You looked so good
in your Sunday’s Best
but on a Wednesday night?
I can not fathom why.

You looked damn good,
though. Cruel to say per
haps, circumstantially
speaking. You looked
damn good, though.

I bet you can get
way down in those
wingtip shoes, though.
Boy, I bet you
can get all the way down
in those black heels.

But on a Wednesday night?
I can not begin
to try to fathom
what you’re doing out.

They sink their blades so
deeply and if I am to simply
bleed out of my abdomen and
moulder and die I will try to do
so at home so at least I won’t
feel so beat up about it.

Yes, the wolf,
he bites and does his damages
to prey and plaything,
choking out the beauty
so noble-ly, and until
they die, only to rend
the flesh from bones.

But he, he is a fisherman,
and a catch-and-release man, too.
He deals only so much damage
and just long enough
to claim to have held,
before casting catch away.

At least the wolf,
gory and red though
his work may be,
has the dignity
to mean it.

You look down your nose with your
cathedral-colored eyes while your
flapping jowls sling pickling brine
and my hands are dripping from
covering my mouth and my back
is cold from this damp, stinking shirt
and I try to understand your rambling
but amidst the catcalls and birdsongs
of the passers-by it’s hard to
stay so focused on such blitherings
as those of your station tend towards
but God and all, I swear, that
one day I will stand and step and
smack some sense in to you
with the back of my wet hand
and when I drop my quarters in
the washing machine down the road,
I’ll mail you a bill

Some will play those bleeding heartstrings
until their fingers bleed just the same
and no-one has a place to stand because
all the cobbled streets are awash with it

I played another set of strings, though,
down on the back of a hot small-block
and though they did not bleed,
they certainly had heart,
and all the burn was more than enough
compensation.

And when you tossed me those rags
to clean the bleed from my fingers,
Friend, I can tell you, Certainly
was the only way I thought
that all was right with the world.

Oh, how the world
it jostles itself in to order
one way or the other

or that’s the way it seems
hit every red light once
and tell me different.
Hit every green and tell me
the same.

Like the time that you
made two pies and
ett the second one first
and then you realized
that the first one needed
to bake a bit longer.

You narrowly avoided food-
bourne disease that time,
too.

And now all your friends are over
and just raring for
a slice,
or two,
And you ett your fill already
so there’s plenty, anyway.

Funny how things work out
Or that’s the way it seems,
anyway. Bake a pie
and tell me different.

And the way you talk it’s where
dreams and souls and lovers go to die
while all the poison coursing through
your veins boils up and you spew it across
the dashboard and the empty passenger
seat, heartless and soulless and coughing
and choking and driving, always driving
southbound like it’s some kind of metaphor
for everything you do and say but really,
it’s just the fastest way home. Then again,
who says that’s not the metaphor?

I have made the mistake
and read too far in to you junkies
and you perverts and you wasted
shells with epithets aplenty adorning
your maladjusted beings.

I can not know the things you’ve seen
because I can not know how you’ve
seen them, Rose-colored glasses or
beer goggles or haze or whathaveyou.

But, however you find your beauty from
day to day, it’s always a hard smile
with your teeth so rotted that way.

You’ll hang on every word like
a coat on an out-turned screw
and you’ll know all the gossip and
what else do you need? Certainly not
truth. Truth only starts trouble and
makes people angry and you just
don’t have any time for that sort of
garbage in your life right now. So
explain why you’re turning out more
screws.

And he’s walked with a cane since the war
and there’s a click in his left leg
every god damn step he takes
there’s a click and the thud of his cane
and he keeps walking forward
just clicking and thudding ‘cuz
at the very least
The God Damn War is behind him

There is a parking structure on the east end of town
goes up for miles and miles and miles, it seems
scrapes the lower parts of the sky that that the
skyscrapers don’t quite get around to scraping and
at the top of this ten-thousand car garage there’s
an old gentleman in a tweed sports coat
with bad breath and old leather shoes and
an old Singer sewing machine

(It has to be from the thirties)

that he sits behind
running all day by the pedals, making jackets and
sweaters and all the garments he can’t seem
to afford himself but he dosen’t charge much for them,
he begs a fair price at just a silver dollar a piece

(Nevermind that he only deals in Silver)

but the man has never seen a washtub I’d wager
and I’m not so sure he’s gone to Church or the like
so Brother you can tell him when you see him
that I wont’ be buying any of his clothes
until he gets himself a real god damned job
and a proper education

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

He’s doing it though. He’s really doing it.

Occupational hazards aside. Dagger out. Shot
gun loaded and locked and danger
ous. But he says what he says to be true:

If never a dull moment, then never a bad idea.

and with every body piled neatly
corners clogged and reeking
(and the smell will never come out)
there he goes. He’s really doing it.

Blood for blood, I reckon.
and God Save him, that bountied king.