isn’t it so?
that miscommunication
rides a broom.

 

there’s a girl on my street
twelve years old,
in an abandoned theater.
her parents leave her there: alone,
afraid, in a seat, on a stage.

her gray mother and gray father
see the grinder everyday.

yet she sits
and smiles,
and sings sour;
I’ve been waiting for this moment,
all of my life.

Some nights my mind swells with temptation
to creak open the closet door.
Ideas, fed through a thick libation,
of madness spill upon the floor;
on settled dust and rotted timber
the ghost of love does thaw and limber
and wake once more a shrieking sound
that goads my frozen blood to pound.
These ghastly dreams cause such a racket,
I place my pillow on my head
and pray I make no sound, instead
the bastards enter with a jacket
and throttle me until I weep,
then needle me until I sleep.

 

Between Manhattan and Queens sits an island that's been forgotten.
Yet it breathes; gasps when oily waves recede and spits when cold
green water crashes. Beneath the feet of children plucking blackberries
by the lighthouse, below the tennis courts and apartment buildings and
the asphalt; the island remembers horrors. Centuries of tortured bodies
and splintered minds seeped down through the island’s skin into its id.
One hundred and seven acres of pig shit and guts moistened its soil
for sin, and thus was born a prison that grew an asylum and a small-pox
hospital. The murderer, the moron and the moribund replaced the pink
squealing meat with disheveled hair and wild eyes and scared, hideous,
screams.

All around it buildings rose that needled and blotted the sky, buildings
filled with women and men and happy little children. Most did not know
the island. Those who did cursed it or forgot it or thought it mad as
those trapped in the clawed walls upon it. But there are two who will never
forget, two who will never forsake, for when they were young, they saw the
graffiti wrapped iron lungs inside the boarded up nurses residence.

 

I generally keep my innards to myself, but I've recently come to the conclusion that my innards ain't my own ... the vultures are circling and I no longer fear their plucky humor. So, just below are a few old motunes for falcons, cattle and sperm whales. They’re all pretty much unfinished, listed in chronological order of creation and, (dare I say it?) raw (wow, what a word), I fear for your soul.

• My Harley – Written and played (originally) by Chester, was originally “My Pony.” I converted it to a California Harley love song, and made it worse in the process … I ain’t sad about it, it’s the damned truth man.

 

“Oh Father, how long must we wait?”

            The abbot had been on his knees for over an hour, and he could no longer feel his feet. The cold stone was now warm, and he felt the temple floor had blended with his flesh and they were one.

            “Have our prayers fallen on deaf ears? I know that to you Father, man’s years are but blinks to your fathomless ages. You have spread out the world on the tip of your finger, but have you grown blind to our tribulation? We are weary and our holy torch is growing cold, the flames are diminishing with each passing season. Our land is changing its shape, and new orders are sprouting up like weeds. Do you not care that your followers are dying off?”

cool, wet, black bough
shrieking in the winter wind
the window waits
chilled, frosty, like a beer

peeping through, three eyes anew
infant plans have yet to hatch
if there's blood upon the shell
let it seep through, renew

hibernating, vitalizing
not vibrating, not disguising
sitting still for all to see
the peeping eyes: one, two, three

and there they sit in reverie
trying to fathom what they see
the banshee screaming like a tree
delivered them, so lovingly

 

He always thought. He thought about his bookcase, thought about his past, the books never read, he always wondered what was inside. Each book spine perfect, each cover unbent. Next to the bookcase he had a TV with video built in.

 

Hey Skinny, the shop boy said, Skinny!

Yeah? Said Skinny.

We got that movie in.

Skinny looked around the store, looked down the isle, and fixed his eyes on the foreign section. Skinny's seen every movie here.

I must have dropped off to sleep before waking to the thump of the novel that tumbled from my hands. Victorian novels: heavy, dense, soporific affairs - not be to read by firelight on a cold winters night. The fire was well into its last embers and in need of fuel and a good stoke. As I leaned to toss in the remnants of a Heywood Wakefield coffee table, happily reduced to kindling from the salutations of my trusty sledgehammer, a second thud, this time from overhead, distracted me from my task. Cranky bastard. I tossed a table leg into the fire and made my way for the stairs to the second floor where I'd close a window, shut a door or tend to whatever needed tending to.

 

The 20foot U-haul punctuated the gray and silver cavalcade of mid-sized luxury cars and SUVs with a burst of orange and a hookah puff of smoke from the exhaust pipe. Inside the cab, a front seat argument was taking place regarding the merits of the present adventure. It struck one agitated protagonist that U-haul could probably provide a cheat sheet for such occasions - given the number of times their cabs played host to contests of logic regarding whether to move or not, and wouldn’t it be easier to sell the contents or better yet to throw them away; or why not hire a moving company instead of soliciting the help of family and friends? This road trip, though, was unique in the annals of U-haulage, as the back of the 30 foot moving van was empty, and would remain empty unless one counted the packing blankets and ratchet straps her boyfriend’s friend insisted on bringing.