And then I made another drunken phone call.

His self-destructive behavior was a bright silk shirt on a the fresh corpse of a young man.

Then I am standing in the red moolight in the back field, holding the torn envelope in my hand. Coyotes yammer nearby. The white night air feels like cool water on my skin, my forehead, the tops of my hands. I reach for your letter, wanting to hold it to my nose again to smell your faint scent lingering, but when I do this I see that the paper you'd written has become a grease of fish innards. Their sudden pungence arrests me.

It was a farm house and it was a rooming house

and the front yard was yellow weeds and dust

with a massive gnarled stump of oak that I

must have somehow cracked my head on when the dude

I'd been drinking with that night at the Mercygraft

Tavern dumped me out the passenger side

of his Ranchero. Or maybe he threw me out.



I slept for I don't know how long in the yard

until Myra, the landlady, came out at some indeterminate

hour of the pre-dawn and threw cold water from a pail

onto my head. I sputtered awake and lay there looking up

into her owlish face with with the huge bifocal glasses

and nest of steel wool hair. Old before her time,

she said, "Why do you do this to yourself?"



"Sorry, Myra," was all I could manage. Ordinarily,

I guess I would've been a candidate for eviction,

but I'd been living here longer than anyone and had always

paid on time. My head was pounding. In spite of this,

I felt another beer and a smoke would've done just fine.

I was giving up, had been for a while, yet it was a pain

in the ass, sometimes worse than trying .



"There's a letter for you," said Myra.

yeff boff



"This is a historic day," he said.

"For the first time ever, we will be allowed a view into the complexities of..."



He droned on and on.



We all knew he was insane.

It was sheer luck his mania

featured no violence or we'd all

be dead for sure by now.



Listening to him was like watching

a freshly disemboweled man

eating his steaming intestines off a plate

while they were still attached to him,

tucking in with a knife and fork,

beaming at you all the while,

showing his tiny, blood-slicked teeth.



His big round head was like a grapefruit.



He droned on and on,

his dull eyes riding atop a vague, condescending

half-smile, the smile of the academic,

the professor, the driven chump,

the codified fool.



The truly clueless could never see it in themselves.



His every word and action was premised upon

flawed reality. And yet he was happy, thrilled,

even as none of his plans ever worked out.

To the contrary, we were the ones

who suffered.



At least he was no one's father,

and never would be.



Later, in the company bathroom,

I jammed my fucking penknife into my carotid artery.

And began to feel half hard watching the gusher of my blood

lacing out to spatter the mirror glass and the white porcelain

sink row.



But then that was the end of that.

collection plate blues (slight return)



Anecdotal reflex:



scriptural process,

spurious juvenalia,

functional abnormality,

referenced hedonism.



Method advertising.



Ordinary items kept inside,

kept indoors,

here and now

where the window's cold.



Untenable ambivalence,

a drawer full of onions,

one dimension revealed.



Just for a minute.



Here.



It's for you.



Cells for the microscope,

my box full of slides

equates lies

while insanity feigned

invites

genuine articles.



It's OK, it happens.



The sage recommendation holds:



hate hypocrisy

and walk away from evil,

if you would

be wise.



More worth should be obtaining

here,

less worthless explaining,



less explaining some worth.



I'm blue as a favor,

and blues

is a flavor.



My favorite

flavor.

collection plate blues



lame anecdotal reflex

thing



spurious juvenalia

scriptural process functionality

formality



abnormality



reference hedonism as a method

of advertising



ordinary items kept inside,

indoors here now

and the window cold



multi-dimensional

untenable

ambivalence



drawer full

of onions



one dimension revealed,

one membrane peeled



cells in the microscope,

box full of slides



just for a minute.

here: it's for you



insanity feigned inviting genuine article,

OK



it happens



the prophets' recommendation

holds



hate hypocrisy

and walk away from evil



if you would be wise



more worth should be obtaining

here



more worth

explaining



worthless explaining

explaining some worth



blue as a favor

blues, the flavor

the favor of blues



blues flavor

In the Handicapped Commode (Part 2)



9:24 arrived in miniature numbers at the bottom right hand corner of his LCD monitor, the pellucid green digital display of his desk phone corroborating this bit of output.



He stood up from his desk with a sense of slow deliberation, the Altoids can with the smuggled spliffie resting inside the breast pocket of his blue and white striped Oxford shirt. He made his way over the carpets, avoiding eye contact with all who passed.



Entering the bathroom, passing and peripherally sighting the humped forms of a few gray haired, ruined meister drones in their rumpled blue and brown suits



standing there spraddle legged, inert before the line of urinals, letting it all drain out, tired old Johnsons, attempting to get it done, waiting for relief, another day, another day, passing and peripherally sighting them, an immense feeling of sadness swept over him, then went away.



And that was a good thing.



He entered the handicapped commode, which was mercifully vacant.



Standing staring at the high tiles of the drop ceiling with the sound of the heavy door locking behind him fading into memory,



standing suspended there in the earth's lower atmosphere thanks to the brick girders and mortar of this fine company's 5th floor he thought,



Now, Randy, old son, it woulda been enough to fire this here puppy this here jibba in ye ole parking lot, in the gentle environs of your girlfriend's Lexus, no foul there and no one would really be the wiser (he'd gone this particular route many times before),



but, let's remind ourselves: that wouldna been the gore slicked elegy and eulogy that you be lookin for here son that wouldna been the



whips flails chains machete to the forehead and blood all over my damn linen shirt and a virtual Shiite theocracy in the southern Iraq of the American body mind



and soul



so fuckers, here goes



now me flick a the orange Bic



in his head, he sang to himself, a little minor-key hymn, the words drenched in thickest accent of Jamaican patois



smoking weed, all day lo-ong

- it the light.

& fire the joint

all my daysssss BE falling down

smoke tha cheeba. And smoke the joint



Then he was singing it again, changing the words, but this time not in his head.



Singing, he thought he should take off his pants to block the space beneath the door.



OK, then.



Because this was his statement, and hell on too soon interruption. This was his own private Armageddon.



Fuck the world. They can't judge me.



He undid his khakis, kicking off his mahogany Nunn Bush loafers as he did so. He was thinking of how in college they used to dampen the towels first. Or maybe the towels had always just been damp as a function of having been recently used.



Fuck it. He wadded his pants into a ball and thrust them in the sink under the faucet. And repeated. The infrared sensor controlling the flow to the faucet clunked on and off. PSSSHHHH. PSSSHHHH. PSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHH.



He wrung his pants out a few times, got down on his knees and stuffed the wet snake of them into the crack between the bottom of the door and the rubberized floor.



He stood up, got a look at himself in the mirror, standing there in his rumpled white boxers, the soft hump of his pale belly protruding beneath the tails of his shirt.



Watching himself, he flicked his orange lighter and fired the ladyfinger jibba.



Taking it in, the mellow trim of the burn. He watched himself in the mirror the whole way. Kept his eyes on his own eyes. The long high rectangle of the commode enclosure filled with smoke. He drew in and exhaled, drew in and exhaled, smoking fast in spite of himself, not pausing to hold anything in, just letting the smoke wash into his lungs and back out again.



When he got down to about a thumbnail-sized roach he quelled the thing on the sink's green marbletop. Deposited the roach into the Altoids tin. Deposited the tin into to his breast pocket. Slipped his loafers back on. His bare legs felt cool, felt good.



The first chub of an erection bloomed in his briefs.



None of that, he thought, none of that. You're just getting started.



In a couple minutes he'd open the door and start giving the fuckers their new education. In a couple minutes. In a couple minutes.



Shit, he thought, sniffing the new dry crisp green odor of his right hand's fingertips, that shit was the Creeper...

In the Car (part 1 of ?)



That morning creeping

along the interstate

toward his job in the sanitized

corporate galleys whose someday

existence over a million boys

had died to secure during

the American Civil War,



he heard tell

of the devout men

of Iraq whipping themselves

blood-slick with flails

of six chains, goring

their backs for love

of the Prophet,

for the love of God.



There behind the wheel

of his silver-colored

2.5 liter V6 sedan,

he decided an equal

and opposite and appropriate response

to this information

would be for him to repair



ASAP to the enclave

of his company's

handicapped commode,

there to fire the ladyfinger

jibba he'd concealed

in a breath mint tin



currently located

in his car's center

armrest

compartment.

I can already tell



Today is going to be

one of the days



when the vile, corporate

American bullshit



runs so thick and so deep

as to be apocalyptic



flood water,

blood-impregnated



virtual



terrorism

do not read this



he toddled up to her and asked



"Mom, am I weird?"



she was polishing her prosthetic arm



the cigarette aroma of her seeping boogers wafted to him from her mustache



"First off," she said, "I am not your fucking Mom. I am your fucking landlady. Referring to me as "Mom" again will result in me coming up to the communal bathroom where you sleep and then I shiv you in the fucking neck with a Dixon Ticonderoga No. 2."



somehow, in that moment, she'd triggered it. the billion decibel mantra. thundering in his head. no escaping it



i am a pee smelling Garanimal...i am a PEE SMELLING GARANIMAL....AND ALL THE KIDS DO LAUGH...i am a pee smelling Garanimal...i am a PEE SMELLING GARANIMAL....AND ALL THE KIDS DO LAUGH...



"And second," she continued, her single deft hand working the black shoe polish (as was her habit) into the fake arm's creaky elbow nook, "For a 39 year old pot-bellied eunuch with sparse hair and a lisp, you ain't that weird at ALL. I've known tax accountants who were weirder. I've known stockboys with more derring do. Any manager of any Dairy Queen in America has more pure elan than you do, Chester."



She called everyone that: Chester. Nonetheless, it was his real name.



He trudged back up out of the cellar to his filthy linoleum abode, hoping that no one had deposited any fluids in the sink while he'd been gone. If not, he'd wash his friar's fringe tonight with the purloined sliver of motel soap he'd been hiding in his one of his Keds.



The casual vehemence of her response had decided it for him: he'd had enough. It was time to bring the fight to them. Right to the front lines. Metaphorically speaking, it was "Punkin Chunkin" time. Except it wasn't punkins he would be chunkin. It'd be his own pickled nads in the blue formaldehyde mist of an industrial sized "Cains" mayo jar that he'd be chunkin. One of those two gallon fuckers. His pickled nads floating like tiny black mitochondria, right in the center of all that blue. Wham-O, like the frisbee. Direct hit.



Oh, they'd pay. They'd pay.



His mind wandered in delicious review of his latest gambit. He replayed the scene in his mind over and over again - he couldn't stop.



This was his last, best shot.



The plan was to interviews at temp agencies, then noisily crap himself while seated at the person's desk, then launch into a hysterical, histrionic...feigned nervous breakdown, replete with crying. Hey, he thought, if it results in a free ambulance ride, then whatever works...

crude oily and a liar too



and then I rode up off the plains on my huge black bay



and from the scrub brush a young, sweaty dwarf

(my Sancho)

hailed me, waving his black sombero amidst swinging bandoliers:



"Ho, Inebriado!"



and the peaks in the distance were white Stolichnaya

and each green pine dotting them was a woman's vagina

and the burr of my mustache was Canadian Club



and my toes were beadies

and my fat joint



was just that

worth is worth



so I shambled thru the back streets

of town, high, coming from the bar,

and the maple leaves had come out

just enough in the space of the day

to provide me shadow and cover

from anyone who might care to look.

Anger is ugly, God don't like it.

I hadn't seen you at the upstairs saloon.

Don - the old hippie seated at the front

door checking IDs - Don hadn't seen

you either. Nonetheless I had a couple shots

of Cuervo and a Lone Star and then Don

and I repaired to the back fire escape

and burned what I had twisted earlier at the studio,

I'd thought of smoking it with you, maybe,

had you been around, but Don was ever

gratetful, and I felt like I had a use.

I rifled another Lone Star and then,

as I said, shambled out into the early

spring night in search of you.

In the back of my head was the idea

of all the ancient artifacts and writings

of Ur and Urek, the birth of civilization,

destroyed and beheaded by vicious mobs

blessed by the U.S. military. Gone,

castrated, immolated, all of it, the gifts

of antiquity smashed, pissed on, raped

and ruined in the space of 18

hours or so. I also had a terrible picture

of that wisp of a Seoul-bred graduate

physics dude crawling all over you,

on top of you on your mattress on the floor

in the soft candle glow of your single room,

his spidery lanky fingers and hands in your gold

hair, tattooing your flushed bare arms and thighs.

Your breath warm and wet on his collarbone,

coming out in the way I too had often heard you sigh.

That strange, cerebral, insectoid character hearing

that and having that. Having you. I just knew it.

All signs indicated. I figured I might

go back up to the studio and smash

my sculptures, all of them, all of it.

I thought, I am a machete and I am

a handgun. But the death of civilization

I guess has saved both my life and yours

and his too because once this booze and skank

wears off I am going to smash

nothing but instead retain it all

and somehow try to make something new

you're a nation



i'm really glad

i got my breaking insane

taken care of

and

out of the way

a long time ago



because if not

i might surely go

insane



today



but, lucky for me

i am

cool canteloupe



motherfucker



i am the ice cubes

in the lemonade



i am frosty beer

and fuck all



y'all



who'll be mad as hell

so hurt wounded betrayed

when the war suffering horror

is climing in over the shards



of your tire-barred bay window



setting fire to your



carpets



drinking your



booze



and fucking your



dog



yeh



meanwhile you'll be wondering how it could be



you'll probably still be



blaming fucking Bill



Clinton



but that won't be able to help you then



nor will he

and



nor will I



because I will still be

deep

deep

deep underground



still watching



watching it all go down

Adrift in my clouded thoughts there in the cafeteria of foolishness,

I summarily decided to will myself into a translucent ghostly state,

and not to care. There was Van Gogh, swiping everyone's meal cards

at the entrance, his mouth a splintered bloody morass, one eye missing.

There was Goya behind the steam table, serving up dumplings of shrunken

human heads basted in intenstinal sauce with earwax and cornea reduction.

There also toiled a pale Galilean dressed in white orderlies, pushing a grey

Rubbermaid trash bin. The orgiasts and revelers throwing trash and worse

at him while making their imperious demands. They, my fellow citizens,

were all naked and fucking each other everywhere around me, frolicking

on the carpets, recumbent upon the long wooden tables,

humping in the deep set marble window casements, fucking

in the kitchen upon the food prep tables, the butcher blocks, jovial

and laughing and making expansive gestures and broad exclamations

of crude praise. Snorting, snuffling, grunting, sporting their digital

cameras and camcorders. Captured images of themselves engaged

in all the acts were beamed live out via satellite feed into the most fly invested,

sweltering, moaning hovels of the most ragged, starving people on the planet.

First 5 minutes free, $4.95 a minute thereafter. T.V.s provided courtesy

of the Red Cross and the Christian Children's Fund.Diners' Club

accounts for the poor and starving were to be created at a later date

and billed retroactively at an APR not to exceed 22.5 percent.*



I was adrift there in the cafeteria of foolishness, and my thoughts were cloudy.

I summarily decided to will myself into a translucent ghostly state, and not to care.



* Conditions apply.

tom joad in my dream wields a broadsword



you motherfuckers



(even the smart

among you - .



unlike

your selected

emperor - )



taking joy in all of it



all of it



you're what I can't

fucking understand



you got the game on a string



and it don't help



or bring no real joy



or help



to anyone



expensive hate

is a bitch debt

that eats and eats



greed at least

should be a fine

feast



(no)



you stupid fuckers

will choke

on your own regurgitated

stupidity



what current

fools

value



will kill them

you and everyone



eventually



we're all going to be

dead someday anyway



just like anyone



but no just God

will have mercy

on any of your souls



you



baby



killers



you



murderers

my bologna has a first name



any panty waist sidles up to my portion of the carpeted reconditioned strip mall floor with boneheaded requests for an



hour here and an hour there is going to risk having a reptile chihuahua with shining yellow slit eyes chew snarl wrangle its



way out my forehead and into play. I'll refract like Legion just before this occurs, so I'll be the printer, the edge of a desk,



a coffee mug, a filing cabinet, every rectangular tile of the drop ceiling become sentient, eyes everywhere, watching the



scene go down. My diminutive hell hound reptile chihuahua buddy will start barking incredibly articulate and cunning



commands in the voice of donald w. cheney, and the panty waists, the striped shirts, the sports fans, will be all, Hey, this



little guy's pretty good. Gee, but he's a neat little guy.



and then I'll also be swaddled in a bed sheet, dirty, crying, all the color gone from my skin and hair, walking among all the



poorest people of the planet trying to explain to them how total world domination is sort of a nifty little thing and then I'll



also be the saddest little cheeseburger you ever saw and some fat ass bitch beast androgyne in ill fitting brightly colored



clothing squished into an orange plastic booth at the Wal Mart fast food area, whatever the fuck it's called, opening his/her



fat shiny mouth getting ready to devour me in all of three bites, masticating, yelling around me at its screaming child



and then that feeling the big men in Washington must have when they're gulling a bunch of good-hearted trusting american



fools out there shaking their hands and kissing their babies at privately owned Ma & Pa breakfast spots, that feeling those



terrible men must have when the local newspaper cub clicks a shutter of them smiling snakelike among a crowd of



translucent smiling childlike oldsters hunched over small cups of coffee and egg plates in their U.S. Navy caps and knit



shawls, that self-congratulatory feeling of mutant benevolence those diabolical men must have will also be a telemetry of



particle physics in a radioactive half-jar of biological kim chee half a world away and also the current swarming



intentionally manufactured morass of chaos in the lands between Christ and the Pharaohs

grasp this emptiness



in this tardy Spring of maximum

zero comprehension

good refuge would be



howl at the torpor

howl at the world



but the mucous click

in my throat

blooms back

and up to become



nightmare blood abortion

detritus on my brain



on the idea of my brain



in the absence of everything kind

I'd like to open a vein on you



but you're not even there

you're nothing, nowhere



just as I am



just like me

just like me



just like me

some gadgetry



some gadgetry

may work

and some may suck



and some may snuffle into your intestines

and come up grinning



red eyes blazing

over silver teat



your grey guts

pooling on the red earth

beneath



it's a matter of policy

to blow up families



mothers, brothers

and the arms off kindergartners



and it's a matter of fucking reality

that ready or not here we come



and we are insane

and we will rule you

and we will kill you



and we don't care if you die



god bless america

like King Midas, but of crap



the egress in my conciousness

for this sort of thing

has today shrunken

to the size of a metaphorical

pinhole



next, as I'm about to wrap this shit up with lines like:

if only it were an egress

if only it were a pinhole

and other tonal bloviary



I instead check my

company-provided, paperback

version of the American Heritage Dictionary

for proper usage of the noun



"egress."



Flipping past ejaculation,

and then, epenepherine,

I'm all: Promise?

and: yeahhhhhhh



Like I said:

a metaphorical pinhole.



Plus anagrams:



ALPHAMERIC LITHOPONE



Chatham Nipple Oriole



Tacoma Hereon, Philip!



Menthol Pariah Police



POTHOLE ANIMAL CIPHER



Cheapie Pomona Thrill(s)!



CHILEAN MOOLAH TIPPER



(The) Charlie Pelham Potion



Ethical Moolah Nipper



OPTIMAL HEROIN CHAPEL



Hooper, PHALLIC INMATE



Alcohol Inmate: HIPPER



HIPPER: Coital Manhole



Loathe Oilman, Chipper



Menial Hoopla Pitcher



PHALLI TAMPON....CHEERIO!



Internet Anagram Server

winter is a lonely bitch



The snow won't cease hassling the inhabitants of our town.

There's not a soul to thank or talk to. The powerlines

are down. The church urn robbed my proper burial.

Why can't they mark my streaking embers now,

mingled in the icy air, like glints of fireflies?

I spent a hundred years today shivering in a stand

of birches, sitting on the snow. With streaming

blackberry eyes, I finally trudged the cold pine

ridges all the way to Pleasant Street, shouldering

my shade. There I paused outside her house, waiting.

There comes a time for breaking, even for the deceased.

I've got my mission. I shall be released.

(2) drunken phone calls

welfare haiku



free and clear

hologram cylinders

combustible brainwaves

*

damp, grey sky

I wish I was home

writing a story

*

black tar cornea

ignore the world

moss on my scalp

*

I, thief.

My boss stirs.

Alt + Tab

there's no wrong or right, but i'm sure there's good and bad



i was out in the yard

walking drunk with the dog

last night, thinking of a poem

about old bones in the ground,

all the bones of everyone

who's gone before

irradiated with some kind

of forgiveness or absolution,

radiating this eternal understanding

up through the earth's soil,

healing everyone



then the Red Sox went to 16

in Florida and I fell asleep

on the couch but didn't spill

beer on either myself or the couch,



and Jenny fell asleep

on the love seat adjacent

so Jackson, the dog, had sole run

of the house for at least a couple

hours, but he didn't chew

any furniture, jump on the table

or eat any of my books,



evidently all he did was repair

to the front room and lie down

on his blue pad beneath the window

and snooze and keep watch