Denim Shit

No-one sees the heap of jeans, foul and festering,

bunched in a cramped corner of our highest highway;

the fumes infiltrate our urban swerving -

and we are lurching like lighters in the dregs.

On their buses during dawn, the grimy gimlets gawk

at the greying air, holding their noses; in our offices guises

at the gloaming, the rest of us, the bastards,

roar and rest past the unwashed rank.

Then the businessmen, snorting cash, rot in their suits;

the builders, baked in concrete, erect an edifice

out of their brickly bodies; and the janitors steam

and simmer in the city's denim stink.

The preachers prophesy purgation by baptism - but

the politicians shit themselves in protest, drowning

from the weight of their filth; and the bastards break

into applause and search for a scapegoat.

The garbagemen are crucified upside-down for failing

to forgive our stenches; and all at once they sing:

our father, who art made of sulphur, harrowed be thy

odors, thy suffocation come imminently,

and find our laundry where it lies decomposing.

But the detectives run in circles, tracking dead herrings

down to the docks, where the fishermen, in desperation,

bite their own delicious fishhooks.

Sailors: don't dredge the river - its coins are full of unheard

wishes, washing to the sea; and Artists: don't sweep the streets -

your brooms are putrid and your dustpans are sieves

that leak toxic scents with glee.

The policemen, driven mad by their dogs, barricade the exits

and murder the mayor; the firemen evolve into arsonists, dancing

in powwows 'round the flames; the street surgeons flash scalpels

and rhinectomize the passers-by.

Meanwhile, the mailmen print letters to the president, pleading

in prose for a platoon of perfumers - in crop dusters -

flown by naked fashionistas whose denim clothes, worn once,

crawl onto the highways in shame -

and there they die, surrounded by flies, while the chefs

spice our maggot-filled meat; and the rest of us, the bastards,

wander in circles and wonder why our denim shit

persists in this city of corrupted gods.

-10/2010

The Peloponnesian Wars

You may have a shattered vase,

but I have a red rotund rose:

love that is somewhat obese, but

better than anorexic lust that eats

its own head, like a macabre circus

that, with clowns tumbling from the

trapeze, swallows itself with vigor.

If I were crashing in the Andes,

would I be the food or would I be

the chef? No, I'd just devour Darwin,

and then God would be happy again,

and no monkeys would have brains.

The subject of monkey zombies merits

consideration. But not at this time,

because the pieces of your vase

have ancient paintings that portray

Odysseus engaging in BDSM with

the sirens. And my flower wants to

wilt, to return to the sadness it

represented in a past life as a seashell,

when Matthew Arnold put it to his ear,

inside his cozy study, and heard

Sophocles and retarded Spartan armies.

So when we crawl into the broad

battlefields of our bed, and re-enact

the Peloponnesian Wars for decades,

don't be surprised if I storm your

Parthenon and defile your gilded gods.

For I am Zeus, and you are Io, and

Hera is hunting for your heifer head.

So I'll shove the flowers into your vase,

and we can decorate a diner for eternity.

-10/29/10

Harvest

In the gloaming, you are grainy -

less like woodwork and

more like wheat.

You lull, and list, and luff, like seafields

fallow before frisked by my machines.

Yours is the smell of the midwest

- in the dusk of summer -

made manifest for the attempted harvest;

and oh, what seven years' famine

is carved by the sharpest scythe.

This spade, this plow, this pen, presumptuous

inventions, pretend to lend their edges

to a vain endeavor -

And still you lie like tender fields untamed;

I can only grasp you grain by grain.

~9/30/10

The Last Syllables

One-two, one-two.
Heartbeat. Don't stop.
You're the last syllable of all this time;
the only friend and only sign
that I'm still alive and beating,
trying to cheat my fate.

One-two, one-two.
Count the number of choices I had.
Count the heart that bled for me
when I had stabb'd it with honesty.
One-one-young-young.

And beat your last, oh bravest heart;
only I will ever know all of what you are.
All of what you are.

Continue on, no death yet,
through crazy deeds and philosophies,
sex and sermons, God and demons.
And every time you see one,
think of me as the only one-two-one.
Think of me (one-two).

And love your last, impassioned heart;
only I will ever feel this bleeding love unmarred.
Because I will be the scar;
I will mar this heart.

One-two, one-two.
Heartbeat. Your chest.
The strength I never felt but always knew
bewitches you and all your futures.
And you will be wild, and I, a child;
you will flow out, come far out,
and I will live in denial.
But through your beats, you'll feel my heart,
and I in yours to dwell in hell:
one-two, one-two, farewell.

So beat once more, oh lovely heart;
only I will ever see all these things you are.
And long your last, o'er distance far;
only I will ever be all of what you are.
And die this time, oh foolish heart;
only I will ever mar
this beauty with a scar.

~05/2004

My Mona Lisa

I don't know why you smile,
my Mona Lisa,
but I am not beyond your mysteries.
"You can't understand a woman."
I've heard that one before.
But your secret is no different
than the secret of time, or space;
or the secret of life,
which you make with me
when we two are one.

Your secret is not in your face;
not from your deep, dark eyes,
as unfathomable as any stretch of ocean;
not from your whisper-filled lips
that may contain many secrets
(all of which I hope to hear);
and, no, not even from your nose,
though how it succeeds in fitting you so perfectly
may mystify me,
from time to time.

Many spy on the horizon,
as they do when looking for other answers:
they find your secret of life;
they find your secret of time
(but not how you make so much time
for one as me);
they find your secret of space
(but not how you make so much space
for love of me).
But to discover why you smile,
I will not search in typically masculine ways,
for then I would fail.

I search your heart, my darling,
and find only that to a gentle touch
and to a warm tear
it is always open.
I search your head, my love,
and find such a puzzle inside
that no secret could be found,
even by you;
and it is obvious by the tilt of your lips
and by the glint of your airbrush eyes
that you know very well why you smile.

And so, finally, I search your soul;
but only my soul can interpret yours,
and they speak in languages
far beyond our comprehension.
So let us set our souls free
to wander, and wind their way,
and intertwine
in the far reaches of the galaxy we share.

And still you smile,
my Mona Lisa,
and still I am mystified.
And so, I paint you.
I draw you out onto paper:
every line, every curve, every shade.
I draw not a photograph,
for photographs have tried to capture
the secret of your smile;
tried, and failed.
No, I draw a portrait of you
that is not perfect and not flawless,
just true.

And so I stare at you
to find your features,
to be the Columbus of this voyage;
the first man to understand the secret
of a woman's smile.
Maybe you smile for me -
or maybe I am vain - you smile not for me,
but for life, or for children,
or to look pretty, or for the poor,
or for money, or for the pink windowshades
in the background of the room.

I am at the point of resigning myself
to be yet another puzzled prince
when I see you,
your lips and your eyes and your nose and all.
Your secret, as grand
yet as simple as the secret of life -

you smile because I wonder why you smile.
Your secret is nothing more
than the secret of knowing
that you do not have a secret.
At least, no more than I do,
and we will find each others' secrets
in time.

My Mona Lisa,
I know why you smile,
and I smile too.

~04/2005

A Poet and a Blind Man

I saw a poet and a blind man
on the corner of a street.
The blind man spoke to me,
and he said, "son, you listen here,
the poet, he can't see."
And the blind man didn't see the irony.

And when I'd passed the blind man
the poet turned to me,
saying, "friend, look at me,
my thoughts are full of philosophy
because of a blind man, and all he can see."
And the poet didn't see the irony.

~05/2005

House of God

I couldn't find you in the house of God;
I wrote your name into a ballad,
but all the knights were dead,
and all the dragons long since fled.

I couldn't see you in the race and games;
for you I lit the Olympic flame,
but the torch was just a candle
for the winners, the losers, the scandals.

Bless me in the house of the Lord.
Bless my guitar
if I ever play you a chord.
Bless my intentions;
destroy my inventions.
Bless my swords and my valiant words.

I couldn't love you in the arms of another,
so I plot the murders of your lovers.
But my plans just go astray,
and my vows just find a way
to get lost in the lines of an elegant cliché.

I couldn't find you in the house of God;
I know your name is just a fraud.

~06/2005

Angels on a Needle

And I saw you
on the carpet,
making angels with your hands.
Such a...delicate sigh
as you glance to where I stand.

And I kissed you
on the forehead;
the angels ran away.
Such a...delicate SCREAM
as the halos began to fade.

Tell me:
on the head of a pin,
would the angels dance
while the devils sin?
Tell me:
on the point of a needle,
would the angels dance
and desert the steeple?

And I saw you
on the carpet,
telling angels your goodbyes.
Such a...delicate smile.
The angels, the angels have died.
The angels, the angels have died.

~10/2005

The Ides of March

If I had to choose a day to kill you,
I think it’d be the Ides of March,
because kings and queens can die that day,
and I believe that’s what we are.

~03/2006

Our Last Summers

They said, "this is your last summer alone;
you'll be swept away in the winds of the cold,
like everyone that's ever cried,
and wrung their hands to help decide."
Where do you go?
when there is no destination.
And for the last time in the history of man
a child grows into his nation.

They said, "this is your last summer alive."
But I won't be so far away as I try.
Each leaf that falls to cover the past
leaves trees empty, burns wicks to wax.
(sigh)...Another candle gone,
and there is no culmination;
just summers away, gone, and dead,
leaving no trace of an explanation.

They said, "ah, but this is life."
They said, "ah, but don't you fight.
With a strong wind your candle's gone."
(out, out!)
Wicks to wax and on and on.
(you brief candle)
We're walking shadows in our last summers.
(out, out, out!)
Count on till you reach a hundred.
(we are heard no more...)

~05/2006