Acts III (Art)

(wherein the wet wall of myriad vaginas
occupies an enormous doorless room's far end
like low hanging fruit)

The first true love

of H.R. Giger's life

put a gun in her mouth

and blew her brains out

on the bed they once shared

but before she died

she took the time

to scrawl one final word on the floor:

Adieu.

Perhaps it was his art

that drove her mad

it's hard to know

but you don't need a P.H.D.

in perinatal psychology

to see the phallic significance of the act

all you have to do

is look at the fucking paintings

Beltracchi bilked the art world for millions

by telling them what they wanted to hear

what they needed to hear

but he knew what art was really for

by showing us these things

in that way the master forger

became the greatest artist of them all

by splashing his realizations

on the tabula rosa

of art itself.

True art subverts itself

that is its purpose

Giger claimed it was his art

that helped distance him from her death

that it helped him heal

perhaps that is its purpose too:

to heal the wounds

that it creates

but true art,

like the tail of the Uroboros,

consumes itself

just as it consumes us all.

For too long now

I have pondered

the purpose and meaning of art

for too long now

I have tried in vain

to escape its grasp

but that is what it does to us

it draws us to our doom

that is what art is

it is the preponderance of itself

it is both the of itself

and the not of itself

all at once

it is the horror of the spider's march

as we look into its eyes.

It is twelve aborted fetuses

in the chamber of a gun

fired at the heart of the sun

screaming all the way down

or a jet black New African xenomorph

wearing a necklace of human teeth

espousing burial rites

transcribed from the Tibetan

Book Of The Dead

in raspy tones.

It is like giving birth on your knees

to a litter of dead kittens

with your mouth

pausing only to wipe your face

with the back of one stale, shaking hand

pale as bone

or a world of perfect iambs no one reads.

Whenever I think of art these days

now that Giger is gone

I see stars and conflagrations

I see wind swept milky ways

wide, cold, old

like the Library of Alexandria

or the bones

of some long dead inquisitioner

whose sins

even pain can not pardon

or the long and plaintive moan

of earth's last dinosaur.

I see the end of all things

and I see the beginning of all things

in thick, wet ink

scrawled on the back

of a forgotten receipt

or the scalding, blinding black

of all first things

like paint gunning eyeballs shut

or the vicious splash of blood

so red it won't come out

can't come out

sprayed on the sheets that these two lovers shared

before art came knocking

gun cocked

behind its back

and loaded with twelve broken embryos

one for each month of the year

like seeing

Acts II (Hope)

Acts II (Hope)

(wherein ten thousand juggalos

quench the fires of hell with love and laughter)

outside my window

the fires of Gehenna are burning

I can see the fires rising now

as I sit and drink my morning coffee

musing at the fact

that no matter where I go

hell always finds me anyway

hell always comes to me

but the steam on my coffee is rising

nonetheless

through the chill morning air

in my room:

so do the screams of hell outside

dancing in the air

like sparks from the fire

that burns at the heart of everything:

we throw our bodies in piles now

we take pictures now of everything we do

but here in hell

where the witches of Papua New Guinea

are still put on display

while the men pour gasoline

down their throats

and the women gawk

posting pictures of it all on Facebook

glad it isn't them this time

there is still hope

there is always hope

because hope is why hell exists

hope is all that matters

hope is so important

that we must suffer to attain it

here in hell

where the blood on the walls

is meant to tell us why we're here

where the screams that echo

down the cavern walls

were put there just for us

so that we can finally become

who we are

so that we can finally be pure

that is what hope is

it is ten thousand juggalos

in black speedos

on their own island

celebrating miracles

with their faces painted like clowns

nuts hanging in the water

that is hope

it is tying your pubic hair

in a nut weave

not giving a shit what people think

that is hope

it is knowing

that money doesn't matter anymore

once you know what money's for

that is hope

hope is a bag of candy

that Wal-Mart doesn't sell

without a doctor's note

hope is Chuck Mangione

blowing that funky sweet flugelhorn of his

feeling so good

and always hearing the children of Sanchez

the way that I will always hear

the witches of Papua New Guinea

hope is one more Bob Dylan song

before he dies

hope is a raging unstoppable erection

at the age of forty seven

when she's face down ass up

when she looks at you over her shoulder

at the age of twenty seven

and says this party starts now

channeling the spirit

of Hunter S. Thompson

without even knowing it

hope is not outliving your children

and somehow making it when you do

hope is loving your children

more than you love yourself

hope is knowing

that being lonely

and being alone

are two different things

hope is obliterating Isis

from the face of the earth

without killing their children

in the process

hope is one line of poetry

that never goes away

that one book

you can't put down

hope is raging against the dying of the light

hope is in your fucking face

hope is a refrain

blowing down the edges

through the trees

on Tobacco Road

hope is knowing

that even old Chuckie Manson

can find peace one day

when he finally deserves it

hope is Carl Sandberg's

American Songbag

stuck in your guitar case

underneath the guitar

where someone has scrawled

this machine kills fascists

on the pick guard

hope is scrounging up enough loose change

for one more beer

hope is the blow job

you've been dreaming about

hope is finally getting a raise

and finally paying off the cards

hope is your car starting in the morning

hope is paying the rent on time

hope is not walking in the women's restroom

by mistake

hope is not getting caught on camera

when you do

hope is one last cigarette

you didn't know you had

hope is the one thing

you didn't know you knew

and finally seeing the women

of Papua New Guinea

set free like singing birds

even as the fires of hell

blow outside our windows

even as we sit here musing

our coffee growing cold

on the only things that matter

Acts I (Lovers)

Acts I (Lovers)

(Wherein Job Is Ejaculated From The Sperm Whale)

She said there must be

some deep rooted trauma

in my past

for me to even make such a statement

and I said that she was probably right

but it didn't prove me wrong

in fact it just supported my argument

when I said

that Hemingway was right

when he compared love to a dung heap

upon which the cock crows

then I remember the slamming doors

the huffing and the puffing

that threatens to blow the house down

and I think that we

are like a different species

her and I

one of us quiet and dreaming

like the coral reef

the other loud and screaming

screaming at me

screaming at our child

screaming at car doors and windows and text messages

screaming at life

screaming at everything really

everything around her

a source of provocation

but she tells me all the time

that she is not an angry person

None of us are

I suppose

the animal,

it is inside us all

the cage,

it is our bodies

no one chooses to be this way

no one chooses to be locked up

no one chooses to be themselves

no one chooses the violence

of their bodies

it is a natural thing

puppets on a string

we dance the slow and awful waltz

to the time of a piano poorly played

missing all the notes at all the wrong times

as we try to sing along in the wrong key

no one chooses life

it is thrust upon us

an act of sexual violence

in which we play no part

this is the truth

that hammers our bodies

I watch her breasts rise and fall

huge pink areolas

for the tongue's taking

we are sharing a cigarette

she says she doesn't usually smoke

but with me

she's always doing things she doesn't do

I guess I'm just a bad habit

that people pick up that way

like cigarettes only easier to put down

or maybe I'm the one

that's hard to addict

it's hard to say

my eyes move down

to the patch between her legs

shaved into a slender charcoal line

like a landing strip

she's the first girl I've known

who shaved herself that way

and it brings out the animal in me

there's a look in her eyes

that says she wants to do it again

and I'm thinking

she is probably right

but it doesn't change things

nothing changes things

even change doesn't change things

a part of me

doesn't want to do it ever again

a part of me

sees sexual congress

as the ultimate act of selfishness

operating as it does

under the guise of altruism

it is a male thing I guess

even murder is more kind

by not pretending to be

something that it isn't

the act of sexual penetration

being the ultimate fuck you

that it is

every orgasm

like the emptying of a well

that leaves us parched

and waiting

the thirst that is never truly quenched

there is a violence

at the core of everything

that makes the world seem

more naturally abhorrent

more abominable

than even killers care for

it is the scream

at the heart of everything

to give even killers pause

it is what they look for

in the eyes of their victims

as they die

and never find

and don't want to when they do

it is the truth that ruins us all

a second, final time

the world is not what we would have it be

it is not what we think it is

and I look at her again

at the roundness of her ass

admiring its whiteness

as she turns on her stomach

to look at me

the trauma the violence

the scream at the heart of the world

raging inside of me

love and hate fused

in a single white hot

carnal moment

I can not resist

I hear the screaming

she hears the screaming

and it joins us now

we pretend that we can't hear it

but it has taken us anyway

unawares

unbidden

we are puppets on a string

and I look at her one last time

before I enter her again

not gentle this time

but hard

thrusting savagely

she doesn't seem to mind

the animal again

the violence

the primal scream at the heart of everything

just as nature intended

and it frightens me again

just as it always has

it exhausts us both

and rolling on our sides

we go back to the place we came from

knowing

always knowing

that there is a separation

between us all

that can not be breached

our bodies are cages

to which no one

not lovers not even love itself

can hold the the keys

the keys that jingle and jangle

just out of arm's length

eternally, like a punishment,

a sentence,

the bars of our flesh

simply do not yield

only oblivion can set us free

and as I slip into dream

where all past lovers merge

into a single faceless creature,

that single undifferentiated primal force,

I ponder once again this thing

that is the truth of us.

• 12/14/15

Wal-Mart Orientation 2009

I'll never forget March, 2009

how cold it was that day

my first day at Wal-Mart

after spending the winter alone

with the power off

living on lentils and corn meal with the occasional onion

onions were a luxury for a while

I never knew onions could taste that good

they tasted like sunshine

like spring itself in a soupy brine

of earth and water

like freedom

like the freedom to fail

and that first day at Wal-Mart

I knew in my gut

I felt that first fire in the belly and knew

that the freedom to fail

was the most important freedom there was

we spent three days in orientation

staring at computer screens

in a slow state of indoctrination

murdering what was left inside of us

that was good

and holy

while outside the air was bitter cold

the coldest winter in years

I like to think of it

as a sign of things to come

a harbinger if you will

of a great misfortune

but after three days we left the womb

of the orientation chamber

doe eyed lambs to the slaughter

and set out to greet the day

to greet the great big world

of Wal-Mart

where weeping was a way of life

they had painted a picture for us

of a perfect Wal-Mart world

where everything goes according to plan

where everyone lives better

but everyone knew

that world couldn't exist

it was the kind of world

where even the banks were too big to fail

and all the Barbie dolls came fully complete

with fully functional labia majora

all the better to fuck you with

but yeah the banks failed

and I failed

only Wal-Mart survived the year of 2009

squatting on the ruins

like the three headed cock that crows

like the slobbering heads of Cerberus

and as I left the orientation chamber

beaten

confused

hungry

tired and bleary eyed

there was still a part of me deep inside

like a turnip that refuses to be pulled free

from the fine first earth

that is the soul's first weathering hole

a part of me that knew and would always know

what freedom truly meant

because Wal-Mart would always be there

to take it from me.

Tree Top Flyer

I guess it had been – what? - thirty years or more

when I found that old newspaper clipping

in my email

my dad again

only this time the clipping was about

his dad, my grandfather,

a man we never talked about much

someone I haven't thought about

for a while now

I guess family is like that sometimes

Grandpa

yeah, I haven't thought about you

in a long time now, have I?

Too long you could say

but it's not always wise they say

to disturb the dead

who dare to dream

but I have dared to dream

and tonight we will dream together

in the savage night

of the heart's wide wasted water

our own personal Lethe

of blood and memories

that forget to remember

You, the way I remember you,

that stubborn, persistent man

who organized his socks

so he never wore them on the wrong foot,

the man who never missed a church service,

that bastion of a conservatism

that drove us all away,

the man who never broke the rules,

the war had given you that I guess,

the big one, the big war,

the one that left dirt on your hands

and stony roots in your soul,

the one with the swastikas

and suicide bombers,

the one where you flew a plane,

the one where you got to come home

when half a generation didn't

Yeah it's no wonder you had to something to say

I guess we've got some

catching up to do now

you and I

grandfather and grandson

it's been a long fucking time

even though I know

you would hate my phrasing it that way

great lover of propriety and metrical form

that you were

yeah

that poetry thing again

you might be happy to know

that it's all your fault

at least that's the way I like to see it

after all it is

one hell of a legacy

by the shores of Gitchee Gumee and all

me as a child on your knee

listening to you recite

Hiawatha's Child,

in that baritone voice of yours

as it echoed down the hall,

fucking spellbound

yeah, you and I, we need to talk

that's for sure

we aren't so different, you and I,

we need to talk

about the newspaper clipping

the one from 1948

we need to talk about

how you got arrested

for buzzing the tree tops

at an altitude of fifty feet,

low enough for all of them

to feel the wind of the war on their faces,

while you tossed out political pamphlets

for the university students when the war was over

like the tree top flyer

in that song by Stephen Stills

only you weren't smuggling drugs that day

you were smuggling ideas

the way I smuggle them now

under the guise of poetry

where the fools won't find them

the wolves

the predators

and the wannabe Hitlers of our tender age

yeah, we're not so different,

you and I, these days

I find myself more like you every day

that stubborn

that meticulous

that sensitive

and that committed to all the wrong causes

for all the right reasons

while I grow more conservative

every day

I guess that one day soon

death will have us both again

it has to happen

and seeing you buzz the tree tops

in my heart's high night

I know that

we're all children when we die

we leave this world

the same way that we came into it

naked

alone

kicking and screaming

crying for the darkness of the womb

yet afraid to leave the light

where even the pain is better

than that one great unknown

it is the war that never ends

it is the war we never win

but when I see you flying low

I know that poetry

is the only way to talk about it

after all it was you

who taught me to love poetry

in the first place

by the shores of Gitchee Gumee

and even though I know

you would disapprove

of the mode of my expression

when I see you tree top flying

throwing political pamphlets in the wind

I know that that is the one

slightest of transgressions

you would easily forgive

because you too were unconventional once

as all young men are

because love and truth

transcend form anyway

and true words have the power

to resurrect the dead

regardless of how

they are put together

so let us

you and I

celebrate this tree top flight

one last time

as grandfather and grandson

while the night is still young

because time is fleeting

and we will not have this opportunity

again

And sometimes even the dead rest uneasy

The dead who dare to dream

When they have something to say.

When The Cavemen Walked The Earth

There's a theory going around
In scientific circles
That the interbreeding
Of Homo Sapiens and the Neanderthals
May have taken place just four times
Four times
Four acts of sexual congress
Was all it took
To alter the human genome forever

But what gives me pause
Is knowing that
For such a thing to be possible
It would mean
That the entire worldwide population
Of humans at the time
Must have been so small
As to make our very existence today
Seem like an anomaly
An accident
A twist of fate
With no cosmic significance whatsoever
Like bird shit on the windshield
Or something sticky on the sole of your shoe
That small
That insignificant
And that ultimately unnecessary

It must have been a bleak and dreary life
For them all
Watching their children die in the snow
Die in the ice
Leaving them for the animals
When they could not be buried
But there must have been worse things
Than seeing your children
Eaten by animals
When the cavemen walked the earth

No wonder then
That the newly born human brain
Evolved a way to protect itself
From self destruction
From the madness of despair
That would surely
Have doomed us all

No wonder then
That it was necessary
To invent the afterlife
And to invent the gods
For who doesn't want to see their children again
When so many have died
And all about you
Is ruin and waste and brokenness
Broken lives
Broken hearts
Broken bodies
And broken everything
Everything was broken
Hope was all they had
I wonder about their eyes that way
I wonder about the secrets they possessed
The brokenness that they possessed
And I begin to understand

That the bleakness of reality
Is the madness that afflicts us all
It is the disease
For which there is no cure
No wonder then
That even children know how to pretend
Without being taught
No wonder then
That even cavemen
Looked to the sky and dreamed
When they walked the earth

300

300 Spartan warriors
Defending Greece
against the hordes of Xerxes
And I can't even find a better job
And sometimes my car keys

Now when I think
about old world heroism
Everything about my life
Stands in stark contrast
Skinny fat guys
Don't set off lunk alarms I guess

No, I am no Spartan warrior
I am instead
Cowardly
Lazy
Self-indulgent
And easily defeated
With a tendency towards compromise

Perhaps one day though
When the time is right
I'll raise my singing sword of flame
And take the field
While the cheering crowd
Sings its timely and unfortunate hallelujah
In my head
Leaving corpses in my wake
A trail of blood for the troubadours
Screaming freedom or some shit

Maybe one day
But probably not
So until then
I'll just be one lonely guy
In the modern age
With no illusions about his place
In the grand scheme of things
Singing his sad no songs
For the tone blind

God Fearing Thieves

We spent the night stocking
Blue rays and DVDs
Tossing them one by one
In the bargain bins
Scanning UPCs
And hunting modular locations
Like Easter eggs

When I saw it
A small white copy
Of the movie Do You Believe
A primer of Christian fundamentalism
I assumed
Then I noticed that it had been cut open

The DVD inside was missing
Stolen
And I wondered
What kind of Christian lifts a DVD?
The God fearing kind I suppose
But you have to wonder
What goes through the minds
Of God fearing thieves

I suppose it's possible
That they didn't know stealing was wrong
Not having seen the movie yet
Or maybe they were stealing it for someone
To impress them or something
Or maybe it was just the thrill of transgression
Or maybe they just had a profound appreciation
For the irony of it all

Its hard to know for sure
But as for me
I like to think they did it
Just to fuck with people's heads
Since not being a God fearing man myself
It's the only thing that makes sense
In my own little personal
Fucked up world

But in the end I'll never know
It's just another one of life's mysteries
Like locks on doors
Like the sound of birds
Like watching your step father slowly die
For three whole days
While outside the quiet
Of the hospital womb
The tornados raged in a town
That had never known tornados

I guess we're all thieves in a way
God fearing or not
Thieves of time
Thieves of flesh
Thieves of life itself
Every moment we enjoy
Existing at the expense of some other living thing
So I guess
In the end
One more missing DVD
Isn't going to make much difference anyway

For now it's enough to know
That the mystery itself is enough
Enough to know
That in the end
No one really owns anything at all
And that information
Is more important to me
Than another useless prohibition
Or fundamentalist Christian primer
That fails to explain the problem in the first place
Much less justify its own existence
Or ours even