After killing the spider, we spoke


It was a one-sided conversation.
I did all the speaking.  The spider was dead.
& this is what I said, starting the moment before
killing the spider, lifting out a book
from the top of the wall of the loft, I said,
Celine is good for killing spiders.
I leaned out over the wall,
arm outstretched, holding the hard-cover out
as if swinging a bat in an on-deck circle,
or a rock, about to be tossed
at another boy on another side of a remembered hill,
or a cast member in the New Testament, throwing it,
until, like the mob, I whacked.
Dead spider, I said,
I’m going to leave you there,
3 feet over the wall that overlooks downstairs below.
where your family may find you,
& know, just know, that where you stay is a bad place,
perhaps some chemical reaction occurs in your kind,
so that, instead of having to rely on some . . . absent mind,
to tell you, tell you that this place is bad,
when finding your own dead, there,
your body just does your thinking for you,
& it becomes something that you just know – 
in your exoskeleton,
or as we like to say where I am from,
in our bones.
So, I’m going to leave you there,
pasted, like a wanted poster,
hanging, like the wanted, caught,
& I am doing all this on a biological hope.
This is mammal country,
& you don’t pay rent.
I’m sorry.

ENOUGH

 
I eat three eggs a day. How long until
my arteries clog? Can I get away
with it for a few more years? At least
my belly doesn’t obscure my laptop.
I need a wheelbarrow to carry
my stomach around. These Tastykakes
are good East Coast fare, plus a ham
and salami sub. Jade plants sprouted
pink blossoms and overran the patio.
What more could I want?

 

Epiphany

Jesus had me brainwashed
Buddha was kneeling on my throat
and Rumi had me tongue tied

The weight of all the wisdom of history
sat on my chest

crushed my confidence
left me dumbfounded
feeling claustrophobic

I was sick to my stomach

accosted by poets and mystics 
inside agitators
fashionistas
flying monkeys
and beautiful people
while literary luminaries and 
classically trained bullshitters
spoon fed me pablum

and to top it all off
there was Bukowski
pissing on my lawn
with all those other pricks

No one would relieve me 
from my burden of anxiety

Well, there you have it

I walked out of church and went home

declared war on 10,000 things

stood in front of a mirror 
and heard the voice of God say—

“You moron!”

The Cemetery of Buried Feelings


He would flip on the light in my room. I would pretend to be asleep. He would loom over me until my eyes opened. Fear would distort my breathing. The walls would seem to lean in. If I tried to scoot away, he would grab me by the arm and drag me back and crack me across the face with the flat of his hand. He was buried on a cold Sunday next to my mother. Some thirty people, mostly family, attended. It began to snow as we stood at the graveside. He had finally found a solution to his loneliness.

“Personal Effects”

So many smiles of hers were turning to the right,
Images of Penny Lane with the mane of a fur coat
Or looking down in gentleness as the light made her hair look ruddy red.
The floral print shirt of hers from Beijing
Belonged to an ex-boyfriend
In the car chatting down Eternal Peace Street
Thick brown pig liver
intestines soup
As homey as her family was to me.
Toto’s “Africa” was being rediscovered
Later the City Pop “Plastic Love”
Quoting John Lennon on my WeChat felt subversive.
Once a Yahoo! News story cautioned about falling in love with a spy.
The Mao portrait hangs like a Warhol
As though the past rules over us
The dismayed look of real joy
Of catching her unawares
In a snap, the aplomb journalist
Long zebra-like bars of the crossing.
A tawny sweater. 

Miserable Lives

I usually start the morning off readin' poetry on the net,
The hardcore, underground work not flowers and butterflies.
I tell ya, some of this stuff is so dang depressing that
I might as well cancel my morning, go back to bed, and
Then try for a decent day gettin' up mid-afternoon.

There're these pieces about how life is so ungodly miserable.
One dude's broke, no job, personal life nonexistent, woman left him.
Well shoot, broke, no job, and the floozie runnin' off was a surprise?
He's lucky she took her hateful, whiny-ass brats with her.
Poor man does miss his one-eared, three-legged wiener dog.

He says that he now looks for happiness and fulfillment
At the bottom of the bottle.
I get happy before I get halfway down there.
I guess proof of fulfillment would come later
With heaving at/in the porcelain throne.

The man surely needs my experience-based guidance.
To start, I'd tell him that it sounds like he's a nimrod.
Nimrod?  Did I say that?  I mean a pussy, a putz.
Lookie here, hombre, who the hell ever loved you anyway?
They say Jesus loves ya, but you may not be into men.
Besides, He loves everybody so don't feel so exclusive.

And stay away from that fuckin' dope.
That 'no hope without dope' line is crap.
You don't need no dope to be without hope.
That'll just mess up your head more, look at me.
What?  No, strike that last part.  I don't do dope.
I been told at times I ain't right, but that comes natural.

So, bozo, either figure out how to crawl outta
That hole you done crawled into
Or wait for the Reaper to come for ya.
No, goofy, I know what you're thinking
But 'klaatu barada nikto' won't work with him.




Warrior In Our Midst

Freddie J. is a soldier.  Infantry.
Jungle fighter.  Done the 'Nam.
That was years ago, but he
Insists on keeping up his
Soldierly skills.  He's the only
Guy I know who lies under
The bushes in his yard with
His rake aimed as a sniper rifle
Substitute zeroing in on those
Who wander into his kill zone.
He lies on his belly for hours,
His knife ready to take a scalp
Or slice off an enemy's ear.
A hardcore hardened survivor,
He's learned to live off the land.
Terrified neighbors wander over
To see if their cat is on his grill.
Could be, Freddie favors roadkill.
He has come to the conclusion
That the world can kiss his ass.
Anyone who doesn't like that
Can just kiss his ass twice.

Sertraline

It’s bad and it will get worse—
this is the certainty.

Then
it will get better—
this the assumption,
the hope, the gamble.

On salary day
I spend the night
drinking at a sports pub
in Newcastle.

I’m here for work.
It’s freezing up here
and working as a cladder
has never sucked harder.

I bet almost all my salary
2.350£ on Leicester to win
after they are already winning
1-0 and with 1.95 odds
I’m looking at doubling
my money.

It ends with them losing
3-4 and getting back to my travel
lodge a homeless man asks me for money
and nodding him away from me
I think if I’d only won that bet
I’d probably take him by the hand
to an ATM and really make his night.

Looking at people walk around life
with seamless easiness
has always been a source
of great envy in me.

Always have felt that I’ve walked
in a quicksand the whole time
and the more I tried to keep up
the more I sunk.

The more they kept getting ahead.

Autopilot doesn’t work.
Stirring through every second
of life manually is laborious work.

An unforgiving loneliness
monolithic in size and grandiose.

It’s like you’re that astronaut
standing on the moon
looking back at the earth
getting hit by a meteor
like an AK bullet going
through someone’s chest

Nobody else but you left

And only for a short while longer.

My Life as a Movie

There would be slow-motion explosions,

elaborately choreographed car chases,

a soft-hipped woman with come hither eyes,

there would be robots versus kung fu,

 
all while a piano burns on a deserted beach

and Death, dressed as usual in a hooded robe

and using the one-finger technique, ruthlessly plinks

the same black key over and over and over.

Caution

Desire
But what can one say
Except bloody murder
And oh, bloody hell I suppose

Lust
But what can one say, except fire!
Fire!
Attraction is a well-dressed killer on the prowl (in town)

And then… there’s the nasty, spell of seduction:
What can one say except - caution!
Caution:
(the threat of)
Falling in love is always around the corner,
down the street,
(just) As a trapped pig IS
Next in line for that slaughter

The expiry of death


Mr. Death is an immortal empire of the universe.

It labels the expiry date on everything.

But it has no expiration to its existence.

What an arcane thing is death?

The death of death is non-existent.

The ultimate survival thing is death.

Everything has certain age to live or exist.

But death has limitless age to exist.

The death surpasses any cosmic authority.