Tender Species

always on the rims
just a foot away while
My Favorite Things
plays out the loud
speaker for all the
submerged people
with their message in
a bottle one cosmologic
night in Walmart
nation when nobody
sees the bullet-starred
sky screen off that
giant eyeball like a sieve

from: AMERICAN DIARY

a white dentist paid an
exhorbitant price for the
skull of Chief Joseph the
beloved Nez Perce leader
to use in his living room as
an ashtray while the asshole
watched his favorite TV shows
and ain't that America

URINAL

RAINBOWS

from: AMERICAN DIARY

fucker's found evidence
that T. Monk had bipolar
disorder and they gave
him the wrong meds
while he sat in a room
with a piano he never
played the whole six
months before he died
and ain't that America

ANOTHER BEER PLEASE

the half-white-great-
black-hope got his
peace prize today
talking about the
paradox of war
and it looks like I've
wasted yet another
vote although I
expected as much
nothing ever seems
to change but the
changes that never
come when you sit
waiting a lifetime

It's A Wonderful Life

drinking cold beer at 3 below 0
makes no sense just like
Bikers For Christ or "I won't
cum in your mouth." but
as that unknown asshole said
somebody's got to do it
so that means I'm your man
first thought best thought
like Bobby Dylan singing that
excruciating Christmas dog
shit just to feed us broken fuckers
somewhere down a long line
of mornings we don't wake up in
because George Bailey got
all turned around by suicide and
never touched any one of our
laugh at lives making nonexistence
a better reason for the season

ODD JOB

broke, heartsick and driftin'

"experts are divided"

What We Do

night before last me and the old lady were driving
around in the mountains looking for deer drinking
with an Indian partner in his 4WD pickup when
we hit deep snow and go off the road down into the
trees and get stuck real bad so with the hour of
daylight we got left we do everything we can to get
out but we're fucked pretty good and we huddle up
in the cab because there's no sense walking out
we're about 30 miles from any ranch and it's getting
damn cold so the dude trys his cell and we can't get
no one we know we keep losing the signal but 911
comes in pretty good so he has them call our kids
to let them know what's up and we sit drinking
the last of the Cobras before getting any half-assed
sleep we'll figure out something in the morning
but then around 2 AM the cell phone rings and it's
a Sheriff Sargent who wants to know our position
only he can't hear us so he has us press 1 for yes 2
for no on the pad and after some call backs and
fucking around we try to get through to him as best
we can where we think we are and then we realize
if the cops are coming we better pick up all the beer
cans and hide the rifle our partner is a felon and so
there we sit nodding in and out when around 5
AM we see headlights coming up the road and it's
Klamath Search and Rescue and we get out and
they ask if we're all right blah blah and the Deputies
are pretty cool they put us in the back of a 1 ton
Sheriff's rig and we back on out of there to a junction
where there's over 20 more cop rigs and the one
Deputy tells them all over the radio everything is
ok and everybody splits so these 2 cops up front
then tell us they were going to get a helicopter out at
daybreak if they couldn't find us and in another day
we'd be on the news it's 10 degrees out the one cop
says I ask them what this is going to cost us and
they say nothing it's what we do so they drive us
all home right to the front door and we thank them
profusely and watch them drive away when our
partner says that's the first time he's ever been in
the back of a cop car without being handcuffed and I
tell him come on in we got a sixer of Miller talls in the
fridge it's only an hour before the store opens up

Last Ghost In America

it's like not one cloud
in Jan Kerouac's
blue eyes over the
parched roofs of
those who don't
want no more trouble
marked for brutal
destinies anyway in
unpaid-for cars going
nowhere in particular
with a drum beat
the synchronicity of
diseased blood
disregarding warning
signs the drunken
screams the facial
recognition because
love was the only way
out now no one of us
will ever get back in