Archive for August, 2011
Tuesday’s Chemicals, Vague Miracles
Feeling the requirement
to write about the darkest days of summer,
but this morning was bouncy.
Hands and my head floated with my music.
And I said, “I can do this,”
meaning I will survive the day.
Chemicals were right, body’s bubbles were joyous,
energy and acceptance flowed through my vessel.
wishing I could create this every day,
but puzzled, merely living a vague miracle,
waiting for the other shoe but not worried about the other shoe.
Then my boss said
that I am good
at doing all that I do
that I thought no one cared about.
I’m believing it’s the visit with the sick last night
that has sparked my day with a chance at life, and if so,
I will visit the sick every night.
Go Away; Come Again Some Other Day
It comes up like a heavy frog,
thick with mozzarella cheese,
with tongue sticking out,
stabbing my thorax.
Choking on my insanity,
coffee running over me,
polar bears hugging me,
I swim in the steam
of broken windows.
Carl, You Have a Hole in Your Head
You stab me.
Pin pricks through my scalp.
When hat comes off,
“Carl, you have a hole in your head.”
You stab me.
Millions of openings.
On each journey, my spirit drips.
You watch it all flow, free,
but poisoned by the air of our world
and wonder why I am nothingness.
And why should I be special?
Why should I be sore about being nothing?
Moving Drearily Down Twelfth Street
habitat is immensely similar to peach and fuzz,
crawling out between
shards of metal
that store a futile race around and around,
like NASCAR,
except there is never a winner.
Striving, we want to win,
but it’s not that way in our circles.
When we accept defeat, accept the futility,
then we are in trouble for not
staying on the track.
It’s mostly coal from the structures
covering my face,
making me unbearable to myself.
Fuck You and Your Twenty-Six Point Two
Fuck you and your twenty-six point two,
and fuck the Escalades, two by two, white by white,
I’m waiting for protection.
Thirteen point one, you’re fucking done.
All around, I might be blind,
but there aren’t any cupped hands
managing my day.
The fuckers who wear their labels.
There’s love in the maze,
but they don’t take my dinero.
What I see with twenty-six point two,
they roll me on the microwave turntable,
kicking my poisoned kidneys,
choking and strangling my god
who rides a bicycle
without a helmet,
hugging the curb.
Thirteen point one runs over my god,
splotches on Escalades,
there will never be cupped hands.
Fuck me and my dead spirit.
I ain’t worth one point two.
Being a Target
The look was wicked under the hat.
There were metal, barbed strings
coming from his eyes straight through
my heart. He reflected on his need
for a gun. I was always awkward
regardless of how hard I tried to be
the undisturbed bringer of peace.
Even when I’m most undisturbed,
there is scraping of a car door
by the shopping cart, and the rubber
boils the blood, furiously, as the man
dreams about pulling the trigger
and watching worms, little white bits
of my brain hit the pictures of palace
yards where no one ever goes.
When It Comes Back
When it comes back, it is
thick cheese on French onion
soup. It is a net that drowns me.
That old brick building, solid red
with windows crashed, splintered,
with chicken wire on the second floor
porch. The porch is the jump pad, for
head first, gently, with grace, knowing
that maggots will crawl from my eyes.
I gaze and pray for the breezes,
inside the building, longing for a crisp,
drying motion before the man
of substance gets here, smiling,
hoping again that people won’t see
my chaos of thick cheese through
warping of tears that come from
a nothingness like a fly stuck in the soup.
Don’t Lie – You’re Alone
I thought he said my name.
How’s it going?
I didn’t know his.
“Fine, you?”
And then it kept running.
Blue tooth. No.
It kept going.
To himself.
I didn’t feel so badly
about my terrifying sponge.
The Dogs Are Hungry
The hippies came by with their dogs.
Help me learn what I am supposed to learn.
Wake up the dogs!
One dog thought of leaving, joining the caterer
who had empty buckets, but smelly buckets.
And why do we scrub the sidewalks
when God’s mother is about to let loose her tears?
What I see, it can’t be all your creation.
Where are you?
Monkeys Torturing Diminutival Man
A sign hangs across my back,
a rope an aggravation around my neck.
Terrible posture, almost crawling, decrepit,
I search for people who can easily rip me apart.
(Because I can’t find any others.)
Signs are spat all over me in layers.
Evil monkeys come from all around, reading
instructions for how to tear down my spirit
and delete the hope, written by Mother
so many years ago.
Mother was thorough and the signs stick.
With heavy prayer, they were to stay under
my four-poster with balls of dreaded,
deadly dust and musky mattress bottom
which was well-known in all its deformities.
Defenseless water balloons, filled
with what was left of love, love in liquid,
running down pitiful, worn, shameful cheeks.
Monkeys, joyfully squeezing the balloons,
loving the pops, cackling,
blaring laughs from trombones.
Why could I not leave the instructions
in some desolate parking lot, in the rest area
off of I-70 where I camped to find out if I was alive
or if it was only the stars that were alive?
The stars blared at me,
and I ran, alive, ran away from humans,
but the signs stayed on me.
These monkeys have Mother’s spirit. One time
in hundreds through months, I feel that I’ve done
great things. No in-between for the other hundreds,
the monkeys gnawing and slashing
at what is left of my spirit, they know Mother’s tune.
How do they know?
From so far away,
from so long ago?
I struggle to be alive like the stars as I work
to slink the signs somewhere dark,
pulling the rope away,
but the monkeys know me and I can’t hide,
and they are slicing and dividing me
over and over
by two, until there seems to be nothing.
The liquid is almost gone.
My spirit is a tiny speck,
a fly under a humid mattress, begging for air.
stillfugue 