I
They chiseled the New Mexico moon
Out of bone last night
And the stars
The stars are nothing more
Than the dust
Blown by an indifferent chiseler
While the tar sits burning
Over the purple ground
Of this jawbone valley
II
His boots still dance the telegraph, y’know
His back still warms the slab
You may have closed his eyes
But maybe they both insisted on staying open
Maybe they still stare that endless ceiling down
Or get lost examining
The backs of coins
Maybe you got lost
Retracing the map you drew
Across his body
Following each red line
Dipping your gloved finger
Into the hole in his chest
You always knew how to make an impression
III
You gave all your smoke to roses
Remember when
You split O’Folliard’s shoulder in two?
And the wound grew teeth and blew steam
In the winter’s chill
While his tea kettle blood
Chewed into his bed of snow
And he sunk onto the caliche mud
That had froze itself into a marble hall
He had nothing but an unrealized kiss
In the barrel of his gun
“And a good goddamn to you.”
Is all he had in his purse
Nothing sadder than unrequited love
In such a harsh land
Someone always gets hurt
And as you smoked a cigar with him
Your mustaches were crawling with ants
A mass of twigs arching your upper lip
A series of scribbles
A collection of chicken scratch
So you stopped looking into the mirrors
That had replaced his eyes
And you wiped the blood off his lips
No sense him dying
While looking
Like a painted
Whore.
IV
Who could mollycoddle the bottle
Like you did?
Raised the little bastard up as your own
Spoiled him
Recited poetry down his neck
Hummed hymns into his glass ear
You tried to read your augury in his golden blood
But you just saw the Kid
Trapped in the fibrous of your eyes
Trapped in your bottle
So drink the Kid down
Pour him right into the hollow of your gut
Just try and keep him down
V
The moths don’t circle lanterns no more
in Lincoln
And Bell don’t track mud
On the jailhouse planks
No more
No, Bell sleeps cold
with a chest
Of broken fish bones
Snapped and ground
Into shards of rib
Into fine powder
Into bone dust
Yes, bone dust
A dash
of pure cane sugar
A handful of stars
When the Kid turned his shotgun to the moon
And fired
It took the pellets a whole night
To make a madman’s arch
and fall back down to earth
And now the sun rises
On the horizon of Ollinger’s shoulders
Behind a thick, healthy foliage of smoke
When they found the rest of his skull
The pieces of egg shell
And the slugs of flesh
And gathered it into that coffee can
It tried to ask for a drink
But they hadn’t found its tongue
And who ever talked without a tongue?
VI
And where were you?
Collecting taxes
Smuggling flasks into church
Underneath a shoulder holster
Mouthing a .44 Colt
(You never were one for cartridge belts
Such a feminine way to carry bullets
You thought
All toggled in red leather
Bejeweled in shells
Like some gypsy whore)
You weren’t no Cath-lick anyway
You did it for Apolinaria anyhow
It is true
You tried to be good for a while
But the law needed you
And you wouldn’t want those
Pecos whores to go hungry
Besides
VII
You saw the world form in a droplet of water
I saw the history of man slither down your arm
The tree of life dug in his gut
Curling through his ribs
Sprouting up his chest
On branches of wet hair
And as you gave the ground
Your golden necklace
Brazel gave you thoughts you’d never had
planted them right into your brain
Drilled the words right through your skull
And bone dust
Puffed
And roses
Smoked
And your face jerked into the grin
You used to get
When you would talk about the Kid
When they would ask why you done it
Why you had to
Do
What you had to
Do
“What can I say?”
You’d say
“The dirt just wanted him more.”
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Friday, December 3, 2010
Rock Salt & Nails
1. The Pansifter
Consider this old bastard.
Arthritic hands malformed. Overlapping veins traveling across every bony hill and valley. A limp mustache masking his dry-lipped mouth, his black spotted gums, his broken teeth. His stained clothes, all desiccated and stiff and there a pearl handled revolver on his hip, shining almost mockingly in contrast with the rest of his ragged form.
His name was Fenn.
He sat in the Pansifter's Saloon in Virgin Alley nursing some watered down beer, leering through the opaque window glass at the procession of drunkard miners fighting and vomiting and firing their pistols into the star-flooded California sky.
He liked the Pansifter and its sawdust floors.
Its prime cut whores.
Its bar tops made of old barn doors.
Despite the watered down liquor, it was the only saloon in Bodie that allowed a man to wear his guns without checking them at the bar. It didn't matter much that a man had to drink twice the amount of alcohol at the Pansifter just to get to the point where he was comfortable in his own skin. This old bastard knew he would never be comfortable without his .44 Colt sitting high on his hip, no matter how much liquor he got in his belly. They could keep the Maison Dore or the Philadelphia Beer Depot or any other fancy-assed den of iniquity. Those places were for dandies anyhow.
2. Joe Hershey and the 27 Sons of Bitches
Fenn’s pocket watch flipped open at the flick of a blackened fingernail and the faint chime of Bach bled into the music of profanity and the drumming of gunfire. It was 10:12 and those sons of bitches were twelve minutes late. This old bastard had no tolerance for tardiness.
He was once involved in a bank robbery in Missouri with his friend Joe Hershey. He was watching the pair of switch-off ponies by the crick as Joe robbed the bank. Only Joe was 48 minutes late and Fenn just left. Just up and left. Joe got down the hill on his own exhausted pinto, and when he saw just the crick and no ponies he thought, "Son of a bitch." and then his pinto collapsed, and the posse caught up and shot him 27 times as he rolled down the hill, and he thought "Son of a bitch." for every shot until he died.
27 sons of bitches and he was face down in a crick that now ran with his own blood. Fenn never had another thought on the matter. Joe Hershey shouldn’t have been late.
3. Billy
Fenn kept sipping his beer in the Pansifter, angry in his guts. Thirty-one more minutes passed and he’d had enough. He whispered a solitary goddamn and stood up to leave, so of course not a minute passed before the batwing doors swung open. Fenn sat back down and watched the doors. It was them. Those sons of bitches arrived singing profane miner songs about cunnies and peckers and tits.
Billy Black Beans and his Bunch of Bullshitters.
They were young. Not one member was past thirty, and each one of those sons of bitches was reed-thin like a consumption victim in his last throes of life. They all wore Montana-peaked Stetsons and drooping gun belts like unemployed cow-boys, save Billy who crowned himself with a derby, and wore his gun high in a belt of rare black leather. Everyone was filthy though and everyone wore coats and scarves and mittens and cigarettes between their lips.
4. On Morality and Plans
"Now look at this old bastard here!" Billy said, flashing the three bottom black teeth he got his moniker from. Billy was a killer, and a good one, mainly because he remained an innocent. He did not have a better side that told him of the Good Book and morals, therefore corrupting him with doubt and guilt. He gave no thought to the needs of others, unless he was pleasuring a woman, and that was really just a reflection of himself in their rippling ponds.
"How you doin' Fenn?"
Fenn stared forward, barely acknowledging Billy as he snapped his watch closed and sipped some from his now lukewarm beer.
"You're forty-three minutes late."
Billy smiled, "Now that's just---"
"That's just goddamned rude is what it is."
The old bastard turned his gaze to Billy's face, and that young son of bitch saw the faintest white dot in Fenn's squinting black eyes all pouring over with shriveled skin and Billy felt as if he were twelve years old again staring at his pa when he was on one of his violent drunks. He didn't want to look soft in front of his Bullshitters but he didn't have time to put on a front because Fenn spoke again.
"Sit down."
Billy sat.
"You tell me what we're doing."
"Well…uh…y'see, we've been noticing that…" Billy picked at some chipping paint on the table.
"Stop that."
"Uh…Yessir."
"Keep talking."
"Well, we…uh…got word that the Standard Mill ships its gold ore by wagon out to Carson City by way of Aurora."
"Yeah."
"Well, we was thinkin' on robbin' it with your help."
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
"Do you got a plan worked out or are you just gonna ride at the thing with pistols a-blazing like a bunch a goddamn greasers?"
"Well shit…I wanted to work that out with you. Y'know, plan it all together."
"No. I don't do things like that. You come to me with your plan and I'll tell you what's wrong with it."
"Alright, well--"
"You know where Mono Lake is?"
"Yeah. Of course."
"You meet me there with a plan tomorrow night at ten o'clock, and don't you be a second late or you will not see me again."
"OK…uh--"
"Now get the fuck out of my face. I’m tryin to drink here."
Billy's eyes bobbed about as if he didn't know where to look. He got up and paused for a second, taking off his derby hat and caressing the brim.
"Um…"
Fenn didn't acknowledge him. He just kept sipping at his warm beer, pretending like it was the best he ever tasted.
Billy turned around to his Bullshitters who were all standing there blank and quiet and brown as a tintype.
"Well, get the hell out!" he said and waved his arms. They all poured out of the batwing doors so fast that one broke off from its hinges and fell on the steps where it stayed for 3 years.
5. Jimmy Barbecue and the Pimp Stick
Outside in the purple air, a man was selling iced melon from a cart, clanging a bell and shouting.
“We got cantee-lopes! Watee-melons! All kinds of fruit for ye!”
And in his anger, Billy snatched the bell from the man’s hand and threw it at a cat that was batting the droopy ears of a sleeping drunkard. Billy turned to Jimmy Barbecue, his second in command, and balled his fist into his hand.
"That old bastard tries to muscle me around. Well goddamn him. If we didn't need that old fart for this thing I'd like a chance at him. I'd whup that geezered asshole in a fight any goddamn time, I'll tell you that much."
His breath was thick in the cold and every word could be seen floating into the air and disintegrating.
Jimmy just looked at him. Billy grimaced.
"What?"
"I didn't say nothing."
"Roll me a pimp stick you son of bitch."
Jimmy did and Billy smoked it and blew rings and thought.
6. The Color of Her Hair
Fenn stayed seated at the table sipping his beer with his crooked fingers all curled and jittering around the handle of his mug. A whore by the name of Coon-Tailed Alice sauntered over to the table and pulled up a chair and her long red hair was like the Arizona plains that Fenn one time lived on and her green eyes were glowing like a wolf's and there was a constellation of freckles all across the back of her neck. He liked those things, but mostly he liked her big freckly tits and her faded pink nipples and the pall of red hair on her cunny. He once fucked a different redheaded whore but the hair on her cunny was more of a brown color.
Alice was Fenn's favorite whore, naturally, but he was certainly not her favorite customer. He wasn't as bad as some of the miners; that was true. With their cold-shriveled peckers and their malnourished bodies where the sweat curled around each protruding rib. And of course their long, lice-infested beards and rotted-out teeth and their propensity for farting and general lack of Victorian manners.
Fenn wasn't a bad john, but he was nothing special and the experience was never more than tolerable. He wasn't into romantic touching though, and she appreciated that. That kind of thing made her feel sick inside. The more straightforward one was about their perversities the more pure the enterprise became. Fenn just wanted a warm place for his pecker and to maybe bury his face in some tits or a big, snow-white ass.
She put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand.
"Are you gonna ask me for a dance or not?" she said.
Fenn's mustache bent sideways and perhaps there was a smile hiding beneath it.
"I'll ask you for something else."
"And I'll ask you for something in return."
"And I'll give it to you right now."
He threw some coins on the table and Alice went to counting them.
"This'll get you 15 minutes," she said.
"I'll be finished in half that."
"I bet you will."
"Does that mean I get a discount?"
"Absolutely not."
"Well, I guess we can spend the rest of the time jawing like we are now."
"In that case, the time starts now."
"In that case, lets get the fuck upstairs. Er…pardon my tongue."
"No need for apologies, because I concur. Let's get the fuck upstairs."
Consider this old bastard.
Arthritic hands malformed. Overlapping veins traveling across every bony hill and valley. A limp mustache masking his dry-lipped mouth, his black spotted gums, his broken teeth. His stained clothes, all desiccated and stiff and there a pearl handled revolver on his hip, shining almost mockingly in contrast with the rest of his ragged form.
His name was Fenn.
He sat in the Pansifter's Saloon in Virgin Alley nursing some watered down beer, leering through the opaque window glass at the procession of drunkard miners fighting and vomiting and firing their pistols into the star-flooded California sky.
He liked the Pansifter and its sawdust floors.
Its prime cut whores.
Its bar tops made of old barn doors.
Despite the watered down liquor, it was the only saloon in Bodie that allowed a man to wear his guns without checking them at the bar. It didn't matter much that a man had to drink twice the amount of alcohol at the Pansifter just to get to the point where he was comfortable in his own skin. This old bastard knew he would never be comfortable without his .44 Colt sitting high on his hip, no matter how much liquor he got in his belly. They could keep the Maison Dore or the Philadelphia Beer Depot or any other fancy-assed den of iniquity. Those places were for dandies anyhow.
2. Joe Hershey and the 27 Sons of Bitches
Fenn’s pocket watch flipped open at the flick of a blackened fingernail and the faint chime of Bach bled into the music of profanity and the drumming of gunfire. It was 10:12 and those sons of bitches were twelve minutes late. This old bastard had no tolerance for tardiness.
He was once involved in a bank robbery in Missouri with his friend Joe Hershey. He was watching the pair of switch-off ponies by the crick as Joe robbed the bank. Only Joe was 48 minutes late and Fenn just left. Just up and left. Joe got down the hill on his own exhausted pinto, and when he saw just the crick and no ponies he thought, "Son of a bitch." and then his pinto collapsed, and the posse caught up and shot him 27 times as he rolled down the hill, and he thought "Son of a bitch." for every shot until he died.
27 sons of bitches and he was face down in a crick that now ran with his own blood. Fenn never had another thought on the matter. Joe Hershey shouldn’t have been late.
3. Billy
Fenn kept sipping his beer in the Pansifter, angry in his guts. Thirty-one more minutes passed and he’d had enough. He whispered a solitary goddamn and stood up to leave, so of course not a minute passed before the batwing doors swung open. Fenn sat back down and watched the doors. It was them. Those sons of bitches arrived singing profane miner songs about cunnies and peckers and tits.
Billy Black Beans and his Bunch of Bullshitters.
They were young. Not one member was past thirty, and each one of those sons of bitches was reed-thin like a consumption victim in his last throes of life. They all wore Montana-peaked Stetsons and drooping gun belts like unemployed cow-boys, save Billy who crowned himself with a derby, and wore his gun high in a belt of rare black leather. Everyone was filthy though and everyone wore coats and scarves and mittens and cigarettes between their lips.
4. On Morality and Plans
"Now look at this old bastard here!" Billy said, flashing the three bottom black teeth he got his moniker from. Billy was a killer, and a good one, mainly because he remained an innocent. He did not have a better side that told him of the Good Book and morals, therefore corrupting him with doubt and guilt. He gave no thought to the needs of others, unless he was pleasuring a woman, and that was really just a reflection of himself in their rippling ponds.
"How you doin' Fenn?"
Fenn stared forward, barely acknowledging Billy as he snapped his watch closed and sipped some from his now lukewarm beer.
"You're forty-three minutes late."
Billy smiled, "Now that's just---"
"That's just goddamned rude is what it is."
The old bastard turned his gaze to Billy's face, and that young son of bitch saw the faintest white dot in Fenn's squinting black eyes all pouring over with shriveled skin and Billy felt as if he were twelve years old again staring at his pa when he was on one of his violent drunks. He didn't want to look soft in front of his Bullshitters but he didn't have time to put on a front because Fenn spoke again.
"Sit down."
Billy sat.
"You tell me what we're doing."
"Well…uh…y'see, we've been noticing that…" Billy picked at some chipping paint on the table.
"Stop that."
"Uh…Yessir."
"Keep talking."
"Well, we…uh…got word that the Standard Mill ships its gold ore by wagon out to Carson City by way of Aurora."
"Yeah."
"Well, we was thinkin' on robbin' it with your help."
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
"Do you got a plan worked out or are you just gonna ride at the thing with pistols a-blazing like a bunch a goddamn greasers?"
"Well shit…I wanted to work that out with you. Y'know, plan it all together."
"No. I don't do things like that. You come to me with your plan and I'll tell you what's wrong with it."
"Alright, well--"
"You know where Mono Lake is?"
"Yeah. Of course."
"You meet me there with a plan tomorrow night at ten o'clock, and don't you be a second late or you will not see me again."
"OK…uh--"
"Now get the fuck out of my face. I’m tryin to drink here."
Billy's eyes bobbed about as if he didn't know where to look. He got up and paused for a second, taking off his derby hat and caressing the brim.
"Um…"
Fenn didn't acknowledge him. He just kept sipping at his warm beer, pretending like it was the best he ever tasted.
Billy turned around to his Bullshitters who were all standing there blank and quiet and brown as a tintype.
"Well, get the hell out!" he said and waved his arms. They all poured out of the batwing doors so fast that one broke off from its hinges and fell on the steps where it stayed for 3 years.
5. Jimmy Barbecue and the Pimp Stick
Outside in the purple air, a man was selling iced melon from a cart, clanging a bell and shouting.
“We got cantee-lopes! Watee-melons! All kinds of fruit for ye!”
And in his anger, Billy snatched the bell from the man’s hand and threw it at a cat that was batting the droopy ears of a sleeping drunkard. Billy turned to Jimmy Barbecue, his second in command, and balled his fist into his hand.
"That old bastard tries to muscle me around. Well goddamn him. If we didn't need that old fart for this thing I'd like a chance at him. I'd whup that geezered asshole in a fight any goddamn time, I'll tell you that much."
His breath was thick in the cold and every word could be seen floating into the air and disintegrating.
Jimmy just looked at him. Billy grimaced.
"What?"
"I didn't say nothing."
"Roll me a pimp stick you son of bitch."
Jimmy did and Billy smoked it and blew rings and thought.
6. The Color of Her Hair
Fenn stayed seated at the table sipping his beer with his crooked fingers all curled and jittering around the handle of his mug. A whore by the name of Coon-Tailed Alice sauntered over to the table and pulled up a chair and her long red hair was like the Arizona plains that Fenn one time lived on and her green eyes were glowing like a wolf's and there was a constellation of freckles all across the back of her neck. He liked those things, but mostly he liked her big freckly tits and her faded pink nipples and the pall of red hair on her cunny. He once fucked a different redheaded whore but the hair on her cunny was more of a brown color.
Alice was Fenn's favorite whore, naturally, but he was certainly not her favorite customer. He wasn't as bad as some of the miners; that was true. With their cold-shriveled peckers and their malnourished bodies where the sweat curled around each protruding rib. And of course their long, lice-infested beards and rotted-out teeth and their propensity for farting and general lack of Victorian manners.
Fenn wasn't a bad john, but he was nothing special and the experience was never more than tolerable. He wasn't into romantic touching though, and she appreciated that. That kind of thing made her feel sick inside. The more straightforward one was about their perversities the more pure the enterprise became. Fenn just wanted a warm place for his pecker and to maybe bury his face in some tits or a big, snow-white ass.
She put her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand.
"Are you gonna ask me for a dance or not?" she said.
Fenn's mustache bent sideways and perhaps there was a smile hiding beneath it.
"I'll ask you for something else."
"And I'll ask you for something in return."
"And I'll give it to you right now."
He threw some coins on the table and Alice went to counting them.
"This'll get you 15 minutes," she said.
"I'll be finished in half that."
"I bet you will."
"Does that mean I get a discount?"
"Absolutely not."
"Well, I guess we can spend the rest of the time jawing like we are now."
"In that case, the time starts now."
"In that case, lets get the fuck upstairs. Er…pardon my tongue."
"No need for apologies, because I concur. Let's get the fuck upstairs."
Monday, November 29, 2010
Guest Ranter Miss Giblets with 'Is this ignorance?'
We have a guest ranter for this installment of Memphis Dry Rub. Check out her blog at http://peanutbuttervodka.tumblr.com/ for even more of her special brand of informed ignorance.
I am really sick of gay rights activism. Of course, I’m not really for any kind of activism— and I realize this has more to do with misanthropy than politics. I’m for gay marriage for the usual reasons i.e. legislation of Judeo-Christian morality is the turd ingredient in the turd salad that I eat every time I venture into the Current Events section of a newspaper. The other ingredients are menstrual blood, raisins and sports. Raisins are okay, but they’re nothing to open a newspaper over. I’d like to say to hell with it and be done, but I live in a college town in Northern California so I don’t get to.
Anyways, the gay rights thing is still going on pretty hard and my point here is that it wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t for the lesbians. They make up the majority of the protesters/paraders. And why is this?
Well, I sat down and thought about it for seven seconds and realized that the lesbians are double trouble when it comes to being burnt about the state of the world. First they’re women, second they’re gay. Women just started coming into activism in the grand scheme of things, and while some may argue there is nothing more to be said on the matter, there are still very real problems with glass ceilings and other clever metaphors for inequality.
You usually don’t hear about a woman getting beaten to death because she’s a woman though. That’s the gay battle, and I understand the severity of that too. The inequality against the gaze isn’t a glass ceiling either— it’s made up of cinder blocks and broken nails. It’s covered in gay blood and has a mechanism that plays “You’re going to hell, faggot” and “You’re going to hell, fucking faggot” whenever some poor gay fails to rise above it.
Yea, it’s bullshit.
But how is some rainbow parade going to change anyone’s mind?? Does everyone need to be aware of you? Is that the logic? Maybe they’re working on the generations to come by annoying everyone into submission. That makes sense, but you’re pushing me away. I’ll still vote for your right to get married, because as far as I’m concerned the day can’t come soon enough. I’m afraid that until you are treated the same as regular minorities, your group will continue to be make itself known in the most annoying possible way.
I’m sorry ladies, but I gotta give you the award for most annoying. Perhaps you are compensating for your subjugated femininity by being…potent. And perhaps this manifests itself in things like your short hair cuts and lip rings and rainbow stud belts. But these things make me relate your individuality to a stereotype that SUCKS. And I’m sorry, but I’m judging you. I’m assuming you are annoying. I’m assuming that you are going to talk about the hardships of your lifestyle choice in otherwise ordinary conversations. When I see the lesbianess you’ve carefully constructed, I refer it back to the large scale lesbianess that gets portrayed in your demonstrations. Your demonstrations that demonstrate lesbianess…
Hmm, so then this isn’t my circular logic. You guys are doing all the shitty circular logic for us. Perhaps the missing ingredient is critical thinking, but are you expecting it from us? Don’t be daft, this is America.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate America. I just have to feel disdain when people are retarded in a language I can understand. And that applies to Americans AND lesbians.
I am really sick of gay rights activism. Of course, I’m not really for any kind of activism— and I realize this has more to do with misanthropy than politics. I’m for gay marriage for the usual reasons i.e. legislation of Judeo-Christian morality is the turd ingredient in the turd salad that I eat every time I venture into the Current Events section of a newspaper. The other ingredients are menstrual blood, raisins and sports. Raisins are okay, but they’re nothing to open a newspaper over. I’d like to say to hell with it and be done, but I live in a college town in Northern California so I don’t get to.
Anyways, the gay rights thing is still going on pretty hard and my point here is that it wouldn’t be so annoying if it weren’t for the lesbians. They make up the majority of the protesters/paraders. And why is this?
Well, I sat down and thought about it for seven seconds and realized that the lesbians are double trouble when it comes to being burnt about the state of the world. First they’re women, second they’re gay. Women just started coming into activism in the grand scheme of things, and while some may argue there is nothing more to be said on the matter, there are still very real problems with glass ceilings and other clever metaphors for inequality.
You usually don’t hear about a woman getting beaten to death because she’s a woman though. That’s the gay battle, and I understand the severity of that too. The inequality against the gaze isn’t a glass ceiling either— it’s made up of cinder blocks and broken nails. It’s covered in gay blood and has a mechanism that plays “You’re going to hell, faggot” and “You’re going to hell, fucking faggot” whenever some poor gay fails to rise above it.
Yea, it’s bullshit.
But how is some rainbow parade going to change anyone’s mind?? Does everyone need to be aware of you? Is that the logic? Maybe they’re working on the generations to come by annoying everyone into submission. That makes sense, but you’re pushing me away. I’ll still vote for your right to get married, because as far as I’m concerned the day can’t come soon enough. I’m afraid that until you are treated the same as regular minorities, your group will continue to be make itself known in the most annoying possible way.
I’m sorry ladies, but I gotta give you the award for most annoying. Perhaps you are compensating for your subjugated femininity by being…potent. And perhaps this manifests itself in things like your short hair cuts and lip rings and rainbow stud belts. But these things make me relate your individuality to a stereotype that SUCKS. And I’m sorry, but I’m judging you. I’m assuming you are annoying. I’m assuming that you are going to talk about the hardships of your lifestyle choice in otherwise ordinary conversations. When I see the lesbianess you’ve carefully constructed, I refer it back to the large scale lesbianess that gets portrayed in your demonstrations. Your demonstrations that demonstrate lesbianess…
Hmm, so then this isn’t my circular logic. You guys are doing all the shitty circular logic for us. Perhaps the missing ingredient is critical thinking, but are you expecting it from us? Don’t be daft, this is America.
And don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate America. I just have to feel disdain when people are retarded in a language I can understand. And that applies to Americans AND lesbians.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Hick Poetry Classic: 'Two Fours'
1.
each step rattles with bottle caps
bent into quarter moons
or half smiles
of gold teeth
cameroon currency
in burlap bags
hemp tied about my canvas drawers
it’ll be a helluva night
tonight
i tell you what
these caps here
these caps’ll buy me
two beers and
and
a pickled egg.
you’ll see.
2.
a thousand souls are drifting
from manholes
in front of that ramshackle
chinese laundry
i told you about
y’see some people
dont like them orientals y’know
but i like em fine
that’s what them japs like to be called
right?
and them souls
well they’re getting caught
in the bony fingers
of them dead trees
them barren trees
scratching the back of an indifferent sky
i heard that
the best thing a soul could become
is a cloud.
i heard that once
i think my gramma told me.
3.
i heard that when god spoke
I heard
It was like…………
BLAM!
the earth come together
like that!
jus like that!
like a sperm
N
an egg
and that
ever time
he speaks
god that is
ever time he speaks
another world is created
spinning out in space
dancing a black waltz
tangled in his beard
i heard this from a scientist once
i think
4.
y'know, sometimes
i crack an egg in my beer
and i watch it float down
like a sunset
in a sky full of smoke
and i think
i sure wish
my mama
would stop saying
i just wish
she’d stop telling me
that
i was a product
of rape.
4.
hey look
they’re lightin them lanterns
and meltin them candles down
in the little town
of Needles tonight
turnin it into a freckle
of stars
stamped across the dirt
smack in the middle
of this bare-assed land
y’know
that the babble says
excuse me
the holy babble says
that it's better to live
in a bare-assed land
than with
a thousand
quarrelsome whores
not in those words though
me
i’d have to try it out first
before i bet on it.
5.
i been dictating
to this bottle
of turpentine
gin
with sugar
on the rim
all damn night
but its hard to drown
out
mexicali trumpets
when they’re so damn
loud
cant even hear myself talk
don’t worry a man tells me
don’t worry he says
yaint missin much
6.
it’s nights like these
that my shadows
come in threes.
each step rattles with bottle caps
bent into quarter moons
or half smiles
of gold teeth
cameroon currency
in burlap bags
hemp tied about my canvas drawers
it’ll be a helluva night
tonight
i tell you what
these caps here
these caps’ll buy me
two beers and
and
a pickled egg.
you’ll see.
2.
a thousand souls are drifting
from manholes
in front of that ramshackle
chinese laundry
i told you about
y’see some people
dont like them orientals y’know
but i like em fine
that’s what them japs like to be called
right?
and them souls
well they’re getting caught
in the bony fingers
of them dead trees
them barren trees
scratching the back of an indifferent sky
i heard that
the best thing a soul could become
is a cloud.
i heard that once
i think my gramma told me.
3.
i heard that when god spoke
I heard
It was like…………
BLAM!
the earth come together
like that!
jus like that!
like a sperm
N
an egg
and that
ever time
he speaks
god that is
ever time he speaks
another world is created
spinning out in space
dancing a black waltz
tangled in his beard
i heard this from a scientist once
i think
4.
y'know, sometimes
i crack an egg in my beer
and i watch it float down
like a sunset
in a sky full of smoke
and i think
i sure wish
my mama
would stop saying
i just wish
she’d stop telling me
that
i was a product
of rape.
4.
hey look
they’re lightin them lanterns
and meltin them candles down
in the little town
of Needles tonight
turnin it into a freckle
of stars
stamped across the dirt
smack in the middle
of this bare-assed land
y’know
that the babble says
excuse me
the holy babble says
that it's better to live
in a bare-assed land
than with
a thousand
quarrelsome whores
not in those words though
me
i’d have to try it out first
before i bet on it.
5.
i been dictating
to this bottle
of turpentine
gin
with sugar
on the rim
all damn night
but its hard to drown
out
mexicali trumpets
when they’re so damn
loud
cant even hear myself talk
don’t worry a man tells me
don’t worry he says
yaint missin much
6.
it’s nights like these
that my shadows
come in threes.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Aurelia Aurita
She wrote a letter to my shadow
I smoked a strand of her black hair
She ran her fingers cross my belly
And fell asleep with her hand there
I saw the patterns on my ceiling
A bloom of jellyfish hung down
The trees were dripping dried up leaves
The wind was sweeping up the ground
When her fingers did their stutter
As she slept across my chest
I saw the moistness on her picket teeth
I saw the pigment in her breath
Jesus once lived underwater
The sea was glowing on the coast
He never did much like the desert
He gave that all up to His ghost
They tried to follow in His footsteps
They tried to dig up all His bones
The tomb was empty and the seas were boiling
In almost all the coastal zones
The polypoids are now in mourning
The anglers all shut off their lights
We walked across a gelatinous sea
Till we were gone far from His sight
When I get killed tomorrow
Write her a letter on the foam
Tell the turtles that I loved them
And that I won't be coming home
Take the kelp from off my bed
Clean the salt out of my room
On certain nights when she looks overhead
I’ll be polishing the moon
I smoked a strand of her black hair
She ran her fingers cross my belly
And fell asleep with her hand there
I saw the patterns on my ceiling
A bloom of jellyfish hung down
The trees were dripping dried up leaves
The wind was sweeping up the ground
When her fingers did their stutter
As she slept across my chest
I saw the moistness on her picket teeth
I saw the pigment in her breath
Jesus once lived underwater
The sea was glowing on the coast
He never did much like the desert
He gave that all up to His ghost
They tried to follow in His footsteps
They tried to dig up all His bones
The tomb was empty and the seas were boiling
In almost all the coastal zones
The polypoids are now in mourning
The anglers all shut off their lights
We walked across a gelatinous sea
Till we were gone far from His sight
When I get killed tomorrow
Write her a letter on the foam
Tell the turtles that I loved them
And that I won't be coming home
Take the kelp from off my bed
Clean the salt out of my room
On certain nights when she looks overhead
I’ll be polishing the moon
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Hick Poetry Classic: "The Wallpaper Insists"
Flowers
growing out
of
flowers
?
That wallpaper
is a goddamn
liar.
That wallpaper’s
never
seen
how a real garden
works.
The curtains
are pulled
together
and kissing
I imagine
and still
those distant
fireworks
paint
in
Reds
Reds
Reds
across her body
throwing shadows
of
crucifixes.
Pyrotechnics
are so
sanctimonious
these days.
or
perhaps
it could be
The end
End.
END.
of the world
at my
window sill
and still
and still
there’s nothing
on
TV
And she?
She’s
as smooth
as
I don’t know
a pint of
cream
a glass of
buttermilk.
I could
dream
my nights
trying to
write
love letters
to the blood
running through
her vines
and the ancient
civilizations
of bacteria
in the clefts
of her flesh.
I wish
my pen
was a microscope
and a scalpel.
Yes.
“In a sense,”
She once told me
“innocence
is like
being Proud
of not knowing
how to
read.”
How much
of her innocence
has she sold
to my twins
and how much
of herself
indeed
?
growing out
of
flowers
?
That wallpaper
is a goddamn
liar.
That wallpaper’s
never
seen
how a real garden
works.
The curtains
are pulled
together
and kissing
I imagine
and still
those distant
fireworks
paint
in
Reds
Reds
Reds
across her body
throwing shadows
of
crucifixes.
Pyrotechnics
are so
sanctimonious
these days.
or
perhaps
it could be
The end
End.
END.
of the world
at my
window sill
and still
and still
there’s nothing
on
TV
And she?
She’s
as smooth
as
I don’t know
a pint of
cream
a glass of
buttermilk.
I could
dream
my nights
trying to
write
love letters
to the blood
running through
her vines
and the ancient
civilizations
of bacteria
in the clefts
of her flesh.
I wish
my pen
was a microscope
and a scalpel.
Yes.
“In a sense,”
She once told me
“innocence
is like
being Proud
of not knowing
how to
read.”
How much
of her innocence
has she sold
to my twins
and how much
of herself
indeed
?
Thursday, November 18, 2010
The Hot Sauce Bottle Full of Liquid Morphine
1.
The red-haired woman
Was tracing constellations
On the freckles of her arm
Perhaps she should trace
herself
some eyebrows
2.
My daddy used to whisper prophecies
Into wine bottles
About damnation contained
In a toilet bowl
And carve commandments into my back
About the gym rules
At the senior center
It was good information to know
3.
I once got lost in the pumice holes
Of a chicken bone
The porous white bastards
Spread on a mosaic of dry mud
In the desert somewhere
Where the buzzards circle
Over your shoulder
Trying to find out
Your pin number
That was embarrassing
4.
I once fell in love with the sunset
But the sunset changes fast
From minute to minute
I mean
It’ll keep you warm for a while
But it gets cold fast
And pretty soon you’re wandering
Through outer darkness
And all you can think about
Is how pretty the sunset was
But you can’t remember a damn word it said
And you think maybe it didn’t speak at all
And if it did
It wasn’t worth remembering
And besides, how many fools have loved the sunset?
And how many more will?
No one will ever truly get close to the sunset
Also, by sunset I mean a specific woman
That I knew
In case you didn’t understand.
Also, the sunset won’t return my phone calls
5.
Get the coffins ready, boys
I’ve been saving my quarters
I’ve been shaving my knuckles
To the bone
The bastards have hammered their last nails
The bitches will commence their brooming
And I’ve come to make things straight
I’ve come to divide your skulls
With a brick
I’ve come to smoke cherry-flavored
Tobacco through a chicken bone pipe
And watch a dozen or so lines of pink smoke
Drift up like sea grass
And make passes
At foreign girls
Too young to know better
But first, I’ll make a necklace of your teeth
hung on a string of your saliva
And you’ll be spitting cherry blossoms
On to the pavement
Spitting
A whole fucking bouquet
In full bloom
6.
I cut my umbilical cord
with a broken wine bottle once
No matter how hard you try
You can’t prevent stupid things
from happening
The red-haired woman
Was tracing constellations
On the freckles of her arm
Perhaps she should trace
herself
some eyebrows
2.
My daddy used to whisper prophecies
Into wine bottles
About damnation contained
In a toilet bowl
And carve commandments into my back
About the gym rules
At the senior center
It was good information to know
3.
I once got lost in the pumice holes
Of a chicken bone
The porous white bastards
Spread on a mosaic of dry mud
In the desert somewhere
Where the buzzards circle
Over your shoulder
Trying to find out
Your pin number
That was embarrassing
4.
I once fell in love with the sunset
But the sunset changes fast
From minute to minute
I mean
It’ll keep you warm for a while
But it gets cold fast
And pretty soon you’re wandering
Through outer darkness
And all you can think about
Is how pretty the sunset was
But you can’t remember a damn word it said
And you think maybe it didn’t speak at all
And if it did
It wasn’t worth remembering
And besides, how many fools have loved the sunset?
And how many more will?
No one will ever truly get close to the sunset
Also, by sunset I mean a specific woman
That I knew
In case you didn’t understand.
Also, the sunset won’t return my phone calls
5.
Get the coffins ready, boys
I’ve been saving my quarters
I’ve been shaving my knuckles
To the bone
The bastards have hammered their last nails
The bitches will commence their brooming
And I’ve come to make things straight
I’ve come to divide your skulls
With a brick
I’ve come to smoke cherry-flavored
Tobacco through a chicken bone pipe
And watch a dozen or so lines of pink smoke
Drift up like sea grass
And make passes
At foreign girls
Too young to know better
But first, I’ll make a necklace of your teeth
hung on a string of your saliva
And you’ll be spitting cherry blossoms
On to the pavement
Spitting
A whole fucking bouquet
In full bloom
6.
I cut my umbilical cord
with a broken wine bottle once
No matter how hard you try
You can’t prevent stupid things
from happening
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