Saturday, February 28, 2009

reflected national banner
swimming in the wind of
my plastic case my eye
my pugnacious radiator
combusting rusty metals
in a dark water
grey water garden
my spasm bags
scattering electronics
your pantomime shotgun
peppered my steak
your wild blind shogun
tattered my paper tiger
my wild fire drowned
in a cotton gin
my arm folded in
a wrought iron
molasses mouth
your castor oil
cauterized my
harmonium
my wooden egg
birthed a grimace
in your image
your name is
flanagan

Friday, February 27, 2009

i dusted off my winter wings in the western library
fluttering through american railroads and oxidized artifacts
awash in a dark sea of
thousands of buried letters
made soft and rotten in a backyard earth hole
i jumped into a garbage bag like cartoon pajamas
and slam dunk a rock into your forehead

we could dig up the hound
or drip hot plastic on a fern
in the barn, scratch poppies,
bike jump a cigar cloud
by the porno tree
or snakebite a lake hand
in a blueberry mouth smear
let's wade through another desperate swamp
forgot the life jacket
but we can swim now
in blue smoke
and fly into the fog
after dinner

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

halcyon mobile

i miss that one crusade
the one where you wore a purple cape
i can smell it now when i lick a styrofoam cup
in a battery park skateboard roll
we bunked up in a foxhole with a lotus
and passed the pipe for days
the dark light shined out of your lamp
and the edges yellow burning
my musket plugged and burst black
over the picnic fish
that daredevil herring
with mercury eye

your stack of fetish magazines
and vegetable necklace
made me deaf by
a tiny brass band
dangling from a pine

horseback days
to the turtle pond
on a criminal hoof
blindfolded
hands tied behind
our heads
gone to
milk
the
grass
for sun
drops

Monday, February 23, 2009

mule boys


boating on the colorado river in a talapoosa strip rib slab strap wrapped around strawberry salad shake striped yellow and ketchup red cream pie french fry submarine listerine barbecue toothbrush vandal spraypaint marble

marinated veal heart chicken pan jump up and down bang bang until you puke

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

beachcomber

i was hunched in a white hot parking lot,
the pavement seared my feet,
but i ignored them. i was digging at
a metal rainbow and i was determined to wrest it
from its paved clutch.
beads of sweat rolled down
my forehead and my fingers cracked and bled,
but i kept on digging at it. i grunted and cursed under my breath
my wife came up from behind,

"let it alone you dingbat, you're playing with fire"

"you're a real sour apple, im sticking with my gut on this one Xena"

"suit yourself, you're going to end up like greg, covered in mud and hexed by voodoo" she said.

i kept right on digging and finally it came loose. i rolled it around in my palm and it jangled like a prism in my eye.
suddenly i felt that something was terribly wrong, i turned around and the cars were gone, and the clam shack was gone, and the umbrellas were gone, and the beach was gone, and where was Xena? oh now i felt foolish, i loved Xena more than I love myself, and now i'd fallen for the oldest trick in the book. the old, "shiny bauble in the reeds" bit. there was only black clay and some dead, rustling grass. just when i really began to sulk, a giant seagull swooped down and opened it's mouth and everything in the old world poured out of it, back to the way it was.

"Are you coming sweety", Xena said. i took her hand and we walked off towards the ocean.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

food misanthrope

not until rachel's pad thai
had i considered the political implications
of our favorite foods
pad thai was introduced
by traveling vietnamese merchants
and popularized by the prime minister
in an attempt to conserve rice for export
by encouraging
more domestic noodle consumption
pancakes were invented by paul bunyan's wife
to help him charge up before setting off to defeat the forest
and macaroni and cheese, well, i invented macaroni and cheese
to poison and disgust you. i realize that my plan has backfired; somewhat.
but there are small victories.
some of you cringe, cramp, vomit, or glut
and that's the idea.

manhunter

brethren jebadigo
he eats people
so as to absorb
their powers
he's eaten a lot
of people by now
so, you know, he's
a real bulldog,
fun to hang out
with. it's hard to keep
up with him, but he's
got enough to go around.
trouble is he ate a good one.
Dennis... we all used
to whoop it up,
shoot birds and whiskey.
i wonder if i'm next?
i hope so.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

neft droomer

on the verandah, an umbrella farm
breeds entitlement and self loathing.
dipped in syrup, sold as paradise.
your ears are ugly, drooping again.
flick the lobe, swab the inner tube
for christ's sake
cecilia turntabled her margarita
rimming the edge for salt
with her tongue
peeking out from behind black sunglasses
perching for a facial expression
from tom, anything to know
she was getting under his fingernails
tom ignored her famously
he flagged down a waiter
the waiter bent down and tom
whispered something behind a hand curtain
cecilia sighed, grunted and lit a cigarette
sucking on it like a fish
the waiter returned with a silver plate
and set it down in front of tom
a razor, a bowl of lather, and a brush
tom took off his shirt
what the fuck are you doing
cecilia peeled away her sunglasses and stared
tom lathered up the brush
and began swabbing some onto his eyebrows
quickly and violently he tugged the razor
through the cream, shaved away his eyebrows,
snatched cecilia's margarita, spat in it,
dumped his plate of food over his head
and finally, hollandaise dripping down his
forehead into his eyes smiled wide and
spoke in a serene, melodious voice
i want a divorce

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

the history of everything as seen from one moment

we found pink bogey wax in a clam belly.
it was mixed up with true grit, black blood.
stuffing the well full
of plastic action figures
in my four year old summertime
while the national union perched
on the edge of a grinder
and daddy, who are those men
with Mr. Gorbachev? fending off mutant
lobsters in the kitchen, or ruining the
neighbors lives by destroying their mail. either way
it all amounts to me writing this poem right now.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

seasonable cucumbert

tom, get out of the road, man.
noontime drunk and a shiny golden coin.
tom has meandered into the road in some cockeyed
act of defiance against the flow of commerce.
you can tell by watching him, that he's not sure of what he's doing.
a heavy cold snow sheet cracks and slides off the roof
ensnaring some wires.
pigeon milk collects in a
measuring cup.
tom and golden coin
pierce their ears with a safety pin
at the soup kitchen.

Friday, February 6, 2009

eggplant michelob

layer after flaking layer
of honey dough melting into
a bowl of orange juice.
the baklava was that good.
ok, i lied,
it was made with crappy ingredients
but it satisfied my lust for garbage
and they might be giants anyway

Thursday, February 5, 2009

connecticut river raft

sandra, trish, and marilyn
gone fishin' with
kevin bacon and sandy koufax
crashed into a sandbar
busted their rowboat into
splinters that decayed
instantly into mush
and the king crab danced around
a bone heap gargling incantations

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

swamp walk

i slept in today, and then headed down to the beer garden
had a kielbasa stuffed up with kraut
a load of beer
and a pastry too
i felt fat and happy
but kind of guilty
like after you jerk off
too much on a pot smoke getaway
so i wandered into hammerfrog forest
hands in pocket and i noticed
the black owls and twisted vines, the
thorny brambles like barb-wire fence
warning against a step in the swamp
i considered the life of a chinese rabbit
as i was wearing one on my head

Sunday, February 1, 2009

ribstick

we got a ribstick at the BJ's discount feedlot
its like a rack of meat stick that you wouldnt even know existed
if it didnt jump out like a javelin into your buying heart and demand
purchase of louisiana style barbecue knob sauce
but now that you know you wont refret it
because the strings are good like that
even though its not a conventional
hockey box, it'll hold 'em

extra, extra read all about it

He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits.out of control from the moment he got there.I had never seen my mother that upset. The soldiers went door-to-door handing out chili and beef stew rations to people cooped up hunkering for a sex activity in the pulpit. Grant Exton is a gun owner, "A gentleman came into the church. He was mentally deranged, and at the end of the sermon, pulled out a gun and shouted something about baptism and proceeded to shoot me in the back a couple of times. I still carry one of the bullets embedded in my spine." Eating varmints is in vogue these days, at least in Great Britain. Cut to Kansas City, that's where Brownsberger rolls into the parking lot of Leon's Thriftway in an old maroon Impala with a trunk full of frozen meat. The French rabies doesn't exist in Missouri so cut off the paw and drop the carcass into a stew pot of Billy Washington tiny leg, "See that? Tender as a mother's love," he says with a grin. "Good eatin'. "My grandkids will just tear this one up, it'll be so good" 'Yay! We're saved!'"