Scammerland (for P.T. Barnum)

This call is a response
to our concern
over the expiring warranty
on your lifespan

The following is based
on falsified events,
only the names
and locations are factual

What we share is one big lie,
the revolution on Youtube,
in pixilated smoke,
mirrors of deceit

Such pretenses
are the leading export
of a continent fashioned
out of genocidal nothingness

The bigger the fiddle
the better the misanthrope,
the longer the street urchin
sleeps at the bus stop bench

With evidence in layers
of the disinformation kind,
let me tell you the tale
and let your snake unwind

A nation built on hypocrisy
willing to believe
the moon is just a bulb of hope
made permanent in parking lot light

Cynical leaders, confidence men,
apprentices out of the obscuring clouds,
pictures of food on grocery shelves,
churches bound in black books of delusion

Brown is the only color
white isn't white
and buckets of blood
water down our action words

Oh say can you see
the sedentary stacks
of trash, inanimate
and animate in gory glory

God is a fume of tricky red shifts
and blues, sung from the deep
a solar storm. a meteor hour,
inducing the sleep of Dorothies

History is bunk, sayeth Henry Ford,
and your automobile museum
attracts the burning deer
in your mud-covered headlights

Notoriety is the self-serving flame
on the conspicuous boulevard,
knees aching from fanciful dreams,
eyes blighted by car part stores

If you could lend P.T. Barnum's eyes
to the lion blinded by the optometrist,
the movie might be more realistic,
and each note, a saxophone solo shining

This call is a robot voice
reminder about the hoax
on your lapsed liberty
that is forever unreal

Information Disease (for Vladimir Putin)

After seeing the morning light
through three motel room windows
the dog came out, trained by a member
of the Select Committee to Keep Me
From Doing Anything But Writing Poetry,
and in that morning blight, the red and yellow haze, 
degenerated all of mankind
into a dumbed down Cromagnon electric gun, 
that, blossoming into Cambridge Analytica,
into access to too much information, 
imagined itself into a slick of lies,
And just as fast, although less permanent,
in the corner of my eye, the painful strain of the deep,
caught up with conversation with the Russian ambassador, 
who sent a secret heiress donation for the Grand Old Party
and the NRA's unpleasant grip on the dominion of sin quaked, rattled, rolled and water vapor seeped up, toward the surface,
from underground and flowers, and idiocy was born,
it had a face and a name and an opaque plan to rule,
and then, booming louder, we all got younger, 
and the wind softened and the internet sent sex sighs
into the fog, thus metastasizing its own enemy: truth

Bermuda Triangulated (for Robert Anton Wilson)

For those about
to wake up
for their next
tropical depression:
I blow a kiss
and an antidote
loaded with Vitamin D

For my brothers
and sisters,
weak, picked on,
flipped on their backs
like doomed sea turtles
for the past twenty years:
I push a little blue button
issuing a satellite beep
causing instant pain relief

For a phony Noah's Ark
full of pixilated African animals
diving deep into twin lakes,
moving slow or fast,
enjoined at their hips:
I call up a might cloud,
concealing a thunderbird

For illegal immigrants
(as well as half-human aliens)
hiding like Apaches
in the motel rooms
of America: I send
a silent warning,
a three-hour head start,
initiating a two-year
launch sequence before
the power all goes off

For dangerous rip currents
building something together
in cascades of waves,
the top one silent, deadly:
a unified nomenclature,
be you rogue waves,
sneeker waves,
baddass high tides,
a roiling, boiling
but quite sexed up
good egg project
shaping smoother shores
so we can all learn
just a little bit more
under mostly cloudy skies

For all of the supposedly poisonous
under toads, intelligent horny toadies,
a tinted glass manufactured
by mere mortal men,
to hide behind
and therefore
to evolve anew
and grow

For all of the rest
of you angel hatchlings
in your fleshy husks:
for each, a single ticket
to ride, to sink and then fly,
riding high up in wood coffins,
rising up to the sea's surface,
like the meek in the Hopi bible
swimming with the shore

My Morning Moo

Fog rolls me out, then back in
dropped down the drain,
my brain, civically insane

Tide rolls in, then out
Listened to "Tainted Love,"
wondered what it was about

Amber alert
revolver
burnt toast on a rack

Tangiers, tiger,
stoned and stunted,
pacing the gated isle

Don't connect
to the music of regret,
not much hope for that yet

My eyes shine this way,
got dark at that,
some authority issues here

The marshmallow sky
seen only through a window,
to lie would be unwise

She is pretty over there,
in her green smock,
never meeting my mouth

Wish I could
go to sleep
touching her summer hair

Ode to the Homeless

Trying to kick the cigs
but the patch led to paranoia
as the watcher of my sleep
snoozed secretly as his cell phone
slipped from sad to sick,
every regret slipping into the dark
of my toss and turn,
rationally revealed
as the merely impossible existence
of mountains to be climbed
as the lady in leopard pajamas,
waiting for the transition light to change,
for the Latifa queen who left
telephonic computers
in the motel room
of her only friend
for the easy free electricity recharge,
moving on for another bus ride
to the Greyhound bus station
and the big bellied man with no shirt
sunned himself atop the highway overpass bridge
and a cluster of birds sang sweet warm winter songs
as the rising tide of crypto currency sank their boats,
the rising tide lifting some,
but all others drowned
and left behind in the tide

Boy oh boy, my boys and girls,
boredom is the devil to keep at bay,
and overstimulation rocked the nation
stunned into checkmate, mates,
and I gave my brown spotted black
Depot Bay pirate T-shirt,
stating, "The seas will be our empire,"
was given away to the lost Navajo
two days into sobriety
Boxed in illusion. Illusion boxed.
the citadel of concrete cracked
in harsh Southwestern light
filtered by the dust
of dinosaur remains
Got the psychiatrist on the line
as the eavesdroppers listened in
as they honed in for thought crimes
of me giving all my clothes away
and the arrogance
of the Brahman innkeeper
spun dry the mourning morning
Daylong you can her the la de da
of motorists passing buy
in the moving tombs
of wheels and metal and chrome
Horseman, pass on by,
since the walking dead
refuse to meet our eyes

Before the Wall

Winning fame through fine language,
clever as a fool outside the castle walls,
somewhere between windswept Winslow
and grey Purgatory and dapper Dante's hell,
I watched the petrified forest sink and melt,
the sun sank and the sea turned back,
then returned as a tsunami,
swallowing the entire cities
of Periander, Segeum and Cleophon,
leaving to float the caskets and tomb flowers

We spoke in epithets, cursed spells in cursive,
ran from the lion, speaking in tongues, no verses
for Eve or Adam, up a tree, down a canyon,
hiding behind browned and heat-burdened leaves,
making a special dinner for the snake,
jumping Jake Satan, who was not so bad,
once you got to know him,
his cup running over the brim,
and we, forced to be deaf,
suffered in the silence
of the One True Lord!

Before the rhinoceros was made white,
before Eden was made less recognizable,
before the first stones were cracked and stacked,
before the animals lost their voice,
of the first drum, the musical tones,
before the first sunset was made diffuse by dust,
and the double-hearted angels
made portals for rights of passage,
I walked lonely and isolated,
down rows of bright tulips and roses

Fortified against the relapse,
leaning toward resistence,
nontheless surrendered, rested,
before the precautionary comfort
of the pill yet to be invented

Thy Father's Needs

In the secret agent shades
along the dirty boulevard,
the disquieted boys try
to hunt down new divas
with energies circling,
tryin' not to rust

As the shadows get longer
no longer rough
is no longer enough
and the divine fems
keep in their corners
reportin' on their formers

Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
cause the earth
to bleed

Who is left or right
of the center
keep untying hearts
and poisoned darts
together feelin'

funny about the weather

And the Overlord plays
his fiddle to bards split
right down the middle
letting the dust of fast
polarities just plain settle


Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
just suck the rust
off the gristy griddle

There's a guy here
waitin' for the gals
to complete their
conversations
dreamin' of their
own truths to private
Cherokee nations,
Cherokee people
as wedding bells ring
and a divided nation
fails to swing or sing
on either wing

Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
Thy father's needs
boilin' up corn seeds
to cut all those Joans
of Arc but deep

Don't you feel
O so incomplete
due to thy Father's needs

Thy father's needs
Thy Father's needs
dryin' corn seeds
O so incomplete
to his dirty deeds
his dirty deeds
crossed up
cotton seeds

Ozo incomplete
Ozo incomplete
Ozo incomplete
to thy father's needs
thy father's needs
cut down those weeds
let it all just bleed
for Thy father's needs

Thy Father's needs
Thy father's needs
the whole damn earth
plain gone to seed

Daydream While Standing in Line at Starbucks Blues

The trouble
with complaining
about overpopulation
is the failure to admit
your own existence
is part of the problem

We who are so intimately
attuned to the primacy of words
may be falsely misled
by the callousness of those
who are not, since they are
distracted by the looming
or evading orb of dark before them,
and, lacking more time, are merely
enforcing their seasons of regret
upon us; see and being, darkness,
no light, except for the kind
that appears with heavy, closed,
lidded eyes, searching for the one
true source of the sun, finding none

Oh, sorry, didn't want cream,

and I don't need to suck on a straw

for that

Dinner Time at the Deluge

She looks out the window
while doing the dishes
Through curtains purchased at Walmart
Through a window during the shifting seasons
of spring and fall she can look across the great corn fields
of  southeast Iowa and view the funnel clouds
moving in from the west
Through to creatures great and small,
as well as straight toward a field,
across the wide driveway,
covered in dented, smashed-in, rusting,
demolition derby vehicles,
without tires, up in blocks, or, on their sides,
the prized possessions of the experienced, the unafraid
Gear head men
with minds for growing maize and working the system,
Martian farmers and their silos that moan
and wail on into the day and night,
their great insect-like machines
mulching and churning and harvesting the land,
From any direction is nothing but cornfields for fifty miles
And up that driveway, a kind of truck stop for the locals,
since she makes breakfast
for banana bunches of the good ol boys every day
She's still got her figure, you know. In fact, she's pretty fine.
With long brown farm girl hair a bit shreddy
from ceaseless moving
for a couple of decades now,
since the kids were born.
Just as the hammer
is pounding red steak chops,
tenderizing it.
There she is, looking out that window,
noticing a raven on top of the little house on the prairie,
Okay, Okay, it's just a barnominium:
She'll never get the word
that her neighbor's daughter died
in the opiod epidemic
after a bitter cold night
walking the street
in West Virginia

Death of a Newspaperman

Dream of dying at the desk,
after a couple of decades
of walking out for a cig
as the main form
of exercise

Dream of winning the Pulitzer
due to the accident of history
of being at the wrong place
at the right time

Death of Ben Bradley
hard boiled but suave,
better as Jason Robards
than Tom Hanks,
long in the tooth
for the truth,
yelling from the elevator,
"Get it right!"

Dead while typing a word,
head dropping on the keyboard,
responding to a thank you note,
that rare thud of recognition

Fired up by Lou Grant
and the Pentagon Papers,
the thought of making a difference
in need of nicotine, ink stained
into delusion by the deadline

Born to be the private I
in the public eye,
slouching into the grocery store
for a freeze-dried pizza,
pressured by money mad spouses
to go into public relations

The spinning around of coworkers,
moved on to puzzle piece places,
chasing the fantasy, used like fuel,
used like verbs carefully considered,
spit out nouns sticking on the concrete

Friend of cops and criminals,
a lifetime of naked fearlessness,
with an ear to the ground
worried into a cadaver
over concerns it rang real

Channeled into a narrow closet,
in the White House briefing room
listening to a huckabilly
yawl denunciations and falsehoods,
mostly for cable teevee

The reporter died here
in the desert of the destitute,
during the electronic swarm
of hive bees and mad bloggers

Woodstein and Orwell and Animal
and Sally Field and rushing
to the office for the single fact
that makes it all worthwhile

Ghosted into a low groaning hum
like a coal miner or puppeteer,
the obituary was quite kind,
the mundane tick of the clock
is what he survived

Guess I Missed the Political Shows (For Chuck Todd)

Sick morning birds in the Sonoran Sunrise

during the Sunday dawning season of the tweets

in anticipation of the endless end of the world

that begins tomorrow consistently amplified

by the bats and thirsty ants disturbed by daily radar,

by the Green Belt ducks by the pool sipping on chlorine

Back East the ice is softened, the ground is soaked,

as the talking heads put on their pancake batter,

try to memorize talking points on single sheets,

pouring sugar and syrup

down blue and red breasted throats

while the birds of this southwestern city

chirp in the symphony of monkeys

falling from the sky

and mating season

is thrown off the rails

in the human quake

Morning now and they are loud

coast to coast, harmonizing, slow roasted,

in the cacophony of disconcertment

and the polar shift of wind

sucks the sweat of all labors

into the air and drops it down from a cloud

on the Kansan plain, shredding a trailer park

as the insurance agents turn off their phones

and wounded sailors sigh at the sound of basketball

The canopy of trees we seldom look up to see

The aviary of green leaves, thick trunks,

grown around the walls, despite the apartment complexities,

as suburban Thoreau picks on orange from a front yard,

wondering how long it takes the peel to decompose

if dropped for the next sixty years of ever cracking sidewalk

And the tweet goes on as the coffee dreams us awake

And the eyeliner girls doze in weekend hangovers

And the casino lights have all gone cold

And the lonely lost shepherds chase their scattered sheep

And the personal items, lost lighters, broken bracelets

are discovered by the sunrise, as the day's new wheels

grind the leftovers into a glittering of everlasting dust

They are on now, the clattering news champions

but the coo of the white owl in the trees,

the panic in the swirling electronic hive,

is a found then lost in a transcendent moment of rest

Soon enough we wonder how will we fill our day,

will our shopping carts be filled in the land of plenty,

with plastic bottles destined to float in the sea

on an island the size of Texas, but now, just now,

the dot of love is connecting to the eternal line,

the spring is working overtime

The rumor is the raspberry has no soul

The rumor is mankind only knows heaven

Yet precarious life up and down the food chain

knows nothing more than the dome of God

fading blue to whitewash, then back into stars,

and that is more than enough from the beginning

to the end of the next night, when the chorus of conceit

blows on smoking wings to pat down the dumpster fire

we like to call Monday, as the highway roar rises

stirring the dirt into the dumb light

~ Scottsdale, Arizona

Please Write Us a Greed Poem

Suds in the spotty water
painting the sea with pee
Moby Dick chunking out the air drain
Melville stolen blubber beast into fiction
then oil was discovered underground
Whale ships became museums, so did we

Dissolve the fat in smoothie drinks
the sugar is the antidote the past
the dream is the screenplay
but what the fuck is the third act
Can't write the word "penis" but there it is
the womb always runs toward the money

Can't fault the soccer mommy
for escaping into the security state
Her secret is back there, at the pawn shop,
in rows of red, white and blue guitars
Living on the edge of Brit TV detective
amusements upon the intimacy of strangulation

Poor Laws re-enacted, the "Lion King" redacted
The guns of London and the industrial revolution
She cradles us in liberty as the lathe cuts and runs
Genocide fences for the hunt, the machine hums,
trickling up the U.S. Stock exchange, tisk tisking
the rising crime rate on the smart phone, ringing

Revolution, evolution, auto-tuned into resistance
Who would ever risk losing the anti-tax clicks
when somewhere in the dark, baby kicks,
behind the wooden door without a nob
Teilhard de Chardin is knocking from the Noosphere
in the white blanks enveloping what we call poetry

The Eponymous Economist (for Paul Ryan)

Might as well call it a day

as in punt

run to the sidelines

Got a place to hide

eat the cheese

There's always the Packers

The horse has left the barn

None of the mavericky said nay

Why should I?

Marx was right

but his followers had guns

Engels is left but Stalin blocked the sun

They are clapping at the end of the day

at the American stock exchange

because a stately mansion

in the remote Rocky mountains

sold for millions and billions

of barrels of red ink

Currents of rust

rivulets of plastic

a trickle down economics

runs to the ocean

but sinks in the sand

in the Rio Grande

Deregulation is a vial

in the Book of Revelations

Only thing you need

are fewer words

to resonate the dumbing down

The lord laughs with the rich

which is why it's okay

For the esteemed Senator from Oklahoma

to look away from the homeless man

sleeping by the stairs at Washington Square

as the limousine passed on by

Look away

Look away

The land of cotton

Look away

No land left to give away

Property is theft is superior violence

We can get fries with that

but your going to have to pay

out of pocket for your heart attack

Don't answer the phone

It's only a robo call

The Gipper is clutching a mean memo

from David Stockman

who reinvented

English Poor Laws

So Tiny Tim

can't get ruby red slippers

Pawning his crutches will pay for a forced drug test

The player piano has gone out of tune

Money is a green cloud

passing over the head

of Milton Friedman

paid in cash by artificial intelligence

beaming a bribe passed

beneath an Italian mob marble table

passing through the sky

a digital sea of endless greed

Who the fuck is Dickens?

Ayn and Benito and Adolf

retrofit the classics

for planet tipped over

by a zillion brain dead end jobs

building a white yacht

for Noah at the nosh

roasting endangered species

instead of a safety net

for the looming flood

of Koch addict funds

When it all comes crashing

I told you so

will be a good

presidential

campaign

slogan

The Report from New Oblivia (Verde Valley Blues)

On the fringes of Cottonwood, Arizona,

along the dusty steppes 

of the car part end of town,

the red and black winged wasp

charges into its three-door bunker

pulling out chunks of red dirt

made of iron old as God

as grasses dry in cutting wind

and ants go one-quarter across

the cracked sidewalk, that mad world,

our mutual hallucinated nation,

hunting hard for fresh water,

finding none, needing more,

scattering wild at the country store,

and the black hawk call down

from the north reels from burning

scents of summer breezes

hurled from solar salts

from down south, the Baja,

the whistle through the window

indicates the Wednesday Mad Hatter

is going to wonder from behind insulated

chain stores with diminishing returns:

Maybe, today, tax forms will arrive

in time to beat the trucks

loading for a flood

Too Many Horses (Why I Don't Drive)

Automobiles owned,

driven and reacted to,

starting with the one

that ran over my dog,

but not limited to,

includes this mortal list

of mechanical turmoil:

One 1965 Ford Mustang,

which my dad owned

as a shiny Great Society driver.

We put ice in the air conditioner

and it melted into cold air

from Texas to Arizona.

One green Oldsmobile stationwagon,

my mom's, which we drove from Dallas

to the far west corner of Wyoming

right at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius

into the denouement of a late 70s green bomb,

a handover in high school. Mark Hirte,

my so-called neighborhood friend,

put dog shit on my windshield once,

but I forgave him after he died

in a restaurant robbery.

I pass by all apparently random,

thoughtless acts. Not my job

to write people up for transitional,

indiscretions.

One highly efficient blue Toyota Corolla,

four-door, another hand me down,

which I drove to college in Arizona,

then to a grisly death toward a U2 show,

where the real streets have no name,

then got married, went off the edge

of the financial world. Oblivion bound,

oh, the vast emptiness I have found.

One hitchhike out of that desert,

home in somebody else's white truck,

the wind in our hair, grit in our teeth.

In other people's cars I get careless and free.

Though, at times, my century makes me

go for the brake on the passenger's side.

Hard to trust when your are co-commuting

on the drag strip of fools.

One series of turnover cars, gas guzzlers,

four-door, family friendly, snow weary,

lacerated dents over one wheel well,

chains coming apart in a storm,

the motor a drum of pain on the paint.

One red Nissan truck, a mighty steel stead,

drove me from shifty Phoenix to New England,

out of danger I, the rising Phoenix, out of danger,

into trouble, into a world of need.

One silver Datsun, sporty, or so I believed,

kept me well until the ghost in the machine,

the Kachina spirit of my dead mother,

blew a motor for lack of oil. Death to husk,

no oil to very little soil. Sold it for one-hundred

single dollar bills.

All the high-end hijinks

of Porches and Jags,

all rented to deceive me, so I bought

a Volkswagon Rabbit, with plates

that rang, "Live free or die!" May oui!

Part of my mapped-out plan for eternity.

Bought it for two hundred dollars

as an act of rebellion against

the smog-belching stink.

One Taurus, circa '94,

forty miles one way to work,

a lifetime to get back,

the stereo blasting a skin

to shield me from the world,

until the day that I,

a red bull in a colonial china shop,

got too many horses spinning

in my head.

Oh, the little hobbit hole

expectations of me.

One two-thousand dollar Honda Civic,

belching smoke because, truthfully,

I know nothing about engines,

only the high-beam up ahead.

Now I have to fix it. That's my responsibility.

The heart burns fuel, and it's expensive,

the engine wears down with each little decision,

each bump, each turn, cracking the crankcase,

chipping the paint around the chrome,

the crunch of each microbe

cracking the windshield

in a terrifying roar

only mites can hear,

the mirror getting dull,

dislodged, dangerously so.

Then the door handle breaks.

I mean, it's cheap stuff, this flesh,

The tires will eventually go flat, or worse,

and before you are there, here, or anywhere,

this thing, this life is just a shell of scars,

reminders of cautionary tales to tell.

An Official Statement from Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

We most humbly apologize

for the series of unfortunate events

leading to the catastrophic batch

of pancake mix products

used to sanctify your

national rituals

Although, for reasons

beyond our control,

as well as those we can,

we cannot fully divulge, recite,

enunciate or simply explain

those circumstances leading

to the incidents in question,

our hearts got out to the families

of those who experienced

death or discomfort or both

from the clearly overzealous

applications of our potions, mixes

and accessories

We also thank your priesthood

and supporting public officials

for their patience and continued

business

Those relationships mean everything

to us because Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

is, if nothing else, a people place

We are proud the many denominations

of your faith have chosen our pancake mix

and asundry gifts and necessary toggles,

brushes and rubs are so much a part

of your holy houses

Your worship means the world to us

As you can imagine

those behind the so-called

“pancake plot” have been

severely punished

You can trust us on that score

While, certainly, the regrettable fallout

over the unfortunate event has been

trying for both of our nations,

our methods against the miscreants

were for more painful, and, long-lasting

than those horrors felt, in the last hours

by their victims

We at Rodrigo et Exciso Industries

remain supremely satisfied

with the high quality of our

pancake mixtures, creams

and agents for fast relief

Working closely now

with your priests and personages

of high renown who have paid us,

handsomely,

for your patronage,

we have made great improvements

to our mixtures, creams, fixtures,

accessories and agents for fast belief,

as well as our security measures to ensure

the purity of our products and applications:

The Make-a-Mix Spirit Cleanse causes

no more moaning excess, rapid heart rates,

vomiting, heaves, sores

and so any further anxiety

is no longer necessary

Which means our products

can be used in your rituals

without any more tumult

or torture than is

absolutely necessary

No more stigma

No more stain

Blood is no longer

needed as a substitute

for milk, whiskey, or water

(depending on the denomination):

A graft of skin will do

And when it’s time

to put your ass in the air

to receive our golden spike,

there will be plenty of time

(and advanced notice)

for you to become mortal,

wounded, of plaster and still

Flat Earth Theory (A Round Table Discussion)

The fact is, the Earth is still. Stunned, in fact,

there is no wind, another than the big fan,

since your argument indicates nothing less

than the coming of another dark age

What can we ascertain of love?

A survival drive, a spark of a star

seeking a guarantee the light

will never die

What we don't know

is everything surrounding

the fractal of what we do

I cannot upload

fifty thousand years

of learning fire burns

and water cools

in a moment of you

closing your eyes

only to deny

the sun of Osiris

in the magical gauze

of the orb beyond the lid

You are quite insistent

but persistence is not proof,

only the tyranny of celestial skys

where the glint of light off a leaf,

relatively speaking

is more profound than Saturn

Hardly fits the pattern

of even the sly screen

we peer into

as our minds go

softer, glowing less,

in the shrunken universe

of the disembodied

voices of doubt

Departures (Don't Wake the Landlord)

The first time the mining boss

had so choked us off, after the ranchers shot our dog,

that we loaded up the truck and headed down the hill,

racing into hell for safety

See no evil in listening to my desert noir

Since I'm asking the Lord for safety

in the mercy of the miracle film score

Another time she said

I was possessed by the devil

and we escaped the seaport town

racing to hell for safety, again,

since your mind was gone

and I had to lose everything

to fill our days with broken glass

and the beads of trust

scattered in the sand by the sea

Then there was that time

you pissed off the landlord

Said you were leaving since

he couldn't keep the trains passing by

from shaking off the paints chips

and plaster from the ceilings and dingy walls

The sheriffs came from miles around

trying to figure out that money you'd found

We tried to get out of town without a sound

but the cat scittered up into the attic

in that long forgotten plains Iowa town

So we had to return the very next day

but where the cat had gone no one could say

Churned by the Mill the Hunter Takes His Aim

Pulling back on the bow

hidden from the self-imposed

exile from the world,

ground to a halt

the pillar and his salt,

feet burning

from the endless day

at the wheel

Now comes a song

etched in the dirty air,

the invisible wall

The typo for the point

about many brushes with death,

the mistakes to attest,

a thousand victories

over the orb,

a thousand losses,

and so he's even:

One kiss to come

to forget about her flesh,

or I can lose myself

in the hourly astronomies,

I guess

That an arrow finds its aim

once or two or three times

in a man's life,

is the star we do annoint

in the refracted light

of second sight

Tornado Food Towns (The Prophecy)

We navigated the great wide American plains

avoiding the chimerical swirl of the turbulence

by taking the back roads and byways

of the sky, running from the grief, you and I

With just enough gas to make it to

some cantaloupe country town

to sleep in a dirty motel room

as the sirens twisted on by

No we were not making good time,

instead killing the moments

and by the time we got to Sioux City,

you tried to kick your way

through the U-Haul door

in the madness of the memories

you never could embrace

The sky was red and green as my genetic memory

fed the agonized stress of the magical marble:

So hell, I was swirling, too

thinking of Dorothy knocked silly

by the door and the way

my grandfather's family

was annihilated in West Texas

This fear of storms is just a test, I guess

We ducked for the basement

and hoped for the best

The Dog Park (And Other Rules of Cyberspace)

You hurl out the door

sniffing for rabbits,

for the Alice in Wonderland hole,

dark in scent, stopping

to make your mark

in all of the usual places,

the parking lot covered

in candy wrappers,

the broken foolery of people

who never knew any better,

who when the black age broke

they hid from the spotlights

of the tigers hunting

for human flesh

of code that is their law

We'd get to the green embankment

and there would be a pause

and all I could think of was

getting to the ritual gate,

the tricky passage way,

the metal see-through bolt

we negotiated,

each man and animal

with their own interpretations

with their own explications

of the same light of the day

and then I would set you loose

and you would set me free

and you would run away

in that see-saw way of yours

while I sat on a bench,

had a smoke and then a prayer

Then would day the wagging whisperer

told me the multiplication tables were coming:

The organizers, the lawyers, the invisible watchers

The orange cones appeared first,

then yellow tape, spikes in the ground

mindless indicators, stunning our speech

into the silence, little hand held devices

saying you can walk here

but you can't walk there

but the shepherd

doesn't know how to read

and angels will do what angels will do

and this seemed funny to me

and my sense of anarchy,

as I shook my head,

laughing, mocking them,

living in the dream

and the nagging feeling

my brothers and sisters

would never get me,

delineated me, the vessel of

dualistic half empty

as you crossed the lines,

since dogs will do

what dogs will do

There was some beef

about grass,

the fenced-in yard

of social control,

and one day thinking

outside of the box,

looking in,

across the field the sprinklers

set the place on fire,

and all the beasts began to run and roar

and the guys with bald heads

leaned into one another,

pushing for a fight,

since the swirl of fangs

turned the blocked out space

into the wrestling cage:

Too many canine cannibals

scratching in their corners,

unyielding into the waste

of the iron-cut lawns,

the broken sprinkler heads,

the bashed in mesh of bent fences,

the spiritual need

to break through the bough

Nobody told the creek in the cave

it couldn't keep on running

or the wind to stream

through the mesh
or that amazing
radar nose of yours
giving it the sniff test

Ruthless (for Babe Ruth)

Charismatic Babe Ruth runs hard and burns,

going good on subatomic energy, good as gasoline,

the homer baby of Babylon, playing Baal

in front of the unholy fences, no longer

a young being bowing to the crowd at Fenway,

during the later years as the unberman hero

at Yankee Stadium, which he built swinging

his bat like a hammer, a mirror to his time

when photos featured haggard stares

a prima donna, manpower in his belly

raging in the rag time, taking in a plug,

feeling his impatient behemoth beneficent guilt,

his soul a razor, at war with gravity,

thinking about walking unlimited miles

to whiskey in the bars near Central Park,

searching for the living among the dead:

History comes in threes, a Roman Catholic thing,

as there are as many anti-christs

as the uncountable stars in the sky ...

O great genie, over the fence man,

a poor boy but genes set right,

his fine-tuned antenna to the natural world,

his roaring twenty appetites scorching

Victorian-styled city streets,

humming New Orleans Dixieland rags ...

all on fire, unsatisfied, kicking the clay

out of his cleats,digging his pigeon toes

into the box, pointing toward

centerfield bleacher dandies

Go ahead and ask me if it matters:

I provide power: Power! Built this damn house

and they gave me everything but wanted I wanted,

to run the team, to be free to walk alone

in the back alleys at night to speakeasies,

to get a big drink so I can forget

that blond broad's name, to remember

who really loves me, though they all say

they do, but some future historian

may suppress my true memory

in order to maintain my superman myth ...

Good thing the common folk understand everything,

that it's no great feat: I just do what feels easy

Duly warned, returning to the box, straining

to keep from scratchin', spittin', and hell,

even sweatin', and thy mind off drinkin'

Next pitch, I hit it foul, but you won't

read about it here, kindly change all

strike counts to zero ...

Did he command the universal flux

cavorting with whores along Congo Square?

Did he find his Elvis there?

Black holes subtract starlight,

animal magnetism flirting, flicking,

kissing bits with flash powder,

avoiding the good Cardinals' cathedral,

igniting the musty atmosphere,

slouching toward home plate to be born,

uttering God's inviolate immaculate

sense of a woman's softest parts,

penetrating the thin veil masking

man made laws we believe, tentatively,

to exist: He had the heart of an anarchist

Taking Stock of Bonds

Ten warm-up pitches

ascend ten Dante-esque

levels up the screen

behind home plate

and Barry Bonds

took a look

and his mega-salary

was mistaken for humble

and human; his life as pure ego

was at stake, make no mistake

He waved to manager Don Baylor

in the opposition dugout

in the sunny half-joke

in spring training in the desert:

hard to reason with the risk

of certain beaning

as limousine Barry

goes up to the plate, the pitch,

and Bonds does straight-into-the-air time

and lands back down to do the earth dance,

an element of fear enhanced, gets up

and his earring shines from some light

beamed from far up in the sky

since, with nobody on, there are only

so many points a ball can be thrown

through the atmosphere as the next pitch

was down the middle of the strike zone

After Bonds had swung it landed near

a western wear store west of Apache Junction:

So much for the element of surprise

Later that day at the ballpark, frankly,

Barry Bonds almost trampled my son

trying to get his autograph

and my kid said, What a jerk!

It made me so proud

Practice

How many brain-dead

baseball diamond drills

do we need to run, rookie?

Do we need to purchase

for you an insurance policy

to protect you against

the sorcery of blurring

curves, the chin music

of mommy balls

coming in fast?

Spring training

is the hope-forming time

to scrunch scar tissue,

to test aches subtracted

from the totem death-dance

of old brown city street snow,

of writer's block shaped

into three white bases,

to take into our nostrils

the sweet fragrance of March

And after the vets have tapped

the buzzing fridge of free cokes,

turning terminal pains

into mere dietary disease,

we must line up trainer's tape

to meet and meet together

at the left-field foul pole

to intensify the muscle memories,

the heated up PFP, PFP, PFP ...

the endless ritual

of pitcher-to-first,

pitcher taking the lob,

spiking the bag

This is how we practice

each thin temporal moment,

experience to ascribe antidotes

for thoughtlessness into decisions

because only repetition can influence

our grace before ownership's

remote octopus lens

so if we can make it to October,

if we get lucky,

maybe you'll thank me

So don't be a loud-mouthed rook

wasted for higher purposes

beyond the reasoning of mere mortals

Don't talk back to me!

Don't think to much!

It's bad for everyone concerned

Don't carouse with wild women

sent to stand on your bases

and don't talk money with me

We pay you plenty

and candy comes after

Because I knew John McGraw

Who fussed himself silly

Made teammates enemies

But they played great

Despite his tyrannical self:

Gawd how I loved his glare,

like Joe Torrie's blank stare;

a poker face almost saying, man,

I loathe baseball, I wanna go home

I heard stories about such skips:

See, this pitcher, this catcher,

they hate each other, so they throw

harder and harder to each other

and surely at some point

there's got to be a limit,

a point where their palms

turn red, maybe even bleed

until all innings end, unforgiven

By the time they get back

to the bench they are screaming

at each other so ol' skipper

comes over, spits, and says,

"Okay boys, you go back

into your pretty clubhouse

and have at it. May the worst

man win. I'll warm up Johnson

and Mack, get the equipment on."

So the two embattlers

go behind closed doors

and end up killing each other

The general manager calls

new recruits up from Triple-A

to replace them both:

Everybody wins

My Cup of Coffee in the Majors

A shadow passes on opening day

as the umpire screens the views

of new scores coming in,

old scores settled long ago,

as the heartbeat of the homeland

counts the day's receipts

checking for signs of mischief,

as angry Aztec gods

make a point, hiring lawyers

for copyright violation,

as spring birds bunt,

turning snow into drops

of sugary sweet wine,

as the ball comes down

the third base line

with just enough gust

to push the ball foul

as ice cold beer sales

flow into the face

of forever: O sure,

I had a cup in Euphoria

but didn't stick for the Stixx

and the banks were all closed

at sunset and I couldn't

get a grip and the previous

night's bright lights

could have been a trick

Sandman

Sing a dainty dirg

for the New York Yankees,

but note the fact

the sun arose the next day

are all the victories

stand, sure as yellow sunflowers

in the fall, falling away ...

Now that the best team

money can buy needs

first aid from the tip jar

for the daily

emergency management

donut fund, the Bombers

and the Joker

are on the run,

and the gangster managers

of U.S. Banks are running

from pranks organized

by mischievous teenagers

running out of bullets

playing digital games,

the bragging rights

now a toss up into the air,

a toxic point-and-shoot affair

of agents so say it ain't so

the best team in baseball

needs to reload, since the Sandman

can no longer come in the Ninth

to ice over the Show

and those who gave a flying f ...

about football can stand

and listen to make sharp yelps

about how I'm paying my own price

with wobbly knees, posts as painful

as typhoons out of season

as we ask a Navajo woman

draped in a royal blue

Dallas Cowboys' number nine jersey

in a defense against the sound and fury

of the noise of the laundry room,

focused on her cell phone like a weapon,

a fence against the outside world,

which sends in scores and more

as the rocking horse hick drones

on about how much his Saturday morning

hangover hurts over the radio,

and neither of us can see the country

crooner because today, sponsored

Ford trucks, is the anniversary

of the day I confessed to crimes

I never committed, places I never

will see, to things I can't remember,

forces I have no knowledge of, waves

I can sense but not see, feel or hear

churning up the winds, the rains, the snows,

falling from above, pushing up from below,

in patterns beyond my science,

no longer local, just passing through,

not on the ball, like Lucy removing

the football to make me look like the fool

after your ice-cold Bud is just another

beer can on a giant empty parking lot

where gas-guzzling lads, ladies in cheerleader

uniforms are stripped, cloned and sent

on their way for a full day

of prayer and fasting, knowing:

The sports godz have had their say

Flame Delhi

You made sweat dry in the strike zone

at great, zipping distances

And the copper company in Harqua Hala

Gave you a lifetime guarantee

If you loved baseball like life

Back then

The desperate diamond of cliche and stone

Wasn't so hard on your clay feet

If you wore black-laced boots at the top

of the mound

The heat would leak out in the sunshine and fame

Screamin' your name, ol' Flame

You came to Arizona long before Prince Hal

And his black-soaked bum friends

came to play ringers,

Cheatin' ore boys outta their nickel wages

They were cruel men, never shaved

They were thirsty renegades, restless;

With neither the guts nor style

For California

But you were good, solid folk

And when seven hits in three innings pitched

Was all you could squeeze outta

the shoulder at Comiskey

You returned, the nine-point-zero hero

of Harqua Hala

Cashing in your guarantee

The company re-armed you

with an engineering degree

and you built boats boats in San Francisco Bay

To keep the boys dry during the Great War

Ballpark Receipts

Read my memorandum

regarding the way echoes

in spinning wheels across

the desert of empty words

between the lines

of the "National Anthem"

populate the aisles

at the ballpark

filled with people

lucky enough

to afford to see you

I was wondering

if I can get my quarter back

or at least a phone call

in the bullpen

to get back into the game

See the falling stars

the dead lights of stars

falling off the diamond

the millionaire stars

with big broad foreheads

stunned into silent speech

taking the fifth,

announcing asterisks

for records erased

for their little lies

the Jose Consecos twittering

their tweets in the long hall

near the dugout, ducking

the limelight to get legal advice

where Will Clark once asked:

"Can you imagine hearing that song 

one-hundred-and sixty-two times

a year?"

In the press box the muffled

crowd sounds are a continent

in sway, swinging left or right

and a hard-boiled cynic sports writer

comments, "Just like the Branch Davidians

when you just felt as if something screwed

up is going to happen, you just know it."

Barry Bonds' last home run ball

is running, still flying around,

on sale at America, up for auction

as a foul ball strikes the plexiglass

and more dead light falls off the diamond

the entropy sponsored by Bud light

Security has been tight

at the Ballpark in Arlington

since nine-one-one, as the FBI

shanks off a few foul tips,

and home base is buried in red dirt

as the manager goes to speak

to the pitcher, who has big ears

about everything from Hollywood

to Homeland Security

as the scoreboard's eternal

motor churns and churns and churns:

"Braves two, Reds two, in the Fifth

and the apocalyptic ghost of Ty Cobb

goes on an invisible walk

to get his free suit

at five-hundred feet

and it's beginning

to look like rain

Regarding this invoice

about the day I got lost

in the dugout right

before the endgame began,

or do I have to wait

for the eternal

seventh-inning hook?

If Christy Mathiewson

refused to pitch on Sunday

why should I?