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

slipping in and out

The kitten laid on my chest
as I held my breath
Floating on my back in a blue pool of water
Wearing an old pilot's cap with goggles on top
The kind made of soft brown leather
(the kind Amelia wore before we lost her)
He spoke calmly to me about being free
while I tried to keep
Our heads from going under
As someone was preaching
while synchronized swimming
about the suffers of dreaming,
the lonesome and weary,
but all had lost meaning
with the alarm and it's ringing
We awoke and lost each other

alright heres an assignment I'm doing in class right now and I thought I'd throw it up here and see if you guys can come out with anything for it.

Its based on a poem called "The Museum of Stones" and its a descriptive piece about stones, but what you have to do is rename the museum of something and write about that. Hopefully its something you know so you can use fancy technical good sounding words that noone else knows about

heres a link to the museum of stones poem

http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/03/26/070326po_poem_forche

and ill comment with what i got so far

quit your job and find your rabbit hole

come away from the rust and the pictures of dreamscapes
put the ambitions before logic and reason
bury the aprehension and scald the nerves to stop the shakes
tomorrows shoulders buckle under the weight of postponed joy
you'll cut your feet
the grease under your finger nails will not fade
pain and prosperity are sisters attached at the heart
and life doesnt hand out second chances, let alone first ones...take what you can from the sinking vessel that is the today, and taste the blood proudly
in truth, the measure of success is worn on the chin

eric clapton sells telephones now, rock and roll is co owned by a t and t people will look back on our generation as the first to do worse than the last...in truth i dont mind it really, never really worried to much about cash, but the world falls short and theres a generation coming up behind us and we're gonna hand over thhe keys to a lemon....0at least bob dylan did somthing cool with his celebrity...he sold the shit outta them panies from victoria secret...now thats rock and roll

Risk v. Reward

after just a few hours

the smell of

your skin on my skin

had faded

replaced by gasoline

cigarettes and

cheap, rest-stop soap

and hand-sanitizer

I kept trying to find you

on my clothes,

the collar of my shirt,

under my fingernails.

you weren't there.

blurred, instead by so many

state lines and miles,

gas stations and

grease traps.

later that night

as I laid restlessly

clutching the blanket that you claimed

as your own

on our trip out of town,

I found you again

before finally drifting off,

the smell of your face-wash hidden

somewhere in that blanket or

maybe only in my mind.

I'm not sure.

but now

your scent is gone from me

and you are hidden as well

blurred by state-lines and miles

and I'm left on

dark roads, alone, unsure of

the ground beneath my wheels

and I should've said something,

anything before you split town.

I should've kissed you goodbye

on at least 3 different occasions.

I should've jumped from the bridge

and, you're right when you say

I don't take enough risks.

And maybe I'll take more of them

if you take a chance on this.

Aries

Aries

make the best lovers

because we love to love.

Two fires flickering,

red hot, licking

at each other’s flames

and burning

each other down.

Stumbling Upon Dharma

Alone

just me and my wheels

against dark roads;

crossing state lines.

I didn’t realize,

until the last leg of my trip;

until my head was finally clear;

no longer filled

with road maps,

music, and anxiety

about my bills or

about how I could

possibly make it another

20 or more hours

on the road

alone,

when all that was left

was you,

Dharma.

What else would I call it?

The Virtuous Road.

The road that

lead me to you.

The road that

leads me

away from you.

I try to find some meaning

in things I see,

in my experiences.

I keep coming away with patience,

a virtue by

all definitions,

as you are virtuous,

and I am

still learning to be, but

I’ve never met someone

that makes me

want to be as good

as you are.

My Mother The Mountain

I drive along
pushing from 60 to 70 up to 80
mph
and I close my eyes

I am driving by sound
and the feel of my tires running
in the tracks worn into the
highway

my arms lock in front of me
and I feel the cool air blowing
of the mountain I am gliding down,
and I wish I was the mountain

eternal and eroding
solid and fragile
and I honk my horn occasionally
to warn any drivers nearby

I slide the car into neutral
and my right hand fumbles
on the steering column
and slides the key out

then I coast to your street
and your window is open
with that sad mystic music
dispersing into the neighborhood

I let my arms fall
but I don't open my eyes
and I think about that mountain
and its enduring wait

loretta built skylines in her hotel by lamp light

nothing like falling asleep at the wheel
theres a monkey skull on the freezer shelf
begging for a suede handout
with a fistfull of fish and a paranoid stand off
platinum nuances stoking my ego
then a word to the right from the left set in motion
all the beauty of stagnance and the pieces of perfect
got a drum of pure misery and two quarts raw sympathy
baking in a coal fire stove
got me running got me hiding got to be more than a principal
all adaptations taste awful in introduction
but theres road weary criminals
and essential bad gurus
theres a sandwhich shop laced with a decades indignities
and the farmers dry tabacco shell peas with the little uns
while the missus play footsy with the visiting vagabonds
its a whole new world out there man, and forgive the expression
but tomorrow is hideous while today seems just ugly
and yesturdays fair as it hustles away
but isnt it the charm that brings the eyes to the fire
and the blind all the while offer no words of warning
the wisdom has run out of the cups and its fitting
cause the bottom fell out and the thirsts been outsourced

snow plow plantation

with ware of asphalt and backroad dust
my boots speak volumes of the search
slept in box cars and rail yards
beside rivers and the kindness of strangers

faces painted thick with road lust and sun stroke
mom and pop video store/gas station
in a town with three houses and one street light

there was nothing under all those rocks we over turned
no a glimmer of freedom in the oil slicked highways
lost with an atlas that was all destination and no journey

plastic palm trees and pink flamingos decorating the only vestiges of a forgotten generation
the malt shops and drive-ins abandoned by time
all the juke boxes link to itunes and the saw dust floors have been tiled over
a fist fight is a felony and a drag race is is close behind

protests and propaganda lead based toys new influenzas
a war in every living room for thirty some odd years and im tired of peeking out toward the horizon and burning my eyes

if you think you've seen the promise land, i promise your a fool

what soft grace in disregarding the disaster of the season
she's ill but carries handbag full of cure alls and redemption
theres no beauty left
we watched the last of it sail off into the final sunsets just before the switch from analog to digital but i think she could serve as a reminder at least
of the moment before the shithouse burned and the stench of truth caked our nasal passages...

one longstanding memory of dust and clay and rubarb she said what did you want to be before you realized it was over

red lights, blue lights,
glare

and i love the way
he dances
center stage
singing into the mic
greasy hair in face
the occasional break of a
drumstick
drummer,
wasted, shirtless and
slightly
off beat

and i love the way
you lean
and tap yer cowboy boots
as you play guitar
scarf dangling
off yer tight levi's

and i love the way
we scream
and drink
and sway
to garage rock nights

she feeds on the mystery,
no need to plead for answers