Slick

poetry

Like oil on the pavement,
the truth lies silently and waiting
for a body to put the wrong foot forward

It expects that the gent will slide
and possibly topple
(to one knee, or do a sort of
split that may just rip his trousers)
letting his briefcase fly
and crack and
let go of all his secrets

It will stain his knee so
everyone knows he fell and
it will paint his shoes
to leave a trail so
everybody knows where he
came from

It will keep eyes on him
just long enough to make him
feel like he
did something wrong
and most importantly

it will remain after he’s
come and gone
laying in wait to
catch another care-
less liar unawares

Budget

poetry

I heard they were runnin’ a sale down to the river
on absolution but I didn’t pick none up for me
or you either ‘cuz the car’s battery died and
I still owe money for a whole mess of things
and that Chinese dinner was a fine expenditure
just like the picture and the gasoline and
I’d say you should grab a little bit for the
pair of us but you’d probably buy a bottle
or a couple good pies instead and that’s just
fine with me what with the economy like it’s
been we don’t need to spend no money we don’t
have to

some blood better left outjected

poetry

i’ve fished for fresh blood
for flesh and blood
blood, the non-stagnant type
to bring life to this flatlining
place so many of us call home

we’ve received some applicants
blood that wants in
but we must check blood type
and confirm it is virus free.

worse than life-bringing blood is the type that looks like such but when the gates are opened and the fresh let in the body rejects it and spits it out where it is then of no use to anyone at tall.

Love-hate

poetry

My cat merlot sings when I’m not around
she calls me names
her heinous gaze reminds me of you
and like a beaten child I quiver in a corner
where you left echoes of your solistices
slowly I bury myself in visions of you
your voice resonates
you’re like a hyphen between the piles of my small-fry years
keeping my soul afloat

While I was looking fey and shuttered
longing for cobblestone streets and
lanterns of warm orangey hues
you fed on ashes and brumes
eyeing everybody else
squashed torn up and hateful
but stars kept getting brighter
and the night darker
you screamed, I drank rhum
you cried, I scratched your skin
I couldn’t prove that I love you
or knew any worthwhile trade

On my way to a different place
you snacked on my will instead
I felt your hand breaking me
down into domino pieces
[but was love such a terror
that it should send me rolling down on the ground
piece by piece]
so I grabbed my luck and ran
only to later find myself holding you up like
an oriflamme of love and hate
[no wonder my cat merlot sings when I’m not around]

potential for greatness, but the ideas, as they flowed from my head to my fingers, met some serious resistance and the outcome was near disastrous.

poetry

for want of a pant line he had hip injections
for want of a butt crack he trained to be a plumber
for want of reason he played sudoku
then for want of friends
he purchased gift cards to his wonderful hip-injection doctor gave them to his acquaintances
then for want of acquaintances he moved, ran for president, and claimed stupidity

The Man with Plutonium Skin

poetry

He is a simple man on the inside
and a martyr and a legend
and he loves the people that reject him
but he does not touch them, for fear
that they’ll melt
and he’s got enough messes to clean
I swear

He moves with impunity
down any city street he chooses
and he does not show his passport
and he has no homeland, at least
not in this universe,
but he wanders among us and he
wonders at us anyway

He speaks to children, sometimes
he whispers in their ears to tell them
all the things that their moms
and dads are doing wrong
and sometimes the children listen
so they try to do the right thing
but sometimes they
just run

And maybe you would to, I mean
he did kill all those people
all those years ago.

Trash Day

poetry

Sunday evenings before football I contemplate life most.
Trash day is tomorrow, and the red draw strings constrict through my fingers like excavated veins that seal in the stench of my so-called day-to-day living.
The autumn air, the herald of Winter, reawakens my lungs from their Sabbath slumber and there’s something magnetic in the atmosphere.
A static that heightens my senses, spurns hibernation, tastes the tension of a minute hand trembling across the numerals of an hour, makes it matter.
Where has it gone?
Heaving the bundle of paper and plastic product necessities from three yards out – the point after – delegating possession to tomorrow’s trash men.
Will they ask the same questions when their shift ends or only wake up to punch the clock again?
On most nights, I still meander back inside, flat tire my shoes and peel them off, wondering whether the Eagles will cover the spread.
Besides creating more garbage have I done, and am I doing anything with what I’ve been given, or am I just throwing it all away?

Rewrite. Celine you should be proud.

poetry

Near,
And in addition to near also far,
Really, wherever you might be at all,
It is compatible with my belief system that the heart doth persevere,
And then one more time,
You unlock and then open the door,
And you will find yourself here inside of this dwelling place I call my heart (please do not intervene with the blood flow, it is surprisingly essential to my ability to live)
And my heart will persevere and then persevere some more.

Whew.

atrophy my mind

poetry

the lack of direction
the lack of focus
the lack of meaning
the lack of answers
the lack of a definite timeline
the lack of vision
the lack of relationships
the lack of a good book to read
the lack of decent jazz
the lack of piano
the lack of meaningful information
the lack of stress
the lack of focus
the lack of direction
thelackofmeaning

thoughts in my last few weeks, vomited like a bird feeding its young for your consumption pleasure

poetry

third graders gather on the floor and ask about toilets and school uniforms in a land they cannot fathom and who am i to introduce them to it? i’ve brought pictures to say the things my words cannot, and speaking of eating dog, rabbit head, or pig lung, may inspire exactly the wrong kind of awe, i fear, but do my best as they gaze in bleary wonder knowing all this time one or two may be moved to drop their lives and leave a world where a child must have 100 crayons if they’re to be expected to color, where three simply would not do. sewage runs through streets in images i’ve taken of places where the scent overwhems any bad feeling one might have from the way things look, and it’s been five of my six months and all i can think of the whole time i’m showing these pictures is how much i miss home, and the “grind” and being on the winning team. to know the work i’m a part of ultimately wins when i feel like away, i’m more of a bump on a log than an addition to society, and snow is not near as romantic as i remember it, and consumerism literally makes me want to vomit in these cities where people are virtually strangling their children, choosing to suck the life out of them so they can have a swimming pool in their back yard, and while i’m not foolish enough to believe this is the case everywhere in this great country, i nonetheless catch a glimpse of the vastness of the nationwide epidemic as i get reports from the “bud light sports desk” during the “coors light half time show” where you spend the whole day in awe that infinite jest had this thing figured out years ago and it seems like only a few years ago i read that book (part of that book) and

laughed at the absurdity of the extremity of it all

Come Out and Play

poetry

Old friend.
You’re back in town.
At my door

Asking
Inviting
Begging

To hang out
Catch up
Spend some time together.

It’s been too long, you say.
It’s been so long, I say.

And I want to.
I want to unlatch the screen door
Welcome you in
Come out and join you.

Something feels brittle.
Cold.
Hot?

Come out and play, you say
My fists ball around jeans.
I don’t think I can, I say.
I promised.

It won’t be like that this time, you say
You lick your lips.
You’re lying.

You said the same thing last time.
The time before.
Every time.

You used me.
Blamed me.
Left me holding the guilt.

I could offer you my soul.
You would take it.
Scrub it over a cheese shredder
Returning the heap of curdled curlicues
Gumming together like orange juice pulp.
Leave me empty and throbbing again.

Here, you would say
If only I would say yes.

i’m a shareholder in words, i have rights, power, OWNERSHIP

poetry

i like woids
and the way they’re formed
with building blocks called
shletters
gwammer is awesome when proper
and in large blocks we complete
ideas in cent-instances
if we master the basics we’re given some freedom to destroy convention and set out on our own (or so they said in college)
so we form our own conjunctivitises like hithertothereforewithoutwhich
and stream together brilliance in zombie movels.
because our English linguine-age is incredi-malleable
we raise our noses and look down them at morons without.

i am a student

poetry

gandhi may speak to me
however those things may be pronounced
tolstoy, probably
the buddha, too
but one thing i can’t quite understand
is how to forgive one for his ignorance

when this ignorance takes shape
of fist
or otherwise
t’wards me
or otherwise
and then yet when his fist
has been planted
and the light shine on him
so he may reckognize the
err in his step
or
otherwise

and yet a second is thrown
or otherwise

i must ask you
why forgive?

Whiskey

poetry

Fella’s been drinking whiskey half the night
the other half spent counting coins for the trip
down the road to the liquor store and his taste
is rather extravagant but desperate times call
for lower standards and fella’s okay with it even
if he has to mix his medicine with Cherry Coke
just to make it palatable but when the only cash
you’ve got to your name is tied up in a bottle corner
the mixer is the lesat of a fella’s problems, yeah?