#43

The lyre's chest is opened
dry notes hang in the air
imagine paper flowers
melting into
n
o
thing
The liar's chest is opened
blood burns in the air
imagine iron rivers
flowing through
t
o
morrow

Vulgate Prostate

Thin as a paperback life
Set to the symphony of dullards
Born inside a cemetery
I am the idol of the godless
Groaning
Hypnotized
m-asses

Black as a snowed-in church
Stapled to a bulletin board
Wet like a pool of freedom
I am the jester of the kingless
Crooning
Self-absorbed
b-itches

Sweet like a root extract
Cast in an impure silver
Clean like a cigarette
I am the ashes of the hopeless
Foolish
Nihilistic
s-laughter

Histronics of the Snowy Ride

As evening fades on winter days
With raindrops sliding everywhere
A grimace, like icicles,
Drips and freezes on your face

The rainfall ceases;
My tears are stuck in time

What Harpies Preach in Words of Wine

Warriors pray to golden calves
Foreign soldiers hold their halves
The Prince of Thieves holds in his laugh
As darkness wakes the sweeping trash
Emblems of the midnight tide
Speak in rhythms born to rhyme
Horrors hope and heroes find
That saviors are not always kind

But it's okay,
You've got each other

Basking in the daylight drums
The rebel speaks of kingdoms
Piercing tithes and other sums
As a poet pirate soon becomes
Passive passages of fate
Wait not for the chimes of hate
As strangers hear and elevate
The causes of the empty slate

But it's okay,
For who will you judge you?

War begins and ends in flame
Vain about its so-called name
Hoping to its dame reclaim
As it claims eternal fame
Tongues of death slither and crawl
In your blood he hopes to scrawl
Your eulogy in words that drawl
As he finds you in the hall

But it's okay,
You're dead already.

The Cataclysmic Reformation of Mr. Humpty Dumpty

You've heard of that fellow who sat on the wall?
Who leaned too far forward and had a great fall?
The one who was ambushed by all the king's men?
The one so complex and yet so full of sin?

Well, what if I told you the truth of his death?
With symbols and systems and so full of breadth?
And for what did that fellow do to earn fame?
Except, as it happened, was felled and was slain?

Perhaps now immortal, his name shall live on
His pain and disdain shall forever prolong
Remember the moral of this rhyme of yore:
To the king and his men, you are but a chore.

The Friar and His Almanac

A man I once knew from the desolate slums
Who poured out his soul to the celibate scum
The peasant who hung from the devilish tongue
The priest of the pirate who peddles in puns

Had such a great fervor and feverish thrill
With dreadlocks and deadlocks and simplest of skill
That, still in the pillbox of Calgary Hill
The friars took arms and were ready to kill

The battle to wage was a frivolous one
Encouraged by Peter and Presbyter John
The question at hand was if war could be won
As so went the drum, ra pum pa-pum pa-pum.

And who could endeavor in blackest of times?
The Baptist is severed, a platter to find
The passions of passives entombed in the lime
Is pleasant and present and ready to climb

The smoke and gunpowder and cavalry ride
Recall and enthrall all of those on the line
In order and rank as the flank, it does hide
The war has begun with all reason aside

That man I once knew from the desolate slums
Who poured out his heart to the hellish of scum
Had died from an arrow that pierced through his tongue
As so went the drum, ra pum pa-pum pa-pum.

Untitled

The newspaper’s in the trash can
The journalist, he seems unsure
All the things he thought he knew
They now seem so absurd
Pointedly, he makes mention
Of his untimely decline
He climbs into his unmade bed
Weeping to his bride
The past, as he would tell it
Has been thwarted by the priest
As he stares out the window
Onto the empty city street

The day has almost receded
The night is beginning to rise
The city in all its splendor
Is about to come alive
Lovers crossing street lamps
Roost underneath the bridge
Both entranced by mystery
And both, so frigid
The constable, he sees them panting
He strikes them with his feet
And now, there are two dead boys
Lying in the city street

Pigeons trapped in cages
All along the rooftop edge
Are chirping their fears away
And are leaving hope for dead
The keeper has been little comfort
Or the ringleader at least declared
Lending to the line of thought
That soon would fill the air
Causing all to fill with fret
And some to even care
And as they hummed in unison
The message was discrete
None in cages or in the sky
Would sweep the city street

Fortune seems oh so tempting
At least to the midnight mime
He speaks with silent wisdom
And pretends that all is fine
He watches all the antics
Of the shadows and their kin
Confused by their hypocrisy
And scared of their intent
He sees a child walking
Into the where the bell has rung
The mime, he tries to warn her
But the devil has cut out his tongue
And as the child is lifted up
Dangling by her feet
The mime, he sits and sleeps alone
Upon the city street

The beggar, though just a boy
He sees the coming dawn
And so with cup in shaking hand
He refuses to be a pawn
Though his hat is on so crooked
And he is mocked by all who pass
The angels have prepared him
For this, his bravest task
Pity has been his companion
And often some disdain
But the beggar boy looks to the sky
As his tears mingle with rain
He needs the coin and needs it quick
For his parents are recently deceased
And he has to purchase flowers for them
And leave the city street

Apostolic Apocalypse

Spiders crawl beneath the skin
Of the dreaded harlequin
Weeping tears of blood and oil
Her words corrupt the sky and soil

Riding on an iron vulture
Is the soldier of the culture
Holding sword and holding book
He dares not at the woman look

A beast of steel and thunder
Seeks to soldier sunder
Clawing at the thoughtless clash
It breathes with smoke and ash.

The gates of time and of space
Forgotten in this hateful place
Shut the trinity away;
Such began the darkest day.

Hiss

Salacious slaves slice and slake
As slither does the snake
Slipping, sliding, slivers sidle
On the silver slate

So severed by the seven signs
Slanted slush and slime
Is slackened slight and sylvan sight
Slovenly and slain

The Whore of Babylon

Harlot, Harlem, starving stardom
The things that "wise men" seek
Starlit darlings, farther columns
The gates of great deceit

I see the Whore of Babylon
Mounted on the Beast
What’s more, the Rising Son
Is stranded in the East

The Anti-Christ and Christians
Transcendental woes
Reformation districts
Blood upon the snow

Who is the Whore of Babylon
Mounted on the Beast?
Dignified and evil spawn
Upon which flesh will feast?

Electric pulses, primal urge
Perverse pleasures, too
Sin, death, crime and scourge
Murder heaven’s troops

I see the Whore of Babylon
With heart so freely thrown
The Beast who goes to babble on
Has seized a seated throne

Women Love Adverbs

"That is like, totally, completely, and like, entirely sexist. Like, literally."

Bombast

Prester John rides out into the dusty desert
Convinced that he will find the colony of lepers
Instead he’s greeted by the Prince of Arabia
Who tells him of an evil king named Malaria
So Prester John takes a sword and travels all the lands
Seeking with his single mind the secrets of the sands
For though the war against the King has yet to begin
Prester John must still atone for sins.

Francis Bacon takes a crown and throws it to the ground
For he feels that all who kneel are really not profound
Stopped by seismic waves of days buried in the dirt
From the earth and flames does a dragon burst
And taking fork and taking spoon into his great, wide hands
Francis Bacon kills the beast and serves a dinner plan
For though the dragon is a beast mighty in his roar
Francis Bacon could not the beast ignore.

Arthur and brave Lancelot make find themselves adroit
Praised for skill in all they do in the city of Detroit
Their exile there is a result of failure and defeat
The forces of the night watchmen would then deplete
Making use of their talents, the duo volunteered
Soon Arthur and Lancelot were heroes and were cheered
For though the crime and decline was harsh and it was cruel,
Arthur and Lancelot were hardly fools.

Javert’s corpse with Valjean’s soul would walk the streets of Paris
And haunt the peasants and the priests and sit upon the terrace
All the houses of repute so ill and quite so stained
Were cast in iron, shod in steel, and birthed upon the Seine
“Who knows when,” the zombie said, “we will return to home”
For robbers of the graveyard sites were fitted now with chrome
For though the children of the night were ready in their boon,
Javert and Valjean were still entombed.

The General at the Gates

The tourniquet of my interests falls in pieces on the floor
This life of which I’m falsely convinced is lost forevermore
Battered and embattled by a hateful mind and spite
Centered on the selfishness of all who pray and fight
I wonder as I squander every chance given to me
Perhaps my ego can end this self-defeating cycle finally
At every chance I know there is a hope, a hidden flame
But then I snuff it with great force just to feel the pain
Convinced that all that’s real is dark and cold in reach
The kingdoms of happiness are stolen from my feet
Messages and couriers dethrone my silent howl
Tailors and tyrants quickly strip me of my cowl
And all the sailors at the bar are eager to make a joke
At my expense and thus invent the reason for my yoke
Spoken like a hero lost whose heart is torn in twain
The damsel, she regards me as though I’ve gone insane
Perhaps I have, perhaps it’s true that all my chances passed
But now I know that it is just my fate to live the past
Scarcely, sacred scared secrets spill upon the floor
Little dreamlets drop like dew upon my morning door
And whisked away from winter’s whiskered, wispy whine
I hope and hold the life and love that glimmers on the vine
Crushed within my bitter grasp, I move in self-defense
For though I hold my own success, to me it makes no sense
For my art is born of hate and thus my only hope
Is to be unhappy, yes- to be bitter but never to mope.

Submitted in Triplicate

Truths of youth scorch across my scalp like crimson claws
Masters of the simple sands have filled their golden halls
When weighed against the wages of the poor and destitute
You wonder what the spirit brings to those who play the flute
Cataclysmic rhythms die upon the kingly chair
As misanthropic children cry, half-hearted in their cares
The somber host and solar ghost of leftist warriors rise
To the call of prince and Paul and priests who scream and tithe
If only those who held the rose would see their pointless role
Reductive questions of the self would fall upon the poll
The question asked by all who reign within the chamber is:
Are my servants working to their fullest?

Scholars speak of little things and hold them to the sky
Their perception is distorted and felled by simple lies
The knights encircled in the church are questioning their selves
Bishops breathe on dusty tomes and place them on the shelves
The candles lit upon the graves of stymied soldiers dead
Call to mind the present tense of all who lightly tread
Searching in the floodlight gaze of midnight’s looming queen
Are the thieves of thirsty needs who curse what they can glean
Preferring shadows clung to them instead of burning glow
The future and the past are naught to them but a chance to grow
They are novelties upon the waltz room and are asked:
Are my servants working to their fullest?

Empires crumble into dust and visions blur and twist
Prophets born to priestesses are cast upon the whips
The pleasant scent of sense is stripped and thrown upon the floor
As beggars born to beggars burst and weep forevermore
Seven separate severed heads are set and sent on platters
Soon the symbol of the times is killed and thus is splattered
On the morbid stone unturned and sitting by the tomb
The metaphysical remorse betrayed by limb and womb
Science birthed to godlessness and gods born to science
Are scheduled for routine protests and other plain defiance
And one last call echoes above the clamor of the day:
Are all servants working to their fullest?

The Error of Comedies

I no what you want
You want my work to haev flaw
s
So maybe you can
Crit
I
Size
all of my words.
Categorize my idoitcy
And right my eulogy before Im’ dead.

Well]; to bad.

The Sorry State of Judgment Day

Are you homesick, or just sick of home?
Tied down to the roads where you roam?
Missing the missiles, or missing being missed?
Making a visit, or reliving your first kiss?
Who knows, babe, but I can say:
We’re all gearing up for the Judgment Day.

Juliet, she’s groaning under the curtain sheets
As Romeo, he’s phoning his mistress of the streets
Ballroom pranks and misogynistic throes
Are perpetrated by the prince in all of his woes
I look at all these people made of clay
And see that they’re preparing for Judgment Day.

First of all the Firsts and Last of the Lasts
Is the governor and his mighty sacred ass
To claim him as a dependent is surely in your rights
But know that he has booked nearly all of your flights
He’s sitting in the front row of the play
And you can see he’s not ready for Judgment Day.

Plastic porters pencil paste into their pies
As Robin Hood in Sherwood builds up his lies
For though he sees through mystery, he’s still unsure
And has to steal the hearts of those who will not defer
And he’s ready, sure, to jump into the fray
And take the role of horseman on Judgment Day.

Socrates and Nietzsche are tied up in a knot
As Arnold and Armstrong find out what they’re not
Pistol, Hotspur, and Northumberland ride
All to find out where Falstaff does not hide
Feeling queer and still revered, they sit and stay
At the ashen gates outside of Judgment Day.

Cancerous canaries and mystical matches
Are cooked by the chef into all of the batches
Perplexed by sex and sexlessness of binary code
He perches all the preachers out in the cold
He’s testing all the waters of the bay
Because he doesn’t know a thing of Judgment Day.

The quartermaster sits alone and counts all his bank
Because his master, Moriarty, has been struck in the flank
Spurred by surly certainty, they will never yield
Because they are fighting so that they can march upon the field
And steely is their will to hope and stay
Upon this final hour before Judgment Day.

Hold me, dear woman, and hold my worries there
Inside of your icy hell that has struck you unaware
Before you can cancel all my missing credit cards
I’d ask you to reconsider where we stand and pause
Because it’s with you that I would like to stay
And see the final verdict on Judgment Day.

This... Is... What... You... Do... To... Me...

I’m stuck at home with a bottle of rum
An empty wallet and a pocket full of gum
A fistful of Christmas lights spark in my hand
And I wonder what I have to do to get you to understand

Photographic memories play in my mind
Of dismal distant damsels and their rotary signs
Strung out guitarists plug in their weapons
As a quartet of lords set up for their sessions

A distant string plucks a note that pulls through the night
Like a sleigh full of wishes burning in the twilight
The mystery spokesman for the big disappointment
Is present at the office for my dentist appointment

Stock broker lifelessness lodged into a trunk
Is found in the bottom of the sewers where it sunk
Pencil me in for a tentative visit
To the palm treed senselessness so that I can relive it

Dangerous psychics chill their tea with regret
As the murderous biker takes a seat and a check
I switch our jackets and take my leave
Because this is a place where I never asked to be.

The Last of These

Visions of your midnight kisses
Memories of your touch and face
Dreams about your laugh and smile
Are enough to make me
Sick.

Lakeside skylines and shoreline candor
Summer heat and bodies cling
Drunken nights spent together
They recall all the
Worst of times.

Sunlit screens and thin, worn hands
Always moving, always needing
Stifled by your selfishness
I feel nothing
At all.

Sporadic Remembrance of a Future Self

Let's kick the ball and emancipate
Gather together and celebrate
I'm looking for love in all the right places
And I'm looking around at all the pretty faces
Hopefully, with a bit of luck—
We'll get down to it and we'll have a good. . .
Ahem, have a good time.

Just you and me… Sure, she can come
Ah, what the hell, we're all still young
Bring your friends, we'll have a party
It's a festival and it's only starting!
I'm looking at you, drunk with love
And maybe some liquor—
It's just a buzz!

Hangover blues on the next day
"It was worth it," you'll hear me say
Even though I don't remember last night
And I don't know if it was really right
I'm just afraid you don't feel the same
So I'll just—
Well, I'll just hope we can do it again.

Dancing Setlists

Bumblebees erupting from a dead end faucet
Spinning citations from the open closet
Morose mantras born in Albuquerque
Dreadlock dreams that are trying to hurt me

Soapbox derby hats and plastic spoon days
Bellicose dandelions who speak with grenades
Corrosive management of whistling sock drawers
Scandalous skirmishes with silvery sophomores

Pensive pasts of a parasitic preacher
Tin-footed tensions of a primary feature
Statutory morals of a symphonic movement
Born-again losers who are constantly truant

Valorous visions of a toothpaste tyrant
Floral arrangements of the blue fire hydrant
Sickles and systems of an idiot pilot
Mystery readers who refuse to try it

Wisdom and the Princess

Sophia, lyres shall play for you
Within the clouds of love and joy
Sophia, I shall stay with you
Forever in your employ

I have done so much wrong
Seeking your light touch
Forgive me for that early song
So filled with angst and lust

I was entrapped within the grasp
Of Sadie, harsh and cruel
Gripped by senseless lack of class
Drowning in her pool.

Until I saw through your blinding eyes,
Born anew by my bold muse
Your strong and firm arms and thighs
Held unflinching truths

Sadie gasped and grabbed at me,
Her claws and tongue lashed
I held my hand for you to reach
And kicked, disarmed, and thrashed

In her web of lies and malice
In my Narcissistic throes
Sadie sought to keep my chalice
And swallow my soul whole

I took your flame and lit a blaze
And burnt her spinning webs
Her venom coursed through my veins
My love for her, it ebbs

Sophia, lyres shall play for you
Within the clouds of love and joy
Sophia, I shall need just you
Forever by you buoyed

Then and Now and Then Again

The spectral spectrum speculates upon your empty grave
The hectic heckling hecatonchires strikes the knave
The pavement of the dreams of yore smolders still with heat
Drawn from the daylight’s blistered hair and the poet’s feet
Streets begin to see receipt of sleek mystique and more
As Cassius speaks to Cinna on how they both are bored
And so, with Robert Frost and Oscar Wilde still in stow,
Jerusalem and Moscow burn in name of devil’s glow
Who is the Satan of the cause, the soldier serving self?
Is Prometheus his name, or Fortuna and wealth?

Aramaic harvests turn to dust in Daniel’s dreams
As slighted sons of nuns and priests find themselves redeemed
Poor, what for the Moors have done, ask Othello there
When Judas and Iago plot to build their fellow’s flair
With flares and fares and fairs so fair, the chain gang does beseech
As Jean Valjean looks to the throne of Jean-Armand du Plessis
“Richelieu, bold Richelieu, the cardinal sin is yours”
Speaks Ronald Reagan to the Pope upon the Senate floor
Who could have known, the gambler asks, looking to the sky
That Zeus and Odin made a pact upon the day they’d die

Lightning born to cosmic might, of Thor and his frank kin
Is summoned and is captured by malicious Ben Franklin
As Roosevelt, the elder one, shoots Fidel Castro
The warmongers and firemen put on the vaudeville show
Charlie Chaplin, Karl Marx, and Einstein march in tune
To Isaac Newton’s organ played in the deadly zoo
Shaka and the Zulu tribes put on their suits and ties
For the ball held by all the Rockefeller types
Frederick Douglass takes the shape of Simon born as Peter
As Josef Stalin grapples with the western theater

But telling to Rapunzel as she journeys to the bar
Is that the Prince of Thieves of Hearts is waiting at her car
Jesse Jackson takes his suit and throws it to the wind
As Adam West and Adam Smith discuss their many friends
The casket for the General, known to most as Caesar
Is packed into the crowded room so all may see his seizure
Facts of fax machines and faces of the night
Are displayed upon the screen of German fright and flight
The Bloody Baron takes his plane and flies it to Montana
And has a drink with Bob Dylan who changes all the channels

The Green Hornet and Tonto take a cue from Mister Rogers
And steal the zeal from all the fans of the missing Dodgers
In some place, in some time, Rimbaud and Verne have doubt
And close the book of now and then and wander all about
It matters not to Vonnegut who speaks in boldest words
As Bull Connor and Dick Cheney shoot the helpless birds
With empty fists and gentle hands, Atticus misspeaks
As Captain Kirk joins the circus and becomes a freak
Billy the Kid and Jack the Ripper rob a Wal-Mart store
But Dorothy returns her shoes and wishes nevermore

Only known to Mao Zedong, the gremlins burn the mast
Of the flagship and the crew of Kremlin and its past
As Putin sings to opera fans and Winston takes a bow
You wonder as your grave is filled if “then” is still your “now.”

I’ll Take My Crucifixion Now, Please

The serpent swallows hollow souls within the hallowed vines
Of Eden's gates and misplaced trace of the plan divine
The pain within the heart of Cain was twain, insane, mundane
Jealousy, that petty beast, had blackened love's great flame
Abraham, sweet Abraham, God wants to kill your son
Complacent man, that Abraham, who brought him thus along
It was a test, perhaps a joke, for Lord knows we're property
Of GOD and FATHER, pointless rules, and monotony
Monogamy, monotheistic pressures of the times
Could it be brave David's luck or his lust in prime?
Solomon, wise Solomon, divides the babe in two
Inspiration to all bureaucrats who thrive on logic too
Delilah turns to Samson, the King of Rock and Roll
And tells him to get a haircut or else she'll steal his soul
Perhaps the prophets and the kings will figure out this ruse
As empire after empire dominate the Jews
Delivered from their righteousness, spared from heathen grasp
As those not born to Israel, put up to Caesar's task
Turned to small Judea with a trader's keen insight
And burnt the Zealots from their homes, blithe to Jewish plight
Baptismal fires flared upon the River of Jordan
As John, with nom de guerre Baptiste, invoked the Spirit's hand
Perhaps he's right, perhaps the Chosen One is all there is
But if that's the God whom I'm to serve—

—I'll pass on that, my friend.

Beheaded Ambition

The distant piano hammers notes that blaze into the wind
Handlers take the vandals to the panel in self-defense
I wonder if you wander in to winter’s winded wars
Or if you’re just a summer soldier of the sunny shores

I missed a chance to frisk a dancing angel in the sky
Caustic frost on my exhaust sputters smog and lye
Thieves and beggars take their cues from the ancient mariner
Leaves and soot fill the grave of those who weren’t fair to her

Sadie, sadist, Satan, savior of the sane and sanitary
Her gleaming dreams of freedom are fleeting and are ancillary
Born to Mal and Melinda and destined for the militia
Approximated purpose and hurt will likely be sufficient

The flare of warning sirens bursts into the twinkling night
Because the planetary juggernaut didn’t think to fight
The fright of those who struggle has been burned at the stake
As the queen makes mistakes in lace and has to eat her cake

Paradise and Sacrifice

I refuse to give you part of me
I suffused you with my empathy
I infused you with my self-pity
And confused you with my hinting need

The battle of the sexes
Athena stretches, flexes
As Ares, he perplexes
Standing in the nexus

At war with self and selflessness
Abhorred by most with common sense
Ignored by those who whine and wince
Distorted by the blackened fence

Stop, hey, what’s that sound
Everybody look at who just drowned
In the bubbling pool I found
With my red and ruddy hound

Heal my wounds, Sophia, please
I seek to end this painful tease
All that's left is but a piece
Of my ceded dignity.

Radio Dreams

A fascinating change of pace
A Fascist with a name of Grace
The same old place where we have chased
The traces of the face of hate. . .

In the end, the innuendo
Is all but out the window
So let me dash and flash my pass
So we can get harassed

Do you hear the bells cling?
Do you see the fountain sing?
Do you smell the mountain spring?
Do you taste the diamond ring?

Ode to a Bum

Homeless man, oh homeless man
You never get to know this man
Some say he is the foe of man
The hobo and the clothesless man

Sitting in the sidewalk there
Inhuman to the kids that stare,
Jeer and sneer at sights so queer
“What’s that dirty asshole doing here?”

Salutations from the Streets of USA!
We are here from dusk to dawn of newest day
Homeless men, us homeless men
Soon we’ll be seeing you, my friend!

Midnight Oil

There's still the matter of the chatter
The splatter of that night
A cloud of clemency and fate
As your dreams are splayed

Breath, breathe, whisper, scream
Ec-sta-sy and mystery
The throbbing pulse within your chest
Is enough to make me heave

I can taste him on you, my dear
Can you taste her sweat?
The passions you have ripped from him
The drinker's alphabet

Had you and I and her and him
Well, if we had worked out
My mind is zooming with the thought
Of how I hate your frown.

Born, dead, or something else
The clock is ticking!
Had you heard the dulcimer
No? I must be crazy.

Dissonance

The bitter twitter of my fit of truth will pass you by
If you let it set and fret and stretch into a lie
The fathoms of your innocence are bound into a tome
As the demon of your deviance is found at home

We’re all lost at sea
Seeing you and me
Don’t you know it’s true
That I love,
Rather, hate you

Take my hand, take my heart, take me apart
As long as you are holding me, my love will never part
Papier-mâché personalities and syllogistic destiny
Are driven by the plowman out of sheer necessity

I’m climbing Mount Everest
All… by… my… self…
Can’t you lend me a hand?
Or maybe
Two?

STARS ALIGN along the Rhine and time and space a-circle
Does anything rhyme with circle besides Erkel?
Poetry, my addiction, it slithers, slinks, and slides
Burned into my skin and crawling in my eyes

Walls we build
Walls we destroy
Walls of hate
And walls of love

My cocoon, it croons and soon it swoons and opens up
Into a tomb of doom and gloom, the womb of ebon tusks
Ever touched by survival and revival of the vital fiscal thump
I know you can hear me when I tear up and tear it up

Hold the mirror to your face
Fold the searing light and trace
Sold to slavers by my brothers
Just for my coat of many colors

To My Beloved

You’re a slick little trickster with a twisted, sickened mind
A quick look into your book of tragic pasts will find
That all things you whine about are simply imperceptible…
You’ve got the self-esteem and self-control of a vegetable…

I figure that the trigger of your quiver has to shiver
When winter and dissent descend upon defenses silver
The fences and pretentiousness of princes slip on by
The door you tore to steal the floor has since been mystified

I know you look at me and see the freak you think is in my heart
But your mistrust and lust has thrust you just into the part
Of the dove of love and thus you trust that you are seeing straight
When all the hawks upon the rocks are blinded by their hate

There’s another thing you seem to bring to all your friends
When you tell them of the hell I would have put you in
The lies that die upon the finding of your mindless game
Are all that wait for those with patience and with half a brain

The Pamphleteer

Ahmadinejad is standing in the circus tent
While insurgents in Baghdad refuse to relent
A shepherd is killed and his body interred
As someone pours a drink for Henry Kissinger.

A condor erupts from an Afghani veil
A Chinese bullet flies on a Darfur trail
Bin Laden dons his Soviet-era fatigues
And his Rolex watch commands the mujahedeen.

The Free World is hardly as free as it seems
Resting on the shoulders of Third World dreams
As Mugabe and Amin and Hussein have shown
The CIA just doesn’t care who holds the throne.

The Free-Thinkers Association

Dishonest eternities and idiot fortunes
Coupled with couplets blown out of proportion
Are loaded into caskets, then a U-haul van
As fragments of humankind fall on Afghanistan
Leeches, bleached and beseeched, cling to my wife
As blackened blood pours up the drain of my life
The cracked and salty lips of the oceanic shore
Are crushed beneath the wishes of a heavenly door
Violent and virulent is the uncharted anguish
Its steely resolve is remarkably stainless
Napoleonic formations swell and raise the mast
As the prairie turtle of the race comes in last
The captain of the guard calls to the Virgin Mary
I put my hat on my arms because they’re trying to scare me
The cigarette salesman tells my mind it’s out of luck
And tired of running, it would rather walk amok
It hankers down and batters down the chorus calling “schwa”
As I abuse a pair of clueless ants and throw them to the maw
I jogged into the county fair and lifted up my shoe
“My soul is falling out,” I screamed ‘til I turned blue
The baker then mistook me for a berry from his patch
And threw me in the crust of the next pie from his batch
As planets passed and Miramax films played in my mind
I summoned reels of images of the life I left behind
Holding onto handelebars carved from granite blocks
I felt the wood beneath me splinter on the rocks
The future and the past climbed into the golden carriage
Tensely, with intensity, they conjugated their marriage
Mayonnaise soldiers played the funeral march
As the chimney sweep gently weeped, rather, wept upon the arch
The professor said I had to have a motif in this poem
So I pulled up my pants and the nurse had to send me home
To veer, or voire, to steer and saw at my hollowed bones--
"Qu'est-ce que tu as dit? I was on the telephone"
At last, the poet laureate cleared the eyes to his mind
And thinking he was free, he deigned to end his rhymes.

Neo-Post-Post-Post-Modernism

The problem as it used to be was failure to communicate
The walls we’d built had led us to impale and yet to ruminate
But now the privacy of past has all but vanished to the wind
As information floods to us regarding enemies and friends

I do not care about your thoughts on Lindsey Lohan’s life
I do not care about your recent quarrel with your wife
This static on the Internet seeks to creep inside my brain
I long for silent days and nights and wish for malcontent again.

Worse than Before but Still All the Same

I’m buried beneath a pile of dirty white socks
As I draw an artistic masterpiece via lightbox
I prance and dance with my friend Lance until the day is dawn
And then we both grab lemonades and set fire to the lawn

The warlord calls and warns us where to stay
So I throw my friend into a cell and set out on my way
The commissioner and his posse ride up the city street
And every last one of them has on a pair of spiked cleats

The blind old cynic calls out to Julius
He tells the old dictator about the sin of hubris
Then Brutus comes from nowhere and pulls a great prank
And crucifies the pirate lord from the deck of the plank

Soldiers born to Heracles hold their standard true
So I go into the merry seas and oceans so blue
The pantograph hatches Prometheus’ scheme
And issues commands from the nuclear machine

Nero uses his new gift to burn Rome to the ground
As politicians use the chance to spread the wealth around
Patrician families hold their status to the gods
As Antoinette force-feeds cake to all of the clods

From the ashes of the city a phoenix does arise
And Tom Outland’s engine sprays oil into my eyes
Sarkozy and Putin exchange a tense stare
As the changing of the guard brings grey to my hair

The aging of a people brings fat to their belly
And old Willy Loman can’t remember what to sell me
He walks into the poison hole to breathe the cyanide
And Biff cannot decide if it is patricide

Vonnegut and Cather dress up for the waltz
As Langston Hughes and blues men argue at the march
Malcolm and Robert are murdered at the fair
And my gnarled wooden leg turns into a chair

Sitting at the table, I play my fiddle loud
And Moses and Jesus part the middle of the crowd
I see red, the crowd goes dead, silent as a photo
And Jesus breaks out his guitar and hammers out a solo

Suddenly a demon who calls himself Walker
Goes to war with stories written by Faulkner
Racist old men explode all over Birmingham
About matters that should not be concerning them

A sword and a shield appear in my hands
I throw them aside and go buy up some land
Katrina, the temptress, she wrecks the old town
Leaving gumbo chefs with a permanent frown

The story keeps on changing, the writer is scared
All the world filters through his angry red flare
The poet calms his nerves and slips him some booze
What comes next seems almost too hard to choose.

The Nutmeg Addict

When last I heard the forlorn call of lost and leery foes
I held a keg of milk and egg as people nearly froze
An early winter storm blew in of fierce and lashing tongue
And hindered us from finding where the mistletoe had hung
The sleigh bells broke and rang no more, the carpenter went home
As fabled hopes had sang and soared, a harbinger to roam.

When dazzled little midnight specks of starlight sky did fall,
The magic of the festival had glowed throughout the hall
Songs of folklore and of myth had been wrapped in sweaters warm
As babies born in snowy fields were left for God to mourn
The townsfolk came and made their peace with sunny manner still
As the crippled old Nutmeg Addict saw his spirit killed.

Hypocrites and malcontents were the first to then speak up
And wrest then from the Nutmeg man his psychedelic cup
With twisted grins, these empty men then moved with hate and spite
And the town watched still in sin the Nutmeg Addict’s fight
The haggard hazardous old man was pried from winter’s seat
And soon they threw him into the frigid crystal street.

As Christmas gifts and vicious lips spoke of the Nutmeg Man
Viscous quips and mistresses discussed then the New Year’s plan
The murderers and riot mob would round the city block
And with some luck they’d single out the hanger of the socks
For this small town with all its little brownstones in a row
Was beholden to a Devil who dwelled within the snow.

The Wisdom of the Midnight Grave

The night I met Sophia, I was far from sober
I think still of how I’d feel had I the chance to know her.

Drunk of the heart and of the mind, to mention not the liver,
I stood and spoke and laughed and joked to strangers holding mirrors.
Their eyes, their masks, their hateful strands of whimsy known to few—
such are the facts of tasteless tracts said toward my view.

The words and deeds and thoughtless pranks of my false peers of age
soon seemed to fade from this parade of lustful angst and rage.
The dead air’s night and willful fright took naught but some to bed
as mist and moon and midnight gloom brought visions to my head.

The grove, the grave, that erstwhile slave, my friend quite prone to fancy
stood yet aside the twilight stride, its glow and life entrancing.
Enter did I into that realm of dead and mournful song,
interred inside was all I knew of life and love withdrawn.

And as I stood along the stone that marked my mother’s home,
the mist and moon and midnight swooned and offered up a throne.
Seated there, in autumn’s air, I heard the wispy whiskered call,
and sleep and sweep along the streets did death’s embroidered shawl.

“Come now,” said she, her hand outreached, her eyes and spirit loosed.
“Who, me?” said I, my eyes enticed, her deathly glow a truce.
With little left to wonder, I moved to make demands;
with wisdom, whips, and winsome wish instead I shook her hand.

Sophia, she speaks in volumes; her hand is the concernéd touch,
but my drunk ears, my useless peers, could not discern much.
I sat with spite as snow and ice began to tumble down,
report did I the record thy sightless eyes do sound.

My words were minced, my heart was torn, my conscious cast aside;
for all I knew and all I was, from her could not I hide.

Milady Winter

My mistress garbs herself in white
"D'hiver," she whispers in the night
Her breath clings and bites my tongue-
Her touch freezes e'en the sun.

My mistress, cold and despondent
"Warm me," she says, so innocent
Icy temperament and vice:
Icy temperatures and nights.

Born to autumn, dead in spring,
I still remember winds that sting
My face, scarred with little cuts
Torn by her beloved touch.