Never mind, it's nobody

Clearly not seen anywhere

Young shadow becomes invisible

Forgotten in the field 

Because he was always transparent and ever clear

(No, not that one…)

The unnamed, untamed memory hits you like a fierce wave

 Enveloping you and retreating

Nothing done, nothing can be done

To force his image to reappear, conjure him up.

Unseen powers protecting him from getting killed forever

As he dies every day

While we are waiting and stopping and slamming the brakes

And again he disappears as fast as one can glimpse that lost soul

And pray that we’ll never forget what we really never saw.

As he fades back into the battle zone

Making our promises, reassuring pierced hearts

That the numbness in the brain is only

There for a while if we watch and look out

Always, always, always and never, never, never…

Then ambivalence rules

We ignore it, hide it, vacuum it all away.

There Have Been Better Days

A priceless pushcart wobbles to the front of the dream and a smooth, smooth sailor trains his hair to talk. Talk, Skeezix, talk – you'll need it soon. That smooth, smooth sailor walks a fine line, a cautious line, a line that traces a path behind the priceless pushcart, wobbling to the beat of his heart. The pushcart wobbles. The sailor is smooth, smooth. And the sailor walks a fine, fine line – a cautious line, some would say (I said it) behind that priceless pushcart.

“Snickering idiots,” says the sailor (the smooth, smooth sailor) as he walks that fine and cautious line. The idiots don't want what the sailor is selling, and they only want to see the pushcart fall to pieces (we always want to see the pushcart fall to pieces, you know) (there was that time that the golden pushcart with the vapor-charged, high ding-dang, pooch-ed octane rip-snort engine came all to pieces in the back stretch of a mid-life crisis and the people cheered, they cheered, they cheered. They put down their soft-core pornography and their microwaved lava cakes and their television remote-controls and they cheered, they cheered, they cheered. The sailor who happened to be behind that particular golden pushcart with the vapor-charged, high ding-dang, pooch-ed octane rip-snort engine was dismembered and covered in unspeakable things. And the people cheered, they cheered, they cheered).

The snickering idiots mocked the one true and living God. They stuffed their faces with ground beef and melted cheese and the ubiquitous sesame-seed bun. They kept hollering that they knew better, because they were bloody well smarter than all the generations that had gone before. Because of their great, advanced intelligence, they knew that they knew better, and they could laugh at the neanderthals who lit their candles and shook their beads and knelt on the hard, hard ground and tried to love one another. The snickering idiots were smart. They just continued to shove the ground beef full of antibiotics and pasteurized cow-shit into their greedy little holes and they pushed away the books that their grandparents had left to them, and they rushed around and screamed that they had no free time and had to rush to get little Justin and little Kayla to the soccer practice and the swimming practice and the band practice and the sensitivity practice and the yoga practice and the pilates practice and the fornication practice and they screamed they had no free time and they sat for hours in front of a box with a talking head telling them what to believe, and they waited to see the pushcart fall to pieces, so that they could cheer, cheer, cheer, the way they had the time that the golden pushcart with the vapor-charged, high ding-dang, pooch-ed octane rip-snort engine came all to pieces. Bastard snickering idiots mocking the true and living God. I'd like to wipe some of that dung – that stinking, stinking dung from your sacrifices onto the faces of your talking head high-priests in the snickering idiot box with the antibiotic ground beef-engine roaring to life in the back stretch, screaming to speak over the screams and the shouts as you copulate with the idiot box in your great, advanced modern intelligence as you kill yourself with a text-messaged social media stake through your own throbbing, wobbling, antibiotic advertised-shitty beef-grease gobbling heart.

The sailor lives. And the sailor and me, we're sick of it.

Wallet to Wallet

Selling your ideals on my porch

Thinking that every cliché

Will make it all happen:

All sewn up, in the bag,

All packaged up and ready to go

While you are talking smack of your planet

In inbred proportions,

Smacking your lips with profane zealotry

Nothing more than a parking lot gull

Scavenging for whatever scraps you can procure

Attempting to hammer your point 

In the middle of my lawn

For all to see and hear

While dodging bricks and stares

Shoving down the stairs 

With a vulgar laugh and a pious façade

Begging to add my name to your clipboard

So that I’ll find nirvana in windows and siding

Or in the sign in the skies

Or in that chemical that will turn

My neighbors green with envy

As they hide their children

From your pamphlets

And your f-bombs

That you drop on the other side 

Of the screen door smoke screen

Making them wonder what happened 

To the cookies and the brushes.

Mash Pit

Singing in Czech

With a Ramones accent

Rapping to a bossa nova beat

In a jazz quartet formation

Performing a symphony of classics

While just folking around

With those Peruvian horns

Under the disco ball moon

In the polka palace

Where the bongo Kyoto player is

Strumming away on sitar

With bells and chimes

And a yodeling mandolin maestro

Dances to the gypsy swing

Swinging from washboard pipes

Shrieking through the sound hole

Of one cool cat’s fiddle

In the honkytonk plane engine

That runs on pure nuts

Xylophone nuts are not all alike

Neither are all punks:

Pre, post OR cow

All just belting out that gospel tune

Summoning the choir

For a group rehearsal

Of that soulful melody

That takes everybody to the stars.

ruins it for everyone

triple-hate and jealous,

with a wax-like sheen

(waxing life-like)

triple-hate and jealous

asking with your hand reaching out

reaching out and holding steady

gave you a damned banana

and you threw it away

because you don't like banana.

“hungry vet”

you cried

on the gravel in the day

clean sheets and warm at night

eating well

(and waxing life-like)

“hungry vet”

you cried

and I learned your jacket came

from the surplus store

Black Velvet Turtleneck

Farewell, good friend!

For a dear companion you have been

Throughout the years

Clinging to me during times of feasting and festivities

While hanging loose during the lean years,

Always the flatterer!

My honored guest to every occasion

From the street scene to ballrooms,

Loved by my cats, though you certainly outlived them.

Every child who I knew wanted you for comfort.

Other loves came and went

But you were always patiently waiting for me

Whether I pushed you into the closet

Or shoved you in a corner

Or smashed you into a travel bag

I still stuck with you through the fray

(There were plenty of frays!)

And would never have parted willingly.

I will pine as I say Adieu

And even though you often divided us,

The leather jacket will miss you too.

Faded Flashback

Dance damaged toes and broken high heels

Carrying her down the street

To that after hours party

Where the communal aerosol can of Aqua Net

Fizzles and sizzles to keep that

Gravity defying hair big and stiff

While they all get spiffed

As if they weren’t already

After drinking to the tunes of

Those old familiar mantras

In that 1980’s brain that was

Searching for nothing more than a good time

Because there was nothing more to search for

With eyes closed and eyeliner shared

With the boys in the band

Whose names she doesn’t quite recall

But whose lollipop shirts and silk suits and leather jackets

She’ll never forget

When she wakes from her dreams

With a haircut

And high aspirations of

Spray starch for proper white attire

Cloaking her history

From her politician husband.

The garb she loved

Now makes her wince and blush

As her son borrows them

From someone else’s dad

For an oldies party at the bar

That she used to dance at

With all of her friends

Til her feet hurt or her shoes broke

Whichever came first…