the American fascists


were always talking about
Jesus
so I used to think I hated
Jesus

but when all the “trans” bullshit
started
I realized that
America
is the enemy of God

so I read about the message of
Jesus

his REAL message

now I friggin LUV Jesus

and I know that God and Jesus
and the archangel Michael
will smash America
into a million pieces
someday

just as soon as they tell Putin
to push the button

and then the world
will have everlasting peace
until the end of time
under Jesus!
Amen!

The world doesn't end
because it's a sphere.

It ain't big either.
The span between reading Flaubert
and writing like Flaubert
dwarfs it.

True, literature is to the world what
literature is to toilet paper--
a poor substitute.
But it can do in a pinch.
And like the world,
it never ends.



A bare-shouldered woman
isn't what this poem is about.
It's about something else.
So is she.
What that is exactly
I'd love to know.



Aus Chur, Schweiz:
My first memory is picking mammoth bone from my teeth. The second, sacking Rome, followed by 13,972 moons hauling water, tilling cow shit, feeding my life to avalanches, wolves, fever, wind, infants.
Tonight, my wife sings in her hot shower while my daughter rolls on her playmat beside me, holding a unicorn. She crawls onto my lap and laughs. In her eyes glint flint tools, skyscrapers, satellites, collapsing stars. 

Songs That I Sing for the Departed 


I see the dead complacent, 
still aloof and souls set to fly.

Counter point, fizzle and betrothed,
no one remains from those days gone.

And now once again, leaves morph
from green into the yellows and reds
and oranges of autumn.

My ghost roaming, intertwined with
nature, always; while everything prepares 
for hibernation; yet again.

While you remain in black and white,
photos brittle and fading, epitaph, 
etched into stone, my ghost too, has 
grown weary and yearns for eternity.

She didn’t look like

the kind of girl
who would mercy fuck
a total geek in high school
but like the cheer leader
she must have been.
I could see, and heard,
she was compiling a
mental of all the bar
staff boys and having
them one by one as if
she planned to do hem
all. I might even have
been on the list, next maybe,
and I thought I should
tell her my boys were
ten years older than her,
easy, but I didn’t.

Leaping from planet__ a Bardic Meat Koan (for Michael C Ford)


Leaping from planet dousing the moon with gasoline
Igniting the tidal echoes of oblivion we breathe

How long the path’s been we travel at the speed of silence
Watching the power come undone memory blast seethe

The American night as described by Morrison
Is a flash grenade in the middle of a graveyard
During the black midnight we were born from;

The black ectoplasmic voice of wild eternal
Ecstasy

Note to a Closed Site
(or Can’t You Take a Hint)

After the frustration of
Several unanswered inquires
Reference my submissions,
It dawns on me that the site
Is ran by some halfwit asshole
(No relation, no really).  But,
I send them this note anyway,
Which will, no doubt, also go
Unanswered as well.


Up To Date Customer Service

“Pardon me, caller.  At this time,
Due to the new guidelines,
I can no longer address callers
As you and I am not allowed
To use the personal pronouns
He, she, or it.  Also, as the words
They/them are a bit awkward,
I will be using a generic term.
So, cocksucker, how may I be
Of help today?”

 

Mary Jane Makes Groovy Brownies,

says the young man in the long
hair, headband and bell bottoms
in Haight-Ashbury in the seventies.
Gimme a dollar and I’ll sell you pot.

His girlfriend in a long flowered dress
hands me green leaves in a plastic baggie.
I paid for a pot, I say. Pot and weed,
same difference, she says.

Neither of us drink tea in our twenties
so my sister and I bake the leaves in brownies.
It’s probably alfalfa, this Montana girl thinks.
But I didn’t see any cows hanging around.

The brownies are so delicious we can’t
stop eating them so we bag the rest
for the trip to Fisherman’s Wharf.
My sister’s boyfriend is driving us

in his blue bug, me in the backseat.
Whenever I tell him how to drive,
he says:  Give her another brownie.
We all laugh as I gobble it down.

I hand the ice cream man a dime
for the one scoop cone as I lick
the licorice laughing hysterically.
It’s a dollar, he says. I laugh.

It’s a dime in Montana. He barks:
This is California. I laugh even harder.
His face reddens so I reach in my purse
and hand him a greenback.

The four bills he gives me back
float like butterflies in the breeze
and I fly along with them.
She’s stoned, someone says.

Six decades later in Arizona I watch
Willie at ninety in a headband and beard
on the internet claiming his supplement
prevents and cures dementia.

Order it, I tell my husband. Is it Marijuana?
he asks. The advertisement says: Straight
from the cannabis plant and it is legal.
We don’t order it. Being stoned once is enough.

 

The Hunchback of Washington DC
 
There are idiots, then there are idiots. The difference is which one’s a simpleton and which is simply a fool. Charles Laughton was the pope of fools, and Esmarelda rang his bells. Women are like that I suppose, always driving men crazy. But it’s like I always say, it takes a village to raise an idiot and an idiot to raze a village. The president falls down a flight of stairs and launches missile strikes on Mississippi. What a moron. He thinks Hugo was just some hurricane. He’s never even heard of Baudelaire, though he once ate a breakfast croissant. Personally, I find the French quite stimulating. They invent theoretical systems of self-destruction. They go on strike and riot over wages. They lost every war they’ve fought. I think they think too much. Some things even an idiot can figure out, like Brigitte Bardot or that Citroën I once drove, sailing across the level earth on a cloud. 



Postcards from the Deep End
 
I’ve been vacationing on the far side of my mind. The vegetation is thick with green thoughts. The roots tangle and twist into straws that draw deep water. A leopard, or is it a cheetah, rips the still beating heart from a young gazelle. I can smell the iron in its blood dripping from the postcard I bought in Nairobi. Except this is Atlanta and the menu is fried chicken. And though I’ve never been to France, I’ve wept hearing the little sparrow sing. The world is a jungle of scheming predators, most of them human. In the dark places, the teeth of murderers are infallibly white. Once, in Manila, I was hungry and willing to eat the worst of things. The intestines of an animal curled in a steaming bowl of dirty broth. The worms that dug into my gut were a curse that grew with time. Even now my protozoan lover consumes me in his madness. Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind. But that’s all I have to say for now. Having a wonderful time. Wish I were here.
  

SUMMER IS OVER AS THE DARKNESS RETURNS

 
August 14th and summer is already
Gone as i sit here with the heat from
Downstairs coming up through my
Badly insulated floor wearing a damn
Fleece and not 1 but 2 dirty t-shirts
With jeans on firmly and slippers
To keep my feet warm.  Outside the
Wind and rain come down hard and
I pity anyone either holidaying or
Sleeping rough on these damn streets
As their lives will grow harder with
The onset of this bad weather.

This week has frustrated and failed
At almost every turn.  A weekend
Lost when i wanted to be drinking
But somehow people intervened
Driving me back here to my room
To just carry on drinking alone as
I always should be rather than out
There feeling bored of my old
Familiar surroundings.  Then last
Night the horror of madness called
Down my landline but somehow i
Knew it was always going to be
Her and so I ignored its ring and she
Finally got the hint and hung up and
Then desperate to forget i rolled a
Strong one, smoked it and happily
Dazed went off to bed.

Panorama

Clarity of bemused musings
Your opulence is dark
Dimly lit
A cranky of tipsy mahogany high
Locations and Culture
Borrowed and located
Your whiteness is too loud
Before we come to your coastline
A blinding red tissue
Scars and hummingbird's homecoming
Monsoon ended
A panorama of whiteboards
My checkerboard
Until
My familiarity of
Little pinks attached
To your smile.