Ladies and gentlemen! Come one, come all! The new issue of Mung Being has hit the cybershelves, and not only does it feature a ton of great prose, poetry, essays, art and music, it also features a poem by little old me!
jawbone symphony
A poem of mine was recently published in the amazing, beautiful journal Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock 3. You can order a copy here, at the Plumberries Press page.
two poems
Scorched Earth Love Song #2
Here: a song for charred blackened flesh
for reclamation by earth and sound
helicopters buzzing like electric bonesaws
teeth biting sucking bittersweet marrow
watching sunsets with hopeless fervor
hollowing out homes beneath great dark trees
sap like ogre blood dripping down arboreal tongues
clenched fist tight around thoughtless mind
harrowing heartbreaking in a world without
sandworms or heatsinks broke down highways
all things made of glass shall too come
no one rides but might sing loudly nightly
for dead soldiers and dead doornails
for fathers everywhere with tongues like snails
slimy fingers calloused thick yet manicured
flowers exploding from lips like pink fire
eyes like rotary dial telephones
or seas under starless skies
Swim in the ash of old settlements
manufacture resentment that could be grown naturally
act hard for the sake of your daughters
smile broadly for other men’s wives
your backyard is a desert
your body is a coal mine
birdsong is breathed through miles
of carpentry and compulsion
each lie an interstate
each soft sigh an exit
each chance to forget
ensures you’ll remember
each long day praying for the night
waiting for the heat to break
waiting for a dog and his boy
to come rescue you
When they do finally come
the boy makes the sign of the cross
and kisses you good night
before syphoning your petrol
2010
Hiccough Soup
in eternal foglight bathes redemption (maybe)
basketball choirs in hopalong robes
looking insectoid and teething (of course)
buster in the cornfield again
all appointments cancelled
radio plays transmitted in technicolor
12 ¢ moustache rides in hell
2010
found scraps
Untitled
The city, still drowsy, looks to find the sun
Absent–the firmament void.
In each high rise, a soft and sorrowful sigh
Met with tiny footsteps walking in circles,
In limitless spirals while
The rain makes wet the aerials
Reaching toward the same
Still-sleeping sun, the same
Gray and empty sky.
My fingers stretch, my arms are slick
Like tarmac, and sparkling slightly.
I imagine I am some great oak,
Or a chimney,
Or a riverbed,
Or something collapsed.
I long for topsoil where I might plant my toes,
A soft and damp mossy beard.
My fingers stretch and crack
And I long to be taken by the earth
Just as one lover takes another.
The city, still drowsy, wipes the sleep from its eyes
And boards the 10 bus toward downtown,
And still the sun is hiding.
2009
Automatic Writing 11/04
I wear
A horseface
Like my own face
Over my skull.
I drink
& drink
& drink
Until my face gets tight.
2009
Heaven is Humming
Heaven is humming tonight
Like a finely-tuned electric typewriter
Like a man learning to sing
Reaching for the right pitch,
Stumbling but never–
And I with my own humming
Plucking away in the dark
Always stumbling
To you who invented the adding machine:
I lay before you my greasy palms.
I set here all my prayers, tied in a bundle,
Organized by tongue. You
Feel the viscous oils dripping
Down. You
Washed yourself
In the ladies’ room
After.
2009
From Blue Canary 13
A Prayer for the Wobs
We are broken men now,
though it may be that we always
have been. And lying drunk in gutters
has never been our true calling,
but we’ve done it enough
when not holed up in living rooms,
union halls or jail cells.
Joe Hill was a saint
but never an angel.
(Or was it the other way
around?)
Yea, though I toil endlessly
under hateful fluorescence
for low wages and no appreciation,
sweat stinging eyes,
I will fear no bosses.
The picket line stretches like the Rio Grande
but in drought. Somehow history
is forgotten again, and the great
Carved Earth is hidden under
a thick blanket of black ash,
and no rod and no staff
provide comfort.
Thou annointest my head with liquor
And my cup is never full enough.
2005
a scrap
The Language of God
We cut out the tongue to taste
And now the name no longer speaks.
The twins cleaved together
As sun and moon, or water and sand.
A light which destroys
Might also seek to maintain.
A shadow sings a silent song,
Reaches his hands to grasp.
Inspired by Paul Auster’s City of Glass
2010