The Redbook (part 2)
From Plastic Tub
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002-2003)
Part Two
So! there ya have a motorcycle A collection, printed and changed The second half promises twice the thrills! Do you hear it? The rumbling? The city quakes in fear from a million chattering knees at least What next on the home front? Tie a line to the polestar? And is that just a pocket watch? Destroy! What happened? Where to, the gibbering genius? This cat was going on about 11-9 as in the obverse of 9-11 Some sorta Masonic feast day Kristallnacht, etc. A whole boring parade of nonsense Undercutting the sad fact of the real conspiracy going on! Let me tell you alll about it…. still fortified after all these YEARS it is all about the pen AND the sword (and the shovel) What I learned from TV news Ken Kesey died today he was outspoken against authority and once organized and LSD-fueled bus trip he died after an operation to remove 40% of his liver His book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Was turned into a movie Fox News Syracuse your anchor can’t even say his name right this lil’ niggle of a blurb then we hear of an implosion Goddam. Just the meanest of redactions from the AP article Itself not entirely too shabby But enough! The man is dead and I’m dissecting obituaries What to say? My poetic awakening Intertwined with FURTHUR The blips of Cassidy Holy GOOF! entranced mysticism from seratonin magazines Kesey wad never a personal polestar but the pine cone and the greenery rang deeply These paranoid perambulations TODAY I sit on the same couch I sat on yesterday all day munching chimps smoking pot television now and then studying ritual studying Mithras (No Mithraists! No Mithraists!) The slow sinking feeling of inevitable defeat A fat ship losing chug and steam wif a woopf That is me on the couch Surprised when, despite the sinking the current still runs: there are terrific jolts now and again electric jabs arching back a wicked taunt a sudden remembrance something important forgotten a puzzle piece falls into place But even these, after one too many, become something of a slow, static hum A log, fallen in grass A muddy path has been made by tiny feet this is the parade field of dead babies an Elysian nook They play right near the river of Lethe and no one fears for them they, ceaseless on the march marking the mudpath in a furrow and moving as one These babies in spacesuits intergalactic innocents they are the souls of sacrifice Thrown into the Grand Canyon Hung from lampposts in D.C. THEN away with the Shit Rockets! the escape pods mushroom clouds clap in unison as the last fiery trail exits into the starry night a frail hug a naked hope Then silence…. Elio Eely eely eely (eel-like) Sounds like black snakes tumbling thru the ink clouds of octopi that is a vision of the net falling from dark tenement roofs lines twisting into comic-book angles teetering skyline furtive in the penumbra clutching something close to the chest the crowd incessant pressing and buzzing oh eely oh that dead-end street you’ve already turned into FORM defining content blue blazes the utensils of the cult a cool hollow under an old, spreading tree This rocker After the punk tunes s’posed to be alternaKool This drizzling shitsong Builds like “The Greatest Love” DOWN like Mexico is down (i.e. south) As in Gone South They call me the Duck My migrations are notorious My migrations are me Revved up poop On two continents It’s all the same Pale and disheveled from too lil’ sleep A fat fortress of lies on top of the Hill lingering, some fall over <sometimes, I still bleed> A vision, of crutches <she wants him to die> and all he has to do is die There then: Milk At 7:45 A.M. a leaf blower the air is cool and damp but goddam it that leaf blower means there at least a few competing brands on the market supporting mass sales of small combustible engines we use to blow leaves! all that petrol, the smoke, the industry behind the thing it only occurred to me because the noise followed me for blocks, pestering an otherwise blissful morn that dipshit I'd a liked to explained to this asshole that a broom is a more efficient tool when yer dealing with such trifles It’s not as if Pedestrians are navigating enormous wet piles of dead leaves stinkpot! Wheelchairs aren’t being diverted into the street! Those leaves are being blown not only away but back onto yer “work” Dumb gamboling shit spirit! To strap on that stupid machine before 8 in the morning makes you either an idiot, a slave or a brownnose, and fuck off ta ya if that’s the call just keep yer goddam leaf blowers (subdivided, mesmerized) “I am immune.” Alfred Starr Hamilton— some variant thereof repeated throughout Hamilton’s appearances in print 1975-1977 “War is a tyrant.” 1. tears Don’t I know it! 2. fears Paranoid hands wring: 3. bells 4. necks can’t grabbit that thin sleeve of a brown-shirt spread flat diffuse light shining from behind some edge fading green in day with grey sidewalk that flat sleeve backlit a day reverie so thin sofine for hungry this image that escapes me like the night ride in New Jersey escapes me and I will write a poem on her naked body in December Tampa won’t be so cold the trembling will be from desire Maudlin, it is morn (the song is maudlin; the morn is grey) and I am blue We share razor blades to make little nicks remind each other how much we are still owned by one another even though there can be a laugh or two now it doesn’t mean the tomatoes have been taken to market it don’t mean the planets have hopped out of orbit no, nothing is completed and nothing out of the ordinary has happened so why does it feel like it is all over and why am I writing about it? Why can’t I capture that transparent rosepetal? Climbing on the corner of the wind out of the bellows of my eye? pumping forth flowers in halo like rats will flee a sinking ship? The flowers are marching across the waves They march on planks and driftwood They are looking for new horizons Everything is a green you can see into for miles Ships on the sea’s bottom in silent, resentful congress Nazi Love Poem WHAT playlist? Why must I take these dictations the slow rotations vibrations and masturbations (par for the course) Heidi! Lederhosen in thin blue air lie thin lips under cold blue eyes of nazi interrogator Heinrich Klim that bastard! he has come to give me guilt the end of a needle or a root canal charred nubs of feet under the scintillating acid bath Well, maybe not…. even Heinrich had outgrown such fascinations So Klim, with Heidi escaping together upon a cruel motorcycle Into the nebulous forests Where are they going? And why? I don’t know the dictation’s stopped <wink> The “treatment” a way to make violent criminals sick upon impulse a quivering machine regular ticking a solid imposter within the family chases away the sun Daily Whether patient needs it or not How then to know (then he spins around then he spins around again) On Nov. 20th the evolution of the spaceman sometimes it’s just a conglomeration of junk space junk filler filling space this junk How do they see thru the stockings? I woulda been a good ad-man, psychological warfare expert, teacher charismatic priest but not a thief or a busker or any other man w/o a net I thrive yeah like a chaotic whirlwind in structure A core of discipline allows me ta act w/ complete irresponsibility In the rainy southern city the air is a-glow and age is creeping upon this mother of mine I leaving country of birth in re-creation of parental wanderings There then, Chicago is tumbling over Tampa and I think too bad I have a lil’ pride in home looking forward to family, friends a cuban sandwich and some seafood I drive by the bay and the sense that my childhood years are tucked away in familiar places Armenia Avenue Harbor Club Public Library Ybor – well not that See: Ole Tom Wolfe you can never go home indeed But you can try Abandon the idea of ever having a complete capsule No poem, painting, film or novel It’s a place defined by change Which makes for tricky bizness for shit like this I will capture and release Spin Hand up caught in light: water flashes in broken corolla dove’s neck bent gentle wrapped in delicate curve of paint-fixed wings…. Daily weather (sky report) yellow trouble brave sun rises yet again to ward off the cold it takes a few months but it finally all happens Can ya spare some change for an old Buccaneer? -- I need some more content than that I would love to be exhausted with you I had a dream last night I was playing a trombone This morning, walking to work in crisp solitude A man playing a trombone at 10 to noon The irreconcilable limit <of the sky> something about her…. Then, on the bus a wretched rain, cold umbrellas twirling in magical unison (a vision of Cherbourg) Then, later, sick having not eaten for three days, I crab and pick at irritated grey flesh mortified, and scratched raw So what does it all add up to? Wake up slowly in kicking fits body humming with ripples went to the machine and clicked it one pulled up the player and picked 6 sad songs then I wept because I miss you I don’t want to live my life without you but will nonetheless live it that way I just haven’t accepted the facts (just the facts, ma’am) and those are painful things facts (facts don’t kill people, people kill people) like knives are painful to bare skin the bare skin I want to cut with razors on my face hands forearms A shallow gridwork of scablines like a Qabbalic talisman earth magic man of clay crumbling into mud and this murky puddle is me alone, crumbling into the abandonment of desire I AM not a strong man (nor bearded lady) I snort dope and cry sometimes You wake up with a bang soft bangs show the pad get dizzy puke in the bucket lie down make a target of the sun w/ a muck-covered snout pointed upwards and in slow revue the troops pass by the General shouts from the crowd intrude upon his thoughts there is pleasure in seeing this fleet of tanks this phalanx of missiles and infantrymen the ole 1-2 from afar then it’s the Kamouflaged Kops Kome ta getcha doorstep surprise in paranoid wonderland USA 2001 God bless it! In God we trust! Allah Akhbar! <send in the clowns> arias drop in slow winged Nikes they mean nothing but sound so good as the troops pass by in slow revue CAN’T get enough of that got too many can’t find a job in the land of plenty So what’s a boy s’posed to dooo? Ya gotta step to the Alcatraz jimmy dolan is a spaz my country 'tis of thee let freedom ring Nite afore last I stood in the doorway the light of morning made the sky a dull grey the clouds twirled around my toes you jumped down and away in a yellow suit and with a smile I could not follow get off the set the scene is over your co-star has moved on the new role that dangled was taken like the fish takes the worm (and the spider takes the fish) the spring that sprung this year did nothing for me all I did this summer was tangle with the Monkey and this fall let him hang there (my back still bearing claw marks) like the body is the cheap apparel of chance wounds can be Bedouin or Irishmen but the production is over and along with it the free lunch better, then, to be from Canada or stop griping that being impossible I will submit my résumé to the ample rumpus league: a society for big butts and general merriments (the bearded butler will not approve— have you read about that thing called love? he has, and it has him concerned) Suddenly Rectum a new show about a freewheeling young rectum working to make it in the publishing biz starring your ass as the rectum we’ll be coming to get it the next knock on your door will be us 60 years ago today america awoke to unprovoked attack (no immediate provocation, that is) and then, war, years of war and cold war with warm spots and two hot stretches that cost us 100,000 boys and men (and girls and women, too) not to mention the horror of N. Vietnam’s millions but things aren’t dropped cold like bombs are hot potatoes but not food nope Cold War hot bombs hot flames hot blood what stupid parts of us want to play that grey shroud like it was bingo in a church basement? when a man’s innards are steaming in the snow what about them they are hot going cold eggs are not one of the inventions of war they are a peculiar inversion of history known to us as the 23rd Static Parallel of 4:20 AM [year classified] And in the time frames we work in 60 years is nothing so many punchlines broken lines fishing lines broken noses so jokey and obscure rare wind captured in a jar and then released art-house innuendos among sophisticated sophomores they dangle from trees by their necks still spinning that is what happens from touching the “gold” share in my grief and risk suicide! and yep, this was meant to be a chuckler but it’s just plain stupid “when you come to face this thing you fear, let the creator guide you….” We have forgotten (the lesion and I) the COMIC (meant to say cosmic) scope of this series of exercises the fakt that a line connects me to a dot in the sky the dot is my head pouring forth armies the Spanish Armada a pale comparison to the armies and the level playing field I want to chew out of the earth I want to dislocate I and strong-arm fate give it up, sistah, I’m henceforth making demands but of course this is all patter empty a villain stands up a bald, stiff Swede among a dagger of thieves ( a dagger being a secret coven of well-meaning rascals; revolutionary, nonetheless) make a deal w/ the devil shake his hand <and say yer only kidding> we’ve erected a maypole…. like tetherballs are the reproductions countless and entrenched -- Osama’s bin noggin I saw a Mormon family in San Miguel de Allende (where a dog bit me) (where hungover, we ran with the bulls) “I wanna beat the head!” The piñata taken down among vegan pacifists Mormon avoiders of the New World Order avoiding I say perhaps confronting – there was the matter of the failed Baptism Was it our fault? Impure quests? Distractions, at least…. that television background such cold evangelism my faith a disgruntled bit of powder and again with this devilish Swede torn apart by his own dogs at last on the eve of war a stumbling over snow -- victory (?) purity…. is it still on her finger? what is this, a witch-hunt? and her tools hang from her belt (all the little chicks with the itty-bitty dicks sing Cleveland rocks, Cleveland rocks) (television daisy-cutter death- sutra 2000; Paris exposition) and waggling, my clementine falls thru and song still broken and what? a finger, pointing is it still an opportunity to extract from this is something stubborn were these intercepted shards able to tangle to take to stay withit long enough to get back hot sand intercept the ocean keeps throwing us back a certain abhorrence of nature on this first snow-struck even and I have a burnt forefinger her mom is in town they will drink liquor and smoke tobacco like Virginians I had tickets to the Messiah comps I gave them to a pair of young’uns (Mike and some junkie chick – I thought they could use the distraction) – but now at 8 o’clock Messiah time it’s me and Seinfeld That’s the fourth set of comps the Maestro has given me Of the Four Seasons, Kristen & I last thru Spring We cut out of the Copland, et al, altogether & at the last show I sat up front, barely a-stagger – all junked and puked after, of course the need to get the attendant to say, Ma’am yer husband is ill? And then from IC I puke red volumes Tonight then it’s Handel’s Messiah In the restored State Theater 7th wonder of the Empire State Excelsior! (Oh well, gonna go join the Taliban just like any other kid) <the super-soft scars> Oh the cheap tricks the tips apprehend the rest of the body James Earl Jones a select digital influence changeling, changeling, uh ah. Same grey soup Suit of four trumps and no give way the salt of the flower pouring from the liberated bloodclot of the eye (in the sky) So I edit that out upon the machine Scale back to reality – -- missing the Messiah! -- and then (plink – pipes clink time staggers) Kristen calls we are off to a movie (& the Messiah’s worth missing for a movie with you) all this all of this infused with you never the flowing hair or beautiful curvature always the staunched wound and triflexate skeletons space age epoxy to replace the bones and goofy baroque excrescence to hide the flow of blood Chief crick-in-neck wake up slowly smoke bowl see me grow my stomach has hunger and my pocket has five dollars how will I make France happen? I could have 20 grand in the bank but instead have a pittance leaking out in 30, 50 100-dollar increments marijuana cigarette plastic baggie with folded envelope What Afghani peril? I’m already contemplating a dabble and here me one day into sobriety (again) a sore test of will this China White Figgers the Chinese slavemaster Would be White, no? The Monkey I am more preoccupied by Love or the lack thereof it is all about the lack the explicit hieroglyph of all my problems it comes down to this doggerel staunch the flow of bleeding alphabet leaking but still distinct 25-dollar increments stomach cramps and the shits raw, aching need petulant desire deep want diligent manipulation use it to make it happen There’s a good reason, see, that this ain’t a fragrant recap of Jane Sez my ticket is bought Nothing is anything else there is no more this is that it’s all just a thumb in the eye So many connections I realize About to be so casually severed My interest in this place gone All my friends Many I realize Never to be seen again Moon over lake edges shelves of ice quiet heavy oxygen clear and pure the light turns the dew into drops of milk your savage milk this slowly spinning chuckler slowly vibrating my skin is electric the problem is ya feel too alive every cell waking back up shuddering the first instinct is to shut it all up it’s just so unpleasant! pour on the honey spread on the butter please pass the grits and the ammo mom a goodnight kiss a pat on the head our tuck-in ritual I’ll never forget the way she looked back before she shut the door framed in the hall’s light shouldering her Winchester sleep was never so sound what was that madness in my youth that compelled me when I was lost and wretched with lust and virginity an intoxicating buzz of possibility about me what was it though the morose questioning maudlin preoccupation exploding images the canister flipping thru space in those young days earliest memories it may seem incredible but at 5 yrs old I flew an airplane I was a frail, fragile youth a compulsive thief a vandal painfully shy and that expression has a meaning if you know the slow, tortured excesses then you will know the meaning of it the way of it shit motherfucker why do you think I act so crazy? hiding heatstroke from parents because I thought I would get in trouble for it thought maybe I got pushed off the slide I never told them after all these years I don’t know if I should Then at some age I heard this ghostly sounds LP Always impressionable it did a lot to make me terrified I would lay in bed trembling covered to the chin would quake every night and lay awake for what seemed like hours and run into my sister’s room every night this behavior stopped now that I consider it when my family returned home from abroad so there I was at 12 in 7th grade Tampa the dreamer who slept in his sister’s bed grown up on Air Force Bases and in the Italian countryside thrust into suburban setting maladjusted average student mediocre college 9 years worth of education in Tampa 6 months in D.C. at American University another 2 years in Tampa for Film school then it all becomes rather diffuse New Mexico, new York soon I will be in France and there the razors will fly…. you know the ones? They fly from my fingertips as I wave them about in the air I prepare by sitting heavily upon them they are leaden and dull by the time I’m done To complete the feat, I read from the Bible at random junctions and attempt to relate what I read to current events I have found a great many prophecies that way, minor ones personal prophesies clay mouths dribble: one honey one milk one lead they coagulate in a pointless puddle pale and pathetic a roundabout soup for lightning: a steel rod 27’ high is implanted therein the hope is that by this assemblage a pome or two may be produced they are tired of tearing at their skin the raw scratch-wounds present a delicious quandary attempt to reign it in with a straight razor a delicate charm must be projected calm, a blip in the panic of it all dangerous in heat the exploding tycoon so be careful this lightning is a dangerous tool many a burnt nub of finger will attest to that and you ask how it all comes back around to what does my journey attest? why am I here planting lightning rods in puddles producing poetry getting scorched recording results taking strange dictations too much H.P. Lovecraft in my acid daze too much too much a dramatic soul in flames with desire a panic about me the smell of sweat and chemicals fornications of hand and mind the vague leer of unfulfilled sex a stifled phantom putting in his time a trainer of monkeys and writer of manuals goofball villain of frustrated hatred for the simping minions the slow disgust which makes me feel like being ill? I can’t say why I’m here or what I’m doing these poems are all there is my work attestations of failure and some small successes definitely some excesses but the unceasing movement I have undertaken for years leading somewhere what is there of this life? friendships severed loss and birth change ….you can never go home…. some legacy then! a child a building a newsmaker John Walker Lindh a farm this is my contribution my shallow grain at least I sustain myself read someone who said they wrote poetry so they’d have something good to read Ha! Can’t quite agree all the time but in my moments of glory I break it out with the best of them Last night I had a vision of my own greatness No. Not a vision. A feeling. Laying down a line with smooth confidence A perfectly formed word the sign of absolute surety The concrete manifestation A master of his craft Almost Then this diffuse shit What to make of it How to staunch the flow Have recourse to flaming Piñatas and diadems of steel falling in slow showers upon the earth The man in the Turban from the middle east Nostradamus or some such Close it all up by saying my heart has been invaded by cataclysm? Plague and war my childhood companions the underlying object of death fondled as though it were a piece of whale bone inscribed with scrimshaw? So lovingly aware of the negation of it all…. death is always near long shadows are thin snakes the sun setting over the Gulf storks’ legs among reeds a fox in fire stolen from the moon (yes, the moon) slipping thru fluorescent grass a rat in mouth the soft cartoon squeaking out the speeches of Winston Churchill the worms stand at attention they are so surprised they act as if commanded only realizing too late what they are doing mutely they continue standing for lack of anything better to do they’ll drift off when they get bored but the point has already been made squeak like a rat and the worms will listen make sure to be eaten by a fox in fire terrorize Mike looking for this very pen how long before it is dry? this current storm elastic whirligigs of light floating in the sky our bodies are curved and our hands held high gonna pull the trigga on a hard-hittin nigga gonna make ya go figga with a lil’ gold digga can’t rap we hand-held-high’ers we just moon along and shuffle sit at keyboards and wax indignant fall to our knees as the elastic light roars say words of praise and delight smoke a butt or two then go back to bed Remembrance of an old grey head A living shuffler embracing magnets and milk bottles raven—corvus—circles black against nebulous sky is it day or is it night? the student orchestra their rehearsal space on the night of a show, empty but pensive impossibly high bridges they sway in the wind carrying clones they are albatrosses Oh for a date with destiny the path that must be hewn & cannot be followed Oval in the sky the bottle of dawn poured over the inky canvas of night Dreams therein, of bitter beers and discombobulate fornications The only time I step on the world as it was, Mississippi, 1972 Father a stern black buzzcut Young officer tilting beercans A Mother, a muddle of memories, and me and Sister And strange dislocation and uncomfortabilities arise I am not feeling it not feeling the seeing the red-cell amoeba purple blastocysts and mitochondria Slavish recourse without rhythm Luckily slant the alliterate trapeze Torn tongues talk treason, tonsures tune in turn on blow up Pure like nothing is pure Silvery globs (mercurial) liquid mirror These slingshots shooting dungballs wreak vernacular havoc upon slave-torn recompense Mastications strange chewed fragments torn and spat so vain forever commenting upon the process Then where, the Product? Holee. Less back up a second! You meet me halfway on this page Or, 100% to the left of my authority my pen scribbles invitations I bought a new blazer with my father in high school A real class coat for a schmoe like me It is too small now I am not resorting to cheap whimsy When I say it is time to run for the hills Flames desperate flames claim airborne heresy clogging on smoke for heresy some kinda cosmic manta ray planets in foam spinning upon metal chlammydia streaks in faulty abortions A vision of hell strong tea dark leaves float on the surface concrete imprint of twigs: sex dwarf citizen soldier Methought “Dwarf Citizen” a moniker of pride for oppressed dwarves A statement of rights A manifesto scrawled jingowise by a stubby forefinger (Hey, 9-fingered friend, good luck!) He’ll need it Orpheus descending Carrot dangled she called my cock a baby’s arm <ahem> No more with the quimbling A change of energy has pervaded the machinery of my living room Oh, then that’s it you were too busy to cry! On yer downtime tripping stoned intensity looking thru old photographs listening to Pavement You left with tears and so did I tearing as I tear now AND NOW I KNOW (you cry too) that strange, implacable comic hitler yore is killing me it’s not my fault again (like it was so many times) before when squawk was squat when I delighted dark uncle with mad prophecy and the comic vision of rectal fervor working themes working differences the slow remembrance the painful withdrawal it is like a stuttered jumpcut (see Easy Rider) Is that a footnote? A cowboy? No…. What is that slow drone that insect buzzing above the chainsaw mesa the stone masons creeping the fish fly thru air ugh gravitate and can’t quite hit it can’t quite bend it strange interAktions a cuticle waltz yes I know, kick it back When do you, senile, reproduce the same line unrealizing uncomprehending should I invest in that web-based interface Now is the time you cannot haggle with hell release that orphic grip she is ripe like poemgranates -granados- are ripe ripped and dripping a juicy tonic a tonic of tunis a tannic tomorry tinted theurgical candled DROP NOTE: ass assin neck-book from the frontlines of war we seemed to have eliminated the human face (as he reclines back upon his opium couch ; we have afghanistan by herb and by polvo it streams across the borders like the panicked destruction of mail is real and the fascist insertion of right-wing partyboy cum Christian Monarch heir apparent dark pilot so far from that care and the LOVE that drove me then we are recovering but how indeed, if we are tried and true News sources in deep eclipse truncations of tongue the voices are saying something about salaver spittel from mouth froth in mad berry contact beery and there it go again! dag nabbit this tongue on stilts…. a mental tongue a duck’s bill the beak of the brain the swirling beauty always beckoning back upon the queen upon Anjou upon fistfulla fruit and the gold, always, to the end she was remarkable if too tolerant What narrative is unfolding? What capitalist zygote? (meaning the infancy of dreams of avarice) For our protection the citizens will be watered 3 times a week It costs $1.50 per citizen per treatment Revenooin’ 2015 When they can find a need to repackage resell air It will happen What will also happen: Empire The merchant aristocracy Vassalitude of the masses Give me cable or give me death! Jello was right That crazy saint The paranoid Sylvester I was drunk surly and hypocritical When the promoters saw the crowd they Jacked the price The talk was good except for the Mumia crap and the Reagan-era diatribes Praising Ice-T after several instances of Kulture Kapitulation Whack shit that Ice Ghetto Capitalist Konspicuous Konsumption proof of playerhood anathema of Jello so except for that he was all right Who else stands firm among the stars? What message or wicked apartment is erected or conveyed? These saints do not leap they do not distribute grain among the suffering they are solitude and sorghum by noon all is quiet after a heavy bombardment all morning al-Qaeda operatives give up now you are dying in droves and no one will remember you Tora Bora like some kind of WWII dream wet dream for bored hawks so give up now or are there some things even more important than living? I am not Catholic I will not go to mass I will sit around all morning and make negative assertions I don’t need this news I need music and thereby a respite from the hail of fire and the gleeful calls for blood The graveyards we have filled are not our own A word of advice: you wanna save somebody, save yourself! and with highs in the 30’s we are expecting rain News from the 27th Parallel: there is a red hawk flying the crested waves spit and shine a bioluminescent blue sails have been spotted on the horizon crazy for calling the renegade soundwave oh-h sing it is the wickedest song I went to mass today and took communion mumbling my responses a heathen welcome to the commune yes I took I the Eucharist The image of Mary glowing gold against a field of blue and fluttering I took the Eucharist what I maroon I loved it all and am set for another 10 years calling for the crazy renegade soundwave sing the wickedest song Yeah I’m down with the Queen and why not this tired lil’ Protestant dynasty has stick up butt and lust for conversion call in the wanton grace the disassembled pattern chaos has risen driven sledwise on a mother’s menstrual blood surfing the red edge we find it our river Mistah Kurtz, he dead and coke-addled fuck-ups aren’t swiss madmen in bojangles rowboat, either I don’t care what they say about us anyway I don’t care about that bang! bang! knock on door knock on wood shoot six-guns and ride off philander we will serve you no more whiskey today, sir! A bumper sticker from B.F.E. New Mexico Is the Spirit of America It’s like having a tattered, worn American flag on your car why this is so I cannot say why it evokes cactus in silhouette, the desert rolling away from the side of the highway, sand blowing in slow delicate curls across the rocks, here and there a beercan; why these things are evoked is clear the sticker is from B.F.E. New Mexico: a tarantula on the highway the sky an impenetrable blue a blue you look deep into and see 1969 reflected back a red dirt road through the BLM lands Cabezon standing dominant over the skyline of resplendent mesas and inscrutable formations there are empty refrains of desire to be sung their emptiness not their flow but their impregnable truth I had a dream some kind of carnival lost objects and a shuffling about the desert is dry so is my throat my bed lies empty my heart unfortunately not so O to be a rock! some product of volcanic belch stringent is not a word that applies to nature is it? Do any words apply to the isness of the ology? Lava tubes Lumpen proles Red Clay and Red Man Brown Pride and La Raza Land Rights and disintegrating wood stake with hand-written death date poverty, art, nukes, mineral wars and rough history of conflict Genocidal memory in Kidnapped Bronze foot A statue of Hitler put up in Brooklyn We have not forgotten And though I am no longer there I am with you New Mexico dog-ear of the union forgotten fields of azure sky so beautiful as to inspire rambling pointless poets claiming citizenship by tenuous thread of four-year residence But you and I know things aren’t so easy my roots are mobile I am the only kind of airborne plant there is strange species of pig Do you remember when we walked along the walls, skipping stones on the moat? Dou you remember that legendary wish to not exist, jumping in the shrinkball until the infinite compression had been achieved? jest keep squishing down smaller and smaller End result’s always the same Wind back up standing tall above the suburbs with a new pair of golfing gloves on. swell, isn’t it? She has a head like a revolutionary war-era fortress (octagonal) and her mouth is a giant cannon the kind of American ingenuity that made US the envy of the globe sent away for all the finest craftsmen some confused timeline and terrible wasted ink like a braindrain to density stupid the arabic graffiti in chalk in the wall in the stairwell a report by a cab driver three angry young jewish students tell of some arabs destroying a campus menorah JDL honchos arrested in plot to blow up LA mosque This place has been marked for death Don’t import your fucking war! Lay down arms and carry trumpets to the gorges place them with the unused hand grenades keep that palestinian quarrel in palestine give them a state already (but progress is stilted and stuck about with knives) That’s it that’s all there is under the soft yellow glow of the nitelite on a dark overcast winter morning miles davis getting’ with it in the living-room the air is cool and smells of me ahhh now I see how it is you are all wrapped up in knots and need to kick this shit out get over it drown the monkey there is something more powerful than the green emerald ray that emanates from that mini-simian forehead— pixilated though it might be, sluggish around corners …. a fish on a line you are hooked like yer name is etched on a tombstone “Dewey defeats Truman” get it? It’s not too late Hanuman that monkey flying over the sea bouncing from the head of one sea serpent to another got one upon me <yer not gonna be alone this christmas said she> somehow, cobblestones dapples in sunlight appear What that has to do with Hanuman is beyond me But All is One, right? So blow up poems stating the obvious jump on sea serpents piss in boots wind it up slow or twist the winder like you was a sadist twistin’ a nipple you are a monkey evolved from the sea Amino soup with space particle surprise Life, you se Is all Me We give our enemies weapons to make things interesting two vats of tar have been found underneath the city a gas-manufacturing plant operated there in the 1800’s our enemies eat at us from within our enemies are the sentinels of time we give them greed, avarice, stinger missiles, vats of tar watching the movement of the pen on paper makes me nauseous But then again, it’s only 7:50 AM An expression I like but never use is see you on the other side I’m too superstitious to taunt death the expression is so noble A fatalism without resentment or optimism flying over France, 1942 see you on the other side Maybe ya will maybe ya won’t life that delicate wafer gone in a jiff leaves nothing but crumbs a little nutrition is afforded the body by one life’s sweet music before it’s all glommed into an anonymous turd Keep it rockin’ clambakers You’ll be wishin’ for a speedier resolution before it’s all over (or maybe not I just play ominous for prophetic gravity) Anyway, is there another side? Will we see there? Will “we” be at all?