Wednesday, June 2, 2010
THE PURSUANT GOD…
…is busy checking the fine print.
Seems the void in warranty is an aching
hole in the center of all of us, and is best
avoided in most instances of polite conversation.
Bring up the weather, instead.
Or ask directions to the local bistro.
Claim a blackout in Google maps, that
your rib cage is a tuning fork on the fritz,
claim anything but empirical proof
of your very existence, because that can
be rerouted and used against you.
Stand still. Stand silent. Let the lights
in the sky go dark, and find no traces of you…
Friday, May 28, 2010
HIGHWAY PSALM
I can feel the heat, and the forlorn
wind of miles whipping by, my tongue
a tattooed receipt, still spending past
the point of no sales return. I am
the Optimized Package, I am
the down payment filled with sand.
I am a miser sun-sick with fever,
feeling his palms blister and peel
and thinking that was the greatest
gift ever recieved. I am the snake-eyed
hologram of the Old West, beckoning
people on into the unspooled future,
only to give them an empty package
filled with their past…
Sunday, May 23, 2010
SYSTEM CHECK
When did I know? When did I shrug off the kink in my neck
and it just clicked, “This is it,” and I let the unspooling
reels carry me to their pre-arranged destination? When did
I become a witness, not for the prosecution but to myself,
when did I declare the driver’s seat officially abandoned, a
cinderblock on the gas pedal, and all systems go?
Saturday, May 15, 2010
FOUNDLING
I found an old, faded black & white photo taped to the
bottom of a dresser drawer at my parents’ house, its’
edges cracked and pointing downward like accusing
stalactite fingers, the brown fog of age already encroaching
on the image: a young tyke, barely out of his swaddling,
and damned if that doesn’t look a lot like me at a certain
age, squinting into the sun, and damned if I can’t guess
what was on my mind next…Just how many crimes can a
guy commit in one day?
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
CALL ME ISHMAEL
You know why? Because I said so.
If I live long enough to make it to an airport
without losing any oxygen, if I use my mouth
to get me through the front door, sign where
it was dotted, breeze out from whence I came,
I could be a new and wholly invented self-made
man, I could write my own ticket. Yeah, the best
laid plans.
Monday, May 10, 2010
REDUNDANCY
Stories are funny. Some of them start off small,
and some of them end up big, and some times
you’re so in the middle of them, you can’t see the
foregone conclusions for the trees. That’s where I
start. From bust. I was done before the set-up
began. Someone was already laughing by the time
I crossed the punch line. Done before I was
finished. That sounds like me.
Friday, May 7, 2010
REVERSE SALES
My brother was a salesman. He was the best kind. He
could sell death. It’s what he called, “the ice breaker” or
the “starter party.” Follow the wake, he always said.
Headlights at noon. Another funeral. He wasn’t an
ambulance chaser. He preferred a hearse. He said the
clincher was when the dirt hit the coffin, he said it was like
a giant eye winking, when you first realize all that
burnished mahogany is going down with the worms. He said
it’s like automatic reverse psychology. Instead of thinking,
“What’s the use? We’re all going to end up here?” you
wonder, “Who’s gonna give me the good send-off?” And
then he’s there, pamphlet in hand. But sometimes, you
bury the wrong person…
Thursday, May 6, 2010
CHANGELING
I was conceived in one of those dump-your-car-keys-in-a-
bowl 70’s swinger parties that everyone’s too embarrassed
to admit ever took place.
I was conceived on the living room floor, beneath a haze of
secondhand smoke and a few bowls of half-chewed cocktail
peanuts. Bad idea. Lots of awkward silence.
When I was older, I would come downstairs and revel in
the stench of aftermath, of sizzled pleasure, knowing I bore
that cloak like a placenta.
I’ve been waiting for you to find me.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
GOOD FAITH
Put your best face forward. That’s a phrase you’ve heard—
I don’t know, can you estimate? Maybe 450 to 500 times
in your life thus far, whether in spoken or written form, or
other various media of some kind? Tonight was the first
time it made sense to me, though. I started off defrosting
a fridge. I ended up uncovering a body. That back gate
was nothing; just a shadowed archway near where we put
out the garbage and the recyclables. Suddenly, whether I
could break its’ lock in the next 20 seconds was everything.
Then the spotlights were on me. Put your best face
forward.
Friday, April 16, 2010
BUY IN
What choice did I have? My bag of tricks was
empty. I could either walk away now, or come
semi-clean. Half of a lot is still enough. Wait
another few hours, and all that info would wash
down the drain, and this little profit-based sermon
would come to nothing. Neither of us would have
anything to gain. God is my witness. Maybe he’d
like to look away.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
LIKE A SLEIGHT-OF-HAND HOUDINI…
…I’m hidden in plain sight, as undifferentiated
background noise, staying just outside the lid of
the not-all-seeing eye. So, the show goes on.
I hum a Waltz time. I’m a shadow coming in
for a slow landing, I’m a blur, a quick eclipse on
the video screen, I’m two bodies passing in flight.
Time to move…
Friday, March 19, 2010
UPGRADE
You hustle me up to the third floor, where only
the most moneyed vultures hold a perch, straight
past reception, littered with many a carcass that
died mid-translation, and into the executive suite,
to a red leather-bound chair with all strings
attached.
I catch myself for a split second, inside the gold-
framed mirror in the spotless private bathroom off
to one side. I give myself a high-five, and what
the hell, a year-end bonus. Such a rarified
atmosphere...
You put me in my seat and lean over me and tell
me not to panic as the emergency lights kick in.
You guide me through it, every step of the way...
Saturday, March 6, 2010
THE VERDANT PLAIN…
makes a fine topical salve.
Apply liberally where forlorn.
The desert called; said,
“Give us our oasis back!”
Like we’d fall for that.
We’ve had sand in our eyes
and dust passing for the winds
of change for too long now,
we know a clear-cut bait-and-switch
when we see one. As the winds
howled and overtook us, I ground
that green to filament pulp,
left the high plains drifter himself
starving for product. I’m telling you,
it’s a buyer’s market…
Sunday, February 28, 2010
BEHIND IT
In my hands, I want to feel
the crusted black loam
of generations: the hands
that slit the cattle’s throat,
strangled the chickens,
stroked the lamb’s ear,
grew calloused and sturdy
and bent. My mother,
watching the tractor
turn over the soil
on her ancestral farm-land,
saw the spinning wheel
of seagulls rising behind it,
to swoop and peck at any
chance green offal left exposed.
“I have to believe,” she said
“that a world this well planned
has to have some kind of force
at work behind it.”
I want to feel that in my hands;
a certainty to hold on to.
Monday, February 15, 2010
SWEEPING THE NATION…
Like your id on all fours,
like a combustion engine with a mouth,
like an excitable inmate on broom duty.
Allow me the honors, you heard it here first:
The dance goes to the volcano’s edge.
Bite your tongue, you might draw some blood.
The tide has turned on a dime, and you
have a one-time free trial offer to track it.
DNA sampling is just one of many hidden costs.
Join now. Void where prohibited, and we’re
pretty much nihilists, so, y’know, do the math…
Sunday, February 7, 2010
ACT YOUR ARCHETYPE!
We offer a full catalog in stock
characters, all at a (“brooding, heavy-hearted”— we threw that in gratis!) click of a button…
Are you a freewheeling fire brand
who doesn’t play by the rules?
A pouting vixen with issues de padre? Maybe the hilarious gay next-door neighbor best friend? Or an exuberant man-child who always bursts through the door at the wrong time?
Our motto is: “We provide the vessel, You fulfill it.” And the glass is never half-empty when it’s (say it with us)— fulfilled. Order now.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
KING MOJO
I am taking simple joy
and grinding it down
to a fine glass; said filaments
to be inhaled by orphans in any
number of undisclosed nations,
as per contract, etc., etc.
I am part of a massive
clean-up initiative that forgot
to inform its’ center.
I’m dusting for prints, forgive
the forensic evidence.
I feel like I’m meeting you
for the first time. When I say
you, I mean me. If guilt
were as old as dust, my hand
would be everywhere…
Sunday, January 24, 2010
MISER’S LAMENT
Your silence was golden,
but below market value.
I seized upon it, anyway,
with a miser’s gnarled heart,
alight in the knowledge that
what I possessed left everyone
else with a little bit less.
Did you just say something?
Damn. That depreciates the sum
total; every word eating away
at my unspoken stockpile.
I beg of you, keep your thoughts
to yourself. If less is more, think
how much more even less would be…
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
OVERTHRONE
From sorrow’s throne, a smile
was made, this rictus split open
like fruit prone before the blade,
scattering the seeds’ teeth,
signaling the easiest breach,
the damp, blank earth still unbroken.
We will say what we have to say,
we will curse this ground to its’ marrow.
We will claim these ruins fallen and gone,
but never that we are its’ bastard young.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
THE BIG REVEAL
It’s no big deal.
You telegraphed it
way ahead of time.
It was your second cousin
with the suspicious moustache—check!
All masks have been stripped, all
pancake make-up left to sizzle
on the griddle of our worst intentions,
all oxygen sucked out of the thin air
where you pluck the fatted miracles
we’ve already accepted for slaughter.
What have you left to sell us?
That these are the ghosts of ourselves,
that we are ready to step outside them?
Sunday, December 13, 2009
MALFUNCTION
Data not available.
Warning: Tongue
may not be self-contained.
Systemic algorithm:
I’ve already said too much.
Forgive me, as I forgive myself
(Forgive me, that’s also an
embedded algorithm, we’re
still working out the bugs)
What you see is a blank
screen, what you must project
is your innermost…Oh, hell,
we’ve already got b-rolls of that!
Forgive me, as I forgive yourself
(Don’t turn the lights out just yet)
Sunday, December 6, 2009
To forestall the install,
to mark the stone’s length,
to count the tears left behind
as incremental mucilage
that make such
a monument possible…
We are ants tearing down
a hero’s lament.
We are a thousand blind feelers
versus the voice that breaks
but is still for rent.
We are the slow IV drip
of boulders into rubble.
We are the crown that
crumbles to the touch.
We are the last grasp…
Sunday, November 29, 2009
TRANSITORY
The night is filled with weak
and whispery electronic beeps,
the bells and whistles
of an invisible choir.
You get the feeling that
some vast, spider-veined hand
is out there, doing the tapping,
spinning the wheels, finessing
the messages out to those
that need to hear them.
You are not among the chosen
few at the moment, and so
to you, those notes are nothing
but the deranged white noise
of solitude, not quite ready
to let you in, to hear
the final translation…
Thursday, November 26, 2009
ORTHODOXY
My throat was stone
when I broke the words
when I broke bread with misgivings
and left them by the wayside
when I formulated the current
and predicted a devastating
flood of one. Leave me be.
I fulfill this empty backwash
I can’t swallow. I am an abandoned
project wallowing in bureaucracy.
I am a sign of the times, a shadow
slowly grading out. I am an ink blot
at the end of a contract never signed,
I am the half-finished condo tower
glinting in the tired sun…
Monday, November 23, 2009
THE TEXT…
flickers, certain as a serpent
yet lags behind the cold-blooded
slow boil of the sun; you may
extract the best test results
like a venomous lozenge
from beneath the tongue
you may say these jaws are open
and call this elixer compromise
but your smile is fixed
and rictus loves to meet itself
at the edges from which
it’s already run…
Friday, November 13, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
STARE DECISIS
is unbroken, and you couldn’t
look further away from the truth.
Your vacation starts now.
The stakes depend on where
you pin the poisoned-eyed
absolute. I see you gleaming
in last twilight, but it won’t get you
any fast tracks to kingdoms best
left unmentioned. You are a far cry
from common ground, as we stand
by that which has been decided,
and still, you can’t leave the rest behind….
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
LISTEN FOR ANNOUNCEMENT
The ears are peeled, the mind is blank,
the night is full of the digital
approximation of silence.
We are attending a ceremony
in our honor, but the invites
have been wiped clean.
Come to think of it,
all the labels from my clothing
were neatly snipped out
while I slept, and my driver’s license
now shows a picture of me
missing on a milk carton.
Come to think of it,
I can’t think of it,
and such forward-thinking
leaves me way behind the curve.
I count loose change, and try
to make small talk with strangers,
but then realize I’m not sure
of the language that’s supposed
to leave my lips…
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
THIS DARK IMPRINT…
doesn’t even leave the eyelid
before it’s categorized,
half a shuttered frame, at best,
out of focus, inconclusive,
you can barely call it evidence,
but still, a shadow has to live
with itself, and every grain
leaves bread crumbs behind
for every bird who ever pecked
at the order of the house next door…
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
WAKE
In every dish left to dry on the rack,
in every idly spinning window fan
refracting the TV’s light, in every
whisper of a book’s pages or
dimming of the stereo, there is
a soft trilling, a touch of collective
cacophony dialed down a notch.
The storms of August have passed
for now. We hover, uncertain
in their wake…
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Monday, August 31, 2009
THE HUNTER/GATHERER GOD SPEAKS…
Adopt a scorched earth policy.
Don’t mind me. See if I care.
I’m just telling you which way
the wind blows. Please keep
in touch. My verdant spear
is lagging these days. Oh well.
We’ll always have the harvest.
The husk of my divine visage
left behind to anoint the pilgrims’
feet before they cross the river.
I hate reruns…
Friday, August 28, 2009
CONTRACT
I think we live with the demon's maw
snapping at our coat-tails, and angels
loaning out wings to get us further
down the flight path. I think I just
wandered off the reservation, and you
might suggest a way back. I think
the blood of innocents makes a decent
disappearing ink, I think you left tracks
wherever you went, in the fine, pearly snow…
Thursday, August 27, 2009
THE BLIND
I can’t see what’s in front of me,
but I’m sure you’re all there.
The space between raindrops
constitutes a massacre.
It’s what I call, “a blind.”
A dark spot behind the eyes
and way past a prayer, it’s
both cataract and cure.
It’s where the story begins
and ends, it’s when you can’t
see what’s right in front of you
but you’re sure it’s all there…
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
SHAMWOW = FAKE DELIGHT
Shuck and jive, shock and awe,
take the bait and then look
at all the pretty lights.
The cripple looks down
the corridor, and wonders
how much he can absorb.
We are legless for convenience,
but that only increases our advance,
a soundless stampede. Our eyes
give us away, the prisoners’
leaden teletype that says,
“We are home, but that home
has been hollowed out from us.
Please let us stay…”
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
NERVE VECTOR
I am the sum of my parts, and then some.
I am often called William, though that
is a misrepresentation, recalling
my essay, “Myth-Making on the Back Burner”
but we’ll save that lesson for another day.
I am less than I am, but more than you.
When we get close to the center,
I’ll make sure you pass through.
A needle-eyed hindsight
so certain it’s pure…
Sunday, August 9, 2009
LIP-SYNCHING TO GOD
….can lead to a very smite-able
contract dispute, where the dotted line
is dashed with dawn-of-time and all
attendant baggage, and the heavenly
choirs are talking trash behind your back
in perfect harmony, and you can count
all the angels you want on the head
of a pin, until the needle drops,
and you’re left standing,
mute and pure as milk, your only
line from an already minor production
suddenly excised….
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