Receipts

I wonder what the world would think
if they knew Sigmund Freund used his clients cash
to buy mountains of coke. Or
if they knew Herbert Hoover preferred a sash
on a prom dress to a tie. Or
if they knew Hemingway took an advance
to slash it at gay bars.

How many receipts littered floors
filled with Parisian whores
as Franklin spoke of simple things
while sucking on those lady's rings.

What surprise awaits seldom few
when they realize the parts that grew
atop poor Joseph Merrick's skin
was the love of journals scribbled in.

I wonder what the world would think
if they knew conservatives used taxpayer pliers
to pry open Thai boys. Or
if they knew liberals used community dollars
to fund revolutions abroad. Or
if they knew no man was safe
with ticker tape strangling him.

I wonder if the day will come
(As it will to everyone)
When my receipts
say something sick of me.
I wonder if that day will ring me free.

Entree

Through lyre does liar be,

Through fires desire sees.

The dire dyer sires Sires

Wired criers on amplifiers.

Pious pyres burn entire

Totaled tires tire liars.

Though denier I hire thee,

Build higher, mire apologies.

I Knew Him, Mr. Pickles

This eulogy for a stranger, oh Pickles!

Swore I off this day that folds in coats

of warmly minted bad breath.

It makes me cringe when hinges

of badly positioned internal rhymes

squeak like weak meat picnics!

Give me the veil, the tarnished toilet,

let me vanquish a generational hangover

and purge me of my dear

beloved cat

Mr. Pickles.

Oh, this finale for a midget!

It's small hands flailing like plastic bags

breakdancing in the wind.

How I wish for a new day

full of awful British accents

and a battalion of toast

to spread over my dear

beloved cat

Mr. Pickles.

Oh, this banana crouton catchphrase!

Peeing in the snow may write a name

but the mountain won't memorize the alphabet.

And every haiku

Has to be about nature

Extra points for death.

Oh, I knew him, Mr. Pickles!

I knew his butter knife shape

frozen, shameless, caught in a revolving

door of temptation.

RHUBARB! RHUBARB! RHUBARB!

13th and Mill Alley

I see insane individuals marching through desert streets arm in arm

and an envious chord is struck inside, in that midnight moment.

They're bare foot and a summer breeze, and drunk, with no future

and no desire to dwell on things called past.

And a twelve, a twenty-two, a forty, or a handle

tucked tenderly under arms as an orchestra of metropolitan sirens cue the waltz Matilda,

and they dance under sunny streetlamps and concrete dance floors.

Back-rooms and backseats substituted with back-alleys where primal activity

lays them bare and ambiance ignored.

I'm floored.

Complete amazement and astonishment,

and exhale callousness of breaths in the sweetest summer moments

between two nothings going alley with no-ones and nothing to do.

Another life, calling me home. Meant for that Matilda melancholy,

for that reach of Rochester cackling the impotent tunes in tones and quarter notes.

Wednesday youth preacher never thought of something so swell.

Sunday Priest sent them all to hell.

And no one knowing all the while that they are the freest of the free

in a land that waves that flag with constant fervor.

They are heroes. They are more than us, and somehow less.

We stomp them under our boots, but they will never die.

Or if die they must, they'll die with a whiskey warmth

that shames all other deaths.

They know nothing of neuroses, and nothing of evil.

They only know now and how they feel and what they need,

and if they have to scrounge to get it,

we are not so distant relatives.

Ashamed and not interested in risking being caught a voyeur,

I crawl back to my car, where the key slips into the ignition

with self-indulgent ease.
This machine is better situated for the coming life than I.

Though different than me, and feeling like the last human, I stand

erect and find no solace and nothing hoped for in other world

or this one.

No inner light, and no outer demands have satisfied this primal urge.

The primal urge of procreation much like any other,

rests less on sex than on want for knowing future folk.

And where am I, and who shall I be today, and what,
and what tomorrow?

In doctrine of America, I steep like tea-bag and it tells me I am ready,

ready to be drank and drunk. Ready for the rough and tumble real world,

ready for the next if horns do play and I'm called by shallow desert grave.

We are America, and America is unreal,yet we are somehow real.

And none can tell any other that his life is wrong. But wrong is what I feel

living this life of right. This life of mine, because I've never caught it by the

horns but it has gorged me and gunned me down and there's no medic in the world

to heal the sick

as Jesus might.

Jesus. What a church. What a man!

Was the son of god to be so poorly spent?

Was the sun supposed to be drowned by night?

Were ying and yang combined and found a third option

better than third rail of New York Subtrain system?

Who is what is where?

Where is what is who?

I'm speaking nothings again and they feel more real than my

other times talking around campfire, or political circle,

or the round round edges of each finite day.  

Apocalyptic Lullaby

A note on the form: A pantoum is a series of quatrains; the second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next. This pattern continues for any number of stanzas, except for the final stanza, which differs in the repeating pattern.

Empty word echo sans the philosophical view

A protest in silence is reaching fever point

When the time comes we'll stop all the clocks

Let the air scoop sounds into our ears

A protest in silence is reaching fever point

Welcome to the end of the world, Mr. Catastrophe

Let the air scoop sounds into our ears

I miss you and I wish you were here

Welcome to the end of the world, Mr. Catastrophe

There's a fire in California, hurricane in the south

I miss you and I wish you were here

Baptisms by fire makes our birthmarks disappear

There's a fire in California, hurricane in the south

Anger into action is better than apathy into lethargy

Baptisms by fire make our birthmarks disappear

We don't need life, but it's a pretty big want

Anger into action is better than apathy into lethargy

When the time comes we'll stop all the clocks

We don't need life, but it's a pretty big want

Empty word echo sans the philosophical view.

Angry Young Man Generation

This is an Angry Young Man generation

with a capital "A" after we sold all our angst to the census taker

he counted our summer afternoons with a ruler

measured out childhood dreams in teaspoons

balanced the fact and the fiction and produced a miracle

of counter-counter revolutionary counterculture

that teased and cried and wrung its bloody corpse on the front steps of the White House.

Save me, Jesus! Save me from your followers!

Save me, Washington! Save me from your soldiers!

Save me, mother! Save me from this pill I choke down called the Angry Young Man Generation. It's bitter and big and I don't like its disguised machismo at all.

This is a Generation of Fire.

with a station at every corner, but they can't put out the inferno

in our hearts.

Don't you want me? Don't you need me? Don't you love me?

Just know I'd torch the libraries for you. I'd analyze and victimize so many people

I'd kill myself loving you. But what would I achieve?

You are cold, you are old, you are so bold as to take these tapestries of time

Fold them up, put them in the closet.

You aren't watching when I do the cannonball.

You didn't call to talk. You called for the facts, ma'am.

You took advantage of me, and that's okay because at least I get to touch you.

Save me, Joanna! We loved your fiery hair!

Save me, Mary! He loves the way you move your hips!

Save me, cute girls! Save me from this world where fire lives in young girls eyes and is cut out by over-eager soccer dads with a paunch!

This is a Generation of Predictable Disasters

as the ice caps drown the sinners in Florida, in New York, in Los Angeles

Do you think God is laughing?

He's laughing at you. You slaughtered the animals,

you drove the sports car,

you cut down the trees and burned the rain forests,

You, Generation of the iPod, of the PC, of the Enemy being the Ally.

Generation of the pissed off, pissed-drunk, deadbeat geniuses.

No sympathy exists. We are all rubble in the pre-apocalyptic world.

So beat it against the wall!

Beat it, beat it, beat it!

Spray it's beautiful brain all over the room!

I want to see it die, I want to see it sing!

I want to bounce those complaints off ruined buildings,

Ask my grandmother about the last time she prayed

Oh Jesus, Jesus, stomp it into my skin!

So we can all bear the cross

of an Angry Young Man Generation.

Television

A box of noise that just can't wait

To fill your room and masturbate.

A Sonnet For John Wayne Gacy, Jr.

Long since the smell of corpses lingered close

and bodies reeked underneath floorboards kept

left him clutching their little bodies close,

hoping for sun-kissed dreams as they slept.

How long will the basement crawl space digest

teenage remains wrought in suburban dread?

I wonder whether hope writhed in his chest

or died, alone, with adolescent dead.

What society lets go of young souls

before they could prove their worth as men?

What broken beast in the dark of night stole

the morning song of the blissful house wren?

Did he kiss their lips to make his youth last,

weeping as men do, draped in their past?

Lines Composed Over the American Midwest

I do so desperately inquire

on the nature of this desire

to defang an airline transmission

with my music-box imposition.

I shall watch the plane burst into flames,

curling around the check-in desk names,

as the rhythm goes unabated

into foreign skies inundated.

And we will crash into the ocean

as the melody's soothing lotion

moistens the skin of old men asleep

with their battle scar secrets to keep.

No land will cushion the plastic seat

or the metal bar laid down for feet.

No God will sweep His heavenly hand

down to cradle us over His land,

He'll let us plummet to the abyss

where the wet bodies of our sins kiss

every forehead with a savage grace

and sweetly, softly, our fingers lace.

uncle perry thoughts merry-go-rounded in my mind on idle thursday walk

The young don't get it and the old so squinty and blind, can't see nothin not more than fifty feet off--walking time-bombs of would-ashouldas, coulda-didn'ts denting the hood of the rusted, busted antique Chevy in back-yard. The company men come by saying "Chevy kill grass," and there it was, couched in dissimulation of profiteers whose truth is always steeped in sweeted euphemism. "Grass blades like children must treat!" Then state inspector men eyeing and prying. Take samples. Send off lab. Test levels--law-book consulting and fine-damage measuring, calculating dollars in oil residue granules--never letting up.

So there it is: company men or state inspector, men so large with briefcase large to stuff you in and smiles. Standing on top of each other in room, ueseless flesh sacks sucking up so, so much oxygen. Ain't hardly none left 'tween the two of 'em. Standing in life room where hung Johnny's picture sits tire swing and Tracy-garbed graduation gown nailed. Hung up by Whiskey Wendesday housewife, little figures gently drunk and Chopin, and the fondling nail. Sweet potpourri of ancient epoch emanating through the place.

Company men eyes-painted railroad get all locomotive on childhood street. "Beat up first then beat down doors," say silky man from far of desk with pen and law and night. Bulldozing down front porch toddler-banana-mural and Nancy Linder, whose Lemon Meringue could make you sing while waltzing down the lion's throat. "Buldoze whole enterprise," they say. Hack with hatchet men every tree whose limbs you'd ever groped. "Bulldoze, bulldoze! Then lay the steal."

Work

Dan got fired a week after he gave his 2 week notice. I always liked his eyes. They were some mix of gold dust and coffee. They matched the dirt under his nails. Maybe manly maybe not. I liked Dan. Two days before I watched him shrug his shoulders and purse his lips and turn and walk away we talked about beating the system and fighting the man - we were on our 30 minute lunch break. Today reminds me of that conversation. I'm at my station, I'm looking into space. I'm dreaming. I woke up to my alarm. I've got the bastard set up so that I actually have to get out of bed to hit the snooze. After three four five six times exposing myself to the cold for only 6 minutes of bedspread it ceases to be worth it - and then I fall to the shower often at 4:45 in the morning.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I hate my job.
I'm at work. My supervisor can't get enough of me today. Maybe someday she'll get big enough balls to follow through with her threats, the cunt, and actually fire me. Apparently in this world we live by a system of points-write-ups-breaks-lunches-fast-food-I hate all of it.
I'm at lunch again. Fast food. Slow brain. This place is everything not good and I crave it. Hanker for it. Lust after it like Meth if I lived on the other side of the bridge. Like food if I lived on the other side of the world. Like sun if I lived in the North. Like shade if I lived in the South. As much as I call out against fast food and devil in a taco I dread leaving this place. I dread sliding my metal chair with rips in the vinyl seat across the tile floor, first established in 1985 you can tell by the pink striping, pulling away from my solitary table in the corner facing the busy road, throwing my inappropriately large amount of garbage for one single person, single meal, single serving, away and going back to work. It's back to the rat race. Once the saga of a twenty minute lunch time is over - because it's five minutes of walking and five minutes of clocking in - I am here. I am here in my department. I am looking at the my work, piled in front of me. I am dreaming.

Ode to the Beats

Get over the Beats? How could I? Like child,

I gaze up to their cielo heights.

Some days I don't get out of bed at all,

just throw on history vinyl and listen to

Roaring jack out on some road or rail,

screaming nancy-wild to the emptiness

as I slink down these solitary residential streets,

a dim glow emanating in the bellies of houses

stoutly situated on this holographic earth—

this hollow, graphic earth.

Rough these days in America,

Tough these days in America.

When things get tough the tough get stuck.

It's hard these days to make enough green

To stay out of red.

But Beats. Oh Beats! How they had each other

and had each other,

how they clutched and cleaved,

whole groups of people

battling, trying to live beyond the bake.

Today, no reality; today nothing real, nothing concrete

except world and chest.

Foaming and infoamation with no human translation—

it's just non-things speaking nothings

to (no)bodies.

I sit here bow-legged in my morning gown, some

Silk curiosity, imported, she says, from Italy, she says.

 

Me here with stone in heart from that true blue pie in the sky
Moon in your back pocket and head on the curb
Sadness that drives this drunken madness

And I hang my summer hair out the windows of

this camino mind.

No one knows no one knows Nobody no more.