I will probably kill you:Pieces for Reading
Thursday, shouts the author of a poem called
!T!H!U!R!S!D!A!Y!
!THURSDAY, shout the people who live in photonegative
and write
backwards poems called
Wonder How I’m Doing
sit apprehensively, waiting for
your phone to ring
try to remember if I have caller id
regret calling me
hang up
listen for my voice
put your hand over the receiver
let it ring twice
dial my number from memory
wonder how I’m doing ß
[Thursday.!], shout the subtle ironists, composing lines
tentatively titled I Listened For Years
I dream that I am eating Thai food
and the waiter tells me that there is a
phone call for me
from you
if only I could find the phone,
so I listened for years,
living on the streets,
eating day-old sushi thrown out in the
garbage,
riding around on a stolen bicycle,
up and down the highways and byways of
the state of Oklahoma,
listening for the ringing phone with you
on the other end.
I awaken in your parents’ spare bedroom
to find you beating me over the head
with a cordless phone.
Thurs Day ! , shout the careful and meticulous, inking their calligraphy brushes
for a poem called Phone Haiku #7
birds on a wire
sing twice when you think of me,
never any more
Thursday, shout those closest to the exit, collating copies of their poem called
Thank You For
at any time during
number of your extension
for questions about
remain on the
all of our customer care
may be recorded for
!T!H!U!R!S!D!A!Y!, shout the joyous repetitious
that write poems called You call and hang up
You call and hang up.
You do not want to speak to me.
You only want me to get up and walk
across the room.
You call and hang up.
You do not want to speak to me.
You only want me to get up and walk
across the room.
I was born on a Thursday,
The first day of Kindergarten was a !T!H!U!R!S!D!A!Y!,
I touched a girl under her shirt for the first time on a
[Thursday.!],
I understood what my father was saying on a Thurs Day !,
Thursday is your day.
Today is a !tHURSDAY, and the music plays, [Boomtown Rats!
Dionne Warwick!
Fun Boy Three!]
the keyboard snaps and the phone rings.
T H U R S D A Y ! T H U R S D A Y ! T H UR S DAY.
R.R. Lies in State 6/8/04
I was afraid at one time of being atomized by the Soviets
under my desk at school:
some kind of skirmish
like an M16 misfiring,
a border scuffle at the Wall,
and then Mutually Assured Destruction.
The premise:
we have to promise each other that everyone dies,
so we aim Titans and Peacekeepers at ourselves.
Men in mountains, medals and lab coats, seeking us from satellites,
crosshairs burning our foreheads.
I read “The Morning After” at age seven
and, shaking, wondered what expression rode the Gipper’s face as He
watched me from the Oval Office,
finger hovering above the trigger,
jellybeans falling out of His mouth.
Combat Shirt
Clover up to my chin and I still can’t stop the flow of
diesel from his mouth.
George Hughes is fighting a painting again.
Sweet nothings into the eyes pinched shut of prey
,(always predators for prey).
There is nothing but air in his eyes, blood long spent,
shot into enemy-ours with finger blasts of shotgun shells.
Please be gentle, oh Killer.
Chin caked in blood, layered like paint on a window frame.
Cheshire teeth are all anyone gets before
the cobra fist bangs out a peace sign on their neck.
George Hughes spills our liquors to mix acrylic paint.
This is why we fight. We go to war against this man alone.
He pulls the bile out of us with the rest of the good
stuff.
He can decimate a room from across the state. He can
strip the lust out of me for a few minutes at a time, replace it with the
gunshot residue his fingerprints leak.
For moments he opens my throat and pulls on the strings I
swallow,
stories about girls that like me and boys that plot ‘gainst
me enviously,
greased fairy tales I gorge myself on like sardines to a
walrus.
For moments I stop pondering the lot of the obese and
plot my counterstrike.
For moments all there is is painter fighting poet
for control of the same territory.
We can sense the fight like sharks to blood. Frenzy.
I put on my combat shirt and
we make war.
Electrapus and the Trombone Parts
I killed all the bottle wasps
with my trombone heart,
when the anger of a sting welled up
and burst from my chest,
reflected off the corona of the sun
and refracted through the knowing glint
that appears in my eyeglasses
when I am smug;
a lightning bolt that ricocheted through time and space
to the core of creation,
erased the concept of the bottle wasps’ existence
from the eye of god
only seconds prior to his Big Bang Blink.
I would do the same to any social insect
that ever caused you any grief.
Trombone memory glissandos me into flashback,
witnessing in high resolution wide screen and Dolby 5.1
the day that my seventh grade band director
told me that the trombone
was designed to emulate the sound of a man singing,
and that the man singing in my trombone
was off-key, off-tempo, and off the beat.
I use my trombone hands to dance
without moving below the waist
in the kind of primeval handjive
employed by our ancestors before they evolved legs;
Esperanto sign language
inadvertently compelling all who observe to lust for me
in their hearts and loins
until their every action and brief periods of inactivity
are devoted to the pursuit of my erogenous zones.
The twin miracles of internet and cable television
spread the new gospel to all non-blind humanoids,
and sank the need to be with me
into the deepest parts of our caveman brains,
down at the bottom with the hardwired desire
to procreate with our parents
like Electra and Oedipus,
until the permanent members
of the United Nations Security Council gave me the codename
Electrapus.
I only do it because I care.
Trombone memory glissandos me into flashback
with Spanish and French subtitles and an optional
commentary track
of that fateful day in which
the well-meaning yet misguided
crack team of mad scientists
replaced my human parts with trombone parts,
liver and eyeballs and the whole thing,
brassy and new, and very close to human-sounding,
in order to save the world
from the world,
etc.
I use my trombone mouth to warn against,
my trombone fists to beat,
and my trombone toes to curl and resist
the pretty and the eloquent,
the fit-ins and the Hat People and the rock stars,
the Lexus Decepticons and Pom Pom desperadoes
with their tyrant hair and pirate smirks,
Moriarty fingernails and Skeletor hoodies,
their parts and their parts and their parts
designed to sound not like a man singing at all,
but like an angry mob in a coma,
a mass funeral broadcast on Headline News,
or the New York City phonebook read by the birthday robots
at Chuck E. Cheese.
Off-key, off-tempo, and off the beat,
I play my trombone parts to protect you
from my myriad arch nemeses
Trombone yromem glissandos me into prescience,
with plasma display and thumping surround sound
to the afternoon that ICBMs rainbow the sky in vapor trails
and the Four Horsemen of Rock and Roll
decimate stuff,
leaving after the raptures of all religions major and minor
only the saccharin sweethearts that borrowed against their
persons,
the Mandroids, blow up dolls, Mr.s and Mrs.s Mannequin,
and the trombone-parted pugilist,
who stayed behind to fight them off.
Capitol S Falls in a Hole and Dies
S
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
S
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
S
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOSOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOSOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOSOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOsOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOsOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOO.OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOO
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Baba Yaga
Tonight I fly my mortar and pestle over your grave,
swinging back and forth until the earth heaves you back
into my family of fugitives,
cadaverous grin melting back to the smile my father
inherited
when the war was almost over and the USO fiddler played too
slow,
meat steaming off into the air with your
boiled white bones glowing in the flashing red
of a midnight-lazy stoplight.
I saw your ghost enumerated in an equation my brother
scrawled onto his homework,
I smelt your breath in my sister’s laugh,
it is your hair that comes out when I comb,
your voice inside mine when heard outside my reverberating
sinuses,
leaving messages on my own answering machine.
I remembered and came to you as promised.
You are skeleton and I am half,
tired and ready for my daughters to paint on past me,
dominoes of obsolescence falling through decades,
the frames of you and Father pushing me to the ground from
behind.
Tonight I shake the mud from your Sunday suit
and lift you two-handed into the mortar.
We will fly down Cemetery Street to the heart of the city
and shake down the real and alive with our cackles,
cows giving sour milk, miscarriages in our shadow,
screeching like owls in the liberty of it all.
Yellow Coaster Cab
(Lisa)
The tracks of a roller coaster wind by the front door of my
apartment;
familiarity means I can sleep through the Doppler screams
that punctuate the night in bursts of !!! and !!!
At 15 past the hour the taxi car circles back around,
announced by the whoosh of its air brakes and the
giggles of my next-door neighbors returning from the grocery store.
The car is yellow as custom, with a quarter slot and 25¢
sign glowing Galga red on the door:
25¢ will bring me round the loop-de-loop cul-de-sac and up
the clacking launch hills,
through the cool, the bangs and moans of the neighborhood
Spook House,
past the swan ships of Lover’s Lake, the bumper car
dealership,
and the mirrored, spinning sidewalks outside of the Fun
House,
bare bulbs flashing chase patterns down either side of the
track
until the brakes catch and whoosh, the bar goes up, and I
step out at her door,
heart as quick as the empty yellow coaster cab as it speeds
down the turn on the loop back home.
Lepus the Adversary
Greg told me that you were directing all the traffic you
could
down dead end streets and
off of sharp turns into the ocean
just to cull the interstates of excess Suburbans and Camrys
so we can track down Lepus and his elusive candy apple red
Volkswagen Rabbit.
I burned down all of the Japanese Masseurs he frequents
for hand releases
and passed a 1/2¢ sales tax on leisure and relaxation
but none of that will phase him because
Lepus rolls his own.
Once a close call:
I stared Lepus down for
40 days and nights in the deep desert next door to his
warren;
he offered me
endless lines of Cheshire Girls
(eyelashes without a face)
that would do anything he asked them to,
so long as he spelled out their names with subliminal
semaphore,
gesticulating wildly with a smoldering cigarette as he
chatted me up
in jet black chirping night.
Lead me not into temptation, little rabbit boy.
Tricksters get theirs in the end.
Metro Center
Subterranean supercollider
atom-smashing resident aliens
on the orange line from Metro Center.
Eye contact is worse than smoking
but is the only way to achieve self-actualization beneath
the city.
Eye contact is an incontrovertible acknowledgement that you
exist,
if that’s important to you in your commute.
To troglodytes
this is a beautiful city of hello
with neighborhoods
but no neighbors.
Hello. Look into my eyes.
Hello. I am riding the
subway to the Holocaust museum.
Hello hello hello.
Fight Box
for John Otha Franklin
1
Open your fight box for me, Grandfather
and place it next to mine:
we will see who has the bigger meat.
I could shatter your ocular sinus with my fist,
bruise ribs and snap back fingers,
outpace John Otha Andante with John Patrick Presto –
you would be so proud.
We should fight.
Skeleton hands locked tight around your fight box, closed
forever
when I pulled your locust shell off the tree,
match head burning inside the exoskeleton.
“What burns you inside out?” I asked from below your knee.
“That is my fight box,” you said.
Held your palm to my chest, inside my T-shirt, to feel my
hot pulse
“When your fight is big your heart won’t need to rest between beats anymore.”
I will open my fight box to the world, Pandora style
and let it rage across the jet stream,
time zone to time zone,
fighting everything living
until the Earth is pulled into sun.
Rock and Roll.
You left me before we could fight.
2
As children we both dreamed of being rocketmen,
living in a castle of stars and milky galaxies,
flying and flying,
always willing to fight.
You opened your chest and bared your charcoal heart to me,
reached in and plucked it out, burning.
You held it to my sternum and let it burn inside, sickly
smelling,
until I could feel it.
“We must fight,” you said.
“We must always be willing to fight for our charcoal hearts.”
Future Babies + Angel Thugs
1 – Future Babies, for Peter Story
Gut-shot star collides with celestial Venus in HotPants,
phallic anesthesia for their rock and roll hysterectomy.
Future Babies throw axes at my throat with X-ray specs flashing at passing cars.
Fire-mouthed sweeties
mesmerized by pie graphs and trombone laughs:
Future Farmers of the Universe,
Blues bitch barracudas.
Body halo like virgin chickadees.
Listens to ice cream soul
with
ice picked guitar.
SexStationOmega
Below the belt of the city.
Moleman Mafia
and their streetlight electric organ,
playing atomsmasher rumbas,
sparking sugarplum cavities,
wintergreen teeth lightning,
more, more, more, more.
Air-conditioning poisonous gas.
Armband superhero kills indiscriminately
firing rounds from her strappy tank,
little black mess.
Warning conch sounds alerting
the glasses gondolier returns fire
with engines of love,
fusiongun spewing combinatorics:
Jean Short Generalissimo.
Future Babies murder, but never explain.
2 - Angel Thugs, for Dr. James Allen
Canadian thighs.
Phonecards in their eye sockets,
toilet pennies that no one wants.
Rockmoninoff face, Rocker Girl:
Trombone tenor mouths and cello marshmallow hearts,
voices like ice cream float flambeau,
pumping cake out their fingers,
all smiles for the time trials.
Flashes of Djinn fire from the hips while dancing
in their Our Lady body halos.
Agents of Evil
Most certainly the recipient of cadaver eyes,
empty socketed from birth,
mistakenly granted missing Osiris parts through transplant
to protect and serve those in his vision.
(he takes them out to soak at night,
sockets and sinuses charred brittle
by life green spirit dead hot god power,
casting swimming pool shadows in Roy G. Biv
across his bedroom ceiling like an infant’s hypnosis kit,
tap water bubbling silently on his nightstand.)
The boy strikes down beautiful people for me and the Agents of Evil
out of a sense of loyalty unmatched in families
of canis and hommid:
I can’t stand any beauty
except for his.
He is framed in exit-sign red, veins moving forward and back like a pump-action shotgun: dead stereo background music drone of my voice not distracting him from his duty of guardian glances across the ballroom, sheltering stare:
“Chat up a girl tonight, kid.
Dance until you spoil.
Break off and steal sugar from the mouth of god,
seventeen,
prom dress,
last night in town,
etc.”
He nods
and I look him in the eyes,
burning out my retinas like angeldust sunshine,
reminding me of the enemy whitehats with bouquets in hand and songs in word-bubbles.
Breath deep, daughters and sisters:
Atomic Fireball dimples like Raggedy Andy or Anne;
Sleepy hair caps
the entity who eschewed the A to B of boy to man,
new adventuring alone and in crowds,
fusion eyeballing with the world’s
only Alpha/Omega chromosomes.
But know
the boy with miracle vision twinkles tonight for the ashen Agents of Evil, subhuman in
all but nihilism and our double breasted robin suits.
We live only as misanthropic miscreants
and mutual history keeps him close.
Tomorrow I will toast to him and the other absent friends
(always to absent friends),
and drink gulps of beer to the boy who sees and never touches,
and remember the boy who turned it down and burned it up because I asked him to,
and cry a smile for the good works done and doing, God and country,
Agents of Evil.