I went to three whole
PARTIES last night –
hoping to write crazy
downthoughts
and experiences on
quartered yellow paper –
but when I finally got
home – DRUNK NIRVANA –
I saw sharp claw
marks on the fake
wood paneling
in my living room –
and they looked so great –
real prehistoric and such –
and I realized that
all I really care about
is WHERE WERE YOU
WHEN YOU HEARD
AXL ROSE
FOR THE FIRST TIME?
I WAS ON THE FLOOR.
I like nights when neighborhood dogs bark
a police siren and mornings where cats meow
a rooster crow.
I like windows that let too much light in
and walls that are thin in all of the wrong parts.
I like saying
“Gratitude is a trash truck
at 7am on a Tuesday”
to whoever will listen.
There is a crisis at the border of us and them –
somewhere just south of here –
so close we could travel in four hours fast,
stop short and hold the line –
the picket and pulpit –
our cardboard –
their barbed wire –
and begin to disentangle the United States of right and wrong –
of mainly wrong.
We could travel in four hours flat and sound the alarm –
that something good is missing from this land –
that a deafening silence falls when the
televangelists are stuck on mute
and the senator’s voice mail is full.
There is a crisis at the border of US and us –
somebody please turn the VOLUME UP.
Appears in Peach Fuzz Vol 10, Issue 1
Every time I walk outside
after a friendly or
enemy rain – the snails
have crawled
out from the
concrete canyons and crevices
under my front door step –
and often times – when
it hasn’t rained in a while
– I forget
until I feel and hear
the crunch of a shell –
and feel bad about
the whole thing.
Sometimes I don’t wear shoes –
it helps me remember – but if
I forget it’s worse.
And sometimes it rains
so much that
I can’t help but remember.
Tonight it rained
for the first time in months:
my shoes are wet –
should I just stay inside
my shell? or should
I leave this place
through the back
door?
She drives as I fawn
at the steel
car(casses)
seemingly salvaged from
every year since
Henry Ford was broke and 45 –
not a yard scrapless:
I guess when your town is called
Plainview – you build yourself
a junkyard – “hell you know
I would.”
She speeds as I stare
down geometric rows –
wind turbines and cotton
planted in perfect
horizontals –
hot road mirages
drowning out hazy horizons
hiding cemeteries for sale:
I guess when your town is called
Whiteflat – all of the cows
face the same direction –
“magnetic fields, they
say.”
She brakes as we get
there – and I
thank her for the
seventy-five mile-per-hour
crash course in rust and gravity – and
proclaim my affinity for
North Texas – where old cars
and fat cows go to die:
I guess when your town is called
Poverty Hills – even the tombstones
languish, unchiseled.
I feel –
a downtown dog in
shotgun shack where
thousands creep
behind the front door
–
no, I cannot see THEM –
but I can hear their gait and
understand their posture
–
no, I cannot see THEM –
but I can smell their perfume
when air rushes under
all sex and daggers.
The dog barks because
he plays detective games –
because he has no distraction –
because he can see through walls.
–
I bark because I know
death is steady and
steadily walking
towards the door.
Appears in Peach Fuzz Vol 10, Issue 1
I think my couch is gay –
I see the way it
expresses itself –
the way it looks at the lamp –
brass polished – leather shade.
Yes – my house is straight –
but my couch is gay –
my lamp is bisexual –
as light tends to be –
as is my Moroccan rug –
as the ground tends to be.
My office building –
tall and erect –
is asexual – but my car is
transgender – and my desk is
made of wood.
There was a time before
we talked about these things –
acknowledged – or understood –
the sexual orientation
of all things.
You can imagine the Puritan
shock and horror – when
households across AMERICA
discovered their gay pickup
trucks – their gay jeans –
their gay lawnmowers.
But now people –
just don’t care –
anymore.
I think my couch is gay –
perhaps your couch is gay too.
Some nights I think about
how many colors I have ever seen…
and is it more than you?
You say – statistically
blah blah blah –
but I wonder
have you ever really seen the
seen the same color twice?
And are there more colors in your lips
or in your eyes?
“There once was a man
who could only stand
parallel to the rain.
The kids from town
would gather around
his garden gates whenever
the tide whipped in
black ghostships in sky
and the air tasted sweet.
When the symphony
started in a crash of rain,
the kids would play their
horns and bang their drums –
a familiar Calypso beat –
as the man moved with the rain –
trying to stay parallel.”
The man was abhorrently drunk – shouting at me!
a nobody – a passerby – a pocketless –
at 4:03 AM.
“Fuck you too,”
his words
danced away
with a passing car.
New Orleans really
is a beautiful
city in the
rain.
The coldest day of the
year – and the whole City
complained. White
graupel falling from the
sky like infinite rat
shit – yes, it
felt like Hell outside
because truth be told –
HELL WOULD BE COLD
had they written the Bible
in Russia – and HELL IS
COLD, IF YOU’VE EVER
BEEN.
I was miserable, you were
miserable, the whole city was
miserable. We had been planning
a house party that night – and
graupel wasn’t on the guest list.
Now we had to invite
FIRE too – so I raced home to
grab scrap wood.
And there – at the last street corner –
I saw a bum – broken bow legs
stumbling towards me –
sheepish grin frozen to his red face.
So I passed him the KARMA
FIVE that had appeared in
my garden the prior evening –
FREE MONEY! – and
he was much obliged –
and the whole thing pretty
much standard – and he went back ‘
to his rags – and again towards the cars –
sheepish grin even more sheepish –
frozen face even more frozen.
And I realized this
bum bow legged broken ankled man –
was the only man in the entire City
grateful for the cold.
And we smiled at each other – because we
both knew that he could make more money
in HELL than here on Earth
The mountains flow and tempormentalate –
sun and snow alternating infinitely
indiscriminately – for nothing is less racist
than nature – or time – or jazz – rugged
mountaintops more camouflaged than U.S.
(Uncle Sam’s Boys) – with shadows
so darker so deeper so deadlier –
it makes me wonder
if nature has a conscious
and a subconscious.
Yes our
Mother Earth –
for if she was
our Father –
we would notice only
jagged cliffs – burned forests – cold
water – unconquered nights –
undomesticable –
certain death.
The rainyday becomes a rainynight –
still a rainy-on-its-way –
still hundreds west –
still twelve late –
and I will lay but not lie:
me and the rain
need each other – I
to breathe –it
to exist.
I had been expecting the rain
all week – had rolled out
the carpet – raised the blinds –
moved the metal – planted
the plants – all for it – for I
was losing breath – slowly
and surely – like the pet fish
across from us – lurking amongst
neon coral – yes, like a blacklit fish at
a strip mall sushi joint –
yes, like the cheap TV
playing Japanese racing
fiction above us – Tofuman always
racing down Mt. Aino – I hide
in the corner of our booth –
like your Chinese grandmother –
“soy sauce is for poor
people” – “rich food has
flavor” – my arms
tingle – you pay
for lunch – just rain
already
please.
I would write beautiful poetry
for The Weather Channel
but I am afraid I get too invested.
Last night
I watched five men
ask for drunk mustard –
steal free bikes –
and ride through
deconstructed
construction sites –
“all on the way to.”
Last night
I met a stranger – as a stranger –
instead my(usual)self – and told
her about how in the five weeks
since my phone died – I slept with
open blinds and woke to the birds –
and she asked me if I lived
in the woods –
“all on the way to.”
Last night
I said “no” but told her
of the Wood People in
South Austin –
modern mythology
thoughtfully crafted
by the sales clerk of
the Adult Megaplexxx in response
to my question about their neighborhood
rival – “OUR parking lot if fenced in –
THEIRS opens to two hundred people
living in the woods” –
she didn’t believe me
“all on the way to.”
Last night
A beautiful woman saved me
from a beautiful man’s couch –
I saw a lack cat
and an orange squirrel
make peace
on a fencepost – what
were they talking about –
“all on the way to.”
San’s screams shattered Francisco –
and echoed in houses across the heartland:
new thoughts slung from rustic rucksacks;
new thoughts hung on fustian wallpaper;
TRUTH slung from young tongued
bums high and strung out on that
Ameri-can’t take this shit any longer
juice.
Howlin’ Allen – drowning in teargas –
hanging out in the hallways of
the houses that raised me.
Jumpin Joe Jack – an invisible attitude –
vicarious – in my father’s atlas collection
and my led foot.
Lucid Bukowski – found me naturally:
never drink
with a straw.
Twenty-five years young and
here I was – providence provided –
where the BEAT STARTED!
I walked from the Tenderloin,
suitcase-saddled and suit-sweating,
towards the Embarcadero, getting
lost in the smoky side streets,
the steaming gut of the city,
the seedy strip clubs
showered in soda lime glass,
NEON XXX
stranded wire, and stopcock signage
LIVE GIRLS
that made me want to
sell my travelling bags –
sell my flight to Texas –
and do good bad terrible things,
I felt the fight
against OSCENITY
in my blood
just like Ginsberg
felt it in his HOWL,
his 520 copies in custody –
his two men in jail –
his “redeeming social importance.”
City Lights Bookstore shined
through the alley like a radical
beacon of history – and inside,
the hallowed wood creaked
under my innocent footsteps –
as if mocking my decision to ignore
the RADICAL words lurking in attic
in favor of the CHILDREN’S
literature in the basement.
I was in love at the time – or close enough –
and an almost lover in a book store doesn’t stand
a blind chance. So I eschewed the TRUTH
and sought out NOVELTY in the basement –
I bought her an illustrated book about a fish
that steals a whale’s hat – a book that had it all –
death and daggers – and, of course –
a Jack Kerouac T-shirt that she never once wore.
I still wear that shirt
every
single
week and wonder
what would’ve happened had I
let the floorboards guide me.
It had been at least three years since
I’d last waded the conversational depths of
maturity. Sure, I’m Mr. Old Soul,
but that just means:
I’ve accepted death –
I’ve disregarded ego –
I treat IT like an art display
on a one-museum tour.
You know,
when life lives you fast –
and backwards –
putting the ending where the
start should be –
you can’t walk
a straight line.
And IT can all seem very
strange
to you.
So in this room of straight
liners I sweat – my
cyanide cynicism
too flexed – muscle memory
of a true existentialist – and I
have to remember that
we’re all right and wrong
at the same time, all
of the time – and perhaps true
love is loving people’s
delusions – and I love
these people here
with me – drinking Mezcal
and talking about IT –
so maybe I should just
take a night off of
pretending to be
RIGHT about us
ALL BEING WRONG.
“We go up the mountain
we go down the mountain” –
the mantra –
spit hard between steep steps and hot breaths –
one hundred and eight times –
to the deafening beat of gravity –
admiring the infiniteness of leaves, petals and blades –
an everchanging sum of parts –
I walk down the mountain side.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain”
the terrain changes fast in the backcountry –
forest hearth –
canopy rock –
and glacial streams alternate –
and often fall sideways –
dead arms branching out omnipotently like a Ganeshian nightmare –
I know the Lord of Obstacles will lay here dead long after we leave –
and again, before we arrive.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain” –
I had been here before –
half a life ago –
but feeling much longer than that –
I remembered the songs of ice melting –
a gentle respiration is mama nature’s scream –
I remembered the clearings –
the ascent –
the crown –
but not the down –
for I was on the way up.
“We go up the mountain we go down the mountain” –
so this is how a trail is made –
not in climbing but in the descent –
each muscle exerting three times the force –
to slow it down –
no one teaches the descent –
we run at times –
climb duck and lunge at others –
carving our prints into the trail into the mountain –
no one teaches the descent –
so I walk the end alone.
“We walk up the mountain we walk down the mountain”