OR AGAINST LITERACY

control the metaphors
to control the thought

Ghost Story

years ago I took the guy who owns the store in
Sprague River to my favorite fishing spot down
from my house here across from Council Butte
where they signed the peace treaty for the Modoc
War and I showed him the rocks like fingers that
go down to the shore and the foot deep grinding
bowl that is in one of them and I told him to imagine
when the Indian women would prepare meals there
so long ago and that blew his mind but right around
then I started smelling a heavy BenGay smell and I
asked him if he had any of it on an injured shoulder
or something and he said no and that he didn't smell
anything so I took him back to the store got some
beer and wine and went over to visit some friends at
the bottoms which was kind of a hobo jungle where
everyone lived in old dilapidated overhead campers
but all I could smell was BenGay and it was starting
to bother me so I asked them if they had any of it on
or could smell it and no no was all they would say so
we drank all afternoon and into the night and I was
getting to where I could hardly breathe from that
heavy menthol smell so anyway my friends started
asking me again about all the Indians I knew and
right then pow it motherfucking hit me with goose
bumps up the arms the whole shot it was Old Fella
shit Jesus he was an elder who I just recently had the
extreme honor of being pallbearer for because we
would party together and me and this other white
partner would kind of look after him a real character
who would only speak Paiute except every once in
awhile when your back was turned he'd say something
in English just to piss you off and he would always
smell of BenGay because he was so damned old now
exactly the moment I realized this the heavy odor
completely disappeared which was a relief but I got
real scared not knowing what it all meant so I said
goodbye to my friends and decided to drive over to
see Gow who was kind of an unofficial Chief who could
tell me something so I get over to Beatty about one
in the morning and wake his ass up and he comes
out and sits with me in the car and I tell him the whole
story and he says no no Old Fella was just giving you a
sign that he was ok and not to worry but I tell him I
don't know man it seemed like way more than that to
me but Gow just says don't worry don't worry and goes
back into his trailer and I just sit there for awhile and
begin to think that yeah he is probably right it was just
the old man touching bases so I drive on home to sleep
it off but now here is where the whole thing gets unreal
the very next day my Paiute old lady who I have been
arguing with for a week gets hit by a train and killed

A Little Dark Mirror

index finger against the temple like
you're blowing your brains out

crotch butter girl through
layers of synthetics at
a querulous 1969 drive-in movie
with the car still running

lost celluloid burning crimson
like a flash of chrome
at the Sharon Tate crime scene

buying food stamps from the south
Texas hippies who stole the remains
of Burroughs's orgone accumulator
in the early seventies

being born a poet after The Last Poets

crusty binoculars dug out of a ditch
before a garter snake bites the adolescent
boy who will kill you someday

THIS WAS WRITTEN LATE 1980'S AT MONA'S NUDE BAR, S.E. PORTLAND, OR:

through you no
blank thoughts
________________

As is now.
(I know)


crawl into the
dark
-------------------------
surrounding voices


NOT A LIFE


we last this
long:

as sweat &
wet
as the fear


as the lips

in the ground


stupid, but I
write &
this moves
-------------------------
to forget you


flesh & mirror;
long fingers
of time
expose need.


so you breathe
hard into his
face as he
fucks you.


I have kissed
the mirror.
________________

I have kissed
your mouth.


an exploded view
of intimidation


Agree (trail of

stolen eyes

far away)


All about you, it's
all about you,
swollen &
important inside
these words
like heated
blood.


________________
All I have.


blank mirror.

this is what
time
is

the waiting to
go back

glorious &
smooth

to that first
room


gggggggggg
I know it.
gggggggggg


--------------------------
it is not like this


MEAN
MORE
TO ME


what it takes.

a heart torn
subject to fear.


--------------------------
not to be harmed,

I accept the
fever.


I AM STILL HERE


this is now time;
not to repeat
words:

you are sick,
contained by an
eaten past.


_________________
she stood in
the room.

he stood in
the room.


burrow into sadness


then to remember,
we are governed
by our hips-
gyrating into
nonexistence.

Short-term Americana

dirt road beer

piss mile in

duct taped

cowboy boots

cutting

backstrap

on a dented

tailgate

LOOKING FOR FEAR

...so then I got a job deflowering
noxious angels on this big blue
marble that seems more like a
Tidy Bowl commercial to me...



Subtle changes take too long.

Them Or Us

the psilocybin is in the portmanteau near the foot
of the bed where Dr. Phil is sucking your heavy
nuts inside an odorous TV on a rainy night in
Portland just a couple of blocks away from Powell's
City of Books where one of your earliest volumes will
soon be experiencing spontaneous combustion in
a parthenogenetic book buyer's hands

BEER RUN

these wasted days
the wasted nights
not recognizing
your face in the
rearview just for
that one second
when you question
yourself and your
weak-assed poetry
hungover in an
America which has
no talent no derring-
do no tolerance for
for your own bilious
breath filling the
inside of this
25-year-old car
with the ether of
those beat and lost
long before you

WHAT YOUR SKELETON HOLDS UP

I am looking out at you
from that album cover
Merle Haggard Pride
In What I Am

Friends

then what

LOVE POEM FOR EVAN WILLIAMS

under my thumb in
the midnight hour w/
mystic eyes when the
music's over won't
come back from dead
man's curve cuz freddie's
dead

already

STOP-MOTION HANGOVER

like bodysurfing
The Wedge
high on glue