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.

Quantum leap

It only is what I want it to be. It's a new world and a different novel to read. Different than the one I was born into. Different than the one I've been writing for you. Each word created a moment and each moment created the aggravation and devastation - I'll live another life; the one I've given myself is past it's prime a culmination full of faux glamour and facades of beauty painted over grime.

What was that?

I do not like my president past president mother's president father's president. You're not my president. To whom does this live belong? I'm sitting on my back porch watching the grass grow and you still haven't answered me. If you don't like it, why don't you leave? I sort of figured you would do me the honour of getting the fuck out.

I keep looking at the countdown, thinking it should be tomorrow, tonight, right now - Let's go. I'm ready. Let's strap on our dancing shoes and skip over different dimensions and timelines and find that house again where we used to lay in bed together smoking post coital cigarettes with an ashtray between us and warm flat beers scattered on my floor. Let's find that moment again in which I thought, "Hey, I'm actually digging this, right now, this life, right now, this company, right here."

Let me be forward now, obtuse and brash; Darling, you do not exist and never have. That life was never lived, that moment never came to pass. I'm a quantum mechanic but I can't get my ship to fly. my ship, my brain, my thoughts all together melded into one(with a bit of rye) boiling pot that is boiling over and foaming at the eyes. Synapses and relapses, addictions and afflictions, junkies and flunkies - I'm tired now. I don't want this life anymore. I don't want to be here and see them and you and my president(not my president) my father(not my dad) fuck it all over up up and away.

Time Travelling

**



3a.m. Tuesday was always a significant event for me. I put out my cigarette and watched the last tendrils of smoke get swept away by the constantly squeaking never relieving rickety ceiling fan. It was going to be another long night, I thought, as I meticulously cracked each knuckle on both hands and slouched back down to my compbook god bless them no matter how old they are or how yellow the pages become they never fail to capture my thoughts. I was another broke-ass in another small town, trying to plot the ways I would make it big by getting jobs at circuit city at starbucks at FedEx at the bank at the carwash and the fuckin 7-11 asking if they would like a conveniance card because God knows it's fuckin conveniant. It was high time I made some big decisions, I thought.

Tomorrow I will have soy in my latte.

Inexplicably I couldn't understand why I was stuck in this rut, the endless hours of insomnia followed by weeks of emotional distress and freeze dried oven pizzas bought half price because the packaging was damaged. I searched as diligently as a lazy minded fool could and I found nothing - all in vain - my attempts of speechless futility were definite signs of unhappiness. So I started the change, I started the revolt against the norm I started to plan and plot against 3a.m. bland coffee in the morning and fancy lattes at lunch, against time against place against poor and rich and lazy and motivated. I was going to start the new and overtake the old.

Tomorrow I will take the train into town.

Again I was proposed the same droning question the train brought no relief and the soy no better health. Each day was just one more step closer to a revolution in my life to a change to a new place to start and a new time to exist with girlfriends and boyfriends and no names and big names I was going to change. I could feel my bones morphing and the air smelled different I knew it was different something had shifted something was brought anew in the air in time and in the now of another 3a.m. There was something I had been driving towards and it was Friday the 31st of January the coldest month in the coldest year in the coldest life I'd ever lived and I could feel something start to grow in side of me. It escaped through my lips and brought explosion as I heard myself speak out in the the night but now I can't remember what I said. I know it was something beautiful something I should have written down and something that I know I will regret not hearing until the day I die when maybe, just maybe, Death will whisper it back into my ear and everything will all come back to me.

Tomorrow I will have pastrami on rye.

I sat determined hunched over my coffee table. I could smell garbage and old smoke and inexpensive deordorant and generic smelling expensive scent. It came to me today that although I had been living here for so long I'd never had anyone at my apartment no one had walked up the rickety stairs on the backside of the building and opened the door that creaked slightly on it's frame and no one had sat in my small living room with a cup of tea coffee or just water without ice. No had joined me on the fire escape to refuse to break the rules of no-smoking inside please it makes the halls smell worse than the dirty diapers, mildew, old sweat and bad asian cooking, bless Mrs. Chan's soul. The idea of change pounded in my mind it had been grasping with icy cold fingers at my solar plexus and it was bringing new life into my body. I could break the air with my voice or just the cloud of smoke that always kept me company in my living room during my ever lasting incredibly repetative nights that I noticed only, that I only noticed at 3a.m. I knew change was coming, started to forget my past the past moments past memories past minutes passing away. last week's lunch was completely gone out of my head, yesterdays news must not have been important because the newspaper no longer existed and my memories of reading the far and distant headlines had all but escaped my drifting mind.

Tomorrow I will clean my apartment.

I looked around my sorted environment and realized that it'd been along time since I've seen clean floors and that I missed being able to cook in my kitchen and walk around in my bedroom and the guitar was setting nicely against my closet where inside the clothes smelled nice and they were hanging stoutly along the rail and there was nothing to be afraid of when I opened the bathroom door. I knew that change was coming I could smell it still the air was still different and now the ashtray in my living room was going to stay empty and the can on the fire escape would fill duly and the plants would stop wilting and everything would be fresh and I would see the day as something to be conqured, not feared and it was time that I put an end to 3a.m.

Tomorrow I will change everything.

I slept in for work and I suppose the last straw had never come so late too late too close to call too late to call in and feign a cough feign sickness while the children of the planet starved there I was calling in sick to work. I woke in the morning I ransacked my apartment simply destroyed the apartment and took it back down to dirty clean is not good clean is bad clean is disorganized and futile in my cleaning rush I misplaced my shoes glasses jacket lighter cigarettes and more random neccessities of life and I sat hunched over my coffee table at 3a.m. in the familiar mess I could smell the air and something was tricking my mind. The ashtray sitting on my coffee table was overflowing and one of the plants fell over but I hadnt bothered to clean it up and I'd ignored my calls right after I'd started to answer them and I knew it seemed like a waste but my friends would always be there in case I needed them, even if I did ignore their calls when they needed me. I had never felt better in my life. yes change was still coming I was still breathing and living a revolution but maybe (just maybe) it did not have to begin with me. Change was change but I'd never felt more comfortable using yesterdays clothes as a pillow and sitting for five minutes staring at a plate in the kitchen trying to guess what that is and if its okay to just scrape it off and keep using the dirty plate.

Tomorrow I will sleep in.

I have made the day change and I have made change in the day. I have brought revolutions to cities and I have shakent he very foundations of lives. I have played God and I have been the Devil. I have brought life and I have taken the last breaths from the lips of the most pathetic dying men. It is time now that I tell you who I am.


I am another broke-ass living in a smalltown. I am ahuman being with regrets and apologies and pride and humilty. I am the average normal human being with average normal eccentricities. I can never drink a full glass of water and I can never read the sports section of the newspaper and it's high time it's 3a.m. and you've also learned to change and break out and unlock the chains that have been forever weighing you down. it is time to shatter the cement block that holds your feet and holds you down at the bottom of the sea the bottom of this job this life and this universe.

It is time to spark change.




**Disclaimer: This was written years ago while, once again, staying up late.

Environmentalism

Tears of pride well up in the corners of my Dad’s eyes when he recounts how he shook Richard Nixon’s hand in the year 19-something-something. My Dad was there when “that great man” stepped off his plane at LAX. My father was the head of the Young Republicans at Santa Monica Junior High. He’s a man who has always believed that economic development should take precedence over environmental concerns. He would later vote for Reagan, who conceived the “economic man," a man who marries patriotism to contribution to the GDP.
 

He voted for the Bushes, both of them, every time.  He’ll occasionally make subtle snips at environmentalists:
 

“I think tree-huggers have the wrong idea. They don’t realize that if we don’t make sacrifices, people are going to be out of work, starving. Some of them care more about trees than people. And a lot of them--especially in a Liberal place like eugene--actually worship the trees and grass instead of the God that made them!"
 

But you should have seen the look in his eyes when dozers and hardhat contractors made a grocery store of our favorite field, or how his cheeks dampened when a housing development replaced the Frisbee-Golf-Sunday meadow.
 

I think back and I’m three again. It’s early in the morning and my Dad straps me to the back seat of his rust-ridden Bianchi to do the paper route he had until Fall Term at the university starts up. After the route we ride and ride. We take river trails. He stops every so often and breathes air intentionally, silently taking in the scene, looking up at the old oak trees in the morning glow. He unbuckles me and we take our shoes off, sit on the bank, and dip our feet in the cool rushing water of the Willamette.
 

We ride.
 

Every so often my Dad points at something, saying “Look Stevie, a blimp!”
 

“A Dragonfly!”
 

“A Dalmatian!”
 

An anything!

On some evenings my dad holds me in his arms; the sky is streaked all purple and pink and wispy yellow clouds hang by string from the ceiling.
 

“Look at that Stevie,” my dad whispers. He walks inside and grabs his old Nikon camera, adjusts the exposure, and marries the image to film.

As his views became less vague and more defined, he lost that wonder and respect and naturalistic impulse. Years later, he’s full of excuses and shoddy justifications for across the board clear-cutting and deregulating pollution.
 

When I find myself at odds with him, patience waning, I close my eyes and carefully unwrap this antique memory:
 

A young college boy, scared shitless in the world, who took solace in your shade and on your banks, who once knew that the most important things in the world happen in early morning hours before men rise.

Scatting Destruction Psycho-Babble Blues

Exactly! yes.

it's that cholic choke

slipping through the vents

creeping over warped and crooked wood,

slinking through cracks,

waits at breathing bedside.

The chill.

Walk inside, close the door.

A slow turn and the world explodes--atom bombs,

phones off the hook, blaring alarm clocks

caught off guard.

I gather up the family of voices in my head.

"Duck and cover," morning fire billowing into mushroom-clouds later in the day,

cool down to a glowing Armageddon by Tuesday evening,

98% chance of Nagasaki.

After-shock echoes are the worst.

Clang!

Exploding world of skull,

eyes turn lava.

"All is lost." That's a lie. Surely, not everything,

yes, everything, and don't call me Shirley.

The whole foundation,

this time those achy-breaky bastards

blew the chicken coop to smithereens!

Two colored tacks on the wall and one small string connector,

less than two inches long,

not even 200 miles and almost always home.

And you thought you had legs to run.

A flash.

Zeus sits drunk and prostrate and sidelined

in a tumbledown chariot,

salivating,

giggling at incredulous cameras.

Watery blinking of teary-eyed history--still blind,

vision creeps back like spent camels from Mecca journeys.

Cadavered cities and corpsed towns. Fire lakes

and melted fish.

History is elliptical.

History, I don't understand.

History looks angry through a peephole.

I envy gods and women, salt shakers and

all life-makers.

All creation,

from taking a shit to a barroom glow and

late night strangering.

Spin stories spin. Make my web grow strong.

Tie up my characters, my parents, my brothers

to Salem stakes,

lash into the blowing smoke,

strike hard.

Faultless inheritance and a million albatross whispers hiding—

I'm in no mood to seek tonight.

Not me, not me, not me, no.

Skeleton eyes and simpering,

eyes bore me, burn me, roast me, turn me,

saber tooth oblivion in this corner on all fours growling,

slobbering, vindictive and venerable

and wrong about this one, friend.

Dead-fucking-wrong.

I'm in the other corner with

shoes many sizes small,

I'd like to, because they tell me it'd be nice and

take one for the team and all that.

And it would be, I guess.

Tea would be nice, too, Sleep.

I'm hot and tired, feet calloused, crowded, squashed.

One more mile is just too goddamn far tonight.

Two is out of the question, but I’ll try to walk a mile.

A mile for each and every undone victim,

a million balls of yarn,

lapping at the small of my back,

biting out fleshy Achilles-quarters,

hedging me in.

Shout: "Sin! Sin! Sin!"

Witch hunt,

endless and quenchless.

Tangled.

Think coffee cup and

silver curiousity

from Italy. Imported.

I boil the grog and fill me with that

bitter blackness.

I deserve it. Yes, I know I deserve it.

It's only fair, really.

[title below]

Red Man and White Man Dance Disco on the Street Corner near the National
Mall under the Watchful Eye of Crazy Horse's Statue

Across the intersection the white man says, "Walk," as the red hand
cautions perpendicular: "Wait." The red hand warns, "wait," and another
white "walk." The cycle repeats, people crossing on white command, stopping
chilly-nervous at the specter of red-man hands.

White men all over town, all over the country-all over the goddamn world
for all I know-guarding gates of progress, giving the wink-nod, the go-
ahead.

The red man's hand warns young tourist "Wait. Stop--please," talking mortal
danger, talking storm clouds and destruction, but he walks on,
not a future of halogen hallways and dizzy dormitories, a future of
concrete cubes or charts and graphs...
but the future of horns and sirens and white-walled hospitals.

Tuesday tourist walking with I-didn't-knowses and nobody-saw-it-comingses
tucked tight into the tattered back pocket of summer cut-offs, hems sewn
with thread and love and raw-wrinkled hands. He walks.

The carousel car sees green.
Green means go; green means a lot more.

Van screeches, spotting evil kismet, fatal error, swerves off course.
Determined to slow, determined to stop as the high-school-coulda-been-
president-or-business-exec-or-philosopher-or-financial-analyst-or-shut-the-
fuck-up-Martha-whatever-he-puts-his-goddamned-mind-to walks into
pieces. Two of them. Confetti halves twirling in air, landing on opposite
sides of German ingenuity and American steel.

The boy walks on, a ghost on stilts, tormented, damned to watch each blood-
red-coyote-custard warning and all the walking-onses and real-worldses and
the no-one-knewses.

He passes tar rivers and feathered beds, passes steak-knife towers and Tri-
tip skies, swallows all, choking, sputtering, passes the salt statue of a
wife outside city gates, looking back.

I wish death were like that.

Clouds clear. He fords across the river of ravenous night, eyes glued to
parched pavement, lumbering shamefully beneath the smile of a knowing moon.

leave the phone at house

A lonely phone pleasuring itself on a countertop and who am I to interrupt?
What am I to meddle in machine affairs? The space-beam omniscients that govern them may do as they please--and so will we.
I'll leave the phone at house tonight.

I'm off again to meet you in the park, to unload basket bread and sit sating on the south bank of Siletz. No bells and whistles. No flashing cursors. No cocks or cunts fucking silly in sidebar brothels, no millionth visitor or serpent soothsaying serendipity clerking for a click.
I'll leave the phone at house tonight.

When with you, under, near you, in you, there will only be the secret sound of bodies and brook nearby. There will only be our cooing, cawing, mooing, pawing. No updating or error code upsets, no blinking breasts or Beta-version beds, just a warm cave with a welcome space and candlelight--a place you've kindly let me stay the night.
I'll leave the phone at house tonight.


The voice of fathers, sisters, mothers, friends and brothers, bosses and others caught, dying in the drainpipes of the deep. No cataclysm communique shouting cover Sunday shift. No old lost lover texting drunk from cold concrete or frigid foyer. No nows or hurrys, obligations or juries, or coming-overs preaching their pop songs from jacket pocket.
I'll leave the phone at house tonight.

No tricky trojans or hungry http, LCDs or license fees. No wandering stupid over Wednesday Wikipedia or chocolate-chip chains of choice adventures. No delicate dames or dirty domains can steal me from this rightness, this thisness.

So I'll leave the phone at house tonight to come
and find a home.

To Google Government

No, I don't want you to remember my password, thank you.

Nor do I wish you to rifle through my electric epistles

but I know that you do--at least when my babbling brain

thoughtlessly throws together certain strange constellations of words

with insidious connotations.

Words like: [section censored by compassionate comrades]

No, I don't want to stay signed in or logged in, thank you.

Nor do I wish to combine all accounts, but I'm sure you'd like that.

You try to hem me in, stuff all of me into a single suitcase.

I feel you sitting on me, wadding me up, cutting the threads of me

in your zipper's teeth.

There's no blood; I'm 100% white cotton.

No, I won't report suspicious correspondence, though I know that's frowned on.

Better ten than one, and you've a heinous track-record, friend.

I'll leave the recorder at home tonight and keep the forest spirits company,

the ones who need and deserve my homage. 

You deserve my hatred.

No, I don't want to catch the souls of friends in an address book, thanks.

                       (They do it willingly.)

Once their hearts were too large for your containers,

but your memory has increased exponentially

and ours has vanished, clicked away and clicking,

synchronized to the burgeoning of your dominion. 

It's the last inch; it's all I've got--

I won't let you hold me in the palm pilot of your hand!

My charge is almost out and your recent recall has made a criminal of me.

This battery is obsolete and 

I'm unable or unwilling to plug into your putrid power grid.

My parts are ancient now, must look like a primitive explosive.

Everywhere I go, the din of this dying cell unnerves you,

unnerves others, and begs askance of the proper authorities.

You'll be coming for me, yes, you'll be gunning for me
as I dance down Pinochet streets, the Penzoil pavement marked in blood.

You'll be out for me, literal or metaphorically.

Throw me in your black box or the bottom drawer or

corner carcel and leave me die.

It's the waiting that's the hardest part.