Flying By

Here we are, a future time! When tigers smoke, people whine, and

Jetsons spin and spit, putt-putting, twisting smogstrings through the sky

Clandestine Nation! We’ve arrived at our car-toon future

It’s taken almost a decade longer than 2001

but America has discovered the first machine to challenge Hal,

a Chrysler 300M, incognito at a stop sign in Crockett Park.

Manufactured in Detroit, silver glint and wheel-wrought rumble,

Its custom flying powers crouch beneath its clunky frame.

The unsuspecting pilot can’t possibly know

how much strength lies in his young hand, trembling.

                                    Go

The hand veers left, right here, park left!

Which way to rest, what way, which left?

Scrambled soles add to commotion,

In all directions less co-motion,

he floors it off the curb,

and flies

 

For a moment the hood tilts skyward

and the ground drops away, rotating out of sight.

Life suspends itself on chrome-rimmed wheels spinning wildly,

flailing for traction and grabbing nothing but gravity –

 

pump the brakes            pump the brakes

Pumping the brakes might slow the spinning,

but the hood still tips back toward the ground

and when the pilot sees how far he has to fall –

all he can do is scream

and keep stomping the brakes.

Sonnet #3

When my father withered, thin and bleached

His raspy whispers barely reached my ear,

From sterile sheets he gave his final speech,

Dear son, I’ve learned these things over the years –

Most men are false and women faulty

True love is just a fucking fallacy,

Some filth gets rich but sloth will cost you

Stay sharp! This life is rationality.

I took his words to heart and slugged on through,

by logic’s rule I left all truth sublime,

To find too soon I’m lying next to you

And steady weariness has dulled my mind.

We always end up here, my boy, if in different times

So promise me to let no reason ever break your rhyme.

A Gram of Ampersands

N E U R O S Y P H I L I S

It all started with my penis.

My dick, schlong, dingdong, baby-making beaver-basher, my pleasure piss-

ton that dripped tons onto Kohler, Mansfield, and every American Standard’s lips.

An insatiable youth of pork-sword thrusts and I began burning with a new pyre,

now infected retrospect makes me wish I’d been more pure.

But then again, the one-eyed monster’s hindsight is Horny/Horny.

It all started with my penis but it spread to my spine.

Blooming lesions consumed me like a deathly rose;

Manhood turned me pan-phile

Turned my sick-stick to a syph-

Kabob – now I’m a loner.

How appropriate – it even spread to my soles.

Diagnosis? STAGE 3: Tertiary neurosis.

My cerebral pores opened to inseminating spores,

And now I stand with uncertain, wobbly poise –

My swollen ear cocked to the steady hiss

of my mind abandoning a swiftly sinking ship.

I’m drying prone I’m falling stiff I’m crusty wrinkled desert prune

I’m drowning while titanic choirs screech a song meant to inspire:

Lyres lie, we speak no truth, but scrape the time! Find Peru!

Where rotting corpses ride the coast in golden youth, dig the rune!

Close your eyes eternally, awaiting heaven’s resting shire

but you might stay in cloudless wait for hour upon hour!

Only holes are true relief from man’s stony spires.

Burning Away

Our eyes will never be as wide and clear

as they were on that crisp morning –

Eager and light, we squinted at the brilliance of the sun.

 

What an introduction to life’s long paradox!

As we become accustomed to its brightness

We burrow long and deep to hide within ourselves,

draw our curtains and shades against the sun,

and become surprised at how

our ropes are pulled inconsiderately tightly

when everything was once an expanse of glowing vitality,

and nothing else.

 

The world dwindles with the turn of each day;

It spins so wildly relentless that strips peel away

and float dumbly into eternal, dark introspection–

drifting myopically back to that burning sphere.

We might embrace its warmth and illumination

If not for the metal hooks born into our bones

and the thinness of our skin.