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