26.12.18

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

20.12.18

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

11.12.18

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

8.12.18

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

11.5.18

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

7.5.18

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

5.5.18

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

1.5.18

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

13.4.18

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

11.3.18

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

9.3.18

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

3.3.18

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

16.1.18

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?