And what are these babes that spring forth and want
achieving nothing
Who have not made a choice
Who have never known choice
Who are not men or women
Their mark never made
Unlike our steel signatures along the shelves of the U.S. Patent Office
Remarkable, unique
Each accountable of it’s own
Our legacy indelible
We shout
“Those who are left, let God grind out!”
Though we grow gaunt like hollow wisps
eating chips in drafty homes
pulling meek curtains over pollen frosted windows when the evening comes
We build silently in those lamp lit hovels
ink and oil and stone
-
In hallowed boxes of loose ephemera our future lay
In braclets and folded paper
thumbed throughout the summer in pine forts and canteen water
We consecrate our rooms in secret
and write words along the walls
-
In rented warehouses we play and plan
to fuck this place and all within
though we never promise and just hold hands and drinks
We count our earnings in jars
and push pins in maps of our future journeys
-
Satisfied by images and ambience we go
to familiar streets and home dinners
but the urge to wander with you never did stray
We can make these things again
and walk among the timbers
And you
You deserve to be dog eared and show the signs
Of old age and handling
Of warm hands and table lamp ecstasy
Cured with oil and venom from tobacco stained fingernails
The careless syllogism and ‘read stoned only’ observations
Including the word paramount
*
Ashcan retching and the smell of wet cardboard
Kept dry by the smokiest coat pocket in downtown
And in this small valley you read testament
To fear and practice and the capacity of men and women
To expect the most unlikely things
In the most dire circumstances
*
But we know you, you’ve written it down
The part where a friend of the family
Demanding and insulting
Left a mark on the day your son was born
With disapproving eye rolls and direction
And this
*
Overestimating the amount of LSD it would take to get off
And finding yourself in a poorly lit stairway
Spitting and wondering why it is red
Waiting for your friend’s girlfriend to get home and give you a place to crash
*
When the last human is not last
But stands atop an atmospheric golem of paper revelation
Of wars and romance and sexual tides of breath-hot pleasures
And every drought recorded and all the letters home to mother
And everything you cared for is there within
Touching the following circuit
And the next
He looked as if he was searching for a dropped contact lens
Red in the face sure, but it’s fucking summer in Florida
Red and sweating all
I stuck my face back into my phone
Reading the same thing I read a minute before
I will see only this screen
I will see only this screen
He does look a little distressed
He’s 6’ 6” with a wrench-bang voice and a fuck-off attitude
the cool kind of fuck-off attitude
I couldn’t imagine being in a situation where I could do a fucking thing to help him
He’s a capable man
Works on his Harley on the carport
Works in the sun
Taking enormous, paint peeling, lunch break shits
If he is having a heart attack, I’ll never forgive myself
If he has just had a life changing moment of clarity
I do not feel safe walking over and asking if he’s alright
This is far more than I ever wanted out of my front porch bench
I come here to smoke and read and think or not think
This is my sanctuary
You dare die in the House of Holy Repose
I’m going inside
De Wayne the Recordist now available for mustache parties.
It’s been strange weather in the Bermuda Triangle
The hurricanes coming straight at us and then turning sharply to the right or left
What is she shielding us from
Does she protect us at all
The warm south where Cthulu came to rest
In breathing waters
Dead Spanish at his breast
So lie there sleeping
Rolling the fog
The embers of empires speaking, forgetting all they saw
throughout the years
I have gotten letters
from men
who say
that reading my
books
has helped them
get through,
go on.
this is high praise
indeed
and I know what
they mean:
my nerve to go
on was helped
by reading
Fante, Dostoevsky,
Lawrence, Celine, Hamsun
and others
the word
(via getintheminivan)
“I want to find the place between melodrama and talking about my balls. I’m not sure what is wrong with me.”
The camera pulls away from the lone lamp atop the desk
silhouette of the author
Beard carefully combed to give the almost-Marx profile
Cock most definitely large and finely haired
balls like mice around the Maypole
He radiates
and I want to be at his lips
Why does he stay at the desk
Doesn’t he see I’m here
I am so fucking tired of looking and giving a shit
I just want you framed by a director
Breathing in my arms and having those brilliant tragic moments
The light can be that soft, I know it
The headlamp halo of authority arriving too late behind us
All that see us know that we share something unique and carefully crafted
by teams of the most gifted creatives alive
Can they feel the wind on the shore at night as we have our first kiss
under the hand-held moon, I’m told it was a pleasure
We wear navy against the sand
This is exactly what I imagined
the construction of immense illusions, terrified to find the seams
Through months of nauseous confusion and misunderstood grasping
late night drinks and early morning red eye
Through headphones loud enough to drown out reason
loud enough to rouse in the dozing hypnotic
days kneaded and rolled into one stale loaf
**
Know all that may be, during quiet
marijuana bedroom desk coffee
biting the inside of my cheek again and again
I just want to be honest but it’s a real bitch
**
We create in conversation, houses along the ridges of technology
neat squares of dank life between
hyper-evolved turf needing no water
no earth
no sunshine
no maintenance
no one
The night never completely black
and the sun never too hot against the nape
**
We build instead into rocky outcroppings
the inky expanses you introduced me to, lay oceanic between
foul scratchings echo through desperate for union
for foundation
for a return signal
and to know at last
from our cramped underground bunkers
operating ham radios and
coffee makers in blue clouds of smoke
**
When the stores are exhausted we are through
Until then, there is the signal
the projection
Devotional
The place between people
The inky expanses where worlds reside
We sat in our small office. Three desks end to end like a bar that only served Folgers and mediocrity. Through the window the storm beat ragged on the boulevard and across to the Health Department parking lot. “Infants cannot eat solid food,” I told the guy from Support. “Who says they can’t eat solid food?” My coworker turned to him and said, “They can’t. It’s scientific.”
I knew I would never love her more than I did at that moment. Though we rage at each other and throw inappropriate tantrums. Blame each other and try to demonstrate with irrefutable evidence how mistaken and shameful the other is. This time. Now. She and I have reached the other.
Where finally the blanket is drawn away and we see we have been brother and sister all along. Spreading sticky cereal over the same oak table before wiping our hands clean with our hair. How I walked in on you taking a shit and made dramatic retching noises and fell to my knees clutching my throat while you screamed like I was murdering you. Your middle school boyfriend, I made confess to a small roadside audience the perversions and lies he visited upon you and told you before I kicked him in the stomach. The time you came to see me in the rehabilitation clinic and held onto me (just that once) while I shook and sobbed, trailing plastic tubes, a swaying jellyfish.
Finally, this childhood where science became Science! and we were nurtured remotely. Our lives the alter at which engineering left offerings of plenty. Plenty flown in by sleek cylinders held aloft by clean gravatic lift. We watched new life emerge and take it’s first look at our world through identity. We aged slowly. Too slowly. The poor around us fed but brief. We held vast stores of knowledge and aged it in smooth polymer casks. Technicians. Keepers. Scribes. The Sovereign.
“What are you working on,” she asked? “One of the last five things you threw on my desk with no instruction.” “How many times do I have to show you what to do,” she snapped? Her sculpted eyebrows raised like a gavel.
