From a found scrap of paper...last year

Abraham that Joker,
pipe in hand,
laundromat his spot,
tells you that the secret
to life is in peanuckle.
But then you remember
that this is false, that
Abraham Lincoln walks into a
bar, pear tree holds four tree eye-
balls. Minefield looks like oregano,
a Vietnam Tornado.
Rastafarian sodomizes his Rasta
neighbor, but if you sleep it sleep it
sleep it off Tom Waits cigar devil
tricks, teeth like California sun.
Grass is was could be should be hair,
so if you salt the tarmac, nose on the
loose, Lincoln in the noose, so
yo-ho, yo-ho, inflatable bicycle tire,
strangle with an electric wire,
lonliness is a paycheck, cashed
like a pipe on a hill. Spirit of Adventure
tagged on a tree, but there's still
the White Tree of Gondor, God's
dandruff. Cubism requires Walt
Disney's signature, and Calypso
sells her apartment on Craigslist,
but let it be known that the secret
to life isn't in peanuckle, it is instead
a boy who picks his butt while standing
on a cliff.


*there's more but I'm done writing for now.

Destroy

television.

The desert flowers droop

The desert is all kinds of crazy as you stop the car and look out among the Big Empty, the enchantress (alias the sun) beats down with the power and grace of a street-cleaner, and if you can't find happiness in the bright sauna, you might find it underneath the ancient stones, lizards pumping iron in the sun, and you're breathless in the absolute silence.

A mirage appears, out in the salt flats. A woman dances, she's a gypsy you know, the desert flowers droop among the yucca plants and joshua trees. She's beating a tambourine and you're in a trance, you want need the grace she promises in her steps. Next thing you know you're stumbling out toward her, sunburn starting to take its toll on your arms and nose, the sun makes your body scream but the tambourine breaks the insufferable silence and your throat parches before the mighty arid mountains, thirty or forty miles on the horizon.

You're a hundred yards from the car before you turn around and realize that you've been walking this whole time. She smiles at you, has to be a mile out in the wastelands, you want need her grace. Freedom is close in the desert wind.

Box, Pandora-style

Demons, demons,
they bury themselves
into this iceberg.

And with a pick,
I start digging, thinking
that by digging them out
I'm removing them.

But instead, I'm releasing
their darkness into my heart,
into my head.

Whatever doesn't kill us
makes us stronger. The

asshole that said that went
crazy.

And the blistering cold
outmatches my simple
blizzard-season coat,
if I retreat I commit myself

to failure. Or at least,
that's what those demons
are whispering into my ear,
wanting so badly to become

the box which Pandora opens,
time and time again.

Tell me I'm not alone,
that the sweat on my brow

from all this digging is
sinking in.

They will not win. I will not
keep digging into the ice,
I will not keep digging into
the venom.

Instead, let me disappear into
the snowstorm, let me tend
the fire in my heart, let it lead
me to the Source, so I may
be at peace.

Is that so difficult?

11 o clock news fades to Simpsons theme song,
and then  I realize how we got it all wrong,
buy this, try that, eat this, medicate that,
ask your doctor to take this pill and enlarge
your girlfriend's fill, watch the new reality,
a new reality talent show, start thinking real
slow because the tele got your jelly on the low,
new car new pop star new drug get loaded.
Naw, turn it off, leave it off, go build a boat.

Cus that's the only way off this damn continent.

To Rachel

Take me to the woods, Rachel,
with pinches and pinches of mesquite
fire smoke, held together with your hand-
some life preserver, fade out the
sour stomach and itchy neck, perched
in the trees shooting tin cans with sawed
off shotguns, drinking cokes in commoditized
50s diners, pretending the Nighthawks are
actually bluebirds, miles of wild geese and
sky-folding ducklings narrating.

What cannot be imitated perfect must die.
Farewell Rachel, your sadness may it melt
away when you take a drag off my cigarette,
while I think about the government and Ed
loads a bowl of medical so we can all sleep
without the dreams of dead or dying fathers.
Not busy living are busy dying, bum hunnie
bum, may you bring your state, Rachel,
may you bring Iowa wherever you go.

But if you gotta go to the teen wolf and plead
for the scent of his cock, then be sure to use
emotional protection. Fuck what you cannot
love, love what you cannot fuck.

Any day now, you'll be
released from your chemical moods and
thrown into alright-ness, but I want
that alright-ness to be bliss for you,
while the rest of us listen to our phil-
osophy professor whine about
epistemology.

The stakes were highest when we
chose to deny silly cures for the many-headed
Cancer beast, and instead, crafted
another head for it to lay its eggs in,
that time when we chose to buy cigarettes.
The lows were never lower.

One day, maybe in your grave,
your chains to reality, they'll rust and fray.

Because, really, you held my hand
in the dark and made me see it was all pretend.
I hope one day I can understand
in better light the plights of one
nineteen-year-old girl.

Vegas, your son is home.

The wind picks up the dust
on the garbage-strewn street,
the sun throws its arms over the
kingdom of desire, smiling with
eyes scheming, distraught man
in painter's uniform looks both
ways before crossing, knows
well of the cancers contained in
the sun's malicious arms, as
well as the tobacco-stained
fingers of him and his strung-
out comrades.

Welcome home, to the city
that sleeps two hours a night,
to the city that is always hungry
and digs 24 hour all-you-can-eat
buffets.

Casinos dot the concrete waste-
lands, filling hearts with empty
empty, filling eyes with glamour
glitz bonafide illusion. Know
that everything but the sand
is false.

The wind blows harder and
dust devils dance.

The Dervish and the Little Girl. (May 2)

Remember you were seven once, and you had a baby brother of ten months, your papa was off in battle with the Turks, your mother sick with post-partum depression, so it was up to you to bring the counsel of the Dervishes in the Lodge up the plateau. They were to tell you to bring your mother there, but the act was symbolic for a seven year old, you had to do what you had to do, and that's what you needed to bring your mother, your home, yourself, out of the broken and into the light.


Remember your name. It was Isabelle, and you were not born in the desert where you live, not in the mud-baked houses sunk in the sand, but rather, in the lands to the north, above the torrential sea. You may not remember these things; you may remember instead the pulsing calligraphy on the heavy oak doors, turquoise engraved with oak lining, ancient rivets on a desert plateau. You were pounding with your fists and crying, "Help my mother!" before the glazed eyes of the hash-ish smoking guard, covered in resin, a plate of melon in his stomach, leaning on the mango tree. You may have instead remembered the ritual of the Dervishes, in which when you stumbled into it you were branded with the burning letters of Allah onto the face of your bold green heart.


But even if you don't remember these things either, you must remember the Dervish that held your hand as you glimpsed into the Infinite, a man with eyes twinkling behind his robes and cap, beard longer than you were tall. You took his hand in his twirl, and the Infinite gazed down at you from His Merciful place in the heavens, holy blue fire pulsing as We took Our fingers and placed them to your neck. Closer than the jugular, We said. You pulled him outside and sailed down the hill with him muttering "Oh, child," in-tow. 


Further down the hill you brought him to a shady sand-sunk house, covered in palm leaves. The Dervish halted when you proceeded to push him through the door. "We must protest, your mother can be helped, but what of your father?"You averted his gaze and sobbed. "Come here, my child."And you fell into his arms on your mother's porch, an infant noisy inside. The birds started to circle around you and him, his cloth filling your stomach with soothe. The birds made seven revolutions around you and him, healer and healing, wise and rash, but a song lulls you into slumber, hummed by the Dervish.


"Row row row your boat,
gently down the stream,
merrily merrily merrily merrily,
life is but a dream."

Missing.

1.
Missing, missing,
something is missing,
in my heart, in my
head, in this love
that I dread.

Missing, missing,
something is missing,
somewhere within
my Led Zeppelin,

missing, missing,
something is missing,
grueling in a tunnel
muddy with infant
roaches skittering

armless legless eyeless
you are missing.

2.
I am in love with
the feeling of being
in love.

3.
I want to be numb
again.

Hair, PETCO job application

The iceberg melts in the
Vegas heat, alone and
bewildered by the ghosts

of what could have been.
A year of forced abstinence
and an uncertain future

prove to be what Vietnam
veterans would call
SN:AFU.

But that's okay, because
my head moves by my heart,
if those fists in the air

at Seattle's infamous May Day

say anything. A comforting
truth midst an ocean of un-
certainty, waiting, waiting.

Waiting for another life
to begin, to reinvent because
this skin is old, old, old.

Let the fingers drum holographic

Dream not of the indigo

children, beware of the piercing

curb permafrost. You are, as

they said once, invincible.

Sleep not for the iguana,

nor the heron in its nest.

Feel not for Nirvana, instead

let your soul find Allah. He is only

young himself, catching fire-

flies. But let it not be for fame--

instead sincerity. Let the cool

fire burn you in the grocery

store, let it take you away

when you’re sitting in the

laundromat, let the fingers

drum holographic but remember

it all leads

back to God.

God is pitching a fit in the

cereal aisle, while his mother

bargains for discount fish

at the meat counter. God can’t

wait for the day when he

would be could be should be

found in this once in a lifetime
 game of hide-and

-seek. We found
Him before,

remember? On a mountain

in Israel, in the caves of Arabia,

in the jungles of India,  the concrete
of Berlin, New York, Liverpool, Los Angeles,

the place home or hospital
where you were born.

If you want some advice, sleep.

Dream not for the jaguar who

eats the sun, but instead, the

tar that preys on insects, fighting

for the sacred territory of

oxygen air-sacs

black

and shriveled.

And creation was created,

the unknown known.

At least, for awhile.
But let it be known that

the known becomes undone

just like shoestrings, and our

shoes, our colossally expensive

shoes, are untied.