Hefner’s Plot

For all our speculative philosophies
mutterings on life, death, mortality
the universal age
what it means to a dead species
when its star fades
and the light from it
five million years hence
evaporates like a dew drop
before an unimpressed
alien astronomer’s eye… for all that
I leave it to better minds to contemplate
ones undeveloped, never to be
drying up on the white expanse
of a hostile Kleenex
a few million lives
an easy genocide of the self
across pop culture pages
from skirts billowing
by displaced subway air
to a flesh and blood sex doll
arranged just so on red satin
from Joe DiMaggio’s jealousy
to middle aged masturbators in their garages
the real corridor of memories
is a fist around a roll of quarters
or a cock, flipped out
three pages wide
skin enough to gift wrap the world
a token of our appreciation
to an unappreciative E.T.’s sight
unaware of his historical vision
all these stars, all these stories
Marilyn’s
Hefner’s
in time
the years between their deaths
will be as the inches between their graves
between her thighs
where powers once engorged
soon withered and withdrew
ceding that ground and themselves
to Earth

Forever Dense

God is a dull human thing, boring
stripped of true imagination,
macho all-powerful posturing
incapable of amusement and wholly lacking in humor
and self-deprecation,
such a simplistic device devised to explain
life, the universe and our origins,
but it cannot explain life because it is eternal
and what never is born and never dies
was never alive and cannot know what it is like
to live, dynamically
About the universe, it tells us nothing
apart from it, standing outside of it –
Whereas God is without beginning or end,
immutable, infinite – and therefore obvious –
our universe is expansive and accelerating
imperfect with quantum asymmetries
ruled by laws
not the creator of laws
it grows and changes – delights and surprises,
springing out from a singular density
like a trick can of snakes
our universe is never quite what we expect it to be
and one day it will, like us, die
for we are made not in the image of God,
but of the matter of the universe
we are born exploding from stars, imperfect,
unstable,
exactly as we and the lights from a hundred billion
madly racing galaxies towards the end of time should be

Cutting Room Killing Floor

Evidence for bad acting is strongest in silence
muted televisions – exaggerated expressions
brows furrowed, heads shaking, hair flipping
intense stares of vacant intention
palpable defeat in each flash of tooth
and chin nod
eyebrows knit, determined to convey
the conviction of their character
I love the desperation of their big tits
of their movie screen foreheads
grand and gleaming under baby powder
strutting in over crank motion towards the audience
anxiously desirous to walk out of the film
and into our elusive acceptance
of their brilliant portrayals of neurotic men,
awkward women – misunderstood mutes mugging for me
it’s a human display, fully nude
erect like a plumage plucked peacock
mounting its final assault on hen hill
more real than reality TV
humans without voice
a purely visual display
fake and frank
frail and raw
in their rolls
in a way never to be
in their lives as humans
waiting for lights
waiting for action
but only getting cut

Sacred Squat

None but the dead live in memories – the dead like you –
it is their sacred squat
until no lung that shared their air breathes,
and that distant date arrives quick, passes,
and is gone without note, mark or wake.
All the accumulated grief of the 20th century:
its wars and murders
its car crashes and ship wrecks
its overdoses and suicides
are too soon to be mourned as no more
than vaporous words upon paper and stone
writ in history books, memoirs and poems
on memorials, markers and crypts
dead things possessed of dead memories
to have existed at all, they say, is a blessing
against the odds
a stroke of unfathomable luck, sandwiched
between formidable eternities of nothing,
but I really don’t give a fuck
about millions of sperm rushing in,
only one bearing any given name
or the 50% of all conceptions that wash out
into the basin, so much flushed menstrual blood
or the dizzying epochs of geologic time
our DNA crawled and survived
when all these people – sipping Frappuccinos,
dribbling balls, pressing cell phone buttons
are here, stupidly existing outside memory alone –
a place to where I would condemn them all to rescue you from it.

Sh

Humanity’s collective conscious is a dog
dimly waiting in an empty house for what it can’t remember
Humanity’s collective conscious is a domestic turkey
hypnotized by falling rain, unable to save itself from drowning
Humanity’s collective conscious is a mother baboon
fiercely unwilling to relinquish the corpse of her days dead infant
Humanity’s collective conscious is the U.S. Forest Service
economically measuring woodlands by the billions of yielded board feet

Humanity’s collective conscious, directionally impaired,
doesn’t comprehend which way it’s going
after two right hand turns ––
it is sluggish and clumsy
like men in three-legged races;
it is foul and tasteless
like too many cooks working one dish;
it is desultory and watered down
like collaborative writing;
it is mindlessly cheery and quick to outrage
like an arena of suddenly sour sports fans;
it is too late to the task
like a tyrannosaur hatchling extending its pink tongue
for a flake of snow, but catching meteoric ash
falling in a flash flurry, unrelenting
until the collection comprising the conscious
dramatically reduces, dropping away to one
where one is clear to think
one clear thought
one clear way
in one clear slow time
the beauty in the silence of others’ minds
the beauty in the silence of others
the beauty in the silence… the beauty in ¬–
the beauty

Fashion Malfeasance

Affectations and accessories
defining traits, personality submerged in a fetid stew
of odious toxins
every generation has its new youth to despise
faggots all goofily dressed
saggy pants, flowers in the hair
tight pants, disheveled short cuts
bangs in the eyes, bell-bottoms
over-sized jerseys, crooked ball caps
goatees and berets
shaggy beards and mini-skirts
the young never win when up against it
it being the power of those who have gone before,
rising up, disapproving of small-scale change
jealous of smooth skin
non-varicosed legs, unreceded hairlines
and greyless beards
shapely bodies hiding their fitness
or displaying too much of it
turning heads, churning tummies
the jokes always on the next at bat
a swing and a miss and a hit
out of the park
all in uniform now, complain
hippies, hipsters, beatniks, cowboys
punks, mods, preppies and bangers
suffer under the weight of us old fogies
we can’t help ourselves
you’re young with so much life to live
and fuck you for it and your temporary fashion malfeasance too

3 Wise Cannibals

Riding their camels in year zero
over sand dunes of parallel Earth
a star stoned on crab nebula gas
commits an error of grave redemptive horror
burning bright in the wrong misguided eyes
of blood-lusty travelers, hungry
they follow their magical astral arrow
to where a family of three
Ma, Pa and newborn sucker
squat it out in an animal pen
scent of straw, feces and domestic musk
but under it,
inhaled pleasantly through broad luxurious nostrils:
pumping adrenalin, blood – red rich meat,
and something else
Behold! A babe is born in Israel
upon it they fell as a group
Jo and Mare dealt swift sabre blows
and that little Lord
eaten raw, chunks of heavenly flesh of his flesh
in gore streaked beards
breaking out the brain from its skull
fresh and easy through the fontanelle
sweet Jesus
the 3 wise cannibals came in their flowing gowns
an orgasmic orgy of godly delight
pliant and tender to the bone
a meal fit for a king
a king of all kings
O, the suffering succulent damnation!
of the first
and last
communion

NonCon

Be responsible
do not feel responsible
others will hold you that
they will hold you in contempt
they will hold you fallible and careless
and carelessly
you must hold yourself like a tender egg
in the jaws of a mother croc
like the feel-real vibrating vagina
holds your ex-boyfriend’s cock
in lonely rooms
where wine is studied and law books drank
caught up in snares
prepped for the quartering
feeble within the imprinted belief
‘tis better to be this than that
damn it!
if you haven’t yet
send your box tops in for the decoder ring
it’s the responsible thing
without it
you’ll go on as always
hiding in dark corners
barely able to wait for privacy
to whack off to meticulously minded memories
of obese blondes in red micro-shorts
jutting their conical pig legs out car doors
as they rock and roll – shifting the weight
cheek to cheek on their enormous derrieres
to do something so simple… to stand on two feet… as they rise, you rise
my, how responsibility can get you so horny

That, Sweet That

Drunken women have proclaimed my genius, but never have I. My feeling is it’s better to go the other way. It’s been said before that happiness and health are in the fool’s hands, and I want it, give it to myself daily with harsh affirmations, “You fucking idiot! How could you be that fucking stupid?” And I know I’m that stupid because I don’t know how. Who poses the same self-asked question everyday and never has an answer or even considers the possibility of one? Only an idiot can tell, and I’m telling. It’s why the sniper can’t get a bead on the unlit cigarette. Idiocy dims the horrors like a low wattage bulb in a prisoner’s cell, the sphere of light cast too small to reach the walls. When the edges of the world are unseen, there is no confinement, set free by too dim a brilliance to see. Genius shines over bright the light of reason, illuminating the cage’s interior, and giving hideous detail to what was wrapped within the formerly merciful gloom. It’s better staring off, slack-jawed, into serene shadowy space. Rarely do the jailhouse walls come into view, and when they do I gladly deal with my moments of retard rage as I pound fists bloody, bellow in intellectual impotence at the immovable obstacles of life until it all blows over and what it was all about anyway is forgotten and that, sweet that, is a far-cry better definition for freedom than any I’ve heard come out of politics.

Endless Means of Bad Ends

When I can smell the food of the man at my back
eggs, ketchup, buttered toast and fried potatoes
there’s this paranoia gripping me
that at any second he’ll fling a heaping forkful –
splat – into the back of my head
hashbrowns, drippy yolk
like a big soft bug on the windscreen
oozing down my hair, neck
under the collar all along the backbone
filling into my asscrack
I sit, hunkered, shoulders hunched
anticipating this ridiculousness
can I really think people are this way
would do such a thing
that I’m worth the waste of their meal
evidence found in a search of my feelings
says it is so…

abrupt viciousness is everywhere
in the holy, the homeless, the haughty
and you poke your head out often enough
into their world
they will hit you with something
their morality, mental illness, mirthless superiority
all window dressing to disguise their hatred
under masks of justifiability
you should respect his beliefs
she’s mad from deprivation
they worked really hard for their money
much harder than on their feeble excuses
for what they put on my head
for how they’ve got me stuck at their windshield
pelted mile after mile by sudden blood-spattered death