The Redbook
From Plastic Tub
Collection of poetry by Steven Adkins (2002-2003)
[Part 1]
What’s the Great American Story? Not wanting to be where you’re at
Born on the cusp of the analog age’s Swift demise Or at least into a world of endings (this play) drops like slow turds and each one a mortifying echo a little less savage, perhaps? plod on in a merciless refrain compelled to tell little daffodil stories and crocodile pete poems written in wikid collab (orations) suffering from the disease of the Blind King the bubonic bungalow (which is a bunghole) (which is a firecastle) green, sanctified plate tectonics of mechanized color ….it drifts….
a needle stick in the Age of Aquarius
swift tournaments of demise
you see,
it’s set up like this
flagrant and fragrant
wisps of willow….
My apartment is two equal-sized
rooms
at one end of one is the kitchenette
at one end of the other, the bathroom
the roof leaks and in the summer
it roasts
the carpet is a travesty, the ceiling
tiles marked with brown stains
the drippings of rain through rusted
struts
tar pebbles and pigeon shit mixed
in for good measure
My rear windows look onto the backside of a rehab center it was erected there soon after I got out of mine and began smoking pot again
I lasted three months But I am still dry I’ve done coke and xtacy once But I am still dry I am on smack as I write But I am still dry
That rehab center is just waiting there, tapping its’ foot and glaring across folded arms
the little dog she and I have had as a companion for over 5 years paces nervously about….
mike, my houseguest also moves hither and yon
“Are you all right?” he asks “Yeah” “Oh….you look all stressed out and worried” “Nah, I’m just….writing”
Reaching back in time thru
a thirty-year apocalypse
whisperers in the ship
every city speaking somehow
in carbuncular tongues
dying, comatose brains
shouldn’t be aware
the tv glares monotonous
o’er the top
or behind
the perambulant in layers
all stressed out
even though the plodding
turd bucket has rolled
over into a bassoon of flowers
some kind of golden urn sexless sitting astraddle the sky waiting in a round ball tummy without walls an infant forms it is the world soft and misshapen like a baby’s head ….or an egg yolk Where is the golden paradrop? The hominid strut How long before that came along?
ANGY HYMN TO MY 10,000 DEMONS
Poet’s first preenings
this perfect onanism (this onanistic fervor)
at eighteen or twenty I visited a graveyard and sat on a dark tomb red-eyed from weariness lit candles and wrote poem fragments with Pete Carver
This forced conclave The hushed expectancy Anticipation was its’ own reward
but I never produced no poems from these summits I don’t work in flares (yet I do)
“bearded tress” Pete grabbed the line and added a cuticle moon
I resented those bearded trees cuz I had not yet heard the call just half-assed opaque moons, vaguely purple over Orlando
That perfect planetarium my sweet terrarium a humidor for life painted stars on the dome offers the illusion of heaven and the promise of hope
it has a leaky roof, now ceiling tiles mottled brown and grey and that graveyard tombstone shit was years ago
Gay Encounters
One time in Guatemala I went to see a prostitute I had money in my pocket and valium in my blood at a nickel a piece, wouldn’t you?
needless to say I was drunk
I am not a pro, I splay what I have on the scratchy blanket and she takes it all
She hikes her skirt but not until she’s pulled me out and slipped on a nightcap I hadn’t brought one
I got hard enough at first but it didn’t have the vigor
she got up and left me there the picture of dejection but she came back
I will never forget the sight of her Her silhouette in the door A trio of young cohorts laughing at my impotence
Their gawking at least mercifully short: I needed to pee
I started in one corner and worked my way to the bed to show I wasn’t such a bad sport left it dry
I met this drunk Guatemalan on the street and chatted him up came on hard inquired if cock was his thing grabbed his crotch
if it were only the fear that the sight of my penis might shake him out of his drunken stupor I would have taken him back to my room but I am a coward and that sore on his lip was disgusting
coda
I did get my willy sucked on this trip a French-Canadian Zen gardener Invited him to plant it in my ass but alas, he was impotent gave great head, though wanted to turn on the light to watch me cum fine I said but he blanched the light did it I suppose I had to whack it out myself
I had by this time sucked and been sucked by two other men Twice each, even
With Edward we were alone he dropped to his knees for a tease while my mistress changed out of her coat
another time he fed me wine and we got to talking we exchanged blows without fruition I asked him if he wanted to plow me…. did I want him too? question, alas, unanswered
a flash of naked white ass as the roommate brings in the telephone
Even before this there was my dark uncle a Dr. Sax of sorts, but with a guitar In the context of a threesome we exchanged a few sucks But we were more intent on Brenda She was good for it Come to think of it, she was our third both times When Jason came in he saw us two smoking on the couch Went in for a try himself at a beckoning sound
My escapades with women are more of the same I’ve had a few threesomes but this other frontier…. is it the sex I crave or the yearning itself?
this probably doesn’t get yer rox off it may not be much in the way of unbridled confession but it’s poetry
absolutely dreadful poetry
but poetry
just renewed my membership in
the anti-hominid league
and just as aliens are angels
angels are aliens
woman combustication a wombat
buddha a fat splat choklit
a choking combat demeanour
thing thug glug jug of clear spirit
‘gainst snow
let it blow let it blow let it blow
a fauve tumbling of fact the
convenient theory
wild gnashing teeth
the acute edge of a turnip
just riding my spine
an electric arcsaw across the sky
it is a gate to the West
The bow in the mirror
is an eyetooth
w/which width witch (she getting a rolla)
ditch witch slumpen drunken
strumpet slut
she reeks of Ripple tiny ripples
in mud puddle face down momma
been a longa humpucker
I protest
you come back
you didn’t come back
Blowback in the cracked mirror
Der Golem reflected a million limbs
shooting the moon stolen from that fat green fuck that spectre of limburger a face so cold and green it glows
I get spam
it clogs my arteries
processed e-meat
for fat bankers ploys
the evil desperate
evil because they are
annoying
win lose indifferent
the bankers bank
the coppers cop
the pyramid prevails
and so I fry spam in the crenulations of my jigsaw
____ 9.10.01 appx. 10 pm
Hiccups – the giveaway for the nonevent allinall a tiring experience trite the body trite the functions
which mean everything associated
from the shit to gold
the alembic journey
the rarification of the worm
he bleeds in tiny wombs
that lick like felt-tipped tongues incongruous in the mist the ravens the moonbeam the unicorn the gold toad a-glitter in the glare of the glam globe it is a slowly melting earth under a brown chemical haze oily the humid sky deposits cancer dust storms scorpions the size of leopards the horizon is a wall of flame small phalli stand silhouette eiffel-like girders crossed and barking sliblets of mournful oil clumped and lippling sliding in upon itself a woomp suck the earth clean the atmosphere has vanished a spit-take a fast bobble the egg cracks and out pops a turtle the egg is the world and the turtle is dead ____
The side of the world exploded Debris is falling like leaflets I hear ambulances The northern tower seems to be on fire
the tops of the towers were obscured by the smoke
the creeping horror
no lovecraftian slithering
but tangible stomach
flailing falling bodies
flames
and for every time I’ve written gleefully of the
apocalypse
is a time I recoiled from the expected
reality
“fuck the hovercrafts, this is the future”
Muhammad Atta
25 grand to fly a missile
Slim Whitman style with infinite
(smallness)
we work on the Napoleonic Code, now
Vengeance, a lust for blood a grimy fist clenching a sword
we need no shields they are immaterial and fly thru hot steel chomping just as hot steel flies: a slowly moving mote across a field of curiously suspended particles a steady straight line
Everyone struggles with the immensity of
this horror
grappling within the lymph, the follicle
the gland, the mitochondria
Inside the skin
It’s hard not to take that personally Visceral skin rinse blasted from pores like tears vomit forth from eyes Cleansing tears pushing away coke cans and jingo
turkey bones
The result a clarity at times A limpid reflection at others quivering and uncertain hateful and vengeful mindless of what it is you really want Which is Peace Sweet like a honeydew melon is sweet perfect
An excuse for a fascist insertion
My heart ached so much I didn’t notice my
ass was bleeding
King and queen of the rubble yard
soft children rising
naked and balloon-like
the sun a dwindling orb
a besmirched yolk
dropped onto the frying sky
What terrible infidels are we to
deserve the nerve gas?
anthrax?
“Hope we can continue just a little while longer.” J. Morrison
Me too, Jimbo!
The new Rome the post-hermeneutic Sodom flags ripping the wind into a hawk’s shriek stone pillars, lead, sulphur frankincense, crushed dinosaur bone Ahh these values are less real than jihad and holy vengeance Even the Church of Satan is calling for blood!
Inspect, operate, dissect <vermin, dogmeat, pus> nonsense, jingo the lot of it
On this day it was revealed to me
that Osama bin Laden is God
and a woman
both at the same time
(leading a carcass into the tissue digester)
There is a past
but there is no future
this scorched earth where our hearts – two drunken warlords parade each other’s soldiers thru the filth in the streets
and the inside of my mouth tastes like chemicals applied to metal
It hasn’t stopped raining for days
and finally, my ceiling has collapsed
I can look into the corner and see the sky
Slowly I creep back into addiction Soft balls of light dancing in nauseating unison
And everywhere talk of war and fear New era of disease and discomfort and no dissent
Just jingo and the lockstep The groupthink terror and the drummers beat as one
The war drummers the sick cavalcade who will promote but never enlist
Guarding the skies of Texas is as close as these warriors will ever get to the wars they promote
Open-ended and ill-defined, angry images to become objects of hatred and icons of vengeance
All around us are causes like so many cast away dollar store dishrags
We poke out our eyes and wonder where it all comes from These discombobulate mutterings of mullahs and malcontents, murderers, martyrs….
Of course it troubles me
My tears now, docile, entrenched the lines of many frowns the scrabbling holes of soldiers
And we, two warlords Our feud quiet amidst the roar of greater wars Of dying empires of ideas bloated
All unfair all material witnesses gone….
Mike will go to jail because of a liar and a judge that will refuse to believe a man accused may be innocent
I will only be saved by love in the midst of it all
But that love is gone baby A tigress has eaten all the ferns and puked up the stalks
A husk like a heart that has been peeled
Boiled potatoes, rheumatism, ice cream and sperm, dog-eared copies of Das Kapital used as kindling….
Where am I going with this one? I can’t bring it all back
We, too, are beveled and charred No commerce will again take place between us
Redolent around him half-remembered dreams
They hang in the air heavy
like cinnamon or musk
Sweet tears fall into dust Magnified from the infinite small exploding into ancient smells of a wealth recovered forever tainted with the grease of thieves
How could he have lost it? What tragic distraction Distracted the watchmen?
His paper heart dipped in vinegar yet still stinks of vomit and undisclosed betrayals
Redolent around him the musty loss he carried it for years in a wet paper bag and was surprised when the bottom fell thru somewhere near the tracks
A gift left for bums Who will mock it and throw it on the fire he didn’t deserve it anyway, they’d say And they’d be right
gonna go meditate
in an upstate kuti
gonna go shoot my sks 500 times
“Falling thru cracks
Falling thru sky
Sunbeams in the form
of opaque yellow triangles
Shards of glass exploding up the concrete
each splinter a drop of blood
seeping into the earth
A giant sump of benzene
And potato chips
Underneath the asphalt
The perilous foundations
of treasured buildings
A gift of pancakes Inscribed w/a prophetic vision of doom What would you do if they showed you the door?”
Apuleius you comical fuck!
Thanks for showing me the Way….
Isis.
Who would have thought it?
My problem….
one of them anyway
is that my religious impulses
fluxuate wildly between idolatry
and mysticism
and more problematic why have
them at all?
my cross may be rosy
but it’s a cross after all
that these dusky stalwarts have taken my beloved Queen’s crescent and turned it into a scythe….it angers me
may you open your eyes to our sufferings however deserved our memory is dim in Mary but at least we have her unveiled we don’t beat your image and imprison ourselves in reckless denial may our devotions tonight be a small voice like a gentle breeze among the reeds a plaintive whisper for peace
we parade each other’s wounds
thru the street
our hearts two drunken warlords
you look at me across the dustcloud my mouth like chemicals applied to metal
<our soldiers gaze at one another they have hunger in their lanky arms akimbo and their time-stretched shadows>
I miss you so much, but calmly
I am tired
Servants of Dionysus
I set up the targets. Warm up at 85 yards
When I get to the target I’ve just shot at I haven’t hit once
Then I realize I’ve set my sight for 850 yards Not 85
So I get back and realign Decide to plink the bucket on the desk (from my place of work coincidentally) I score perfect – well, all my bullets have pierced it – Then from the desk to the target then back to 85 yards I fire off about 90 rounds in an hour and a half
John is my supervisor at work I am on his farm My relationship is that of friend and somewhat bedeviled underling But that is John. Dr. Marmora Fulbright scholar Masseuse Shoemaker Farmer. Vineyards that after lunch we tend. Layering. We take the vines of healthy plants and bury them in a small trench 8” deep 1’ foot long as wide as the pick Then the end tied to the wire and ribboned
Later I retire to a cabin in the woods An Amish shed really, but decorated with items as adorable as they are practical
I tend a fire and think about Isis and Dionysus. When I was on that tractor I was his servant I made the work holy
In the cabin I jerk off into my sleeping bag and listen to the sounds of night….the wind, strangle cracklings, a dog barks Once in a while the dim hum of a jet A strange throbbing pattern which may be a bassline The Redneck, I’d assumed
Now it’s me in the cabin. After a baffling loss of a pack of matches which I hunted for high and low for over an hour. Gone baffling. Wood spirits I thought
The wind, Lyle Lovett gospel on Sunday, gunshots in the distance This is my church Nature, Music, Struggle
I am not the wounded party
A stag, stylized ink on glass
Curving like a crescent moon
Its bottom tip producing
Tiny bulbs of blood
WHAT mystery
there-IN?
this golden trunklet
BANAL and lowing the COW of the night stuck on the moon
and darkness lowered, let’s sleep
We partake of each other
cake portions squared-off and
hunkering
hungering
the distant samurai golden
what? rainbows trout speckles of light speckled trout
thumping and sirens my aural hygiene clogged vassals these ears in need of a good candling
One candle ate the other candel and the bull is the father of the serpent and the serpent is the father of the bull
the nuclear suitcase
a delicate state of paranoia sharp as knives as gilded as a lily in perfect unison with the Sea Accord of ‘47 a harmony veiled upon the sound of clinking salt rocks distilled from air poured into the wounds this salt nuclear Fear, anxious lonely random accident, please not
the mass death or the epidemic give me the benefit of a long prosperous
so it comes down to that anonymous please votive devotion a fair exchange gimme shelter, soteria, shekels n’solace I’ll be humble tonsure myself
golden trinkets of doom and remembrance note to self: destroy this notebook
a basket of snakes in a fortress of sieves softly sifting sulphurous stones gold from within balls of mud
self-destruction high 12 with a backup dancer or a security guard caught by chance in a collapsing tower
a secluded stormcloud
a tempest in a teapot
the glass globe of his combat helmet
fish swim by his eyes
the water a perfect fit
lay down with this imperfect beast draw blood no draw breath then collapse in a shambles of heavy guitar riffs and thund’rous drums god, it is only a rock sock it covers the foot parked in the tunnel of his throat
grey listless day
last workday before the freedom’s ring
and she called me today soon after noon to cause me to wonder a pre-emptive strike? to see if my friend had filed a report on some painful thing? and feeling it out, finding nothing, she is mute
SUNday is not
she has not been in for hours
methinks some lie afoot
VURT lying on the floor a soft thermodynamic an exchange none too gentle stepping through the doorz that are opened smashed, interrogated, blissful
We cannot win this war Within ourselves This hysterical barking
of polystyrene heads polystyrene molded like wooden shrunken heads
A radio peeps out from the past there is no hyperkinetic changeup
the kids don’t dance they circle like sharks their cheekbones cleave thru the cigarette smoke
a waft, here and there, of vapor rub
there is more menace than abandon but nonetheless, the event must be reckoned a success
the slime on the walls the plywood disaster waiting to happen the swift coagulant
she is angry, always and I am desperate like a thief is desperate
and the moment now and again when the sun sees fit to poke out from beyond the clouds and illumine my room Autumnal wan but noble a hard edge to the patterns of fingerprint and dirt on my window
this slim reminder of life outside keeping the plants alive – dismal dismal fodder what I leave in my wake; ANTI-MIDAS I turn GOLD into SHIT! dripping like specialty shop gold candles thru my blood-stained digits onto the tarmac of my brain cooled by wind and speckles of high mountain rain a camera panning away in the Andes, quickly then, from a TURD!! gargantuan twins kining on the globe a 3D rendering, in ink manifest slowly the elongation of desire it forms a tusk a sleeper image of a captain circumnavigates the globe the salt will never forget heart-rendered absolved somehow the shadows in the wall form the shape of a priest – no – with the mitre he must be a bishop! they are handing out slips of forgetfulness
relapse….relapse….relapse it calls across the mud hollow all narcoleptic thick sweaty air warmth, them
ah, the wishful thinking! the snow thumps into earth soon the air cold woodsmoke, even, upon occasion Never never never I do not get a visit
I have put all my eggs in one basket I gave it all up for love but love gave up on me our allies hung on the frontlines dying in prison slow hurtling swift myrtle If I know Tampa, I’ll be back Cigar City w/trilingual fortitude cobbled streets that useta ring with the clang of horseshoes caught steel of trolley track Smells of wood and yella rice murmurs votive thru incendiary cracks ashen light on the solitude of 7th quiet humid haloes of 7th this was when, ’87? It was an entirely different world then Most of the shops were empty Those that weren’t were….gritty Punks & hippies Squats abounded This was when the El Goya was the only club around the flood was yet to come
the 90’s came swept away the Emerald Ybor Pizza and Subs Grotty places with dark unused corners Mildewy smells graffiti…. Before new tile and neon….
Sweet Charity – ah there was a joint Not one but 2 Santeria shops the one on the west end survived a while is it still there?
That nebulous zone north of Ybor that oozes unexpectedly back into Tampa it seems to exist independently Poor wooden homes about mysterious groves which seem deep but where could the deepness come from; on a map there’s only a grid
Tampa is a shifting tectonic definition is hazy vast and lazy and sparsely governed it is a very oneiric place I can hardly wait
My memories of you, Florida
are bathed in warmth
and scented vaguely with
oleander, citrus, cut grass….
there is a cigarette-filled
beer bottle or two, yes,
but mainly I think of swaying trees
silhouetted against a deep blue sky
or, westerly, an impossible profuseness
of clouds – but there they were:
One could see clear to Hawaii
reflections of gold upon the clouds
sunlight beamed back up from a smiling Pacific
Pacific. Peaceful. And in Deland, I lived on Sans Souci drive Too bad I got the notion, that futile, naked gesture…. Frozen into a lifelong pose A dapper nose A change of clothes A cold imp following a Gemini shackle Cold tackler melting in action under the illumined wing of the sun stuffed but incontinent Jealous of yet in contempt Can it yet be tempted to behead this glamorous oxymoron (which is a bad way of saying that beards, mandatory, win out over no beards, mandatory)
A mountainous terrain the khyber pass more than an excuse to mime a monocle and adopt a phony Edwardian tongue this is no imperial joke
somehow, decadent lobbing from afar the delicious platitudes of the overfed
we send them bombs of choklit piñatas that plunk down all delicate crak wide reveal treats
sweet tooths.
[section omitted]
We know there is no paradise for murderers Absolution under the veil that is a cascade a veil so to speak over a rocky abutment which is the brow of her perfect beauty vaguely “of the east”
but only at this angle
She speaks gracefully and drops healing
Water from her hand;
there is a slice of melon of honey the darkness the crescent glistens in the dew this reign of tears the collision of fruit held in the hand and water over the face causes futile explosions fluttering limpid in idle waves upon the floor
love that mysterious crocodile
a floodlit balloon
upon a pterodactyl stage
rampaging and serious
gamboling and heffalumping
flying off motorcycles
in a desperate grab for the wrong side of the edge
ONTO the floor!
gwa-
….gridle
wha
Pumpkin pie in a diner full of tiles
and each one a tiny guard
placed at the holes to the core of her heart
spiny forested leprous Louisiana stinking of crocagators
and I made those holes sloshing thru the swamp
knee-deep
falling thru the decay reaching for a cuticle moon cleft finger slipping grasp a fork in the treeline
bearded trees looking on
as I fall
I don’t need her in the same way
but I can’t take the cold indifference
shut out and then the “oh really”
upon complaint
the exaggerated artifice
the surprise gestures that
say “you expect too much”
it’s as if the lone ranger looking toward tonto under the hail of flaming arrows says: “We gotta get outta here!” and tonto, placid, says: (he has known this all along) “Whaddaya mean we, white man?”
The film stops on her hand as she leaves the counter the sound of wind and ships rigging a distant emptiness of sky dissolves into green fields Badalametti-type score There in the grass A chipped wooden statue here a burn, there a split garlands, candles halves of oranges, incensed cones A cup of water A seed or two That wooden statue is me in the position the film caught me in when you left unsurprised, grim, relieved, desolate je sui desolé – I’m sorry and I am not motivated by guitar weeping nor Frail memory tears don’t come I tell ya I’ve got no more right
I have abandoned my chips No more time outs or explanations I can't hold it in my hands and examine it She moves The tube that connected our heads is severed at her end She is free of it it leads from me to…. nowhere An appendage waggling in space that is a glum reminder A thousand frogs may fall from the sky the intelligent bald man may utter truth but don't let those regularities stifle the drunken meander or the gee, golly whiz-bang you are off to see your family anyhoo sister, crazy Negro woman ex-husband a Baptist Preacher boyfriend a loving thug crackers all and salted earth
Mum what to make of her sad life childhood full of war and Victorian discipline The child out of wedlock and flight into Empire Husband in Vietnam a 22-year commitment to country -- then death Two drug-addled kids and the man in her life…. You may call it Oedipal if you need to I can't avoid that pointing Finger As much as the finger is a wag non-malicious but wrong I simply do not like the fellow
Have no more time for drunken agape Fat lettering, dying modernist architecture, global war. This is my world, So be it. I can see why she left me!
POST SCRIPT
It is the pen that rules the hand the flow of its' ink the crucial tongue Merciful, I've stumbled into Fortune
When doppelgangers meet
magic pen floweth like the River of Forgetfulness incessant necessary in tha bizniss tha long stork winding become forgetful of prophecy throw of the yoke of self-consciousness throw in a scrap of tin for the war effort false girlies wax chimpin’ dining on the sideways smear of light hard-edged and uninspired
there are no little explosions – a bad thing in this case those little explosions moments of joy or creative bliss to punctuate the dull drone As if we are still sloughing off a Decade 10 full years of anxiety and abuse she a foreign thing so….
gone
there is pain so I indulge myself in the wicked pleasures of pimpery and
drug peddlin’
ha. please take that meta 4 ickly
nothing but a coffee who must be stopped look @ the carnage
the thin smoke
semi-opaque and tan eyes like molded plastic moving on a slow wheel in front of a pediform scrim A sky-blue box and the rays of hope
Amen Ra – it is a candle in a tincup
I deserve a lashing for my poor
behavior @ the puppetbox
Surly and discontent
spread malicious vibes of solitude
for a manual that has become
a meaningless haven
but still a haven
A man imagines himself one way
Is seen entirely different by another
In most men in most cases
This is the plainest of Truths
One thinks of Kansas
Fields of Wheat
Honest pursuits traded with
leathery hands
A scarf blown in the wind
Sideways & ethereal
Knock-kneed
(The Poet has a tendency to catalog)
What are my characteristic misspellings
the nuclear suture to the can of worms
let’s hope that couplet’s wings are clipped the heavenward march of bugbears Wanton, in the wind appointments made, appointments broken
eh, whaddufuck? he shrugs his ragged shoulders his Abe Lincoln coat
Hell-Fire 2000 the Arabs are right We are decadent and depraved A pal, Young Lord, offered to Pimp his ole lady for 100 bucks
A golden Hottie, she Aside from Brutality all is game Ass Shaved beauty Mouth
This was all brought on By my simple “I need to get laid, desperately.” He doesn’t need the money— we hang out on his sailboat— it’s about the power She gets off fucking an unknown— blindfolded as she’ll be I get laid He gets to tell her ex post facto He’s pimped her
So much for honest pursuits….
We are hungry ghosts of time
Amblers of space
turning ceaseless orbits
around one another
the orbit gone wide
I Pluto-like
a vast distance
cold black oblongs
smeared in the rainbow of bending starlight
space rubble
illumined like plankton on fire
the undersides of the sphere heavy
and damp today
It never, ever drifts back close dismal satellite blinking set course for nowhere
Adam 12 and Pogo strips a penis and a brown lump of moldable clay (don’t bother looking)
Then, there, at the edge of things We realize we’re really in the thick of things Skulls and heads mostly
Pretty then, in demeanour wickedness implies girth wine and a seat in Parliament!
On a machine in Hal’s Deli: CROWLEY’S MILK
Rocked in gorgeous heffalump
We are eating spinach from tins
Disaster food
One became the uneasy friend of another that larger, southern state lush and fundamental
this continent is sewn with blood Its’ furrows a brow in grief the war was everything, but civil!
she was staring at me
a jaw as square as cinderblock
a patina of grease on her maw
she tossed a chicken bone across
her shoulder and giggled
the sun broke thru the clouds,
coincidentally
27 minutes later we were engaged in connubial bliss
I played the Sun She played the Moon A delightful curvature of numbers, fish and interlocking fingers
If I now enter the River of Lethe then let me hold on to this inscription of memory and laughter forever
Hats?!
I got hats
Participles
Flashes of Insight
Shard-like triangles of thought
Pushing forward like fast mountains
And that little turdling smelling peachy rubetine and mellow
Somehow any minute now seems like forever and the cold banal plate of my existence is a dishrag soiled and grey
the air is cool and damp it is 3 o’clock the air is grey it is really 1:11 and the air is bright I imagine it otherwise, nonetheless
No dox in hand
Trip to Gotham an impenetrable wound
I would like to see comrades
Bust out in jigs upon concrete
but the deep hollow cough
and the rickets inhibit me
anthrax spores thick in the air like balls of snow
let’s hope not
the image of carslik roads glisnin’
a chord struck
a casual hum
an inflection brings him to the point of dissolution
I’ve tried been patient Waited for the stumbling fragile word to come it didn’t
So now, when I raise myself up like a digital falcon sharp as 12 knives to cut you out of me
What selfishness I will exhibit as always petty to the end after all what are 8 years?
and when these bleeding rednecks
pick themselves up after the blast
there ain’t gonna be no he’ll to pay
there’s just gonna be hell
She doesn’t want anything
that’s just it
(except maybe for me to go away)
all the experience accumulated
burn it all
that curious personal weather we each have our own Michelle (that is a her-a-cane bearing down on Cuba)
in common cartoon panels black clouds overhead indicate dark moods a connection ‘twixt the body and barometer
a big wide view of the earth as if from a plane or an animator’s pen bright hues and sharp edges
It is a memory a lovely old hymn and a strange variety of cat
a subcutaneous roar:
an insistent train making its way thru town
a few blocks away
the news is always bad
