oh!

Oh blackened pit of despair!
Let me take you by the handlebars.
Let me fluff for you the pillow. My guts
are fruit punch,
Hi-C fucked open
at two ends
by metal.
It is a good day, the sun
appallingly bright and the sky--
OK, the sky
is hazy. The hydrocarbons
are having a field day, even if
it's the white ribbon kind
that even the fat kid can win.
No prize
for you, blackened pit! Today the trees
are weeping black
lullabies and my sadness
shines like a far boat
on the bay.

recommendations for 30 yrs

live life
like a razorblade. become
beautiful
whenever possible.
encourage
light, spread and
take
sips, sometimes
gulps, sometimes
the whole damn
enchilada all
at once. yours. make
every effort to
surpass
the common verity. read
as much as
is humanly possible,
then ever
so slightly
more. and maybe most
importantly never
forget to
rock,
rock and love,
love and rock and
more of that,
onward, double-bass drums,
howling,
the night.

lupo rima

What we gave
to the wolf
can never be recovered. Even
the strongest
of similes will eventually
leave us, black
as a pocket or
bottled
like the sky. So
don't. I am here
to give you
the rafters. I am
the wolf
with the butterfly's heart.

not finished yet but still

How many more sad
poems than happy ones!
It's all right.
Why borrow another's
broken razor
when what's really wanted
is one's own private hospital
for lost birds.
We all want to be
Frank O'Hara but
it simply isn't practical.
For example,
the single size of pants.
There is so much
to suffer, ice cream
to spill and everywhere
we walk may be
the 101 in rush hour:
to the bathroom at night or
to the kitchen to say,
I need you.

adjective as a noun

hard as an eskimo pie.
hard as as a sheep-shackle.
strong as a bathtub.
strong as a corkboard.
strong as a lipstick.
black as a shoelace.
black as a dollar.
black as a susan b. anthony dollar.
black as a plate.
black as a theory.
theoretical like a beer glass.
theoretical like iggy pop.
hard as crutches.
theoretical as birds' wings.
black as a pocket.
strong as a pocket.
strong as a tub.
bottled like the sky.

two from the iggster

"All I liked to do was walk around the streets with a heart full of napalm. I always though 'Heart Full of Soul' was a good song so I thought, What's my heart full of?
I decided it was basically full of napalm."

"What happened was by the time I finished Raw Power, my standards were different than other people's. That's the only way I can put it. I wanted the music to come out of the speakers and just grab you by the throat and just knock your head against the wall and just basically kill you."

what else are you taking with you? (old)

Kat grabbed a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table, lit one, and lay back upon the couch. She put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, savoring the acrid taste. She heard the crinkle of the tobacco burning, watched the thin ember ring work its way up the cigarette as it turned white paper to ash. She counted the rings on the stem of the cigarette, the tiny striated lines marking the paper that held the tobacco. How many rings per drag, per breath, she wondered. She inhaled and watched the rings disintegrate into ashes. The rings of a tree, she thought, rings of the cigarette that mark time’s passage, our life together. This ring for when I met you. This one for we first slept together, and in gratitude you told me that you loved me. Here for your birthday, when we drank too much tequila and I broke all the plates.

alipio

certainly he
can take it,
man the beseiged,
alipio americanus,
chicagoan he who
takes it every night on
3am sidewalks.
the mechanism
is one handed,
american industriousness,
with one movement
the blade, but
the sentiment to use it seems
a most unamerican undertaking,
by this i mean one
must act unencumbered
by forethought, repercussion, as
if one were already
dead. no one
ever stops at 3am, and
thus it is
a wash, a thousand
knives into the eyes
of a thousand draining
shadows,
bootheels and
bootheels' echoes soon
will all just sink
away.

friday

here
my heart
is nothing, her
forehead, tears, her
handkerchief, if
only i had
loved you, streetlights, why
all i see are things
that lie
behind us, baby, i
would have
been brighter, better,
another man
entirely.

not quite weller

hello i am a nothing salesman
i sit alone and wait for endings
once a year i suffer the old folk
it's always good to know where you're heading

that's entertainment
that's entertainment

at age twelve i was a brilliant young lightbulb
by eighteen a pock-faced nightmare
thirty-five and now i know nothing
it's just the wattage that's what i'm saying

that's entertainment
that's entertainment

treatment

The camera begins on a pane of glass, looking from the inside out, and a wet hail weakly taps the window. Outside can be seen a dour winter, snow on the ground, a northern mountain town. Cars move slowly down the streets, early day, everything gray in the pale gray light. In fact it is Christmas.

As the camera pulls back into the room, turns, we can see we are in a bedroom, a man's room, nothing on walls, wooden floor, the kind that echoes too loudly beneath one's heels in the still of night. A pile of clothes in the corner, work boots, a bed and a cluttered bureau. Upon it change, scraps of paper, receipts pulled crumpled out of pockets, a lamp and several mostly-empty beer bottles.

A man sits in the bed fully clothed. Jacket and boots on, waiting. He holds his ski cap in his hands, looks out the window. Lucas Raley.

the kid

Another man was coming up from the jakes and they met halfway on the narrow planks. The man before him swayed slightly. His wet hatbrim fell to his shoulders save in the front where it was pinned back. He held a bottle loosely in one hand. You better get out of my way, he said.

The kid wasnt going to do that and he saw no use discussing it. He kicked the man in the jaw. The man went down and got up again. He said: I'm goin to kill you.

-- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

fourth dirty monday

Fourth dirty monday.
washed up and old
before the washbowl
the dull razor pulls,

catches,

at last acquiesces
and cuts.

You've always stuck by me,
my skin,
today as I again
abrade you,

let that not go unthought of.

let it not go unsaid

what

if we
were the only
three things
in the world.

you,
me
and the reflection of me
at 6 am,
the fourth dirty monday.

how to survive in this world and not even know it

[fragment]

When she touched me
I couldn't stand it,
as if missing layers of skin,
where had I put them,
I love you
she said, she kissed me, I said,
Ow.

Outside the mist lay over the city,
the mist always lay over the city,

Charles, she said
where are you going

In the park I saw a girl stand up
and her bottom held the imprint
of her seat,

In certain ways
even a picnic table
can want you,

Charles,
in certain ways
you are the only thing I know.

am I waking up at all today?

Not sure it fits
on a postcard
i'm
not sure sentiment
is worth one fucking stamp,
when a younger man i
was no more happy though
once
i watched the pink broad
sky,
alone in a far-off sand
and surrounded
by the shadows of coyotes, one
gets weak with linebreak, one doesn't
have the heart
to end it, as if believing perhaps
one line might finally solve it, as if
there might ever be
one final line.