A List About L.A.

honey bees pollinating lemon trees in winter
beans and lard and strong detergents on the gentle breeze
on every block a liquor store
yards of dust
24/7 sirens and helicopter blades
territorial spray-painted warnings
over-sized white tees
shaved heads
hostile blood shot eyes
shrouded in a hood of gray
a digital titter of parrot screams
green and red on a blue
chemtrail tracked sky
rolling brown outs
two month heat waves
rain turning streets to rivers
roofs giving in
violent straight line winds
tossing gazebos, flattening gardens
toppling crosses off the steeple
and mountains and palm trees
and the unpredictable instability of earth
seasonless
six lane freeway traffic mile upon mile
towering Eucalypts and other foreigners
tongues ever-changing on a walk down the boulevard
wide and jammed, accustomed commuters
unable to feel even tedium
guns blasting in sporting victory
flowers, free fruit for the picking
and me – I won’t leave it for all that and more

Long Haired Asshole

Bent-up, roughened face bad for wear,
humans don’t erode smooth,
quickly made but small strides
down the pavement (also down death’s side of the hill)
she passes me, muttering so I can hear
“Another asshole with the long hair like a girl,”
and on those stout stumps she pumped by,
scowling westward to the sea,
a bitter hostility hot enough to burn
a circling gull out of the sky.

I had never been called a long-haired asshole before,
not officially so I’d notice,
but I sure did not expect it
there in Los Angeles
there in 2012
the year of our Mayan demise
maybe she believed I was one
proud brown member of a dead civilization
returned to sacrifice her and all her world
to the memory of my people’s ruin and our too long silenced gods…

How wrong she would be
for this long-haired asshole
is as well a white atheist dickhead,
and for that I was once met with surprise,
“You’re an atheist? Well, I don’t care,” said the old drunk gal,
“I think you’re a nice young man anyway.”

Yes, it is true. I was young then,
and in Los Angeles in 2002
although I didn’t think it then
didn’t fully know to revel in my youth
squandering it in dank dive bars and barber shops where
I have gone for ten years running
harvesting my scalp crop,
licking it shut into envelopes addressed to charity
for wigs to be made
for the distressed children
of chemotherapy’s follicly destructive side effects…

I can only hope, should they survive, these cancer stricken youth,
they’ll keep their comments concerning long-haired assholes
quietly and happily to themselves

Einstein

Disobedient to physics, I fly
faster than the speed limit of light
when I leave you
you have never seen me
when you swallow my come
it’s before you’ve even begun sucking dick
when you cry
you won’t know why
because you have yet to hear my devastating lies
such good ones
such as
I love you
we’ll be together forever
your clothes flatter your figure…
on the move
out of sight, always
time running back until I’m born again
and fucking Christ in his animal cage
in his impotent rage
backward through evolution
from ape to monkey
newt to worm
I seed this life in reverse
the great grandfather of all things
into the past, undisciplined photons flow
digesting crops unplanted
impregnating the unborn
in primordial soup
the virgin sacrifice is to a sun waiting to ignite
fission superluminally transposed is fusion…
cold and possible and nice one, Einstein!
You twat.

Bars

Money is its own reward
paychecks large, fingers tremble
breaths stall, shakily exhale
a nineteen year old who’s waited too long
to blow his speakers on rock-n-roll
art yoked to success
dragged by it
plowing rows for corn to grow
achievement is yield sold
fan letters
assess in seats
broken competitors
mosca musica – music on the fly
by night in clearing smoke
new alliances are forged
as old ties cut
like gnarled roots draw
water to high branches, broad and strong
in gloaming maroon, flickering limelight
on the bodies hanging in the tree
clear water that never revives
once ugly mud introduces
impure vision to the people
peeping, spying and searching
the connect between the male of death
and female of glory
plug in and get it on
understand light bulb ways in dark winter woods
on paths follows a scene
for or against
inspire or expire… unsteady… uncertain…
just in time
where none need apply
as lightning strikes a solitary
shock

Where is she?

She was never home
not in the attic, cellar, foyer
anywhere: bedrooms
vestibule, hall
cupboards, closets
hanging in the belfry
in neither nook nor alcove
quarters nor cupola
at no time was she there
literally gone
and you could look for days
under eaves, up in rafters
slinking through crawlspaces…
and she wasn’t on it
looking out over the rooftops of others
people within them all
doing all those living things they do
no need to enumerate
because gone is gone
in thoughts and space
soon, it’ll be unknown
she’s not home
unknown it ever was her home
lost to history
to dead star, to cold vacuum
and that’s unpleasant
existentially poop-drawers
yet what’s worse
is for now, knowing
it’ll be a relief not to
tick-tick, tock-tock
is my wife in the cuckoo clock?
no, it’s me.

The Future, My Dear, is a Shaven Cunt

Tortured backward into submission
by childish hands, nostalgic
for what can again never be
a lively abundance sundered beyond nature,
barren but bleeding, despite appearance.
As progress, defined by man,
is razed across time –
an overly maintained existence
is made vulnerable and exposed
to ever worsening cruelties from without
and no infantilized disguise
no artificial patch of preserve
no fetishistic sanctuary for a wasted past
will ever fulfill
a future, love-starved,
craving compassion and care
when the only end foreseeable,
to this lie,
to this deceptive act of virginal innocence,
is one greedily administered & whorishly unregulated
fuck!

and p.s. you’ve got AIDS

Standing & Staring

By my fucking life me has no choice
peg the cunt square in jaw
prick drop
clutch wire rack shelf in support
pull it and content all down upon him
book and coin all to floor
asshole on back
rock back and forth like tortoise
“You hit me! You hit me!”
he scream and repeat
“Fucking right I did,” me yell
felt good
second punch of life
fist into face
alchemy of perfect pain
bitch wail, bitch lament
and bitch call cop
she come
one, solo chickie-pig cutie-pie
she take me side
roommate he jump and scream
accusation rain like chicken-shit
fun time, me sip beer
baby copper ask if me got place to go
as if me a battered wife with split-skin knuckle
violence daddy has no home
too drunk to drive
lady fuzz say that okay
give me card and number
free to be behind wheel
hot cha-cha, ready to burn rubber
all in, ride hard, place to slumber
there more to tell, this story
mostly detail
hand here, hand there
but us wait
us wait

Pigs in Zen

Everyone of us
should be in the government’s philosophy
too big to fail…
and if you don’t think that’s true
if you think men, women and children
should be on their own to fail completely
in homelessness and hunger
then tell me this,
when was the last time
the tab on rent and food was picked up by Charlie Manson?
And if that’s not good enough for you
if that example’s poor
you think Manson’s contribution to culture
doesn’t justify his free ride
or that our tax dollars
would’ve been better spent
on needle or noose, well then
that still is a free ride of sorts
the fare paid on an outbound ticket,
but you probably don’t se it that way
see it like I do
see birth as a lottery
a few lucky winners striking it rich
extra special fertilizations
in wombs of great fortune
because right now, that’s still how the fuck things are
the divine right of kings
sacred cash in the DNA
but if we can’t be guilty for the sins of the fathers
then neither should we be credited for their successes
as we’re here, stuck, living
in some medieval caste system
serfs, lords and their muscles
knights on horseback
earning their pay by pillage
their pleasure by rape
because this is how it works
when we decide
there are some people
who just ain’t fucking worth it
who should fail
who should die
and if you think that’s unconscious knowledge
then fuck you
you can take the room adjacent Charlie’s…
and for that matter
so can our government
if that’s going to be their philosophy

Today’s Poem: Bow Your Heads and Spread Your Assholes or Let Us Pray

The Virgin Mary
cloaked in her holy aura
peers out at me
as if from within
an open cunt
ready to birth
the horrors of membranous morality
that says don’t do it
but if you must
sheath not before ensheathing
let loose grief-tailed sperm
listlessly paddling
toward a prize
not worth winning
perpetuation
proliferation
womb-forged
forgeries of humankind
twat-dropped, God-deluded
ill in manners and behavior
obsequious
to the sexual dictates
of a celibate Nazi
in a dress
who orders
the orders
of child-fucker men of God

It’s How You Fuck the World that Matters

“It’s a small world,” people would say,
but what no one meant by it
was that our planet’s size was a problem
one of the direct roots of all our trouble
size doesn’t matter much
when no intelligence evolves
capable of exploiting resources
developing a technological society because…

Man, on a larger world
us Homo Sapiens, we could’ve made it
been bought more time to develop
before our poisons and carbon emissions
brought about ecological change
we were completely unprepared to cope with…
and for many… on purely ideological grounds,
they wouldn’t even accept
the end of our industrial capitalist culture
had been written
when the first ancient primate
sparked its first fire
and we haven’t been the same since
from then on we haven’t stopped burning
and now we’re burnt out…

If only our candle had been thicker and longer
we could’ve kept going,
but you get what you get
damp little blue and green rock…
maybe I’m wrong, maybe it wasn’t our world’s size
but how we used it