JEFF MAYS
MINOR VIOLATIONS OBSERVED
Blind-sided
All I could see
as I turned to answer his question,
“Do you stay in Rialto?”
was the rage in his face
the peeled back eyes
the horse’s nostrils
the small spheres of sweat
the templemuscle clench
and that he didn’t care if I
answered yes or if I answered no.
Not daring to look over my shoulder
I frantically ran to her
the woman walking towards her car
with a single key stretching
from the pinch of her fist.
I came closer to her with blood
on my basketball, with crimson drops
that have not stopped, and a numbness
in my ear that I’m afraid to touch.
There is a question on my face,
but I can see she is forcing
thoughts of gunshots away
from her, sweeping these crumbs
off of her blue and white dress,
and in mid-step, I realized
I shouldn’t even bother to slow down.
Synapses, Involuntarily Making Connections
While driving this morning,
In a flash of peripheral vision
I saw on the pavement
Of the intersection
Empty red flare shells
And gray ash snakes
That rolled with the breeze
Of each passing car
And I thought,
If I drove through the old Neighborhood
Where I grew up
There should be this same litter
Lingering in the street
In front of our house
Except that there was never
An official, trained emergency crew
To arrive
To clean up the
Deadly crash that occurred
Inside that house –
No rescue team
To shuttle us
To safety
Lug Nut,
or
I Axed You to Go to the Liberry Because It Was a Book I Wanted You to Get for Me
Nicholas Copernicus, thou art loverly to me,
Mine tongue hath done exalteth thee
Thy name Ping Pongs about my mouth
And I cannot spit you out
As I savor the flavor
Of your multi-syllabic pleasurishnicity
Expelliarmus! Cried the Woman in the Bright Room, Microphon’d
Christian mothers are school-board-meeting scared
Of 4,329 paged Harry Potter books
And want 451 degrees of Fahrenheit
To permanently disapparate them from library bookshelves
And the innocent hands of ten year-old fans
Because, of course, magic is real
As real as turning water into wine,
As real as making a blind man see,
As real as die three days then rise again
But Snape is not the Christ,
Dumbledore not the Father,
Nor Binns the Holy Ghost
Leaving impressionable children to learn prestidigitation
From naked witches dancing in forests of Georgian pines
Who have learned Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra
From the Dark Lord who leaps from closed Bible pages
To midnight apartments of pentagram-protected miscreants
Sitting in incense before knife-split kittens
Lunch at Victoria Gardens
a man with a beard black
and grey sat on a bench under
a sheet of shadow and light, his
dark jacket keeping him warm,
his folded card-table legs propping
an opened book, his disinterested arm
holding an apple up, its orange-red
variegated skin like an ornament
and behind the bench the boxwoods ran
their green around a sycamore which
was all reflected in a storefront window,
the glass glinting silently as a shop-
woman, young and full of possibility,
stooped like a simple calligraphy
rearranging the props and wares, as if
Edward Hopper hadn’t been here
a hundred times before
Mother Says Goodbye
As I held it up, my arms around its ribs,
my head resting in its clavicle,
I realized what a soft skeleton she was
her eye sockets wet, and her mandible
issuing sob-torn words of regret.
Pieces of the Ocean Are Floating in the Sky
The sun’s rays heat the top
of the ocean – its waves cresting
and falling, the krill bobbing
and swimming, the seaweed
sleepily drifting
Warmer and warmer it gets as the sun
seems to climb and presto
chango! it poofs into vapor,
causing the thin blue horizon to
shimmer, if you’re looking
This sweating vapor is released like a
balloon, striving for the cooler
air to calm and condense it
back into water, tiny droplets that
are but magnets of white fluff
Until windtraveled and seeping
with inky blue and grey
these chunks of the ocean floating in the sky
finally give way to great gravity’s pull
and immediately make their mad dash for home
Scorched-earth Policy
Where have I been, your blue-eyed son?
I have been the dusk to your dawn
Pushing through streets where the people I meet
Haven’t seen a single blade of your lawn.
Red Clay Land
Progenitor of orangetree turn-of-century magnates
A pretend smalltown sits at the top of the east of the valley
Its Victorian turniptops in purple and pink overlook canopy
Of crepemyrtle and peppertrees who with sprinkler help
Have taprooted below desert to watertable hiding
1950’s downtown State Street with white lights in carrotwoods
Betty’s Diner’s limp fried food & Wurlitzer jailhouserocking
Fifty-five float Christmas parade where Y Circus unicycle kids
Balance and propel agape smiling audience red-sea parted
Giant inflatable kid-slide ponyride and kettlecorn popped
Bags of oranges, clutches of gladiolas, and street performer sounds
All blend with gatherings of black-garbed teenage smolderings
Five-personed oldfashioned rally on street corner Sunday
“Stop the war for oil! Bush is a liar! Honk if you like peace!” fete
Whilst spandex-bright sunglass’d helmets swish by on light-as-feather two wheel racers
Past Ford Park with the tennis courts and most expensive gas in town
To top of high Judson Hill and survey commuter-collected professional people
In their above-ground construction and mismatched streets
Under the R carved, 400 ft tall, into purple San Berdoo majesty,
Between downpointing arrowhead and Seven Oak Dam enormousicity
Prospect Parked, Morey Mansioned, Kimberly Castle Crested
Pledge of allegiance drummers of Japan romeo & julieted
Arias and orchestras outside in family-night June
Where bronzed Smileys stand, Lincoln’s artifacts entombed
And Me? I’m afraid of the University Avenue offramp
Blindsides in every direction, cars collecting behind you
Pushing you out the chute to deal with the ghosts of cars darting,
Swerving, appearing out of nowhere and you tumbling
In the stream beside the banks of white wooden crosses
Where sidewalk shrines have with loss enflowered
To Allen Ginsberg and His Large, Red Collected Poems
I read through a year of your work in 15 minutes --
Your “Laughing Gas” speaker has his Farquhar moment
not on Owl Creek Bridge, but in a dentist’s chair,
seeing not his reflection in a thousand dew drops
clinging to a thousand needles of pine
in a tree by the bank of the creek, but a lungful of eternity
that awakens the very nucleus of his cells
to the sound of God’s universe-creating voice
And I remember my own wisdom teeth reverie
lying in the unfolded silvergrey vinylchair
bright lights all around, intravenous tube-needle
in my arm and Dr. Sellers asking me if I have accepted
Jesus as my personal Lord and Savior while I am counting
drowsily backwards from 20, into a painless violence
that, hopefully, I’ll awake from soon
Viva La Viva!
Old Fidel cigar baseball dull army-green jacket
his menacing beard pointing northwards
a pretend nightmare we’ve been dreaming
since before I was born
His Communist missiles pointed at Jesus and Freedom
to mushroomcloud our Walmarted landscape
to destroy the dollar and snap off Florida
and set it adrift in swift Atlantic Ocean current
New Fidel ghost-frail enshrouded by white hospital gown
a new day to dawn that the dead disregard
because the fight no longer matters
marines on the beach erased by Dr. Obama’s
arms full of forgiveness and reconciliation
What are we now? Mirrors offer no answers
because the times they are a-changing
there’s a-music store in a-my bedroom
addictions are not embarrassments
desert’s dry brittle crunch hides beneath green radiant lush
and Spanish spills out of my ears to brighten my tired, old clothes
Growing pain in my AM radio is groaning about
the toothaches of congested freeways, confused classrooms, and bankrupt
emergencyroom coffers. Fencebuilding fixes with MarineCorps
cogs? The socialist dialectic throws the citizenship blanket
on the hiding strawberry pickers and invisible brickwall builders
until justice runs like a mighty stream off the table of poverty
flooding the floor of brotherhood And Amen! And Amen!
and the XXIst century’s newest version of Hallelujah!
Talking Santa Ana River Blues
Why am I here, in this vast asphalt and concrete urbanity
built upon scores of round river rocks like mummified
potatoes tumbled millions of years ago down from
the southwestern slopes of our three saints: Gorgonio,
Antonio, and Jacinto, as their snows melted and creek-
connected to create a volume in the valley below? Why
here, where the human migration in search of comfort and
plenty left stragglers behind in the scrub eating red prickly
pear and bitter acorn paste, wearing the skins of curious
coyotes who had trotted down from the foothills cold and
lonely? Why here, where Spaniards traipsed heavily
through the heat, building a small outpost of sun-baked adobe
teaching Jesus to smatterings of savages subsisting amongst
the tumbleweeds, spiked yucca clumps, and sleeping rodents
burrowed underfoot? Why here where the Mormons in their covered-
wagon relocation climbed over the Cajon Pass and spilled
into the hardscrabble of the valley below, working it into something
livable, with the steady trickle of the Santa Ana and the mountains’
pines that could be lumbered and drug down to the flats? Why here,
businessmen, in this wide swath of dry riverbed, stony and covered in
crickets and toads oblivious to the citrus and grape that would thrive
in a desert grown green on irrigation stretched thin, a land populated
by migrant-worker pup-tent towns that would incorporate
as soon as aqueducts would bring more water to the valley floor
for the steel mill and hospitals and a flood of shops and services?
Why still here, between these three, ten-thousand footed saints
so far, so far from the sea?
The Clatter and Din of People Living their Lives
Off to the side
P. F. Chang’s empty vinyl seats
Gleam in the dim light
Lacquered wooden table inlays
Contrasting colors shine
Raise the velvet curtain
Reveal the theatre of the animal absurd
Always the gazelle at lake’s edge
Ears pricked, nostrils enlarged
For hint of lion while whetting my tongue
Madison’s inside the bathroom
Has to pee before we leave
Unaware of monsters in the stall
White boys raping black girls
In crowded state-line casino’s
Wet countered, crumpled toweled, mirror-glass smudge
Poor and dumb’s frustration
Doesn’t know why
He held bloody machete
In his crying neighbor’s yard
Where their children ran and played
Being the last on my block
To Christmaslight my eaves
Everyone but me
And Madison’s sweet brown hair returns
So we can leave this clatter and din
Of people living their lives
The Bitter Pith
in the darkness
created by the closed
closet door there is
a photograph leaning
inside a box; we bought
the frame after the wedding,
carefully matching its
woodtone with the colors
of the image – Raoul with his
shinylong heavy-metal hair
about a year before he
shaved it mostly off
behind the black, un-
plugged radio under
a snowfall of garage
dust, on the bottom of
a jewelcase tower
imperfectly stacked is
Steve’s Van Halen
cd that I had borrowed
last year, but every time
I walk past, I see
but do
not see
and once
I went to downtown
Los Angeles to the Arco
Building, the 32nd floor,
where glass walls looked down
at the city, to pick up
Milton for lunch; we
had Chinese, and he showed
me how to use chop
sticks, a simple yoga of
the hand, and now a pair
lay in my utensil drawer
next to the sink, the painted
tips worn to the wood
A Shortage of Bees
Japanese number puzzle with no access to nines
so stick my fingers in a thicket of synapse
whose tendrils tighten as I pull,
a Chinese handcuff of citalopram fiber;
farmers buy white wooden boxes
and stack them swarming in the fields
but the strawberries still taste like water
The Color of Water
dew lies in the grass
water is a chameleon
greendrop clings to leaf
Poet of Little Renown
He stands in the farthest corner of the park
in the dark in the middle of the day
under the overlapping shade of sycamores stretching
blending in with their mottled trunks
a veneer of pigeon poop covering his crown
his base blurred by the browns of fallen leaves layered
unable to escape through bars of dusty iron fence,
yet he still, in the stirrings of his warm, dark bed
formulates images of statues in the public gardens
melds them into metaphor in the hours set aside for sleep
stumbles downstairs into the black of the spare room
turns on the light and types in these words before they
disappear.
A Transference of Energy
The steam howls into the seeping sweat of your face
as you tackle the pile of half-eaten dinners and sauce-smeared plates
a restaurateur’s army of Mordor whose numbers can only be diminished
by blasting them with a scalding water that shoots out of
the dangling chrome flexi-hose and single-handled nozzle
making more steam that swirls and condenses in your pores.
The tiled walls surrounding you in their loosening grout
and mildew lines marching remind you to hurry, godspeed you,
you tired dishwasher, with your black, shiny shoes and hair-netted coif,
your green knee-length apron tied around your back straight-jacketlike
demanding more oily salad dressing stains and mashed potato badges,
hurry, for more customers are coming because there are no time outs
for removing the heap of water-logged buns and noodles and cakes
that have grown like bacteria in the industrial-sized sink
whose soft parts smear apart when your hands transfer them to the trash;
your fingers tightly gather dripping clumps of dissolving dinner
and fling them into the plastic-lined waste barrel, while the non-slip rubber mats
below your feet trap the bites of meats and vegetables that try to bounce away
while Julio flashes by, rattling rack of dinner glass in his hands, and
“Basura!” out of his mouth as he tries to teach you bits of Spanish
only to vanish into the edges of the stainless-steeled and rubber-matted room
but not before leaving another pyramid of brown plastic tubs
hastily filled with the slops of human consumption.
The Lowest Form of Art
Sylvia Plath read her poems into a microphone
and then put her head in the oven to breathe in the natural gas;
Van Gogh described his paintings to his would-be-lover
and then sawed through finger-pulled cartilage with a bloody serrated;
Jack Kerouac read his poems to hipsters’ snapping fingers
and then crawled into a pine cabin, shuddering with humility;
Virginia Woolf read to the grey figures coming in from the drizzle
before loading her pockets with rocks for the wat’ry depths.
As for Kurt Vonnegut? He just cracked the cap of a bottle of scotch
and enjoyed the seeping burn at the back of his all-too-knowing throat.
The Crimes of Martin Luther King, Jr.
When he was five years old, he picked his nose, rolled the long string of mucus
between his thumb and index until it dried into a ball he could toss to the ground.
When he was six years old, he told a lie to his momma to get his brother to take the blame for the broken lamp, knowing their wasted money lay in pieces on the floor.
When he was 13 he masturbated in the bathroom, his closed-eyed movie featuring
his cousin’s Sunday dress unbuttoned to her belly, exposing tight brown nipples.
In his twenties, his plagiarized doctoral dissertation was in love with the words of
Jack Boozer’s, whose shared truth was like a jumping Amen! and a sweaty Hallelujah!
While he was married, he was intimate with women not his wife, beautiful brief companions attracted to his shining light, willing in all manner of motel rooms dotting the map of a racist and impoverished America.
In his thirties, the committed leader put his family in mortal peril, practically inviting a molotov cocktail through the front window after putting the kids to bed as a white Cadillac raced into the night, anonymous as the death threats in the mail.
And when he was 39, he left his four children fatherless as he bled to death in the arms
of Ralph Abernathy, his spine severed after taking a patiently aimed bullet in the neck
while catching his breath on a Memphis Tennessee motel balcony.
Waiting at Walmart
I needed an oil change
and it doesn’t pay to do it yourself
anymore, so I sat inside
the grubby rectangular prism
hidden between the smeared greycloud
garage and the painted cinderblock
storage room, where people paid for tires
and new car batteries with paper money,
their twenties dealt out like cards,
but the room reverberated with booming
television reports of a gunman on the loose
in the snowy wilds of the Big Bear
Mountain that pulled my concentration
away from Thomas Jefferson,
The Art of Power, so I walked
through the air filters
and paint guns,
the index cards and manila
folders, past people without a
purpose shuffling through the discounted DVDs;
surrounded by the slow pushing of carts
and half empty scuffed metal shelves,
I felt a wave from far away
come slow-rolling towards me
lifting my feet from the ground,
a momentary crest-rider
floating on the swell,
the linoleum far below my feet
and me far away from the plastic handle
in my hands with its colorless blue
in a building that was never a building
as I occupied a body that was never really there
Scatological Poetry Greetings
I read that pre-Apple, Steve Jobs’s shit smelled of rotten vegetables.
Legend has it Paul McCartney’s shit smells like saffron.
Elizabeth Taylor only shat out little diamonds that she gave to the poor.
The magazines say that Angelina Jolie doesn’t even own a toilet.
And Robert Downey, Jr.’s mansion has no bathroom.
And if you’re a republican, your shit refuses to flush down when a democrat is president.
Word is, Kate Bush has giant, Yeti-sized shits.
Michael Jackson shat out chocolate covered caramels and fed them to other people’s children.
Humphrey Bogart shat black chess pieces that scarred his rectum.
Daniel Radcliff shits out chocolate frogs that hop away when you try to catch them.
Johnny Depp shits out little Helena Bonham Carters and Keira Knightleys.
Marilyn shat out short strands of pearls and whispered squeals of joy at their passing.
Allen Ginsberg’s hairy, bespectacled turds howled all night against the finest minds of
their generation turned to madness under the shroud of bright grocery store. . .
oh wait -- minimum number of syllables, maximum amount of information
George Clooney shits out golden statuettes & tells dirty jokes while thanking the academy.
I’d bet Helen Mirren’s shit is still as beautiful as Selena Gomez’s.
Dolly Parton’s is lucky it can pass through her skinny little hips.
Nicki Minaj dresses her shit up in shiny, Skittles-colored vinyl.
Of course Sydney Poitier shits out pebbles of pure dignity.
But as for mine, well, you don’t even want to know.
The Wachowskis Speak in Couplets
atmosphere, this ocean of gases,
is just an amniotic fluid supporting our surface area
a red wheel-barrow beside a white chicken
is the darkness stopping us from seeing what is to come
the distant barking dogs and overhead airplane drone
are but the fuzz we can’t discern when completely submerged
driving with the window down in the cool, blue night
all just a dream in our growing foetus-brains
and death is just a squeeze through yet another a birth-canal,
where we will learn to expand and contract the bellows of an entirely new lung
Suspicion
dark man standing
in the shade
in the parking lot
next to my car, with its windows
open wide
is he waiting for a friend
waiting
for an opportune moment
or just waiting
for the day
to pass away
Searching
wings stretching for the horizon
a thermal lifting the spines of feathers
and a cry as sorrowful
as a night train’s horn
for eyesight detects
only
the brown, dry earth
and empty tumbleweeds
rooted loosely in the ground
Mode of Transportation
You could take the car,
but then you wouldn’t notice
the hawks circling overhead,
nor the current of black ants
surging towards the semi-translucent
grasshopper carcass;
you wouldn’t see
the sun-blanched, tailless lizards
running for safety ahead of your
footfall, the lobules of dog shit
trying to hide in the grass,
nor the bee belly-up,
scooted by the breeze.
Ambulatory
The spindles and tentacles of my body
Propel me through this universe, slogging
These molecules of consciousness along.
The swirling fractal of this stomach and spleen,
Of this sternum and spine
Keeps the myth of who I am aware,
And throws my Self into particle accelerator
Its underground electro-magnetic miles
Send me crashing into it,
Into what,
And into
You.
O Suffer this Godly Punishment
O damn my lower esophageal sphincter!
And damn the creator of failing muscle tension!
O damn my bloating belly!
And damn the creator of bellies that bloat!
O damn my bowed legs!
And damn the creator of knees that can no longer run!
O damn Laura’s high blood pressure!
And damn the reasons for blood vessel explosion!
O damn melanomas, leukemias, mis-shapen moles, and pancreatic tumors!
And damn the creator of such horror!
O damn heart disease!
And damn the creator of cholesterol and nicotine!
O damn Arab Muslims who pilot airplanes into metropolitan towers!
And damn the creator of circumstances that lead to such blind, lingering hatred!
O damn katyusha rockets and C 20 suicide jackets under robe-like garb!
And damn the giver of ingenuity to metallurgist and bombmaker brain!
O damn drunken drivers in unfocused stupors!
And damn the creator of yeast and barley and water!
O damn the strap the needle the plunger the spoon!
And damn the creator of disease and despair!
O damn the apartmented meth lab boom that drives children into foster-care!
And damn the creator of addictions to stimulants and easy money!
O damn the hunger in the bellies!
And damn the creator of poverty and disregard!
O damn the hundred thousand thousand losses!
And damn! And damn! And damn! And damn!
Puking-and-Shivering-and-Shitting-out-the-Watery-Chime
Scientists imagine the universe collapsing
upon itself
compacting into a ball of mass
the heat + pressure building until
the trigger is pulled, again, scattering its particles
into
yet another cycle of
universe-creation;
the circle of life twisting into an infinity
The true-believers understand the end
whether by fire or by ice
is when God finally re-
unites with man, face to face, at long last,
and after that – the universe just does not
matter
As for me,
once the humans become the first
to grandunify their common perception and genetically engineer
a life beyond death
what any longer is the use? – clockmaker will decide
to uncreate his watch
this godlike-consciousness will deenergize all force
shut down gravity
turn electromagnetism off
defuse strong nuclear and weak
causing elements to disassociate from molecule
electrons untether from proton-neutron attraction
quarks aimlessly unquark
and strings finally to be still
until everything is sand through the open fingers of ether
Sensitive to the Light
knee deep in the murky lake
my legs, like a lobster’s feelers
blindly explore the bottom
I step again into the earth’s wet draught
and my foot slides on the side of a stone
onto a broken beer bottle
that was waiting fiercely in the silt
Feelin’ It
standin’ on the line
sinkin’ throw after throw
starin’ at my spot
hittin’ my spot
my will controllin’
where the ball will go
and I’m wantin’ to write a poem
like those Nick Van Exel commercials
like all those quick-edit b-ball-shoe commercials
bata-boom-bata-bang
but i’m hittin’ ‘em like crazy
hittin’ ‘em like a glass of beer
sinkin’ ‘em like a shot a tequila
standin’ in tha corner
starin’ at the rim
lookin’ straight into the sun
as i keep movin’ this ball from my hands
through the air
in the hole
with a splash
from the net made of chain
as the ball drips like a drop
from the center of the hoop
to a point on the asphalt blacktop
Convalescence
a good deed not to be repeated –
the fumy Lysol watered the eyes of the newly arrived
slumped sacks of potatoes stacked to look people-like,
tethered tightly to leathered wheelchair seats
his one good leg propelled this welded metal
slowly down the corridor, his lost eyes failing to
focus on what you and I see
“I want to go home,” all wet and snivelly
elsewhere a disconnected “HEY!”
whipped through the air and quietly startled
the white uniforms as they moved quickly
to their next busy task
and for the bingo winner:
a piece of banana I chewed for her,
my hand slowly working her hairy chin
Crick’s Search and the Questions that Follow
Not what is consciousness,
But where is consciousness.
The brain is not a machine easily taken apart.
Only a Mengele would prematurely experiment,
But the dawn is beginning to glow in the Eastern nightsky,
And what will we find?
I am not me; I am biology.
Ifso, could we eradicure evil?
As of now,
The evil of this world cannot be purged,
Only repressed.
The devil always hides in the shadows
When he’s not dancing in the sun.
I am not me; I am biology.
Ifso, could we then breakaway?
Could we be the ant
To breakaway from his colony
To step away from thorax and pheromone
To explore this consciousness on his own?
If I am not me, just a biology.
Without Scientific Evidence, Freud Theorizes about the Powers of Morpheus and Lethe
In the five o'clock hour of the morning, when the alarm tries to startle me from asleep to
awake, I lay in bed, with my eyes closed, and I am still in dream. I see eagles the size of
dirigibles, with flying fish swarming. I taste strange basketball-sized fruit with furry skin
from the produce bin. I feel desperation when Laura is missing and I all forlorn in the
crowded Las Vegas bright-lighted lobby.
Then I turn off the alarm, stumble to my closet, disrobe, throw bedclothes in the hamper,
turn on the shower, walk to the toilet, sit on the plastic seat to pee, and get into the stall.
All in the heavy morning darkness. All with my eyes mostly shut.
As I stand there in the dark, eyes closed, regaining the warmth I had when I was under
my blanket, the dream that had nearly died comes back to life. And I am there again,
living in this regained world where it makes sense to leave keys in the car and walk the
last block to the hotel.
But soon enough, I open my eyes and force into my mind new images: white shower
ceramic tiles, shampoo bottles, tumbling clouds of steam, the clangy patter of shower-
water crashing, and wet hairy legs standing over a grated drain.
Meandering Toward the Morphine Drip,
or
The Dissolvability of Days
Tomorrow,
I won’t even remember half of today.
A week from now
only one seventh of that,
and in ten days
I’ll be lucky if I remember a thing.
Not how you wore your black shirt
with the flower of sequins over your heart
as we drove down to the University Regal Cinemas,
a red travel mug half-filled with warm tea
in the holder, and a murder
of crows, hundreds strong, that swooped upon
office building roofs that we put
into the distance.
Not how you stroked my hand, in the dark,
in between bites of brittle English toffee.
Not even how sad your eyes looked when you said
Titled, but Untitled
I am floating in this world
Buddha-like
a helium man
unconnected to anything
my daughter is 15-years-old
studying chemistry
living in high school football
stadiums
but that floats by
under my feet
unpinned
my left middle finger
has scabs under the nail
the remains of
a gardening injury
but this is just a
photograph
I can barely remember,
fat floating
on the broth
the concrete is real
but not real
just dreams
and ghosts
and images
erased
but still there
faintly
on the paper
I close my eyes
and ten years pass by
I open them
and I am five years old
again
I hear George
and my wife
saying
Be Here Now
but now is yesterday
and tomorrow
and today all over again –
it is an ocean wave
pounding you off your feet
in waist-deep waters
spinning you helplessly
to pin the tail
far from the paper donkey
We Thank and Excuse
Juror no. 6? No? Crap. The selection process
over, it will now take two days to cover
three minutes.
People in dark, situation-specific
attire argue over words, scattering each individual
straw from haystack searching for their truth underneath.
Patrol Officer Witness must be true to six month old report
studied last night and night before, reinforcing
memories shaped and reshaped in half year’s time.
Defendant wears same blue, tieless long sleeved shirt
day after day to hide tattoos and doubts of respectability.
It goes well with new, handsome haircut.
A pause.
All noise is sucked out of room by hidden-from-view
machine whose vented piping reaches into ceiling
so Counsel can have enough space
to think.
The mathematics of memory become complicated quickly.
Sitting stoically all the while, vivid thoughts
gut-punch Defendant as characters from
six-months-ago moment walk by, sit in the
same room and speak. A smile escapes to Defendant’s
lips as Officer recounts how scared he was when
Defendant’s strength pinned him down
momentarily.
Ringside judges award points
for Defendant’s pugilistic acumen.
The PD hired years ago too many Officers
so it can still protect city while
they are sitting in the courthouse,
and sitting, and sitting, and sitting.
Attorneys question Witness from distance
not afforded to Hollywood lawyers who must strut
about the courtroom, histrionically
shaping Jury-and-Witness clay.
The defense becomes the prosecution.
Public Defender fights to keep train of
thought on tracks, considering every
possible testimony Jury might deem relevant,
flipping through worked-over yellow notepad
above the tangle of Judge and Witness jabber
as Transcriptionist asks all to speak
singularly so she can record words uttered
as fact.
Bailiffs pass notes on bright, yellow
Post-its to break up
boredom
and take sips of canned soda, scrolling
on cell phone, punching quiet buttons, finding
something in silence to share.
After sitting motionless to the point of aching,
Mr. Prosecutor takes the time to rub eyes,
trying to bring
sensation to mind
anesthetized by patient inactivity.
And after hours of mundane minutiae,
a revelation in the narrative! Microphones
turned off, Judge and Counsellors’s trained
and practiced murmurings lock in secret
conversation.
And recess is announced
w/admonition to leave
our notebooks
on jurybox
chair.
Devil’s Snare
a few days prior
they had removed a chunk of his body
from his insides
placed it in a bag
inside a box
and wheeled it down to the basement
to feed it to the incinerator
its heat making sure no one
would ever find it again
and now he lies in bed
thrashing
neck arched
his black mouth open
as if trying to let something
pass right through him
thrashing against the rails
against the restraints
purple flowers blossoming
on his wrists as soft cotton
mittens strangle the fingers
trying to pull out
all of the lines and tubes
that pierce his skin
and burrow
their way
in
so when ever comes
the enlightenment
to soothe our struggling bodies
and make them
still
so as to starve the binding
tentacles, the twisting
tethers
that we may slip
instead peacefully
intothenext?
Obserditee
(the rough draft of a stream from my consciousness)
Laura says I am an expert at analyzing television commercials
And problems with display methods devised by Walmart managers
The veneer is peeling off the countertop edge
But Buddhists who twist into yoga-related relaxation deconstruct
So their extra-sensory perceptions can smell Nirvana
While I only see Pepsi print ads
And fail to understand how every decision I make
Has been predetermined by Western Global Corporations
But then maybe my ignorance is important
Important like the strings that vibrate into matter
The matter into tissue, the tissue into life, the life into contemplated interaction
But as far as I can tell, godless columnated ruins domino
And we can’t use the pump (c’mon now, in your best Jack Nicholson voice now)
Because the freakin’ vandals took the god-damn handle
So what the who is the man I am?
One possible certainty that could surely be
Is if Ginsberg were still alive, he’d still be writing his poetry
But in whatever whisper or joyous Coldplayish exultation you can find
Was it William who was right? That it’s all just a tale told by an idiot,
Signifying nothing?
All I know
Is that while the universe hurdles towards higher levels of entropy
My windshield wiper fluid is low and needs to be refilled
The Inevitable Loss of Sensational Information
It almost wasn’t worth it –
playing catch in that field
where your ankles got bitten
by empty, rusty cans
and your skin got stung
by the prickles waiting
under the murk of the foot-tall
brush where the rodents
continually grew their long teeth,
but above was an absence of powerlines
(the paralleled black crow perches
that would swat at our throws)
and cars with angry drivers
barking at us to get out
of the street.
It was there that death introduced itself
as more than an abstraction
or a limp lizard that fell on its head
as its tail broke off in my hand –
an explosion of sound had created
fault lines in the air, and redirected
our attention from a sphere with red
stitching, spinning towards its destination
to a Volkswagen Beetle – now
a yellow hemisphere of scrap metal
removed from the street and placed
right-side up, left-side caved in
by one of the trains that would wake me
at night as its horn bellowed its approach
and rattled the rectangles of glass
that laid in my louvered window,
but now the engineer was working
on minimizing its momentum as we
rushed to the mangled mass to discover
three passengers slumped in their seats,
the driver draped over the wheel
where someone had decorated
their skin with streaming lines
of red jigsaw
puzzle.
A Glorious Mess Tattooed and Profanity Laced
In Manchester northern England two brothers and their mates created a Grendel full of
blood and piss and christened it Oasis in order to hit you through the guts with their boiled-
over anger, and when you’re doubled down, to pound you on the back with two-fists clasped
and whistle as it walks away while you lay grounded, clutching at your tender flesh.
It is a certain kind of frustration that takes it out on anyone who has the bullocks to tell
the loud to be quiet. It is intimidation of the weak so it doesn’t have to waste any more
time dealing, as it thrashes out brash chords to linger distortedly in the air, loitering in
public spaces while those who are scared by its disregard can only wish for it to go away.
An Aloysius Fisticuffs angry at God for creating death, at bosses who withhold your
money for not doing the degrading things, at the love-your-brother/hate-your-brother that
has existed since the Kinks and Stones and Who.
But at least, in the face of all this injustice, it can create its own sonic world, a sphere of
sound and fury that wobbles, spins, and orbits, casting its heat into the universe while
wondering if there is life enough, out there, to feel it.
Upon Being Accosted by Ole Peter Hansen Balling in a Dark Hallway of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.
It all started with the wild
hair of John Brown, floating
upwards from his scalp in pointed
flames shrieking
his final warning of coming
claws and fang, and then
the impressive heft
of his nipple-length beard
requiring neck muscles
of great strength to carry
and command that tremendous
beard about, and by looking
at the beestorm of his eyes, you knew
that his strength wasn’t just a simple
brutality, but ‘twas also a thing
that had been finely tuned and shaped
in the forge of his bright and heavy
heart.
Monks in Thukdam
Certainly anthropologists
have identified, studied, and reported
the pattern I find myself
sucked into
as if the door of the airplane
has been ripped off mid-flight
First I noticed
an absence in my music collection
of any act that had formed
within the past decade
Then a disinterest in politics
because they are all corrupt anyway
or maybe because
they are the last people
who feel safe publicly standing up
for the rights of those
who are oppressed
I never had any interest
in acquiring the gadgets and gizmos
that would make me another member
of this new millennium
and now my baseball
is become unraveled, with
its red stitching heaped
in a loose pile next to flaps
of flaccid, white leather
The Conversationalist
The bees buzzed searchingly
through the yellow and white petals
their legs heavy with symbiosis.
Beside me, apart from the din and chatter,
stood a fellow silently statuesque –
the Colossus of Rhodes ready to guide
any lost party goer, ready to spew
his thick hairy strings of language
to haggle home his point. Yet I don’t
care to discuss with him tidbits
on the weather, my clothes, or
the possibility of peace in the Middle East.
My lips are sealed with a mucousy film
while about me I hear ingenious dialogues
filled with invisible metaphors, choice words
that will be forgotten in an hour,
and the same recycled sound waves
that lift away in their lightness.
The people around me eventually crowd me,
poke me, slice the skin on my head to look inside me,
but I don’t want to offer my empty hands
to these peering figures who, with their fleshless
fingers, pry apart my life only to stay for the night,
only to stay for the job, for the time during school –
people who are only temporary friends, who fail
to last, to make an honest impression
onto the length of time. Permanence
or abstinence is my ultimatum.
And here she comes, wine filled crystal
balancing in her fingers; wearing the “I’d like
to get to know you” smile as she says hello
and remarks about the watch loose on my left wrist.
In response, I broke the seal, opened wide,
and watched a fly buzz from my mouth