(wonderland)
man-eating plants and
and
air with high acidity
tunnel vision
the smells, they stick
and are all sulfur
in the end
the colors slip
from your memory and then
from your eyes as well
and too from all the things
you bathe in what
eats you
just to keep you clean
and
on your knees you are
standing tall
relatively
but still too pussy
to lay down
oh carmello, carmello,
is this all that there
really is?
(lost)
The moon like an orange slice floats
over falls under the ‘anecdote’
category and no matter how fast
you drive it always seems to follow
the car on the right side.
It’s a swollen stone high above
horizons sending shivers down spines
and sending eyes to sparkling and
men to spying on other men.
Your neighbor could be a monster
in this light. Your best friend is
a monster in any other. I for one
can not see either of them.
johnny’s in hell
opium was his heroine
his fleshy little actions
putting holes in his veins
his blood like water
just a-dripping into
the night
The dawn defibrillator sends shockwaves to senses.
Inhale.
This city’s heartbeat wakes, resumes rhythm.
Eighteen and a half miles, the morning blood rushes in filling arteries and streets.
Same as every day.
Mundane miracles.
And still—
swooping beyond exit bends through threshold: arriving
to tree-populated panorama; Terabithian splendor.
Boughs and extensions slathered in forest fire fog—
heaven and earth make love. Skyless.
Thomas Kinkade kissing leaves with golden caresses.
So much more:
pinks, pops and pitch pine and yellow, layers of lush,
delicate and cherry, cedar, plum, red maples, magnolia!
Watercolor fireworks sprout from the cream.
To say beautiful amounts to a crass joke.
Cameras can’t capture periphery in a frame.
If only.
Time later—a turn, to return, to remember—take in, captivate again.
Let’s get this heart beating.
Exhale.
These lungs—
Five o’clock the surge resumes.
Eighteen and a half miles.
Crayola 64 transcendence—pastel and pencil, ephemeral majesty.
The sun soaking sweeping canopies in melted butter.
Licking lips at ice cream scooped clouds slipping into rusty horizons.
Cornucopias of leaves the colors of a candy store.
Gaia how you flaunt, and so unknowingly—painting masterpieces in passing.
Acceleration back onto the highway as it intersects with more highways.
Filling every vein and throughway.
Transporting life to fringes—fingers.
Vehicles scurrying red blood cells, white blood cells.
Yellow purple, orange blue, black silver lining, four-wheeled, retractable roof cells.
Gnarled street signed conglomerations, overpasses, underpasses, metal, barricades,
flashing lights, white font on green, white font on green over asphalt
asphalt asphalt over cement, potholes, sink holes more asphalt
and 7,145,249 and 5/8ths fuming blood cells and half as many semi-trucks
all devoted on going somewhere.
Civilization, call it progress.
The Big Apple, it’s rotting.
Beloved humanity, is this your comparable superlative?
For in the approaching season you will tarnish the glittering snow scapes,
transforming marshmallow rapture into the feces-streaked slush of my sin;
into scattered splotches of melting coffee custard.
You must have missed the memo.
It’s October 26th, but there you are
wobbling over the reflection of my face in the window—
squeezing out intermittent bleeped blinks of morse code.
Does your light keep you safe from the cold?
You must have thick skin, or exoskeleton, I guess.
Poor firefly, head south for winter,
go stuff your tiny belly full of firefly food,
go hibernate or go do whatever fireflies do.
Whir your wings feathery fragile to where the rest have gone.
It won’t get any warmer.
There are perfect intervals
but they don’t work so well
when stacked by way of precision
(so much for perfect).
So we coerce them.
Change the temperament.
Fudge the numbers.
Now these intervals are imperfect.
And now they work alright.
Close enough for jazz,
anyway.
Commoners surround
snorting gasoline boxing jaws
running the better parts
deep in to oblivion
no concern for humanity
no concern for empathy
no empathy, not to be confused
with the emphatic snorting
of gasoline and boxing jaws
and annihilation of goodness
but if my friend is really correct
they won’t stop before
all good things are
annihilated.
What a thrilling notion.
a rumble in my tummy
breaks me from the norm
bringing me to knees
where cheeks meet seat
and magic is born
Where is my fire now?
Soaked with misstep
Soiled in selfishness.
But the heat, it burned so brightly.
Where is my fire now?
All that remains,
Ashes that no sackcloth
Provides penitence.
I should run to you, but I am running.
Call me.
Take these coals.
Your hands are scarred.
Where is my fire now?
Remind me.
It’s still you.
they dont make aluminum balloons for just anyone
but rather they fit a specific niche
an
“i want a balloon that takes for ever to deflate”
niche.
but guns will fit the hands
of any man
with fingers enough to embrace
while triggering a mechanism
designed to fire.
gunpowder was made
by those in search of eternal life.
The joke was crass and rude
but I can see her smile through
her shaking head as she turns
away, veritably fuming.
The sun was brighter before
the clouds blew in, but here
they are and here we are beneath.
At least we don’t need sunscreen
on these grayer sorts of days.
But cutting out remainders
like an elementary mathematics
course, we find ourselves divided.
What reason to keep standing
shaking heads, even if she’s turned away?
Or is the point half the joke?
where we soaked in pools of poo
for lack anything else to do
and you told of how your wife said
“i love you”
much too soon.
there was a mcdonalds there
and a grocery store too.
where we so soaked in pools of poo
for lack of much else to do.
but beer on tap can be be redemptive too.
the hands
the ticks
the metal parts
working in complete
unison
to all do
the one important thing.
Every once in a while,
(More often if you’re not careful)
It doesn’t turn out like you planned.
The pour misses,
The spout miscalcuates,
The cup teeters (and falls).
Worst of all there’s a crack or tear.
The waters sploshes along the tabletop.
The iced-tea splatters on the counter.
The Kool-Aid (of myriad colors) stains the tablecloth.
The orange juice slunks over the sink.
The Pepsi simmers on the linoleum.
But sometimes you just have to slurp it up,
Cause what’s the use of crying over spilled milk
When it’s still perfectly good anyway?
Invisibility,
a trick worth learning
for all purposes
excluding tax evasion.
You could abscond
with candy at a liquor store
or rule the roost at
Capture the Flag.
Back-door men and
Sneakerpimps would
benefit, too, but
the only two certainties in life
are Death and taxes,
and mark my long-winded,
erroneous words:
invisible or not,
the I.R.S. Will find you.
University steps high marbled stoop
Feet tocking symmetrical pendulums
Back elbowed
Imbedded face to phone
Finger’s chattering on keyless keys
Beeps and bops and bebops clamoring from the audio
Busy so so busy
Distracted
Lonely so lost and lonely
If he ever looked up you could see it in his eyes
So lonely looking busy
Busy distracted and busy busy
Looking content
Drink and be merry
For want never want again
Independent and hear me roar
But I don’t want him to see me looking
A text my turn on the game the zombies are attacking
Something is going on
Something yes I’ll have you believe
Flip the phone and walk on
So lonely I hope he doesn’t see me
Or at least he doesn’t notice
muscles clenched
eyes squeezed shut
waiting for the
punchline
waiting for the
point
and the
punchline
excuses for ideology
are excuses nonetheless
and rather idyllic to boot
Best wait for the
punchline
and the
point
and the
punchline
Sometimes,
it’s a long wait.
a picture is all you need
when you’re yearning for the past
like my bike ride to work
and the dim nowhere sky
the booze in the autmn
leaves
it’s been a year
it’s been a year
or the party with the crazy guy
the one who knew
your perverted friend
and the yellow colored
lights in their house
file errors
you can almost smell the
girls,
on your bed
flipping you off
on a laptop
or the ones of you trashed
by yourself
bloody-nosed
in the mirror
in your bathroom
all alone
followed by the dead foliage
pricker bushes
and nasty landscape
of the lot behind
the parking lot of
your hellish old,
whatever,
a picture is all you need.
Beside the stroller,
Petting zoo’s spectacles temporarily forgotten;
Wheat-brown palms find their destination;
Protuberant pupils slant in concentration;
Tongue set between taut lips.
No miner’s tools—no light necessary;
Digging deep with precision—cache in the offing;
Explores, pinpoints, delivers.
Bashful mirth—victory coo; a toddler’s smile;
He extends a stout fingertip, smothered moist, green algae;
Offering exhibition of his treasure, nonpareil.
the sun doesn’t set on
our love baby
but it’s dusk now,
so come on
get in the car
i’ll drive you home
and when the stars
come out
pretend not
to notice.
writing using words
folks far superior to me i know it’s hard to imagine
to request in clear but big words
details with the same hands that write poetry
about programs for which it’s highly unlikely i’m qualified
for further education you’d think i’d quit at some point
and hoping against hope
for acceptance when this same writer is rejected from just about everything
or at least and the least really isn’t too little to ask
for patience a seldom recognized saintly gift
in understanding clear communication is for writers of prose
Salty sea breezes
I’ve heard tell of such things,
though it’s quite a march to find them,
and March is half a calendar-year away.
Souls blow in, I reckon.
Whisping across cheeks and thighs
and other barer skins and through
the hair and through the heart
of things.
Confused, I imagine, for some
salty sea breeze.
Perhaps a bit less briny.
ceaseless pounding of flesh
against the ground as i beat my body into submission
bloody nipples the only casualty
The palpable scent—
Sweet, sickly,
heavy,
Clings to weigh down hydrogen,
citrus molecules,
Barometric pressure.
Discarded rinds—
Sliding, peeled
with grasps, gasps, gentle tug,
separating soft slices,
taste exotic fare.
Rinds redolent of potpourried sweat
tropical fruit—
Delicious, dripping bare.
the gravedigger did the dirty work
his shovel rotating as the hands
of time zoomed all around us like
the horse flies on my grandfather’s farm
and there you were,
oh, there you were
your lifeless body looking foriegn in
the moonlight
twisted and distorted
a fairy-tale gone wrong
and what was left of me left
after he slumped you over
started covering you up
dim light
peeking over
the horizon
i drove home and listened
to your favorite songs
and you were alive with me.
I was born in a laboratory.
My cognizance stamped out on a microchip.
I am a single-core processor and 128 gigabytes of RAM
stuffed inside a semi-squamous sack of
sputum, pustule, and bone.
She was left at a Battered Women’s Shelter
for dead or otherwise. The other battered Women
didn’t care much for themselves.
Nor for her. Nor the children.
Ignorance ever the mark of a battered life.
But I tend to push my emulator
and fake the sort of care one needs
to take care of one’s needs.
The fools and the machines never
ever stand together. Though I suppose
the fools rarely ever stand.
in dim lights
with repeating chords softly reverberating
the pastor led a prayer
instructed us to breathe in, deeply,
you whispered into my ear
“think of a smile”
(an inside joke)
but i did
then smiled
only partly because of the joke
but mostly because
you had just whispered into my ear
while I was breathing in
during a prayer
with repeating chords reverberating softly
in lights, dimmed.
he tells me to get some land
some waterfront on lake superior
to get me and some of my fuckin
buddies around and get some fuckin
land
it’s the
largest fresh water source
on the fuckin planet
i’ll never need water
fuck detroit
he says
i don’t have time to
wait around for that shit
i need to get me some fuckin land
and i know he’s right
cuz when the shit hits the fan
at least i know i’ll have a plot
with my name on it
where no one else can stand
and watch the shit fly
or i could always wait till
people want to build shit
there and pay me twice what
i payed for it and fund my
retirement
like the guy
if i make it that long
it is i who lacks self control
it is i who needs self control
but how do i control myself
when control is exactly what i lack?
here’s to hoping for help
from the outside.
the vine produces grape
with or without a maker of wine.
the question is
are said grapes grub free?
