television's television dinner sinner

by summertime all the pockets were frayed
and displayed like an open wallet
pictures of empty festering nothings
were haunched over laptops breaking
their nails on every keystroke

berta, my secretary at the time
took to riding her bike every day
to the donut shop down on 4th
and kretzel, she would bring us back
a large box of assorted pastries,
but never failed to drop them,
or eat them, or give them away
before returning to the office,
with sticky hands and face,
sweat trickling down her meaty thighs
and nothing to show for it, but
a suttle stench that followed her around
until evening, when we locked the doors
and went home to our television's
television dinners

toothbrush decay

put on your blind shoes and step
on the cracks, rest your hand on the back
pages of some tennesee williams 50 cent novel
carress it's spine and ask it, 'why are you so sad?'

i'm sure you'll get an answer somewhere in there.

grandma grable gets a stable.

finger puppets in the porchlight
swinging wild berry glands of off beat
oft forgotten long lost shoulder wounds
hip replacement latter ladder saints
you better forget everything i've told you and remember nothing of what you've seen here today this long list of mediocrity is no better than a lisp on a short stick walking the dog in august misty heat of two ton town wrecking balls
clumsy afternoons where you watch spiders build traps of litmus paper
stuck to the inside of your long lost cowboy boots of childhood

clearing my mind of nothing, buttering buddha buddy's body

it's hard to look like yourself these days dimented de-minted and all flossed out tangled hair and beard and windswept dried cracked face. cafe sitting and sipping coffee or tea lounging on backs made of muscle and memory floundering out somewhere beyond where you thought the end of your limitations were. - at 4:40 i'll hop the greyhound to manhattan kansas watch the brown grass bowled under the disc fold into the soil, watch the birds return to the rivers the rivers return to the land, the soil swept away. floods are always on my mind, sweeping clean the debris bringing in new crap, car parts, rusted feeders from farmer's fields. - just like that, the sheep die, the crows fly off with their eyeballs and the dogs can't keep the wolves at bay. the coyotes see the steam, smell the rancid odor of defeat and dig in to some good eats. tongues in cheek meat. - i've got a disaster plan, an escape route in case of hostile government take over, a long list of laundromats in case my washing machine breaks, a back up generator for my backup generator, canned food to last at least a winter, and enough winters to last a thousand years- but i still don't ever have enough socks.

last night, the night before

send me dizzy up the stairs,
but i fall down. all
around me, they're tracing white
lines on table tops.
asking me, but i always,
almost always, say no.
and here i am laughing,
telling myself lies.
a little further away from
everyday, every day i live.
-


scrape bottom down
this rutted road
made old by winter
and the big trucks
that just can't sit still.

two trains coming,
running down river
tracks ripe with coal
folding like bricks
around the bent hills.

pass the pipe and know
we will never know
what it was we felt before
our old souls knew
new shoes loose in the gravel.
-

wind and words

the wind is a sucker; chasing it's tail
indefinitely, finding cracks and alleys to run
through, corners to howl around, always
running after itself.

if you had a tail you would be
like the wind; always ahead of and behind
yourself, essence
of an incapturable moment, like sunlight.

if you were like sunlight, what would that mean?
would you glow with truth? hide behind clouds?
interfere at your feistiest times with electrical signals?
if you, words, were like sunlight, would you provide good
clean energy, or would you simply burn?

no, you are more like the wind
perpetually unaware of your beginning middle and end.
unaware of your own existence, unaware of the wars
fought, lives lost, treasures gained, thoughts shared.
you propagate yourself in a thousand dialects,
a thousand ways to say the same thing.

nothing, has ever, or will ever, change.
the wind will chase itself, words will pile up and mean nothing.
the sun will glow red and disappear, swallowing cultures, and people,
and planets.
the wind will still chases itself, and words will still pile up and mean
nothing.
nothing at the end of the world, will not know,
will ever know, and has ever known...

-

crockpot piss on a blackspot
your thought is nonstop
so cop-out and block
the nonsense you incensed fool.

-

if i were hamfisted
i'd buy a bag of peanuts
and see what that was like.

-

your lasso is a truth lasso
wonder woman
your lasso is a truth lasso
asshole.

keep it upstairs

spend your time passing by strangers and forgetting

them. wired resistant, but out of flux, and too much

reality weeping through the glass.