| Legacy |
[15 Jun 2008|08:05am] |
Hope hangs limply
within a translucent IV bag
inanimately waiting;
a forgotten transfusion,
while fear bubbles in a superheated spoon
eager for the suck of a syringe
and the plunge of a junkies thumb.
The have-nots are gaining mass
and losing ground
while the haves are surgically
widening the gap
and preserving their wealth
with petrification
and chemical solutions.
It’s not about to suddenly right itself.
Man never sees the impending
thing that will later be dubbed disaster,
never imagines itself upon the cusp
of something tragic about to occur,
but excels at turning it to solemn record after
to whose lessons we’ll never defer.
Six point seven billion individual experiences,
six point seven billion hopes, fears, flaws
and separate pleas I must make
on behalf of my daughters
|
|
| Underbelly |
[01 Apr 2008|03:09pm] |
It’s inside the echoes of asphalt footfalls
and raspy chants of street prophets,
the crackle and vacuum of trash can pyres
and chiming chorus of breaking glass.
It shapes within the rants of leather tramps
and pantomime of streetlight silhouettes,
in the grit of overturned ashtray sand,
and cigarette butt remnants
fossilizing in parking lot tar pits.
It’s in the strays, the spray painted
identities crying out from alley walls,
the vandalized stalls of dive bar shitters,
and the lonely numbers left like suicide notes.
It’s the essence of Bukowski and Baudelaire
entangled like two feral, urban dogs,
straining and clawing for one another’s throats.
It’s the beauty in the wretched,
the simple truth within the frailty of man,
the motif of melancholy,
the clarity of pain
and the intangible but irrefutable
allure of sorrow.
It’s the symphony in minor,
the requiem mass that moves us to tears
that we still play over and over again.
It’s the sickly sweet uncertainty in all tomorrows
and the voyeur at the tragedy
we loathe yet intimately comprehend.
It’s vampire fan clubs, snuff films and goth.
It’s the capacity crowd at the Grand Guignol.
A distinctly human condition-
taboos, secret shoeboxes, online alter egos
and locked closets.
It’s the underbelly in us all
|
|
| Almost |
[20 Mar 2008|04:13pm] |
In the slow condensing of self
and the subsequent distilled drip
it dawns upon you,
like becoming suddenly aware
that you are standing on the lip
of a yawning chasm,
but it's no pit that triggers your epiphany.
It is perhaps a glance in the mirror,
one you've made countless times,
a phrase you catch yourself saying
often,
that when you listen to this time
just does not sound right at all,
like hearing your voice on a recording-
it never sounds like you….to you
and you realize your existence is glass fragile,
your identity is as precarious as a '72 Cadillac
seesawing on the brink of oblivion
with you and that big block in the front end
and a four-hundred pound gorilla in the back,
who's nervously rolling down the window.
Then that little crystalline moment ends
its short fall and impacts, exploding
into a million tiny fragments.
You finish shaving or your mundane conversing
or whatever it was that you were in the midst of
and fall back into the elaborately built system
of blankets, casings and cover-ups
that allow you to sleep easily at night
or what some would define as
the human survival mechanism.
A collective sigh of relief is almost audible
above the din of all the world's clocks
simultaneously starting back up
|
|
| In there |
[20 Mar 2008|04:10pm] |
For Sandra
Yes,
I want to talk at length about my semen.
Or my ejaculate.
Or my wad as you so lovingly put it.
All right then.
I'd like to mention my load.
Pearlescent. Stringy
and radiant when the light hits it
like the moon in its full glory. Rigid,
I create jewelry each day.
The life inside it like a colony.
Vigorous bits of slick
to-the-touch-stuff that quickly turns sticky.
Poppy milk without the poppy
The gobs of vanilla pudding.
Elastic strands like
silken rubber in your hand.
It's important you feel it freshly warm,
understand the texture isn't watery at all, but viscous.
That I don't unravel or dribble
between my legs. Rather,
I absolutely geyser, yes I gush
from some not so deep center--
like a Texan oil well with its deposit just below the surface,
or better, like a coked-up bartender
madly mixing White Russians in a cocktail shaker
who suddenly looses its top.
Still with me?
Oh I know, sweetie,
I'm waxing on, but ride it out
if you will.
I find the substance engaging.
In fact,
I'd like to stroke my fingers
again and again across my quill
and write a poem across the wall.
"A Poem of Manhood"
Would you find that intriguing?
Words inked in semen. But no,
not semen alone, I told you.
If semen is thicker than water, then
cum is thicker than sister-
hood. And the way
it is alive! Sparkles.
Wriggling microscopically
like electrolyte.
From the first
translucent drop of white
to the pearly spray that comes later.
Oh, did I mention taste? Well
you'd say salt.
But think milder.
Savory.
But lighter.
An intoxicating musk
from a bustling, Arabic bazaar.
Viking pale, virile
and oh so distinctly
male.
|
|
| For Lilly |
[20 Mar 2008|04:08pm] |
or Lilly Bean Jinko, endearingly
Baby.
My little Lilly Bean.
They set a date for you to spring
into this world,
to first unfold your petals,
but you did not listen
to that refined medical wisdom
and came on your own terms-
early.
You entered the air
with a scream that no surgeon
had to induce with a smack,
I swear you spat out the amniotic
fluid on your own,
even earned yourself a scalpel nick
to the cheek in your eagerness
to be free.
Restless, even in the womb
and I've no doubt
that these are telling signs
to the way you will be in life,
to the way you'll think,
to the thorn you will refine
your sweetness into and place
in the side of anything that obstructs you
from getting where you want to go.
Even though the peace
a satisfying fart brings
is all the philosophy you need for now,
I can see it in you-
a tiny spark that will be
a far reaching fire.
But for now Lilly Bean,
you're simply
my baby daughter
|
|
| Blackout night |
[20 Mar 2008|04:04pm] |
Blackout night, self induced hell in a bottle.
Dance of a thousand devils upon the pinhead
of a shrunken iris in a glass filled eye socket.
Demon brew brouhaha, sold your soul
for a fifth of black labeled fuck all
signed it away in broken-nose-brawl blood.
Absolute absolution of all inhibition,
indignant ignition of the tethers of reason,
reprehensible responsibility rages on a pyre,
slamming pistons jackhammer, spirits flood,
driving them home with their combustion,
phone poles turn picket fence in a hurtle to the crossroads
but Beelzebub brakes for souls and owns your foot.
Toes splinter under the force. Sinews snap
with the whiplash of the sudden halt, inches from oblivion.
The words "too soon to leave yet." echo in your mind,
car door creaks, a tumble and heap and you find yourself
stinking and disheveled on the side of the road to nowhere.
Your ride’s totaled, teetering on the lip of a pit,
flames licking at the rubber till it drips black goo
like the liquor-blood-sweat squeezing from your pores.
Satan shows back up in the form of a state trooper
who kicks the shit out of you before saying a word,
cracking your skull like an egg encasing a pulsing membrane.
His tongue flicks out and slathers your throbbing brain.
You catch a glimpse of your sorry face in his shade
and finally he says "Boy, what’s a soul worth if it aint soiled?"
You snap awake in a sleazy motel, with a hair-lipped hooker
coiled around you, her breath hissing from her like a wounded snake.
The ceiling’s paint peels away to reveal your contract- signed and binding.
Blackout night, self-reduced shell, the mottled skin
of what-was-once a man, now the shambling dead,
slouching in wait for the day the devil collects his due
|
|
| Jim |
[10 Feb 2008|04:30pm] |
He hit the time clock looking half dead-
disheveled hair, stained white tee,
worn hound's tooth pants.
"You're late again"
I said, while thinking: goddamn,
If I could only find another cook
worth half your salt?
Just one of many times I could've fired him.
I am no pushover or sentimentalist,
so there are a few things you need to understand.
Old Jim was an insufferable drunk,
relied exclusively on curse words to talk,
gambled, lied and rumor had it,
once killed a man in the pen,
yet despite his faults
he was a maestro when in the weeds.
When the wheel was blooming tickets
and the servers were screaming like banshees,
he never lost his cool.
It's not the point that I once caught him
washing his pants in the dish machine,
knew of his stash of Pabst in the produce cooler,
turned a blind eye to his nightly dinner
of broiler station scraps and that
those, in actuality, were whole fillets
and not even his habit
of referring to his knife as his "tool".
The point's that in all other respects
he was born for the kitchen's hellish ways,
the long, cruel hours on your feet,
scorching heat of salamandered plates,
desperate pleas for traction
thrown salt asks of spilt grease,
inevitable cuts, burns and falls,
the sheer will it takes to keep your hand
over a broiler grill when flipping steaks.
"The breaks" had never broken him,
so I let him saunter in like he owned the place
but watched him like a dog
that could turn on you at any time.
What it amounted to was that Jim
was an indispensable, son-of-a-bitch
who if I gave enough rope,
always towed the line
|
|
| In there |
[10 Feb 2008|12:55pm] |
For Sandra
Yes,
I want to talk at length about my semen.
Or my ejaculate.
Or my wad as you so lovingly put it.
All right then.
I'd like to mention my load.
Pearlescent. Stringy
and radiant when the light hits it
like the moon in its full glory. Rigid,
I create jewelry each day.
The life inside it like a colony.
Vigorous bits of slick
to-the-touch-stuff that quickly turns sticky.
Poppy milk without the poppy.
The gobs of vanilla pudding.
Elastic strands like
silken rubber in your hand.
It's important you feel it freshly warm,
understand the texture isn't watery at all, but viscous.
That I don't unravel or dribble
between my legs. Rather,
I absolutely geyser, yes I gush
from some not so deep center--
like a Texan oil well with its deposit just below the surface,
or better, like a coked-up bartender
madly mixing White Russians in a cocktail shaker
who suddenly looses its top.
Still with me?
Oh I know, sweetie,
I'm waxing on, but ride it out
if you will.
I find the substance engaging.
In fact,
I'd like to stroke my fingers
again and again across my quill
and write a poem across the wall.
"A Poem of Manhood"
Would you find that intriguing?
Words inked in semen. But no,
not semen alone, I told you.
If semen is thicker than water, then
cum is thicker than sister-
hood. And the way
it is alive! Sparkles.
Wriggling microscopically
like electrolyte.
From the first
translucent drop of white
to the pearly spray that comes later.
Oh, did I mention taste? Well
you’d say salt.
But think milder.
Savory.
But lighter.
An intoxicating musk
from a bustling, Arabic bazaar.
Viking pale, virile,
and oh so distinctly
male.
|
|
| If you can't stand the heat... |
[27 Jan 2008|11:14am] |
Life is all to often a recipe for chaos
with unpredictable steps emerging
from an obscuring murk, forcing you
to fly by the seat of your pants-
to continually compensate off the cuff.
Perhaps this is why, at the most hectic of these times
I crave the kitchen like a starving man.
It is there that I can undoubtedly carve out
A bastion of meticulous order,
A place where well laid plans
very rarely go awry- unlike life.
Laying out each ingredient is catharsis
as I run the courses through my brain
and with the aid of fine, German steel
fabricate garlic, onion and herbs,
peeled and minced into tidy piles at first
then arrayed within pristine bowls
like order incarnate upon my counter.
Several skillets heat, the oven warms
as my marinade’s acidity tenderizes the meat
and in intricate, layered increments
the meal begins to take shape.
Sautee, proof, broil and bake,
stock simmers for the sauce,
roux browns to finish it off,
custard sets in its water bath,
a final whip emulsifies the vinaigrette,
skirt steak hits the pan to sear.
I dance through this routine
without fear of calamity-
a heart attack won’t kill my entrée,
the birth of this meal won’t be met with a medical bill,
I will not have to rush a fallen soufflé
to the hospital for stitches,
the crème brulee won’t be fired
and evicted from its ramekin
or subsequently cause its marriage
of flavors to dissolve.
In the kitchen I am in control,
king, ruler-of-all, dictator if need be.
I am intimately aware of the variables
and can vastly influence the chance disaster.
In life I am left no recourse
but to chant this simple mantra
and never could I say it enough:
order,
order,
order,
order…
order up
|
|
| Falling forever |
[01 Jan 2008|10:07am] |
It was not so long ago at all
that my gut would flutter
at the sight of you.
Not so long ago that
a simple shared glance
(the times it was as if
a magnet had drawn our eyes
to lock onto one another’s)
sent an electrical shiver
straight to my loins.
How silly we were,
mutually longing
for each other
and neither willing to risk
the words.
No, not so long ago at all
where we would flirt
with snippets of small talk
while you feigned
reading your books.
Not so long ago and yet
the times like now
where we are whipped
to opposite ends
of the radius of our shared whirlwind
(the sudden force
that plucked us from our pining
and swirled us together into one)
make it seem like a lifetime.
But lover, as long as this life is mine
and blood still beats its way
through these veins,
there will never be a day
where the honest simplicity
of that mighty crush
will be far removed.
Not so long ago
is always and easily
now to me.
No matter how the trials
or triviality of life
attempt to intercede,
this heart will surge
for you
|
|
| That I had the impact......... |
[29 Dec 2007|11:52am] |
Pressing question 176:
Were cigarettes really so self-medicating
that they diluted this swarm
of one thousand tiny things
currently stinging me like
salt encrusted darts;
did they actually make me oblivious?
Observation:
Quitting seems to be contagious
to other avenues of my existence.
Examples:
I am struck with the inexplicable desire
to quit my job, organizations, friendships
and conversations I may be currently
in the midst of.
Observation:
Given the populace of shopping malls
as evidenced by recent visitation,
random mall shootings
are not as iniquitous as I once believed.
The current trend seems to be
for shop, kiosk and food court
employees to hawk their goods
like medieval fish-mongers,
wading amid the throng bearing trays
of lotions, perfumes or orange tempura chicken,
thrusting them into the faces of shoppers,
so unfazed by refusals that their miens
never change from the plastic, grotesque
mockery of grins that have been
stamped upon them by the overlord Commerce
and the tyrant Hourly Wage.
Random acts of violence
would do well to target them first.
Pressing question 177:
What have I become?
At age sixteen I despised cowboy boots
and all that wore them,
seeing them as the regalia of simpletons.
Yesterday upon above mentioned trip to mall,
I spent one hundred dollars
on a pair of Steve Madden, designer
quasi-cowboy boots.
Observation:
The city looks less like it was snowed upon
than some god of frost
blew its wad all over everything.
White, cum-like slush clings
to streets, sidewalks and cars,
squishes beneath feet with the sound
of something being sucked from an orifice.
Revelation:
If I were to attempt to quit drinking now,
on top of smoking,
it would be reasonable to assume
that I would transform into a denizen
of the ninth circle of hell
and the world would ratchet
one notch further down
on the scale of “Doomed”
|
|
| Keeping it real |
[15 Dec 2007|09:17am] |
Your poetry needs a pimp
to get its ass to the streets,
to make it work that shit.
What, you thought
you could write
something good
and it would just get read?
Well not here,
not now,
no way.
There’s a long list
of players
you’ve got to play.
You better perfume that shit,
paint it up and shorten that skirt,
get it out there in the scene
and make it flirt
with all the happening scensters,
the king-turd, poetry freakers.
Yeah, your poetry needs a pimp
to make its ass look good
with stiletto heels,
to teach it the truth
of it’s all about how
it makes the fat-cats feel.
You’ve got to put your name
in their mouths,
slide it around until it drips
from their lips
and they can’t help
but pass it on.
Your poetry needs a thong
So that it will peak out
from its hot-pants
when it bends over to shake that ass,
‘cause in this hood there are asses everywhere,
strutting their shit just like you,
willing to do whatever it takes
to get that break.
That’s the reality,
the break down,
the truth-self-evident.
So if you want to keep it real-
your poetry needs a pimp
|
|
| Spheres |
[13 Dec 2007|03:22pm] |
In youth, we first learn to wield the hammer,
smashing all things subtle like childish gods.
We only know to take what we want most
like the heart that’s confused love with fucking
or the soul believing obsession’s worship-
our child minds lack the grace to win with words.
She was enamored with words
yet used them as a hammer
to fell bodies of worship.
She had no use for tame gods-
what did they know of fucking?
She knew so much more than most.
Later; fired by passion, we crave lust most,
while struggling to define this drive with words.
We care not for the sheep and their fucking
mundane course, we’d as soon take a hammer
to their skulls, breaking them like vengeful gods,
laughing at their mewing pleas of worship.
He took easily to worship
and she could love him- almost.
He thought her a gift of god’s,
content to bleed for her words,
act anvil to her hammer,
clueless it was just fucking.
In the end we wonder at the fucking
mess we’ve made and ponder whether worship
would’ve proven more worthwhile to hammer
at than being so hedonistic most
of our remembered moments and if words
weren’t better spent in whispered pleas to gods.
She thought if she could shape gods
she’d devote one to fucking,
one with no need of cruel swords,
saw orgasm as worship,
smiting ones who need it most
like Thor with a cock hammer.
How we hammer away at playing gods
with whiskey and words; with gut-felt fucking
and idle worship while love's lacking most
|
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| The clique |
[11 Dec 2007|04:13pm] |
Stuck up
poets abound
in this small, wannabe
city of literary dreams-
egos
|
|
| Premature burial |
[29 Nov 2007|07:22pm] |
The shovel tip bit into the earth
sending a shiver through his foot,
up his shin and into his kneecap
like a tiny cataclysm, a mini thunder clap.
When the hole was dug, into it he drug
the last bits of a checkered past,
remains that had been carefully dissected,
drained of blood in an old dirty bath tub
and arranged to economically take up
the least bit of space.
He unceremoniously buried it this way,
without last rites, somber words or eulogy.
When he was done he unzipped his pants
and consecrated the mound with his piss
for his past amounted to nothing more than this,
at least to him; those he’d wronged
would likely see fit to think differently,
making no distinction between his new self
and the shell he’d given to the loam.
They’d never see that it was for them
that he did now what he did,
never realize that as he tamped down
the freshly wetted soil it was like
placing a lid on a jar of flies
to let them slowly suffocate,
and the flies; the iniquity
he’d excised from himself.
Regardless, he still walked off into the world
wearing the new apparel of an empty slate,
ready to be written again,
ready to write himself,
ready to prove that the grave
was not yet his fate
|
|
| Cover up |
[23 Nov 2007|12:40pm] |
Surely I’m as guilty as the next hack
when it comes to the stark lack of sweet love
rearing its red sappiness in my craft,
but it’s not because I’m some stoic beast.
If truth be told I feast on its syrup,
gulping it down in gluttonous scenes
rife with Waltonesque familial revelry
(and not so PG vignettes with the wife).
Why then when it comes to squirting my love
‘cross the page in the medium of ink,
do I balk; gravitate to sourer things?
Perhaps the same reason I don’t wear plaid,
wide lapels, ascots or polyester-
sharing my foppish side with only her
|
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| The stink of obsession(or Elizabeth Taylor is an insufferable bitch) |
[17 Nov 2007|10:47am] |
Obsession is the greediest form of self flattery.
Consider how the obsessed carry out interaction-
whether it be me, he or she, their words become like lead
as they weigh down their invariably one-sided conversations,
as if they’d be committing ego suicide
if they were to let someone else get a word in edge-wise.
It’s like being endlessly buffeted by wind when in their midst.
Bothering to point this out to them
is as futile as the brief stink of flatulence
in the proverbial whirlwind-
the most you’ll get is a wrinkling of their nose.
The fact is they already know their fault
but they’re too absorbed in themselves
to care about what may be important to someone else,
like a glutton with an endless bowl of food
who knows full and well the next bite could burst his gut
but can’t detach his hand from the fork.
So you smile and nod as they carry on,
but your mind becomes more and more divorced
as they plunge so deeply into repetition
they may as well be chewing a wad of gum.
End position: everyone is numb to what the other thinks,
uncomfortable glances at watches are made
and halfhearted farewells are doled out
like dismissive quarters given to panhandlers.
Sad that the obsessed are never compelled to change
|
|
| Impulse |
[21 Oct 2007|09:45am] |
The rain fell like an erratic Neil Peart solo
on the corrugated steel shed
where I’d sought shelter.
I could have listened for hours
but I only had one cigarette,
only a few drags to reflect
upon the evening or was it
everything?
The night seemed bigger
than normal, swollen,
out of proportion.
The questions came
like the staccato rain
yet one clear voice cut through-
“The truth is sought by few
and only in moments like this.”
I wished I’d had another cigarette
|
|
| Drinking to remember |
[18 Oct 2007|12:46pm] |
“There’s no getting those years back.”
He said this after a long swig of Black Bush
and for a moment I saw in his eyes
a glimpse of an unblemished childhood
where the years had yet to etch
his present weathered patina
with their acidic fingers touch.
Crutch-less, a boy running
through dandelion jungles
and a wilderness of endless possibilities
sans the crippling effect
of beatings-
the paternal swung belt buckle,
lashing of multiple callous wives
or the gun butt of some
government’s definition of enemy.
We drank for hours and played Memory
with overturned desires,
shuffled them face down
and flipped them to prove our mettle,
until they were as mixed up as us.
“You’ve got to lance the puss, not let it settle.”
I said after a particularly disturbing snippet
showed itself on the table.
He slammed the shot glass down
and the sound echoed in my recollections
like the first time I'd fired a deer-rifle
some long ago, lonely dawn.
“There’s no goddamn time machines.”
But my only reply was to tap
the half empty bottle of Protestant whiskey
and think to myself that they’d gotten
that old adage about drinking to forget
all wrong
|
|
| Hard-boiled |
[16 Oct 2007|04:58pm] |
Few have the fortitude to weather
the dive bar long enough to be considered a veteran,
fewer have the desire to do so.
I can’t say that I have,
and if I were to tell you
that I had inclinations to posses it,
then I would be professing an intention
to create something that can’t be chosen
if it's to be at all genuine.
Rawhide does not simply will itself
into well worn leather,
it has to be broken in and beaten
till its rigidity loses the backbone
to stand up and simply lays down for the wearer.
Such is the dichotomy of the dive bar drunk,
except that they scuttle themselves
until they’ve sunk into the muck of the scene.
Still, they take on an almost legendary status to some,
especially among the wanna-be gritty sorts,
you know the ones,
sporting they’re Pabst Blue Ribbon adornment
and their sleeve of tattoos that no true
ne’re-do-well could really afford.
To aspire to be a bar room novelty,
to hope for scars and crave a personae
that steeps itself around you
like the dirt from an early grave-
it’s strange, such fascination
with what most accept as simply sad.
Maybe they read too much Bukowski,
or perhaps on some latent level
they’re just emulating a granddad
(that spent one too many days
in the tap room of the Dew-Drop-Inn),
over a case of unrequited, familial love.
Check box one if you’ve ever drank alcohol out of anger.
Check box two if you’ve ever missed work because of a hangover.
Check box three if you’ve ever consumed whiskey just for fun.
If you checked all of the above
then you may just have what it takes
and you are already well on your way
to becoming a stumblebum, barfly, dive bar veteran.
Now just cross your fingers it stays trendy
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