John the Revelator



No one believed

in aces or ashes

till I came alone,

with black haired

wrists and no pains

in my side.



My ribcage

is whale

bone. Heave me

from the shore,

if you can.



Spray of agony,

spume of dismay,

I have neither, none.



Cloudburst lightning

strobes the grey tide.

I breathe, and eyes

breed over me.



Suck now,

lovelies,

from the hem

of my coat,



oh yes,



heal your hands

in my salt-slicked



hair.

will you marry me?



After long battle,

the stonecutter

pulls salt hits.



No meat required.



I lurk.

and another thing



1.

statue firing squad blown out rain of blood water

chastity. fields of embers. an arm. slicing her face

in the mirror she feels like a rose a calamity of fingernails

rake back the months, the flesh of her neck, a mirror

for thugs, marines, news commentators, lust



2.

Tigris, Euphrates, ladies, my trust is your nightmare

black horses fed on desert dust and rust made 2 oceans

away. today, I beat the lust down, but the crown of the emperor

is glass-crusted cocaine, dry chains whipped back till fill with black

blood, the soldiers, the desert mud's topography charts the death of love



3.

"Screen it!," I yelled, but you ignored me letting dopamine prevail

as you bashed and bailed, my temple the worse for the poplar hail

of your ashen bat, your gat, your homegrown genome of hate, fate

and taking the bait. She took you deep, deep as she could take you,

but finally she died. Freedom. Fried. And all your grade school teachers lied.

I reckon I'll be makin' a few drunken phone calls tonight.



I hope I will be.

This kid Eddie

had been in my homeroom class since the beginning

(because he was a "D" and I was a "C")

and now we were coming to the end

the beginning of the last Spring before high school

graduation



There he was, sitting next to me again,

big lumbering dude, fresh grey cords not falling down,

striped green dress shirt tucked in, belted in.

Wide, open collar. Clean, white leather hi-tops

laced loose, tongues pushed out, the way kids used wear them.



He'd become a dresser. But with his sand-wisp

hair and close-set, rabbit blue eyes, his pink, slick, fat

lower lip, his runny nose, and high, halting, impeded speech:



he was the same sloppy, happy-seeming, gentle kid from the second grade.



He carried himself well.



I suspect things were not so great for him at home.

He had his dignity.



That homeroom morning in early Spring,

Eddie made a singsong remark

in that curious high pitch of his

about hearing the birdies sing



This morning,

13 years later,

walking outside with my dog,

hearing them birdies sing again,

I hope he's still out there.



Why am I crying?

blood river March



Your dark hands

again wring our

local demons.



Yellow reparation

of locusts buzzing,

the rattlesnake's chitter.



Your snare,

suspirant beneath

our children's



eardrums.

(1) drunken phone call

warm day



when the March sun heats the breeze

and beats down on the windshields of the cars

and trucks, even in the roadwork dust

of the on ramp,



ah, fuck it.

In the space of a couple hours, how wrong could I have been?



You can see how the wind blows now. They're doing Shock & Awe on the ground while pretending at the Pentagon that they're not.



I guess what it comes down to is, they don't have to decimate the country for this all to be an outrage.



CNN is saying they're going to be dropping 1500 weapons over the next 24 hrs. I'm doing the math, and if this was happening in my neighborhood, I know what I'd be thinking:



I'm dead.



Rumskill this afternoon described this latest bombing using terms including "humane" and "humanitarian."



Every time I think I can't get more cynical, the B.F.E.E. shows me the way.



(I'm too fucking chagrined, lazy, and pressed for time to link, but, Progressives, click over to Bartcop.com, linked under Probitas, left, for more outrage vis a vis the B.F.E.E.)

the Cakewalk



I think we're being played.



I think now, watching Faux News & etc., that all this "Shock & Awe" bullshit was a political ploy, calculated to make the Bushboy look cagey, wise & benevolent. Evidence of his Steady Hand & Political Leadership, as he witholds, as he waits & sees.



I wonder if they ever intended to do it at all, the "Shock & Awe." I certainly hope I'm right.



I think it might all have been another marketing campaign designed to scare and/or excite the shit out of everyone: them, us, the world. Maybe it wasn't even planned out as such, but it seems pretty clear this is how they're playing it, as they have so many times in the recent past: bait and switch. Say what you will about the present cartel, but they are a cunning bunch of opportunists, running this shit.



I wonder if they've known all along that Saddam has almost nothing in the way of serious force, no real way anymore to gin up any serious mayhem. If he could strike Israel, if he could drop some chemical WMDs, wouldn't he? Or is it possible that he's feeling like what he is, an old man, and that he's sharp enough to recognize what this all represents: the curtain call? Time to retire?



Our military capability, at this point, is truly, ridiculously fearsome. The appropriate respose to such overwhelming, horrifying power is to shit your pants, fill 'em up, and I'm sure that's what Saddam and his fellows are doing.



It's so clear that Saddam is fucked, out, finished, no matter what. Perhaps in large part because most Iraqis probably want him gone anyway, and why wouldn't they? Saddam is a garden variety evil bastard who without a doubt even within his own regime has made his share of mortal enemies over the years.



Here's a guy who stood up before his fellows smoking a fucking cigar and having anyone who blew him any guff taken out and killed until all those grown men started weeping, shitting their pants, genuflecting, pledging their undying allegiance to him. Oh, yeah. There's footage of this from like 1964.



We've had Special Forces & intelligence working inside Iraqi borders for months, and I have to believe that they've considerably paved the way for what we're seeing now i.e. the Cakewalk



It's not hard to figure out how it benefits no one to wreak havoc and chaos in the Middle East. Evidently even the Hawks must know this and fear the range of consequences.



Let's not forget, they're businessmen first and foremost. Truly bloodthirsty monsters do not good plutocrats, or salesmen, make.



They're not the rapists who bash you in an alley, take you by brutal force. They're date rapers, they want to soften you up, just lie back and take it, try to enjoy it, because you can't stop it. Not at this point.



Short-term, I certainly hope this is the Cakewalk, so lives can be spared for the moment all the way around. Maybe if we get the Cakewalk, somehow this ball can be rolled to the world's better advantage. No one really knows for sure how this is all going to play out, long-term, and I think that's important to remember.



Although if the Cakewalk is indeed what unfolds it will be a huge political victory for the Smirking Chimp. You have to think it will be an effective fucking coronation, it will be a pious thermonuclear love-fest, it will allow BushMedia to forbode and prepare for Pseudo-Campaign Thank God for Reverend GW Bush Jr. Inc. 2004-08.

fodder



they're hosing us down in forget foam

they've been hosing us for a while,

but they're ramping up now

and it's scary

how their lies are all out there

for anyone to know

or believe

and you find yourself thinking things like:

I hope they all just surrender.

Maybe it won't be so bad.

No No NO

God, what a bitter, horrifying reality show

this is

painful in its brand-new quality

this is another chapter

such atrocities will follow that people

will forget what came before,

how we got here

some people will.

and what about the people who are

mistaken or deluded or just plain don't know

how we got here in the first place?

what viscious lies are in preparation for them?



to kill and die

to kill and die

to kill and die



No. Hide. Go underground.



But how do you go underground

when you've already been buried?



Fucking crappy poetry

won't save the world.



But it'll save me.



'Scuse me while I tend to my dead soldiers.

Machine Gun

Tearing my body all apart



Machine Gun, yeah

Tearing my body all apart



Evil man make me kill you

Evil man make you kill me

Evil man make me kill you

Even though we’re only families apart



Well I pick up my axe and fight like a farmer

And your bullets keep knocking me down



Hey, I pick up my axe and fight like a farmer now

Yeah, but you still blast me down to the ground



The same way you shoot me down, baby

You’ll be going just the same

Three times the pain,

and your own self to blame



Hey, Machine Gun



I ain’t afraid of your mess no more, babe

I ain’t afraid no more

After a while, your cheap talk don’t even cause me pain,



so let your bullets fly like rain



’Cause I know all the time you’re wrong baby



And you’ll be going just the same



Yeah, Machine Gun

Tearing my family apart



Yeah, yeah, alright

Tearing my family apart



- Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsies

eve of war



Beneath the insane impulse

waits the insane absolution.



Crush uncertain worth.



Insanity doesn't panic

when blown out on the page.



Fallen away from good times,

it's not OK.



Coins circling the drain:

click the worth.



What soul, written?



Excuses, reasons

to drink one more night.



Suffer the suffering world.



What dreams

insanity realizes.



Got guns,

gumption,



the bomb,

souls made of rain.



America, X function,

eats her brain.



Absent genome for quality goods.



I want to live in the woods.

I want to go away,



some place far.



Deeds hidden:

the script's going too fast.



My heart is breaking.

It's all going too fast

pisces fate



Ok, so tonight

is a night of slamming doors,



calamity,



accoutrements falling all over the place,



disposable cameras, wrought iron baskets,

sales receipts, gloves, hats, envelopes,

bills, relationships



coming apart.



It happens.



Don't make me say something awful.

Because, believe me, I can.



She said.



I can relate to that.



I always get mired in the hard vowels.



None of those words

have ever made it

with the ladies.



Like,

I suppose,

certain guys

never do.



Good thing I ain't yet sworn

off the drinking and the smoking;



God knows,



I need it

tonight

beer, coyotes



1.

Tonight,



and for nights to come,



I'll take it as hemlock



for my dormant politics,



essential Risperdal



for viewing



the atomic white schizophrenic war hive fetus,



I mean the television



2.

The coyote has no despair.

Strange urges

move him

toward the highway.

The moonlit woods

beyond

sings of his

billion souls.

good night, sweet hearts, it's time to go



I used to sing a song about a War Prophet,



a washboard

blues in E-flat

involving scratch

acoustic slide riffs etc.



v.1

The War Prophet

came riding over the hillside

he only had one horse

between his thighs



the other 3 horses

he left

bereft

for Jesus Christ



the War Prophet

knew his price

he knew he was not the Christ -

not yet



v.2

He came

thunderin' through the twilight

lightning shooting

from his eyes



All across horizons

you could see the farmhouse

fires

blowing



Women, girls & little boys

heads exploding

in the noise:

the War Prophet



had looked too hard

at their Horizon



Fire in the Government:

Satans from their Hells



arising



v.3

"You're bound to drop the bombs!,"

shouted Clint Eastwood from his house,

while long across the purple plain

the President, a mouse, just lost his grip:



This is what I have to do

This is what I have to do



Okay



Once I believed I was the War Prophet

and so, evidently, I was,

albeit in a very minor

league way.



The Grand Masters of

the Prophecy Council

now, of course,

sit bunkered



in Washington, D.C.,



lording it to their vassals,

munching on Freedom Fries

fixing to umber the Panic Code

up just a shade



in honor of GWB's

Big Moment of Truth

Infoganda-mercial

scheduled to air tonight,



8 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.



Ready or not,

here we come!



dead or alive

dead or alive

dead or alive



I plan to watch in terror

distraction



Gazing at the other owners

in dog training class,

I'm aware of my dark resume.



Metal folding chairs

are set two by two

in a circle.



We - men, women, children, dogs -

sit amiably,

behaving,



waiting for instruction.

Third Soldier



Women wailed,

a soldier coughed,

uneasy.



Another muttered,

couldn't be heard,



the third sent

a sponge

sopped in oil.



God drank unslaked,

took to heaving,

but not before making

certain requests.



Many women wailed.

Others left.

Kids became restless.

It was almost over.



A wife,

dry-eyed and disgusted,

flung her hand:

They're laughing at you!



Truly,

this Jesus was polite.

Those soldiers knew

exactly what they had done.



They did it all the time.

Some lived to wonder

if they'd really

loved their crimes.



Some forgot,

others couldn't:

owned atrocities,

shame and pride.



The third soldier,

who had raised

the dripping pike

and swabbed



the lips of Christ,

came stoically,

many nights

into the throats



and bellies

of Jews and Christians

alike. He pressed

their heads down.



Crude irony,

not funny,

though perhaps

righteous



that such scenes

should play out

again and again

in his life.



Doomed,

he was comfortably

unsurprised about

everything



else

that ever happened

to him. Incapable

of guilt.



Christianity.

He wondered:

can it be true?

He marveled,



with reservations,

at the enormity

of his sins. The way

one might marvel



at rumors

of distant natural

disasters. Earthquake,

floods, famines,



pestilence.



In Rome, in the time

when Christians were

having their throats torn out,

this third soldier



went to see the lions.

They came from Africa.

He was engrossed

by their awesome boredom.



How careless their stalking,

how listless their pounces.

Arrogant, they killed

only to sniff with disdain

at the corpses. As if

to say: remove this



Two moved together

away from their slaughter.



The old soldier left

saddened, and strangely

frightened

to be so alone.

Here's an old one. I just found this in a box. This goes way back, to around '95.



for a girl I don't even know



You, Sketch. I

say instant, sure. At

first sight.

This, not as easy.

Whatever exists is

outside of movies.

Cut to the good.

No chance. Always

stuck in the integral,

each now leading

irrevocably to

next imperfect

next.



Even your face

won't be safe

in my mind.

What happens there

in the long

nights. Best thing

that could happen:

an earthquake, a war,

disease. Endless birds,

shadows stealing

over us.



Why say future?

This now

is the first

to matter. Is.

Isn't. Is.

Isn't.



You,

Sketch. What

you are. We met

in a dream.

The dream was real but

who I was

isn't.



How we turned

through that saloon,

raising our bottles,

God on our lips.



Winter light

sketching the

pool tables.

Us moving

past them,

like people we

never knew.

***************************************

Thinking about it, being with the girl in this poem was heartbreak from beginning to end.



I used to spend a lot of time in the Video Saloon in Bloomington, IN. It was maybe the best bar in town. It's probably still the same. After I graduated, I landscaped there in southern Indiana for about a year. I remember baking in the sun. Raking this reddish dirt, we were at some wealthy person's house way out in the country. I remember thinking how this big war was probably coming, letting the movie play out in my mind.



It really sucks to be right sometimes, even partially right.



I was wild and crazy back then, and the world was calm. It was the boom, the long national orgasm of unprecedented peace and prosperity.



Now I'm calm, and the world's gone fucking crazy. At least, our country has. Relatively speaking. I'd like to say this is just one man's opinion...but I'd be lying.



This business of having to get up and go to work really sucks, now...

Annie Rex



I met a girl named Ann Hui

who said she didn't care

enough to cry anymore,

sitting half-dressed by her

rain-spattered window,

one more grey Indiana day,

late winter,

first bottle of $5 Merlot: downed.

funky red ashtray: all mounded with butts.



I met a girl named Ann Sile

who rebuffed

my initial advances

at the pool table

but told me later in her Mazda

sipping Beam from my shiny flask

that she'd thought to slash

her husband's blonde jowl

that morning but didn't,

for her kids' sake



I met a girl named Ann Mesh

who set fire to the hair

on the back of my neck

with her breath, who grasped

me so hard her cuticles

filled with my blood, and filled

they remain. Now she's on fire

somewhere down in east Texas.

I'm still here in these woods

in the cold mountains' shadow,

waiting for songs



I fucked a girl named Ann Rage,

now I live in her house.

And I can't get out.

Her ironweed touch

is narcotics, blood, whiskey.

Remedy enough

for one with my

history

purity



we're lucky.

we have one of the gods

on our team



"I don't like too many things in my head," he says. "I don't care who is pitching. All I need to see is the ball. My mind is always clean. Empty, empty, empty."

i am stupidhead



all in all

it's small ball

to recall

the loll & stall

of last fall's

pall,

y'all



unfetter

your better

letter now:



the wetter

the header

the bomber

the cheddar,



regretter,

forget

about cheddar

but never

the letter



and never

forget her

i was down



a nomadic entity

in your sarcophagus

island



i was a renegade

umbrage moniker



deep water

swift

in the culvert



you were amenities

for a wastrel

80 miles hence



and i was your Philistine

with the door closed,

able to channel my ace hand



to make amends



with the belligerent fist

that was my god



cut loose

inside your blue jeans



i stood fast

within your delta soul,



and did not fail to amaze



how swift i cut,

disintegrating ties



offering all

to your sympathetic hands

Five Points



In the low rectangular confines

of the bar,



I sat at a wobbling table

along a sweating extrusion

of brick wall,

hunched in a battered, wine-colored

bingo chair,

outlining my theories to my friend.



"The world is changing," I said, ashing into a warped aluminum

disk, "Some of us are too."



I crushed my cigarette

into the top of my hand

as proof. Baring incisors,

my friend guffawed.



We were the seediest

scumbags ever to crap

in a graveyard.



The only women we knew

were drunk and disturbed,

and smelled eternities

more alluring than yeast

and saltpeter,

our cheap urban stink.



We sat there tripping,

feeling alien strong,

knowing we'd be awake

for hours,

immune to the ill effects

of drinking.



Drifting back to the city,

we rode in his brown 80's Ranger

along the winding highway.



As the lights rose glittering

among the billboards and buildings,

the milk Georgia night

pulled smoke from our lungs,

away from the truck,



into more covert madness

blood flowers on the sun



God,

and in the morning

came breakfast.



French toast

on a styrofoam plate

with the syrup pre-added

pooled on the bread



And I'm not sure,

but I think a cop

came in and loosed

the straps on my arms

so at least I could eat it.



I held the plate

to my mouth

and ate

it like a dog



Before that,

way back

in the long night,

I'd been strapped into the chair

and they left me there.

I'd finally quieted down

and there was an era of pause.



motherfucker...that broom handle...

ain't feelin so proud now...

bitch ass...white motherfucker...

hahahahahaha



meanwhile, I sat there

in full knowledge that the world

had, overnight, become a glowing crater,



that my father had boarded a plane,

come to save me

after he saw me on TV

channeling Omega via satellite feed

with Eddie Vedder, Jimi Hendrix, Tupac



(who'd resurrected himself 900 ft. tall

and had blown blood flowers on the sun

as the explosions fell)



My Dad was on the plane

coming for me

but the bastards had known

and slit his throat



and my poor sweet girl,

who'd made it underground,

was just two cell lengths over

laying dead and bloodied

on the grey floor

in the wan, hospital green reflection

of the block's cinder block walls

raped by the guards



I must have slept.

Next thing I knew

there was a black man

in a khaki cop's shirt

bent over me trying to unfasten

the straps on the chair



I'd been publicly electrocuted

the night before on national TV

after my Armageddon gig

but somehow, now, had endured.

And this black cop was unfastening

buckles, locks, clasps



whatever they were,

as fast as he seemed to unbuckle

them, they seemed to re-fasten

themselves of their own accord

like the dark magic

I thought I'd invoked



Eventually, I was freed.

The whole nightmare had begun to start

all over again

in modified form

but luckily my Dad and uncle (twin brothers) finally appeared

in real life to transport me to Tennessee

and sanity



but, before the cops brought me out to see them,

the black cop who'd freed me from restraint brought out a pair

of old, crusty, bleach-withered, wretched running shoes

to put on my feet

(I was barefoot: the day before, I'd thrown away my shoes,

coat, glasses, guitar, sanity and hope)

and led me into the room where they took pictures, mug shots.



He stood me on a platform

and aimed the camera at me.



I was still convinced of my horrible guilt,

and asked, "Is this going to hurt?"



He replied, "Doesn't usually."



Then they turned me over

to my Dad and uncle

and I remember them both looking at me

with such looks of incredulity, fear, and love



my Dad hugged me,

and the first thing my uncle did

when we got out to his truck

was give me a pair Docksiders

he had in there



I took off the fucked up, bleached jogging shoes

and dropped them on the Georgia asphalt,



noticing a medallion sized, purple blood blister

on my heel as I did so,



I told them.

"They killed her

and pinned it on me."



And it was a long ride

after that before I was finally safe at home

yeah now this is what I call living



Word, I want y'all to meet my man Onan,

he got a slick hand

with the ladies

and he is an ice-cold motherfucker

when it comes to chains

of molecules and shit and

Hail, no, I have no idea what I'm saying



I'm LSD in your waxed paper, Ma

I'm Charlie Tuna slithering up your inner thigh

I'm the raconteur of not giving a fuck

and my main assets

are alive and walkin the land

like fuckin' Baal,

just like that walkin' dude



Gnaw,

I'm an inflammatory motherfucker,

you have to recognize,

I'm fuckin' addled, man



they had me locked in a cage

handcuffed to the bars

and some big dude

in a sheriff's costume came in

and said if I wanted to act like Jesus Christ

then I better damn well prove it to the motherfucker in the orange jumpsuit

with the fuckin' mop bucket and broom handle



as my black brothers in the cell across the path

adjusted their huge hoods,

letting their spittle trail out

in mournful pendulum arcs

as it fell to the floor



I said to the world, you motherfuckers better turn off these cameras,

and I want only 3 things:

a six pack of Honey Brown

a pack of Winstons

and my lost girl to come back to love me



short of that

you better get me fuckin' Dan Rather

and a CBS news crew

and let me rectify my shit

now, before the bombs start to fall



but it was too late.

and it was my fuckin fault,

no one could stop it,

the hands of the clock

couldn't be wound back past

the twelfth hour I'd brought on



later they passed me a fish sandwich

through the cell bars, just a couple hours after I'd brought

the Apocalypse down,

and I couldn't even eat the fuckin' thing

because I was at that point strapped into a restraining chair

and the cop with the key

was fuckin' snoozing,



I could hear him snoring