prize fight dry tortugas

a dog pack fanned out in front of my cart,
a hearty braid of rope for each one.
huffing and jangling, we had popcorn and beer to deliver us.
sundown on the ranch, the dogs sleeping and creaking in the yard
raking fingers through my shaking wig
we've got plenty of roots to chew
i tut tut tut all round the living room
doing a dance to put me to bed

weather report

overall, the thunderstorm was a dog spook.
a salt and pepper window washer.
harsh words took flight on the wind,
and according to my sources
some feelings were hurt.
But, the grange remains intact,
and the griddle cake cook-off
is still on for Saturday.
after careful deliberation,
we decided you all should take care
to visit the oak tree
and carve a love letter there.

field trip

plymouth rock
is a bubblegum
cemetary

heptagon

clouded leopard cubs
proved fatal
monday morning
and all hail the quaboag
drum and fife ramblers
who eulogized
the man
a tumbler
of nectar

When i was 95, a lady named Rhododendron moved in to a house down the street from my old place. She was a gentle soul and she made peppermint soap in her basement.
She kept a peanut brittle mailbox and a brown flower couch.
She drank peppermint pop in the lemongrass patch and hollered at the moon.
It's true that I learned of the plant ways from her.
In the summer, I crashed my bicycle into her fence.

a beautiful tree grew out of that wreck.

We spoke on her lawn for the first time.
We were crying.

Her past was a flooded mineshaft
singing and swimming
to stay alive.
I was a welder's word
sharpening shark teeth
to bite myself to death with.

I built her a plastic swan lamp.
It was rather magnificent
and it marks the beginning of
our love affair.

The swan seemed happy.

But on it's eighth birthday, it
ran away from home.

We weren't really sad.

Plastic swan lamp
moved out of the river
into a swamp.
Swan lamp slept in the
bell of an enormous flower.
Hearty eagle-racoons
arrived with a flaming
declaration of peace.
Plastic swan lamp built
a radio
for flower.

swan and flower

swamp boggle
a red bird's map
couldn't navigate

an egg tariff has been proposed!

i was encased in a bubbling mass of blue hydrangeas
which killed me in an agreeable way.

love always love

in the warmth of the nest
i am swimming
in kisses
only the hum
of the heart engine
fluttering blood
through your body
and love
always love

sunday cats

a russian blue, a calico and a tabby
one of them strong as rust
one albino pigeon
one kid in bulky knee pads tends the goal
i followed the sun

fustian fathers

just some vague dancing patterns on my eyelids
and my sonic earmuffs until
the sharp nose oboist plucked me from
my reverie and poked my nose with
his index finger. his thin white beard, gross
and wispy, a horn rimmed mind bloat and known pedant
staging opera in local gardens with undead liver for libretto.
bygone hippie days in some rusty waterhole. not the half of it.
the grade D meat and stinking egg patties, diabetic soda chug, high heel puncture wounds,dildo padiddle, rabbit shit smoker, and security guard sex scandal. not to mention a romantic fervor for the old south up here in a far off union hollow.

disintegrated brain flakes dusted the surface of the water until the king fish broke the mirror with tiny puckered snout. the old wild world fell to pieces just now.

imagine

scapegoat

musn't he be then?
the musky one?
the killer.
his bent reed dirty boot foot path
leads right to the corpse.
he stinks of rotten leaves
sin written on his wide drooping
mouth and in the creases at the corners
of his eyes.
it's clear.
the waves of
guilt have lapped him up,
and washed him out for us to see.
mute, yes, but just as guilty.
there,
in his eyes!
i'm not so sure.
the light's gone from the eyes.
i can hardly make him out anymore,
not much more than a weeping shadow,
flickering here in our waiting room.
a mere apparition.
i won't point my finger,
nothing is certain.

set-up

mudbogged my dune cart.
it was meant for the sand
but i couldn't resist.
i watched it sink
for a minute and then
i had to figure out
what the falcon
was flapping over;
i found out.
it was a jimmy hoffa mask. the bird upturned
a birthday cake and there it was.
he gestured at the frosty plastic face with a sweeping wing
and spoke slowly, "you cannot afford to be without it".
FBI's all over it. the woods are a
maze of yellow tape and im being charged with
poaching wild toads.

parallax rodeo

i shattered a great globe with my feet hands, wavering now, light fogged my vision and gave birth to floating star spots. A moron in fussy dungarees smokes, unzipped, burned by a hot button. The story of his toothache and his headache and his stomach and his nerves and his shit and his mind and pancreas and whatever all else was written in bits and pieces, objects and garbage speckling the room in their gravity prisons. I often imagine the ashtray drifting in a cloud of carbon dust, my tobacco slouch clutching crusty puffs, sending off the lamp like an air balloon, until the tug of weightlessness gently wrests its plug from the wall socket. i retreat to fantasies of this kind in the desert of my life. parched, mad times, tall as saguaro and just as thorny. a jungle time came and i soaked the lobster of my mind in a buttery roil of tiger blood rhythms, sticky tree fronds caterpillaring with poison, catamaraning with lemurs for skis down a mountain of skulls. thats when im cruising. Through the bevoodooed eye of a caribbean puffer fish i noticed some things on the walk; the possum corpse lingered on the spike at the end of a crumpled fence for as long as the dead squirrel remained impaled on the wrought iron post in the acid rain holocaust theme park. There are also a bunch of fishsticks drinking mezcal in the carpark. fleshies and trapezoids spotted hobknobbing in the grain silos, anti-political mouth terrorists pillaging libraries with a congressional identity crapped in the district attorney's clubhouse. A carefully planned tuna heist carbureted the getaway to polynesia, monkey-wrenched kiwi poachers, and coughed up a misty lake of desires. plenty going on out there. it is not some parallax rodeo on a scarfy level. its charlemagne. it's heck thomas, a tough lawman in indian territory. it's alan lomax recording a butterfly with a rectangle. it's blackbird, the first blind ping pong ball champion. it's the Tlingits reenacting family sagas, or the plaster coated robot bird head chewing affectionately on your finger while the theremin breaks the sound barrier in a dream where johnny cash keeps on changing into george c. scott, a scotch bonnet that radiates a cow family farm carpet.

little guy

your digeridoo is dribbling
on my convertible
and haggis is a mystery
that i would like to taste
but the crux of the matter
is a nest of hair in an oil spill

flight

wolfy, wolfy come to bed
your harpsichord needs no further tuning

my insides are eaten away
i will take food no more

wolfy, that's ridiculous

i'm confused by reflections, shadows, common language,
my own face seems to me strange and mushy
purple rings around these weird eyes

cast aside these mad thoughts
you are deprived of rest
and you're beginning to scare me

i think only of my brother,
that compulsive nomad,
caressing a gun
sleeping near a horse
or planning an ambush in a cave...
i am there with him now

clapervoch

trumpets leapt from the bandstand
in a rigid floe as if coated with resin
passing dirt clods mouth to mouth
all this i notice in a flurry of biting ants
that everyone else ignores
i've lost a tooth in my ice cream
the sun is sure to disappear again
and by then it'll be tea time
wipe the saucers and dangle the bags
the lizard is knocking
knocking our porch
out of whack with
his crude dermis
and his god awful
punk face
better invite him
in for a civilized
time
oh, too late
the neighbors are spaying their
cats over it. there'll be a dramatic
reenactment on TV now.
another perfectly good sunday
gone the way of the cuckoo

lambinatr

shepherd to sheep, "grow my children"
sheep to shepherd, "that is our way"
wolf to shepherd, "look at the sun"
shepherd to sun, 'god..."
wolf descends
shepherd is blind
smiling
wolf is trapped by
eagle
the sheep are safe

oscar the grouch

angus mcfarren is an atheist
his ancestors were ostracized from scotland
for plumping themselves on pagan potatoes
he drives an armored car
protects the heavy bags with his life to make sure
the television nanny cooks your kids
a delicious packface nutriment

ragtime

ragtime
such a good time
for a bath or too much to drink
either way. no matter. hardly.
let your skin chap carelessly
feel it and know its a laugh
ahh...the piano roll
so tightly wound but fluid
like a two pointed star
or a porcupine dalmation
in a phantom blanket

scorpio

squealing gangs of kids are melting all the snow
with sparklers, water dripping down your hair and
sizzling on the pan. we were cooking like eggs
in there. good thing you got us out when you did.
we might have broken our yolks
or been made to perform grape juice rituals
in a carpeted basement while
the congregation frothed
and fidgeted circles around us, writhing in
their black and red
frenzy, apple juice lost
in the rummage.
i don't mean to make things sound so grim,
its just that i've capsized my bathtub
and my frozen licorice vines are wiggling in the water.
im getting used to it.

big day

it's a big day out there. brushing my teeth with peanut brittle
seemed like a bad idea. i had a go at it
and washed it down with carrot milk. i considered
taking off my pants and toppling the pyramid of cereal
like a fat cyclops, so i popped my camera and
wrapped thirty-six exposures around my skull.
celluloid headband with sprocket holes for cranks.
a dumb child hatched from a globe beside me,
"fascinated by my yo-yo? should be. it's an omega fireball,
it glows in the dark" i swept him up with a bok-choy. i'm trying to think damn it! about these sponges, these creme eggs stuffed with buffed fondant, this hairnet microphone, fish pouch, foil balloon, pumpkin liqueur, a real midnight puzzler.
but anyway, my name is Mark. I'm kinda dusty
so beat me bloody out back and I'll clean up nice.
i pocketed some pickles, we could picnic after?
fruity pebbles is my stage name. I'm dancing
at the Hollywood with Sugarhouse tonight.
no doubt, i have an impressive mask collection but
I'm going to need to borrow yours.
that one is just the ticket.

a new york highway ride in the bitterly cold hot sun

three giant hogs vacuum slop
a splintered chimney flies a crow with a chunk of hot ice
in a hurry that tatters a flag
the clergy proclaim that,
"luck has nothing to do with it"
a half dozen crumpled barns sinking ship
in a christ farm
rows of christs
for christs sake
these fucking cookies

hoffmans tacklebox

from the shrieking brick mountain i can see
skeletons grow deep in the car park
where birds do secret magic
and skyhook over greasy sheafs of pulp

shapes on the concrete collect,
distort and morph pulsing sickly like
broken hearts bloody in a
bag lady's bag hands

smoke drops balloon into prominence
i think it's a temperature thing

drift in and out of costume after
6 months of monsters and moths
carrying your corpse while you watch them eat

i sat silent next to the naked detective
incubating in his promotion chamber
threats of violence swell against you
pinwheeling the body into hysteria
and laughing your guts out