January 8, 2013

the specials are worth perusing...


photo by Jan Herman ©


because of big oil, picture glass, paper menus, jumping jack-o-lanterns and other roadside eateries…

I am a gourd palace journeyman
and I have long abandoned
my dreams of a midnight wheel
to become a semi-affixed regular
at a chrome metal house of decay
awning poems into every food stand
serving hamburgers and hot dogs
made out of stardust, here in America

if it’s not cut down and rusting
in flickering neon wanting
I am uncomfortable
in this land of big signs
I become little furies
turn them into 
determinate causes
other tidal waves
of ignorance 
coasting around the bend
thumbed torrents of texts
in a calligraphy that says
mystical things not served
you need not ask
for them

the television keeps saying
to fornicate with kindness sleeping
Love here, it says, can be picked apart
it is best behind closed doors
and paid for up front

I have made
administratively poor judgment
into my clothes, identifying
all of your expected
customary behaviors of me
and I have finger chained myself
to an assignment of letters
and keys, keeping the driving
in something else’s hands

the simple massage
mass denials to everything
sneaked in with the tolls
with pain in the seeds
and the manufacturing claims
kneading new and improved
before I was even born
to a billable birth certificate
with re-chargeable hubris
modifications and allocations
of my soul
allow me to color
outside of things

I keep finding
patterns in the white noise
just to please acted outcomes
curtain-ing theater portholes
with memory shaved into piles
whittled down, filed away
for less than earnest
but close to the center
of a dark hearted marksmanship
William Tell says keep quiet
and I do

today, I hear the hoarfrost
morning matte-paint about
it is moaning radial arm length
with words like, particulates,
catch the ice, and each dendrite
blooms for a piece of the Dawn

jesters are posing as every jesus
camping out by the last remaining
blue mail box here in America
its slot metal eyes waiting
to see who I might post myself off to
who I might stamp myself to
waiting to see if I am picked clean
of any bones of knowledge
will I crawl instinctively
through the processes
of diminishing reverence
and articulation
for mirrors
and things
foretold in them

are mouths, merely gates
sometimes fleshed
in a disguise of lips
knowing only dictionaries
and the other sides
of laughter sometimes
when the wine is right

in this land dissected with asphalt
I am literally flung across the stars
with all that I want including respite
scooped up by time and made to eat
my humanity in wafer thin tablatures
sometimes I even like eating here
especially when the fries are fresh
and the night’s hunger
doesn’t seem such an endless rest
letting the morning symphony
stick around, to stretch its legs
to move me, for a bit

EJR ©

4 comments:

  1. the television keeps saying
    to fornicate with kindness...

    I keep finding
    patterns in the white noise
    just to please acted outcomes...

    nice both of those really cool lines....i would much rather prefer the old greasy spoon among people that i find familiar in their point on the road....

    ReplyDelete
  2. Potent and engaging.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My prior attempt at commenting failed. This is gorgeous. It's impossible to pick out just one line that I loved. It is all lovely.

    ReplyDelete

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