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.