Constipated Words

Life passes through our words

constipated like a bowel movement

stuck in its scratchy reluctance

to breathe the same smoky air

the periwinkle trails wreathe,

resisting the green and the pearly white,

the scarlet-scattering dim moon light.

Our words may be tight and brown

smushed between our lofty eyes, but

this world was built on ancient words -

musical notes that formed fierce waves

in beautiful orders, rising and falling

sharp and flat in interweaving winds,

like a familiar song in the woods

at dawn, with warblers hopping one tiny

branch to another in yellow bursts -

these world creating words descended

upon our thrashing wave thrown world

like a counter-balancing tsunami,

where wave and trough cancel each other

in opposing sines. These scenic

words spawned dew from the spray of the

highest land-breaking wave, drifting

with the salt and the semen of life

toward the slow drying mud lands,

growing the curious mud people.

Bring me to these forgotten forlorn

worlds, waves of warbler wafted words

creating the moss and the lichen, the

rusted brick and algae covered gutter,

the oily ocean and the warming clouds,

pearly whites and black tar;

these blind visions of happy heaven and

gnawing hell impress me into drink,

an intoxicating mixture of slurred

creative words and duck-billed platupi,

lost between the drowned lake-weeds

and the sun-burnt rye grass - 

mistakes are the loins of creativity.

I wipe my mind with words tarnished

in yesteryear's cutting edge insights

dulled only by their recycled tedium,

the cold breath of once upon a time

sages spread their old beneficent

experiences upon our globally warmed

minds, implacable and unthawed -

our words no longer sit immobile and

contemplative...they jumble and bumble

into each other, crashing thought into

thought, lapsed like a word ex nihilo,

ex cathedra, exited in our self righteous

babbling towers of fundamental particles -

our words bounce about unbonded

by our own ancient God-imaged personness,

limping along in primordial muck

without a righteous thought to fuck...

Journal 59 - Promethean Phoenix

I missed my rooftop kiss in flights of callow and
ignorant fancy - fancying myself not a tease but not an
indulgent twenty-something either. This accomplished
quite the romantic feat - basically an exercise in masochistic
annihilation of the desire for a future penguin or wolf.
You know it's said we aren't the only ones who mate for
life; though we're devolving to our carbon cousins in
this ritual of congruence. It's hard to deny the self.
We know single raised children, particularly those of
divorce are worse off in the long run but still we divorce
over 50% of the time. We know the cigarette is toxic and
a carrier of cancer, and yet even with the tobacco companies'
advertising against themselves they still mint money like
a third-world country. We know that alcohol has
more mental disaffects than marijuana  but still we
drown our livers in its inhibiting seductions. I suppose we're
destined to survive in old age divorced and mumbling on
fancy dialysis with brown cracked skin and purple
teeth reminiscing in nursing homes about the lament-
able mistakes we knew we were making. The good old
days are myths we arrange for ourselves like religion
philosophy and politics. The good old days awaken like
a phoenix in the recesses of our dying embered mind,
cawing with bright sparks of breath illuminating that
forsaken memory like gold in a dark tunnel underneath the
storm cloud draped sky, a storm-ridden sky dropping
dirty drops of rain upon an impatient and frustrated crowd
of posh pedestrians. The phoenix rising is a perennial sign of
hope in this crowded world. The smile and the conversation
of that loud table in the bar or restaurant laughing with
great boisterous laughs is a spy for hope. A sentinel reminding
us that sunny sweaty days aren't the end of our burnt
lives. Rain is a cocktail for the soul and light cloud
streaked blue skies are sincere glimmers of the promise
our parents made when we were children damaged for the
first time. That promise of another chance at the rooftop kiss
clings to the back-plane of my memory like a faint magnetic
charge on the hard disk from a deleted file - waiting for the
right image to accost and rearrange it so it flames like the
Promethean Phoenix.


5.22.09

Journal 58.5 - Dismissed Lore

With limp eyes drooped in apathetic indecency

I stand on the brink of the roof

And yell at the moon with an arf and a woof

Wriggling out of my hairy skin

With yellow canines and a daemonic grin -

I stare at the light, green through the slats -

Green and white in the half moon light

Staring with blank black eyes

At the red petals of her faithful prize,

Pretending the damage done was damage slight -

I howl with a crack in my grape-dried voice

On top of the roof I howl with no choice

Armed with a map to yesterday -

A day yesterday when we were wrong but known,

Now right and unknown in a mildewed today

Soaked too long in the grey spinal matter

Thrown aside like slung paint splatter

To the truth in no truth and the action

In no action but ancient survival recipes,

Handed down from family and faction.

Not far removed from the deer-skin covered male

Or the bare-breasted food gathering female

We follow these modified recipes of antiquated life

Down streets teeming with passionless half-ways

Hearing the song on the street of bare-foot praise.

Lead us to these forsworn streets of dismissed lore,

Ever drawn like cattle with hoof and bit;-

We will not rise without the whip, without the whore;

We will not sing our freedom free from shit,

Though we will not win passed out on the floor. :)

5.26.09

(dated because it comes from my journal)

Journal 58 - Bloodletting Mosquitoes

The smell of a Carolina night toward June is

often inseparable from the feeling of it - warm and

thick and humid and noisy. The nocturnal birds

chirp like the un-nocturnal birds, indecipherable

to my human ears. But so melodious in their

Pentatonic rhapsodies. I wonder if the sound of our

harsh guttural voices shame them into songs of bird

freedom and liberation from the oppression of sad

choppy sounds. Cars also pass by over the interstate

like a distant waterfall in a concrete waterless world.

Death is frowned upon unless it is the premeditated

murder of the mosquito. Bloodletting is such an ancient

concept but it works well for me looking like a 

crazed loony slapping my nose or my face in hopes

of eradicating that micro-hypodermic needle of a

vampiric*. Behind the mosquito perhaps the sur-

prisingly agile slug in its fat wet suit of natural

spandex is most deserving of premeditated...wait a

minute, even though salt, thick kosher salt, rests

like tiny land mines on my door frame, the sounds of

the night-time birds still sing to each other in the

middle of city concrete sounds. The jungle of the city

is wild and loud but the beauty lies under the surface

unlike the jungles of South America or Africa. Sure the

hippos and crocs are deadly, but still so beautiful in

their living bodies of carbon and calcium and oxygen.

The sound of tires on roads and gunshots in the night

like M-80s - not the same appreciation of beauty

though not parched or bereft. The smell of the salt

of the sea on the wind from the coast eventually wafts

its way over to my recently clogless nose like the smell

of honeysuckle in the spring or cotton candy at the

state fair. Regardless of its beauty or its deficiency in

that area, the city still holds for me a magical and 

mysteriously beautiful convergence of man and beast

(as I slam my elbow against the wicker sofa to startle

or kill the spider-looking bug scurrying in the corner

of my eye) - a place where life thrives regardless of

the expectations of scientists, humanists or primatologists.

5.21.09

* - can't read my writing. hassle? husk? kiss?

Sunday Evening Musings

I

Sometimes the day is discarded 

like a dirty dish rag, scummed and mildewed,

draped over a broken-leg table tray.

Or maybe the tossed wrapping paper

having wrapped an unwanted gift.

I regret the forlorn emptiness this day

may express, this neglected song

singing major notes in a minor world,

mocked at their naiveté - how can art

be bright and loverly

in this shit-ass world

they may haughtily say.

Why is Beauty so mistreated?

Why is Pain so often given to her

as her only lover, blue and grey

with tarnished cuff links?

I pick up dirty dish rags, sniff them

like an ancient god, sniff that dirty

life with a longing and a lust

only naked bodies in snow

can capitulate to.

I want to use that rag to wipe my ass,

throw it back in the face

of the one who dismissed it so

effortlessly. I can laugh

I can hit a ball, shoot a clay bird.

Let her who has ears to hear, hear.

Or she? Gender qualms are such a human

narcissistic obsession - yes that pronoun is

denouncing your worth, you should retaliate

with all the overcompensating testosterone

you can muster.

I know: oppression is real.

Reality is oppressed and suppressed,

translated for the lowest common denominator.

Yet the dirty rag lingers in the air

in slow motion, like Trinity of The Matrix.

There may be no spoon, but free will subsists

in the gutters and the golf courses,

the gutters of the beautiful golf courses,

so green, so cared for. But

they're golf courses...for whiny rich people.

Yes. And they're beautifully manicured

by the green artist making $35,000 a year.

Landscape architects draw the course

but the work is done by Karl's laborer.

Not far removed from the bourgeois Labrador,

fetching slobbery toys of their own making,

subjected to their putative master's

oh-so-kind frolicking.

It's a shame the world is so unknown,

so uncertain. μυστήριον is a wonderful glimpse

of lapsed happiness, but something

in some slight moderation of known

unknowableness would suffice

for the flicker of learning, for

the mystique of growth -

the yellow-green light that seeps

through a setting forest. I know

we need something not to know.

But we need some things to know.

Some things that put us certainly in

our context, our world, our battlefield.

Why are we fighting and for whom? I feel

I need to understand

the mother

who drowns her 3 children

in a scalding bath.

II

Poetry is dying and I'm not strong enough

to resuscitate her. She is gasping

like a hooked fish, lusting and flopping

for the oxygen lurking in brown water.

I cannot bring her back to our poetry-

impeached world. But there are those who can.

Jonesmann is one. The entirety of his words

condenses into an algaeic lake of suggestion

creativity and craft. You may learn

of the Germanically named Markus.

Listen to him. Il paroliere meglio.

Billy is another.

The visible breath of the drunk

in the snowy world is a sight

worth sipping on, no matter how mixed.

(I hate metaphors so I mix them)

I like to grasp at my cold breath

the way an acid tripping frat boy

grasps the invisible girl he met

at last night's bar, then fatly calling

the operator, asking for the number of the

"beautiful blue-eyed girl

I met tonight."

Snow is corporeal silence,

still and soft - like a woman's breasts:

thoughts quietly freeze.

I like to lick the falling snow

with my hot tongue also, lustily

encircling the frozen air.

Lust is a wild horse desperate to buck

and fuck all your muscled whips

and breaking ins. He sees and inhales

the beauty and scent of the brandished

woman - but we are so sophisticated

we ostensibly debate the honor of

Socrates and Jesus until our hearts

fail, until our eyes plead

for one more vision of the heaven

and hell of the blossom of a backyard

ghost orchid, so mundane and so perfect. 

So right with the word.

The world really is a word, Λογος,

a remnant of creative power,

of creative will, creative knowledge -

not gnostic or subliminal or esoteric

but the plain knowledge of the birds and bees.

Words fly and cogitate and habitate,

sometimes sleep under the

star-eaten blanket of the sky,

cozy and warm.

(pardons to Hulme the Master)

Words may wander the world

walking like the recent dead,

abrogating attrition and stomping over

the long words of the long dead ancients,

cozy but not. I like to lie in cozy beds

under cozy blankets but the words of the world

are not so innocent and not so warm

when they fiercely create

our embodied ideas from nothing

but brotherly hate. 

I want to write a poem.

A poem that matters to someone.

A poem that matters to the wordy world.

Yellow lines and red lights constrict 

My thoughts.

Yet these words seep out -

Seeping out of a mind with a self-imposed

traffic light regulating the hormones and

synaptic firings in dull fermentations.

I forgot the meaning of the eucharist

until I found my way along a smoky road:

a smoky, drug laced road

that should have slapped me in the face

and turned me away.

But the word will not leave you on your own.

The word, the Λογος, wills more than emptiness.

III

A vacuum may limit horizontal exchange,

but eventually it collapses.

Or so it seems.

Logic is as diversified as pop music.

Philosophy cannot replace our hearty lust.

A dish rag lives in the sink or the machine.

Useful or rejuvenating. I should be so lucky.

Forced.

I need a quarterback to hop on his feet,

point toward the end zone while mouthing the words

“Yes, this is your path and your way.

Your way is not the way of duplicitous

enervation.”

Todo es mintera en este mundo.

Todo es mintera la verdad.

The words just plopped into my head,

courtesy of Manu Chau.

The bourbon is done, as am I.

Forked.

Journal 57 - Clothes for Life's Dance

I collapse onto the wet ground, saturated after the
day's rain and cold, cold against my hot-blooded
cheek - with flowers, daisies and peonies, growing out
of the corners of my smile, waving petals at the
mischievous clovers in the fluffy patch of green over
one garden block. I watch the clear bottom-heavy
tear-drop of rain descend through the salt-water sky
down onto the small petal of the three-leaf clover,
attaching temporarily with wet friction adhesive qualities,
forcing the smooth leaf to bow down to the drip-dropping
wet ground; the rain drop scootches down the quite proper
and obsequious leaf like a small child sliding down a
leather couch, holding on to the top of the couch with
out-stretched hands sliding down slowly and joyfully
in loud sticky rubs of skin on leather - this is how
the adhesive drop of rain from the pitchy cloud drips
onto the soil; the leaf springs back to place in silent
joy awaiting its next wet faery ride, splatters of
water spreading out like dandelions in the wind, or a
dog shivering itself dry upon ascent from a wet world,
water stretching in slow motion, almost creation ex
nihilo - from nothing beauty cuts her greenish eyes
in playful teasing until the day collapses like two lovers
spent on a scrambled hotel bed. I rise from the wet
ground with wet one half of me cold in the evening
wind walking back through the open door smiling like
someone who just avoided the persecution of a lawsuit
happy neighbor. The air in the house as I approach catches
me off-guard in its humid warm attack on my beauty
laden senses; a gust of whiny reality touched me in
the face, but undaunted I smiled the invalid smile of
intoxication, unconvincing with its glassy artificial
impersonality. My feet tracked specks of dirt and leaves
and pollen into the newly vacuumed floor tracing
too many childhood footsteps placed before the
atmosphere assented to our contradictory embellishments,
dirt and pollen and fleas were once the outfit of the
yard-bird's flighty prance. At last I found a way to
incorporate the outside world's clothing into my life's
dance.


5.20.09, 3

Journal 56 - Ragged Promises

I'd like to wag my ragged tail at the smiling crazy
man in the window drooling because he just took one
more tab of ecstasy. I laugh and take another sip of
the wine - hoping to find out what is true and what
is fake. But like Yael I make every possible mistake -
dirty dishes with fish and truffle oil saturated in the
sink soaking in their own fetid pheromones, delaying the
olfactory explosion in the morning when my exasperated
tethered wife will explode herself into a Mariah Carey
high-C assault of piercing tones for neglect of promised
husbandry. The women of Africa sing me to peace with
the gold-dust spider in the corner of the porch - such
a valuable abdomen this Rumplestiltskin spider has -
I'd like to shape shift but at least the chromophomatic
acrobatics of the chameleon or backyard lizard will
do, transforming my ubiquitous white skin into a light
Mediterranean blue. Perhaps I should overdose on my
Amiodorone. The beard is turning greyer with each
passing heartbeat. Soon with the proper dosage of
Amiodorone I can audition for Papa Smurf. Sing Mali
Sina Deni I'm Free, like the lotus and the flower - free
to preach the suffering path to evacuate and evaporate
from all suffering. Cucumbers and white truffle oil
are like cocaine, more infiltrating but only slightly less
potent to the balance of the soul. I mean you Mr. Pickle!
Ah but The Nurse chants Le Tshephile Mang and my
a-fibrillating soul dances in the songs of the night-time
music of the ocean and the wind and the moon pulling
its weight like a giant horseshoe magnet. I don't think
being a backup singer is the worst fate in the wold
where so many don't know and don't care who Ken
Lewis or Tim Geithener(?) are. California and France are
fornicating in a mulatto blend in my mouth, the western
Cabernet and the Parisian-esque champagne blend well
enough in the night after all pretensions are dismissed
and discarded left only with swollen fingers and toes
left bare in the falsetto heat of another intoxicated
showdown. Promises are back doors left unlocked and
defenseless waiting for the glass to be broken and shattered.


5.20.09, 2