Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Springfield Poems, 08/18/11-08/28/11

In no particular order.

I want
to taste your teeth,
drink your eyes,
drown in your lungs,
dance in your skin,
breathe your hair like smoke,
kneel upon your back like an altar,
wear your feet like a mask,
wear your hands like a noose.

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Mill of avarice be damned,
I am not unwanted!
Ground to a pulp,
doth not blessings yet be cursed from compost heaps!
River rolling, my swollen ears float Me
to downstream chests of mud and silver!
The apes cannot fathom why you'd love this man,
where I why I am still still, shining coin in pale hand!
How sick every day to find love,
how torn every day to live!

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Alcohol

O sweet tranquilizer, cross-eyed womb,
excuse to hate and be hated,
to do and be done,
kaleidoscoping vomit to forget the day,
staggering pathetic morning still alive,
blessed blood transubstantiate,
words spilled from skinned knees
like ignored arrow through brains.

How the sentence would smart if my gun were sober,
what wake my actions would leave in the pavement
if my hand unwavering swung that axe
with a clear mind
and frightening eyes.

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I'm slobbering drunk and hungry
chewing on sunrise
my own two feet my own two feet
drooling truth while you swim in lies.

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Shit, how could I forget blonde punk rocker;
we used to neck in purgatory.
"Ah, fuck it" he sighs satisfied,
faces away from everyone
and drinks his drink too fast.

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I'm building a hearth,
palace between my ears and behind my eyes,
heavy wooden doors and a moat of blood.

It is my jungle, my lighthouse
my nuclear submarine in a black sea of quiet glass.

You are not welcome,
you will not shatter my tranquility.
You have proven to be anything but a friend.
I refuse to be anything but alone.

I hope to live my life as a thorn in your ankle
and you think of me every time you fall.
I hope to live my life as a bone in your throat
and you think of me every time you choke.

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Chainsmokingpushupaholic

I stink with living
and am a pond brimming
with the frogs of discontent.
Let me show you my arms,
wrap you in lazy scars.
My eyes train towards the heaven of smoke
your beacon is lost in the fog of bleeding.
I have plenty of dry bones
with which to stoke dry fire
and your hair is made of straw.
I am the avatar of kerosene,
dripping disappointing oaths
to a cold curving pink god
one-night-love, this town dead in flame.

I will not stop smoking.
I will turn into a tree
and your spine will lean into mine
and roots will fuck the mud.

Who am I
who is this motherfucker
knowing too much,
saw him to lumber
treated so that his eyes are stain
and his hips fragile be balsa.

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Complete solemnity,
paper pulled from golem's ear
is a mixtape track list,
thusly are my feet glued to habits and sighs,
my face is turned and shorn and blossoming
in summer's final death throes as if to affirm
I cannot last forver!
I will flame unto you while I can still muster humble strength.

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Doing the Twist in my bedroom,
just me and Nina,
5:23 am,
makes me want to drink more beer.
I'm missing the point
and don't care.

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Bricks are red and bed is magic
Trade them for a life less tragic

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Poems 08/04/11-08/17/11

Bomb Dream #16

Napoleon pinned down by sword thru his guts,
they had no problem aiming the Bomb right at his heart
and blowing the city into a new seaboard
a harbor of boiling blood
and me splashing away in a fervor of survive! survive!
Jesus O Lord save me
as burning ocean laps my ankles with flame
and I wade thru water thick with fat and atoms
past dead dogs and cars transmuted to coal and iron
floating atop Munich's ash river
and under the glare of a European dusk
God willing I nor anybody will ever see.

What do all the movies mean?
I ask my sure-footed shore, my grunge god.
Nothing at all
as he calmly smokes his cigarette
and waits for me to wake.

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Country Boy

Where is she who loves legs swinging over farm gates
eyes trained to the cowshit
the crunch of drought-bleached gravel under boots
the sweet-sour sweat soaking chest
under St. Christopher hanging desperately around my neck
like a noose of the interstates I've known and loved
and fill me with a lonesome dread
so that here I am, walking meditation
remembering when this tree was a tree
and not a lightning-torn stump
just egg rolling back to cedar nest
just drying fish flapping like dead man's clapping hand
towards creek towards spring basins.
This I offer.
Take me for what I am.

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Of Those I Miss

Of those I miss
I miss their faults as much as their perfection,
their lies as much as their love,
for we have shaped shaped shaped each other
beyond any semblance of ephemerality.

And now we wander
with feet planted opposite shores
among the ruined foundations of bridges burned,
and I can't remember their faces
but I love them just the same.

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Twisting A's out of twigs,
kissing all the wrong backs,
worried about my parents.

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There will come a day
when I'm judged not for my inability to cope with small talk
with people looking down their noses
Me swelling up like a tick
like a balloon like a ballast of love
a raft on tides of shame.

Fuck no, that day is tonight
and here I am,
sober as birth and as deadly serious.
Electric fence,
a live wire stare with towhead and mean fingers.
Rebuild my crumpled body with bricks and cable.
This heart will never know the difference.
I need love and raw meat
I need love and dead leaves
and we all float slow and screaming
to rot in Heaven.


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Ante

I've been rolling my eyes like dice,
going all in on the small blind first hand,
playing people like chess.
There are no winners,
the game will end the same.
Ha!
Except I will live til the end!
Swear allegiance equally to passion, whimsy, and folly!
No regrets, by God!
I've loved!

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Mildred

Sitting quietly in country static,
a radio tuned to night bugs
and the occasional snuffle from a tired hound dawg,
I can hear the draw on my cigarette.
Watch mosquitoes land on me,
fly away without molest,
I am unprovoking and without resistance
to those who suck and bite
so they neither suck nor bite.
Nothing to do with how I taste now.
More to do with how I choose to sit;
silent still sad content.
A bird couldn't alight from my shaking knee,
My ribs would spread like legs
no, like a curtain
and the bullet would pass through
and I walk unharmed.
Maybe a little lighter, I've lost some weight.
Maybe a little more humble, I've lost some pride.

I've lost nothing.
The goddamn son will rise in the morning
and there I go.

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a constellation of cigarette burns
with a burning cherry satellite
while I'm a space station
still spinning mute

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You're beautiful as frost,
I'm stunned as Valium,
thinking floating eating memory,
pure as
pure as snow
pure as hate,
clearer than swollen hearts
is the fading plea,
the choice to about-face in this gunfight
draw and fire.

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New Orleans

I don't consider myself an extrovert in any way.
it's a scam.
Today I got my first lapdance
I loved her, smelled her on my hands
the rest of the day.
met people at the metal show.
got punched in the gut at the metal show.
I don't know.
I guess they're alright
these people
these people
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Thunderstorm broke the night
like a fever
5 am
hangover.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

A Marked Change in Behavior

Sometimes you gotta lose to win
I have no home
but here feels good.
In my dreams
My friends are dropping like flies
and here I always thought myself humane
a vicious carnivore
but usually a scavenger
a lye facial
lying facedown
and lying.
No, goddammit, I ain't no brute
no caveman
no muddy fool with clumsy tongue
no bleeding heart carried on broken legs.
A cannibal, maybe
though I'm not sure
if eating your own fingers counts.
And besides, I'm happy,
Alhamdulillah,
Pretty sure I'm happy.
Sometimes you gotta lose
to win.

"Road Prayer"

There are some nights, I've said it before, when there is nothing like a perfect murderous drive, I've said before, like a hot knife through the buttery underbelly of state highways, our angular little hood the head of a snake swallowing its two-lane tail, blinking at spirits hallucinatory and convincing, like making love straddling a backbone and swinging wide through the curves until she gasps and I nearly see the Glory of the Almighty in the infinite shadows cast by floodlit flagpoles, though the flags themselves drip with brains and wet gunpowder.

Only a night ago, everything was wet with stars, and closing my eyes I could see a lunar landscape of glowing coral and spiraling marble columns encrusted with hard candy and brooches, and I could kick off of these columns with a child's feet and fall giddily and unscathed through the storms of fear, and I was only filthy barefeet dancing with cicadas.

It makes me sad we will never know each other, but life is a funny wheel. I'll still have your letters and someday I will read them without a bitter pang, still will I someday regret to have washed your hair from my pillowcases. The wheel spins, we move on as swiftly as the world turns beneath us. There is no room for futility in these spokes, only a playing card to make the whole rotten thing feel a little more like a motorcycle. Insha'Allah, may we all find blessed comfort on maddening winds, knowing that same air pushes the sweat from all of our brows, knowing I will never know you so long as I refuse to know myself.

Screeching hymns of the open road, the lonely howl of semis and the tranquility of smoke and good tunes, the Holy inertia and exhausted eyes in league to make this road twist and pulse and lunge under my feet even when I'm standing perfectly still.

Amen.