“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.

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.

Girl

girl