The world without time;
I am floating on a ray of
jasmine scent wondering
if it is you or a phantasm
and I am fully awake because
the deaths I have experienced
virtually have prepared me
for what life is really about;
motes of magnesium and sulphur
circling about an ebon singularity
beyond which we Just Don’t Know
and if anyone tries to tell you
different they also have some
real estate in Antarctica they will
try to sell you.
It was a dream, nothing more.
A planet I don’t know
from the records but
I saw it out the porthole
last night, rings resplendent
in the red rays of its
dying star, and I thought
“Those moons are so beautiful
I could live there,” especially
on the yellow crescent one
that is almost hot as
Antarctica and could
support life,” perhaps I
shall settle there and
have babies.” The ship
speaks to me at these
moments of unease,
and reminds me that
the Mechanism is supreme,
that all things must begin
through the collation
chamber, and that
Antarctica has no part
of that.
And I think, this existence had
a biological antecedent once.
The war was fought,wasted, wanted, knotted by tough lovers
of liquid fossil gold. I once stood on the sidelines and cheered
because I was an idiot – and am still a recovering fool,
truth to tell. But looking through the documents one sees
the deceptions and the blindness that snowballed with
the result that men and women and children
are dying violent deaths in the Middle
East with much greater frequency than
before, and this trend shows no sign
of slowing down any time soon.
I wonder what madness
affects me and so many other Americans
at this juncture of history to unleash
us as a force for destruction and random mayhem,
sanctioned as a spiritual and moral crusade to
preserve those antiquated memes. (Don’t
they have freezer burn by now? The memes,
I mean, not the crusaders.)
The truth that impacts me right now -
and it is not the smack of an AK round
or the rumbling of a JDAM on the horizon
because I’m sitting at my desk in Waynesboro,
Va where war has not happened since 1865 -
is that contrary to the cliché that neo-conservatives
aren’t that intelligent, there actually has been
a coterie of very well-educated right-wingers,
capable of subtle and nuanced thought who
ideologized us into this corner, and, much
of America buys into it, a critical mass
solid enough to keep pushing those measures
through, and then calling it an exercise
of “righteous might.” And it will still be
there when W is no longer in the White House,
a stomach-churner for sure.
We are still paying for it, and will be
paying for a long time.
a respite from learning
every third second
a crystal star piece dives from the chandelier
onto your arrogant toupee.
And I am glad that we learned to
talk without gagging because I am in
need of that skill today.
herniation of a dug in the sky
like my new underwear
says the emperor
the insurgents escaping
over the dunes trade AK
fusillades with their own
We are new except
when we are old. Embrace
the bold. The styles of
yesteryear are paramount.
We dress them up to
pretend we are saying something
profound. (Every “we” is royal.)
Dinner is served.
Come and get it.
the pain
she screams at
I don’t know whom
on the phone because
she is out of gas again
and I wish she would
just crash at home so we
can deal with the gas money
situation tomorrow but
she is on her own life trip
and I am outside the frosted
window watching through cracks
in the spider web. My sinuses
are wracked by something that
tastes like spackling, I am
under glass, harassed by
men in black who fired
muskets upon debarking
from the aluminum flying
saucer, or on the
astro-turf of the strip
mall in a false place
and she has left.
She is not coming home
tonight.
And I am out
of my mind.
Over the road in a Mack truck I
am not comfortable driving yet, so
it goes, as the champion breakfaster says.
A volume game soap dementia
by Uli John Roth plays on the radio
and I am wondering how he
got those precise sounds, that
astonishing tone. The feedback lilts,
a flutter of angels’ wings,
aftertaste smacks of whiskey
sour, and the smell of blood pudding
from a Gasthaus in Bayern.
My feet are released by
the speed-hammer of the double
bass and the shrill tang of
the classic whammy drop
from the Scorpions’ first album.
I hit the horn too long and
the breaks lose power.
I am skidding down a
West Virginia interstate and
end up – after hijinks you
would not believe if I told you -
in the gravel escaped truck
ramp, white dust pluming the
air around me; I cough, and
am cleansed, as the blue lights
flash around me and I am laughing-
but completely sober – when the
State Trooper writes out the charges.
The rainbow reassembles behind me
before crashing apart again in fragments
of numinous soul-shear, as the sun spins
and spins like a record baby, right round
round round.
She increaseth across the skies;
she increaseth in her deserts,
and her love chameleon is a
silver chrysanthemum of
spirit and life, crackling ashes
of elite ballistic realism -
the five part mini-series
they were filming here has
fallen apart due to financial
difficulties.
We are skateboarding around a
fountain in downtown Taos and
it is all fine. The geese are heading
north back home and that is
just right. You and I have outgrown
the crude, shrill shackle-garments
of yester-fashion and are painting
ourselves onto the windmills,
a season of expanse.
Unlike the men who
shaved a rhesus monkey
carcass and dyed it green
then scorched a ring in
the Georgia pavement,
and claimed that this was
merely one of countless
space travelers they had
seen returning to their
flying saucer – and numerous
neighborhood folk attested
that by God yes, they had
seen the flying saucer too,
with integrity we plummet
into the tomes to wrest from
them crimson-inked glyphs and
sigils and shove them up
the Man’s ass – as far into
that alimentary canal as tire
irons can manage -to tell him that
we we we won’t take it any more.
Come on feel the noise.
Being a rock and roll extravaganza
of a strange long trip through decades
of decadence and chill tunes
I saw Jimi play Monterey
twenty one years later on
a vhs tape in the library
break room. The experience
changed my life.
Like changing God’s underwear,
it will blow your mind, and
systematically derange your
senses, to rhyme with the length
of the auto-jailer’s coat.
When you awaken, just for a moment,
you feel the rough police hands on
your body and the voice saying “He’s
coming out of it, hit him again.”
And this was years before the
Wachowski brothers opened our
minds to what was really going
on.
The items were not described
with complete accuracy, not to those
favoring histoire in the
19th century fashion, but
for those of us who mainline
Heilsgeschichte like it was
our favorite iv drug, it means
a lot.
And the sky gods fall out
during the tourney of lead
guitarists, strings rip
flesh and there is blood
on the pickups as the Marshalls
feed-back worship to the
hill beings, and the gargoyles
cower, but the angels delight.
This will be a sweet night.
You will not forget that we
rifled the tomb together in
the failing flashlights, to
commune with near prehistoric
servitors, to taste, but not hoard,
that primordial en-sigilled gold
which is salvation, and no mistake.
In those hills is gold, and monsters,
which amounts to the same thing.