i am so happy
TRANSCRIPT
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I
I AM SO HAPPY
I COULD HUG A REPUBLICAN
POEMS AND OTHER PARANOIA
1999--2008
RVMARTINEZ
FOR MY FATHER,
PIOQUINTO CHAVARRIA MARTINEZ
Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklick.
-Rainer Maria Rilke
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II
Copyright 2008 by Ricardo Valente Martinez
All Rights Reserved.
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III
(PARANOIA)
THE MIRACLE RECEDING IN THE BRAIN
A PSYCHIC READING
AFTER BACKING OUT ON A TATTOO
BUTCHS LAMENT
FROM A SECOND STORY
FIVE YEARS OF FATE
THE STAIRCASE OF OUR FALL
A FREAK HEAT
SUNDAE MOUNTAIN
LUMP
THE SMART BOMB
QUOOQUOOEY
ZOMBIE AFTERNOONS
( DRINKING TO LAREDO )
TIO MATIAS
MARIACHIS
ROBSTOWN 1932
ENTERING FLORESVILLECHRISTMAS SIXTY-SEVEN
AURORA DEMANDING
VALENTE
DRINKING TO LAREDO
TACO BREAK
CITRONS
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IV
( MAS PARANOIA)
THE SOUND
AS THE MINUS IS MULTIPLIED
NEAR THE TEXAS THEATRE
CANTICLE
I WAS DYING TO HEAR THE NEWS OF YOUR LIFE
JUST IN CASE OBAMA WINS
WINDOW SEAT
SPRING WINO
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V
P A R A N O I A
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THE MIRACLE RECEDING FROM THE BRAIN
transferring its own embryo
of change,
the policy of doubt inherent
in its own gestation,
torn terribly from times hollow
mausoleum,
cryptic reminders of odd occurrence,
sad refrains.
The last haunt of forlorn ghosts bent on
redemptive duty,
stranded in dimensions, moaning inaudibly,
through sheet-rock,
the husk of a hallway, falling silence,
the muted quiet of the soul,
the terminal spirit collapsed uponitself
dissolving in a mania of utterance,
subdued and restrained
---detained.
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A PSYCHIC READING
Who knows whose ego you are enhancing,
dancing
to their lime-light, mirror-ball spirituality.
All my frugal attempts at saving my soul
for you
were wrecked on stale cigarettes and lite-beers.
I am getting drowsy just thinking about it.
anti-depressants
at war with each other, name calling, not waiting
their turn, raising their voices in my head
to be heard.
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AFTER BACKING OUT ON A TATTOO
The ever present line, down the divide
dotting our lives and our times, equating
our apprehension into forced rhymes, that
subdivide and subdivide into
subdivisions too plain to hide with our
painted skins that beg uniqueness, but
coincide, with advertisement, a neon-lit
pronouncement so smug, like a candidates
commitment to stem the tide of losses.
Losses he cannot hide,
weapons buried
so deep in his imagination
that a busy nation has no time
to worry his use of myth
into a crime, but carry on, bury on,
unfertile ground is ready to receive
the soul-exited remains, releasedof their vengeance and their pain,
their dry-mouthed la-la-las
echoing over the sand grains,
because there is no justice.
There is only Darwin.
Now that we are the fittest can we out swim
the tide, or will our internals, full
of macroscopic cells implode from the inside?
Steal the yellow jackets nest from its unique
height, destroy the larvae in their parchment
caverns, the strays still return to the sightfull of glorious brute anger, wobbly might.
.
Sleep now, sleep now, there is dream -journaling
to be done, life-styles far more entertaining,
than dying in the sun, people trip through
turnstiles, enter elevators, board planes,
and soon, and forever after, are interrupted
from their days
.
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BUTCHS LAMENT
O my eyes have seen this glorified landtheyve dreamed it into existence
blind to the indignant man
Cold to the persistence
of the questioning sex,
and the raindrops that keep falling on my head,
until I am dead,
they keep falling,
so Im free,
But can I tell you what is really
bothering me?
Since the bull stopped chasing the bicycle?
Since the posse lost wind of our scent?
Since the railroad man blew up with his train?
Its this.
Whats to stop us from stealing into a bordering land?Blowing a safe. Living like a rich man
in a foreign country, like a European,
but on the cheap.
Only the Lord could find us,
defeat us,
bind us,
return us to the prison of poverty in America.
Theyre not taking me alive.
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FROM A SECOND STORY
Exasperation bled
from the orchids still waning
in the humid night breeze.
Ever-present ash trees soaking in rainwater,
all the disordering discipline
a storm can afford.
Boredom has its own requirements,
distilled in concise droplets,
ping-
ponging, in the echo-hungry night,
but I was a camper,
backpack-heavy with happiness,
leaving
a
trail
of
cigarettes for some one
tofind my smoky self
and inhale,
with unfiltered puffs
all my crude cruelties.
I long for screened-in porches
and
sick school days,
let us scamper without hampering
our desolation
in the polite moonlight of summer,
before harsh winter
plucks the leaves from the Chinese Tallows with all theirFall agendas of faded greens, yellows, and reds.
Until we are dead,
for dying makes us all the same.
No need for hospitable doctors, nurses, and bloody emergency rooms.
How can it be cathartic? If you are not Catholic or equally Protestant?
he threat of the red army has added white and blue
to its palette,
while you were upgrading to DSL.
Eyes go blinderand so full of sand.
It is surprising that you never thought of what you think
as contraband.
It is so tiring, all the farenhight heat of this Bradburian future,
and if Orwellians believed in hell
they would be living in it now,
instead of tanning off its brightness.
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This and all politeness aside,
it is your innocence that has died,
all the past empires have subscribed
to these growing pains,
they just learned to check their guilty consciences at the door
That and PBS did not yet exist.
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12
FIVE YEARS OF FATE
1
Greetings from a very hot spot,
warm climates are welcome here,
helium evaporates into the atmosphere,
but you already knew about that.
I dont have much news, so lets just chat
about thoughts I might have forgot.
The women next-door finally gave up the ghost.
Mysterious cancer cells invaded the rumor mill,
the ladies fought bravely ,with their shaved crowns
fashioned with garden hats, but still
could not kill what was eating them
from within.
Their children dispersed throughout
the city, the state, the country at large.
If they could have afforded it,somewhere in Europe would be their final domain,
for instance, Spain, that family said they were
Spanish all along, or so they claimed.
2
In the stronghold of my own armor
I light my love.
I ache for tall trees
and unconsolable breezes.
I identify the sunlight
and try to unbend its beams,
but it seems there is no living without it.
Industrial nuisance
treads dirty on my soul.
I try to keep it Holy.
O, but for how long?
Until the dancing girls
dance into the song,
then I am gone.
The ocean call of ecstasy is minutes fast,its hasty love evaporates the past.
I sense a sunshine
at the cavern crevice,
but it is a long hike up an unguided path.
Time for a wait in line, for a shower or bath,
to wash my sins away.
The flaming spirits zing
pin and needle pain at me.
I drink up all the misery, the well tarnished luck.
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3
Say I to the savior:You went through worst.
He fires off a shot of love.
The mental anguish was the hard part,
you live beyond the martyrdom
of physical pain, lifeless bones.
Sense of betrayal wrecks at your mind
for empty ones you sought to save,
I could not save them all,
before they killed me.
Hows that for a perfect God?
I wait for sleep to vanquish me
I try to keep my sanity
counting sheep backwards
from one-hundred and three.
Seven finally arrives,but the alarmed clock forgot to buzz,
and I, late for a job I hate,
ease into the grind,
ease into the fate.
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THE STAIRCASE OF OUR FALL
The giant is ambling
down the concrete staircase.
He is a proponent of fun,
music is allowed,
crowded dance-hall jitterbugs
with several whiskey chasers submerged in beer mugs and
clouds of cigar smoke too thick for thin patience,
and then the behemoth bursts into the party-lit conversation
having invested all his horror on a social situation he cannot adequately
explain.
He stomps his feet.
The guests concede he has vocal skills a politico would kill for,
he bares his teeth,
Yes, noshing is a fashion that they could get behind,
not too discreet enough to
decline his warring tendencies which mushroomed
into conservatism at a most
appropriate time as if somebody else was not to blame ,
as if somebody else was not to blame this time.
Time is the only asterisk we have not visited
in all our mooning exploration.
We hover over it in a countless march of dimes
Until the loan office informs us of our crime.
The Masters and Johnsons of an infinity
Gone dull in the triangle of of our breeding.
We move on, still speeding away from
the monster we have chosen
to ignore, take lightly, adore. We gaze into the ions
With our sleeping souls so content.
We consent. When did the giant get so gigantic?
Molecules from now we will knowwhere the nucleus was hiding when the gray matter
Became so gray, and so ashen.
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A FREAK HEAT
Trees hang heat-stricken
In the last days of August
The drought has not subsided
It will continue until September,
Even October,
Until Halloween has spooked us
Into a cold fright;
A terror ripe for sweatshirts,
Sweaters:
People running for their lives.
This year everyone has Bush-heads
And Gore-y faces,
At dusk it is hard to say which horror
They represent.
The unforeseeable future or
The apparent one.
It may be as cold as fifty on the 31st,
Until then that cool dream is harbored
In the minds of Austenites
And they will have to live on
With the wave of hot air as it
Exhales onto their faces
Forces them into informal wear,
Into swimming pools, lakes,
Rivers, and coastal regions.
Noon is so extravagant in its warmth
Most unbearable at three-oclock
Where sweat and perspirationReach their zenith
And heat takes a hiatus
In the confined cool of air-conditioning,
Fall still quite far off,
Winter, only an imagination.
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SUNDAE MOUNTAIN
The sun is up
and all is well, pterodactyls
rest at our borders still,
but we marochino cherries
are safe from the kill;
sitting on our sundae mountain,
sitting on our sundae mountain.
Perhaps prehistory was meant to be
a creative endeavor
a solar vehicle plummeting to sea,
but we desert toppings
were meant to be
sitting on a sundae mountain,
sitting on a sundae mountain.
I first begged that neanderthal,graffiti artist of the cave wall:
Why such childish scribbling?
He answered me while dribbling:
Ug ug nuk nuk ang gik gik kung
Oh? I replied.
You think someone as fruity as I
Has never thought to outlive life,
through art? I ,a garnish, at best?
Well, let me tell you,
when you find yourself sitting
in a red, delicious syrup at mid-life,
you have to question the very validity
of your own being.
What is next?
A rum drink?
A jubilee?
Could there be more?
And this is what he and I both failed
to see, that this is where I was meant to be
on a mountain of transfixed vanilla
that I scaled after emerging from
the sweet-candied slime,
I do not know how I managed that long,
or whether to condemn my lifeas a condiment as wrong.
But I stood fast on that peak,
in the lotus position
for so very long,
exposing myself to freezer blasts
among boxes of forgotten pot pies,
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like monk in muted meditation.
And this is what came to me.
Do not oppose.
Do not agree.
Let your cherry sweetness
free some throat of pain.
Find a mountain of ice cream
and climb.
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LUMP
Even if I were a tiny lump of coal,
And given the choice,
I probably would choose not
to be a diamond someday,
simply because a diamond
is such a cold, impersonal rock.
Its shiny, I like shiny.
You can scratch glass with it,
surprise your girl or someone elses wife with it.
But can you fuel a train on it?
Can you keep countless burglars from
coming up with heist after heist schemes
until they are bored with the entire idea of theft?
Even the idea of out-foxing the local police will
no longer make burglarable objects worth burglaring.
All this geology at work and a portion ofthe population has had their mode of living
rendered into dust because someone was not
happy with a fossil.
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THE SMART BOMB
My wish was to be
drummed out
of the navy,
it was to be hurtled to sea,
but I ticked someone off
and they exploded.
Seems some folk dont like
to be debris.
Every memory I have
is an ignition
Every drag I take is
destined to kill
Every fuse is burned and gone,
so fast and so long
I wish I had the time
to feel your pain
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QUOOQUOOEY
The coyote are restless
Wincing when they howl
The moon is dissolving their eyelids
Their voicing at the mercy of misinterpretation
The night, disjointed and obsolete
Absolute in its quiet
They poke the raw flesh
Dreaming of garbage drums
Knocked on their sides
The contents arrayed like a feast
They cannot limit their sinning
Injustice smells indifferent
And the spoils sweeten in the heat
They hear the owl , the human faced owl
Propositioning the business wind
They know his true name is unpronounceable
They wish to capture him by daylight
But the daytime is overdressedTrying overly hard to impress the diminished
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ZOMBIE AFTERNOONS
They ask me always
Am I plowing
I am bowing
So sad, knowing
That the sour grain will be the pain I endure
Until my spine frays away like a poor guitar neck
Fretted through rusty strings
So sings the CANCER in our lives
crabs take over us sometimes
We are at war with parasites
And Paris cities
Whose logic offends
Depending on which abyss you are staring into...here comes the crank
He is handing out pamphlets
In the hall
Yanking on the handles
Of every stallHe wants to hear our verdict
But we have found the funnies
On the floor
REST in peace thoROughly Over Mountains
Valleys,
Creek beds
Reeking of Deadheads
I pulled my pistol from its case
and shot an angry round into the air
And itnever did come down.
Gravity stole it
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DRINKING TO LAREDO
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TIO MATIAS
After all my restless imaginings, my mother finally reveals
that my Tio Matias, fathers older brother, leapt to his death
into the violent current of the Rio Grande, and probably not
pushed or involved in an intrigue. Of course, the story changes
every time she tells it,
with every visit to the old house on the Westside,
over barbacoa tacos on a Sunday morning,
after my father heads off to read the Express/News in the john.
We time our conversations on his flushes, at the sound of a flush
we know to change the subject, for it still pains him, sometimes
his eyes get glassy, and then he switches subjects,
hiding it in humor. Insulting my mothers family,
their tackiness, their lack of shame, questioning citizenship, he teases,
they go into a bit with all the fury and high comedy
of a Desi and Lucy episode. You can tell she saved himfrom the brooding darkness of his families soul
their stubbornness and alcoholic recklessness
My father never said whether Matias was discovered drunk,
only that he was found on Mexican side of the river,
bruised, perhaps badly beaten, they were lucky to get the body
back to the Laredo side of the bridge.
I had another Tio who was thrown down a staircase in Chicago,
he loved seven card stud and dominoes, maybe he was tipsy
and took the wrong step, which is what the police reported
to my father and his nephews when they drove upto retrieve the body.
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MARIACHIS
At the restaurant
With the four dead Mexicans
On the roof,
Dinner is served
And breakfast tacos
Are also offered.
Bacon and egg,
Which means scrambled egg portions
Conjoined with bacon crisps
Sharing a lonely tortilla
In segregation.
Separado.
Sabes?
The four dead Mexicans
Are cast in ironand painted happy,
happy to smolder in the hot North Austin sun,
almost like in real life,
except they cannot walk home
down along the earth-moving
reconstruction on 183,
in the hundred degree heat,
because they are caged in metal,
smiling their conjunto smiles,
singing Arrancame La Vida
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ROBSTOWN 1932
I will not sun these children here,
Nor quiet them under a harsh moon
Only to wake, hour upon hour
At the creaking night
The cold collects on windows,
Encasing their fears
Enshrouding their futures
To this undemocratic fate.
Democracy or no democracy
This is not the only country
They will ever see, smell,
Or hear of
I will take them to the mountains
South of this home
Descend them into free-falling valleys
Which they might question me of,A nature that I could never retrieve
All the infinitesimal answers to,
Their mouths hung open, waiting.
I will feed them mangos and avocados
Shook from the trees of our very own yard.
But they will be free
Of these cold-hearted men
With their burning crosses,
Ghostly impressions,
And blanketed bodies,
Not so brave men, not so smart,
I am acquainted with all their voicesI know the shame of all their names,
Coaching their sons to swing at a baseball,
Sleeping on a chair, resting my hand on my rifle
Resting my mind on the bible
Driving my sons and daughters
As far from the home of the brave
As I can drive.
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ENTERING FLORESVILLE
Everyone had their eyes peeled,
on the lookout
for the largest peanut
in the state.
At the rest-stop,
we had Shasta lemon-lime
and orange sodas,
grape was a favorite
although its bubbles
scraped my throat
Mom gave us a solitary wiener
tacoed in white bread,
Buttercrust, from the blue gingham wrapper.
My sister and I scratched sticks
across an army ant mound
until they came scrambling out in chaos,looking like Martians,
with their antennae in an uproar.
I would run to the ditch
where the train tracks were,
because there was always
a turkey vulture lying there dead
with its wings unfurled,
like it was shot right out of the sky
in mid-hover by Clint Eastwood.
Others complained about these trips,
the heat, being forced to listen to Flaco Jimenez,to realize he had a twin brother who sounded
just like him,
but this is what I liked about the drive,
all those dead wild animals.
Where you could see them up close,
Where they were supposed to be.
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CHRISTMAS SIXTY-SEVEN
Anticipating Christmas on its eve
For those of us who still believed
Would come at midnight
If we were good and patient
Although, all we wanted
Was to unwrap it
And leave it littered
On the floor of the New Year
Next to champagne bottles and cans of Shlitz
And stacks of Guy Lombardo and Perry Como
Plates and plates of tamales
Some ruined by ketchup
And Tios getting your name wrong
On purpose
Tias in a bouquet of perfume
Pinching your cheeks too long.
All this you must endure
Way past eleven, even though
You know you will not
Make it to that last, painfully,
Talkative hour.
Which gives the holiday
Its power and you awake
To its magic and say:
Why didnt you get me up?I wanted to see him.
You wanted to see
how Santa climbed into a house
with no chimney.
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AURORA DEMANDING
The day has dwindled down to its more menial portion.
I stay aloft in my netted hammock, trying to maintain
the effort of swinging, book in hand, ideas locked in my attentive grasp,
every once in a while, I will strain my fingers in search of my icy glass of grape kool-
aid,
while my mother rasps against my subconscious with a rusty leaf rake
upon a backyard so hopelessly mined with German Shepard turds.
She is scraping them into leaf piles, the dry white cubes
along with the smoother, fresher, more pungently enhanced quantities,
trying in vain to get me to dismount from my reflective trance.
I know she is there. I can hear her cursing in Spanish,
I could not translate it for you, but I get the gist,
the mood of her intent, subtlety has never been her strong suit.
It is not that I do not want to help her, it is just
that she has chosen poorly as far as the time continuum is concerned,
my chapter is in mid-crisis, it is mid-morning with the breezes quite intoxicating,at this time of day, and aside from the fecund odor of Shepard shiest,
this could be a valuable day of reading and mis-reading,
were I left to my own resolve, but there she goes, scraping along again,
damning the dogs penchant for poo
and in her plants of all places.
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VALENTE
I had a Tio who died in World War II.
Named for him was I,
A soldier, who was snipered in the Holland woods
He could not pronounce his surprise in English.
There is a hint in the wind as it winds
Through the cypress tress
standing straight
In formation down the boulevard
of Fort Sam Houston
more than ordinary flocks of careening doves
in unified spirit tear into the sky
like the moans of a mother in morning.
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DRINKING TO LAREDO
Drinking to Laredo
Accordion rhythms poking at my ribs,
The advice grows distant in the dauntless
Headlights of the nighttime highway.
How do you get there?
Past Kennedy and Kelly, where the airplanes
Rest, sleeping.
Too many hard cans of Schlitz.
What?
Are you not brave enough to follow?
Back to a place where everyone speaks
One language.
Are you that afraid of where you come from?Never be afraid of that.
Im telling you.
Listen...you like?
Thats Jose Alfredo Jimenez.
Singing of Chihuahua.
No Ive never been.
He was the best.
He is the best.
No, he isnt alive anymore.
Ah! haa! huy! huy!When his hearing is equal to his loving.
Ah! haa! huy! huy!
He taps on the steering wheel.
The blue Pontiac is an instrument
As well.
Why, why do we drive to Laredo,
Whenever hes happy,Whenever hes sad.
Sometimes my mother and sister
Convince him to retreat.She threatens to drive and my mother
Cannot drive when shes sober.
Can after can he drinks to Laredo.
He drinks to Laredo whenever he can.
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TACO BREAK
Here in Austin, illegals have invaded
the untended landscapes, denying work
to the poor-whites who have lost
the opportunity to turn lobster-red
in the Fourth of July sun.
They motor through the sidewalks
hoisting their weed-trimmers at hip, like oarsmen,
they attack an apartment complex,
engines revving together in servitude,
grinding the gears of concentration,
chasing quiet to the loftier limbs of a sycamore.
The same peeling tree that competed
with the telephone poles all its life,has finally overcome them in height,
now shorn of its dignity,
its very branches, of direction,
by state workers, legal Mexicans,
Americanized enough to value a well milked clock.
After clearing enough limbs until the tree
becomes freakish, they leave the downed bramble
to loose piles on the scorching asphalt
and break for tacos.
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CITRONS
I am visiting my cousins in Laredo
and we are in the backyard of my Tio Lalos house.
Picking citrus, lemons, limes,
oranges still green in their unripeness,
we wear the sour faces
of taste-testers, lobbing all half-eaten casualties
toward the alley behind us, until we become gamier
and reach the hovel of a house
beyond the fence.
Trying to beat my cousin Quiquis best distance
He throws like an acrobat,
with his entire body,
going for the roof, aim for the roof.
Enraging the neighbors dog,
he bays at us with his red eyes,
we mock the mongrel with our red eyes,our hiccupy laughter and our howls.
We toss him the gigantic lemons
with hides thicker then our own.
We aim for the sky, hitting only earth,
and we are fastened to this earth
for as many tries as we miss.
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M A S P A R A N O I A
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THE SOUND
for Geeg
Either you throw all these words that are not
in your vocabulary onto the page,
re-arrange them so there is a glimmer of meaning,
and suddenly you are half way across the bridge of doubt.
But I doubt it.
A metaphor is left standing alone clumsily
on the landing with shifting swales and careening
voices of seabirds screaming off the sound.
Fresh moist air, cool from the cold, so new
you can taste the oxygen.
Existence abounding in a circling forest of green;
as the view from the hundred foot dropgathers another gulp from your heart.
Where are the wings you once owned?
The flapping madness inherent in your spirit?
You have landed on earth for the very last time.
Tasted the mud in your mouth,
black clay so rich in childhood,
staining your life with uncleansable phantoms.
Raked against the rusty leaves of fall,
the cold storage of winter
with its wetness, and red noses.
Father kept warm by a bottle of Ancient Age,staying up Friday nights until the test pattern taught him to sleep.
The flapping has stopped.
The voices stifled,
the air is more musty than when you began.
But the wings are still intact,
having molted on experience,
So you leap out onto the sound,
Screaming out at God,
in hopes that he still hears our fear,
leaving science to the earthbound logic,
and flying, yes, flying.
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AS THE MINUS IS MULTIPLIED
This is a poem about nothing
It says nothing
It means nothing
And yet, there is nothing
It cannot explain
There is something
Of nothing in everything
And all the negative positives
Cancel each other out
There is nothing on the horizon
And it is what we do not fear the most
That our lives are nothing
And they will become nothing
When we are buried or burned to ashes
We only live to mid-sentence
Nothing is beautiful
And nothing is horrific
Nothing gives us personality
And nothing distracts us from our flimsy character
Nothing aches at its heart to become something
And aspires to become anything
But it was born a nothing
It went to school a nothing
Graduated as a nothing
And majored in nothing in college
It worked day shifts and night shifts at nothing
Measuring the tedium with the boredom
With sighs and cries of nothing
When something finally happened
It was too good at nothing
To recognize something was something
It absolved itself of nothing
And became an anything
But something was too important now
And it realized that an anything is really nothingBecause everyone can have anything
Anything had too many molecules
Too many alternative DNAs
What nothing really wanted
Was to be everything
And that position was already off the roster.
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36
NEAR THE TEXAS THEATRE
Davy Crockett's ghost haunts the bedsprings
Where he hid before he died
He fought bravely to rid San Antonio of Mexicans
He had no place to hide his musket
where it would not make a sound
and the flourishing swagger of bayonets, daggers,
and the biting sound of their music in his ears
Almost as loud as the Tennessee legislature
waltzing an argument to its dull death
Driven by duty, by honor,
by blah, blah, blah
Another cannonball has fallen,
a league away, his mind explodes
into destroyed dirt sounds, his young mother calling,
and he does not want to give up the game,
he has his play soldiers surrounded,
he awaits their surrender, his stomach,
growling.
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37
CANTICLE
-and he began to decipher the instant that
he was living, deciphering it as he lived it,
prophesying himself in the act of deciphering
the last page of the parchments, as if he
were looking into a speaking mirror.
Garcia-Marquez
The drought is almost over
I can feel it in the drops of hurricane
The clouds circling my eyes,
the bathing tears of ocean water
My mistress is drowning
and she is drowned,
all the swirling current ever found
was a notion of faith left on the wire
of a clothes-line tee from bygone years
to bygone years, to years gone by
the will of the tragedian sea-captain
with kelp at his throat
Sea gulls offer an annoyance
and hover and glide and ride
out the gleam in his eye
as he sees for the first time
that merits are mistaken
and fingers misshapen when under water
but the seaweed is in bloom,sand -castles have walls of sand,
testing the tenacity of the tide
and the vice and venom
inherent in the sea-snake
breathes doom into his poison
and release into his fangs
He awaits the appearance of a fin
like a student awaits self-consciousness
and every sigh is a lie
and every moan a distraction
a reflection of the truth
and as they are sifted up into a fearful soup
the gray whale denies his apology
the whale shark denies his apology
the sea-otter breaks his back on a wave
and cracks an oyster on the anvil of his chest
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38
There will be no pearls, nor wisdom,
nor barnacles to age you with
There will only be blue water
when the sky is blue
and gray water too
and land, not really,
only for the optimist
who haunts the dreams
of a sub-conscious submerged
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39
I WAS DYING TO HEAR THE NEWS OF YOUR LIFE
for Kurt Vonnegut
Verbs accumulate
Nouns accommodate
Predicates lead the young
Into ungrammatic clauses, lost causes
Adjectives bankrupt us
In our semi-colon lust
Our diphthongs are determined
To inaugurate an impasse
The horizon is as horizontal
As the ambiguous is vertical
An ambit splits the distanceAt a whistle stop:
Poo-tee-weet? Poo-tee-weet?
Our prayers were broken
On laws chiseled into stone
By God's hippie
Tattered words on skin
To warn friends
We were frozen artifacts
Swollen in ice
At the mercy of extreme temperature
With no meter to measure
You stood at the dais
Floating clouds of cigarette death
But we invented truth
And we invented lies
We even lied about our inventions
Which became our life
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40
JUST IN CASE OBAMA WINS
Glad rags and sad rags
and enough with the Beats, already.
You can serve up all the spaghetti
awareness at your dinner table,
hand out the tum,tum, tum, tums,
be benign or cancerous
regretful or regret less
all the maximums and minimums
and the single harsh explicits
in a single uncensored minute,
revolve around an inertia
that is quite inordinate.
Ah, we sleep with virtues
that dont want to cuddle
and sheets of mattress
that get lost in our pillow.The drama is fatigued,
and all our skirts
are worn at mid-drift
suspended from scary
Rapunzel heights of hair
I am left with a totem,
a sacrilegious sarcophagus.
alive and well
and the epitome
of earths own anxious spinning
because sinning
was just a past timekept warm in the bosom
of our religion
crossing the tees
of symbology
and exhaling conversations
just to fill a room.
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41
WINDOW SEAT
Seething,
a functional savant.
Rare wine, crispy nuance,
discharging and flagrant,
ambushed by layers
of skeletal veins.
Pathways and quadrants,
diadems stripped of their vacuity.
O embittered parchment, thirsty paper,
cardiac unrest has unraveled my ape-ish
tendencies toward an air-to-air evolution
of desire--- fed by remembrance,
castled by kings---turned, and torn,
and plowed by unsavory peasants of indeterminate manners.
Every fingered cotton ball scolds the skin--
the palm is its own sensory pathology.
The artist is draped over his canvas,
sprawled out and terrified,
deified and distracted,
eyelids---lead-heavy with paint,
smear after smear, knifing the scrape,
nearing the ill logic of his own roaring imagining.
Needlework to be done,
threading the armscape and the darksideof the kneecap---the epicenter of lust
has made hungry hungers seem like weak demands.
Cloud vapor and exhaust tearing the nasal expressions,
sallow in his injections---retrieving the beast
---summoning it like a demand.
Moistening the fuel,
ticking the speedometer, the lost common denominator,
a grease stain to please us,
lamp fire in the mold---lucifer tears
---morning madness,
awaiting the rigor mortis of the century plant,
its grayish-blue bladed husk,
and succulent fingers pointing with needle intent.
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42
I dehydrate in the desert,
when the moon is not shining,
when the stars are not clustering.
My adobe is cool as clay,
it perspires as I expire,
it is a shame that terra cotta is not a color,
but a necessity.
All cities taste their end,
buildings are abandoned and ghosted,
you can smell the fervent noon
as the sun dilates its pupil
---you sing out, but all I hear is sobbing
---there is nothing quite as lonely
as the thorn-full prickly pear.
My eyes are brown, but they don't see brown,
they see hair follicles frozen
in the evening ice-rain, my spiritus escapesin circles in the sky,
I am vulture,
scavenging the sand grains,
I want to eat death,
rip it from the carcass of the reborn,
while the desert sleeps and dreams
in sunlight,
trying to keep my mind warm.
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43
SPRING WINO
Theres a fine hat
Chewed up leather, forgotten,
rubbery as the soul of his boots,
but that does not constitute his goat-tee,
all brillo-pad streaks of gray,
like Beelzebub,
sad lieutenant
dressed in royal,
loyal blue.
The confederate governors house
reeks of righteous cancer,
an Earl of blight,
clothe the rich,
they seem so naked now,
pattering through traffic
on winged footwearthey carry their bottled water
up to heaven,
no deposit, no return.
Sad Hat mouths a Parliament
in a blue London Fog,
all his live oaks are strangled
by English ivy,
if you count Homeless Sam,
seated near the driver,
elated and full of prose,
local news,
all the useless minutiae;poll results,
football guff,
starlet rehab advice,
daring strangers to converse,
until they reach the Transfer center,
end the begin.
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