LADY LIBERTY

(a vehicle for quoting Grover Cleveland & Steve Ignorant in the same stanza)

Crusty punk girl, your wan skin
would possibly be unbecoming were it not
so damned reminiscent of Lady Liberty’s oxidized glow.
The thick gelatin which bonds your meticulously
coiffed spikes, your seven continents rifted and drifted
from your shaved Pangaea, reflects stage lights
like a diadem of freedom.
A raised fist: your torch, ignited
with a fiery frenzy at the first wailing chord.

You are the poor, the tired, a member
of the huddled masses in studded black
adorned with Discharge patches and perfectly
stenciled Crass logos, stomping the terra,
flailing extremities with abandon, streams
of light projecting through your seven seas which
shall pierce the darkness of ignorance and man’s oppression,
your tattered t-shirt a reminder to subway patrons to
                Fight War,
                      Not Wars.

EULOGY

Tiny combinations of morphemes, you create and fracture culture
Into tiny flecks of gypsum glistening off the cellulose pulp,
Dried and fibrous in our hands, like a desert rose,
Pulmonary pressure producing articulate sparks off a polyglot’s larynx,
Igniting the combustible vegetation of semantic-conceptual fields
That burn uncontrollably for days on end.

O how I yearn for thee,
Your smooth, nimble semantics nuzzled between my frontal cortices,
Sweet stanzas stimulating sensory systems;
So selfish I have been, sugar.
Accept this bouquet and let us enjoy this caress
As my salty sweat smears your syntax.

FLAT POWER SPECTRAL DENSITY (NO SELF REMIX)

Pregnant mindbelly.
Detached, ethereal fetuses

generating hypnotic tones of aural sex,
motorboating their cherubic little lips

in the amniotic fluid, the sonic equivalent
of the Rapture in full reverse.

Theologians, I implore you,
there is something holy in this

audio pastiche tickling my eardrums with
wet pinky fingers made of music;

the soundtrack, such a sharp atmospheric contrast
to the life story it scores, with its poor character

development. And my feet sticking to the floor.
Sounding like the future if this were the past

is a symphonic quality held in high esteem.
The hum heard between walls, that white noise

in a black room, is retrospective foresight asking
what happened? But if we keep our thoughts still enough

we can hear our organism playing music
through an infinite series of biochemical processes;

our own DNA warbling away, trilling the song of creation.
Somewhere between mind and heart,

pale horses tow gilded wagons
with a cacophonous carousel calliope caboose,

the chromatic cavities whistling the steam of muses.
When the temperature of the steam is just right,

I put a stethoscope to my neck and listen.

NO SELF

If we keep our thoughts still enough

We can hear our organism playing music

Through an infinite series of biochemical processes;

Our own DNA warbling away, trilling the song of creation.

METAPHYSICAL ATTRACTION

There’s something organic about the acidic

Free jazz congruence of a short denim skirt and boho moccasin sandals,

Half moons the color of a blood orange

                                                                      dangling ever so slightly

                                                                                                      past the footbed.

Pineal wading in a decollete of scallop patterns

Tightly woven into polyester,

A cream canvas with velveteen flocking;

A Dimethyltryptamine dream of dimethyl terephthalate

Washed in a golden halo of fuzz;

                                                                                ~ an electrocuted nirvana.

This is what summer should feel like —

Ecru eyes that glisten like canary diamonds in the beacon of a police flashlight.

Spaghetti strings of coded data, we ride

Like great snakes through our molecular deserts.

APPS

(A Fibonacci sequence poem)


Give

Me

A touch

Screen face. Drag

A smile across my

Lips with your greasy forefinger.

Diddle my dimples for mastication. Tickle crow’s

Feet for skepticism, a little harder for contempt. Thumb my epicanthic folds

To surf the salty data waves of my tear ducts, you sick, sadistic bitch. Just be sure to close my eyelids when you recharge the battery.

ARM WRESTLING W/ THE HANDS OF TIME

Hunched over a table saw in the garage, his brittle body
sculpted from yellow fingernail, leathered appendages trembling,
the ashtray swimming with wood splinters
and the regal lions of Pall Mall’s unfiltered coat of arms,
he sat cursing everything within range of his spit.

He was a creaky folding chair in the church basement
on a Wednesday night, dying for someone for rent him
or borrow him for a function of some ilk—a family reunion
or a dinner party; a rendezvous, get-together, gospel outreach,
whatever—yearning for someone to sit with him.

His home smelled like the church basement, too,
a scent evocative of the public library but more desperate.
He showed us his rifle collection. He gave us coins and
pulled stumbles out of his trick knee. Abracadabra.
He’d tell us how Mussolini stored Nazi gold in the Vatican
and, after the war, the Catholics let the Nazis escape
to South America dressed as priests on jets.

We were too skinny, he’d tell us— all elbows and teeth.
I’m gonna lock you two in a room and I won’t open the door
‘til one of you eats the other one, he’d say.
We won’t eat each other, we’ll just wind up getting skinnier,
I’d tell him, and what good would that do?
Logic, you see.
He would chuckle and say something like,
we’ll see if you still feel that way on day 7.
His cedar fence was our outfield wall.

P.E.A.C.E.

I’d like to move far, far away
to a distant projected reality within universal consciousness
free from the tyranny of style.

I’d like to find some new electrons with whom to collide.
Know what?
Fuck electrons; they’re too negative.

Protons and electrons always cause explosions.

You can see how this is frustrating.

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE THAT CONSCIOUSNESS CONTINUES TO EXIST AFTER THE TRANSITION KNOWN AS "DEATH"

I’ve seen heaven in a downed power line
close to the earth and tangled in the trees,
undulating in the wind like black Chrysopelea;
the last fiery remnants of a rogue kite that refuses to leave quietly.

Butterflies flitter about her live wire hair
like ghost children poking each other in the sins,
saturating dish towels with the energy raining from her fingertips,
huffing her aura and getting high.

And there I was, all of seven, maybe,
my syrupy fingerprints smudged across the glass,
a greasy cheek pressed between the floral print humeral veils
frocked over the pane, separating the sanctuary from the sinners.

To see that serpent hissing sparks, the crabgrass ignited
with ticklish orange arms outstretched, grasping for nimbus,
bridging the current between nature and science, it left the boy
praying for lightning, to whom, he is no longer sure.

FLAT POWER SPECTRAL DENSITY

Pregnant mindbelly.
Detached, ethereal fetuses

generating hypnotic tones of aural sex,
motorboating their cherubic little lips

in the amniotic fluid, the sonic equivalent
of the Rapture in full reverse.

Theologians, I implore you,
there is something holy in this

audio pastiche tickling my eardrums with
wet pinky fingers made of music;

the soundtrack, such a sharp atmospheric contrast
to the life story it scores, with its poor character

development. And my feet sticking to the floor.
Sounding like the future if this were the past

is a symphonic quality held in high esteem.
The hum heard between walls, that white noise

in a black room, is retrospective foresight asking
what happened? But somewhere between mind and heart,

pale horses tow gilded wagons
with a cacophonous carousel calliope caboose,

the chromatic cavities whistling the steam of muses.
When the temperature of the steam is just right,

I put a stethoscope to my neck and listen.

WHY BIRDS COLLIDE WITH AIRPLANES

The sallow glimmer of streetlights
encroaches upon thick sky
as stars get lost in urban glow.
Voices muffled by broad doors and sheetrock,
squealing fan belts traveling at a constant finite speed,
You prop yourself up, shoulder freckles
aligned like some lesser known constellation,
overlooked, but nonetheless beauteous.

Your rubber words bounce off walls
and ricochet off the pine floors,
the shrapnel from your lexicon
crashing into my sternum with the
force of Adam West era Batman onomatopoeia:
Thwack! Pa-Pow!

Words born out of wedlock once read so severe
back when revenge was a sound
and love was a taste
that didn’t lose its flavor so quickly.

I study the sacred geometry of your external shell;
the topography of moles, surface scars,
where the meteor landed.
Shoulder blades to protect your blindside.
Ribcage prison for bagpipe lungs.
Rogue heart incarcerated.

Long after you fall asleep, I tell you,
the howls of theta waves reverberating through the air ducts,
I inhale your dreams.
They smell like gasoline.

They fuel my human vehicle.

I talk in circles and create a ring of words
with which I promise to love you to pieces
so tiny and jagged, the razor-sharp slivers
cut the heels of suitors and attack the forefoot
at the faintest scent of lust.

Your elbow unlocked, shoulder remiss,
“We’re in it for the long haul,” you say,
tonguing a ring of your own,
packaged in a saliva box.
We have no use for diamonds.
Not where we are going.