If Jimi says its true its true
the dead don’t lie across their fretboards
six third rails to kiss the sky
For Desperate Poets
Boot by Boot
| The Man: | The Boot: |
| I hurled what was left of them | big boys tongue tied, slap flap soles, soul |
| shredded waffle rubber, duct tape | combat stomp Mongol hurl |
| broken laces, sweat-stained leather | wall wall wall wall |
| off the top | climbing on the wall wall wall |
| of the Great Wall of China | death of the sole |
| deep in the back-country, 4 days of steep climbing | pounded into saying goodbye |
| up and down, the wall mostly rubble | giving up the ghost |
| walking and climbing | feet are swords pulled from stone |
| treading stone needing stone | kingmakers, empire |
| a thousand years to carry rock up the mountain | blisters like signal fires |
| then a thousand years to cool the stone with wind | redemption of the tongue |
| villagers carried water to us up the mountain | she said gweilo ghost people foreign devils |
| on their backs | gweilo |
| they called us gweilo | gweilo |
| tied together, the boots whirled | Kamakazi toes that’s Japanese |
| ecstasy of footwear released, absolution | machine gun boots army boots |
| RIP for the next two thousand years | no quit |
| an archeologist will dig them up | boot boot boot |
| declare evidence of Bigfoot | yearning of the boot the tulip faced foot |
| carry on, rock time, rock time | nothing but time on the wall |
| nothing but time on the wall | stone, step, stone, step |
TSM 260
| What is this picture? Half-man, half-horse, half-dead – a rodeo centaur as played out as an Oklahoma oil field flat on its back, nap-time on the prairies of Mythos singing Home on the Range in Ancient Greek: Οἶκος, οἶκος ἐν τῇ χώρᾳ. | |
| I only see geese by the river, standing in water up to their knobby black knees. | |
| And this – A flower whose red has exploded like a grenade blindsiding us with color. The war of the roses now in full swing. Quick, don a gas-mask of thorns or be paralyzed with beauty. | |
| I avoid stepping on a nightcrawler. It shuffles across the sidewalk, basking in rainwater. Did you know, they are not drowning? | |
| Surely I must understand that a body cast in clear resin will leave its last breath as solidified bubbles. And that if we are lucky, we will watch the sun’s final nova refracted through trees and snow. Our last grace the instant before immolation. | |
| “Can you say ‘Wickaboxet?’” The dogs, out early with me, do not respond or even look at me with curiosity. | |
| That we must come to terms with the tragedy of our faces, mechanized from staring too long at clocks. Or how our louche desire was spiked by a lover we will never see again, black and white all the color we will ever need for that story. | |
| You are sleeping late this morning. Light in our apartment slowly recovers from drizzle. Words recede, my eyes follow barges heading towards the landfill. |
For Desperate Poets OLN and The Sunday Muse
Tweet
Could we even say
that on the last day birds
lifted morning into light
with their song.
For Desperate Poets
Glyph Dwelling
I want to scrimshaw love poems onto your bones. Scratch the itch of Rumi in endless scrawl knotting our ribs. No, I meant – carve totem poles of beastings, godheads, thunderbirds flying from one place in our story to another. No. I want to begin. Charcoal and burnt offerings, cinders and spark, painting cave walls red and black with our ashes.
First published at Euphemism, Spring 2019
Cough Gogh
Yessir milk is my North Star after all it is the Milky Way right poured into the galaxy’s whirling blender blades of light and dark chocolate frappé we sing “Say Say Say” until gravity is udderly teated open your mouth in awe to catch a squirt of falling star warm and liquid on a spring night let us say say say this is in Nebraska the State of Art because its picture frame shape its texture thick with pallet knife waves of corn green like Van Gogh‘s starry night with a million trillion points of mooing black and white
For Desperate Poets
Eat Your P’s & Q’s
Of course like all simulacra
no mater how hard I rowed
the rowing machine its
wind noise its pull chain
fighting my grip
we did not cross the river
but sank steel and grease
under the waves
no matter how many lights
I turned on then off then on again
we did not find the sun
but sank in darkness no
matter I cannot find your hand
only the sinking feeling
of falling from the sky
pulling the ripcord
of words but the shrouds
snap only shreds
of I’s and O’s and U’s
what I owe you my love not
poems torn into fortune
cookie scrip counterfeit
screed with “Be here now”
written on one side
and “You are here”
on the other
a big red arrow pointing
like a laser gunsight
right between my eyes
dropping
down to my heart and
click of the ersatz trigger
a pacemaker hunting
big game Hemingway
exhorts us ‘Write the truest
sentence that you know’
so you look out
the window and say
“It‘s as cold as frozen peas”
for this I will love you forever.
For Desperate Poets
Toreador Song
Again I opened all the mailboxes
at the bottom of our road,
left the doors hanging open
like mouths – opera tenors
singing the Toreador song
from Carmen:
“Toreador-a,
don’t spit on the floor-a,
use the cuspidor-a
that is what it’s for-a!”
Nearby woodpeckers, an aviary on loudspeaker,
hammer out the Anvil Chorus.
My wife, in full detective mode:
“What is wrong with you!?!”
wants my head examined
by Dr. Edward Anthony Spitzka
who autopsied Leon Czolgosz’s brain
after he shot McKinley.
My mind that bubbles like an aquarium
in the dark with the light on –
radiant GloFish, neon tetras,
darting guppies –
where even the tiny plastic diver
gets the bends.
Across the room
grandfather clock's round belly – a cello
that plucks and murmurs
the hours – time now
to eat my telephone
and speak from the gut.
For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM
Mummy Weather
Your voice a dove cooing in an Egyptian sarcophagus – a radio left playing for the dead. Not buried with me and my six best suits, no, not fly me to the underworld and pad my stone nest with your feathers and bones, a gold clown painted on my tomb. Grab ahold of what knots us together and fly – Spin me like a top as you always do, and I will dance, dance.
For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM
Piper Cub
I am as failed as any
mechanical falcon
littering sidewalks of the galaxy
like abandoned e-scooters
I cannot hear the falconer
in my push-to-talk
phone app
things fell apart
no air in cold space
I swoop
without guile, gyre,
crashing onto the globe
where you remind me
I am balsa and rubber
a thing of this world
where you rewind my
rubber band propeller
soft hands on my wings
launch me back
towards the sky
For Shay’s Word Garden and TSM
qbit 