Full · Penatration · Poetry

writing secret scribbles to myself

longhand in my little black book

one hundred sacred pages later, I turn it upside

down and start over hitting it

from the back this time my attorney

has advised me to stop keeping

a journal just type everything and see it come

together so quickly it is faster this way

is easier this way it is not

better, this is another level of the falling

dream where you bounce from cloud

to air mattress cloud I am in a cage

but I am not in jail so I will play the foole

and represent myself in this kangaroo

courtship my space is splattered

with the cream of my contemporaries

mind you, I am merely filled

with contempt for the waking

dream between me and the final draft

Get Up Off Of Your Knees

for Simon Grimm

the poet gig is a good hustle if you’ve the stomach for it

is in this respect we share common traits with surgeons,

soldiers and butchers it takes nerve to do it right none

to do it poorly is a sign of intellectual impotence

equally as useless as soft dick I’ll admit I am

a soft touch though ask without giving me

attitude and I do what I can. I’m not here

to judge mans’ fate. I always think there

but for the grace of god go I and I do

what I can. I do what I can. 

Attachment Fears

this is supposed to be one of those poems

where I demonstrate to you what a clever

bastard I can be by writing in such an ambiguous

manner that you cannot tell whether I am

describing computers or people

I have the poem in my mind but

it’s not my... idiom so I have decided not to write it

for you have grown fat and lazy waiting

for people like me to think

for people like you know more

after all I am sure some no talent ass slamming yahoo

has already done it there is nothing new under the son

you have all convinced yourselves

that you are all natural born geniuses

every one of you no you are smarter than me

you are sitting in your central heating and air

conditioned white cubes of solitude saying

to yourself this isn’t even

poetry hell I could have done that but you didn’t

you never do anything but breathe bitch about those who do

and breed badly so think of this poem as if it were

poetry’s self-service station get off your cottage cheese arse

poetica do something for yourself ewe

lazy fuckers gang rape a muse your damned self

what do you think I am

your slave

4/27/06 1:33:09 PM

Last night naked eyes swam into a nameless sea between death and the dream country
Rapidly I moved to find myself aboard a slowly sinking cargo ship overloaded with refugees from every continent. As the ship began to list and sink. All the holy men simultaneously pulled out their holy books looking for something appropriate to read to us passengers, to prepare us for an inescapable but stupid demise. I refused to accept this idiot’s end. I began to look around for lifeboats; there were none, no radio, nothing. Still, I prepared to live, I told them the ship is sinking because it is overloaded and to throw all the holy books they were all carrying overboard. The Rabbi’s and their chosen tribe reluctantly began to toss their torahs and scrolls into the sea, the priest and their congregations followed their example by throwing their bibles and tracts overboard the mullahs and the children of Muhammad always the most obstinate of the big three were the last to pitch their Korans into the drink. The ship righted itself but continued to slowly sink.

Its not working they cried out in harmony voices breaking wet with fear over the black waves. Now we will all die without god, having committed this needless sin against the scriptures at the bidding of this hedonistic heathen poet. They came at me of one accord I offered no resistance when they grabbed me by my arms and legs like a sack of potatoes and I smiled as they tossed me over the railing. When they heard no splash, no thrashing pleas of a drowning man, they became somewhat curious as to what had become of the poet so peevishly they peeked over the side of the slowly sinking ship. They saw the poet beneath them bone dry standing on an island made of all the holy books, which had bound themselves to one another and held me afloat just above the water. What foul enchantments this poet wields against us the holy men cried out in unison? Surly, this is a trap. It is not a trap, “and stop calling me Shirley.” ignoring my attempted humor they continued, he must be of the devil, for he does not believe as we believe, he does not study the holy books, he does not fall to his knees to worship the one true god. The very existence of this infidel is a blasphemy. I like your beards! I shouted, It’s very becoming the way it frames your face, the color really sets off your eyes. I can never get mine to grow out so long and full like that. You look like Walt Whitman. “I bet you must go through conditioner like crazy.” You mock judaism, you mock christianity you mock islam the devine chorus shouted. No, you guys are doing just fine yourselves, you don’t need my help on that one. I teased. Now they were really mad.

Religious fundamentalists are notoriously well known for never having any sense of humor, especially not about themselves. They generally are a rather craven lot overall, just like their cousins the politicians, with few notable exceptions. They always want you to do what they claim god told them to tell you to do or what they deciphered from this incomprehensible mish mash of babble in their goddamned holy books and I’ll tell you a little secret most of them just make this shit up. As a rule when they say god said to them to tell you to do something, it is really them telling you to do something they’re too chicken shit to do themselves. Often it involves smiting these peoples, or blowing up that other who does not believe what you believe or shooting at some other anonymous dimwitted dickheaded loser. Whose never done anything to you and never would have except now he’s been told the same thing about you that you’ve been told about him and while the two of you are busy trying to blow each other to kingdom come or getting shot at somewhere for reasons so ridiculous that even a monkey would have to laugh. Guess whose back at the ranch knee deep in grade ‘A’ coochi; you guessed it, the same cats that started all of this bullshit in the first place. And where will these firebrands be when it gets hot. Why, where the women and children always are, in the rear with the motherfucking gear.

Hey! Didn’t I see you guys in that movie ‘Smite Club’ everybody laughed at my little joke except the holy men. As I continued to taunt them a second time, I began to walk around the island, it was solid, a good foundation, but it was too small. The ship continued to slowly sink, the holy men continued to do what they always do nothing but talk. Until they finally convinced their three biggest, dumbest, meanest, most vicious psychotic holy warriors that they should get off the sinking ship, go onto the island that was not an island at all but a bunch of old books, and kick the cowboy shit out of me for walking all over the word of god. Which is exactly what I was doing when the soldiers approached me seething with self righteous hatred, hell bent on killing me, because they were so stupid and gullible that they truly believed god wanted them to kill me but really, it was just three old cowards in robes.

Appealing to their sense of enlightened self-interest and reason without looking down I kneeled before them to pick up one of the holy books. I looked at the island, the slowly sinking ship and the three killers of men and I said it’s too small as I began to rip the pages out of the holy book. They were horrified but I calmed their anger when I explained that if we did not work together and put what was in these books to some intelligent, practical use, then everyone on the ship was going to drown needlessly. I picked up three more holy books and filled in the holes in the island with the pages I was tearing from the holy book in my hand. I handed each of them a book and said I to them; do not be afraid my brothers for there is no sin in living, it is what we were put here to do. And today is a good day to live. The unholy trinity all nodded their heads in agreement with me on this point. Now go, each of you to opposite sides of this island and spread the holy words out at the edges of the island so that it will be big enough for all of us to live on. And one went north, one went south, one went east and the last, I walked to the western shore kneeled as the son kneeled before the coming darkness and began to spread the holy words.

We worked without rest straight through the night and when the first shafts of sunlight peaked over the eastern horizon, the island was big enough for everyone on the ship to live on. The ship full of refugees from all over the world who just wanted to find some place to live peacefully all, except the holy men, cheered and abandoned the sinking ship.

4/30/06 2:57:35 PM

Sculpting the Poem

writing is sculpting with a chainsaw

with inspirations chains you drag

this big tree of an idea into the studio

and the bigger the idea the better

then you appear two do nothing as you

just gaze into it until you can see what is living

beneath the skin but once you get that old

chainsaw in your hands its just a matter of carving

away the gnarled parts that obscure

your vision hammering the knots out filling the wholes

chiseling the hard edges sanding the roughened surface

until a dead tree is resurrected

revealing the sculpture that has always been.

4/29/06 10:51:35 AM

After She Gets On the Bus

These are the euthanasia mornings when the 609 moon is steel

a raised sepia nipple heavy with wet light waiting

for some bigmouth to suckle the verse

out of this is how you craft your own fate

out run the cops and out live the rest

keep breathing long enough to get the one

woman that gets you to walk down these streets as if

they were named after you and when the early rising

neighbors turn to wave their soft white hands greeting you

with their small good mornings reply , “It is.”

flashing your trademarked snaggle toothed smile

talk to the old trees for history lessons

heed the deepening voices of treed chicks

witness the old house wood framed with rose bushes

mounting the honeysuckle, more scent than scene,

admire the little cement Saint Francis of Assisi sculpture

summoning wild birds, squirrels and feral felines to the fat cats yard

then just go home take off the worn leather jacket

pour yourself a strawberry margarita

blaze up a sweet little captain black cigar

fold the poems into paper airplanes

and fly into them with the sun.

Don’t cha just hate it when some no talent ass clown gets up on the stage
and you know and I know he’s going to suck like a black hole
even before he starts to suck he’s sucking he’s going to suck so hard his
skull is going to implode and he even knows he’s going to suck and you can see
him start to sweat big salty beads roll down his forehead his skin starts to look pale
and you wish he had tits so at least you’d have something to look at while he prepares to launch into one of those 100 mile and hour auctioneer voice monologues about something inane like how bad he sucks but he didn’t think to write about that
and he wishes he had tits to distract you from how bad he sucks and before he begins he’s getting cotton mouth and stops to get a drink of water and he’s sucking so hard they name a vacuum cleaner after him and he’s wondering about the wisdom of having a triple espresso with the cheese pizza before getting on the stage and how much time three minutes really seems like eternity and he’s wondering if his fly is open because the audience is looking at him as if he was standing on the stage with his cock out and now he’s just stand there sucking like a virgin on prom night remembering how great this poem seemed last night when he wrote it at 4:20 in the A M but now he even begins to doubt the self referential wit that he thought would help to carry this thing over he begins to wish he had written it in verse iambic pentameter or done it as a 130 beat per minute rap just to baffle the audience with bullshit because he has no substance he’s not really a poet hell he doesn’t even read he spends most of his time waiting for his fat assed old lady and kids to go to sleep so he can log on to indecent acts dot com and jack off to German Goo girls before his fucking wife wakes up and seizes his erection when all he really wants is to just once be able to cum with out the fear of getting her pregnant because she’s got kids from her first marriage and they’re great kids they’re so great he figures she got it right the first time but he doesn’t want to have kids with anyone who has kids like that now he’s gone off on this scatological tangent and he’s scrambling to save him self before he bombs like a radical Islamic fundamentalist then he feels guilty for bagging on the towel head suicide bombers and he’s doubting the veracity of his own work and he’s wondering how many people in the audience will have to go look up the definition of scatological and voracity oh just shoot me now he’s sucking so hard gods getting a chubby he hasn’t said a word he’s just standing there sweating with his ass about to explode and when the three minute are over they mob him with faint praise and you forgot that you were just wishing he had tits now you just wish you could teach your girlfriends to suck like he just sucked you swear he could suck a cinderblock through a 100 feet of garden hose he’s forgotten that he was just wishing he had tits because he’s sucking so hard now he’s gonna have to put out so now he wishing he had a cunt we were right and he was right you’ve never even seen porn stars that sucked so hard he never said a word he just walks off the stage and you applauded because he sucked so hard he bends light.

Walking up Goliad listening to the morning
song of the old trees, the iris’ are flying
their colors beneath a soft parade of periwinkle
clouds being pushed over the rooftops of the gentries
three story condos just out of reach
of the straining finger tips of the oldest
trees the streets almost crowded for a moment as
the herd of neighborhood soccer moms jog past
crossing me on Empire with the arrival of the first light.
me in my skin crawling with insecurities, black
leather motorcycle jacket, black denim jeans,
black steel toed work boots and a crown made of black
bandana worn as if I were an urbane pirate.

Daedalus deep in his cups owns this
grief that always embraces the beautiful
lie over the ugly truth is my hubris
martyred him not his ego or ignorance
of no consequence now we spin doctors
create a palatable myth push aside
Pilate to wash our bloody hands of it
history is easier to deceive
than death the truth is out there but who will
admit they are guilty as sin seems so
easy to escape just keep telling the same
I told you so and so story until
the lie is a Phoenix of memories that returns
when the prodigy drowns in burning water.