Get Naked At Once

Auto-drip scars lightning, trapper peaked with moon leak, shadow field
up against long, drawn-out meadow greens, golden oak, fury of live prey
on cannibal drone-fire, dust bomb, burden load of chrome, meat sticks
out of coal, grill waste, barbarian moss, the colloquial charm of minions

out of this melange, the grass future, solid flight commode, icicle drops.
Stuck in the middle finger of germs, the hollowed tree, carved canoe end
they lick the flicker, dominion, follicles of lamb's bread butter on pickle
the toast of marriage swell, catered alligator and octopus pate, crumbs.

How's about the fish sticks, the form, the food source, the arboreal apes.
And the belligerent nemesis of second language, the cat nap stirrups, all.
Gone from plantation puns, linen threads, cheap equilibrium, Hoffa pops
on the train, the el, the sub, the condom wrapper, the spilt jug of poplar.

Rhine wine from the bottle, meatloaf and cornfield proper, caregivers
changes with the star chart, the zodiac ritual of falling far apart, what point
at what moment kills the sound, the drowning boat, the choked fish split
and the provisional terror, sailor sight, love the brush, the bush, the weird.

The bawdy cackles of Sylvia's pig-grunt and mule-bray lasting through the night.
Fuck me while my head is in the oven, from behind this spaceship taking flight.

when pressure swells
caught prime tempera
paint in distemper
and the shopkeeper
spells stout disaster
with hikes in prices
past November ices
the commute ensues
and follows the news
down to Lolo, down
in the valley, among
rivers and herd bulls
and the whole livery
line waiting on novas
we'll keep driving out
we'll keep tuning out
the static and bruises
the commission moos
and mileages without
village reimbursement
while the town sinks
due to the mountain
lanes full of avalanche
and sheriff hounds
bully the trout fry
into submission like
wolves hungry for chum
and a fight against death
with the ranch hand gun
water table struck with wire
a vibrant wire of power line
a verdant hill of alkaline
whole country a quagmire
waiting for air to quit fire

The TV plays an actor in me
a simulation of a forked ward
bifurcated triage, a yellow cage

The doctor is an actor on stage
a dinner theater factory improv
lessened guilt, a guileless age

A guileless rage plays a symphony
at a double march of procession
mild hemorrhage, a colloquy

A Postcard From The Edge from U2

a deathbed flashback
of a death-camp smokestack
on a camp cot of no-death-do-lack
not the lot, nor the world-war railroad track

Utter Waste of Earth

I don't care much for retards
although I care for the one next door
out of sense of righteous duty even though
he's fucking worthless and I fantasize about killing him
thought about filming snippets of his annoying time-wasting
to illustrate how fucking bothersome he can be
and then a snippet of me tossing a grenade down his stairs
and watching the stupid look on his retarded face
Huh? What's that?
and then BAM as I laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh
and then post in on YouTube
and wait for the cops to pick me up
but he wasted their time every day
so the cops would laugh with me

Soporific Belladonna

Hey guy, here's the fire to hide from, with a head cloud
and system of palladium, an earful of candid brass
the lungs of a master stroke of mind
cataloguing flatulent ovations

To orate, there's a presentation coming, with wry nerves
and careless study, goldenrod maladies shun fast
held expectorant dips in travesties
beleaguered by fellated trains

Twins on see-saws of low hunger bogs, tire swings
taut and spinning, the squeak of the wheel well
and tired rope, event horizon tweaked
whinnying dwale, bibliolatry

but I don't want to think about a discipline
I want to play and play and play all day
I want to play get nothing done but play
Play is important ask anybody
I don't walk to the store anymore
there are more pressing demands
like how to be heard without singing
if anyone needs a sacrificial lamb
let me know, I'm not innocent but I can bleed
well, will wash away your trepidation
with the fluency of my digestive river
where colored smoke makes a painting

So a friend of mine who teaches freshman comp asked what I thought about sex with students
I said that while we'd all like to spend weeks in a sweaty bed with all that young flesh
It was problematic and best suited to fantasies
He said that he explained to the girls that the sex would in no way affect their grades
Well they didn't seem to like that very much
I mean, he's a handsome and funny and intelligent guy
But not enough to warrant no-strings sex
There are many strings attached to that awful decision
I told him he'd better just give them all A minuses and hope it goes away
But what about next time I asked him
Aren't you going to continue down this debauched path of social destruction
He said of course but next time I'll just fuck the pretty ones

It was never about strictly not caring, it was mostly about never having a reason

Boulder Dash or Waterslide of Stone

It was a sinking-stone, one that takes the surrounding ground down too
And I know you're alone, even though the stability is reliable and it's a challenge
For all of us to relax, the thing is, we're forgetting, and forgetting the fact

Where's the sense in that, quicksand that happens to be frozen, bag blocks
Nothing fathomable could be had, a surrenderless garrison of shackled crews, flagless
Bucketless and partially eaten alive, they say the genitals had been torn off

By the teeth of starving curs, devouring what they could, and had eaten
Their way through the liver before they succumbed from blood loss, I feel so light
And interrupted by the honeyed keys of autumn leaves from to the windowpane

Here then come the asides from obsolete cinematic screeds of scrolls of guns
And vagary penny candy store novels of game room coloring book nuclear warhead
Some zooted beats from outer space the hyperbaric color of test engineer red

A gunsel is a criminal carrying a gun or homosexual youth but either way would
be a great Historical fiction novel about every poetic hero worth their shit, but no
Matter lost my way just now having to attend to domestic matters, such as putting dinner

In the oven or else, I'm lazy today, trying to be anyway, on account of my abysmal
Self-esteem, general psychological condition, and utter ennui with existential angst
And there's no help to be had here, unless from the self, so be it, I will give it my most.

I DO NOT THINK I WILL MAKE IT WITH THIS DAMAGE

She sings all I need's a

Little sign to get

Behind the sun and

Something or other

About finding a place
To celebrate the give 

And take of amphora 

Finds under the waves 

Of pools' course but 

Who would care about 

Anaphora so mundane 

and casually muttered 

By the professors of 

Canonical obedience 

Augmented by cadence 

And the sadness and 

The silence of the 

Splatter of always-

Female jumpers from 

The tall malls of 

Chicago property on 

Michigan Ave. siren 

Cloud tourism scraper 

And stones of falling 

Panes of sheet glass 

Not even the terrorism 

Cuts through whole 

Torso to leaves two in 

A split like firewood 

Hand holding child

Now agape quiet and 

Rapt by the axes 

Lastingeffect the other 

Spurting veal tender 
Retreat and shattered-
Glass red with 
Screaming distant
Turbos what-a-

Supercalifragilisticexpi

Alidocious-ness to the 

Whole thing the scene 

The terrapin

The tragic serpentine 

Belt ready for a new 

Cataclysm to rock my 

World west of Winsome 

Terrible fishermen 

````````````````````

So many variables it's 

Scary I guess I mean 

Think about it I don't 

Know how I got here 

And why it had to be 
So violent and
Dramatic and
Emotional and 

Absent and vacant and 

Lower than low it just 

Came spiraling down 

This mountain of 

Accumulated miseries 

And returned 

Abductions and little 

Girls missing for over 

Fourteen years with 

Parents still waiting 

Every day to hear from 

Them and I just sit 

Thinking about how I 

Don't have the energy 

To create anything 
That will truly bring 
The entire world 
Together in one big
Party with tents and
Rain and music and 
Drugs and stories and
Food and friendship
And sex and learning
About things you only
Google about.

This is a new day and 

The old ones that 

Complicate selective 

Memories and pander 

To your insecurities 

But it's okay we all 

Make mistakes and we 

All lie and we all have 

Reasons for 

Overcompensating 

When faced with 

Feelings of guilt and 

Shame and no matter 

What you can always 

Get a coffee and a a 

Thin cigar and sit 

Behind the wheel of 

Your carnation 

Blooming to the stars 

With unfathomable 

Technology and 

Missing agents from 

Global forces and very 

Few living resources 

For what happened 

There back in the 

Pleistocene sex scene 

Between the grunters 

And the dragged
Squaw of prehistoric 
Architect pledged to 
Braise the bullfrogs or

Dogs of plenty wit rex

The realization that I have shortcomings and may never be of real consequence because I lack the talent and time in life to matter makes me feel confident and certain that as far as I am concerned I should end my life at once. As far as my family is concerned I should stay for making their days brighter but it is beginning to make me not care anymore about other people at all because when I'm gone they'll get over it and I will be free. Free at last, free at last.

If I could shit on this virtual journal, I'd smear it all over, rubbing it in, it would stink so bad, and be a caking filth, ruining any pristine white that had been.

I don't have the steam that cares. Wastrel. Peat bog burial that allows future ridicule. Distant mocking of a practical handicap. Know what I'm good at. Pulling the trigger over and over.

blowing the word you can't remember, the words "word" and "the"
across the oil plain next door, booming, winter dollar, draft home
the crude can't proof from wind, what a travel to bridge the distance
from work to living, from shoplifting to giving, flight out of question
and sunwarm grass a fallacy, a vertical descent without the cavern
the deeper the brighter, floating mountain, dead arrogant friends
becoming part of the wallflowers, the moss and crumble-rock
untouched by flesh, a library of the crude word of rescue
one talisman of Oppen, one of a thousand nodes of knowing

No Direction (Hoarder of Words)

I'll begin the poem with I, in spite of all I've read regarding the absorbed self
starting every line with it.


I read a poem today from a friend who I've never read anything from before.
It was good. Very good. It had all the restraint of years of not writing.
It made me consider my faults, such as the lack of direction, in all my endeavors. That's me. But I stopped pretended I had it long ago. I will always seek it, but fall short in the clarity of purpose, and the sharp edge of a plunging blade.
I can't make the choices alone. The real decision about what to cut. No discipline in the one place I don't want it, but need it, as much as needing to stop making an enemy of my audience. Alienation will not work in any communiqué.
I'm too prolific, but don't mind not stopping. It makes me feel better about everything else I don't do prolifically. I am a hoarder of words, and now I have a hoard of words.
They've gone from toothpicks to block paragraphs and no one reads them anyway.
They fill out my oversized poetic dress, squeezed from my organs by the corset
embellishing the bustle where I sit. Pouring from the bell bottom of the hem
out at the ankles of my swollen, pregnant, childish form of pretend-a-pride.
Impassable I've been told. Dense. I'm sorry for everything you've read if it wasted your time.
If you left feeling worse, or with less questions, I apologize. All apologies, though this time they have nothing to do with the amends of an alcoholic. Just an initiated, genuine reconciliation for the monstrous and empty rants and psychiatric pathos. Sorry.

I can color the background of my text, too

Hannitize says Ed, wow, constructive killer of conservative
bomb Fox News smammer Milwaukee with imported beer
atomic harmony of inert anemic neon nor xenon mortician 
pucker up, put up a guard, put down the mongoloid retard.


I won't watch the event, not on television, not in formation
or the line up, frontage code, Butterfield Road and hot dogs
river rats, canoe casino floats, engine repair small animalia 
ackerman gadfly Jesus turpentine Volga hover, ye tanagers.

In the motorcade a cogwheel link gearing
A Sauternes in cobalt glass pinwheel red
Lavender and savory in Niçoises reflecting
Pools of sel de mer and vinegar wedding
Where a line break led to a stanza swing

All the way over here

Just out of reach, my sweet

My honey, honey

Cum toward me 

In an arc of siring 

The siren horse of bulimia  

Blurring

[pop song lyrics]

This lucky fight, still solemn to blue plights
All the things without me you feign to refrain
Numbers, sub-prime, draw the odds, make it right
All the things without me you feign to refrain
You take me weeks of counting to feel again

Burn the time out of thunder
I can taste the static
Burn the time, lightning circuit, network
Watch these lies construe your part
Burn the spine out of jackets

I can smell your burning child

Rehearse for Prado, oil cello
All the things without me you fail to refrain
You take me weeks of counting to hurt again
You take it easy while pouting in your diadem
You flake you let me trust you to not begin

Burn the time out of space
I can taste stardust mint
Burn the time, stellar gush, nova fall
Watch as she tries to pull you apart
Burn the crime out of arson

I can smell your lucky denial

No Dental Dam

a headquest hike downhill without
knees or graded dirt the loudness
of a cracked rib and branch tumble
where chips stack and cards go back
to the shoe to shuffle to gamble air
whatelse but a languishing model
cacophone cracker soused on couch
in stutter with dead definite
sediment and your joyous louse
has every word spoken on a thimble
but a droop foundation under house
I can feel my effort falling short
failing by light of the dragoons 
Valley Kings swirling dormancy 
the puissant utterance of dearth
chimera songs in the punk vein
the dirty tongue of verisimilitude 
let's walk...
sorry, this town prides itself
on every brick building as brothel
in some history no one lived in
no one alive today anyway
and all the windows produced
jumpers what delicious thrillers
sad sex workers in corsets
having used their single bullet
on the bedroom door that night
afraid to unslide the deadbolt
too scared to break the bodice 
and crush the cagey bustle 
maybe we love history's hookers
as we love fantasy's catharsis 
we can go under the trainbridge
or over the tracks but not thru
never across the private yard
of billions to be kept coming
and then antiques start drawing
changing displays but always
showing and wanting window
dressings and dustings and sales
to do the same routine uphill
in the overlook of thankfully
the floor of the valley stays put
sliding down the weather road
in summer snow and chaff
the thresher husking winnowing 
and detassling a cooler-full
of breaktime corn shucking
either way the brickroad sinks
the alley is guttural prim
the princess-pants walks fashion
in spandex and leashes meekly
what a paint job they'll say
what a fine cobbled fantasy
before the grace of foothillsnow
goes obscured trails cur-caked
what a commitment to art
what a slovenly excuse to make
oh chanticleer quiet and cold
can you give a brother a break
and wake the city I impart
for the longest breath hold?

I gather it has more to do with a lack of dignified poise

than whatever statement was made, but I don't subscribe

to dignity-- that's one of the luxuries of my generation--

no pride to hurt

No foundation, not a conquered-earth patio, no cocktails,

just rewards from ancestral-work, cumulative. I gather

because no one knew about communication outside

of parties and bars until after the wall came down, and then

only for a minute, and not again until after Wall St. came down.

Such toys, a toy revolution!

Products of decades, each their own unit,  repetitive twelvemonth,

Dementia pugilistica, refilling their own script with annual character

and Reagan's plastic wig and office Christmas party rape charges

and the silent witness under duress. 

They aren't interchangeable, image and text,

not in the interface of business sickness

but they're mine to alter, without grace or balance,

emotional, most importantly, which is what gets all the boos.

The scolding scoff and sneer, contributing to the problem

A pill the size of an airplane and fuel for thirty days, transition

to musical and dinner-dancing all the way to the top

and out the bay window people like to write about

Eclogue

fuck the city

fuck the country

fuck in the grass if it's sunny

fuck in the gutter when rainy

fuck the impulse to restrain

fuck the futurist terrain

fuck the forgotten

fuck the clear sky

fuck the feeding 

fuck the bleeding

fuck the now and new lie deceiving

fuck the open gates on the bottom

fuck the last gasp kneeled out

fuck the raped lover dying in the keel 

Middle English --Middle Low German--Middle Dutch

divisible friends fortressed in broken vessels

lower louvre

impatient swing
setting permanent
against muttering
crawling tenement
tent collapsing

in the tart sky
ballooning a fast
pfui of sex on top
with an Eiffel tramp
digging heels in trash
her heat astounding
disregarded pounces
verdant casking
lovely furs left
after Germans

but what of Alsace
and Maginot smudged
what of Aragon ink
blot begging for Huns
zomething different
what about the girl
the polecat stink
the cover of organs
the spawning twirl
of being nudged
to flashes of grace

Synaptic Mongol

Directing
and rehearsing
the wild card
and wither
on porous
horse
arriving late
in the limbs
of wrath

the Provos

their salvo
what is real
whose pronoun
avid acronym
the boughs break
and tingle
the eaves
your loss
a sister of dust

a soft break
color pushed
to edges out

to edge out
the font solvent
character psalm
past participle
kingdom hood
the estate
falters forward
with brambles
and purple kush
tumbling
backward
into ambiguous
season ending
seasonal
distending

Syzygy

like watching fish swim in television, weary tampion plug shrouding, murmured gills and venomous scales of commerce on the sunken city, in barnacled palatine orange-pink and white powder jewels, grist from a hundred year old soil, siloed and motley with cucumbered headspace, a sweatband of joy and pearls, embroidered seance troubling,  fountains of street thugs, perpetual youth, lip-blood and rusty, drab deciduous vermin stirred, lords and ladys; there was a journal entry about waiting on an inevitable lack of scoring, vamps and mugwumps, sea dragons with traveler's cheques and scrotum, surgical, opened with heavy machinery, street-level bombs, Vauxhall mechanics, dewy mead,  red grass

Stand Up Digression

thinking about abortion jokes 
while rubbing one off in the shower

it more had to do with fanaticism 

as I have a tendency to believe 
pro-lifers are fanatics, that is 
unless they're actually as scared 
as I first gave them credit for...

it's all about seniority, really

an expectant mother is at least

twelve or thirteen, so that's not

really experience but it's time

put in, and that fetus hasn't yet

been cursed with life outside womb

so women should have veto power

and I've been one to think my father

always had the inalienable right

to end my existence as a minor

as he created me with his own 

gravity is the ultimate arbiter

of fate when you're climbing

and ancient trees still crash down

under the weight of weather and saw

or rope tugged by the heavyweight

it is a monster still connected

by hunger and linkage in food chain

but really what I'm after is drift

double day of dream sleep after week

spent; what happened at an early age

we can't remember readily; it must be

unique perspective used by the dead

wallet found in packed jeans in trunk

full of pills, some painkillers, some

poison, coins made of cyanide embossed

in undecipherable German, beachhead 

had to dig out the sandbank with pick

and this led to the companion dimension

full of phone calls and bad medicine

snow blind from the whitewash of dark

stunted by old growth of the remedy

of redwood monastery passing, cut tree

a cathedral ring sprouting steroid ally 

following old trails on new streets

with every sign in Spanish and of 1970

there was an intermission she woke me

to revisit reality, I peed seated

and went back to bed but it was late

it was early, it was early in the world

it was timeless in the apartment 

amid campgrounds and smoky highways

had to keep calm past the 82nd parallel

I'm 41.6 nautical miles behind record

in the ocean trench laughing at races

and had to hitchhike back from the pole

company of a sled full of broken dogs

pulling a red sleigh with anemic elbows

and heels full of slivers, blood blisters

but that memory is part of a world away

and who knows if it's a destination any

will return to, does a time yet to happen

have people who will say, comfortingly:

if you'd have been a little more patient

if you'd have only had faith

if you'd have waited

none of this would have happened

So Much Depends Upon the Afterglow

Prowess-poised and vulgar,
vandal hordes abjure cover,
creep after full-moon terror,
stockings bar evening dress,
splay the random encounter
with an oblivious mishmash
of strayed, nameless hikers,
body-fluid varnish/splatter
in variations of amaranth;
pillaged nightmare clover
with ruby-grass overdose
and the scarlet-lava dream
in majorelle blue-on-horror
and magma mulling over
maya and sapphire hues;
so much for color wheels
and easels' erected display,
so much for the reckless
visit from the vandal horde;
nevermind the role of closure
nor the venerable roadshow;
do not forget to wonder
about how you should never
live in the past/recall youth
while at the same time
not forgetting it nor why.
Me and my sideshow shadow.

Praxis

Kill him, or you'll be subjected
To the unchallenged whims anchored
In depictions of his semblance of balance;
Pride of the team, collective horde
Of serotonin and tools of adjustment;
For some reason, they aren't compelled
To die for unanswered questions, content
With pastime, with assumed roles cycling
Toward recycled lessons of good living;
For some reason, they do not understand
Their unforgivable role in poison nurture
And in neglected rearing; now it's time
To make mistakes of extremist culture;
Unheedful extents of applied emotion.

Word is Bail

You'll have to take my word.
It was a wednesday, I'll say,
Though who could be sure;
When all-days and tungsten
Are alloyed by high melting
Points and the unstable half-
Lives of five isotopes' niche uses.

And sense comes from your
World inside. It stays on the line
For organizing--are you aware
Or even capable of contemplating
All those unanswered things?
I want you to work, too-soft tyro;
I want you to learn teaching.

Thursday through Tuesday
Were spent humidly breathing
Awkward regrets and silence
In clinical dining rooms w/decaf
And overdressed dementia cases
Making reservations on the moon.
Sunday was restless and all-rains.

Orderlies have never been for hire
For me--for as much as I can present
Myself neatly, anyone with warm blood
Seems to have a grim premonition
Warning them not to get involved w/Andy--
I tell myself it's because they're threatened by
My blinding virility and precipitating disposition.

Then there are those drawn in like fly-to-light.
I used to accept their lunacy and issue-addled love,
Out of lust for intensity and need for intimacy;
Every year was thirty and it tired me out right.
Benevolent and patient and desperate connective,
Drawn to drama, drunk destruction, conspiracy;
Pulled up over the side of the boat, tired fight.

Holy Hairball

Parchment meadow dribbled with goldenrod cornflower tusks
Needles through the tongue and dumb debs littering boardwalks
Beaches of western profit on bone-beds of nail-flattery balloons
Many meridians and too-much date for your linear discovery
There you go as always loitering on a moving page estoppel
Hoping a distraction or easy answer will carry you through
I'm here to tell you it will never happen--actually it may
But the lack of consequence and your obsolescence
Leaves your tongue the map of history and irreverence
Rapture of pocked relevance corresponding to back pain
Geronimo at our mellow barbecue in Georgia with Chechens
On a moderately cold mountain awaiting the first snow in ages
And the addition of an angry young man with no luggage or toes
Only a note from his mother who left him at the altar in Attica cells
Zero hour and hopeful scourge the remaining pestilence of German Kurds

Rough Night Haikus

Wakened by cop-knock

Then cold blare of sun light burn

Tased by power-trip

Eyes flushed by pepper

Spray detained civic duty

Paralyzed for hours

Hospital abuse

Treated like child abuser

Nurse told to ignore

Leaves outside double

Paned safety glass scratched bad

By scared fingernails

Bomb suitcase dropped off

At the bus stop for the school

No one could hear me

Warning unheeded

Imminent death having laughs

Jail in the cards still

Flesh Sonnet

I don't understand why they hang
their harvest across their hoods,
why the points have corkscrewed
leaving without shavings of wood.
I'll savor the game through teeth
where the meat remarries blood,
but don't care to take that spirit
away from the beast's livelihood.
And perhaps in my primitive air
deep down I know that I could--
but whether I take the kill shot
I'm pretty sure I should not--
unless it's kill or leave-to-rot.
I will take all in sloppy seconds.

Maudlin Marauder Murtagh

George the cadaver didn't know what hit him. He was cold. And his breathing had ceased days ago. He was gray and stiff like how his Chinese launderer made his shirt collars, "X-Starched."
It had been over 72 hours and no one bothered to tell him what had happened. So he waited. Eventually he found himself disassembled, like an engine in auto shop, surrounded by supervised trainees. George thought it funny, that even in death, he was being the subject of more trainees. Everywhere he went in his life, whatever it was he needed on time, was always delayed because it was being handled by someone whose first day on the job it was. Fuck this, George thought. If they can't keep their turnover down they should pay them more. Why is the whole world retiring without having taught anyone along the way? Why is it our problem now? It's not like we haven't heard the whole fucking story of the greatest generation that we are not, the noble wars won, the tyranny averted. You spent so much time bragging about the battles of your youth, you forgot that the world is now full of seven billion people who have no marketable skills, and constantly shrinking resources and a lot of drugs and anger. But I don't blame you thinking "who cares" because you'll be dead by the time it matters.
Well now it matters, and the only difference is you're in a nursing home and I have the power to unplug you. Where will we put all the dead? What will we make of the new world? No one cares about anything but satellite television and Facebook. Here lies civilization, over-educated by poor humanities, under-paid for non-work, shuffling papers, "teaching," bored by the done-to-death of instant porn, internet poon, none interested in reading "The Palaz of Hoon." Even the most legitimate men are hiding forever behind a laptop screen, downloading.
George said a magic prayer which reanimated him, just this once. Jerking back tears, George the cadaver was back to virile and rosy-cheeked George Murtagh, claims adjuster-pimp extraordinaire, ready to rape the land and hit the high seas with his bounty of loot-to-be.

Take It From Beaver

I've done it all for others--

the irony being that

I hate myself only because

of my perception of others'

ideas about me;

if you had to think about

that much, you won't get

my drift and won't

likely like me for it--

I love to like me when I can

but seldom does it

stick around long enough

to matter, to be convincing

or add up to loving--

it ends with a glib moment 

on stage, a poem on a page

or a fisted bottle

breaking another mirror.

It is too big a struggle.

I enjoy getting dressed when I have the foresight to choose an outfit
The night before. Some sleepless nights I rise without a wink and pick
Out my clothes before showering, so they're laid out in the light of my living
Room instead of the lightless closet and wardrobe in the bedroom (she's sleeping).

A thorough shower, taking time for all the parts, because it's very early
And I've much time to kill before I'm due elsewhere. Having fresh, folded cotton
And the lesser worn layers of favorite winters, plus wool blends and heavy belts, boots
And always a bag full of books by occasionally-hated writers, plus backup storage and mints.

But the warmth of under-armor and waffle-knit with snug denim and fleece
What the lambs wear, what the lions love to tear, what the gold became and leather
From feet to waist, and the pocket briefcase under my arm. Socks I'm saving for leaving
When the cold outside won't make my feet sweat unduly in the early morning awake at home.

It sure beats prison, I tell you what, not much roomier but it's better than
England. It's better than a Tokyo tube. Better than my recurring nightmare being stuck
In a crowded and hot elevator miles below ground near Hell and the brimstone foothills near
The melting pot and core of earthen wardrobes of introvert stars, iron-diamond dust kerneled.

Though the air is mighty dry, and the cracking dead skin around my hair follicles
Is dreadful, as is the patches of flake and red rash on my chin. (The sun is not a she. Nor 
Is the planet, or anything other than animals with vaginas. You're a fucking idiot. I hope you
get raped and left alive with grotesque facial scars. You really fucking deserve it you cunt). 


But really, who am I

Prone to Fits of Song

Charmed. Don't mind if I comb my hair. So smooth and bodily. It smells of ashtray flowers. Pink lilies of the panty. Unfurled furnace, like a fern and a penis, but both and neither. God on a pedestal, gods on upside down swings. Gods surviving only by water-wings. Choppy sea-idol. Quiet on the set. I have a scene to shoot. It will destroy you. Benny walks into a bodega for a tall boy of beer he cannot afford. He cups the bottom and walks toward the door. The world ends suddenly, from something unimaginable. What about the pale horse from the book about religion? In the cellar there were plenty of books about arguable literalness. From the charming grass a hippie rose to greet the dole, and then the non-violent protests began, and got absolutely nothing done. This was when I made do with a golf club, a softball bat, a lead pipe, and my butcher's knives-- and set out to change the world, one innocent civilian at a time.

The Hitlers of Kennebunkport

Chills of a actress in her first nude scene, telling herself she liked it, comfortable

Scissoring a stray girl from nowhere with a Bhutanese passport and machete scars;

On the wall a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm, one of Pope John Paul II, and Ivan Cooper,

But around the corner, in the shared space of flatmate Gerry, a floor-to-ceiling spread

Of Tito next to a votive candelabra illuminating Trujillo in exaggerated regalia, all-gold.

One day a doll-like silhouette of hair plugs plucked, a freezer corpse of Gaddafi's slit-eyes

And the rag-doll neck-break ocher of a splayed dictator dragged behind a .50-caliber Toyota

Truck not dissimilar from my own; but the memory of a people in a pewter frame on a mantle. 

And the looks of shame from my ancestor's watching from the trees in southern hemispheric

Smog, over the baobab trees singing with civets and beneficent of barbary apes and baboons

Or the painterly skeet of a Spanish fauvist, the ponytail of perpetuity and strength waning.

Since the visual is taking over the aural, so the neurologists say, the poets in sustenance,

Futurist presiding, a crab apple bower on being pelted by children, my innocent prison.

When the arrow flies, it holds time in it's wet feather, the arc and velocity engaging--

A cave song bellowing, what an asshole, what a hungry pig, that succulent American

Borrowing money he does not know how to spend, all the good grades, the burritos.

Ketchup all over Hitler, on his Kennebunkport trampoline, laughing-gas eyes, old. 

Get along little doggies, under your orphan sunset, to the strange manger at Bethlehem
Worried your long storm on the plains will slow you down, don't worry, we're all doomed
And wishing we were with you in the poem, an instant image of artifice, held by emotion
Held high in esteem, raw power, bourbon mouthful of hair and rural dogs with urban
Breath, the aftermath of lost child dinner, the hearth at home warming the idiot-innocent
And old albums of misrepresented pictures, your children's lies, your new role of providing.

A hermitic passing of voluble life, the giving monk of self-sacrifice, permanent absence
A prototype of folk-song jubilance, ringed rosy, terminable fault of Chablis jug held close
And a bathtub of beer cans warming away from the quench of drink, addled lovers giving
Up. Even in the scant halls of boozing, the successful avoidance of issue, the drunkard swell
Of girls longing for dick, there is no longer a dick to teach with-- it's concerned now with Hell
Alone, and the easiest way to get there, a writhing spinal helix of breakthrough pain subsiding.

There are few ways left to thrive with, in, out of, from The Book Of, knocking, only a trove
Of open airways, multiple formats and venues, playing the same record, by a self-styled
Recording Artist, without ability to write songs, play instruments, or know anything else.
I've tried to give the arts and sciences a fair shake, but the more I delve and commit
The farther away from coherence I find myself, and think we'd all be better off loaded
All the time, mumbling, choking, fucking, hating, and finally, with last opinion, oblivion.

Similar Structure is Restricting

What's the topic for research, where is the taste of the crumb, the ritual's sacrifice,
calisthenic hyperbole, benumbed-- is it in the cloud detail, or the liminal edifice,
in the thick of her milky thighs, behind a high-priced veneer of denim and labels?

Belief in the responsiveness of mentorship, in saddles packed with flesh, dopamine
travel, iron horse beveling a Saturnalian occasion, soft silver limb-sleep of teenager
embrace, after the longing of a warmth-- she left you there without music to channel

and kept the curtain drawn to hide your wails and silent, sunken eyes from the sun
and its attendant champions of life, meant to stay on supports as long as it takes
to change your mind about dissolving with the rest, to die deliberately with a gun.

To hide your wails and lament, on the veritable surface of harm, absent purpose;
passing the shoulder at sixty-five, headed to city-center, a Jabulani soccer ball, concave
on the valve side, I could see such minutiae, a pinhole deflated, black slush, squidding.

Cut through to bone like a serrated accident of malice, I had to stop her from screaming
You had to use the rest of your booze as a solvent, to lift the stains and freshen the air
while I resumed smoking and selfishly perusing the battered lungs of revised humming.

They say you broke your own heart, but I believe you're innocent, because I've seen
the damage self-defense can do, and it may have stemmed, they say, from the scaffold
on the campus by the tennis courts, where below was placed a vaulting cushion for falls

even though the limberest jumped from the top to enjoy the second or two of free-fall,
I could never ascend past the middle if I was to leap down, did not trust the vinyl, nor
the break of wind and holler, nor the nearest hospital, where I'd died twice before twelve.

But I know it came from a seedling during times of civil unrest and holocaust, smoking
black and red-grey, raining a musty coat on empty bones of marrow, guitar stringing,
descendants dreaming about forgetting in an elderly woman's tearful lecture in Poland.

A shovel wrapped in flannel, redcoat armies versus guerillas, musket-shot deafness
murdering the Berkshires with rented Ford Rangers and obscure elements from periodic
tables, absurd atomic numbers, proton theory, medicine or physics, different tangoes.

Nystagmic Tirade

Enraged-in-white, in blanket holes and clapboard femmes sanding the overlap
with womb-worn spite, stirring Sanka while sleep won't come, allowing noise
and light to dictate cycles afraid of challenging the restful needs of night.


Handled with agenda, a paranoid care for other's misspending, self-preservation
plus postdiction, where the brain collects up information after an event before 
it retrospectively decides what happened at the time of the event, young allergen.


Cryptograms possessed of truth, in their obverse, in the adverse, in their flourish
wire-walker embodiment of medical aspiration, vessel suction, human sculpture
gauging colorant before its dispersal into buckets for dyeing, soul music, anti-flash


white and alice blue, ball and blizzard blue cupboards in kitchenette bisque, Bulgarian 
rose and Byzantium, celadon and cadmium blank. The rafters strung up by unfinished
business, decorated in streamers and banners burned out of Unionist strongholds. 


Coquelicot and cerise, cordovan procession of cyan, ink-blood sizzling the edges
with finery from cerulean cloud background, cornsilk, slate, chestnut, Eton fallow
and fandango, fuzzy wuzzy glaucous headache grullo, guppy green, hansa harlequin.


Isabelline with Islamic moon and stars, half-bent to prayer, boundless music above
reaching down into a Jonquil jungle of clover and new colors, laurel, lavender, liver
and lion mauve-taupe, sea salt and mordant red 19, with myrtle and melon drapery.


Pale robin eggs and pastel silver fleck, lathe turning the wheel into Payne's grey 
Persian plum and phlox, it's all Skobeloff and smalt in the end, tawny thistle, old
white smoke and warm black, splashed lace, papaya whip, floral ghost, eggshell--


these are a few of my tiny pangs, skinned rivulets shedding coulee skin, peach-poo
and dusty with nascent fuzz, the scroll of subliminal attachment, television, story
time, soap-opera actors or failed porn stars, keep lusting after the illegally young.

Distraction By Proxy

When it's too late to sleep,
And the unconstrained time-frame of night--
Still, ready when you are, engaged-in-residence, slight
Repose, and the pineal kernel wakens to memento,
Treason to retire the sultan's number, fog-deep hind
:
Reckon to tango, alpha-volcano, delta-echoic,
Her ghost phased beside me while her body lives a day away--
Balking at travel, repository of your threat-blind ego,
Stoic-shrine in ditched garb from fleeing tribes, mid-massacre,
Staggered by high winds and static shock, sail failure
:
Phantom girlfriends, booby-traps, girls I've not met yet,
Gorgeous Lord, virilocality, patrilocal residence-upon-pub--
Gaily the silverly shallots transmogrified past Jewdom's castle,
The ladder and the lager, both runged, marbled; keel-deep and reaching, stately
Elms and fodder, reruns and young guns on canyon floor, desert rub
:

[distractions have progressed to Münchausen-by-proxy, with mixed results]

:

But DOCTOR, she's in AGONY! 

: roots-radicals with bitch-slap backhands and the hula dance of pink-brown kings, queefs 

back to the process, my pragmatic grands, and avoiding well you are the scorn

of capitalism's greed champions '77, '78, '79-82, 84, 88, 91, 94, 96-2002...

: 

⎧access those dreams that were too awful to recall readily by morning one⎫

⎩even though they'll stay vivid for at least thirty years that I can attest to  ⎭

:

it's an empty cage and newspaper strewn boudoir parlor of Eastern candlewick 

burren into earth-mound-- fellated trust on one last crutch of smoking-burl bandstands

and either bed contained ecstasy and the other irony, lost on me, not from the O.C. but bunked-in by randy flatmates 

Moms Are Extinct stretched tacos, tack, tell; across turtle- shell, rack and sink: frozen factory of floor ice; rink skate, tape blade, slip foul: hit pain, goon-trip, howl soon-- bad blood, snow-cow, owl claw: eye-pluck, taloned, pronged, portent tine-cut, luck out of run-- tower fortress-- depends whose hoops  you wish to jump thru, and whose race you wish to throw loops to; and whose version of the truth you choose to prelude fanfaronade ... but after a recent bender (a braggart front-desk clerk--) [it is my duty to inform you--] downtown is off-limits to night auditors due to heavy bombardment on the payment plan tenses, expected waits, to wit: clustered comet's smarmy glide, ass implants and amateur lung's far-and-wide exhaled connection. They say economy of language like a new spendthrift account they say it is fundamental (I must be wasting words with daylight) for defining good poetry ado ado ado ado ado poop yadda bang, zoom,  straight to the fucking moon,  Assumed con-           (subsumed, a neural substrate) traints, is everyone that mimetic? nOW, gOMER sheeny It's not a fucking equation or solvable system.  It's power is in its puzzlement. If you can't  accept that you should realize you're detriment  to poetic society is worse than a dictator's  preference for one race.   Don't hesitate to GET the FUCK OUT. Leave before  you have to live with me causing your dying.  Dead dormouse dick. Get the lead out Goombah Gassius