A Poem To Friends After a Night Out

The cops at
the door
always scared me,
even when
there wasn't anything
to be afraid of.

Next it was a tall long and stretched
out place, it loomed and symbolized
a distant
power like
a guardtower
of the Roman
frontier.

Full of nobles in their
togas fresh
and their women
(mainly) on display
and the libations poured from fonts
forward in their thinking,
"Let us keep them drunk!"

And to spew the lies
and herald truths
and miff enemies
and salve friends,
to say that I would
do it all
again would be an
understatement

I Was a Bird On a Powerline Feeling Okay

Like a bird
on a powerline
I bore the winter's
wind to hang high,
and look down on
those happy people
and await
the crumbs
and hot dog pieces.

I watched them and
began to hate them,
in their two-legged
lowering flight, in their
hollow ways
and irreverence.

And the hot-dogs and crumbs
they made me love them.
I felt a way like maybe they
were not so bad.
And they all aren't!

My wing was broken from
the birthing tree,
and one of these
people
placed me back in the nest
to heal
and try to fly again.

(But many believe that to touch you would alienate you,
and laying soft-bodied on the ground they would
callously pass you by, as if to shun you from memory.)

Sitting lightly on a powerline I
still wait
for the odd
hot-dog or
the new puddles
on the clean
asphalt to
preen and bathe, and I
often decide to leave my
Signpost roost
and spend the night in
the pine trees and bamboo.

There I eat the seeds of grass and the
insects of the night
and I shiver in the wilderness cold
and the feelings
I had for those crumbs and people
fade away
into the hiss of wind
and rattle of
pine needles.

I thank them and forgive them
and may
one day
forsake them.

*Makes Crazy Gesture With Finger Beside His Head*

All at once
I saw
for a fleeting
moment
That Flash of
your flaxen hair
in the lights of
trash can bonfires;
but I was mistaken.

It was only a drummer for the band
and he
had not
your countenance
nor ever
will anyone
else.

And somehow I knew
that you'd
lose your phone
that night
and it hurt and burned
like a bullet
remembering
that you
are
diseased.

Diseased and dying, through
no fault of your own
and I in my ignorance cannot see
the sores
and welts
and lesions
that make you
the way you
are.

So I forget
I treated you like an athlete
when you should
have clearly been on the bench, or
in the hospital.

When I heard
you had lost your phone
later,
and my
suspicions were
confirmed,
I knew
then, and only then,
that the alcohol
wasn't the only thing
making you forget.

Somehow you forgot,
through no fault of your own,
and I in my ignorance
raged against the dying mind
like I could change it, like
you might
suddenly be cured
by
 a
   verbal
slap
or
dis       jointed
kindness and strength,
a
              hug
here or a
                 shake there
could bring you back to the world of
the living.

Hubris is the fatal flaw of many men
and I too
succumbed to it: Thinking that I was
stronger than
Any disease!
especially
one that inhabited
another.

I have been the bearer of
both the lash
and the stroke,
and to stripe the back of
another
only to
see the blood
after the fact
makes me recoil
from myself
in horror.

Lamenting One's Own Folly in Anger: Vanity Will Lead You to Correctly Believe That This Poem is About You.

Here you go, A Greek Drama for you!
You queen of the trailer park,
and you king of tight t-shirts!
Empress of lies,
with your courtesans of cowardice!

Let us never forget the beautiful words,
willful actions,
and hard earned cash
that swung in wide arcs and
spiraled into the toilet of your existence.

Told to pity you,
taught to hurt you,
led to hate you,
you jerked and spun like your whims,
and tides that rose and fell
could not match the discrepancy
between your words and actions.

There are days and nights
that could not pair with how you treat others
minute to minute.
If this is the drama you seek then lift up your mask!
Head to the odeon and hear my chorus song!

Here's to hoping that we both crash
like Russian satellites in flaming hunks
of metal
so the world can see our plight.
The writing on the rubble is no longer legible,
burned away and written in Cyrillic.

Your Emperor! Innocent but complicit,
king of crossfit! Milk-drinking Mother's babe!
Totem of turf-toe and thrown shoulders!
He'll gaze at your watery complexion
with horse-head and doe eyes,
you'll remember fondly your parents own poorly thought-out tryst
and seek to create
a bastard-child of your own.

So be underemployed forever!
Live less and more sadly!
For these are the paths of those
who receive
the sympathy of
the world,
and their way, while not just,
is
easy.

Stretch,
wrinkle,
smoke,
dye,
squint,
die.

You'll divorce,
grow old,
uglier
and more bitter,
you'll shake more
and the cigarettes
will have torn your voice.

You'll lament your loss of king and country,
the death of a nation built on knives
standing upright in backs.
Weeping with no one by your side to hear.

Another piece of white trash
left
on the porch swing
to die.

I'm Gonna Write You A Letter

I'm going to write you a letter.
It will be businesslike
but, hopefully, coherent.

In it, I will
subtly explain myself and
overtly apologize.

For this apology I seek
no acceptance
or forgiveness;
I know, however,
that you are the forgiving
and accepting type.

If I had never been there,
if I had never sought
you out,
imagine how you could have
spent all that time.

Imagine, instead, your success
unhindered by
the great weight,
the reprieveless burden,
that was I, to you.

Anyway, the letter
won't be too long, and
will necessitate no
response.

It is to you, for me.
Is that selfish?
Maybe I haven't changed. 

Only Part of The Story (2012)

She'd smoke cigarette butts
out of public ashtrays
and had no qualms about
pissing in the neighbor's
rose bush.
She'd fight like a man
and spat like one too
She'd shoplift clothes
and makeup
she'd never wear.

She got mad
broke plates, lamps,
hearts.
She celebrated,
drank, shot,
screamed, fucked.

I taught her how to do
a drive-by, testing
her abilities first with
a 12 gauge. She shot
the rural stop sign with
aplomb.
Next, she anointed an
abandoned house with
turkey shot as I
maintained 40mph
down a dirt road.

She careened and freewheeled
her ragged Japanese import
scars on her arms
and the wind in her hair.

I watched her come off dope once;
I was solemn and dutiful.
She told everyone it was the flu;
I knew better.
Sips of Gatorade between
bouts of vomiting
and
I held her hair.
Garbage piled up;
I cleaned it.

We would drink, laugh,
holler, cry for the night to depart in sullen
sleep on the couch, tangled together
in knots, snoring, drooling.

The next day, she'd slug whiskey faster
than I and my beer.

She'd backstab, shit-talk
break windows, hearts.

She'd nod off on your couch
and burn it with cigarettes.
She'd puke out the car door
while driving home.
She'd forgo shaving in the winter,
then spring, summer,
then fall.

She was a portrait
of unfinished tattoos,
scars obtained in domestic disputes
and sharp, steely blue eyes
that stared past the horizon.

We'd stay up on painkillers
and watch kid movies or
hospital dramas on DVD, then shirk
the dawn in the back booth of a Waffle House,
downing tarry coffee, more painkillers.

Not completely clean, she takes
a job across the country, a 120 dollar
bus ride away. Removed from
the resources of stagnancy,
she altogether
changed.

But,

The night before she left
we drank, screamed, cried
for the heartstrings that would
tug, pull, snap.

We slept together on a couch
like drunken kings after a
battlefield victory,
but sober too, like baptists
at a funeral.

Our limbs tangled in a mobius strip,
wrapped around each other into
infinity.

While we kept in regular contact,
by both phone and by mail,
and I could feel the chasm widening,
our respective floes drifting
apart, borne by the currents
of change, of age, of
days followed by nights.

I drove fast the night
 she came home, and after
a brief reunion we settled down
and went to sleep. This time
in a bed. Our limbs did not
tangle and a desire once so
imposing in its presence that
we could not shun it
now
was absent.

I will always remember her
smell that night, as it had been
altogether new and foreign to me:
Like makeup, like shaving cream,
like deodorant, like
fresh packs of cigarettes.

She wears dresses that
flatter her and are not
paisley or patchwork;
They are black and classy, usually.

She wears makeup, black
around the lashes, blue
on the lids,
red
on the lips.

She looks down her nose, sniffs,
scoffs, scorns.

As a man caught in a riptide looks at land
so I look at her.

I consign myself to drowning,
turn away, and face the endless sea.

She courts her eastern European
boyfriend, pursues a degree she will
never have to
use.

She works, grows
She dances, sings
eats, believes.
She breaks barriers,
glass ceilings, records
and in a final
destructive throe,
she breaks
a single, seeing,
pulsing, hearing,
longing, feeling,
Heart.

Brutuses, Judases and Backstabbers.

Hear me now on my death bed
as y'all
come
swinging knives in the
dark,

Hear me holler out:

"I am a poet whether you
can use me or not!
Whether feast or famine,
crowd
or
solitude, I am and
will always be
the truthsayer, the soothsayer,
the singing bard that
twists in your ears!"

Still dark, still swinging.
The Judases will smile in my face:

"It's gonna be all right, kiddo."

The Brutuses I won't see coming

"And thou, also?"

The Backstabbers will laugh

"I can't believe he bought it!"

A Diogenes wasted for you, lying in the street
uselessly.

More valuable a Virgil
to extol
the virtues
of the "True Romans."

True to lies
and
greed.
True to all the winks and flashes.

True to the hand that holds the knife
and the heart that swings it.

True to the blood on the Senate floor and
true to the picture hanging; to get you shot
in the back.

Your hearts lie
on the coinpurse strings
that you garrote me with.

Squeaking, squirming:
"And thou, also?"

This Week (part two)

Careening on
black
and coming up
short firecrackers
blasting in my ear

And I'm watching that fuse, that
spark burn down
close
how long can I wait?
before I throw
and
strangely try
to get
burned again.

Hoping for
that
chunk of
fuse
out the back of an emotion
hurling itself into the
sky,
loudly and
above the trees,
to come sizzling backward
into my forehead.

It burns it
all burns and
I spit
and struggle
and blow shit up.

Fuming fumes and smoking smoke
brimstone and tobacco.

This Week (part one)

This is how it starts, humid
and hot
           sleep is hard
and
regret, paranoia, the death of
love fallen on a poisoned
                    dart
gnaws at
my heels.
The Snarling
           Devil
           Snapping
in time
                    with my
                    bones cracking
listening,
            (listens)
and agreeing
       (agrees)

That Jar is nearby
           and I would
For
      a
  Kingdom
or
       a
Song,
                Drink and sweat and swear and hurt
But, to sleep.

And we will
see just
how
barbaric
I become.

Nightfear (I Was a Magnolia Blossom Growing Brown on a Tree)

It gets spooky
spooky
spooky
caint you see?

When I got
all 'ese
eyes lookin at
me?

And walls
are fallin in
to pieces at
night

when I
come down
with that ol
fright fright fright

That
fright
that fright,
stealin
the dawn

and I'm in
the driveway
with
shitkickers
on.

If Time Doesn't Heal It Kills

They call it
"Borderline Personality Disorder"
unless
you haven't paid for the diagnosis.

In which case you're just
"the crazy one"
or maybe just
a dumbass
or a fuckup.

So one thing to remember
is that
whatever you're taking,
it's
not working.

And that if
time
doesn't
heal
it
kills.

Odin One-Eye Tests Your Humility

I am reality,
screaming at you
from the rooftops.

I am the one who wishes you
all the fat hogs,
and the best harvest
you could want.

I am the
Dog,
nipping at your
haunches,
snapping
and snarling;
Possibly
in a
playful spirit.

Possibly.

May your
year
be fertile
and
wet,
with cicadas crowing
loudly, with the traffic

Roaring outside your window
drowning out the
voices
that tell lies and spew
filth like the way
I'm screaming truth
out your window.

HEY YOU!
DOWN THERE!

"That piece of shit is wearing headphones!
What's this world coming to, when one can't even
scream
at random people on the street?"

I am the bird
shit on WC Handy's
brazen, miniscule head
and I am
Odin asking one-eyed.
for a cigarette.

And I am Baldr at Mimir's well
gazing into the Eye of my
Father.

Hear in our
own tongues
the goddamn
creatures that
climb in the attic
and the blessed
Coyotes always
in wolf's clothing.

I am
you screaming
from the
rooftops.

Sunday School Number #1

SO I got
this
real thick
neck.

I can't wear ties
as the
top button doesn't button.

My driver's license picture
looks like a
thumb
with
hair.

And
I'll
sit here
in front
of you people
and I'll breathe
heavy
through
my
thick neck and
shirts
that don't fit right.

SO here I am, before you
neck exposed
see it's girth
and laugh shamefully
at my misfortune.

In this
thick-ass neck
is your
moles in the mirror
and the pimples
that hurt in your sleep.

Here on a man
who can't
wear ties
or find
shirts that fit
is every fat-joke we've ever
made and
every time
we superfluously
thanked a deity
that we
"don't look like that"

SO here, look,
you can't
see my tendons well
or any veins,
and my adam's
apple is dwarfed by a double
chin.

SO when
we cough
loogies
and disdain
a bad
tattoo
Samsara
spins
our traffic jams
in hair knots
just as the track of
a wheel
follows
an oxcart.

A Poem To A New Friend

There were baby buzzards
hopping short-tailed
in the pumpkin field
that day I saw
my past twisting in your
hair.

The Roar and Flame
of
Internal Combustion
was the rhythm
to a song
of which I already
knew
the melody.

And I sang, because
you did not know the
the words, but I
heard under your
breath
the humming of
familiarity.

So open your mouth
and sing with me!
We have been here before
together
and driven past these fields.

Let loose your
tongue and buy me
music,
because the tracks are cheap
and we have our
own instruments.

I can feel the missed notes and
our off-key
wailing
that we have made before,
but now,
with practice,
I think the sounds
will be
much sweeter.

Here

This faithless town
is where
even YOU
are suspicious,
you callow and
pale gentry's son,
you parasol-daughter.

This is that little corner
of the coverage map
where cell service
is a
big
white
gap-toothed laugh
in the face of modernity.

Here we
find fear and
paranoia as means
and not maladies.

The worst part is
this may be
one of the better neighborhoods.

Catfish start to poison themselves
in bottom-feeder suicide
and take us all down with them.

TVA pulls out, cuts all ties.

The dams break and our fields flood again.

"HERE, IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED"

All the nice antibiotics and heavy metals just floodin'
right on up to yer doorstep.

Reckon how much mercury go for at
the scrapyard?

Y'all happy yet?

"The Graveyard Sure is a Lonesome Place"

Shifts come out
whistling steam whistles
whistle in the dark
cold
sausage stink
and like
Ol' Choctaw chiefs on the run
they hit the
pavement
in deerskins and
war paint.

So
the ghosts
patch the holes
in their soles
so they got
boots on a glass-half-empty
full moon, Magha Puja to be exact.

Pullin old
light-moon food engines
in the winter's glass-half-empty
Heart ghosts.

Well take the furniture please
because I always thought
under street orange
you might
hate me so
dearly
and I had just hoped
you'd say just about anything.

Now here I'm in trouble y'all.

I've got dice and a bible, a 9mm
and crying swarming
eyes like
the river surrounding
a heart that
just wants you to say
anything.

Poem from the Lab Book Number 5

Teased

Like a fish

by a lure

Bit it

(it worked)

Bait and Switch

I was reeled in

As soon as I knew I was caught,
I was ready and willing
to visit that higher ground,

The hook was pulled out,

She kissed me, and threw me back.

A Poem About Autumn (Part 1)

The Sun burns hot in
the day only to realize
that the cold flourescent
Moon is
doin' it's job as
The World's Cooler

Canned Cranberry
and pre-packaged pork
people also pre-packaged in
gortex and leather.

Hey look! I can see my breath!
I can see my fingers
redden and feel my nose
doin' it too.

Your lungs'll hurt when
you try an' run, that's a
bullet you feel,
shot down by Fightin' Fall,
makin' fodder
for unforgiving
Old Man Winter.

That Brown phlegm,
brown falling leaves,
from smoking too many
cigarettes.
There ain't enough nicotine
in the Carolinas
to bite back at
construction weather
clouds and wind.

That brown on my teeth,
brown falling leaves,
from all that coffee,
every morning, just to sweat
for a few minutes
and stop shivering.

Nasty rain
That never seems to stop
and then
I understand
why grunge-music
came outta Seattle.

A Poem About a Friend's Troubles

I can show the road and
the ways
all the way on down
to Elysium.

And the dark seas with
fright-white scared tips
nor their climbing spires
in stone
will deter the times
that come
when I'll still be the one
who showed you the road.

There are the bothy ballads
and the great epics
but the one I parted
with at the crossroads,
those roads even less taken,
are the
ragged patch
on my knee
and the gun
rusting on my
shoulder

I lose toes to frostbite
and insist,
still,
on walking there.
All the way on down to Elysium.

I'll step on that ship,
that'll catch that whale,
in that cold span that
reaches to that
cold cold Greenland.
And
I'll peg-leggedly
hobble back
on deck
and look for the
one I lost
at the crossroads,
and somewhere
in the back of my head,
I'll know,
that she's sewn into my clothes.

Poem from the Lab Book Number One

"Crossroads"
What a cliche
Where am I?
this dirt road is
rarely traveled
and the dogs behind
the barbed
wire
are by no means
friendly

These dark hollow
forests hide
memories maleficent
and fantasies
for a fool
I'm ancient, anxious,
and apprehensive.
the sinkhole
and birds of prey,
waiting,
in stone solid
quiet
statue
waiting
for my
fall (from grace?)
The skittering sounds,
then silence.

It's frightening.

Poem from the Lab Book Number Two

Dust
and
Dirt
are
Everywhere.
timeless
sordid molecules
of malevolent
silicon.
Throw in some
water
and we've got mud
on our
shoes.
The smears
on my glasses
and the
stains on the
couch
are infinite
and timeless.

The Disease

Gallbladders
Nauseated with
Eyes glaring thousands
at every mote
in your Carbon Frame.

A sick-tearing
organ retch
To pull Suicide
inside.

"And I will heed
your cry with diligence,
my friend!"
Said The Revolver.

"I am at your Mercy."
Said the Temple.

I, I have been knighted
into the Court of of the Condemned,
Now a servant of
Our Lord and King Pariah.

To work, you must die to die
you must work.

Like a carburetor:
even after an atomic blast
or electromagnetic pulse.

Cassiopeia tempts from
the heavens and only from the
briefest, barest fiery tips of a
Mushroom Cloud
do I ever seem
to
glimpse that
shining field.

For no angel am I,
rather a crashing, celestial,
Satellite
burning
White-hell over the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch.

All steaming and hissing on impact,
tumbling slowly sinking
a black and wretched hunk of metal

Wishing for the fishes' touch;
the barnacles embrace.

(But I made a helluva splash though!)

A Poem Written Under Lamplight

I read koans and you
Pretended to understand
And you craved and I knew
Not for what.
I wrote poems for you
And you hid them in
Steering wheel covers
Only to sell them with
The vehicle.
I knew the leaving was inevitable,
And this why
I always insisted on copies.
Because I knew
That
I was their mule,
Their tool
For
Self-gratification and
Aggrandizement.
I was the busted knuckles
That fixed your car and you gave
Ne'er a loving glance or appreciative
Nod.
I was the gentle hand that comforted
your progeny when you were
Withdrawing from skag and
Pulling inward into your own
Carelessness.
And you,
In true form the abandoner,
and I,
the relinquished.
I was that caress
that touch
that meant
that you were beautiful
beyond measure
and your own prejudices
villified us both.
Maybe I will walk as a loving ghost,
Always caring and loving and with no tangibility or identity.
Drifting.
Concerned, with no hands to caress.

A ripcurrent and dragtide of
friendship
that sank me, drowned me,
and fossilized me.

"This Stuff's Got Legs On It"

A great white highway
stretches
and fills
a horizon
of heat
and hollow earths.

And slowly, it rises,
the long far-off hill-slope
up
and out
dazzling.

A road to walk along,
to drive
at a leisurely pace
it invites
to escape
and elate.

A moon smiles
gap-toothed
on argent
asphalt
and the
stars are
fished for
by the eyes
of a
weary pilgrim.

A winding and vast
web, veil, lace,
Mandala,
laid carefully down by
holy men
one grain at a time, and it,
upon completion
is swept
away, a
reminder of
our only
permanence.

A wind sweeps dust over the
highway and its
pavement
cracks
and bursts
and keeps the time
of hapless
footfalls
all the while.