You still selling your junk? When you gonna get a real job?

glass crash lands
my pants

catch golden

malt-liquor spritz

not to mention

my shattered nerves.

trombone

shorty,

named for

Mr. Gillespie’s majestic,

launched a full forty

from his Pontiac

Aztek

yo but at least i can say

he threw a bottle at me.

her daddy says get a job. a real job.

What did her soul-brains

command her hands (commander hands!)

(last on a list of pains

you know well old man)

--what  her soul brain

commanded  her hands

to do--

(before

she met me

we had him then again

we had her)

--is unimportant.

immaterial

to you,

what she do.

you know what I mean

she asks

after every second breath

words levitate--add

auditory hallucination

to her

maniacal nights

scrawling scratch on scrap

paper

eschewing the pills again

much to the chagrin

of the doctor that tried to fuck her

If only I was

Gebre-selassie,

heir to the

Merob Traditional Ethiopian Bread fortune,

when that pretty lady today

smiled at me

or the devil in her tea

If only the words I pray

could sustain our transaction

until the

slipstream sucks

our hands emancipate

a brief literary reckoning

Larry McMurtry and John Graves made me wish I were Texan.

Flannery O'Connor and Franz Kafka reveal the true filth underneath.

A Moveable Feast qualified my desire:

even if I never create, I will surround myself in a wilderness of those who do.

Breece DJ Pancake and Dorothy Allison confided that my people were worth writing about. 

William Least Heat Moon got me off my ass and on the road.

Cormac McCarthy taught me poetry isn't poems, but still every line counts.

Sam Shepard made punk swing country-western.

And Celine, god bless him, saved me from being just another Bukowski-loving drunk.

the empiricist & his daughter prefer pizza hut

a Swedish biologist

who wishes to remain anonymous

donated her uterus

(which had served its purpose)

to a bunch of scientists

among them a geneticist

who won’t be home

when his daughter unlocks the door

Pastor Buxton
bid able bodied deacons:
locate and infiltrate the pizza hut
nearest the heritic's house

when his daughter unlocks the door
for the warrior/

uniformed pizza provider,

god’s mighty soldier

engages her,

takes her money,

his time,

noting well

the good doctor’s interior habits

Rodeo II

her complex chemical reactions

lead to expectations

that I practice the way

to unload a grocery cart.

we went two times a night,

claws, beard, entangled

searching for purchase.

Ranking first, number one

flush-knocked-cartoid-throb,

 she bespilt unvoweled

octaves from the high sierra.

Open  your eyes,

Cowgirl,

I  feel objectified.

post-second had a

very why dialect.

laugh asking,

do you like me?

Fourteen Two Thousand Seventeen

You whisper.

my heart turns acrobatic

you leave

light bulbs pulsing in your wake.

The bowling alley

can’t seem more chaotic than

the bed we so beastly unmade.

We made the boy and the girl

who we prep

for trajectory.

hell if know

the routes you go

with,

to me,

uncanny instinct

I trust like

I once did Santa.

(it was the drug, not me)

You can populate

a Dee-troit city directory

with what i can’t explain.

i do

know

though

why

my head explodes:

you want me?

my

high crass woman.

Together as we lead them to nest’s edge

the world will open up with arms outstretched.

my dearest partner of greatness,*

your love is
tulips in the tiptoes of

me and Harry Dean.

*Macbeth, 1.5

As the Weed Eater Turns

Low octane paranoia standing in my intestines. Nothing that can’t be assuaged by a deep existential exhale. My breath reeks of corn chips, coffee and cigarettes. Possibly rivaling Corn Nuts, the decomposing dog someone heaved into a garbage bag, dropped into a 5 gallon bucket and relocated to the middle of the alley behind my house. Flies pop the sack like steady rain, stuffed insensate with good old Corn Nuts. I say dog because the weight feels right when I poke it with a stick.  I can't actually see what's inside the bag. It could be a human leg.  I opt for animal control over 911 because I am not a slave to fancy. Odds are it's a dog. I wouldn’t bet its real name was Corn Nuts either. I named it in honor of the snack that smells bad.  Like my breath. That possibly my breath smells as bad as that carcass out back?   That's not even close to the truth. An exaggeration that serves no other purpose than to draw attention to the weight and inconvenience of death. 

passive aggressive fan letter

where some unnamed personal inadequacy contributes to the ghost writer's thirst for vengeance

first
had to talk her out of the race
took her to a meeting
this and dialysis?
ran unmolested
delivered suggestions 
as ice belies the booze.
what forces drive
the changing tide
we’ll leave to the known
unknowns.
what may come 
came,
the aye’s held sway
on my motion 
to ban your 
book

Jimmy's insides turn to custard

grackles blast then recombobulate
with a fresh full moon backdrop.
it was the moonwalk
on tv and Waves
of Jimmy’s remedial charm/plump fingers of Southern Comfort.
Jimmy cracking corny jokes and traces of her
ancient Greek grandfather's high pitch whine

still stuck in her throat.

Francine claps
what the hell.
slips
her hand down the ample 
elastic band 
of her polyester drawers,

 smiles.
Before she whips it out,
the grackles reconvene
for yet another
daring
power line cantata

Stalin Never Once Said Netflix

neither has my daughter ever said militia

except when she’s drunk, talking to Melissa

while living among Aleuts

who had no written language

the Russian saint assigns Cyrillic to their audible thoughts

principal

accountant/nail lady

pool cleaner/lawyer

fry cook and I

agree

on one thing

so broadly stroked we

don’t even notice

to encode the sound of a thought

that exists in the mind of an Aleutian

ease on down the slavic slide

where

palm tree and Dairy Queen

translate paradise
cold hurricane, soft-serve

Boca Raton, and 
that’s what I like about Texas

allright already,

with the fixed meanings

what can’t keep up with our

profound expectorate

he disappears when they pass the plate

Young Jimmy Spatula
flushes again

as a courtesy
to himself.
Beast reverb in
this blessed restroom

let us turn now to

page 22-eeee-leven,

for it is well with my soul

dampened by the wall

lingering in his stall

he hums along.

a charity to hum,

who never yet kneaded strange flesh.

paying himself a confidence

for,

never, 
even thru bad skin,

had he groped for bones to clamp his hands

hips and

never, like rinse water,

did he cup the skull of another

as a confidence

let him

touch her lip

stick to hymnal

pages. let him draw the message

to all the girls he's yet to kiss

starring rice, with very special guest...

I’m certain when it’s Ray Charles.
rice bathing in its own milky cloud.
that I can’t
but i will
or i won’t
cascade minor chord!
descend! step over the hint 
of victim emblazoned in highway orange.
End road work

The Girl-Child featuring an all-star lineup including Rick James

Beautiful freak of nature,
if nature = that
which most consider
“the way things should be”
I think we’re good on freak.
(thanks Chic & Rick)
Analysis of America
’s Got Talent
turns dark on a dime.
She laughs after me
in herself
like a survivor
genuinely freaked
at this new depth she has plunged.
10,000 years ago
she might have been branded
a cynic
and I would have admonished her with
multiple listenings
of Herb
Alpert & Tijuana Brass covering
The Price is Right theme song
until she submits,
on record:
I like hopeful people

Three Day Weekend featuring Link Wray & his Raymen

Hurricane Harvey Eve.
Worried about the beating
Corpus is in for.
Patch along San Antonio to Austin
will absorb its 
slow motion renaissance.
and Houston. Fuck.
We’ll get some weather
down here
but...

Teacher across the hall bitching about school getting cancelled:
Means my kids are out of school too,
she says, wait
oh yeah,
you like your kids.
I do. 
I don’t mind.
Not a fan of the board games though.

I dread that lull
deep in the afternoon
when I’ve chosen the
perfect patch of wall
for staring
and I hear
the half-assed 
last-ditch call to scrape
the vein of diversion.
Hey dad?
play this board game?
that reveals its worth
by its intact shrink wrap?
With its fucking byzantine rules?
And zero payoff?
Dad?
Parental guilt kicks in.
I’m busy children,
clicking on pop-up ads

Certainly
I would like to harness the power
and energy of this hurricane
and ram it straight up someone’s ass.
Problem is who?
You get one chance with a weapon of this magnitude.
One chance, and I wouldn’t want to waste it on a grudge fuck.

I mean, damn. 
If I had a hurricane in my pocket?
It would need to reduce. 
Not in its massive force but in size. 
Like a hurricane bouillon cube,
that I could slip into someone’s Lipton
Cup of Soup.
But again.
Size matters.
So I’m at an impasse.

Anyway,
Link Wray, 
play us out.
Alright boys. 
Rumble, onna-1,2,3,4