October Poem 36: If You Don’t Remember Willie Nelson, You are Him

And while we two were left for the cleaning

Lady through a sweet chocolate parting gift

Of croutons over red wine. A job well

Done. And candied marmalade orange rind.

Willie Nelson had run off with a whipped

And runny cocoa-anything. Although

Mushrooms followed ribs and the magically

Unopened case of Bud light folded meat,

He could take the cream explosions while

Having to hear the tone deaf bursts of song.

The bursts of song that made him think that his

Womanly long hair gave him Sampson like

Strength in the musical arts. Without art.

Without strength. Without a musical ear.

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October Poem 27: That Old Narrative Jive

Waiting sharp and shiny on the forked end.

To stop thinking to the next good line. The

Darkness of the trek to your car was made

Even blacker by the blinding of the

Field lights through the choke of leaves in the trees.

Take off your God goggles and succumb to

The wispy lip of Mister Five O’clock’s

Geedunk van stalking neighborhood streets in

Search of unsuspecting children mostly

Reclaimed by a belief in a Christian life.

To understand a text. To believe that

You know the world. To understand that a

Cigar is just a cigar except when

It doesn’t jive well with your narrative.

 

 

 
Succumb

October Poem 26: Cloaked in Darkness

You flap for open water to give you

Enough speed for your low angled assent.

The fluorescing against the unexposed

Film. And the new chemical exposure

Of early childhood impaled below

You. And the hallucinations to save

Yourself and the end of the Indian

Summer. And poetry is the last thing

Going to sleep. You can blend abstracting

Imagery in an elegant poem. To

Mine out the abrasive and in-your-face.

And attempt similar tactics to hear

The dry bones clacking like old walking sticks.

The path that turned sharp into the darkness.

 

 

 
Cloaked

October Poem 20: How Political Sausage is Made: The Liberal Chainsaw Massacre

Inherent guilt and inherent bias.

Injecting Novocain to the nation.

The perpetual spinning of white blades

Pushing forward currents of air panning

Back and forth over the lying bodies.

To dry you to a rigid leather of

Submission. To hollow out and wear you

Like a butcher’s smock, a pair of boots, and

Elbow length gloves. To puppet you through the

Motions of control. To cull dissenters

Like so much chaff among the wheat. Like so

Much grist for the mill. Like so much meat for

Sausage. Spiced, cured, and smoked to be served on

A toasted roll with sauerkraut and Swiss.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tame

October Poem 19: God Bless the Damned

The quality of the light through the clouds

Blessing the trees softening the shadows

And lightening the green in the outer

Layer of leaves like the holy light of

The virgin mother. You were, vestiges

On the golden age of highway. The life

Of watered ice and liquored drink. Lights on

In the house abutting a busy street

Pocket. Over the bumpy road, threadbare.

Angry Japanese lanterns red in the

Window lit straight to the street beyond the

Road reflecting in pink. Beyond the

Weedy hill of the crack and gravel drive.

Beyond the utility of a knife.

October Poem 18: Antifa’s Postmodern Reading of Hard Work

Pulling nails like deconstruction. Now that

He couldn’t bail out they pick an abstract

Word interpreted without the intent

Of breaking a bone. The point of the bent

Nail menacing. The rusted nail like an

Old scythe found in the tall grass. A symbol

Of Death reaping souls. The old rusted nail

In need of a hammer. The bent scythe a

Sickle and hammer on a field of red

Rust. Pulling nails from an old board as the

Soviet Union reaping souls. Chopping

Down the tall grass of the capitalist

World. Red on the nail as blood in the streets.

Violent revolution against fascists.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Believe

October Poem 17: Childhood Words

One word prompted a nebulous mix of

What would turn out to be little more than

Waking to his childhood. He’d realized

That the people responding pushed him up

Lifting two years after the small rock shook

Him now that it shot out from the homemade

Salsa. An entire bag full under

His front right wheel. Like the flat side too fast

To bail now that he was a fruit. A red

Pepper that you buy from the store. Still in

Great shape for his age. Now that there was one,

Out there was the gap that would catch the wheels

And a few clouds to darken the after-

Noon. Send him flying into a blind rage.

October Poem 16: If Curtains Have Meaning

The red iron smell of the dried wood tongue

That had been burned against the heat like the

Sweet jalapeños. As if the gap between

The bushes of peppers and his cover

In growing of the grass hasn’t brought down

Layered insects, you ask him, what does it

Mean? He responds: does your house have curtains?

Now tell me, if you can, what do they mean?

In so many ways, he had given in

Adorned like stained glass in a Catholic

Church. He had taken on the mantle of

Post-modernism. Now, he was of the

Neighborhood garden. Pushing up lifting

The front of a word so malleable.

October Poem 15: Tattoo

The blackening pigment of his skin. The

Filigree he wears like a policeman’s

Blanket to cover his nakedness. To

Be taken like an abstract hieroglyph

Imbedded in the interior walls

Of the great pyramid. Painted in the

Old way. Chiseled in to mix blood and ash

As mortar to hold the panes of stained glass.

To shed light colored in the dust and sand

Of tradition. To guide him along to

The afterlife. His exterior all

Weather coating guaranteed for life

And then some. More than just illustrated

Parchment for you to judge him as a book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Superficial

October Poem 14: The Last Scraps of Rational Thought

The fear of living by the college. The

Fear of living in a community

Of liberal values. The fear of the

Black and white stripes of anger on short shocks

Of pink and blue hair. Their words with eyes like

Zombies devouring the last scraps of

Rational thought. To go without a prompt,

They could use a word like yellow strips on

Patterned walls when they look into the glow

Off their dog whistle virtue signaling.

They brought it all back to his time before.

The path and the word were concrete instead

Of just the first plank on the path to the

Fear he used to ride when he was a kid.