Judas Ephemera

Rat-visions of my sleep paralysis
scamper ‘cross my lover’s breasts
in waking dreams, I scream, break free
and bring down the fist like a hammer,
but awake she doesn’t
I am still trapped – frozen at the door
unable to close, agonized
creaking on hinges, forward and back
obtuse and acute
like the indecisive angulature of my brain
hamstrung on its journey out of the house
onward along the freeway
exiting against the driven force of my will
to check, aggravatingly,
on the non-burning burners,
and again, stalled on my way back out,
swinging like Judas, betrayed
by my head’s own crippled weakness
like the one perceived in my heart’s irregular beat
the numbness down the arm, shortness of breath,
awash in self-generated panic,
attacked as if by tooth gnashing rodentia
bearing in on the target
to bite and tear and nip
upon feeble-minded chemical accidents
I dodge and they race past
snapping at the spidery-legged clown smiles
hallucinating up my bed sheets
consuming the sick shambling things
of my automatic imagination,
running out the doors I am incapable to close
and burning in the blue forever fires
on my mentally haunted stove

Good Faith

Alien temptations lure you past velour curtains into tawdry parlors
doubtful of absurdity, you immerse your world in deep meanings
turning out your pockets,
and stuffing yourself sick with all the vulgarities good faith can buy –
reassurance of your central importance
planets twist through star-houses
and transmit secret messages:
do not turn down an opportunity for a new acquaintanceship
a wise investment will pay off if you practice cautious reserve
now is the time
to make your move on that important decision
you’ve been putting off…
O, the wisdom of the stars
all focused on you and what’s right for you
thrown across the sky by a hand straight from your heart
the dead never die, they live in a game to entertain
yes, yes, no – spirits guide the oracle
the web over your bed
entangles the ones seeking to plant mischief in your sleep
ancient Semitic virgins play peek-a-boo
in the wood grain of your closet door
as you take advice from the bottom of a tea cup
and make requests of invisible servants, hands entwined
in a grand gesture of enfeeblement
a deck of cards deals out the times of your life
while upturned palms explain your wealth, love, health and fate
you drink human blood and sup man meat
yet are considered harmless, peaceful and loving
and as strange as this all seems
no one is calling you crazy

Vote Republican Because One Day You May Be Rich

What matters most now is now
to Then pay no allegiance
unless the They of Then deserve blame
when the We of us Now
are of no fault…
for economics and gas prices
for market collapses and realty bubbles
into the past we fire our accusations
our projections of self-incrimination
no mistakes belong to he who made them
to the buyer they are sold
mass consumer eating yesterday
river fish chasing hippo dung streams
poor are always past
rich to the future
runner-up dissidence
posted against each other
history always hopes to change
but when doomed to repeat itself
no progress will avail
sommersault, backflip, chasing tail
your own and times
you are doomed to never get it
not Now anyway
never Now
would you like a Megabucks ticket with that?
we accept credit, EBT or food stamps…
you’ll take five?
good citizen, good

Detroit and New Orleans are Mere Harbingers

When young it was a given
when the cities went they would go
in sudden pyrocumulus columns
flapping at heaven’s underbelly
like a fairy ring of hairy membranous wings
and not as they are –
economically consumed by amber waves of prairie grass
in the withering wake of
industrial collapse or
subsumed by greedy seas
seeking vast tracts
of prized real estate or
gutted by ghetto creep, stinking
like an expansive mildew stain
fueled by a private drain upon
what small scraps it ever was the public had –
as schools fail
as hospitals shutdown
as drug clinics go bust
as buses and trains rust
as libraries burn for fuel
as police flee for the countryside
as religions cast blame
and men are strapped to goats’ backs
driven by force of stone into desert wilds
there will I be laughing at this disgusting
race of brutes who grandly deserve
each misery, each grief, each pain and violent repercussion
self inflicted upon themselves
by means of willful and hateful ignorance
the same as a newborn infant deserves
everything these fucks have slowly reduced to nothing
but archaeological evidence of wasted ruin

Into This World

Call it your calling
let people know
tell them
you have come into this world to speak the truth
trumpet yourself
sound the alarm
hammer it home so they know
you have come into this world to speak the truth
steal the airwaves
scream, white spittle flecked
red in the face, fist pounding
you have come into this world to speak the truth
gather disciples, preach
reassure them their prejudices
and amazingly they will believe
you have come into this world to speak the truth
until your very name
is synonymous to honesty, integrity
the salvation of the ignorant
who came to see in your illumination
the stains upon themselves
the falsity of their ways
as they strive to make amends
bowing, scraping, praying
and you tell them all will pass to be right
as you soap their feet
in preparation for the march to war
under a single command
“Whoever is not with me is against me,”
and the mob comes to guns, murder and arson
for the truth will out
the faggots from the closet
the elite from ivory league towers
the terrorists from caves
laugh joyous as thy will be done
you have come into this world to speak the truth
and now it is so

That’s All It Takes

Futility floods all my aspects
My aspects are hard to cope with
without futile dedication
My mother cut my steak into smaller than bite-size bits for me until I was fifteen
The room can’t be small enough
The great outdoors are never big enough
I’m agoraphobic when hiding under a bed
My dream of death is to be crushed
beneath a comical 2-ton weight
the old standard four sided pyramid
with a black iron loop at its peak
I was never punished for the horrible things I did
My abhorrent behavior went uncorrected
but a swift and decidedly chaotic hand of justice
got me for the accidents
a shattered candy dish
a busted lawn jart
mowing a gopher
accidents are so horrible
bigger than anything
worse than all
I’d rather hijack a jet liner
drive it headlong into the Sear’s tower
than dent a fellow motorist’s side panel
aCciDeNt
The word holds more horror than terrorism, war or chupacabra
more horror than a war against chupacabra terrorists
if only lawn jarts were sturdier
if only they could endure a toss high into a jack pine
if only gophers weren’t so fucking stupid
if only candy wasn’t that delicious
if only steak could be eaten whole, uncut
torn in gnashing animal fashion from the bone
of a still breathing cow
blood pumping hot
if only I were a chupacabra
then I wouldn’t be so miserable and fearful and helpless and depressed and awful
if only one person would come along
a great love
a true lover
to cut my steak
and resurrect my gopher
to suggest a plastic dish for candy
to crush me with her two ton weight
and play my corpse like an accordion
if only that would happen, then I could cope.

The Customer

“Submarine meatball sandwich,
caramel bun, French fries
and extra large soda…”
“I know,” she said, “It’s awful.
A terrible breakfast.
Especially for someone my size,
right?”
The horrible questions of a customer,
putting the service industry
up against it
I understood the beleaguered barista
in that moment
terrified of the truth,
having to answer, “No, not really,”
how we lie, we lie
to those most in need
of a reality smack
like a wet mackerel over the head
you are fat
you do eat like shit
and you will die young
of diabetic complications
learn some self control,
but you can’t say those things
in a job like hers
where managers have ears
and the first reaction is to placate, negate,
reassure – bolster the consumer’s ego
it’s ingrained
a reinforced habit of culture,
nurtured into us to nurture the worst of us
to accept
to value free will
because that’s who we are
as a people
we despise discipline
we shout the dangers of government regulation
so much
we refuse recourse to honesty
we become duplicitous
raising social niceties
and personal liberty
over integrity and decency
a sad disease of politics
reducing us
as we choose sides
on a two-sided coin
we fail to understand no matter what we pick
the face value remains the same

Root of All Denial

No justifications of tender young leaves
excuse a hateful thirst born in knotted old roots
the ethics of a happy ending
cannot compete, hedonistically,
against the miserable journey there,
but to not pretend otherwise is madness.
humans always exist at the end of the hook
cast from time’s geologic depths
we have been the worm
we have been the fish
now we are the Homo Sapien, assured
this is it – the perfect coda
tacked onto a long brutish trip, arising
from ancestor’s who dodged extinction’s broadsides
with cunning and aplomb
to find a home in this present world
of men, semen and kumquat trees
where we squat, wank and refresh ourselves on fruit
in an era of ease and comfort,
clipping our toenails and bitching about the cost of butter
what do we do to the memory
of our billion of years of forebears
when we so callously deny they, and the epochs they lived in,
ever even existed… we make beasts of ourselves,
heartlessly pissing upon countless graves
of our relations, our heritage – the legacy writ in our DNA
we may as well go kick our great granddad’s
low-hanging testicles straight up his asshole
for all we respect of history’s biological triumphs
over the grave – over the centuries
we are the spoiled mewling offspring of far nobler generations
as we yawn and unscrew the cap off another Orangina,
they put parched lips to dewy thistle
as we recline in the light of a flickering wide screen,
they cowered in the darkness, ears alert to death’s stealthy maneuvers
as we sit on a church pew chanting magic words,
they worked through trial and error, constructing
the foundations of language
now used to argue against their existence
their works – their struggles – their lives
From whence came our obstinate refusal to accept facts?
Ultimately, the blame falls to them
all the worms and fish of our past
tangled up in our animal roots,
pumping up through,
nourishing the modern dissonance
that resonates so easily in the young and freshly sprouted
in the fearful and egocentrically hearted
as a truth greater than the sum of hundreds of millions of years
all the false positives and patterns incorrectly recognized
that saved one of the animals of our ancient family
nestles in our genes, putting bad lenses to the senses
the accidental genesis of all conspiracy, paranoia, OCD, schizophrenia
and most harmfully…
gods.

Population Ethics – Mass Graves of a Frozen Mankind

Every snowflake is unique
year after year
the descent of billions
onto our windscreens, rooftops, mountain sides
and tilled fields
from the sky they come
each one special, individual
delicate and not long for this world –
Yet we all know
they’re all pretty much the same
and even if sometimes they’re fun
to slide and ski on
and provide idyllic winter scenes
of rosy-cheeked Campbell’s soup kids
rolling up snowman segments
they are still a pain in the ass
the rich avoid them in summer homes
we huddle indoors around fires
well pleased by our walls
without which our suffering
would be as endless as the blizzards and the drift
God
Billions
All different and special
Right
But it can’t be true
some must be crushed down,
pushed aside, ploughed into open pits
blown into lakes and rivers – scraped free,
salted, melted
unceremoniously covered over in dirt
and when the sun reasserts its supremacy
and finally does away with them until next year
we breathe a collective sigh of relief – happy to be rid of the nuisance – for a spell.

Here on Optimism Street

Existing now – empty stretches of wide road
barren lots, detritus of industrial decay
telephone poles and power lines shedding insulation
in black peeling strips like sunburned asps
lounging on defoliated branches
all is waste and ruin –
desolation is the golden coastal city,
but in the hope that springs naively
out of the artist’s brush grows change
and forty foot tall trees lining the lanes
brimful of bicyclists and pedestrians
mothers pushing strollers
building of brick defeat
replaced by glittering glass
as if the sea has been dragged inland
like a tsunami wall frozen before breaking
gleaming in the eyes of all the happy people
in their revitalized ghetto, smiling
in the shade cast by fir pine canopies
where birds tweet and squirrels twitter
eager Yorkies pulling on the limits of the leash
gone are the wires crisscrossing the sky
gone is the graffiti and murderous glint
in the skinhead cholo’s bloodshot cheek
here then is the future
our streets of optimism born from colored pencils and paint
ready and waiting for those yet to crown
into a life of depleted resources
a world diminished in biodiversity
a planet warming past points of no return
on unmapped oceans – here there be dragons
breathing gasses and smog into the choking atmosphere
that blankets the fracked landscapes and dustbowls
what we leave to them is less
what we leave to them is a condition of critical collapse
what we leave to them is Raphus cucullatus on the rotisserie
slowly rotating on its skewered axis
beautifully browning
tender and tasty
that’s the picture we leave them of us
to carry in their wallets
Signed,
Your Loving Ancestors
xxoox