Saturday, August 30, 2008

All my energy is going into the election.

I'm a political junkie and right now my on-line life is centered around getting Barack Obama and Joe Biden elected on 4 November. So if my output seems very severely limited, that's probably the chief reason. I hope to post once and a while, though.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

He can set down

the rusted, pock-marked razor blade
that he has used so often
to gouge out pieces of his
fear-riven corpus.
He has drawn enough blood with it
to inundate a thousand tight chested
nights.
It is still possible
that he could avoid
its final shuddering cut,
if he can decide, finally
that it is beneath 
his dormant
contempt.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

They couldn't see the final scene then,

when they both inhaled in surprise
at that first random meeting,
never expecting anyone to grab them
by the neck with such happy ease,
sensing the presence of
one who was different from all
the rest of the boys and girls
they had frittered away countless
empty hours with.
They talked until three, and he
ran his near-trembling finger
along the electrified fence
of her right hand, wanting to make love
to her right then and there, but
knowing it was too soon,
even though she wanted him
inside of her more than any other
wish she had ever conceived.
Long telephone calls dominated
the days that followed; their desire
overflowed and swept over the
flood plains of their restraint
on their fourth date.
It had all happened so
unpredictably, and now lives
that were only possible in theory
had been launched, and children
loved more intensely than either of them
could ever have known it was possible to
love anything
were drifting casually through
the lived-in rooms of their
warm house.
Did they have any inkling
of the moment
when he would look up
from the hospital bed one last
time, and his eyes would once
again be 20 years old,
and that in that last instant
all that had been
would be swept away
and they would once again be lost
in the soaring newness
of each other's hopes?

He smiles with frozen grace,

letting his sweet glazed mind 
drift into Elysian Fields 
of numb delight,
blocking all poison tipped
spears, deftly tip-toeing
through fields of 
antipersonnel mines
aimed directly at his gut,
wearing wonderfully efficient
earplugs that screen out
the cries of the wounded
until they resemble only
a distant chorus of sighing,
bearable lamentation.
He will live in bouquets 
of vinyl flowers and wax fruit,
happily embracing his narcotized
mannequin and congratulating himself
on bringing the dead tree
Hallmark card
to life so easily.

I could hear the voices

in the after bedtime darkness
but I couldn't quite make out
their smoke-embedded
words, nor catch the drift
of the deep-hued sentences
not meant
for me.
They were  distant signals
from another world,
spoken in a language
that was still largely
Mayan to me,
harbingers of the times
I would be speaking
in tones of reminiscence
or cynical bitterness
or casual eroticism,
sending out my own
mysterious messages
to other open-mouthed
listeners.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Their story began in desiccated hills

and fields stripped bare so utterly
that even the rats starved,
the glorious aftermath
of rancid war, blind revolt, and ravening
soldier-locusts.
Tender minds that should have nestled
in warm repose to hear bedtime stories
saw adults ripping their teeth
into the tough hides
of dead neighbors.
Wandering helpless from the corpses
of exhausted parents,
they clung to each other in the
maelstrom of the dust-covered Gehenna,
their numbers thinned by the machine guns
of the proud, blocking Chekists.
They lived by stealing from the dying,
hiding in the indifferent forests,
and learning to forget the last remnants
of kindness.
Their children, born of rape,
and careless whores,
shrieked with delight as they
terrorized the soft little intellectuals
from Moscow, kicking in the faces
of the politicals who tried to stop them.
They ruled the camps, using kids
as bets in card games, and cutting
off the heads of anyone stupid enough
to object to their missing rations.
When the betrayed soldiers flooded in,
the former rulers were deposed, but their
descendants found new empires in the
concrete slab prisons, and the tattoos slithered
across their muscled torsos to keep score
of every plunging knife and cracking skull.
Now, the great grandsouls of the
original Children’s Crusade
rule the nights with shiny automatics,
collect the protection money from trembling
shopkeepers, and smear the pavement
with the brains of those who have had
a less distinguished patrimony.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

He jumps frantically,

trying to see the source of the distant
cries and moans that have
disturbed his magenta night
and awakened the grinning
demons from their shallow
rest.
His heart races in tempo
to his helpless fear,
going too fast in the straightaway,
and heading dangerously
for the wall.
He strains his ears, climbs
on to a ridiculous little
stepladder, and holds up
a sparkler to signal his
profound concern.
Engulfed in Plastic Jesus compassion,
choking tears seize him, and
while walking into his bear cave
he almost trips over
the darkened figure gasping like
a washed up alewife
near the moss-covered entrance.
He once again shakes his head
in noble despair
and unloads a .38 clip into
the faces of the
screeching devils.

Friday, August 8, 2008

It takes all of his effort

to keep the balloon fully inflated,
so that it still casts the same
impressive shadow
on the easily awed onlookers
who throng in wet clumps
below it.
And around his torso he can feel
the cold fingers digging their
jagged nails into his reflexively
clenching rib cage,
reminding him that the day
is approaching
when the last of the gas 
will sputter out
and his altitude
will dip low enough
for all the rubes
to get a good look at him,
and either lynch him,
laugh at him,
or simply bury his
comically withered
body.

No one will mourn you

if, 
in the blindness of your stumbling,
maliciously indifferent,
odyssey,
you let the only refuge you 
will ever have 
slip through your 
idiot fingers.
There will be no solemn line
of pensive, drawn faces,
no whispered expressions
of consolation,
no embraces and perfunctory
offers of "anything I can do."
It has been given to you 
by accident.
You were made from it,
but not for it,
and if you squander
its ageless inheritance,
there will be no rescue,
no escape,
no harbor from your 
self-generated
storm.
And from the outside,
no one will notice
anything different,
if they ever noticed
anything
to begin with. 

Monday, August 4, 2008

I still don't know

how he came through the scalding mist
of his own fear, 
he who was so lacking
in skin that it was as if all of his
huddled nerve endings
were fully exposed to the 
merciless taunts
of a world cheering for his self-immolation.
How did he survive the axe-blows 
to his flimsy skull, the ones that 
rendered him 
a flailing,
helpless refugee 
in the Minotaur's Cave
of his own life?
Was it a world grown suddenly
merciful,
or was it he who grew more
merciless
and resigned to the futility
of hope?


Friday, August 1, 2008

He hurls his vaporous roars

through the dank atmosphere
of his airless room,
tearing out fearful trails of
glistening viscera in 
the fevered landscape
of his imaginary battlefield.
He triumphs inexorably
over foes who will never know
of his humorous, impotent
existence, and the red-hot
explosions of his stammering
Two Minute Hates
stir the detritus
from the bottom of his
cup of ranting misery.
He murders his enemies
in hellishly creative ways,
celebrating his paper-doll
savagery
from the safety of a life
grown rusted
from lack of use.