Tuesday, November 2, 1999

Rerun

ha ha
I suppose everyone reaches
reaches the bottom at
at one
one time or
or another
yet I feel
feel like I’ve been here
here before
before and I
I have.

Time-Share Demons

Life has lent me
a large expanse
within which
to fight demons

how nice of life.

I fight these demons
in the name of life
and love and hate
and all that other shit

which I attempt to hold so dear.

People in this restaurant
stare at me
and in their eyes
I see the reflections of
their demons

and I sweat
as our large expanses

coincide.

Your Ceramic Lips

Tonight
I kissed
a hot
cup of tea,
being careful
at all times not to
push myself too hard
so as to
burn my lips.

The Past Does Not Exist

What a week:
romping
grinning
using logic
wearing hats
composing
strolling through
flowers
and past
the chained-up barking dogs
laughing
all the way
sending subliminal love letters
to long lost
sweet souls
debating theology
over hamburgers and fries
sand grinding in between my toes
the glow of creation
fresh in my eyes
scratch pad
beaming with jumbled
seedling madness
mind talking
and world listening?
was it possible?
could it have been?

I should have pinched myself
now
I’ll never know.

Upon offending...

My mind
has been fragmented
into beautiful
crystalline
shards of
thoughts
deeds and
actions

with razor-sharp edges,
look
you’re already bleeding.

Haunted Cobwebbed Filmstrip Beauties

Today the female entity
seems to exist
only in the form of
dusty movie clips;

haunted cobwebbed film strip
beauties kneeling down
and kissing technicolor flowers,
finally having found something
more beautiful than
themselves
and blessing it
with cherished cinematic love.

Throw Me In

Throw me in,
Pop.
I want to roll around in the mud
with all the other metal-clad boys
and dent up my sides
and twist my axles
until my body
is interesting enough looking
that I can stand myself,
Pop.

Bottom Line

There is no woman
in my bed tonight.

The Swing Dance Craze Part 2

I think that I would
feel out of place
in Heaven:
everyone would be
swing dancing
and I wouldn’t know
any of the steps.

The Swing Dance Craze

Sweaty young bodies enslaved by
complex foot diagrams
with faces beaming forth
in electric neon happiness.....
but from the hidden corners of the room
and from within the folds of
antique dresses fanning out
as slender female frames are spun
by grinning wasteland hipsters
squirts the unexpected

BLOOD OF CHRIST

and if you turn your head correctly
these buzzing cheerful swing dancers
will morph into strange, flexible crosses
dancing all about
like Walt Disney’s animated brooms,
and the correctly tilted ear
will reveal that
Cab Calloway
is quoting bible verses
over his 1930’s Big Band
with nothing but heroin
pumping smoothly through their veins-
they’d rather leave all that messy uptight blood
back at the church.

The Last Page

It’s the last page-
but it’s never the last page
really
there is no last page
because when you do reach
the last page
you won’t think
“this is it,
this is the last page”

or

maybe you will
but you won’t ever
be able to find out
if you were right

so

just turn the page
and
get on with
things.

Temporary Dances Behind Time

Some days are like this one
with music creeping from everywhere,
every tilt of your head
revealing vivid
cinematographic
splendor
and you’re dancing
right behind time,
studying its habits,
catching coolly its limitations
the careful ebb and flow
of its endless walk.

But somewhere
deep within
you feel that iron-cold pacemaker
ticking
just like a bomb
as you
sink
to once again realize
that soon
time will turn around
and it will yet again
release those tiny sets of iron jaws
to nip at the heels
of your endless walk,
and that’s when the dancing
stops.

Talking to Michael

Talking to Michael
the other day
we realized that
as far as time goes
you’re dead
99.999999----> infinity
percent of the time
and only alive
0.0000000----> infinity (there is a “1”, but you’ll never get to it)
%.
There is obviously so much more
death
than
there is life
that I wonder if life really
exists
at all.

Such a Tragedy it Was

Such a tragedy it was
this youth spent
with slow-motion foggy
shots
of distorted realities
and my pocked grinning
face
the clown paint is still fresh
on my hands it seems
and stains my accomplishments
one
by
one.

Sports Injury

My mental
slide guitar echoes
its hollow sentiment
and the TVs are sizzling
like everyone’s giant electric pet cricket,
with images unnoticed by mind
yet entrancing to the eyes,
a neighborhoods worth of eyes,
distracting them away from the
approaching line of the
golf course
just peeking over the horizon
like some reverse disease
cursing the body of the land
with an impossibly perfect skin,
turning it into a mannequin,
and all in the name of sport.

Spaces Between the Words

Laying beside
an injured angel
quivering with
self-hatred overdose
my silly fingers
walk themselves
in circles
and my speech
spins lamely into
itself as well
the ends swallowing beginnings
until they are the same thing,
and I realize that
I could probably
simply
hum to her
and achieve the same effect;
I guess that
sometimes words are only sounds,
yet sounds can still carry messages
to those waiting
to receive them.

Chips and Salsa

As I devour
chips and salsa
I think of pleasures past
in a Spanish sort of way
and recall this morning
as I drove my car
through a hole in
the clouds,
and as my wheels touched that
small sun-soaked bit of
blessed (two syllables)
freeway I felt like the proverbial camel
who finally walks through
the eye of the needle
as I thread myself
through your life
and my life
and the lives of all I know
and love
and hate
and despise
and love again,
and there’s hardly any chicken
in this burrito
but that’s okay, I should have ordered
the veggie
anyway.

Impotence

Sorry
one poem is just not enough-
I would need to write
17 poems
simultaneously
at least
to give this thing
justice.
One word describes this poem:
“impotence”,
as I flail lamely
against paper walls
with this
now flaccid pen.

Sometimes Winter Wears Tennis Shoes

I turn my back for just
two seconds
and Christmas trees spring up?
and the streets run slick with rain?
and everyone retreats to their homes?
with sweater armor?
and I catch a cold?
and gloom steals the upper hand?
and we enter the season of thought instead of action?

just two seconds
mind you
barely enough time
to
think about sneezing

and then to do it.

Sometimes, Like Tonight

Sometimes, like tonight
I dream that my bed is a cocoon
and that when my alarm clock goes off
I’ll be a butterfly
and be free of my
larvae
ways.

Sleeping Girl 2

You’re emitting
other-world gravity
sleeping girl
with soft simple skin
singing pale-perfect silence
and meditation winds
spilling back and forth
forth and back
like the tides and seasons
and everything else.

You’re emitting
other-world gravity
sleeping girl,
a suspended
warm
photograph of yourself
that you will never see.

My thoughts want me to touch you
to fall a little
into that other-world gravity
that pulls gently at my body
with the caress of a thousand angelic fingers
but that’s like wishing for heaven
and only fools
do that.

Sleeping Girl

You're asleep beside me
and there's a wind
rumbling beneath your eyelids
and your fallen body
receives shocks
from unknown
complex thought movies
that fuel the slide-show
carousel
presently spinning in your mind.

and I lay here
back at earth
and there's simple rain outside
as you turn over.

She’s Got the Dirt on the Stinky Guy

The stinky guy
has just entered Copperfield’s.
He approaches the counter to get a
refill
and is told by the girl behind the counter
that he should probably go outside
because the boss is here and
-OH LORD-
my face twists up,
the stinky guy’s stink
has washed over me like a
yellow urine cloud.
I try to fight the question
“does he sleep in public bathrooms?”
when,
contrast of all contrast,
here comes Sommer
in all her natural born
corn-stalkness,
with my sandwich,
and we may talk later
because she’s got the
dirt
on the
stinky guy.

She Had a Boyfriend

Oh-
to let the heart vibrate
in simple automatic
appreciation
that there is good in
absolutely everything.

That’s what I’m doing
right now
and there is a girl
to the right of me
that is so
perfectly
beautiful
that my insides
are getting ready
to well up
and leap from me
in an explosion
of bloody cupid flame.

Karen

Karen
I’ve seen your form somewhere before-
lingering on the edge of daydreams,
curving up against cathedral walls,
rolling down European streets and
arching delicately toward sunlight
from soil.

and
I’ve felt your will before-
effortless, easy and with a grace,
like this very sheet of paper
dropped
from 30 stories,
slicing lazily through the atmosphere,
creatively performing
it’s goodbye dance;
taking it’s own goddamn sweet time
on it’s single flight
down.

(A recent realization:
every time you speak with someone
you are saying goodbye
to that version of that person.)

Goodbye Karen,
again and again
goodbye.

Runner’s High

I’ve been-
carving out a technicolor
overexposed
rock-video
long-shot
of Petaluma neighborhoods
with iron-cool
air being sucked in and
               pumped out
of my chest
like the steam of some menthol dragon
-yes-
in other words,
“jogging”.

Robots on Drugs

Okay, okay, okay
so- there is no such thing as
“pure”
experience.
The passing swarthy lustful urge seems so vivid,
the induced frustration so complete,
but
we’re all just robots on drugs,
hopped up on
temper, mood and sexdrive.
Hopeless junkies,
with rehab only
a lobotomy
away.

Logical Rain Falls Straight Down

Listen:
outside
logical rain falls straight down,
slicing deftly through winds
and wasting no time attempting to be anything but
rain.

and my family today,
gathered here my grandparents'
kitchen table
on one of Grandma Peach's last days at home
(her mind is finally surrendering to the infinities of time, and the rest home awaits her, hungry as usual for those tragic finish-line souls with landslides in their heads...)
creates a perfect circle
of logical raindrops,
falling straight down
the organic pipes of time,
while chiming the wisdom of laughter music.

and as my grandmother
violently raps her 83-year-old,
grapevined knuckles
HARD
against the kitchen table,
she howls through the chambers of her deafness
for us to "sing Father Abraham!"
and we do,
slicing deftly through the wind,
wasting no time attempting to be anything but
rain.

Role Reversal

It’s so hot in this room,
but I’m alright.
She hasn’t called


-wow,
the phone rang
while I was
writing the word “called” above

how disappointed I was
when the female voice
on the other end was
my mother

for a second there
I thought my poem
was writing
me.

Plantlife

Filling up my notebooks
using up my pens
mixing down my tapes
filling up my space
look at me I’m Ivy
crawling around
the random place I’ve ended up

Hell
Ivy looks nice
anywhere.

Nothing is Free in This Land

The sky outside
shrieks a luminous blue-
I feel well oiled
and steady,
yet this poem
seems composed of
nervously twitching toothpicks
and rusty springs-
as I hold my breath,
overthinking its fate
in well-oiled and steady
stupidity,
it crumbles before
my eyes,
a miniature Burning Man, 
and the sky outside
shrieks laughter
now.

Most People

allergies
coffee
Mondays
gas prices
The 10:00 news
Jay Leno
the weather
last night’s party

Miniature Relationship Tombstone

She had that
strange beauty
that I will always ache for
even when I have
it
held fast in my arms.

Her body was like
ghost milk;
I reached out and grasped
and kissed
and drank of it all,
paralyzed with trust
and disbelief.

Her eyes were of course wounded
and her speech confused me
as I was left skidding
through the damaged labyrinth of her mind
never knowing quite
where to turn.

Finally Spying on the Framework of Useless Prayers

One more sip of coffee
     and the inspiration will finally come home to stay
     and I will be a free soul, burning logic for fuel
     and the world as my inspiration.

One more hurdling light-speed jaunt to the Holy Ocean
     and the inspiration will finally come home to stay
     and I will be a free soul, burning logic for fuel
     and the world as my inspiration.

(The Question begs the Answer, yet the Answer refuses the Question’s advances, feeling way too crowded by the Question in the first place, declining to loosen even a single stitch of it’s elegant clothing, all the while keeping a cautious eye on this desperate and irrational Question.)

One more line written
     and the inspiration will finally come home to stay
     and I will be a free soul, burning logic for fuel
     and the world as my inspiration.

Pre-Coffee Orgy Battle-Cry

Oh gods
what are you giving me?
This lifeless body
that constantly wilts
and a whole arcade
of laughter responsibilities
dancing before my
drooping eyes?
Fuck you!
You stinking pieces of shit!
I’ll drink and consume myself
full of evil chemical
for ever
always
rather than give in
to your bland gray
wilting death!
I will not wilt!
I will
burn!

Mid-Coffee Orgy Battlecry

HA HA!
OH YES!
filled to the brim
with lovely
mechanical
artificial
energy fire!
Yes!
now that my
balls
are strapped
to the
caffeine electrode
I snap my jaws
and brains
with hollow lightning bolts
and two dimensional thunder
in all directions
till this possessive demon
flees for it’s life
and leaves me
once again
empty.

Meanwhile on D’s Nose

I’m just a chancre sore
festering
on your nose
irritating- aren’t I?
But that’s okay,
it doesn’t bother me that you feel this way
in fact-
I laugh at your hideous predicament.
I’m stuck in your face
I ooze away happily
while you stress all day
over life’s petty concerns.
I’m a greedy nasal parasite.
I laugh metaphorically
all the way to the bank.

The only problem is

I hate it

when you

sneeze

Matches Are Not Toys

Like a rare geyser
these explosions of hyper-electric
creative flash forest fire
only ravage my
usually dormant
mind-eye-time
machine
when they damn well want to,
and this one has been
drinking and driving me
all over the fuck
all day
and now deep into the night.
At this point I feel that
creativity itself
is abusing me
and setting its own fires
underneath me
to keep me in constant transition
between anticipated
hallucinatory
rest-stops;
why else
would I be giving
poor Smoky the Bear
the finger
and running through
these dry
dry hills
with my brain on fire?

8:00AMSaterdayMorningLongsDrugs

8:00AMSaterdayMorningLongsDrugs
a video camera paints a ghost green pixilated version of me
and shoves it rudely in my face
the instant I walk in.
Some young girl
asks a cashier
“do you have any Silly String?’”
and the question
sounds like a clown’s bicycle horn,
ship-wrecking sadly against this whole pathetic
8:00AMSaterdayMorningLongsDrugs
scene
as I pour over and over in my mind-
the notebook options:
“What the hell is going on here?  These are $.99 for 70 pages, and these are $1.99 for 100 pages.  Who prices this shit?  Do I want a thicker notebook?; The 100 page $1.99 option seems to hold itself rigid more, so there’s that advantage.  Yet, the 70 pager, besides being the more efficient buy, would be lighter in my satchel.  Plus they don’t have the 100 pagers in this cute green color.  Oh wait, they do!  Hmm. Perhaps I should go for 140 pages for $1.98, one cent cheaper than 100 pages (in one book).  Oh!  Hey!  Wait a second; all the 100 pagers are wide ruled and these 70 pagers are “college ruled” which I prefer!  Whew, saved by the “ruled/not ruled” distinction.  Oh, come to daddy you beautiful little greenish 70 page bastard you!”
sorry
8:00A.M.SaterdayMorningLongsDrugs
can bring out this sort of
ludicrous mental behavior,
especially while throwing in a hangover
for good measure.
Ambling up to the counter now,
reveling in hollow notebook victory,
the Globe
boasts the beautiful headline
“Who’s Gay and Who’s Not on TV”
in large
patriotic letters
and while I’m thinking about how much
less I would have liked that headline if they
had used a comma in the proper place
I discover that
“$.59 is my change”
(I bought a pen, too).
Exiting Longs Drugs, 8:19AM:
“I wonder what sort of pointless crap I’m going to start with on my new green notebook”.
Listening to “Giant Steps”
take #5
Trane could be said
to be attempting
human exploration
of
a happy fury
and that just so happens
to be right where I’m at
right now
and godammit
if the happiness runs out
I’ll just attack it with some
of that
good old fury
that burning
holy anger
that is life itself
pushing its way
right on through my skin.

Laundry Lesson

Readying
my dirty laundry for washing
(a seemingly innocent task)
I came upon a tiny white sock
that obviously wasn’t mine.
(much smaller, and.....)
I realized that it must have been yours
and like a
FOOL
I decided to smell it
just to make sure
and sure enough
this damp, sordid little sock
eloquently spoke
delicate female backdrops
like roses
swimming is sweet buttermilk
and for a second I perceived the outline
of your tiny ankle
from within the sock
and like a
FOOL
I tried to pull it back
for a kiss
but
of course
there was nothing there.
I’ve always rooted for the
wind
and the storms
and the floods
sitting in stale classrooms
the teacher droning
like an incessant low speed siren,
the clammy
corners of the classroom
with abstract dust-encrusted
cobwebs
trickling over the basketball,
on it’s recess
in between recesses
calling my attention
instead.

Let's Not Go Bowling

It’s funny:
right now I can imagine
practicing my saxophone
just as much as I can imagine
sucking a bowling ball
into my nose
and shooting it out of my ass
like some sort of
human ball return.

Monday, November 1, 1999

I Wonder What She Did With My Number

I wonder what she did
with my number
-not agonizing
just intellectually theorizing:

she gets it
puts it in her pocket
forgets about it
it goes through
the wash
and the ink from my nervous pen
stains her graceful laundry
(revenge!)

or

she puts it on her
dresser and it fades in the
passing sun
and years later,
she looks at it
and remembers that weird night
and some sax player
(immortality!)

or

she leaves it
on the table
in the cafe
next to a crumpled
napkin
the two objects
befriending each other as equals
(failure!)

The Enemy as Usual pt. 2

Hey you!
Skinny silly fool
clutching your notebook
like a girl does her favorite doll
you pansy!
Whirling through your only time
unattached;
wise and useless.
You can’t make love to a notebook!
Mirrors are empty feedback loops
best avoided,
and your notebook is
nothing
but a glorified version
of a purse’s vanity mirror
you moron!
Oh yes-
begin innocently
with one hand
caressing your other hand
and sooner than you think
you’ll be gagging for eternity
on your own flesh
like some
retarded snake!

(Who wrote this poem?)

Wednesday, October 27, 1999

“Gotta Go To Work Gotta Have a Job” -Modest Mouse

Rest time is over-
time to go out and
march in time with the soldiers
to cut my hair
and manicure my smile
and lubricate my walk
and pacify my yearnings
by replacing them
with money.
Just like everyone else.

A Tight, White-Knuckling Grasp on Air

Goddamn-
a tight
white-knuckling grasp
on air;
trying to regrow some shoes
and reattach my
brain,
trying to re-establish my root system
and suck in some clean water
through all this
dirt
-cheap
death
that strikes
with electric daggers
sliding down
rusted alleys
and then along up
my back,
sizzling through
veins
like telephone
wires
communicating nothing but
911
desperation
in the ever-evolving
paranoid midnight
neighborhood-watch
committee
of my soul.

Girl in a Box

The other night
she lay before me,
her will held in a capsule,
shivering discretely
against white nylon cords,
a delicate butterfly
with pins piercing her wings,
and eyes probably piercing infinity
under a blindfold's care,
a fragile trembling gift
crucified before me
that I could never deserve.

Friends

just another addiction?

just another crutch?

or a vital stepping stone
     to becoming human?

For Glenda the Good Witch of the Office (Something She Shall Never Read)

-At another time in my history
I would be on the floor
nipping at your
cool
white
heels,
twisting in gangrenous
agony
upon your departures,
and all my daydreams
would be superimposed by your
cool
white
body
and the ghostly romantic intangibles
of your
cool
white
mind
-but it seems that nowadays
I’m too
cool white
myself
to get down on my hands and knees
for no reason.

Fluorescent Light Warehouse Culture

These people
these poor, unfortunate
warehouse working bastards
live a life of
7-11 meals
and cigarettes at break
smoke drink eat shit
work work work.
The bare necessities.

and in their daily
tombs 
the fluorescent lights glare on
harsh, naked
uncaring and
of course
utterly efficient.

Eye Contact

She was talking to her friend
when I,
walking across campus,
made eye contact with her,
a very
FIERCE
eye contact;
she was
“in my scope”
ZAP,
she was mine for a
moment.
A tender young beauty;
dark eyes,
slender body,
cropped jet-black hair,
fair skin,
ZAP.
I passed brusquely by to hear her utter a tiny laugh and say to her friend
“Uh, wow, I forgot what I was talking about......”

Tin Wisdom

We’re all very tired in this
nearly empty Chinese restaurant
so late on a Sunday night,
me and the balding, grunting man
awaiting his food to go.
There is no
music
and the silence is
golden,
like tiny tin dragons
on a string
choosing not to clink in
a closed
Chinatown department store-
as the waitress brings my hot food
and looks down at this page
and then at my face and asks
“study?”
and I say
“Yes.”

“Effortless”

Hey, lets over-think the word “effortless”!
What is so beautiful and seductive about this word to me?
When I say it or think about it
it takes the sugarcoated shape
of all the golden-orangy carrots
which I dangle in front of myself daily
so as to avoid the
cruel clockwork logic and petrified branches
of stone-minded all encompassing
wisdom.

This word
“effortless”,
is a succulent female voice
powering a cotton-candy staircase;
my floating passage
toward a tragic
toothache shrine of tang.

Dunce

Dunce

Yes
my nervous buzzing entity
screams always for
phantom discipline
and the
cruel delicious freedom
of confinement
as I scour this globe
for women who can
paint themselves schoolteachers
in my mind
and sooth
my jangly form
into meditation
with
gifts the shape
of
slavery.

Dumb Mechanical Luck

Dumb Mechanical Luck

There are insidious insects
burrowing electric tunnels
in place of my arteries

a purple/blue gasoline flame
flashes on and off like a carnival sign
in place of my brain

and soon my bones will be replaced
with rusty automobile parts
that would be better left in fields

and I will be a walking talking
hillbilly garage sale
a mechanical ghost
held together by cobwebs
and fueled
by dumb mechanical luck alone.

The Evolutionary Dominatrix

The Evolutionary Dominatrix

Us men we're rabid dogs,
frothing forth in red-eyed hopeless
endless
desire
to hunt, rape and pillage.
Momentarily this pen is a phallus,
and I wish to spear,
spear, spear, and then
to be covered in mint leaves,
naked and perfect
and emptied of cum,
tasting the fresh calmness and satisfaction
of pure dewy plantlife around and throughout my exhausted limbs,
finally rid
of this electric
buzzing nuisance,
this cartoon-orange
jagged desire engine,
controlling the roll of the eye,
the movements of the hands,
and the pull of time,
the evolutionary dominatrix,
whipping us all out of
untraveled imperfect meaningless paths
and back onto the big meaningless
libidous
reproductive highway,
forever humping the clock
with no weekend
in sight.

Do I Smell Muffins?

Do I Smell Muffins?

Yeah!
The doctor’s receptionist
wriggles her body
to the “Pointer Sisters Live”
album,
she especially likes the “rap parts”
and
the numerous soprano sax solos.
“ooh ooh!”
Ah, yeah!
Rockin’ the office!

right now
waiting for my elderly landlord
to leave the wound specialist
(I gave him a ride here)
detesting and laughing at the receptionist
with her JC Pennys professional
career suit
and face caked with
working woman’s paint.

however, her assistant
is young
and cute
and young
and she just gave me the “shy/becoming eye”
but I see
by random turn of her
head
and a professionally cold
flash of her eyes
that all she has going for her
is her age
and soon
she will be baked into a little
office muffin
just like all the others.

Death is Unavoidable

Death is Unavoidable

She’s pretty,
and she’s pretty,
but none of them
are worth dying for.
I know one that is-
she lives in San Francisco
in a cool little flat
with another one
but no one
should die for someone
that they don’t know
and I doubt I would know her anymore
(the dying for one that is),
and anyway,
I say
die for none of them;
let them die for you.

But the one across the way
who was one of the two in this cafe
that I dismissed
as not being worth dying for
just turned her head
at a perfect angle
and I felt a little part of me
die.

D Laments Youth!

D Laments Youth!

Goddamn
beauty
so temporary
withering before me
sliding slowly from the mirror
oh-
I despise my reflection
because it’s so
goddamn
beautiful.

Crying Through a Funnel

Crying through a funnel
funeral time
bring out the dead
place flowers on their heads
the savage turn of the screw
the twisting reality of deed
with evil accents
on graceful dark
contorting violent
violet
riveting nightmares
brilliant in their ability to
trap the mind in a soft pastel cage
and communicate
without the use of language.
What is a word
what is a note
one as meaningless as the other
both as meaningless
as this
“poem”.

Rant # ?

Rant # ?


I don’t take Prozac,
sorry.
I guess I fear the tasteless frosting
that coats most people.

“-ooh look!  It’s somebody’s
   birthday!”
 “-did you color your
   hair?
   I really like it!”
“-hee hee hee!  No rest for the
   wicked!”

All these pleasant plump
T.G.I.F.ers,
who spend Sundays with their noses
buried in Maya Angelou books,
gad!
with their fat free cookies
and JC Pennysâ Career Suitsãâ,
all these women
band together in the office
dependent on their daily ring of hollow muzak compliments,
constantly getting older
and fatter,
while eating more and more
fat-free cookies
and decaffeinated coffee
and diet soda,
but they are not the type to watch soap operas.
-oh, no!-
but their books are like soap operas:
“Clan of the Cavebear”
“Beloved”
I’m sure you’ve seen these
War and Peace-sized monstrosities,
they ramble on and on
so that these pleasant
pleasant middle-aged women
can temporarily exit
their flat worlds
and smother
their gray KZST minds
with fat-free stories
and cinematic walls and door and ceilings
so that they will never have to leave the movie house.  The orchestra drones on and on, playing music that stirs your heart to glory and your stomach to nausea, yet somehow you actually never really notice that it’s there, and you forget, in the sickness/euphoria, how expensive the popcorn is , and how the guy next to you laughs like an elephant at all the wrong parts, and there is always a banal, politically correct, positive and placid ending to every tale, and these women (yes, the office women, who two pages ago spread their plump sweaty legs in my mind and gave birth to this disgusting red scream of a rant) never want to leave this movie house.  For these women every day is a new scene in some audience tested, mass-marketed, shitty film and they all pray to die
before the credits roll
and it’s time to actually
GET UP
and do that high-dive leap
into the searing realities
and the beautifully
perfect imperfection
of life’s parking lots.

Chinese Restaurants Are Often White Trash Dives

Chinese Restaurants Are Often White Trash Dives


Fat Europeans wander
sweating
into Chinese restaurants
and gobble pork
and drink Bud
as they envision themselves
devouring an exotic piece
of the orient
complete with cliche’
gong crash
and out of sync
overdubbed vocals.

Cheap Travelling

When I am in my room
and my shades are drawn
or I am lying in my bed
and can only see the skyline
then I could be anywhere.
New York.
Paris.
Montana.
Big Sur.
Salmon Creek.
Tahiti.
Well, maybe not Tahiti.
Anyway,
you get my
point.

Tuesday, October 26, 1999

Cartoon Headless Roasted Chicken Island Fantasies

Cartoon Headless Roasted Chicken Island Fantasies

This day has
chewed me up
and spit out my bones
and then ground up the bones
and then snorted up the powder
and gotten high off of me.

I am this day's
vice.
Today is addicted to me.

Its gone to meetings
with yesterday
and the day before that
and talked about it's
hopeless addiction
to me;
about how it dreams of the powder potential
of  my bones,
and how whenever it looks at anything white
it hallucinates about
my white goodness,
like when Elmer Fudd is starving
and stranded on an island,
staring at Bugs Bunny,
causing his mind to suffer those damn  
cartoon headless roasted chicken island fantasies.

Chapter 666

Chapter 666

Chapter
six hundred
and sixty six

keep head balanced
another week of fury
eating hot death
every minute

feeling sorry
for the ghosts
who serve
breakfast every morning
to “the regular”

awkward in that slot
awkward in many slots

flying down life’s highway
in an unregistered vehicle

a drifter

sans the slick theme song
and
snappy dialogue.

Upon Talking with Cameron, Age 2

Upon Talking with Cameron, Age 2

A child
possesses wisdom
WELL
beyond its years,
like senility in advance.
Talking with a child
makes so much more sense
to me than with all these
mad mad
adults,
walking around with their heads full
of opinions
and attitudes
and numbers and letters,
all hopped-up
on experience
and "wisdom",
the more you know
the less you know
for sure,
and the less you know for sure
the more mad you become
and the cycle is enough
to
KILL
those who actually think and observe
as children
all they have learned
as adults,
as it is presently trying to
KILL me.

Talking to a child
can be not unlike
the primal soothing nurturing touch of a lover,
calling up the same senseless beautiful
white-noise clouds,
like the gentle arising from a childhood's dream:
-worlds in dust particles-
-galaxies of reason in soap bubbles-
-momentous meanings in seasons-
-imagination and reality sleeping together in the same bed-
you can have all of this
when you get older too-
but imagination and reality
won't just sleep,
they will fuck;
imagination will rape reality
and then
reality will gain the upper hand,
brutally and violently
violating the imagination,
the bed is soaked in blood,
and the mind screams
sending electricity
along ice-blue veins
to bloodshot eyeballs
staring blindly,
awake
at a grown-up's world.

Brooding

Brooding

“Brooding” now
seems to be the only formula I know,
sitting alone
in crowds of people
knives and daggers aimed at my heart
and my actions are
cheesy
and selfish
and immature
and typical
and lame
and male
and stupid
and self-serving
and completely
utterly
and totally
unavoidable
as far as I can see
right now
with my petty crummy little
formula
called “brooding”.

Bitter?

Bitter?

I am
Goddamn tired
of licking the heels
of these
star-eyed maidens-
tired of hitch-hiking
aboard want-powered
automobiles
with these cool careless drivers
dropping me off at
empty locations
where there is nothing to do
but scratch at the wall
and perform countless careful
obligatory acts
of
self-denial.

Beyond Depression

Beyond Depression

I’m beyond depression,
which is not to say
that I’m
really fuckin’ depressed-

it's just to say that I
don’t believe in it anymore.

(depression’s just a bearded fat man fantastically stuffing himself down my chimney)

My house is empty,
which is not to say
that I feel empty
in some overwrought
metaphorical way-

it’s just to say that I’m
in between room mates
right now
and my landlord’s probably asleep
in front of the
buzzing yuletide
satellite god.

(cats lick themselves, paint peels from walls)

My madness is
BURNING,
and is my beacon of hope-

which is to say
that my madness is
BURNING
and is my beacon of hope.

(madness burns and is seen as “beacon of hope”)
Behind
spectacles,
her sternness
my magnet,
her silk scarf
my noose,
as I daffy duck it
all the way through
her yellow brick road.

Uninhabitable Romantic Beach Midnights

At midnight
beach grass still sways
violently
whispering all the
uninhabitable romantic
beach midnights
that have been given away
by smooth fingers and flushed faces
searching for warmth and acceptance
where there is mostly
only deep deep wind chill factors
and one million possible
species of frozen plantlife
denying death
to frozen waves.

Ashlee

Ashlee-
the two e’s on the end
remind me of e.e. cummings
or perhaps your two
eyes
as they pierce the quick
and mire of my soul
with a light
too graceful
for even cathedrals
to afford
and your laughter
shooting out
in the shape of small birds
building tiny nests,
underneath all the cold
logical
structures of my
belabored form
until I am finally ticklish everywhere
and buzzing
with the energy of
thousands of sets of tiny wings
carrying me
in every direction at once,

forever,

or,
until you take
your laughter back.

Monday, October 25, 1999

Saturday, January 23, 1999

Anxiety Nursery Rhyme

Anxiety Nursery Rhyme

That tension
is green
and electric
it trickles from
dark corners
a head’s turn
away
at all times

and before you can
meet it eye to eye

it pains your stomach
regions by and by.

Another Breakfast Poem (for Michelle Anna Jordan)

Another Breakfast Poem (for Michelle Anna Jordan)

Yes,
please place logs in my stomach,
slow
burning
logs
with my morning stomach acid
as hungry as fire,
and please jolt my rat-caged brain
with electricity
from the cup
so that my efforts and
musings and sideways glances
will all ring iron
with sharp edges-well defined,
against odds,
on Sunday mornings.

Sunday, January 3, 1999

Old

Am I really this old?
Perhaps that’s why
I am now growing mad-
all this early growth
piled onto
this young frame,
a heavy load
(too heavy!),
all this forbidden perspective
crucifies me
and the blood just gets
everywhere;
on the friends
and the walls
and in my walk
and on any woman unfortunate enough
to crash into me
on randumb drunken freeways
(and alleys!)
and other meaningless
excursions.

(sorry,
space has been explored.
everyone just go home.)

Saturday, January 2, 1999

Curse the Puppet Show

Ah Karen-
fictitious ghost
haunting a beautiful
idea
in my mind,
you can feel the falsity
of all this
yearning
of all this
anticipation,
you come from a clan
which fights this nonsense
with razor sarcasm
and a bitter, bitter love,
all of you
with your poor caged hearts,
growing tenderer by the minute;
overprotected,
yes, your smothered heart
and my naked infant one,
bouncing off each other now
with a sound louder than fate
and much louder than tendency
and much more painful than both.

Ah Karen,
we suffer the bondage
of slot car tracks
and curse the puppet strings
that we actually hold
ourselves.

Aching For Some Sort Of

Aching for some sort of
beauty or grace
in this barren land
as my blood rusts
and I turn to stone
and watch the vultures
tear away flesh and cackle
and spin
fueled by final knowledge
of death
being the only truth
and life being that
meaningless
void
/////////////in between/////////////.

Friday, January 1, 1999

11:35

11:35

Here at the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
the clock is stuck at
11:35
it has been
11:35
for two weeks now
here at the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
my educated
guess
is that tomorrow will be an
11:35er
as well.
Probably the day after that
too.
Oh how
I wish it were possible to climb up that
clock tower and
twist those hands up
making them say some impossible time
like 57:65PM
or even something cute like
12:34 or
the old traditional
4:20

anything
but
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
11:35
however
soon
on another humdrum day here at
the Petaluma Center for the SRJC
some computer science major
will lift up his
standard issue head
and see the holiest of sights-

11:36!

and he will pass the word and
announcements will be made
and plans planned
and there will be an 11:36
celebration
and all the administrative assistants
and career path hopefuls alike
will bask and roll
in the glory of this monumentous development
called
11:36
and a plaque will be cast
and awards handed out
(the first one to the famed computer science major who first caught the sight,
it will be called the Amerigo Vespuci Award)
and pictures taken of the clock
with all the administration
including one wacky photo of the dean
pretending to pull the minute
hand one more minute
in order to prompt another day of celebration
so that he can get out of his office
and into the fresh California air....
...........
so perhaps 11:35 is okay with me.
At least it keeps things
quiet
around
here
for now.

Blog Archive