Month: January 2011

Car Show

Cadillacs of the 1950s
Glinting in the Cherokee
Sun, arranged in rows
A stabbing revelry

Americana, what we are
A memory spoke in Southern drawl
During a trot along
The Trail of Tears.

Colorful figures,
All around the mountain square,
Jangled in their meaningless
Headdress and fascist tribal flare.

She’s a beauty ain’t
She? asked a farmer
Of about 67 and
Three months.

I reckon to say she is,
Replied some onlooker,
Paid ten dollars
Just to see her.

On a streetcorner
Just down the hill:
Bronzed in black fishnets
Stood a mother, 17.

TV Guide

Blackjack, panic attack,
Chrome dreams and steel.

Three Stoned White Guys, Cops,
Hot on Their Heels.

An actress on crack
Is winning – is losing,
Is dead on her back.

A library in each head,
One feeds his disease:

Latex miracle Fear machine,
Absolute power that gleams!

A slack silver-lined serpent
Writhes in the sky.

The Black Magnus unrolls,
Roils and unwinds,

Planting landlines,
Serenades.

Twisting and coiling
Like some new galaxy,

The great heroin beast-
What’s next on TV?

The “Space Race” 80s and 90s

I was once an empty flagon of liquid hope;
Nothing has changed.

I used to want to be an astronaut
But hated to limit myself.

I learned how to write on a sheet of cardboard
On the shag carpeting of a trailer because
I was “not like them.”

And I have always been a shit writer
Pretending like he isn’t.

Though perfectly accustomed to it,
I am by no means afraid of failure.

The probability of intelligent life
In our galaxy is so small,
It probably exists,
Somewhere else.

Hate is a more realistic word for
Love.

There is no membrane,
The atmosphere is thinning
With my hair and I’m only
Twenty fucking five.

I am the Cold War.

By that I mean some part of me
Is truly American
And the rest wants peace.

College makes me dumb,
Or I was never smart.

People are a source of misery
Because they make me so happy.

This is nothing new,
It won’t make the frontpages
Or anything.

At least, it shouldn’t,
Because space
Is for real
Celebrities and life
Is about learning
To pretend.

Mad Man’s Hate Song

I shut my eyes and drink the rain;
Thinking madly about our children, fat, yet underfed.
(For endless corporate capital gain.)

Yellow fields of swaying grain
Fuel delusions, concealing dread:
I shut my eyes and drink the rain.

I watched my life go down the drain
And regaled stifled dreams so overripe, so dead on fire.
(For endless corporate capital gain.)

Factories wheeze and workers strike, hacks retire:
We vote for him, more lies, more sin:
I shut my eyes and drink the rain.

I hoped it would end but fear remained,
Until one day there was only noise.
(For endless corporate capital gain.)

I took it upon myself to go insane;
At least this way I fit right in.
I shut my eyes and drink the rain.
(For endless corporate capital gain.)