mind the store

Tricks are for children:
and my own - on me -
causes me to vomit upon sight
of a butcher shop.

It's harder than you think.
Not many meat men remain:
we need more old time America.
Bring back Sam the Butcher

and I'll soil the sidewalk
like a supermodel.

Believing is too easy
(1) Hypnosis
(2) Believe
(3) Bleech!
(4) Splat!!

The mind tricks more
than state-heads
or egg-heads

and my newfound nausea is proof.

Who knows: maybe I'll
fixate on the evils of
leaf lettuce next.

Shoestring Heart

On a clear day of blue
Mestopholes taught the band to play;
barons bitched
badges stitched
and the press was bewitched
as the tune screamed into now-grayed
skies and souls without a compass.

Rocking chairs rocked
and Life rolled forward,
not as a coward,
but as an entity that knows not
what lurks around the bend,
not looking to fend
off music looking
to ravage its shoestring heart.

Life, to be sure, goes on and on.

whatever

Whatever happened to you:
the breakup
the child who's lost your way
the job you fell into
(that you can't get out of)
the empty look skyward
the hums, the ticks,
the nics, the bums
was all a long time ago.
The the mirror will show -
the only one there with you
is you.

Wisdom

She would harness the stars if she could -
hitch them to her hitching post,
just a stump in the mind of a six year old -
and marvels at dewdrops, rabbits, and buildings that
defy gravity while they climb into the clouds.

She feels unburdened by life -
by loss, expectation,
the need to attach meaning -
and embraces creatures, grotesque and fuzzy,
as the fangs they bare do not prevent her approach.

She needs not cigarettes nor lovers nor coffee, uh uh-
her security comes from being out and curious -
and runs wild through sunrays
or bounds through the snow.

a post it note from a century gone by

You can not
free yourself
from your self
without loosing your mind.

Synthetic wood

Synthetic floor and synthetic wood
seems enough to aspire to
as your self sells in eight-hour time -

by the hour, willing power,
because admist this cart of lemons,
you're the only lime.

You only hope its enough
to keep this world alive
fake bushes and squares of sod
do you keep this world alive?

Clock tick echoes in your head
robbing you of sleep instead.
Most ponder wrongs and why they've fought;
another sunrise brings you "why" / "why not?"

Ode to Antony

Antony fought like ten,
roamed the prodigal streets,
gambled his talents,
married Fadia, Antonia, Fulvia and Octavia,
and besieged Brutus for lacking
what Antony swore to his general:
loyalty.

He conquered others, moved men with speech,
but desire defeated him drop by drop,
breaking the stone that was Caesar's second,
the desire for funds, for lovemaking,
for all that feeds
the importance of a man.

Had he hung his head once,
had he not picked the best blooms,
angered those administering the nation,
would he have been the lesser, indeed,
could he have been Antony?

All Night Long

You ever thought Krispy Kreme wasn't enough? - she said,
dough pinballing off her palate,
and a trio in identical hoodies-and-jeans
(though each ensemble slightly miscolored
for a last grasp at individuality)
walked in to hear:

what she thought
what earrings say about the pussy, non-specific
what earrings say about her pussy (con-tin-yoo . . . )
what slicing a tree really thinly will get you: a napkin!
what lightning does to darken the world
what about a hard rain could depress and cleanse simultaneously
tried to riff on what made coffee glorious, but could never
get beyond the word "legal"

I saw the three shuffle out, cups cupped in palm,
looking anywhere but our table.
Two ay-am came like a wall; all words wasted in a donut shop,
on naughdehyde, beneath pink neon twisted into
the phrase, "all night long"

Two Kinds

Blunt or twisted tale tellers
both decorate my life.
But if I had to choose one way to live
I'd say straight-on causes less strife.

Then again for pain avoidance -
dodging brutal, searing blows -
twisted tales whisper much better,
straight-on every-one knows.

Straight on blasts hurt like the devil,
then you can cauterize the wound
while twisted tale rumors prevail,
making the unaware a buffoon.

If you have to choose amongst the two
(no holds barred or behind-the-back bitches),
you might want to change the peeps you keep:
leave the blowhards and ban the snitches.

Let the twosome dance together
until there's one, alone.
Before, talking smack or behind the back
Now, atop a lonely throne.

It Ain't Just A River . . .

Everyone here
has been trained to equate the smell
of blobs of buttermilk baking with
those biscuits that spring from the
cardboard roll like hostages freed.

After cooking, even the cats try to
scrounge some. The cats see the giant mutant
cats eat with happy faces; well,
they want some of that.

It's too perfect -
when you cook here,
the smell seems to waft
right up the stairs.

Now for my next invention:
a "meal-stick" that burns a biscuit scent,
to get people here
out-of-bed,
hungry,
and angry.

Empty house

The amber LED blinks. Long enough
to grab your attention, but
not to hold it.

Someday I will fix that blink.
Today, I need the company.

Self Advice

Giving up coffee ain't easy,
sure enough,
because coffee keeps me awake,
sitting in a chair and dreaming.

What am I dreaming for -
these five words spelled the end for the brewed beast,
personified so you'd think the beast is coffee,
and not me.

For myself, only a life stripped of java,
all fascinations and masturbations
wiped aside, must do.

This came to me via a dream
where a path through the jungle
was the only thing, the one
thing that could deliver
me from the ultimate dream-evil:
A humungous coffee bean, tucked
in the middle, rolling oblong toward
my head.

Wake up time.

Got more living to do, and life has
nothing to do with dreaming.
Or coffee.

Besides, smokes are expensive.

Porches and shes

Stay cool, she says,
with a smile, the crows feet extending down to the bone.

If writing is your apple, she almost winces, then go ahead
and do it, she says in a sing-song chant.

On the back porch, in a plastic chair, I wonder:
At what cost do you hold in it?

Good writing, she continues, is halfway between
hold-it-in and let-it-out

Halfway between the skids and the stars,
don't shape, don't make
and just let it flow through you.

This makes no sense at all.
So you sit, think,
and it washes you like rain.

The rider

Two thin plastic bags groan, swinging
detergent and chocolate, orange juice and Camels
off two short metal sticks.

The seat grates, grates, grates as hips rotate
and the gears grind, grind, grind:
proof that forty bucks buys a bike, but barely.

A tree stump beckons. The rider sits, and thinks,
"Metal and bone aren't destined to be together,"
but the stump. smooth, cooled by winter air, is another story.

Silhouetted, the plastics droop lower still -
damned gravity!! - as the rider stubs out a smoke,
and bicycles under a moonless sky.

Be eight, decode Hollywood

"That guy who had the lottery ticket, he's the star of this movie, right? It means that maybe his friend will get shot, but he'll never die."

- A child, while watching the movie "Treasure of the Sierra Madre"

spent poem at 3:04 a.m., no caps

Radiation from the screen throbs my head:
a sitting zombie, the woken dead-
never thought about making bread, instead
thinking about the mash-ups in my dread
pulling peter won't take this night away:
whether its pos or cause, yea or nay
just want a soothing place to stay
while i keep pouring out what i must say
if i were canadian, the next word' be "eh"
but being born in the u.s.a
dissuades examination of the now, today,
two sides decomposing 'til decay.
i suppose its always been this way
i suppose its always been this way

Summer, Friday, in the mountains

Foil folded furiously -
A pipe made of silver,
smoke brings laughter
then bubble gum lights.
And, crouched in a limo-tinted GTI,
more laughter.

"We'd be in there, too."
"But we're out here. High. Ha ha ha"
As police cuff friends who have the misfortune of place and time,
our little hideout in the driveway rocks with glee.

Freaks

Nipples through a tight tee no longer make me horny.

Am I getting old? You betcha.
The sight of the suggestive no longer suggests.
If you're going to show me something, just show it for free.

Otherwise, it's all freakshow to me.
File today's midriffs with yesterday's Wonderbras and
the rolled up tees of eons ago,
each in mothballs for a
future fashion comeback.

Calculating love and how to elicit it
seems pretty hard to do;
whereas a low-dangling cross on the chest,
a look then a look-away, then a look out of the corner of your eye,
an elbow-touch in mid-conversation (mingling words with touch),
a glance away as the other person glances at you -
breathe deeply and watch the social dance.

Freaks have a special place in my world.
Just use yourself and let me watch.

SF at night

The puzzlement sends our night into motion -
"Who the fuck is Wills?" we bellowed,
as our spittle rains on train strangers,
legs evade turnstiles,
trenchcoat tails trailing behind
being the only evidence of our petty nastiness.

"Wills, my ass", we say,
even though Wills will surely fire us
because the dough lies in a lump on the boards
and we are on the street,
letting skoal fall from our lips into teapots,
dropping a quarter into a newspaper stand
then taking eight,
wadding them up by the water
to hurl at one another, thus
distracting us from our hacky-sack circle.
The sun indulges, staying low like an accomplice,
and we are gone by the four a.m. police sweep,
bewitched by authority / enticed by a score.

Enlightenment

Baby oil now suggests

only one thing: a liquid

made for the tiny.

Honorarium

"I'm warm", shivers Randy
with arms jammed into his palm.
He sips, gulps, breathes in the vapor
the truth in his eyes tells all.

i am thinking of Adam,
both eyes conveying the cancer within -
even the glassy orb -
as his head, his torso, buckshot knees, and feet
dragged years across a hardwood floor.

Can i think of Lupe,
the most aware mofo I'd ever blow,
tongue cradling an LSD tab,
a shooting star in a picture, framed?

Must ends meet, ropes tied just so?
It warms me thinking how
they do and they don't.
If lives synched differently,
that tab takes Randy away
that youth helps Adam
evades bullets and tumors
but what of Lupe, who had
walked his own tight-rope
like a boy in his backyard?

That warmth ebbs as deep-gut fear
creeps in on the same soleless feet
that took him from the street.
If life leaves Lupe,
faced and emaciated before two score,
then what can it hold for me?

Trinkets

Footsteps crushed the dew as we walked to the Farmer's Market.
Chipmunks spun away from our path; dogs just sniffed.
We had nothing to offer but rectangular paper,
colored like money,
but the trinkets!!
Sausages for dogs
and angry ladies selling burritos in the mist.
Could the sausages also fortify the food wraps?
Moving on:
crystals, and dream-catch feathers, and
epoxied seeds roasted to perfection,
and overplumped breads with underplumped sellers,
augmented by push-thermoses left coffeeless
by the groupies, who bought every last homemade cinammon roll,
the one thing that coffee might have washed down.
After an hour, when gaunt breadman walked over to sausage lady,
to compare home cooking,
it was time to walk home,
pockets bare for the animals on the path
save the ubiquitous smell of dog sausage
everywhere.

The Upside of Nepotism / White House Dreams

I hope to be able

to provide friends with paychecks

legitimately