Flat Tire

All there is to do
Is to paint constellations in the fog of the windows
While I rest my head in the semi-idleness of the rushing traffic
Waiting for you to return the phone call
That I know you won't make

Feel the slightly firm presence of my tongue
Tightly pressed against my teeth that I can't stop from gritting

All there is now
Is me sitting here looking outside the window at my own reflection
Slowly trying to erase the features of your face
And make this more pretty

The slightly slumped over stranded feeling
And gentle swaying in the wind like I've been cast loose and free
Stuck here on I-10 in the middle of god-knows-where
Casually tracing the stars with an index finger
Thinking of anything but my flat tire

Myla

Fair skin freckled by too much sun,
My hair breaks and splits too often: Yours you perform mystic rituals on to polymorph your curls
Believe me. If I enslaved you, I could never part with you.
It would not be fair to anyone. I have seen my reflection in your ebony skin, you have studied the
secret maps I make of my freckles.

The Baby Is Asleep

Thick and heavily
You softly snore with your infant soft hair tickling my nose
Too late
In the afternoon, the world has passed by too fast
And now
It is so slow. The light drips in through the blinds,
The baby is asleep.

Every Other Name

I felt every teardrop that you lay on Wounded Knee
And I have devoured the blood from your silver grail,
The blindness of the sweetheart of every infantryman,
My dark-feathered wings flap the irons upon every voice.
I am the shore and depths of every painted sea.

Closest to MacDuff of all,
it was clear that my reason is doom till least
And last, long at last with heavy hand
my steadfastness added another sad victory;
Like a pale coat of all tomorrows,
of creeping slow snow
I turn gold to dust and
am the lifting of every wedding veil.

Trashcan Diary

I remember when I was young and you were young and the whole world seemed old and new to us, the young; and we would dance all night and screw all night and sometimes later on at night we'd bleed and scream all over each other like wild animals with no moral upbringing you would claw and I would bite and you would claw some more until I got tired, tired of all that shit and left
I left

You probably don't even forgive me even now even now that we're old or at least older. I know the world seems old, and sort of stained from where I bled on it and you screamed at it and we both fucked on it until it was all fucked over, and the world is sort of frayed now or maybe it's just me. I don't stay out all night and fuck all night anymore, even if I could I think it would just be boring. Maybe not the fucking but doing it all the time, who would want to do that.I might get a rash. I worry now that I'm not young that I might be old, but old people don't have any teeth and I still have them. I could bite you if you stepped on me like a fat red tabby I still have fangs but none of you are worth killing
just yet

I have a daughter now, but you know because she's your daughter, oh yes oh so much your daughter and sometimes not my daughter especially now that she's growing older and not old enough yet to no better and I should know because I watched you say yes too much. To me, to other guys, probably a few girls, god how it drove me crazy but now it just makes me tired and you make me tired and I worry that she's your daughter Your daughter that might say yes and what could I do now, just a bad old dad who could watch his daughter become the whore that you were when you were younger when she grows older, please let her grow older, and not grow up like you or me either.
I'm fat.

This is coming out like a prayer I think, but I don't believe in god anymore. Why pray to someone who would so obviously disapprove, up there in a polished white seat doing shit-all for anyone except to fuck a virgin now and then? That's some god for you, fucking and making worlds and stalking people on the beach. I don't have time for that, I just have time enough to grow old and worried and fat and remember fucking. That makes me pretty much like the old guy now, as I figure it. Maybe god would be a good guy to play cards with or have a beer with, but until he chooses the bless me with a beautiful redhead maybe I think we're just only polite enough to be on speaking terms with. I tried once or twice before but the
bastard couldn't hold his side of the conversation.

I miss the whores. The whore side of you that makes me afraid of my daughter and the other whores, the dark bar whores that would sit in my lap for a sip of my drink and make me smile and wipe the rim of my glass while trying to look interested as the told me their dreams and the bright college whores that lost nterest as soon as they found out that I was poor as well as fat and with this crummy face they still pranced around me in the skimpiest of clothes like a fucking porn magazine without the tits, like secret tits and so close that you could smell the perfume between them. You used to have tits like that and like the other whores too, which made you special and I remember that you were special. It's too bad you didn't stay special, because we were good together in our terrible way. You were the perfect slut and I was the fat, denying, cynical bastard who left you when you grew too ripe. I'm glad that you found god by-the-way,
god can have you.

I took your brightest tears, and I burn them sometimes late at night when I grow
cold and lonely.

More Than One: Couplets

I could love you,
But I don't.

I could care for you,
But I don't.

Be satisified,
Or be silent.

I have no more to give,
Nothing left to take.

The Pallbearer

He seems so light as I try to measure my steps against the others,
Treading deftly through this stone city that never sleeps,
This quiet celebration of where all the baby girls and boys go.

The Silent Letters

Beyond organic notions of
this protein stained strand. Our culture of ourselves;
You and I speak same languages. Gestures of wild intensity,
Protohuman eating habits born in infant stages of starvation.
We speak in vague awe: Heinlein always, Asimov sometimes,
Hubbard never. Babble on about the importance of understanding
When no one quite understands
What you are talking about. I know you,
Your dirt underneath fingernails: potted plants make less mess than cats.
My stacks of papers fall everytime the overhead fan is turned on.
White sheets of paper sometimes dance in the extra bedroom I have made my office.
Not quite clones but too close. We are evolved notions of ourselves
As ourselves. Sharing this: Likes and dislikes, reflections.
We could have been born of single parents and moved notoriously into separate homes
Secreted away changeling-wise into elf mounds. Sidhe mentality never shared what has arose
Into this separate sameness.
You and I speak ourselves. The same language of ourselves.
There is no word for us.

Honolulu Frankenstein

I walk carefully
watching for the sharp rocks
that might bite into the tender
soles of my feet.
You said, and I quote,
something about never loving me
so here I am

It's funny how I'm always
expecting more Florida
seagulls here, but not the subtle
scents of tropical fruits
growing like discarded ruins
peeping over the back walls
of people's houses.
Even in the most dirty alleyways
you can see splashes of
poinsettas hovering over flickering
back porchlights I tell you,
sometimes it's enough to
make me sick

I've come here to look for
the albatrosses. Here at this
supposedly holy point at the tip
of the island, easy huh, but
I feel lost. Pillboxes
now serve as graffiti posters
of the brave new world my
grandfather fought for
and I know I should be offended
but somehow I can't be.
The seagulls that are here
can't be said to lack
for their sense of humor, but
still I feel I must press on.

The waves crashing on
the only beach I've seen on this
quest were unsurprisingly filled
with the other people off the beaten path,
nudists and lovers, lone surfers
of some skill - I suppose the
rocks lurking beneath the shallow
surf might scare away the timid.
I don't even remember who told
me about this, a sanctuary I guess,
for birds, great big honking birds.
Albatrosses. Painted oceans.
I'm drenched in brine, nursing a limp
from my big toe and watching
warily over my shoulder every
moment to brace myself for the
next wave. Painted ocean my ass

I wish I knew something
that could have made it better,
but somehow I think it could
never be any better than it was
Past tense already? I wish
is such a cop out - right?
because winners don't wish
for things, they make them happen.
I wonder if I'm beaten,
and if that's the reason I've
come to see the albatrosses.
Fuck, I don't even remember
what the albatross was supposed to
mean except that in the end it was
dead and the old man was a pariah.
Maybe that's what I've come here to do,
kill the stupid endangered birds and
justify my self exile.

Though I admit, if you're going to
exile yourself this isn't a bad place
to be. I'm not too far gone to completely
escape the sunsets and jiggling suntanned
boobs everywhere I guess, but I'm not
in bliss either like the young punk
soldiers who come drifting in and out
of the bar like loud clumps of feeder fish
to oogle the oriental eyes and make
bad old jokes new again while they
sweat out the hoo-ah testosterone
Uncle Sam-eness and tremble to regain
their ex-indentities as average
dropouts and not our Apple Pie Ubermensch.
What good would it do?
I've come to paradise not to coddle my old
memories but to exorcise them. Toss the torches
you angry mobs and burn down the
Castle Frankenstein already, I'll make no more
monsters of myself anymore.

The Love of Dr. Moreau

Under this shadow of love
I will maim you,
I will cut off the parts
That displease me.
Carve away the faces
That you face me with.
Disconnect any feelings,
Sensations that might numb me sad.
Your depressions I will depress
Into deep recesses of your body.
I will take your whole picture
And dissect it jigsaw-wise,
Replacing only the parts
I think best.

In this embrace
I will make you safe
To be loved by me.
I will remove all of
Your fangs and feminine fury.

I will leave you only my shoulder
To cry upon.

No back to turn away.