Saturday, January 12, 2008


SIGNIFYING BLUES


I walk through these streets
where the shit and sapphires meet,

steam boat weaving through
crowds abruptly breathing,
but I can't touch the ground.


I am trophy-hunting through this
disconnected shunting--frame to frame. There's an uptown matron, and there's a homeless
wasteling whose brain's in flames.


It's eye for an eye and I bargained my pride,

so--who's to blame?

Me and this town--

a Babylon merry-go-round,
going down.

Thursday, January 10, 2008


ROAMING CHARGES


Across a prairie
In a cushioned doctor’s office

From the bottom of a chlorinated swimming pool


Waiting for your voice to come back

Wednesday, January 9, 2008


SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAVELING

(Part One)

I am convinced certain things need to be said,

or maybe they’ve been said already, or
maybe they’re being said right now.
I am convinced many bodies are at work
in the wires we cross to reach one another,
and with every click of the receiver

a blood vessel opens to let our voices through.

I am convinced the delicious red flesh

of the central wire (which holds our most
important pulse) is really the long tongue of history’s deceased, which we must
borrow, just to say,

“I love you.”

or

“Fuck you.”

or

“I’ll be home late tonight.”


And when we plunge ourselves into the darkened places

to hear our voices flap as gulls or crows do

against a storm, we must feel strained

(in a sympathetic way) by the barriers
those wings now fight against.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008


SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAVELING

(Part Two)

And when you talk hurriedly to a friend late at night
from a pay phone, and the voice of that man
(one of the most frightening men I have ever met,
though not face-to-face) enters our conversation
to tell us with his cheerful hint of menace:

“Excuse me, Please deposit 25 cents for the next one minute…
or your call….will be automatically…disconnected…”
Is this the voice of the boat man
who we must pay to get to the other side?
He rises from the mist between our clamped eardrums,
taking us through the length of these smaller journeys
our restless change could buy.

Monday, January 7, 2008


UNHOLY CUP


There goes Apostle Bob’s Abomination Truck--

I’m still waiting for that unholy cup.

I’m way past due, I’m way past tense.

I skinned the village idiot to get his two cents.

I’m itching for a signal that I can trust, but now I’m the one breaking up…

Saturday, January 5, 2008


“OUT, OUT, DAMN SPOT!”

(THE GAME SHOW)


I wouldn’t speak that way to me if I were you.
No, almost definitely, I would not. But then, if I were you,

I most likely would not speak at all, but curl up, fetus-like
in the corner, stricken with the ineptitude of God’s financing
in areas such as creation and genetic inheritance. And if I
were doing this, and I were you, who would you be?

Lost in the shuffle, that’s who; a blank spot, a shadow figure,

a dawn-day silhouette no one would be willing to step into.

And yes, all the crustaceans would curl up their tails in salute,

and the tad poles would do a slow dive backwards into
the sperm pool, and it would all be like some old

Esther Williams swim-&-dance routine;

A celebrity roast to the blind force of evolution.


Up to the podium walks a man we’ve never seen before,

and he would ask, “The envelope, please…” and your name

would be on it, announced to the crowd, the camera crews

searching you out, the spotlight frantic, and we would all

fall down the open keyhole of your identity, spiraling down
like a DNA chain, holding hands, not knowing whose hands

we’re holding, partners for eternity, like Groucho & Marx,

like Karl & Engels, like Fish & Chips, tumbling, deposited,
as safe as a rerun, as two lovers—each with their finger

in a socket—stretching across the long room

to meet in a kiss.

Friday, January 4, 2008


DEFUNCT KING

Today, I needed to talk to my father
and I had to go forty miles to do this,
and it only cost a few slim quarters
down the pay phone’s throat.
Me, a little lighter in my pockets,
and my legs no more tired for it.

“Kill the Messenger,” they used to say.
Well, now the messenger can keep his distance,
but there are still ways to drip poison down the ear of a king just turned defunct.

Thursday, January 3, 2008


HORSES

So, who was that ferocious god we answered to, who lay buried
in the coarse thicket of our pubic hair, in swigged beer and the serum
of our guilty sweat? He was our outpost of dog fur, our immaculate

boner, he was radiant. He ran through flaming sewer gutters,

exploded mail boxes, all juvenile pranks while our bodies burned

with tides we had no name for. We were wired to his spine,

we knew his dance which set us running, but we could not
speak to him.
The power plant hummed at the edge
of the neatly combed lawn,
which was green in a way
that whispered green even in the gathered dark.

And our shadows galloped like mad horses, afraid
their own muscles
could tear them apart.

Wednesday, January 2, 2008


MR. CRUNCHY


(part one)


This dance you do, what do you call it?

This old thing? Oh, I don’t know.

Maybe Waltz-with-a-Hole-in-my-Pocket,

maybe the High Voltage Serenade.

Maybe I dance when I sleep and don’t know it,
my follicles swaying toward star light.
Maybe I am photosynthesis in reverse:
All crimped and fetalized under sunlight,
all milk tides and electric limbs by night. See how protectively your skin is gripped to you?
Force of habit, that’s all.

It just never found a better dance partner.

Let it slip off your coat hanger bones

and find the real freedom it needs.

Let it have an affair with a traveling salesman

in a sleazy motel, let it assume the form for him

of an aging movie star he was in love with as a child,
and as they sleep, their tattered bodies lit

by late-night TV, by its’ blue swarm

of itemized moonlight, someone on the screen

is squawking, about a 1-800 number.
A place where you can dance all night.


You’ll catch me down there

at the Omnivore’s Ball,

swinging with the spectacle,

looking for my latest victim

who could pass as my own lonely double.

Tuesday, January 1, 2008


MR. CRUNCHY


(part two)

This dance you do, what do you call it?


I call it the Caustic Two-Step,
I call it the Tango of False Intimates.

And let’s play a game:
You’re the forest, I’m the defoliant,

this world a ballroom of asphalt.
I am not still, dumb in the sway

of static’s ebb and pull, I am not

spindling out to match the galaxy’s
black-sun demise---I am dancing!

These rooftops, they are not still.
They’re leaping; black-gapped jaws
lapping up the sky’s oblivion.
And these leaves, scattered in the streets
like the toilet paper of dead kings,
they are dancing, too!
These muddled street lights make islands of vacancy for us to belly-leap and frollicate
endlessly through, without any thought at all.

Whatever carries us, whatever moves us---


Dance the Bodily Holiday!

Dance the Contusion’s Delight!

My skull on a blind date with the Titanic—

I’m about to crack, I’m about to go down

drowning with champagne in hand…

Monsters