Wednesday, December 3, 2014

silent car rides

His eyes sagging in their corners, he rubbed the back of his wrist across them and blinked into the smearing traffic lights. Silent car ride, she next to him, no music on the radio. He dreamed lazily about the silent car rides of his life, memories that came from that fount that tugged at the edge of pain and loneliness, the dull toothache of nostalgia and memory that he could not help but prod with the tip of his tongue. Silent car rides with angry parents on frost-bitten mornings, or with angry girlfriends on cool teenage autumn evenings, or he the angry one, strangling the steering wheel with one hand and massaging his grimace with the other. There were sounds within these silent car rides; the rustling and cracking of vinyl or leather jacket sleeves being bent by their silent wearers, a nauseating sound, or the exaggerated nasal exhalation with chainsmoking billow lungs. The turn signal was obnoxious, a smug metronome.

Sometime in the midst of all of these infuriating tactile memories, smells of the hollow past and its forgotten sins, he had driven into their driveway, and he sighed, the silent car ride finally over.

Monday, December 1, 2014

My Pyramid

It is the king's laughter, here and now,
it is the king's holy gizzards by which I clamber
so clumsy and so loudly mute,
stumbling upon feet of miles of sentence;
the last mile
the HOLY mile.

I miss my challengers,
I miss the dust between us
of which we are too busy to speak.

And so I wait,
wait wait
with darkened pencil and sharpened room
and capture all of the deep fates
with looms a-spinnin' and wrapped
to beg some grace to come lurching to my bedside.

Naught else to do;
wrapped in papyrus,
brain ajar,
heart preserved.
Ah, my pyramid, my unfair,
my long journey to be unhurt and unafraid
ends here,
and I am left

October sometime, 2014

bad vibes, last month or so

10/31/14, 7:30 am

If I were to be asked
to be lashed to the tracks
in the name of you and your eyes,
my hesitation would naught,
only welcoming knot
to be bound wrist and ankle to morning,
and sung through the night,
sung as bards sing their knights,
I who lay down my bone to stone,
hot blood splash cold steel,
I make known the deal
forever dreaming I die
in you and your eyes.

Verde, te quiero verde,
Te quiero en la noche verde
y la mañana ya verde,
y sí comprendo que estas palabras
son ya en los canciones
de los muertos.

------------------------------------------------------------

Halloween morning blows smokey blue, a gentle rapping of skeletons in all the gutters and leaves trickling down Campbell Avenue. No rest for the wicked, weary, nor Wiccan, and here me still nursing a bottle of red (red?) and all three; a vampiric thirst for blood and breastmilk moistens my lips and dries my throat. Imagine toads, trampled beneath hooves. Imagine dolphins and chimps, both dirty rapists, their skull-meat dripping from the end of my pirate's rapier. Imagine there's no Heaven. It's easy if you try. Certainly a Hell. Certainly more than sky above. John Lennon was an asshole and a wife-beater. George is the way-2-go.

Had I known this marker yet (ya) held such vitality, long would I have been abusing it, long would it have since ran dry! I mistook it another limp cock drained for my Dylan Thomas portraits yet here it goes a-scratchin' and a-bleedin' 'cross the fucking page. Dylan Thomas, I will draw you this morning!

[here I draw a terrible sketch of Dylan Thomas, and then proceed to spit wine all over it, purposely]

11/3/14, etc

Sooner or later, all luck runs out, and when you've been as fortuitous as I, have slipped by for thirty years generally unfazed and largely indignant, never wholly without a jangle in my pocket nor a teat in my mouth, that final fall from grace is a steep one, that straw-broken plummet bound to be screaming and bloody.

I remember leaving the bar, or so I tell myself, and I remember coming home, making it home I should say, in what felt like twenty long, cold minutes. But this is too easy, and not the case at all. There are at least three hours missing, and at a little past 4 K found me standing in her doorway, swaying. "Your room is beautiful," I apparently was able to mutter, and she bolted out of bed in time for me to crumple into her arms, my face a mess of blood and swollen flesh.

Sleep was blessedly without dreaming, and I awoke at 9:30 (by the grace of Daylight Savings) to make it to work only about eight minutes late. There were panicked calls to my mother the night before, K wondering if I should need an ambulance, she and my mother not understanding the full story, wondering if I had fallen or maybe beaten the shit out of myself, but the knuckles on my right hand are swollen, and the tell-tale marks of where someone else's teeth broke my skin riddle the back of my hand in a soft semicircle.

But none of this occurred to me while walking to work, and I did not remember speaking to my mother, certainly did not remember her telling me to "Fuck off", believing as she did that it was but the latest Fuck-Up in a long series of Fuck-Ups from her eldest and prodigal son. Instead, I am distracted, you could say, by my left eye swollen completely shut, by the purple bruises turning both temples into a Quasimodo brow, the long deep scrape from right eye to right ear that was surely my head hitting and then dragging across rough sidewalks, the blood matting my eyelashes like goth makeup, the blood oozing in my mouth  where the inside of my lip broke against sharp teeth.

Sharp teeth, I am nothing but sharp teeth, a golem of sharp teeth. The world owes me a living, doo-doodle-doo-doodle-doo. I've learned nothing. Fuck this.

_-_-_--------_-___-__-_-_-__-_-_-_-_-------_----_-_-_---___-_-___-_-__-

Went for one of my evening walks, face swollen and discolored, found myself staring at a beer-and-a-shot on the cool patio of a local alcholic's haunt. Got beef jerky, pack o' smokes, my trusty notepad and trusted pen, and a crippling affliction with motherfucking devil-ass cunt-mouth alcohol. Help?

Haven't really eaten in two days; my mouth hurts too bad. This beef jerky ("Sweet n Hot") is a godsend, sweet protein and sodium.

My bones move by the grace of grudge and guilt alone. It's a lonely way to be. Someday, I'll be rid of both. Not today.

And now I can control my phone without touching the touch-screen. Am I psychic, telekinetic? Am I dead, a ghost? Can ghosts operate Android smartphones?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't know much,
but I know the sound
of bone knocking bone,
chiming wooden in the breathless wind.

I am routinely surprised and impressed
with the strides I take upon this stale earth,
at the path of fire behind me
which explains with great shudderings my guilt,
which does nothing to assuage fears,
which bolsters my inability to admit defeat.

~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Goat's breast,
who says?
Cock-cup,
a chalice
to suck,
stroke vein
with
tender tip
and
tooth'd lip

--------------_____________-------------------____________---

Dream about Nyquil.
Dream about storage,
dream about chortling
with chunks of spent amoeba
running our assholes ragged
on some alien planet
costa rica

Dream you are who she wants you to be
for once be
who she wants you to be.

(He, shaking hand, extinguishes another cigarette and laments the evening's follies)

"This is horseshit.
I want to go to bed, early rise, impress my benefactors
and nullify my contrarians.
I, myself, am not a contrarian.
Yes I am, of course I am,
no I am not."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''_______________________----------

He took one final drag from his cigarette,
and proceeded to slip backwards upon his heels.
The wife had dripped butter on the floor earlier
and had neglected to give much of a rat's ass
when it came to mopping it up, the greasy spot.

He had meant to quit, that day, finally quit smoking.
Walking to the bank, he had his second-to-last.
Upon arriving home that gently late afternoon,
he had his last, and enjoyed it.