green dot goes bang

over on skullbolt, he sez
sometimes he forgets to look up
and look around to see things poetically
or maybe not forgets but just is unable...
or maybe i'm just projecting my lack of poetics
on what he was saying. but if he said that and meant
it in the way i think he did, i can relate

in other words, poetry's gone underground.
a refugee from pragmatism. everything's a struggle
because ...i don't know why.


earlier tonite when we were talking bout things
bandy made it clear to me again how she thought
it was so wrong for me to be with 2ybf. young .
enough to be my son. in fact in 2 years i'll be twice
his age. tg it didn't come to that. i dunno if i could
have taken society's scorn. so i told her about you
and how you're age appropriate and chemically bonding
besides bein musical and just all around great.
she was all, at least he's your age, you needed someone
your age , you're better than that she reiterated.
better than....what? you dn't like thinking of me as a cradle
robber and that's the only way you could think of me
the cold shoulders we got, he and i. the disbelief
and how it infected everything we did, every benchmark
we tried to celebrate. from every angle, from each
stare, each story, each boytoy gigilo reference. as if i were
able to afford such a present. as if the only way i could
hold his love was to buy it. and in the end, that became
the reality. he stayed because he was too lazy to move on.
cuz it was easier to fuck me for a five minutes and say
i love you
than to find his own place, support his own self, fully, without
a net. which btw, it appears was always there waiting for him
when the one i was ripped. as if we were a delusion only i ws in.
i never thought of him that way. i believed the things he said to me
cuz that's what i do when i love someone. belief. wish it to be so.


zo, i esk the doctorrrr
but bandy, what if i'd told you
that he was my age, toothless, a harley rider
who parked his bike in my living room.
you'd be a bad friend if you didn't bitchslap me
to mendicino. she was all like no
it's ok if someone that age does that b.c.
they've lived, they've had experience.
i had a bf who did that once. of course i was 19.

i told her yeah
so did i , his name was (insert ex's name here)

that shut her up. made her think. a bit. i said
girl, if i EVER tell you something like that
you better just take a gun and shoot & burn me cuz
the mad cow's taken over, and that stuff's contagious


later i tell you how everyone thinks i've
got the biker girl look.
"not me" you say. "i don't see a biker girl.
i see you" with a start i realize this is true
and fall in love with you just a little more.

there was this competitive
tension thru torsion in each of the times
they got together. some proof of intelligence
perhaps or to see who could fling
the handful furthest. sampling became
the way things moved into a seabed.
a coral reef grown in a decameter
and time a thing of the past.


the smell of sperm and suicide in the bathroom.
stretch marks on the demarcation of cloth and skin.


they were always trying to see beyond
what was right in front of them. surfaces.
they wanted to be the alien, not just observe it.

when something was trashed, they would spread
their chemicals blobby bobby style .
they were something to pedal get some air
going then leak into the body invisible as vibrato.


this might be their stories. but we'll never be sure.









































































































































have a soda on me
sprinkle liberally with crackers
then lick them from the inside of my navel
that resting place of beginning that tied off
cut roothole that entry into cove
of below me on the genealogy tree.

notice how you can't get the crumbs tiny
as the netherlands from the sworls
which lead with brain pan paths inside.
this is my defense, this is your challenge.

last nite the "cute one" according to ruth
the cute one said "oh yeah, you can smoke inside
in nevada. in deed, you can take your gun
inside bars , just lay them on the counter
when you walk in. but that's disappearing"
i thought of how maybe there were other places to go
how i don't have to be cored in one place , limestone
unmined, maybe there are other places to live
besides the inside of this screen.
















but i like it here. guns scare me.









































































































































































































crank it up
crank it down
intensity goes both ways
in dream land . office machines
on vacation push faxes off
printers, give wedgies to the pencil
sharpener who's just tryin to make
time with the clock. likes the way that second
hand moves. the lights keep asking everyone
to pull this dimmer. no one speaks to whiteout
who was not invited. machines. private partay.
take your chemicals and scoot over to the supply
closet little artifact
. this pisses off toner
who makes a hasty exit from printer's bowels
joins in solidarity with whiteout
refusing to entertain paper because
it's not
chemical
nor machine.



















































































































"it's name, probably, meant happiness"





















































at mile marker 420, she lit the pipe.
passed it. celebratory rituals for things of import.
feed the gods. so- mom wouldn't let her drive but
it's all good. she rather be high . plenty of time
for the highway if that asteroid isn't coming.
in four years. always it's the official story
versus folklore. but we got binoculars too
she reasons. we have ways of making you think.
so if four years is all we have that's longer
than tomorrow. smoke smells like two zigzags.
manyana we will look for oil. her private smile
waxes a twenty eight day cycle across the face.
it isn't black or blue or white or all of these.
covered in skin. reflected in the shiny surface
of the laptop with the back light off
all those worlds waiting to be lit up , engaged, open.

























































































































anchor. cross. receptivity. hope.
there's all these catholicisms in their symbols
born of persecution. the hidden hip hops of the mideval crowd.
premedeval , roman empire repeating itself
for the first time. before history was erased and replaced
with the scapegoat o godkillers. the impetus
toward annhilation encoded into communication
so that each word became another razor
for a cell to slide across her membrane.
the secret path of the pigslopper's fondest desire
cradled in the bosom of a slope recognised
as soon as he moved from animal to animus to ammunition
aimed at whatever father figure god was pissed off at
at the time. the stuck pattern of symbolism
because someone wanted to say high to a neighbor
in ways other than sniffable.
















*


























































































































soooo no matter how the pen wants to retreat from
matters of the soul, sold out in newage coinage
along comes the corporate giant mitsubishi to TM the sucker.








just can't get away from divine power today
the trinity bearing down in blonde eyed aryan NORDIC
symmetry. i don't long for those days anymore they
were a thing, it happened. long and slow birth on thin air
mattress. everything falls toward entropy.the one
who would capture it all is the one doomed to grieve.
why can't you just be



where you are?



















then later they would all be without her
on the road. in the red mitsubishi wagon. conestoga
ketchup and chili for lunch. mountains waving
in the distance. singing that old folk song that no one
learns anymore, and not because it's retro
no, it's beyond the need for irony
based in catholic, bloody and useless.
explanatory in a semiotic grand mal. the convalescence
all quiet, a wombstate of non understandment
where meaning coaleseces around a snippet of smile
a feeling of positive reinforcement
therefore fleeting
therefore not as memorial as the stick
pin in your finger. remembering things of not
not of yes.































but seriously. she never proofs before hitting send.
that button's so capricious.































































man i gotta go pee.

check this out
the book i picked up to read
had a short story of gogol's wife
made of rubber who spoke
at the time of my reading
only once, to the biographer and her words were
i have to poo poo.
synch.
























































































































i opened my eyes
and looked towards
your head, cradled between
thighs covered in fishnet
saw you coveting the mandorla
tounge at the table
like a christ with almonds
for eyes.
i remembered how you said
words and their effects
how mysticism battles with the feel
of your mouth and the shaved
areas of meaning to be found
in the origami of my cunt how
you thought it would save you.










































































































































































"give me love give me light give me peace on earth
give me hope help me cope with this heavy load"
even george was lonely. always seeking that union
with the untouchable. become his lord
this symbol is not recognised at "peace" by the dictionary
currently in use. it means o lord
won't u buy me
a mercedes benz.

songs come quickly now, snippets of name that tune
thown in the pot with whole choruses of moonlight.
tonites a party nite. in this town we have parade
not unlike a mardi gras. sin city junior trying to copy
momma orleans. who grabbed her schtick from brazil
where thongs have marched along the coast centuries
in the telling. the ripe curve of young plums, perfectly tanned
mouthfuls of mullatto mango to the tangos
plucked in the air between alleyways filled with beads
because confetti is too hard to wear.



















































































































































































did juno that asteroids have names?
it's lurking behind the sun. not this one, the one
with a name. the unnameable.
the one who might or might
not exist the one lurching drunkenly
towards an impact that seems to promise
the cessation of thinking too much.


i may have told this story before .
feel free to stop now if you've heard it.

















it was during the time of your blondenesses
a bold ride down hanley in the five speed
between a couple of affairs that happened later
but to , not between , each other.

she says mom did you know there's this group
that says an asteroid is due to collide with the earth
in ten years? mom says no, i hadn't heard that end
of the world story. but
mom!
she says do you realize how young i'll be then
and it isn't fair i'll never have even lived
she went on the pluperfect future tense, all negative
i won't have
had a boyfriend or fallen in love or kissed or anything
i won't have been a mother or an artist i won't
have even lived.
so she turned herself into a bird
and took off for the rest of her life.

arch

six floors below
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on the shore, a couple
with their first born, toddling.
they stand between him and the deep sea.
the sea that would swallow him as fast
as he'll grow, in
retrospect. he takes three
steps and falls
into the thin layer of water that slides
up the beach after the waves break.
gets up, waddles tilting toward sandwater
then falls again. foward this time.
kicks his feet. rolls over a bit of flotsam
on the surf. gets up and does it all again.





ode to sake
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the water's running hot
from the faucet into the ice bucket
making your molecules dance.
a wellspring a yosemite a joshua light

vera sez you
taste like lighter
fluid but i think you're
essence of fire

room temp, on the front
of my tounge ,
water, waiting
for the swallow to burn.



at the beach with rick and crow.


he's on the bed, with guitar in hand.
waves rolling fifty feet away
peace kind of sliding in like a fog hiss

algebra of passion simplifies itself as the guitar moves
into the bathroom where the acoustics are better
and you don't get the buffet feedback from the tiki bar

we talk about last loves, lost love, what it takes to hate
or believe or want. i'm forty eight. almost fifty. i feel
like i want to be fifteen again and sit on top
of your open mind in the half light of a half moon
dim gray lights reflecting off the monolithic resorts, hilton
hyatt, raddisson full balconies, o0r just wide enough
for doggie style. this morning joe peeked

into the open window with his nail gun and his morning
cup of coffee. the harsh punch of whining metal into metal.
woke my ass up, yours too, naked over to the window
to pull the drapes. they muffle the high freqs enough for her
to go back and finish the dram of the dream. joe toes

it back to work. but now it's time for a swim. in.
salt water and skim board sacraments.





strange places my pussy's been sleeping
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
on top of the washer
in the laptop computer bag
the insides of my black capris
across jessica's neck, late at night
under the house, with tarantulas and sand
in your lap, what are you doing in my chair
between our bodies ourselves and rumi
on the black bookshelf
the warped and breaking windowsill
with the paisley scarf from paris
as her blanket her copper eyes sound
like hope and peace on earth her yellow
stripes inside the tree limb as a
lampshade beside the broken screen
that leads to another kind of bedroom
vast as the savannahs of old

pull

when i felt this before
i thought it was more
or less the feeling
that you get

and just like before
i'll open the door
as wide as i can
let's get wet

never say i love you easily
it seems to fall like ashes from the sea
a smoking cigarette and me
and you & love makes too

the real fuckin thing
coming in on
top of it
double tracking ocean waves

a sometime surprse
that look in your eyes
does it match mine
what will it become

never say i love you easily
it falls like ashes from the sea
a smoking cigarette and me
and you & love makes too

bday beach

at the beach with rick and crow.


he's on the bed, with guitar in hand.
waves rolling fifty feet away
peace kind of sliding in like a fog hiss

algebra of passion simplifies itself as the guitar moves
into the bathroom where the acoustics are better
and you don't get the buffet feedback from the tiki bar

we talk about last loves, lost love, what it takes to hate
or believe or want. i'm forty eight. almost fifty. i feel
like i want to be fifteen again and sit on top
of your open mind in the half light of a half moon
dim gray lights reflecting off the monolithic resorts, hilton
hyatt, raddisson full balconies, o0r just wide enough
for doggie style. this morning joe peeked

into the open window with his nail gun and his morning
cup of coffee. the harsh punch of whining metal into metal.
woke my ass up, yours too, naked over to the window
to pull the drapes. they muffle the high freqs enough for her
to go back and finish the dram of the dream. joe toes

it back to work. but now it's time for a swim. in.
salt water and skim board sacraments.

after bday poem

the one who would be sober
says the one who denied the cling
good job.


!




lol.

sake. i'm official older now. it's the next day. we wrote
a song tonite. i call it a silly love song but i don't know
i dunno. i dunno. love? what's that ache i can live without.

yeah.


tears at the leaving
even before it dis integrates.


heh. hermitage on my horizon. i feel the insides of ownership
and strange vibrations moving away from pulsar explosions.
the air conditioning magically working against the sound of
sea and the smell of music. i'm giong to erase this because
the blank white is all this needs.don't jinx it? fuck jinxing.
it is what it isn't.

i guess it's ok to take your time.

i need to write a poem about the waves and surfing.
i always was a surfer girl.





















































*()(&*&&&






















on the long shore the waves move in a lateral line
breaking with the current , like cigarettes rolling themselves
i have a skim board. a suit that fits. the water's not too
cold. the sky is grim but the ocean rolls a split leaf
turning yellow. how long till the temp climbs
below your level of tolerance? i dunno but hey
i'm here, now.

we go over the waves, beyond the small breakers
looking for a breather. the riff plays a little gnarly.
randomness snarking into sets of swells that threaten & tease.

i make a comment about the way mother's so sneaky
lure you out then suddenly you're fightin off sharks
and trying to flag down the coast guard helicopter.

this pisses her off. she sends a slam my way and i try
to avoid it but she grabs the board and turns me over
pulls my pants down and smacks my ass. bitch.

after i recover she throws another my way
as series of three with nasty undercurrents.
i struggle to breathe, go under the first
and she slaps me again. get up, a nother one's
on it's way, perfect ride into the shore but no
i want to be out in the water, past the breakers so i
push on, and under. damn. she pushes her tounge
into my nose. i'm panting. third one now,
i ask, so it's surf or die?
she nods yes, i dive again, she
pulls the board up
but i don't let go so i'm underside
one more time eating sand
with my ass.
i made it past though, with the board.
i think it made her feel bad
cuz she let me rest a while
then gave me the sweetest ride on a soft breaker
all the way into shore. all the way in.
they scored it a ten, after i turned the skim
minnowy and heading back out to sea.

om

on the lanai
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the sun put out its fire
now it's ashes and wan

i look for the dot but it's missing,undoing
all that was worked for. today
there were suits in the plant
looking us over, now
the owner's dead. long live

the queen. anyway, the metal
band next door shakes the lizard
from the screen. curvy silhouette
in the last of the light.

a face lit by the white glow
of the page with
no end seen
from the street.

the lampost turns on.
the bass lingers.
to the west time
tests the wind.


unsweepable
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i take a broom to half corners, bricks
blackened by moss and effluence.
between the landfill and the water treatment
facility, a bike path winds beside a stream
connects to the bay. i've been feeling bottled in
chaneled, chained to an inland.

my sister looked like carly simon in the seventies.
she's dead like i wish the moons in your eyes were.
tomorrow would be her birthday. john lennon's too.
i imagine a lot of deaths could be commemorated
on any day. why not begin then?





*






he feels like a loser. opens the window to let in a dark
shadow. a tv show with vampires bites his neck
and he's down on the count with all the lights off.
he's choking on maybes, chewing on yesterdays.
he calls, what she's doing is sublime summertime.
she tells him about her vendetta.
how the guns are loaded and aimed.
how she points them at various windows as the targets
emerge. he wonders how he got her number.
the tv turns black and he falls into not again.





*





she's on the chat room again. the old standby.
six conversations is slowing her down and either the keypad
is fucked or the new digs at her old haunt totally need
some major interface renewal ware. glitchy is how her
answers look . runs with toothpicks is back
and hotublvr peeks in. she always blows them off.
in the worst way. the phone rings. she knows who it is.
he's going to make her think about love and things
she's trying to fog out, forget. they say it happens. shit,
she means. she answers. they talk. she puts him on hold by telling him every story. his lights
are off. his room is dark.




****



there's some place she'd rather
not be. yr smile makes me ahhh
asks about romance. she takes
a needle and pokes him in the eye.
he's alright tho. there's still lust
to consider. there's no blood .







*()_)(787








she's got the hands free plugged in.
he sounds sad. she remembers what that was
like, falling out of fragments, how glass
got shadey and she watched as it flowed from one sharp
edge to the other. then she remembers what an ex
friend told her. "take your meds." she commands him.
he agrees. they remember how to make a smile.
the lights come up. there's a guitar in a corner.
there's a car. there's other places to go. they go.
the broom waits.



futon frame
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


sans mattress, it sits on the side of the road
to my place. behind the decaying fences of the track
housing beside the trailer park. mobile home facility.
manufactured housing park. wooden arms, bent black
metal bars. just like the way we left yours that night,
heavy fucking in the venetian blinded windows.
revenge of the dorks. you wanted to be a porn star
notorious decline of the twenty first century.
me a hammock for your bliss. why not i said?
you're young enough for anything.
i wasn't. sorry. but this frame, splayed
like the money shot of the girl on the pole i think
you put it here. a post it note on the one mowed yard
along this bucolic route. yeah it reminds me
as if i could forget your aluminum arms.

nimbus tragedies

what a great band name, she muttered
coming down from the bleachers
with tommy and lee.

1. the lights were out.
2. the game was on a different night
3. illegal specimens were involved.

auras lit up the area directly to the left
of where they stood, silhouetted
by cyan & tangerine. he got hungry

and left without the rest of us. a 420
moment objectified by payment
calculus and terror. of being. alone. a.


then she turned the translator on. the babel
fish if you please. they all had a swig
of nostalgia. the good old days aged well

like sharp wine and cumcumber cheese.
munchies. yummmm. a sense of playfullness
returned on this side of the mountain. it's all

downhill don't you see jill shouted from punultimate
peak. they stopped and looked. yeah. she's right
a mutual reconnaisance revealed the lay of the land.

down hill. gravity gives us /me her hand. no
not you. the onces becoming a time. you still have
things to climb. me, i'm takin it on the declension.

bobbing and weaving at 5 mph

all this space in the ocean and you have to be a
los angeles class submarine surfacing
on my japanese fishing boat. i wonder
what to call that?
fate? time to die? mother ocean's sick
sense of humour? anyway, i'm destroyed now. hope
you're happy in your sappy
new relationslip. i told my girl to call
you for a ride but she says you're not
up that late anymore. i'm all like
why not? "he's got a girlfriend. he's sleeping
with her" the periscope pushed through balsa
wood and i'm drowning. seven months of rise time
cuddling sluice through me
toxi flash flood release . "oh yeh. i
forgot. i was chopped
liver. "


so let's examine the sick side of desire
today. i wanted you
to change, for me. you wanted me
to change, for you. i couldn't get
younger, tho i tried. you couldn't get mature,
and you tried. so you say.
heh, look at me still expecting
that the lessons which worked on me
could work on you. not everyone likes vanilla.

we can't be friends cuz i wont let you. still want
you. it's why i let you use me
so long.
kleenexesque sheaves pulled from my box
till they was gone. all gone. nothing
left for your mucous swaddle.

you climb into my box. let your girl move in
reincarnate us
with the actors in the right roles this time.





song like love comes on the ipod. all akimbo
like a sputter--i said we were already past
and i meant it. then solomon birch.
how is it all our songs are still around?
this music a consistent reincarnation.
but all your debts are pain. paid. i typed. i got you
with slut rap and you wanted the whole movie.
turned into beasties dancing with hemp
on the rafters. i can steal from ourselves
now cuz i lived it. called it art.


permancence an illusion. however red line! let me spell
like i can. don't stop the spew with
your reminders of rulez. it's about breaking them.
crash the bus.paint something beautiful
black. how will your photon shine out of that?
the rhythm guitar is you, the painful out of tune lead
guitar punches at words
that came from hiding what you would do to me.
making me believe in something or
was that someone, again.

my test case for the male/ found lacking.
ozel told me i expect too much. i guess
that's my curse. mediocrity? that's
just for living.
can you do better?
hole in my core
fill it.

tomorrow

they opened the doors to the outer banks
and fresh pineapple floated in. she was rapturous
in her floaty blue dress and tie dye heels. there was

dominations and combinations of goth inspired tea.
over the audiophilatio speakers, and under the red line,
lemmings dotted the air like golden leaves setting fire

to mountains. she's been crying a bit, sometimes in the ten
and under line at the store, reading about him on a cover
and the life he was having had without her. but she always

knew it would come. it was the we'll always be friends line
he'd checked out of that was the heartbreak of it.
they looked alike, a lot. that's what made them the perfect

couple till that bitch came along, with her
money and adoptions, all ready to be family
all ready to snap him up for the baby daddy
while she plays mother dearest. her blue eyes

were contacts they said in the tabs. her liposuction lips.
just jealous. just girl next door sour tampons. her blue
eyes tho, misted in the checkout. they changed places

like a pirouette, just for a moment. they made a movie
of it, after the kids were grown, when it didn't matter
anymore. the world was always ending in those days.

break pome

but what about now/ overcast jet
water wick into cigarette butt
new lined papers getting a 30% reduction
well. that didn't make sense. cars cross the tracks
jumping jacks on a rattle. a while ago a train
crossed over, bells of saint doubting thomas.

thomas york works afternoons in anger management.
his wife's somewhere in penn state, making do on snow and croissants.
his shirts are often pink. he speaks with a clipped mouth
as if used to being background noise. i think of radiohead

and from there to you who are abscesses in today.
plural cuz i've lived a few times.

standstill fog, brackish

ahead of me, the ocean and sky are one
behind me, heavy metal backlight,
the sound of slapping
as if waves move against the boat i've left behind

air becomes sold, solid, the back door trojan
i vibrate against, ever more slowly.
are you laughing now? i miss my a's and q's
victim to the needles in the cat. i miss

a lost of things: lists, the will to make them, popup
advisors shakin me down. threes and the way they snicker.
the holes in my head expand in inverse proportion
to the duties i fulfill. is it the season change? have

we figured that stuff out yet? triangular balloon.
pneumatic lunatic. door closed on meaning-
tip of tale caught and cut off. then the punchline
which concerned purpose and the office parks of gnats.

but you seemed to be laughing. laughed. till i told you so/s became the dish of the day.why didn't you tell me\
so, mutherfucker? ah but what did you know then? suckling

pig with big hair, big dreams, big wampum. you eye
the spit with glee, eat another apple. you like to cut
into the middle of a carefully constructed market survey
and mow the ministry down. it comes back you know.
but i'd join you if i weren't so sharpless. or if you ever
gave me that knife i axed you for.


the cycle is on. nothing stays the same. i began with a mist
i'll end with a brick. in between, it's holding on
to things for a while. taste soot mingling on what
i call a tongue. think of steak. swallow ash.