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.

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.

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

Rosary For 2000 and Nine

I don’t pray
I smoke cigarettes
Delicate white keys
That hang elegantly between my medicated lips
Silently unlocking intuitions
From opaque tombs
Where they were buried alive
Centuries ago or last week
Reanimated corpses of my true feelings
About this, the Queen city
And myself
The vibes I’m giving off
While loitering by the Kitchen entrance
Fuming with grey-green hallucinogenic visions
Caused by five minutes alone with my freezing sweat
And snowy ankles
Hypodermic bullet to the tension epicenter
All up in flames and nicotine
Remembering “I AM ALIVE”
Forgetting that I am mortal

I don’t pray
I write letters to my friend
And I speak at dizzying length
About mice upon mice
And the ghost of a mouse
Whom I called “Little Brown”
Who was darkly murdered
In a shocking accident
And the varying interpretations on
What is considered “humane”
I also write my friend about
How I think spanking is not only sensual
But ingenious
Guessing it might come down to personal preference
I am ecstatic that we share this proclivity
Name Brother and a cool customer
I duly note his ghostly eyes
Go on to illustrate a dream
Close with my lipstick
And hot breath from a one-hit.

I don’t pray
I read the horoscopes
The moon’s in Gemini
From the Universal jewel-box
Some necklace all of planets
Tangles to arrange us
And I become my own twin
Each sibling plots to murder the other
And I hope at least one of them succeeds
In this Spy Vs. Spy scenario
Playing out in my subconscious
There is a well-dressed cartoon madness
That is smeared like honey
On my brains
Where dreams gently bite my neck
With Manitoban tenderness
Teaching me about the seasons
Needing more than one wing to fly,
But less than two:
Everything is rigged all right
Still I persist in gambling

I don’t pray
I cut my hair
A symbol of my spiritual release
From the memories of the old style
Polluted by corrupted wire-hanger instruments
That tried to force me open
Slipping credit cards
Into latched up doorway 5 feet and 5 inches tall
Intruder my intruder
With ugly pathological lies
+ maliscious hopes for what becomes of me
I don’t quit, cause I hate to quit
Slipping your deformed right hand
Into something far too dangerous
Attempting to reach and subsequently
Restrain what is wild
Like the horses on the island
My freedom is wordless
Unexplained, without an argument
There are no handles for me
No coded entry
There is just no way to chain
My mammalian soul

I don’t pray
I wear a white sweater
Half-naked like some refugee
In quilted blanket of smoke
Draped in 3,000 thread count silk intentions
Memories all frayed around the edges
And the temple buzz from THC
The hum of pink blood
As it fills my face until
I’m pulsing smiles of mute desire
Left so desperately unfulfilled
Forgetting is not a choice
Or disappointment would somehow cage me
All in cheap metallic bird-cage bars
This attempt
With odes of love muttered out
Like vague threats
Empty of affection
Lacking any consequence
No changes in my flesh or pace
But I am nearing my perfection
Eliminating recollections this bad run
And the details are exposed
Like flesh torn off from frostbite
To reveal a dazzling red

I don’t pray
I dance
On the bar-room floor and under
Dimly sparkling paintings and Irish flags
And all the fragments I’ve forced out
Assemble from the best and cleanest
Corners of myself
And my scientific hands sweep over
The wrecks of former prototypes
Magnetizing what is worthy to remain
Discarding all the left-over unhealthiness
Post-traumatic-stress medallions burned
With maximum sterility
And I am born again
Ice and winter under my feet and there is a Reggae hymnal
Across the street the Church bells
Inside the folded napkins
I become my best-self’s hologram
In a fortified transition
Over into worthiness
No one can tame me
Or my New Year

I don’t pray
I love my family
In a hangover shared
Sister and I take the reins
A snowy walk through past rivalry
Yields only Freudian metaphor
That to us does not make sense
Though we carefully guard our personal complexes
As well as shared regrets
For what I’ve put us through
High school trials and rumors vanquished
My gallantry
Big eyed beauty
Forever to be my pride’s most renewable resource
Like the forests and creeks
Of our natural youth
In prairie wilderness
When we finally share the spot-light
My finger demonstrates just where
To go
And tie and yellow ribbon around it.

the ultimate impotence of "c"

Paint marker murder blood
and all that is beautiful I have stolen
and made myself
Of composite parts
To be gathered with persistence
even in the winter
and I lay down plates
of both vinyl and ceramic
and if you were a scale model
Which would be your material?

Mouth full of mandarin tongue
And breath laden with a citrus health
That yields not to cigarettes
Or copious amounts of pot
With the pulp in my mouth
To be spit out
At some later
More inappropriate moment
While I am wreaking of turpentine
Beside the table cloth
And intending to nuke

All silence and patchouli
I slink home again
While the crescent of the moment hangs on some incongruous
Eyelid
I note the fort-night’s passing
Without celebration
But with an excess of confetti
I see the evidence of my traversing
Room to room
Marked on the faces
Of those who play
“A game for young gentlemen”

I awake from another drunk to find I regret nothing
But the fact that I can’t find
The one hitter box
In my apartment
Made entirely of camouflage both winter
And forest- GREEN
There are handprints
I can sit on
For the next few hours that will relay to me
The sparkle and crack of memories
laid on an open fire
as I camp on diagonal slopes
Prepared to watch you take the fall of lifetimes
Thrice to roll

Twenty times to die

A sailor with your arms full of
“Time” magazine war-bride
All the clickety-clack of the 1920’s hides between
Your drugstore teeth
and in the pin curls of our hidden lusts
Straight up and down
I just want
To long-board backwards from what has cumulatively amounted
To madness
And the hands of Nigerians
Disembodied, bleeding rainbows
The birds of true love
yakking back
From the small trees in front of the rehab centre
(under construction)

I don’t kill tigers with my sling shot
Only maim them
And heavy fur and muscle
On the waifish flanks of mine
Is burden sweet enough
And I DRAG them
To my secluded game of house
Where coconut is thick in the air
And I linger with the eyes
Of a mournful child star
Just within the door frame
And pray to Jah…

With my face kissing the gray storey curves
Oh the anabaptized clouds
I forget the prairies
And all else that encumbers me
And with brutal hands I try and throw
The beast away
But I
Can
not.