A steady intake of
cookies for breakfast and
fried chicken for dinner
will catch up with you
sooner than me
in the form of
my knuckles
against your cheek.
I know I could be greater,
but where's the challenge in that.
Besides,
much like a small country
with a king's ransom of nationality and
complex to last generations,
I am the last one who needs
to be weaponized.
original works of parts
Trigger Man (air to air)
Pulling a rare and textbook perfect
canted rolling scissors.
The opportunity to come
directly out of the sun long gone. Blown.
Smiles keep running ear to ear
behind your oxygen mask.
The gees are getting to you, I hope,
the way they are getting to me.
The joy is in the maneuver. The knowing
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it."
But the ground is coming. Fast. I know
you know
which way you're going to break and
I do not.
Thumb on the hat switch, it is hard not to watch
the horizon rise and fall
the sun wheel and dive behind cloud banks,
Earth rise, fall, and sky blind again.
Hydraulic boosters are crying.
The air is tearing.
The real nerve is found headfirst supersonic
toward the ground.
I don't want to blink, watching your helmet glitter
glancing straight up at me
through your canopy. Judging distance and guts and glory.
You are beautiful,
but I will roll as deep and when you throttle out
I will be ready to light you up
and send you home in flames and titanium confetti,
nothing more than a tea cup for a casket.
canted rolling scissors.
The opportunity to come
directly out of the sun long gone. Blown.
Smiles keep running ear to ear
behind your oxygen mask.
The gees are getting to you, I hope,
the way they are getting to me.
The joy is in the maneuver. The knowing
"I'm doing it! I'm doing it."
But the ground is coming. Fast. I know
you know
which way you're going to break and
I do not.
Thumb on the hat switch, it is hard not to watch
the horizon rise and fall
the sun wheel and dive behind cloud banks,
Earth rise, fall, and sky blind again.
Hydraulic boosters are crying.
The air is tearing.
The real nerve is found headfirst supersonic
toward the ground.
I don't want to blink, watching your helmet glitter
glancing straight up at me
through your canopy. Judging distance and guts and glory.
You are beautiful,
but I will roll as deep and when you throttle out
I will be ready to light you up
and send you home in flames and titanium confetti,
nothing more than a tea cup for a casket.
The Chrome God, Tomitroux
came to me in a dream five years ago
on the shores of a city made of gray sand and
brown water tide pools and
no sign of a moon or stars or clouds and
spires of termite tubes hollowed out
for human use and enough flies
to choke a lung if there were any
need of breathing in an afterlife.
I blinked and he blinked
his two foot high wide eyes brown veined
retina blacked and said his name was
all I remember hearing was a million horsed engine's noise.
Fire compressed into cylinders and
steel blade chopped and blowing
through the back of his head and out of his
mouth that sucked the thick water from
the ankle deep slur of earth
eating our feet and spat it hot across
my face.
The sound was the name of the Devil himself,
if I ever heard it blow across my ears hard
enough to pull the skin away like hairs
against a hurricane and he blinked
his two foot high wide eyes brown veined and
I blinked back, afraid for my
second life and this time aware
that if I did lose
my life there would be nothing else.
The chrome god came to me again
yesterday and this time stood
no taller than before, face wide, eyes thinner and
we talked, entirely this time, about him.
The city was gone, fallen into its own mouth,
leveled by its own power and heat
to its buried solid grounds, the oceans
so evenly distributed with the departure of all
celestial influence that it became a
bright gray marble in some telescope's eyes.
Walking in this world
instead of that other,
he was so much the same and
I bit my tongue
to wake myself and failed.
"Write it for me," he asked if I could remember his name and
the skin at my cheeks began to crawl and my ears started to scream and
my nose began to bleed
because I had no way to spell a sense
with no expression so he said
"I will do it for you."
On that hill, against a star burned sky,
with his big toe and a down cast eye,
the other still square on my own,
he wrote in the short grass and litter
weather whip shreds of plastic shopping bags and
spray paint cans
nine letters
that lit little fires and
left gray ashed dirt
where I need not go
to know nothing has grown there since
a name I wake wide eyed with in the middle of
summer nights since. A name I thought I left behind,
a name I want nothing to do with.
on the shores of a city made of gray sand and
brown water tide pools and
no sign of a moon or stars or clouds and
spires of termite tubes hollowed out
for human use and enough flies
to choke a lung if there were any
need of breathing in an afterlife.
I blinked and he blinked
his two foot high wide eyes brown veined
retina blacked and said his name was
all I remember hearing was a million horsed engine's noise.
Fire compressed into cylinders and
steel blade chopped and blowing
through the back of his head and out of his
mouth that sucked the thick water from
the ankle deep slur of earth
eating our feet and spat it hot across
my face.
The sound was the name of the Devil himself,
if I ever heard it blow across my ears hard
enough to pull the skin away like hairs
against a hurricane and he blinked
his two foot high wide eyes brown veined and
I blinked back, afraid for my
second life and this time aware
that if I did lose
my life there would be nothing else.
The chrome god came to me again
yesterday and this time stood
no taller than before, face wide, eyes thinner and
we talked, entirely this time, about him.
The city was gone, fallen into its own mouth,
leveled by its own power and heat
to its buried solid grounds, the oceans
so evenly distributed with the departure of all
celestial influence that it became a
bright gray marble in some telescope's eyes.
Walking in this world
instead of that other,
he was so much the same and
I bit my tongue
to wake myself and failed.
"Write it for me," he asked if I could remember his name and
the skin at my cheeks began to crawl and my ears started to scream and
my nose began to bleed
because I had no way to spell a sense
with no expression so he said
"I will do it for you."
On that hill, against a star burned sky,
with his big toe and a down cast eye,
the other still square on my own,
he wrote in the short grass and litter
weather whip shreds of plastic shopping bags and
spray paint cans
nine letters
that lit little fires and
left gray ashed dirt
where I need not go
to know nothing has grown there since
a name I wake wide eyed with in the middle of
summer nights since. A name I thought I left behind,
a name I want nothing to do with.
Someone Stayed Late
Danny wasn't human. Danny wasn't close,
Danny wasn't sure of anything
Danny had no ghost. He couldn't throw a shadow
if it weighed only a gram. He couldn't
do stairs and he couldn't sit or stand.
Danny had no conscience.
Danny had no pitch. If Danny could compile,
he'd do it with a hitch. Danny never slept.
He couldn't try to eat. If he wasn't strapped
he wouldn't find his seat. He swore too much,
he cupped his nuts, he never kept his head.
He beat on bins, he hit the bricks,
he chewed on chips of lead.
Danny was in to mercury, starships,
and short day dreams.
Danny never first date kissed,
never sorted or cleaned.
Danny was a window licker
with no sense of rhyme or theme.
He was a little bit of straight line power.
A little bit of speed. A little bit of
fuck tomorrow. A little bit of need.
Sometimes he got it going.
Sometimes he went face first.
Sometimes he went too often
into the pitch of night.
Sometimes I wish that only once,
Danny could get it right.
Danny wasn't sure of anything
Danny had no ghost. He couldn't throw a shadow
if it weighed only a gram. He couldn't
do stairs and he couldn't sit or stand.
Danny had no conscience.
Danny had no pitch. If Danny could compile,
he'd do it with a hitch. Danny never slept.
He couldn't try to eat. If he wasn't strapped
he wouldn't find his seat. He swore too much,
he cupped his nuts, he never kept his head.
He beat on bins, he hit the bricks,
he chewed on chips of lead.
Danny was in to mercury, starships,
and short day dreams.
Danny never first date kissed,
never sorted or cleaned.
Danny was a window licker
with no sense of rhyme or theme.
He was a little bit of straight line power.
A little bit of speed. A little bit of
fuck tomorrow. A little bit of need.
Sometimes he got it going.
Sometimes he went face first.
Sometimes he went too often
into the pitch of night.
Sometimes I wish that only once,
Danny could get it right.
Take Heart (selections from Prescription Static)
In the space of vacuum,
the vacated throne of what is and
what can be
there is you
and there is me.
Together we are.
We make.
We believe.
We smoke and we drink and
we get wet in being.
And I believe that is all there is
to it. You are free
to argue and
I will rejoin, but
the beauty of us
is in the morning
because, though we both do dream,
we both do wake
into a universe not of our design and
where the night falls
we will rise
until our engines cease
and our bodies are given over
to the timelessness of earth and trees.
Bury me in California,
would you?
I've always wanted to see the Pacific.
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