No More Digitalis

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Jump the Piper

"rape him with extreme prejudice"

[shadows)

THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST

While a passenger in Iowa City

we passed at dusk a cemetery

and from its gates emerged

the tall Irish wolfhound

lumbering like a Baskerville

beast in need of feeding.

Later that evening

in front of a restaurant

while smoking cigarettes

we looked down

and there on the ground

laid the cordial canine breathing.

The beast was calm

and his guardian was around

the corner speaking of wandering

grave-rows while the dog

came along and chased

ghosts and rainbows.

CHEATING AT SOLITAIRE

Showing restraint--

too little, too late--

fine, fine, everybody's

prolific and ingenious

no need to intuit

to breed to screw it up

just some idiot idea

of love, just a theory's

hooves, pirate Jack's

one-eyed suicide,

birthday thalidomide

surprise—look Ma,

no legs!

CONQUERING NEW ORLEANS

It will never not be too fresh

to recall in this life unless come early death

with a ten-day pass to bacchanal

to die by pride and insolence

fueled by lightning and a numb face

and raw prostitutes with the death wish

fatalist chemists of power doom asleep

SO MANY DEAD FRIENDS

Miss like hell the mind

when I thought it superior

when I was fifteen

when I had a healthy body

and couldn't wait to destroy it.

Gangsters don't worry about it.

I do not prefer anything at all

about California except for desert.

The rental throbbing, guppies

on the handle with harmony.

Hotel suite shellfish on white.

Art deco pastel trauma mural.

Chew on green in chemical slaw,

only the color strongly brewed.

Irish Spring, Shamrock shake.

Pole Position. Rod Laver Adidas.

Correspondent shapes and clover.

Mistletoe torture with crook-neck.

The stuff of dreams. Ideals made

of a lack of brotherhood myth.

Stones of accord, milliner hood.

What about the we-don't-know

and the madam's charging toys?

The day-plugs of acrylic clogs.

Revert. Backward. Regression.

Not past-life, this fucking life.

I don't care for much these days.

Joylessly biding and distracted.

Deliberate, constant diversion

is a talent worth cultivating.

This Place Has Never Seen Light

step tentative reverse, back into slippery alley, galosh displacement

like the waters of crossing by Xerxes, bridges floating, armies come

in step with melody, harmonic bones, yellow fife, moose offal drums

to map the city, in a novel of exploration, the cartographers theorize

and drafting tables are nudged into breaking the unbreakable window

against parody, against the charity parade, from where comes energy

did it belong to the weavers of dreams, did it scream at the snowmen

the drifters of plow inertia, banks of marshmallow down shellacking

a great river of oil spillage from pine timber pilings, thousands old

I will not be careful in the cold, I know its secrets like a family recipe

the courageous ground frozen after drowning in fickle liquid regrets

backward walking, turnstile dancing, look out for the demons in red

ghosts of unknown authors fixing ribbons to mosaics of typewriters

under a war-lost blood moon, I quit listening to her after firestorms

the sand cannon shuffling a mortar round's two-places-at-once part

call it god-like, a tremor of doctor-boxing, a daft dentist chisel point

a courier of girls named Ivy, a strand of antebellum hair in a comb

the foods of nothing, the pirates of plumbing, maybe mud wrestling

continue the chorus, strum the neck with bated breath, charm hook

censured by vice in presidential longing, dreams deferred to dreams

hang-gliders crashing so the cables connect to rock's-pinch, a noose

people fall apart, nobody knows the trouble I've seen, fought w/God

and lost, because of my low self-esteem, my extremes of conviction

my lack of comfortable disposition, glut of love of can't accept at all

Denouement

I know I don't know, where are your tickets 

and passport, did you lock the back, dig holes 

for the children, sleep me off in a tree, away 

from Jesus and this awful species, with oars-

men for the friction, the water-weight 

of weakness, a skeleton bell and slumber 

with witches from a place you've never 

heard of, and the dawn announcement 

of a bantam machine clocked with an axe 

on a lamppost near the cemetery gates behind 

this town, when will they cease the upkeep 

of these gardens of iridescent skin, bullion 

fringe from bone shivers, a solemn history

belonging to a callipygous clerk of twenty

and gouged eyes of game, just a sport-fuck

I've eaten the heart of my enemy chief
and the tender eyelid flesh, anus-like;
and the legs of an heiress on the cape
in winter, sand-blown peaks to sea crust
over a howl of ghost-gull chatter, gone
at once, beach glass the work of a loner
jilted into needles, creaked wood deck,
faded, painted, forgotten at the bottom
like a rich history lithographed in ink;
hydrophobic, tempestuous catastrophe

Manufacturing Formica Factory Flora

An inflatable bowel dildo born a butt balloon of bursted poop
A mongrel elf sputum shaping torch of Bakelite el-tripped Loop
As it lays a game of suits setting places upon a quattro tableau
A sentient willow sprig and apiary maple branches from groves
Am I the outlet sex of nail-file pricks all in electric light
A deluge/barrage of jetsam/flotsam displaced by Armalites

___________________________________________________

An inflatable bowel dildo

born a butt balloon

of bursted poop

A mongrel elf

sputum

shaping torch

of Bakelite

el-tripped Loop

As it lays

a game of suits

setting places

upon a quattro tableau

A sentient willow sprig

and apiary maple

branches from groves

Am I the outlet sex

of nail-file pricks

all in electric light

A deluge/barrage

of jetsam/flotsam

displaced

by Armalites

I dropped off her confession in a handmade paper envelope
after editing it for scope and incriminating content I hope

she didn't have much to say about the delay
about the killing fields she had overseen
about the starving families whose famine
she had the honor of starting with disease

modern cargo cults and dolphin rape caves
make the news these days and my pulpit's dry
making more opportunity for great difficulty
whatever she wants she gets so long as I stay high

I lapped up her recession with wringing rags cut from curtains
after tearing down the diffusion for blinding by reflections of suns

all the raw materials converge there at high volumes
noble gases, hydraulic vaults, rogue elements of Hades
Osiris a spiritual labyrinth of hedged bets and solemn
charges of forgotten felonies from dangerous physiques

the angels are around me pressed against the wall
nauseous and oblique in the art of rock's hard place
where fascination ends the teenage feeling of good
you didn't need to worry about the excess of belonging

you didn't need to misdirect the directionless with death drive
the dirge song of missed callings without adjustment to thrive

a stained slut on a carapace couch of slotted spoons resolving
a cane of wickerwork candlewax coating a candlestick chandelier
a falling tank of solvent and winning girls of old easy jobs laving
a seminal flux of rewind fluid an acid bath in cock-a-doodle cheer

Hurt

I saw your picture of the old man dying on the train
I saw a middle-aged victim of stabbing violence again
outside the bar window in Uptown over a gram toot
of killer blow and a dark glass of stout and loud rock
I saw ice form over the face of dead junky in the park
I walked every street of Manhattan with one eye open
while the other slept off a needle exchange and bought
lots of expensive new clothes up top before walking back
I never thought about the novel I meant to remember
even though it sat tight in my back pocket on hard boots
I waited too long for a cab and felt the wind waver over
Brooklyn Bridge while the river sounded like a hole
in the ocean and the city swizzled backward into cold
my sweetest friends stayed in the burned out buildings
and my plane was delayed long enough for one phone call
I didn't have the nerve to let you know about my plans
to disappear in spite of my inability to extract myself
and without conscience sever every tie I knotted long ago
threadbare and textile bundles behind a pipestone tomb
fetal cliff mummies a warm and osteolytic breath from
the farthest star cackling back infinite bad paintings
created in earnest with total lack of technical capability
but full of the fullest colors of fall and compulsive creation
I ran from a nightmare and lied to the slighted dealer
I hugged a pervert on the Spanish lawn near a fountain
I gave away my freebase gear to the hotel receptionist
I left the last time and laughed nervously the whole flight
I realized trying not to start lines with myself and I
was getting us both nowhere and I could not articulate
so I decided to just start lines with whatever I felt like

Take It Easy

tied an awkward object to a coarse rope and dragged it thru mud water

slush and brushwood and half-constructed site waste to a pole set in concrete

several factors overlaid a pin cushion rubberband network of push-tacks

two locked bathrooms and empty coffee pots and spilled grounds

a taskmaster cutting mailing addresses off magazines
but what about the skeet pull thing and clay pigeons?

got it to the corner of Romeo and Juliet

where the double-barrel banged open the parlor door

and smelled the dew-peaks on her downy tuft

before sidling upstairs to find the indigent boy

cowering under the girl's covers with a sack of wet mice

and the urge to purge a virgin of her vestal absence
this is where I get off

rescinded wind, maybe a fortune at that end, my ravaged miscellany
pristine as the first falls, the kickback mist, heaven's hand in laser light
in the dark show, forestalled shadows, just a few days sowing the meadow
leave it to a limited air supply, and maybe, the organ lungs will go free
the colliding spoons of security, an anthem hymn of false serenity

the machine must slow, we must succeed, there is no option
the engine block in want of lube, the world in want of petrol
the guide says this was the spot where the world's oil dried
the clock says this was the time and the place that we died

I have a funny way of showing it
but the bookends justify the magazines
humidity of southern battlegrounds
publications sold in sad cafes
now there isn't enough cash
to while away the days
worrying about the next conquest
and I'm so bad with math
I'm afraid you'll have to find another way
to take back what belongs at rest

I'd scream hoarse wither without you, cornishrow pickle hens, iodide, what say you, the wench, Winnifred, colonel peanut butter and all-dies, all the men's horses of death, all the building up of nothing, all the energy in the sails, blackened sea creatures attached to guilty and becoming patients in lost wards, keepers of light, soft impression of magenta tears, blacklisted screenplays, glitter heels and sudden glitch, the disentanglement, utter and joyless, diving headlong into the fairway refrain, sandy bottoms with crooked goalposts from an Incan specter parade of lobules, pheasant breast the game's delight, what hath they done to me.

Dirigible Earth

sorry I slithered out of your glue, primates in the trees called time, I screamed hoarse

ventured to build a better society, got lost in the bushes outside your dream, headphones

watched the glow from a late show, saw space traces bullet down your house, big armchair

back at the bottom line, bad coordinates for living, what the pipe smoked, what I hoped

a charged houseplant with claws mangled the musical psychic air, it helps to have limits

nail down the rope so its lengths can be pulled taut, nailed again, misfire, rocket launch

I don't have the butterfly trigger, the war bonnet of smoke, no network to Windhoek

the heat got to the engine, the oxygen got to the iron, the pigment painted a dye

the balloon had combustion carrying revolution, the tropic utterance of a bay

a singer's sabbatical in an ocean of snow, mountain crest groping dark

no precognition, no energy from the sun, just a rusty sleigh ride

snowshoe hares and spry foxes, stuttering, staggered lines

all that was left was an empty gondola barreling