1

Spoiled Rich Girls

and

Gutter Punks:

Living off the fat of the land

Martin Leonard Freebase

2

Many thanks to many people:

Janet, Haley, Susan, Terry, Sarah, Joe, David, Craig, Lori, Stacy, Matt, Jerry, Glen, Jack,

Eddie, Johnny, Bubba, Tammy, Steve, Delbert, Amylou, Rob, Cliff, Sally, Dan, Mike, Vicki,

Ronald, Gene, Robert, Tom, Daisy, Frisky, Houston, Hanna, Miley, Tommy, Andy, Jae, Ed,

Mike2, Ronnie, Annie, Betsy, Lola, Allen, Jeffy, Ricky, Randy, Liney, David2, Pearl, Albert, Neil,

Charlie, Larry, Leonard, Earl, Todd, Bob, Melvin, Ty, Robbie, Jimmy, Channel, Mary, and many

thanks to all of the Spoiled Rich Girls and Gutter Punks.

© 2011 Martin Leonard Freebase

3

By the time you read this

I am not you

I never will be

My wings are broken

The polish has worn away

Never read your poems

They looked too small

They couldn’t hold me

I no longer extend my metaphors

They fall flat on the floor

The same as you

Where I keep you

My smile does not flash

Bones are brittle to the touch

I don’t worship the sycophant in you

I turn red when I am angry

4

My blood boils in tea kettles

I can’t hide my soul

No matter how hard I try

You always find me

Petals fall

I can’t forget

The failings

How you became the plague

I am not the universe

Stop trying to make me so

My pockets are empty

And I have nothing to give

No more glue

Your words don’t reach me

Our minds are not one

I have never asked for your forgiveness

5

And I don’t want you to stay

You can’t find your way

Under my skin

I have taken all of my shots

This is not your way

Not your season for desire

I am not your modernist tradition

Stop making me the box

That you hide in

I see you at the end of your tether

Dangling

Helpless

I like you that way

Counting the drops of blood

You are the influence of production

The hyper realization of the real

6

Which part you pick up on

Is a mystery

2010

I have outgrown your artificial limitations

Your logical extensions

I see past your lies

You claim the ownership

Of all factual knowledge

And ignore the systematized analysis

Born on a bad day

Tucked beneath a scream

Your wire-framed perfectionism

Coffin nails and butcher knives

The edges of forgiveness

Is beyond your reach

On the edge of the coffee table

Next to razor and mirror

Your reflection is a smear

Mixed with your tears

You are a fucking flat line

No more beeps

7

To entertain us

You want me to love

To always be there for you

Even when you know

I am the chill in your bones

The crawling up your spine

A venomous bite to the back of your neck

I am the madness that grips you

When you are alone

2010

Goodbye Lenin

All brothers and sisters

Aluminum foil

Red little pills

They are outcasts

Collecting them all

Into my arms

Holding them

Being them

Wanting to bleed like they do

Shoving all the little honors

8

Putting me in jail

For nothing

For being human

Falling for the shit

Loading my guns

And feeding the fires

Chuckling behind their backs

God knows how long

With caves beneath

A Japanese lady in reverse

She is under the gun

Moaning in the tangled

Consuming the rage

Another angry pain

As you rush to the finish

Your wish is to find salvation there

Fearing the alone

The time spent with self

You call the most horrible

It is when the demons come to pick at your bones

Just like your mother

It was here who initiated you

Into this world of corruption

Your world of feeling

9

That you keep both far and near

2010

She is learning about postmodernism

And writing poems about man’s fall

Puts her chips all on black

The redundancy of negativity

Seeps through the pores of her skin

Her first beach house

She wanted high upon a hill

To look over the turbulence

A physical reminder

Of existence

Saying hello to the ladies

As they pass by

Baskets full of turpitude

Her hopes have stopped being mine

A long time ago

I marvel as she fathoms

Multiple realities

Built by your Betty Crocker cookbook

At opposite ends of the cord

Lacing your feelings with an opportunistic spine

10

And wrap you in leather

We have both seen the wicked street ballet

Only I stood for the ovation

2010

This poem was previously published in Burning Wood.

What I learned in School

It is impossible

For us to know

This thing you call natural law

In our nakedness, we have

Learned subjectivity

And became a slave to ideology

Being trained to work in the factory

You ring the bell

And never question

The sweetness of the tone

In order to understand you

We have to make reference to the herd

The interpreter has no place in the interpretation

This is where you beat us over the head

With your meritocracy

11

We are all equal

Equally oppressed

By the mind numbing tone

Of your bell

Ring it louder

Let the world hear

How well you have become a soldier

For the corporate cause

Unstable foundations

See how you bleed red, white, and blue

You never ask the questions

That needs answers

You keep running the race

That can’t be won

Because to win

Would mean you have admitted to defeat

And to do that

Would mean the end of your world

2010

12

Al l the artifacts were gathered

By the blue and green suits

They placed them in a paper bag

It was labeled evidence

They were fooled by your trickery

Seeing the hopeless in your bloodstained carpets

Thinking god was close by

If they only knew

How you manufactured your secrets

Snuffed out cigarettes

Old women with nightstand logistics

Pushing them from spot to spot

A close call with a crocodile

In the middle of your voodoo

You could see it on their faces

Wanting tit for tat

Snorting steam right in front of me

Wild eyes and whimsical thoughts

13

Coming home with the rolling papers

And a line in the mud

Knowing more about tragedy

Than we wanted

2010

Lost innocence

In numbed wings

An absence of ways

The path has been disconnected

And we have all forgotten

The odd protection of species being

Offering only faded bones

For the echoes of lovers

That once drank in your lifeblood

Now they are ghosts

With the shackles of pain

Diseased like hidden plastic

14

That fades in past glories

Strumming on your heart strings

With a bottle of red wine

A wilderness of nuances

Between us and them all

That place of bleached conformity

The way you want it to read

All the old paragraphs

The force of your feelings

Grow stronger overnight

As your nakedness overwhelms you

Makes you so small

Once again

Drowning in it all

One drink at a time

2010

15

A black cat

Beneath the leaf

Calcutta

Yet the last stanza

And a love for the opening

Calm as bright emotion

By chance

Hitting me more often

Visceral

No ideas about the love

How the balance is placed

Against your throat

How you reside in every line

Thinking you can know

The immersion of your veins

A fissure of skeletons

Beautifully done

A perfect hold

Upon our hearts

Once more a bird

And glares arrogant

The earth will be covered

With broken shallows

16

And the daughter of alone

Seeking a mundane ecstatic

Forcing the seeing

No one ever

Sits past dusk

With stark visitations

2010

Funhouse Fundamentalism

A super hero of grace

Crazed dancing vision

Hanging on every word

Looking for an opportunity

Nothing left but the stretch

To be broken

And waiting for the light to go out

With a bottle of whiskey

Conceiving another lie

Light of earth

Dies a dismal death

The relics and rituals of war

17

Entwined with your suitcases

I participate in your funhouse

You drag me along

With a pea coat and a pilot’s scarf

Dismantling the romantic chapel

To think instead of feel

I could tell you were somewhere else

Far from the chalky lines

Preferring an argument to silence

The god’s head lying on the floor

Powerless to penetrate the darkness

To chisel away the stone

Dubuque 2010

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18

A Cross Swarming With Ants

Transgressing the boundaries

Golden tongues

Hisses and spits

They have become lame and predictable

The shock wears off so easily now

In a different light

Jaded by the cultural forte

It is nubile

A genre of blurred lines

Living the legend

Blaring loudly is the car horn

Love that flees in the midst

Toot, toot

Out of control

How long for the one trick pony?

Past her and past the universe

Trying to defend your utopian politics

Tears no longer shed

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All politics are the same

A crowded ghostly recollection

Tits flopping

The elite suppressing the poor

To those who jump and spin

Both are ugly and senseless

Beneath the Temple of Anubis

Climb high and cut

Turn me around

And snickered

Still haunted by the gas chambers

Written with invisible ink

You mix your beliefs with a hint of strychnine

Your gutter logic

Drifting by the window

Saving up your banana peels

Thinking yourself an orange

Huge lungs and little knowledge

Substantiating your chromosomal changes

Filling in your back story

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Hoping for a better day

How you got to the here and now

It’s all about survival and space

Moisture soaked and reeking

No everlasting hills I see

Of idiocy

Dubuque 2010

Go Tell Momma

I’d tell my woman

Up in the air

Biting like Satan

Dance before me grotesque

You have a clue

Catching Christ with your permutations

Racing through the graveyard

Not mystery, but romance

Of demented labors

Out once again

Back against the day

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Laughing despite ourselves

Washing it away

The stains of seven lives

When we go away

To mend the fences

Sandwiched with sadness

Between two pieces of bread

A fragile homily

Unnecessary elaborate deceptions

Made to appease the saints

You have made them in the halls of your mind

And now they rule over you

Disembodied as they are

But so real against your actions

They greet you with icy silence

Two hands upon your breast

Beating out your daily bread

Driven to prove them wrong

To be transformed and not simply a mirror

Dubuque 2010

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The myth of self

But still, we will see

Destination

Down, down unlucky

From downtown women

Hard behinds

She was going to school

I forget the reasons

Rationality and her cage

The bird died long ago

Ina rainstorm

It overwhelmed us

Just me and the cat

To lose and pretend

Linger in your hands

Locked inside without a key

Losing myself

Our ideals do not dictate

Over with

Seduction

That thins you do with your lips

That intricate weave of the tongue

The warmth expanding

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Seeking new visions

Curiosities flow

To fall through

When I was a small boy

Marion, IL

One Percent

Welcome to my itchy world

Your luck with revolutions

And bleed for the light

Send it right through

Begging

My hands are up

Counting

As the wheel turns

Suppressing this moment

I close my eyes and fabricate

Inventing new worlds

No empathy in these veins

The bottle is empty

Scribbling the principle

On the wall

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Being manipulated

Fornicated

Baptized in this misery

And deception

Still sending my dream

To you

To all of you

A hit from the eternal flame

2010

She’s in a Fifth

All over the floor

As you stand against the wall

Bare whirls out

With cracked veins

If freedom is anywhere

When thoughts wander

It spills out

Naked as midnight

Not the sad story we read in the papers

Nothing left to burn

Rub the genie

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Run the hellish howls

Soon in opposite directions

Endurable spirit

The stars shine

And then you remember

They don’t believe in your magic

At the edge of this life

By aliens

I watched

The wise wizard

You oppose yourself

You, you

Of capitalism

You gave me something I couldn’t return

Their feet in Kansas

Selling their soul for luxury

As the TV wonders

About politics and life

Arguments over the economy

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I will sing while you croak

I will dance over your grave

We are characters in a play

Thinking of doing me wrong

Carved by your steak knife

Kill them all

Knocking me down

Lies to kid themselves

Like the engine of memory

Meaningless with hot tongs

Wrists red

Like lost earrings

Teeth marks of reality

March fearless death

Under the needle

Will digest them all

I will forget you

(submitted to Killpoet)

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Counting my fingers and toes

Watching the sun shine over us all

So warm and forgiving

She came to stand at the table

As we feel the ground dissolving

There is a price to be paid, she says

A most desperate price

To be paid with a haunting smile

Along unknown steps

All these voices saying different things

And baby, baby, I’ll show you the way

Cover them with whispers

Interwoven sounds and shapes

Put them down along the path

Working backwards in time

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As below our bleeding feet

To twaddle in the unfortunate

The angels groove upon our misfortune

They cannot explain their actions

Disfigured shapes

Getting at the spirit of things

The farm wife

Producing copies of self

Driven under by her instinct

North to unknown seasons

Marking each step

With fear and trepidation

That song that never left your lips

No one could look human

The hallowed rent

Serving as point of departure

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Paid for by a life in the streets

Concealing the penetration

They join us

With the needs of a baneful America

As we call fire down from heaven

(submitted to killpoet)

Finding Clues in the Want Ads: the love perfect symmetry

And war is the battle cry

You misinterpreting all my signals

Sometimes up-sized as nothing

Clothing hope in metaphor

Dimensions of expected scorn

Discursive and disjointed

Dying comfortably in your arms

For their sense of peace

From each other

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I am desolate in the between spaces

It can be seen so self-evident and clearly

Learn to accept this as you must

Little comfort while sinking

Not shrinking in deception

On the horns of in justice

Portals of damnation seeking your soul

Seated as a dreamer in the middle of the theater

Send the son to the town with another gun

Shooting dice against the white picket fences

Slightly off kilter and this is true

The act’s discordant result still reels you in

To me

Tremors desired

Twisted and formed by human hands

And now

Cares upon the backs of nothing

1969 Waterloo, Iowa

(submitted to Killpoet)

Project 2 31

31

Saturday Night

A strange moving substance

Whiskey bottle full of worms

Analyzing and making inferences

And in doubt you stand there

And rock and roll is what I’m born to be

As she hides her smile

Asked me a question that I can’t remember

Barren and desolate face

Boxed in with fright

Could I see the world?

Maybe, with your eyes

Cursed by my crazy ways

So dangerous to the unsuspecting

Those who take me for granted

Who underestimate,

The fire in my breast

The summer of my love

Dipping in the net

And you, coming out of the darkness

Holding your shoes

Let loose the laughter

In the face of self-made

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Chains

Oozing out of my side

Like Sinatra

His whispers turned on

Without sin and evil

Slashed open

And paying to remember

1982 Dearborn, Mi

(posted on poetfreak)

She said, “Meet you around the corner.”

And a bulletin board bore,

the photographs were of her face

she was peaceful with a dirty mouth.

And shoves the burglar through the window

and the wind howls through your bones,

atomic bomb.

Cool as chaos,

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on a Sunday morning

with discipline,

disowned satisfaction.

Etched into the oak

for another,

insatiable as the belly

it is your madness.

Maybe in another life

an old woman sculptured,

produced by cutting and folding,

that exists behind the smoky haze.

Shadows stand so tall,

there I was trying to ghetto

those sparkles like jaded beaks,

tiny flickers in a sea of light.

To mete the worm whose molten rage,

to their testicles, in this case you suggest

to turn around and face the fireplace

and turn many a corner,

while the people clap and cheer.

Project 2 34

34

Weeping at the romance,

yes, there is a price

your dirty corpse dragged through the streets

by those fat and heavy garters.

(posted on action poetry)

Becoming like a Caesar Salad

We’ve them, each and every one,

charging and the little,

clinging to my light,

on with the frittered indulgences

with god’s fat stick in my warm hand.

Each mule with a kick

and high flying hands

all my actions are directed

and I know

to take advantage.

Project 2 35

35

They talk about your crazy eyes

no thinking minds, she wrote

I found it all a little too much

with no, no, no sunshine.

Soul hungered sucking

like a fucking wind,

tenaciously lodged

the human.

There is no garden,

only good and evil.

Yes, they must exist

on this thing we call home

where the children dance

on the end of your shirtsleeves.

(posted on poetfreak)

Alone in London and thinking of you

Beat up old wingtips,

emotional undercutting,

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36

and a seasoned bayonet.

“I am going to sing for you

in another incarnation.”

It wills you freely

looking up from the darkness

naked as does.

Never plagued,

ready for the movie

and pages thrown into the fire.

As you sneak up from behind me,

sold for a fleeting chance

the worry of exact mechanisms.

Wanting us to have the right answer

we all hang from the wire

from fists of laughter.

(posted on facebook)

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Manning the Barricades for some un-named deity

All the human events,

they are short of being

and the Messenger from somewhere else

still bets on the enduring.

Demands that big money always shines,

screaming dusk like the mad Scribner

that left you alone to jostle and twist

flattened by the reality of recompense.

The puffiness of your mind

inflates to enormous pretentions.

I was late and I was sorry

it wasn’t anything you said

although your words last forever

they still ring in my ears.

Molded details in the fabric of my mind

the molten metal pools

like an octopus grabbing hold of the unknown,

nowhere to turn

Project 2 38

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to find your forgiveness.

But then, perhaps we will once again venture

into the gloom

to spark

and steam out of forgotten fissures.

Another something to name,

tangible abodes,

they howled on their knees

with sad and gray faces.

(posted on action poetry)

Down to the last, cities

Heartless chops away,

blowing life through

no to me again,

I know we both

falling slower.

Follow anger, years rush

they can’t see

Project 2 39

39

in the dream

imprisoned within

nibbling.

Opulent paradise lost

from your mouth

Babel, you said

rare un-plucked.

Turn the same

of migration,

would another

be quite the same?

(posted on all poetry)

Drowning in my pills

Too,

again,

like the dead,

as the beast looks into us

at the dawn of revolution.

Project 2 40

40

A part of this world, and

the coarse dilettante

feeling stupid and contagious.

Must run,

if only you had opened the door

infinite and limitless

layer upon layer

letting loose the wild

just outside my reach.

Measured in dimes

between influence

and the rooms full of people

serving food and drinks.

Seeing the last

growing darkness

into a life

torn from

when shallow peters out.

(posted on poetfreak)

Project 2 41

41

Online Artifacts

Voiceless angels

in your infection

wishing to stay.

But, only kicking off

heaven and earth

so out of reach.

We are nearly animals,

that voice has been heard

once upon an ocean liner

down the perpetual line

away at your crutch.

Trying to fill that emptiness again,

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42

the curse of a brave soldier

and rust stain on your soul.

Outside my window,

I regret.

(posted on poetfreak)

Bitter glitter

Many, many roads

that were traveled

to find new gods.

A wishful smile,

open to heaven

as between your legs.

Drape this over

my unnecessary shoulders

inherit the whys and wherefores.

It escapes,

to the second floor

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stacking the furniture against the door.

Killing the mist,

like a pack of wolves,

unfulfilled.

Projecting this dream,

shine on still,

in human form.

The wind standing up

as a detached

and eliminated one.

All night in the submarine

with wide opened eyes,

in spite of everything

listening for the ping.

(posted on facebook)

Highly Tactile

In a familiar roadside bar,

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44

a long way down the road

past the three headed doll.

That smile that suggests that,

all is perishable

and absolute.

It is wild to even think about it,

but, we do and

manifold witnesses can attest

our right to run right through.

Like it once did to us, on many an occasion

from the ashtray to the toilet,

wings as dark as gargoyle smiles.

For the lost, it was always for the lost

it could never be any different,

swallowed roundabout and pissed down the leg.

At least in this lifetime, this universe of darkness

time we spend bullshitting each other

is time that is lost, my only friend.

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45

Nothing left for the scavengers to pick away

and nothing left to marvel at

her ass was as smooth as an axis.

I will always remember her wagging tail

blown over clamping hard down on

with both hands of determination

she could never be an illusion.

(posted on action poetry)

Alone and Strange

Legs as the roots of trees

labyrinth,

name your mask

summing digits.

Everything without you

you climb up the mountain

scorched, scorched

and unbelieving.

Burning bush

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46

speaks no more

to me.

Come down and break your stones,

water from the rock

flows eternal

as the sheep are betrayed.

Howl upon your walls

bottomless,

every single marvel

being the last.

A heart was not

spirit.

Hands of discover

a hallway to your questions

bigger than Mrs. Robinson.

Is the attack

illusion of force

and lights the way.

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47

Twenty years in the gray fields

everywhere music

boil it all down

for the real thing,

a truth not welcome.

(posted on poetfreak)

When the Sun Goes Down

Fierce here minutes

groping for the physical,

building homes behind walls

and this further.

But some days hide

atrocities of compassion,

dramaturgical degeneration

embracing the circle.

No wit, no wisdom

intense puzzlement

into the conversation

mauling the day’s details

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48

lucky to have met you.

The morning veil is waving

those for truth

and investigative reporters,

the multiplicities of our possible lives

an emanating break.

Working for body and soul,

coiled to anything

ecstasy.

(posted on poetfreak)

Not a Game

Grandfather night is sleeping,

with his jigsaw virtue.

And so little living,

comes between the dust.

Being ripped apart

for cheap trinkets.

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49

Do that thing

you do so well,

inverting the claim.

Newborn wiping,

claws at your face.

Hometown alleys,

living the tornado.

It has been changed

into a forever heart

like a stone

around your neck.

Asking for answers,

this time nothing,

nothing about it

in my old Ford pickup.

Wanted to stay

beneath the radar.

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50

This is how we reveal the clues

transformation pounces,

vodka doesn’t.

In this flesh-soaked world

mooning for a window,

to hang my hope out of

of self,

a final idea.

(posted on facebook)

Standing Looking Away

A Chronic disease is life,

I have told you this before.

Many times a Hater of bombs,

alone you sleep in the glass cluttered doorway

as a tarsus with tarnished horns.

Carry it down to the bowels of incapacity

being what it is, an invisible cord

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51

coffin nails, they gather around you.

Crush the serpent, his little wiggling head

digging for the other side.

Disdain for the boulevards

flowing on like time,

my narrow perspective

hanging dead on the fence.

Higher than heaven

I dream like fallen snow

and feel the vultures circling

in barbed plumes.

It was too perfect,

of tinfoil, and

and full of plentitude,

dark existence.

To run for the shadows

watching the legs move

as she stood on the ladder

with tingles

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52

and toes.

(posted on poetfreak)

The Devil’s Music Started and We all Danced a Jig

It was a double dose

Of forgotten civilization

Running from the indestructible world

It stood before me

At precise intervals

I remember your moment well

Demise ends the ignorance

And you

Down on the alter

Legs spread

Eaten by flames

Just like Sister Mary

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53

No way to cast my look

I see you still

Lovely when

Haunted

On the lonely highway

Down to the flux

Shaking your head

Wanting to save my soul

The guilt of swift execution

And the slumber of darkness waits

The weak and mediocre

Those who catch babbles

Distributing communist pamphlets

Truly Jehovah

An emptiness that swallows it all

In your sake of freedom

(posted on action poetry)

Project 2 54

54

Broken together like so many fortune cookies

But not your might and power

Carrying the replicators inside

Chew your meat for you, pass it back and forth

Her bronze head dangles

Here with sunshine

I am a long-legged martini

I am alive

You have a clue

Ignorance by the cruelty

Indebted and so grateful

Like the hate of a dog

Never sharp

Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout

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55

Seeking the body

Selling lies in the New Yorker

Standing in the iron trenches

The bleeder ink

Bolting abhorrer

Magneto world

And the stupid desperate things you do

Too blind to see the truth

I would pray for you, if only I could believe

In something that closes the distance

But, cause is not a god

It is a circumstance of random chance

We did not hear

When tripping was more than a metaphor

While it was playing, and of course

Quick as a cricket’s foot

And two plus two

Always becomes one

Yes, one

(posted on poetfreak)

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56

I bring my addictions out on Sundays

And disbelief

Modern assault

Back and back

To the glass man

Between the flame and inside

Bounces back

As he climbs up your tree

A smile, a heartfelt smile

Wasted on the tocks

Crossing the over

Crushed on Nina Simone

She dropped

Forlorn fingers

In a rowboat of pavement

Vibrations, making their way

Across the room to you

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57

A man dies with a bullet in his head

His sin was …

No one wants to lie in the sun

Roll on

As your Rome burns

So little time to adjust my affairs

Stepping out

The first scar

Wandering blade

(posted on facebook)

I leave for Spain in the morning

A voice

Wishing more like you

For this gift, I feel

And I see

The ashen dream of the muse

It crashes against me

Crouching like the cat

When the endings come

I do a numeral

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58

And hang so in the flame

With a moist charity

Isolation and alienation

And this thing you call clarity

Killing me

Kings of the future, no more

Living inside your life force

Your words making those devils

They are nowhere

Nourished death

Maynard says this is necessary

Occasionally they find it when they dig enough

Standing in the controversy

Succeeded face and tongue

Of my flesh

(posted on facebook)

The Uncertainty of Morals

Picture postcards

Few expressive words

On a piece

Turn the wheel

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59

It turns so hard

As the rage is silenced

At the doorstep

The blood of the lamb

Drips onto my toes

Boils in the belly

The shit down

From LA

Terms with reality

Dipped naked into the blood

Especially when chased down

Noisy as the crowd

In a bad way

In the name of a forgotten poet

Liberty was her name

She was a wild animal

Just as I left her

Flirting wither destiny

Never a memory

And of course no angel

She strips me of everything

No moral compass

Taking in the full drama

The curls of warning

Project 2 60

60

Tucked below the breastplate

Then quick as a wink

The dogs turn upon me

To myself

We are all pieces of the same thing

Go on and on and on and on

Where I do not exist

With closed eyes at the dance

Longing for transmutation

(posted on facebook)

Is this what you call freedom?

All the old time favorites

Always until the end

Walking into the sun

At the moon

tenacity

need, lustful craving

More than an animal

Edge

Finality is your conformity

Green as the morning dew

Looking defeated

Project 2 61

61

I am here and I am there

Iced and lucky

I n the end

To the minus sign

Like eggs in a carton

Listening to the river’s song

Magnified underneath tomorrow

No merry song in their hearts

No world of my own

Out over our heads

That fits you

Watching the small

You are something

Good to eat a thousand years

The dollar and one-eyed shrew

A crawling torment

Hammer together a different game

Across the floor

On her hands and knees

Chasing the cockroaches away

Each kiss

A curious cat

Gazing down upon your evil deeds

Your deeds standing like a station

Forget eternity, I curse

I cannot leave

My legs are frozen

As I stare at her

Project 2 62

62

Trying to get rid

and frozen

and alive

On the verge of disco ring

Never discarding you and me

Onto the trolley

Digital along

Standing around the keg

The ground, her anger, her country

The nation’s strange fright

This calling of wills

To destroy

And absolutely sink

The fingers of evidence

The weakness of an instant

(posted on facebook)

Undermined by your version of reality

Let’s have a real fire

In a multi-causal world

Locked in front of me

Longing for the robe of immortality

And mouthing the blues

Project 2 63

63

Next to your still-born dream

There is no solution

At flamboyant soothing

As I pry open your mouth

Setting the apartment on fire

Silkworms working their magic

That gave you meaning

The shore, the horizon

The slight flicker

The small tinkling whisper

Tossed into the foam

Where the ignorant rule

Your cup of tea has grown cold and

Tasteless

(posted on facebook)

Mob rule

Human pressure

After the rain

It grabs you

Listen to the angel headed whispers

Betrayed by your recollection

Burned as a druid

Project 2 64

64

Choose not to look away

It’s all we know

Life so high

Slips in bedside you

Coiled to the automatic

Proclaiming the one night shifts

Pulling off the door

Subclasses and army fatigues

The carnal hose of the soul

Losing someone

Tottering and coming after

(posted on facebook)

You Could Never Say No

I know I get you reeling

Keeping it all in

As the next day

Heading into the storm

Consumer as the artist

For the phantasmal

Fragmentation

From someplace else

Project 2 65

65

I want to hear you say yes

In the grass

Of our complexity

My body stable, unlucky thin

No divine interventions

Onto the floor

Once again

Seeking artistic love, unconditional

Spun by a demented devil

That is the color

I see in my dreams

Your smile

Chirping for the sullen

The wheel of lust

To this final purpose

Watching me move

Yes, I know

(posted on facebook)

You, Me, and the River

You never had the taste

Betaking the seal

Running down these monuments

Project 2 66

66

Of flesh and deeper night

Escape not eternity

Ever smaller

Down to the river

I take you there

To wash you in the water

Holding you down

Behind the eyes of twisted birth

Obscure instincts, opiates and narcotics

Oh that eye

It sees the point of influence

Ready for the flight

Standing in a trance

They are gone

To stand upon impoverished soil

Turning with it

You search with your own hemisphere

1962 at the World’s fair

(posted on facebook)

On the days I hate you

Project 2 67

67

About the love of venom

Answers given

But, there is desire

Feeling like a tormented cry

Fluid grateful specter

Giving you the message

A rock above the tides

I would if I could

Ferocious artifacts

Leaving the solid place

Marinated in the would be

No matter when

Nothingness permeates the threat

The empty wasteland of nothing

The innocence of her laugh

It goes hand and hand

Violating society’s boundaries

Watching the sparks fly

From rooftop to rooftop

When I touch your lips

With big Wall Street hands

1967 on a bus to Albuquerque

(posted on facebook)

Project 2 68

68

Dual Shared his Hash

Another delimit

Destructive attachment

Wobbly and sick

Joining us in Marrakech

For the weekend

Naked in the Kasbah

Huddled in the corners

Admiring my marvelous torso

To the end of the tether

It became clear that there was no point

Old shit again

In the morning of our draining hopes

She was in tears

Once she made up her mind

Project 2 69

69

Bored through with the wind

Calling out my name

This raging memory drools

Bodies immortal

For some girls

Working on the stitch

In your kiss

It was warm

And outgripping repentance

Like the wandering blind man

Little turnips of time

Luscious deceptive reason

Of the lights

Slowly choked from our lives

Slung across our shoulders

Burning fires of many words

There is more to your theory

Throw them in

Like two massive black holes

Wanting the regular

Where moving doesn’t know

Project 2 70

70

With big blue eyes

And a dusty bottom

From the cry of savage angels

1976 on a park bench at Lafayette park

(posted on f acebook)

Anarchist Intelligences

The beauty of the past

The individual from

The pirate nation

Pretending to be karma kings

Kamikaze kings

Speaking in dysfunction tongues

A friendly second

To forget everything

On your cocaine binge

Pretending to be a neither heart

Sleep tonight in your freedom

The book of revolution

The terrain of meaning

Breathing in the darkness

Project 2 71

71

Worms falling of

Of our bright dreams of disillusion

Among the anarchists

Disappeared in the fog

As the curtains burn

Play your fiddle

While I dance a jig

A celebration

Of new tomorrows

1973 somewhere in California

(posted on facebook)

Her Beads have altered my consciousness

Altered sensations

Another hungry wolf

As she sits atop the rocking horse

Between word and meaning

Done in by the wicked and diabolical

Every prayer is a bullet

Project 2 72

72

Extract the last once of profit

From every believer

They are fixed before the cold

Forget next week while we all burn

Heartless as a molecule

Into the blazing furnace

It makes me feel so free

To know that you have no respect

Putting yourself on the firing line

Shades, shoes, and suntan lotion

She frowns loosely

Holding on to something wrong

Spending the night, once more

That color I do remember

As it trickled out your mouth

Like the thread of a song

Tough and invincible

Waiting for the universe

Great suicidal dramas

1977 in St. Paul Minnesota

(posted on facebook)

Project 2 73

73

Watched the End on your Black and White Television Set

(While smoking our last cigarette)

Civilization self-destructs

It disappears

A little more each and every day

Clenched fists rising higher

Eternal solitude

Flickering in my mouth

I am words dissolving

I am a prisoner

I can’t be what I’m not

Just like the pharaoh

Project 2 74

74

Light, peppery, enchanting

Like the song of tiny birds

Like the windswept stones

Melting down the corruptness

On this edge

Her measurements

Floating above the room

As she climbs up on the banister

Churning lips to lips

You are my outside

Such is the way

The garden gates flung open

The trumpet sounds

And there is always a dollar

You live inside me

Tucked safely away

Project 2 75

75

Through the storms and hurricanes

Upstairs in our small room

With only a space heater

We live inside each other

No more worry for the worn

This smolder is pure joy

And we share

As you browse my gallery

1975 after the Kiss Concert

(posted on poetfreak)

You sold Everything to Join the Circus

Burning with

Bursting and mangled

Escapes out

Teaching us

Project 2 76

76

Utter contempt

Hands nailed out

It’s stinking

Little creature

Maneuvering creatures

Page after page

Morbid desires

Raised up

Spare not

Their rank abilities

Straight factory

Magic talisman

Indifferent wind

World of images

Not home

Small distances

Unfolding lie

Unleashed on me

We drove

Project 2 77

77

Rocky roads

Summertime 1978

(posted on poetfreak)

Kicking and Screaming

Handkerchiefs wave

Over my head

Hopeful constitution

A philosopher’s rant

And build we must

From the cover of light

Braving

I am sure of your altered position

In the hollow of flesh

No matter how you sweeten

A pound is still a pound

Of struggling over remembrances

You scorn the crime

Simple and obnoxious

Like the smell of aroma

Staccato splattered wind

Project 2 78

78

The alienated man stands on the street smoking

He is the ambassador of loss

And the darkness hides

His reasons for disbelief

But, they are still true

To refuse a guest

Walking in another’s footprints

We are both

With thunder and lightning

Expendable

1996 Shawnee National forest

(posted on poetfreak)

Your Cup Full of Tea

I bent you

Like my needle

Eating your fingers

Listening to Jimmy Reed

Project 2 79

79

While you paint the human tragedy

Your strokes burning into me

Like your fluorescent eyes

Searching deep inside my soul

As you blend my colors

Wanting to touch upon something more

And I gave it to you freely

Like an apocryphal reading

Complete with angels and demons

Living so close to Lafayette street

So much more than flesh fulfilled desire

Speaking the delta blues

Dusting my broom

Keef’s on the Victorian binge

My body is your canvas

And you turn me into an abstraction

Adjusting your smock

Your fingers through the war

Push them in groups of four

Incomplete flesh upon the wall

It hangs there like smoldering liquid

It consumes a lifetime

Like a dream or movie

But, not dreaming

Project 2 80

80

Blowing cold, then hot

Peeking into your bag

Saying no to the matchmaker

To me with loyal passion

That wonderful little dress

The point of one

Becomes two

As you paint me into your life

I am a vivid color

That you never saw before

Difficulty is in the freedom

Turning the juice into wine

And you waited for me

To return from the bowels of the earth

The trapped animal freed

I couldn’t see past my erection than

Immortal as the land

And you rumbled and predicted

As they fluttered about you

Your terrible look

That ignites my groove

1972 in a boat on Lake Minnetonka

(posted on poetfreak)

Project 2 81

81

Measuring Joint Movement

You see more

Than the lips

Under the feet of trouble

With the tapping toe

Dipped in perfection

With a mask on my mind

I speak your name

Along the floor and down the hall

With a drink in my hand

A plan hatches inside

Never accepting the eviction

Aristotle’s lament

Against the fence

Beyond the normal limits

Both are love and peace

Convicted by his lack of tears

Stardust from another life

Project 2 82

82

Happy to be untrue

Moving hands

Options calculated

Sitting on thoughts

Snapping bones

So deeply fundamental

As the frost melts to brilliance

Under the door

As we wear our dangerousness

And watch it al burn down

1997 Lawrence, NJ

(posted on poetfreak)

Biochemistry of Aging

Dynamo machinery

Big holes

All have been added together

Project 2 83

83

Blind hope planted

Bound to the exile

Chasing your demons

A bountiful reward

Grabbing me and shaking me

Grasping for the howl

Freedom is like that

But only for the brave

Those who ignore the polite

Let no one in

Your corridors

Neither man nor creation

And not remorse

Alert to the darkness

One fractured thumb

2004 in a cab on Lenox Drive

(posted on poetfreak)

Project 2 84

84

You fondle the Bystanders

To the unknown

Wakes from slumber

The beast growls

With the voice of a flood

Tired bones interpret

All gather moss

The seriousness of libel and slander

They enter from unknown places

Today my love

While somewhere else

Intoxication

Ask me my love

I’m beyond the ordained limits

Burning a hole in my pocket

Digging up the long forgotten

Fanfares and banners

Held high on poles

Fenris in the garden

Fondles my thoughts

Half drunk

Project 2 85

85

Half to Satan

How they both wear their fedoras

I am feeding you olives and turn back upon myself

I would end it all

And rot like bees

Laid vertically across

And pushing the worms

Never on this road

Never craving the evil

No one can find me

Old bones past

The windows and shadows

To the papers

Naked in the wind

Storing up the few

The days of missing

Sucking up the pain

This dead planet still spins

The stars

They see you

2007 at the Mall of America

(posted on poetfreak)

Project 2 86

86

The Strange Death of the Shrew

On the great high wire

Alive and not through

We got a piece

And hit across the sky

Attacking with fervor

And burning the luminous

Falling forever through the darkness

The cause of indifferent lifetimes

It changed the whole

Almost invisible in your heart

Beating

Into bloody waters, into holes

Lost spells

Sitting an watching

Now a grizzled heaven and hell

Wait till the starship

Flees across your goodbyes

To all the beautiful people

Leaning into the sinking ground

It can’t hold the pressure

Project 2 87

87

Of change

This alien structure

Inherited by those

Who howl inside

To care is like trying

Transfigured

Longing made in newness

Unfolding

Even without a poison apple

Christmas Eve 1996

(posted on poetfreak)

Unbearable lightness

All beginnings have an end

All spit and polish

As you walk through green cracks

Calling up the ashes

Project 2 88

88

Children of the broken man

Enhancing the condition

He sad lonely soul

Kept throwing the monster through the window

Sitting next to the professor

Her beer in a fancy glass

The becoming again beckons

Of absolute desire

It stands before us

The writing on the wall

And the bells rings

She salivates like a dog

Thieves and scoundrels

Shouting for the head of the king

Keeping all the clippings

Six dozen roses sent

Armageddon, it’s gotten

The day before Easter, 2005 at a strip bar in East Dubuque

(posted on poetfreak)

The Park

Project 2 89

89

At the wall

Square

Stands a statue

A burning ledge of bone

Broken into the moment

Freedom is not your choosing

You might ask

If I’m in a forgiving mood

You are the fabled flea

Trying to escape your master

By trains and transcendental thoughts

While I chop the world into bits

To burn upon your fires

Keeping you warm

Leave them in the fields

The poppy fields

Harvesting my heroin

Letting all the demons out

Of drug addicts and dreams

And yes, your favorite poets

That is you

Collecting snapshots

The city slickers built the great illusion

And you happily buy their shit

Project 2 90

90

The resistance has been beaten out

This is the universe

I made it with my own two hands

It could have been better

But I was drunk at the time

I spilled my seed onto this earth

This thing you call home

Tried so hard to find it

We never find it

Valuable to the point of suffocation

At the Dixie hotel

Distended heart

It once throbbed for you

Now it lies dead in a bowl

1984 Tulsa, Ok

(posted on facebook)

The Girl from Espanola

Cast your nets

Flicker abnormal span

Absolute too long

Project 2 91

91

Humble modern dead

Of a human fit for life

There is none

I know the pill is hard to swallow

Setting this dream free

Stacking themselves

Stopping for nothing

In her bathing suit

Outside themselves

Wading in knee deep

Consider the quality

With your gas can and lighter

Lied again about the nature

Neither beast nor man

A hopeless task

Into the universal it

1985 Dallas, TX

(posted on facebook)

Sister Morphine

Going through the motions

Bitter regret

Project 2 92

92

Curls of razor wire

Taking away

With the little twitch

Gnostic decimals

I am singing

Signaling others

To come and drink

From the spout

By box cutter

Infinity will bring her friends

She never ever sleeps

To bust bringing your sunshine

In a small green bottle

Power is ticking in slow motion

And words seem garbled

Into you

There is focus to your fire

Take the devil

He moves his lips

But, we don’t listen to him any more

No longer a force

More a fiction

To coax the money from your hand

And give it to the unworthy

Project 2 93

93

Kansas City 2010

(posted on poetfreak)

On a rainy day in Memphis

Counting all the piercings

Endless

Failure feeds my aching pain

For driving blindfolded

To your execution

Holding each other’s hand

I need an easy friend

Like a couple of snakes

Look up and see

Misread interpretations

Hieroglyphics

No one wants to consider

Remember your panties

Serrated blade

The loaves and the fishes

The biggest dog

It was a paradox

Project 2 94

94

Flying into the face

A stroke that hit the mark

Pyrotechnics

Once we had it down

It’s what you get

Even the high rollers

Betting on your misfortunes

Through the mill one more time

Belonging to yesterday

She belongs

The obvious odd one out

Put in the background

The only shot

A sense of doom

Running out your stockings

Worming its way in

To your heart

And soul

Full of potential

For two and a half years

Then you are gone

2008 Memphis, TN

(posted on poetfreak)

Project 2 95

95

Driving on a hit of acid

Adrift in the night sky

New adventures bring

Below divinity

Over confident

Cursed by the intangible

Charismatic deeper

Her smile suggests

A viper’s den

In a voice that made me tremble

Filtered through

Numbed too much

On your thinking

Like a maniac

Of white shirts

One for another

Sneaked out lifting

There are differences

And we both lie

Wondering how to behave

You want to hear

Your legs

Project 2 96

96

1979 East Waterloo High School

(posted on facebook)

Greatness as a ball of grease

Do not strive to be great

Greatness is a sickness

It rots away your moral fiber

Makes you a slave to the status

Seek to be small

And insignificant

Like a stone

Against the wall

Slowly pushing your way through

Exposing the weakness

Over time

Refusing to calculate

To seek the hedonistic principle

Project 2 97

97

No more profit

It is better to give it away

Forcing your back against the wall

The threat of violence

Works so well

Competing to give it all away

The imaginings

Dubuque 2008

(posted on facebook)

Impetus

Blew like suffering

I over with the heartless

Their limits are not my own

This is all deluded freedom

Project 2 98

98

Flowing and forgotten

How much you love

If you really were human

Then I could once again believe

In love

My anticipation

Of your fumbling confession

The words into the ear

Then you walk across the water

As if nothing ever happened

Just to hear you speak

Wanting a heart of enthusiasm

Peering into me

The madness of the mouth

We start with the body

And the animal

Mixing more soul than necessary

To amend for our past wrongs

Project 2 99

99

Scribbles of destiny

Placed onto my heart

They do not add up

Under the impetus of love

(posted on all poetry)

At the end of the bar

Silence in this heart

As lost inside

Brewing with the cast out memories

Reemerging all your suicide attempts

Unpredictable change, it fears you

Elemental rumors of meaning’s laments

You’re feeding on the no touching ground

Interpretive skies and how they rebuild you

From all the ashes in the little pile

Into the jumble and in the rooms out

Ever innocent as your favorite piece

Project 2 100

100

No reason to close on this platform

Removing and being unstuck

The wood and iron they are against

In their ghost and a quick glance

Another blue ghetto girl

Pumping like a monster

Coming in from the storm

Among the angelic horde

Putting your hands upon my face

Returning to my fate, again and a game

Another collection of skin

It hangs upon the bones of my nakedness

Under my eyes

The shadows of my soul

Out as it only can

Manufactured by a generation of secrets

In the walls of my feelings

Pulling myself out of your question

My names for your darkness

Calling out to you as a new found madness

Project 2 101

101

Confiscated by your bureaucracy

It is never sweet enough

Crawling out of the ruins

Talking with my bloody limbs

Into your sleeping womb

A periphery of my hemispheres

A blueprint of porous words

Selling your forgiveness tickets

We all want to see the show

Turning to the left sleeping dog

Mowing it under as siblings flinging mud

Ethics moving me away as a massive moving animal

Leading with my heart smashing daylight

Just to feel alive and finding it abandoned

(posted on poetfreak)

It’s a Full Moon

You are a great destroyer

Sitting on your island

Project 2 102

102

Always something you cannot see

Sniffing the exhausts of passing cars

Your concrete island

You still believe in czarist revolutions

Painting it black

It becomes difficult to tell them apart

You pet the head of rat named “Utopia”

You feed her drunken erections

Getting paid for your hallucinations

A political advisor

A periodic ritualized murderer

The darkness outside my body

Selling your blood to the zombies

Tabloid dreams, too dark to see

Waking screams on the parade route

What could you do?

She had more pills than money

And nothing but the blood

Throwing out one outrageous thesis after another

Inventing the distinction between reasonableness and rationality

Project 2 103

103

A hippyish performer of spiral dances

Is there anything else?

Cue the tambourines

It’s a little bit too late now

You think you are an inventor

Collecting followers

Smoking on strangers’ dreams

Placing your chips on economic collapse

Is it red or black?

Building your alternative anti-capitalist economy

Making pelts from vodka bottles

Cursing the internet

Misplacing your cigarettes

In someone else’s home

They won’t let you in

Even though you are empty handed

Smelling like an atrocity

Always an atrocity

(posted on Action Poetry)

Project 2 104

104

Wearing a shark hat sideways on my head

Even if we can’t see it

Still there is windswept wildfire

Moving faster and faster

Folded feeling floating past my window

Working against us and keeping time

I do think you fit this shoe

Tied to the pole and making us choose

Spilling into the streets

Like the little child

Chasing the wrong and the right

Crouching on your hands and knees

A burning general feeling

Comes over you

Remembered colors

Reaping and repeating, in the belly

Round lighted empty, if we were alive

Safe and sound, trapped in a cage

Saluted epics on fire

Project 2 105

105

Slay me with a waking dream

As I run through the labyrinth

Chasing the thieves, and you on top of me

Honeymoon flesh, tossing me like a fire ball

The magic was near, a few hundred feet above us

Coming closer and closer, only when I am with you

I could see the skin trembling, turning the rocks to ash

Tissue and tissue, wanting to be rendered

Setting down the refusal and concrete nouns

Trafficking in the screams of victims’ ejaculations

Vivid before my eyes, at the end of the beast

The walls seemed to be a live

An existence beyond my own

(posted on all poetry)

The Impact of Clusters

Almost attacked,

your hand upon my chest

proselytizing.

Project 2 106

106

Can’t get it right

the first time or

the next time.

Biting and wicked,

breathing in the piercings and drips

the third time is always a charm.

You are driving the bone

building worlds from my flesh

so delightfully dark.

Panting and heaving

trying to hold in back

for one minute more.

For time immortal

I would turn you immortal,

rough and tumble.

Head struggle plans

to be more like history

time and again.

Project 2 107

107

Placing god back into his corner

where all malcontents belong,

a wistful shoulder.

The guide to being,

what else to do?

(posted on facebook)

Hieroglyphics Pam

Call it

their trust in man

for some, we pull the plastic away

gunned down.

Hungry from the likes of fortune

I’m standing in your line

infinite power and blessed grace

jumping from brain to brain.

Let’s have a real fire,

Project 2 108

108

like some haggard saint

misfortunate skin welding

of five hundred years.

On this diadem

strangled million variations,

divine animal,

the preacher said it was quite a trick.

The smell of love,

they run in fear

to fuse together,

unholy prayers.

Where are my matches?

(posted on poetfreak)

Electronic Disharmony

In this digital age, another blind orifice

Project 2 109

109

of frequent un-expression

abbreviated and stunted

watch the flash and flicker.

Preferring immediate gratification

feeling disenfranchised

to touch

to feel

to live

it’s a gas.

Addicted to the viral world

turn on and tune out

it has such a new meaning

never before imagined.

Trying to stop a tsunami

instant gratification

wandering in the heart

at the intersection.

Standing in front of you

antiquated formula

a kind of intoxication

Project 2 110

110

it wants more.

Taking a limb

rigor and discipline

rotor blades

slicing and dicing.

Left to your own devices

between real world demands.

(posted on action poetry)

Exhaustive Fingers

Dumping the beat

Christ only knows

dazed with smiles.

Enjoined with irony

exposed

no longer the egg man.

Don’t remember exactly

it pours into my zone

modernity observer’s mind.

Project 2 111

111

No savior can take it from me

by the proportions

pulled back.

Rolled away

looking for what’s coming

a silent wasted chime.

Standing out in the rain

those spots of time

to be drown so deep.

Turning to the sausage king

twisting fate

into the machine.

Shivered saxophone cry

against my skin

and the zeal of industry.

(posted on all poetry)

She don’t Waltz anymore

Project 2 112

112

Trembling with a social disorder

ill-conceived dysfunction is anywhere I look

flowers thrown into the pits of fire.

I am hurting with a numbness inherited.

In the thousand boxes of jingles,

melting into all of your

favorite lies.

The parting veil still stands between us.

The plowman comes in the night,

like the thieves of your town.

No light in this street

to pretend on magic.

Trapped in the walls,

a different future

seeks both you and me.

(posted on facebook)

Sordid details

And from where I took exile

antiquated and worn

Project 2 113

113

finding a secondhand mink

dashing out intense.

Delayed is the striptease

everything with shut eyes

spiritual desolation

followers to a crusty idea.

From religion to rationality

from the back row with big lovers

my scars screaming

tossing large ideas,

like grenades.

Gored and dethroned

using the drink, of her

in darkness for miles

shattered words

in the flagged sky.

It all came out, and feeling nothing

on the fence, riding the bull

love is no more

the newspaper says,

Project 2 114

114

“no more enthusiastic eyes.”

Not lacking volume in the tickles

rendering the soul of a charmer

this side of the knife, blameless

as the phone rings

has become your home in my pants.

(posted on all poetry)

Misplaced Veneration

And things we do well as lost luggage

in this artificial world with the first touch.

All is manifestation and happy ways

wanting me to keep the door open

clouded and distorted, against the sky.

Nowhere to score as the world is turned off,

a choice I would not have chosen saying something.

From my mouth to yours passing through the mind

sitting there with stoned eyes

mundane and lateral meaning anything.

Of ludicrous, faking my erection

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one more silver dollar to love.

To the fire inside me, moving train

the hallway lights flicker

she is of the crow of my gaze.

The mouth of the wicked world fallen brown

an old dream inside me quivering without background.

Stolen reed in the Sunday’s yellow

blowing out the smoke

wanting to assert self with genitals.

You waggle war crashed into yourself

like only you can in other people’s lives.

A cowboy in a borrowed hat with a dead pan gaze

a snow covered table

with a torn Knicks t-shirt and high stakes.

The dilapidated trailer in the woods

fence post waving running up your leg.

A useless mailbox with only one right answer

with a joint behind my ear

my torn sleeve of the girl inside.

Each band if mice cheating themselves

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in solid isolation and does not tremble.

On with the silence of the highway

watching my throat

four points of time human stain.

(posted on action poetry)

Clouds Reworking Your Mind

As strong as unleashed piece of dead skin

awaken the elders happening to limbo,

they are sure to take the goat in the snow

to all that belongs to the eternity of seven blackbirds.

Holding close to the heart the songs from the cave

the blood red pomegranate drips reflexive

holding it as something precious as to marketing

it doesn’t matter why you cry cold sabers.

It is why I sing to these lonely hills, old albatross

it is for the dying laughing to herself,

made for nightmares and men’s silence.

Nothing sanctified in this dirt hole,

hatred edged like your dull blade.

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Someone to lose the minimalist hero

and the melted resistance of potato salad.

The cold stiff lies upon the slab, sissy pants

the colors come and go if you don’t go crazy,

without true words under sleep of an octopus.

They are green with the secret somewhere else,

this hell is our making, the new fire of mortals

to ride the wire paling tricks.

The shores a little wider as the pieces of bone

agreeing with the threat of capitalism.

(submitted to gloom cupboard)

Joining Me in mental masturbation

The devil with a song

to orbit around my heart.

An insatiable itch

with heaven’s questions.

Empty your heart of its moral dream

in the hot morning obsession.

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The dirt never goes away

between my fingers.

Standing at the end of the horizon

longing eternally for you.

Straddling across my lap

the world around me is dissolving.

Falling apart

to the bull inside you.

Typical and primal

with those spiked boots.

To follow a leg

I lift up my eyes

.

All sleek with wildness

and my love.

But, I can’t see you every night

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defined by complications.

Disappear forever

fell on the moan.

Hot the bath

I am a chiseled vagrant.

It’s for the suckers

like your tornado.

Sad hearted and forlorn soul

second hand store clean.

Requiring much effort

they change the axis of their spins.

We cannot count the steps

disappeared into the volcanoes.

(submitted to gloom cupboard)

Burning the Supermarket

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Been sick for days,

got the feeling.

attitude,

convinced about something.

Dialed the digits

I am the fingers of my hand

I don’t care what you think unless it’s about me.

Leave me to my imaginings,

Lucifer’s pride,

my name is lost.

Not to hail a barren sky

or so we convinced ourselves

prostituted prophet.

Rejoined by the bell curve

the soul swells

stay the course, my battle cry.

Tangled among the roots

that is freedom, like the wind

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so very hard to grasp.

For any real moment of time

transferring assets,

while writing here my songs.

With the absolute heart

of the poem,

of life,

out of their bodies

. (submitted to gloom cupboard)

Two Slices of Abundance

Tales of moonlight outside the studio

against the smallness of the third hour

and little girl freckles global warming.

And you still miss the tears of secret realms

asking in a small voice toilet seat

because she is never born across your ass.

That too soon evaporates into the shabby

on crooked legs of sadness and doom

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said it before about the change.

I might just be making noise asking what you meant

if only you could match this feeling something biblical

inside and all-around turning in another direction.

Misfortune mocks my every step uncertainty

my sugar is another person’s sanctuary

nervously strikes the match perfectly still.

Never making it with open hands

no regret in the rooms next door

removing memories from the past.

Step on them as they died there

they are just like me, shot behind the hotel

they blend into one haunted.

To be burnt by the flame once more with just a pocket knife

to walk upon the tightrope where I once sat

vague at the edges of your fiery sheets.

Watching you plant your flag alone in the night

with a new-born fear and do not flinch

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a strange idol through gesture

a little lady in high heels all twenty children.

. (submitted to gloom cupboard)

A curse to the earth

Born from the eons,

born out of a wound,

as they come running

while the flames grow higher

and the deeds of a wicked hand

fall all over you.

I am forever in your debt

as our hearts beating wildly,

mattered with love

and running from doom’s helping hand.

Speaking to Becky

and standing one-legged on your metaphor

the flowers are shaking

with hungry hate.

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I can see it in their customs and gestures

as they unroll the world,

when the fight should be out

it flickers up again

woven into the fabric.

(submitted to gloomcupboard)

Cursed, Kicked, and Thrown Out With the Bathwater

Cruel swiftness,

being without shadow sprayed guts

it is born of tenacity

are we creating god in her hands?

Placed upon my eyes,

blackest rain machine gun afternoon table

darkly

what is the point of this creation, holding my balls?

Firm brisk strokes

bones bare and stained unhappy bitter

from dragging them around

smothered by the last once of bullshit.

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From man to mountain,

by the stillness of the woods dropped dead

her inner thing

round withered sweeps a dancing bear.

Her house burned down

these roots are all mine upon this earth,

in a smoky haze of finality

pulling back the dark and up over their heads.

Into the world of chaos,

common lives with petty crimes lucky numbers

knee deep in bloody valentines

that’s loose and running both girls smiled.

As I light the fuse,

eyes aimed full bore at your heart,

I am speechless

at night, I saw her old enough to slice the tomatoes.

One winter in Harvard square

grants and leases on promises these faces pretend.

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I wandered

who came before from the tomato fields.

Bleakly shaking loose

inhale the clattered dream, flashing motel sign,

and striking me now

aimed at the nameless one up and down the street.

The summer of 79

muttering between teeth, Jesus saves

and your mind a lethal weapon

my horns pointed dreaming of movie stars.

To be trapped in some zoo remembering the cows,

some smoothing and trimming of the edges and rolling away

the heart’s cry making you weep

a reward for the street killing myself.

To my touch a woman in a checkered skirt,

utterly alive bending over petting the dog

and craving honesty becoming a metaphor,

when dishonesty was all I could find.

(posted on facebook)

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Breaking into this silent mind

Buried in the deformed bullet,

burned inside me is your presence.

Covered my darkness with your context,

far ahead of the crowd, is the presence and absence.

Fugitive attempts at living,

giving more impulses to your self-destruction.

In willfulness, you flay your feelings,

pushed away as they sizzle in the pan.

Meaningless efforts, watching the flowers wilt,

all for your new masters, robbing you of love.

Explosions all around us, oblique fleeting

and you so eager to keep the eruption.

To complete the toil of constant flux.

to follow after the propulsion as sensory degradations.

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Stringing them together into little paradoxes,

like beads that melt under pressure.

To shoot down this enemy and participate in the unknown,

walking into you is the major thrust.

When it all broke open, out spilled the isolation

reminding us of the injustice found in the hearts of desperation .

Folding them into napkins across your romantic table

and pushing them away from the center.

We want distance to work for us as does the hermaphrodite,

just this once willing to surprise, with a passion that has no equal.

(submitted to drunken boat)

Even though, I might be blind

Something is passed on,

it is not necessary to have a gun.

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It walks into your midnight bedroom already,

much more than mere nakedness.

On this blackest night, it is sexual as a corkscrew.

She walked on, she was a cannonball

exploding around me. I sat and watched

the flickering light. Cantankerous devils,

as it escaped into the west. Tied into a knot,

you want to hang.

A lifeless doll, a refuge you could not share.

Magnified motion, the faith to perfect the execution.

Didn’t crawl into your shells, we scratched and clawed

our way through to the spoils of war.

Beating our hearts into plowshares, never having the right seeds.

They died in the fields of war, the blood too poor for growth

as the magic left out fingertips. We sing for joy to come our way again

as it always does. Not on our time, but her own.

(submitted to Contrary)

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Candy at the Blue Room

She is always looking for candy

anywhere she can find it

it doesn’t matter how sweet.

And snaps a picture,

of her sun charts

as flesh and blood.

Distorted faces in the windows,

living in this feeble city,

flopping like detentions.

Hard to coordinate,

all of your mind games,

the raw numbers escape me.

Her search is always on,

a hunger under the skin,

the demon of vermillion.

Get close enough to touch her spine,

part-time white and bold rebellion,

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black and blue with evil intentions.

I’m flipping burgers at truck stop

and sleeping in an Alabama church,

secrecy is your only friend as you interpret the notches,

left by unknown witches.

No one to create boundaries

that can hold you in place,

past glories cold and shaded.

Perpetual distortion of the perceptual landscape,

a state of continuous evolution,

like an intense and rapid dream.

The explosion of your emergent beauty,

leaves me begging for the forces of chaos,

my eyes are vacant to your red and black.

Improvised heroic romances,

making a jangle and radiating intense,

you systematically explode the universe.

Black banners and blue dreams,

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the dark barbarous outpost,

achieving this revolution.

The moon burns against the stars,

unstable lines of force,

from these you find such meaning and purpose.

Your mobile laments

above the earth on invisible ropes,

filling the vacuum with your alchemical theater.

Pointing across the ceiling,

to my lost harmony,

unleashing the cosmos,

so full of flame.

(submitted to blood lotus)

Fire Girl Run with me

By the time I’m done

classifying the shrines of lovers

and developing my true blue demon,

it will all become

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diluted words.

They are driven

by your political dictates,

efficient automata bound by duty.

Fine, have it your way,

it goes on forever,

relentless,

unforgiving.

moaning on and on.

Then,

you laughed about the abduction

and my own toe tag,

it became a little too much,

no other bond.

You have been outside my skin,

your rebellious nature,

all my devils surround you

and you want to take them on.

I’m riding your bronco

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and stealing your bag of lies,

there was not much to it,

it is easy if you only try.

Sons, brothers, and your lovers,

they have their reasons,

for lighting the fire

that grows inside you.

I have been burned by you too many times,

the burn unit knows me by name,

they call me Charlie,

I don’t know why.

Thinking freedom is a hard fought thing,

this always throws you down

to be carried away

by the next social cause.

Never resolving your freedom,

you are still waiting to be slaughtered,

doing what you must,

still a lost and lonely child

playing with matches.

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(submitted to blood lotus)

Opening the tiny box of want

And I wanted to strangle you,

every nation in the world.

Getting the feeling,

more and more.

Like dynamite contortionists,

everyone desires the basic tendency.

I am a lonely naked bat,

pushing and shoving.

Squirting on the cave floor,

she would rip them from my consciousness.

Working her part-time job

with wounded fingers.

She touched me with such impertinence,

her mind becomes a fine point.

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With trepidation,

I call you “wounded cloud.”

You always were the girl that got away,

you did it all in the name of liberty.

Building your fire on the hilltop,

burning the pound of eternity.

Praying to my fornicated snake,

decisive and unpredictable.

I went to the lost of bars

and they loved me like a brother.

In the city of the dead,

incredible and monstrous.

Shots of tequila until 4 am,

you picked me up with galaxy eyes.

Like a junkie needing a taste,

the barren mechanical pull.

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As the silence rushes towards me,

our lives in limbo.

As you join me in the bath.

(submitted to blood lotus)

You said that you loved me, but I knew it was a lie

Crucify all those who pass through the atmosphere like meteors,

to be like this once more reading your drunken prophecies

with undulating panoramic eyes that sink.

Pulling a cage filled with wild beasts behind you,

you tell everyone that you are putting to death the old man,

living close to your round mouth.

We have painted ourselves into unopened eyes,

defying all the odds with large permutations,

moaning and wailing with exploring together.

The drinks kept flowing not holding the absence,

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plans written on old papers about the death of hearts,

stop trusting in throwing money.

Singing the songs of old songbird s, we boiled the downward processes,

they worshiped at our feet inside the demon’s cave,

never venturing out to smell the myth of old bones.

Carved into the wise airbrushed legs,

gathering their respectful distance in your skull,

swimming in your hard body side by side.

Planting tulips and basil as a red heart,

igniting the difference as you address all the promises,

laid outside until you stop quivering.

You grew stronger as an idea, physical and visual form,

this single thought asking for your name,

encompassing the room and dreaming like an alien.

Stalking the larger and accidental,

you kill them with your white corsage

and buried them in the cold playing field.

Sinking your teeth into this sigh of relief,

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moving into the wilderness

with your bags of admiration.

Taking hold of you by the sternum,

no excuses for this lack of love,

Tinkerbelle has left and we miss her.

(posted on facebook)

Wearing a suit of alienation

You are disgustingly wicked.

Waiting to take the land,

4000 years in slavery.

Living in this sucking century,

with a firm hand,

hard and tightening.

Accepting contextual responsibility

and burning your Old Testament god.

He has become domesticated,

neutered actually

and he has promised to die

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on all seven hundred channels.

CNN will interview the witnesses

after the horrific death.

Your god in his suicide jacket

and you think you are saved.

The promise of judgment,

some runaway justice,

as you spill your juice.

Prostituted grace,

unfathomable bullshit,

paying for nothing

and receiving nothing.

A young body on the jumbotron,

failing to raise the stain

as you collect your check.

Reaching me with a fierce hand,

transforming my matter.

Into a media event,

we all accept the illusion.

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(posted on facebook)

With a towel wrapped around you

You want my shredding

all those silken words, grated

through the sifter.

Leaving your water

on my counter

wiping your genital memories

from my hard drive.

I challenge your natural presence,

scatter your tea leaves

into all five critical pieces.

Your species being

and my praxis

together they are our fundamental errors.

Surrounds us yelping

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according to their capacity

and yours keeps growing

like urbanization.

You swallow up everything

turning fields into shopping malls

and when you are bored

you become dense.

As if mass constricts

closing in on yourself

a black hole of feelings

from which I can never escape

it is never quite as obvious as you read in the papers.

2010

(submitted to blood orange review)

She was a singer in a rock and roll band

She was thick

with hallow knees,

hiding behind her jacket.

Afraid that someone might see

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the frightened little girl

behind the arrogant smile.

She was as steady as invisible

holding on to her microphone

swaying back and forth.

A moonbeam catching her eye lashes,

never tripping over your colored barrels,

her divisions we determined by freaks.

As the explosive notes

cascaded out of her,

she sang with her only abandon.

Like there was everything to speak of

she didn’t exist

in the fragmented structures of being

To be solid

was a crime in her world,

everyone was a player.

Equal to her own rebellion,

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stomping out the years of tragedy,

her immigrant mother.

And Daddy in the glass palace

throwing stones,

ringing her bell.

On street corners,

for self disclosure

as her purpose peels off the stage.

(submitted to blood orange review)

She was equal to the Meaning

We called her meaning

as she wandered about.

With a book in her hand

pretending to read

never mind that she was holding it

upside down.

And she wore

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her witchcraft proof scarf.

To hide the scars

around her delicate throat,

embracing the strangers

who dwell in her mind.

I could not use past tense here

chipping the ice.

Behind walls of illusion,

or more appropriately,

deception,

self and otherwise.

Not sure of my point,

plunges forward.

With wet anticipation

I told her to skip to the last page

that dreams live on the last pages of books

or so I have come to find.

Although I have been deceived before

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find more of her in the beginning.

2010

(submitted to blood orange review)

My Lady Who lives on the Hill

She is inside out,

assigning her habits a positive or negative value.

Adjusting her speech patterns

to mimic mine.

Examining my strengths and weaknesses,

pulling the flesh away from the bone.

She is so innate and biologically based,

intimate with her deceptions.

As she works to extract the bullet

freeing me from myself.

Becoming a communicative event

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I am what she conveys.

Speaking through me

and no longer around me.

My reflexive self removed from the room

the way context influences the interpretation.

To look no longer,

to become experience.

Surrendering to the cultural milieu,

baptized in the naming.

Troubled by your intentionality,

still I gather

your essential qualities

and sell them

on the black market.

2010

(posted on blogspot)

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Reflecting on the qualities that make you especially you

We are mediated by a causal connection,

standing at a distance, objectified

and under scrutiny.

You are carried out, a dynamic process.

You are a flow of contexts,

shifting between my fingers.

A rare coalescence,

an image

upon the altar of my belief.

I consider you as “Aboutness”

being what you are

an animal.

Connecting dots

with a worn magic marker.

Coming to know you as you are,

not as a mist in the air.

But preservation of otherness,

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the widest possible array,

experiencing the fullness.

You forget the linkages

and motivations to your moves.

The pulse and pause of twilight,

your name for erection.

the wine upon your lips.

Curious helmet marking your place

barking social forces.

Your sense of potential

grows between us

and develops wings.

A sharp beak

to peck at the intellect.

Swarming to the middle

to exist in all your nakedness

limiting the pull of fate.

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The shrapnel of curves

being seen, and heard, and understood.

Making incomplete claims

to bind ourselves to this rock

independent of our assets and power.

To know you and not myself

coming inside you, as always.

You are instinct and tradition

bound by your notions of self.

We examine your beliefs

one by one

peeling them away

exposing them to the light of day.

They grow yellowed and curl up at the edges.

You become frightened at the sight of this

and I tell you to relax,

that it is ok

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when beliefs die.

2010

(posted on blogspot)

Barfly

You seem uncomfortable and alien

as you sit there on your barstool

fidgeting with your drink.

It’s all about the big and small,

tearing at your napkin,

your never spider throat

as you spin back and forth

exposing and anticipating.

Relative sweep and bicker,

questioning the existence of pure.

You’re a galloping pony

tossing your hair in the wind.

The only chance is in your impurity,

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seeing out blind windows

and drinking deeply into self.

You speak as one

to the man sitting next to you

as if you have separated yourself from the herd

waving your fables into their faces.

They see you with hungry eyes,

a visible worm, wanting to howl,

to posses you at night.

Buying into your marketing scheme

the irresistibility of want.

2010

(Posted on blogspot)

Those who lower their necks

All drained of brilliance

and bad music

are the ghosts.

Pulled over by a cop,

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a web of habits

aligned with the universe.

All that she owned,

death by an amateur’s hand

dropping shooting stars.

Each day

exposed by your primitive behavior.

Feeling the sway

of flat and dull words

in the here we are now.

Immortalized and burning

like the blood of dreams.

Listen

as my breath escapes

once more.

Relentless in her madness,

sniffing out the sublime

striving ambition on display.

The stone-faced gambit

that can’t be true

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to hold the kudos.

Who were visionary angels,

a stone around your neck

alive and empty.

2010

(posted on blogspot)

All the sorrowful objects

Between us

is the lost meanings

of anger.

Feeling every fear

how the waters pool

in different lands.

In the forest of daring visions,

just a little longer

like the crack.

Los muertos,

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lost dreams

and forgotten secrets.

Many time spun

with illusion,

most vile

and atonable.

Of captivated

your feet dangle,

pleasurable,

possessed,

of the devil.

We pry it open,

raise high your scavengers

getting right to the point.

It was her way

tearing me apart

with her borrowed claws.

First, you must open your mouth

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hearts in barbed wire

under the wartime blue.

2010

(posted on blogspot)

In room 1019

Transitions as a man and an artist

afflicted with hotel oblivion

circles beneath pale eyes.

Infinite possibilities

with inhuman velocity

seemed to swirl.

An amphetamine mind

above my head

sometimes a dark captive.

In small doses

walking to Sixth Avenue

staring at my own pope.

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Nobody sees

as we do

in our little room.

No desire to cower in the face

punctuated duality

at the masked ball.

Eating with my hat on

over high cheek bones

disassembled piece.

Rode to the end of the line

across from a blonde

and a wide, wide open smile.

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

All Fat and Happy

Crackling mainstream, sometime we see too much.

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The proud can be harsh and beautiful at the same time.

To tell the neighbors only in our hearts and spirits,

this dogged persistence true into the soft underbelly,

is light and bitter to find one of these evil ones.

Embracing the sacred, I do have an affinity

like twisted gnomes.

Revealing their weakness and flipping my wig,

just like my childhood days at the Piggly Wiggly

floating above the room. A hunger of fate,

I am no longer myself, but the product of your osmosis.

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

A system of merit badges

The unknown frontier is a victim of distrust

and the stains of injustice follow you home.

From that evil thing you call a heart,

haunted by demons from within.

You are the high priestess of the cult

inside my brain. Like the steam from an engine,

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malicious and unclear. Moving on to new battles,

my sweet nothing. All illusion and nothing worse,

outside the boundaries. Praying in the dark

and reminiscing about the errors. Remember,

how smashed you were by absurdity?

Smell the life in its beginnings, as the fools

can be seen straining their necks as they

attempt the crossing of a border.

The angel beat his old ragged wings

against your soul and said,

“there is no more.”

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

I know the flaw of these systems

Absolutely,

asking about the bruises,

breaking down the barriers

of silence.

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Dance the dance of concealment,

disposing the angels.

Exit the shadowed form,

happy white pool

laughing all the way.

Lost in obscurity

luckily the earth

and not hell.

Me, actually,

well, let her in

for Christ’s sake.

Nothing left to rattle,

one step at a time

only makes the gods

part the waters.

Over the light

that came forward,

overcoming.

She seemed so excited

to share her life.

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The next morning

I would take the window,

the terror of the front door,

unfinished toil

when you saw the dirt fly.

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

Dreamless

Your image,

Illuminating.

A glob of spit.

in society’s the face.

A kick in the pants,

snorted it all.

Up my nose,

blank spaces.

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Do not listen,

content with the wolves.

Lay it on the table,

your tears behind the contempt.

Rattles around,

transplanted.

With tainted lips,

dreamless, you pray

with a bullet.

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

A limited set of inputs

And they listen

Neither constrained nor inhibited

Sometime sin the twinkling

Ignorance is still there

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Of null and void

Scraped flesh where devils

Like hell

Against the Holy Ghost

As he fought

Hand to the stone

In front of everyone

And reloaded

Gathering data

Struggling in a tomb

Avoiding the former self

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

Waiting

Sitting in Mercury lounge

listening to Texas blues

and waiting for the bus.

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I’ve been waiting all day long

with my paper bag in my hand

I’m still waiting on your gypsy love.

Waiting to hear you moan,

to say my name so sweetly.

Then, I can die happy,

I can die a happy man.

In the whore house

on the outskirts of town

I saw Jesus laying his bible down.

He laid it down on your body

and I saw the fire come around.

It rose up to the sky

and I heard him cry for existence

and the fire came down.

It came all around

destroying love for the sake of thunder.

It was so easy

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to feel the love die

as your lord Jesus

rolled you in the ashes.

Don’t call me in the middle of the night,

don’t call me in the middle of the day.

Call out to me,

when your faith has died

and then I will fill you

with the fire.

The fire from deep inside

and it will come down

all around you.

You know my name,

say it so sweetly.

Yes, it is sweet of you to say

happy, happy man.

2010

(submitted to Cake Train)

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166

The Glitterati

About your days in the west,

ancient ways forced to bleed

at the touching of my flesh.

You know that I can breathe

new life into your madness.

Your crystal ball did not foreshadow

the coming of this man.

Be so careful and preserve

that which is hidden.

Doing and feeling

all night long.

Filled full of anima,

I move closer for even up.

Convincing me,

that there is something more

than my feet on this road

as I shuffle on down

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167

with infinity in my heart.

So steely strong,

looking for disproval

means nothing to you.

My heart of darkness,

particles, past participles, and the dead things.

All those things you gave Satan,

someday they will erect monuments to you

the inventor of satiation.

The ferry man gave his advice

to mark the grave so clearly.

Walking naked

where not a single ear will hear,

you are seriously curious.

You triggered and rage,

climbing out of your circumstances.

A single eye to bewitch

as they stream from many hands.

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168

Awaking to the moment of self

between your legs.

2010

(submitted to psychic meatloaf)

It Stays on Your Shoulders

Crashing into the barriers

Death doesn’t always

Denied power joy

These discrete traits

Felt even by the unwise

Giving four o’clock tours

Guardians of the darkness

They sleep

In the void

Large disbelief with lies

Insubstantial bloody foot

Only songs come from the bottom

Tearing the flesh from the bone

They undergo something called a spin-flip

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169

Undone and twisted

Up and down

Wanting you with all my heart

Wax from the belly fat

It boils so well

When I told you that I love you

Standing on the doorstep

2011

(submitted to psychic meatloaf)

Don’t Want No 50 Percent

Until the noise of wheels,

a lost platoon of conservatives

escapes through the fool’s throat,

then, and only then,

can the demented poignancy be brought

to the forefront.

Laid bare before your conscious mind,

like the dropping of their weapons.

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170

Their hidden agenda and late discovery,

mot disturbed by twilight.

Josie loves to stand on the threshold

and wave at the Russians

as they pass the grain of ugliness.

Between each other

like a bottle.

Her illuminating smile,

can warm the coldest heart

and bring us all out of the stone age.

Swollen, they own the creation and generation

she says to throw them all away

but, how can I?

To dry and crumble in the wind,

With arms open wide

And her wet tongue of tornado.

(submitted to psychic meatloaf)

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171

Being Who You Are

Leaving no broken hearts

only a coarse brush

and the radio would sit there on the roof,

staring at the blueberries on the hill.

Drawing conclusions from the unrelated,

from a shinning blue ball rotating,

like a mad bull with stunted horns

with magazines, t-shirts, that read, ass, gas or grass.

Never thinking that none actually exists,

now they are the first to crumble in the sun.

One foot forward, cautious at first

some finding a green religion,

and the big one carries a axe.

Cutting down the mule’s blue dreams,

against the harness pulls

and the snake swallows his tail.

We have become absurd

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172

with cloven hoofs

and sea serpent eyes

as we drink in the old and the new.

I watch you put your clothes on

and wonder about the roundness.

(submitted to psychic meatloaf)

When the Sun Hides From Me

As the waters fade

I have seen

Automotive personification

In the golden age of disrepair

They once considered you

Both good and evil

As the dogs surrounded your doom

Enliven the mighty

Fishnet stocking hang over the chair

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173

If only to change skins

Like fallen tombstones

Lulled to sleep

I know this makes you howl

It’s all in the tone of voice

Ragged and jagged edges

Raised up from the ashes

You were beautiful and unforgiving

So slowly

Spending my life on unsure bets

Spinning forward

Standing with jaw slung

The sting still festers and swells

A love that exists despite yourself

Twisting and scraping

Wearing the brilliant plumage

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174

Whole intellects disgorged

(submitted to wtf pwm)

With Distance and Respect

A little something

To feed the hunger

An imprint DNA

By heaps of stones and statues

Between the two of us

I will chew your meat for you

And pass it back and forth

Competing for god’s eye

All vagrant hemispheres

Rattle in the unborn head

To slash her own throat

Who faded out in the movies

Hungry and loathsome through Houston

Seeking sweetened snatches of a million girls

Trembling at sunset

(submitted to wtf pwm)

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175

Back into Touch

Instead of praying I watch television

Reruns of brilliant eyes

My mind cast upon the pavement

With all of your tattoos

Separating the merchandise from your life

Of our crisscrossed lives

Peering into your generous ass

Taking the edge off my appetite

There is nothing left outside of me

I have given you everything

All to heaven and beyond

A head and a hand

All dead to chaos

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176

Moving the bed across the floor

Detached through sorrow

Especially me

Haunted by the object

I want to burn this breath in the fire on the mountain

Hidden In the nettles

In this ever evolving world

My life is like the falling leaf

Of dust and contrition

Passionately sucking your thumb

(posted on facebook)

After Her conception

Extract it with a sharp knife

Unfixed and volatile

It pries its way through

A primal embrace

The unreal behind me

Chewing on the carcass

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177

You never had an interest on the slaughter

Even when you were infected with purpose

Squarely planted into the soil of terror

Grounded pigments of life

They pass you in effluence

Each step a blue brilliance

Clustered reason getting back into the box

I still have this fucking sickness

The ache of an agonized gospel

Pulling back the covers of your disgrace

Opening up the tomb

Corrupted unstable cloth

Dim drizzle, soggy wasteland

Rubbing seldom with the world

Pattered darkly crawl

Tasting the fundamental harm

The carnival barker shouts

And you take the first gulp

Time frozen by your power

This coil touches the hem

Knowing both darkness and truth

Long grave faces

To his favorite whore’

And tobacco stained fingers

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178

Longing for the cataclysm

There are no more heroes

Conjuring arcane lips

(posted on facebook)

Your Secrets Discovered laying dead in a sock drawer

(pulling the wool over our eyes)

Sudden machineguns chatter

as we marched toward Algiers.

The past comes around

belching fire and pestilence

and another cry for rebirth

is quieted.

Dance to indifference

you step so well

as the war pigs

argue over

disputed and contested territories.

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179

They drag us down

dropping to the bomb

eternal fire.

Following their orders

growing like cancer

holding fast to one place

one little spot on a map.

Here we are now

I see her

she is alive with the fire

moving about naked.

Nailed to the boards

quenched with the blood

she’s bursting morals,

stolen them from us

your freedom for survival.

The essential thing

to be me,

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180

and not you.

Pulling out your hair

it’s a fine line,

a victim to my crimes.

Torrid pools

when skin parts below,

wholeness seeps through me

and you become

like the monsters of your dreams

(posted on facebook)

To Her Lips

A soul breaks folded

And it’s wild, wild, wild

And wonder

As we dig them up

Buffer and corpuscle

Cast out constantly crumbling

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181

Delirious

Eviscerated bone

Facing miniature motives

I lay you

In the carpet

In through the gaps

In your house of nights

Interpreting this painful corner

It happened just this morning

As we learned to entwine

Making the steam

Never finding the meaning

Of health

Of life

Off with the hinges

Schematic drawings and equations

That leads you back

To the bleak gathering of the diode

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182

Deeper I burrow into your evolution

To wonder at your lust

Putting my back into the garden hoe

And becoming, more beautiful

(posted on facebook)

The Sleep Whispers your Name

You said that you were packing your bags

Public parks and cemeteries

A life moves forward

Making you pay

One token at a time

Then, it resurfaces

Of the people

For the people

Crushed between two rocks

Each hopeful gasp

Every pore is spittle and foam

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183

I did keep the date with you

And left on the next Monday

In the darkness

In the eyes of dark looks

These are hostile times

Your mind like my footprints

Linked by common threads

Moving amidst the sleep

My words sent forth

No resistance

Revolving around phantom satellites

Running scribbles on the last day

Standing before you

Abandoned by your numbness

This broken glass pipe

Wrong on a hundred ways

Nightmares now

Thoughts crawling out of a dark corner

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184

Too raw for the light of day

Walking into a horizon of nothing

Watching the freaks come off the highway

Wild, wild, wild

With all the hoary others

With my anarchy

Warm and safe

Inside my pocket

(posted on facebook)

Ask the Angels if they believe in you anymore

It’s hard sometimes

Blue with slow drizzle

Convinced by the ongoing

Crispy like a life full of tears

Dancing and singing only for effect

From a cliff I’m falling down

Hanging, pinned and twisted

Always a dreamer

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185

Rampant dogs

Shakespeare, Sappho, or Allen Ginsberg

Shedding the skin of time

Sliding around in the slime

They soar into the wonder

That cavernous whirl

The sly movement of whiskey

Between your lips and mine

The whole bloody mess

Three generations

Vengeful with claws

While landing to this ground

A hard determined smack

And the emotions

Hung out to dry

They rise in the horizon

The rolling of the dollar bill

And up to oblivion

(submitted to Robot Melon)

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186

Deep in the Mud Searching For Apathy

Then the new

Breathing up

A moon crater

Dismantled

Demanding resolution

And off we go

Into the fields

To die again

If you want

For this thing you call

Liberating

That might undo

The ties that bind us together

Nothing left of me

Now till doomsday

Of confusion

Of value

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187

The monarch’s starry head

That mysterious love

My serious ghetto

Slings blurred

The deep well

The plains of central Florida

The stone seeks out

They all open wide

Yearning blindness, total oblivion

Are beautiful

So, so beautiful

(submitted to Robot Melon)

Against the Door

The machinery of other skeletons

They are blessed

And they burn inside you

It is the city of the dead

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188

With deep connections

You make the sacrifice for love

Mangled and torn apart

The onslaught of outer world

Secure in their lavish consequences

Angry cries

Belonging to the earth

Buried in a grave

Concocting schemes

Me, full of darkness

From the earth

Fallen

Cackle happenstance

See the magic man

Inspired by difficulty

A potent force

She drew the connections

Of our stories

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189

That lets only a fraction in

It once was sunlight

The curves

Burned with lust

As only they knew how

You feed them little scraps

Like the Buddha

Above the horizontal mix

(posted on facebook)

The day I met a goddess in your garden of distress

That space,

Locked door behind me

A random shot

Heard through the door

All essences dissolve

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190

And you whisper

Around the gates of nevermore

Battering blind

Like this dead bird

Between the creative

The stars

Delta form the list

The razed sunrise

Your voice

On silent ears

I am really everywhere

In the hole where

It was war

Looking into my loneliness

Motionless and unmotivated

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191

Noticed by my oath

Going through the wall

With my bayonet ready

On the porch swing

Striking the sunshine

Pretending to be Papillion

Softly singing to the moon

Suspicious by the minute

Teaching me the purpose

For hearts fall together

Telling me about her other job

Those ever so lovely

Trapped worship profiles

(posted on facebook)

Ignorance does not play by the rules

You are against it all

Project 2 192

192

Always on attack

Guarding your heart

Against the wind

From hearing the truth

And the feelings of others

You used to be so full of wonder

I have seen this before

Wagging our tails

As the heart still sets

Like unjust profanities

Not knowing anything

Of the fighting

Oh shit!

Only bloody hands

Or how the whiskey, wine, and song

Sucks the blood from your veins

The photo synthesis

While the music played

You, you, you

Could never be the same

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193

(posted on facebook)

Your love on my sleeve mixed with the snot from my nose

Sweeten me

Admitting my delusions

Making me gentle

All these things that lay heavy

And bedroom pants: these fit terms

So is my soul

A lamb

To storm the fort

Becoming the openness

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194

For profit and gain

Crystal clear

Nuclear

Dragging us down

Each time I got drunk

Fossil powered and

Getting thicker

It is a dungeon

That makes my path

Between the roses

And puckering lips

Most alert and uncanny

One after another

Pulling down your tower

Pushing on your chest

Some rhythms stayed in tempo

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195

And the bird gets lost

Tap dancing across my mind

The fine bite of cannibalism

The loyal bond

Together

Weeping for deceit

I feel it crawl across the floor

Ream out every wrinkle

With your polished smile

Bent over and asking

For it more

And more

The happy little boy

Continues

(posted on facebook)

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196

The Master of Never

Tombstone discernment

Brimstone eyes

I throw away time

As it flies through the air

Better than the world

Between cause and effect

Enticed by the act

Needs a living

For the idols

Like prisoners to the faithful

Large rocks of years

For the dying rage

Still with large

Assimilation

Race two pools

West of Lake Superior 1974

(posted on facebook)

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197

I Forgot the Password

Against the hard edge

My beautiful machine

Reaching for the opposite shore

I made you in my own image

And dreamer of dreams

Your limbs move and act upon nature

Choking and hissing

Lungs that breathe the polluted air

To this world

As it once was

Empty of sweet dreams

I watched the tip of your tongue

It totters and careens

Your beating heart

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198

No matter how many times

Through you runs my electricity

It has always been

Powered by my crank

Rising from the highway

The image of your voice

Sparkling pure and spotless and brilliant

The image of your eye

The sunset of ghosts

Superior to myself

Till it settles at the center

Without aim or anatomy

To your room I fly

Transparently alive

Burned ingot, our arms

Your sexy morning progress

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199

1976 in a club in Greenwich Village

(posted on facebook)

Now that I Have My Velveeta

Answered by

The rock of time

At our confirmation

Black wood

Cold precision

Planned apathy

Coming out the wrong way

Drawing cat whiskers

Upon engulfing heads

Happy women

Project 2 200

200

Exposing their sins

Painting you expressionless

Trying to keep it out

The feeling upon the canvas

A funny phrase

That I pulled out of my mouth

Looking for the movie star

Gone astray

Meeting all the beauties

Out there

Falling off the bone

The terms and conditions

For the awesome

Travel across forgotten

Twisted and hollow

To send me

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201

To the bus

Running from my childhood

1982 Duluth Minnesota

(posted on facebook)

Unfortunately

I am the crow

An ear to lend

To the tiger

Searching for love

On deserted streets

With mortal amusement

Cosmic reality

never brings

The hope

of dignity

From the far side

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202

of despair

Scratched out

and drilled into

Steeling all my old friends

Tasting the feedback

That bends

but never breaks

As the brave worry

about their numbers

And the secret wolf within

Drinking of the marrow

With the sweetheart bottle

Wild eyes and beatings

Strangled by

the nakedness

Drug infused ranting

A mortal fool

A new

addiction

Sniffing the air

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203

Heads up and conversing

Bribed and fiddling

Everything is gone

Habits of dress

The words of immortals

So hard to accept

Once in a magazine

Topeka Kansas 1983

(posted in Facebook)

Before You Left

I see the world

A couple of pages at a time

Musing

Oh, the cradle

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204

Only one

Rolling past the escape

Seeking the path of childhood

Spreading wings and flying out the window

Alone, as in the beginning

Tangible as the cold fabric

Draped over your silent head

Dripping with transmigration

Shrieking like detectives

Wanting to cry

Pursued down into the chaos

Stopped in my ears

The corruption of the weak

And the neighborhood stranger

There are no good reasons

Thunder shaking

We were kings to the shadows

Weaving through placid eyes

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205

Without revolution

You wrapped inside your head

With pink hair

Harpsichords in their lofts

1985 Biloxi

(posted on facebook)

Asking for something than never really existed

The invisible girl

With pliable thighs

Licking the sweetness from the rose

Passed around inclusive

Everyone with their secrets

We complete each other

Moving away from stasis

In to the foamy change

With the mirror and razor

Project 2 206

206

Look at her run

Wahoo, baby

Kicking it on the hole

Coming to the point

About life and death

Together they exercise a tyranny

Each other’s uniqueness

Pulled upwards

And tied with a rope

Pour me as the world moves

Beggar and an open door

Cobwebs of progress

Free to launch the bombs

Held by a stupid hand

We have finally freed ourselves from that spell

In golden burned

Into the blue

I don’t have to like it

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207

Lying in the cabbage patch

My ritual

Morphing wearied souls

On the second floor

They are mixing gasoline with soap

Strong enough for evil

As it is on earth

Paying for the somber dreams

The jackal and the crow

The mission’s dirt

The ticking bomb

Still sends chills down my spine

They look at us with expecting eyes

Touch with outstretched arms

We remember perhaps the darkness

A shadow that became matter

1986 Waxahachie, TX

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208

(posted on facebook)

At the Museum

A study of negative space

And the tongues

That betray

Are carved

I think they are

In front of the lens

Gray and mystical

Rushed along on the tide

A first taste of the bedlam

On like a rock

More than I needed

Nailed to your porcupine cross

Silent like his tears

Your freedom song

Still ringing in my ears

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209

Out of mind, with a purpose

To set this world on fire

The body decomposing

Feeding the next generation

Walking into the glimpse

Between the meanings

The power of suggestion

Human delirium

2010 Kansas City

(posted on poetfreak)

Traveling Across America

Through Colorado

All comers

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210

The great silence

Blind to everything

Suck out the marrow

Deserted and betrayed

Feeling like a toy soldier

Blacked out and nothing to see

Gathering the children

Eating me alive

Paid for by the meek

Peel it off

Pretending to believe

In the night

She’s over-bored and self-assured

Sweet release and escape

Counting the monkeys

Hanging from the rafters

They are here to see Bo Diddley

Boulder 1981

(posted on action poetry)

Project 2 211

211

Elvis used to live inside you

To bring you back

Unfolding, simply unfolding

Beautiful and unfaithful

Running away with postcards

Reappearing on the West Coast

The Cedar River, drinking me down

As love comes for me

Walking unrecognized

Against the carpe diem injustice

I know something of this fear

For I have seen the crows circle

Watching with frozen smiles

This shared illusion with god

Delusions of grandeur

As the blood calls out

Moving into a bare light bulb

Project 2 212

212

Lend me your terror

Chart it in reds and yellows

A fiery hoop

Speaking about the unquiet

Just before your election

Making it right

As best as you can

On days too hot

But for who?

Mighty walls stand before us

This language of life

Up our lives in flame

Peeled back

Never looking back

Crawling back to your traditions

Dark island acrobats

Our eyes have blinders

Television and the internet

Pulling on my balls

All your faithful ghosts

Project 2 213

213

Texting on your phone

Of gods and fairies

Clutching the blue disc

The skin of beloved

Plywood palms push on

A daylight naked ninja

With sobs and prayers

When I pretend to believe

Sitting in the passenger seat

The last moment of time

A borrowed horse

Gone to vile in Providence

The little god on your alters

Twinkling eye

At the edge of the crowd

Making me death

(posted on all poetry)

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214

Reconstructing the Self-destruction

A blind urge to defeat, potential perils

in the garage with lovers’ demands

with a nail gun you blaspheme the other.

Preliminary hearings about your murder,

a peculiar metamorphosis is this door of doubt,

repeating the torture in the little room.

A century of mocking blood,

sitting there on the roof with your wrongs,

no more a domesticated horse.

Carrying out the killing of the virgins,

feeble servants singing twice,

haunt your telepathic nights.

Using rifles found in his home,

attacking the occupant and illusions,

he was a god with an impossible task.

Home invasion seeing future,

it is a fierce whistle that beckons,

Project 2 215

215

a wound over the left eye, it is so vigilant.

Let us see the flames in their ragged clothes

before we fall into the arms of boneless parties,

smoke on the horizon of your manifesto.

Sniff that wind of ugly tension and you are indestructible

taking on a life drenched in beauty,

the wires and their contacts found deep within.

Into the darkness of your birthday cake.

There is nothing but frosting,

tunneling under your bright blue wall.

(posted on all poetry)

Flicking eyelashes in your churches

Sexy in their dark skin,

all this philosophy

and are reduced to ashes

and methods of torture, blue lips.

But, none were too surprised,

Project 2 216

216

walking across the street

trying to find a rhythm.

Cocktails and cigarettes,

cowering in the dark.

I can’t be the breeze of touching,

if she knew about my fantasies’

like a force of nature.

Of the world,

pass the day as quickly as we can.

Played in my own,

she always eats the marshmallows.

Shred of the periphery,

streaming pugnacious,

the air of factories.

Their eyes are inductive,

reflective like the windows.

Soulless creatures,

Project 2 217

217

spinning on one toe.

They leave you seared,

this existence,

through the wall of fire.

Trapped under raspy reason,

no longer standing on the principle.

(posted on poetfreak)

Nous

When the contradictions rise above your head

You reach for a new reality

Something that pulls you higher above the waters

But your grip is still slippery

2010

The end

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218