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.
The fair light peaks at dawn
this heart flattered by the rush
another perilous tick tock
another band of blue
in a seemingly endless veil of gray
say something for once
say something that is real
There’s a motion in the air tonight
as souls weave and collapse
through American freedom Tees
the land of liberty
stitched up tight
with fence posts and signs
restricting passage
I am Tulia
I am Cortez
I encompass every soul
and every broken bone
I’ve penned every sad song
with a pair of scissors
and a blow torch
cutting, yet mending
every carnival light
reflected in her eye
the sound falters
from a laugh, to a whisper
to an eternal sigh
Gasping breath in some lonely dream
until I land alive beside her
when the fair light peaks at dawn
and with it
a brand-new day
making her more beautiful
than the one before
but not me anymore
So back down in the shadows of the pines I troll
the bleeder bell tolls
I am running over the land
as cold mysteries of life
lunge ever closer with outstretched claws
and where would I be
if I had fallen off that mountain?
Not here, not anywhere
hiding my fear in a bell jar
pasting it shut with hoarfrost
a crystal icing so cold and clean
a white glaze with her imprint
frozen, forever
The complicated clock
ticks recklessly
tossing time into a volcano
feeding Buddha bedtime snacks
cold strawberry cobbler
mad, hot liquid drinks
Have I done anything remotely close
to what the Red Soldier has done?
I think
smoking cigars at a toy train station
bring me my luggage
I am going home with her
We smoked our last cigarette
on the train ride to New York
it was 3:35
and the sky was losing its shape
and I was losing mine
returning to the womb now
to swim in mother’s blood
I’ll come back out and start all over again.
War on war is nothing more than war
and now we got bullet-proof baby blankets
our digital souls manic and depressed
killing each other over our opinions of God and love
history now bleeding from Polaroids
Christmas trees now strung with bandoliers
enslaved by the dollar
enslaved by work
enslaved by worry
enslaved by this beloved freedom
We sever dandelions with blowtorches
before the spores can even be born to the wind
we label each other like products
which ones are disposable?
which ones are not?
which ones deserve a good bombing?
which ones deserve to be starving?
which ones are worth saving?
And the decisive scissors are held by madmen
cutting away the undesirables from the cloth of life
snip, by snip, by snip
the masses beaten down daily
and yet the masses keep elevating these fools to positions of power
antichrist venom spewing from their tarnished guts
money brewing madness, always madness
the richer the fool, the more dangerous the fool
for that fool, that bigoted masquerade
can buy his way
into an ugly history
and you paid for it
you selected it
you chose it…
Just sandpipers on a wave
floating the way that they say go.
The ebb and flow of the Jesus crowd washed nostalgic candies into the streets of LipLock, Tejas on a sweltering Sunday school day gone mad. The bacon was loaded. Mosaic scrawlings of jelly looked like sparkling guts on the sourdough. Coffee was but swirling blood fueled by cream and sugar. The roar of the hungry throng was like Madagascar jungle traffic. Everyone was full of the holy spearmint, and everyone was hungry for a hot breakfast at the very same time.
So, we swirled through the stuffed parking lot looking for a space and I just knew it was going to be bad. The porch swings out front cradled the starved corpses of those who had to wait too long. The list of names at the front podium was a mile high and the hostess chick was losing her mind as people moaned and bitched. We held our ground in the lobby, but it was tough. I tried to examine a sack of maple nut goodies but dames and dudes with urinary urges kept bumping into me.
“Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me …”
How it dinged and donged in my throbbing head. It was like riding a stream train by clinging to the under belly. Too many people. Not enough space.
And that is what it is like down here in LipLock, Tejas. The infrastructure is flawed. The streets are designed to encourage collisions. It’s a great bulging bubble all steaming and hot and there’s nothing to do but eat, eat, eat … at Cracker Barrel, on a Sunday morn after worshipping super fresh Bog and all his hip angels. I had never seen a crowd like that squeezed into such a mediocre joint. How could anyone expect a fine dining experience amid so much chaos? Shove them in. Take their money. Clear them out.
Our one-star waiter was a lanky and shaky fellow who could barely keep up with the maddening buzz all around him. He managed to pour a few cups of decent joe but brought us limp bacon and not enough coffee cream and no jelly for the biscuits and I felt bad for the dude as we piled more and more demands upon him, but hell, it was his job. But did he deserve to have to eke out some paltry living this way? Does anyone? It all seems so futile and petty and yet Big Biz tries to fake us out with the corporate propaganda and the sterile smiles of robotic clerkies in glossy advertisements. It’s not real. None of it’s real. Yet we buy it, and we pay for it time and time and time again until our lives are completely absorbed and then wrung out by the pretty-polly machine. And it’s accepted as the social norm by the big bugged-out mass audience riding around in bumper cars, staring at smart phones, listening to factory-farmed crap music. It’s brain stew with no meat and no hearty gravy. We live in a watered-down world where the stooges flock like fire ants to pay for the privilege of emptiness in a vacuum of noise.
The pumping, screaming arteries of the static cling are unnatural. I think I would prefer to dine in the pines with only the sounds of the wind and the water and the wine, sans the flaring of the human crack pipe. And so, it goes no matter where one goes – east, west, north or south – the same strip mall mentality all lined up for the gibbons to feed. It’s all so lacking character, so lacking old-world charm, this architecture of capitalism, boxes stuffed with crap that we just can’t live without. We work all week to spend the weekends spending wages on Chinese goods packed into big metal boxes with drab neon signs and bullshit slogans – the flame thrower fluorescents sunburning us with sacrificial radiation, to crack our knees and send us down to bow to the almighty escapade of enslavement.
They advertise perfection but deliver the exact opposite.
“Fast, friendly service!”
Bullshit.
That’s all it is. Don’t believe the truth.
this angel skull of Harlem doesn’t sing or sink like the wind. it’s laundry day in Manitowoc, the MAT is down by the old Navy ship resting in its watery grave and the sky and the rain is so damn gray and sad as I hoist canvas bag over shoulder like some old-time dirty clothes beatnik hobo with wrinkled clothes and wrinkled charms. cigarette smoke burns the eyes at the frantic cross walk, the digital intersection and all those mod bods in the cars have dingy faces glued to smart ass phones. you got to watch the itch they have in their eyes, or they will just run you down. you got to be defensive at all times, a defensive posture and mind that is. no one pays attention except me. some lady comes up to the cross walk with some kid and she gets mean when smoke trails into her face then swirls around her balding child with the bad cough. she talks about asthma or some other respiratory illness and berates me for fogging up the public spaces. she says something about going off by myself to suck poison. maybe over there, she points, a lone picnic table beneath a low branch of a big old pine tree. sit there and suck on that thing is what she says. I answered with a big ol’ I was here first … and she huffed and the light changed and I stepped out into the street and nearly got hit by a car but they slammed on their brakes at the very last last last second and I did not die but instead went to the lone picnic table like that mothering broad said and sat there by myself and watched the dumb world be all mindless and beautiful even so and I just stayed there for a very long time and in the very background I could hear the crashing of the lake waves against the not too distant shore and it made my belly feel real lonely and then it was made worse when the bell tower of some ornate stone church a couple of blocks away started tolling away too and the lonely belly feeling started to feel even lonelier and then it was the dropping sun cracking through the clouds that added to the whole mix of lonely sadness, an Americana downtown’s brick and glass in sunwash light now. that gutty loneliness sweeping me up and getting me all choked up. it was all too lonely to sit still and think about it. I moved on, my bleached canvas laundry tote slung over my shoulder, into a rainbow all wet and smelling like gasoline as a magpie ate paint chips.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 