the frozen muddy

She is a whisper

of dawn

at midnight,

a sharp breath

of clarity

born.


I dream of nothing

but blackouts

and madness,

she is the promise

of morning

come dawn.

--

She is a figment

of my

exhausted pointless,

the last filament

of desperation's

hope

with daydreams of nothing

but delirium's

coitus,

disappearing

into shit storms

of shimmering sleet.

Damaged

down South Street's

filthy drifts devoid,

she is gone.

Leaving nothing behind

but the frozen muddy.

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.

Season's Greetings

The air stands heavy

and thick as mold -

though not nearly so inviting -

as a sweet December

squats rotting Saint Nick


midst a wind-blown snot-dusted ice sculpture called life.

It's Christmastime

for Charlie Brown

as Linus makes love to his blanket

and Lucy mixes cocktails

of Bourbon and Bacon

for Peppermint Patty

and nobody else.

The Unbearable Lightness of Beefheart

Captain Beefheart

copped me the keys

to an asylum wonderland,

noise akimbo staccato.

Bestowing rosy crows

of joyous madness

juxtaposing rhythms

just as weird and wired and right.

To ramshackle his aura

in full aural angst

is to play a game of twister

with porcupines and power lines.

Please buck your instincts

and appreciate this terrible beauty

through prisms askew

surrounding you on terms unnerving,

from your tongue to your toes

as the free range octaves

whisper down your blind side.

The Final Peel (Dreamland Fog)

She peels my mind

like a grape out of season,

keeping the platitudes

from the reach of my mouth.

Compulsively itchy,

she's a mammoth wooly blanket,

stinking of casinos

and new money dung.

I remain ever clear

through the forest of my anger,

just a slick twist unstapled

yet hard wired to my fear.

Begging the fog,

"Please masquerade my confabulations!"

And coax me gently

from the raincoat jello shakes.

Blur me resolute

and absolutely fabulous

with delusions of Disney

painting shut my Looney Tunes.

I need the fog of dreamland

when my furniture finally passes;

my best friend, my chair,

of malignant bad posture.

I need the fog of dreamland

when the night keeps its promises

of smoldering loneliness

even television can't consume.

With my gills gone gray on grime,

the fog drifts me asunder

coating my mind's eye

to a soft focus rose.

Peptic, vaguely pompous,

my fog frees me from the vanquished,

as even the grotesque flee,

making sick at my sight.

I share with them their nausea,

I am stillborn of their nausea,

I am master of their nausea

embodying its essence,

while watching my entrails

twist in the wind.

Four Horsemen

So I was just visiting my local pharmacy to pick up the usual monthly supply of happy pills when Nurse Ratched behind the counter apparently decides to test my prescription to make sure it's strong enough by fucking with my head, draining whatever vestige of optimism I had in the tank today (whether organic or brought-to-you-by-Wyeth):

Ratched (seated behind the counter): "What do you want?"

Me: "I'm picking up a prescription refill I called in yesterday."

Ratched: "It's today."

Me: "Excuse me?"

Ratched: "It's today, it's not yesterday."

Me (confused): "Isn't that always the case?"

Ratched: "It wasn't yesterday."

Me: "Huh?"

Ratched: "We don't keep them around."

Me: "I do this every month - can you check the bin?"

Ratched: "It's not there, we don't keep them around.  You'll need to call it back in."

Me: "Can you just check the bin?  If it's not there, I'll wait for the refill."

Ratched: "We're not taking waiters right now."

Me: "What?  Please, just check the bin."

Given the loopy nature of this non sequitur-laced exchange, I looked around expecting to see Milo Minderbinder (or perhaps Charlie Kaufman).  Instead, I found the Lord.

The man behind me was decked out in full-on Jesus attire, complete with long hair, beard, sandals and a dark afghan poncho that stood in nicely for a biblical-grade flowing robe.  He smelled biblical too, or so I imagined since I don't recall any mention of showers or deodorant in the good book.

Mr. J. H. Christ seemed sympathetic to my plight, but not to the point of using his godly powers to smite my adversary.  Maybe turn her into something useful like a pillar of salt or a pint of Cherry Garcia.  Clearly he was more concerned about getting some antibacterial crucifixion cream (damn rusty nails!) or perhaps some anti-psychotic medication to quiet the voices.  Maybe both.  He wouldn't want to antagonize the person standing between him and his meds, even if she might just be Lucifer's bitchy sister.

I turned back to the surreal exchange I was having with Her Satanic Majesty of Pharmacopia.  Before reengaging, I first craned my neck in an attempt to see beyond the glare of the evil eye she was shining my way beneath her obscenely thick, arched eyebrows.  No sign of any pharmacists working in back. Isn't it illegal to leave all these dangerous drugs solely in the hands of  Susie Cash Register here, without licensed supervision?  If I was the squealing type, I'd drop a dime on them to the DEA. 

But I just wanted - no, needed - my particular drugs, so back to the matter at hand.

Perhaps I was asking in the wrong way. Maybe she fancies herself some sort of Soup Nazi derivative (a Pharmaceutical Eva Braun).  Possibly I didn't follow proper protocol.  "No pills for you!  Come back in three days!  Next!"

So in the spirit of the Soup Nazi, I tried another tact: "Effexor, S. Buzzard, quantity 90, ordered 02/25."  No dice. "That was yesterday. It's the 26th."  

My last strategy was to just be annoyingly repetitious until she caved.

"Where is the pharmacist?"  "She's not here right now."   "Yes, when will she be back?"  "Later."   "She's at lunch?"  "She's not here."   "Can you please check the bin?  Please?  Please?"  "It's not there, it would have been put back."  "Okay, but maybe it was put back into the bin.  Can you check it?  Please?  Please?"

I was persistent and finally Little Miss Sunshine meandered the twenty feet down to the bin of prescriptions waiting to be claimed.  Lo and behold, mine was among them, as I had strongly suspected all along.  She seemed stunned.

"It's not supposed to be here.  They're supposed to put them back. You're lucky.  This time."

Now I know perfectly well that being one day tardy doesn't result in a prescription's expulsion from the pick-up bin back into the bottle (I don't even think they are legally allowed to put the stuff back).  I've been a week late lots of times when I called in refills from the road traveling for work.  Maybe with a new crew (I didn't recognize this evil witch), there are some new rules here.  Maybe they do put them back now. Maybe, this one time, something more was at work.

Indeed.  I looked back and Jesus gave me a knowing smile as if to say, "It is accomplished. You're welcome, my son."   Divine intervention?  Oh, God, though - that smell!  Christ needs a bath!

As if on cue, the Lord started convulsing in a fit of gags, coughs, half-heaves, and slobber, pulling out one of the nastiest "handkerchiefs" I've ever seen to mop up the excess "juice" spilling over into his beard.   Something else caught my eye across the front of his dark afghan poncho. Bugs. Lots of them. Little fuckers - like fleas - crawling free-range in his own little patch of Afghanistan.

The Jesus-did-it smile disappeared suddenly and his holy eyes rolled back into his head as he marched up to the counter.  He needed drugs of some sort pretty badly, that much was clear from his tone to her: "Ahh, mmm, Pick up, mmmehrerh, for Sid Marvin, Yes, err, emmmm, no waiting here!! Watch out now!"  I can only imagine what might happen if Sister (Un)Christian gives him any shit (the picture on the right might provide a clue).  She was staring back at him, wordless.  I wasn't waiting around for the big show.

I grabbed my meds quickly and hightailed it out of there.

I half expected to run into the Four Horsemen galloping down the antacid aisle as I hurried toward the front door.  At the very least I figured I'd spot Kirk Cameron and his Left Behind film crew hard at work by the photo counter, working their way toward the pharma apocalyptic epicenter in the back, careful not to step into the fiery pit over which my counter gal ruled with pitchfork in hand.


When I got back home I thought to myself, "Self, we need to change our pharmacy."  God and Satan can do battle there but I'm moving on.

Remember, though: Sid Marvin Saves. Amen.

Bee Stung Sensible

She's all frost blonde bee stung lips

and half frivolous shoes,

swaying, tripping, on the nod,

settling into my ghost horizon.

She whispers sour and warm

to my sweet icy edges,

contemplating a tender burn

of steely wool failings.

-----

The subway takes me back downtown,

she follows drifting on a tide

of corporate sweat

from the workaday bodies

stacked like cordwood on the F train.

-----

Cupid creeps stalking his prey

on Bowery north of Houston,

writing Valentine's Day poems

on the back of dead band flyers,

torn off telephone poles

and abandoned holy shrines,

blown haunting down Bleeker

after the spectre of Joey Ramone.

I toast them righteous

with a goblet full of glass,

in the end bloody doomed

to shit out the shards

into tenement toilets

of artists unbowed.

-----

Side stepped sick to my soul

down the alleyways of promise

past a rain tickled insolence

free of ethics and ideals,

I taste sulfur and circumstance

and the cyanide of seekers,

when all along she's merely bleached,

free of stingers and the stung:

tied off,

pushing a hot shot

into her hell bound panic;

surfing plasma,

left to fade.