Hooray today!

from the barrens of brick walls
faces search for shape
noises mimic actions
mimic gestures
mimic empty moments
the notion of relevance binds memories to conditions
perceived relevance anyhow
as the fluorescent lights flicker in locked foyers
locked like cages
barring all from the eternal bliss of cable television
barring those inside from funnel cakes & funeral processions
the rain
the rain dances hard down the street
finding it's fate against the black top
each drop another lemming
smacking against car hoods
finding cobics
!
the sound of a blender whining it's little motor
rips the new morning in half like a chainsaw
a chainsaw having it's way with a phonebook
she makes a new concoction for a brand new day
a healthy new day
first the gym,then the office, a love affair at lunch,
& the opera after dinner
she fills with excitement as she rinses her glass
she finds the keys to her BMW & makes for the door
she already wears a body bag
how could she possibly know?
her toe is already tagged
she is eternally stepping in front of that bus
it happens at 1:30 on her way back to the office
on her way back from adultery
it happens forever & it's been happening forever
since the dawn of time
same bus, same dress, same "just had sex" hair
her slip is always 2 inches visible on the left side
just below the knee... she never fixes it
never sees the bus
the world is a sick joke
& time is the motherfucker telling it
yesterday is all in your head
today appears fresh (every time)
tomorrow will be no different.

Hand to Mouth

Not quite
punk rock girl
says "Did you ever wake up
in the middle of spilt beer
wet dreams?"

I cough a cigarette cough
the door is 12 feet to my left
Gil Scott Heron breathing down
my neck
The revolution is 12 feet to my left

I excuse myself
she wasn't listening
says "I'm not above
living hand to mouth
as long as it's my hand
and your mouth"

Avenue of Americanism

American cities can drown
and black turned purple bodies bob around
like lilypads reclaimed by hungry swamp
and when the last of the street prophets,
deshevled and disrobed, snakes his way out
under the radar, unseen and un counted
I see America bathing in shit
handfull of painkillers and lips marking
high water point, sinking down

In daytime I don't know my drunken, stumble down streets
anymore, concrete softened by churchbell sun
antique shops open their doors to sell me old family photos
sepia toned borrwed history, but that looks enough like grandpa when he was young
I don't wonder where they got it.
Cigar shop indian asks me for directions to 3 star bistro
with 5 star prices
No, not indian, not even made of wood, but he
smells of cedar and his eyebrows are painted on

Johnny Cash is begging for dry socks,
while I'm wading through cheap Tuscan wine
they lap it up, like feral dogs, only vaugly remebering
their owners hand, they see me as a threat
I don't have terror eyes. I'm their twisted
acid burned mirror image. When the desperate, naked-from-the-
mustace-down camera man
goes to record his last
moments for posterity
I'll be sleeping under his Toyota
to stay out of the wind
used to be Main St
renamed Avenue of Americanism

grendel

grendel
came stalking out of pure mythical night
from the fringe of the universe
-the unintelligable boarderline
and when he split open
those heavy meedhall doors
in their drunken myth-laiden fear
in the back of their heads
those unfortunates
saw him as
the grand accumulation
of that which trully
drips from the air
the sweat of the void

Beach Haven West, June

a little blonde girl
that I've been back and forth with
to many times to count
in my arms- eye to eye
trading footsteps
with a grateful dead backdrop
that I've been back and forth with
to many times to count
outside there's a savage fog
almost palpable
it won't shake from our hair
and the would-be budha
radiant and placid
clings to an enlightenment beer
maybe this one will get him there
all these to many times around girls
and get drunk let it slide boys
heroes of anonymous Manahawkin night
bayside in Jersey
the crack of beer cans- the smooth caress of female hands
the liquid evening, the game, the kickback, the dance

beneath twinkle twinkle dark

Moments Above Water

odd the resembelence of the womb and baptisms
the way water tension gives way under gravity
sometimes
and all along this was the beauty of the stuff
lost in the bottle
with Marley off somewhere
"free yourself from mental slavery
none but ourselves can free our minds"
september with its daydreaming
of Niche's landless bird
making love to the idea of Amelia Earhart
in all that Fear and Trembling
and the heavens
flitter between ears and inhale just before the splash
a serenity found in submersion
all the worlds barrooms
the heavy base and tormenting wetstone eyes hushed
and fading

Is there enough space
between notebook lines
to fill in your own story?

Space is rationed
and your lot is 1/4 inch
and your joys
and sorrows
and left field sucker punch
epiphenies
have to be squeezed in

Coffee soaked thoughts,
sleep talking your way out of
bagel theft, arson,
impersonating a shrubbery,
only footprints in volcanic ash

Shopping List

1. wedding card
2. 9 volt battery
3. mayo
   
4. 31 green candles
5. trebuchet
6. Canteloup (if they're in season)
7. Shoe leather
8. vaccines (whatever's on sale)
9. claronette
10. squirell feed
11. squirell traps
12. corn bread stuffing
13. contentment
14. laser disk player
    

This Queen of Camp

this queen of camp
with wide appetite eyes
having reigned herself to tight grasp fate
and this thirty-minute asphalt conscience
deliberating issues of place and action all the way to her
the fuzzy claw-game boardwalk dice
holding her in their midst- soft multi-colored aura
her fingers at rigid attention
and the cheapest cigarettes at their extreme
pursed lips
the picture of a fourteen year old’s first cigarette
she exhales THC and ghosts
over a plastic Pan Am bag
having borrowed cultures from men in lobster suits
big breasted snot nosed animation
dancing on the screen

December

The quality of air on the first authentic winter night
Crisp electric frantic charged
The instant between
Friends and a first kiss

And all these winter nights
Glistening with all the potential of gunpowder
Scanter off
As fish through a net
In some monotoan zen koan
But the white blanket
The silence as if before a death rattle
The cold sting
The stillness like a prelude to the bomb
Echoes of whispered possibilities
Ever gone-
Unless…Echoes of whispered possibilities

AM

Early morning drive
With sleep dust still in my eyes
And frost clinging tightly to the windshield
A low sun
And the way exhaust hangs in the air
Bring me back to birth
Or brings to mind the day after an air raid

Army Jacket Days

Back in the army jacket days
noose tightens
Scar still tingles
He rubs it unconciously
and pulls up his collar.
Once hanged man feels invincible
twice hanged, and he finds Jesus
learns to keep reptile eyed friends
at arms lenght.
He re-fought the Crimean War,
but history is only justice with hubris

He escapes to Charleston and finds comforts
in a city of open wounds.
City blood mingles
and leaves a taste in his mouth.
Nowhere looking sisters beg for alms
and schemes are put off for
shadowy, closed off tomorrow
and the lights are dimmer than yesterday,
pupils compensate, fill his face
and he becomes a repository of light

Pieces of the Road

I see tumble weeds
shatter and fracture
before the grill of a MACK

highway sainthood
lights a cigarette
in the pitch black Iowa night
with Omaha burning a sky off to the north west
exhailing smoke
into the irridescent glow of a dashboard

headlights on holy route 70
in an all but forgotten Jersey fog
offer up saintly halos
rivaling those of angels

Thought from the West

shadows fall slow and long
jagged on America
the ghosts
of Kerouac
and the Buffalo
running, smoking cigarettes
black ribbon highway dancing with
the train- first child of the Industrial Revolution
as interlacing fingers twisting
the country bulges
as hastily laid fabric
a thousand diamond eyes
the stars and the lights in a death stare contest
drift
flow
wild wild
dance floor
canyons and desert and forests
dark dark night