I broke the seal
of the highway bottle
the greasy liquid shot
of a place unlike Eden
a place called
Plains on Texas
The sickness came on like a roar
the shaking and the sweating
love all nonsense now
reality but a blur
Dairy Queen red
running over my eyes
catastrophe walking the strip
of a gravel pit morgue
dead end ruckus and muck
sandblasting the sky
with a dire need to survive
Like I said the sickness
I was ready to tumble to eternity
nerve endings bursting
without joy
or meaning
or purpose
the stench of oil so thick
the desolation of a wounded place
sticking to the sweat of my skin
and I was ready to snuff it
snuff it loudly in Plains on Texas
choking on an imminent stroke
I sailed to the roadside tables
trembling and feeling wildly ill
I needed a pill
a naked, sleek pill
to kill
the present-tense situation
the coma I was driving toward
a cure was badly needed
for a stroke was knocking at my door
The shop windows reflected dead light
glass depictions of gray headstones
kaleidoscopic blurs of broken eyes
and shimmering wanderers lost
in flattened fields of hot wind and demon paste
and I was ready to pull to the side
to let it all go in a dirty lot
discarded moments of plastic and paper
soaring like wounded doves
soaring and circling
the stroke victim
clutching his brain
and catching his breath
gripping the end of the story
like a blade or a torch.
Tag: Writing
-
Stroke on the Plains
-
Walking to the Moon
The birds began to sing
at the edge of another dream
My eyes hurt with sleep
Heartbeat torn
like old paper
The skylight burns another hole
through everything I hold
But not your skin, your gaze, your soul
I’m a rocking chair captain
with threads of cold gold
running through my veins
this window is driving me insane
Another hole to look through
another view without you
roof tiles and smokestacks
a slice of cloudless sky
Every day I whisper or scream –
How I wish for flight, out of sight
Naked at dawn
these unforgiving hours
A smoldering cigarette lights the way
Through this smashed up haze
I’m just a cast away
on lost highway
with nowhere to go
but so many damn directions
Empty roads beckon wanderlust
Heaven torn asunder by the sun
I’m down and out, beat
I wanna run
to the view from a summer porch
buried in the green torch
memories of stories
told outside a backdrop
of large glass windows
Memories torn asunder by the sun
This heartache wakes me to another day
beating against the wall of my chest
Struggling to breathe
I want to let the world in
but how do I believe?
When everything I once captured
has now been released
And everyone I love
Loves someone else
And everyone I love
lives in a different house
And everyone I love
doesn’t even remember my name
Headlamps stir this torture
like a straw in a poisoned drink
I’m melting in the cold
Truth untold
Lie awake at night
struggling to calm the burdens of the day
My life gone astray
Stone, metal harp
greets me at the door
turn the key
and I’ll be free
Because everyone I loved
never even knew me…
-
Elvis in Atlantis
I saw Elvis making crop circles in Atlantis
From the window of my pink wooden house
Rattling pigeons lining the lip of the rain gutter
Squawking at the wash line
Strung out in the strata of the bleaching sun
I hung out in the window frame
Smoking Camel Lights in a T-shirt
Watching flocks of black angels
Soaring above the leafless treetops
The bourbon reek of the ocean
Rolling and foaming across my
Tilted square of freshly-cut lawn
My radio zoomed into Prague DJs
The red pin of the dial pointing magnetic North
Tangled fibers of cotton
Being spit from slits
In my favorite vinyl tablecloth
Rings of coffee stains
Blood stains
Love stains
Remind me of where I have been…
It was the sway of electric light September
A lonely hovel of a home
Basking in the sore stomach of life
Miles from nowhere
Seconds from everywhere
The typewriter clicks banged off the walls
Steel drums clattered in the distance
Monkeys tossed pineapple bombs in the graveyard
And all was merely a flicker of time
Bottled in a piece of cherry-lemon rhyme
My Christmas tree bent and dried
Presents left unopened
The jagged shards of ornaments
Looking like fragile teeth
Ready to take a bite out of me
Whenever I passed by them
On my way to the bathroom
To load another razor
To scrape away my senseless charm…
It was in the grocery store where I saw her
Standing in the long line
With a bottle of all-natural apple juice
And carb-friendly yogurts
Cradled within her arms
She smelled like dirty peaches and chai
Broke and fragile and hot high from behind
Her zodiac leggings tight and cradling ass
One strap of her orange top sliding off her dimpled shoulder
She turned for a moment to cast a psychic, random smile
Ocean water eyes from another world aglow
A premonition of a wife to be
Then watching her fade out the sliding doors
As I plunked down thirty dollars
For beef steak, potatoes and mounds of pasta
And I dropped them all for love
And followed her through the jungle
Hoping she’d lead me to a crystal ball
Or Kerouac’s meditation mat in the woods…
And when I raised my head up off my table
The vinyl stuck to my face trying to keep me down
I realized I was dreaming again
The jagged teeth of the ornaments
Grinning wide, making fun of me
And I went into the kitchen
Turned on the light above the sink
And went to work making a poison stew
While listening to Prague DJs spinning
songs about screaming for help.
Enjoy more Cereal After Sex! Enter your email address below to start receiving notifications of new posts.
-
The Escape Artist
Oxidized eyes and diamond fireflies doing the rotating Merry-Go-Roundabout above in the sky, under hot sun ozone hole as I’m mining in desert Minehead up the breach highway linear West near the Hondo – I’m hitting into dirt wall with pounds and pounds of frustration while the rattlesnakes and the antelope watch, cocking their different heads in wonder, sniffing the air with nose and tongue, searching for an unwound rag doll named Sheena in this desert Mars land of bar.
There’s a tattered zip line over a deep gulley to get across when the mad, mad water rushes in from the West – but this place be bone dry today and yesterday and probably has been for a long, long time by the looks of the bleached skeletons down in there playing bad hands of poker with weathered cards set to reel off at any second with the slightest breeze. This is Deadland and I am deep in it, shins and thighs scratched to hell by the muscled, thorny bitch plants that thrive here, the ones that dine on salt and spit and kick at you with tentacles of nails.
It’s Christmas day and it’s still too damn hot. I’m hiding from St. Nick because I know he’s going to beat me with a pillow sack full of fresh beehives. The family of strangers back in the village is all too damn hypnotic, admiring those dumb faces as they hold up the shiny new toaster as if it were a mirror – you’re burnt bread baby, I can smell it from here. How can you live in such a fucking catacomb Mrs. Nannette Hourglass? How can your soul stand to be so bound? I for one cannot take it and let out of there like a hurricane playing a harp, a roughshod whisper, phantom skin squeezing through the door, starting the car, driving away, away, away.
Sure, I think about my bad case of anti-social and radical behavior as I ride alone on the Rose Highway smoking sheepskin cigarettes and listening to defunct, angry music. Sure I feel the rocking horse guilt well up inside and think I might puke it all out over the steering wheel, but this mind muscle can be hallucinatory, can trick you into believing that what you are doing is right when in fact could be wrong, but most likely is correct anyways, baby – listen to your soul, not the fucking TV – for Christmas is meant to be spent alone, alone in the dry hot, hot whorehouse, alone to recall the dead ones that used to give you gifts; gifts now broken, now tattered, the ruined parts sent back to China or Bangladesh where they are piled in heaps right next to the used and worn bodies that made them in the first place – stockpiles of corporate shit and the starving enslaved with those melted, plastic fingers scratching at the emergency exit just to get out, out, out. Smile and sell for hell.
The sausages are boiling in the pan over the small fire I have built here. The smell is fine. The stomach is growling. I look at my scratched pocket watch – they are all probably sitting down right now for the big feast and the blah, blah, blah, hah, hah, hah, chit chat shit of waggish talk whilst imaginary butcher knives twist in the spine of who sits across. It’s all pretend love and love until the polite goodbyes and then the door slams and the backstabbing blurp, blurp comes rolling off those twisted tongues. I wanted no part of that; I wanted crisp sausages, quiet, fire and Christmas cheer – toasting the rocks, the gravel, the wayward scorps – it was lonely as hell either way.
There is the aftertaste of chagrin in my mouth and guts – oh, how I long for guilt-free freedom, how I long to never return to the same space twice, how I long to taste every road, every directional arrow, every point on the map, every carriage, every castle, every loch, every green garden ever grown, every ocean, every river, every trickle of light in some small English cottage – but I am far linear west poking at ash with the metamorphic girl sitting across from me now dressed in lava rock – it is the shimmering sheen of some prehistoric volcanic sacrifice in hallucination – the wild makeup and hair; the savage, spitty pout; the long, velvet legs leading to Heaven’s flesh; the eyes bursting like honey bombs set ablaze by a sharp, silver Zippo.
Flick, burn, inhale –
“Merry Christmas,” I say to her anyway.
She fades away, but I can still smell her – like roses and spray paint.
I thought I saw that dude Arafat scrambling around in rocks and brush, but the longer I stare the more I realize that nothing is real. It’s all a memory bank baby. We were all here many moons ago, rag-tagged in the back of some trashed out Euro sedan, barfing out the remnants of mad ragers all over the freshly polished desert floor, the groaning, the twisting and uneasy sleep – everything always comes back around again no matter how hard we try to avoid it. Memories are deposited, the pains and joys withdrawn – it’s like black-and-white Poland to me, wandering in rags, sleeping in parks, losing muscle just to hustle.
888 West End posh and some baby hot, hot lady in bed-ready red is sipping my best brandy like it’s water as she sits on my couch looking at all the shit I have on the walls. Does she even know she’s just a mannequin who happens to know how to breathe?
“So, it’s New Year’s Eve, and here we are.”
That’s what I say to her.
Her glassy eyes look up at me as if I were some loon.
“Do you like chainsaws?” she asks. “I’m afraid of chainsaws.”
She holds out her glass for more brandy.
“You know, this shit is pretty expensive.”
I pour her more of the brandy and walk out onto the veranda. She doesn’t get off the couch. She just sits there sipping my expensive brandy and staring off into space like some bucket of chicken in need of a warm towel. How can I tell her to get the hell out of here, but still be polite about it? Am I really that boring? Is it me? Has it always been me?
I turn just in time to see her putting on her coat and walking toward the door.
“Wait – it’s not midnight yet.”
She smiles, puts a chick cigarette between the frosted lips.
“So, what? “You are boring me; you always bore me.”
That’s what she said to me in that thick Euro accent.
“But wait, we could take a drive in my car. It’s fast. We can go wherever you want.”
She stopped at the door.
“All right, but you let me drive.”
She was a maniac behind the wheel, but I said nothing. I even removed my seat belt when she went faster, faster, faster.
“Are you afraid I will wreck your car, or worse, get you killed.”
I just let go and flew with her. She accelerated. Faster. Faster. She went faster still until we were out of the city and in the luscious throes of country dark.
“Are you afraid yet?”
She shut it down in some lonely void.
“It’s 12:01. I’m going home now.”
She got out of the car and walked away, disappeared into the dark woods, forever gone.
I poked at the ashes with a stick on Christmas day. The sun was still bright, and I was still alone. Would it ever be safe to go back? Why go back? Why keep going back? This life should not be a revolving door – push in once and go through, push in again and keep going through, push, push, push, until the end is beautiful enough to stay, the day she falls in with a first airport kiss that sends rockets to space.
CEREAL AFTER SEX 