“And the Beat Goes On” (originally published at littledeathlit)

Dropping from the air

upon ears like paper blotters on willing tongues,

raging at the bloodlessness of cardboard cutouts against a shrinking sky,

through psychedelic lenses

let me seeeee, let me beeeee the pulse of silent rage

that rails against the vulgar machine

with words

that organize, legitimize, minimize, super-size, tranquilize, proselytize, tantalize, infantilize,

sexualize, stigmatize the suckled teats of long-conditioned truths.

Poking the bear, disturbing the seas of featureless beige,

stirring the comatose anima with battle-cries of sight and sound

that pierce dusty eardrums like sterling icepicks,

repressed wants teeeeem, solemn faces beeeeeam,

liberated in the warmth of a sun that breaks just beyond the horizon on coffee-house stages,

rousing thoughts

to gestate, ruminate, conjugate, propriate, sublimate, fornicate, obliterate, determinate,

propagate, exfoliate dangerous visions, birthed from the unfetteredness of a purple haze.  

Fueling the scribblings of furious hands upon white sheets with whisky and cigarettes,

Making, naked, ugly underbellies of the angst-ridden and inflamed

with the glorious promises of their ecstatic treasure-trails,

let’s revel in the coolness of poetry’s heeeeeat, indulged in pollen-dusted skin so sweeeeet

within the honeyed tangles of poets’ asymmetries

to detoxify, dulcify, intensify, demystify, purify, glorify, magnify, beautify, electrify, sanctify

our bodily streams of light that sugar lips and candy the fingertips.

Tearing away at the fabric, unraveling, woven from Gloopstick youth and plasticine smiles,

repulsing at the hoards in their mindless quests for extra-flavor and double-coupon days,

looking for a steeeeeal, wanting to feeeeel,

as hollow dollars crumble to coins when plopped upon unsated palms and countertops.

Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! Think!

We are on the brink

of the Fall of the American Empire.

Dig.

“Damn, God’s Got a Fucked-Up Sense of Humor” (originally published at Headline Poetry)

I was born a criminal

and mentally ill

on a sunny April morning in 1969.

The sky was blue,

God was in his Heaven,

and I was fashionably late.

My parents were hopeful—

father swollen with pride,

mother already counting grandchildren.

Damn, God’s got a fucked-up sense of humor.

Who else could make a sexual predator

look cute in purple Garanimals?

An abomination rock a school Christmas play

in a pair of make-shift, white feather wings

and glittery Converse high-tops?

Good ol’ St. Mary’s,

where brown (OK, sorta brown) boys like me

go to learn the three Rs,

fade away

into a sea of beige, and

find shame in their bodies

in the process.

Where fear is the heart of love

and there’s a special place in Hell for me

‘cause God hates sissies—

So sayeth Sister Clair Veronica!

Damn, God’s got a fucked-up sense of humor.

Interesting how the tides have changed.

Popstars and Hollywood

with their puppy dog eyes and bleached teeth

telling us how “It gets better”,

promising unicorns

and pots of gold

at the end of colorless rainbows.

Too bad Matthew Shepherd

couldn’t stick around

just a couple of more years

to hear those sweet words–

no leprechaun’s treasure

at the end of a pistol grip

or the bottom of fence posts

on cold October nights.

Damn, God’s got a fucked-up sense of humor.

Turn on the radio.

Turn on the TV.

We are everywhere

for all to see

and have a chuckle.

Walking, talking stereotypes of

who The Unbroken still think we should be.

Am I “Just Jack”

or the Stanford Blatch—

the quippy, queeny best friend,

a comic relief.

Stand back and clap!

Watch the pink monkey dance!

(Are they expecting me to pull a string of banana-colored

anal beads out of my ass?)

So nice to be finally wrapped up

in America’s embrace.

Too bad all I want to do

is tear at the fabric of all that is good and holy

like some twisted moth

with an appetite for family values

and holy sacraments

that straight folks don’t seem to have a problem

shitting all over–

So sayeth GW Jr!

Feeling a little like my birth day today.

Damn, God has a fucked-up sense of humor.

“Nothing Lasts” (originally published at Terror House Magazine)

Stars fall

against the murk 

of the night sky,

a rain of fireflies, 

dying in mid-flight, 

hurtling,

heralding, 

upon gentle heads blow,

cruel truths.

Nothing lasts. Nothing lasts.

Listen to the harmony,

that inaudible peal

(Ong)

that sets heavenly bodies to spin, 

amidst everchanging kaleidoscopes

of the Void’s sacred geometries,

pulling,

tugging at Fate,

with the waxing

and waning 

of single points of light.

Nothing lasts.  Nothing lasts.

We, 

the kings and queens 

of planets and moons,

tread upon paths

of celestial dust

wishing, searching

to join hands in communion

with the witnesses 

to our ignorant freefall into The Bottomless.

Nothing lasts.  Nothing lasts.