Heartbeat

                                                

Tonight I went to a jazz show starring one of my boys, as he likes to call it when we’re off smoking in the woods together in secret like little kids, and he’s up on stage looking fly in an orange tie and concentrating, or maybe looking like he’s concentrating, but not concentrating on the music, and I’m in the front row with a wide smile on my face knowing all of these possibilities all the time. His boy, this kid I don’t know as well but still well enough to be my boy, maybe, he’s drumming and has a solo and that stuff makes me soar in the hang-gliding falcon Amelia Earhart sense of the word. I’m off in the dark cold wilderness and every beat is a bright shining light on the path and I’m smearing blue and orange and green and pink on a canvas, the notes off my boy’s bass guitar are the colors and the drums are the light. And then there’s the dark, mean and grumpy and full of misery, inflicting the fear of centuries of predator fangs. But there’s also the noise noise noise noise noise noise that humans make as we play rhythm guitar or sneeze or scratch ourselves—is it real, though? Or just a way of passing through the night? Jesus, the fundamental terror of silence, of nothing absolutely nothing there, of absolutely white-wall bleach kind-of nothing, this is what death must be like, and if death is silence than lord knows music is life. Lord knows noise is life, squirming and wrestling and pushing against the primordial ooze, noise is the sound of industrial rust capitals and dust yellow hillsides and ceramic coffee mugs and violins and microphones and leather and tongue clicks bird calls railroads tennis courts and and worst of all the inside of my bathroom, inside of my head, the noise tells me I’m alive. Hmbm. Hmbm. Hmbm. Heartbeat goes hmbm. I’m alive. But even still, I wonder-- is it such a good thing if all I crave is silence?

Originally written May 19th, 2011.

originally by Macka B

Everywhere I go, people love Bob Marley

Everywhere I go, it’s the same old story, bop.

People of all nation love the Rastaman vibration.

unobtainium

Big Ben stole all the peanut butter. He says sorry.

I

unobtainium is best described as a substance

which, faced with the ethereal nothing

of the darkness or the lime-crusted hands

in your mother’s tomb, will evaporate on command.

unobtainium is like four girls killing hydras on a

river bank, combined with jellabean firestarters

and a stream, a stream of arbitrary tributaries all filled to the

                                                                                                brim with magma and shit.

Magma and shit,

and you can bet your ass your Genghis Khan impression will

fool no one, and you can also bet on your father’s gravestone that

he will not be at the funeral—

it’ll become a corpse underneath the eyes of King Kong.

            Yes, King Kong, he is present at a funeral only because

he is a funeral in itself, he is the top notch collar-fricken                             hoodahday

that can combine your presence with a heat ray so hot

it’ll melt the cornflakes off your schisch-kabob homeskillet.

II

I’ve lost a friend to Justin Beiber,

or is his name George? He ferries fairies from the underworld

childhood into the Land of the Living, the decaying water bottles

and push pins and Coca Cola cans and rop-foppin’ huggin-tuggins.

One chicken mcnugget later and you’re there

with your ketchup pocket jeans and three shillings

that ride with the wind in your blonde hair.

Or do they die like elephants led to the wine-country in

Hannibal Lector’s crematorium, where the people you eat

are the people you love?        answer me.

Bump in the night, collate the yumyums and feed them to your brother;

he’s sick of trying. and so are you.

so am i. sick of trying anything ever, you wanna give up and move

to Memphis and become a country western star but you’re stuck here with

ten umbamillion lights that flicker when you say hello,

or when you had a bad dream,

or when milk is spilled and no one cries.

no one ever cries over the apple-juice that fell into the refrigerator

open and caused so much havoc that it was left alone to fester

and call in the ants who are willing, by God!, to drill

in Antarctica for their life source,

who are so willing to communicate legends about

Love and Craft and Magic inside a funeral home.

crinkle blinkls fuggin tinkles eradicate the money-maker, forlorn and jabberwocked to little

ittle bits

like a collarbone on a piece of riff raff trailer trash vermin dogbone milkmaid hunky-dory barmaid rip raid and replenish those who cannot offer you what I most willingly can.

and those principles, they’re buried under

three feet of dirt, past Rush Hall and the twin waters holding up the world with their clean-truckin                                                                                                                     gobble gobble Atlas fingertips.

The cities, they rise like ashes to the scent of your face,

each one climbing into you to fill you with death

and fire and gurgles of iodine.

                                                adslfnsoladfnsf

                                    srgnmrglne

            pl4 ro45r0

Can you hear the radio towers now? they’re sending out

signals to get you to

the next line,

the next minute, the next car payment saxophone solo marvin gaye hit, the next girl next  dream next next

gribblegrabble drunken monkin octopus wore a sweatervest to the mall!

four AM and you’re lying awake, walking awake,

finding the early morning to be as what hurricanes leave  droptowns.

Imitate initiate alleviate whatever opium burns

lay on your liver,

eggs from spiders that slither through your digestive system, using it

the way a caveman would use           acave.

They sleep inside the junk drawer and when you pull it open

to find those scissors the spiders, they crawl

on your lipstick and shit out hunger pains.

III

But none for you, CARROT.                                        CAN YOU HEAR ME in your sweet little head?

Remember that you and I, we were meant

to be more than just star-gazing hooliganizin jellyfishin swashbucklas.

We were more, you were more. You just can’t seem to slip

and slide down the barricades to tell me that

we should get married! and I’d say fuckyeah! and

we’d have four little rugrats, each one named the same thing—Muhammad Ali,

even if they’re girls but if they’re girls I’d paint them a picture of one,

and they would stick it on the doorknob every night before whispering the three words which,

when you say them to me,

I get all tingly inside.

Justin Beiber smiles at your accomplishments.

Congratulations.

IV

Millions and drinking ramping arsenic

rick-rolled boogie       down before

the riots begin, because when the shit hits the fan you better

duck your head under your 1950s desk

and pray to your indie god that your hair doesn’t get wet.

aaaaaaaaaand the hermits will sing

with the toads while the flies cover the world

in a stingy eloping borneo.

            Telephone call television,

            tell me some tele-versions.

the remote will now act in real time,

            and that shall suggest that no time is real time,

and real time is no time at all.

but wait a second, peanut butter

in the gears of Big Ben is the only way

to legit stop time, otherwise you just get a bunch

of melting clocks.

                                    See this? you’re missing this. you’re missing me, I’m sure

all too caught up in your paint-free neutral toot-oreos

front-drive your automobile

into the wall and clash with an ice cube

before taking your George the Curious home for a bath

in oatmeal and grass;;;

                                               
                                                                        HEY, TEMPLE OF THE SUN GOD!

                                                                                                NICE TO SEE YOUR PRETTY FRUITS HERE;

Your oranges show me light in the forest for the trees,

and you always know when I’m gonna show up for dinner

and you can dream with the mushroom clouds

but when the hurricane hits,

you’re too far away for the drink to see.

Bears sink down into the mud before heading back

to the castle, and you, blondie,

you can’t find your top hat because some gnome

took it and hid it underneath the universe,

because gnomes are secretly working underneath Big Ben,

peanut butter in hand, for as we all know,

the world is up for grabs.

V

Ensure your cadi, Maddy, before you set off and conquer the moon.

the cheese sandwiches you have prepared will

conjugate the following phrases in French.

Ahem.

FUCK

GODDAMN

SHIT-ASS

ASS-CLOWN

            and, the classic

IMGOINGTOTAKETHISPIECEOFSHITYOUCALLAHANDYPANANDSHOVEITSOFARDOWNYOURTHROATYOUWILLTALKLIKEABONAFIDECYBORG

please do this before and after you control your clitorodoris

with five letters of recommendation from four teachers

and a pharmacist. that way you are totally insured for now and forever.

Haymarket riot let’s go Bezerker on a chain struck periphery!

Haymarket flies off the kindle and allows your head to get stuck in four Kenmore ovens or other electrical appliances made for heating food inside the kitchen section at your local grocery store.

VI

Aping around and I can’t seem to discover the jar

of dimes which has got me through the year without so much as one broken ink pen.

Rape the dinosaurusrex before setting off to discover a lost continent,

maybe atlantis, maybe America, because America is lost

in bad posture and eighty-nine thousand frying pans, and if you find it you can KEEP IT

and give it your grandchildren to give back to those eighty-nine thousand frying pans,

except as Big Ben ticks they become ninety-four thousand frying pans,

each pan a memoriam to those we lose to treasure chests.

unobtanium is best described as the

life you’ll never have.

I think I’m done now,

go back to your caves and think about it.

Please keep this In mind when you do your laundry.

Cerberus cremates your cerebral cortex

while you slide two quarters underneath

Charon’s lips, and then you find yourself

In the giant washing machine of death.

Except it’s not a giant washing machine,

it’s a really small hair dryer that

Hades will use sometime maybe

if he ever grows any hair. A message

from management. Thank you.

Watched a sad movie

About Hitler’s last days in

the bunker, a total flunk

eight guys and a basement.

Now I’m horny and alone

But no women because

They all died in the big

Scheme of time. Never

Enough time, says Hitler.

Never enough time,

Says me.

The whites of your godfilled eyes

Clutch to the wild earth,

And Mount Rainer’s within sight.

Tired of being watchtower turf,

The mountain flexes its calves.

We shiver.

Ready to run, Rainer takes off

And marches into the sea.

We have no choice but to

Follow the mountain to our

Own murky depths.

Open the Dam

It feels good to release

The dam and watch the

Worries tumble on down

To the ocean, away from

Where my hopes like

To build their houses.

For Comrade Goldman

Free love, as if love

Is anything          but free.

Love and be

Grateful, for the sand

Will spell out

Gold in your honor,

The Earth remembers.

Imagine it, can you?

Emma, let it snow.

This dystopia erodes.

Wielder of the celestial

Grime, terrestrian

Equestrian blues, please

Listen to the hymnals

Of someone that truly

Does not give a fuck.