Thursday, December 28, 2017

The Spin Cycle

Tropical passion fruit cynicism.
Feeding machines dingy dirt-caked coins
and watching it wash away two weeks
worth of sweat and stink-
the hamper has a life of its own by Sunday.

I reminisce about antiquated methods
of laundry. How housewives and maids
would wipe away filth and grime in the
rivers, basins, and tubs outside.
I can see chocolate stains on a mother's apron.
I can smell death being scrubbed
from an old settler's slacks.

Yet it's laundromats that take me back.
Maybe it's the Sunday funnies, bitter old
station clerks and rose-tinted Downy balls...
When did nostalgia become such a fucking chore?

Years later I'm going in circles trying to understand
why it takes so damn long for pants to dry.
Mom probably asked the same questions,
Questions about detergent,
Questions about dryer sheets,
Hell, the convenience of home appliances.

Questions about others as they navigate their lives
in the spin cycle. Empty eyed, sluggish, sipping
cold coffee, peering at timers over old magazines.

The strangeness of the mundane,
locked in their own temporal terrors.

An elderly smoker struggles to catch her breath.
A divorced man fumbles with socks
he can't seem to match.
A widow solemnly folds her husband's faded red and
black plaid flannel, only before sighing then pressing
a warm sleeve to her cheek...

In the tapestry of mid-American life,
laundromats have their own special patch.

I'm fluent in the language of the mundane,
the tongue of boredom my people
are too ashamed to admit they speak.
I think about this while viewing the
world through the holes in my underwear.

Spin Cycle (audio)

Thursday, December 7, 2017

For Kurdt

Blonde haired, blue eyed,
For you my pupils are dyed.
Sappy sifting, the Teen Spirit
gospel of generational endorsement.
My angst is the pedestal,
My savior the woman in white.
Clean up before she comes,
As you are, forever in debt.
I wish I was like blew,
Easily amused.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Personality Crisis

Soft screams
subtly subdued.
Short sighs,
trembling thighs.
Silence breaker,
sincerity faker,
violent mood changer,
fearless danger engager.

Lucky muckraker,
salacious soul sucker
stalking vacant city streets
still saturated in neon and
echoes of sultry sweet-talkers
whose acidic sentiments stain
sidewalks leading to the mouth
of a solipsistic serpent.

"The point is...
there is no point..."
hisses the snake.

Such are the laments
of those swallowing themselves.

Great walls,
heart engraved stalls.
Sleepless nights,
neurotic fights.
Anxious cries,
swarms of fruit flies.
Dead friends,
logical bends.
Loving trends,
it all depends on what
our lonely serpent intends.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

The Wounded Chapel

Winter storm advisory:
Soft blizzard evokes stifling
feelings of cellar doors,
rotten cores, godless bores.

I and I sigh at sights of
shattered snowflakes melting
away already peeling paint
appearing like scabs on
an old chapel wall.

Christ's wounds have not
healed, holy blood pours
onto a pulpit made of
flesh and bone, bound by a
pastor bound by God.

We were to marry here,
The Wounded Chapel
that sits so delicately
atop the highest hill
overlooking a frozen valley.

I step outside to peer
at the empty gray sky,
as if the artist abandoned
this canvas, tossing away
oils, paints, and pastels.

Or maybe this emptiness
is deliberate. Deprivation,
withholding deep blue hues
that compliment the most
extravagant scenes at dusk.

These numbing nights are
longer without the pale glow
of starlight illuminating what
was once a dense forest.
Oh, how moonlight would leak
from the treetops and
spill to the floor below!

Memories and prayers clung to
like a scared child buried
in his mother's loving lap.
He turns to face father's
scorn, only to find in ashes
the burden he once adorned.

It was all too familiar,
waking up to blank realities.
Staring up at a dusty cross
from an even dustier pew
clutching my tattered bible.

To think it was all a dream,
to think we could be happy
hanging onto the gospels
of false prophets for we know 
salvation is Christ's concession. 





Thursday, September 7, 2017

Spot the Lie

Today was
top to bottom
the worst day
of my life!

Too bad I'm
so inclined to
tuning out static,
I forget to turn
the radio back
one or two clicks.

I'm in my burning
car still turning
the station back and
forth, back and forth,
back and voices
telling me in broken
frequencies -
GET OUT OF THE CAR!

Talk radio,
so tedious these days...

May you find peace with every demon living in the cellar 
of your dream house. You should have killed me when you
had the chance. You know when I come back it won't be
for you. I would tell you that I hate you but the last thing
I want to do is give you any sense of satisfaction. After all,
you're a con-artist; I'm a liar. It became too real for you
when you started believing your own story. Though I'm not
sure where the facade began and you ended. All I know is
we ended and you're probably dead somewhere warm, 
or so you hope. I hope for a lot of things. I'm ever the idealist.


  • I hope you forget where I do my work
  • I hope my poems are lost on you
  • I hope you never read a line of poetry again 
  • I hope you find peace across the sea
I say I may be back.
You know what lies are for.

A trash bin that reads THANK YOU
stands more dignified than I.
Dutiful, proud, polite...
A belch erupts from my jutted
hairy jaw. My mouth opens
collecting dust, flies, and
coins from generous -- if not brave --
Samaritans. I pause to sniff my armpits.

My eyes are like dumbbells
weighing down my dumb head

Brain sloshing about like ice
in an empty cup of cola

Thoughts of naked ladies and smelling salts
rattle in my noggin like a lump of an infant

banging it's rattle on a white hi-chair tray
I write these similes while drooling on myself

My libido rages like Lucifer's unholy war,
and I will inevitably fall from grace.

Like Milton I shall blithely declare:
It's better to reign in hell than serve in heaven 

Like hell, this waking life
Like dreams, I keep my visions to myself.

Like a star everyone will see my dying light,
gazing at profound beauty until I will

inevitably burn out and come crashing
down in dust at their feet. Little star gazers.



 

Thursday, August 31, 2017

The Tragedies That Envelope Loved Ones and Ones We Barely Knew

The story of the Screaming Lady.
The pockets of her ragged cut offs
lined with ugly orange filters where
the smoked was sucked out.

She expels frequent blasphemes,
aiming malice toward the sky and
to passerbys who pass her by without
a scoff, smile, or slight.

The smell of cigarettes sticks on her
breath like a dog who rolls in freshly
dead animal.

With each grimace and scowl
her face contorts and assumes
a frightening frame. She speaks
only ills and slurs simple phrases,

"All in on the bad one!"

Each blistered finger pointed
in the face of an infant, mesmerized
by the revolting expressions
dancing across her face.

A cradle, a miscarriage,
the outline of a sobbing
woman holding a baby's rattle -
that doesn't make a sound.

She must think it queer, the mistress'
distress, immaterial as the shadow
she spots in old photographs, looming
over fading depictions of parties,
old friends, lime green dresses.

Haunted by scentless apparitions
of love and trauma occupying
the same space, but no one
believes them to be bothered
with ambivalence.

We are, after all,
flawed beings by design.

Be it the bottle or a potent
cocktail made to swallow,
snort then wither and wallow,
you find out down the blurred,
red eyed road you've been
enamored with who and what
you choose to abuse.

It's a curved road,
an uneven road,
a slippery road,
a road that skirts the cliffs you once
feared falling into out of fear
of not knowing how far
the floor is below.

A fear of falling
and falling
and falling
only to realize
you've been
falling
falling
falling
all along.

One moment, headlights.
One moment, weightlessness.
One moment, eyes closed.
You touch the chasm floor and
sing out to all your friends,

"I'm here, there's nothing left to fear..."

Wednesday, July 19, 2017

Retreading the Same Damn Sinking Story

Thick, dark, sweet fluids
(or so I picture them in my head).
The subdued practice of feeling.

Feet up on a ratty plaid sofa
left out in the rain, collecting
moths and mildew - it
smells like home. White
fluff puffing out from the
crusty cushions like cotton
boils ready to pop and ooze.

I'm a disease. As certain as
one may be in this gripe age.
Clinging to dreams of fleeting
memories still suspended in the
musty air of a Michigan basement.

A skipped rock sunk in the bottom
of Lake Huron, a westward wind
gesturing toward a life ahead of me...
if only I wasn't so far behind.

I'm the 'no means' Messiah,
giving it all to be crucified on
my cross to bear:

To be the tortured artist,
yet holds all the tools of platitude.
To be starving,
yet always insists being full.
To be misunderstood,
yet always unsure of himself.

The conclusion came to me
in a fever dream of angels and
demons playing cowboys and
indians in the scorched
pasture past the screaming forest:

I remember her posture, how
distressed she appeared bellowing
at her face sinking to the
ocean floor so far below.

The complexion I fished for,
so dark and deep, kept me honest
as I gazed at the reflection glaring
back at me. My resolution held
firm, I damned these thoughts to
depths deeper than the face
that once belonged to despair.

I awoke in my bed,
wondering only now
who it was that I allowed to drown.









Thursday, July 6, 2017

Born of Fury, My Child

Paternal dreams,
the recluse of my grandiosity.
Flipping through channels,
dead batteries in my clicker.
(Antiquated references be damned!)

She's flushing her destiny down
the drain. Tears, vomit, ill will.
She's weeping now,
weeping now,
weeping now.

The TV set is broken.

Weeping now,
weeping now,
Weeping now.

There's a sweaty ball cap
sitting on the chipped oak post
on my edge of the bed.
It's blue and red all over.
To no one's delight, it was for
the One never delivered.

A solitary tear.
Eye contact, a breach
of rules solemnly kept in tact.

Brown eyes, window to the soul.
Blue eyes, some will never meet.
Brown eyes, shutting now.
Blue eyes...someday, somehow.

Brown eyes, weeping now.



Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Ritualized Disorientation

It was when I traded the
pen for the drug that
I lost my mind.

The debilitating buzz.

Slurring poorly written slam
to an audience of a complacent cat.
My dog died...
(he was a better listener.)

Sometimes I'm bold and proud,
the rest of my hours are spent 
cruelly staring at a genius
that'll never materialize. 

Fraternize with the enemy.
Maybe choke down a cat call, 
a copper brew, a smile to say
I'm prone to poor decisions. 

Attention comes at a price 
we're all paying. A dilemma 
we often ignore, but 
I need this more than
you ever care to know. 

Acknowledge me, 
Cater to these 
intoxicating fetishes. 
Habits, demons drowning 
out the cries of nature's better angels. 

I, a casualty in an unholy war. 
Alas, the angel before me now 
fills my glass, and again...


Monday, February 13, 2017

Return

I'm at a loss, involuntarily
withholding words best
put to paper.

Arrangement improper,
prose perhaps?

Phony, fake.
Unsightly to scholarly
eyes, an undignified
force to reckon with.

I wish myself Webster,
or perhaps an Eric Carle.
I find myself Dadaist,
mocking my own meanings.
Ambition lost in a
weathering soul.

Grace in a period of
brutality is a hard sell -
an even bloodier buy.
First it's a black eye,
then a bruised aorta,
then comes the real hurt -
pride in the age of the fall.

I should be writing
instead of laughing.

I should be living
instead of dying.

I should be loving
instead of wondering
what's wrong with a
little more cream in my coffee.