moonlight on the bourbon

moonlight on the bourbon
and murder on the brain
caught a glimpse of your intentions
then caught the midnight train

now i'm headin' south to georgia
won't be comin' round again
won't be fallin for your skirt tails
won't be shakin' by your skin

oh there's moonlight on the bourbon
and a killer on the run
there's the smell of blood and entrails
sulfur rising from the gun

you spent your last night preaching
how you're nothing like the son
just another long gone loner
seeking shelter from the sun

oh you've felt the pull of that mighty pole
you've never known what for
you've just been leaking out your life blood
letting it puddle on the floor

and the bastards keeping tabs on you
they've banned you from this town
sent you scramblin' from the moonlight
sent you runnin underground..

best poem

she bends over the rice bin
and tells a dirty joke
the kind my grandma used to tell
i laugh, chuckle is more like it
jokes just aren't funny anymore
nothing is funny, it's all just ironic
ironic and sick and sad.
so, i pushed her into the rice bin.
she didn't laugh.
i told her a dirty joke involving her mother
two llamas and the dahli lama.
she punched me in the face
then laughed.
i never knew blood was so funny.
i pushed the rice bin into her.
and made a porn using pixels
and a highly rendered model
of princess diana's hand.
nobody thought that was funny,
but i laughed my ass off
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
seriously. this all happened.
just ask the dummy with rice
in her hair, rice everywhere!

it's all nothing.

If you'll carry the cold tube,
the compress, the last leg, and the jar
of peanuts, i'll make a pillow out of the
longness of your neck.

I'll watch the fall come and go
and leaves burn scorched marks
on the sidewalks of our hometown
and winter it can go too.

Everything can go, it's all going
anyway. the universe expanding outward
always, and always us going after it.
chasing paper trails and tails, tales
and tailing ponds.

forget it. forget it and everything.
forgive it and forget everything.
forge your smile, your stance,
your brilliance- of all these,
for all these, you are nothing.

if you'll carry the lipstick
i'll burn the effigy.
born still as the dogs breath
dying out.

floodgate '93

those blankets they carried my fears

and spread out like nightmares

another thousand years and all but blinded

by the light of your lie

these houses they carry the flood

and bring back everything but blood

your picture is leaking light

i guess now is the time to say goodbye

narrow little stairs and stars to wide

to span with one hand

narrow little stairs and stars that start to hide

under the kitchen chairs

those pea thick soup light streets

of new orleans are lying to us all

saying they'll catch us if we fall

but they're falling off- a long way off

and you can't catch them anymore

slipping through some nicotined yellow fingers

sparking when they hit the running board

gunning the last gate out past the flood plains

TOO MANY TOOTHS AND TWO LITTLE TRUTHS

I pulled the tooth out of the compost
pile, not because I had to, but because
it was there, I had to. I imagined
it was the tooth of a dinosaur.

The compost pile smelled
like a compost pile.

The tooth smelled
like a compost pile.

Every year or two I wonder
why I pulled the tooth out.

I never wonder how it got there in the first place.

Five or six years ago I lost the tooth.
By which, I mean, I flushed it down the toilet.

I flushed it down the toilet because I was afraid
that if I simply threw it in the trash,
I would dig it back out.

The trash smelled like compost.
The toilet smelled like toilet.
The tooth is gone forever.
The compost is now a garden
Dying it's fall death.

life and death on a slider scale

if you held out your hand i'd slap it
nicely, of course in the gesture of a high
five. in the morning i woke up and smoked
a cracker jack ship of dreams
squeezed into teenage jeans and addict
schemes. your sleeze isn't as hidden
up your sleeve as you would like
us to believe, so just be brief
in your freedom and free in your
bevy of unwashed hand
clasps.
your button is rubbing my thigh
bone and causing a cloud of pink
on my white fleshy man bits.
i know, right?
no, i know no right, just know wrong.
wrong is a lot easier to get right
and be sure of it.
right is decades of tests before answering and still not knowing if the final plunge will plunge us all into death. i like death, but not as much as i like life. i like life because of lifes relationship with death, what's to like about life if it isn't at risk EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY OF EVERY YEAR OF EVERY DECADE? well nothing probably.

feelin' iffy spiffy?

if i had to nail my worth
to a word, shiver in it's
decrepit/silent/still falling
world, i'd follow lonely
women home from the hospital.
i'd be afraid of death.

i'd be afraid of death,
if every time it returned i felt
closer to the reality of a life
coalesced in the secrets between
here and maternity wardens.
i'd be afraid of living.

if i had to nail my sword
to a wide swath of land, defended
by my own hand's will to keep
working/falling/scraping/kneeling
before eternal sunrise light
i'd be afraid of nothing, but night.