magical reality bending technique

say for instance
the entire eastern seaboard
falls off the face of the earth
taking the whole of virginia with it.
your sodium uptake
will be the last thing on your mind
even with your ocd.

and south carolina, she'll take the beating
like a slave with no vocal cords
which is less than you'll scream
while the slide's happening. it's
gonna be that fast.

or say for instance the truth
is you're caught on the phone
with real obligations that look a lot
like the last hallmark card you lived inside.
until the coffee spill stained it
too blurry to tell the kids from the catacombs.

meanwhile the baby's looking for a bottle
the mama's doin the monthly
small hysterics winding up
 for  hurricane season.

you call and i think of not answering
but the moon's in opposition to the sun
  so i'll be cautious. invite you
to eat the dinner no one else did.
you can share it with the dog.

by the way, congrats on breaking
the olive barrier. i like the purple
  probation  officer fantasy. it's a bit
higher class than the stripper
 of your youth. yeah,  
good luck with that.


gotta tell ya anonymous
is not doing well on the interblogs.
 after our experiment in anarchy
failed i'm surprised i still have a sweet spot
for you. googleTM however does not.
 the bots don't care but you humans might
 wanna get a fake skin so you don't get
sent to the spam line and picked off
 like collateral drive-bys






*)












btw, thanks for all the fish ;)

thunderhead row

finally the rains beginn
right o n
memorial day weekend coming up

was gonna do a poem about that
at the open mic but i found i had none
for fallen service men or really for the fallen
 at all. we're all dyng has pretty much been
my motto for years now. they're the lucky ones
is my newer way of putting it. not the dying
but the deadness. slings and arrows considered.
suffering. etc.

so the usual paranoia about loving living
arises. you disappear into your other life
and i'm left wondering why you don't text
creating drama over uncertainty. luckily
you're not integrated overmuch into my life
yet so i can do the shrug thing and half believe it.

i  believe the second tornando spawner of the season
has swept you into a ditch on the side of the road

i believe when you went for cigs and called me
but i didn't answer you went back to where you were
and walked into a raid.

i believe your ex didn't pay the phone again
and left you with no communications

i make up ten scenarios, each of them more twisted
and they're all spinning in the aether , but only one occurred.

i'm going to bed. the box isn't opening. my castle
outfit is good to go, i'll be wearing it next time.

hope you're still in a position to take me dancing
becuase that's about the only thing i trust these days.

outside

  gramma's home. i can open
her door now, so i go ahead and open
it and walk in but i gotta wait
 for her to finish talkin to mama and jake
  gramma! i say.. then she walks in so
i shut the door.  wanna see pictures
but she pick me up and say hugs
she  hugs too long and  pat me   say i gotta go
 with jake.
 but pictures! i sit by the puter she say no,
 she in  the bathroom and take off
her work clothes. help you! i take a bottle down
help you! she put the square
 under her arms so i raise  my arm  and
she put it on me. it's wet. smells funny. she rubs
a br.ush on her eyes. say close your eyes
rubs it on me. it tickles but it's soft
brings out the lip stuff  say hold on, i make a kiss
  say go look in the mirror.
smiley girl there . i shy with her . gramma put
my hair up in two parts. say that's so cool.
i look in the mirror. see that shy girl with banana ears
gramma say. so pretty  go show mama.. mama
 want a picture so i pull em out. i don't like the way it feels
gramma has  a dress. i don't have no clothes i
don't like the way they feels.   i know
where my shoes are. the pink ones. i like
they way they feel. makeup. shoes. ready for outside.

prairie dogging

up for air
i check the news
because something must be
happening in the last
year of the mayan long calendar.
just mayhem as usual, most of it
played out on in the halls of justice
an oxymoronic idea these days.

a woman shoots a gun in her own home
as a warning shot to  a man on whom
 an injunction has been served
to cease and desist who has been choking her
on this day so instead of killing him
in front of his kids she scares him off. two
years later she gets 21 years in prison

another woman runs over an indian motel manager
with his own van, in a the parking lot of an industrial
warehouse facility down the street from the strip club
to where he'd taken her after insisting they go out
for a drink just down the street from the motel
where she worked as a maid and he lived with his family
and kills him. two months later she gets five years.
thousands, say his daughter, gather in the man's village in india
the nine he supports there are penniless,so many
respected  him back home but here he's just another corpse
that could have been a deserving douche
or a robbery gone wrong.

they make us buy this insurance to cover medical expenses
if we get in a car accident.  it's become a cash cow for ambulance
chasing chiropractors and lawyers. the docs bill the insurance
exhorbitantly, the lawyers .go after the pain and sufferring aspect
so they changed who can get care. only emergencies. only if your life
is threatened. all this means is that amulance companies are now
going to get to cash in but chiropractors are out. lawyers, however
will still be needed to poke holes in the gen pop to see how much
more money can be squeezed through our skin .


friday i cleaned all day.
 today i poke my head outside
my room.  my house looks like it did
after i didn't clean for a month.  i started
 to throw away
the trash on the counters,
 but stopped myself. asked her
to do it instead. i don't know
 if it's the mess in the house
or the mess in my head
 that keeps from writing
but i really need some air.








































()*





at the beach she's frightened-
 waves, salt, so much water
it moves like the living. she hates
the plastic tube around her waist
has one of those "why are you
torturing the poor child" moments
the kind you want to stop
when you're on the outside of them.
when she stomps out of the water
with you behind her
she  drops it to the ground
then steps out of it.
the wind catches it, takes it
toward the dunes. she runs
after it, and you after her. as if
you were her grandfather instead
of some random
guy i met online
with whom i  am
 currently exploring
all the ways we can
become each other's next
ex. among other things.
from the water, i watch you disappear
down the beach,
 chasing  the wind's hoop
and a little girl who will
 remember, at least, this first chase..
 i turn and dive into shallow
gulf waters at the mouth of the bay
looking for treasures made of sand.

a sweet ordinary dog

once upon a time i thought i was a story teller but i've fallen off that wagon at the crossroads a couple times now.  at least. worker b. get up, get a job, do the job, come home, eat. raise a family between nine to fives. i had energy once, some sort of vague enthusiasm for the intricacies of the work but it was not supposed to be my life. this is how i feel but it's not how i live. i live the work. it sucks me dry every day, so that i just want to collapse on the bed, release the water in my ankles, get rid of gravity for a while. upright is uptight, . smoke a li'l sum sum, hanging in the hammock, monkey branched. remember the weekend. you and i dance  and sex and sleep . outside the waves   kept the clocks wound round a profound anarchy bounded and collared and tied to the bed post at half past a live band's shell. so story telling. that's for front porches, white wicker rocking chairs, slat backed cane seated rockers, front porch stair s . only the rich have the leisure, hasn't it always been that way? compared to china, i am rich. so. stop whining.either tell the story or don't. part of my writer;s block is due to me feeling like a thief. taking someone else's experience and running with it. always thru a filter of me me me. isn't there enough of that in the cacophony of the internets? what exactly do i add to the commentary. and then i think, well, who gives a fuck. i hear this story and i want to get inside the woman's circumstance, the tragic flaw that got her convicted, perhaps turn the story  into a purely fictional account where she kills the motherfucker and gets off entirely on this ridiculous stand your ground law. only in florida. let me repeat. only in florida, where detritus runs god's waiting room for your gramma and gramps and hericlitus opens the church doors every day, twice on sundays. they kkknow this girl, she been down at the laundrymat with her daughter yellin on the phone at him again. trying to get him to see right , trying to get him to do the right thing, like he said he would . he always promising , always saying i'm sorry, i'm sorry but it gets old . specially when he hits me. it comes on so sudden, like a jaguar it's so quick , from out of the dark, his beautiful hands the ones he holds me with he holds me like he, he say he love me, so yeah i believe him when he says he's sorry , his strong fingers so gentle on my skin how can they be this fist that knocks me back into the wall, sets my head ringing. his kids are yelling daddy don't, dont, n i see them pulling on his legs so i get my knee up in there and when he's doubled over i run to the garage where i know i got a gun to get this sonofbitch outta my house! i take the gun iback iin there and point at the ceiling , without a word i  shoot. then i aim it at him and say git! and he gits. he he, he gits indeed, draggin the boys behind him. shoulda killed him. then they wouldn't have that domestic battery on me from when i tried to make it with him again. fucking hands . those hands, mmmmm girl. cain't believe the jury convicted me. ain't that standing my ground? law say i gotta run? that man'll come after me. with those hands. i ain't no murderer, but  this is MY house. he need to keep his goddam hands offa it. she shakes her head after.  the sentence. but it's not bowed . she's looking at the judge, thinking of  appeal. bail. he's out there, too. with those hands. she doesn't know how lost she can be.

what a shot

retreating every nite
into this room, weary
of living, soldering ants
with a blowtorch, scrimshaw
with a chisel. it wears on me.

yesterday a stitchy moon
kept me home at nite
skipped the lights in ybor
and the shoe licker to lick

the blues in clues on your skin.
sonnets of let me in. you leave
one thread unknotted, within
from without , whole sheaves

unravel, like the credit card
come due or the paypal lockout
weariness in the sun burnt hard
the next straw becomes the knockout

summer shift

in paradise by may

summer has set in. joy spends all her time

in the house, centrally air conditioned while

expectancy retreats full bore into apathy

and closes the door. because 

hey, it's HOT out there. 

i have not been writing much really

 once an artist

is content, there's no necessity

to produce art

or would that be no muse?

perhaps in my case. i've spouted

about love for so long

to be in the thick of it

without naming it--eluding

  benediction in favor

of mystery, in favor of a fan

blade swishing thru air--

leaves me wordless, all my pomes

coming in softly unspoken falling

on  with a blessed shurroosh on the roof..

love requires. it does. to hold it

to give it to take it

it requires my daughter speaks

on the phone to her baby daddy

the girl is sick he says, the girl

may need to go to the doctor.

the mother is lost. she can't 

take care of her baby

 but daddy can

she's the weekend 

parent going to school

for a career and baby 

is in his crack stained hands.

 .

but he's doing better.

drama free with a new girlfriend

and a playmate for the child.

but where is my mommy

she must be thinking

where is the one who sings me

to sleep at night/

and i ache for them both

unable to be the one

who wrests the future

from the twists which desire

screws into it.

&*&*&*&

delight she said, she wants

to try it.  in the morning

  she pulls into her parking space

remembers how his lips

pace the night, jaguars

 with five speeds, ebony

 sleek,   standing waves

padding softly through the dark

mine fields, shifting into turbo

explode out of the gate.

when she pieces

 herself together again

 she opens several doors

 goes to work.