haiku 7
three primaries white
stir north new mexico hues
challenge mixer’s skill
They come for us undercover
in white robes disguised as suits.
Their thirsty mouths crave
power through slippery lips.
They are never alone.
Two are more their modus operandi.
Dropping hateful language before attack.
Unaware their words armed your defense.
They don’t know we’re an army.
Multilpying as I speak.
Ready to fight for our rightful place.
We will not retreat!
The noise boys
Pouring down
From their hometown
A hard rain
On the soft parade
Delicate droplets
And hammering hail
An unlikely duo
Free falling together
From dark clouds above
Pulverizing pre-fab homes
Mistakenly built to last
Saturating the stale swamps
With streams of sincerity
And rivers of realism
Washing clean the entire map
For a fresh new day
i drop from a line
cut into little dots.
bait for the guppies in the pod
gulped like fish pellets
drink me in, drink me in.
turn this moment into ribbons
of film, of photographs.
played into the ears of those
who never listen.
remember me, oh god won’t you remember me.
turn me into a globe,
a glass ball, your oracle.
slide your hands over me and look into
my eyes for something more.
find your future in me, it’s lost
somewhere in between
what I am, what we were.
cough me up like
cherry red couch drops with shards
sticking to your throat.
let me sink in, taste it for days.
Long lasting, easily forgotten.
Nobody lives on Herlihy, Goldie,
Nobody sleeps there either, and also
Nobody finds this reckoning funny.
I took you for more of a dick joke girl.
On Nobody:
He was named for two streets in the city,
I won’t say which,
and cut meat at the dirty Kroger,
the one that sold head cheese
and jicama sticks;
he once drew a trash bag over his head
and approached the Tarpon,
stationed there maybe a tour or two longer,
who’d butterfly loins with his cold
and untarnished hands
and then pick over the duty-free cola encased
in a tepid, community cooler,
the ice rubbed red, enrobing discoloring cans
in a clabbering grenadine;
and said to him, “Tarpon,
Fuck me”—
he thought he resembled
a crinkly condom: a cock
encased in a staticky tube sock.
He was a Leo, as well, he confided.
He loured in prying the ribs from the ribeyes.
He’d been hired
back, some years ago, back
when the thewsome butchers might
passively
ash amongst ruffles of Swiss steak,
parliaments clung at each twist of their callused lips
and no cherry-brined blood upon half-snuffed stubs
in the floor drain,
bones of a plundered shoat
arranged like a rain-addled camp fire
kicked to a smearing sigil or hieroglyph.
He’d begun to strictly stock the cold cuts,
knackwurst, chicken franks, scowling souse.
His back, you’ll see, had begun to unbuckle.
When wrapping a bevy of beef once,
over and under in finicky ripples of plastic
film, he’d conceived it
the wisest thing
to present to me
there, in his palm, as a bastard tomcat
stages a sparrow on some young, sun-slopped stoop,
amongst pinguid fronds that
hours of sawing strips from marbling loins
had engorged to the turbulent girth of beer brats;
some diseased, still-sallowing molar plucked
from pinked and enfeebling gums,
a tick picked plump as a pallid plum
and bowled along pimpling knobs of a balding dog’s back.
He wanted to be
a firefighter. He’d fought in the war,
the bad one,
use to ride motorbikes
or something,
veal and vellum enticed
to dissemble a shawl
or a mantle inherited, viscid and thin as a jellyfish
stretched to encumber an oak
in aspic.
One namesake street was where a small school ran
eye-to-eye with the murders of
cracked and abandoned mansions; the other
laid out by the mall, the Orwellian district,
where once whilom places empyrean,
paddocks stretched ever and always
blushed with the violets, rapeseed, jonquils,
dandelions, gilt and delicious, the irises
cudded by wobbly box homes, teething,
squeezed amid corsets of cringing vinyl,
preening as teeth struck dead yet stuck,
left milling and mincing meat by wanton will alone— left
wizened then,
borne bald as the sperm
of a cottonwood felled
by a wheezing breeze,
he kept to himself
a resplendent tear,
the days condensed
as dew upon tramp-trod clover.
A wren lays waste to his Saint on the street sign, dollop of
teeth refined in titanium white
to a torpid, sore, and sartorial simper—
linen left scowling, souring, whimpering,
raveling threads to a flimsy flax.
Bald pinschers bay
in the greening gloom
of another young dusk descending,
ripe as a throbbing and bottlenecked jack fruit
some rushed shopper abandoned in bunkers of shanks
and flank steaks pimpling green as a weed.
Protector beneath rearview mirror – Jesus bobblehead dances to his own ballet,
Through winding path, both up and down, content and bouncing with gentle steady sway. My engine roars but gas runs low, the long miles and years fly by,
Jesus bobblehead deliberately nods, thwarting rage, the finger, and passing evil eye. Through country hollers and wooded hills, loyal and quiet, enjoying another ride,
No maps, roadside directions, or GPS needed, the northern star tracks as our guide.
During cold bitter storms or blissful summer days If misguided off-ramp is taken along the beltway,
With Jesus bobblehead watching the toll is always paid.
We adventure, learn, serve, and drive on, towards the horizon’s end,
without exception assured that Jesus bobblehead, no matter, will be a faithful forever friend.
One day the car will stop, tires blown, journey over, the short time here will be through,
I will leave this world in peace, for Jesus bobblehead’s turn at the wheel is long overdue.
Her lure: Wanna taste
this ripe flesh? My sweet juices?
She’s a little tart.
The flywheel wobbles,
the fan belt squeals,
the gaps between parts
gets tighter and tighter.
But, we must maintain
the illusion of efficiency,
as a species, as a man,
just more grim-faced now
having learned what
we’ve learned, knowing
what we all know to be true,
at what cost this life is,
our shift coming to an end,
our quota still unmet.
Yesterday when I turned on the radio
I heard a very familiar tune
Upbeat and fun
A love song I couldn’t place
A happy tune to cure my sorrows
My worries gone for just that moment
What a shame I never saw the title
I carry on everyday life
The hardships and the struggles
But when I’m at my worst I hum that song
I still don’t know the name
I only heard it once
But it rooted itself in my brain
I hear that familiar chord
And hope it’ll finally be that song I love
But it’s the same old sad song that’s got me down
Maybe I’ll never hear it again
I’ll be stuck with only the memory of a few lines
But at least those lines will bring me happiness
For as long as I can remember them
