Yokota High school smoking area circa 1987

Les Vapeurs

At night in the wooden precipice of sleep
I see between the black branches of oak trees
a lighter dark to the sky beyond,
so far beyond that the idea of distance
as a measure of travel unhinges
from language and bobs away
before filling with ocean and going down.

Because he may be sick tonight,
I want to think of my father, put him up
in place of my childhood. I think
of still water closing over the boat.
Instead I get the memory of a bus-stop
beside a concrete wall, a gaggle of children,
a blue bench of faded plastic, tin ashtray
filled with rain water and the soggy tea of butts.

I’m not even sure I am one of these children
I think I remember, so honey suckle grows
over the picture and I advance a fear of bees
which brings me back to my father
who is deadly allergic to bees.
Maybe it is the vine and its green steamy
odor, sledge of bright perfume that
always makes me think of triffids
or other sinister botanical assassins
drawing me in with a puff of pink
pollen and a tentacled vine.

Maybe it’s the blankets twisting
up my thigh and words over the bright
forever of space. Maybe the only way
I can ever conquer my childhood
is to be a beekeeper like Sylvia Plath,
grow larger than everything else, at least
in my mind, so I can squash it all.
Maybe I like to sit at empty bus stops
and smoke because that is the true
place of distillation. Distances becoming.

A pure turn of the bowl for the tea
ceremony, the leaves crumbled just
so, whisk of tree branch across the sky,
the steam evaporates, so begins autumn
which withers up the vines.













:

9th Circle

Relentlessly Bleak

So much rain these mosquitoes emerge
from the carboniferous where too much
oxygen had bugs as big as Pintos. Light
flash of synaptic carry overs finds them
nudging into my house on the dog’s belly
though I try to brush them away, they
only squash into smears of blood, mine
and the dogs mixed to resonate that
tiny grinding of some microscopic
insect lollapalooza bloodbath.

Black they are as the souls of Scando
death rockers, Viking boats upon the dog’s
stomach, braided beards, red knot
entry to the kingdom and late night
assail upon my domesticity. Fuck.
They creep me out. What can I do
but take the job serving hotdogs
at their fairgrounds. I can’t not take
the dog out to piss, that’s an alternative
of too much mopping and wood rot.

I should do what everyone does and
consider my role in the food-chain
as symbolic. I am the systemic sacrifice
who also leads the lamb, here dog,
together we are walking troughs
of divine substance for those creatures
whose purity will outlive us both in
number if not in duration. Hissing
presence in a cavernous nowhere, their
wings buzz the neon blood bank.

Simulator

Where route 27 bends into Georgia is a man in a wheelchair
who waves at the cars as they pass going seventy.
The wheelchair may be the result of a spinal defect,
degeneration of the structure of the back, like my father
and brother, the core too tired of holding its end of everything
up. On Monday mornings the dog wakes everyone
barking at the garbage truck, recycling, a glitter
sparkling stars as the shatter of glass emerges me from sleep.
There are other drivers on the road, the cars are
thick armor for the jellyfish brains operating from inside,
bleary eyed and translucent to the radio’s swell.
I wonder if back pain is the vengeance of evolution,
payback for up righting out of the pond, a coalescing
of paramecium like two minivans meeting head on
in the swale. My eyes are old fashioned swivel dials of the radio.
Crows mock me to motion from the dead center
of my lane and make me swerve like I know what they know.
That there is ten miles of cellular dead air here past
Swamp Creek, past where my ankle is cramping at pushing
the gas. I pass the man on the border of two states,
one is moderate health care, the other is a heavy riff of sludge
metal. His wave is encouraging, saying go on, push
through it. Resigned, the both of us, just sitting there.


::

Blessed Black Wings

Black Rhino

While Getting Yr Doctorate, We Steals Yr Women

High on Fire

This monster patterned after learned dysfunction,
Cells born of electricity, humming with electricity.
This monster is a trap-root buried, speared straight down.
Days of hornets stitched across his back, run him through the woods,
Set the dogs on him. High on fire, this monster staggers toward the mob,
Lurks the perimeter of the elementary school, carries his daughter,
Three years old, on his back under trees. The closed fist of his ribs continue,
This monster engulfed in fire. Train the cameras on him.
Forgets to pack sandwiches for the pool, tends daily to the equipment.
Observe monster family systems: rides quiet in the truck
Beside his quiet daddy, falls from space into a boiling Atlantic,
Slows his truck at lunch by the playground to maybe glimpse his son.
This monster shaves slowly in his tub, his own little girl pours water
Over his head, this monster weeps.

Brother in the Wind

--High on Fire

Art Is Your Enemy

Against All Odds

Bleachface

The welding school instructor leaned

into his connection to show us just

how to pose for action. I was fat

as any of the others in attendance.

Before this I was a clown for kid’s

parties, oil faced and woven hair.

Before that baskets of night

watching trucks sleep with stars.

There was some cold then. This

because of the sex appeal

of a television commercial, I’m

salving the hot end of my torch,

tack arc and blinder beams to not

look into. If I learned this I would

be complete and successful.

It is the clown’s dream to wear

regular clothes, but also a key

could fit into the rotten teeth

I see my grandfather smiling

at me through, a slot which loosens

up a man’s place to dwell next

to a stove with a drink in his

heart like a knife, holding two

parts together so as to seam

down a night cloth-dark, and duct

tape silenced to anything, become

hard cornered, holding

together an ended comfort.

When it was my turn the torch banged

a little heavier than I expected

and melted a corner of my glove

which I immediately brought up

to my nose to smell and the goo

tacked on there and seared out

olfactory futures for a good ever.

Then my eyeballs went

clown white and sizzled, basket

beard went up to smell like

burger king, all flesh and pot

to piss on. And just so, tight

jeans gave me over to the door

locked forever to the right edge,

no ship rivets in my future, no

offshore deep water money

making, no ever in the end of

disappointment my grandfather’s

smile sealing up, all snarl

after a sear of bourbon

hard going down, trucks through

the ice, no ship, just laughter

grinding along with me, burnt eye

never seeing you again, burnt

halter-top exposé of retina, lip

disorder not speech, hairline

out mode of the done up, my line,

your line, cracked out the get-go

It’s not time enough, clownish

forbearance doesn’t cut it, this

gauge won’t melt it out, witch’s

longing to transcend. The course

I failed but made it to the hospital

where a nurse polishes my inside

out until it made a gloss and can

breath the night, porcelain edged.

::

Look Alive

Although there are roller coasters, a pair of tiger cubs

at the gate distract the girls before we even get to the toilets,

post interstate, traveler’s dementia, souring sweet air

over the spilled blue Icee, there is only an allofasudden

standing in line to ride the Hangman or the Rattler

all of the water park spred below,

each delectable flavor of death the coasters serve up

here and there the wasted trailer

leans its hulk in a direct line to some distant

industry. America’s amusement parks,

strands of garbage and stalls of animals, milk squash,

yards of water logged bread,

feast of the gull and pigeon, ants forever in line

the sweltering preamble to the Swamp Thing,

a feet down hanging coaster that’s main thrill

are a pair of overfed alligators

confusing the children with even more threats. Just

this morning words comes of a teenager

decapitated at another park, other deadly portend through

the mists of America where we all stand

sweating to board the Anaconda or the Magnum,

force of doom, the rising up to taste. Surely

it is early man, not the zombies, rising up from the

water-park’s Lazy river, slouch shouldered,

wet and flavored with the taste of Band-Aids and urine,

the heated ooze and swirl of gestating bacteria

here is our origin and our doom, fat upon the inner tube

spinning away from the world’s regret.

.

If there's no such thing as a victimless crime,

what happened to this man?

Keep Swimming

Mace Windu,

Dressed in his Jedi robes, led me down a narrow back passage in my brain I didn't even know was there. It opened onto a hot room with low hanging cage-lights and concrete walls. There was a pit in the center with a concrete ramp, and I followed him down, it was hot and close like a boiler room. Stacked like cord-wood in one corner of the pit were life-size versions of lemon-flavored sour-patch kids, large bodies almost entirely devoid of form, piled like bodies. They were, they were bodies. I could almost taste their sweet gritty coating, salivating at the memory of their flavor in my mouth. There were maybe fifty or more. I asked Samuel L. Jackson-Mace Windu what could they possibly be for, lying there like a new sugary holocaust? He explained in a baritone like was like the ocean at night, they were my bad histories, the deep old memories, the ones that hurt. He asked me did I want them, or was I in fact done? I didn't even recognize most of them, none of them had faces anyway, I said no, I wanted them to go away. He told me okay. He told me they would dissolve, slowly, over the course of two days.