All HALLOWS EVE (For the Fleet of the Damned)

I met a girl who sang the blues

and then she walked off

the very face of the Earth.

So good old boys,

drink your whiskey and be wry,

see through your red-shift in thine eye,

the blue-shift in the American pie in the sky,

your lie is no pie, no water and no rye,

and no life is for no foolin'

in the world your rulin', the orb your ruinin'.

Because death is a happily dead peasant

I know, there is nothing more unpleasant.

No bigger lie, bigger no reason

than to keep ourselves

from just being amusin'

at the electro-chemical,

metaphysical union,

this revolutionary season.

It's all just layers

and layers

inside

one

big

onion

leading

to a mattress

sale on your tv,

and underneath there's a pearl

in a movie about a whale

and an old pirate guy with TB,

and from there he sailed

the underworld surfer's beliefs

and found the secret in his tea,

that the bones be they

and they be she,

and God's Black Madonna,

is the greatest

revenge

in never-ending

human history.

Seventy Two Hours as a Social Darwinist (To the Sound of Cyberpunk We Go)

Spent seventy two hours as a social Darwinist 

Gotta get ahead of you (Seventy two hours) 

Seventy two hours as a Social Darwinist 

Gotta get an edge over the loss, 

vengeance is hip you know 

Gotta get a handle on the guilt I miss 

gotta get a multiple set a girlies to kiss 

Spent seventy two hours as a social Darwinist 

Gotta get over you (seventy two, seventy two, seventy two hours) 

Seventy two fucking shitty hours as a Social Darwinist 

As you tried to convince me of your Know Nothing bliss, 

I let my eyes look away, if for just a minute (Seventy two, seventy two seventy two) 

Being anti-social ain`t darlin little Darwin 

You won`t like the feeling, your empty hand will be shaking (seventy two, seventy two) 

Won`t like the smell as the whole world is quaking (seventy two, seventy two seventy seventy seventy two) 

(Refrain) 

On the third day I flew across the sky 

rebuilt the temple of love, I did pray 

Sure, I fell, makin` a hell of her heaven, 

and man O man let the bunker busters fly 

I ran for cover, O sweet Sweet Twenty Three Skidoo

(Twenty three, twenty three twenty three skidoo) 

By the sixty-ninth hour as a social Darwinist 

I ran for cover, looking for the way you look at me, 

hoping and I`m praying to look up to you. 

(Jaggedy Guitar riffs here) 

Three more hours as a social Darwinist, 

for just three days I forgot about you (seventy two, O, seventy two, yeah) 

Seventy two hours of living from your hand to my fist 

Separate but equal, sure, gotta get a step on you. 

Treated every living thing like my private little toy 

Dreamin of the cosmos now, when I was just a boy (Darwinist) 

Wore your love like a glove but there was no joy (Darwinist) 

Gotta get around these blank walls, gotta get over you (Darwinist) 

Being anti-social ain`t darlin little Darwin

Being anti-social ain`t darlin little Darwin

Being anti-social ain`t darlin little Darwin

Cat and Andrew's Ring (And a Wedding That Never Happened)

Your ground is weeping

The humid air soaks

Wrinkles into all my

Categorization. I am

The air, ever changing

And it’s easy to see

How my inability

To be ever present

On the earth

Is enough to send

You beneath the surface.

He was a fair-faced man

With a smooth baby face

And a soft tone of mouth

That would easily shatter

But he could shatter none.

They bought a wedding ring

And experienced love

Well before the mildew

Of everyday things

Could wear the heat away

She would talk talk talk

About the little things

I couldn’t see, or believe

My wind heart hardened

Into storm clouds

Into a rain of gloomy

Terror in a private sky.

Mostly I was jealous

But realistic, knowing

Love is a survival game

Old as the dirt and sun

And if for just a while

I consider the trees

As I blow through in ill ease

Of temperature and pain

Let me for just this once

See the majesty

In the impermanent

Pebbles, and in tenderness

For just this one day

Of weather, remain.

ANOTHER PARKING LOT FOR WORDS (STARBUCKS AFTER DARK IN THE KEY OF KEROUAC)

In a penguin on the television set apartment,

with no water in my chalice,

home of the grandaughter

of mad bomber physicist

Wolfgang Kurt Hermann "Pief" Panofsky,

who was made famous for the eons

in a Monty Python skit,

I made sure the windows

were all wide open for the cooling

and ran out of the house, trembling,

God forbid the warming, should we

ever break bread with reclaiming

witches living off our free bread

They insisted they could save me;

They were beautiful in their own zonked ways,

and then, the saving being done,

called me the devil, the devil,

the devil, three times,

before they were One ...

And compassion is a virtue

sold out in short supply,

borrowed again for what Ryan Adams

might call the "rescue blues,"

when they pay you up front

and lecture you the rest of your days

with their vitriol and their dim views

And there you were, with my backlit

ghost behind the suffused

dark arts Baphomet computer,

the difference between innocence

and knowledge being sub-atomic,

it’s positively Platonic,

allegorical, hysterical ...

when you ask for a cigarette

since it’s my personal policy

to only give out one cancer stick

per hour to the hopeless ...

(I mean homeless) ... and if they

claim to have hope I give them three:

That’s how smoke-free hopelessness can be.

So it’s back to my parking lot for words,

worlds within worlds,

a bridge too far from the gypsy cafes

as Napoleon, fresh face-i-fied,

sleepwalks into Starbucks to be reborn

and his iconic cup

 of Gaian corporate glee, 

which may be good news,

just maybe ... since I saw

a kachina in my dreams,

then his shirt logo of the same

damn military echelon of wings,

eagle spread, winking

He, a soldier sure, retired, moneyed,

yes, a super serene Baby Bomber ...

A crier of you know what ...

Fear for sale. Fear, the slut.

Say can’t you hear their bird's eye cries,

they are, bling-winged bat men who sigh,

repacking themselves, after landing,

in their imperial cruiser esuvees:

I saw a documentary

on their disappearing, once.

But they will live free to die to free me

to be free, an uneven trade,

the polarity of it, so absurd

I guess I need them more than they need me.

Then one more comes in,

a walking zombie cell phone call

after parking a black hawk

Land Rover, gee ...

she has camo flag pants in tune

to those photos on the big electronic

BBS .. SBB...Bss...BS...Bs...BS...

I would walk down Colfax

all the way to downtown Denver

just to run away to see those neon bells

with a crazy dame like her,

to see the red lines speeding by

of Iranian missile launches

all doctored up to be seen

on this stolen property, this land

for you and me ...

Hey man,

what’s the plan

what was that you sai-i-i-d

sun tan, burning man,

lying there in bed?

You who tried to socialize

but couldn’t seem to find

what just what, Jethro,

you were looking fer,

that sumpin’

on your mind ...

Piped-in classic rock:

The very ether of the Rockies

But a big heron circles

over Starbucks, wide white

sailing, neither failing

nor flailing

with black-tipped wings

... and just as strangely

I almost missed, the ponytailed

programmer in a Prius

as a potential friend

to send this give up, this smoke,

this one-per-hour cigarette of hope

to a guy wearing a turqoise bracelet: 

Hey! Hey! ... Hay?

How much faith do you have today?

I just got a medal in my dream:

A Thunderbird re-e-e-e-ward,

and another laugh, a smile,

from a strong blueish blonde blondee

bird driving a white trash from Truckee Ford

So good, this little gettaway:

Love this parking lot

almost as much 

as I love

having the last word.

~ Written while observing a Starbucks parking lot in Aurora, Colorado

OUR DUST IS OUR COMMON DENOMINATOR

One more sip of water

One last ear of corn

at the Big Pharm

Earth's daughter

is refused

her prescription

to stop the rain

Just bought a rice cooker

From the Chairman Mao

collection: No laugh,

No seed, nothing

to do but sell

Baby strollers

not available

in stores

as I yearn for

a life that bores

The price of diapers

will cause a drop

in the population

sure as cold stone

You just wake up

to Al Roker

to keel over

from the rising heat

on his balance sheet

October games

Terror claims

one more day

with no more rain

Lightning whips

as the highway slips

with hailstones big

as baseballs

Urban nation city state,

we are only as good

as the world we make

They who live behind

their golden gates:

See the ethanol gas can men,

green with greed

as humanity

bends toward liberty

a bit too late

There's nothing

left to satiate,

or kill the pain

or stop the rain

as this dusty dry desert world

goes down the drain

 

I run out

into the Indian summer

to sell my belongings

just to stay sane

Tossed upon on a mountain, now behind the shades, longing for the lost, ever-changing sea, but not me

We made this place up. You were used,

brought here to recite Faulkner,

to champion great beasts from the sea,

thwarting the diamond-hearted vistas

of America, sold, bought, traded ...

No, another scene: Closer, a yard

of broken concrete, cowards,

laughing, chasing some old lady,

down the road ... No, closer, closer!

You called the police car. You!

Now my nerves are jangled

and the ambulance is gone

and the TV news crew

never arrived like it does

in the movies and the

music is the reason

why I cannot live

without you.

Closer? Can't be. Just can't.

I mean, it's too close, too soon.

The curtains, full of holes,

like a planetarium at mid-day

of endless siestas: My god,

you stayed here with me?

You endured this tormented

corner of trains going

in both directions and audible

rattlesnakes ripping

through the night

and automobile drivers

who just don't get it

and never will?

Don't you see who I am?

I am a man who cannot

even think about leaving

because if I do, it will be

the end of music for me

and I will have to walk down

the straight without your

sweet warm palm

inside my hand and, man,

that's just to close, woman.

You got no right, just no right

to shed such salty tears

on my brow as we hide,

trembling, behind walls

stained by forgotten

details, jagged angry

mad loafers who once

made these roadside

spaces home

away from the sea

Welcome to the Last Water Wars

All typed up in Courier-wet ink

poisoned at dawn, the two messengers

were hung with typewriters for counterweights

to keep stiff in the wind and rain on a sandstone hill

Last water! ... Last water! Beyond your first thirsts:

You cannot be a centrist in the undeclared aquifer war

Come, see Jerusalem, the Gasoline War is over

and they'll be begging for the drinks, me thinks,

from Damascus to all near-beer holes and the shores ...

For water is life for the timid and the meek,

for even satiated Kings and Queens

with red and blue bottles of perfumed wines,

for that sacred drop off the first morning vine

O sure, O, sure ... the autocrat will pour fresh

to soothe and wash their hands of this thing and that,

for the blood of their guilt of our lost daughters and sons,

but only from the sea will we ever so eternally run

LATE NIGHT STROLL AFTER THE BARS ALL CLOSE

Do I look like a Circle K,

a walking convenience store

for your craven desperate needs,

who can dial you up your alcohol

when the state laws say go away?

It has been quite an experience here in hell,

Where the party people all fall out the bars at 2 a.m.

and spill onto the road like antelope with helicopters chasing them

The cops, in their feeding frenzy pick them off, one by one, two by two.

They spin down the boulevard in whirls of ache, the need unsatisfied,

their numbness, slowing going awake. I roll one guy a cigarette

who promised to pay, smoked it and left and I let him go away.

Please go away. Please go, away! The new moon is in its new cycle

and the power of the haunting is getting bigger by the day,

I just went out for a bit of air, time to think, now I howling again

from your need to drink, and the hollow sound of your two-faced lie,

I watch you walk down the alley way, and I wonder why I even try.

Then there's this other guy who told me about a fight, likes Vodka over beer

because it gives him second sight. I tried to get a word in but the liquor

was his holy roll. He broke up a fight and I became his priest to a confession

I didn't even invite. Couldn't get a word in. Couldn't get it right:

So here's what I think of the demons of the night ...

NIGHT LIFE IN COSTDALE, ARIZONA (FOR CHARLES BARKLEY)

This city is full of stinkers,

wannabe politician shop keepers,

Walmart hoarders, real estate gangsters,

frumped-up bean counters,

dead-tired security guards,

soccer mom whores for the bling,

speed freaks, shallow non-thinkers,

pretty boy coke heads on trust funds,

private drinkers, dressed to kill drivers;

That's the town of thee I sing.

Just how big is your diamond ring?

You can keep it on at the orgy, I think.

MOURNING BY THE HOUR, ANGELS SWEET, ANGELS SOUR, FOLLOWED BY ONE MILLION BRIGHT LIGHTS

So you wake up before dawn:

Not the girl, but the time of day,

and it's just all too heavy, the dark,

the weight of the week,

and sure, you can tell yourself,

"Oh, maybe I can just enjoy

the suspense

of knowing

what's about

to happen

next?"

And then you get the coffee loaded,

have that first smoke, and your spiritual advisor

opens the door, your little plastic chair

for a throne, huffing and puffing

the sad magic dragon,

and you say "Sure,

where else would I be?"

And the mystic fortune teller laughs

because at least she knows

it's going to be Okay

The day breaks.

You shake off the snakes.

The doctor who interrogated you

the day before. The bill collector.

The bomb about to go off on your TV.

And you linger, for just one moment,

telling yourself: "Fuck it, this what I do."

There is time for everything,

your old friend once said,

and what there is no time for,

there is no time for.

You go back at it, Jack,

doing it all again,

reeling in your tears

because you know she's out there,

maybe cold, maybe alone, dead,

or worse, and those were just

were your worse fears,

overblown

I don't mean to be morose ...

I'm just not comatose

Then all the faces across the land

start popping up, like grains

on some lengthy beach of sand,

the waves washing over you,

the brilliance of all of those

wanting to take a stand

The new day is here.

Good to be alive.

And off that coast,

I dive, the leap of faith,

the lingering love possible,

being just awe right

with this unified field

of friends

is this great sea of people

far out there

in facey space

El Cathedral (For the Forests Now Gone)

Light leaking through the trees

in a voice of sun music

as a Jesuit-taught cowboy

poking gruff holes through

the forest, a well-worn

horse-made trail ...

In the morning's blaze

Sunshine Peak smiles

through touristas

in hangover cobwebs

after a night's

culture shock therapy ...

She is kind, but wise and cautious

as the deer but fearing nothing

except for the coming bulldozers

and coyotes of commerce

preying on the young, the weak ...

(Ah, the weak,

now there's some

cheap meat ...)

And it wouldn't be here

in the future, which is today,

and yesterday is just

this poet's old ghosts ...

roamin' ...

The next day and for years

after that, Set would go on nibbling

on greens, for no one,

said Horus, the hawk,

could crunch on greens

better than Set ...

Among he are those times

is monies folks, old blokes,

who pushed women around

for centuries, like cattle,

due to God's half-written call

And they were good

intentioned men,

just like me ...

who went home,

all unsatisfied,

to beat on their wives,

to then sleep for another day

with their brokers, pork belly

stokers, livin' among chain

smokers, all bragging about

how they had this girl and that girl,

when, in fact, they had not ...

She is kind, and wise

and no longer

free to be

alone ..

Sexual Distortion (For Harvey Weinstein)

Got my helmet on

My emotions in check

Haven't had sex

for what seems like ten years

and I'm wondering what the ... (heck)

Got a memory of Obama's day

and the way the old wounds

of racism, thought withered away,

bled like a seven-year plague

through the streets of Bethlehem, P.A.
Now we fight all civil wars
with angry words and unsheathed swords

Now the new fan is blowing on hot coals

for the war between the soul man and sister soul

And I'm thinking twice about the alibis

for the war between the sexes

and this new father of lies

and the mother of his nature

Don't touch this. Don't touch that.

Touchy as a funeral in the sex and death vat

Leading to the unsatisfied dynamic

of not touching this, not touching that

Send me a kiss and I'll hit it with a baseball bat,

Then I'll flame you with a conversation that goes like this:

"You wouldn't understand. Cunt is the ultimate compliment

men only use it against women when they know they've lost."

It's well deserved due to your interview couch moves,

met with flash dragon ways and discouraging verbs

as the drop in population, tightly held to the regulation

leads to a sex-starved people pleading for strangulation

as the mighty engine of love can't get no satisfaction

No wonder, woman. No super, man.

All hooked up on porno and strung out

across the land; and the only one winning

is Tony Soprano living in the Caymans

and Russian mobster secret agents

sucking in the dough

in the sexual distortion show

But love is for the real

and these fake news blues

can't last forever

since a caress

and all the rest

is imperative

and primal,

as natural

as survival

Even next to food and fighting,

there really is no other rival

So buck up Ken and Barbie

Your missing parts

were stolen

by their private

little party

Even a true gentleman

doesn't have a chance

If you don't believe me

try to get a dance
with a wolf

The Captured Girl (For Joan of Arc)

As I lay on this couch

smelling of the wolf,

covered in a dead dog's hair,

telling you "It's going to be awe right"

as you walk out

the cabin door toward the cold

to renew a long lost love

that never gets old, ages or bores,

let me deny you the satisfaction

for one final time, without a wave or goodbye:

I will not submit, I will be a martyr to your hallucination,

your demand for my body, my mind, my third blind eye.

I will walk this world a homeless waif, my shoes gone soft

and the paved Earth you point to as civilization's mistake.

I would rather be the Whore of Babylon, cursing you to hell,

eating fried dirty rice from trash bins, rolling in the dirt.

than let you be with me again in my tattered witchy chic skirt.

Open Mac Night (For the Victims of the Lost Vegas Massacre)

Refrigerator Rick,

kind enough to let the guitar lead the way,

and me, with only pee-tee-ass-a-dee for a band,

lending new words, updating "Turn the Page"

for this week with me rage at the riptide, at Sip

On a full moon, the nation in gloom,

the rehearsal version on the porch

is now lost to the sky, and only the orb

will ever know why o why o why

And after I said, "Well, that will 

never sound the same." But it did.

And just Rick had a another sip

of his strange pyrotechnical brew

in his typical melancholy,

man-I-used-to-be-a-rock-star way,

but he's always ready to play

Indoors we were Okay, killed it, actually

But there has already been enough

killing done, out there on HIghway Ninety One