why won’t you let me
be your mediocre mess,
away from the rest?
working on an all nighter, so of course i’m going to write a song first, duh.
(and yea, that’s a CSUN shirt)
~
i’ve been wondering, baby, “Why you hangin’ by the door?”
its been six weeks and your dancing’s getting borin’
.
well i don’t think that i have been the honest one, no honest son. i’ve been writing my plans on the back of these matches and burning them off one by one.
.
i’ve been wondering baby “Why you walking through my door?”
haven’t been myself and still you’re comin’ back for more.
.
well i don’t think that i have been the honest one, no honest son. i’ve been writing my plans on the back of these matches and burning them off one by—
.
once i find myself you’ll see, there’s no retrospect for me to see. And i’ll hope for melancholy things to burst themselves out from their seams, and i know, yes i know, i can’t do it alone.
Then she said something like,
“You don’t know how to unscrew me.
You don’t know what to hold next:
the hips? the waist? My tangled hair?
You could never tilt me at the perfect angle
swallow me whole,
digest me through your organs, suck out
all my vital nutrients and then mix it
with your blood.
No, you could never love me, lover, because
love is a man-made endeavor.
Love is a bullet shot straight through your
knee cap, shattering
skin down to cartilage,
down to a hollowed out bone.
Love is a lightweight binge drinker
that can’t drive himself home and you’re
asleep on the backseat wearing funeral clothes.”
Started this song like 2 Februaries ago…Here ya’ go.
~
Dry Spell
.
I walked down across this February, sunburned on my back. Will you listen to me now? I once thought of the unusual, let’s pack our bags and go. Will you please come with me now?
.
Because I won’t regret what’s said and done before I wake too late; I’m over this now.
.
I stepped over the last stepping stone in cemetery clothes.—Will you bury me whole? I dried up the river right before the cemetery rain, but it never came.
.
So I won’t regret what’s said and done before it gets too late. I’m over this now.
.
I can’t forget me all my wasted nights, no wasted times now; I can forget them all the same. I can’t forget me all my broken times, no broken lines now; I can forget them all the same. And it’s better to question than ever be certain again.
.
I walked down upon this broken street with broken bones to spare. Will you bury me whole?
Tune-up
Sometimes I wonder if my strings need changing,
or if the hollow body
of my guitar needs filling,
or if its crooked neck and rusted frets somehow
need intonating;
but then I pause to stutter
chords that Dylan showed me late last night,
on the car ride home, along with Lenon and the whole
quartet, and I realize my ears are stuck on silent yet
again and the reason Marley’s missing
is because he thinks the music hasn’t hit me yet.
~
Seeking Routine
Why do you insist on simple language for communication when, as we all know, your thoughts tell more?
Stealing sentiments and throwing them up-until they flee the sky and join the flow of comets’ streams; locking the doors of abandoned houses and closing windows on drafty nights.
It’s all just routine after all-the driving force of morning dread, the admiration of a weekend’s possibilities, the rope you braid each day to swing above your ahead.
… It’s the noise that you whisper before dressing for bed It’s the driving force of your morning dread It’s the admiration of a weekend’s possibilities, It’s the noose that you braid to swing over your head. It’s the sound of the moon as it slithers through moors It’s the closing of windows and the locking of doors It’s unopened letters piled high like ma’s temper and coke lines laced in mace whiter than Elvis Presley. It’s the train in derailment, it’s the closed-off collission It’s the blood in the gutter and untalked about rules It’s all just routine, catching up to your senses, coughing out of your belly with a sense of entitlement, like a cop , and it ain’t askin’ questions
wasted at the Coup d’état Hotel
The toilet bowl seat
reminds me of drunk tanks.
Except, instead of some over-
looked meth-head ranting on
about Goldstein and Brotherhood
.
plot-schemes, I’ve got a line of
barbarians rattled up to their hair pins,
about to implode into nut-shell
mink fedoras; gnashing porcelain
claws, and Swarovsky-lined tusks
stained with creme broulee breath,
pouring out of their snot holes as if bathroom
lines controlled some sort of finite existence.
.
I’m not one to complain, but
I think I like the drunk tank better.
At least there, with a bolted-down
toilet made of metalized cold,
churning vomit-camouflaged shit stains,
everyone took turns—you know—
mannerisms, the filler a good mom
stuffs you with after slappin’ up your jaw and
leaving her rosemary mark upon
your baby-fat cheek year over year, again.
.
The meth head spewing bile atop
LA-County’s open sewer hatch
never threatened me,
he just coughed a lung and held it up
long enough for everyone to see;
drooping like a prized fresh-water fish,
.
like some fair-ground trophy only he
could win—and, you know what,
he deserved that iron lung bravado, throbbing
in its asthmatic beauty—every
saggy-eyed cellmate knew it.
.
Even after slipping past me,
slapping my ass like some last-call
relief pitcher walking into a dread-knot game and
whispering “fuck those pale-faced Bourgeois”—
I didn’t really mind. I didn’t even hide;
just followed his laughter like a little-
kid brother and let him show me around.
So here’s a new year
Thirteen hours,
thirty flashbacks later,
you’re still drunk
off glitter gloss, champagne,
.
and broken English catch-
phrases. Your hind legs buckle
as you remember the dancers:
let loose like kicking cattle
running from an eager prod.
Like freckled skins of clothing
.
dried in wind tunnel airways, you
grope for the walls of a city left
lonely for tonight—just tonight.
.
Your brain expands like a hot air balloon
holding a family of confetti, peppered over
raw hides of line dancers now leaving on cue,
riding transparent turnpikes
.
’round gropers at midnight,
’round cuneiform flesh lines hugging
wedding ring fingers, before finally
reaching the floorboards, damp
.
with Merlot and shallow pop lyrics—
trampled, kicked, and pissed upon.
.
You can insist resolutions all year long,
but when that giant disco ball shimmies
toward ground zero
and she’s bared down to just that
jaw-bone, pucker-up smile—boy,
you better bounce.
.
Bounce back towards the car,
back way up past 3rd.
.
Bounce out of the sand dunes full of
tar and maroon from the wine that you
.
poured yourself full by the stool.
Bounce black like the shadows that
.
followed you home, like the pebbles stripped
off’a there walked-along shores
and tossed deep into waters that
ripple past crows,
perched one-legged on
.
Christmas trees shriveled to twigs,
with adhesive eyes sticking awe-struck
.
for nights,
with a retina clung loosely
like the perforated edge of an unopened pay-check
.
begging costs for attention, or at least
somebody able enough to carry you home.
i’m at the foot of the bar
where it all makes sense
and i’ll be with it in a min-
ute, just let me finish sip-
pin’ on this cup of dread;
c’mon and put me to bed.
she likes driving
You’re always so damn thoughtful.
Like when we coasted through
Sepulveda pass—last month, I think—
and my ears each popped a couple times
as they often do when switching heights.
.
And even though the cops might’ve
seen us, as they often do
this late at night,
and even though I still had wine to finish—
like the crumpled poems stuffed in my shelf,
like impartial lyrics missing nouns—
.
you hardened headlights to a sty
and laid your car to steady sleep
beneath some low, disheveled willow tree
you said you’d passed sometime before,
.
when peering off the 405 to find some place
to drag your tires
and let your sobered brain cells scream out loud.
“The willow’s like a hermaphrodite,” you said,
.
bottling up a corkscrew laugh. “It’s got both men
and women parts so it’s like they’ve never
really learned to be their part.” But as we smoked like
placid road blocks blinking CAUTION
with the heater on, I noticed how the
.
willow’s crooked neck
just hung there as if cradling the car,
while it creased the pavement at its feet
with roots burst underneath the ground.
