Monday, September 7, 2009

Friendliness Depends

The Owl of Athena is so kind to me
And ours is a friendship born of a single cell
Inside the fortress skull of Zeus
Where we ran our nails down chalkboards
And had loud, drunken conversations
Relenting only when we became deities
And merciless warriors

We allowed for there to be a reprieve
In the cosmic headache
Using the front door
To make our exit
You were giving salutes like a soldier,
I was shaking my sugartits berserker

I am ruled by Mars (submissive)
With a moon in Scorpio (dominant)
And with war-paint on I saunter through the streets
Loyal to a an ever-shifting code
Dictated by last night’s half-forgotten dreams
The Grimm moral half-obscured
By the sort-of memory of gnashing fox teeth
And the feeling of having eaten bricks

A cheerful rose colored flame in a moth’s metropolis
I press my diamond soles down against the pavement
Which yields to me like a magic carpet
And I rise and fall like a rootless ghost
Sweeping the side-walks clean
Cigarette butts and delicate grasses
Dancing around my pure white ankles
I hope to jump the curb
“Don’t find no opportunity”
I make my way inside a city park
To recline beside the totem pole
And get lost playing “He loves me, He loves me not…”
With the feathers of a Ojibwa headdress

And a little red dust goes a long way
When
Making brotherly overtures
With my fine feathered friend
I donate half my sandwich and a mickey of gin
To the cause of keeping living
Like the unicorns linger too long
In the designated smoking area
To miss the Arc,
Yet remain ahead of the curve
In the Animal Kingdom
We swap each other’s secret shames
And for just one day, I lose my keys
In the rain and the silhouettes of pigeons
I know that I can count at least one person of the opposite sex
As trustworthy

A sojourn in Saskatchewan
A fleshy sea of helpful pilgrims
Who offer up gifts of ice and leather
And we participate in the jungle rites together
Our animal intuitions throbbing as one
As the cocaine jaguars of the workplace
Watch us dance with clenching poisonous intentions
And we are courteous to them
Bowing our matching smile-shaped head wounds
Although the fear is in my stomach
And your back is up against the blood red walls
You could cut the air with a switchblade comb
And we try
Like hell, we try

I am Sylvio “Plymouth Sundance” Jones
You are Esteban Garcia De La Boltaz
And we slip through greasy daytimes
With righteous curves, and sleepy eyes
With chalk to exploit on pavement
All others are forsaken before us
The masses are obedient to our commands
Which we are fond of writing on public surfaces
Running our hands over everything
This Kingdom is anything we want
We are crowned with dandelions

We own all that we touch
A kleptomaniac’s advice on living thrifty
I have debts no honest woman could repay*
A peasant’s stolen treasures
Compulsive souvenirs of everyone I’ve known
A book on surrealism, and one about artists, a nesting doll
Some Vietnamese cobra-wine
A page from a school-book you wrote my name all over
I put these thefts out of my head
While we share four X’s for eyes
Drinking from a bottle with five

Rip Torn
We consult the map spread across my apartment floor
I keep telling you we should wing it
But you remind me
What it means to always be prepared
With a firm hand on my shoulder
And a loose grip on your lighter
You tell me to “take it away”