Tag Archives: Prose

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


Ambient Endless

What am I anymore? Some days I feel like a rock, other days I feel like a cloud full of rain. At times the heartbeat hurts, and I just want to go to space and be all alone. Then the clock chimes a certain time like a line in the sand, and all I want is to be turned up against her. I think she’s missing because I can’t find her anymore. I thought maybe I left her in the closet with the light turned on and a plate of food, but when I went to look, the light was off, and she wasn’t there. The plate was empty, though.

Maybe she took off to Florida like she always talked about. She wanted to live in Orlando so she could be near the dwarves. I never understood why I was never good enough for her. I suppose in the end it really doesn’t matter that much. She took off without me. Everyone takes off without me.

Somehow, I ended up on a jet plane headed west and I was wandering around the airport in Las Vegas. I had one suitcase. I got a cab and had the driver take me to The Cosmopolitan. I wanted to be up in the cosmos, the 37th floor, so I could soar to the stars and dive down into an infinity pool to find infinity.

The Goldilocks were all dressed in red and champagne and everyone was so good at making noise. Las Vegas is such a noisy place and that’s why they build the hotels so tall so the people who are afraid of the noise can find some solace up in the clouds, the flip threat atmosphere climb is always a good one.

I wandered around in Caesar’s Palace, but I never met the emperor. I bought beer after beer from a vending machine doctor. Mimes in white with pointy hats and red mouths smiled so strangely whenever I came near. I was surprised there were so many kids running around. I thought this was a playground for adults. Matters of life just don’t matter anymore.

I was lying in bed and looking out the big window at the sparkly darkness when someone came pounding on the door. My heart went psycho in my chest, and I had to clutch my own breast to make it settle. I put on one of the big white fluffy bathrobes they give you and went to the door. I noticed all the hair had fallen out of my legs, and now it was falling out of my chest and my arms, too. No one was there. It was all in my crazy head again.

I’m always falling in one way or another and I just don’t understand. I can’t keep up the pace that life demands of us. I just want to sit down for five fucking minutes. But the machine doesn’t let me. The machine always runs—29 hours a day, 13 days a week, 904 weeks a year. Time is all nonsense now, like purple wine in a gravity-free cathedral. Jesus and his sex dolls are just spinning aimlessly. Space is space and space is seemingly infinite but where exactly is this infinite space? Maybe it’s all in my head.

I stepped out onto the veranda and watched the city glow and explode and ignite and withdraw and scream and cry and finally never say goodbye. I saw a helicopter float atop the dome-like glow of the city. I watched it land on top of a building. It was a high square building with a gigantic H on it. H for hospital. H for hang in there. H for hallelujah. H for help.

I walked into the gilded sterile box and climbed aboard an elevator for the ninth floor. It released me onto a shimmering corridor with countless doors. I walked along and looked in the rooms there. I saw sad people, I saw lonely people, I saw people visiting with loved ones and they were only now just loved ones because death was near. I found a room that was empty, and I climbed up into the bed. I played with the controls. I switched on the TV. I waited for a visitor, but no one ever came. Before I fell asleep, I thought about what might happen to me the next day. It’s all I had because everything else was void and gone. I finally closed my eyes and went to space. There I found her on one of Saturn’s 145 moons. She was beautiful, beyond beyond.

END


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 Marbles of God

The marbles of God
Photo by Vlad Alexandru Popa on Pexels.com


I felt the breath of God in Santee
by the shores of Lake Marion
the spiders like aliens
weaving webs the size of quilts
white and silk tapestries of insect thread
jungle creatures with big, black eyes
and I looked to the sky
overcast and clouds a boiling
the wind blew through the treetops
knocking the leftover rains from their leaves
the brush as thick
as terminal cancer in the lungs
and the lonely breeze
whispered help me please
as I walked on down the road

And the green was everywhere
the breath of God cooling my veins
and I strain
to find meaning in every pulse
I strain to find meaning in my mind
my dreams
my sleep
my pain
my rage
love

And the deepest green was still everywhere
the chalky tracks of the dirt road
looked like baby powder
on the tires of my burnt-out ride
and I ran
I ran up the road
into the tunnel of trees
the verdant canopy of angels
God’s leafy cherubism
cradling the path of my life
and I ran down the road
back into the sun
breathing hard
And spitting blood
and I preached to the stones
the sky
the trees
the weeds
the birds
love

And it felt fine beneath the cloaked sun
the fireball veiled in churning clouds
it felt good for a change
to be amongst the rural world
the rural South
the old man rocking on his front porch
just breathing in the vapors
of heavy vegetation and peace

I rolled with the marbles toward home
ice chips in the eyes, the work of romantic elves
destiny forever on the dash, beyond the cracked windshield.



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?


Firefly Eyes

Firefly Eyes

There is order
There is disorder
There are purgative drugs
And there are clouds to sleep on

It was a day that was easy to dance to
It had a beat
and a really good rhythm
with the angel ship standing there like she was
some great gift slipped directly from God’s palms
and she didn’t even begin to sing
she just stood there 
a microcosm
a star
a California thread
beating down my doors with her eyes
and a long highway lust 
stretched as taut as the yellow line 
from which she had just begun
the long-toed tip toe
with valleys of grain
whipping by her temples fast as light
and she waved goodbye to her scar tissue
as it flew out the window
and died in the past
for now all she had before her
was the whitest milk
and the blackest nights
snuggling a cold mattress
reeling in the chill of it all
as does he

My chorus ran through the checkpoint
my liver was aching something fierce
on that Arizona wideband
that Calypso horizon swimming like a fish
across the rusty pinnacles sprinkled with salt
and I dreamt of snuffing it and devil tattoos
calling to me from the other side
and I begged for the lush
of some green island adventure
with vodka and bright vegetables
canopies on wheels
and jalopies with no steel
a theater show for the man on his homemade bed
peering out a broken window
watching all the wealth rain down on him
and he was indeed the meek
and all he wanted anymore
was to inherit the Earth
she being queen sun
and he being king moon
and he would lay out carpets of stars for her
so she could step over the puddles of empty space
ever so elegantly and precious
like a newborn baby
kept clean and pure 
behind a bell jar of kaleidoscopic glass

He stepped on the white, feathery scorpion
and it played the tune of a harp when it squealed
and he wondered if he were in Heaven
rolling snake eyes and sin
across green velvet lawns sprinkled by the belch of a 
crisp hose
he pondered fame
he pondered glitter
he pondered perfection
and the price you pay
for not living what you feel
when all is a cool, light, tapping reverberation
and your soul feels as empty as some wicker basket
beside a raging river run dry
think of the music inside you
think of what smells good
think of letting go
and feeling for once
with that wrecked soul

He was playing a baby grand
cigar crunched between his teeth
the whole of NYC bouncing around in his eyes
and he looked around at the clean carpet
and all his plush interior
and he felt as dirty 
as a slaughtered lamb
he was too cold to think
and too hot to cool down with ice
he was wrapped up in all the fornication
society was performing in front of him
and he climbed out the window
and started to fly
like some great bird
startled free from a bush
all around the world he soared
like a rollercoaster of flesh
and all he saw was her
standing there with her small feet
planted firmly on the long, yellow line

He dropped the porcelain figure on the highway
it was crushed by large wheels and scattered amongst the tacky asphalt and cryptic road kill
so he knew now it would be a mad journey
to hell and back
with an English girl
and an American man
and he rolled her on the dandelions
in some London park
and they ate squares of cool, orange Jell-O
making glasses out of them
and seeing the world through a
wobbly, blood-stained sepia glaze
the antiqued film made them sentimental
the statues and cobblestone
had a look like one would find on Mars
not the planet,
but the god’s personal person
and he pulled out a slide
and the world was indeed an orange hue
and the English girl 
and the American man
never wanted to leave London in the summertime

And he steered his teary-eyed red rabbit
near Joseph City, Arizona
gunning it hard toward Gallup
and the museum 
of green pharmaceuticals
but the meditation gave him a vision

Like a small film painted on the cold, white wall of a
motel room
and this particular film taught him about writing letters
and the waste of getting wasted
because he knew the angel would return
in one form or another
and she’d be happily holding out a plastic platter
filled with jars of glass eyes swimming like fireflies

Castaways, in some bruised Irish sky.