my civil service job
like the taste of a mint
melting on
my tongue, the day
drifts away. one phone call
from a man who lost his
job and wants his final
check. his employer
is broke,
I hear this twenty times a day.
the next call from a
woman who
is obviously
insane, looking for another
lost soul to draw into
her web. blah blah blah, hang up.
between the calls my fingers click clacking keys
I type virtual words into
an electronic nowhere
that
I trust to hold
them. answer the phone, hear
another story of a person's life
being destroyed by
a swamp
that eats
the working poor. desperate voices
come through the phone
looking for help that does
not exist, looking for fairness in
an unfair universe, and
existing only as bits
of electric potential in some
computer somewhere in between
silence and
the still uncounted stars.
other people's poems keep
running through my
head
like rusty freight trains
across the Minnesota prairie. other
people's knees
are bending
to touch the floor of someone
else's chapel, to pray to someone
else's god. other people
see and touch
you, lick your lips
and kiss your toes. other people's
fingers -- perhaps they are your
fingers -- hold brushes
painting
beautiful things with bristles
plucked from a pigs asshole.
somewhere there is art, beauty,
youth, women who bleed and men
who jerk off...
a place where they all smoke cigarettes
and get drunk
and make love
like horned mammals... but not here...
here, the smokers are dying of emphysema
and syncope, falling to the floor,
clutching
their damaged brains
in
their hands
and the drinkers are old and sick with ruined
livers and bad breath... the lovers are
the worst of all, a horror of wrinkled skin,
sin
and lubricated death
no wonder I listen to other people's songs
back to top
I walked south on mcknight road
this morning, following orion
the hunter who has a sword
where
his dick should be. the sky was crystal
with stars
like nails driven into blue painted
plywood.
I knew the big dipper was following me
behind the reaching
branches of oak trees and furry red pines.
it did not matter. it occurred to me that
americans spend
way too much time trying to sell each other
ointments to make their
dicks larger and their girlfriends more sexually
compliant. they would be better off looking
at
the stars...
but then what do I know. I almost missed my
bus.
I am falling falling falling falling....
how can I catch anyone or anybody....
the ground is deep with roots and rocks, fossils of gigantic lizards and
all kinds of dead things buried, but deeper, there is
rock, then lava.... so what angels
can hold up these broken things??? my hands are wrinkled and time walks
through my head like one of those
giant man eating lizards.... I can stand
upside down on lightning bolts that lace the sky with fire.... I can stand on my
head and whistle dixie out of my asshole.... the moon is my oyster
and my lobster too.... the moon is
my six pack and my whiskey... there is not time for love anymore... when
turtles pull their heads in and the city of new orleans disappears
in an ocean of mud and misery. my heart is a handful of mud...
my brain is a wilting sunflower and a hurricane of tendril winds.... my eyes
are dirt made transparent, angry and insane for now.... soon nothing
I went fishing
out
on the gray
bay. the mountains across the way
were blue as cheap paint
and
clouds hung low, as usual
above the ragged pines. I
dropped a line
as instructed and soon caught
a rock fish (red snapper). the guide
told me that fish
was 40 or 50 years old
and would make a good meal. I was tough
and did not bat an eye
as I watched that fish die. now, years
later in all my watery dreams I see
that beautiful old fish, red and pink as
any rainbow,
thrashing on the plank
bottom of the aluminum boat. I see its
bulging eyes and the desperation
of a living thing beyond all hope of life.
I am now an old man
and soon it will be my
turn to
be a fish out of water, gasping
for a dying breath.
forgive me
for taking that fishy life.
I could have survived
on bread
and left that glorious fish undead
in the deep cold water
just a few miles southeast of
Ketchikan.
The sky beyond broken buildings slips
between
the thighs of evening. A low-rent
Batman locks eyes with lover boy (or
lover girl) and feral cats eviscerate
field mice
in
his look.
The bus driver studies bible prophesies
and figures the end is coming soon. Last
summer, he cut two fingers off with his
table saw. For a while there, he thought
the end was coming
then.
Batman distends as bumps in the street
massage his cancerous prostate. Lover
girl (or boy) looks out
the window
where roses bloom in the snow.
The newspaper cries and
bleeds on the
stoop
of my cooped up life. The
Twentieth Century stumbles to
a stuttering close
and
only religious
nuts seem to notice
or care.
I am a key clicker.
I am a button pusher .
I bask in waves of mauve
and electric blue light from
the television screen.
My eyes blink green
in glowing idiocy.
I am a servant of the silicon
over-man. I am an educated
monkey, obsessed
like monkeys
in an old-fashioned zoo
with rubbing shit
on the bars
of my cage.
The mental cases
and brain
damaged
citizens sit
in the food
court.
Somebody is taking care
of them, at least for now.
They talk to themselves and
to the table and one
gesticulates wildly while another
says softly to people
passing
by,
"whodayou think YOU are?"
I don't
have an answer
for him.
A woman about the shape of a giant
watermelon eats half a sandwich
in
one
bite.
She ignores
the mental cases
but she is looking
right
at
me.
Swirling ribbons of sand,
like
wisps of snow, sift across the
shell-shocked floor, swift as
swallows. Hungry melodies
wallow in the mist. Lips
kiss
the fist of
a desperate darkness.
Lights hang from the balcony
where gold bars gleam in flickering
shadows.
Ice cream women
with lips
like glass, smile. Behind them, the choir
sings a meaningless, scientific song,
the slot machines blink like many
colored angels
and frozen birds chirp like
tinkling bells.
Night shift workers sigh
and white fire
falls shimmering from the
glimmering,
plastic
sky.
Insane Robots in the Mega-Mall
Insane robots with porcelain eyes
sit in the food court and
sip diet soda through red-striped straws.
They probably cannot see
the flames reflected in their eyes
and in the greasy tears
that fall on hamburger wrappers and fries.
A television is bolted to the wall
in the corner
and
on it, insane robots are dancing
and whirling like tiny tornadoes
across fields of artificial tulips and daisies.
Numbers blink green on the cash register
screen as calculators calculate
and women with bloody lips lick
salt from the gritty tile floor. Stars blink
beyond
spider-web skylights
as needles fall from high broken places
and
pierce porcelain eyes.
the mountains
tiptoed across the
horizon
and
icy clouds
whispered
to each other
about the mutilation of
time. my fingers became lobster claws
clicking clacking keys.
red contrails dimmed the sun
the mountains kissed
the yellow
layers of smog
as
road raging drivers
sat jammed
in traffic on a freeway that
went
nowhere.