Sunday, January 31, 2010

Catholic King

This terrific Week
A grayscale in seven hues
At a loss for fine cutlery in
A decadent decade
I’m getting by
With my plastic forks and knives
Temporary fortification
Against things too tough to swallow whole:
Like 3rd degree burns
And sculptures that are 6 feet tall

One lime green
Thigh/High stocking
Solemnly pulled over my bucksome flank
Worn as a complementary side
In symbolic tribute
To a more perfect romance
That once happened on the internet
Getting started on the right foot
Dressed in psychedelic files
As I hand you my coat
Stars collide
And we are reduced to a shimmering dust
The triumphant survivors stand below
With their eyes closed
Trying to catch us on their ruby tongues

It’s just one thing after another
In this hit sit-com
On and on through our afternoon re-runs
Like sand through the hourglass:
These Are The Days Of Our Lives
After the first commercial break
The plot is re-explained
Still, I’m lost
In a funny fantasy
That I’m trying to live out
You caught me practicing my routine
Candy-clad palm on the small of my back
And we’ve struck emotional gold
Just riffing on the soundstage
Sitting high on folding chairs
We know the full-moon is above us
But it’s invisible
With metal beams and wires obscuring
Our view of the midnight double-feature

These recent days everything
Has the feeling of a one-night stand
Some sort sexual impermanence
In my complete extension outward
A sentiment of singularity
In all my latest handshakes
I become my own entity
The more I stand alone
On a dance floor by myself
I am exultant
Kindred spirits with their bodies pressed
Against the XXX of the speakers
And amps
Can’t stop shaking
With all the good vibrations
My heart swelling
With the a special sort of tenderness
For all these pretty strangers

I am optioning the various rights to my story
And you seemed keen
On making a movie
Where I was the star
You envisioned the trials of a hypnotist
“In a world she never made”
You saw me as a beautiful destroyer
The sturdy descendant of a milkman
She, Himself
With mysterious cuts and bruises
And an artist
You wanted me to play my own character
Mercifully relieving me of the audition process
Although, I had come prepared with a song
We have now forged a business relationship
Prepare to become attuned to my vision
Be courageous in the face of my audacity
I’ll be your idea man
You can focus on the details


I will now admit
That I’ve dabbled in the occult
With a special minor interest in palmistry
I have money in my hands
And charcoal on the tips of my conical fingers
There is a discernable narrative
Amongst the mounds of Apollo and Jupiter
Two nights ago
I unconsciously incurred
Some significant little wound
Running boldly parallel to my heart’s line
I see my life line interrupted
A vision of me
Standing in the shattered glass of what I am
With another self-same revelation
Of what I may become
I am but a child
And a *-soldier of fortune-*
Winning February’s contest,
Hands down.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

In such rotten times

I brought my work home with me that night
and stood to watch sweating orators
grow big and tall with the richness of rhetoric.
Speaking certainly or saying something
about that which they cannot live without;
sexually satisfied essentially repressed proud Americans
with some real shit to talk about:
"There's independence in the open wound,
Which is to say that we can heal so soon."
They raised a stage, erected beneath
the shortest, most important buildings history keeps.
Coughing up chewed pencil lead, my eyes to the page,
decorated in work's sweet sweat and love's neck on my breath,
the words I heard then seemed to lack the passionate sexual regret
that marks the end to a fight well said.
Something is really going to start on fire tonight.
Don't ask me how I know.
Why?
The erected statue for which I could not bear to crane my neck,
which they said resembled the empty Cicada shells of those died unwed,
they built it out of wax, grease, fumes and wet stems.
Tonight protesters gathered on the National MAll to tell the general public exactly how and when they want what they want. It was hot, the crowd was cranky and most news outlets did not bother showing up. One committee member said of the event, "It is not a matter of life or death, but the will to knowledge for all the repressed."
They speak clearly and are so well read,
I can't think of a better way at all to distract from the sketches I make between interviews
like Michael Dukakis rolling his tank over Berlin
and across the binding Mussolini dropping napalm from his upside-down gallows.
A couple in matching tracksuits jog by, man mumbes
"If all they wanted were their genitals back, all they had to do was ask."
My wardrobe fits right in the puzzled crowd
But I can't seem to keep my head to the ground.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Regina Prediction

I’ve got a friend with a fast car
I’m fighting a war on the passenger side
With brilliant flames
Deep thrusting jazz
And bayonet eyelashes
Painted black
Violent as all Winnipeg
And twice as fucked
Restrained by a belt between my breasts
That bites my flesh
Shining like the heaven sign
Clasping at my fabulous half-circumference
Advancing on no-man’s land

New friends are sunshine-mustached
And we make a great team
We wear prison clothes
(that match)
And walk through the hall-ways, and on the sidewalks
Collecting and saving
All those flimsy pieces of
Last night and last night and last night
Opening our throats up
With the jagged sweet tare of birdsong
We have things in common
Like our interest in women
And our lack of white conté
BUT
Wolf eyes doesn’t take the bus
Cause it hit his sister once
(She’s O.K.)

Spectacularly feathered
With bodacious plumage
I am a Bird of Prey
Deadly headmistress of all steps taken
With a loping gate
Living in a meadow of champagne
Immune to the cold
Vulnerable under fire
To burn and burn and burn and burn
Still to early-rise again
To glare the clock down
To keep a dream-ledger, and a soul-list
So many bodies ungratefully torched
And then rebuilt a little thinner
Somewhat hollowed
NOW!
With more room for candy on the inside
Garishly dressed in paper maché:
Colorful fragments on the outer layer
Sometimes need to come off
Beat me with that merciful baton
And allow me to treat you

While we admire the image of
“I love you with my Ford”
It occurs to me that I hate you with my Pontiac
But must never tell you so
Because you are my meal ticket
(among other things)
United we must suffer
Under San Diego heat
Closest peers and colleagues:
Let’s get drunk
Spread loose-leaf across the table
And design nearly accurate
Johari Windows for each other
In a fresh campaign
For self-improvement
Here is a list of adjectives
Please note the bar graph representing
My statistics
I think you will find I am not lacking
In any department

I thought you might be good for me
So I enticed you to come and visit
During my public office hours
I guess I can’t win them all
Or any of the ones I want
And forced to endure the brutality
Of a sweater that does not fit me properly
Being called the wrong name
And also talked about loudly
With lavish vulgarity
Ignored, cheapened, trivialized
I decide to withdraw my porcelain shoulders
From underneath your heavy stance
I will not be so readily abused
Although I can’t quite shake your crooked smiled
Out of the bottom of my paper-bag
And it still spreads
Behind my eyelids
Like a highly prized centre-fold
Babe, you crack me up

Sometimes I feel as ugly as all get-out
As forced as some Capote affect
Misshapen like a Playdo sunset
I wish to resume my primordial form
Away from the hands of all these
Eager children who are forever
Sidling up
And lose this restricted body
And all its cumulative aches
On Thursday I feel certain
Of my outer-space magnetism
The unpolished beauty of my French inhale
Raw seduction written on my outline
In the darkness of the cave
The neon glow of things is lessened
The shadows host a play rehearsal
And I silently applaud