A study, by the writer, of
Sex-as-prison, of
Love-as-hawk-in-chains,
a broken raptor of the evening,
a blind and silent dream of flame.
Money sears the palms of orphans,
lashes borne as woodcut flesh.
Memories dry upon the morning,
no one wondering which comes next.
A study, by the writer, of
promises,
and the slave traders who broke them, of
cigarettes in lips,
and the lungs which deign to choke them.
of judges
and the knots they tighten,
of lovers
and the loads they lighten.
A dove, a crow,
the things they carry;
a worm, a mouse,
a sumac berry,
a single thread, a double noose,
a button which has wandered loose,
an ancient piece of gold conniving,
a single sprig of poison ivy.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Unanswerable.
Does the sight of blood make you proud, patriot?
Can you see you your face reflected in the eyes of the dead?
Is there anything left on these scraps of skin to suck,
a tapestry yet to be woven from the stained hairs
that decorate your unexploded grenades?
Do the stammers of a foreign tongue
echo as the cries from an abattoir,
bleating in the face of bolt guns and bone saws,
a warning to their impatient ilk of the true nature of justice?
Will you be as brave as the Crushed
when the scissors are to you handed,
and they ask to see the scripture
scalded into the muscle of your forearm?
How does the wine taste sipped from a child's skull?
How does the bread baked from ground bone
taste upon your confident tongue?
Will you ask for that same mercy that by birthright you have held aloft,
as a canteen above lips cracked and dying?
Or will you fill your pants with shit
when you finally find your fingers trembling upon the golden trigger,
thrust to the back of my neck
while my eyes reflect your own guilty cheeks,
and unanswerable cries are silenced
by the weight of all you were born to be,
of the violence that steeps within your bless'd arteries?
I lie here, quiet, I die,
and still you bring yourself to life without misstep,
evil rendered inert by opportunity,
and the American refusal to view it as such.
Can you see you your face reflected in the eyes of the dead?
Is there anything left on these scraps of skin to suck,
a tapestry yet to be woven from the stained hairs
that decorate your unexploded grenades?
Do the stammers of a foreign tongue
echo as the cries from an abattoir,
bleating in the face of bolt guns and bone saws,
a warning to their impatient ilk of the true nature of justice?
Will you be as brave as the Crushed
when the scissors are to you handed,
and they ask to see the scripture
scalded into the muscle of your forearm?
How does the wine taste sipped from a child's skull?
How does the bread baked from ground bone
taste upon your confident tongue?
Will you ask for that same mercy that by birthright you have held aloft,
as a canteen above lips cracked and dying?
Or will you fill your pants with shit
when you finally find your fingers trembling upon the golden trigger,
thrust to the back of my neck
while my eyes reflect your own guilty cheeks,
and unanswerable cries are silenced
by the weight of all you were born to be,
of the violence that steeps within your bless'd arteries?
I lie here, quiet, I die,
and still you bring yourself to life without misstep,
evil rendered inert by opportunity,
and the American refusal to view it as such.
Nine Scraps.
01.
"Hagiography 1 (a friend walking home)"
I imagine you and your Ludi eyes,
crossing feet homeward towards a respective rook,
feeling the olive throb of your veins
tempting the bleach of the night's cold.
We hoisting a palate of lies,
we pray for swan-skinned maidens
to sweep our stone clean,
for carlies with arched temples
to appraise the tombs
we've drug from some holy land.
My ribs, beloved, friend,
are yours reaching just the same,
cracking like kindling in our fraternal
immolation
consumption
consummation
02.
O, what can't your boy do with his renaissance auspiciousness? Die, apparently, as I've been efforting as much as the next for now on thirty years. I stand from bed each day only to gift my blood the chance to drain from my head.
03.
When your life is consumed with grief it can be a screw turned into a rotten tooth, the singular pain that defines your entire existence. I hesitate to say this, but I think I know already the feeling of loss of a parent or child, of a loved one, the final amputation of Love. When one feels like one will never live again, and when you do, what next?
04.
"Hank Williams, dead at 29"
Ah, the plush seat of a Cadillac,
a fine American auto,
here is where I lie my head,
tossy hair sprawled
in some fictitious Christ-pose,
never to rise,
knowing that I soar sore soar
from broken eyes,
wings of barroom paper,
heart of the godly love of Pain
and heart of the god of Pills.
05.
"Otis Redding, dead at 26"
I still see you, Otis;
You defy and define
the light and the dark,
you who splashed your blood
upon fiberglass fins
and filled your beautiful lungs
with the rotten water of some northern lake.
Your silhouette is that of a street lamp,
and within I find a mirror;
it blinks when I blink.
06.
*a startling influx of cute black girls in my neighborhood
*noticing finally in an empty graveyard that my backpack's plastic clasps knock like bones
*a dog with a mosquito head
07.
"Rimbaud"
I've never finished Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell", though I've owned several copies. It, that is, a copy of it, along with Ferlinghetti's "A Coney Island of the Mind", are in my mind's eye silently moldering and mummifying in some great old Chevrolet, wedged in the groin where windshield meets defrost vent, bleached dusty pages eroding across a dashboard, unread. Why I lent her Rimbaud, especially not having finished it, is beyond me, for as surely as that summer melted into a dank fall I had already learned that all I found exciting about this Some Her was ultimately flashing teeth and terrible driving and breasts still stupidly prideful and that we smoked bud while fucking but it was all gross, grossed me out and myself grossing out as well, limply slapping time with gypsy fantasy, so I threw dark books at her, dark books I hadn't even been able to finish. I hear it echoing still around the empty skull of her car, grimacing as worms as to thighs as to wild eyes rolling in an empty head, her breasts and their promises barren when their flesh was forced down my dry throat. I pretended the candles and beads and dark poems made the situation desperate, but I embarrassed only myself.
08.
"My Ghost"
His name is Despair,
and he is my ghost.
He lives in mirrors,
though in this instance
"lives" may be giving too much credence
to "Life",
as there is plenty to be had
apart from the realm
of the contextually
warm and breathing,
slave to their empty dreams
and unable to fly unfettered.
09.
"Leaving the Card Game"
I have such tremendous energy,
but when left rudderless
have no sink within which to bury it.
One step at a time,
when morning's still breath
becomes a cyclone.
Walking a thin line bleeding,
the avenue is alive
in each way I am not.
Maybe I can fish romanticism yet
from some sort of defeat,
from "Yo no soy yo",
from monster-man,
from yin-yang,
as goblins gobble
and men Stand and Walk.
I alone am not I,
turning data to birdless wings,
sparrows remembering the dreams of men,
and I put faith in happy selfishness,
and selfish happiness,
which both remind me
that tomorrow a new sun rises
upon a new earth,
and each funereal clod fallen
is a new lung to breathe,
a new breath to be won,
a new rose upon a frightful sidewalk
that beneath the sun's scrutiny
I promise that I will remember yesterday's bats
and tomorrow's green fruit.
I pray Gawd bless our young love,
and carry the answer's to yesterday's flowers,
and tomorrow's sorrows.
I give myself dirty looks in the mirror.
"Hagiography 1 (a friend walking home)"
I imagine you and your Ludi eyes,
crossing feet homeward towards a respective rook,
feeling the olive throb of your veins
tempting the bleach of the night's cold.
We hoisting a palate of lies,
we pray for swan-skinned maidens
to sweep our stone clean,
for carlies with arched temples
to appraise the tombs
we've drug from some holy land.
My ribs, beloved, friend,
are yours reaching just the same,
cracking like kindling in our fraternal
immolation
consumption
consummation
02.
O, what can't your boy do with his renaissance auspiciousness? Die, apparently, as I've been efforting as much as the next for now on thirty years. I stand from bed each day only to gift my blood the chance to drain from my head.
03.
When your life is consumed with grief it can be a screw turned into a rotten tooth, the singular pain that defines your entire existence. I hesitate to say this, but I think I know already the feeling of loss of a parent or child, of a loved one, the final amputation of Love. When one feels like one will never live again, and when you do, what next?
04.
"Hank Williams, dead at 29"
Ah, the plush seat of a Cadillac,
a fine American auto,
here is where I lie my head,
tossy hair sprawled
in some fictitious Christ-pose,
never to rise,
knowing that I soar sore soar
from broken eyes,
wings of barroom paper,
heart of the godly love of Pain
and heart of the god of Pills.
05.
"Otis Redding, dead at 26"
I still see you, Otis;
You defy and define
the light and the dark,
you who splashed your blood
upon fiberglass fins
and filled your beautiful lungs
with the rotten water of some northern lake.
Your silhouette is that of a street lamp,
and within I find a mirror;
it blinks when I blink.
06.
*a startling influx of cute black girls in my neighborhood
*noticing finally in an empty graveyard that my backpack's plastic clasps knock like bones
*a dog with a mosquito head
07.
"Rimbaud"
I've never finished Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell", though I've owned several copies. It, that is, a copy of it, along with Ferlinghetti's "A Coney Island of the Mind", are in my mind's eye silently moldering and mummifying in some great old Chevrolet, wedged in the groin where windshield meets defrost vent, bleached dusty pages eroding across a dashboard, unread. Why I lent her Rimbaud, especially not having finished it, is beyond me, for as surely as that summer melted into a dank fall I had already learned that all I found exciting about this Some Her was ultimately flashing teeth and terrible driving and breasts still stupidly prideful and that we smoked bud while fucking but it was all gross, grossed me out and myself grossing out as well, limply slapping time with gypsy fantasy, so I threw dark books at her, dark books I hadn't even been able to finish. I hear it echoing still around the empty skull of her car, grimacing as worms as to thighs as to wild eyes rolling in an empty head, her breasts and their promises barren when their flesh was forced down my dry throat. I pretended the candles and beads and dark poems made the situation desperate, but I embarrassed only myself.
08.
"My Ghost"
His name is Despair,
and he is my ghost.
He lives in mirrors,
though in this instance
"lives" may be giving too much credence
to "Life",
as there is plenty to be had
apart from the realm
of the contextually
warm and breathing,
slave to their empty dreams
and unable to fly unfettered.
09.
"Leaving the Card Game"
I have such tremendous energy,
but when left rudderless
have no sink within which to bury it.
One step at a time,
when morning's still breath
becomes a cyclone.
Walking a thin line bleeding,
the avenue is alive
in each way I am not.
Maybe I can fish romanticism yet
from some sort of defeat,
from "Yo no soy yo",
from monster-man,
from yin-yang,
as goblins gobble
and men Stand and Walk.
I alone am not I,
turning data to birdless wings,
sparrows remembering the dreams of men,
and I put faith in happy selfishness,
and selfish happiness,
which both remind me
that tomorrow a new sun rises
upon a new earth,
and each funereal clod fallen
is a new lung to breathe,
a new breath to be won,
a new rose upon a frightful sidewalk
that beneath the sun's scrutiny
I promise that I will remember yesterday's bats
and tomorrow's green fruit.
I pray Gawd bless our young love,
and carry the answer's to yesterday's flowers,
and tomorrow's sorrows.
I give myself dirty looks in the mirror.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
State of the Union
In every way I am strong,
I am weak.
In every way I am whole,
I am broken.
Each potent totem
has as its ballast an idiot.
Magnetic tape sinew
wears, wears
strung bodily upon a device's gears
stretched thin with a watermark
each for each blessing
for each prayer and pratfall
for each tiger trap a night light
each candle by which to love
is a flame to render marrow ash.
We think we are Gods?
We think we are Magellan?
Yes, circumlocuting the wastes
only to find Death at savage hands,
we no better masters than our fathers.
Yin Yang, then.
Look to our women.
Our mothers, our lovers.
Stronger I have not known.
Apologetic in the symmetry of their loins,
the logic of strong taut tendons
where I and my fathers brothers fellow travelers,
our Men,
are so weak weeping.
Merry silence, wrap my bones.
O Lord if you loved me
I would die.
Long have my afflictions
been dragging our Earth from the sky
and her bosom of milky stars.
My leaden feet echoing eyes' change,
a flag flared full
bull skulls
a rag soaked in gasoline bloodclots
eggs shed
so that we conquer some fictitious mountain.
Is this truly what I was reared towards?
Am I only a corkboard
Am I only antiquated flesh
to be stabbed and quantified?
Am I only my dim skin
to be scoured and planed,
riding nebulaic toenails and semen spurts,
to be bat a'flit on fingered wings?
O Deliver Me Lord
From All These Things!
Finally now I find my peace,
shrapnel ache settling on shattered palms.
How long must I write,
explode these sons of Suns of sons,
before I fisherman catch
some gulping mouth
gasping venomous air,
left to dry upon the concrete
beneath sliding glass eye
before automaton eye
before slit glossy eye
beneath shit glossaries yet to be writ,
each thrum of the heart
an inconceivable notion of doubt?
Tonight I wept in relief
at the fecundity of Rot,
at the permanence of Death,
that all die,
that all fade.
These ephemeral tails which wind catcheth
and which whir in delight at dissolution.
Burden born may yet appear
a swaddled joy,
a bless'd jaw
with teeth of gold.
See the scale of gold,
see Indiana's strains of silver string.
Please put one last hand's breadth of faith
in the fate of burgundy ink.
Waves strip shingles
from haunted measures,
each cunt-hair an inchworm
burrowing into the furrows
of my generous guilt.
In light
(in lieu)
Of bone and death
Of love and breath,
each more perfect than the last.
1/28/14
I am weak.
In every way I am whole,
I am broken.
Each potent totem
has as its ballast an idiot.
Magnetic tape sinew
wears, wears
strung bodily upon a device's gears
stretched thin with a watermark
each for each blessing
for each prayer and pratfall
for each tiger trap a night light
each candle by which to love
is a flame to render marrow ash.
We think we are Gods?
We think we are Magellan?
Yes, circumlocuting the wastes
only to find Death at savage hands,
we no better masters than our fathers.
Yin Yang, then.
Look to our women.
Our mothers, our lovers.
Stronger I have not known.
Apologetic in the symmetry of their loins,
the logic of strong taut tendons
where I and my fathers brothers fellow travelers,
our Men,
are so weak weeping.
Merry silence, wrap my bones.
O Lord if you loved me
I would die.
Long have my afflictions
been dragging our Earth from the sky
and her bosom of milky stars.
My leaden feet echoing eyes' change,
a flag flared full
bull skulls
a rag soaked in gasoline bloodclots
eggs shed
so that we conquer some fictitious mountain.
Is this truly what I was reared towards?
Am I only a corkboard
Am I only antiquated flesh
to be stabbed and quantified?
Am I only my dim skin
to be scoured and planed,
riding nebulaic toenails and semen spurts,
to be bat a'flit on fingered wings?
O Deliver Me Lord
From All These Things!
Finally now I find my peace,
shrapnel ache settling on shattered palms.
How long must I write,
explode these sons of Suns of sons,
before I fisherman catch
some gulping mouth
gasping venomous air,
left to dry upon the concrete
beneath sliding glass eye
before automaton eye
before slit glossy eye
beneath shit glossaries yet to be writ,
each thrum of the heart
an inconceivable notion of doubt?
Tonight I wept in relief
at the fecundity of Rot,
at the permanence of Death,
that all die,
that all fade.
These ephemeral tails which wind catcheth
and which whir in delight at dissolution.
Burden born may yet appear
a swaddled joy,
a bless'd jaw
with teeth of gold.
See the scale of gold,
see Indiana's strains of silver string.
Please put one last hand's breadth of faith
in the fate of burgundy ink.
Waves strip shingles
from haunted measures,
each cunt-hair an inchworm
burrowing into the furrows
of my generous guilt.
In light
(in lieu)
Of bone and death
Of love and breath,
each more perfect than the last.
1/28/14
Thursday, January 9, 2014
fairytales that flit from sight when my sight may flit to find
I've nearly lost my balance on the steep slope of a skittering grin, each morning's weight settling into my threadbare pockets like a flour sack of mealworms. Unevenly I keel upon feet sliced by broken-glass teeth, slick with drool and the dead snow and brown ice that gasps upon losing your boot to your will. My veins are ivy run thick with mustard and slow as morning smoke, the smoke that barely sighs itself a shape, a ghost born weary, born only to melt waxwings in sunbeams.
Were that I were to be a seer, or a clown or a drinker of women, or a clock with its hands stolen, knowing and loving only the midnight chime in my bones, or a goat with its yoke dragging in dust and its cart forgotten, or aboard a boat in portage between eyelid black and iris blue, would that I were able to dance myself through day's distress and night's preoccupations, would that I would finish wrestling these bears who break my bones for a long enough song to admit my terror at the ants that inflame my feet.
Cut me as you would an apple to show its star, and you will find my cloven body the bisection of a wasp's nest, these paper chambers all I can see when I finally beg to dream. Here now when my mind stills do they come gurgling up through the plumbing and sliding down the simpering flagpole, here now when rest gently threatens with crackling fur my busy ears do they prick my dulling drums, whispering fairytales that flit from sight when my sight may flit to find, leaving only an afterimage of piss in a shitcan.
Monday, December 9, 2013
Saturday Mo[u]rning (lyrics)
I've got no time for regrets
I ain't got no time to act upon or feel them
When you're burning at both ends
with the right kind of friends
You don't need them
But maybe come Sunday
I will kneel down in Confession
And I'll spill them
That's assuming I'll still make it home
by Saturday morning
That's assuming I'll still be alive
on Saturday morning
I've got a lot of scars that I wear upon my arms
If you wanna see them
I've got notebooks of poems all about love and bones
If you wanna read them
And I leave blood drops like breadcrumbs
all the way to my bedroom
Just to lead them
Assuming I'll still make it home
by Saturday morning
They're assuming I'll still be alive
on Saturday morning
And one day you will wake up
and realize you'll never get another letter
From anyone, from any boy
who could ever presuppose to write them better
So maybe come Monday
I will sit down with my pen and paper
That's assuming I'll still make it home
by Saturday morning
That's assuming I'll still be alive
on Saturday morning
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Country Music Death Poems
I.
Tom T. Hall sings, a scratched record
open: dark kitchen
bubbling on the stove
marrow, chunks simmering in blood
butter churned from brains, onions
sauteed in white lightning
and in butter
churned from brains.
II.
Hunting dawg stands on its hind legs
prized hunting dawg
speaks an ancient tongue
cleaves the hunter's head
with a tobacco knife
long-handled with a blade
fashioned from an ancient handsaw.
Prized hunting dawg shivers
brushes blood from his fine coat
mumbles to himself in an ancient tongue
smokes a pipe
learns to drive a car
III.
old country graveyard
(Mincy)
coffins of wood, real wood, collapse inward, marking the rotten slumber of decades with sunken spaces throughout the shaded sycamore roots
dead things wake up
light themselves a fire
have a dance, neck, get drunk on creekwater and fireflies
early morning, sun begins to rise, the ladies are exhausted, shuddering into the leaves, the boys left unpaired in their romance of tendons long snapped and skull kisses, they stir smoldering coals and talk gets real, far-out, they laugh about their dreams, especially the ones about bein' alive
written, I think, around Valentine's Day '13, I think
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