The aeroplanes are carving slits through the night sky
Blinking jewels of genitalia roar toward somewhere else
I look up at Orion; home
Still my feet planted firmly on Planet War
Planet Corruption
Planet Destruction
Planet Malnutrition
Planet Delusion
Planet Holy Hate
little green men licking human lollipops
pluck polluted dandelions
then dash away
for what amount of hope
lies with beings such as these?
She is like the light
the blue light, that crops life
into some picture-perfect kiss and heart
wandering I go,
clouds and echoes
they pour down and talk about love
in every sun-drenched step
she smiles
and says it’s all right
and even when I look out into loneliness
as the sun drops and the stars spit
she breathes and wanders
in her own head
in my own heart
the dying of the light
I catch her like a kite
loose and torn
my shoulder against the frame of night
cold, gray, sun blessed
love blessed
a Dixie pout in Heaven
the road worn and all that
and it’s human on human
it’s beauty unknown
exploding like some summer blush
a street, a lane, a river that boils
I hand her a flower
broken but beautiful
in my gray night
where I troll and dream
love light just written in a book
this heart arcing, exploding
some stranger’s tears running down
across the space between us
and I can taste her
across a world
across a distance
and I hold her in the space
the division runs asunder
yet I know her
completely, dreamy, love like the sun
love some magic burn
tattooed like fire and light
a kiss to melt my endless mountains.
The baby nearly crawled off the airport food court table because we were too busy arguing. I threw down a wrinkled five-dollar bill and told her to just leave. I had a flight to Tulsa to catch and I was beginning to panic about being late, but she just wouldn’t stop with the gnawing upon my wooden soul. I called her a beaver and that pissed her off even more.
I snatched some pieces of paper from her hands. They were pages from my Book of Life, now partly crumpled due to her angry grip. I needed to use the restroom and walked off. I turned back to look at her from a distance. She boldly stood out from all the other people there. She was as red as a lobster and there was a ghostly white mist swirling above her head.
I came upon a half-open door labeled MENOS. I stepped inside and it was a bathroom but also a bawdy place for leather-clad rebel rousers. I stood in line at the urinals and glanced over at the crowded billiards table. There was smoke and drink and loud talk in the air. There was a woman sprawled out on the orange velvet and she swam among all the colorful balls. Someone looked at me and whispered to a friend: “These perverts come in here to watch.”
I began to get nervous as I continued to wait to just use the urinal. Someone tapped on my shoulder, and I turned to look at a large man dressed in pearl white long johns. He looked like Bull from the television show Night Court. He went on to inform me that this restroom was only for “fighting men” and that I had to leave. I was horribly embarrassed but angry as well. I was still fuming from the fight with the wife that had been going on all day long. “Well, then where the hell is a restroom that I can use!?” I barked. Bull grasped me by the shoulder and shoved me out into a crystal hallway, sterile and cold, black trapezoidal chandeliers dangling in nothingness.
The next thing I knew, I was in downtown Tulsa leaning against a car and looking over a paper map. For some reason I was smoking a pipe. I looked up at the alabaster sky streaked with a purple bruise and saw a spaceship. It hummed methodically. It was circular in shape, as if a jumbo jet had been twisted into a cream cheese and cherry kolache. It was colored cranberry and aluminum. It was flying so low that I just knew that at any moment there would be a terrible crash and explosion. It never happened. I guess it landed at the airport and I was just crazy.
I found a Howard Johnson’s hotel and resort and checked in forever. I sat on the edge of the bed in room 413 and looked out the large window at the hostile skyline of the world. I studied all the hard edges of architecture and bemoaned the endless seas of broken hearts. The room was quiet until the window unit A/C kicked in. I lay back on the bed and there she suddenly was beside me. My wife. Sleeping soundly. The baby must have gone to Heaven. The anger must have dissipated as well. I don’t know. I never know. An end of day darkness began to swallow the room. I gripped a pillow and tried to sleep my way into another dream.
END
I sometimes wonder about the blood on Mars and the indigo stilettos on the streets of New York. The ‘tack, tack, tack’ sound against the sidewalk beneath the bourbon leaves of an autumn day as I look out my open window encased in old world brown brick with crumbling mortar.
I’ve been trying to rid my hands and my head of all the electric things. There’s a blue vase on a small table in my room and I stuck some wildflowers in it to make my life seem more natural. The sounds of the city do not play fair in my dwelling place, yet I can still hear the birds chirp in the diesel air and those indigo stilettos pound the pavement.
I pretend my squeaky bed is a coffin. I lie upon it and cross my hands across my chest. I close my eyes and I can hear the clumps of moist earth strike the lid of my ornate box. I breathe and wait until I can no longer hear a sound. I’m feeling terribly claustrophobic. The depth of my own dreamland demise is beginning to suffocate me. I can feel my living heart begin to beat faster in my chest. It’ so dark. I feel blind. Even the colorful imaginary orbs of the universe have disappeared from my radar. I don’t like this death. I don’t think I can take much more of it.
I sat up in the bed and gasped like Basim in chaotic Baghdad. I have flashbacks of the bad parts of my life, and it stuns me into a death ache. If I could only step onto the bridge of a time machine ship and go back to the birthing room at the red brick and crucifix hospital where I first saw artificial light and the animals in their blue gowns. Would I then be able to correct every misstep I took in the first life? Would I then be able to snuff out every foul word for the essence of harm? Would I be able to drown every bad deed by simply walking out into the new sea?
I get out of the bed and go to the refrigerator for a cold beer. They’re not allowed to sell it cold at the stores anymore. The heinous, misguided politicians still exist. I expect one to come into my apartment any day now and unplug my refrigerator. Shithead in a suit. The madness blooms like a pool of black orchids in the garden of evil and more evil.
I go to the window with my beer and look out. I like feeling that I live up in the trees. I hear someone yelling. I can hear a car horn blare. I hear music and smell incense burning. A magic carpet comes floating by…mystical jinn with purple skin. Their banner reads: Rock the Vote!
I feel bouts of anguish and joy like a roller coaster. I drain the beer. I put the bottle in the proper recycling bin. I look around at the room I live in. I’m alone. Maybe I have always been alone. Maybe all of us have always been alone.
I pull a bowl of Easter eggs out of the refrigerator and take them to the table with the vase of wildflowers. There’s a second window. This one has thin yellow curtains. I push them apart as I sit down. I tap one of the Easter eggs on the table to crack the shell. I peel it clean. I salt it, take a bite. It reminds me of eons ago when I wasn’t so tired all the time and people were alive. One more shake of the salt and one more bite. The day is slowly fading. Blue skies turn pearl white and orange. The traffic hums. I go to the couch and turn on the television set. I sit alone as the world spins and the wolverines howl. That place out there is beyond me.
This heart beating down to surrender
The world taking me apart
Piece by piece by piece
Turning’ my head around
And laughing down my neck
Now this birth, it hurts
Now this birth, it hurts
The jets with all the people
Flying high above
His sky feeling so empty
His sky feeling so alone
Laughing’ in the mirror
The underworld torn asunder
His veins, his veins, his veins
Leave a stain like opposite of heaven
And the truth comes to light
He isn’t worth the fight or flight
Backburner baby boy
Left to boil over
Like a street fight under lights
The fireflies alight
Like sparkles in his eyes
The girl doll on the ocean
Forever waving goodbye.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 