the caduceus, or, the triune evolutionary mechanism

you swing left you go crazy.  life’s
all bad.  nothin’s right in your mind.

for a little while you sit
in center, where you’s all
happy,

then, you
swing right you go crazy all over again.
when’s it ever gonna end, huh?
you feel like a goddamn monkey,
left, right, crazy, crazy, crazy.

and,
no matter how much you
evolve,
you just the same as you ever was.

the denver ski train, or, the birds and the bees have gone all mechanical

you know, it takes a lot of lubrication to get a train to leave the station.  but eventually, it always does, and it chugs merrily down its tracks for miles and miles.

and sometimes, when a train really loves its tracks, the tracks will lead the train into a beautiful mountain range, where there will be many tunnels.  the first tunnel will have a door, and the conductor will honk his horn, and if the tracks love the train too, the door will open.

then the train goes in the tunnel, and out the other side.  then it goes in the next tunnel, and out, and in and out, and in and out, exactly 28 times!

and then the 29th tunnel is the biggest tunnel of all, and at the end, all the people inside the train will get out, and, while they are shopping and skiing and playing in the snow, the train will fall asleep in the tracks’ arms.

to abort or not to abort: a haiku

space missions, babies,
applications in windows;
all the same to me.

complete exsanguination (of the very tiptopmost part of your pinky), or, a haiku for incompetent blood letters

who knew it would be
so hard to make oaths in blood?
let’s use spit instead.

how to hit on a cashier

when you ask the cashier for the
boulder veggie bowl
you have scant time to ask about her sign,
her hobbies, or whether or not she’d like
to see some death metal band with you.
better to take your punch card there
and back again, like going out your door
was the most dangerous thing you’ve
ever done in your life.  the leather jacket,
the look of a dark passenger beside you -
they’ll be sure to win her over once
you’ve got that thirteenth punch on
your loyalty card.

who are all these people and why are they in my way?

days like these,
god sees fit to
place every
slow ass motherfucker
behind the wheel
in front of me.  he
does this to teach
me a lesson in
patience.  i think
god has finally
come down with
a debilitating
mental disease.

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my body lay asleep:
i am seen as a caterpillar
writhing in a droplet of water,
like it’s a sea and i can’t
tell the difference.
-
i am seen falling
from dark skies to darker
waters, mostly helpless but with
feathers i haven’t noticed;
wings i cannot see.
-
i am beholden to
a terror greater than my
understanding.  it lives in my
bones and calls me in the
dark before dawn.
-
destiny is fulfilled
when the caterpillar wakes,
the wings take shape, and then,
without my even noticing,
the terror abates.

if the devil’s light comes to greet you, or, an exercise in self-exorcising

first, you will find your insides spinning outside you like guardian schools of fish.  your lungs will turn into makeshift coffins barely still afloat on the wake of a passing sea beast.  back in your room,  a shadowy figure will greet you by offering to kill all the spiders in your home if you’d just let him in, and you will refuse (by now, you’ve learned what violence against your benefactors does to your bones).  he will conjure the scent of burning frankincense, bringing you to bed with your favorite lover, but again you will refuse.  you will then find your thighs on the floor of your room and the fish will become hostile bees.  an illuminated figure will greet you and offer to ease your pain if you’d just let him in, and you will refuse (by now, you’ve learned the wisdom of your bones).  legions of light-footed imps will tingle up your spine and out your pores three times in all, and at last there will be no figure to greet you, nor deceit to get in your way.

internet porn in three acts

I.

jenna
jenni
tissue
—

II.

taylor
chasey
sock
—

III.

cytherea
cytherea
keyboard

getting fat in three acts

I.

twinkie
breasts
butt
—

II.

hoho
breasts
b  u  t  t

—
III.

big mac
breasts
B  U  T  T

water lust

the slow, rumble chase of a gut that needs more fire*
dear, put your hand in my belly and
take away the sins i’ve stored*

for there is no other way, (and no way to speak of
growing out of it out loud), there is no other

way back when my heart felt less like a lion
and more like a lamb* – you

could you have felt it then?*

could i have told you (no,*

evolution is a conversation
between you and god alone

.

.

—————————————————

*when heavy thunderclouds encumber the functions of your exit organs, encouraging a separation of god and man (leaving open an invitation for malevolent entities to stay a while – *though even the most vile of them can teach).

..................*could you feel the sea beast in me then?

.

……*see how the pelvis looks like a bear trap, or the jawbone of a shark?*

*dear, be careful how fast our bones can move.

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our moon rose faster, fell, waxed, and waned faster, till one
night it stood still, and didn’t move again. and i
played along to my favorite song on a bucket that had my name.
my
mate danced along to that song
for 90 minutes straight.  i thanked
the moon for prolonging that
song, stood up
and kissed
her
nape.

with the moon on full blast, and
her chin buried deep in the soul of my neck, i opened my
eyes and she was crone – i
opened again and she was young.
i kept them closed to see what would happen and she
showed me her favorite form of all.  i loved
her underneath a juniper tree – and never forgot
that scent.  to this
day i get three hugs in one -
a
lover,
maiden,
and
crone.

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stay a little late tonight, honey.
what you calling me honey for?
i just want you to stay a little longer tonight.
what for?
to fuck you on the floor after everyone is gone.
you can call me honey anytime, baby.
baby?
i know you got a beard and a hardon, but i can see inside you got chubby cheeks and dirty diapers.
you into that sort of thing?
ask me again after everyone’s gone.

it was the second best hug of my life and
i swear everyone left when she said i love
you over and over, like we’d been lovers
since high school.  her scent has been the
same since then, and she hasn’t aged at all.

the ten of us played cards together just
like the old days and i undressed her
every time she lost.  the old days weren’t
actually like this at all.

we’ve all found our bodies since then,
and we’ve made our habits into personalities,
giving voice to the kids we used to be.

some homemade brandy, some american
spirit blues, some backseat wheat pennies,

and then everyone left, except my high school lover and me.

intention

While the last thing I want to do is admit I’m an amateur poet (I accidentally stepped on a few amateur poets on my porch this morning – the goddamned things are everywhere), I feel the need to come clean.  I am an amateur poet.  I mention in my “about” (which WordPress tells me someone actually reads) that I consider you one of my teachers and dammit I stand by that.  I’m listening.

That being said – I decided to flesh out this blog a little bit.  I’m a human being too, not just a wily sea creature with a penchant for the written word.

Today I wanted to spit out some thoughts about intention.  Something I probably would learn on the 2nd day of poetry class.  Something I wish Christians knew something about (my childhood would have made a lot more sense).  Something that I eventually learned from DeviantArt.  Beaple wrote a beautiful little poem called Eifell Towers, and in his author’s comments he writes:  “(4 lines intended to be read left to right as well as top to bottom)“.  This is probably an unremarkable statement to everyone but me.  Something clicked when I read that – he intended for you to read the poem in different ways.  Holy shit!

Here I had been meandering through my own writings without really any intention at all.  I wasn’t trying to describe an experience or make the reader do anything.  In an almost literal sense (I am a water constitution according to the Chinese Five Elements, which I write about here) I was lost in a settled avalanche of words.  I didn’t know which way was up, and there was no other human in sight.  No audience, and no direction.

So now that I’ve become aware of this concept, it is showing up in my writing.  In “letter from a mysterious stranger“, I decided I wanted to describe feelings I had when I bumped into an old lover.  In “& the trees of the field” I wanted to describe my grade school experience.  A good example of one of my poems without intention is “columbine“.  I still have no idea what I was trying to accomplish with this poem and the only reason I’m leaving it where people can see is to remind me never to do that again.  All I really want to be able to do in the end is have an answer if someone asks me “Why?”  If I don’t have an answer, then I know I’m just stuck in the avalanche.

So please, if you care for my evolution as a poet at all – ask me “Why?” over and over again.

And you want to know the best part about learning poetry?  What works in poetry works in real life too!  Holy fucking shit!

I have looked back on the past 10 years of my life and asked myself “why?” about a lot of choices I made – and you know what? – the answer is almost always “I don’t know.”  Simply put, for many, many years I have been leading an unintentional life, and in my experience with it, it’s barely a life at all.  Like I mentioned earlier – it’s like a life led in a settled avalanche.  I’m able to say this because I know the difference, and thank the non-existent lord for that.

I also mention in my about page that the only thing I know about poetry is that a true poet lives life fully.  In other words, a true poet lives life with intention.  In’t that just purdy how it all comes together like that?

ode to the titan arum

how indescribably inappropriate your name used to be!
imagine the schoolteacher,
children, over here you see a giant misshapen penis!

and so you have more than a few names:
corpse flower, which i like the best,
and the titan arum – largest flower in the world.

there are plants with mysterious, seductive
power – yours, so obvious, a rotting
meat chunk between your legs, a
hidden weight tied to your toes.

if not for your dark power, evolution might have
relegated you to the realm of daisies:  cute,
abundant little things
with no dark sides
at all.

an office job

if you wonder what
an office job is like – consider this:

what if inside you lived a brutal death metal band, in your bladder, and its groupies – all wearing black and pierced – lived in your kidneys?  every stroke of the space bar sounds like a zildjian trash cymbal, every time you hit “send” it feels like the strum of a tritone against your fingers.

the slow march to the bathroom, at 9:46 every morning, feels like advancing in line for a concert you know you’ll hate.  you try to keep your cool going up the elevator, as working weary mumble how happy they are it’s friday like it was the only one history ever gave them.

imagine your favorite band tuning their guitars for 4 hours, taking a lunch break, and tuning for another 4 hours.  they play a 45 minute set, but only of contemporary christian worship songs. and for the encore, the death metal groupies hang them by their hair until their scalps fall off.

if you still wonder what
an office job is like – i hear
microsoft is hiring.

letter from a mysterious stranger

dear lover, wife of the morning star:  i feel both stepped on and the size of angels.  chewed up, at best, with languid weapons in three hands.  a forehead with eggshell cracks, and neck suspended by twine.  a snail retreating to be with kin, too late and small to make it.  a lion stuffed with negligence and sin.  there is a titan arum flowering in my chest and tourists have come to see.   a sketch picasso made for his friend the sword swallower, six hours before a tragic sneeze.  have you seen venezuela in spring?

dear frank e. rodgers blvd,

when we lay down in grass i don’t
know where the world went but it wasn’t
where we left it

first the new york city skyline melted away
then the boy in bright red overalls
and the clump of pastel colored balloons
he carried
and there was no more
ice cream man or cuban sandwich shop -
they just folded over themselves like
a trick jacob’s ladder might pull

and when i opened my eyes
they took you in, one cheekbone
at a time

the devil in threes

there are some little devils who put hair in
your soup, some who put holes in your favorite
shirts, and some who tempt you with poisoned
fruit – i for one can’t tell them apart – but
they all come to visit on the same damned day.

he says the second time the morning star
hits you it ain’t as bad as the first,
and he was right – in fact, i bet i could take
a third, right now, and barely
feel a
thing.

the ancients had devils for ten thousand different things:
destroyers of wheat, tornado bringers,
baby eaters, and more,
but the only one we still call by its true name
is cupid.

you and me in the garden makes three

& even though i don’t eat them,
we’ll have peppers in our garden
(they look so bright and tasty, don’t they?)

our goats will wake our guests
earlier than they’re used to waking
and we’ll apologize while scrambling eggs

from our chicken coop, out back,
where there is still a blood stain from
the wolf whose life i promised not to take.

& when we’re in the garden together,
we’ll make three – a little god or goddess
who decided on this plane for a little while.

& the ten thousand peppers we grew
will dance along with our life, like it was
the only thing they were ever meant to do.