a word is worth a thousand pictures

I looked

into the mirror

yesterday

and I couldn’t

see myself

so I

walked outside

to the rainy streets

and peered

in foggy puddles

but I couldn’t

see myself

so I

ran to my

friend’s room

and asked him

if I was there

he didn’t say anything

back to me

so I went to my room

and fell asleep

naked

and

free.

Oh my God, So I had This Dream

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The Break Dance

I broke my teeth

chewing through your

corn filled shit,

I broke my wrist

fisting my way out

of the annals of

your deceits

I broke my leg

running in concentric

circles, falling

over those thin, low-lying

trip-cables you see

in heist movies that

may or may not actually exist.

I broke my neck

sticking it out of

a fast moving train car.

I didn’t see that brick

barrier coming so fucking fast.

I broke my arm

weaving webs of lies

to escape the ones

you trapped me in

But I won’t break

my heart for you,

and I wont’ break

my balls for you.

Those I’ll save to break

myself, when I’m tired

of using them

for my own

selfish pleasures.

I fall, we fall

I saw her

laugh

and I loved her.

A stuffed

dove

with the mating

call on

repeat.

on repeat.

A diabolical

angel

playing a detuned

harp

in hell.

But I knew no better.

So what if

I stuck my

hand in a bowl

of colors

and came out with

the popcorn

jelly belly.

At least I got laid.

The Last Day

A long wave weaved through my hair

in the last dying breaths of day.

The tangerine sun tickled the horizon with rays

of intolerable fragility,

sinking with the light into the sea.

White birds danced with brown bulls

on black sinking sand to the tune

of Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine man,

but he didn’t play for me.

It was the last day of the world

and we all knew it was coming

but we didn’t know it’d be so soon

we didn’t know it’d be so god damned soon.

So I swam in the sea as the last light of the last day

descended into the void of darkened eternity and I was

washed away as the long waves weaved though my hair

as Dob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine man

played like a million symphonies convening

over the coastline

playing for all of us

daring us to dream

when there was nothing else to do,

as God slept in a hammock in Tangiers

sipping Pina Coladas.

where are you from?

what’s that accent?

why are you here?

why are you here?

why are you here?

how long?

have you been to new york?

do you like bush?

do you like skynard?

how bout that exchange rate?

does it matter?

conversations flutter off an on with varying results but more often than not it all just boils down to can you get out of my way. because that’s all I really think sometimes, but I also wonder if my periods will look weird if I don’t de-italicize before concluding my sentences that aren’t queries or exclamations – and normally these are the types of thoughts that occupy the vast amount of my brain-time.

desktop alliteration

six bottles, ten cans, six empty personal size chip bags, two unwashed plates, dead digital camera, overturned burnt cd - I wonder what it is, telephone, corkscrew, nearly full pack of Marlboro medium cigarettes, empty day planner, fan, lamp, six pens, twenty six bottle caps, ray ban wayfarer sunglasses, toothpaste, three empty chocolate mint wrappers, a bottle of Heinz tomato catsup, empty hummus container, small foil square, laptop, two arms.

i dont know what this is

Primrose princess

in your infallible infatigable

mall meager fantasy song:

deliriously, eagerly and

freshly won with no more

tongue today than yesterday

stained and barking stung

climbing ladder rungs and

licking dark deepened

blood clotted skin rivets

speckled across sands of

vastly different sonnet sons

dripping with the scarlet

lungs singing cancer dances

dusted with lusted necromancers

in the twilight’s negligent sun.

Lowercase

I dreamt I had no body,

no limbs

just a head

inhumanly capable of bounding

freely along lawns of carpet

across wooden tables

through pastures of night drenched grass

fenced in by complexes of crumbling

terra cotta apartments

and dangling impossibly off of balconies from

string, like bait, begging

for the crossing pedestrians to bite

who look up in muffled horror

who shudder, retreat

and cower behind upturned

trench coat collars.

Twenty one more days to live they told me

in this strange state

of pseudo-existence

where nothing more was required of me

but to bound and be,

to love without a heart

full of life and with a feeling

like I’ve never felt before.

I dreamt I had no body,

no limbs

just a head.

I woke up crying

I wasn’t sure if I was happy to have everything again

or I was sad to be back to it all.

Dreamers

The leaves hustle and swirl
around the pomp and pearl
of foreign white sandy seashores
like a forgotten flock
of dark dead seagull ghosts
decayed from the sun
and caught in the wild throes
of an invisible tornado.

All this,
drenched in the night's rising darkness
these sad birds begging in litter bins
of blackened sunrises
for no more tin can tomorrows
throwing desire to the salty wind
with stunted half living breaths
and blowing away
the tin can yesterdays.

McDonald’s is across the street.

America is across the street.

I almost can’t see those

yellow tits they call the golden arches

because the Texaco station canopy

hides it. I can’t even tell how many billions

have been served. This is very important information

knowing how many burgers have been balled

and stuffed in gaping throats.

This is now how I gauge time now. See you in

seven hundred thousand burgers babe.

I’ll marry you when it reaches a trillion.

But I won’t add to the number again, not until

tomorrow at least.

same walk same

I tripped again

on an off-kilter

raised concrete square

squinting in the strange

London sunlight that

should be shrouded in rain

and clouds

on my way

to the angel dirt tube

for the fifth

time today.

I passed a bleach

blonde headed

skank standing and

skulking in Ugg boots

black short dress

smoking cigarettes

and barking

into her cell phone.

I thought she deserved my penis

but I walked by

with my mind on my

headphones and my

headphones in my mind

drawing sweat from my ears

bleach from my eyes

posing and pouring as tears

and I forgot about

her and her death glare.

Suicidal

I shuffled through gravel

In black high heeled boots

Made of dead cows and

Stitched by slaves

And I laughed at everyone

I passed and pointed

as if

I found no flaws

In myself.

The change in my pocket

Knocked against my thighs

And against each other

Like my very own

Instrumental minstrel

Following my every move.

One heel broke and I tumbled

Into the soiled gravel.

I was vaguely embarrassed

Falling face first

In front of a group

Of slender blonde topped

White men

Resembling cigarettes

While Smoking cigarettes

And watching them

Laugh at me

Falling in my righteousness

Like felled timber

Into the strip of gravel

Lining the sidewalk

But it was

Mostly tolerable because

I was mostly numb

To begin with.

Twelfth Street Blues

your chin reminds me

of last night’s

drunk breakfast meal

biscuits

and gray hearted

gray smeared gravy.

you may not

be the Picasso of perfection,

the carbon copy

of a Michelangelo

celestial acid trip

on a foreign

chapel ceiling

or the full figured

ghost of Marilyn Monroe

painted by

Andy Warhol

but

your meaty chin

beckons anyway

in my drunken

bones

and blood veined

tear stained

eyes

for five

minutes

straight

and that’s enough

to make

both of us come

and awake

in the

fiery sunrise

to no memory

of it all.

no titled

The red shirt fell off on my way to the liquor store running from the spoiler, spilling on the ground like a lake of fresh foaming blood drowning insects and pebbles who never thought they had to learn to swim. They cast you away because you were too much for them, but you know you aren’t too much at all, no one will listen to them anyway, or will they? It’s not like you can’t be too sensitive about these things because everything is ephemeral anyway, it won’t matter two days from yesterday or four from tomorrow, all that matters is this time here now in this perfect sand moment, a grain in a million maybe but it’s still the one you’re talking about and it’s still the one sitting in your hand and it’s everything you ever wanted and it’s everything that ever mattered and it’s the only thing you have.

not my problem

a diseased panhandler

hunches against brick.

hands wrapped around knees

head bowed hiding a forest

of gray whiskers

and grayer eyes.

skin the color of khaki speckled

with coffee stain tears

arms cracked and bleeding

into his cup.

almost full now.

I drop a quarter into the red pool

and watch the ripples radiate

to the dirty plastic edges and gone.

god bless he says

with a soulless voice

bitter blue and ravaged by life.

the moon is barely visible

in the sun drained sky and

the black slanted ghost silhouettes

painted on the cracked

concrete streets file past us in

the falling light

as cars creep by in

impatient rumbling traffic.

everybody’s always going somewhere,

except the diseased panhandler

until the quarters make dollars and the dollars

make enough beer

to get through the cold

hard night rain

as a family forgets

he’s out there.

A Letter to the Lone

I look at you

through the window

at your face.

Awash

in a swirling sea of pale grays

under the fluorescent

electric suns of 2 a.m.

breakfast mornings,

hiding from the moon.

Body draped

in a bleach stained blue t-shirt.

A punch hole patron

sitting

eating

drinking

and thinking, what?

at the Golden Gables

24-hour diner

all pall bearer solemn

on a Thursday night.

Alone.

Weary eyed with

hair slicked back

into a sad thinning mullet

brooding

over cups of coffee

and white ovals

drowning with the grease

of Midwest American obesity.

Bulging gut

resting and breathing

on the plastic wood

of the table while

you beg the dangling

red-headed cigarette

to take you soon,

to make good on their promises

as even the smoke

leaves you

alone.

The Moat

Bored as a blind bum deaf and dumb begging for dimes in the desert, I watch out my apartment window as my landlord, Charlie Cho, builds an impressive moat around the small apartment building I’m writing this in. I ask him why the moat Charlie Cho, why the unneeded expense, why the effort, especially when his business is in its infancy and revenue can so easily be reinvested in more practical improvements like garbage disposals. He tells me that terrorism is a ballooning threat and we should all build moats around our places of sleep and masturbation as to minimize the potential of death via automatic machine gun, dirty bomb, car bomb or airplane. I do live next to a busy road but I don’t see how a moat could stop an airplane in any circumstance save a mid-runway moat which would be tough to build with all those new aviation regulations. But I guess any of those passing cars could have bombs in them but probably not. Although, if I were a terrorist, Bloomington, Indiana would be the first place I would erase from the earth. I mean with the large frat population and the fact that Riverdance and Dennis Miller will be performing at the university auditorium, I’d say that this is a hot target. In fact, I may reference Wikipedia as to the best and most cost-effective way of manufacturing a homemade nuclear device and save al Qaeda from having to squander the precious few resources they have left. Charlie Cho just doesn’t know what he has gotten himself into. Now he’s stuck here with me, the budding terrorist and nuclear physicist and he hasn’t even built a God damn draw bridge to escape the island slated for certain destruction that he has so carelessly created. I’ve always wanted to operate a draw bridge with a large metal hat on my head so that dream will be slashed if my plans ever come to fruition. O the decisions we terrorists have to make! O the costs of opportunity we must endure! O the pangs of fundamentalist Islam! Maybe I’ll apply for the position if he builds the bridge and delay my personal nuclear proliferation plans for when my beard comes in thicker as to blend in with the rest of the terrorist scenesters.

DVD Rack Transfigurations Interspersed With Connecting Fragments

The Shining Odyssey

Is just a

Bulletproof Requiem for Raging Psychos

Stalking

Seven Wall Street Chainsaws

Like

Cool Hook Luke

During the

American Apocalypse

Where

The Hills Have True Lies

And the

Pirates of the Departed

Smash

Schindler’s Romance

Into

Vanilla Magnolia

And

The Silence of the Scissors

Mocks the

Murder of La Dolce Vita

At the hands of all the

Full Metal Rejects

Living in

Gilmore’s Garden

Or

Beautiful Taxis

Where we

Kiss Drink Bang Woman

And where

The Assassination of Mulholland

Was covered up by

Bill’s Red Velvet

And we all scream

Blow, Cinderalla Man, Blow!

But we know it’s just one of

The Usual Omens

And that

Life is Beautiful on the River Kwai

And all

Unplugged Bicycles

Ask

Who Killed the Electric Casino?

And it all causes

A Mean Vertigo

That stings like a

Haunted Blade

In the

Devil’s Bonfire

Under the

Untouchable Sunshine Sky

Little Boy, Little Girl

Her eyes are protected by a thick crust that keeps moonlight from creeping through her long lashes and closed lids. I stoop low and hover above her sleeping naked body that would float away with a strong gust or a stiff drink. Outside in the tremor of night on the pale sea sands, a row of gulls squawk in sequence all balancing on beams of disposed cigarettes. A rotting dock unusable juts out into the calm endless expanse and I suddenly realize that the world is flat. My open mouth lets free a foamless salted water stream and awakens the sleeping deranged angel brown eyed and haired. The crust flies free from her long-closed slumber eyes though too quick to see without slow motion capabilities. A flash of fear appears in eyes red stained from drink drugs and long episodes of insomnia punctuated by restless bouts of stunted hibernation. I look over my shoulder and see an old sun-leathered man draped in rags standing idly on the boardwalk in front of a closed salt water taffy store staring at the curling waves under the black star speckled sky. He looks over to me, at my scarred face and down to the naked nymph buttoned below me. Through tattered gloves his fingers stretch. He reaches up to his left eye, removes it without expression and offers it to me. The squawking gulls circle and flee by flight and leave a serene silence allowing the crashing waves to become the only remaining sound. I peel back the sky and jump into the white void, leaving them together to pick up the fallen stars.

a slice of america the beautiful pt. 1

a seven legged dog walks past me solitary on my way to buy frozen pizza for a dollar fifty nine at the long line fluorescent gray of supermarket America with only marijuana and beer on my mind and breath. I cant figure out why the dog has seven legs but I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for this. from evry open apartment window I hear the shouting of tv talk show hosts game shows and the corresponding scream from the excrement audience none wily none really there, only on tv and only coming out of open windows and closed minds. there is more to this phenomenon than we can ever comprehend. doctors dont make me better, drugs make me better, the information superhighway is more like an empty trailer park of dusty remnants of meaningless masquerading fuckery. blip blip sound bite byte bite bite byte bite. (im burning every dan brown novel tonight I can get my stringy fingers on). its a sandbar of isolation im sitting on and im damn pleased to be here with my thoughts, books laptop (or is it notebook) marijuana and naked Rimbaud dancing in my head with that damn seven legged dog from earlier attached to a spiked leash also attached and choking Rimbaud, as evidenced by the bulging neck pipelines about to burst and drown my delusions in poetic red.

Neighbors

I can’t get the royal blue blinds on my front window closed before the old bald bastard living in the decaying shack across the street sees me. He gets up as quickly as he can from his ancient once red, now pink rocking chair on his unpainted porch and starts toward my house. He stumbles across the road that divides us and calls out my name. Hey Jimbo (my name is James). I let out an audible sigh and make the seven step walk from my front window to my front door. I make sure to keep the screen door shut as a reminder to both of us that this isn’t a friendly visit. He asks me for five - wait for it - ten dollars because he’s had a hard day and just needs a few beers to unwind. I can smell the cheap whisky (Beams 8 Star no doubt) on his breath and can see the glassy coating on his eyes hiding him from the outside world. You already owe me twenty five dollars I say. He tells me with absolute sincerity that he is working on that outstanding debt. A lying drunk begins to believe his own stories and it’s hard for me to believe that he works for anything but favors. I tell him to hold on and grab the last beer out of my fridge and hand it to him (a Newcastle, fuck). He thanks me with a shadow of disappointment in his raspy cigarette voice. I stand in my doorway and I watch this sad lonely man stumble back across the road to his miserable rotting life and decaying shack. It’s times like these that I wonder if my mom would still be alive if maybe her neighbor had given her the vodka she so desperately needed instead of getting hit by a car on her walk home from the liquor store on that rain dead November night. Maybe I should have gotten him more beer.