murat11

poem: all lit up like

2011-12-16T19:21:00.006-06:00

my reindeer husband & I be
so fly:
ain't every day
the president of Mongolia
comes callin' down
your chimney,
shuckin' and jivin'
the peace signs
of frivolity -
them Mongols be
a righteous boogie
bunch -
isn't it a pity
the muzzlin' we waste
on nasty house calls,
prank-callin' the Vatican
& all them dismal
sundry sorts:
get out your
seventies platforms,
get the boogie
on out - Mongol
train is comin', betta
get on board,
shimmy, sure it's
all a gimmie,
a give and takin'
thang,
y'all know we
big in Finland -
Finnish we -
catawamping zoot suits
I tole ya we wuz
the hoi polloi,
the cashmere brigade
all lit up like we
got diamonds on our
you know where,
no wash and wear
tribal goofballs, we
righteous thangs,
merry fangs in our
kuomintangs,
we strut,
so whut?
you try our bliss
you be struttin' 2:
Aslan, king o' lions,
but we be kings
& queens
of EVERYTHANG.

poem: ever my tangled

2011-11-25T11:36:00.002-06:00

Portuguese Saturdays &
I wanna be a vegemite girl
Heyday visions, the grey highways
Down the deal-making overtures
You make your way through
Blue alleys, gallivanting
The miseries, the Hugos
The Victors, the caveats,
Caviling vestries, blooming
Rooms, glooming blooms
Down the ashstruck walkways:
Cherish your memories, mes amis,
The visions deep-fried,
Freezer-burned into wrists,
Thighs, calves, penetrating the
Deep, the cavalry brigades gathering
For recompense, softening
The heart’s fissures, polar
Perambulations, dreaming the flowered
Adumbrations, I will dream of you,
You dream of me, sample
Scores of halcyon daze
Snide murky murmurs fading,
Easter bonnets de rigueur, as we
Shimmy down the avenues
With bristling prides fading
You were ever my sympathique
You are ever my tangled stream
You will come to be my cantilevered,
Mowgli-engineered,
Vegematic
Dream.

[in the bland absences]

2011-11-12T15:29:00.007-06:00

for rachman

in the bland absences
scour a sense of you lost
in blue sapphire time,
time too green
for annoyances,
too blue for heaven's
anvils to hammer
the grilling of a lifetime's
conveyances:
we measured rain
in your departure
and raised Cain
till your return
to the nether,
a bliss burned into
the anthem of you
sung across the hearts
in your visionary
labyrinthine
karaoke epiphanies
in the vestal night:
seam the pleasures,
annotate the calculus
of your inert glimpses
down the long Toto
dance of your sly
prancing pony
fiefdoms, heart-theft
of the gentlest possible
calliope'd highway:
I wager more now
in your passing
than the simplest veins
you offer - veins
of gold, of silver,
of dogged limestone night:
sample me
a questing fool in your
afterglow
this too shall pass
& the thrifty cares
will burgeon,
calling forth,
in the end,
your silly
incipient
hounddog-lovin'
Glenlivet-scotching
self.

poem: the fading rise

2011-10-22T00:36:00.003-05:00

take a page from the black furnace

simmer down the folkways
autumnal blues
the midnight gavels descend
query post niggles the distant
prime: cudgel justice
a beating of monstrous
proportions, lather's
crown asks the fondest
questions: i ask for pardon
she bends the rules
the castaways linger
in the wings
outrageous a plunder
the whimsy of which
tastes as sweet as the darkest
roots, portions splayed
the black wells
vaulting the pommeled
sequence, the three
the fear of Havana
the aquablue mystique
cobbling the weary,
the lost,
the converging
galleons,
the last crimes
withering the heights
of your facile deceptions:
find the key
answer the prayer
cast the spell
& order loses her
sainted ways,
the skullportions
of the night's coastline:
call the wild blue
tangle the moon's feeble
intent. this whim of yours
fades in inverse
mockery,
the gingerbaby gingery
calculations moot, a fading
collision, as you stand & rise
a shell of stellar
evacuation,
dripdry steampunk-driven
foggery: only in the last
fading moment will i ask
your tenderest
of pardons.

poem: beyond the miracle

2011-10-17T17:15:00.005-05:00

for the black rose

I initially balked,
the cumulative watts
bearing down on
the fusky nuts,
the amber prime,
the neverending plenty
of dewy decimaled
oscillations: you calve
your glaciers,
I'll calve mine, halving
the distance between
pleasure &
double entry,
bookkeeping the side bets
till wuthering claims
its spiritual climes:
venture into deepest space
and the vigorous
anonymity
extends beyond
the miracle-gro
tendencies of downright
signal virtue:
sunflowered virtue
hangs her head for
no good reason:
this tarry shall
merry in dew time,
a marrying conflagration,
tassel-beamed sentries,
organic play pens,
carousel capillaries,
a righteous finn:
sing into leopard night's
rusty truths,
partnered with simple
calibrations,
hands covering the gaze
as she sees her rain
in the halcyon bayous
of empyrean blue.

poems revisited: blue cafe

2011-10-08T12:31:00.002-05:00

(Listening to cuts from Patricia Barber's CD Cafe Blue last night put me in mind of Jackson's wondrous and much too short-lived Blue Cafe and these poems again.)

An acrostic suite from 2001...

BLUE CAFE

heron meditations

i.

good fellow: strange vision exhilarates the nest.
rarely have i known the direction of your mist. until now.
enviable, is it not, your race
across time to
this moment of mississippi, shore

bought from what
legacy of pasts only you can
utter. they come, floating, fishlike -
elegant waste of piney ocean depth

ii.

glass eye, i think from my distance, so like esche-
r’s orb, a world turned in, turned under:
eternal sleep, a pearl in wait. spillway
a mighty punctuation to our dreams:
therein lies the irony of your long comma.

bridewell, hale fellow, get my drift?
lunacy’s sunken treasure
unfurled, the gar that ate jackson mississippi -
evolution’s finest hour.

iii.

gargoyle at seaside: can death be more still?
read this palm i lay before you.
eat of it. taste if fate is
altered in the fractions we have left.
taste if time cuts as a rule,

bereft of moorings
line for line
uranographer as mighty walls crumble
epigraphist of the gathering mists.

poem: these wanting few

2011-10-07T20:03:00.003-05:00

if I were blue
as I frequently am,
dawn of a remnant wind,
pregnant ocean rump
in my lungs, son
of estuary,
orphaned, lost,
found, this stew
a miserable
sequestration,
an amber
gift to the vagrant night.
she asked after you,
found wanting
desire most blessed, these
wanting few,
wanting less
wanting the last note
down the line:
a single digit,
plea to gather
the blue you
carry, the blue
you mine,
the blue that begs
the question
in each & every
wine.

poem: rest your names

2011-10-01T23:20:00.003-05:00

simple rays
Mary's tears cry
whispers
these foolish fools
calibans
tribal waifs in the blue
margins, calling:
answer the rest,
your names
are drowning
the violent dreams
parting ways,
cast of busybees
heralding
the nothings
sequestered in
your natural wells
blue holes
singing the silent
gospels,
the wildflowers
of your rendered
face, castaway
we forget the rinsing
parlor, the first
time, the very time,
the tingle in the alleyways,
seven times seven times
& the nights are falling,
the flying fish
of a thousand memories
fragrant
dropping through
rhyming space
I knew it then
I crave it now
I pray the wonders
never cease.

poem: sacrilege bold

2011-09-15T22:51:00.005-05:00

able-bodied midstream dithering,
handcrafted barrier islands,
indigenous malingering
professional zealotry
the long arms of worry
calculate the mistimed sacrilege
bold new warriors in
the blind soup,
nomenclature rifled,
crispy critter inundations
the noble fest wreaks
havoc in the wayward mists:
go west, go underground
ancient of daze, angle
your tide-worthy ass
up the festival kissfest
of winsome gerrymandering:
that's soulmandering, you
nebulous fool, it isn't the wonder
of it all that makes me sweat,
it's the regal touch, the nods
to diamond lives
best sequestered in the blaze
of your furious demise,
frost feathers gathering
potion #9 looping
your mongrel avalanche
the jasmine fates
will linger past 9, &
then fading,
insinuate the amplitude
of your curious
intrepid
mortality
rate.

poem: side the tender

2011-09-02T23:32:00.005-05:00

for esther

Heading to Nada tomorrow
sampling the road-weary pilgrims,
dodging the sheer cliffs of fate,
tangled sunflower sympathies
angling for the better view
the deus ex machina that
whimpers beyond the bass notes,
in the dire dreams,
straits of gilbraltar,
over the top
disarray, but you
need the secrecy,
the solace of
one time past all
return &
by your side
the tender touch
of a smooth talisman,
calculated oblivion:
this was the last time she
entered the web of
the black prism,
forgiveness down
the arroyos of desire,
bastion of final
exacerbations, nether
possibilities of the ancient
rhymes.

poem: roundly we can hear

2011-08-27T22:17:00.006-05:00

for wsb

yellow-haired girl calls
his name twice,
flips it in the air
like angular salsa,
bewitching the silences
in his head,
this curiouser of elegant
mammals, a vigilante
panda-bear of cushy
intensity, the oval
of nights you will find,
the care with which they
will find you too, baby bear,
all your vigorous
plim plom plum
hiding - but not too
generously, not too roundly,
we can hear your trumpets
calling, twixt the din of escape,
the patter of avalanches
in cerebral netherclimes:
you can accentuate,
you can contemplate,
you can dive under the regress
of your caveman blunders,
your sensitive tide-bearing eves
of consequence; calibrated
youth bears down with a dance
that mirrors the very notions
you malinger, the body's weakening
hindrances, the heart's
castaway filé gumbo, bop
till you drop,
teeny bopper in the whispering hazies,
capitulations in the kiss-on-your-listing,
epiphany in the south 40,
edification for your Tinkerbell salivations,
quicksilver messengers in the glimpse of your
offsetting
dressy casual
fit for the Elvis chapel glance.

poem: cosmetic blue down

2011-08-12T22:40:00.006-05:00

big baleful bowl of brown-eyed salary
the kiss and tell mythic edges
singeing the palisades
selkie cliffs skimming
by the missing riddles
i keep my sensible fashions
closeted,
diverticular asymmetries, castaway
chops in the regal latitudes
velvet horn in your ear
can turn a phrase faster
than the fishy cheesy
presence in the Eyes of gods
down the Basse bus stops
filigreed digitation, if you
were asking the fools
to the right and left
you'd feel the evidence
rising
the situation settled out
& striped through
the compound vagaries
the distal cheeseheads
the cosmetic blue
down your bedroom lanes
& you might ask
& you might tell
but the general's widow
has vaguer plans afoot
& she's halfway up
your juicy dissertations
inside out
becomes the only way
to bring it back
to sing a furry tune
a sizing merrily forgot
tell me one more time
is the lissome true
imperil me with a glistening
truth
cash me in and skip
on down
your merry road.

poem: Mary Karr dreaming on Chuck

2011-07-10T06:36:00.004-05:00

long-limbed branded rifleman,
avatar of the dreaming west,
Jason in his rounds of the steepled
frogbent gloom, life
mirrored in the groves
of door-to-door misery
plumping the pillows
of the dried scrolls
at the bottom of your belly,
asking for naught but
entry into this life,
that life, any other
but the drumblooming
frenzy that freezes your belly
taut, lightning bugs
starlighting your fate
inside the screened-in porch
of your wary mind,
casting a weary eye down alley,
across lawnspace,
up and down the doxy gams
of your sister's bounty:
live in that shadow long
enough & the Specific
rolls its head into your
drowsy tentacled afternoons,
the call is inventory-blessed,
catching fire in the swamplands,
the delta force of a belated
gaggle of angels calling
you out, calling you forth,
calling you past the rounding
place of your withered home,
prairie dog hermitage
coyote nunnery
cottonmouth nest in the synapses
of a spoiled food fate:
Chuck was ever nothing more than
the call to your own desertion,
the world tumbling
through your bones,
your daddy momma sister
in the waters
of memory's collapsible gate.

poem: yes, that is you

2011-06-16T10:18:00.006-05:00

[While on the Massachusetts trip, Tina and I wrote a passel of patina poems (paschal + tina = patina). This is one. The Resident Youth also collaborated on three or four of the poems himself.]

i.

rescue damsels & chew bubble gum
put your blue crew on notice
after the barn wobbles, this is
last call of the wild Kahunas,
drinking Kahlua and coffee in
a sacred ritual that warrants remembering
that the last time you left Cambridge
you were bereft of all
but the beach glass in your Tarantelle,
globs of prissy membranes
membraning your velvet receptacles -
traverse down from the North Shore,
a dip in Spy Pond should
refresh any grumblings,
where the overcast color follows
you into a past life you
once lived, where Armenians
walked up and down Watertown,
hands clasped behind backs,
walking toward a Utopia that
only lives in their mind's eye,
an eye bewitching the eye's tumble through
space, portals the size of Wonderbread
capsizing the half-baked yous into
fully-baked raisinettes & Holy Mutton.
Is this the mourning
coffee that dons your present
tomorrow? No, it smacks of
the true ferocity of Life
that ekes out past any small
identification, any moment
of time, and explodes into
the real yes that is.

ii.

you can yes that moment into
rhythm and rhyme and you can drag
the blue sky across your back, all
the while backpedaling a metronome
in bubonic flood time, a geriatric
impulse to feed the flame, clasp
your Klimt to a vagabond future
anchored at Good Harbor.
Remnants of poppies live
and bend toward that flying
blue sky, a hue of heart
that melts into coronas, amid
solar flares of
passionate connection,
tender webs that light up
when you blink,
knowing without a doubt that
where you are standing
is the vast ineffable place you trace.

poem: your notorious

2011-06-03T10:15:00.005-05:00

sexy shoulder dresses in
the back alleys of Yerevan,
3 to 8 bucks apiece, that's
a hunger richly deserved,
80,000 to choose from,
these are your margins
in the jungle:
sexy jingle to match your
notorious bigs,
hammer the fading dreams
while you slip on the rounds,
carouseling the plangent
afterchords you lost,
childhood poverty,
adolescent fatima,
vagrant deserts in a 1000
lifetimes, Yerevan still
questing, still coursing
through your veins,
this single match
that flames, a failure
in no small magnitude:
if only you could see into me
verified longings,
amber swerves round
the corners,
the music withers,
lifting you homeward.

poem: boutique your geisha

2011-05-29T16:20:00.006-05:00

armenian chocolate boutique,
your geisha's showin', cher,
ample feedmill severance pay:
if you squander the wander,
you'll sit tight in the afterwhey,
all cuspidy spiders dancin
in your eggy egghead.
it's the simple that matters,
as your garage sale mentality
grows beyond Aristotelian shugga-shugga,
that damn Archies song ain't half
as bad as we all used to think
(when we wuz thinkin'),
& the old roll down Old Canton,
whether flip side or not,
whether tethered or retro,
whether solid or golden ass
shining out for all the world to see,
is a conundrum we so seldom get to meet
in these psycho killer daze of
wampum and wanderlust,
beaver cleaver tentacles
in the 7 Rivers of June
we all partied for, canvassing
the willow tribes,
jejune prophecies mis-
calculating these Five and Dime
custardmongers, fabricating
the essence dolls,
accentuating the fervent
halls of dim sum catastrophe:
apostrophize your damn name, son,
it fits the calcifying calculus
of your eternal flame.

Gil Scott Heron (April 1, 1949 - May 27, 2011)

2011-05-28T17:32:00.004-05:00

I spent a couple of hours this morning with Tia Elena on South New Braunfels Avenue, running down some ancestors at St. John's Lutheran and Hermann Sons cemeteries. These are enjoyable enough excursions, both in the search for specific gravestones and in the delight of finding names that are now plastered on street signs around the city (this morning yielded Probandt and Walzem). Sometimes, as it turns out, the search is for the absence of a stone: I spent a good bit of solo sleuthing a while back, only to discover that one of the said ancestors was actually reposing in an unmarked grave. The fact that some family members had gone to the trouble of exhuming this great-uncle from a farm outside San Marcos, just to bring him down to his unheralded repose in Tres Leches struck me as quite odd and, knowing my extended family's predilections, somehow unsurprising.

Elaine always makes for good company, what with plenty of good stories and a vibe we seemed to have grooved into ever since she took me in for a few months after a fire in an upstairs apartment destroyed my downstairs apartment on Joliet Street, all while I was away that evening celebrating my 23rd birthday. Lovely "present" to come back to. Today's search was for some Alberts and Nauscheutzes: all found, with background stories filled in as we pulled a few weeds, tossed a few stones, or sat in the shade, backs to a pair of stones, wondering why Carlos Nauschutz dropped the "e" in his name. Upon our quick visit to her parents' plot, I pulled some weeds from around her younger sister Jessie Marie's stone. Jessie Marie died at the age of three, back in 1930, and was referred to as "the little green fairy." I know for a fact that this was a reference to a series of differently-colored fairy books that were popular in my mother's and Elaine's childhood, but it was fun to needle Elaine a bit with the competing fact that "la fée verte" (the green fairy) is also another name for absinthe, the alcoholic spirit attributed by some to have distinctively psychoactive effects.

All this by a most roundabout way of saying that, as much as I enjoy Elaine's company and her family stories, they are largely about people with whom I, despite their being family, feel virtually no connection whatsoever. This was not the feeling I had, however, when, after having dropped Elaine off at her house, I heard on KRTU that Gil Scott Heron had died yesterday at the age of 62: the very same GSH whom I had featured in a facebook post just this past Wednesday, his name popping up into my lint brain out of nowhere. As dj Joan Carroll spun two GSH tunes (both featured below), I was filled with a deep sadness and a familial sense of loss.

I'm fairly sure I was introduced to GSH during my senior year at Harvard, when I spent a fair number of evenings over at Craig and Phil's room, both of whom amply expanded my musical chops via a veritable musical appreciation course the likes of which I've only seen one other time, with friend Steph, as we (Steph and I) trolled the discs of Nick Drake, the Waterboys, Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks," Al Stewart, and, of course, the mighty Van Morrison in his post-"Brown-eyed Girl" incarnations. While I had grown up faced by walls filled with a couple of thousand albums in my mother's record collection, C&P brought forth an avalanche of music that had never made it up on the childhood walls. This was the jazz course: Miles, Chick, RTF, Di Meola, Hancock, Billy Cobham, The Mahavishnu Orchestra, my first forays into the Dead, and plenty of Steely Dan to boot. As I say, I'm pretty sure that the top floor of Lowell House was where I first encountered Gil Scott-Heron.

GSH was an interesting anomaly: highly political discourse wrapped in a decidedly crooner-esque voice: a crazy - and very groovy - collision of sounds on the box. When in 1994, I made the fateful decision to sell all of my record collection in preparation for my relocation from New Orleans to Moscow, Idaho - with the delusional inner assurance that I would eventually replace all my records with their corresponding CDs - I'm sure that was the moment GSH went on out of my life, save for the occasional pop-up in recent years while surfing my new record collection, better known as YouTube.

Now just two years shy of turning 60 myself, I find 62 to be way too young for someone to be moving on; these days, I pretty much feel that "too young" is anyone under 80, and that number is nudging on up to 85 at this point. Tia Elena turns 86 this December, and she is still one young and feisty whippersnapper.

Peace to Gil Scott Heron and all the young 'uns. We (all) still plenty groovy.

poem: banana sweet

2011-05-19T19:01:00.004-05:00

(DiMartino for openers . . . )

my past few days have been
bananas, tofu on the down
low, mary on the rompy
waves, strutting her
mother of god oompah loom-
pah, love ya boy,
tango alley all
tingly in the mangos
severaling the times we
passed this way, all
eva diva,
Ur-mama,
outclassin' all the competition
angling for the rain
sampling the z's,
rumbling down the mylifes
the trace be tracing all
the traces, lipstick,
hopstick,
stickystick
eternity brothers, the sisters
outsmart the needling
rain, judgment day
gains her tether
you might as well
boogie all night
& we can use,
& we can say,
& we can bride the day
with sassymissy doseydoh,
a salamander friday
salamandering the footstools
prince of peace in
the corners, countdown's on,
sugarbaby, you might as well
check your math & join
the party, my extra credit ain't
worth the sun risin' &
I ask you, feelin' lucky?
seekin' plenty?
masqueradin' for pleasure
or just for the down &
out, my treble bells will
treble you on out down
the line, & seekers will
salivate the fine line,
regaling the left behind,
sashayin'
calculatin'
the derivations of all
pissy pompy
actuarial
happenstance.

poem: apogees falling

2011-05-14T22:58:00.004-05:00

I saw two men kissing, she
saw a desert,
fiery caravans of them willing,
Saharan spirits,
traumatized vocals,
knotted cords bristling lunar
throats, a vision
of your fading
across the Taos scar,
up out of Pilar,
brown haunch of Georgia's
iglesia in your rear view
mirror, sensible shame flooding
the arroyos, castaway shame:
dreams risen from
Jesuitical slide rules,
calculations of the godhead,
peregrinations of a sashay
the likes of which only
Moses may have seen,
carefully now, you
on your Hanseatic quest,
apogees falling while Impacciatore
sidles up all nappy &
sings us all to sleep,
quivering in our wretched
seasonings, on the verge
of the next verge
&
the next &
the next, mistle-blooms
all Tosca, the fact that
I am following
commemorates nothing more
than
the herald
that you missed.

poem: the backyard cosmos

2011-05-07T15:01:00.009-05:00

sidescraping firmament
navigating the inroads
left sizzling down your
western ways
it can't be real, the way
you size out the leftover
gams, the absent follicles,
the damsel in distress fairy
tales we tell ourselves , waiting
for the bus, waiting the quizzical
way we mention yesterday's
artesian memories
hollow out that cave down
the eastside, baby, the fishy-found
aftersweep, Mardi Gras debris
in your hair, starshine
sensibilities, brides of the candysquare
rubydolls, i ask you: been to the emerald
lately, felt the sweep upon
your skin, skedaddled
down the raspa-heavens,
the trailertrash prom
nights, Ihopping morning prayers,
them be the feet
you wuz dancing? Shebop
down the aisle, sister,
cement your future selves with
the abandon you expect in
the prettyways, your tolerance
for passion still sizzles the nights
still gallavants the backyard cosmos, still
amps the ramps,
apes the homo sapes,
articulates the particulates
nano-seconding the corollaries
expounding the capillaries
sounding out the phonetic
cavalcades of the cautionary,
revolutionary, coparcenary
kisses of the second round -

poem: dairy queen on skinny

2011-05-06T20:28:00.004-05:00

vigilante hamburguesas, now
that the moon mystery's been solved,
young striplings down the alleyways
vagabond desires, handmade
visions, big bertha rockets all
in a row, glance beyond the certainties
gather the surfing starts
ease past the belief
that abundance died in the precious
sapphires of your drowning heart,
flight past the infant dreams
the major motion picture you call your
life dustballing the finest wines,
arrogant scenery my lord god
blisters with her last cries,
april-smothered, the kissing stranger
rides once again in the split-second
glimmer of the heron's eye,
sample the tastes of the
fishy book, fishy menthol-riddled
flounder mamas
the numbers endless as the moony night
Miz Rain looks tired,
the semblance lingers
we ache for the down time, we
chase the thinnest of filigree dreams
augustinian falconian fais-do-do
I'll be your cajun
theologian, you be my
ragin' scepter-wielding
dairy queen on skinny blades
saw-busting snapdragons
of the last brigade
the tiniest of tiny tinny
rills, cascading down the ripple
bends, after the knowing kiss,
this maple grove accentuates
the p's and q's,
tuck your napkin, baby,
lips be the taste of real,
the sound of tawdry,
the blast of the annotated
bible of
the rampant heart -

poem: unleashing the wonder

2011-04-30T11:00:00.004-05:00

for amy and mateo

All the honeybutter
mingled with glimpses
yearning the midnights
& applemornings
May – may? – nay, will
accumulate in the simplest of
twinning twining souls
thee to she & he
hearttwinedtwinning
earth babies, answering calls—
worldwide blossoming
Tapping the wunderkinder in your
raring to go: she
asked out of deepest asking
imminent blessings
permutations of a calculus
saturated with
incandescent wonder:
never the solitary wayfaring ways
gather your blooms to bosoms
Entwined: sample your treasures
under a lambent sky
reeling with the splendor
of epistolary, of
prescient, of
evergreening, evermarveling, everseeing, itchycoo-gleaming—thunder

one word: iron: fishy tales

2011-04-23T16:56:00.003-05:00

collapsing rhymes, this
iron resolution riddles
the sublime
tickles the ivory
vagrants in they
classy lil jibes:
answer the blistered
options: i crammed
for the last time, all
rumors to the con
trary.

one word: styrofoam2: wound time

2011-04-23T11:57:00.003-05:00

dim sum
organic chemistry misses
the point, if pointing
is your bliss, point west
she misses the point all
the time: grasp the tear,
animate the wound
time gathers you to
her womb.

one word: styrofoam: signs of liquid

2011-04-22T23:12:00.002-05:00

delilah's mean flavors
gathering storm in the foamy
mouths of billy-babes
we fashion our times
in the biomes of the west
we sense the demise
of nautical pleasures
we ape the rim
angle for the rival's
exposure, coasting down
the vital signs
of liquid treasure.

one word: foreign: boogie that

2011-04-22T08:40:00.002-05:00

tangle your groove, mister
split them infinitives
like it’s rapture
simple is the best
pesto, she
asked twice & you
gave only once:
hardly the quota you
wuz after, now wuz it.
shimmer this way, boogie
that: biblical negotiations will
ever ensue: you needn’t
lose sleep over that one:
that one left her mark
long after the gold
rush.

poem: optics gather

2011-04-22T07:35:00.005-05:00

astral barbecue
blender maze
time best spent in
otherdreams of your
other's other
dipshit qualities down
the esplanade
snugging your harbor
circumventing the glassy
eye, the vernal twins,
the seasonal vine,
the glad-to-see-you
inventory man,
she of the cobalt de-
colletage, a crimson
glory even you won't
want to miss,
this friday morn, in your
thursday's nougat
insensate wonder,
a boogieland express,
the ground opens to reveal
vestiges of your twelfth
dream, the one that began
after your bus-missing life
ascended to the purgatory
of apple climes, is it any
wonder we roam
blissfully blissful,
taming the baby kibbles
robbed of their moony
faces, clammering little
gummi bear lounge lizards
get out your lizardpants, boy,
ain't the spaztec quadrants
nuff wonder for your
tangerine striations
i seem to remember
that night
that semblance
that next to me sen-
sation stemming the tides
of your distal agonies
the twerky chasms
blow wider with casual
dreams, they sleep wide
the emerald doors
you can forget the optics
gather the pins
invigorate little miss missy's
intelligence while she
renegotiates the summer
dawn.

one word: foreign: Demeter pleasures

2011-04-22T00:03:00.002-05:00

slick pasting the galaxies
i wonder
i wait for the next digression
I infatuate beyond plenty
seven times the seven dreams
of these foreign times
ask your eternal questions
in the next Demeter, pleasing
pleasure paints
the least of your worries . . .

poem: these variant times

2011-04-21T23:17:00.006-05:00

girded loins &
videotaped hullabaloo
this blue rivals the six
means to heaven
a passionate delegation
of missteps,
conjurer's arts mangle
the magnetic pose
i rival the colors
of seven munchkins
lost in revelry
the mighty Oz
gathered his storms to meet
the Sumatrans
little clicky clock
admirals
violating the rules
of engagement
I'll bring you home
the skies weep the timeliness
of these variant times
evening the odds
as past lives carry
the motives,
marry the intentions
of lamb-chewing postulants
savoring the minty
fields, retiring Busbys
accentuating the positives
cost/benefit analyses
inside the lines
outside the city limits
overturning vagrant laws
in the downtown of
uptown heavens
you cast your fates
she angles for less
than a favorable return
downtrodden interest rate
interests her more
a shuffle-boogie charts
west of the naked side
phosphorescent Lizzie on
the loose, ambling
by, calibrating your
fall &
hers
altogether.

poem: last to query

2011-04-09T17:20:00.003-05:00

(Ally donated the opening line . . . )

give me a disaster
well-toned, heart-blistered
desire in the darkest tombs
a casual dissemination
of all that crawls
the darkest halls
in any way
the roads will wander
love gasping
for the simplest of breaths
tsunami castaways
we fall for the last & only
the carrion blessed
the righteous mess
of his glowing divisions
I ask & the answers
evade the blue
mirrors, the suffering
ground upon which
we stand, shifting
sands, you were the last
to query the winds
darkness burnished
first light
tremors of the least
of your angels
spreading so quickly
knowing the lost
the trusting soul
in diminishing fifths
take your golden
opportunity
to the flea bag hotel
cry eyes and hearts out
the rhythm tenders
the last will gather you
the perils will
stab through the bluest
dreams, leaving
grace as your only
raining daughter.

poem by attrition

2011-04-02T22:59:00.004-05:00

Poem for a contest, "carved" out of the paragraph at the Crazy Horse journal link:

Bullwinkle’s Serenade

Clear talking:
I'm trying to say
a little-known moose,
blissfully honeymooning—
wee pants I encounter,
and fire,
bear-proofed:
all the things one does is not
a gay hideaway,
a Porta-John:
I am proud to say it is
quite
the opposite.

poem: the honeybees have it

2011-04-01T19:02:00.003-05:00

filial junebugs
cockroach filaments
gazing down the long
cool road
episodic filibusters
in the whether ways
castigated soups of processed
cheese
(Mother Velveeta)
intimations of immortality in
the back rows
genocide orphans, fabricated
ne'er do well
the vigorous pie
eclipsed mamasita's
artesian well:
if you
measure the seismic
waves, spaghetti
western minutiae
Bobo the Fool
with his castanets
netting port o' potties
in Port au Prince
the rakish blonde
mango tacos in a blue
6 Couer d' Alene
epistolary magic,
trident emissaries,
elemental
periodic
tannic
kisses
on the cheap.

flashed fiction: the arroyos in march

2011-03-27T13:00:00.003-05:00

Road-dusty stranger walked into the bar, parting smoke-clouds, wearing the scent of green grass in the miasma of the less than holy. Stepped to the bar, leaned fresh smiling face across to crumbling Bess behind her old mahogany fortress wall. For a quickflashing moment, she felt the emerald stir of the sixteen-year-old beauty she'd been all those years before, inspiring the dreams of boy and middling, pufferied man alike. But her dormant green to the stranger's green was another story altogether: he called out with nary a smidge of lust, and she felt no need nor desire to conquer. Brother to sister and back, if any context was called for at all.

"What'll it be," to the stranger. Feather-light breezy voice she hadn't heard from her lips in ages. With it the ache of days long thought dead.

"Water, my sweet."

"In this hole? Step to the well outside, if it's water you want, don't you think?"

He smiled the sweet green grass back again: new mown hay, full moon over a hayed field, saltcedar sweat on the skin, glistening. "Company's better in here."

"Is it now?" Just a touch of flirtation in the question, but playful, bird of prey flown the coop. "I don't know you from Adam."

Brotherman smiled at the reference. Lovely irony in the ear of that beholder.

"True that, sister."

That sister plunked at some rusty heartstrings. "You know we ain't exactly the welcoming kind here, don't you?"

"I've been told. I don't take much to gossip."

"Knives and broken bottles ain't exactly gossip, fair man."

Fair man chuckled. Sweet Bess wondered if anything could get a rise out of him. With that thought a heartrending ache pierced palms and feet. She staggered for a moment behind her wall, kept her feet. Drew the glass of water, set it before the stranger.

"Another glass, if you please. Empty."

"Something to chase it?"

He smiled again, the sweetest fall aspens burning. A smile that could light centuries, she thought.

"Something for you," he said.

"My lucky day. I don't get many." She set the empty glass beside his.

"That's a shame. That sixteen-year-old heart was big as any full moon I've ever seen."

The words were meant as a gift, she knew it, but they pierced her side like the sharpened blade she kept behind the bar for the Saturday night ee-jits. That second babe she'd given up to the Fist of God, dark hair on olive face sleeping in death's hold from the ready, not even that pain had pierced as deep.

"Brother, I ain't never - "

"I get fuzzy feelings is all. Sometimes I'm off, more often, well, so many of us have been there."

"Your heart been to the grave already, too, brother?"

"Give it time. I ain't special. My travail's bound to come."

She had no idea what to do with all this talk, all this mirror in her face, all this sudden ache to live again. She glanced at the empty glass. "I don't see no canteen by your side there, strangerman. Snake oil, perhaps?"

"Drink up," he said.

"Mighty light, from what I can see. Can't shit a shitter. You oughta know that."

"Plenty more where that came from, girl. Drink your fill."

Crazy as it seemed, she half believed the man, half wanted to reach out and drink deep. She was damned tired of all the world she could see: she'd long felt it was time for the blind man's reach.

"This miracle water got a name?"

"Living."

Three quail fluttered in her chest. She wobbled as she reached. Tears mixed with the joy that wanted to do its dance.

Mama raised her better, but she let it slop all down her front, flashflooding creek running down the arroyo of her breasts.

Drank three, she did. Gulping through the rain of tears, she fingered the rough hand that lay on the bar.

"Like to take some home," she whispered.

"More than welcome. Got a whole truckload. But - "

Sour taste in her throat. "Oh, now we come to the scam. Samples is free, but now - "

"Easy, girl. No scam. Just one price, my sweet."

The green grass in his breath calmed her heart again.

She surprised herself with her answer: "Anything. Anything."

The stranger smiled a rainbowed sun her way, tipped an invisible hat and slid the glass across the dissolving mahogany.

"Exactly," he said, as he backed away, the rush of spring flooding all the precincts. "Exactly."

poem: your wonder begs

2011-03-25T23:01:00.004-05:00

Crudder Movie 2 the Girl in pink
shining shimmy in the quatrains
the wetlands rolled back to the times
of plenty, asking forgiveness
granting nothing but tender mercy
Caledonia in the frozen foods
acquaintance asks for little else but
piddly lost fevers
crimes committed in the hearts
stories whispered in the toll booths
of despair, cranking our way home
this was a shadow best left
in the cold, your wonder
begs the question of sovereignty
when the voice cries
to the last tomb
you ask for blessings
crepe myrtle blossoms
migrating down the
Naugahyde chakras, a veiled
reference to the patchy fires
the seeming confessions,
the brown hands of worry
the quicksand devastation
in the cruel stains
you grant not the least
of your enemies. Pink girl
was a prescient one, she
saw the flames converge,
her talents fading
by the sides
of your messianic
glory. Tilt the cross
back homeward, bring down
the dark empires
the fallen angels
castaway intoxicants
minding the beasts
the call into morning's
last
single
crimson
cry.

Epistle to the Plebeians

2011-03-15T18:16:00.005-05:00

Rototill Dillwether, he of the neo-agnostic Plebiscite Twins, left his backwater glade, the better to proselytize the ill-tuned, dubiously derived, and arrogantly sniveling Hollywood cast of thousands better known as the Juniper Circus. An aeronautic enterprise given to flights of fancy, poetic license, and - the temptation to dissemble notwithstanding - ribald arson. Documents, stately homes, regional clapboard monuments, billboards up and down the north/south busyways, apple strudel at the Cherokee Inn after a particularly conflagrationist night. Roto was badboy on the Juniper naughty list, and they on his. The predictable sparks sent most bystanders off to the alleyways or, at the very least, the drive-in out the Montel Highway. For those not of the Tony Robbins set, Stewart Granger in pithy safari garb beat hell out of the downtown fireworks.

Roto, in this latest of rampaging incarnations, had a mad Mae West crush on Apostle Pablo, waxing and waning all "fell off my ass on the way to 'Mascus, now I'm back here to KICK some ass, I don't care who's in the way, get them Jerusalem boys out in the Gentile streets, don't give a damn if I wash my hands first." Big Mamadoo pompadour, greasing the keys of his Hammond like Solomon in a trance fired by at least half his naked troupe of globally collected harem, Roto was not a man to be dismissed lightly, you kicked him to the curb at your peril, a lesson learned the hard way - once - by Dr. Fish: PHD doctor Fish, though even that Phud was suspect, who the hell had a damned Phud in chiropody, anyway? Sassy Fish had a mouth on him, far too Babylonian elegant for old backwater Rot, a classicist in the ways of Barbary anthropology, which is to say, pirates, but little miss sassy weren't no pirate, now was he? The elegant beeswax candles might burn all night round his cushy Victorian table, but old Rot knew the rest of the story, the bonded apprentice mama, cushioning her feathers in the back rooms of half the magistrates in the Oklahoma Territories, it don't take a divining rod to find that kind of freshwater, now does it.

Round Two of the Roto-Sassy mah-jong tussle went something like this:

"Other way around, son." Typical Roto-jibe to the decked out Fish, should they ever meet in downtown Trilby's infernal noon. Infernal for Roto, mind; sublunar Fish was seldom without his midday parasol, a limb of Satan to prowling Rot if ever there was one.

"Gas it, old man." Fish, no longer a cod to be had, unschooled in the ways of deference to near-madness. Unschooled due to his own proprietary interest in the lunatic cohort. You might call them birds of a feather, but that would be damned insulting to the aviary.

Rot had his big-ass Jerusalem Bible as weapon of first choice, but Infantryman Fish was not without the bayonet blade of his incisive ferule: "You don't think I trot this bit of dandy candy out solely for your disapprobation, now do you, Old Man?" Pinned by a smart-ass Eastern-schooled chiropodist (Methodist to boot), old Rot was not long for the streets of Trilby: swamp frogs were congregation enough, given to full throaty approval on those fullmooniest of moony nights.

There may not be much in the passing plate, but it sure beat hell out of being publicly trodden underfoot.

poems: emperor clothes

2011-03-09T23:29:00.005-06:00

Back at the factory, we've been "extracting" poems from the gradoo of discarded books, funky tech magazines, dog fancier mags, and the like, in search of the poems that are always there. These are some of the ones I "found."

[OBSIDIAN]

Is a revolution quite possibly unlike
Any you’ll
Find
Within easy reach?
If you’re doing it
For the first time,
Do it right.

[On/Off]

Envision
10 fans, or the
Dream of
Millions.

[WHERE WE PUT STUFF]

Scrimp on parts, but
Kick ass
Now with
The brakes on.

[Include your city of residence]

I love the truth:
Things are looking grim.
At some point, someone will wake up.
After all,
Vulnerability isn’t just limited to the clouds.
Every single one of us
Folds as soon as possible.

[White-socked feet]

Horse steps, so its thoughts were of him.

[Bobble-head]

Perched on the arm
The door across the hall was
A fax machine,
A tangle of wires,
& a boot that bobbed impatiently.
To be precise
The sadness
Was so low he couldn’t catch it.

[Ellsberg’s soup]

Mankind
should be
Persons / Not a girl:
How’d you like to call me a boy?
I could see a barn—solid Quaker farm folk
Was it any wonder
Love is a muddle
Upstairs
Naked & plaintive
On the paper in her hand—

[Dear Prudence]

Thanks, fellow pilgrims: a chance thee loves me
A can of hash, a contented son, devotional books
Kissing Firbank on the refrigerator
Still & cool
First visit, first married,
Farming was the last thing
I had to tell you . . .

poem: can she tender

2011-03-02T23:21:00.004-06:00

(Former student M2 dropped the excellent first line, I kept on riffing . . . )

I am no longer the mother of beyonce &
I miss her,
sashaying down the thunderdome,
pinstripe jeans, genetic
explosions in the plissery places,
galvanized wounds
in all the sister places I
fancy down the first base
line: i ask in the abstract,
mostly Tuesday and Thursday
schedules, fiddling for the vagrant
dimes, issuing proclamations
in feral time, ignoring
the obvious psychometrics,
the caliper ways,
divining the watery festoons
in the diamond halls:
see can she tender
refuge for the biggies,
the joneses, the vagabond
teriyakis: she were your dream
before motherhood gathered you
in its frenzy, a cobalt blue diadem,
an emerald footsie toe-slam
sephardic stream.

poem: bubba-lithe

2011-02-25T21:54:00.004-06:00

Moammar in his sleek silver travolta
disco ultra sheen,
acquiescent fetch-bubba of the lithe
ruling class:
ring your bells, child
this ain't your mama's
ruling elite, it festers
the gruel right out
from under your feet:
it ain't like you didn't see it
comin'. Give Imelda a call,
see can she give you
some red rubies
get you on home to your
disco Kansas:
this will be the grill
you never wished exposed:
them derricks ain't exactly
toys, boy-toy-grabbin'
artifacts of world-gone-by
hubbalub the rightwing
authenticity of prurient labor,
nab the last bit o'honey
for the sugar-foxes
at the bank - swiss-fried
in all likelihood -
i'd say the quick exit
makes best for keepin
the sheen on your shine,
boogie with respect to the average
fare, it's an inquisition on which
you just might
want to pass: smokey seconds,
stevie's uptight, and you,
bloody amigo, best be
on
yo
way.

poem: drippings ask

2011-02-19T18:17:00.004-06:00

tamale kings
highland queens
daylight jack of all the pumice trades
china girls in they big dog
terrapin teenage dreams
up & down the 29
bird-dogging the rest
the recompense:
in leisure
a treasure
in gathering troves, tyrone
derelict twilight
troglodyte samsonite
the nested way to gainsay
the nylon drippings
ask & ye
shall she & he
& all will be
immeasured.

flash fiction: judgment day

2011-02-06T14:14:00.005-06:00

Buster creamed his coffee; his disarray straddled table, on and around, teeming room with conga lines of turbulent creases, thundersnow, vagrant absence. Where in hell's name was solace for the passing jello-minds, frivolous ubiquiters of this brave blue Sunday morn? No chance up against Buster's hirsute avalanche, fire-breathing postmodern daddy in the throes of peace-bondage and mommy-come-lately revenge.

"Space in the next room," said the cup at my elbow. "Beats hell out of this opera."

Next room is the chin-level window-slab: ogle the street traffic, wonder the whys you always wonder. Buildings across the way stripped of logos, mirroring Buster's rumblings in the back room. I'm feeling stripped today, too, John Lee Cadillac-stripped, naked before the judge. I'm guessing Buster's done his own cough-and-turn in front of Judge Judy in recent days. Sagging jockeys in they own shoddy grey disarray.

"Spare me the change, Buster." Judge J always was a charmer.

Just exactly who is the grey lizard back in Buster's rumpus room, scaring off all the Sunday Times debutantes? Sabbath day therapist? Nose-cone attorney? Baker's dozen-stepping sponsor? Innocent slob strangled by Buster's albatross? That lemon yellow v-neck was enough to scare me off, why not Buster?

My Michelin eardrums pop to the sound of "And how does that make you feel?"

Buster seems wrapped up in a soliloquy that signals danger up ahead; he seems hellbent on meting out justice to one and all, when in truth his soul covets nothing more than time on the grey beaches of Port Angeles, if only his spinal fluids could ooze him to another land. God hasn't the rosaries to hand out for this chapel of disquiet.

"Sizzled," says Buster, an adjective I can applaud: his cranium does, if nothing else, resemble a foggy marshmallow. Or blackened pompano, if you squint your eyes enough. I tried both, settled for the fish, all yummy in its uncertainty.

Lemon pledge seems befuddled by the less-than-standard, closed question response. Beyond the ejaculatory color of his own togs, he is bereft of a conversational palette up to the turbulence in Buster's grey breast.

I toddle on: my day is calling, lemoning and sizzling in its own pas de deux. I've prayed between sheets, opened tonsils to night sky, evangelized in poorer straits. There ain't mirror enough in those around me can't make me shiver.

poem: óvissu býli

2011-02-06T09:38:00.004-06:00

uncertain farms
uncertain drudgeries
uncertain vagabond loops
uncertain the last time you saw mary
uncertain the exact time of day
uncertain down which aisle
uncertain whether you want to
uncertain if luther ever bothered
uncertain the never-dreaming possibilities
uncertain how to fly so high
uncertain if this is the really
uncertain why you even care
uncertain the gods in their siesta'd glory
uncertain if presbyterianism carries weight
uncertain the price you pay
uncertain why you received the honorable
uncertain two blushing lips
uncertain the qaundary of downsizing
uncertain the warehouse on basse
uncertain why stevie ever wrote that one
uncertain the prerogatives of the nesters
uncertain the latitudes of your regal hair
uncertain the tropics of capricorn
uncertain why harry aped analise
uncertain which thousand remains solvent
uncertain vamps
uncertain blokes
uncertain lucy meets ethels
uncertain the prince of peace
uncertain the delicatessen where last you meet
uncertain the pending rhyme
uncertain the golden opportunities
the cadillac jacks
the ypsilanti facts
the fashionable vagaries
the apologetic bibliographies
the ballyhoo'd abnormalities
in the trenchant vein . . .

poem: icarus days

2011-02-05T18:44:00.009-06:00

uncertain farms
fuzzy taco train tracks up
& down the jelly highways
vagabond tumeric infernal
rondo: i ask at the window
the answers say no, as
if the delectation is ribbed
beyond belief,
a casual dress day all
down the six, the seven,
the eight ways of pity,
your western elegance
fights down the need
to wander, to vary
the myths and posters
of icarus days
angling with fortitude best
left unmade: watching
the lines piss away
the wherewithals,
the snaffer blooms,
the quenched beasts in their
Trojan replicas -
save the fifth place ribbons
for itty bitty classtime,
i've called round
the green tangents,
you've gone round the bend
we've digitized the very best.

poem: no telling how visible

2011-02-03T19:32:00.004-06:00

fine tooth comb
the barely brined
accidental tourists in
the casbah, bridling the fished-
over memories,
salsa-sensing the ancient of daze -
inquisitive little bastard, ain't he? -
digging the laundry out
on all the lines,
catching fire for the nth time
equal parts paisley and rhyme
slip in the side door
kitchen babies, preservatives at
the ready: canning
the lesser times, equivocating
the do ron rons: casually wear
the queries on my sleeve
you'd sneer the leavings, too,
if the drift was plenty,
i go round and round &
the answer's still no
fastforwarding through
the palace guards,
tronning the regulators,
flouting the fashionable
soundings. broadway sez
it better, which leaves little room
for you & the runt: careful how
you raise the tent, this one's
twice at the ready & there's no
telling how visible
the dreams may be:
reconnoiter seven
times the simple blessings, grieve
past the terrors,
situate down the wires,
cable your travelers,
satisfy your last longing
till longing completely over-
fills. you're the register,
you're the blank note, you're
the reason
Samson never wrote.

poem: bliss minuet

2011-02-02T20:38:00.004-06:00

guano on the fire
meerkat shuffle
it's a Sansabelt kinda night
the bludgeon tools
need a feeding: if you
wrestle your demons
in the midday, the forecasters
ramp the dizzy doodles,
answering the full of love
cashmere sweaters
not a snowball's chance
they lay the other way
casting calls
redeye gravy
pinch the bottoms of all they gals
in fashionary bliss
minuet on the boardwalk
the teasing's in the saucy sauce
little miss teentown
box your socks
with nary the second glance
falling severance pay
egalitarian passion play
get that marimba on outta
here, the curves
say angular, but
you haven't guessed them,
guessed their weight,
guessed the nearest
whey, guessed how
the ample
maples the rest of all
your ubiquitous
pusillanimous
atramentarious
wide world economy
righteous brontosaurian
rusty, crusty
mess.

poem: Vishnu alleys

2011-01-31T18:15:00.004-06:00

pillow road in
Noggle town,
investitures on the move,
dreamsicle highways:
the ventured gain ain't
nuthin' in this five &
dime world, domains
of tamale specials
crowning the murky achievements
in Buddhaland: I cashed in
all my chips, my mood was
fully vagrant,
cowsill'd beyond belief,
aching for inventory,
the higher selves out
on the town,
seraphim & cherubim all
in they polyester
chariots of fire
for the moogie present:
cash it in here, dear, sez
Principal Lee, the biggest
damn angel on the block,
gainsaying the bandbeaters,
elevating the discourse beyond
reptilian, & if you want
lipstick traces, i suggest
you check your noodly
pomposity at the door:
red overalls lit the night,
golden boar radiant
in his clamoring for
eternal crowding: say
your prayers, brother,
simulate grace
if you ain't got the fullness
bulging,
same as you I ain't no
cellophane doom, i crash
the parties, i veer left of
left, slipping down the Vishnu
alleys, on down
the polytheistic
polyester,
damned in the ethereal
lyric opera,
tangerine libretto
dream.

poem: the down and simple

2011-01-28T23:47:00.004-06:00

fashion me your shining blade:
kiss-off, kiss and tell,
kismet down
your shining alleys,
integers of the eternal
bloom, faces
of the tumbling mannequins,
pleasure in the fields,
gathering the custom wires,
the nethering gates,
the jasmine confederacies,
the down and simple
fragrance that grabs you
by the neck, whispers
now,
excites pandemonium
in even the bleakest times:
ask at the quarry,
steal the watchman's attention,
gamble with the takings:
i confess the idea not mine,
in the farthest seams the scarves
are with me, shining
the foolish sensibilities,
the sideways costume changes,
the withering glances,
confined in your seeming
the lord god's bellows
desires that cave the senses,
shadows that know the certainty
of your every move.
bless us, quiet Mara,
still the quandaries,
exact in due time,
never leave me to
the facts that cherish
you home.

poem: pious bennie to the rescue, part ii

2011-01-22T11:13:00.006-06:00

Rosy Bennie, fresh
from his condom makeover,
teetotaling megawatts
to the minions, wants
his noncoital bubbas
to save their precoital
ewelings and lamblings
from the nightmare of
"invalid marriages":
industrial strength walkers,
I guess, for them
dawdling bedriddens,
wheelchair causality smiting
the oftly doomed. "Marriage is not
an absolute right," my sweet little bubbas, &
lest we moon ourselves into
bedlam oblivion,
let us remember that
"the right to a church wedding
requires that the bride
and groom intend
to celebrate." Foolish me,
in all my funereal nuptials,
Hamlet-black in dour
regalia, I thought it was all
for the little warm death.
Balloons? Popcorn balls?
Limbo'd kazoo contests?
Celebration enough for you
& your compassionate
latex'd
boys in the street?

poem: quaint missionaries

2011-01-22T09:46:00.004-06:00

(The first lines were straight from the Google ad popping up on my YouTube video: yes, it stopped at car . . . )

Become a personal trainer
Get ISSA certified,
turn your passion into your
Car, a velvet backseat
kind of passion
foggy windows
Condensation wracks
the van gogh in your fingers
flesh for a sainted
bloom that wiles
your wily fishy soul. I trained
in the withering light,
cold air biting
the night's dreams you
were there & there was
an afterlife of missing persons.
I trained for this
in the past lives
of gravel roads, lucindas
gaining ground as you
sow what reaps blessings
from the drunken boats:
sift your mercies
for the turtle bays,
a dying grace fells
the womb in you,
tinsel-gathering
through all the seasons of you
down the quiet streets
down the carnivaled alleys
down the avenue of trees
was the first in them all,
was personal training the vast
crowds at your disposal
was fashioning bliss
the least bit on
your yeasty mind?
I grant you
the quaint missionaries
in their murmuring
toss-offs:
theirs are missiles
firing through the mist,
& I, well,
I,
I, can no farther
round than
this smattering of
this.

poem: [Fell off Dante, the ground was harder than I thought]

2011-01-20T21:27:00.005-06:00

[Poem inspired by a line from the Nebula Girl and a rough fall . . . ]

Fell off Dante, the ground was harder than I thought,
Dismal maritimes in these dying days
Italian cadences rhyming
the ridges In my head,
circling fires
The exquisite surprise of
fire and ice
ridicule of the western slopes
hiding the ancient ways
we seem so far gone
when the half-sized minds
echo the final dialing down,
final dialtones you
miss in your frenzy to equestriate
your life to the barely living,
rounding chasms best left unsaid
she was a quandary, an abyss,
pas de deux of commiserating dragons
in the nestled eye
sliding down a river of doom
the wastrel gods
in search of food and home
their last mermaid selves
so much more than what
they bargained for
the miserable little experiments
tinkering in the woodshop
I carved an eden,
sez the one,
& the plenties answer
In banal chorus to the hallelujah babies
Crying terror crying
Misguided simplicity
Crying the endless dimes
Excuses middened
In gorgeous green Mystery,
tax tables
of the hobbled saints.

ix. The Rounding Place

2011-01-17T10:24:00.004-06:00

I woke this time to the sound of the sea. Opening my eyes, I expected to see the girl, the last remaining child, the boy having disappeared where all the others had gone. Instead, I found myself once again in the blue tent. All the wounds from the boils were gone, all save three lined up down the center of my chest.

Voices murmured outside the tent. I rose to meet them. Tossing back the flap, I stepped outside. Grey sky greying to black; grey sea in dreary reflection. On the beach sat Fas, Ra, and the woman in blue. With an uncharacteristically bold and wry smile on his face, Fas lifted a black patch from his left eye and tossed it into the fire in front of them. With a courtesy I thought beyond him, Ra bid me sit on a yellow blanket beside the woman. I still had no name for her, nor did I expect to ever get one.

She gazed out into the grey greying black. Such a beautiful and yet impassive face I had never seen.

I played the next card in my fool's deck.

"So then all this was just a dream?"

She spoke into the grey, not looking at me.

"You dismiss dreams with that just, brother. They are not puppet shows put on for your pleasure. Or your terror. But no, not a dream at all."

"But, the girl, the other children -"

Before she spoke - was it a trick of the eye? - the young girl's face flashed across hers.

"Girl? There was no girl."

"Then you."

"Nor I."

"Neither girl nor you, and yet not a dream either."

She turned her goddess eyes on me; with her gaze, I felt a sadness well up from depths I felt completely beyond me. It was as if the sky itself poured its greying blackness within me. I felt wracked by a despair that threatened to pull me under.

"Is that a dream then, too, my brother?"

Ra spoke, whispering in a tone of beseeching: "Sister -"

"He can handle this." Her eyes still upon me, she continued: "Brother, you have lived your life in one tiny crease of what we know as the world, a crease we would call the hell your sainted men go on and on about, with no sense at all that they are standing in its very midst. Golden eggs offered to all those slaves who will most pander to their lickspittle visions. Visions? Bedtime stories for infants. You have lived your childhood to its fullest, brother. Childish boy at play on the playa, but your body cried out for more. We heard you. We know the other creases."

I felt a rage - my father's, in truth - rising within me. Fas must have felt it, too, as he rose to meet me.

"No need, Fas," said the woman. "He can meet it."

I feared the coming explosion, but I also felt a hatred for the woman and her infernal certainties.

As I reached to strangle her, the girl's face flashed repeatedly cross hers, and the two of them spoke in unison: "Three labors remain -"

Instantly, the grey scene melted away and I found myself back in the pine forest, strapped within my traveling encasement, under a dying sky. Alone, but for the sound of jackals in the nearing distance. The left side of my body was once again paralyzed.

I prayed the sound of the jackals was in my head alone. As the moon rose, I found my prayer had not been answered. Not by a long shot. Illuminated behind a lone jackal were three bodies hanging in the limbs of another tree: Fas, Ra, and the woman.

Despite my paralysis, despite the fear of the jackal roiling within me, I had but one thought: I must cut them down.

With the thought, a blade appeared in my right hand: my father's knife. I cut the bonds of my encasement and rolled out onto the ground. All I could do was drag myself slowly towards the tree. As I neared it, the growl from the jackal's belly was the sound of hell.

But a crease, my brother. The woman's words resounded within my head.

The jackal is assuredly no crease, my sister.

I see that, even in your misery, your arrogance still travels with you.

The jackal - the crease - leapt. It's vice-like jaws upon my left arm were as nothing, what with my paralysis. I reached to stab it with all the vicious rage I could summon. As the blade pierced its flesh, I found that I was holding a young boy, me, at the age of nine, me, now, by my own blade, dead. The blood that rained this time transported me nowhere. I simply lay, howling with despair, in the flood that ran upon me. I sat up and held the boy tight against my chest.

With both arms.

All strength returned.

Bathed in the boy's blood, I stood and approached the tree. No transformation of the corpses this time: all three bodies still hanging from the limbs. For the next two hours, I labored to bring them down, carrying them with a strength I had never felt in my body before. Given the creases, I kept awaiting the moment when all would shift, the woman's eyes would open, Ra give a mighty crack to my spine, or Fas offer me something to drink out of his magician's hands. But, as the three bodies lay in the dirt side by side, nothing. I felt death crowding in closely, attentive, peaceful, oddly comforting.

I wept. Even the tears did not wash away the crease before me. Nor did the four fires I built, standing sentinel over the pyres that took my three travelers and the young me off to their places of rest. I had the strongest impulse to throw myself into the boy's pyre, but something - the woman's touch, her voice in my head - stilled me.

As I finally lay down to rest, the sun was just beginning to light the horizon in the east.

viii. Visitation

2011-01-16T22:34:00.004-06:00

On each of the next four days, the girl lanced yet another of what she called my "eyes," and with each piercing, a new child would disappear. Of the band of angels, that is. The teeming hordes off in the distance seemed to draw closer and closer to us, though shimmering, as in a mirage. Silence during the day, though their voices seemed to fill my dreams. I hesitated to ask the girl where the angels had gone, for fear she would lay their disappearances on my head as well.

On the fifth day, I woke to find that feeling had returned to the left side of my body. I cried out in elation, but found that my voice was gone. The girl seemed unfazed by sudden resurrection, as if all was proceeding according to some calculus to which only she was privy. The remaining boy mounted one of the horses and she the other, handing me a tether to lead her on. The encasement we left behind. Late in the afternoon, the ocean appeared on the horizon, as the cry of gulls filled the air off in the distance.

"North," the girl announced, a terse command I was fain to resist. It seemed my journey, one I had envisioned ending at the ocean, was still not at an end. As the last light disappeared, she lit a lantern: instead of stopping for the night, we pushed on.

After two more hours traveling, a horse nickered in the dark. Out of the darkness, a one-eyed man stepped into our traveling light. A quick glance to the girl: she nodded, and he took me roughly by the arm, pushing me into the darkness.

We entered a coolness, as walls of stone closed in upon us. No light: the man, with his one eye, seemed to guide us on sheer familiarity: no need to see, no possibility of seeing. Our steps went downward for a very long time, echoing footsteps back on up the stone walls behind us.

An hour must have passed before we stopped, at which point I was pulled down and made to lie on my back in what felt like mud: the feeling was not unpleasant, almost comforting. Behind my head, I heard the scraping of wood against wood. Within moments, water slowly began to fill the space around me: salt water, by the smell of it. As it filled the space around me, its saltiness was confirmed: densely salted, as I floated on its surface, with no effort at all.

The voices of the mirage children seemed to fill the air around me, pressing so heavily upon me I felt as if I would suffocate. They rose to a horrifying crescendo, and then fell away into ghostly silence, as a rich orange light split the darkness. Defying all natural laws, two figures floated above me: twelve feet from me was the remaining boy, with a knife at his throat. Holding the knife was my father, a man I had presumed dead, since he disappeared over thirty years ago, in a hail of violence.

Glimmering in the mud to my right was another knife, twin to that in my father's hand.

"Make your move," said my father. His eyes upon me were serpent-like.

I lay in horror of the man, paralyzed by fear of him. Still.

"Pick it up." My father, again. Sick of my hesitation, he slid his blade inside the left nostril of the boy and quickly slit it open. The blood began to rain upon me.

A rage welled up and I picked up the knife. As I did so, I began to rise in the air.

A foot from my father, I lashed out, a quick slit to his brow. He laughed maniacally, as I found paralysis returning to the left side of my body.

The boy cried out, "Not him! Do not cut him! It only adds to his strength!"

"What would you have me do, foolish child?" I cried.

"I cannot tell you. All I can say is that, if you cut him, it will kill the both of us."

Blood continued to rain upon me, and my father seemed to grow as my strength diminished. In a flash, the girl's face exploded in my mind's eye, and with all the strength and determination left in me, I thrust the knife into yet another of the wounds on my arm. An avalanche of fire ripped through my body, ripped through the cave, and then -

Darkness fell.

vii. The Thousand Eyes

2011-01-16T22:17:00.002-06:00

I traveled – I was traveled – by my ragtag band of angels for three more days, sluicing through their silent choreography. No feeling returned to my left side; my minions continued to strap me into my daily encasement, though they cut into the upper panel, allowing me to see the terrain we were traversing. On the second day, we dropped down out of the pine woodlands into flat scrubland, punctuated every few miles by skeletal trees affording us some shade from the raging inferno above us. I felt like a mere babe in the buzz of all the patient youthful activity around me, but no one seemed to begrudge me their labors. I recalled the oldest girl’s assurance that they were being well paid by Ra for their work, a statement I held with the greatest skepticism: I had never known Ra to pay for anything, much less well.

The morning of the fourth day, as the oldest girl set my simple breakfast before me, I said, “I see that you drink, but you do not eat.”

“I am fasting,” she replied. “For the others.”

I looked around at the younger children bent over their rough bowls.

“Not them,” she said, following my glance. “For the hundreds, the thousands –”

“Your village, yes. There were that -”

“Not them,” she said, with some vehemence. “Yours.”

“Mine. I beg your par -”

“Look around you, blind fool. For the thousands you have left strewn in the wake of your arrogance and oblivion.”

At first, I heard her words as madness, yet more madness on this insane journey, but then off to the east, rising back into the pine forests, I could have sworn that they teemed with limbs and hungry eyes. I felt a terrible desire to run, and yet, even if I were not strapped down, there was no way that my body could have moved. I felt trapped by yet another of Ra’s maniacal plots.

“Ra has nothing to do with this,” said the girl, belying her earlier denials of clairvoyance. “These are the thousands you have killed, my friend.”

I bristled at her accusation. “I have never carried a weapon my entire life,” I said.

“So many ways to kill us. You are truly one of the gifted.” She took my left hand and fingered the ring upon my it.

“This. What is this?”

A gold band, inlaid with the profile of a carnelian horse.

“A ring my father gave me.”

“And where is your father?”

“I do not know. He left me when I was but a very young boy – younger than the youngest boy here.”

“An early death,” she said. “You see how quickly they multiply. Look around you.”

“I hardly see how I can be held responsible -”

“I’m sure you would see it that way.”

“Why heap all this upon me?” I cried. “My body is wracked with pain, it is not my own. My left side is paralyzed, and as you can see, I am still covered with all these hideous wounds -”

“Yes. The eyes. Eyes to see all those you have killed.”

“Child -”

“I would not call me child. You do so at your peril.”

I knew not what to make of that statement. She who sat in front of me was a child. What else call her?

“You do not see, my friend. The problem is that you look with the two eyes in your head. No wonder you are blind. God has given you a thousand eyes upon your body, what you dismiss as affliction. See with your body, and you will be able, finally, to answer your questions.

“Questions? I have no -”

“Who are you?”

I was stunned to realize that I had no answer.

“And where, pray tell, are you from?”

Again, I had no answer: not for her or for myself.

She placed her palm upon one of the many sores on my left arm. With her forefinger, she pushed down firmly into the middle of the wound. I felt fire raging in the spot, and a flash of lightning in my head. In the midst of the flashing light, I saw the face of the boy who had shown me the map of our journey.

When I looked for him, he was no longer there.

vi. Into the West

2011-01-15T01:35:00.006-06:00

I woke to the sounds of traveling. Darkness all around at first, but as my eyes acclimated to the movement and my surroundings, I could see broken light through slits in whatever it was that encased me. I found, to my initial horror, that I could not move my left hand at all. When I reached for it with my right hand, the dead hand felt extremely swollen. The ring on my middle finger bit deeply into the flesh around it.

I heard the piercing cry of a hawk off in the distance, but for the most part, there was silence around me, save for the movement of the contraption in which I lay. No voices; just the muffled breathing of the animal I assumed was pulling me. I surmised that I was pressed between two panels of flexibly latticed wood, further cushioned by pine branches and a thick blanket beneath me. The smell of baked pine filled the air; I had not known there were pine forests to be found in my slice of the world.

There was little feeling in my left leg as well. My foot felt very cramped and swollen, in a most painful position. After thirty minutes or so of traveling in my moving coffin, I cried out, near dying from heat and a pressing sense of claustrophobia. The movement stopped, and footsteps approached me, circling and untying what I saw to be leather thongs. The sun was low over the western horizon, but still merciless in the sky; I was quickly pulled into the shade of a tall pine tree.

I was surrounded by six children - three girls and three boys, all clad in faded blue. They looked directly at me, but spoke not a word, none of them. An older girl approached me and, cradling my head in her left arm, she poured water from a skin into my mouth. Warm and sulfurous, but nonetheless it quenched something deeper than thirst in me.

"Thank you," I whispered; there was no reply: no words, no nod.

It appeared that we had stopped our travels for the day. Two of the boys unpacked the two horses with which we were traveling. One of the girls began to build a fire, while the others lay out a blanket atop which they set a modest meal. Just as there were no words shared with me, there were indeed no words shared between themselves. Nods at best; most of the movements seemed long choreographed from their familiarity with each other.

My question, "Where are we?" passed completely unnoticed; not even a glance my way. Slow to catch on to my predicament, I persisted with the question "Where are we going?" before giving in to the silence. A rough bowl of bulghur and beans sprinkled with mint was set before me, along a cooler cup of water, without the sulfurous taste. There was no spoon; I made do with my right hand, as my left was useless.

I noticed that the oldest girl did not eat. She sat on the edge of our circle, gazing steadily at me.

After dinner, one of the young boys approached me with a rudimentary map. His right index finger traced a line from below what I took to be the Rif, westward to the ocean. At the bottom of the map was Ra's unmistakably chaotic script, warning me to stay with the children, no matter where they went: as if, in my condition, I had any choice. I briefly touched the boy's hand to thank him, and for some reason he was moved to speak - or try to. His lips parted to reveal a tongue that had been carved in half. I wondered if the other members of my silent chorus had all suffered a similar fate.

"Not all," said the oldest girl, the one who had abstained from eating to gaze at me through my meal.

"You hear people's thoughts, do you?" I said.

"I see. Nothing more. Pay attention in this daily silence and you see many things. Things you often do not want to see."

"Like me, perhaps."

"I pay you no mind, sir. That is to say, you do not bother me. Ra is paying us handsomely for your transport."

"These are your brothers and sisters?"

"They are now. Our village was slaughtered three years ago. We were the lucky ones to get out."

"Not all so lucky, it would appear."

"The price of a tongue or a finger -" she raised the four fingers of her right hand - "is dirt cheap compared to the price paid by our mothers and fathers."

"I'm sorry, I meant no -"

"There is no need to apologize. Living is dying for us. You travel with shades - nothing more."

After nightfall, I had no trouble believing the girl's words. It felt as if they all melted into the darkness around me, leaving me to my troubled dreams.

poem: beanpod dance moves

2011-01-09T18:17:00.005-06:00

create your own world sez
marky z, a shaky proposition
that, i've schnizzed
the frontal lobes for just
the right egress this
ain't no simple dimes
we're countin, the vesper
queens have a way with you
they gonna badu
your bad ass all over
the governor's school, monmouth's
mighty cooty bag of
jelly bean metaphysics,
a presidential platter of
refried fussball, it ain't
in the midgetary brain waves,
the brian jones of poolside caviar,
i meant to ask
for the proper dinosaur
etiquette, i mean it did
cross my mind,
but that wallowing mist,
the beanpod saccharine
dance moves gave me
eventual pause:
you see the quandary:
we all live down
the dairy lanes,
we cast our visionary
piggie platters before
the gods of
voodoo seismographs, if
it ain't in the shutter,
cher, then it's
in
the shuttin up.

poem: play the rounds

2011-01-09T13:01:00.004-06:00

platypus blues got you
rockin the casbah
empty dismal pepto
bismol days play
the rounds of fury
it's a kinder/gentler
bambino we're after here,
little franz, take your
Amerika all the way back
to bourbon bronx
oenophiles, regale yourselves
with all the psalms
at your disposal
cry a big rio
segue the rest
to the jonesy
midnights you reckoned
beyond your beck
this Faneuil hall
of cats in the early days
splendid Kansas City
barbecue, miles dithering
the holy cherokee out
of bird, two havens
for the smiley twins
of inactivity, jil sings
down the rest in
her radiant chorus,
it ain't the after she's
after, she wants it now,
the fistful of dollars
ain't for the takin, she
gathers the rest
down the bosom highway,
gallivanting little
heifers all in they
vigorous
Big Bib city
clairvoyant
rubdown.

poem: whispers here

2011-01-08T17:48:00.005-06:00

the imam fainted &
the english teacher right
alongside, it ain't often
the rest of you integrates
the last of your coffee grounds
tumbling futures
orange and blue,
sifting through the images
of damned if you don't
& you better:
the liveliest of livelies
in the Carolinas
never withered with such
fury, sampling the better
days, severing ties
with all they jerry garcia
splotches, wine has
a better way of saying
no when you rack
the eight-ball in the center
you hear all
the lasting variations
all the exponential
eggplant growth
on the distaff
side, and as you're rounding
third for home
the whispers:
here is your nowhere
here is your noun
here is the radiance of
your thistly
crown.

poem: unsaid careening

2011-01-08T10:17:00.005-06:00

i went backward in the backwards
store, ascending the spiral
fates, elegant wasteland
of the forty times traveled
past the details left unsaid,
careening by brute force
the simpering fools
lingering in the heart,
lounge lizards on grey rock
salivating the futures
the golden opportunities
gooed in the gooiest of honeys
all your little honeybees
back in the woods
clamoring for a daytime
spot.

poem: syllables ooze

2011-01-07T23:04:00.008-06:00

veiled threats
skimming the pot
saturnine equestrians
ogling the sweetish hills
backyard frenzy round
the riotous bibs,
caterwauling misses
in the fields
of plenty, i wish I may
& all the variant nonsense
Ventures hit lists
in the green gra-doo
of tangible dividends:
the eventual run-off
guarantees results
at ten & all the rest,
obliging winners to vary
the digitals until wipe-out
relearns its memory
code, & the blue syllables
ooze southward, disturbing
peace & plenty,
shaping nasal opinions
while the vagrant
avalanche saturates beyond
all hope of
savage beauty,
riparian waste.

poem: turquoise of the last

2011-01-06T21:25:00.004-06:00

chester's chicken to go
mimsies your soul
with writhing tributaries
the acquisescent iridescence
of last calls
the vigilant renegades
coursing the soul's
guava jones, as if
she mystifies on the order
of dark meat and righteous
lemon lime: I ask you:
was there ever such
sublime guidance 'cross
the rockies, frolicking
wildebeests tumbling
the SATs of vigourous
stimuli, angel food lab
partners left behind
the parking lots
the Heidelbergs,
eleventh floor
vagaries,I seem to recall
you were the first
simply shaded by reputation
your kiss was free fall
down the wiliest of ways
passionfruit
amassed as time passed
turtle bays most
complete
surprising calm
in the after
inured by time's
dither, ask beyond the fall
of men, the rise of
doors blessed
by singleminded
caution, and the vespers
whisper, calling
eyes forgotten
limbs bewitched
wings
in the turquoise
of the last
mercurial
exponential
nonessential
round.

poem: you do answer

2011-01-01T19:11:00.003-06:00

get your big bib on
down to Big Bib's Bar-B-Q
fusticate your druthers
in the drip dry honey
trees, fishy sauce
that ego on up the traces
a simple quandary bears
fruity fruit only when
the casual gambler
arrays self to gnome &
gnome to the past tense
the oliebollen of revelry
will paste your gluten
free pasta jones
to the cheechy maritimes.
henry morgan down the royal
way, his bib no bigger
than Big Bibby's &
Mr Tim's broadcast
liver & onions on
the presa way, it's cruelty
in a cruel-free zone
the armpits of renewal
congeal around
the obsessions of
foster-gruel,
whatever you do
answer all your doors in
all your bibs
the big show is callin'
she be the ever
you never
had the predilections for
grooving, anthem girl
in the back seat,
a sublime misgiving
the very giving
in the drawing rooms
the plastic forties
seraphim of equal splendor
your hindenberg's in the closet
foaming up the left-over
yous, feeling the rest
of the puzzle,
nuzzling the monty doors
& all they goats.

Mary Christine Brockert (March 5, 1956 - December 26, 2010)

2010-12-27T10:06:00.005-06:00

What a season to go. I've chronicled this diva's voice here many times, my early days ridiculous dismissal (early days) of her, my epiphany at the gas pump on the Austin Highway, hours spent at the old downtown Starbucks hEARmusic kiosks, filling it up with the endless database that was and is the glorious Lady T. What a treasure has left us, and what a treasure she has left behind.

I love all of these, but if I could only take one to the islands, this would probably be the one:

poem: picture pay no

2010-12-26T20:40:00.005-06:00

slithey twins
gaslight variations
we ambled the halls in
winsome glory
the anonymity of passion
transfixed by turtle
punctuations, i came this
close to choosing,
in the world wars of adolescence
the vision quest turns all
twiggy on you, calling out
the names of all
your last morsels,
if you take, by all means
take till the drooping hens
gather your tiny dancers
for all the bands to see. i
vary the reasons
i missed that call, the pages turned,
the love & perfection,
concoctions of the netherworlds,
you best leave that one
in the pandora she be
one tittering little thang
take the rest of you &
boogie round the palace
with missy's tidiest of tidies,
her gave at the office,
prime time
major motion picture
pay no attention to the golden woks
the shaolin footsies &
all they innocent,
amply riddled,
crustacean
ballyhoo.

poem: plenty was / slices of you

2010-12-25T14:19:00.005-06:00

lay down the sensible dinnerware
prime the portals this
vagrant day demands
chillier vocals a dream
in the five-time
of whimsied vagaries
I could ask for
nothing more than fancy
green fairy queens,
if the bees murmur, cane them
seek the past tense
the miniature orbits
bring them &
the feeling's back
that was song for love
simplified access
to sliced milky ways,
down the higher
ways, the golden wheys
tittering on the dismal
couches,
this venture wiggles
the yammering hearts,
it was all so isosceles
in the triangular days
we feast-festering
lingering in tangents gold
the simple line of a back
in the merry woods
the cut back
to partially civilized time,
inferences splayed by
desire & wonder
you in your &
eye in mine
silvering languor
under pines
beds of plenty
was in the roses
we found the stain
of mirrored days
the wisping names of
who you were then who
we are now
why we will
be
ever.

Caroling

2010-12-25T00:11:00.002-06:00

My favorite carol:

Cassandra weighs in with her own Joni:

Something to calm the restless babes:

Merry Christmas, one and all . . .

poem: Pink Ladies

2010-12-24T16:09:00.002-06:00

Santa Baby kringles his way—
Not the least bit krissly, we can assure—
Into your nights,
Offering the tenderest of mercies
Best left unsaid:
Avalanche of silent review
Essaying all the tender
Dews of nights before,
Whispering the wicks
Of candles burned
Down leagues of midnights,
Herald of ancient cries,
Infinite laughter as
You wish your way
Into futures of the
Vagabond hearts:
Mapping the appled days,
Charting the gathered
Ways we dance
When the calling wild
Visions plenty. Steal
Away into all the nights
Fore and aft,
Urgent messengers will
Affirm the need
For this to be that,
X to by Y, calends
Of the sun to weigh
In with mighty laughter,
Ubiquitous trickster
Of the irreverently holy—
And wholly irreverent—
Heart.

v. Bow of the Ox

2010-12-24T11:45:00.006-06:00

My skin burning like wildfire, the thought of the sea's brine was torture. All I could think of were the cooling waters at the foot of the carnelian stairway, so I headed south, back into the Rif. The sun was unbearable upon the travesty of my body, so I traveled at night, using the white robe as shade from the pounding sun during the day. The cloth was too oppressive to wear, so I traveled naked once the sun had set.

I felt myself a walking lamentation, wailing at the walls of my own pain and disarray. There was not prayer enough within me for gratitude, all was desolation, all the sweet fields of me burned to black. Lying beneath the white robe in the noonday sun, I felt swaddled for death and well nigh welcoming its embrace. At night, under the sharp blade of a crescent moon, I felt as if I were walking the killing fields of death's harvest.

Climbing into the Rif, I lost myself in a dark canyon I had not seen on our journey north. Ghostly silence surrounded me, a breathing abscess of emptiness. In the deepest, darkest part of the night, feeling my way through the vile labyrinth, I felt a rush of fetid air that knocked me to my knees. So sulfurous was the air, my head reeled from the noxious fumes. Nausea sapped my ability to walk on; wrapping the robe about my head, I lay down in mud that felt oddly comforting to my burning skin. Despite the reeking stench of the air, I rolled around in the mud until sleep finally claimed me.

I woke to a holocaust: a small oxbow lake, a stinking mausoleum: skeletal trees decked with black vultures stood upon the embankment that sloped to a vile green water. Rotting fish and animal corpses were strewn about the scene; my head lay not five feet from the ghost of a calf upon whose entrails a chorus of flies was feasting. As I took in the horror around me, a shadow passed across my body. A naked, one-eyed child stood above me; his eye appeared to have been gouged from its socket, as if he had been assaulted by one of the funereal birds praying in the trees to their demonic lord. In his right hand, the nimble child held a sturdy spear, with a stout though rusted blade. With its flat side, he prodded me to my feet and then indicated that I should follow him.

We walked to a cave dug into the embankment on the opposite side of the oxbow. In the doorway stood a man I first took to be Ra, though he stood crouched over a stout limb from one of the spectral trees. As I walked up to him, he first bowed low to me and then stood and bludgeoned the side of my body with the limb. As I fell, the boy was immediately upon me, with his rusted blade at my throat.

They spoke in no language I had ever heard, clearly disappointed that there was no treasure beneath my robe. With his blade, the boy shredded the white cloth; with disgust, the man threw my sandals into the fetid waters of the lake, shoving me in after them. Though the mud had been a balm to my skin the night before, the water felt corrosive on me now. I came raging out of its fire, only to be tripped by the shaft of the boy's spear. The man was upon me quickly, grabbing my wrists and raising them above my head; he stood on my hands, as the boy raised his spear and plunged it into my right armpit. I lost consciousness to the sound of my own screams for death's embrace.

I'm not sure where or how I traveled, but travel I did. I would have said on the wings of an angel, but I feel sure no angel would have entered the hell in which I lay. Still, somewhere in a memory I have no memory of, I feel sure that I was carried. The stolidity of the body carrying me suggests that it was Ra, but I doubt his capacity for such compassion. This was much more than mere rescue; it was, in its own way, a resurrection, a raising of a man leagues beyond death.

When I finally awoke, truly awoke, I was indeed at the foot of the carnelian stairway. In the slightest of breezes, I was sure I heard the sound of a distant flute playing, but there was no one to be seen. Crawling, for crawling was all I felt capable of doing, I took my battered soul and body and slipped into the healing pool. As before, I drifted off into a sleep beyond sleep.

The Shirleys Have It: Fun and Passion

2010-12-23T15:26:00.003-06:00

Ms. Bassey:

Party girl:

Diamond girl:

The sublime Ms. Horn:

fiddly ways

2010-12-23T14:39:00.004-06:00

lydia and her fashion blisters
down the groovy
passion line
caterwauling up & down
the Palestine
it was growth fed
her gravy trains
ever slipping the downs
the slimgrooves
the orangey filigree
casually is never
enough
it was lodey town
we met
shaped the shimmy
groove, appled our
way downtown
capital planning it
was the undertow
in the mighty mighty
chain reactions
of all the ways
we imagine
summers rising
echoing pleasures found
by the roadside
in the kiln
in every punchline
of the randy
moves. fitting rooms
call the numbers
severing the holy days
from reaping
nesting
bollywooding
sunflowering
wariness in the nesty
nestiness, the golden
opportunities
yemaya holds in her
glorious spray. sing, babies,
sing the dross
the mossy finish
the samsonite
fiddly, it was
every way
the nose knew
the groove was
sculpting, strange attractors
in love with
viability on the slimshadiest
of ladies' dimes.