Category Archives: Poetry and Prose

Ravioli River

Photo by Bethany Hicks on Pexels.com.

He had a wandering image that followed him, something about ravioli in a lonely café somewhere on the other side of the world. Light rays harken down thin alleyways, the sun an orange ball in the sky, the clouds clotted with heat, melting like a sorcerer’s tongue on acid, leopards and leprechauns leaping over the moon, shirt tails caught on the quarter point that hangs down, a broken piece of cheese, a nightlight. “Right, right,” Alex says.

Fright night. The nerves are ticking like wax paper snuffing terminal electrical anxiety lamps. The rain patters against the window, a crazy man in gloves comes for a visit at midnight. The rotten guts of a warlock wreak havoc on a Long Beach bungalow. Crystal quartz hearts conduct energy like a psychotic maestro.

Daybreak den wake. He slithers out of a chair like a pale snake, a voided king at the precipice of gigantic sin. He puts two quarters into the coffee machine and waits for the dark brown dribble to come out of the hole and flow into a red cup. He preps his mind for complicated mathematics, genital schematics. He sits down at his worktable, clicks on a lamp, readies his chisel and hammer, and goes to work carving a notorious-bound puppet.

Once fully formed, the man fills the puppet with fear and anxiety. He stuffs it in like seasoned ricotta into a pasta shell until overflowing. He zippers up his flesh, sets him on the ground and winds him up like a pure machine. He watches as the young and inexperienced toy soldier marches off to war, the battle with life, the battle with God. Explosions abound in his wake.

The man breathes a sigh relief as his new creation disappears beyond the horizon. Now, it is time to rest, to eat some ravioli on the banks of Ravioli River, to drink some wine, to dream of more fiendish things about love and life, to look out upon the street and simply watch the ripple of time pass by.


A Mail Slot Groveet

Photo by Phil Ledwith on Pexels.com.

Shards of grass, comatose glass, liquified emotions in a cage of all the rage baked and sliced and handed by. Replicants rest by water drip. Sleeping with window veils pulled wide, the city outside, aglow in its ambers and blues, the steaming hues, the pink bruises, the cottonmouth blooms, the glistening tombs.

Azio turns his head to see. The sleepers are holding him down. A witch arrives in a gong gown, right through the wall she comes, like a whisper in satin. She numbs the air with her voice: “The dreams you’ll need, the dreams you’ll feed…”

There’s leftover coconut cake in the refrigerator. Azio looks at it as it sits on a plate in the overbearing light. He grabs a carton of melk, pours a glass, thinks about shapely ass. He grinds on the coconut with his teeth. It feels good to him. A plate and glass clink. The refrigerator blinks, then says goodnight.

He lies back down, the symphonic band plays in his head. The bed sucks him in like quicksand, the sand man has a noose, “Sleep, forever sleep,” he too whispers with sinister intent. It’s during the night the beings really crawl out from inside his oversized mind to take a bite.

And he remembers riding the snake through High Dallas. The things man has made, he wonders. Or was it men at all? He likes to think not. The machine swayed as it moved on its elliptical course around the city. The people there swayed with it. He recalls the frightened eyes, the dead eyes, the dumb eyes. All the eyes full of lies. He remembers the moving mouths, the lazy legs, the twitching hands, the Easter eggs from outer space.

See, the egg is a symbol of life, Azio thinks in his cyberpunk bed suit. He turns to look at the invisible her. “Why don’t you ever want me?” he confesses. She’s 100 billion miles away, running through a green meadow together, hand-in-hand, with a perfect robot. The insomnia devils stab at him with red pitchforks now. They torture him with these scenarios of lust on a ship. A buttered orgy ensues.

END


The Zodiac Salamander

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com.

Alabaster eggplants frolic in a purple haze. Munchkins drop acid and watch Wizard of Oz repeatedly until one jumps out a window. Wood gnomes with shotguns play patriots on the streets of D.C. The world looks at them and laughs. Sharpie abusers make cardboard signs declaring freedom and love. Love? Love runs rampantly abused. There is no such thing as a pair of dice. Las Vegas doldrums, sadness in a sea of glitter and gold. The tin man walks against the tide, his metal hide, the mental ride, rising, like Calypso. He feels sick to his stomach and vomits nails. He’s so visual yet so invisible. All those magnetic eyes stuck to the rides, plowing the sleigh bells, the conch shells, halls of injustice carpeted in velvet and blood. The soul ship arrives, to take us on a ride, to the other side.

His heart is dwindling, his skin is splitting, magic means nothing. He has a heroin sandwich for lunch on the 32nd floor. The room is quiet except for the soft whirr of an invisible A/C unit. He steps out onto the veranda, looks over the edge, the city roars, there’s wild boars, mandible monsters pound the pavement, the invisible man falls… No one even sees the crash. It’s all madness walking over and clockwork cuckoo skins. The fountains spray jest, the endless hallways cradle the wild, the wind, the sin, the ever-flowing gin. There’s sonic bathhouses and orbital areolas, Italian soda kisses that send some to Kingdom Come.

Flight patterns are all nonsense now, like sauerkraut rainbows, mint gravy, acidic donuts, laundry detergent made by skunks. The wires are so loose, obtuse, full of fruit juice. Here we go. The whore canals swell in their suits of lies, another tried and died, another tear-filled sky, standing on the deck of the wet city, the rain finally flies to wash away all the deliberate unlove.  

And now there are men who think they are animals, and they pay to live in a glass cube at the zoo…

When one gazed into the room, his eyes were like little red lights… Little traffic lights they were, in that bloom of darkness. But when he stepped out of that darkness some, his eyes then turned green, as if fireflies were bouncing around inside his head and peering out the eye holes. And when he finally came full into the light, he would blink madly, and his eyes took on a golden glow. It’s because he’s an animal. It’s because he’s a human animal, a man who lives in a cage at the zoo. The sign outside his enclosure reads: The Zodiac Salamander. He’s an amphibious being with fire for feelings.

Cat food chaos envelops the world, the morning, the night, the knights of the trapezoid table. Maximum fluoride, ambient chloride, synthetic metropolis, a glimpse from the cage. He sees the eyes stare back at him, the monkey grins, the Karen chagrins, the popcorn tossers and word salad snipers. The girl cracks the skin of a banana, takes one lonely bite, throws what remains at him to see if he’ll play chimp. Gimp. Shrimp. A wholly cocktail to turn him different colors. The sky is a blue sheet of frosting, the clouds twisted puffs of cream, he lives in a dream, a chocolate fountain by his bed, a loaded gun to take off his head.

The purple bus steams as it waits, passengers fidget in the queue, he watches as it pulls away toward a desert moon, a wandering bride swallows a monsoon. He’s satiated where he stays, the curtains of his command center are frayed…

“Why can’t I be just like everyone else?” he asked himself as he stood before a circular mirror inside the Gilligan hut that stood inside the larger enclosure. “Because I don’t want to be like everyone else,” he answered his own question. “I’m not merely a man, I’m a man who’s an animal… I’m animalistic. I am extreme. See how my eyes glow?”

The Zodiac Salamander got on a black telephone attached to one wall of the hut and pressed some square numbers. “Hello, central operations? It’s the human animal again. Say, when am I going to get some hot prey to mount? Isn’t it mating season yet? Can someone bring me the menu?”

He paused as someone on the other end of the line spoke.

“Uh huh. Right. I understand. Not too many willing participants? Now I don’t understand… Uh, huh. Right. Society frowns upon human breeding experiments at a zoo facility?”

Again, he paused as someone on the other end of the line spoke.

“Well, surely you can find some wandering aimless babe looking for a good time. My hanging fruit is ripe and full and I’m about to blow a packet of seed. So, when you do, let me know. Thanks.” He set the receiver back upon its cradle. “Damn society and all its correctness despite all its ill repute. This societal schism is giving me mental illness.”

The zoo wasn’t a big city zoo in a well-known place. It was a small zoo out on the edge of a brutal southwestern town on the fringes of the mad desert. The animal animals were limited to the usual small-town zoo fare plus various creatures that were native to the region. The Zodiac Salamander was neighbor to foxes, coyotes, a black bear, bison, devil snakes, lizards, icky spiders, evil goats, a long-horn steer, brooding vultures, and a passionate mountain lion.

After watching the movie Taxi Driver—his favorite—for the 919th time, the Zodiac Salamander stepped out from his hut and into the open air of the enclosure. He liked taking time to look up at space before he went down for the night. The jagged universe tossed back its grand array of colors and shapes and the milk of the Milky Way spilled and ran down across the faces of all the stars and other celestial objects.

It was just then that a small, gray man came into view beneath the light of the moon. The Zodiac Salamander sniffed the air. “Cliff? Is that you, Cliff? Cliff old boy?”

The man stepped forward to reveal his true self. “It’s me. How are you tonight?”

He sighed a painful sigh. “I’m lonely, Cliff. They’re not bringing me any women to mount. I have needs, Cliff. I have animalistic urges.”

“I suppose they haven’t found a proper mate yet,” Cliff answered. He scratched at his head. “These things take time, but I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’re a good egg, Cliff, and my favorite zookeeper.”

Cliff looked up at the stars. “Do you ever consider the sheer vastness of space?” he asked.

The Zodiac Salamander followed his track up to the heavens. “All the time.”

“Yet we toil with such meaningless wonders here on Earth. For instance,” Cliff pointed out to him. “My greatest worry is not being left alone or the fate of my everlasting soul… It’s will I be able to afford the rent or be able to buy enough food or keep the lights on. Isn’t that just such a terrible way for a man to have to be?”

The Zodiac Salamander nodded his head in agreement. “That’s why I’ve chosen to live how I live. My only true concerns are of a deep and primitive nature. I let the world out there worry itself to death. I mean, what can I do it about it. My hands are tied.”

Cliff tapped at his fuzzy gray head. “It can make a man go insane. We weren’t meant to live like this, yet here we are, living like this.”

“Sounds like you need to mount some female prey, Cliff. You’re wound tighter than a toy top.”

Cliff laughed at that suggestion. “I’m afraid my mounting days are over.”

The Zodiac Salamander frowned at the thought of the same thing happening to himself one day.

“Well,” Cliff said. “I need to finish my rounds. Unless I do myself in, I’ll be back at the crack of dawn’s early light to hose you down.”

END


Aquarius Sanitarium

Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com.

Sinisters are solace

Silence is alabaster

The creeps roam the roads at night

I see headlights that pierce the warm fog

Guttural engines, high beams, red eyes

The steam of a summer day, from the narrows it rises

Like snakes on bellies, ravens in the window, vultures perched on hay loft metal wanderings

Babes that begin with J

Her scent lingers like toast or English muffins

In a breakfast nookery, the cookery, clay cast by broken hands

Milk is here, melk is there, across the oceans we number

The maps we draw, the lines we force, the people we cage

Cultural imprisonment, the other side of a jackass wall

Taos and Laos, hybrid honcho burritos and fish stew

The words a jumbled Azio mess on a hot plate

Sometimes stupid stories are merely stupid stories

Binary therapy in a terrarium

An aquarium

Sometimes I just like to look at fish.


Weird Upstairs Walking Guy

Weird walking transsexual guy with long hair in trendy respirator mask.
Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels.com



There is this guy see
who lives upstairs from me
he’s the weird upstairs walking guy
walks and walks
but he never says hi – until today
he looked disheveled and bruised
hair all a muss
toting a bank bag full of money
and I’m wondering what all the walking is for
floor to floor
he walks and walks
till a quarter to four


Is he shooting darts
or is he shooting junk
is he hiding a decapitated head
in a hand-carved wooden trunk
has he stashed away the body of Cinderella
takes her out in the deep of night
combs her brittle golden locks
until she looks just right
props her up on the couch beside him
as they munch popcorn
and watch “I am Sam …”

Or maybe he’s a Buddhist
with incense and candles
and lots and lots of fluffy pillows
he kneels on his straw mat
and bows to the sun or to the moon
or to the neighbor beating his dog and grandma
with a pinecone and a bat

I always see him solo
never with a mate
and I wonder what his story is
what is his twisted tale of fate
how old is he
how much does he weigh
does he believe in Jesus
or follow his own way
what does he think about
when he drives to Albuquerque
does he play a Steinway
or toot on a green bottle flute
enticing the charms
to rise from the ashes buried in his carpet
does he drink white wine or red
what does it mean
when he screams like that
is it merely bad dreams
or frustration bubbling to the surface
in the form of dragon fizz and warm oil

Does he watch Regis and Oprah
and maybe Dr. Phil
or does he watch the motion on the ocean
three vodkas and three pills
is he a menace to society
or one of the popes
does he smoke razor blades
or psychedelic dope
is he a war veteran
or a homosexual
does he eat pot pies
or filet mignon
is he French
or is he Irish
does he have nightmares
or fairy tale dreams
does he have children
or maybe a wife
has he attempted suicide
with a rusty fruit knife
has he called on Allah
to save this bloody world
or does he sit back and sip martinis
whilst smoking Izmir Stingers
not really giving a damn
about his brain anymore

All this I wonder
but don’t really care
I wish he would just stop walking
and leave me to my Russian bear
the one that looks me in the mirror
and says…
Please don’t stare.



Little Rock, Big Sea

Little Rock, Big Sea



Every day
is merely a little rock
in a big sea
see this philosophy
came to me from a glance through a window
a curtained kitchen window
with the tang of street lights
burrowing through
woooooo
and the ride takes off …
don’t paddle
swim
to the nearest point that is your heart
all these paths
we twist and turn
for patriotic bliss
a stranger’s kiss
lemon drops on the moon
pea-shooting gypsies
feeling for a fresh, new vein
gypsies flying to California
seeking a mad hideaway
beneath the pulse of it all
the pulse of the freeways
the pulse of the helicopters hovering above you in the
sky
naked and quaking
the jewels get the spotlight
and suddenly the curtains close
and the wind sways your hurt so elegantly …
The piano walked softly
from beyond the pillars of salt
there was someone standing on the edge
and the notes were begging him to hold on
for just one more day
for just one more little rock
in a big sea …
and he hoped to send her roses
through the mail
or in a pail
which he would set at her feet
and forever carpet every step she would take
with honor and love
with compassion for her dreams
with a hard, warm place to rest her head every night
and he would shatter every glass slipper
for none would fit her so well
as my kiss on her brow
my kiss on her teardrop
which he would swallow as his own … forevermore.
And he sits on the little rock in the big sea everyday
crushing glass slippers in his fingers
and damning the size
of this majestic sea.



The Undecipherable Want

Undecipherable money worship.


The chariots rode into town
blaring trumpets
and waving spider webs
like white, cotton kites
and the soldier watched the cheering crowd
all smiling with blood on their teeth
and scriptures dripping from their curled fists
and the soldier felt as empty as wind
when he jumped off the back
and made his way through the blistering crowd
their eyes vacant, their hearts rattling with ice
everyone was like a bee sting
clawing and banded amber jewels
wearing spears and hammocks on their backs
in which to swing above a lazy flower
before the dark stones fall from the sky
and Jesus is riding a missile
spreading handfuls of love dust
across the widening gap of mankind
and he plants the point of the missile
right into the dirt lot of the Cactus Gin
a splintering roadhouse joint
on a desert road
a long, spindly caramel kiss
warmed and running
across the bourbon asphalt
the mellow yellow of factories
glows like a foggy harbor veiled in red velvet
and the broken bulbs of the Cactus Gin marquee still flash,
the craggy edges are crusted black
the little heartbeat light
flickers like a sick Christmas tree
and inside…
floating malnutrition
backward evolution
noise pollution


And the son of God ordered a whiskey
and smiled at the people he created
as they danced and fought and loved,
cried and laughed and ached…
to the slow grind of a melancholy jukebox
and he brought with him an angel
one with a rhombus head
and stunted wings
and the angel was singing the grief
of all she suffered on her leash
and a weepy guitar began to groan in the corner
Jesus was singing a song about peace and love
and the congregation began to throw beer bottles at
him
and Jesus spoke into the mic…
“Oh great. Here we go again.”
But he took the blows with harmony,
nibbled the glass between his teeth as he sang
weaving tanglewood hopes through the vibrating cave.



And the madness began to settle
as he curled before the window
the soldier was home but shaking
he was upset about the killing he had done
his wife a dozen miles away on sleepers
the children were slaves
the plays were robbing their minds
of any moral foundation
the madness had spun out of control
to the point of consensual acceptance
like morphine in your I-V
the slow drip of horror shows gone real
and fishing down by the river
was no longer notated in the wired almanac
as simply two boys and a bucket of worms
a shingle thatched roof
crowning a famous whitewashed bait and tackle shop
glows in the background
like a slice of warm care
or apple pie with vanilla ice cream on top
cinnamon showgirls lifting their skirts
and squirting you with a city sweet…
that’s life with those eyes,
what is this undecipherable want?