Writing

My shirt is crusted over with meals of the past
and my dirty hands are clutching fro one more broken bone

I want a meal of light
But I can’t believe it could be served

It’s just as bitter as it seems
Can’t be surprised by a meal that never tries

grab my rusted spoon and scream,
“Nothing’s as good as it seems!”

My plates an empty hole,
eating my sarcasserole.

Dig in and don’t hold back
Spit on life ’till it attacks
Break through the good to find the bad
Stay satisfied with what I wish I had.

Humble pie, sour grapes, spilt milk and gutless chicken.
Swallow teeth and mud, and smile in the blood.

Dearly beloved

we are gathered here to fuck and die.
All us sisters and brothers
Our sins pure and man and woman made.

The page is plain.

Your rulers, you, have deceived you, your rulers.
It’s not who you are.
It’s not what you did.
It’s who you know.

In the Biblical sense.

What a friend we had in Jesus
nailed to some tree in Galilee
and bearing fruits of seedless fruits,
straits swum by straights seeking to birth before they drown,
dykes of bloody dykes with fingers stuck in each other,
to hold back
raging floods of damns,
the hole damn nation, a void dead,
floating, besotted, on some strange bedrock of hell
and high water.

But his story hasn’t ended.
The power of their need requires a place to hang our
heads.

Perhaps life and death are equal, but we’re on the winning side.
And we like it.

Nothing says it like flowers. Flowers are dead. Killed in the flush
of their bloom. Alive only to be given in death. In given, their purpose all
the more of life.

As our cells fuck, as give to each other to make more life. As we touch our
shells together, and know briefly, far beneath words, that there is someone else
outside. As we trade our breaths, beating on our necks, trading our tongues, exploring
the plumbing.

And a cross stands revealed, as but another canvas. Stroke and brush. And then it hangs about
our sweet pulsing necks, albatross or treasure.

Making both the sweeter, your gods, your terror, life and pleasure.

A way to hold it in.

He was big. And good-natured. And violent.
Big veins feeding his thick neck. His shoulders
sagged slightly, but not from weariness.
From years of leaning in and swinging hard.

He invited me onto his team,
for a game of pool. We talked between shots.
I played, fascinated. I made sure to
play just slightly better than him.

He said,
“How long’d it take to do that to your hair?”

I gave him the short story. Seven years. He
ran his hands over his cop’s haircut. He
was definitely no cop though. His hands
were weathered, callused, permanent dirty.
From decades of manual labor. Nice
slacks, shoes, and a hundred-dollar sweater.

“I could never do that,” he said. “That’s what’s
wrong with me.”

“What?”

“It’s too easy to grab,
Your hair. In a fight.” He demonstrated.

“I always think about that,” he said, and
sighed. “I’m too paranoid.” He sipped his beer.
I didn’t think it necessarily
that. I wanted to know about him. His
childhood. His job. Was he just born, designed
to fight? (and others just to think? spin thoughts,
until they loom so fine they fade, or feed
back into themselves…but sometimes knitting
useful things…or fighting…)

I was wary.
To ask opens to action. Under walls.
Either hesitation, or opening
too deep. It might either reveal, or cause,
my fear. And show insulting weakness to
this open, violent stranger.

I wanted to look into his eyes. For
longer than the urban millisecond.
Only eyes can’t hide in skin. Soul windows.

We played more pool. I took aim. “You asshole!”
he bellowed, laughing. “We’re not stripes!” and
grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt. I knocked
the 8-ball in, but hit it twice and scratched.

We lost. No one was hurt.

We all shook hands good night. He said, “Be safe.”

Now that you’re dead,

I don’t need to see your eyes
looking-glass remains of once a home for dreams
I throw stones

You still smile
lie
change the subject
and light up.

As if the slow death of your lungs
could kill you quicker
As if the flame could warm you.

The less you feel, the less you hurt.

Your heart is gone
Your soul is gone
Your blood slowly replaced with crystals
suspended in solution

And your mind is screaming
As it beats itself against the cage

I can see it, sometimes, cutting through your clouded eyes.

But
Now that you’re dead
I don’t need to ever see your eyes
again.

Fuck off, O Starbucks
Fuck off, O Starbucks
with your brand-name colon fuel
homogenized from third-world beans
go build a haven for the craven
light and simple, like your demographics
Just go do yourself, O Nike
With your deity name
and your $100 price
for the name of black savior Jordan
stamped on the leather
made by off-whites in some Indo-Asian purgatory
bought by ghetto kids with things to prove,
that you sold them on,
that can’t be proven by buying:
their own worth
That c-note is thirty pieces.

Go blow your own logo
and stop shooting it all over my mind.

Take your useless website,
and roll it around in your sterile dot-come.

And all of you poor lost once-creative deviants
betraying your own mutant roots
keeping the robots in the marketing hive alive –

All of you can just eat my stinking ass.

It’s unfamiliar taste will strike you.
You’ll chew on it like a new idea
from some as-yet unplundered,
once-viable now-doomed subculture
You’ll powder it and perfume it
but no matter how you try
there is no demographic
baffled you will retreat to the whiteboard
make diagrams, hold focus groups
taste-test my ass against Jennifer Lopez’s
but you can’t figure it out
my ASS it will remain, triumphant.

Hey, I know all you really want to do is
market-share our auras
and trademark joy
and figure out the demographics
of dancing spirits

You work towards a glorious future ™
where we’ll be born in already advertattooed skin
to amortize the original sin
of lacking pre-paid brand-name souls

But at least for now,
without fear of copyright infringement
not that that would ever stop me
I can tell you to FUCK OFF
off of my world
off of my face
and away from my
precious
remaining
time.

Light slips in quietly
so as not to startle
The night has been fought off
And a sky all the colors of war, becomes at peace.

A candle’s lit in a corner of the workshop
where they build another day.

Curtains move lightly with the pulse of the wind
You should be sleeping
But the moment has drawn you to the dawn

more than the power of the ages, more than just the
flower of the sages thoughts.

Moments like this were seen before there were eyes to see it.

It throbs with electric quiet.

Clouds do slow and dazing dances
Half light playing off their arms

As sun rises to take the stage
And you do as well
To build another day.

Passing judgment
in passing.
inadmissible evidence.

divided
mutated
closed and crying eyes
striking in the dark
the closer to my heart
the easier to hit.
I’m scared to grow
the light hurts
let me
never
get another scar

let me
never
make
another mistake

let me
just
keep dreaming

insert angst here
and more here if we feel like it
there’s only me,
no one else has ever felt so bad.

and it’s not like they care unless
they’re forced to listen
right?

you’d be the same way too
if you weren’t so much better

alone in a 3-ring circus of friends
feeling like a bear surrounded by
wolves and ready to strike

eat animal or vegetable,
whatever strikes a fancy
go kill the nearest creature or
just scratch back on a tree
or

just bear it

are you listening?
I hear you’re planning to come to california
you can visit my island
if you abide by a few simple rules.

1) you can not be camera shy
2) you must like juice
4) you must let go of any preconceived concretized notions of how we do
things out here
z) you must be willing to get wet

when you arrive you must do the following:
float your chest cavity along the water until it feels hollowed out clean
and ready to fill with sensation
eat raw avocados sprinkled with nutritional yeast and call them french
fries
wrinkle your nose and sneeze out the east coast
gulp down the vast Coriolis-swirled martini that should be awaiting you
frond the milkdrop and make it coo
take a nighttime flying journey over this city in a clawfoot tub
blink in the spun sugar which melts on your eyelashes or sparkles on a
chilly day
and let it color your steps sublime
while our boots cement my deja vu to the sidewalk.

easy, huh?

Response to Proposed East Coast Deprogramming:

test subject ‘James’, a known liberal, agrees with the following conditions:

loopy tai chi- style hippie techno dancing
momentary disorientation may occur while subject undergoes his aura graft
subject J may retain a preconceived notion that Californians dislike
preconceived notions

Subject admits to liking Juice more than that sugary carbonated cancer
is quite willing and able to kiss the ocean,
Floating in clawfoot bathtubs is nice,
J also likes velvet-coated dragons with good stereo systems.
Deja voodoo is also a good option.

However, any glass of port in a storm.

Lets move forward with this on the same page, there’s no “fuckin’ A” in team.

Regards,
Smog-enshrouded future slate

They dance around in their cages, and sidle up to the bars.
Their currency, a turn at the reins, for a sweet, brief caress of the ego.

Welcome in. Drink deep, and take a look around.

There’s a man I don’t like to know I know.
He’ll kick your cat across the room
just to see the wondrous texture of flying fur

and when you ask why Fluffy’s coughing,
he’ll compliment your drapes.

He’s not the only kind of dancer.
But I can’t deny he’s in here.
Somewhere.

He lives to play the games you don’t like to think you love
And he doesn’t just play them because they work.

He’ll dump a fuck in you as easy as draining a soft heart of a
swollen hope;

trade your money for a lie just to see you wake up broke.

wrap your heart around his fingers,
and snap them just for fun.

Money, souls, and promises, just another set of songs,
to dance around.

Only one of many inside here,
yelling “let me out! I’d know just what to do.”
Or just smiling smugly, jaunty hand dangling a cigarette
between the go-go bars.

Just one of many alternating egos, only one shows at a time;
one, at any moment, every day for the rest of our time,
in this finite flesh.