beginning to panic after panic is normalcy
money. fuck you, money! em oh en ee why.
we don't have money
yet we work like
sled-dogs with
arthritis,
with a bloody lassie good girl paw
ah beg. scoot the holy hell over
& let's discuss television
shows. denzel & the hollywood experience.
try being a man who doesn't act,
or who goes beyond characterization,
who is buddha sufi sick factory-rat poet,
& fling him some sticky pennies.
his teeth are hurting
& he doesn't have cash
or dental insurance. he doesn't smile.
he doesn't pretend
he's somebody else.
he works.
he writes.
he gets notices from the erie credit
bureau.
he is very
gray-hair'd. he feels
like he's
almost dead
something stinks
only full a quarter of our garbage
bag in green container,
but something awfully
ripe reeks thru most of this
little apartment. i wrap it
up, take it down to the dumpster
in afternoon sunlight,
blue sky, in the 50's.
i don't know what it is
that stinks, but i smell it
all the way back to the hallway.
i sniff my arm-pits.
i slip in a clean white bag,
check for air-freshener spray,
but just find
oven cleaner under the sink.
i have 3 of the 4 windows open.
i am this close to lighting
a few sticks of incense.
rotten fruity rancid spoilage
which textures this
layer of reality with
kitchen shadow,
quietness. sshhhh...,
soon the smell
will disappear.
plan bee
we were like lithe flesh
rootless trees pulled
by perfect math of earth-spin
breeze rotation not to mention
jupiter in night sky gravity,
balance'd. war of love
inside our knot-hole heads,
rectified by hugging,
by hugging hard,
my hardon pressing
between yr breasts
like a branch
in windy branches
sturdies against
such force
as the spin of the orb we
are stuck to,
everyone can now envision
the rapture better
with tv, with movie
special-effects --
look how we watch
the apocalypse begin
in the center of new york city
& now we read
this poem
lost in some past poem
when we were young
when we were smoking cigarettes
when we were thin alien creatures
big black eyes, in a fog,
mind-control,
time travel, abduction
love.
the physical world.
we are blowing up
like old dinosaur
lungs, & we
exhale,
create this world
rapidly
darkening,
changing.
fill the bowl.
we'll wait out
chaos, or not
oh fuck
we nap in the middle of the afternoon
after a few beers. the bald guy downstairs
is moving out -- it's what wakes us.
i peek out the bottom of the window
by the little bed. i got a vampire's
eyes -- sunlight burns, blinds.
& the sky, as blue as a fucking dead baby!
sitting at home
at least we aren't smoking
cigarettes. two years since
may first. nicotine addiction
is for the birds,
moaning owls of
smokey death. both my kids
smoke
newport
menthol. i think it's an
erie thing.
but we aren't smoking
cigarettes -- what were we smoking
at the end? winston's? bidis...
& i still wldn't mind
a few good drags.
30 years of nicotine addiction.
ann saved me from
that. in a parallel universe
a cigarette burns in an ashtray
& i reach skeletal fingers
down to clamp it up, jam it
into my inhaling head.
fuck you already.
i am not injecting nicotine
into my brain,
& it's saturday,
middle of march,
21st century.
music pounds below
us in the downstairs apartment.
dangerous-looking bald
guy is whooping & walking
like a whooping-crane in his livingroom
to the music
of the
pogues.
listen,
the slice-like crack
of a beer-can tab.
afternoon delight
i wake up on my sunken belly
on the couch. tv going: infomercials.
stare at face of blonde lady talking
about the benefits of some particular
blue lotion.
i wipe drool from the end of my lip
with the back of my hand,
rise like i am one of the twin
towers trying to
stand again all shattered & felled but
regrouping molecules,
penthouses full of black dust
slam doors within my
mind. a fist floats thru a wall.
time is a dream
memory. there's a blizzard outside.
i'm an obliterated skyscraper
suspended in a second floor apartment
looking out at horizontal snow
whipping the city.
fog
it isn't like waking
in the afternoon
is a refreshing sleep.
if this board
pulls me from
bed like a large,
sleepy carp
mucked down
in mud, that's fine.
purpose is purpose
is a rose a
metabolized wish out of a
dream, & that's just fine.
groggy, grab my keys,
walk down steps to check
mail -- glance out
downstairs door window
into the parkinglot.
i glance again.
thick
fog.
soon i'm driving
thru an oatmeal cloud,
headlights on at 3.
visibility
maybe half a block,
peering.
life
is
exhausting.
click to view movie/poem - eggs