sunday funnies

The cold gun metal

pressed against my temple

is trying to tell me something,

perhaps.

Her razor soft warning

sliced into my longing

is worth a gun's chilled muzzle,

almost.

The acid washed Levis

wrapped around her leaving

are fading into the ether,

a ghost.

The empty bottles

of Grey Goose and Effexor

are dancing on the ceiling

of my dreams.

At least until the barrel

full of monkeys and munitions

has warmed to its calling

in a white hot flash of brilliant blue.

Falling

she grows aloof,

i fall afield;

she's calm serene,

i rage away.

an autumn sun

bonfires the sky.

october blues

melt yellow to orange,

a gorgeous nonsense,

where acid laced donuts

choke sad sacks lost

into the waxy white

winter to come.

The Throbbing Numb

My mind is awash

in the joyful filth of thought

until a wayward worry

scrubs it glassine clean.


I can't write my way

out of this spic 'n span,

hard as diamond

without the sparkle;

I can't think my way

clear of this sanitary muck,

a throb keeping time

to the beat of my breath.

----

Life for me

is but a raw nerve exposed,

torn asunder

lest stoned to stasis,

holding at bay

the fever and flavor,

baking in nothing

but the throbbing numb.

Almonds & Sulfur

the breeze died empty

on this autumn weekend,

set free to vanquish

into sunday funnies,

her short breath tart

of almonds and sulfur.

the night keeps edging

my reckoning to the sidelines,

for a while past echoes

until at last no longer

yet still sadly yearning

for the comfort and the stupors

of a tanqueray morning

drained dry.

Resolve

She burned cold

then broke down.

He turned south

then caught empty.

We came apart

then ached together.

We lost, naive;

then found resolve

hoping to err,

human as we were,

on the side of angels.

Summer Unbounded

Her melt into happiness

on the tip of my tongue

clots my bloodstream a river

of cappuccino steam

until a stroke of luck

cools me down



to a drip and a drop.

Our capillaries winded last past whimsy

with the rhythm and blues

of a gasping window AC unit

playing harmony to our ecstasy

as we wring sheets of sweat from the mattress,





safe for a moment

from a summer unbounded.

Gone Daddy Gone

A Coca Cola Coffin.

A Marblesque Bobble-headstone.

A Plexiglass Lava Lamp Urn

with Racing Stripes.

Some kind words,

or at least some kind of words.

Appeasement and appeals

to the gods and angels

that they welcome our loved one "home."

The rituals of a species

still early in their evolution.

We bury, we burn, we stuff.

We entomb and mummify

and jettison to the sea.

We conjure up fantastic scenarios

of reunited ghostly bliss

to quell that most primal of fears:

the absence of consciousness,

the disappearance of self.



What a horrific thought,

that something

- everything -

can in a quiet instant

become the void.

We think of that place

as a bottomless solitude,

ascribe emotions

to what is by definition their absence.

This is perhaps to me

the most merciful thing of all:

you're never around

anymore to deal

with what has happened to you.


You are gone, daddy.

Gone.