It’s a quiet somber feeling
of safety and security behind
miles of red tape and
piles of paperwork, and
even when the rest of the world
is on fire and screaming,
Here in our little fort
with the shades drawn and
the locks done up,
everything will be alright,
you promise.

And on the subject of hands his
strangled a man once to death,
and on the subject of dogs his
has had a throat or two I’m sure.

That doesn’t stop him from laughing,
though, once in a while. It doesn’t
stop him from being real and flesh
and fragile like the rest of us.

He just killed a man, is all.

And ol’ Fido ate well that night,
I’m certain.

Fought tooth and claw for
a few bits of
scrap meat
and that dog is still
starved.

And now he’s
bleeding,
too.

And now he’s laying down
with that rasp
in his breath
again.

And he’ll get up
to fight
tomorrow.

Clock runs whether you want it to or not and I’ll
smile while it ticks and I’ll grin while it clicks
and I can hang forever, strong as these hands are
so I wouldn’t get too many bright ideas, yeah?

Snowdrifts are old hat, ice is just a challenge,
cold-starting amps this beater’s got for days
and the sun comes out sometimes to help anyway,
and the trucks do their part too, now and again

there’s always change to scrape when scraping’s
on the order, and I haven’t found it yet but I
know there’s an easier way to book a nice evening
so I’ll keep my ear to the ground ’til it shows

And I guess you can drive your 22 hours down yon
every now and then and just to see what shakes
what but I’ll tell you, there’s not much for it.
Strong as these hands are, I can hang and cows
come home.

This man cuts delicately
and with purpose

This man has an art to him
and a sight in his eyes

His is a gentle way,
but a righteous way,

but he loses track
sometimes

We have begun counting
his steps down the stairs

We have tallied his
transgressions

He has two ticks on the board,
but the first is smeared a bit

It has been up too long to
remember where it’s counted from.

He smiles mostly these days,
and grips the banister loosely

He cuts with purpose.
He stays mostly on track.

He has two ticks
nonetheless.

I met you
in the parking lot
between the county court
and the CVS Pharmacy

I did not buy your wares.

I did not look you in the eye.

Your coat was torn
but I did not offer you
mine.

I did not hear your sales
pitch or read your
convincing literature.

And now you’re off again
to find another buyer.

Good Luck.

I can’t seem to feel my extem
ities as well as I once
had
but
that’s a matter of conj
ecture

For a moment I was fal
ling and for a moment I
was due to dro
p
and it was going to
hurt
I’m cert
ain

I was caught, though, la
st minute by the
belt by you and you said
you never were rea
lly letting
go

But for a mome
nt I
felt like I was
falling

Ten dollar gas can
Three dollar gas
Two block stroll
there, two block
back again

open door, uncap
stick in snoot
pour through the
long pause

 

 

 

 

 

 

remove, recap,
can in trunk
turn over once
sputter to death
turn over once
more
sputter to life

brake, shift
park neutral drive
gas, drive
and home and
sleep,

I suppose.

Play summoner
with brass horn, with
steel string and pickup

Make dark the room
while ghosts come
through, while soul simmers

Locks on windows and
the clock set fast so
it’s on time when it
moves again

Things are too short to settle for.
Things are too long to settle, too.

Ghosts come through and
quiet, for to not disturb
the summoner played

Time is arbitration
timing, arbitrary

There’s fire in all of it,
though,
sprouting from the devil-box
and bursting from the big
brass bell

And it would bring you to tears
while the ghosts come through,
and now you’ve lost yourself,

and that’s just fine, because
here we are again.

A man crashed his car in to a viaduct
with fervor and purpose.
He died instantly, but his
viaduct still stands, still holds up
the things it’s meant to

His car was totaled in the paperwork
but a junkyard man will
make that old car right again
and sell it off new-used, no
question.

His mother is screaming and
his daughter does not get
the concept of not having
a ride to school or a bedtime story
or a father, in fact.

At least they get the money, though,
from that big fat half-mil term-life.

And at least he got to go out big
before he had to collect his pension.

Not that there’d be anything for him,
anyway.

These muscles ache and stretch
they are the Devil’s Sinews,
the machines of a vengeful spirit.

My heart, clutched by blackened bones
is pounding and burning,
my stomach spraying acids from it’s
pores

I would scream if my lungs would not
brim with pesticides.

I would kill if my hands would
stop ripping my skin from me.

I would eat and tear and scream would
my body permit me.

Instead I smash my hands on concrete
until they are but
pulpy stumps.

Instead I break myself apart.

That gentleman in the corner,
he is insane, I think.

He is eating buttons
like they are candies.

He swears they’re all he can afford,
but I gave him a bag,
last Sunday,
of the finest M and Ms
this side of the Mason-Dixon.

And yet he eats his buttons,
now, and his shirts don’t
stay done either. And
by the time he sews them up
he’s on to another.

But I gave him candies
not a week ago.

So let him sit in his corner,
I say,
and let him, bare and breathless,
chew another little hunk
of plastic for all it’s worth.

He deserves it.

As another man in another life my
soul was up for grabs but
I got it back and now
It’s safe in a trust fund,
lock and key and all of that.

If I got the bank-man right
I’ll double my investment
in no time
(say a lifetime or so)
and that’s perfect, says I.

After all I’m not using it,
and since a lifetime is
exactly how long I plan to live,
I’d say things are working out
precisely.

As long as this bank don’t fail,
that is.

everyone has to be alone, sometimes.

“I took a sword one time
and I thrust it in to a heart
The heart stopped beating
The blood ran freely
The sword did nothing
and in a matter of seconds
was ready to thrust again

“and sometimes I feel like
you are that sword
and I wonder how you manage
and I wonder how you are allowed
and I tend to keep my distance
as far as hearts go,
I am fond of mine”

I have been dead for seven days.

I have stolen away to greener pastures.

My family has eulogized me.

My friends have all disowned me.

There’s a box in a barn up on 10th street.

There’s a book of numbers inside.

I never made those calls.

I could have been a better man.

I should have said the right things.

Now I’m buried and gone.

Now I’m as good as I’ll ever be.

Fuck ‘adolescence’
and holding standards without
taking measurements

Fuck snow-globes and play-lands
and long driveways

Fuck feeling like you’re dreaming
when you’re wide awake
and the alarm is too far to reach

Fuck cars that don’t stop
and drivers that don’t go
and long red lights

Fuck Solitary, gen-pop,
thug-life death-trap gangbangers
with nothing, and less worth proving

Fuck gas, fuck rain, fuck taxes,
fuck chasing the dog when he gets out,
and having to smack him when he gets back

Fuck the corporate world
Fuck your ‘adolescence’
and Fuck you

to the bastards in the alley
or the beggars behind the
woodshed?

The station man said there were
dragons flying in with the northerlies,
for to terrorize like every other
imaginary monster, but
they’ll be swallowed too
when Quetzalcoatl comes

A losing streak an infinity long

we will eat our dead when
burning is no longer cost
effective

Even our saints will be caught
with flesh in their mouths

Even our

, no street in particular

We saw the pyramids fall
Saw the Empire catch fire
saw the machine work its gears
while its printing presses spewed

While its furnaces consumed

While its bonuses were paid in full

There was gold in the
hills thirty
years ago.

Now the hills
are out of bounds.

Now You and I And
God and Everyone are
starved for soul-food;
we languish in our hunger and
we settle for tenth best

Perhaps we will delete ourselves,
or be deleted, or be (continued)

Nothing will change until it changes.

But there are whole truths for this year
and last year
and the next:

-Love,
-Passion,
-Greed,
-Terror,
-That knee-jerk reaction you make
when you think you’re going to die,
-we’re not gone yet,
-you don’t know where we’re going,
-you should keep the good ones, and
-you shouldn’t let poets
lie to you

The American Dream has settled
in the bottom of the basin of
a low-flow toilet somewhere in
White Suburbia and we’re all
up to our ankles in water that
seems clean enough until we
see the stain on the bowl
that hasn’t been scrubbed yet
and we’d try to flush it away
to start fresh but the handle
is just too damn far up the
tank and even if we could there
wouldn’t be enough water to
move this shit down-river
unless we can maybe hit it
a couple dozen times just like
you had to do two Christmases
ago when you ate too much pie
and you didn’t want to make
a terrible mess at your grandma’s
but you couldn’t find the
god damn plunger but oh
it would have been so much
easier if you had.