Friday, August 31, 2012

Bonzoponzirama




Juggling rubber checks in the dark
Hope that they don’t bounce or snap
No control, out of control
Watch the fire and the sparks
That keep the neon snakes at bay
Smile with those painted clown smiles
Distract from the files,
File away, look sharp
In those viper fangs
Waiting for any excuse to attack
Bait the prey, pray for bait
Sparks fly and singe the crowd
Avoid the debacle and the threat
To the juggler’s jugular
With the skill of blind justice
One eye covered,
Only partially just
As the cries and fears at the performance
Keep the speculators under control
Mesmerized with the spell 
Of the lights in the ebony sky
So dark, so distant, so vast, so eternal
Hook the unsuspecting tourist
Who grasps a tidbit
Of the aerial attraction
Seeing the truth, knowing the secret
Smirking at the faux pythons
And the rat-a-tat shoes
That flip and flop and conceal what grounds us all

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Mercy For......


Protecting your secrets
Concealing your truth
From the soda pop, pop gun mentality
That would suck your life
Leave you bony and dry
Devoid of marrow
Losing your inner core, core beliefs
Outer core, skin deep,
They would pull you into a spittoon vortex
Swirling, repetitious and unending
Justifying with their lies
With any horror that abandons the truth
Lies about love,
Lies about hate
Vaporizing your only true happiness
Through violent outcries
Discarding your soul
With the carelessness of drunken spillage
From an open cask
Without keeping the angel’s share
For the defenseless babe,
An abandoned race,
A lonely and confused elder.
Victimizing the innocent with guilt
Over false honor that kills with piety
While we stand aghast and powerless
To protect the blameless
As the brazen conquer nothing
But coal in their hearts that once burned with pure fire
We do only what is in our power:
Shelter your silence

Friday, August 17, 2012

Unfinished Business



Morphing once again into a new entity
Changing from one level to the next phase
Without much thought or notice or remorse
Not even realizing what has happened
Until the transformation is done
And then
She is no longer there, no longer the same being
Constantly shape-shifting into a new era
That has only a vague semblance
Of the last stage,
While sometimes reverting back for a short comfortable time,
The permanent alterations have been fixed
Moving on, going forward
To new changes and challenges
Becoming the next metamorphosed creature
Who appears to have escaped
From yet another cocoon

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Drought


Tar strip heaven
and my mother said they used to chew the stuff
blackrock tooth cleaner
for a gypsy-eyed little boy
Eugene! Eugene!”
and he prayed for rain
and prayed for work
and prayed for pain
and prayed, I bet, for death
(near the end, anyway)
(as Eugene might have)
with a blackrock tooth cleaner
and pocket full of jumbled-dirt

Squirt-eye told me about the grasshoppers
grasshoppers as big as life
or bigger than life
(depending on the size of life)
and her father nailed them to the chicken coop
and watched while dark clouds came

I stood from eighty years' distance
I stood in the middle of a cloud of swarming grasshoppers
they bit at my eyelids and tore my lip
the blood pooled around my ankles
ankle deep and shouting from the soil
and the grasshoppers hit the window panes, dropped dead as dead can be
my father nailed them to the chicken coop
and watched while dark clouds came

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

My Angel Is a Creeper



I knew my angel as soon as I saw him smiling
At me in the coffee shop
With those pale blue eyes
And flopsy curls bouncing
As he jumped like he had a centipede in his undies
Scratching his shoulders
Where wings might have been removed
Because God would only want me
To have a creeper or two watching over me
Or maybe she was that big and tall creaker
With the pig snout
In the zebra print muumuu
Welcoming me to the joys
Of the afterlife
While nudging me back to the animal world
Where I wake up in that same café
Near the condiment bar
With a bump on my head
And spilled soy milk under my shoes
And an EMT telling me that I am okay, but I will
Need to get checked out at a hospital
And that my two friends left once they knew
That I was alright.
Yep, my guardian angel is a creeper
(Or probably two because I am so much trouble)
And that comforts me in a weird sort of way
Since I know that they are staring at me all of the time

Friday, August 3, 2012

Chugging Bug Juice


Eating crepe-like olives 

In the land of dancing liquid

Where the fierce wind 

Softly hits hard

Against the hand

Sailing through the abandoned barn

Of angel wings

Delicately floating downward

In the scent of the anise orchid

That snickers at folly

With impish sweetness

Of the tap, tap, tap

On the glassine fruit

Tasting the tepid tincture

Of the fading spirit breath of the green nymphs

Buzzing in my ears in the dusk

Singing the old gnomish tunes

Of delight and satisfaction

While the creepiness of the brush

Whisks away the glistening fireflies

Into the subliminal indigo veil

That curbs into midnight oranges

In the sky of my youth.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Mausoleum


I want to hear your breath
force it into me and calm time
your words in slavic god-speak
I could scream and press that stake right through my
heart
I want to hear it and if I don't hear it
I will go outofmymindf*ingcrazy
for that single Polish word on the lips of an angel
give me your breath
or I will suck it out of your still-warm corpse
and a halo rings your head
I could swallow your tongue and never do justice
to those dark eyes and mongolian fold
holy place
holy one
holy