For Bear. The earthquake child. Because you love your polaroid camera. And also for Saginaw.
We're sitting on the barn porch at 2am
breathing heavy clouds into the frigid dark
my brothers' chest is swelling
in and out and out and OUT
he's holding his beer like a microphone
he says that we are all official members of the church of insomnia
It was founded by a two headed deer in the 60's
I say "Ok"
He says the earth is tilting
There's lightning out over the reservation
It's making the clouds glow green
We feel like we're looking into space
He asks if I remember the Indian pow-wows we went to as kids
He spits on the ground
I think about the Apache medicine man we met at once
Whos name was Saginaw
He was so old his voice sounded like two stones
grinding together
He said he was one hundred and nineteen years old
He told us
that native americans believe if their photograph is taken
that their soul is stolen
My brother asked why their were so many pictures of Indians then
Saginaw told us a story:
He said the pale faces came when he was 6
they shot his father in the back
because he had a gun for hunting deer
they raped his mother
tied her to a horse
and dragged her through the prairie naked
until she died
they stuck his three year old sister
into the dirt with their bayonets
and they spit on him,
and made him watch until she was dead
Saginaws' stones stop grinding for a minute
Then they come grinding out from behind a smile
"You see, we tricked the soldiers.
We said we would all let our souls go
that we give up, surrender and go to reservations
Even Geronimo did this
but we live in the spirit world now
we do not live in the pictures
we are ghosts and they cannot chase us
they cannot tame us
we are free"
My brother spits on the ground again
He talks about his Polaroid Camera
And how he hopes native americans were right
We sit for 45 minutes in the wind
watching the reservation light up
and feel the thunder shake our guts like a firing squad
The little kid in me knows its a pow-wow
in the spirit world
Long rainy fingers are tapping on the windows upstairs
tapping tapping tapping
the rainstorm is begging to come in
Somebody in the kitchen yells that tornadoes are coming
But there hasnt been a tornado here in years
probably decades
maybe not ever
My brother says its a waste
unless it kills someone
He says people die choking on hot dogs
people die vaccuming their cars
people die in their bathubs
"People drown in their fucking bathtubs"
Why not go in a tornado that only comes once a century?
Why can't I die in a tornado Dave?
I dont know...
Why can't we all die in tornados?
Theres people still dancing upstairs
Still singing
Like they're way out in space
Swirling around with ghosts that only live here
only here and only this once
They can feel the earth is tilting.
What if the tornado is here already
What if we just don't know it yet?
What if the tornado is made of ghosts?
Swirling around taking us to the spirit world
Taking us out to space
We collect zip lock baggies
we breathe into them
my lungs feel like buzzing chainsaws
trying to zip lock enough air to last us
a year in space
just in case
He say's "Its a party in there."
And closes the screen door behind him
Talking to my brother
feels like standing in an empty trainstation
Im counting the seconds between seeing and hearing the lightning
I don't know the formula anymore
I dont know if there's another train scheduled
in my lifetime
I wonder is my brother is on the same train that took Geronimo
out of his desert
and into Florida
The two headed church deer is hanging on the wall inside
My brother shot it.
10 Times
"Wow" is the usual response.
And then everyone looks at it
because something that takes ten bullets
never REALLY dies
We all know it
We're all waiting for something
The way Geronimo waited in shackles
for years to be released back to his desert
The same way my brother waited for storms
when he was six
on the trampoline
jumping into the sky in the rain
higher and higher
screaming "Come on!"
Come on!
....Come
on....
The earth is tilting
There's water running down the stairs
It might be someones bathtub overflowing
It might be the storm coming in the screens of the windows
But nobody notices
Or nobody cares
Our "church" is packed
Its shaking
The water is ankle deep
The tornado touched down in the field outside the barn.
And that was the end of a perfectly good Church.
There are no official records
of a 119 year old Apache shaman in Palm Desert
Theres never officially been
a substantial tornado in California
And theres never been any official evidence
of where my brother went.
But if you ask me,
I'd tell you that I saw a 6 year old boy
on the balcony
holding zip lock bags
shouting at a tornado "Come on!"
And that somewhere out in space
Geronimo is probably hunting a two headed dear
outside a church thats filled with a million dancing Indians
and one happy kid
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Youth In Asia (Very 1st Draft)
Grandmother has 3000 miles of rusty train-tracks
written deep in her hands
She says when she was a young woman
Grandfather used to read her palms
and tell her that she had great luck
that her life-line was strong
For her 85th birthday, she tied rockets to her skates
and went ripping down into town
barley holding her pants up
I only know that she told the police
she was training to be a samurai
The police said someone so obviously senile
should be kept in-doors
Grandmother gave them a good fight
She is a hard old woman
She was on the river,
north of Nagasaki when the bomb detonated
She searched the city for 5 days
and never even found Grandfathers glasses
She tried to place the rubble of their home in her pockets
and carry it forever.
She put so much in her pockets, that they ripped
And she hurt her back.
She was pregnant, and very determined.
Maybe this is why she holds everything in her hands.
I asked her when I met my husband
why she did not search the city
for 5 decades for Grandfather
She said because she was tough enough to wait.
I did not know what she was waiting for.
She was old.
And smelled strange
She would mumble often
about tortoises that lived for hundreds of years
She said it is a great misfortune to live that long
"It is unimaginable"-she said
And she would spit into the ground.
And rub her hands together as if to warm them.
Or smooth out the growing wrinkles.
I did not know then that she was also speaking about herself
When Akiko was born,
we let grandmother live with us
So we could take care of her.
And she could help with Akiko
Her hard old hands have many wrinkles
And I want to read them to her
To tell her she IS lucky
To tell her that when my mother died
It wasn't her fault
To mend her frayed pockets....
And then a few months ago
I became pregnant again
She cried with happiness
She said her pockets were mending.
That she might let a man read her Palms again someday.
We all said "Gross!"
But she just smiled and sipped on her tea
and said
"Love is life multiplied by a number nobody has ever heard of"
At the baby shower
She gave my husband a house-plant
that has pollen which creates erotic dreams
I still do not know why
************
When grandmother heard the news Broadcast
We were in the garden
we were collecting ladybugs and fireflies
we were putting them into big glass jars
Akiko was laughing like small children do
her heart was a jar full of ladybugs
We did not know
When Grandmother came outside
her words were a cliff dive in my stomach
she said:
the earth is trembling with sadness
it is sorry it can not hold back the sea
we have to tell the children they are magic!
we have to tell them they can breathe underwater!
we have to tell them this is just practice!
I asked her what she was talking about.
"The sirens"-she said
"They are not working."
My pockets felt like they were tearing
Like I was carrying a desert of sand in them
My belly was large, I could not move very well
We felt the waves coming
Grandmother and I looked over the fence towards the docks,
we heard screaming and the thunder of collapsing buildings
I did not understand what the wall of debris was
only that it was louder than anything I had ever heard before
louder than a planes engine
louder than grandmother yelling at us for breaking her china
louder than all the ladybugs and fireflies in the world
buzzing inside one jar
the power lines snapped
the electricity was gone
Akiko was holding a jar.
Her little hands and face were glowing
She did not know
Grandmother picked Akiko up
turned to me
and said calmly
"Hitomi, you must be tough now"
The last thing I remember seeing
was the white of foam crashing through the fence
and separating me from my daughter and Grandmother
Akiko was still laughing and holding her buzzing jar
I am searching the city every day now
I am sleeping on the 5th floor
of a parking structure
I am hungry.
I am walking the coastlines at Miyagi
with many others
Searching through the thousands of bodies
Secretly hoping I find nothing
I am trying to be tough.
It is the 5th night now
My belly is kicking
In my dreams my husband is building a house
a million feet high
And I am holding Akikos little hands
through the holes in my pockets
And the sirens are turning into voices
saying "We are under the water
We are under the houses"
And the insides of my belly are buzzing and glowing
written deep in her hands
She says when she was a young woman
Grandfather used to read her palms
and tell her that she had great luck
that her life-line was strong
For her 85th birthday, she tied rockets to her skates
and went ripping down into town
barley holding her pants up
I only know that she told the police
she was training to be a samurai
The police said someone so obviously senile
should be kept in-doors
Grandmother gave them a good fight
She is a hard old woman
She was on the river,
north of Nagasaki when the bomb detonated
She searched the city for 5 days
and never even found Grandfathers glasses
She tried to place the rubble of their home in her pockets
and carry it forever.
She put so much in her pockets, that they ripped
And she hurt her back.
She was pregnant, and very determined.
Maybe this is why she holds everything in her hands.
I asked her when I met my husband
why she did not search the city
for 5 decades for Grandfather
She said because she was tough enough to wait.
I did not know what she was waiting for.
She was old.
And smelled strange
She would mumble often
about tortoises that lived for hundreds of years
She said it is a great misfortune to live that long
"It is unimaginable"-she said
And she would spit into the ground.
And rub her hands together as if to warm them.
Or smooth out the growing wrinkles.
I did not know then that she was also speaking about herself
When Akiko was born,
we let grandmother live with us
So we could take care of her.
And she could help with Akiko
Her hard old hands have many wrinkles
And I want to read them to her
To tell her she IS lucky
To tell her that when my mother died
It wasn't her fault
To mend her frayed pockets....
And then a few months ago
I became pregnant again
She cried with happiness
She said her pockets were mending.
That she might let a man read her Palms again someday.
We all said "Gross!"
But she just smiled and sipped on her tea
and said
"Love is life multiplied by a number nobody has ever heard of"
At the baby shower
She gave my husband a house-plant
that has pollen which creates erotic dreams
I still do not know why
************
When grandmother heard the news Broadcast
We were in the garden
we were collecting ladybugs and fireflies
we were putting them into big glass jars
Akiko was laughing like small children do
her heart was a jar full of ladybugs
We did not know
When Grandmother came outside
her words were a cliff dive in my stomach
she said:
the earth is trembling with sadness
it is sorry it can not hold back the sea
we have to tell the children they are magic!
we have to tell them they can breathe underwater!
we have to tell them this is just practice!
I asked her what she was talking about.
"The sirens"-she said
"They are not working."
My pockets felt like they were tearing
Like I was carrying a desert of sand in them
My belly was large, I could not move very well
We felt the waves coming
Grandmother and I looked over the fence towards the docks,
we heard screaming and the thunder of collapsing buildings
I did not understand what the wall of debris was
only that it was louder than anything I had ever heard before
louder than a planes engine
louder than grandmother yelling at us for breaking her china
louder than all the ladybugs and fireflies in the world
buzzing inside one jar
the power lines snapped
the electricity was gone
Akiko was holding a jar.
Her little hands and face were glowing
She did not know
Grandmother picked Akiko up
turned to me
and said calmly
"Hitomi, you must be tough now"
The last thing I remember seeing
was the white of foam crashing through the fence
and separating me from my daughter and Grandmother
Akiko was still laughing and holding her buzzing jar
I am searching the city every day now
I am sleeping on the 5th floor
of a parking structure
I am hungry.
I am walking the coastlines at Miyagi
with many others
Searching through the thousands of bodies
Secretly hoping I find nothing
I am trying to be tough.
It is the 5th night now
My belly is kicking
In my dreams my husband is building a house
a million feet high
And I am holding Akikos little hands
through the holes in my pockets
And the sirens are turning into voices
saying "We are under the water
We are under the houses"
And the insides of my belly are buzzing and glowing
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Three Cheers for the Semi Good Stuntman
Everyone's got one last stunt up their sleeve.
when the Army started testing artillery
in the mountains at night
my jail cell shook under the heavy handshake
of thick violence and midnight wilderness
and it was bright.
BRIGHT. AS. HELL.
by the sound of it
the shells must've punched a solar system
of moon craters into that mountain
it sounded like Gods buckshot,
like HE was sitting up there
on his fancy cloud porch,
shooting and howling
"Don't ever TRY to come up here again."
Don't. EVER. Try.
Again...
you might ask me where it all began
and I might tell you
but you must remember
that I have as many secrets as I have teeth
and my mouth has become VERY crowded
tonight I will spit out my wisdom teeth
and you might catch your shiny magazine story
and you might not
sometimes you do not see or hear things,
sometimes you just understand
I have never looked for stars in a woman's eyes
starry eyes are a load of poetic bullshit
most woman's eyes
are ugly plane crashes in the Andes
the kind where people end up eating each other
I've earned a lot of wrinkles as a sleeping pilot
and I only earned a sore throat as a flight control tower
sometimes I still speak in radio transmissions
the secret is to find a woman
and I mean a a REAL woman!
the kind of woman that you would fake the moon landing for
the kind of woman that would make stilts high enough
to walk out to Catalina
and bring back a shell for you
and in that shell
she'd hide a decades worth
of "Groovy"
every time you held it to your ear
you'd feel like a dear in her headlights
you want to find the kind of woman that's soft on the outside
and fierce on the inside
you want a pair of perfect "You know whats"
banging against tiger cage ribs
that's a REAL woman
HOT DAMN!
you want to find a woman who's got
some professional tonsil hockey skills
and a vagina like a new chainsaw
you want a woman who declares thumb wars like a samurai
and knows how to destroy cities
you want to give her a chandelier
so she can make it a BROKEN chandelier
to better tell dinner guests
the story of how you collided with her
one summer night
like two trains at top speed
wreckage flung across four states
and when you decide to go to the moon
and not come back
you want the kind of woman that says
"Its hard to know you..."
because it is
what you DO NOT want
is to inhale crabs
that is a fact. Not a molar.
my mother is a good woman
she always makes too much food for dinner
she doesn't know why she does this
But I do
because when my brother Sammy came back from Korea
he was one tough motherfucker
he got hired as a local weatherman
just part time
he liked to say
"Let me tell you something"
and then he'd tell you somethin'
his usual forecast was
"Its hot as balls out there"
and nobody said anything.
that's America!
THATS THE RABBIT HOLE!
that's the real beat man!
he had 26 years of gravity
swelling in his voice
the kind of gravity that could make the moon
follow you when you drove around town
when a blizzard blew in
he didn't give a shit about any temperatures
we would just pontificate
and talk about how this was "Pussy Shit"
and that in Bravo company's retreat from Chosin
guys had to choose between freezing to death
or being turned into pink mist by snipers
stay warm by a camp-fire
or freeze in the dark
his weatherman career was short lived
but people listened
because he categorized days into two groups:
days when he would choose the fire
and days when he just couldn't make one
we stayed up late on the porch
spitting into 2 AM darkness
and he'd tell me how his barrel melted
from shooting down a hill at 300,000 Chinese regulars
"Chinks can't fight their way out of a piss soaked paper bag.
But there's a million of em. Yuh dig?"
he had some heavy god damn boots
so we had a party for him
down by the river
on the 4th of July
and most of town came to see him
mom cooked her heart out
because she was happy
and very proud
it was my favorite 4th of July I can remember
because Sammy was home
but I didn't tell him
because that would have been some "Pussy Shit"
everyone ate and swam and laughed
and slapped Sammy on the back
and their was an earthquake
Pa said it meant God was happy too
when Sammy took Pa's shotgun
and started shooting all the squirrels in the trees
he'd yell "Airborne!" every time he squeezed the trigger
blasting rodents
into squeaking explosions of fur and flying buck teeth
Sam!
-Airborne!
BAM
SAM! What the hell...
-Airborne!
BAM BAM
Sam....
I put my hand on his shoulder and said
"You can't get them all"
he said he knew.
I don't think we were talking about squirrels
he'd been home for a few months
when he told us he had to find himself.
he "HAD to go"
I understand now. But I didn't then.
Pa looked at the floor
Ma demanded one more night
the way moms demand
and Sammy said "Of course"
mother cooked quietly
she cooked fast
she was in a hurry
so we could watch a box of home videos
from when Sammy and I were little
the ones when Ma and Pa pulled us in rusty wagons
and we decorated a sidewalk
with blue chalk celebration
there was no sound for home movies back then
so we invented the words
and they went something like this:
Ma-"Whats your favorite color Sammy?"
Sam-"Purple"
Ma-"Why"
Sam-"Because that's the color my finger turns
when I tie a string around it"
he'd be gone by the time we woke up
so when he was asleep
I went to his room and sat next to him in the dark
I thought about waking him up
tell him I loved him
tell him I was proud of him.
ask him not to go
but that would have been sissy.
so, instead I cried.
I sobbed.
I wept like a twelve year old school girl
and that...
that was the first time I died
in the morning there was a note
that was the last time we ever heard from Sammy
it is what he wanted I think
Airborne!
I wonder if there's a squirrel heaven....
now for more radio lingo
my inner radio is broken.
sometimes my fillings tingle
I hear faint static when I eat grilled cheese
I pretend its the sound of my brother
and somewhere in Mexico
he's untying his string
just for mom
so she doesn't have to keep throwing away food
every night
ever since I turned 18
Ive been living on the skin of my teeth
eating fire and glass,
shoving nails through my cheeks
balancing on balls, and juggling swords
living in unfinished buildings
trying to perfect the art of sawing women in half
I was a semi-good stuntman
some days I paid for my sins.
some days I tried to pay for everybody elses
I learned how to blow my head off
splatter my voice-box on the sidewalk
so the rats could carry home a clumsy song
I became part of a super secret club
to replace every white light bulb in LA
with a purple one
its was going to be fantastic
I helped fake the moon landing in '69
and the night I did
my limbs were heavy prosthetics
filled with my brothers melted barrels
and bloody snow
Ive secretly kept a bucket of blue chalk
on my fathers porch
because mom said that he's old now
but he stills gets on his creaking
hands and knees to draw stuff every 4th of July
and then he sits in his rocking chair
and talks to himself and smiles
Mom says he's got dimentia
I say "Its better this way"
someday, just like every other secret
these things wont have to be kept so quiet
I got arrested in in 1980
for sawing a women in half at a cheap carnival
I told the jury
THEIR truth is like that
THEIR truth is in the gas chamber
in their slaughterhouses
on their reservations,
it built their railroads
their truth is small pox gift-baskets
their truth is rotting in the subways
and kneeling in church pews
their truth is uniformed roadkill on desert highways
nerve gas cake candles, and date rape
it's the bullet that killed John Dillinger
their truth is paid for with silver and gold
their truth is without magic.
their truth is a woman sawed in half in Dayton Ohio
in front of three hundred people
the judge sentenced me to life in prison
and Ive been burning through calendars
like a scientist burns through rats
how long do I have to pay for my sins
I am getting tired
30 years later I am headed for the chair
I am a dead man walking
it is what I want
You want to know MY truth for your magazine
you want to know who I am
the truth is that magic does not happen at magic shows
magic is muting your TV
and inventing the words
magic is saying sissy things
it is artillery in your chest
smashing away, shouting:
SHOW ME YOUR BUCKSHOT HEART
SHOW ME YOUR BOOTS FILLED WITH GRAVITY AND BOOZE
SHOW ME YOUR CHAINSAW VAGINA
SHOW ME YOUR AIRBORNE SOUL
SHOW ME YOUR WET STILTS
SHOW ME YOUR ILLEGAL PURPLE LIGHTBULBS
SHOW ME YOUR TRAINWRECK GROOVYNESS
SHOW ME YOUR MELTING ASTRONAUT DINNER GUESTS
magic is truth
and the truth is childhood is written in chalk
and that is why old people dislike rain
the truth is flexing your wheelie
from the river to the porch just because
the truth is plane crash cannibalism
and snowy campfire graveyards
and purple fingers
pulling the trigger to a melting barrel
aimed at a moon nobody ever walked on
because its better that way
the truth is hot as balls
this is my last stunt....
I'm leaving my molars and fillings for my mother
so she can hear the static of strings untying
so she can be ready for her suprise dinner guest
I'm leaving a bucket of chalk for my father
so he never forgets the weight of rusty wagons
I'm leaving my jacket for my brother
so he wont have to categorize his days anymore
I am leaving my secrets to the woman I never sawed in half
so they can teach the audience
that they do not need to listen or watch anything
to understand magic
I am just a semi-good stuntman
when the switch to my electric love seat flips
my restrained hands will shake like San Fran in 89'
my fingers will scratch out the trenches of world war one
on my arm rests
flames and smoke will climb out the windows of my face
I am scared to die for the second time
but it is good to know, some places will always feel
like the fourth of July
when the Army started testing artillery
in the mountains at night
my jail cell shook under the heavy handshake
of thick violence and midnight wilderness
and it was bright.
BRIGHT. AS. HELL.
by the sound of it
the shells must've punched a solar system
of moon craters into that mountain
it sounded like Gods buckshot,
like HE was sitting up there
on his fancy cloud porch,
shooting and howling
"Don't ever TRY to come up here again."
Don't. EVER. Try.
Again...
you might ask me where it all began
and I might tell you
but you must remember
that I have as many secrets as I have teeth
and my mouth has become VERY crowded
tonight I will spit out my wisdom teeth
and you might catch your shiny magazine story
and you might not
sometimes you do not see or hear things,
sometimes you just understand
I have never looked for stars in a woman's eyes
starry eyes are a load of poetic bullshit
most woman's eyes
are ugly plane crashes in the Andes
the kind where people end up eating each other
I've earned a lot of wrinkles as a sleeping pilot
and I only earned a sore throat as a flight control tower
sometimes I still speak in radio transmissions
Can you hear me?
......Over.
Come in. Over....
the secret is to find a woman
and I mean a a REAL woman!
the kind of woman that you would fake the moon landing for
the kind of woman that would make stilts high enough
to walk out to Catalina
and bring back a shell for you
and in that shell
she'd hide a decades worth
of "Groovy"
every time you held it to your ear
you'd feel like a dear in her headlights
you want to find the kind of woman that's soft on the outside
and fierce on the inside
you want a pair of perfect "You know whats"
banging against tiger cage ribs
that's a REAL woman
HOT DAMN!
you want to find a woman who's got
some professional tonsil hockey skills
and a vagina like a new chainsaw
you want a woman who declares thumb wars like a samurai
and knows how to destroy cities
you want to give her a chandelier
so she can make it a BROKEN chandelier
to better tell dinner guests
the story of how you collided with her
one summer night
like two trains at top speed
wreckage flung across four states
and when you decide to go to the moon
and not come back
you want the kind of woman that says
"Its hard to know you..."
because it is
what you DO NOT want
is to inhale crabs
that is a fact. Not a molar.
my mother is a good woman
she always makes too much food for dinner
she doesn't know why she does this
But I do
because when my brother Sammy came back from Korea
he was one tough motherfucker
he got hired as a local weatherman
just part time
he liked to say
"Let me tell you something"
and then he'd tell you somethin'
his usual forecast was
"Its hot as balls out there"
and nobody said anything.
that's America!
THATS THE RABBIT HOLE!
that's the real beat man!
he had 26 years of gravity
swelling in his voice
the kind of gravity that could make the moon
follow you when you drove around town
when a blizzard blew in
he didn't give a shit about any temperatures
we would just pontificate
and talk about how this was "Pussy Shit"
and that in Bravo company's retreat from Chosin
guys had to choose between freezing to death
or being turned into pink mist by snipers
stay warm by a camp-fire
or freeze in the dark
his weatherman career was short lived
but people listened
because he categorized days into two groups:
days when he would choose the fire
and days when he just couldn't make one
we stayed up late on the porch
spitting into 2 AM darkness
and he'd tell me how his barrel melted
from shooting down a hill at 300,000 Chinese regulars
"Chinks can't fight their way out of a piss soaked paper bag.
But there's a million of em. Yuh dig?"
he had some heavy god damn boots
so we had a party for him
down by the river
on the 4th of July
and most of town came to see him
mom cooked her heart out
because she was happy
and very proud
it was my favorite 4th of July I can remember
because Sammy was home
but I didn't tell him
because that would have been some "Pussy Shit"
everyone ate and swam and laughed
and slapped Sammy on the back
and their was an earthquake
Pa said it meant God was happy too
when Sammy took Pa's shotgun
and started shooting all the squirrels in the trees
he'd yell "Airborne!" every time he squeezed the trigger
blasting rodents
into squeaking explosions of fur and flying buck teeth
Sam!
-Airborne!
BAM
SAM! What the hell...
-Airborne!
BAM BAM
Sam....
I put my hand on his shoulder and said
"You can't get them all"
he said he knew.
I don't think we were talking about squirrels
he'd been home for a few months
when he told us he had to find himself.
he "HAD to go"
I understand now. But I didn't then.
Pa looked at the floor
Ma demanded one more night
the way moms demand
and Sammy said "Of course"
mother cooked quietly
she cooked fast
she was in a hurry
so we could watch a box of home videos
from when Sammy and I were little
the ones when Ma and Pa pulled us in rusty wagons
and we decorated a sidewalk
with blue chalk celebration
there was no sound for home movies back then
so we invented the words
and they went something like this:
Ma-"Whats your favorite color Sammy?"
Sam-"Purple"
Ma-"Why"
Sam-"Because that's the color my finger turns
when I tie a string around it"
he'd be gone by the time we woke up
so when he was asleep
I went to his room and sat next to him in the dark
I thought about waking him up
tell him I loved him
tell him I was proud of him.
ask him not to go
but that would have been sissy.
so, instead I cried.
I sobbed.
I wept like a twelve year old school girl
and that...
that was the first time I died
in the morning there was a note
To my little brother:
Let me tell you something,
Purple is the color of home-sick blood.
that was the last time we ever heard from Sammy
it is what he wanted I think
Airborne!
I wonder if there's a squirrel heaven....
now for more radio lingo
Can you hear me? Over.
Quit being purple. Over.
my inner radio is broken.
sometimes my fillings tingle
I hear faint static when I eat grilled cheese
I pretend its the sound of my brother
and somewhere in Mexico
he's untying his string
just for mom
so she doesn't have to keep throwing away food
every night
ever since I turned 18
Ive been living on the skin of my teeth
eating fire and glass,
shoving nails through my cheeks
balancing on balls, and juggling swords
living in unfinished buildings
trying to perfect the art of sawing women in half
I was a semi-good stuntman
some days I paid for my sins.
some days I tried to pay for everybody elses
I learned how to blow my head off
splatter my voice-box on the sidewalk
so the rats could carry home a clumsy song
I became part of a super secret club
to replace every white light bulb in LA
with a purple one
its was going to be fantastic
I helped fake the moon landing in '69
and the night I did
my limbs were heavy prosthetics
filled with my brothers melted barrels
and bloody snow
Ive secretly kept a bucket of blue chalk
on my fathers porch
because mom said that he's old now
but he stills gets on his creaking
hands and knees to draw stuff every 4th of July
and then he sits in his rocking chair
and talks to himself and smiles
Mom says he's got dimentia
I say "Its better this way"
someday, just like every other secret
these things wont have to be kept so quiet
I got arrested in in 1980
for sawing a women in half at a cheap carnival
I told the jury
THEIR truth is like that
THEIR truth is in the gas chamber
in their slaughterhouses
on their reservations,
it built their railroads
their truth is small pox gift-baskets
their truth is rotting in the subways
and kneeling in church pews
their truth is uniformed roadkill on desert highways
nerve gas cake candles, and date rape
it's the bullet that killed John Dillinger
their truth is paid for with silver and gold
their truth is without magic.
their truth is a woman sawed in half in Dayton Ohio
in front of three hundred people
the judge sentenced me to life in prison
and Ive been burning through calendars
like a scientist burns through rats
how long do I have to pay for my sins
I am getting tired
Can you hear me? Over.
I am getting tired. Over.
30 years later I am headed for the chair
I am a dead man walking
it is what I want
You want to know MY truth for your magazine
you want to know who I am
the truth is that magic does not happen at magic shows
magic is muting your TV
and inventing the words
magic is saying sissy things
it is artillery in your chest
smashing away, shouting:
SHOW ME YOUR BUCKSHOT HEART
SHOW ME YOUR BOOTS FILLED WITH GRAVITY AND BOOZE
SHOW ME YOUR CHAINSAW VAGINA
SHOW ME YOUR AIRBORNE SOUL
SHOW ME YOUR WET STILTS
SHOW ME YOUR ILLEGAL PURPLE LIGHTBULBS
SHOW ME YOUR TRAINWRECK GROOVYNESS
SHOW ME YOUR MELTING ASTRONAUT DINNER GUESTS
magic is truth
and the truth is childhood is written in chalk
and that is why old people dislike rain
the truth is flexing your wheelie
from the river to the porch just because
the truth is plane crash cannibalism
and snowy campfire graveyards
and purple fingers
pulling the trigger to a melting barrel
aimed at a moon nobody ever walked on
because its better that way
the truth is hot as balls
this is my last stunt....
I'm leaving my molars and fillings for my mother
so she can hear the static of strings untying
so she can be ready for her suprise dinner guest
I'm leaving a bucket of chalk for my father
so he never forgets the weight of rusty wagons
I'm leaving my jacket for my brother
so he wont have to categorize his days anymore
I am leaving my secrets to the woman I never sawed in half
so they can teach the audience
that they do not need to listen or watch anything
to understand magic
I am just a semi-good stuntman
when the switch to my electric love seat flips
my restrained hands will shake like San Fran in 89'
my fingers will scratch out the trenches of world war one
on my arm rests
flames and smoke will climb out the windows of my face
I am scared to die for the second time
but it is good to know, some places will always feel
like the fourth of July
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Dinasour Extraordinaire!
Happy Early Birthday You.
A tripping hippie points to a Eucalyptus
and says
"Hey man....didja know man?
That every time you carve your name
into a tree, you get younger by exactly 13 months?"
He carves my name into the tree for me.
Wild eyed. And tie-dyed.
And Ive been holding that pocketknife ever since
Waiting to give it to you.
Because YOU....
are a jukebox full of sad songs
You make me want to wander the south
With a bottle of shine, and a hammer
And pull the nails out of every window sill
That ever kept kids from sneaking out
to an Elvis concert.
This year.
I hid Dynamite
in your roman candle cake
And made you a macaroni necklace.
I want to see your face blast apart
into a run-away run-way smile
My lips could land...
ANYWHERE!
If you wont get up, I'll lie down.
And share your chalk-line mattress
To un-invent your acheing
I have this idea that I can sneak into you
Just un-hinge your doors
Like a cheap magic trick
And waltz down your throat
But most days, I step on a land-mine
before I can drop a coin in you
I want you to know it's OKAY
To sing your blues to me!
I'm in the mood for you
I miss your Antarctica shoulders
like an Astronaut misses gravity
and your equator thighs
the way Kamikazi pilots miss their bombs.
I miss your disguises
the way all adults miss saying "HOLY MOLY!"
Our love is rough.
Sometimes its a wrestling match
Huge oily man in spandex
jumping off a ladder
smashing a chair into your face.
Sometimes its dysfunctional
A NASA rocket launch
To the Saturn.
....Aimed into someones back yard
And we are karate chopping
each others faces into oblivion
to see who gets to push the button
Bad coordinates never stopped anyone
from planting a flag.
or moonwalking.
Sometimes its a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Quiet, and dark as a theater.
And nothing needs to be said.
Its silly.
Like being buried in a tie-dye shirt
and at your own open casket funeral
Nobody will know what to say except
HOLY MOLY
Our love is a city in Alaska
built on goodbye kisses
It has no umbrella stores
And one HUGE airport.
It gives us six months to hibernate
And six more to hit the snooze.
Someday
Id like to grab your ass
throw you over my shoulder
and send us both over the cliffs
to find the coordinates of
every would-be ship slave ship
I hope you know how to sink.
And cut chains.
Our love is a postcard you cant throw away
whether it says "Hi"
or "Greetings from your future Alien Abductor!"
Your veins are spliced with Trigonometry
and I want purge you of every math problem I cant solve
Even if the end equation is YOU>me.
Man, if I had to deploy again
I would bring you with me
So we could organize our own Tank Brigade
Just you and me and ten thousand
"Singing-arm-waiving-in-tongues-speaking-Hallelujah-Amen-Write-Me-a-Check-TV-Evangelists!"
You and I can represent
"The-Broke-Sinning-Hallelujah-Amen-thank-God-we-dont-actually-go-to-this-Church"
Minority.
We will be the "Holy Rollers"
Or maybe even
Holy.......
...........Moly
We preach firepower damnation
And Salvation through HUGE donations
of rabbit feet.
You would become the luckiest girl alive.
And Ghandi would be proud.
With a long drawn out P.
Like this: "Prruuuuuhhhhhhhhhh-ROUD!"
You...
are big during the day
You've got a face that takes up the whole mirror.
And a heart that could spontaneously dis-assemble
Every tank in Tiananmen Square
At night you're small.
You only take up an extra half persons percentage of the bed.
That percentage is too high.
Your Birthday present this year
is a bottle of moths
You can let out to find the light.
or destroy my clothes.
If we lived in Alaska
Your present would be the secret
Of the northern lights.
A Mediterranean circadean rythm
And a pile of deer carcasses
to fatten you up for winter.
If you were turning 81 it would be a
Cake the size of a bed, with 18 Candles
And a "retemodo"
Which is odometer spelled backwards.
You get the point.
If your birthday were spent in prison
Id smuggle you out inside a hollowed Bible
In very small peices
We'd hide in the swamps from the hounds
and hop trains out west to escape the Tommy Guns
and lynch mobs of half the counties in Lousiana.
Man,
If you ever become a dinasour.
Please dont go extinct.
At least not before I get a sample
of your DNA
and a fancy college degree
Because I really hate museums.
Confession:
I took one of your birthday wishes.
And wished that we could have an adventure together.
I dont care what it is.
Flying Plastic Dog shit out of Hong Kong
Hunting Moby Dick
Meeting the Devil on top of a mountain in Tennessee
Or becoming THE premiere trapeze act
at the greatest show on earth
No nets.
Just to tease gravity.
I want you to live to be so old
that the candles on your cake
are a rocket launch inferno at Zero Hour
to which nobodys eyes can adjust
I want your cake to be so damn good
that everyone tries to use your birthday wish
to wish for bigger mouths.
I want you to get so old
that your face looks like beef jerky
And I call you "Ol Hickory"
I want you to get so old
Your party will be the end of the world bash
Thrown to prove the Mayans and Nostradamus wrong,
I want you party to ACTUALLY end the world by causing
a bizzarre mass jailbreak of animals
from every Zoo in the world.
Everyone will be there for that LAST night of
Pirahana pool marco polo.
Gorilla indian-burn madness.
Pin the tail on the menstruating lioness.
"Hide and seek and probably get eaten"
Cheetah tag.
Elephant stampede jolly jump.
Drinking games against Camels.
Python suffocation tire swing.
Hyena dance party feeding frenzy.
Flock of Geese Pillow Fight.
Vulture Charades Slumber Party
I want to bring you a word.
Everyone else will bring one too.
But nobody's will mean the same as mine.
My word is "Whoa"
It means Beautiful
in Kerouac
I want you to get so old
that you wont remember
If I gave you the same thing
when when you got married:
A beaver pelt
And a coupon
for 5 free air guitar lessons!
I want you to get so old.
That I have nothing left to give you but my pocketknife
Man,
If you had that, I'd be a stump,
and you'd be 6 again.
A tripping hippie points to a Eucalyptus
and says
"Hey man....didja know man?
That every time you carve your name
into a tree, you get younger by exactly 13 months?"
He carves my name into the tree for me.
Wild eyed. And tie-dyed.
And Ive been holding that pocketknife ever since
Waiting to give it to you.
Because YOU....
are a jukebox full of sad songs
You make me want to wander the south
With a bottle of shine, and a hammer
And pull the nails out of every window sill
That ever kept kids from sneaking out
to an Elvis concert.
This year.
I hid Dynamite
in your roman candle cake
And made you a macaroni necklace.
I want to see your face blast apart
into a run-away run-way smile
My lips could land...
ANYWHERE!
If you wont get up, I'll lie down.
And share your chalk-line mattress
To un-invent your acheing
I have this idea that I can sneak into you
Just un-hinge your doors
Like a cheap magic trick
And waltz down your throat
But most days, I step on a land-mine
before I can drop a coin in you
I want you to know it's OKAY
To sing your blues to me!
I'm in the mood for you
I miss your Antarctica shoulders
like an Astronaut misses gravity
and your equator thighs
the way Kamikazi pilots miss their bombs.
I miss your disguises
the way all adults miss saying "HOLY MOLY!"
Our love is rough.
Sometimes its a wrestling match
Huge oily man in spandex
jumping off a ladder
smashing a chair into your face.
Sometimes its dysfunctional
A NASA rocket launch
To the Saturn.
....Aimed into someones back yard
And we are karate chopping
each others faces into oblivion
to see who gets to push the button
Bad coordinates never stopped anyone
from planting a flag.
or moonwalking.
Sometimes its a Charlie Chaplin movie.
Quiet, and dark as a theater.
And nothing needs to be said.
Its silly.
Like being buried in a tie-dye shirt
and at your own open casket funeral
Nobody will know what to say except
HOLY MOLY
Our love is a city in Alaska
built on goodbye kisses
It has no umbrella stores
And one HUGE airport.
It gives us six months to hibernate
And six more to hit the snooze.
Someday
Id like to grab your ass
throw you over my shoulder
and send us both over the cliffs
to find the coordinates of
every would-be ship slave ship
I hope you know how to sink.
And cut chains.
Our love is a postcard you cant throw away
whether it says "Hi"
or "Greetings from your future Alien Abductor!"
Your veins are spliced with Trigonometry
and I want purge you of every math problem I cant solve
Even if the end equation is YOU>me.
Man, if I had to deploy again
I would bring you with me
So we could organize our own Tank Brigade
Just you and me and ten thousand
"Singing-arm-waiving-in-tongues-speaking-Hallelujah-Amen-Write-Me-a-Check-TV-Evangelists!"
You and I can represent
"The-Broke-Sinning-Hallelujah-Amen-thank-God-we-dont-actually-go-to-this-Church"
Minority.
We will be the "Holy Rollers"
Or maybe even
Holy.......
...........Moly
We preach firepower damnation
And Salvation through HUGE donations
of rabbit feet.
You would become the luckiest girl alive.
And Ghandi would be proud.
With a long drawn out P.
Like this: "Prruuuuuhhhhhhhhhh-ROUD!"
You...
are big during the day
You've got a face that takes up the whole mirror.
And a heart that could spontaneously dis-assemble
Every tank in Tiananmen Square
At night you're small.
You only take up an extra half persons percentage of the bed.
That percentage is too high.
Your Birthday present this year
is a bottle of moths
You can let out to find the light.
or destroy my clothes.
If we lived in Alaska
Your present would be the secret
Of the northern lights.
A Mediterranean circadean rythm
And a pile of deer carcasses
to fatten you up for winter.
If you were turning 81 it would be a
Cake the size of a bed, with 18 Candles
And a "retemodo"
Which is odometer spelled backwards.
You get the point.
If your birthday were spent in prison
Id smuggle you out inside a hollowed Bible
In very small peices
We'd hide in the swamps from the hounds
and hop trains out west to escape the Tommy Guns
and lynch mobs of half the counties in Lousiana.
Man,
If you ever become a dinasour.
Please dont go extinct.
At least not before I get a sample
of your DNA
and a fancy college degree
Because I really hate museums.
Confession:
I took one of your birthday wishes.
And wished that we could have an adventure together.
I dont care what it is.
Flying Plastic Dog shit out of Hong Kong
Hunting Moby Dick
Meeting the Devil on top of a mountain in Tennessee
Or becoming THE premiere trapeze act
at the greatest show on earth
No nets.
Just to tease gravity.
I want you to live to be so old
that the candles on your cake
are a rocket launch inferno at Zero Hour
to which nobodys eyes can adjust
I want your cake to be so damn good
that everyone tries to use your birthday wish
to wish for bigger mouths.
I want you to get so old
that your face looks like beef jerky
And I call you "Ol Hickory"
I want you to get so old
Your party will be the end of the world bash
Thrown to prove the Mayans and Nostradamus wrong,
I want you party to ACTUALLY end the world by causing
a bizzarre mass jailbreak of animals
from every Zoo in the world.
Everyone will be there for that LAST night of
Pirahana pool marco polo.
Gorilla indian-burn madness.
Pin the tail on the menstruating lioness.
"Hide and seek and probably get eaten"
Cheetah tag.
Elephant stampede jolly jump.
Drinking games against Camels.
Python suffocation tire swing.
Hyena dance party feeding frenzy.
Flock of Geese Pillow Fight.
Vulture Charades Slumber Party
I want to bring you a word.
Everyone else will bring one too.
But nobody's will mean the same as mine.
My word is "Whoa"
It means Beautiful
in Kerouac
I want you to get so old
that you wont remember
If I gave you the same thing
when when you got married:
A beaver pelt
And a coupon
for 5 free air guitar lessons!
I want you to get so old.
That I have nothing left to give you but my pocketknife
Man,
If you had that, I'd be a stump,
and you'd be 6 again.
Light Bulb Deliverance
Pillow fights and Thumb Wars. Like Helllo!
I don't know how to be Romantic....
but
if you were the solution to the energy crisis
Id grab your solar panel ass
and slide my rough hand
between your legs
to flip your economy friendly heater on
I'd kiss your white hot, light bulb lips
to seduce you,
and let the eastern seaboard sink into
a century long power outage
....because you move me
If you were the worst techno music ever
Id have the best dance moves on the floor
and you wouldn't have to be ashamed of me anymore
because you'd crack up for a decade
before robo-rocking your hips
to the rythm of cocaine overdose keyboards
after all,
....its just me and you
....and 4 other dudes
on the dance floor
If you were the moon
Id be an army of nerds
sitting behind NASA desks
pumping out math equations
to get to you
we'd search for the the right trajectory
and never worry about the reverse
because breaking apart in the stratosphere
is fine.
we'd make heavy breathing nerd sounds
and speak in nerd
which isnt so much numbers and star wars
as it is
just rare passion
and maybe you'd forgive us
after we mapped you out
as the only thing in the sky
Id stay up late
and turn off the house lights
to peer through a telescope
at you
and wait for you to turn the lights back on
You want to know if you're a something? Or a nothing?
But I dont know how to be romantic....
All I know....is
If you were a war machine wet dream
You'd be the photgraphs inside my helmet
and the cool aluminum dog-tags in the heat
that I carried on every patrol
You'd have your rolling thunder tank breasts
pressed against the top of my head
with your thick landmine thighs
wrapped around my neck
Id suffocate under your
flamethrower kisses
and get ripped apart by
and your teenage orgasm grenades
my face would dissapear
from shotgun lipstick smears
and you're rusty bayonet fingers
would crack my ribs
but I'd wait for your second charge
If you were an atomic bomb
Id handle you with extreme care
but if youe exploded
Id catch all your tiny peices
and wait out the cloud of dust and
vaporized cities
to squeeze you in my palms
and rebuild you under extreme pressure
If you were a drunk
Id be your whiskey
and Id change the calendars
so every day was a good drinking Holiday
and we'd parade around New York Square
in perpetual St. Patty's sillyness
and you'd drink 9 of me, and
spill the tenth down your shirt
And Id say in a Deniro accent
"You lookin at me!?"
every time you opened your eyes
when you drank me
(because Id imagine it was a kiss)
Eventually youd set me on the curb
and crawl to that fire hyrdant
and judo chop its face off
because we both know,
that fire hyrdant,
was staring
If you were a flower for halloween
Id be a bee
in a giant sweaty suit
made of dead dogs and cardboard
Id throw rocks at your window
till you woke from your candy coma
so I could spill my love saturated guts out
You'd sigh and ask me to be romantic...
Id stand in the yard
and tell you....
"Your breasts are like........pillows."
And you'd sigh harder
and then I'd lay the real shit on you
"Can I fluff you pillows?"
I know.
I know.
Total Ladykiller.
Id make
the loudest buzzing sound youd ever heard
BZZZZZZZZZZ
and spread my arms like a bird
And buzz into the streets
before you
could say
Double You
Tea
Eff
Dearest,
I dont know how to be romantic. I dont know how to make you sigh.
I dont know poetry or how to dance. I dont know how to build space shuttles,
or survive atom bomb blasts...
But...
If you were deaf
Id be your silent movie
and I'd talk to you with clumsy hands
to tell you I loved you.
Id sign to you,
about the great electric sound in your chest
because in that cavity there's a movie
that crackles and shines
like the old black and white ones
from the fifties
about the war and the future and love
but eventually, i'd have to stop signing
So I could press down on your skin above your breasts
so lights will shine through your ribs
and sound will swell out of your throat
because the war and the future and love
are all still inside you
if you were blind
Id kiss you the way sailors kiss their girls
like you were a lighthouse
that I'd been flailing my limbs for years
to get to
And that kiss would tell you alot
and Id see a jazz concert in your eyes
because you're not a something.
Or a nothing.
You're an everything.
I dont know how to be romantic.
but....
Im going to take a piss and when I come back we'll talk about the Mighty Duck movies
I don't know how to be Romantic....
but
if you were the solution to the energy crisis
Id grab your solar panel ass
and slide my rough hand
between your legs
to flip your economy friendly heater on
I'd kiss your white hot, light bulb lips
to seduce you,
and let the eastern seaboard sink into
a century long power outage
....because you move me
If you were the worst techno music ever
Id have the best dance moves on the floor
and you wouldn't have to be ashamed of me anymore
because you'd crack up for a decade
before robo-rocking your hips
to the rythm of cocaine overdose keyboards
after all,
....its just me and you
....and 4 other dudes
on the dance floor
If you were the moon
Id be an army of nerds
sitting behind NASA desks
pumping out math equations
to get to you
we'd search for the the right trajectory
and never worry about the reverse
because breaking apart in the stratosphere
is fine.
we'd make heavy breathing nerd sounds
and speak in nerd
which isnt so much numbers and star wars
as it is
just rare passion
and maybe you'd forgive us
after we mapped you out
as the only thing in the sky
Id stay up late
and turn off the house lights
to peer through a telescope
at you
and wait for you to turn the lights back on
You want to know if you're a something? Or a nothing?
But I dont know how to be romantic....
All I know....is
If you were a war machine wet dream
You'd be the photgraphs inside my helmet
and the cool aluminum dog-tags in the heat
that I carried on every patrol
You'd have your rolling thunder tank breasts
pressed against the top of my head
with your thick landmine thighs
wrapped around my neck
Id suffocate under your
flamethrower kisses
and get ripped apart by
and your teenage orgasm grenades
my face would dissapear
from shotgun lipstick smears
and you're rusty bayonet fingers
would crack my ribs
but I'd wait for your second charge
If you were an atomic bomb
Id handle you with extreme care
but if youe exploded
Id catch all your tiny peices
and wait out the cloud of dust and
vaporized cities
to squeeze you in my palms
and rebuild you under extreme pressure
If you were a drunk
Id be your whiskey
and Id change the calendars
so every day was a good drinking Holiday
and we'd parade around New York Square
in perpetual St. Patty's sillyness
and you'd drink 9 of me, and
spill the tenth down your shirt
And Id say in a Deniro accent
"You lookin at me!?"
every time you opened your eyes
when you drank me
(because Id imagine it was a kiss)
Eventually youd set me on the curb
and crawl to that fire hyrdant
and judo chop its face off
because we both know,
that fire hyrdant,
was staring
If you were a flower for halloween
Id be a bee
in a giant sweaty suit
made of dead dogs and cardboard
Id throw rocks at your window
till you woke from your candy coma
so I could spill my love saturated guts out
You'd sigh and ask me to be romantic...
Id stand in the yard
and tell you....
"Your breasts are like........pillows."
And you'd sigh harder
and then I'd lay the real shit on you
"Can I fluff you pillows?"
I know.
I know.
Total Ladykiller.
Id make
the loudest buzzing sound youd ever heard
BZZZZZZZZZZ
and spread my arms like a bird
And buzz into the streets
before you
could say
Double You
Tea
Eff
Dearest,
I dont know how to be romantic. I dont know how to make you sigh.
I dont know poetry or how to dance. I dont know how to build space shuttles,
or survive atom bomb blasts...
But...
If you were deaf
Id be your silent movie
and I'd talk to you with clumsy hands
to tell you I loved you.
Id sign to you,
about the great electric sound in your chest
because in that cavity there's a movie
that crackles and shines
like the old black and white ones
from the fifties
about the war and the future and love
but eventually, i'd have to stop signing
So I could press down on your skin above your breasts
so lights will shine through your ribs
and sound will swell out of your throat
because the war and the future and love
are all still inside you
if you were blind
Id kiss you the way sailors kiss their girls
like you were a lighthouse
that I'd been flailing my limbs for years
to get to
And that kiss would tell you alot
and Id see a jazz concert in your eyes
because you're not a something.
Or a nothing.
You're an everything.
I dont know how to be romantic.
but....
Im going to take a piss and when I come back we'll talk about the Mighty Duck movies
Shark Belly
I had a hallucination while I was sick with the flu and a fever in a Mosul combat outpost. And the hallucination was me tied to the chest of a whale, diving deep and watching every ancient sea creature, shark, and whale come up from the depths to "Even the Score". I also woke up and watch a commercial featuring a flash of the A-bomb hitting Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And I also was being rained on. And with the fever, ever cold drop of rain felt like a sledgehammer smashing into me. This is the ensuing verbal assault. It should only make sense to people who know what kind of "Home" I'm talking about.
Let me tell you something about home.
Did you know that the flash from the atomic bomb
turned the sand in Hiroshima
into glass?
Thats how your lover wants you to be converted
From the cult
of "Im coming back"
to the religion of
"I am here"
In a flash!
So.
Dont become an avalanche of goodbyes.
Just. Explode!
Like a 3 Mile Island beach house.
Live together in radiated love.
Glow green at night.
Grow three arms and an extra nose.
Concieve Godzilla
So when he leaves one year.
Everybody he meets
Will sigh and say
"His parents must have been skyscrapers"
And they'll be right.
Listen Kid
That bomb took 45 seconds to fall.
Maybe that helps you realize the importance of 45 seconds.
Because even if that bomb fell for 45 years
It wouldnt be enough.
You can invent magic calendars
that read backwards
So that whenever you leave
You're actually going back to her
To fall in love
Over and over
Until your kisses skip like
An overplayed record
And your hearts explode
Like pens on an airplane
You can invent x-ray machines
That show the colors you didnt know existed.
And use them to camouflage the machine gun nests
in your mouth
But in one millionth of a second.
Modern American Science
Can birth a second sun just long enough
to prove that popcorn never lasts past the previews.
Lovers clothes never come off fast enough.
Kites will never take you to the moon.
And doctors will always say its Cancer.
Home can be alot of things.
It can be her body shaking like California
in earthquake season.
Turning your head into a thunder cloud
singing electric hallelujah praises
Sometimes its
Tired arms are the Atlantic swells
grabbing at the sides
of every ship thats leaving your harbor
Its a sleepy fuse
that leads to your head
waiting to be lit and
destroy your nightmares
with the noisy bar-room lullaby
of a thousand sad soldiers
drinking to forget
Its the gypsy kid spirit
That glows electric
in all train-station lanterns
And the tunnel a dozen kids
Dug from Santa Monica Pier
To China,
But never filled up.
Its one of the millions of
miracles of light.
that died over Roswell
in the 50's
Sometimes the weary walls of
a Hospital Corridor are Home.
And its buckling under too much bad news
For some people Home is a coal mine
in Pennsylvania
that will swallow them as it swallowed
every other honest working man
for 6 generations.
Home can fit in places air cannot.
There are no canaries in that house.
But the Descent Cages hold a dozen men.
and release them like doves
into the tunnels
So they can get used to being lowered into the ground.
But more importantly,
to make them feel like birds.
Kids want to feel like birds.
I want to feel like a bird.
You want to feel like a bird.
For some people
Home is an old Victorian house
built outside the city.
And when Katrina rolled in
the exodus started,
and all the windows and doors
were boarded up
and painted with
"We're coming back"
And they've been renting the 7 O'clock news ever since.
Paying for it, with the cash of their ears
Hearing every day
"You cannot go back"
Home is the reason we invent time machines.
Its the burts of red and green
All over the room on Christmas Eve
And the look on your face
that says "Im going to attack you. Fiercley"
For sharks its the ocean.
Every damn drop of it.
You can breathe in it
As much as you can drown in it.
Believe me!
Because since Hiroshima
I have been a shark
thats mouth has been gaping
its whole life
so that maybe
someday
in all my desperate yawning
I can say
that the WHOLE ocean
has passed through my gills
Because if you can never be the ocean.
Well then,
You can never be anything....
I know you've been chumming the water
with the meat and blood
of your own arms and legs
You'll sleep in my belly when I come back.
Listen Kid.
The reason I look so familiar is because
I had been everywhere before Hiroshima.
Where I forgot my tinted goggles.
And couldnt look away
If everybody could have seen what I saw
There would be no such thing as war.
Or Atomic fission.
And the Enola Gay would remain a Holy name
And when houses creaked at night
It was just them doing their best to say
"Thankyou for sleeping in me, just one more night."
I found your thighs and shoulders
In a cloud of red
In the Kuroshio
Converted and Baptized
Amen
Let me tell you something about home.
Did you know that the flash from the atomic bomb
turned the sand in Hiroshima
into glass?
Thats how your lover wants you to be converted
From the cult
of "Im coming back"
to the religion of
"I am here"
In a flash!
So.
Dont become an avalanche of goodbyes.
Just. Explode!
Like a 3 Mile Island beach house.
Live together in radiated love.
Glow green at night.
Grow three arms and an extra nose.
Concieve Godzilla
So when he leaves one year.
Everybody he meets
Will sigh and say
"His parents must have been skyscrapers"
And they'll be right.
Listen Kid
That bomb took 45 seconds to fall.
Maybe that helps you realize the importance of 45 seconds.
Because even if that bomb fell for 45 years
It wouldnt be enough.
You can invent magic calendars
that read backwards
So that whenever you leave
You're actually going back to her
To fall in love
Over and over
Until your kisses skip like
An overplayed record
And your hearts explode
Like pens on an airplane
You can invent x-ray machines
That show the colors you didnt know existed.
And use them to camouflage the machine gun nests
in your mouth
But in one millionth of a second.
Modern American Science
Can birth a second sun just long enough
to prove that popcorn never lasts past the previews.
Lovers clothes never come off fast enough.
Kites will never take you to the moon.
And doctors will always say its Cancer.
Home can be alot of things.
It can be her body shaking like California
in earthquake season.
Turning your head into a thunder cloud
singing electric hallelujah praises
Sometimes its
Tired arms are the Atlantic swells
grabbing at the sides
of every ship thats leaving your harbor
Its a sleepy fuse
that leads to your head
waiting to be lit and
destroy your nightmares
with the noisy bar-room lullaby
of a thousand sad soldiers
drinking to forget
Its the gypsy kid spirit
That glows electric
in all train-station lanterns
And the tunnel a dozen kids
Dug from Santa Monica Pier
To China,
But never filled up.
Its one of the millions of
miracles of light.
that died over Roswell
in the 50's
Sometimes the weary walls of
a Hospital Corridor are Home.
And its buckling under too much bad news
For some people Home is a coal mine
in Pennsylvania
that will swallow them as it swallowed
every other honest working man
for 6 generations.
Home can fit in places air cannot.
There are no canaries in that house.
But the Descent Cages hold a dozen men.
and release them like doves
into the tunnels
So they can get used to being lowered into the ground.
But more importantly,
to make them feel like birds.
Kids want to feel like birds.
I want to feel like a bird.
You want to feel like a bird.
For some people
Home is an old Victorian house
built outside the city.
And when Katrina rolled in
the exodus started,
and all the windows and doors
were boarded up
and painted with
"We're coming back"
And they've been renting the 7 O'clock news ever since.
Paying for it, with the cash of their ears
Hearing every day
"You cannot go back"
Home is the reason we invent time machines.
Its the burts of red and green
All over the room on Christmas Eve
And the look on your face
that says "Im going to attack you. Fiercley"
For sharks its the ocean.
Every damn drop of it.
You can breathe in it
As much as you can drown in it.
Believe me!
Because since Hiroshima
I have been a shark
thats mouth has been gaping
its whole life
so that maybe
someday
in all my desperate yawning
I can say
that the WHOLE ocean
has passed through my gills
Because if you can never be the ocean.
Well then,
You can never be anything....
I know you've been chumming the water
with the meat and blood
of your own arms and legs
You'll sleep in my belly when I come back.
Listen Kid.
The reason I look so familiar is because
I had been everywhere before Hiroshima.
Where I forgot my tinted goggles.
And couldnt look away
If everybody could have seen what I saw
There would be no such thing as war.
Or Atomic fission.
And the Enola Gay would remain a Holy name
And when houses creaked at night
It was just them doing their best to say
"Thankyou for sleeping in me, just one more night."
I found your thighs and shoulders
In a cloud of red
In the Kuroshio
Converted and Baptized
Amen
Sunday, February 7, 2010
We are the Avalanche
For a pair of specifically heavy boots. For the barn that almost burned to the ground when the planets aligned and we all acidentally came home. For everyone back home that still wants to tuck me in.
My name is Lee.
At least my first name is.
The most important thing you should know about me
Is that I like to put
preceeding my address.
I like to be sure.
Since I turned 9,
Ive been measuring my age
in Dog years.
A ratio of 1 human year to 7 dog years.
I am almost 630 dog years old now.
I am the opposite of young
And I know I can get kinda preachy these days
But I need someone to know the value of listening
And being sure
When I was a boy,
All the snow in the mountains melted
And the river swelled into our house
Like a long acheing scream that the mountains finally let out
after keeping the worlds secrets for a thousand years
The secrets were so loud
I thought it would break me in half
To listen to them howling in that flood.
At night the water rose even higher
and I watched all our horses get washed away by the current
Their eyes were HUGE
But they stayed so very VERY silent.
I asked my father why they stayed so quiet
When they knew they were going to drown
He said:
My father leaned towards my ear and finshed by saying
"Sometimes, we are supposed to lose our armies.... and even the war."
I asked him how I'd know when to lose MY war.
And he said "Just be silent, and listen. Like the horses."
His answers were always stories.
I think because he had a mustache.
The next month brought the fever and
that was the last story my father was able to tell me
But that story is why I have my name.
Well,
The water rolled in under our door for days
until it filled up the first floor
It swallowed ma's rocking chair
And then it rose past the pictures on the wall
Until it pushed our family to desperation
And we sat on the roof waiting for the river to rise to us...
Maybe even INTO us
It brought the ice age
My sister and I
made a telephone out of a two tin cans
and a long string
And I would talk her to sleep from one side of the roof
When she was cold
That was the closest my sister and I ever got
On that rooftop, waiting for the Ark
Seeing our own breaths in a can,
but hearing the others voice
It was like magic
And my stories kept her warm
One night she packed up two suitcases and went to sleep.
I snuck downstairs and felt them to see if they were heavy.
To see if she was really leaving
They were boulders.
We think she left for New York to be a nurse
Back then we didnt have Milk Carton kids
And we never heard from her again
Except once I think....
It was when the Palmers bought thier Model T,
It was the first time I rode in an automobile.
And we were laughing as we drove down the road
that led by ma and pas old house
We passed a young woman in the road,
with two suitcases banging against her thighs
as she struggled up the dirt road
I watched her summer dress flutter in our wake
Her face was veiled by the dust
But I just KNEW it was her
Somehow. I could feel it in my chest.
I felt like an avalanche
Waiting on a mountain for a suprise "HELLO!"
to bring me crashing down at the speed of light
to reply
I felt very heavy. And very happy.
Its strange how the first time you ride in an Autombile,
You can wish they were never invented
When we got to the end of the road,
I left the Palmers, and ran to the old farm house
I tore down the boards that covered the doors and windows
I used charcaol from the old fireplace
to smear a "Welcome Home Maria!"
on the front door
I made a telephone out of two rusty cans and a string
and placed one can carefully on the front porch
I closed the front door,
took the other can
and sat in dads old chair
.....waiting
I made sure to be quiet
Just like Pa said
I wanted to hear her small feet crunch through the gravel
and creak onto the porch.
So I could hear her little metallic voice ask
for "Just ONE more story Lee!"
I pressed my ears into the can
I was ready to press 12 years of bedtime stories into it too
But the gravel never crunched
And the porch never creaked
I leaned on the water damaged walls.
I imagined I could hear her say "Im right here"
And my avalanche came down without her
I cried into that can like Pickett cried
when he sent his boys across the field
whistling dixie, going to hell in a handbasket
I died the way Pickett died
When he learned all his liuetenants and commanders
were killed only fifty yards from the Union line
I left the house open
I didn't board up the windows or doors
I left the charcoal smeared across the decayed door
I put the cans and string telephone on the roof
Because my dad was right about some things
And wrong about others
Sometimes you SHOULDN'T lose your armies OR the war.
No matter what you hear
Even if you hear nothing
I know this because
when I travelled to New York with the Navy
many years later
I met one of the doctors
my sister had worked with
at a hospital
He told me she had died a few weeks or so
before the summer I saw her on the road
And to this day I am convinced
that it REALLY was my sister that came home that day
I think she took a few weeks to come back
because her suitcases were heavy,
filled with string and rusty cans
banging against her thighs
I am glad I saw her come back.
Doggy years arent any easier than human ones...
I had quite a few jobs after that
I was a fisherman in Vermont
I made ice cream and moonshine in Tennessee.
I built big Billboard signs for buisneses.
I was a cheap magic act in a shitty travelling circus
I was a navigator on a Navy ship in the Great Lakes
I was a typewriter salesman in Alabama
I think liked running moonshine the most though.
Or typewriters...
I fell in love with a very poor woman
who wouldnt buy a typewriter from me.
I asked why she wouldnt
thinking it was because they were hard times
for her and the rest of the country
But she said
"Because it wont fit in my luggage darling"
Nobody had ever called me darling before
or since. And nobody, I mean NOBODY
around there had money to gallavant around county.
Let alone the country
So, I asked her
to name three damn places
in the whole damn world
she'd need to take her damn luggage
And
She answered
"EVERYWHERE of course!"
Aint love Grand?
Like Hell it is!
Let me finish my story Jackass
Love is something you can be sure about.
And I like to be sure.
She said "Love has to be said with a sigh"
So we'd say "Love...ahhhh"
Seven months later we were married.
Nine months later
the doctor said it was cancer.
Love is impossible....
I remember where I was the day
of life sentences, and anvil heavy x-rays
The day every calendar in the world
ended in "6 months."
Maybe a year
I was 168 dog years old.
And I was the opposite of ready
When she started getting frail
I told her
"Everything will be ok."
Even though we both knew it wasnt true
It doesnt make me a liar.
It just a stubborn way of showing love.
Theres lots of ways to show that.
Im sure of it.
When her eyes became as dull
and as wide
as the Arctic circle
I knew she was going blind
So I learned to read Braille
And I taught her.
Id rush our trembling hands,
over the tiny bumps
that told her simple things
Ill tell you now,
If you ever want to appreciate
how beautiful a woman is
close your eyes
and read her body like Braille.
Softly
She'll think its weird at first
But we all have alot to learn
About what is beautiful
Especially from the blind.
It wasnt even half a human year before
The hospital became permanent
I never wandered the corridors
to kill time.
I couldnt even FIND time
And if I could
I would have shot it in the face
Repeatedly
We had to pass time
Even when there wasnt much left
We made the list of places we'd finally visit
when she got better.
It was called the EVERYWHERE LIST
Even though we both knew it should have been called
the Never never land list.
She liked to play a game called
"Count the number of times
Lee says "I LOVE YOU" in a day"
When she was conscious
I told her every two point five minutes
When she was asleep
I played my own game.
I would count the number of steps from my seat
to her bed. And make sure it was never more than three.
One
Two
Three
One Wednesday night
She squinted and mumbled for me
from her hospital bed
One
Two
Three
I kissed her forhead.
It was hot.
She said "Everywhere..."
She said "Love"
And sighed deeper than the Mariana trench
I said
"I know..."
My dad was right about some things....
Sometimes you just have to listen.
I ripped all the beeping cords off of her
and picked her up out of her bed
She didnt weigh anything.
I put her in a wheelchair
and rolled her out of there before anyone could stop me
I remember she looked like an avalanche in her hospital gown
tearing out of that sterile tomb like Loki
I helped her into our tiny car.
She smiled HUGE.
That night was like ANY other night
We had had hundreds before
We ate ice cream
We told jokes
And cracked up for a decade
We made love
We ached for a hundred extra years
We ached for a hundred extra days
We stayed awake talking and laughing
We thought we'd be awake all night
Awake for the rest of our lives....
But the spaces between her words grew longer
And all the film negatives of all the pictures we ever took
Were melting in their photo albums
She finally said "Im acheing...to hear you say it"
I thought of waking her to tell her .
But I thought that there would be another night.
There would always be another night
We had had hundreds before
ONNNNNNNNNNEEEE....
TWWWWWWWWWWOOOO....
THHHHRRRRRREEEE....
But there simply werent anymore nights
She died on a Thursday
She's been gone for a long time.
Since then Ive been counting the steps
to "EVERYWHERE of course!"
Since I knew, thats EXACTLY where she'd be
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
All the way to infinity....
I remember my youth
And it bursts into a thousand colorful peices
I remember love.
And it makes me feel achey breaky
And I want to run backwards.
Fast.
I want the thousand dog years
to TICK TOCK their way back
ALL THE WAY BACK!
So I can tell he horses that they'll be fine.
And to just close their eyes.
So I can let the mountains thousand year secret
crack me in half!
So the flood funnels into me like a black hole
I would hold it in my warm guts,
and spit it out into my rusty can
So my sister could have
the heat of a fourth of July Fireworks display
Sitting in that can with her
on that freezing rooftop.
I want to go back to tell dad
that he never had to be
on the recieveing end of any cannons
to be my hero.
I want to un-invent his fever,
and also automobiles,
so I can let my sisters suit-cases
bang against my legs,
knowing whats inside them.
So we could have got home at the same time,
and tore apart the boards that said "We're coming back",
and wrote with big triumphant smoky smears "We ARE Back!"
I want to go back to selling typewriters over and over again,
so I can hear the fearlessness in her voice when she said "Everywhere!".
I want to go back and kiss her HARD,
because thats the ONLY way we ever kissed!
I want to run back to saying "Love" with sighs,
and trade our list for boat tickets.
I want to attach rockets to your wheelchair
and send you out of the hospital
glowing into the dark night like Sputnik.
I want to run back and eat ice cream with you.
ALLLLLLLLLL NIGHT
But most of all,
.....I want another night
Just like any other
To tell you what you want to hear
when you ache the most
My name is Lee.
I am almost 630 dog years old now
I am the opposite of young
Soon there simply wont be any more nights
to tell you,
that
LOVE IS BIG
My name is Lee.
At least my first name is.
The most important thing you should know about me
Is that I like to put
"Universe, Milky Way Galaxy
Earth, North America"
preceeding my address.
I like to be sure.
Since I turned 9,
Ive been measuring my age
in Dog years.
A ratio of 1 human year to 7 dog years.
I am almost 630 dog years old now.
I am the opposite of young
And I know I can get kinda preachy these days
But I need someone to know the value of listening
And being sure
When I was a boy,
All the snow in the mountains melted
And the river swelled into our house
Like a long acheing scream that the mountains finally let out
after keeping the worlds secrets for a thousand years
The secrets were so loud
I thought it would break me in half
To listen to them howling in that flood.
At night the water rose even higher
and I watched all our horses get washed away by the current
Their eyes were HUGE
But they stayed so very VERY silent.
I asked my father why they stayed so quiet
When they knew they were going to drown
He said:
On the 2nd night at Gettsyburg,
Our artillery was landing on the 8th Virginia Cavalry Regiment
on Cemetery ridge.
And the whole ridge was ablaze
All we could see was the frantic silhouettes of men and horses
churning into long shadows in the smoke
We choked on the fog of gunpowder
and watched the only Yankee unit from Virginia
get torn down to skeletons
Many of the men had brothers and fathers
and even sons up there....
The tremendous roar of artillery
from down by the Peach Orchard
and the distant yelling of men
and neighing of horses
was all we heard for most of the night
until one soldier let out a cry unlike anything
we'd ever heard
from the dying OR the dead.
We were bombing his sons company.
We leaned our faces on our muskets
And every time the dull explosions lit up the clouds
you could see our entire regiment
wish they were on the recieving end of cannons that night
General Lee was on his horse watching this with us.
And I watched in silence right nex to him.
After the better half of an hour
he looked down from his horse
and told me himself,
that he could annihilate the entire Army of the Potomac
in a single maneuver.
And he could do it "TONIGHT!"
But he turned away and kept watching
the way old sea captains used to watch the Atlantic
Every time they knew "Tommorow" was THE day
that they fell off the edge of the earth
General Lee knew...
HE KNEW!
The next day would have to be the last day of the battle
...But he could hear the electrical storm of Americas heart-beat
Throbbing in the air seperating the two armies
A tremendous pump puMP PUMPING
Louder than all the cannons in the war
The last thing he said to me was
"The only thing seperating those men from us.
Is that field.... that DAMNED FIELD!"
His eyes were as wide and orange as the ridge.
And JUST as sad.
Because he wasn't talking about distance.
Lee stayed silent for the rest of the night.
Even past the end of the bombardment.
And Americas thick heartbeat spoke to him
and pleaded "Not tonight"
And so the next day, Lee threw the war
On that very field
And Pickett tried to strap a giant magnet to his chest.
And paint his uniform like a big red bullseye
And ride his horse to the front of the charge
My father leaned towards my ear and finshed by saying
"Sometimes, we are supposed to lose our armies.... and even the war."
I asked him how I'd know when to lose MY war.
And he said "Just be silent, and listen. Like the horses."
His answers were always stories.
I think because he had a mustache.
The next month brought the fever and
that was the last story my father was able to tell me
But that story is why I have my name.
Well,
The water rolled in under our door for days
until it filled up the first floor
It swallowed ma's rocking chair
And then it rose past the pictures on the wall
Until it pushed our family to desperation
And we sat on the roof waiting for the river to rise to us...
Maybe even INTO us
It brought the ice age
My sister and I
made a telephone out of a two tin cans
and a long string
And I would talk her to sleep from one side of the roof
When she was cold
That was the closest my sister and I ever got
On that rooftop, waiting for the Ark
Seeing our own breaths in a can,
but hearing the others voice
It was like magic
And my stories kept her warm
One night she packed up two suitcases and went to sleep.
I snuck downstairs and felt them to see if they were heavy.
To see if she was really leaving
They were boulders.
We think she left for New York to be a nurse
Back then we didnt have Milk Carton kids
And we never heard from her again
Except once I think....
It was when the Palmers bought thier Model T,
It was the first time I rode in an automobile.
And we were laughing as we drove down the road
that led by ma and pas old house
We passed a young woman in the road,
with two suitcases banging against her thighs
as she struggled up the dirt road
I watched her summer dress flutter in our wake
Her face was veiled by the dust
But I just KNEW it was her
Somehow. I could feel it in my chest.
I felt like an avalanche
Waiting on a mountain for a suprise "HELLO!"
to bring me crashing down at the speed of light
to reply
I felt very heavy. And very happy.
Its strange how the first time you ride in an Autombile,
You can wish they were never invented
When we got to the end of the road,
I left the Palmers, and ran to the old farm house
I tore down the boards that covered the doors and windows
I used charcaol from the old fireplace
to smear a "Welcome Home Maria!"
on the front door
I made a telephone out of two rusty cans and a string
and placed one can carefully on the front porch
I closed the front door,
took the other can
and sat in dads old chair
.....waiting
I made sure to be quiet
Just like Pa said
I wanted to hear her small feet crunch through the gravel
and creak onto the porch.
So I could hear her little metallic voice ask
for "Just ONE more story Lee!"
I pressed my ears into the can
I was ready to press 12 years of bedtime stories into it too
But the gravel never crunched
And the porch never creaked
I leaned on the water damaged walls.
I imagined I could hear her say "Im right here"
And my avalanche came down without her
I cried into that can like Pickett cried
when he sent his boys across the field
whistling dixie, going to hell in a handbasket
I died the way Pickett died
When he learned all his liuetenants and commanders
were killed only fifty yards from the Union line
I left the house open
I didn't board up the windows or doors
I left the charcoal smeared across the decayed door
I put the cans and string telephone on the roof
Because my dad was right about some things
And wrong about others
Sometimes you SHOULDN'T lose your armies OR the war.
No matter what you hear
Even if you hear nothing
I know this because
when I travelled to New York with the Navy
many years later
I met one of the doctors
my sister had worked with
at a hospital
He told me she had died a few weeks or so
before the summer I saw her on the road
And to this day I am convinced
that it REALLY was my sister that came home that day
I think she took a few weeks to come back
because her suitcases were heavy,
filled with string and rusty cans
banging against her thighs
I am glad I saw her come back.
Doggy years arent any easier than human ones...
I had quite a few jobs after that
I was a fisherman in Vermont
I made ice cream and moonshine in Tennessee.
I built big Billboard signs for buisneses.
I was a cheap magic act in a shitty travelling circus
I was a navigator on a Navy ship in the Great Lakes
I was a typewriter salesman in Alabama
I think liked running moonshine the most though.
Or typewriters...
I fell in love with a very poor woman
who wouldnt buy a typewriter from me.
I asked why she wouldnt
thinking it was because they were hard times
for her and the rest of the country
But she said
"Because it wont fit in my luggage darling"
Nobody had ever called me darling before
or since. And nobody, I mean NOBODY
around there had money to gallavant around county.
Let alone the country
So, I asked her
to name three damn places
in the whole damn world
she'd need to take her damn luggage
And
She answered
"EVERYWHERE of course!"
Aint love Grand?
Like Hell it is!
Let me finish my story Jackass
Love is something you can be sure about.
And I like to be sure.
She said "Love has to be said with a sigh"
So we'd say "Love...ahhhh"
Seven months later we were married.
Nine months later
the doctor said it was cancer.
Love is impossible....
I remember where I was the day
of life sentences, and anvil heavy x-rays
The day every calendar in the world
ended in "6 months."
Maybe a year
I was 168 dog years old.
And I was the opposite of ready
When she started getting frail
I told her
"Everything will be ok."
Even though we both knew it wasnt true
It doesnt make me a liar.
It just a stubborn way of showing love.
Theres lots of ways to show that.
Im sure of it.
When her eyes became as dull
and as wide
as the Arctic circle
I knew she was going blind
So I learned to read Braille
And I taught her.
Id rush our trembling hands,
over the tiny bumps
that told her simple things
Ill tell you now,
If you ever want to appreciate
how beautiful a woman is
close your eyes
and read her body like Braille.
Softly
She'll think its weird at first
But we all have alot to learn
About what is beautiful
Especially from the blind.
It wasnt even half a human year before
The hospital became permanent
I never wandered the corridors
to kill time.
I couldnt even FIND time
And if I could
I would have shot it in the face
Repeatedly
We had to pass time
Even when there wasnt much left
We made the list of places we'd finally visit
when she got better.
It was called the EVERYWHERE LIST
Even though we both knew it should have been called
the Never never land list.
She liked to play a game called
"Count the number of times
Lee says "I LOVE YOU" in a day"
When she was conscious
I told her every two point five minutes
When she was asleep
I played my own game.
I would count the number of steps from my seat
to her bed. And make sure it was never more than three.
One
Two
Three
One Wednesday night
She squinted and mumbled for me
from her hospital bed
One
Two
Three
I kissed her forhead.
It was hot.
She said "Everywhere..."
She said "Love"
And sighed deeper than the Mariana trench
I said
"I know..."
My dad was right about some things....
Sometimes you just have to listen.
I ripped all the beeping cords off of her
and picked her up out of her bed
She didnt weigh anything.
I put her in a wheelchair
and rolled her out of there before anyone could stop me
I remember she looked like an avalanche in her hospital gown
tearing out of that sterile tomb like Loki
I helped her into our tiny car.
She smiled HUGE.
That night was like ANY other night
We had had hundreds before
We ate ice cream
We told jokes
And cracked up for a decade
We made love
We ached for a hundred extra years
We ached for a hundred extra days
We stayed awake talking and laughing
We thought we'd be awake all night
Awake for the rest of our lives....
But the spaces between her words grew longer
And all the film negatives of all the pictures we ever took
Were melting in their photo albums
She finally said "Im acheing...to hear you say it"
I thought of waking her to tell her .
But I thought that there would be another night.
There would always be another night
We had had hundreds before
ONNNNNNNNNNEEEE....
TWWWWWWWWWWOOOO....
THHHHRRRRRREEEE....
But there simply werent anymore nights
She died on a Thursday
She's been gone for a long time.
Since then Ive been counting the steps
to "EVERYWHERE of course!"
Since I knew, thats EXACTLY where she'd be
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
All the way to infinity....
I remember my youth
And it bursts into a thousand colorful peices
I remember love.
And it makes me feel achey breaky
And I want to run backwards.
Fast.
I want the thousand dog years
to TICK TOCK their way back
ALL THE WAY BACK!
So I can tell he horses that they'll be fine.
And to just close their eyes.
So I can let the mountains thousand year secret
crack me in half!
So the flood funnels into me like a black hole
I would hold it in my warm guts,
and spit it out into my rusty can
So my sister could have
the heat of a fourth of July Fireworks display
Sitting in that can with her
on that freezing rooftop.
I want to go back to tell dad
that he never had to be
on the recieveing end of any cannons
to be my hero.
I want to un-invent his fever,
and also automobiles,
so I can let my sisters suit-cases
bang against my legs,
knowing whats inside them.
So we could have got home at the same time,
and tore apart the boards that said "We're coming back",
and wrote with big triumphant smoky smears "We ARE Back!"
I want to go back to selling typewriters over and over again,
so I can hear the fearlessness in her voice when she said "Everywhere!".
I want to go back and kiss her HARD,
because thats the ONLY way we ever kissed!
I want to run back to saying "Love" with sighs,
and trade our list for boat tickets.
I want to attach rockets to your wheelchair
and send you out of the hospital
glowing into the dark night like Sputnik.
I want to run back and eat ice cream with you.
ALLLLLLLLLL NIGHT
But most of all,
.....I want another night
Just like any other
To tell you what you want to hear
when you ache the most
My name is Lee.
I am almost 630 dog years old now
I am the opposite of young
Soon there simply wont be any more nights
to tell you,
that
LOVE IS BIG
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Marlon Brando
On R&R, My brother held up his beer.
Offering it to the ceiling fan
And yelled to the whole world.
"God Bless America... And No place else!"
And the neighbors
On their balcony cheered back
"Right on man!”
And so did all the other 49 states.
We had a good laugh at that.
We skateboarded through Isla Vista
And breathed the salty air
deep in our lungs
Later,
I learned that
If drunken linoleum face planting
were an Olympic sport.
Id be the stuff of legends
And the next evening
When we crept along rocky coast
My brother told me that the black gum stuck to our legs
was oil
left over from a spill in the 70's
And that dead and dying animals
were still washing up
4 decades later.
Sometimes deaths' leftovers stick to you
For years.
Offering it to the ceiling fan
And yelled to the whole world.
"God Bless America... And No place else!"
And the neighbors
On their balcony cheered back
"Right on man!”
And so did all the other 49 states.
We had a good laugh at that.
We skateboarded through Isla Vista
And breathed the salty air
deep in our lungs
Later,
I learned that
If drunken linoleum face planting
were an Olympic sport.
Id be the stuff of legends
And the next evening
When we crept along rocky coast
My brother told me that the black gum stuck to our legs
was oil
left over from a spill in the 70's
And that dead and dying animals
were still washing up
4 decades later.
Sometimes deaths' leftovers stick to you
For years.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Church of the Chronic Under-Acheiver.
Procrastinators: Leaders of Tommorow! My inner slacker often becomes my outer slacker.
I wrote the Holiest of books
on the hood of a car
in the middle of summer
I want to start a cult,
without the white robes and incest
I want the Woodstock Movement
without the Waco ending
We will live under life-gaurd shacks
and believe in pinky promises
trampolines, and loud sex
We will carry our lunches
in red handkerchiefs tied to sticks
Because we beleive in Ham Sandwhiches,
and the open road.
We throw water balloons
at other cars on the freeway.
Because we only believe in popping them,
or pretending they are boobs.
We will use brass knuckles
to enforce the NO Beard policy
We believe in breaking bottles,
and arriving 1 minute too late
to EVERY train station
So that we can board it with horses,
like Bank Robbers in the Wild West.
We believe in the magical quality of Crop Circles
and roller coaster butterfly stomach syndrome
We believe in climbing trees,
bangsticking sharks
and bonfires fueled mostly by marshmallows
and black gunpowder.
We believe in foodfights,
and pray to neon signs pointing west.
We root for the 340lb sommersaulting gymnast at the Olympics
No matter what your name is
We will call you "Herby"
All Day
We believe in samurai sword vs. cinder block battles.
And that Oprah is probably a cool guy.
We say "Listen here preggo, I can't hear you,
over that screaming baby in your stomach!"
When we mean
"Theres something great in there"
We are no good at discussing fine art
But we can put the emphasis on MOAN
every time the art curator says "Mona Lisa."
We believe in tearing apart expensive putting greens
And taking our glasses off to see better
We are the Church
of busy city intersection light saber fights.
And beached whales stuffed full of TNT.
Exploding!
We decorate fancy cars
And silicon fun bags on Trophy wives
with putrid whale guts!
Because nothing is more sacriligeous to us
than people who dont appreciate Ninja Stars
Our ism has no name
It doesnt NEED a name
Because everyone believes in being happy.
I wrote the Holiest of books
on the hood of a car
in the middle of summer
I want to start a cult,
without the white robes and incest
I want the Woodstock Movement
without the Waco ending
We will live under life-gaurd shacks
and believe in pinky promises
trampolines, and loud sex
We will carry our lunches
in red handkerchiefs tied to sticks
Because we beleive in Ham Sandwhiches,
and the open road.
We throw water balloons
at other cars on the freeway.
Because we only believe in popping them,
or pretending they are boobs.
We will use brass knuckles
to enforce the NO Beard policy
We believe in breaking bottles,
and arriving 1 minute too late
to EVERY train station
So that we can board it with horses,
like Bank Robbers in the Wild West.
We believe in the magical quality of Crop Circles
and roller coaster butterfly stomach syndrome
We believe in climbing trees,
bangsticking sharks
and bonfires fueled mostly by marshmallows
and black gunpowder.
We believe in foodfights,
and pray to neon signs pointing west.
We root for the 340lb sommersaulting gymnast at the Olympics
No matter what your name is
We will call you "Herby"
All Day
We believe in samurai sword vs. cinder block battles.
And that Oprah is probably a cool guy.
We say "Listen here preggo, I can't hear you,
over that screaming baby in your stomach!"
When we mean
"Theres something great in there"
We are no good at discussing fine art
But we can put the emphasis on MOAN
every time the art curator says "Mona Lisa."
We believe in tearing apart expensive putting greens
And taking our glasses off to see better
We are the Church
of busy city intersection light saber fights.
And beached whales stuffed full of TNT.
Exploding!
We decorate fancy cars
And silicon fun bags on Trophy wives
with putrid whale guts!
Because nothing is more sacriligeous to us
than people who dont appreciate Ninja Stars
Our ism has no name
It doesnt NEED a name
Because everyone believes in being happy.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
BANGARANG! A Hesperian Musical
From the Knife fighters in Myrtle Beach, to the strippers in Austin, to the Sales-man in San Diego with teeth like piano Keys. There is a weird technicolor high five waiting for you.
Bouncing lights in the sky are always
Either the lights in Downtown Heaven
or UFOs
Both of them make me wish I was an astronaut.
Mystery is a tragic gift.
You are a mysterious gift.
Which is good
Because everyone
Is tired of tragedy.
Vietnam and the 80s were enough.
For you I want the jungle with-out the slaughter
And the mullet without the burden
I want to drop Molotovs off the Eiffel Tower
and Waltz on frozen ponds with steam irons
as ice skates.
Just to see.
.....just to see
if we burst through the ice
What the last thing you'd say to me
Would be.
So I can whisper to you
that this Pond is only neck deep.
and that your breasts look like a sideways 8
with the right one, being the bottom half of 8.
And that its funny how 8 is the perfect number.
Arent you sick of not having a secret handshake?
That involves kissing!
And reading nipples like braille.
Braille for "Oh yeaaaaahh"
I want to catch up on a year of missed kissing
It would take about 5 days
of woodpeckering your face into a lipstick swamp
to make up for 12 months of not being caught
under your storm-drain eyes.
I like to imagine that I am the Pope.
And in my first televised speech
I show up wearing a pair of gator skin boots
And thank the Devil for the promotion.
Just to hear Italy crack wide open.
All the things I need to know
Are hidden.
Are all the dentists in the world
secretly Nazis, like we've all suspected since
mom put the fear into us on Halloween?
Where do escape artists hide the key when they're naked?
Even though its about as likley as a prom night virgin,
I still want to know if Shoko Asohara is enjoying
His prison sex?
Can the Wizard I met
in the Humid mountains of Georgia
cast a spell of unbreakable Love
and shake out the the Roaring Twenties
from his Sherwood forest beard
Or was smuggling moonshine his only talent?
You have the longest name Ive ever heard.
I takes me a week to say it.
And thats if I wake up early to start.
Your name is magic.
Like you
Its the sound of the circus
when we went and turned
the bearded lady's face
into a pinata.
Its the sound of a summers worth
of crickets
swarming through the trees.
Its the sound of shrapnel
ripping through hummvees
And touching absolutley
nobody
When Im with you
I feel like a lightning rod
trying to pull information out
of the swelling clouds of your lips.
I want you to tell me if you know
how to build a flux capacitor
And who built the Headless Horsemans treehouse?
I want to know if I can carry you
on my shoulders.
And if you want to sling pistols
and stomp through saloons winning back the west
all over again
in the rowdiest bar-brawl of all time.
Bouncing lights in the sky are always
Either the lights in Downtown Heaven
or UFOs
Both of them make me wish I was an astronaut.
Mystery is a tragic gift.
You are a mysterious gift.
Which is good
Because everyone
Is tired of tragedy.
Vietnam and the 80s were enough.
For you I want the jungle with-out the slaughter
And the mullet without the burden
I want to drop Molotovs off the Eiffel Tower
and Waltz on frozen ponds with steam irons
as ice skates.
Just to see.
.....just to see
if we burst through the ice
What the last thing you'd say to me
Would be.
So I can whisper to you
that this Pond is only neck deep.
and that your breasts look like a sideways 8
with the right one, being the bottom half of 8.
And that its funny how 8 is the perfect number.
Arent you sick of not having a secret handshake?
That involves kissing!
And reading nipples like braille.
Braille for "Oh yeaaaaahh"
I want to catch up on a year of missed kissing
It would take about 5 days
of woodpeckering your face into a lipstick swamp
to make up for 12 months of not being caught
under your storm-drain eyes.
I like to imagine that I am the Pope.
And in my first televised speech
I show up wearing a pair of gator skin boots
And thank the Devil for the promotion.
Just to hear Italy crack wide open.
All the things I need to know
Are hidden.
Are all the dentists in the world
secretly Nazis, like we've all suspected since
mom put the fear into us on Halloween?
Where do escape artists hide the key when they're naked?
Even though its about as likley as a prom night virgin,
I still want to know if Shoko Asohara is enjoying
His prison sex?
Can the Wizard I met
in the Humid mountains of Georgia
cast a spell of unbreakable Love
and shake out the the Roaring Twenties
from his Sherwood forest beard
Or was smuggling moonshine his only talent?
You have the longest name Ive ever heard.
I takes me a week to say it.
And thats if I wake up early to start.
Your name is magic.
Like you
Its the sound of the circus
when we went and turned
the bearded lady's face
into a pinata.
Its the sound of a summers worth
of crickets
swarming through the trees.
Its the sound of shrapnel
ripping through hummvees
And touching absolutley
nobody
When Im with you
I feel like a lightning rod
trying to pull information out
of the swelling clouds of your lips.
I want you to tell me if you know
how to build a flux capacitor
And who built the Headless Horsemans treehouse?
I want to know if I can carry you
on my shoulders.
And if you want to sling pistols
and stomp through saloons winning back the west
all over again
in the rowdiest bar-brawl of all time.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
The Monster Mash
Somebody asked me what its like to die once. How was I supposed to know. I died for like...a few seconds when I was 11 completley saturated with anesthetics on an operating table. The truth is...death feels like a lot of things. A Vampire would know.
You asked me what its like to die.
I didnt have an answer.
You attacked me horizontally
But probably just because of my cape.
So I grabbed your wrists
And felt your bank robbery suspense
And bit you like I bit
A few lovers before.
Tongue tied to a girl
whos got the dictionary between her legs
She says "Soon Ill let you go"
but she doesnt mean it.
No way.
Ive memorized A through Z
And she still says I cant spell.
I covered her mouth
But failed to keep
That noisy stream
Of bats from
Pouring out like a storm.
Must have been those little
Devils
That fogged up the windows.
Or the open bathroom door
after I kicked it in
and snatched you mid-shower
And plugged you into the electric socket.
We're like tangled Christmas lights
Bed Breaking.
Clothes throwing.
Lamp smashing Christmas lights.
Pressed against the wall.
Scandalous!
Eh, this isnt really my holiday
Halloween is.
I wish you
Would dress up in fishnets.
Or nothing.
Get "Undressed up"
for All Hallows Eve.
So my teeth would hurt
From gnawing on your shoulder bones.
I dont really watch TV.
(Not enough blood)
But,
If I hold your ankles really high
And spread them
Like glowing white antennae
Do you tune into the
"Oh My God Channel?"
Or...is that what the metal
from the Handcuffs is for?
I bought you a
Vibrating thong
"Modern m-ASS-terpeice"
Im a blood-sucker for
Catchy advertising
And retarded puns.
Double Whammy.
Ok.
Ill convert you.
And drink your blood.
Maybe do some creepy vampire shit.
Like....speak in a thick accent.
But really Im just interested
In kissing your inner thigh
Till you heat up in a
Red thong blaze
And explode
Like a Vegas stage act
And appear somewhere rediculous.
Like, hanging from the ceiling
Upside down.
We'll have to tie you up.
Or down.
Which-ever you prefer.
And Ill "Turn" you.
With one good bite.
By morning
Your tongue will become
A thirsty knife.
And then we'll blow out the candles.
And go to bed.
You can know what its like to die
Like watching the frozen lakes melt,
And realizing
They may never freeze over again
To connect me with the you,
And bridge my way home.
Like wishing you were the only person
Id ever spent the night converting.
You asked me what its like to die.
I didnt have an answer.
You attacked me horizontally
But probably just because of my cape.
So I grabbed your wrists
And felt your bank robbery suspense
And bit you like I bit
A few lovers before.
Tongue tied to a girl
whos got the dictionary between her legs
She says "Soon Ill let you go"
but she doesnt mean it.
No way.
Ive memorized A through Z
And she still says I cant spell.
I covered her mouth
But failed to keep
That noisy stream
Of bats from
Pouring out like a storm.
Must have been those little
Devils
That fogged up the windows.
Or the open bathroom door
after I kicked it in
and snatched you mid-shower
And plugged you into the electric socket.
We're like tangled Christmas lights
Bed Breaking.
Clothes throwing.
Lamp smashing Christmas lights.
Pressed against the wall.
Scandalous!
Eh, this isnt really my holiday
Halloween is.
I wish you
Would dress up in fishnets.
Or nothing.
Get "Undressed up"
for All Hallows Eve.
So my teeth would hurt
From gnawing on your shoulder bones.
I dont really watch TV.
(Not enough blood)
But,
If I hold your ankles really high
And spread them
Like glowing white antennae
Do you tune into the
"Oh My God Channel?"
Or...is that what the metal
from the Handcuffs is for?
I bought you a
Vibrating thong
"Modern m-ASS-terpeice"
Im a blood-sucker for
Catchy advertising
And retarded puns.
Double Whammy.
Ok.
Ill convert you.
And drink your blood.
Maybe do some creepy vampire shit.
Like....speak in a thick accent.
But really Im just interested
In kissing your inner thigh
Till you heat up in a
Red thong blaze
And explode
Like a Vegas stage act
And appear somewhere rediculous.
Like, hanging from the ceiling
Upside down.
We'll have to tie you up.
Or down.
Which-ever you prefer.
And Ill "Turn" you.
With one good bite.
By morning
Your tongue will become
A thirsty knife.
And then we'll blow out the candles.
And go to bed.
You can know what its like to die
Like watching the frozen lakes melt,
And realizing
They may never freeze over again
To connect me with the you,
And bridge my way home.
Like wishing you were the only person
Id ever spent the night converting.
Friday, August 28, 2009
We Can BOTH Recite Every Line From All 6 Star Wars Movies
Someone once told me, to be a "Favorite is something we all want to be" I didnt know what the fuck they were talking about until I read D. Browns poem, and thought....Ahhh...yes. I even realized it like that too, I said out loud "Ahhhh yes" Then I was flipping through a magazine and there is a picture of a turtle, smugly mounting another turtle doggy style. They looked like some happy turtles.
School was as useless to me
as a box full of napkins
next to a cold BBQ pit
so I dropped out of the 5th grade
And spent all my summers karate chopping
watermelons to into gooey nothingness
in my grandmas garage
perfecting the art of kissing
on my hand
and acting and talking tough
to mirrors that called me "Frodo"
...by the time I was 32
I was smashing
cinder blocks to dust
with the wrecking ball of my face
and kissing?
lets just say
practice makes perfect
and by now
Id be perfect times infinity
I may not be Bruce Lee
but Im tough.
Like woodpecker lips.
And nobody calls me Frodo anymore
they call me
"Lou-sir"
Its French for "Badass"
or some shit....
When I met you at the fair
you asked me if I wanted to go on the Ferris Wheel
Do I?!
We weighed it down with our thick and heavy kissing
until later, amidst all the electric light and young noise
I decided to tell you about myself.
And win you over.
I told you I fight bears for a living
.......It was the only thing I could think of
but you still sighed like you've been running
from bears your whole life.
I told you about
my cool skills
"For instance
I know how to build a hovercraft
..and...."
well thats pretty much it
but if you ever want to float
I'd keep you suspended
for as long as you can handle
not being a part of the earth
I dont need to be your first lover.
Or your best lover.
Just your favorite.
After my Zombie Survival and Awareness meetings
we went back to the garage
and had a Karaoke contest
until our lungs were sore
from intense competition
and I had to bark
"Shut the fuck up!"
to get you to put the mic down
and you yelled "Fuck you"
and Grandma hollered from upstairs
"Hey! Theres a whole lotta fucking going on down there!"
and we went back to singing badly
until you asked me if I thought you were pretty
Of course I said
"Your lips
...your lips are so big
you look like you could whisper in your own ear.
And with those glasses...you look like you can see the future."
(Thats pretty to me)
And you smiled as wide as the Mississippi
like you've been talking to yourself your whole life
and those big ass car wind-shields on your face
really are magic
but nobody knows
except me
Shhhh.
The fist time we slept together
I had a feeling I wasnt any good
But I tried.....
A few days later I snuck into your journal
and read the entry from that night:
"We fucked like.....turtles."
So....you're saying Im pretty much an animal!?
You always indulged me in playing dress up
like the time you put on a leather skull cap
and a red scarf, and a huge pair of goggles
and sat in the side cart of my motorcycle
we grew curly mustaches in a day
and raced from Oceanside to Austin
robbing every 7/11 we could
like space age outlaws
We were rediculous
we went 100mph
in a 20 zone
and you flirted our way out of a ticket
It made me jealous and proud
I held the cashiers at gunpoint,
and yelled for you to
“Grab everything we need for a post apocalyptic Mad Max scenario.”
And you ran frantically through the store
and filled your pockets.
We stopped down the road a few miles
and you emptied your pockets.
And my proud face went blank
Fruit roll ups?
“ Dude….You stole 7 fruit roll-ups, and a root beer?
Dude….epic fail.
What kind of fucking mad max movie did you have in mind?”
And you were all
“Dude Im a pussy,
I didnt want to get caught stealing
a bunch of stuff!"
And I yelled "What kind of pussy?"
and you said "A Big one"
And I said "No way! Thats the worst kind!"
And I thought about disconnecting your damn little side cart at 90MPH,
the whole way through Arizona.
Later you asked
Do you still love me when I mess up?
Yes,
I love you even when you're a pain in the ass.
How much of a pain in the ass?
Mother in law pain in the ass.
Oh thats a bad pain in the ass....
Remember when you asked me
if I would still love you if you were fat?
"As long as you picked me over a pizza."
You re-assured me
Pizza, was my only competition.
You always were the honest one
You once drank the Niles worth of cheap wine
at your brothers wedding.
And confessed to me,
that I wasnt your first
and that "Turtle"
doesnt translate to "Animal"
in the way I thought it did
And then you said I wasnt your first
Or your best.
But I was definetley your favorite.
And it wasnt "Opposite Day"
School was as useless to me
as a box full of napkins
next to a cold BBQ pit
so I dropped out of the 5th grade
And spent all my summers karate chopping
watermelons to into gooey nothingness
in my grandmas garage
perfecting the art of kissing
on my hand
and acting and talking tough
to mirrors that called me "Frodo"
...by the time I was 32
I was smashing
cinder blocks to dust
with the wrecking ball of my face
and kissing?
lets just say
practice makes perfect
and by now
Id be perfect times infinity
I may not be Bruce Lee
but Im tough.
Like woodpecker lips.
And nobody calls me Frodo anymore
they call me
"Lou-sir"
Its French for "Badass"
or some shit....
When I met you at the fair
you asked me if I wanted to go on the Ferris Wheel
Do I?!
We weighed it down with our thick and heavy kissing
until later, amidst all the electric light and young noise
I decided to tell you about myself.
And win you over.
I told you I fight bears for a living
.......It was the only thing I could think of
but you still sighed like you've been running
from bears your whole life.
I told you about
my cool skills
"For instance
I know how to build a hovercraft
..and...."
well thats pretty much it
but if you ever want to float
I'd keep you suspended
for as long as you can handle
not being a part of the earth
I dont need to be your first lover.
Or your best lover.
Just your favorite.
After my Zombie Survival and Awareness meetings
we went back to the garage
and had a Karaoke contest
until our lungs were sore
from intense competition
and I had to bark
"Shut the fuck up!"
to get you to put the mic down
and you yelled "Fuck you"
and Grandma hollered from upstairs
"Hey! Theres a whole lotta fucking going on down there!"
and we went back to singing badly
until you asked me if I thought you were pretty
Of course I said
"Your lips
...your lips are so big
you look like you could whisper in your own ear.
And with those glasses...you look like you can see the future."
(Thats pretty to me)
And you smiled as wide as the Mississippi
like you've been talking to yourself your whole life
and those big ass car wind-shields on your face
really are magic
but nobody knows
except me
Shhhh.
The fist time we slept together
I had a feeling I wasnt any good
But I tried.....
A few days later I snuck into your journal
and read the entry from that night:
"We fucked like.....turtles."
So....you're saying Im pretty much an animal!?
You always indulged me in playing dress up
like the time you put on a leather skull cap
and a red scarf, and a huge pair of goggles
and sat in the side cart of my motorcycle
we grew curly mustaches in a day
and raced from Oceanside to Austin
robbing every 7/11 we could
like space age outlaws
We were rediculous
we went 100mph
in a 20 zone
and you flirted our way out of a ticket
It made me jealous and proud
I held the cashiers at gunpoint,
and yelled for you to
“Grab everything we need for a post apocalyptic Mad Max scenario.”
And you ran frantically through the store
and filled your pockets.
We stopped down the road a few miles
and you emptied your pockets.
And my proud face went blank
Fruit roll ups?
“ Dude….You stole 7 fruit roll-ups, and a root beer?
Dude….epic fail.
What kind of fucking mad max movie did you have in mind?”
And you were all
“Dude Im a pussy,
I didnt want to get caught stealing
a bunch of stuff!"
And I yelled "What kind of pussy?"
and you said "A Big one"
And I said "No way! Thats the worst kind!"
And I thought about disconnecting your damn little side cart at 90MPH,
the whole way through Arizona.
Later you asked
Do you still love me when I mess up?
Yes,
I love you even when you're a pain in the ass.
How much of a pain in the ass?
Mother in law pain in the ass.
Oh thats a bad pain in the ass....
Remember when you asked me
if I would still love you if you were fat?
"As long as you picked me over a pizza."
You re-assured me
Pizza, was my only competition.
You always were the honest one
You once drank the Niles worth of cheap wine
at your brothers wedding.
And confessed to me,
that I wasnt your first
and that "Turtle"
doesnt translate to "Animal"
in the way I thought it did
And then you said I wasnt your first
Or your best.
But I was definetley your favorite.
And it wasnt "Opposite Day"
Monday, June 29, 2009
Long Island Silent
When I asked my grandmother how she was
the answer was 9 decades long
because she was
she was the great depression
and the great wars
and the walk on the moon
But most of all, she was still in love
When she talked about Grandpa
her lips would quiver
like the San Andreas fault
She'd lean against the sink edge
and stare down the drain
and the earthquake on her face
would crack wide open
When I was 10, she took me out to the garage
and we pulled out all the boxes labeled "Lover"
and brought them underneath the dead orange tree
The same orange tree that had kept me small forever
and weighed our family down
with oranges every summer
and drown the house
in the perfume of orange blossoms
it was a magic tree
...mostly because Grandpa planted it on a Sunday
generations ago
Grandma sat with me under the tree
and told me the sotry of her and Grandpa
in an achey breaky voice
She said:
She handed me a letter she had written to Grandpa
It read:
On the night you left I came over
and tried to keep my tears behind my eyelids
But
I felt like the moon
and you were the oceans of the earth
And I ached to break my orbit
and come crashing down into you
and freeze under your churning
and if you wanted
I would drown
and I'd think "Im ok with this"
But my goodbye was as pointless
as a singing underwater
And the ships were leaving early the next morning
for the rest of the world
Departing London
Atlanta, San Francisco, Rio De Janiero
But never any sign that said Arriving: "Home"
At the harbor
I fell asleep....
...like a pile of love letters under a bed
and when I woke up I was listening
to the mad hurricanes in my chest
break their hearts against my ribs over and over
every few seconds
as if I were Long Island Sound
the megaphone "Departing" Voice announced
your ship was boarding
And you plugged my ears for me....
and I leaned on the sinks of my heart
and tied my earthquake lips together
to keep from looking weak in front of you
And I became Long Island Silent
I ached to let the hurricanes out of my chest
and let them roll inland
so they could wash us both away
over the warm golden streelight fuzz of New York
to the tall grass of Oklahoma
to bring the swells of Long Island Sound
to the silent midwest
but instead they just broke against my bones
and I spit my worries over the cliffs
Why am I always where you arent?
When I put it down
She continued
She sighed.
And leaned on the tree as she stood up.
And then patted it once, and slowly walked inside
I kept sifting through her yellowing journals
and brittle polaroids
that I drug out of taped up boxes
letters written between
her and Grandpa
that she saved to feel close to him
there were pictures from when she was young
and in love
you could see it
in her face
because back then
black and white pictures
were the ONLY picutres
and they couldnt contain the kind of love
grandma and grandpa had
it would be like holding
a big band jazz and swing concert
in a redfrigerator
she buried the photos and letters
in the saftey of his old shirts
They were the deepest boxes in the world.
They had to be.
a lifetime of loving someone
a lifetime of being loved
becomes boxes
and tape
Every Sunday afternoon
Grandma would take walks
Long walks
To nowhere in particular
Like her and grandpa used to.
It was the only time she looked young
And Id open
the many letters they had written between each other
and rea
There were hundreds of letters
so many, that all the messenger pidgeons
in the world
would have been filling the skie's
So many letters that, grandma had been lost in them for years
since grandpa died.
About a year later
On a summer Sunday night,
I noticed the orange tree
had finally bloomed again.
And that "Grandpas perfume"
had filled the neighborhood
And somewhere inside,
a room full of lightbulbs flitted on and off for a few seconds
for a few decades.
I wonder if she stayed awake all night, the way Jesus stayed awake
the night he knew he was going home?
the answer was 9 decades long
because she was
she was the great depression
and the great wars
and the walk on the moon
But most of all, she was still in love
When she talked about Grandpa
her lips would quiver
like the San Andreas fault
She'd lean against the sink edge
and stare down the drain
and the earthquake on her face
would crack wide open
When I was 10, she took me out to the garage
and we pulled out all the boxes labeled "Lover"
and brought them underneath the dead orange tree
The same orange tree that had kept me small forever
and weighed our family down
with oranges every summer
and drown the house
in the perfume of orange blossoms
it was a magic tree
...mostly because Grandpa planted it on a Sunday
generations ago
Grandma sat with me under the tree
and told me the sotry of her and Grandpa
in an achey breaky voice
She said:
I was 16. And he was 18.
We were both in love
We would meet by the river and go swimming
and then he would read to me
He taught me to read
I taught him to dance, awkwardly
We made love, and it hurt
Why does anyone make love?
But the war in Europe called him
As it called all young men
And the trenches and mud became
a maze that he was lost in for years
Why does anyone leave?
My letters came back marked RTS
or "Invalid" and his would come in bunches
months late
She handed me a letter she had written to Grandpa
It read:
On the night you left I came over
and tried to keep my tears behind my eyelids
But
I felt like the moon
and you were the oceans of the earth
And I ached to break my orbit
and come crashing down into you
and freeze under your churning
and if you wanted
I would drown
and I'd think "Im ok with this"
But my goodbye was as pointless
as a singing underwater
And the ships were leaving early the next morning
for the rest of the world
Departing London
Atlanta, San Francisco, Rio De Janiero
But never any sign that said Arriving: "Home"
At the harbor
I fell asleep....
...like a pile of love letters under a bed
and when I woke up I was listening
to the mad hurricanes in my chest
break their hearts against my ribs over and over
every few seconds
as if I were Long Island Sound
the megaphone "Departing" Voice announced
your ship was boarding
And you plugged my ears for me....
and I leaned on the sinks of my heart
and tied my earthquake lips together
to keep from looking weak in front of you
And I became Long Island Silent
I ached to let the hurricanes out of my chest
and let them roll inland
so they could wash us both away
over the warm golden streelight fuzz of New York
to the tall grass of Oklahoma
to bring the swells of Long Island Sound
to the silent midwest
but instead they just broke against my bones
and I spit my worries over the cliffs
Why am I always where you arent?
When I put it down
She continued
The war ended. And he never came home.
I got engaged like all good Protestant girls should
....Like all scared women do.
And HE came back.
But just to meet my fiance.
He rode into the driveway and smiled like the old days
just to tear me up inside.
We talked
And talked
And when my fiance came home, your granpa shook his hand
looked at me
and said "Good..."
My heart felt as vulnerable as a room of ten thousand light bulbs
shining brightly, but about to be crushed to sand...
If he would have asked I would have jumped on his motorcylce with him
and dissapeared. Oh how I ached for him to ask.
But he never did....
My fiance left me a year later, a month before we married
For a wealthy woman he met in the city.
They were hard times.
But I wasnt in love with him.
When I was 29, the depression drove Him home again
and I walked to the river to see him.
Because I knew he'd be there.
and I told him I was in love with him.
Because I'd been waiting for a second chance
we danced awkwardly
and made love
We missed the depression
we spent it taking walks every sunday
and reading and writing
we swam in the cold river
and danced at night in a small dusty room
we planted an orange tree together
we slept on a tiny bed
in a house with no doors
we made love in the dark
and all the lightbulbs in my heart
came shining back
We lived for the rest of our days together
and we continued to walk on sundays even when
our legs were tired from years of working and raising children
we continued to read and write to each other
even when our eyes and fingers were only inches apart
we swam until the river dried up
and the dancing just got slower....
and we hung a christmas lights on the orange tree
and the smell of the blossoms was the smell of your grandfather
and none of the lightbulbs in my heart ever broke
until he died.....
I stayed awake all night with him that night
because we both knew he was leaving again.
She sighed.
And leaned on the tree as she stood up.
And then patted it once, and slowly walked inside
I kept sifting through her yellowing journals
and brittle polaroids
that I drug out of taped up boxes
letters written between
her and Grandpa
that she saved to feel close to him
there were pictures from when she was young
and in love
you could see it
in her face
because back then
black and white pictures
were the ONLY picutres
and they couldnt contain the kind of love
grandma and grandpa had
it would be like holding
a big band jazz and swing concert
in a redfrigerator
she buried the photos and letters
in the saftey of his old shirts
They were the deepest boxes in the world.
They had to be.
a lifetime of loving someone
a lifetime of being loved
becomes boxes
and tape
Every Sunday afternoon
Grandma would take walks
Long walks
To nowhere in particular
Like her and grandpa used to.
It was the only time she looked young
And Id open
the many letters they had written between each other
and rea
There were hundreds of letters
so many, that all the messenger pidgeons
in the world
would have been filling the skie's
So many letters that, grandma had been lost in them for years
since grandpa died.
About a year later
On a summer Sunday night,
I noticed the orange tree
had finally bloomed again.
And that "Grandpas perfume"
had filled the neighborhood
And somewhere inside,
a room full of lightbulbs flitted on and off for a few seconds
for a few decades.
I wonder if she stayed awake all night, the way Jesus stayed awake
the night he knew he was going home?
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