February 3, 2013

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 ©


1 comment:

  1. This one just pulls you in strongly from the first words and takes you on quite a ride! Well done :)
    Anne-Marie and Jason

    ReplyDelete

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