REDLINING THE FOSSIL

Three million
different varieties
of seeds from
around the world
are locked away in a
doomsday vault and
you don't have the key.

MICHELINE TEN YEARS GONE

The empty streets
are not empty.

Forever Lost Forever Savored

for Jim Samples

you old fucker
it's your birthday today
and usually we'd be
sitting out front here
sipping on a half G of
Jack but you've been dead
awhile now and there's
too much snow anyway
so that's out I'll just keep
drinking this wine for you
and try to dredge up your
voice again talking about
days of redneck glamour
drinking 40-cent drafts at
the Blackboard in Bakersfield
when you and Merle were both
dumb and good looking
and those oil fields paid
the dividends a pussy
licking young man needed
to speed him down that
road of roughneck years
forever lost forever savored

JESUS
AND
AMERICA
WAS
HATRED
AND
RACISM
AND
GREED
WRITE
YOUR
WAY
OUT
OF
THAT

URINATION AND INTELLECT

for Mel Clay

a naked teenaged white
girl on her knees in a
small plastic kiddie pool
looks up at three burly
black dudes all pissing
into her open mouth

1952

There in the road lay my lost friendship ring.




almost died twice on the table with
only the face of the clock laughing
in those silver black photos of youth





Bud landed a good-sized speckled trout.





momma I can't see no light no please
come back I'm drenched with sweat
in the afterglow of a burnt ghost





There will be no floats in the parade.





I am screaming but you don't hear me
what makes you think we are not dead
already inside these musty yearbooks





Here is your red crayon.




"tomorrow or next year or several
years from now your turn will come"

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE



Suddenly you remember.

The World Is My Toilet

used to be I'd go visit
this old white dude out
back here in the hills
and we'd drink Oly and
cheap whiskey and I'd
watch him carve these
beautiful Kachina dolls
out of wood and then
decorate them with
rabbit fur and bright
paint and you couldn't
tell the difference even
if you were standing on
the side of the road near
Four Corners I dug his
whole scene we all called
him Hazmat and that was
good enough for him
we'd sit drink and swat
flies in the heat for hours
one time I had the runny
alcoholic shits and asked
him where the crapper
was and he got up and
walked over to a tree and
brought back this folding
aluminum lawn chair with
the bottom webbing torn
out that now had a toilet
seat attached to it with
baling wire go anywhere
you want he told me the
world is my toilet and so
I did a few times then
another day I came over
and he was at his table
with a gallon glass jar
setting on it that contained
three large turds being
swarmed by a hundred
flies I shit in this jar and
now I have no flies and
when I go to bed I just
screw on the lid he
explained and I must admit
it worked damned sweet
well not too long after that
another drunk told me they
had put Hazmat in a rest
home somewhere and how
it was pretty fucked up
because all of his stuff was
still sitting out there in the
woods I did think about
going to get that lawn chair
then but I kept on drinking

DOWN HOME TASTE

meth parents

"hard to content"

New Episode

in the back seat of a rusted GTO that rests down
in this gully only ten and a quarter miles off the
main road to Ensenada there is an aluminum
suitcase full of some handwritten poems of Jim
Morrison's buried in empty Tecate cans and
lizard shit just begging to be discovered

CASTRO

the Sierra
Maestra
resonate

with the sound
of an exploding
cigar

while deep
inside a t-shirt
Che looks out

for his surgically
amputated
hands

Poem On My Daughter's 9th Birthday

barbecuing in the snow
with Hannah Montana
blasting out the open
front door this is the life
baby girl make no mistake
it doesn't get any better
than this with hope making
a comeback and the root
beer ice cold your smile
is all I need to obliterate
time yet to come

THE REJECTION SLIP THAT IMPLODED

now 40 years into this I am
bruised by poverty and
the blacklist but it's clear

that I will outlive you and not
because you don't buy my
books don't be fucking stupid

I've gone from the mimeograph
to the computer in less time
it took for you to figure out

visual poetry no assholes it's
because I truly don't care
anymore so be with that

you haven't beaten me and
there is nothing left to prove I
will write what I write with

impunity in total amusement
and after careful consideration
you can suck my veiny root

SOWING MEMORY

I looked
into
her eyes


until they
spread
her legs

F. A.'s BLUES

I don't like you with line fragments
what the bluesmen did for fun
it's two white horses in a line
and verse shapes as well because
I will disintegrate your name in image
almost like pieces of the same long
song as an echo of singing subvocally
to slice the weather in your heart
with symbolic structure with no coats
on and your suspenders down
I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say
that poetry was dead and stinking
not artfully perhaps the use of the
dissonance outside an interpolating
Mississippi roadhouse where only the
lowercase letters precede essence
when misspelling becomes meaningless

Wine Stains On The Pillow

for Billy

your face

as huge as this
is

quintessence

or
in our hot

fucking a

consequence

that's what
I'm

talking about

FOR WAY TOO LONG

boppers are nodding out in
redolent phrases of Au Privave
35 years before the first
spoonful

so this is the right joint

albeit now just a field of broken
words where the terrible
noise set it all off

but hey baby come back here

like Faron Young once said
"Wouldn't that be great? To be
killed by Hank Williams!"
as the fucker pointed a loaded
gun to his temple because
he wanted his woman

I'm skin popping Ripple on
Dead Indian Rd. just to lick
that gardenia in moonlight
yes baby oh yes

it is a war I can't understand
please straighten
your stockings

and dig the imponderables

I will quit forever

for way too long

Get Away From Me

working for a living
so the douche bag
breaks inside the dog
show when a best friend
asks how you keep your
nipples so hard in the
luxury suite because the
only time you read is taking
a shit with old Bob Dylan
albums one like nature
as it should be boss he's got
a gun but I can't get off can't
get the day off then the new
season begins leave me alone
take it real easy please like
immediate jeopardy my
eyes are not closed not so
much anymore but you
already knew that

ME, THE GUNMAN, AND GOD

smells)

trigger.

memory,

I GOT BEATEN AT THE RIOT INSIDE ME

for Wanda Coleman

I can remember once a genius named Tom Clark
told me that another genius named John Martin
only laughed at him when he mentioned my name
as one of the people he should be publishing but if
I were a woman coming out of a workshop I might
have a chance is what he said like it was a joke and I
quess it was but I didn't chuckle too much back then

I

PRESSED

MY

LIPS

AGAINST

HER

STRETCHED

OUT

ROSEBUD

AND

SUCKED

HER

HUBBY'S

SPERM

OUT

OF

HER

ASS

EXPLORING YOUR CREATIVE WRITING POTENTIAL

And the word was made flesh,



and lacerated with knives
and pissed upon
and peeled and dried
and blown by shotgun pellets
and burned by chemicals
and covered in cum
and fed to lions
and lessened by disease
and riddled with bullets
and sucked by leeches
and sold to lechers
and smeared with shit
and buried with paupers
and mocked in its deformity



and became this poem.

HANDMAIDEN TO CAPITAL

celebrity endorsements

"now back to you"

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

NASA sent one of
John Lennon's
lamest songs to

the North Star
Polaris to cheer
up the aliens

it will take 431
light years for
them to hear it

thank fuck those
Sun Ra sides
are already there

A Confession

you're holding a large
plastic bag that says
PATIENT'S BELONGINGS
standing in the rain at twilight
fabricating a confession while
dreams crawl off like desperate
housewives on umbilical leashes
and the bus that never comes
is now your own plasmatic
future gasping in deathless
afterthought

A
MASSIVE
CULL
THROUGH
VIOLENCE
DISEASE
STARVATION
OR
NATURAL
DISASTERS
WHICH
BIOLOGY
DICTATES
FOR
ALL
OTHER
SPECIES
WHEN
THEIR
NUMBERS
EXCEED
THE
LIMITS
OF
THEIR
ENVIRONMENT'S
CARRYING
CAPACITY

BAUDELAIRE RIMBAUD VERLAINE

Check the
surveillance
tapes.

PHILLIP BROWN, SR.

So strangers can
speak your name.