two with mustard and onions, please...

annexing Astroland America

it was an alternative 1980, I was in a nod

thinking I had found my own personal Oz

the brick by brick started

at Coney Island Brooklyn

it was a seedy dilapidated yellowed

come save me looking road

before the Russians had brought forth

a new wave of immigrant blood

this land was thirsty for eager souls

I used to sing I was hungry for supper

beneath salted clapboard waves

thinking this life is all about

washing the behaviors of animals

into my digestive streams

every animal takes scavenging clues from us

even birds don’t need wings to fly

but they do because we want them to know

that if we could we would take flight away

from guarded jars of life for use at a later date

sometimes my life is prison walls

and denim clocks with rivets welded

on sewn lip orgies and cotton vermouth

the snake havens, wanted posters and insect propellants

are displayed by the frozen drink machines in the corner stores

I killed my neighbors one by one drained their pockets

I pretended to eat their pituitary glands and made myself

new men and women to befriend

they had the same names as before

but they didn’t talk back as much

this gave me an aura of invincibility

a mighty cloak of ignorance and holiness

without having to have it be Halloween

or some other soiree of masqueraded pigmentation

sworn under oath as a daily vitamin regimen

rancid and rank are my scented underlings

they do just fine in keeping prying eyes away

my cancer is a hypodermic dirty soul

and I am everywhere you Love

Love is what we need but you have to pay

its costs in America and I’d rather root for the witches

they don’t cost me anything beyond reason

or treason in the fires I’ve lit on the way

to school since I was in first grade

I used to be smart, got perfect scores

stole liberties from anyone

who distrusted humanity more than I

so yes basically anyone could be marked

to be gotten and set forth, ready and raced

into some 70 odd years of building menial mental empires

in the sand, demanding unlimited cable access

to soft porn on Friday nights

rummaging for discarded Chinese take-out

gathering standing ash trays to make into lamps

the cigarette filter holders were lovers and

they used to be cellular buddies

they sometimes could mimic body temperature changes and

they slept alone and listened for the last Cyclone riders screams

the rickety rackety clickety clackety wheel pieces

of connected sounds, hello operator could you turn

my skin into every reveal, could you sir or you ma’am

could you have eaten my canned meat or anything else

you weren’t sure was supposed to be a fixed mouth centerpiece

the bread tie doilies, by the doorway

were made by the skeletal crones

in dimly lit alleyways, they were handed out like leis

when you became homeless, when you boarded

the ride to expectations of a less than wholesome life expectancy

hitting the beaches was a destructive tendency

just as a madness is painted on each lead glass bead

with little holes to string, yes my hopes for a pearled humanity

have rust stains and the heavens I lean for

are near open air displays of trinkets outside their gates

I grab handfuls of them and make off

for the darkness slowly doing rosary counts and

calling out all the names I ever knew for myself

charlatan, thief and clever clown stealing hands and time

EJR ©