Thursday, March 25, 2010

Turquoise Turned The Turtle's Head

Turquoise Turned the Turtle’s Head


Turquoise turned the turtle’s head

Dog-like in conveying his lack of understanding

The beauty of this jewelry

He slowly passes and

It’s nothing like this turtle has ever seen before

Perpetually slow, saved and surreal

Forever remembered

The first fragile time

Turquoise turned his mind

Slow to speak

The turtle turned his turtle head

Slow to speak and turning he slowly said

“This stone I see

Commands my attention

I am connecting to it

Like no other connection”

Turquoise, turtle, time and place

Turtle, turquoise and a slow pace

Like some example of rapt attention

Focusing on a certain selection

A slice of sunshine in a slow, slow life

2.10.ten

Friday, March 05, 2010

The Bass Rhythm to Being Belittled

I got another piece of maybe
it's stuck to my shoe
she said, " today is your day
I got tools just for you."
and we were dancing and hopping
and leaving the street
for our heads and our hearts
and the reasons beneath
so when I fell backward ugly
and I injured my head
she sipped at her dry wine
said," you're hurt or you're dead."
I never told her how much I'd agree
but she danced her little seminar
all over me
and when the walls were shaking
and the pictures fell down
she was clawing and quaking
I was pinned to the ground
the noise fell off
in the cold of the night
so when she lit me a smoke
my chest got so tight
I tossed my pants
up on the bed
I was searching my pockets
for my mouth or my head
that's when the bathroom door
stole the room's only light
I took a drag from my cigarette
stepped into the night
as I stepped over cracks
and hopped over curbs
she was under my hat
with all her sharp little words
and I could swear the street lights
were burning me blind
everything that I'd lost
all that I'll never find
beneath the smog and rain
and the pain of a night
where a girl crushed my conflict
and fractured my fight

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

The Trick

"bang on the table hard enough
and every one will be listening."
she always had a way of making
my passion seem stupid
she could always cut me right on the vein
until I just started breaking things
a trick I picked up from the old man
toss plates against the wall
smash the mirror with the lamp
then breathe
angry heavy in the silence
now she's dying for it
now she needs to know
what pearls I've got tonight
and that's where we leave it
you can't whore yourself
that's when you look her in the eye
tilt your head a bit
" how late does that chinese joint deliver?"
try and cut that up, sweetness

Heaven

I was in this joint
downing my shitty beer before it got too warm
when a man next to me said
" I'M IN HEAVEN."
so I looked around
If heaven is in a filthy strip club
where the fuck is hell?
heaven is where you're over charged
for beer
and anything else, really
and dick teased for hours
with no satisfaction in sight
girls with c-section scars
pretending to love you
until you're broke
or broken
heaven

I'm fascinated by people
but most people
I've noticed
most people aren't really fascinated
by much
most people want to be told
told what they're interested in
what they care about
I can't see the fulfillment
in never really being shaken by something
to have something tingle your nerves
are you listening, people?
This is really fascinating stuff.

RED WIRE/BLUE WIRE

when you're still awake for the sunrise
but angry for its rising
you feel my every morning

when you can't find the difference
between yourself
and the characters you spin
then you've found my madness

I can be a blank canvas
ripe with potential and beauty
or I can be
A home made time bomb

Just when you want to kiss me
And, yes, you'll want to
That's when I finally burst
spraying you with deadly debris

when you've shut your eyes
and begged my lips to find yours
you'll be torn apart
nuts and screws and carpenter nails

razor blades and thumb tacks
whatever I've collected through the years
whatever's been lobbed at me
As I was making my way to you

Atlantic City Majesty

For a place with so many lights
it manages to stay so dark
Beautifully dark
A dollar here
A hundred there
Pulled upwards into these high rise fortresses
shined up nice
Complete with bells and whistles
and all the mind numbing vice you can handle
So it leaves these streets
barren and desperate
and dangerous
He had a condo here two years ago
now he's asleep under the boardwalk
pretending he was in Vietnam
All the savings
All the college funds
they're all in these high rises now
how else would they ever
keep all those lights on?

It comes out of me warmly
It spins me in all directions
Like a gyroscope
I love the light
I love the tones and places
I find
Out here in the inside

She only wrote the last one to share it
there was no therapy in it
NO
NEED
no unresolved inner conflict
outer conflict
stellar conflict
she has the luxury of words
hardly the torment
she makes whispers blast like shot guns
she makes stanzas loom like high speed
permanence
her plot devices like torn crumpled steel
bending over a mutilated cutlass grill
she's a literary muscle car
in high gear
with the windshield
painted over black

The Ballad of Punxatawney Phil

We loaded up our warmth
and threw it in the trunk
A couple smokes burned down
A couple whiskeys sunk

We hit the long road early
searching for the thrill
of finding a country legend
named Punxatawney Phil

Blowing through the mountains
charging through the state
Our stomachs were aflutter
for all we'd anticipate

Barely sitting still
as we pulled into the town
Rushing out to stretch and breathe
we began to ask around

A waitress at the diner said
she'd heard he'd gone to jail
sent up for a robbery
three million dollars bail

A store clerk said, "He's out at sea
to find uncharted land."
Rest his bones in the sun shine
expire in the sand

We'd about lost all hope
when we made it to the bar
and found a burly biker
drinking whiskey from a jar

He spit on the floor and put out his hand
We all felt the chill
I shook his hand and asked his name
he said, "Punxatawney Phil"

He was shorter than I pictured him
with a pair of jagged front teeth
wrapped in old leather and dirty denim
covered in fur beneath

We sat and drank with Phil all night
He regaled us with his tales
The women he'd given children to
His escape from county jail

He sat there posed and solid
chewing wood chips into splinters
said, "I'm heading out west tonight
'cause there's six more weeks to winter."

A shot gun slung over his back
he never paid the bill
On an old rusty Harley blasting away
was Punxatawney Phil