Wal-Mart, 2015

Five days now I have written my soul empty

but there's always Wal-Mart

to fill it back up again

Wal-Mart with all its bullshit

Wal-Mart

with its stupid fucking cheer

Wal-Mart

with its vapid rollbacks

and fucking early Christmas lights

with its side counters full of crap

and half eaten stolen deli dinners

with the skus torn off

General Tso's goddamn chicken again

Wal-Mart

where the Peter Principle

is more perfectly embodied

Wal-Mart

where thieves find their tools of trade

box cutter blades by the screwdrivers

with which to ply their trade

all free for the taking

Wal-Mart

where they sell rotten meat

because labor is a controllable cost

where they lock the bathrooms at night

where cashiers shit their pants

and stockers need to pee

where everyone's in too big a hurry

to give a shit anymore

Wal-Mart

where it's cheaper to pay a fine

than it is to do the right thing

where you get fired

for doing what you're told

where they treat you like shit

even dogs get treated better

where they build you up

just to knock you down again

where respect for the individual

is just another meaningless mantra

just one more lie

in a sea of lies

that add insult to injury

Wal-Mart

where everything is incrementally excremental

Wal-Mart

where it gets shittier every day

where they fill your head with bullshit

and where the screaming in your head

never ends

Wal-Mart

the eight hundred pound gorilla in the room

the great big swinging dick in the room

its ridiculously huge cock swinging there

back and forth

like a pendulum

like the goddamn fucking cross

of Golgotha

come there to save us all

come there to save us all some money

and help us all live better again

Yeah, Wal-Mart will fill me up again

because there's enough human drama

enough human suffering

and enough human condition there

to fill volumes

to stock the shelves of every library in the world

enough even to fill the shelves

of every goddamn fucking Wal-Mart

in the world

The Poetry Machine

I buy one thirty dollar smartphone
And already I feel like Google
Has taken over everything

But I never realized
That they had finally invented
The perfect poetry machine

It's always there in my pocket now
Awaiting the perfect line
And the not so perfect line

Example:
Today it captured the strangest image
Of mysterious hungry mouths
On hungry yellow stalks endlessly swaying
On a white plain
A sea of mouths in the wind
The size of melons
As far as the eye can see

Nothing gets lost now
As it sits in my pocket
An ever present presence always waiting
The serendipity of eternal dictation

And while the endless sea of mouths move
They murmur too
Some in unison
Some not
While in the cacophony
Something beautiful is occasionally heard

The Dumb Ass Patrol

The dumb ass patrol is out in full force today
The dumb ass patrol
And their impossible expectations

Like 75 picks an hour
Climbing up ladders
Pulling down cases that weigh 40 pounds
While one hundred fifteen Chinese kids
Are packed together in dorm rooms
To sleep four hours and do it again

Impossible expectations
Like a clean back room
And everything off the floor
When there's two trucks worth of freight
And nowhere to go with it
Sitting on pallets
Mute and silent like the dusty dead
While somewhere a child spends Christmas eve
Making toys for other children

Impossible expectations
Set by impossible dumb asses

Impossible expectations
Like cranking out two thousand price changes
When you have to reset
The entire department
By yourself
But no overtime
And no excuses
Or its your ass
You should've been done already anyway

Impossible expectations
While Isis mutilates it's children
Just so we can pump more oil through our trucks

Yeah the dumb ass patrol
Is out in full force tonight
That new breed of supervisor
Whose mouths work faster than their brains
When they even have brains at all

Yeah impossible expectations
But my mind is far away
In a land of far away vision and manga

Hey, Shinichi Izumi
Who is that your talking to?
Are you talking to your hand again?
Your cock this time?
But Shinichi doesn't answer
And I turn once again
To hear the barking of human dogs
with Wal-Mart badges and titles
That obedient
That stupid
That impossible to ignore
While the blue pallets bear mute witness

Old Bird

I still remember her

sitting in front of her basement condo

in that grey bathrobe

old as dirt with a cigarette dangling from one hand

a red Solo cup on the table beside her

perched there like an old bird

giving everyone the stink eye

yeah for a while there I hated her on sight

but years later

when I was down and out

when all the credit cards were maxed out

when the condo was in foreclosure

and the whole world turned its back on me

it was the crazy lady who took me in

I think for a while there no one liked her at all

there in our little condo complex

at the foot of Signal Mountain

living in what we used to call cell block A

because these weren't the classy condos, you know

this was the Baltic and Mediterranean

of Mountain Creek Road

but it was OK

we all liked it

it was cheap and cozy and it did the job

that's all I can say about it

five years I lived above that crazy broad

trying to come and go without being seen

but at the age of 72

she didn't miss a lick

nothing happened there

that she didn't know about it

there in cell block A

our little crackerbox affair

with everyone packed on top of each other

but for a while there I parked my car on the other side

coming up the steps where she couldn't see me

until one day

she poked her head around

asked me if I wanted a beer

said we needed to talk

anytime a woman says

we need to talk

you know you're in trouble

but looking back I think

it might've been the only smart thing

I ever did

for that entire decade of my life

that's how the whole thing got started anyway

all the crazy parties and late nights

in front of her condo

at the foot of Signal Mountain

on Mountain Creek Road

I met a lot of people then

some good

some bad

but still just a lot of people

for a recluse like myself

Hell, it was probably good for me

but I still hated her just a little

even after all that

because she was all right after a few beers

she'd get going

saying that the wisdom of 72 years

could be summed up by saying

you can't go wrong

with an oblong ding dong

I remember once she almost fell down

in the parking lot

remember helping her back into her apartment

thinking that one day she would hurt herself

but she never did

and all the neighborhood college kids seemed to like her

so it went

but after a few more

tin cans of crazy

it always went south

she was not a happy drunk

talking in circles

getting mean

and driving everybody crazy

it was hard to break away

kept getting harder

and I always ended up staying

just a little bit longer than I wanted to

but more and more

a long time longer

until I finally went back upstairs

head spinning

truth be told

she was one mean fucking drunk

she had a way of leaving you

feeling all hollowed out

like a Thanksgiving turkey

with the guts yanked out

like she was making a meal out of you

with the things she said
each word from her mouth
like the bite of a Kimodo dragon

and maybe she was

or something

but old people get away with a lot of shit

so for a long time there

I tried avoiding her again

but that never lasted long

Hell, nothing does, ya know what I'm saying?

Five years I lived on top of that tough old broad

through the red and yellow blur

of the Chattanooga autumns

that made the mountain there

so beautiful it could change a man forever

and the blistering hot summers

of East Tennessee

on the north Georgia border

Five years

while that hollow wind blew

through the wasteland inside of me

past the junk pamphlets, broken glass

and cracked pavement

of my heart's broken city

where no one talked to anybody at all

Five years

and I slowly started

to just lose my shit completely

and she was down there the whole time

cranking her crappy radio

playing the same song over and over again

I never learned its name

sometimes the people we try to avoid

are the ones we need the most

yeah, five years I lived

with that wasteland inside of me

and when the shit went down

and the bank took my house

when I was just standing there

a dick with his dick in the wind

nowhere to go

she was the one who took me in

that crazy old bird

that mean old drunk

the one I'd spent five years trying to avoid

life never works the way its supposed to I guess

but she did more than take me in

without even meaning to I think

she gave me one lasting parting gift

before she died

she introduced me to just one more person

before we both left for good

the woman who gave birth to my only child

the child who made that hollow wind

blow its way out of crazy town for good

and it wasn't until I held my newborn daughter in my hands

that I finally figured out

the thing that I was supposed to be doing

the source of all that emptiness

the thing that fueled the madness

all that time

and I felt healed

for the first time in years

I felt my heart bloom like some strange vegetable flower

I'd never seen before

the one that finally pulls the sunshine back down to earth

where it belongs

like I said

sometimes the people we try to avoid

are the ones we need the most

it takes a lot of wisdom

to know the difference I guess

or maybe it's all just an accident

maybe I got lucky

I don't know

I never claimed to be a wise man

that's for sure

my life like a Kansas song or something

but when I look back on it all

I can't help but get a sense

of something, maybe purpose, maybe design,

like it was all meant to happen somehow

like my daughter simply wanted to exist

and this is how the dead speak to us

Through the mystery of circumstance

so strong is their desire

to return from the shadowlands

back to a crazy world of broken glass

cracked pavement and junk pamphlets

that blow through the broken city streets

of our secret hearts

who knows?

I sure as hell don't

what I do know is this:

that crazy old bird

must have known a thing or two

about birth and death

that crazy old broad

who outlived her only son

when she died

when the lung cancer finally got the best of her

I wasn't sure what to think

I guess she's in the shadowlands now

working some crazy magic

from death's secret secreting place

on a waiting world

but if I know her

if she's still anything like she used to be

tough old bird

who didn't take any shit

then she won't be there long

No

she won't be there for long at all

and who knows

maybe soon

on some sunny day

I might just hear from her again

when the dead come knocking

The Poet Writes About Himself (Again)

I was going to write a poem about the future
Where instead of smartwatches
And those ridiculous wearable android devices
Everyone decides to wear electroencephalographic monitors
With moving image maps
To display their brain activity in rainbow hues
Like some Doppler Radar of the soul

But I decided to write again about myself instead
Not because I'm interesting
Or beautiful
Or ugly
Or unusual
Or anything at all
Its just the only subject that I know

Still the future thing would have made a good idea ya know?
In fact I wrote about it once already
Before my phone ate that one too

The idea just doesn't let go
The idea of letting Google extrapolate our thoughts
For all the world to see
Maybe for once
We could finally know who the smart people really were
The poets and the dreamers
The visionaries and the future Nobel peace prize winners
Just by tracking their brain activity everyday
And putting it up for everyone to see
We could finally find the terrorists
We could stop Isis in its tracks
The Pol Pots
The Hitler's
We could finally rid the world of all their shit
Then we could come for the poets and the dreamers too
Hell, why not?
They probably started it all in the first place anyhow

But the world can't handle that much honesty
So I'll write about myself again instead
Since the world can't talk about itself like that
I'll do it for you now
Writing one more time about myself, my soul
A quiet place that sits waiting
Like the end of the world
A place where everything
Is so exquisitely empty
A place where the Pol Pots don't exist
Where the Hitlers are dead
A place where Isis can no longer
Brainwash its innocent children
The true victims in all this mess
My soul
Where the child in me sleeps soundly
Wrapped in a blanket of forever dream
That place where quiet winds and soft rains come.

The Clean Up Crew On Black Friday

We hit the ground running this year
Building endcaps and stackbases
Picking up all the bullshit,
The empty shrinkwraps and pieces of broken pallets
We've all done this before
Lost in that maelstrom of kinetic energy
That aftermath of human greed
That every Wal-Mart warrior knows
We
The clean up crew on Black Friday
Poor retail bastards
Hopped up on hydrocodone
Heartache
And hope for something
Anything
Just to get the hell out of that place

But it gets shorter every year
Black Friday
A mere shadow of its former glory
The legend we all love to hate
That great god of retail
But even gods can die
I have died every year
And been reborn
Emerging from the ashes
Of Black Friday

Yeah it ain't what it used to be
I guess no one wants to leave the house any more
And a part of me inside
Says stop looking back
But seven years in retail can change a man
And when I look back far enough
I see the way we used to be
I hear the howling of ancient wolves
And I feel sad
We're not much different now I think
Then the men and women who painted caves
On Black Friday
We're still foraging
Hunting
Gathering
Modern cavemen with nowhere to go anymore
But home
Back to our phones and computer screens
Wondering what it is that we're supposed to do

And when I remember all the assholes I had to work for
Over the years
I put my face between my hands
Lost in reverie
Marvelling at the fact
That even misery is worth weeping for
Life is that good
Seriously
Even in hell
Even here where everything is just all fucked up
Even here at Wal-Mart
Where the people go
On Black Friday

The Wizard In The Tower

Boneless faces on the boughs of trees
hang like leaves. They drip and slowly weave.
The wind is blowing. You can hear them scream.
The dead dream. The trees are lodged in stone.
Their roots were forged in lightning on the rocks.
The rocks are made of lava, flesh and bone
that has grown cold. The earth is void of green.
Spikes and faceless heads surround the scene,
severed heads that can not truly die.
A tower in the distance overlooks
this garden of once human travesty.
A window in the tower top contains
a shadow where the wizard moves his arms
and casts the spell that murders his humanity.

Lines 11/25/15

He's tapping out poems
On his phone again
Even though
I told him he would ruin his eyes
But he never listens anyway
He's not the listening type
To be honest
He's probably not listening to me now
As he he taps away
Tap
Tap
Tap
On that stupid phone of his
Singing about
Lovers gone dry,
old dusty bones
And ancient melodies
While the world stares at its screen
Refusing to even listen.

Daughter Of The Moon With Yellow Hair

By the shores of Chickamauga,
By the splashing vision water,
Of the Tennessee that shining
There enfolds the Chattanooga,
Shines my little big Nokomis,
Splashing in the splashy vision,
Shines my little baby water,
Stomping puddles in the moonbeams,
Stomping puddles in the sunshine,
Daughter of the moon with yellow hair.

In the rain I see her dancing,
Laughing in the laughing laughwind,
Lily of the moon and sunshine,
Lilith of the shining water,
In the sunny sunlight playing
Where the heart that hearts the heartbeat
Sings the knowsong that is knowing
As it knocks the water of her body.

Hear the singing of my singing,
I who came to be your father.
Know that many came before you,
Daughter of the daughter of the
Daughter of the daughter of the
Moon that shiny shines in shining water
Where you play.

What is there to fear my hushling
When the spirit world protects you
With the passing of your mothers
When so many shadows walk your way?

The path you walk was walked before you
So go my little shining water.
Go my little big Nokomis
By the shores of Chickamauga.
Go my yellow haired Nokomis,
My daughter of the daughters of the moon.

Sing the world a world of worldshine.
Sing the world a song of longsong.
Shine like shiny shining water,
My young Nokomis shining water dream.

Go into the world. Be vocal!
Make your singing song of raindrops!
Cast your voice upon the water,
Make each thunderword a wordbolt
Daughter of the moon with yellow hair.

A Song Of Bones

I have meandered through the day.
I have meandered through the night.
I have seen darkness.
I have seen light.
I have seen the swelling mountain's might
where the monster wipes it's mouth and bleeds.
I have seen the rain, the snow, the now
that never leaves.

I have seen the severed limbs
and I have heard the song of bones,
the squish of boneless face and ogre's shin
where tears of blood that shake and groan
take root in earth of flesh where flowers grow.
I have heard the weeping of the beast
that loses everything it knows
to a frank and furious rage
that blows.

It is the lasting long and copious meal
this feast of friendship where the bleeding beasthead
weeps and says it couldn't help itself
then lays its head to rest
to wonder what it's done
and what it knows.

A Blanket Of Song

I lay. I dream. And in my dreams I see
the core of self that peering back describes
the perimeter of mind that seems to be,
the inner eye that ghoulishly confides

the mouthless murmurings that no one sees.
This is the spaceless place I long to be,
obliterating mountains as I move
through time and space and all eternity.

Here I go and lay all fears to waste,
to wrap about the mantle of my creed,
the blanket of my song, this crownless night
of all that I could ever truly be.

No one knows the things here I can see
but in my mind now I am truly free.