Bullshit?
Bullshit, meant only to paper over cracks
and make it through another day without
coming apart completely
or
Truth, lurching out, agonized and dragging
a bum leg, pale from the cloister
or
Chaos-theory random stream of conciousness
babble on and on throwin that shit at the
wall to see what sticks because it's
bullshit.
Enhanced Interrogation Technique
I'd rather pull off
each of my fingernails
and wash my hands
in vinegar and brine
set the deep fryer
to 350 and step
left foot right foot
into that greased hot vat
i'd rather rock the knife
Through my bones than the pizza
box me up and
have me delivered
than stand back
and watch as they
set themselves afire
and warn me
not to ever
put it out.
Down Comes The Flood
What could I have done
It was one in the morning
Of all times to break.
You tell me to hold the course
What could I have done
When all my work til now
Can't hold back the
Flood, the Tide, the Great Water.
I speak my Truth, I give
My promise, I hold on
Tight and still the Flood.
You tell me to hold the course.
Now we're adrift, lost
In dark places and when I ask
What could I have done
You tell me to hold the course.
Breakage
This bend
collects sap
which will be
amber someday
but for now
just a wet
sign of
breakage
even muscles
must be destroyed
to grow stronger
timely cutting
of your lawn
causes dieback
of roots and
improves the
quality of soil.
scar tissue is
the strongest
tissue i know
and comes only
from breakage.
Ghost of Stop n Go
Already a ghost.
Entered the store
with the four-legged cane
barely clearing the sill
whispering over palazzo floor
down the aisle by the window
hidden by shelves of
charcoal and antifreeze,
next to the copy machine
until i forget he's there.
until i hear
his wheeze and whisper
at the register
one sunday paper
one fifty.
out comes a pocketful
of change, thirty
cents short and so
out comes the black
battered batmouth
wallet
out comes a single
crinkled bill
and i see the
only color on him
is of age, time
bleached the blue
of his eyes and
all hint of pink
mouth gone, all
fishbelly and cracks
and i can not
breathe until the
buzzer says he's
labored back out
into the melting
morning.
Phone over Coffee
Over coffee, eyes still half-mast,
circuits only now starting to fire,
I explain what it cost when we
refused to open our doors.
The pause makes surprise manifest
as if you forgot the laws of relativity
and of free lunch, or had come
to believe i could defy physics forever.
I have always been aware of the compromise,
I saw when we built this foundation
at least this particular flaw. Youth
may have underestimated, yet now
years have given the structure a trial,
An earthquake, a flood. Now your
eyes see too the lean and tilt, now
I reassure you, it will still stand.
This Apron Don't Fit.
Ask again and I'm rising
Red, loudest of loud colors,
Hands got a Shakespearian Itch,
But I think it's under control.
I wish to scratch the red out my throat,
I wish to fit the propaganda posters,
The Rockwell Evening Post,
Apron strings wrap round wrists
And constrict airways.
Where do June Cleaver and them
Goddamn hippies meet?
Why, in the kitchen, over a
Slice of fresh-baked organic whole-grain
Wheat bread with local RBST-free butter
And home-grown herbal tea.
Of course.
To Drain an Abcess
scalpel sharpened, shining in
light that could flay skin without blade -
never could stand to look when metal
pierced skin and so flinch eyes
away.
we always feel it when our bodies drain
- bladder, sinus, amniotic sac,
abcess.
First the ease of release, then the
work and pain. The final push always
brings a curl and hunch to the spine.
One moment's work perhaps and
Then on with convalescence.
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