Toyz in da Hood

This time of year - which seems to begin earlier every autumn - puts me into a nostalgic frame of mind. Up with the birds this morning, I was able to catch a bit of Saturday morning TV fare with the very first flush of the upcoming holiday season's toy advertisements already breaking bread. Now to be sure, my toys of yore were a bit different. We're talking toys circa late 60s/early 70s. I think the most "high tech" item I ever owned was Hasbro's Lite-brite.

Hot Wheels were my longest running passion. I remember a few Christmases with them, and they're still alive-n-kicking in the 21st Century; in fact, they are one of Mattel's premiere brands to this day. Of course today Hot Wheels is all fancy and whatnot. Back in the olden times it was just a bunch of orange plastic strips of miniature road connected together in sundry ways (loops and ramps and so), with little metal cars you dropped onto said tracks. Gravity did the rest of the work, no electricity required. It didn't take long for the day-glo tangerine strips to outlive their usefulness as race tracks, but they went on to new lives as play weapons (whips, swords, etc.). I can still feel the sting those three foot hunks of rubbery plastic exacted when used in pretend anger.

Slot-cars. They were right up there in the pantheon of toy Christmas pleasures, along with Big Wheel and my black Sears Spyder five-speed "muscle" bike. I could be getting some of my Yuletide memories jumbled with birthdays here but I remember the slot-cars distinctly on Christmas, racing them all day long under the tree.

Looking back now, my favorite time of Christmas wasn't rushing out of bed to see what the unkempt fat man and his mangy venison chauffeurs had delivered but rather putting things together afterward. My parents - and later, sister - were often up until the wee hours stitching together my Kris Kringle loot but there were several items still wrapped come morning and many required assembly once opened. This was the shit "Santa" hadn't delivered (presents from people living south of the North Pole). Dad and I often set to work on this task together and it was one of the few father/son moments I remember fondly. The other was Sunday mornings with the paper and powered donuts. After that it drops off into the abyss.

Other items of note:

• Unicycle. Not sure why my friend Brian and I learned to maneuver these things but I can tell you it's not like a bike: you do in fact "forget" how to ride as I found out not too long ago in a painful display.
  
• Remote-controlled model car
• Rock'em Sock'em Robots
• Barrel full of Monkeys
  
• Electric Football Game. Electricity vibrated the little players around the "field" - perhaps this was my highest tech toy.
• Various Play-Doh toys (mainly used to carve up said play-doh into numerous shapes and sizes). My Mom used to make homemade "play-doh" as well, of wildly varying color and quality.

Man, reading all this now I see this kid was really spoiled as a child with all manner of crap. Somehow my parents came through with the goods come Christmas and birthdays, regardless of our financial straits. If only there were but two days in the year then things would have been golden all around. Damn Gregorians.

Oh yeah - I nearly forgot perhaps my favorite toy of all: Mattel's VaRoom! ...

Varoom by Mattel
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beach dreams

her heart gave out

on the beach

he could not see for dreaming.

eyes exhausted,

legs akimbo.

dreaming.

sandy broken bottles

mixing seaweed to cerveza

cut my calluses underfoot

on a night with no moon.

fragrant bonfire remnants

drifting afterglow of yesteryear

are no match for the odor

of hospital waste on the tide.

my mind gave out

on the beach

she could not see for dying.

breath deflating,

eyes in wonder.

never more.

Ketchup on Champagne (Fever Dream '09)

The dream ...

I am floating on a giant pair of scissors, cutting smoothly through a boiling ocean of Listerine. I didn't realize scissors were buoyant but damn it they are in this adventure through the looking glass.

How, you might ask, do I know I am navigating through mouthwash (and how in particular am I certain it is Listerine and not, say, Scope)? It's a good question. All I can tell you is that in this dream the substance and brand are givens, as sure as the air we breathe. Several of my shipmates, it should be noted, are regularly dunking little cups into the antiseptic waves as they crest across the scissor blades, gargling with the stuff before spitting it back into the deep.

I am clearly captain of this fine vessel and I have the best crew you could hope for. Well ... not exactly ... My USS Scissors is manned with an odd assortment of team mascots (Phillie Phanatic and San Diego Chicken), Krofft characters of yore (H.R. Pufnsuf and Sigmund the Sea Monster) and Sesame Street regulars (Big Bird and Snuffleupagus).

This felt-heavy menagerie is fortified by the addition of Sally Struthers, a gaggle of Christian Children's Fund (CCF) kids (presumably tagging along with Ms. 'Gloria' Ginormasaur), and Rob Reiner, his Meathead 'stache glued to his upper lip and 70's wig covering his chrome dome. Archie Bunker's chair is tied down to one of the scissor handles for some reason but no Archie or Carroll O'Connor accompanies it.

Maybe the CCF kids are mine. I've been sponsoring them for some time now (no thanks to Ms. Struthers and her voracious appetite; in fact, visions of her grinning girth among the starving almost made me renege on my pledge, suspicious that at least a portion of my monthly offering went to feed her Pizza Hut jones). Mainly, that kindly grandpa looking guy in the TV spots shamed me into it. And I wanted to prove that some of us non-Christians can nevertheless sometimes act more in line with the teachings of that lean clean Nazarene than the supposed true believers.


Anyway, back to the nightmare recap, already in progress ....

The dream started out pleasant enough, as we sailed through the boiling mouthwash under clear skies and relatively calm seas. We were all singing ABBA's Fernando and eating from apple and pear trees that rise just above the tops of the gingivitis-fighting waves. I kept having to slap Sally's hands away as she repeatedly attempted to steal fruit the CCF kids had already picked and gathered for themselves. Get off your fat ass, reach out and pick your own, lady! But all-in-all, things were going "swimmingly" (in fact, the Phanatic was a bit drunk having swallowed too much Listerine during a brief anchorage taken to let the gang dive into the "wash" for a few laps around the scissors, mainly to rinse the stink off their hides).

But then the skies darkened and the seas grew rough, the clouds arrived blood red and the driving rain a blindingly bright day-glo yellow.

And now we are no longer alone in this aquatic wonderland.

Now there are wild Pterodactyl-style prehistoric birds of prey filling the hemorrhaging sky as they circle our craft, shiny from the banana-hued sheets of rain hammering down on us from the heavens. The mascots, Ms. Stivic, her CCF toddlers, the Meathead and I sit back on the scissor handles, raising our blades up into the sky to stab at them, opening the spears and cutting them shut as those filthy birds move in for the kill, dive-bomb style. We clip off a wing here, a head there - blood splashing into the Listerine like ketchup on champagne. (There's a picture - but that's the analogy my crew keeps muttering over and over: "like ketchup on champagne.")

Sally/Gloria loses an arm in this bird/scissor battle before it's all over and Rob/Meathead is stabbed in the eye by a Pterodactyl beak, knocking him back into Archie's chair. The San Diego Chicken is taken by the neck and spirited away, up into the clouds, never to be seen again.

Then suddenly, in the midst of this maelstrom, the bubbly greenish clear ocean turns thick and brown. A horrific smell slowly arises from its depths and permeates my nasal passages, finally enveloping my entire being. Listerine has morphed into shit. I take a whiff and get sick. And then I wake up, sick.

I make it to the bathroom, thankfully, and greet the porcelain receptacle with an early morning technicolor yawn. I often pine for the times I'm able to make regular and "productive" visits to my favorite "reading chair" given my increasingly severe "blockage"; however, it's a different cheek resting on the cold white ring with the flu 'round my throat. Nobody I know wants that (apologies to any bulimics reading this who might take offense; your company is excepted).

For a long time thereafter, I tried and failed to shake the dream. No tidy ending, no resolution, no reason for being.

It just was.

Erectile Tryptophania

(Originally posted 11/26/09)

Cialis commercials are getting ever more disturbing. At this point I think we're all sort of numb to the veiled metaphors around the benefits of a stiff dick, just as we were earlier indoctrinated into the "menstrual pad as field of fresh flowers" mindset. I can deal with the knowing smiles, close-ups of embracing hands, and even those ridiculous tubs. Never mind that the guys in these ads are precisely the kind that probably should remain forever afflicted with "E.D.", if only to reduce the likelihood of them spawning offspring and propagating their insipid personalities onto successive generations.



But the spot I saw this morning really creeped me out.

The thing that dug into my spine was the manner in which the ad kept swinging back to a portrait of the family dog on the wall. The mutt is smiling. Winking. Like he was in on the gag, wise to the source of his master's new swagger. Or perhaps just relieved that Mr. Limp Dick wouldn't be taking his failures in the bedroom out on the the ol family pooch anymore ("Stop taunting me, you beast! Tail in the air - you think I don't know what that means! Take this!!"). Perhaps. But the dog's shit eating grin really got to me in all the wrong ways, digging into my psyche like nothing this side of those Charles Schwab rotoscoped monstrosities. Its metaphorical fingernails dragging across the chalkboard of my sensibilities.



At the end, the newly empowered Peter starts rattling off all of the unfortunate side effects of Cialis (marathon hard-ons, massive boils on your testes, loss of bowel control, elephantiasis of the nostril, stink eye, etc.). And in the middle of this "happy fun ball"-like disclaimer speech, focus switches back to the stairway with the family portraits, centering again on that damn dog. Or am I just imagining all this? If so, why?

This was to be my Thanksgiving post before I got so rattled by that ad from our friends in the pharmaceutical industry. It was to be a typical "happy, happy" tome. You know - one of those heartfelt "I'm thankful for my friends, family, health, etc." bullshit pieces of sentiment that folks haul out of the basement a few times a year as a break from the hard work of shoveling shit on one another. But I decided to put the kibosh on that nonsense. Perhaps I should be thankful I'm not afflicted with "E.D." (but it's more than counterbalanced by the fact that I wouldn't know it if I was).

My memories of childhood Thanksgivings are, like many things of that era, hazy. They were mostly pleasant, I think. I don't recall any major meltdowns or other high drama (we saved that for the other 364 days on the calendar). There were likely many levels of tension going on during those gatherings that I was (thankfully, blissfully) oblivious to. Once the food was eaten, Thanksgiving was over in our house: I don't remember us doing much afterward. We weren't a "gather 'round the TV and watch football" kind of family. Nor were we a "head out to the yard to throw the ball" brood. Chow down and veg.



Occasionally we had extended family members over. Sometimes members of Dad's booze crew stopped by. I don't recall anyone overtly smashed, though - no vomiting into the stuffing or falling face first into the pumpkin pie.

I often think my unfocused memories of events in my childhood home were more a function of the thick haze of smoke drifting like a London fog throughout the confines of that place. My remembrances aren't faulty - they're just nicotine stained. Maybe that's why smells don't trigger any sense memories for me (not like sounds - music takes me back to moments past every day). The smell of turkey doesn't remind me of childhood Thanksgivings simply because it's no longer enhanced with Camel and Alpine tar-based herbs and carcinogen-laced spices.

Anyway, back to thankfulosity and gratefuliousness.

At the end of the day, I'm not terminally ill (that I'm aware of yet, anyway), I've got friends and family I don't hate (most of them, in fact). I'm gainfully employed in a profession that often doesn't suck (not relative to a lot of other ones out there). I mean, I could be working in a slaughter house or as a sideshow geek in a traveling carnival, if I had the aptitude for such endeavors. Thankfully, I don't. At the very least, I lack the requisite drive and desire to excel in such rarefied environs.



So there's that.

By the way, I'm not looking down on those fine individuals pursuing careers in slaughterhouse management and executive geekdom: remember, without slaughterhouse workers, very few of you'd be enjoying your turkey this day (and without sideshow geeks, you'd have one less thing to be thankful you're not).

Well, better hit the hay - Black Friday awaits ... Americans at their best and brightest. I figure if I get to Walmart early enough, I can take advantage of the 'doorbuster' sales I'm sure they'll be having on their line of Caskets (such as "Dad Remembered" or the "Lady de Guadalupe" - steel jobbies both, guaranteed to be worm resistant). Order online and have 'em shipped to your home or the home of the lucky recipient. Oh, and be sure to order soon so that it arrives before Xmas; you wouldn't want to disappoint! Truly gifts that keep on giving.

50 spins 'round a star

I've ruptured aspirations,

slicing my imagination,

the memories bleeding out

into the last vestiges of summer.

An accidental tripping, stumbling,

crashing into aging,

convulsing on the edges,

cracking wise before the fall.

I've torn asunder wonder

and my civic standing today,

the neighbors - slinking caffeine junkies -

take their sojourn elsewhere.

As the weather turns from August swelter

to September autumn amber,

I wander through my yesteryear book,

making sick upon the page.

She's half gone, slipping softly

through my psyche today,

speaking a language I can't fathom

with a hope that's not named Bob.

That piece of her remaining rains down

hatred dressed as passion,

as I surrender punch drunk

on the wrong side of my needs.

Finally, a steely-eyed truth arises:

50 years of breathing,

knocking me flat back on the floorboards,

staring up at the ceiling looking down.

Leonard

Leonard was a hefty sort and a sad sack - the only overweight member of my Dad's rum buddies (or more correctly, whiskey chums). He was trapped in a miserable but inexplicably lasting marriage to the rarely seen "Bubbles", a hoity-toity gasbag forever berating him for being who he was: a falling-down chronic alcoholic prone to balling his eyes out at the drop of a hat.

But Leonard had his uses, at least to Dad and his pals: he had a vehicle, a truck. That was a valuable commodity to this crew, most of whom no longer had ready access to such devices (wrecked, repo'd, sold for liquor money; they all had a story).

Leonard's truck was a means to get to the state store or the bars, and was essential to his continuing inclusion in this band of boozers, since he rarely had any duckets to kick in for beverages. (Bubbles came from money and held tight to the family purse strings. She had long since put the kibosh on doling any out to her lush of a husband and he had to settle for scraps or whatever he could steal from the cookie jar when her back was turned.)

Leonard had mad skills behind the wheel as he weaved down the road bouncing from curb to curb, emphasis on mad. Terrifying, in fact. As one of the few people to ride with him sober in those days, my survival attests to his mastery of the art of lubricated locomotion. (I was 8, 9, 10 years old and wasn't prone to knocking back shots at 9am on a sunny August Tuesday like the others along for the ride in this deathtrap.) Leonard had a six sense when navigating to the state store (the truck pretty much drove itself).

His visits would start with a knock on the door. He'd plop down on the couch, forcing Dad to sit upright from his usual semi-horizontal position. Leonard would start with a bit of small talk, all the while licking his lips and shooting glances plaintively toward the corner where the old man kept his bottle. Medicine for the sick. If the bottle was empty, he would suggest a road trip and if it wasn't, he'd suggest a glass (I think he used a glass but my memories are kind of foggy; Dad usually didn't bother at this point). Either way, soon would be the booze a-flowin' and the tears would surely follow. Bubbles doesn't understand, woah-is-me, yada-yada.

Watching that fat drunk waddle-stagger to our bathroom after knocking back a bottle with Dad was a treat. He'd have done Chevy Chase and Dick Van Dyke proud with his prat-fall antics, though perhaps Chris Farley would be a more apt comparison. Leonard'd start out by invariably catching his shoe on the braided living room rug, nearly doing a header into the dining room. Next, he sluggishly danced with a leg raised in an attempt not to step on the tail of my sleeping dog Snooks (a failed attempt on several occasions I was present for - the damn dog didn't learn). Once past the dog for good or ill, Leonard would grasp for the dining room table and chairs to slow his stride lest the momentum tumble him into our 'china' cabinet. Safely through the worst of this journey, he'd stagger out into the hallway near the toilet, on two occasions tripping over the cord that coiled out from under the telephone table there, falling back on his ass.

Only once did Leonard alter his route to the can and he paid dearly for this deviation. For some reason on this one trip, he made the journey via our kitchen rather than directly through the dining room. Bad move. He was confused by this wrong turn, puzzled by the sight of a fridge where the hallway phone table should be. In a daze and about to topple over, Leonard made the mistake of using the stove for leverage and placed his hand firmly on a lit burner (I was getting ready to make coffee). You never heard such a banshee cry! It caused Snooks to hightail it out of the living room to safety under my parent's bed. I'm surprised Leonard ever went to the bathroom again in our house. Certainly he avoided the kitchen. And that's Leonard. Glad ya got to know him.

Hal

His name was Hal Lambert. Hal-o-wishes. A charter member of my Dad's drinking entourage, he was forever decked out in his pork pie hat and dapper threads, a gentleman in the 1950's sense of the word. Kind of sophisticated for Dad's crowd. Sophisticated, that is, when he wasn't throwing up in the corner or crying like a baby into a pillow on our couch (both happened more than once). Looking back, Hal reminds me a bit of William Burroughs. Did that make my Dad Jack Kerouac? Probably not. I think the resemblance ended with the gentile nature and omnipresent hat. And of course their mutual addiction to mood altering drugs. With Hal, it was booze while Burroughs was hooked on pretty much everything (opiates were his "drug of choice" when pressed). The fog forever enveloping my childhood memories is usually as thick as pea soup, but if I strain my psyche particularly hard, things more or less come into focus for an instant, exposing my revisionist history. Then the fog rolls back in again, protecting me from things I'd rather not know. But it also has an insidious way of hiding the detail that is a necessary ingredient in the pictures I'm trying to paint here. I guess ya can't have it both ways. I get the feeling that Hal-as-Burroughs is one of those false fog-infused recollections. My memories momentarily a bit more lucid, I see he most resembled Mr. Magoo (who, it should be said, was a sharp dresser in his own right). I'm pretty sure they attended the same Driver's Education class and shared a similar field of vision, Magoo's courtesy of two bum retinas and Hal's brought to you by the makers of Bourbon everywhere. Having experienced the spine-tingling terror of being the lone sober passenger on a liquor run with Hal at the wheel, I can attest to his routine Magoo-like supernatural escapes from the jaws of vehicular death. Hal's wife Darlene was anything but gentile. Boisterous with the bluest of collar, Darlene was a "tavern jacket" type who could go toe-to-toe with the best of them when it came to knockin' back the sauce. She was tall, "big boned" and prone to strut, he was diminutive of stature and perpetually hunched over. Opposites who attracted, bonded by the booze and little else.

Darlene would have fit right in on the local bar bowling team. Hal would have looked more at home pacing the sidelines of a football game, Tom Landry/Bear Bryant style. Well, he would were they prone to vomiting into the Gatorade and weaving drunkenly onto the field at inopportune moments.

This odd couple often graced our home, to drink and talk and cry (well, Hal cried; that wasn't Darlene's style). And then one day, Darlene up and died. It was a strange death, apparently in her sleep. Hal waited several hours before calling an ambulance (I think he may have dialed our home first and chatted up my Dad while awaiting Darlene's rigor to kick in).

Perhaps Hal had been drunk and was confused (that was always a good bet). But we often wondered whether he'd finally had enough of her noise and simply wanted some peace and quiet. As mentioned previously, Hal knew his way around a pillow and likely could wield it in anger just as skillfully as he did in sobbing drunken sorrow. But this was merely idle talk; Darlene had any number of legitimate reasons for casting off this mortal coil at a relatively young age (I couldn't hazard a guess as to exactly how old she was - maybe late fifties). Booze and cigarettes likely played a starring role.

We saw Hal occasionally after this sad event, he prone to crying more than usual and just a bit more blind to boot, thanks to an amplification of his natural melancholy fueled by Darlene's passing and distilled (both metaphorically and literally) through the usual spirits that represented their life blood. I can't say for sure when Hal joined Darlene and Dad in that great liquor store in the sky. I imagine it's just one of many details lost in my particular fog of time.

Bottle Rotten '95

I bottle up my terrors

in self-prescribed libations

while drying out the night sweats

on a clothesline called the bar.

I sing the body electric

in a bathtub with a vacuum cleaner

praying that the fuse blows

me straight into the light.

I walk through my conscious laughter

into hazy ragged dreamscapes

of yesteryears gone haywire

and tomorrows not to come.

I huddle half nervously

near the bottle in front of me,

doubting its superiority

to a frontal lobotomy;

still, this kid's shaking safe

in her burning peptic embrace.

Toilet of Beauty

My father grows old in the toilet,

a desolate room

with the air thick as mold.

----

He works life there in perpetual sweat,

a captain of industry

building factories of sick.

----

Little bits of wonder found in claustrophobic vistas

often linger in his melancholy,

kissing the linoleum.

----

The mirror blissfully out of reach,

my father hugs his friend,

wrapping his arms 'round the cold white wet.

----

Yes, my father grows old in the toilet

amidst his softly sour splatter,

the holy cracking plaster,

and half finished caulking consecrating his divine.

----

So many contemplations,

so many toilets of my own

since a childhood spent listening to my father pray.

The eternally pungent confessional,

with a compassion beyond religion,

kneeling, catharsis, release ...

Until a trembling tug of the handle

flushes the misery for a moment from his mind.

And from mine.

everlasting delirium shakes

dripping colors
of sunburned regrets
bleed through my dreams at night,
chased by daylight nightmares
of stumbling stasis
draped down in corporate ruminations
of my albatross.
--



she's always just off-camera,
gone from lost thoughts
out the corner of my eye,
a goth ghost
fondly remembered,
drifting toward existence
only after leaving me behind.
--
meanwhile, foreboding parties
of social grace failings
cut me screaming mute,
as though to peel away
the peptic perspiration
of conversations gone awry,
hemorrhaging reflux like museum wax figures melting.
--
i cling to my precious precipice,
balanced between the glory and the gored,
with my spiritual stupidity
up crevices divine,
twitching 'longing after' glances -
down toward echoes of elation -
at the normalcy i envy ...
--
... wandering giddy
into the warmed over death
of everlasting delirium shakes,
dissolving into the infinite past tenses
of hallucinating happiness,
shooting up idyllic confabulations
laced with imaginary days of yore.

blackened purple, fire of white

I dive into an emptiness,

my soul spent to fill it.

I languish in a mystery

that coats my world in choking smoke.

Her breath rides crystal hot and hard,

my vanquished eyes surrender

a blackened purple aftermath

slicing through my psyche sweetly.

My hope's on fire of white teardrops

torn from words gone silky silent.

Her hatred pure - so singular -

no consequence but gorgeous madness.

I pour myself down drains of light

while all my dreams drown disappearing.

She swims the depths through fear and failure

while all her doldrums die debating.

I haunt the ever twilight tinged

waiting rooms of faceless nightmares

waiting still for an unknown something

and called on yet by nothing, no one.

She and I are all but spent,

bent twisted in a life conspiring

to rip it up all raggedly, senselessly, heavenly -

finally to tear it all down.

-----

Translucent Chains

A child's eye view

of life's possibilities

is light beyond boundaries,

a vision bright as to blind

an adult's perspective

long relegated to the shadows.

---

Slowly the light dims,

the vibrant colors growing flat,

the edges sanding smooth.

---

Countless innocuous admonitions

handed down through generations

form an unseen family heirloom

of dysfunction we all carry inside.

---

Growing.

Choking.

---

Sewing a web

around your dreams

in translucent chains

hiding hideous across

the expanse of your life.

---

Ah, young childhood -

the unfettered joy

of a hot water heater

cardboard box "fort"

or ratty paper kite,

happiness that trumps

the best grown up high

you'll ever have.

---

But it's a drug in itself,

the flame we all chase

our whole adult lives,

whether through workaholism,

or alcoholism,

or religion,

or sex.

---

It's the gift that keeps on giving,

as old as history bestowing

the first vestiges of neuroses upon us

through predators/famine/drought, whatever.

---

Our futile race to taste

the primal pleasure again

unwittingly extinguishes

that very fire in our children,

our own ember doused

from our parents' drab rendition

of this same sad song.

wordshit

I drain

my excess wordshit

onto the pages

of this abyss

lest they abscess

into a volcanic metamorphous

of nonsensical tirades

struggling through the social niceties

that choke

this sweatbox called life.

... meanwhile, a cold wind blows

through drunk town ...

April Gray

It's April gray,

a morning lost;

one Sunday laced

with the duped and doped;

a Fool's Day fallen on deaf ears.

It's April gray.

Summer of '74

My hometown blooms

in twilight fading shades of grey

as the summer simmers

and then slips from my mind.

There remains only the house.

The room.

Them.

There, no sunlight penetrates

to disturb this tomb.

The dead don't notice.

But I do.

life, death & the in-betweens

honesty shot through the prism

of a rapier wit,

poetry from laughter and life.

--

life is on the edges,

still we too often cling to the cushioned walls

afraid of death omniscient beyond

while killing ourselves so subtly within.

why does it take the loss

of a loved one to give us pause

in this slow-motion dance of subliminal waste?

--

that fairness not be fair weathered

or kindness out of vogue,

that searching wanderlust go walking with a quiet resolve.

--

that simply to be and be hilarious

might just be the most important,

the most caring,

most healing thing of all.

for Larry, RIP.

plumbing supply chain blues

My father danced

from the gallows of life,

a Don Draper swinger

gone to advertising seed.

Should you find yourself in need

of plumbing supplies

or second hand cirrosis

and can wait out a Strand Hotel

bender or two,

come on down to North Everett cira 1969

and darken our door -

my daddy-o, he can oblige;

this hep cat pappy,

with his dad gone mad skills.

Sweet sounds of sickness

and Aqua Velva whiskey fragrance,

deep thrusts of indigestion

and tortured circumspect;

the fury weighed heavy

on this slightly animated corpse

but he'd be glad to help you out

for just a taste

of formaldehyde distilled.

coyote smile

It's February lately,

she's April in a hurry.

Lost in a winter

of temperate goodbyes,

I rush to her chilly

but coyote smile.

raining afterthoughts

it's raining

afterthoughts before her,

blowing

pissed-off into the wind.


Somewhere Monday

but not yet.

Sometime tomorrow

but not now.

Somehow broken

yet unbowed.

Some things tear

and won't cauterize.

My mind is a patchwork broken,

threaded with cobwebs

and moody medicine,

aching to break clear

just once.


My past is taking on water,

soaked with salt

and nausea's backwash,

passing as nerves

chewed to cheesy bread,

cloaked in this carcass

I call home.

pebbles & petulance

My nose is running

but I'm not.

My head is thick

with thought;

my eyes unsteady

and crossed;

my legs bowed

and bought.

She's up the block

past icy accusations,

dropped off the face

of reconciliation.

I've given up the ghost

of meeting expectations

without a whisper

from that spectre

long since given up on me.

Meanwhile, the alley shimmers

with pebbles and petulance

and me here tonight

trying finally in vain

to soften the edge.

a blinding brace (with squirrels)

My father was but a dark shadow

passing down the hall,

a perpetual winter

onto himself.

My mother was but a blinding brace

of robes and smoke,

a withering wind

blown back hard.

I'm but the seed of misplaced rage

trapped in a past

caught on a half torn tape

spinning in my head,

a nightmare on rewind

I can't bear to eject.

Through it all, the squirrels in my yard

find the pickings pretty slim,

the trees stripped bare,

crying quietly into March

and neither much concerned

about poor, poor pitiful me.

perpetual adolescence

I dream of lithium

and lethargy

as a January

night sweats alone.

I burn gas off a sickness

like cynanide

born from a fever

festering always,

undone with a shrug.

So dawns the 50th anniversary

of the year of my birth,

yet still I get zits

and panic attacks

in this perpetual adolescence

grown oh so very old.