck your movies, they ain’t fuckin’ funny,
Fuck pornography,
Fuck superiority,
Women are as good as you and me,
Fuck attorneys,
Fuck your sports,
Fuck your annual financial reports,
Fuck big business,
Fuck the space station,
Fuck inner-city deterioration,
Fuck your idea of progress,
Fuck all this mess,
All it’s allowed us is to regress and regress,
Fuck the temptation
Of money and power,
And your Frankenstein grain that makes the deserts flower,
Fuck your free-market
Fuck your wars
Fuck you useless corporate whores,
Fuck your hell,
Fuck your drugs,
Fuck your computer viruses, bugs,
Fuck the end that is drawing near,
Fuck "let freedom ring"
Fuck your bullshit democracy,
In fact, fuck everything!!!
Fuck Tom Metzger
And George W. Bush
Fuck your brainless educational mush
Fuck Rockdale County
And fuck Columbine
And pathetic bitch boys who whine and whine.
Fuck skin cancer
And Fuck Y2K
Fuck NOW, Act Up and the NRA
Fuck corporate book stores
That fuck with my head
Fuck Widespread Panic and the Grateful Dead
And fuck privileged white kids
Who think they’re rebelling
By refusing to shower and being smelly.
Fuck the Southern Baptist Convention
In all their spiritual postured pretension
Fuck the Democrats and Republicans
And those over-zealous Libertarians
Fuck marijuana
And Fuck LSD
Fuck crack cocaine and PCP
Fuck crystal meth
And Fuck psilocybin
All the chemical bonds of slavery.
Fuck fake tits
And gigantic cocks
And pushing ass for a twenty rock
Fuck pro-choice
For idealist murder
And fuck all the life that it takes
And fuck pro-life
For its bourgeoisie cancer
And the unwanted life it creates
And fuck anyone
Who fucks like a beast
And creates another fetus for this sickening feast
And fuck the excuses
That "adults" always make
Do what you must
But don’t call it a mistake.
Fuck your traditions and wedding vows
And fuck your diamond rings
Fuck all the names for the sacrificial cow
In fact, fuck everything!
Fields Of Stars In Your Eyes
Fields of stars in your eyes
And the ripple of bloody red waves through your hair
Pardon me if I am impolite, excuse me if I stare
But the sight of the flesh
As it lies upon your bones,
Speckled with rusted soot and pale as moonstone
Creates within me a simple desire
(if I say I don’t love you, then call me a liar.)
My resolve is in ashes on the funeral pyre
Of some weird-ass thing they’re calling "love"
And though few of those who call it that know what it is
I most certainly do -as the ocean is blue,
And the mirror has been my abyss
So let me look closely to see where you start
Where is your beginning?, for there went my heart
And where do you end and yield to the sky?,
For there shall you find me with my thumb in the pie,
Yours that I grabbed and inserted my thumb,
Reached for your cherry and pulled out a plumb
I ramble, I rant, for the lack of my senses,
I get it down right -except for the tenses-
But verbs are just ink, and nouns are merde,
Contractions do not matter, and interjections fall flat,
To describe the beauty of my doll, sangria-haired,
I like plushly buxom (though some would say fat)
But what the fuck do they know?, they’re just jealous as shit
And jealousy’s just good for a laugh,
Your pussycat, my rattlesnake, like gloves they fit
Let us soak forever in our carnal bath
Gardening
Out of my corpse will grow a garden
After my mere human veins have hardened
When God grants me death as a wonderful pardon
And you won’t be around to piss in my garden.
The garden you grow will be better than you
It’ll cancel out all the evil you do
It may feed many, it may feed few
But finally God will approve of you.
Carousel
Sadly does this merry go round
And the horses are dreams that died
Climb on at birth, ride it to death
To the music of suicide, genocide.
Madly does the earth spin around
On an axis of greed and deception
Lusting for more and gasping for breath
As we drop like flies, no exception.
Redly does the death knell sound
Yet we ignore it with consummate pride
And live the good life with no regrets
The lives of others, a shadowed aside.
Heat Wave
Arctic, icy, cold, hot
Yet again, on again,
Off again
Bet I win this time
Cos the screaming mouth of triumph
Is mine
Agape with the wonder of
Losing myself in the crowd.
I have conquered,
Now where’s my fucking wreath?!
I am still alive
From 9 to 5
In the squalid remains
Of where I once was
-but I still have an air conditioner-
And some 85 year old
Woman dies on the floor of her
Rat-infested kitchen/oven
For lack of a better place
For lack of a truer love
For want of a whiter face…..
And the system that ate her soul
Called her poverty-stricken
For lack
of a better word…..
And the fat fuckers in S.Carolina
Called her "just another dead nigger"
For lack of human compassion…
But the confederate flag
Is not a symbol of hate, right?
Meanwhile, I think I see a Byrd
Near the air conditioner…..
Pass me anothah mint julep, sugah.
Betrayal
Betrayal…
Innocent advances
Like a steel trap
Hiding in a bouquet of violets
And baby’s breath;
Smell the incense of lust and fuck
As it whispers "love" in your ear.
Open your throat and
Insert the phallus of
False icons and romance,
Gag on its sticky
Putrescent cum, reeking of cat-piss
And lies…
Betrayal.
Yes, when you feel that cunt
Being sliced into your shoulder
By the blade in the hand
Of the one who is embracing you,
Betrayal,
Betrayal, betrayal, the mask of fools,
Betrayal, the tool of the State,
Betrayal, the blackened and bloody whore
Of those who are in love,
A gaunt, cadaverous steed
Beaten to a frothy death
Gasping out lies with every breath
Swallowing the teeth knocked down its throat
Choking on the vast amount
Of innocence it sucks from you.
Don’t get too close or the boat will spill you
The lethal water will kill you
The betrayal of Life itself will still
Your beating heart.
Solo
Dying
Alone
Does not
Bother
Me,
It’s just
Another
Lonely
Thing
We do…
From
Birth
Through
School
To sex
To
Suffering
To death,
We
Live
Alone
Within ourselves
Within
Our
Shells.
All of
Life
Is a
Solo
Experience.
Liberal
I know how you all tend to be
(A general statement, I know, but see…)
When the time finally comes that the world is one
I’ll be the lunatic hiding up in the caves
Screaming out shit like, "Jesus saves!!!"
Who wants a one world government, bank and religion?
All of life a classless, international rave,
But organized religion has always caused death
Protest it from the cross with my dying breath.
I don’t want a computer chip under my skin,
It’s another form of despotic control, again.
And a government based on brotherly love?
What the fuck are we thinking of?
‘Cos "government is government is government"
An all government kills
Identify with some bullshit group,
But it never cures our ills.
I won’t be there at your side
Waving banners of invisible pride
Won’t be around for the victory
‘Cos the "tolerant left" won’t tolerate me.
I won’t schmooze with dictatorships,
Liberal fascists who think it’s hip
To undergo a cultural lobotomy.
Cut away my self to set us all free...
Remember,
"what’s the freedom of us all
against the suffering of the few?
that’s the kind of thinking
that killed 6,000,000 Jews" ?
And this time around, there’s no race demarcation
Just ideological discrimination
And death for the hopeless few
Necrophile, Coprophile, Make A Pile
You black-eyed soulless structure
You inhuman corporate slave
You unclean whore to greed
Necrophile in a shallow grave
Fuck the corpses of the ones who die
To make all that cheap crap you buy
From your children to theirs
The cost of life is splitting heirs
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own dead,
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own shit.
You filthy profiteering fuck
You’d kill your kids to make a buck
You shitty human fuck-pile
You stab me from behind a smile
Rip out the throat of the opposition
Call it an easy acquisition
Meanwhile, you ripped another life apart
A goosestepping automaton without a human heart!
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own dead,
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own shit.
You freeze the old and starve the poor
And then send their children off to war
Roast them in the summer in rattraps you call homes
Give them poison arrows to keep them good and stoned
Make the schools into prison cells
Scare them straight with an earthbound hell
You let them work but make them pay
And they go to prison anyway
To feed your growing cancer
That malignant greed within
The more you have, the less we get
And no one ever wins…
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own dead,
Eat, eat, eat, eat,
Feed on your own shit.
Issues About Size
Little boy in the body of a man
Feel the insecurity, fight it all you can
With sexist jokes and ridicule
The strength of women adds more fuel
‘Til the fist is poised and ready to strike
The bitch is down and the skirt is hiked
Her legs are spread, the fear is there
It’s date-rape and you don’t care!
Penis envy, closet fag, issues about size
Tell yourself she likes it
Tell yourself you need it
Tell yourself it’s normal
And believe in the denial.
The inability to change your life
Shows itself in the bruises on your children and wife
Shows itself in your porn magazines
In the flag on your wall and your purple heart award
Live by the blade, die by the sword
Your lust for meat and death is evil and obscene
You objectify women, there to be fucked,
And eat their corpses in the doe and the buck.
Penis envy, closet fag, issues about size,
Tell yourself you have to
Tell yourself you need it
Tell yourself it’s normal
And believe in the denial.
To the Girl At The Diner
I work on my car so I can get to work
I’m covered in oil, grit and dirt
Cute, blond fluff in your miniskirt
Sneer at me and enjoy the hurt
‘Cos you’ll go to a mechanic who’ll rob you blind
Lower the prices when you shake your ass
That’s just life to your well-fed kind
You don’t even pay for the gas...
Your future is with the joy division
Glassy-eyed whore watching television
Just a tiny painless incision
And you’re a remote-controlled computer minion
Enjoy the "freakshow" while you can
Soon it’ll be too late to stop it
I’ll cut your strings before you can walk
You pathetic plastic puppet…
Overabundance of material wealth
And a lack of compassion in cornflower eyes
A sex life based on animal lust
And a relationship based on lies
A sharp little knife poised to sever your life
My words are a prophecy, self-fulfilling…
"You’ll make a perfect Stepford wife"
As long as your husband makes a killing.
Death Scenes
A decapitated baby on a cutting board
The butcher knife near the neck stump
Wonder if the lifeless shell sprawled on the floor
Lasted long enough to see the blood pump?
Or was it an act of desperation, of guilt;
Horrified, paralyzed as the towers tumbled?
The tide erodes the sand on which your castles are built
And your lips scream (but you only hear a mumble)…
Tears of desperation, worked to the bone
Years in isolation and failing on your own
Life is solitary and a carnivorous thief
Until the corpse is buried, suffer in your grief,
Until you’re six feet under, there is no relief…
A man hanging by his neck in an empty room
And a tear-stained note to an unnamed malefactor
For years in stunted silence, he tucked away the gloom
In a corner of his soul and was an actor…
Never believed the lies, or the tic of the smile
Never heard the preacher when he howled
All I saw was endless dreary highways, mile upon mile
And a con-artist, alcoholic, whoremonger and heavy-jowled;
I always knew the juggernaut, the jackhammer waited for me
To grind me to bone, to ashes, to death, to dust
From the time of my birth, I could feel, I could see
I always knew that Thanatos eyed me with unholy lust…
Lifefucker!
Trends In Stagnation
Clear away the propaganda, what have you got
Another generation of hippie wannabees
Suburbanite PC-types smoking pot
Copying the past ‘cos they "wanna’ be free".
More consumerist shit is what I say
Punk died on the day of its misbegotten birth
A corporate dustbin of social decay
More pointless production to destroy the earth.
Nothing new, no originality
Black leather, painted slogans, a vague identity
Mall clones with mohawks is all I see
Looking alike is not the same as unity.
Punk is dead! Punk is dead! Punk is dead! Punk is dead!
Rime of the Ancient Lemming
Blasted on the high road
Too loaded to go home
And anyway, I wouldn’t want
To go it alone…
So fuck you queer
Get away from me!
Intoxicated is the
Way to be!
Don’t like you if
You don’t look like me!
Don’t want to see
What I don’t want to see!
Music is an overdose
Too close to call even!
And I like it but I
Don’t believe it…
So fuck you faggot
You’re too abnormal!
Dance ‘til dawn but
It’s gotta’ be formal!
The weight of the world
Is in our corner!
Besides, you’re just another
Little Jack Horner!
Mark Down
Conserve
Uniformity
No will to change
Complete conformity
The idea behind capitalism is to keep the classes separate
Media pushes the concept of wealth
To make sure the masses swallow the shit
Wash it down with obedience, provided by the state
A cocktail of feudalism
Fueled by shallow nationalism and xenophobia
…cry, you sad sack patriot, when you see old glory flying
die, you sorry pawn, on foreign soil you’re dying
for Arab oil you’re dying.
And it doesn’t matter if you "break out of the mold"
To join some faceless opposition,
‘Cos you’re still a joiner, a lamb to be led
And the leadership of any movement
Can be infiltrated, subverted, objectified, classified,
And capitalized upon, cashed in on…
Just like our precious punk has become a market,
And anarchy, mohawks, and bad manners
Are no longer banners of independence
And free thought,
They have become commodities, items, objects,
Product, just like us…
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to pigeonhole us?
My point of view is that the label never describes what you’re seeing
Because a label goes on a product, not a fucking human being…
Until now, that is;
See, we’re all way too addicted to our convenience and comfort
To put up even a token struggle and show of unified resistance
When the time comes for the bio-chips to be implanted,
And finally, fascism will achieve the ultimate through technology,
When we all become the products of our owners,
Evidenced by the easily-scanned chips in our hands
Already on the menu, and now our prices are clearly marked.
Plot Twist
The corporate world gives us hints
Through media productions called entertainment
But if you dare to see it as it is
Then you’re an outcast, victim of some paranoid derangement…
"Star Wars, the Phantom Menace,"
See, they tell us exactly who they are,
Congo, "we’re watching you"
So much more obvious by far.
Everything is a conspiracy
Or a distraction of invalidation
Make fun of valid paranoia
So the status quo can’t differentiate
They twist our minds with special effects
Show us their true files, then mark them with an "X",
To tell us it’s off-limits
To make us mind our business
To make us all indifferent
To drive us all insane
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
Real-life and modern-day.
Show And Tell
Conversion is perversion
Lock your head between the thighs
Of the wholly bloody virgin
You can feel the phallus rise
Clench the sphincter tightly
And religion is reborn
But the penis pulses nightly
Masturbate the cruciform
How many million innocents have died because they didn’t believe
Been murdered by cannibals for the communion they won’t receive
How many more will feed the flames, a sacrifice to Antichrist
Religion is the reason for the dimming of the fading light…
Abuse the name of God and love
Manipulated death march
Murdered in the name of heaven
But your corpse still lies in the mud
And the lies continue screaming
From the television screen
It’s a Holy War you’re dreaming
For a god that is obscene.
You could kill a million children for law and church and state
A bigoted religious revolution based on the spirit of hate
Burn the women at the stake, make the heretics confess
Convert them all for their own good, though it’s done under duress…
And it’s another case of Father Flaherty’s
Blood-drenched Show-and-Tell;
The nuns would not believe you
And you’d only go to hell.
Trigger Mechanism
I killed everyone I know
In my dreams last night
An Mk Ultra nightmare with
No satisfying end in sight…
Everything I want to do
But can’t, I do in dreams
I watch the TV set so much
That nothing’s as it seems…
(Some kid went to school with a loaded .45;
He went down like a dog, screaming, "no one here gets out alive!"
A minister in Bumblefuck killed his kid with a lethal chop
When they finally caught him, he said, "Satan must be stopped.")
I strangled my own girlfriend
With the violence of a fiend;
Woke up in a cold sweat,
Realized it was a dream…
Then saw my fingers clenched
Like twisted talons in the sheets,
I feel as though I’m suffering
An intangible defeat…
(This guy went to an office, he was armed to the teeth,
Shot the place to hell to avenge an unnamed grief.
A woman in Atlanta put her baby in a microwave
And when she snapped awake, all she said was, "Jesus saves!")
Southern Fried Death
Death is a shadow
Cast on the backside of
A 24 hr. convenience store
In the harsh glare
Of antiseptic fluorescent vomit
In the backwaters
Of some lonely and
Alien place…
Such as the deep south.
It’s a Southern Fried Death,
And it smells like chicken
And the sweat and blood of slaves
And sounds like fat, white maggots
Slurping mint juleps
And screaming NIGGER!!!
As they whip a young boy to death,
The death cast on the backside
Of a 24 hr. convenience store…
The Vengeance of the Strange Fruit
See the strange fruit
Twisting scabrous in the cold wind of
A winter wasteland of the soul?
See it, recognize it, discard the fact
Put on airs, your act of
"I didn’t see a thing,"
And fear.
The earth is full of concrete arroyos
Furrowed like the brows of some malignant
Mutant giant, like a virus,
Like a fireball melts us all
On contact;
A brief flash, a flare, a dare
And lose the world to irrational ideals.
Check your pulse, how do you feel?
You cannot see the truth and pretend not to care.
A melting pot? A smelting spot!
A place of terrible heat and friction
And greed is the addiction
Of choice on kinder streets…
Streets of fire and gold where the strange fruit
Does not hang upon the dawn and cold
From trees and streetlamps;
And if they were to do so,
No one sees the labeled tramps
The women and children in cardboard camps
Eating salmonella from tuna cans
A hundred years old and moldy
Rotted like the virginity of
One nation under Goddy-God-God!
We were beaten from the outset
Trading human lives for muskets
The bullet in the back of
A blindfolded, raped figure
With scales aslant, a-tilt
Her flower wilted
See her purity run and melt
Like candle wax, we bear the stinking brunt
Of corruption and obscenity oozing from the cunt
Of the whore we all call Justice;
So lovingly bought with high appeals
And blood money from the skin trade,
Drug trade, gun trade, a sick parade
And the warlords’ prancing tirades
Telling us we should fulfill
The animalistic urges
Saying it is God’s will,
All the systematic purges
Commanding us to kill.com
And feed their growing power surges…
It’s our own blood that we spill
And the innocence we reach for
Only to fall from grace
Face-first into the pigshit, donkeyshit, elephantshit
And coat ourselves in their muck.
That strange fruit has stopped swinging
Yet still my ears are ringing
From the scream of freedom torn away
From its pestilential host;
The bodies descending from trees
Have all given up the ghost
And their tired, hollow sockets
Are filled with burning rage of vindication;
Beware, beware! Amerikunt beware!
Beware of brighter tomorrows
Brought to you on pay TV
On DVD with THX
The techno-killing muscle flex
And pour steroid-pumped-up media
Into a lifeless head.
Eyes alight with the future and hope
Sponsored by Gillette and Diet Coke
And the hardware goons will sell you the rope
So hang yourself and take a toke;
Just make sure the announcer is yelling
By the time you end up dead.
And the funeral’s on the Internet
Everyone arrived in black Corvettes
Secretly sucking on cherry Sucrets
The CEO’s are placing bets
On who can buy up the movie rights
And who can beat the spread…
Just make sure the announcer is screaming
By the time you end up dead,
Like that strange,
Strange fruit.
The Fear Again
I saw some black
and gnarled trees
Growing from my calcified knees
A baby in a carriage
And the ruin of marriage;
But the carriage was RED
And I didn’t understand
Until I saw the baby’s head
And the razor in it’s hand…
And I knew I had the fear.
I came upon a clearing
And the sun was disappearing
There were black fish in the clouds
And dead clowns in funny shrouds
A house upon a hill
Where Morrison lies so still
And a naked woman on a balcony
Was bloated, staring down at me.
At first my thoughts were "paranoid"
But sights and sounds can’t be ignored
She had a death’s head pepper shaker
A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker
Sitting to her left hand beside her
Then along came a burning Kalki spider
And it scurried, crawling after me
I turned to look, but couldn’t see…
And I knew I had the fear.
Winning Hand
If the gun ain’t in my mouth
It’s pointed at my head
Either way , the system loses
‘Cos in the end, I’m dead.
Pull the trigger pig
I ain’t got shit to lose
Hit me with that billy club,
It’s yourself that you abuse.
No, you can’t control me
I’ve got the winning hand
Life is pain, and pain is death,
And death is not an end.
So, pull the switch Uncle Sam
Make me twitch, bogeyman
Smear my brains in the exercise yard
But that’s your only card.
We Have Ways of Dealing With People Like You
The government creates a state of racist paranoia
By portraying the "enemy" as anyone different than you
In the case of war, the enemy of the state is a "gook"
A "towel-head", "camel-jockey", so son, pull the trigger
In the streets of our own country, we see
The Japanese as greedy thieves, and the ever-present nigger.
Homosexuals are harassed and beaten to prove some macho point
Women are the meat men eat and beat for the same reason
White is right and rich is better by far
And if you don’t like Imperialist Amerika, you’ve committed treason.
Animals, as women, are objectified and then discounted,
There to be eaten, there to be raped, there for men’s pleasure
And the submissive mentality expected is promoted by the media
Everything America can grab becomes a "national treasure".
If you dare to show your feelings then they have the upper hand
If it’s anything but devotion to this warped, polluted land
If you step out of line to defend your fellowman,
There’s the Army, the police, the church, and the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
(We have ways of dealing with people like you!)
And your mind is stuffed with MTV and sex so you don’t know what to do
The prisons are overflowing, but some are sitting open and empty
And there’s one in California with room enough for a million and a half!
See, if they turn the screws a little tighter
And turn up the heat till the pressure cooker’s boiling
Put the animals in human zoos and step up the hatred
Then the illuminated winged serpent starts uncoiling
With race riots in the streets, gang wars in the schools
The cops harassing all of us for breaking unknown rules
Gangstyle assassinations for opposing the party line
It’s all just a part of the fascism of business by which Americans are defined.
No More Trees Under Which To Lie
No more trees under which to lie,
No more valid reasons to die,
Nothing left but the mistakes of history
Repeated again and again,
We hack at one another with weapons of power
Blood-soaked blades, our souls are devoured
And is it any fucking mystery
When we die at the hands of our children?
We’ve no wisdom left, no rhyme or reason
But to speak the truth is highest treason
No one cares for understanding
Just the inevitable desire for conquest,
We’re all as crazy as fucking loons
Ridiculous clowns, retarded cartoons
Starving, yet nevertheless demanding
That we really are up to the test
Of time and life and death.
Cross-eyed and Guilty
When at last I open eyes to see
What is there besides an heroic nothingness?
A monumental tribute to our folly…
We have, all of us, blood on our hands and
Smirks behind the masks of our faces
O, we children are hiding ourselves in spaces
Between spaces between elektronik pulsations
Dead from the feet up, dead from the crown down
So used to the whip of adult aberrations
Immune to emotional outburst, as immune to logic
As wanting for an education, as desiring of others, our
Protestations notwithstanding
We are the anti-here, the anti-then, the otherly-tomorrow
The antithesis of joy and light, the embodiment of sorrow
And we shall take what little we can
Beg, steal or borrow,
For there is no more to the world...
Like Amaury-Duval's "Birth of Venus" we shall be forgotten
We shall fall like the walls of Jericho and blow away like dust
Young womb throbbing, raging penis of the misbegotten
We shall fail, for the only history we know is tomorrow's lust
Carried off to disease and the shit-lies of our fathers
On the wings, coal black and papery, of
A black crow named the wind, the weather
Of these days, the great and mighty ways,
The horror of another Jaffa,
The black and bloody heart and body
Of today's Maidanac, the impending seizure
Of a Roman heart attack,
Lost to the spirit of less gentle methods
It calls us, we hear it,
We burn down churches
Shoot down angels from lofty green perches,
Climb the trees of dawn and
Saw off all the dreams, like branches,
Leave them to the appetite of the day
Leave them upon the ground to decay
We will have no dreams but a vacuum
But a starless, lonesome vastness of space
Filled with a groaning, droning buzz,
A tangible nothing, so thick it can be cut
Like the veins of beautiful children,
Whose faces have been tarnished by incredulity
To the point of immobility and cold withdrawal
Whose hearts have been bruised and torn asunder,
Pushed under the surface of
An alabaster lake of suffering and sorrow,
Held down and drowned by the muscled arms of reason
Without reason,
The careless callused hands
Of bold adult treason...
Whose souls lay blue-faced and as blackened
As sweet baby cherub smiles,
Streaked with ash and soot,
Shriveled from top to foot
Like purple-lipped puffy corpses
Of drowning victims washed up
On shores of pubescent hopelessness
-God, what a fucking mess!-
What a shit-stained shame!
And am I...am I to blame?...
The Triumph of the West Is Tomorrow's Failure
Greased pig groaning triumph of the West
Laden with our sins and
Trailing neon strings of colored lights
Packed between fat hamster jaws
Night here is as cold as the steel
Of a Zippo lighter, yet
A frosty, frothy flame in the nothing of flight
Prostitutions and institutions
Protestations and strange mutations
In a windswept utter waste
Of TV dinner trays, a desert,
Empty of even crumbs; aluminum foiled again
The sand stretches out its hand
Like a preacher on a roll on a revival Sunday
And its cyclone breath touches obscenely
The children in suburban playschools
All a giant playpen full of brats
Bats in attics full of relics
I am the West, the past
In a sparkling new age distraction
Moving faster than light
And fucking like robot processes,
No procreation, a sterile womb
Devoid of presence, tiller of pretense
Because the genuine article can’t steer
Has been discarded, forgotten
Cardboard, oh yeah!
Pasteboard boxes
On street corners reflections of false prophets
Promising a short flight through Sheol,
They line, they lay, they lie and say
All manner of blasphemies…
They strew the floors of the, walls of the
Concrete canyons of the city,
And they clutch so tightly to
Their secrets of homeless love
And loveless homes
Like a gossip holds her tongue
During the sermon, but…
Can be heard to whisper tales
Of Brother Jasper and Sister Drailes
After the service, after the fire,
After the fall, out back
Behind it all,
In the dust and dandruff
Of midday in July…
Waving banners, burn the sky
Putting windows in the eye,
Licking toads and getting high
Oh, everyone else, but I, I, I…
I sit a little higher in my seat,
A highchair for a highbrow lunatic,
The moronic child of some bastard
Machine-cog-coupling
I am here, I was a mistake
And I am usually mistaken
Or taken from someone else
Gift-wrapped like a silky necktie
All shaken up with the truth told
By mere children in an arena of ancient faces…
Mouths of rivers
Speaking watery riddles, graves
Every mouth that opens itself to be heard
Riddled with bad teeth
Melting like icicles before winter is over
Crimson and clover,
Plagued with halitosis
And merging with the slushy snow
Dying in the summer hear
What a torrid, simply horrid
Way to go
-in 200 years we have almost erased
the natural landscape with concrete and
glass and steel, rising in spires, falling in
ruined shards…and so, what with
technological advances, where will our
species be in another 200 years?-
The death of the West.
The Trust of Babes
The sky I see is bloody
And filled with murdered desires
Infant corpses strung from black clouds
By ropes ‘round broken necks,
The skies filled with the reek and shit
Of filthy lies
Penetrates my sweetest of dreams,
Opening my sleepy eyes…
To the tracks of distress, mute and muddy
To stars that burn with an alien fire
To the somnambulant torment of humanity, spoken aloud
By the mouths of human shipwrecks,
And the winter air is cracked and split
By every single "why",
Wracked by the pathetic screams
Of babes as they die…
The path I walk is winding
And runs past ruined cathedrals
Cemeteries of dirty syringes
And wrenching broken lives,
The wind is filled with the gasping moan
Of trust betrayed,
Penetrates my fondest of hopes;
My faith in you was mislaid…
The magnitude of betrayal is blinding
The anchors are dust, there a holes in the walls
And all the doors hang askew on their hinges
All earnestness merely contrived,
I descend, I drop, my heart like a stone
Pierced as with a garden spade
I hear the creaking of the ropes
Of the babes as they are hanged…
Oh, give me your hand that I might not sink
Give me a raft, that I might not drown,
Yet all I can see is a crafty wink
The third time I go down;
Give to me a song uplifting
To buoy my spirit within this shell,
But the map blows away, on a cold breeze drifting
And I realize you led me to hell!
The sky I see is vomiting blackness
To cover the earth with a howling despair
And more children gulp down the blood of unease
Seated around a table, feasting on pain;
The ocean is crimson with the blood of martyrs
And green with the piss of lies
I cross my fingers and pray that much harder,
Ripping away your disguise…
The angels are deceit and attack us
And the semen of foulness sticks in their hair
And I watch as you ingest the cum of disease
Drunk with disgust and disdain;
The lakes begging our souls to be bartered
In trade for a resigned reprise
Your heart is on ice in the depths of a larder
Your voice is the buzzing of flies…
Oh, give me your hand that I might not sink
Give me a raft, that I might not drown,
Yet all I can see is a crafty wink
The third time I go down;
Give to me a song uplifting
To buoy my spirit within this shell,
But the map blows away, on a cold breeze drifting
As I realize you led me to hell!
Love Sucks
Love is desire,
Or is it distress?
Love is the fire
Or perhaps just a mess.
Does love mean more
Than just to fuck?
Well, one thing is certain,
Man, love fucking sucks!!!
(heh)
Love Spin Cycle
Love, the spin cycle
Round and round and round
It chews you up
Then it spits you out
And you never do see
What it’s really about
Yon Aged Dancers
If I could slow the world for a day
I could grasp it,
Throttle it in my wondering, raging hands
And make life spit out some answers;
Like blowing on a dandelion
Watch the seeds, like aged dancers
Perform their geriatric ballets
All in accordance to my will.
But the world speeds by on some urgent errand
A moment here and a second there and
Rumbles on by like the express train
Outside my window;
I run to see the ruckus
When I hear the whistle blowing
By the time I arrive, it’s gone;
Always guessing, but never really knowing,
Until it’s too late
That life has escaped me again.
And all the worker ants and drones,
Queen bees, dictators and slaves,
All the inhuman flesh of humanity surrounding me
Can assort and label and file and organize
(but you know, it’s been said only insects specialize)
Can make it turn a buck, they’ve realized
All the secret buttons to push
And codes to punch
To keep the machine a servant to whim.
An escalator, a Ferris wheel, wheel of fortune,
A revolving door, and a game
With no rules except
The more you cheat, the more you gain;
Life is hurt, it is pain,
Life is a never-ending circuit
Creating an illusion of success and hope…
But the hope I had flickered
Like a guttering candle, sputtering in its own wax
Puddled in pools and dying to leave
Memories of people I once knew
Things I once had,
Like happiness.
Life and the World are two
Fickle contesting lovers,
Vying for my death;
Cold and roving bitches
Compiling essays and completing dossiers
Reprimanding contentment,
Rewarding greed…
But
I could never understand the World,
Could never throttle Life in my wondering, raging hands
And force it to spew out some answers
Like blowing on a dandelion,
Watch the seeds, like aged dancers;
It's all just clouds my mind
Like some sick catastrophic ballet…
In the Wings
Lest the mouths of others run
Hide my actions behind a furtive glance
Adopt a mask of neutrality
And a more subdued and docile stance
Lock away the smoking gun
Give up the whole, sad martyr’s dance
Appear less affected by what I see
Though the hairless apes still caper and prance
And the world is but a stage after all is said and done
Just sit still and watch the entertainment
Juror
The garden of Eden of human ideals
Is charred, blackened and overrun with weeds
It can never, in purity, be redeemed
For the only life left is mutated seeds;
Anything we plant becomes an abomination
Choking, cannibalistic vegetation
Nuclear, bio-genetic, total devastation
A fool’s parade of ultimate negation.
The roots of our hope are rotten and vile
Our children, more corpses to add to the piles
The skull is the permanent human smile
The soul is the virgin we all defile;
What hope is there for love or grace?
Progress stunted with a compromise
And the apathy of those oppressed,
The lack of desire to see through the lies.
So we die
Purchase our death
And yet claim victimization
With our dying breath.
Awkward Little Fools
If I touch you, you burn away into air
Overheated illusion, only imagination
(Four years, already fading into repetition of words)
If I touch you, you pull away, a fickle cat
I say the "L" word and you shriek
"No! Don’t say that!"
Am I so terrible a thing
Such a binding cubit zirconium ring
To be untouched, uncaressed, dispossessed,
Am I that bad?
I grow another pair of wings because
You ripped the first ones off, silly things
If I could grow them upon my back,
Well, we might just fly away,
But on with your petty play
You awkward little fools…
White Slavery
Human laffy taffy,
Sitting in afternoon sun
Melted by the heat of
The demands of others
Melted quick-frozen and turning ugly colors…
Silly Putty stretched to ends of boundaries
Poured in a foundry
Images of new sprinted ha-ha
Unfunnies impressed on
Underbelly,
Like honky-flesh-pink tinted jelly
And selling pounds and ounces
Online black market
In semi-darkness
In solitary
Confinement
Cages and slaves’ wages
Turning gray and
Burning pages
Lark
Bounce down this path, kitten
Look at this but don’t touch
The earth between your toes
You love it all so much
And the ants that intersect in lines
Carrying home their food
So occupied with the convoy
Such aloofness is plain rude
And the birds fly by overhead
To nests to feed their young
And because of this, you’re stung
You’re a pretty girl and should be seen
But you half-wish you were a boy
Because then instead of hating them all
You’d simply just destroy…
Land of the Free-Range Dustbunnies
Air filter system is huffing
And the Night is out there scratching at the glass
And suffocating
Someone’s asthmatic child in
Her bed
As she dreams about being in love
With darkness…
The flickering candles standing in
Melted time on the bedside table
Puff out with a conspiratorial wink
To the Night
And exhale smoke at the salve and medicine bottles,
Contempt for the child’s sleeping sentries…
There is a clutch of free-range dustbunnies
Clustered beneath the bed;
Oh, the lamb lies down with the lion here,
So safe from yesterday’s monsters
Because this child’s Byzantine bogeyman
Wears a suit and tie to work
And returns late wearing a martini halo
And wings of rage and lust…
Fuel for the fast-paced vice-filled day
As he rushes back to the dust
From which he came…
And every game of hide and seek becomes another loss
Jumping rope and hopscotch
Are only words in a foreign tongue
And Mother’s overprotectiveness is
The nail from which the garlic’s hung
With care,
Like stockings on the mantel.
Uncovering the Body
I look the way an owl might peer
To the earth, to the sky,
Put a window in the eye…
To my left and right was everything I knew
Pull the shade, draw the blinds
You will never find me…
I see nothing anywhere and everything is real
I see everything everywhere and nothing is real
I see manythings anywhen and everywhen is real…
The universe is a bag of bones over which to stumble
Grumble about the inconvenience
Wake up to the reality of unreality
And the brick wall on which you bump your head
Isn’t even there…
Footprints of some strange creature in the sand
On the shore of quantal existence;
Look through the eyepiece of the microscope…
Closer, there!
It’s your footprint, mine, all and none!
We use science for discovery,
But the discovery is just ourselves…
Under A Pseudonym
These bells ring on Sundays
These clouds reign ghastly of
Horses’ breath, manure and an Aryan cure
It is "Christian", it is "Aryan", it is "white"
It is allied with the cold of the night,
This beast to butcher babies
And then pick its teeth with the bones
Of yesterday’s news
(the headlines scream like its victims)
Cristallnacht! Or Christiania?
All a European blood-heresy lie
And how many Jewish children did you make to die
Before washing your hands of the day’s work
And returning home to kiss your wife
Kneel and pray in a cathedral
And pretend to normal life?
Two-faced Janus German bastard
Only following orders, eh?
Upon A Meathook
Centuries untold upon a meathook
And the blood ran out the throat
Down the inner thigh
The stomach finally bloats
As the blood dries on the ground
A rusted spot of silence
The entire tableau
Almost graceful in the dimness of ignorance
A forgotten statuette of violence frozen
Time and flies and the moldy rain
Crept in and stole the flesh of the image
So that man’s age in the dust heap
Meant nothing
We decompose at a faster rate
Sometimes when we add light…
And so, all the nice inventions
And all the pretty poetic philosophy
And all the collected knowledge
Means nothing after all;
Without wisdom, we fall
Without salvation, we are sad clowns,
Wearing paper crowns
Sacks of dust,
And all fall down.
Villager Runs
Path to the village infested with snakes
Wipe the sweat from my brow and blunder on
Pledge to do whatever it takes
Just to get back to where it began
Stumble on blindly, crouch, the cornered beast
(staring, gawking, draped in shame)
The idiot villagers prepare the feast
My world spins, I can barely stand…
"Blacksmith, blacksmith, forge me a heart"
Bark out orders from the deepest files
"You see this sleeve, shredded to tatters?"
(I grin at blank faces as though it matters)
"Eaten alive, I’m only here after miles and miles
of surprise attacks, blades in the back;
see, for me there is only the Greater Part."
But they don’t understand, I can see it so clear
And now they fear and hate me for no reason
They have Internet, cheap sex, cheap beer,
And they’re not even here for a season…
"Why can’t you hear, why won’t you look?"
I plead, but it falls on deaf ears
They don’t understand beauty, compassion, not even books
They only function on pain, pleasure, fear…
So I start to walk away from the village
But its inhabitants have joined ranks to kill me,
And I recall thinking, as I roast them alive,
Through the screams, ‘is this person still me?’
It doesn’t take a village to raise a child
Villages just scar us much faster inside
It doesn’t take a village to raise a child
Villages just scar us much faster inside
And if I had a say in where the chips would fall
It would be "kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all!"
And if I had a say in where the chips would fall
It would be "kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all
kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all, kill ‘em all!"
When
When it was still yesterday, when the sun dapple ponies on the surface of the lake
When it wasn’t yet today, before we closed our eyes, made fatal mistakes
When two small butterflies chased marigold daydreams and tea parties
When Halloween was not butchers and monsters, but chocolate bars and smarties…
When the light of day still showed its face, before desolate dreams stole the night
When lunch was a p, b, and j with the crusts cut off and I always gave you a bite
When a kiss on your cheek meant I loved you forever and ever and ever and always
When Saturday morning with its cartoon parade was still the bestest holiday…
When the dew on the grass tickling your feet was enough to make you laugh
When games of hide and seek in shadows were how to avoid the daily bath
When Spiderman beat Mysterio, and the Fantastic Four beat Dr. Doom
And the best punishment in my comic book world was being sent to my room
When little girls all played dolly games and little boys played baseball
But I played truth or dare in a tree house with the coolest girls of all
The ones who could spit further than me, belch louder, and it made them proud
The ones who liked Kiss and knew all the words to "shout it, shout it, shout it out loud…"
When we counted days to summer break when it was still mid-December
Days like those with snow on the ground I think I will always remember
Like the day I rode my bike down the hill on Dumbarton Street
And I tore a ragged wound in my knee and you said you thought it was neat.
And you stole a cigarette from your mother’s pack; I believe it was a Camel Light
And we smoked it together under the maple tree, and were sick and green all night;
When we traded bubblegum cards and caught crawdads at the creek
And I remember the day you left, moved away, and you kissed me on the cheek…
And when and when and when,
And that is when I wish I still was.
Philistine Killer
Shelved away on the back row
Books, like tiny people, glow
All their wisdom or knowledge to show
Just how this verbal garden grows
With density, the propensity
Of people to misunderstand
It’s staggering to the core of me
That the world’s so bland…
Smile away confusion
Comprehension, an illusion
All these words in such profusion
Well, what is your conclusion?
What’s the meaning you are gleaning
Up there in your pretty head?
Or is it just demeaning
That you don’t get what was said?
Are you frightened by the verse
Do you find it all perverse?
The subject matter, it could be worse
Let’s call it a lexiconic curse…
St. Liber and the Quest for the Veil
for one brief tear-streaked moment you think you are
treading on the sand, leaving footprints in the surf...
and then the undertow sucks you out to sea
and you are lost in the ocean's cold embrace
face buried in her smothering breast.
for a little while, as a child, you stomp about
like a giant chasing the shadow the sun is casting
into your limited world...
until eventually the shadow becomes your world
and its unseen denizens howl for you.
it takes very little skewing of perspective for the table to turn
from the world being the place in which you live your life
to life leading you around the world
by the ring of preconception in your nose.
...she smiles prettily and says “forever”
and maybe knows the meaning of tomorrow, and probably today,
but doubtfully yesterday or now...
she breathes deeply, her chest
heaves and continues expanding
-there is nothing left, she evaporates...
lifeless memories are life-long experience,
hang on to what you have...
she calls these words out like a life-line to you
as you drown in the cold embrace and she
skips away to do it again...
“it's good that we are not required to be nice to people,
only civil...”
funny words to part company on,
but they really do fit the situation.
when I closed my eyes on the old home place
the very last time, I was 20 years old.
two decades later I opened them again and began
to count the coins I had collected while sleepwalking...
the weight of the heavy things is not worth it
-they carry more tax than their face value adds up to.
when they told me i could not keep the treasures I had amassed,
I was crushed and fell back to my ledger to try to
recalculate and shuffle the numbers in the hopes
of stealing at least some small jewel
to hold close to myself to pretend is the rag doll effigy
of a lost girl incinerated by dragon's fire and witches' brew...
I touch the far away face of St. Libertine and hear the deafening absolution
of more rejection, the stale precursor to the inevitable loathing
the saintly ghost girl will eventually embrace...
it tickles and I melt in the experience, trickle down
parking lot alleys where once physicians healed themselves
now neon prophets proclaim their violated message
to the small hamlet that became this haven of rats,
garbage in perpetuity, memory staining the bathroom floor
where we lay some 22 years before
in praise of neon prophecies...
not far from heartbreak hotel, in a basement, an encasement,
an extension of the haunted woods and condemned future
of the home of the children of the time-blasted white wyrm...
lain down in fields of futility,
silently filleted in the stone foundation
of an earlier age of Marxist indoctrination
inhaling the stench of dead hobos,
3 am stoned forays to sit in the road and stare at lights
to trip the night fatalistic
and challenge the spectre of traffic past
then run from the encroachment of dawn's tide...
our fortress had chimes and bells, baphomet, ceramic,
lace & leather;
our fortress had Alice down the rabbithole,
we were the looking glass
-cracked into 88 jagged pieces...
everything was permissible
nothing was forbidden;
we were assassins of ourselves,
the bricks to dust, the mortar washed away, the walls eroding,
the play of light and shadow that blinds
the look over the shoulder...
like Lot's wife, that place could arrest the world...
it was time, it was place, space, it was children,
it was freedom to run.
In a dark place I laid my head on her shawled shoulder,
my hand on her knee...tunnels in time
running beneath man-made sand dunes,
very concrete reality breath of the dragon that ate us...
approval when destroying, sad indifference when sustaining life...
she and I awoke to children poking our bodies with sticks
and laughing, their faces the mockery
of the infantile and encephaletic.
Pinhead world and pinwheel-giddy-stomach-turns...
Nick Cave melted out of permutations in the walls,
clove smoke...their faces disappear like Roanoke,
it was a dark little party,
the whole affair seemed planned,
yet no one would admit it.
I step sideways, crab in a tardis-shell,
and Athena grins from classic ruins of wisdom squandered
and the fake pleather pretensions of college towns.
Winking at the cardboard cutout place and blinking in the dim half-light
of a world waking up after gluttony in the wake of famine,
I don the leather armor and go traipsing off through
absinthe-green mist and bubbles,
chasing dragons down lonesome country highways at dusk,
coming up empty-handed, all the lords and ladies
only shadows of what should have been mine.
In exile, abandoned, afraid to stop breathing,
in case someone might take me seriously
for the first time in my long long life,
I gulped in AIR and screamed at the sky
to let my pupils run down my face,
to allow me not to see any more
of the insanity the people were calling truth and light,
right and good.
There is a problem common to ALL women in the world...
they are not her...
her voice calls out mewling, begging me to make it stop,
crying for my help, and I can do nothing.
There are ideas that should be aborted instead of fostered,
there are babes in the dark wood of the world
who should be fed diamonds and milk
and allowed to run themselves into the grave;
there are paper tigers and there are dandy lions
and there are ceramic and tile dragons,
and every smoky enemy is concrete in very life...
hold onto girls crooning on the quad,
hold tightly to the German, to the breath,
to the trees and talk, hold to the thoughts of
lost entrances and concealed exits...
pray that the answer is within the confines of
“I didn't realize”
“I don't know”
“I'm sorry”
“Please forgive me”.
Now is the last time she will heave a sigh,
now is the last time we will know ourselves,
now it is all over,
now the sky is shimmering silver and the moon is red,
blushing like a virgin bride,
now the spiders crawl from her head
and the stars die to immortalize her memory
...St. LiberTina
take me back to 21st and we'll die there
in our youth,
okay?
Selfsame Game
a shared spirit, lifetime
firelight in a mad eye
teardrop crystallized
time frozen full of ghosts
life drains from limbs
bones melt like pulled taffy
a memory, photograph
turns to attack
heart beats from adrenaline o.d.
There is but a handful of beats
until I fade too
fall out of joint and out of view
give up the ghost, admit defeat
it only takes a solid beat
'til angels skulls
are angel dust
and flippant flings
turn ravenous
'til blackened winged
fueled by
the turmoil ends,
and dark descends
and all the hope
and love professed
is crushed...
every
single
word
ends in
“I”...
Draconis Landscape
lady in rags
with the riches
of the world
of a language,
of the dead,
of a kingdom
of a ray of light
vagabond princess
of a ragtag realm of
children of
lower expectations
no one denied
the magic was there
animating features
of the landscape
swallowed in
a cupful of
poisoned ale
dragons floating
through the
gentle mind rape
dancers on
the heads of pins
such gorgeous
boys and girls
and no one wins
Thiefy Creepy
I know, I know
you never knew
what...touch...wait...don't
they will, except they won't
face the other way
(pretty)
please don't betray
the face beneath
crawl and creep until you catch the thief
you, wasting time, burning hours
on my dime, erosive
like acid, corrosive...
we live in time
(it slips between the floorboards)
in the cellar
where the thief has
hoarded the loot
grab the hand,
rewind, relapse, reboot
dirty bird on you hands and knees
begging for the
stop...touch...end...don't
they will, except they won't
face the other way
(ugly)
don't betray
the face beneath
crawl and creep until you catch the thief...
is you.
Snowblind Sidewinder
eyed sidewind winded wide-eyed and snoblind
describes the last time with lips of sugar
she reached, the window beseech preach
her sermon to me soundly, silently with lips of sugar
were tears outstanding or makeup smears demanding
I remember that moment until my body rots
whitest flow, just a test or testimony, would I know
if I could go back, glue my body to the very spot
doe-eyed, did she understand, dry-eyed I was no man
a boy forced from his homeland to march the waste
but eyed and sidelined winded wide-eyed and snowblind
she heaves her chest a sigh and parts her lips a taste
a kiss of flurried haste in winter flakes she smelled like “wait”
a goodbye but I didn't know her the noon bell tower rang
snow fell sealing silent forever that momentary hell
hurried down to Chattanooga in a kind strangers Mustang
I was waylaid, downplayed...I swear I would have stayed
for another moment of that unspoken forever she kissed goodbye
outshined wide-eyed sidelined left behind and snowblind
alley...
Giraffe
a ghostglance sideways
knowing smirk and laugh
stopwatch, run its race
a secondhand giraffe
gawky and incontinent
pratfall, untimely gaffe
before the gun sparked start
leaping the easy part
crouch by and call it art
the legend clings to crevasse walls
inches by to fall apart
and life is the broken heart
A Saturday Night In April
smiles sideways she does and winks at me
shines her eyes past her drink so pointedly
dancing all a-jitter in her chair she sits there
and tells me that she loves me
but why the sun just cannot be
she drinks her coffee black but spiked
there's nothing new she does not like
she tells me in a whisper that she's insane
she knows it and fears the worst
grabs my hand and screws me until we burst...
Mickey Rickety Rasputin Rat Race
Mickey Mouse won't tiptoe to the Chapel
he'll be riding Pluto to Jerusalem
and feeding Petunia Pig an Apple
hanging from his boxers, tucked underneath the hem
Mickey Mouse is cheerful, people
he won't make you sad or blue
he'll erect another mousy steeple
c'mon in, bring the babies and the old folks too
Mickey Mouse, he's a rat,
the ghost of John Wilkes Booth
but old Honest Abe knew a secret
(that his REAL name is Sokkuth)
Dredel Dredel Dredel, let's all roll the bones
for Chiun Kah is here, hear the little tykes groan
the Stars all fell of their own accord
on the BSA on a camping trip
Mickey Mouse Club molested scout Cubs
then told them all to get a grip
pointed a gloved finger at the leadership
made inroads into the US Marines
twisted the American collective mind
by cramming disparity into cans like sardines
and threatening the world with being Left Behind
turning fact into fiction, it's all been a Process
a milk toast addiction to Crosses and Roses
and symbols and semantics horizon events
entitlement and antics festivals of circus tents
a mad parade of carnal hedonism in the streets
a sad charade a new religion between the sheets
in the Chapel in the Temple the lie is growing
bite the Apple it's so simple and the Blushing Bride is glowing
from the pustulent praise of the rat with disease
Mickey Mouse, Ricky Rat, pass the red tide please
Rockefeller, Tricky Dicky in front of China on his knees
there's a Dragon on the Bandwagon of the 1970's
the Wall kept out the Mongols, but only for a short time
the invasion of the Asian just like operation mind crime
(so long ago yet rather odd, the Tao Te Ching in the Land of Nod)
Dredel Dredel Dredel, all roll the bones
of the Czar and his Daughters
roll away the stones, and dig them from the quicklime
Mickey Mouse, Rasputin rat in the cellar of the palace
Anastasis, poor little Alice, the Princess myth of modernity
and Ricky Rat, oh Angel fell
flat on his face for eternity...
wake up darling bride, the Groom is on His way.
In Again
If I touched your face again
the soft milk white skin,
would it melt beneath my fingers?
Would my hand rest within your soul,
would my palm lie flat on your insanity?
Kiss the spine of your book
the pages of you, lick the dew
bow the back, whip the crack
run the track...
circuit
from your lips to
your toes and knees
caress the feathered wings
and only try to please
if I touch your breast again
if I kiss your chin again
if I promise your we shall never sin again
would you please, oh would you
could you ever let me in again?
Lone
sweet and shining
beauty is lady grief...
eye to eye with life surviving
rusted blade of knife does not
snap, but cuts the sky in pieces
makes it fit her revolutions jump thru
hoops and revelations burning bright
in deserted sun-baked burnt-out
pattycakes pulling thru a miraculous
putting laid to rest, pain in full...
the past is just the past and nothing
more anymore a-caper in there the desert
she is mystifying door
and where the key?
...in the skeleton mimes
chase memories/making my pen
drip its poison again...
nothing so epickly wrong the desert
can't eat the pain
grab for the golden ring
swallow every glassy sandy grain
for getting everything
want...
want is needing to end the pain
wanting to dye just one last time,
when is this party over?
When is the job done?
Lost in questing questions
in deserted wastes of time
it all comes down to
one last grain of sand...
the hourglass brings pain
and death.
The Whisper of Night
the soft caress of a whisper at night
leaves traces of quicksilver sparks in the light
with the lingering scent of the passion of lovers
the night steals her sanity with a kiss and a smile
appeals to her vanity and yet all the while
the seduction and deception have left her uncovered...
to writhe and to moan in her deepest delight
coupled? Alone? She's bathed in pure white
dappled with droplets of crimson and blue
each time her mouth opens, the cry that erupts
is a step on the staircase of her giving up,
is another drop of pleasure infused in sinews.
Tickled pink skin, oh soft and inviting
she's tracing his touch on her thigh and delighting
in the tribal tattoos his tongue illustrates down her
and the thrill that is building is crushing her chest
with each explosion of light as he kisses her breast
ahh, she's gasping for breath as the waves gently drown her!
She's been boarded by silver-tongued pirates before
who plundered her treasures and charged up her shores
but she's not been filleted with such a turn of the blade
so that body and soul dance falling and turning
so that pleasure and pain are so thoroughly burning
her inhibitions, dreams and her protests away.
Now she lies in the dark between dreaming and waking
awash in the currents that her still quaking
and she wonders whose hands touch her under the covers
for the man there beside her lies slumbering and snoring
and his juvenile efforts, though in earnest, are boring
so she drifts on with the whisper of night as her lover...
Marsha Trembles
ghostlike girl in corner
wanting revenge how can I
tell the little girl not
to listen to lies not to look
into dead eyes don't tremble
don't shake the dead awake
vendetta frozen creepy-cold with ice
in veins china doll blue skin
black button eyes flat panel
panic the button launches
more fearful tearful flow of
sob the anguished child
exhausted in her death
Sainte Liber Tina
earth
angels fall from lofty positions
mistakenly assigned to them...
from pedestals of the ideologue
pathetic worshipers of
unrealistic expectations create
irrational goddesses from
molehills
when “human” is a designation
difficult enough to maintain
let us put Ste. Liber Tina back
upon the dusty shelf, beside
the plate of humble pie before
she is beside herself,
a mirrored face out-of-place
before the flaws betray the
lie, oh my yes
she's cute and friendly
but saintes don't dance
in this deadly age
only fairer human slaves
to flesh...
post-script:
(she said she was someone's broken wing
brown paper, staples, scotch tape and kite string)
Musings on the Crescent Moon
grew from pale
to the rugged light
victims of circumstance
jaded by life
seeking games
that adults play
open up Pandora's Box
and lose the narrow way
a play date corruption
a childhood seduction
led to the deduction
that life is worth taking
the limelight calls,
a siren's lure
barbed wire babies
all in need of a cure
pornographic priesthood
gives swift vaccinations
of a bleach-cleaned needle
and a two-bit salvation...
clothe me in your afternoon, let me eat just half the moon
randomly shine a light on me (I'm still here twiddling my thumbs)
I'll be festooned with the legendary (and I'm only playing dumb)
-
count the cost on one hand
saw off the finger with the wedding band
figure out the meaning from a chap book
and swallow the answers in the pills I took
looking back won't seal the deal
cutting my way out won't make me feel
Sodom and Gomorrah, still turned to slag
i'd offer you a cigarette, but you'd choke on the drag.
Doll Smack
two eyes hearts apart
blood beats pressure film on eyes
sewn shut magnanimous
smug and acrimonious fling
and torn apart shards on floor
broken lives make twisted art
no apology
no apology
no apology
no comprehension
nothing forthcoming
to give and not receive is
only part of the hardest part
to expect and draw a blank...
here is the key to the hardest heart
break it off in the lock
like breaking prying fingers
try to get the clear light back
but the dark musk lingers.
Small doll china head glazed eyes
like china white she's smacked around
skin pale head fractured cracks
run through divulging secrets
torn apart shards on floor like
rusted knives divesting regrets
no memory
no memory
no memory
no recollection
nothing forthcoming.
Composty Communion
cowered down in misty
mothballed memory
who did you used to be
what means the sight of me
fantastic heart
pulls a tug a bit
a graveyard by a Riverfront
the less-than-fully-dead
climb out of holes
in the banks they're only
parts of memory
I sometimes forget
to put myself to bed,
or tuck me in
and so the murdered
walk again
but that isn't me
anymore
I will give you
meat to eat and wine to drink
and bread to sop
I will give you parts of me
that were not mine to give before
but composty communion
in lysergic days
that rot away
and nights that all but
melt and fall...
that sort of Saturnalia
strikes no chord in me,
only mallets on the head...
only dirges for the dead...
I have
symphonies for life instead.
In the Lock
watching waiting
world on fire
dissipating
reinventing
but the picture
doesn't fit
poisoning sustenance
burning sky
unholy writ
scream of missiles
to targets
land-lock the sights
cocked guns firefight
for something
fall for anything
and as the world spins madly
grab for the brass ring
but then you pulled the plug
kiss her tender lips sadly
remember and
it falls apart
what was the broken piece?
Oh yeah, it's called a heart
best to forget,
drown in deeper thoughts
save yourself,
buy a gun
the celebration's just begun
armored up, chained down
marionette strings pulled by
half-breed circus clown
but the world on fire, just enough
situation crisis
(I'm not in love)
insert the key into the lock
in paper heart and break it off
the sky is plastered in paper warnings
misstated halelujahs on chilly mornings
and when lips sadly tender kissed
aimed higher heavens sake a shot
heart-shaped mirror smoking pot
tried for silver, bronze and missed
push the button,
boil the seas
there are no you's
for a million me's.
ghostmusick
to look upon the room
faces succulent and bright
(I can take your inmost light...
oh, you all all shine in the dimness!)
eyes widened and rimless
mouths parted, open-hearted
ready for the artist
to perform his surgery
and the hand it shakes the papers
I imagine lighted tapers
the podium stands aflame with my words
I find it hard to stand
they spidery scuttle all about,
refusing to sit still
bright fibers covered in mindless soot
crawling circuits on windowsills
never heed the call, but I mouth them anyway
to make the fresh young heads explode
to cause the blankness to erode
to reach a hand out as an invitation
recoil the claw, retreat to isolation
the mind and soul to stand alone
and shake the walls with a voice of despair
age and rage,
despondency and flame
rise up on hind legs and
STRIKE,
there goes the microphone,
crumble up the words
wad into a ball and drop it on the floor
smack my fist against the posts,
still insist I killed the ghosts
crumple under the weight of ideas
the smashing voice I am receptacle for
too much too much
too much...
shut up!
Timing Brandy
she hands me the sun
and tells me it's stolen
or sacred, or holy or swollen
(I can't quite remember)
and the word she breathed
was a strawberry wind
blowing liquid neon contrails
down the blind alley of my spine
leaving pictures on her lips
in the shooting gallery of my mind
every glowing freckle on the smoothness of her face
a star in a constellation in a negative photo of space
I think her hair caught fire
and ignited her pursed lips
and when she kissed my cheek, it...
it burned like brandy going down
and when she shared her breath with me
her tongue described
every ancient tree in a forest...
stripped of bark
where every branch was smooth
where smoke covered the mossy ground
...and I blinked...
time extruded like taffy, slowing to a frame by frame
stop motion, all rickety gyration love potion
my head was spiraling, nose-diving at a crawl
watching as her milk pale body
melted, in reverse, like wax into a candle of her
up from the smoky woodland floor
carpet on her bedroom door
candles spilled across the bed
arcs of flame as she gave me head
and I burned, the world sang on in stoned indifference
curtains striped with fireflies
like time igniting snippet moments
bursting clouds, surf on the rocks
I rocked with the rhythm of the tide
and lapped like the waves on her shore
soft muffled sounds salt-water dewdrops down
and softer red hair, a crooked smile
and green eyes like marbles...
suffocating me, embracing
as her body shook the rafters
brought down the house of cards
the world around us was in laughter
the glass house shattered
and at the age of 19 the only thing that mattered
was a tiny red-headed soliloquy written by the Masters pen,
her kisses promising heresy
and I in her and she in me
and a blurred sensation of strawberries and cream
in a dark room smelling of lilac
sandalwood, patchouli and the musky dew of youth
as we
God Almighty fucked...
Julia 7'ed
oh, out in the back yard in the trees
misted morning white
the web was woven tenderly and just for me to see
moon half-lidded patient eye
in punch-drunk pitch black night
makes silver strings on spider's harp
the key of desultory country isolation
come what may another slither
mr. toad stuck to windowpane tongue
that licks the acid rain
eye to put the window in
throat to swallow day's refrain
reformed from coppertones and
ancient cans of Silly String
apply a little Fiona Apple to the bee sting youth
go to bed little girl and dream
I never went away before you sleep
and don't forget to read and please
make sure you pray say the words
I taught you to make the night things disappear
whisper whistle in the darkness
to put the wall upright again
a shadow on the blanket tent
but it cannot come inside
your special little world of Crazyhorse and Funny Bunny
the slug is left out in a rain of salt
to melt and spew
but words are only words
until a dictionary forms like an island
in your head
brush your hair luv
brush the doll's head right off
roll across the floor
through the window out the door
it is Circus Maximus lappin' comic book reality
and life creeps back in like an embarrassing infection
and melts your castles of pretty confections
stuck in the doldrums beating
like Indian skin drums on coffee cans
pulsing in nocturnal rhythm
zither slide right up your spine
oh what could have been with competence
the scented sheets but spread your wings
on rainy streets instead
to fly the dream away
fall from a parking deck and crack your head
a tomato-burst of pain
twirling flighty Nethinim twist up the words of ancient sages
the difference is there but can you still see the ripples
wealth is not measured in money
a fly trapped in honey
you're squirming in the tangled web
of mediocrity
and you thought you were a star...
Rift
make that face again
with eyes like pools of swirling storm
and fevered furnace intensity
God, I love it when you smile at me
sweet tender morsel of your soul
that you tempt me with
the musk you wear for me
is the most succulent gift...
take the plunge and breathe again
your chest is heaving like the waves
and hips roiling as the ocean
oh dearest, I love it when you dance for me
rich, burning liquid motion
you serve to make me turn and twist
your steps, oh string-cut marionette
an aching, yearning tantric gift...
make that soft contented sound
before you curl me up in sleep
to float in your scent unencumbered
sweetness, I drink in your golden slumber
a frozen dozing portrait of you little girl
who hides behind life's waking mist
the child within, sweet dreamer
a most misleading gift...
the heart of the darkness in
your aching, lonely mind,
an uncrossable rift.
Coppertone Remove
I didn't mean to live so long
I thought I would have left by now
turned off the lights, locked up
waited for the crowd to disperse
never meant to know so much
(although that's what I begged for
every time I felt the touch
a stranger's hand in velvet
tracing contours in my eyes)
this vast auditorium filled with people...
faces I saw once on postage stamps
or comic books, or in dreams,
masks that come to life
and tell me stories
about how I know them...
but I don't know them
lips that pucker and tremble
as I pull away
eyes bruised and puffy
with time and anxiety
anguish and the lore of living life
at least the way
you thought you had
but I never did...
make accusations like that?
Convince me I was ever there!
This ballroom filled with cyber-ghosts
they walk, they sing,
they dance!
And I didn't mean to live so long
and now it's too late to die...
only drop the future in my eye
and whisper in the ear of a redhead named Romance
Residew
when she says, “hold me,”
she means, “don't get attached”
when she smiles the crooked smile,
her eyes will follow you
when you leave the room, kind of hungrily
(she's got a Shangri La sort of casualness
about her loyalty...
head's in the clouds,
on the endangered list)
you can try to take her pulse
but you won't find it in her wrist
she's the girl everyone thinks they love the most
she's a treasure trove of picked-at sores,
a trauma diva trailing unholstered ghosts
she is uninvited,
but she comes along anyway
she doesn't know the tune
but she sings the song most every day
if you hold her hand she'll ask you why
and smile at the sun like it was her love
she's tied so strongly to this mud
but claims to fly somewhere above
she will never be,
never promise, never stay
she will make you believe it
and then waltz away
she's a statue inside a little girl
a cross sheathed in a lead box
she's naked, crowing in the garden
and it rocks, and it rocks
she's a fox in socks
her hair is woven through the trees
with potted plants and madness seeds
and spider's silk
kimono jingo Japanese
Om Mani Padme,
stomp, stammer, star-jammer
she bleeds the wind and inherits the breeze
she was poured into her genes
and now melts out like wax inside herself
beside herself upon a shelf
and wearing rose petals
peddling pretty rhyming pearls and wearing pelts
and every word she spoke to me, I hung upon a rosary
and seven years my litany was, “anything for you dear,” anything for you
oh no, that's not a tear, it's only residew...
April Fools
step outside
sunglare and ugly fanfare about
leader of the pack
general malaise shooting smack
feel different than who you are
by the railroad track
chase the dream away
chase butterflies the flutteredby the years fade,
not a dry eye
inhouse tooth and nail turn the trick to black
uproarious the mirror cracked from side to side
vainglorious approaching altars made by hands
in diocese twisted bishop slip-grinning wide
unrest unease, oh the grand hypocrisies of worship
in this modern age, this land of dying for beliefs
on paper tissue thin we call freedom but so brief
to stab the issue like a finger in the eye, fist held high
we will bow to any idol as the mad parade goes by
just as long as the false god getting nearer
faces away, presents a mirrored backside
so we see our own face base desires in our petitions
to ourselves and time is turning us to dust
in our houses of the unholy
our automation begins to rust
eating on a graduated scale the sin the scape
goat turns pale and slowly
we are carried as congregation witness to the rape
apostasy what do we see eyes sewn tight
extinguishes the pouring forth, mounting fount of light
consumptive darkness eruptive illumination
teach the kids abominations
clutch the ears and call it funny
hide rotten eggs kill the bunny
make the children to crawl
on hands and knees
grass is plastic suffocation green
April Fools, we got you good...
We will steal your children off
to the Merrie Green Woode!
Piled Up In Centennial
I picked a certain spot
for far too long
and like some imbecilic village idiot
staring at the sun
I could not focus anywhere but there...
that place where the grass grew
and now is almost obsolete,
that space where I kissed you
is now re-bar and cold concrete,
that world that was all me
is gone away a puff of smoke,
the one girl who was
pixie sticks is the
punchline to a sorry joke...
time blurs barriers,
ideals and places,
names and voices and actions
are apparitions in a withering moment
lasting decades.
The breath of the clock ticking
whispers all away...
tiny rabbit, stuffed purple fur untufted,
loved to death
and bear with rusted eyes, flattened nose
he loves the bunny bride,
but inmost light hath died,
a whole damn nation cried,
weeping for the death of puppy love,
and fog horn moaning deep lament
in the woods and cinnamon and peppermint
I can smell her spicy neck from years away,
her hair was copper
her skin rice paper
her smile was cherry cream,
her eyes were a long-lashed
unbelievably crystal blue dream
her nipples brown
and freckled breasts
were only there because she wasn't flat...
on her back, shoulder blade
a tattoo of something utterly trivial
and so very very then...
lived in the moment,
sang through the long twilight,
dying by degrees in the sensible daylight...
without SPF 69 your spirit begins
to burn and curl
enveloped by the weight of it all
I twist and reel
I twitch a glitch
and fall break knees
in piles of dead leaves...
oh yeah! So that was where we hid the bodies,
but at least we won't end up
with skeletons in the closet
just a bag of Quickcrete
and a strawberry blonde wig
...the bride died in June
under a menstrual moon...
piled up in Centennial
Park.
Eve of Distortion
tip-toeing thru tulips flower
powered down the big white house
wears a frown
cracked in childhood skipping
rope turns sidewalk chalked
on games
angered sentiment
by the non-sentient educated
self-appointed gurus of
what's good for us
the kids don't get enough abuse
at home put them on a bus
to distrust
the neighborhood up in flames
just down the street
oh ride the blame as
finger-pointing blindfolded
hang our heads in shame
picking planks of stars and color bars
apart with fingertips
itching for the least reason...
burn away another season
for the hope the dope pass the rope
hang your heart on a nail
hammered in with sickle cell handle
anemia
our blood's got no mettle left
spilled on unholy ground
the coffee not the tea
into this sea
mass distortion twisted shapes
of truth
contortionists knotting fingers
into army tents
the canvas paint the bigger picture
token words won't stop it “nigger” fissure
crack in the frame
the glass upper lower middle class
semantic pedantic frantic band aids
slapped on haphazard
onto gushing wounds
how soon is too soon?
How soon was yesterday?
Do you remember what
they pretended to say?
And when hand shakes the same way
parkinson's in shades of gray
spill explosion oil swill
swift erosion
change the captions
fake the photos prototype
of plug-you-up hooked on drug machines
obscene
the lust for knowledge grows
like a stiff cock
with no wisdom it's a windsock...
it isn't knowledge that we lack
but the understanding of what we see...
impotent we make ourselves
siphon off the padding
keeping us afloat
and with rivers full of carcasses
watch this sculpture's red and blue
naked raped and bloodied body bloat
in the filthy waters of
the clamoring teeming masses
feeding frenzy frothy mess
of a rapidly dying world...
oh God, we pulled the trigger
on Your precious little girl
and how will we ever
atone?
Until the Dress is White (Vagina Blues)
the very moment, shadowy, yet pregnant
with promise that never comes
oh, she gets what he wants and hides the sun
his hand rifles through the words there,
the name escapes him, but he's sure she said okay
is all he really cares about
alive, he flies off the handle and into the night
to rumple the sheets with the world with all his might
she cries a castigation and
flings it all to the walls, to the floor
a put-on culture, a masturbation
all the little world there is doubt
she cries to run, mascara painted
or like daisies, blue-white ruffles
where has Emily gone away or has she fainted
brash splash mad dash magic lantern
casting shadows, tracking bunnies in the meadows
grinning, leering faces spaces carnival and
nightmare and modern technology and who are we
and who is she? Falling forward, time the step
creep toward you indirect, the picture glistens
and smears just out of reach, teach and hear
the words again before you speak them
patripassian in reverse, swallow backward laughter
cough and hiccup out the curse like a black
bleeding thing erupting on your face
wipe it off! Mommy won't, Daddy can't
eyes of brother are aslant, lost in mystery
lost in rabid shadow from that lantern
light show history recant unfold retold
burns the cycle on and on like lust in
reverse, oh the venereal curse
vagina blues until the dress is white.
Eternity
lemondrop spin the top dreams like these should never stop
swirl in hoops of fire in mind's eye wave crash
upon another monolith in spirit's foundation, scattered ash
patterns measured out in children's smiles and teary eyes
when snow blew in from 1989 forcing yesterday's goodbyes
stand in mute wonder on stairsteps ponder where the kisses went
temporal veil rent in two/halves/future perfect past self-evident
but where is she...floating out in space with ice in her eyes
no, the house of her memory like houses of the wholly mortal
lies frozen in a river, an hourglass vignette of Ms. McMinville
strawberry hair, speckles star-fired cheeks emerald chip eyes
burning out churning “but what about?” for weeks
and venom in the prick her vein is black no going back and did she find
eternity she seeks...she would bow to any altar just to hear
the stars speak rend the silence in her head spend the
violence bottled up she pads on ghostly tiptoe to the window
of a dream about jumping naked from a balcony snapped
neck eyes rolled back tongue black flies buzz
a drone of something that never was
a cycle repeat won't ever go away
is there something I should say to make the poor dear
nail herself to a world that was killing her
to death?
She got answers from the altars whirling dancers
flinging shards of pretty words into the bubble of her world
so she could hear nothing else
the blizzard static of life like a muted lurid pageant
tragic only 16 mother to the wolf if only ah if only
she could see...and surely one day will in precision,
the golden mean,
calculate eternity.
Naming Stars
naming stars
a twilight game
the stairs to heaven
ladder to the attic
blatant bold attack
in the basement
darkest coldest angel black
the lights go out
the bulb goes pop
even though the child screams
the soiled creature doesn't stop
eating past the alibis
chewing glass like gummy dreams
a bulging bulbous
taffy treat and terror
but in the basement
no one's there to hear her
naming stars
in monotone...
Arcturus, Hydra, Canis Major
Betelgeuse, Polaris
Shamballah triad Pleiades
spidery tendril filigree
between dark matter stony hearts
Saggitarius, Ursa Minor
do you know the silent part?
Open mouth she drools another out
pinning down the star charts
as names roll off in fire from
her tongue
a catalog surprising in one so young
oh, in the basement
they creepy crawl
the child left alone
lying in shadows
she's naming stars
in shattered monotone.
Skinparty
this feeble shell so perched
upon my bones like refuse
grumbles as the
world casts stones
picks up pieces
of barbed wire and string
a scarecrow hiding
among living things
crab-walk ease the seams apart
pretend the cogs and springs
inside the torso
make up the heart,
this, it bloats, distends
looks like a person
maybe but still
the lame-winged ego
gone to ash
and rusting on the vine...
eyes like balls of hematite
stare at light
all blind to the world
and blind and staring
deep within
look self over
seeking less-than-perfect twin
written there
and writing thereupon
is the muttered inky
celebration of the skin.
Coffee Can Skindrum
old bones roasted toasted black by the bonfire
white bleachy ossified sun streaked countryside
the ribcage of America protrudes from mountain peaks
steam locomotive trains of thoughts collide
sparks on the railway line iron fire steel and wine
the throat of the nation gurgles up the words it speaks
more bigger harder louder faster swift disaster
putting works to the test count the spires
chattering of congregant like clattering vulture beaks
secret fires burn into the night from refineries
sacred symbols words invoke evoke provoke we spoke
and the past that was was nothing untamed future became
something is out there crawling through the rain
to curl up in the lap of luxury that spurned it
to slink on into middle America and breathe out, “home again.”
as though he earned it falling into everything an elaborate
accident, our wonder over shallow promises stole
our innocence...the ocean parts the incontinent divide
flag flapping in this wind different picture on each side
the right is a fist round an eagle's neck dripping blood
and plucking the feathers stuffed into a crack pipe, oh yeah
and pentagrams and stripes
the left is a bloody field goosestepping the enslaved
boogie nights comrade! Join the rave we've unicursal hexagram
cookies for you to carry to the grave...
but the blindfold stays in place
and all the tin-eared populace can hear is, “change”
crackle crackle snap and pop the old bones
bleach and creak and roast
and the bombs drop
and the drums in the Valley of Hinnom
never stop.
Misdirect Hope
the band plays on the Hand conducts
celestial symphonies
time signature beyond a human scope,
no hopelessness when there is hope
miniscule distractions
pointing fingers shifting blame
oh the shame oh the shame!
But the song remains the same.
A rose by any other name
push the pawns shift the blame
hopscotch grid turned left and right
douse the lights
east and west are up and down,
skip hop jump but never reach
the north unknown or southern breach
as blood and oil soak the sand
where bloated babies blanket the beach
in Rio, Colombia, Sao Paulo macarena-crazed libido
grinding carnival days carniverous pornographic
misanthropic andropophage wet the fingers
turn the page
refuse and resist they insist
it's all about revolution and not communist
maninfested destiny turnkey prophets sniffing
glued to PS3 reverie
hallucinate the future as a zombie holocaust
if Microsoft is god then the generation's wholly lost
and feed the flesh to fires and unchecked obesity
pills and nightmares
we drink the poisons they're selling
too tone-deaf to hear the lies the snake oil salesman's yelling
kicking screaming is America still dreaming
of a red white and blue-faced equation
change the station a human eclipsed and soular isolation
we would rather storm the heavens pull the stars into laboratories
not look at famine's sickness and cure that sad disease
because the stars sing consolation of a cold Germanic derivation
holocaustic nothingness genocidal eradication
dark matter medication to cure the virus killing man...
the fact that we can't stay our hand
and keep ourselfish nihilism locked within our hearts,
we insist on bloody ritual for the nations
for our children giant Moloch rocket to Mars we are building
and the band plays on while man lays down in fear and pain
oh, there's no hopelessness in hope it's true,
but the song remains the same.
Dos Libertad
classroom, students reach into the bag of history
next step after learning how to add
subtract and read making wrong deductions
based on handfuls of tiles
bipartisan seductions
(Chilean midnight abductions)
by the left by the right makes right(?)
by the party of the people
burning down the churches
burning up the night
the battlefield lurches
shooting from the hip
“you sank my battle-dictatorship!”
one despotic rat smells just like the next
by the left by the right makes right maybe
cut the heads off chickens in the night
drain the blood on the doorstep cast the hex
flood the market powder-white
oh revel in the fires
torch civilization to cast away the masquerade
of the poverty-stricken sleazy stereotype
sacrifice children for the war
against reason humanitarian treason
napalm hand grenades cyanide Kool Aid, oh yeah!
Breaking walls on the border
brick by brick white powdered
mortared martyred watered down
south make a run for the
bank stash the goods behind
“no habla anglais”
fix INS with innocent blank stare
slack jaw broken law infected eagle
with dying dead eyes harmless as a beagle
absorbing soft-hearted mush-mouth
lies on belly like snake in dirt
under barbed wire under cover of night
by the left by the right makes might and mulatto say-so
roll the bones, toss the stones for a handful of pesos
or fistful of ugly dollars
sand pit punji sticks hear the criminals
wonder why crosses light up the night
drug trade slave trade
tirade kidnap hostage to the sex trade
in the pages of your
forbidden magazine
is someone's abducted daughter
and obscene eyes glazed with stoned apathy
by drugs sold on streets
wash, rinse, relax, repeat
from the left, from the right makes might
draw the lines with a razor blade
they'll never put the walls back up
so do we commit our progeny
to inevitable defeat.
Heaven Is Just Around the Corner
Time pulls pranks
Like Puck
Mischievous illustrious trees bent
And stars darkened pathways
And laughtracks
Too many nights spent
Alone with a knapsack
Back porch by frozen peaches sweet lady
With a bible and a prayer
Rug to cover the body
Time turns tail and runs a river rat race
Hard to retrace
The workmanship is shoddy
Two glasses raised to toast
The nothing there is left
We are bereft
Turned away faces of two ticking timebombs
Do the math
Starlight hung paths and Amtrack getaway car
With passengers like time
Hiding its face with a newspaper
Turned up collar pulled down hat
Schroedinger’s cat
The liminal luminous
Criminally temporal
Hilariously humorous antics
Time plays as it observes…
Of course there’s a cat in the box!
And a jack, of all trades,
Time chooses the woodsman
Hews and hacks
At the trees and the brass tacks
And is there in the forest
To hear its handiwork fall
All in all
Time sure likes to play
As though it was supposed to happen overnight
Like we were all born yesterday
Even when the wind blows cool in autumn
Sounds like time whistling about
Someone’s mother in a rocking chair
Dry leaves crackle a fire on the hearth
To keep old mother’s bones warm
She looks too late to care
But is only cured like leather
By time touching her skin
It doesn’t really leave a mark on her face
Its most intimate touch is within her
In the core of one too distracted
By the clock to fear Death in the dark
Every night dreaming of a young man
In the spring
In a park holding flowers
Saying, “forever…”
…heaven is just around the corner.
From A Parapet
Momma, when do you stop to listen to the waves
Seagulls crying we all know the fish are dying
For a breath without our insensitive touch
For our midnight meal we pay too much…
Momma, do you smell honeysuckle and lilacs?
There’s a dirt road leading down to the
Lonely stretch of beach in the back
Of a small child’s imagination
Through a forest of wishes and fascination
To the she-selling-seashells seashore
Strewn with shells and starfish and barbed wire
Mortars and manatees and star fire
Smells like a funeral home in Atlantis…
Momma, do you remember when grandma died,
Was she happy to go?
To the east, the horizon shows
The tight half-smile of dawn pretending to be
A small explosion
And the ancient ocean is revealed
Ridge by rolling ridge, cap by cap,
Tinted with the blue purple kiss
Of a shy sun,
Nervously edging its way out of
The dressing room of last night.
I think the sun watched too many horror films,
Ate too much of the theater cotton candy
Of the landscape
And gotten a stomach ache,
Had bad dreams,
Woke up bleary-eyed to the screams of the seagulls,
The fish and kids playing tag in minefields,
All just idle chatter of what the mind yields
When the filters for survival
Are down for repair…
Momma, do you brush your hair every night,
100 strokes per side, with a comb
Made of crimson and clover?
Over the bungalow rooftop
I see a spiteful thief sneak away
With what he thinks are pearls of wisdom
He stole from a sleeping girl’s Bible.
In the light of morning that is ever-so-slowly
Achingly seeping into day,
He will scream and howl with the gulls and the dogs
When he realizes that what he got
Was a handful of paste, imitation costume gnosis
That is indecipherable to those
Who would steal from dreamers
And lovers of the Lord.
(the thief will eventually realize
That the one real pearl he gained was earned…
He knows why the animals howl and screech
…it is the imagined pain of not understanding
The world of men,
And the real pangs of homesickness)…
Momma, do you like the throw-blanket tapestry
I am weaving for you out of gold?
the words flow and melt together like mercury
To check the temperature
Of the world I see
From a parapet
In my castle
In Rivers Run Her Memory
A thousand miles away gray green eyes peer out at me as if to say there is no body here, but the freckled face belies the truth in swirling eddys of time lies Ophelia in another girl, with golden honeyed cinnamon hair and bleeding heart her jade eyes cry to me for mercy I cannot offer that I do not have
And where she is I cannot say but only her eyes pierced today and made the ground go soft
And made the heart to melt and made the sky regret the blue and made the air take back the air it usually so freely gives
In rivers run her memory as a child perpetual in a place that cannot be touched
Tiny legs pumping in a field she never had
She wanted to wear my clothes like a little girl in her father’s closet
I can sometimes hear the holes in her arms begging for just one more second of oblivion
Irish voice calls out the pain and brings to surface sinking ships
Of where she has been, who she has touched, what love was made and fade away
It’s no ordinary cemetery in which she
Resides, she rides the waves at high tide
Swaying hips and pouting lips
For the afternoon while the eerie night is still today
Break the Moooooon
The moon said dark skies, clouds on a coffee break
The memory of her last caress is more than I can take
Sometimes time itself calls out louder than it should
Smile away foolishly for hours and it does no good
The corners of my mouth cramp up like the pen in hand
Just pretend you love to dance when they strike up that band
Silverware lain out in regimented graves in drawer
The good China’s shadow smash-up on the kitchen floor
Spin and twirl in the wind of her passing
Like a funeral for the gravy boat before it finished crashing
I’m so happy I could smash this porcelain mask smile
With a ballpeen hammer, sit back wait for the coming flood
Gasp, suck in air stare at the moon and shake for a while
As my soul bleeds out the cracks and dogs lick up the blood…
Jezebel green eye blue eye
Call me jester call me jailer
Traitor in a trailer park
Trash in the can
The muffin-top man
Call a spade a spade
Just make please make
These goddamn ghosts go away…
Artifactus
Teen child pulls life from cathode rays and paper dolls made
Of plastic magazine smile credit cards eyelids flicker like
The late night cable fuck fest press the panic button press
The rubber baby doll to one desperate last caress feed
The form but not the meaning paper doll in private screening room
Grow no farther than the leash of hearth and home
Crumbled walls of Styrofoam anorexic prom queen stumbles
On through excess daddy issues emetic melted Kleenex tissue
Disintegrate for lack of love…
Ignorance is bliss.
Teen child draws life from cartoon violence comic book
Paper dolls made of pixels locked in battle drone on launch
Platform to a serial future feed on the blood of last
Year’s sport plug in play the brain scrambled codes in the
Storm oh any port will do no hunting rifle no mounted scope
When age is just a trifle and games devour hope
At least in adult fantasies the child can shake the
Mad disease full frontal killing spree replaces pro sport
Drunken orgies in place of love…
Ignorance is bliss.
The Janus Cow
Slithering slathering cloud storm gathering
The world’s a whore shroud the form in tattered rages of yesterday
Head thrown back for loss of important thoughts
Swirl down rusted grate drain memory burn like acid rain (rain)
gray convoluted food for thought mind polluted
Feet upon a twisting path chemical bath washing will away
Marionette turns head this way and that
String section lullabye of cat-gut pull the tear formed smile
Alas a lie oh Belsen was a gas let’s ask the sacred cow
Rabid pack of howling cattle transformed into sacrifice
Bled dry on railway platforms lysergic drop in nightmare eye
Turn the puppet’s head again the gas like fog makes killing dry
Tomorrow the light switch turns off the film projector
Like children waltzing into traps of childhood ghouls
Nothing like the two-faced tongue-in-cheek a bit of slapstick
Vaudevillian rules to play the record backwards on dusty phonograph
Knife plunged to hilt in back a tin-type pornoparagraph
Nothing lasts forever but the bleeding eye of
The sacred cow don’t touch the holy words verboten
Curling smoke from ash pits two-faced, rat-race
We beat ourselves to death and WATCH!
Fountain of Misspent Youth
What turmoil troubles brow and twists the countenance in sleep,
Fitful slumber of humanity as the treasured spot in history
Passes in the night,
A twitch of the cosmic eyelid
Dismissive snuffle of the universe
As this world grows cold and groans.
Decaying metal steeds and rusted clockwork unicorns
Traipse through the foolish dreams of boys and girls in uniform
Who dance the waltz of vanity and beauty
The privilege to ride away in ballroom masks and Saturnine glee
As crystalline waters burn the guts of the condemned.
As if to chide these debutantes, the rags of ghosts of what will be
Do cling in travail as mildewed bridal veils
In a wedding of damnation from one state to the next.
Step by step, oh lovely siblings, our blushing bridal
Necks are in the noose…
Hang it all up and ride it bareback
‘til the frothy carcass writhes in radiation poisoned marriage bed
Until the rapist spectre gives you head
Until validity and meaning are
Vivisected amidst the sacred and profane
And we all fall down in rosy swoons…
Lick the long starless night of this age
Like the back of a cook-blackened spoon.
Drink a last draught,
Cough up one more dusty gasp, raspy laugh,
From a combat boot dipped
Into the fountain of misspent and
Tormented youth.
…and the kings of the world lie underground
Dry cracked ribs and gaping mouths
Their memoirs scrawled in glorious discourse
On the death of God, a vainglorious divorce
But surely we must consider the source…
Have we not had every chance to survive?
Have we not been snatched back from death, yet alive?
So from when does such hatred of life derive?
From Ishtar to Easter, every atom, every cell
Should scream it’s abhorrence at our “civilized” hell
Nations arise and empires fall
And all the while the trumpets call
The footsteps march and the war drums pound
And the kings of this world lie underground
(oh, one of every one shall fall,
And life will be the death of us all)
To Walk Unfettered
Prefabricated alleyways
Midsummer in the valley days
Playing parts
Of straying hearts
To pass the years in a youthful haze
‘Til winter stole in and froze the ground
Choked the grass without a sound
And black storm clouds
The tattered shroud
That cloaked the sun, now iceberg-bound
The time flew by so sickly fast
The years rolled off and quickly passed
Fond illusions fell apart
Revealing children’s broken hearts
And the dreams within then unfulfilled, amassed
But when I was a child, I acted as such
And wasted life with an impish touch
Now winter’s blown away like straw
Spring is come and so shall thaw
The rime from the minds of men who need no crutch…
For we walk unfettered when we follow God’s pathways.
Man Of the Washcloth
So thoroughly wrung out, a man of the washcloth
I stumble blearily through the day
My light, yes it’s still shining dimly
To light my weary way
I will have the chance to take my rest
Eventually, later tonight
So I cup my hand ‘round my guttering candle
And embrace the warmth of that light
The air is an ice burn against my skin
And the minutes ooze by like glaciers
Eyelids gritted like with sand
So I barely see through the glasses lenses
But I can lug all this weight around
And come through it intact
Because the word I hold in my heart
Is more than a matter of fact
My words are dull, desultory things
Delusional, without any weight
But this word lights the candle I hold so close
And the word does not hesitate
To fill with life, the soap up the cloth
To cleanse the eyes of the haze
To hand back the pearls cast before swine
To help to redeem the days
So when I return to my room from this place
And crawl into blankets to sleep
The words I have spoken the promises broken
Are made whole by this word I keep.
Soft the Chain
The robots turned away and fled when
Towers turned to dust,
And the machines that once sang harmoanies
Are still and choked with rust…
It’s only me now, only me
Towerless in iron gardens
Soft, the chain that set me free
And powerless if it should harden
The clockwork heart, that wind-up toy
That sits within my barrel chest
It has run down and thumps no more
A silent serenade, at best…
It’s only me now, only me
Steel boots removed from frozen feet
And soft, the chain that set me free
A seduction to my own defeat
The sails of muslin, richly dyed
In gasps breathed yesterday, in a curio
Are filled with songs that sting the eye
Adrift in notes from a radio…
It’s only me now, only me
I journey from this poisoned land
And soft, the chain that set me free
I’ll wear it when I touch your hand
The frozen vignettes of two lives
Are all cataloged in mist,
But the side shows where we danced and laughed
Are missing from the tattered list…
It’s only me now, only me
Departing after raping Oz
And soft, the chain that murdered me
When we destroyed what was.
Invoke
Sky lit with moon and stars
Barkless trees of alabaster
The front yard speaks to me at night
“O, little lamb in fertile pasture,
The wolf is held at bay for you,
No longer at your door.
Now use these riches wisely
For you were never really poor.”
I grow with leaps and strides
I sing with colors, paint with sound
I offer up my honeyed voice
While planting in this sacred ground.
And all is right within my world,
The sun, the clouds and tameless birds
And everything that God has made
…all excepting careless words.
These little, petty spider scratches
Trapped upon a yellowed page,
Once spoken, have too much power
And it never goes away
Until there’s nothing left to say…
Silence can be golden.
Her Name Was Resurrection
Streetlamp shadow lying limp rag over cobblestone misted
Night hugs the train whistle hustler picking pockets
For crumbs of solace…white rose petals crumpled halfway
In a brackish puddle bootstamped its thuggish yearning
Calling card on the bouquet…somewhere softly crooning
Cigarette smoke serenades the scene with cello clarinet
Violin gray tones of sour wine, but that’s all this pretty
Little girl can afford, so worn away to burlap
Frenzied manic lethargy, she is the night calling stars
Out by their names her eyes reflect the lamplighter’s flame
In Prague or some other far off dream of isolated everness
Beauty tragedy cleverness in the turn of a forlorn vagabond
Phrase like “I do”…accordion tunes the life out of
The plaza the downer end of every night the dull knicked blade
Of coppery spite the spire of the Duomo St. Peter Paul
And Reubens Mary calls out to the angel, “manger?” echoes
Footpads tiptoe frosted crackled lifeless listless kisses to
Repeal the dawn pull back the drapes of virgin muslin
Nightgowns bruised doll knees shoddy shoes a candle
In the window awaits the triumphant return of ghosts
The wind kicks up along this rock-strewn coastline
Ocean rearing back on shore piebald swayback mare mother
Of night with a thousand yard stare shell-shock and
Bitter candy apple red the roses and hearts on the hand-wrought
Valentine, a dream ago a lifetime away as
Close and dear and real as yesterday hangs in foggy
Frozen air agape and wondering what words did we
Say a little tough embrace of need desire want the lovely
Heart to flaunt show the crowd how the trick is
Done trick of the light…the night picks up her
Dead child limp form holds sway the court walks stolidly
Away that worldly whore with the only thing I love…
All the scene a vignette and her name was
Resurrection.
Pocket Observation Comment
Tournament delight immutable transit cut the night in
Squares fill with tiny dots of incandescent light but
Dimming out side in congress and impatient interact
The conversation fade to black repeating down the
Slippery slope mechanism use to cope imbibe the
Product of this loss of hope a stagger crawl free-for-all
A Friday night
Supernova Top
I don’t wanna know which way
The wind blows for you
Seeds of contradiction
Lie in every phrase you choose
You don’t know which way to turn
You don’t know when you should stop
You don’t know where you’re going
You’re just a great big, spiral-painted child’s toy spinning top!
I don’t care to take your dare
And spit into the wind
Or try to understand the story
By only reading the end
You can’t navigate for flying blind
Can’t concentrate with a double mind
Around the next corner, what will you find?
That you’re changing nothing, just wasting time…
You don’t know what you want
Don’t know who you are
Don’t know where you’re going
You’re just a great big, gas-filled supernova star!
Given are the desires, bought with our errors
that would lead us down the garden path
village of fools star-gazing and missing the signs
assigning our own punishment, life as wrath
strangled in our cries for relief from want
staggered in the dusty lane, pale, drawn and gaunt
soul sucked dry as dead reeds rattle in the wind
turn to face another choice, the error chosen again
closed eyes, fevered brow, plagued by dreams of gold
haunted by the direst rewards as our bones grow old
folly are the ways of flesh, even if no sin
exclaim, declaim, explain the facts mistaken as the truth
the justifying pride of self, the flame burns cold.
You once asked me why my love
you could not understand
and I promised only that I love
and clasped your tiny hand
I could not tell you why
there is no reason as such
nor qualify the quantity
I love you, but how much?
Not how much, but how
this thing I could explain
I love you as the day is long
I love you as the night is deep
I love you as my prayers at bed
the Lord, my soul to keep
I love you as my dearest friend
as laughing children play
my love for you, it has no end
though you have gone away.
Severing
I stand beneath the domed sky
and kneel below the stars,
a lowly man of poverty
a humble man and scarred
by acid burns as life goes on and on
upon its course,
twilight, dawn, the light, the dim,
the patterns of joy and breath,
the tragic deformed divorce
from any real thing,
humanity moves en masse
as lemmings to a shrouded cliff
seeking release from responsibility
from logic, from sanity,
the mob rushes on to further ergot-inspired
witch trials,
a dance of st. vitus, a virus unto itself...
pride, denial, insistence, betrayal, disloyalty,
inchoate howling,
puling, hurting beast...
we do unto others for what they have done unto us
we wither deep within,
drown our spirits' children in desire,
the heart of man is incurably wicked,
the fears of man are invariably overwhelming.
A small pastry the shape of the sun,
it smells like almonds,
is powdered with angels' tears
and seasoned with those overwhelming fears...
is offered on the communion table of the
godless religion of this selfish age
by priests who cry 'science' on the
black, blasted, cratered battlefield of technology
where ghosts shimmer in pixelated agony
and disembodied voices waver and hiccup
about purity and love
and a thousand other modern wounds
with sutures shaped like bunny ears
and valentines and time clocks
all in a row...
what means it all?
I don't know, I don't know!
I kneel beneath the domed sky
before the stars and at your fiery feet,
head bowed, back bent,
unproud, youth spent...
a lowly man of scars,
a humbled man of poverty,
severing the roots from me to you
by your command
from you to me.....
gnosis no anastasis
approach the time the prophecies like the stars unfold
the heavens as a scroll unrolled
spoil of the ages
shimmer light
spinning top
accelerate and oscillate
wobble upon table top
platonic solid
icosahedral cauldron heart
of a sun
oh universal end
approach two-step of appolyon a paragon
messianic property wars
upon this impure madman's shore
so close and yet so far
as the unloosed tongue
of toady yes-men scrape ground
with hashmarked foreheads,
eyes as blank as hearts of dead black stars
only love me once
only embrace my numb arms
only pledge your life to me
only pull me down from this tree
no knowledge isn't sacristy
gnosis no anastasis
burn the limbs frozen toes
flesh shuffled off
forms of smiling wish-it-were
and could-have-been
smash the teeth down the throat
light particles sucked into black hole gravity well
of stomach churning cosmic hell
end of everything end of everything
alone alone
the world is as was promised
a mud-covered ancient stone
alone alone
we live and die
simply cry out
for the end of everything
that is that was
turned inside out to be what shall be
...depravity inversis...
she is gone
and nothing will ever be okay,
nothing ever be the same.
The wall melt,
halls implode,
the structures weep for the flaws
short-circuiting the man that was...
a soundtrack for defeat
boots tromp down
the passages of my heart
to jackboot stomp the the world apart,
who cares?
It is the end of everything
and it has a nice ring to it...
apocalyptic pop song,
teenage death in a tin can universe,
recycle.
How It Sounds
rusted creaking mandolin
pluck the strings
dusty green
with corroded oilless precision
crank the handle
on the starry side
of the jack-in-the-box
out pops clownish
lovelorn foxtrot
filled with cotton batting
tommyrot
misstitched beady button eyes
a-flopping flapping seedy smile
untuned and crooning to the night
the heart the moon
the tears
worlds apart
heavy on the marzipan and cream
sludgy trudging in the dream
land upon the shore
so many footprints, ah...
what for, what for?
To anchor little girls and boys
to this island
of lost and forlorn toys
rime of the ancient submariner
comic booky love
to have the looksee to 1976
a barrel of monkeys
and pick up styx
(get your kicks in new mexico
on route 666)
sly and smiley stones
roll them bones
on a dried up creek bed with
a girl from the islands
in a large maple tree weekend
small world baseball leagues
4H's...
hand, heart, head and harlotry
the four-leafed clover covers all but
the Irish in me
kiss the neighbor girl and make her cry
cross my eyes and hope to die
soldiers soldered to spaceship wars
and dungeon maps in '84
big brother was I ever wrong
repeating chorus in twisted song
remains the same and fragile youth
inclement game roll the bones
in dry empty grave
snake eyes
entropy reply
entrap endure enslave...
just go away.
Rising sun frost on ground
same as when the sun went down
spider's web in shaded bed
the form is there, the spider's dead
words puff out in labored breath
hold them to my heaving breast
nodding rose in winter's cloak
the floral gown in which they're dressed
when spring alights upon the world
to waken seeds from frigid sleep
in warmer climes, the heart exults
and I decline to make a peep
but steam it rises, warming fog
from carcass of the fallen dog
the dawn ascends from earth's white head
crowns the world of winter's dead
for now I walk where angels fear to tread...
fool am I.
Billy Joe
Billy joe the bunny dog fell asleep inside a log
as purple as the night was long and in his sleep he hummed a song
his sleep so sweet and untroubled
no fearsome frog to burst his bubble
a-ribbeting the night away, clad in orange dusty gray
just rising mist on dragonfly wings
oh billy joe hums of mystic things
murmurs long and mumbles deep of worlds wherein the angels creep
to take the cookies, drink the milk
tiptoe under the mistletoe wrapped in velvet and silk
billy joe puffed long and hard and fell asleep sleep sleeping guard
on moss on rock on trumpet blow
the candle's wick to lick the snow
some crystal light fell on his pelt
but the rabbit slept and never felt
a kiss so painful sweet as youth
but billy joe dreams of the truth...
Scared Crow
long tall thinny-boned one,
sing a song of sixes, your pocket full of lies
kiss the little viking lasses
make their mothers cry
oh funny little scarecrow fool,
a dunce cap for a crown
shamble-jive and count by fives
the rows of corn you have burned down
ah, feed the worker's broken back
to laggards and tell them it is raccoon
bark commands in parody
thou howler at the moon
jackbootanape bow and scrape
lick the toes of despot clowns
eyebrows singed and petty revenge
you would cut the righteous down
a rocking horse for princess one
and a unicorn for princess two
don't say the word 'impossible'
(but tell them it's from you)
and anything the fool requires
you know we'll turn it loose
that is until the scarecrow dances
as his scrawny neck is in the noose...one can hope.
Cold the snow, wet the leaves, frosted breath, chest heaves
pace is frantic, forest dark, where has she gone all on a lark?
Lost, the words that came to mind, steel restraints my fingers bind
cold the night of bitter frost, gone she is and I am lost
run the path and pass the trunk
the frozen clearing where we were drunk
the waterfall of frozen slips
the blurring night, her starving lips
dash past the lilies as they die
under stars fallen from frigid sky
down to the pier of perfidy
hath she been drowned in blackest sea?
Ah, dark the petals, soft her breasts (upon the moss her head did rest)
copper hair and golden eyes, scent of shameful cloak of lies
lest I stammer, lest I fail, I bit my lip and do not wail
for frantic pace and forest black, i'd split the night to have her back
scrambled vision, teary-eyed
adrenaline and terrified
this darkness is no consolation
dare I endure this isolation?
What was my crime, name the sin
to bring abandonment again
I've been erased from her design
for I am lost and left behind.
Todes Stool
tongues of prophets
profits in the pockets
of senators and priests
and kings and
these are a few
of the most-hated things
poppy flower poison pods
the acid heads and
cybergods
poison in the bowel movements
of all the silly old-time
farcical bad guys
poison in the German brain
that pulls the switch and
looks sedately into the dying eyes
of Jews.
A Device
a device to call the air a liar to
call the stars and ask for
fire to crumble the church bell
and unearth the graves...
a device to call the saucers down
a low and rumbled tumbled rube
a device from parts of Rubik's Cubes
and tinfoil hats and vacuum tubes
a toilet paper passion play
a device that just gets in the way...
a device that sucks the life from the babes
the ducks from the sky
and the sweet by and by
(from the Sunday service)
through a hole in the sky
that condemns all the perverts
and feeds the clouds sherbet,
a device that can do all of this
(and what's more)
it relieves arthritis and waxes the floors
and cushions your fall so that when you slip
you won't need an alien-made replacement hip
a machine gun harvest mechanism full of rage
that auto fires at every blank page
so the nights will rust and the motes will dry up,
the pawnbrokers will trust
and Jim Carroll will cry foul,
all his ducks in a row for the second coming
and all the people who died, died
will use the device to wipe tears from his eyes...
a device to crease the brow of God
to cause a ghastly frown
to call the stars liars and barber the friars,
a device to call the saucers down
from the wrong side of the track marks
from the dark side of the spoon
to turn butane lighters into ovens
and VW bugs into gas chambers
divide the sum by dying suns and
add up the remainders
...a device best left undisturbed
(but we all know human nature, now don't we?)
a device to be fondled and stroked and loved
because mankind disbelieves what his eyes can see
a device that makes nighttime day
and turns circles into squares
(quadratic equations into romance novels,
but no one reads anymore, so who cares?)
a device that turns monkeys into men,
then makes the poor bastards pay,
that turns people into product,
a product that just gets in the way...
I opened wounds so terrible
when I told you I would stay
when everyone you'd ever loved
had always walked away
it hurt me so to see you smile,
knowing it would crumble
and like the walls of Jericho,
your soaring heart would tumble
Lakota Lantern Dance
touch the sky, touch the earth grounded and yet striving for divinity
...wheels within wheels doorway over the horizon burning sun
hanging in space like a golden linchpin
scorched cinder staring us right in the face
there's not enough time to spend in a carcass
to begin to reach apotheosis gnosis no anastasis
(does she hang on or just hang?)
high plains rocky peaks a cold wind blowing
from the All-seeing All-knowing
no cold science for anything
but wreckage the ancients may have known
oh, a spirit dance for the Great Mystery
reunification a great penetration beyond the veil...
it all comes down so soon the year starts and ends
but what ends when the symbols clatter
into a dry bowl of misunderstood mysticism?
The hours tick by like seconds a reckoning
for the wickedness in the heart of man
a bottle buys oblivion and oblivion is deadpan
whereas death is just a jester
a bald little stooge like Uncle Fester
but touch the earth, touch the sky
we all were angels who had to die
just a bit of sleep in a weeping child's eye
dolly's still there, don't cry sweet babe,
Daddy's only busy for a while, not gone away
out in the vineyard, making wind for the feast
sweet little lovely one, the time is almost done...
so close your eyes dear and count to seven,
you know your Poppa loves you and good children go to heaven
then blow out the candles and come to bed
and dreams of the stars will circle your head
swirling and spinning like a magic lantern
but bright enough to warm all the shadows
a light in the light, alight in the night...
it's only a temporal dream and when you awaken,
the stars will have all marched happily home,
to touch the sky, to inherit the earth
Lakota in a spirit dance forever,
amen...
Other Uses
some of what you see has multiple uses
hushed-up secrets of strange recluses
little boxes painted like adobe rooms
magic lantern shows to sweep out the gloom
roiling flower beds that bobble and stretch
and spin but don't toil
shiny diamond smiles made of tinfoil
the grabby baby hands of the wanton and worn
ripping up heart battlefield wartorn
painted plaster walls like the wails of the hopeless
and the hopelessly lost to candy hearts
(hell, parts is parts!)
or feet or hands still frozen in place,
plastic ziploc grin on the face
it's dynamite (with very short fuses)
and some of these things have other uses...
say i'm sorry, i'm sorry, I bleed, see?
I bleed...
say i'm sorry, im sorry, on bruised-up knees
plead and plead
the condemnation doesn't cease
it trips up the day like a dark disease
there are petals wilting where the footsteps were traced
and a small white rabbit with blood on its fur,
at the mouth of the cave
calumet a vision quest and unsafe bet
a calendar of useless ways to suit oneself
in painted days smoking peace like a drug
(there is no peace! Peace! Cry...)
what makes the chariots fly
(lions and tygers and blood, oh my!)
but the sun settles down on this chapter of time
in the swampy dark soup
human cruelty and prime the pumps
for something crystal clear and clean
then refuse it...
oh that puppet, the heart,
it has other uses.
Perched Upon A Wormhole
peel the rind off, the flag unfurl
the dog the cat the boy the girl
unrolled carpet burns the midnight oil
just give me an iphone...
the oceans can boil and we can say
we did it to save the ice caps
coffee on the back of migrant workers
talented monkeys we all are,
just screeching at the moon in terror
maybe it's a mirror
in the big silver sky
don't look, the photo flash steals souls
oh cry, shout the spoof the truth
be told on rooftops save boxtops
and soda cans and pop caps
trade lazy summer days
for Catcher In the Ryeand a gun
shock the world step the beat
catch the chant comic colorbook sycophant
sleep in his eyes fingers in pies
and cookie jar houses of the wholly obsolete
paring apples away to knowthing
but knowledge left to stand on
forget about skating on thin ice,
we are perched upon thin air!
Clutching at dust particles and
neatly stacked carbon atoms
in the night sky
australopithecus spitting in the collective monkey's eye
steady stream of plasticene figurines
marmalade boy broken vows
Bart Simpson hindu holy cow
tares huge holes in the atmosfear,
oh dear, oh dear! What shall the bunny do?
Protracted, distracted,
tardy tangled mass of good luck that he be...
just say you fell off your bike and skinned your knee
kiss the next door neighbor girl and make her cry,
she was blonde, she was cute
she was 23 skidoo,
and she even liked comic books and pirate games
despite all the pink and the
crawdad fisher kings
the blood and the gore
and the shotgun blast late that night
crawling out of bed scared to death
a jackrabbit monkey with bubblegum breath
to watch the nation go down in flames,
up in smoke
...to hear the sage words that Tenskwatawa spoke
lifetimes before and a lifetime too late...
the open door and the garden path gate
...choices, choices, choices!
Eat some more paper squares, kid.
Dust Rag
stop the world I wanna get off
gimme dramamine to curb the
lifesickness
spinning top Calgon take me away
to the funny farm
some shelter pale
mother's little helper
make a great meal fit for the pooch,
screwed stewed like okra
and tattooed blue agave
cactus mescalito rictus
death dream wet dream
the salt the tears the blood the steady stream
of 500 years of oppression
(doctor, can you say “obsession”?)
sorry I'm white/notwhite
I didn't do the slaughter
didn't do your daughter/land
take the cupid by the hand
can't love right now too hurt for that
the rabbit is climbing back into the magician's hat
…i apologize for the mess in the hall
the futility of it all
the pressure, the grief
(just blame it on the cat)
I can pay it all away
(no you can't)
yes I can!
Some things I don't seem to understand...
money burning keeps the worm turning
crushed pulverizing glazey-eyed
stunned in shock disgust remorse
par for the insane human course
there are no explanations no magical cures
constant throbbing steady
deadly pain head caving in
like a star collapsing on itself...
bunny in the hat in the box on the shelf
candle wax sealed tomb-like
airtight
...what if someone asks,
what if I never answer?
It's cramped in here and hard to breathe
just gasp and move on...
but I can barely move at all anymore
like a small piece of bread crumb
blown across a kitchen floor
Spandau ballet machine gun shock and awe
...Father, please forgive me,
make me useful
for something...
a dust rag, maybe?
'Twas the Night Before the Funeral
terror of the fair-haired tribe
there's a gate in the midnight air
that looks like someone put it there
like to kiss Ezekiel on his bald head
and pull the prophecy from the scribe
to look the vision in the eye
plug in the little electric train
footie pj's slop the hogs
roll the dice tick off the days
hang a sock to catch the wind
oh, Santa crept in
filled it full of coal
so they filled him full of lead
the tree the snow the oreos
the spilt milk baby cry
while mommy kisses
Kris Kringle's killer in the spotlight
under the hemlock
mantlepiece windup automaton
with a wind sock
no weatherman no ku klux klan
no Dylan with his voice on a leash
just the juggernaut from Detroit
here to sell a car or two
and keep the peace...
Blame the World For Dying
chase the funnel down the lane
I don't think we're in Kansas
again again
pace the measured magnetic keyhole
north pole circle circle dot dot
now you have your rapture plot
cooties creepy heebie jeebies
in a storage closet at CBGB's
locked away like an albino step-child
it was 30 years ago today
some strange electrical storm taught the kids to play
caused Mt. St. Helens to erupt smoke and fire
an abrupt end to silly innocence
there's blood in the hills
blood on the moon
(how soon is too soon?)
soon enough for all the goons
to occupy the spinach cannery
cull the weepy kids from the 'burbs
teach them hoodoo voodoo tricks
peel the stickers off the walls
scrub the spray paint from the concert hall
reveal the mural underlying it
dog in a pit with dead piglets
suckling
the fat guy who works the door
is chuckling
thinking back to darker times
when all the girls had bleach blonde hair
and would to anything to get backstage
kill Jimmy Page
work the bloody Rubik's cube
unlock the gate
too damn late
then blame the world for dying...
The Stars Are Marching Simply Home (in the garden man built)
when he laughed
cat spilt clabbered milk
in the garden man built
cartoon silo full of
dead men from Shiloh
and Gettysburg
there was a word for all of it
but it slipped away
on the tip of the tongue
smiley face paper pinwheels
song like misspent youthful
yesterday afternoon
burned the ants on the sidewalk
oh, what the kitty might say
if only he could talk
but brat's got his tongue
little black angel butterfly
and silent black and white film reel
images flutter by
stock photos of shiny stars
marching simply home again
and a stealthy tom kitten
laughing at spilt milk
by the can in a flowerbed
in the garden man built
hush-a-bye and sleep
so softly
bundle of baby silk...
spin wheel
pinwheel
sun wheel
heat and wind
pick strum
world hum
bread crumb
the end
the end
whirling
swirling
twirling
abyss all is wiped
clean slate
broken plate
yesterday
was far too late
here come stars
to inhale
this age away
crash
smash
clash
conflict
give in
succumb
the blind
leading
the naked
and the
numb
the mute
speaking to
the dumb
the end
the end
Summer Days In the Bermuda Shorts Triangle
rolling on the hills
fog bank like rolling Lincoln Logs
blank stare from
rolling papers with long thin fingers
worm turns
rope burns
the smell of history lingers
dust in sulky chapel
caught spinning in infinity
little blackbirds little bitter pills
startled in the shafts of sun
streaming through the cracks
in the monumental wall structures
of man's long-blanked mind
crack apart and fall
slow dance waltz with the briny deep
where the depths shelter from daylight
where missile silos sleep
(bunker busters that require psychotherapy)
where hidden is the shoebox
with the dead tiny bird
oceans full of panic for which there are no words
banana seat bicycle braces on the teeth
(here comes the rain again, here blows the soulless wind)
build a shelter of cement blocks and plastic sheets
upon this raft upon this sea,
the lashed-together poles are coming apart
and overhead the data soars
like spheres piloted by only the engine's roar
the strains of strings stretched tight across the galaxy...
oh I can hear but I don't know the steps
while the best dancers are deaf to this splendid symphony
universal blank sheet
where pinpoints anchor legacies
the night shines through these tattered wings
to beg to plead to call the shots
call the witnesses one by one
(the tattoo needle and the damage done)
towers and spires
bulwarks of obsidian
symbols formed by city streets
of Egypt and of Midian
comic book graphic novel parlor trick
with mirrors and marble columns
ironwork boilerplate lifeless shiny golems
eat the nation's collective conciousness
then stumble down the back stairs
tumble in the abyss staring back
a blank page for the loss of innocence
there are no words to tell the tumbling blocks to stop
to scream it from the mountain tops
to stall the march the glacial floe
rebuild the walls of Jericho
the fall of Rome as dominoes...
Epiphany In Amethyst
verily we roll along
the tide is high and the sky looks wrong
the stars arrayed like rock candy dust
on the licorice page of night...
white satin sheets cover hillbilly millionaires
in backwoods mean streets
peat moss grows where stones don't roll
rock formations in the shapes of trolls
ghost in the machine
gremlin in the Kremlin
groovy ghoulies in the White House
fools on the throne
toss up the ball and the old men creak and groan
leaping to smack it down
on their side of the fence
density like shadow puppets
paper tigers and promise rings
sweet land of hibberty gibberty
of thee I sing
a song of 666 pence
a pocket full of ergot
witchy kangaroo courts
in the Jerusalem that time forgot
the wheat grows tall
and the rye grows cheap
in fields of rape
the lies run deep
and ever does the setting sun
creep creep creep
the queen sits in her nodding throne asleep
at the helm and there's no one home
no arms to call to repel the 3 red dragons
and snap her garter
to wake her up
for the Jack of Knaves
lilts bawdy old punk songs
(he's really in his cups)
shifty-eyed the jester lied
Batman bats for the other side
broken back and jelly-spined
there are no heroes left to skin
where's the Justice League
when there ain't no justice (just us!)?
Pieces of eight at the bottom
of a sea of debt
victory banquet table is set
but all the liveried statesmen
are afraid of getting wet
so does the nation lie in ruins
so does the crabgrass eat the lawn
predawn jackal cackling madly
as loyalties go up the chimney
propensities for heresies
a season spent in burning promises
of hope of help of positive change
(of spin-doctored therapists in the house of the deranged)
and these are a few hundred misconstrued things
to hang the hired help out to dry
the tide is high and sky
just looks sort of purple and off-kilter
the screaming suns arrayed like amethysts and entropy
I still resist the urge to tear away the filter
breathe the air
not tainted by stale gas masky hysteria
take a long walk across the cotton candy page of night
and smell the dogwoods
...there surely must come rain tonight,
and clouds.
Sister Luna Silver Flame
oh, she looks out the window, rain...
the blackened stoop-backed night
the bats look back
and the night birds cry out her name
and she picks the little flowers off the wallpaper
(she's lost control again)
there's a warning sign for a construction site
with a flashing yellow light and
amber flares up on the wall behind the bed
(the sign says there are flesh-eating roaches in her head...
but they can be bought with a bribe
of some good Irish whiskey
and a lollipop shaped like Hello Kitty)
the day wears off like a three day coffee buzz
its effects drip away like shower droplets
a spring rain time to bring down the moon again
in the temple of marbled cheesecake delights
all the acolytes know her name
she's the daughter of the Frozen North
she was fostered by her fame
lights the cool spring air like a cigarette,
Sister Luna Silver Flame
Cricket cranky (crikey!) bed's a mess
with lilies painted for her dress
eyes as green as unseen things
she is the alabaster ashera the sun does not caress...
from the rooftops from the billboards
hear her name and cheer
masses matted interwoven crowd mentality
and frozen lakes of tears
and honeyed years
a river of glowing sentiment...
oh, they all think this Queen of Heaven
is heaven scent
these praying mantises perched upon
worn prayer rug tuffets
dalai lama karma muppets
shaved of all the monster fur and worldly facades
in robes all writ with praise for the
homegrown angel of darker days
but everyone is doing a jiggly fandango
as she looks out the window
on the leprous night
at the freeze-frame sky
and the garden of confections and Turkish bath delights
salt the circle 'round her feet
her mercy is impossible unstoppable and palpable
turning corners to be at a right angle
to the world at large
a surfboard a serfdom
a titan queen of wallpaper pickings and nightbird song
(she wants us all to sing along)
a banal order of not being touched
this bent little girl not enough and too much
snuff out the light
come greet the bats
kiss her back and
see what the sister of tranquility offers...
rats!
Bouncing baby pupa wrapped
In the fuzzy wuzzy blanket
‘til the larval stage is done
Then off to Capistrano D.C.
Double-barreled sonofagun
New prisons to build and temples to tarnish
Laws to misread
Steal all the deeds
Imprison the bruised reed
And spill his poisoned seed
Planted in anemic flowerbed
To clone himself
Because the line of the damned
Must continue in perpetua
Now wrapped in dead languages
Draped in dead prostitutes
But the memory of the public is short
And iPatchy
And the ad campaign jingle is catchy
So Camelot never falls,
Just starves the filthy peasants
To death…
Amber waves of whiskey dazed daisy chains
And café beat drop
The coffee shots
The plot thickens
See you through your copper swirl green-eyed haze
You’re wreathed in pure white fantasies
Of better days
And sometimes I can lay here and
Smell you in my dreams
The pain is dulled
Cut by the memory of
A fine wine at an Italian restaurant
In Georgia
Make it a double
Crush your scented spicy breasts
Up close to me,
And dance beneath the dayglo stars
However near however far
Wherever I’m at, there you are
And ever were before
My sailboat hung up on your rocks
And I can’t get off your Irish shores
Your hips your lips
You’ve lost your grip
But I’m still holding your hair back
When you had the flu
I’m still watching, enraptured by your grace
I’m still wrecked by life without you
I’m still stuck in this unloved place…
See the flash
Heavens slashed
Bleeding light
The sky is gashed
Bone white
Blue night
Felt if not heard
It rumbles on
The spoken word,
It rides the wind
It shakes the trees
It calls the humble
To their knees…
Not in the quaking earth
Not in the raging fire
Not in the ceaseless maelstrom
Nor man’s impure desire
But in the still and quiet breaks
Between the strokes and streaks,
Therein dwell the promises
The voice of the Almighty speaks.
Simple little thing of brass
A wee genetic sting, alas
The great man hits the floor.
And though the error’s miniscule
The terror is a potent fuel,
The heart stops and the king, he is no more.
Event Horizon Reached
Mechanism repeats its futile message
Repetition mirroring the madman
In the alley bangs his head against the bricks
Click click skip click k’chunk
Throbs potent in the night
All the lights wink out
Like fireflies
An automated library circulates
It oscillates and escalates
The urgency
By carefully measured steps
‘Til the warning is a klaxon
A clarion alarming siren squall and
No one sees it coming
(Though the writing’s on the wall)
The missile silos steaming smoking
Skipping beat the call invoking
Images of clockwork paths
Once tread by feet pulsing life
(But now the final hour,
And there’s no one left alive)
The computers all have hangovers
From massive EMPs
And the oil drills flake the rust away
Shaking the disease
Tank treads roll on powdered piles
Of human bones in heaps
Polluted dawn and toxic pawns,
Oh the victory wasn’t cheap
Flashing strobing sparking
The ATM skylarking
Like a crotchety old man with Parkinson’s disease
The bio domes lie shattered
The teletypes chatter
With the fax machine in the karaoke night
Designer tags:
Toshiba Sony Mitsubishi IBM
Runway model plastic humanoid
So many toys to fill the void
The high tech has unzipped its freedom
Eagles tearing rending light
And the mechanism repeats the story
Of humanity’s defeat allegory
For next generation AI pondering its fate…
The second hand it ticked so fast
And then one second too late
An epitaph for thoughtless souls.
Event horizon reached
…and can results be reckoned
On this alien black sand?
