Recent Poems

Battered

mom had an electric mixer
seemed like an electic insect
with pincers head down in the bowl
with rotating tusks in the batter
spine hunched in the kill
her tea cakes came out like angels
so I grew into this sort of brute
half kind
half brutal
mixed
inclined to use force
inclined to use reason
mixed
mad
common





Pissed

importance, you bastards
I could change to zillion bats
skitter in the falling leaves
make the 17 year locust
sound like harps
I could fill with nitrous oxide
make whipped cream
and torment you
this body is without water
no collogen
no oxygen
bone and titanium screws
from the wreck




Bird

living room
basement apartment
pet rooster perched like buffalo nickel
young lady says she was in jail for stealing cars
getting the keys off close relatives
and passed-out targets at parties
the bird flapped pillow feather wings screaming
converse like a disc jockey
share-crop sight of the giant television
be a family



Rock Slide

I want the pain
won't move
or wince
rain of dust and pebbles for the overture
I won't open the umbella
landslide is big tit nature
sound of scraping and cracking loose
sight of cheap frame houses unmoored
gotta look up to something
gotta give
I'll give a dime
first rock that kills me





Back Woods

grimly he assumes
he has to take control
repetition
has to hear himself belt it out
he had moments full of napalm and laughing gas
there's you like a baby rabbit
he can come at you with a goose gun
leap bow-legged over barb wire
he will repeat the story about inhalents
he savored spray paint
woofed an aggressive kitchen of solvents
mad cow






Renovated Former Dump



they took out the wooden steps
cased the beams in faux aluminum
in dark modern blue
the row of basement doors were cinder blocked
swan sun glass hue to match the siding
secure entrance assured by an autistic engineer
it has some racing goggle replacement windows
tropical insert court yard
I used to study the moon there
shoot the shit with some shit heads
on webbed chaise lounges
when it was a dirt square
been fine somewhere else





Flying Bugs

locust treadmill
rolling black belt to the check out
flying insects a ribbon in clouds
grocery stores on every corner
tire stores
feed mills
weevils dusting the brown air
grasshoppers loaded with radiation
scabies
rabid froth
vermin with lace wings
tinting the air black





The Redness


red roof on the manse
red undies pop out when they dance
red trance

red letter day ahead
red eye gravy on bread
red thread on the rubicund literary bed

red the type of skin blushes
red bush fillling four cubic inches much
my drunk red luck
chance to get fucked
chuckles


Smither


garden of little things
the voice is too soft
makes you step up to the spikey terrarium
captured mantis centaur anemone squid
thornweed timothy asparagus sticks
lettuce moss centipede
ants in a black leather trench coat
once inside
it has you
makes you smither





Turning Cold

been keeping the heart in a Mason jar
it was opined I wear in on the sleeve
that's only whining
I'm inclined to store it in glass
only take it out when desperate
only when praying to the West
for money
or praying to the East
for learning
been burned
then froze
on a shelf with peppers and tomatos

Fear Of Illness

I just got a message on my answering machine, bruiting of disease. The spinach I bought at the grocery store is being recalled because it may have been tainted with salmonella. The automated massage said it was for spinach I bought over a week ago, and had already eaten. They knew I had the spinach because I used my "smart shopper" card at the check out. I trust that a public health robot is examining my medical history right about now, with clinical dispassion. They don't need to get their semiconductors in a knot. I'm fine. Though I may never feel the same about spinach.

You should see my fore arms balloon when I eat some. Haven't sung a sailor's jig all day.


So while I'm recovering from the panic attack, I get a visit from Little D, not his real name. He hasn't been coming around as much since he got hitched. I guess it's safe to tell the weasel that I'm off my graze. Just got a scare. Don't have my sea legs. Should have known all along Little D was a slow acting snake in the grass. All he has to know is that you have a soft spot.

"I know a guy you can talk to," Little D boasted, practically in my face. I used to think of 'a guy you can talk to' as a teacher or responsible small business representative. Maybe I gave the twerp too much information by declining his offer to help me initiate a frivolous law suit. A creep like Little D sees that as an opportunity to twist the purpose of moral scruples. Like it's dumb enough to have them, and a bigger waste not to use the trait, in others, for personal gain.

He moved in next door a few years after I found a two room hell hole in a barny looking wood aparment complex with spindly stair cases. Little D quickly established himself as an indispensible companion. The way an item can. I once had a vacuum black head remover that was so helpful in controlling acne that I thought of the plastic syringe aparatus as a companion.

You can kill a million scabies with a cream, and it's so legal you get the poison from the doctor. People think like this when they are stewing.

Maybe a year before my spinach trauma, Little D hitched himself to the hairy fore arm of fortune. This was about a charter school that didn't allow him and all the other litigants to serve the slum community. They were all veterans with hinky records, and had been supposedly entitled to hiring preferences.

Answering the phone is like drinking from an alien creek. Praise technology for the answering machine. It told me I could have salmonella. So when I decide to just answer the phone, myself, it's Barry Scumbag, attorney at law, wants to talk to me about my experience hearing of the tainted spinach, and more importantly, did I eat some.

"I ate some, Barry. I ate the whole bag of spinach. With some croutons and dressing. No, don't think there was anything special about the toast chunks and salad oil, how can I help you today, Barry."

Barry was trying to get a word past me the whole time I was talking. Couldn't wait to ask Barry if he was the one who told Little D about the class action law suit that he seemed to fit into like, like a hand in a silk glove.

I let Barry get to the point. I fucked up. I should have said I was puking blood.


I'm getting time frames mixed up. I could die of salmonella any minute, and I just got off the phone with Barry Scumbug. Little D tried to shake down a charter school about a year ago. For some reason, he and I are still speaking.

Little D worked like a charity martyr, calling everyone he ever met, asking if they liked spinach, and if so, did they know it could kill them. Barry, the professional, would emerge from the rear, soon as someone said they were sick. Alright, it was a month ago that I ate queer spinach and got an automated warning not to eat it on the answering machine. Getting nearer the present, Little D's new bride has been complaining something awful. Seems she is acutely ill. Symptoms something like salmonella.

Now both Little D and Barry Scumbag have been calling me ten times a day. Seems there's a legal loop hole. Might still be able to sign onto the Spinach Caper. Meantime, a local songstress is rounding up singers who lost their voice from puking real hard after getting sick off the spinach. She's been calling here. Nice voice. A little raspy. From all the puking. I hit the play button on the answering machine, and hear, "This is LaVoris Crackman, and I need you to help me sue."

It's hard to convince people I'm healthy as a horse and happy as a pig. LaVoris was calling from the dressing area at her club, The Pink Camel. It's owned by the gay Libyan cat. They say he's hung like mule.

"Come on sugar. Tell LaVoris what really happened to you. When those bad food handlers made you ralf up blood."

"Well, they scared me, LaVoris. That much is for true."

Somehow, I knew that if I went for this thing, I'd be wearing a hair shirt loaded with Noxema. There would be discomfort, salved with something made for women with bad skin. I'd be wearing the unwashed hair shirt to bed, with people. Other people. Lay down with bad people, wear a greasy hairshirt. No. I'm not waking from this greasy.

Farming

swing the wire basket full of eggs
rope the sun with pendulous milk
her white bonnet and white trimmed black farm uniform
repells animal fluid
her galoshes adore soft synthetic pastures
wondrous quartz gravel trails rove artifical peet
the bog smell is piped in

Pissed

importance, you bastards
I could change to a zillion bats
skitter in the falling leaves
make the 17 year locust
sound like harps
I could fill with nitrous oxide
make whipped cream
and torment you
this body is without water
no collogen
no oxygen
bone and titanium screws
from the wreck

Befuddled

you have to fish it out
I've been wrenching gleet in the basement
roof job has me swimming up ladders
I tried to chase predatory carp
in a chimney
fast greasy gold fish with teeth
hard to concentrate on the school
got away
a pipe broke
Old Faithful with thick fluid umbrella
gushed away my compass
I need it
can't find my toes

April Moebius

falling for the same phone prank
april fool
paging mike hunt
course figure eight like orbit
kinked in the center
tormenting me
calls me where ever
at work
at home
a fun seeker
stalker
joke