Co-dependant African Blue Mantra

It is the hour before
The hour before work
Every minute is golden accumulation
Against the shower curtain
That I will draw on this private morning in my apartment
Which will end once I am in the alley way
Taking three or four last desperate inhalations
Against the restaurant’s brick wall

Trying to look forward to the money:

I praise whatever somber mystic power permits the Greeks
To keep both of their two clocks
Running ten minutes slow
A double blessing
Needed to counter the two human manifestations
Of ill feeling who have just moved in next door to me

Twin specters of death
The color of an anti-matter black
African women
Sisters, or friends
Walking the neighborhood streets all day
Relentless
Collecting plastic shopping bags
Completely full
Of other people’s garbage
They never fail to stare at me
Not speaking a word
Only gesturing malignantly
Sometimes they hiss
Like rotten sickly cats
And a vuvuzela in the local pub
The Mother continent
Having an infectious touch
All around Saskatchewan
I’m afflicted

This latest addition beautifully complimenting
My other already welll established infections
I am flourishing in a new
More assertive kind of madness
It is a hard drinking
All possessing
Omnipotent and magnifying
Force lingering behind
Every kind of feeling that I feel
From now on
And he the disembodied
Unnamed figure
Now starring in all my nightly dreams
And hallucinated picture perfect
In a recent fever
That has forced me to cast something out
Relinquish all my blind intoxication
For ten days, while I take the medication
The perfect excuse
I will challenge my own will
On the back step
The cruel nature of perfection
Forces me to up the ante

Some say red hair is unlucky
I read in a book of proverbs that:
“Ill-luck is good for something.”
I have fully thrown myself into the discovery of all it’s uses
All parts of the animal
Sweet stench of the avid lovers’ bed
Endless ways to entertain with perfect courtesy
And the best card tricks
You’ve ever seen
The way he is the highlight
To the way I lose my head
I inflict a bodily revenge
Let him be lost on my island,
Wrecked in my shapely ruin
Looking for fruit in unknown forest
You're the free man
Because tonight, it's on the house

New EP

Hi folks,

Just wanted to share our new EP (entitled "Proto") with everyone. For those who don't know, we're William Carpenter's Towering Trees. We play rock music that's poppy and jangly and mostly fun. Here's a download link:

http://www.zshare.net/download/791045639b9e7092/

Also, the songs can be heard individually at:

myspace.com/williamcarpenter

or

reverbnation.com/willcarpenter

Thanks for listening!

Forward Talk

Between forward talk
be more assertive
worked out in circles
i’d like to be burned
is an unfulfilled patio
buy the bigger hat
of objects
i could go for that
on top of one another,
the clouds were too fat
a mass of question marks ask
why and who’s there?

The wind went
where a possibility waned
then lost one for a second
as a memory of mushrooms
drag into a forelock--
I cried at your funeral
I felt closer to god
Amen
The open ceiling
brushed stroked mysticism
and the pews we sat on.

Large cities and their newspaper
publications people could still get
but would rather read
through a phone
on a train
that smells a mix
of your twin bed,
armpits that are too ticklish,
and the barbeque I ate last night
for breakfast.

When intimacy issues peel
louder than a sonic boom
flip them again
until they become something new:
A rush of river trees
humbling circadian
horripilation.

Vagary

No one every warned me
to fear my hands
but they should have
-Paul Guest

I.
My oldest nightmare
resonates like wooden floorboards
shifting in solemn hours
where a tune is played
a closet door opens
and inside darkness
calling me to it.

You were white
and it was white
all over again
in the shower
and on your bed.
Drawn out
like a funeral.
Three gun salutes
then quiet.

Honestly
I slept walked
from your room
to the sofa that was
a veritable twin mattress
of red cushion
until it got weird
and your roommate
saw me naked.
That moment
is dead now,
at least for a while.
Family continues
to reel without
not that you were present
the last five years
anyways
brash honesty
is an unfiltered cigarette
smoked whatever
wells try to hide
during daylight.

II.
A simple kind of emotion
services the crowd
as the benches are drawn
and the people begin to kneel.

The lake is quiet
(give thanks and breathe)
again
then interrupted
(give thanks and breathe)
by crappies breaching
in the dream
you were trying
to sleep
with the bedroom door open.

Mutually Beneficial or Not

I spend most of my time not dying…
I climb on a woman I love
I repeat my themes
-Frederick Seidel

I read somewhere
that most human body heat
is regulated
through the head
and the feet.
My three limbs conform
with yours, all together.
Four hands excavate
a lode of unfelt memories
that coyly bite on an earlobe
as a deposit of sleep unfurls
an orgasm of quiet honesty.

Down on you
and you’re down
further on the carpet
than I could expect.
Green shag melted
into green: a wind blows
a grove of trees.
You’re a stone building
with a temple front;
a Corinthian column of curves
mouthing unlit funeral pyres

Lightless for hours
then morning
until a crow sings
and you kiss me.
Mouth sweeping
into a bite of lower lip
and until a sigh is returned
I think about the uneffort
of a tributary: A body becoming
an entirely new body:
A thread being sown
into a seam

The moon…
or could we talk about
you again?
A breath
then two moan
an outline of shoulder blades.
A tongue tasting
the humble repetition
of a thunderstorm
in tomorrow’s lavender blossoms.
I could count freckles
on your body for hours
when you are asleep
or I could count
the Canadian Geese
hurling themselves
toward migration
to keep their bodies
warm at night.

Your hands
gave me something
I haven’t had a chance
to receive.
Still, they know
how all roads end
at the bluffs of your shoulders
and intersect with your hair
straightening.

For Lauren