I'm gonna name this dream after something cynical

Ubiquitous bottles of intravenous emotions

Bravery makes us all a little stupid

The glorification of idiots

Being the preview of municipal party planners

And network executives

I'm gonna name this disease after something beautiful

These are the days of glancing at wristwatches and

The constitutional grumbling of paper tigers and

The burning of origami infidels

Does anyone have a match

I'm gonna name this list of the fallen after a Dickensian love song

One lone dry drum beat

One lone piper

Playing Amazing Grace for

A company of incredulous mourners

Standing on ceremony

Standing on shallow graves

Standing still

A testament to the ghost of something

I'm gonna name these children after the atrocities of war

I'm gonna name this dream after something cynical

Ubiquitous bottles of intravenous emotions

Bravery makes us all a little stupid

The glorification of idiots

Being the preview of municipal party planners

And network executives

I'm gonna name this disease after something beautiful

These are the days of glancing at wristwatches and

The constitutional grumbling of paper tigers and

The burning of origami infidels

Does anyone have a match

I'm gonna name this list of the fallen after a Dickensian love song

One lone dry drum beat

One lone piper

Playing Amazing Grace for

A company of incredulous mourners

Standing on ceremony

Standing on shallow graves

Standing still

A testament to the ghost of something

I'm gonna name these children after the atrocities of war

Don't call me a cowboy

It's a misnomer

A poor appellation for

Politicians and Diplomats who

Shoot from the hip

Say what they mean

Stand their ground and

Pledge allegiance

Don't call me a cowboy

unless you understand

It has nothing to do

With singing a song

Kissing a horse

Selflessly saving the day

This ain't the 1950's and

Gene Autry never

Shot a man for snoring too loud

Don't call be a cowboy

It's an insult to the Vaquero

Ugly Americanized into buckaroo

Romanticized from Home On The Range to

Ballads by Thin Lizzy

Don't call me a goddam cowboy

Unless you want to be spitting teeth

Wyatt Earp was no Cowboy

Although he killed a few

Criminal Cowboy smuggler

Sonsabitches who wore the name

Like street punks call themselves gangstas

Don't trust a man who calls himself a cowboy

Those records have been expunged

Mostly forgotten through

Television spectacles and

The myth of John Wayne

The code of the west is a bullet in the back

While holding Aces and Eights

He'll take your boots and leave you to drown

In the desert sea

With a single bullet to end your misery

Don't refer to me as a cowboy

Unless your intent is to impugn

Cuz cowboy ain't cool

Call me Maverick, buckaroo, or Hopalong

Cuz most of these cowboys are pirates in disguise

It rained on the day we went to the zoo. It wasn't the duck and cover rain of the apocalypse but a silent documentary on the history of mime kind of rain. I lit a cigarette while you stared at your watch. The red-assed baboons weren't very entertaining. That's what my father used to call them red-assed baboons. The old man was never subtle. He used language like a shotgun, fire whatever you got and hope it hits something. I'm the opposite. I like to say what I mean and mean it. I don't talk much.

Our relationship is based on silences. Anticipation and echoes in thought and movement mark our state of togetherness, or some horseshit like that. Today our collective silence gnaws at the inside of my gut. Queasy and irritating, I'd rather make small talk with strangers. I'm always like this when we argue.

You stop, put on lip balm. "Well?" Your small voice shattering our soundless void.

I want to pick the right words, nothing feel appropriate. I don't want to fire a shotgun and blow everything to hell. I am not my father's son. Those damn red-assed baboons are staring at me like I'm less evolved, and there's too much non-commit all rain, and sometimes I wish I was one of those pick the girl up and swing her around the field of wildflowers while schmaltzy 70's pop music plays in the background sort of guys, but I'm not.

"Yeah." I reply, feeling like a moron. "If you think so."

There are these weird moments when you realize that thumbs are important. Moments when you have this small, odd, beautiful epiphany that her fingers fit perfectly into the spaces in-between yours.

I know that's a terribly romantic notion, and I know that terribly romantic things have fallen out of fashion. Make a small exception and allow me this conceit. I swear that, as we walked away, the red-assed baboons smiled.

I woke up this morning and screamed for a bit

burning like dwindling stars,

fire that Pandora stole from Prometheus and lost at the airport.

This is the switch that pops the blade

that triggers the monster

that swallowed the sun.

Cut the veins

Cut the wires

Cut the lines of communications

thoughts have become curdled

In the aftermath of mental culling

I woke up this morning and screamed for a bit

floating in ocean

King of empty

Lord of

Obsolescence

In the corner a windowless room

wallpaper faded

Humming songs that you can't entirely remember

making half assed attempts

drawing pictures

of shadows

of holocaust ghosts

I woke up this morning and screamed for a bit

Portrait of a war general

Water color memories of yellow and gray.

reflections of

Dreams of

Old friends left to shrivel

When the Stagnation comes

I can sit perfectly still

wipe these lips

of the remnants

of cancerous vomit.

I woke up this morning and screamed for a bit

Took off the blindfold

Removed the dagger from my back

Cutting and pasting

Swallowed

Brittle boned and waltzing

On the day of the dead

Skinless

Soulless

Chastising

wind spitting bitches and

Sons of narcissus

I woke up this morning and screamed for a bit

Warring with broken reflections

Doppelgänger stabs,

Puts on a dead man's shoes,

Parades around proudly

living your fiction.

It's in color but not finished

like a guy in a suit

but with a big apple where his head should be

It's potato chips wearing a kilt

I remember there was a stairway and a cigarette

God, I want a cigarette

And music

Good music

something that sounds like Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak"

Back porch

Chug a lug

This week's imported beer

Talking about

The revolution, revelation, big old bourgeois blues

Talking over the hidden meanings of 1984 and a Clockwork Orange

Pretentious as hell

And you just want to shout "soup cans, enough with the soup cans, I'm gonna slit my wrists if I see anymore of these damn soup cans"

Someone lit a pipe

Cherry tobacco

I still want a cigarette

Been years since I've had a cigarette

Stop

And whistle

Smile for a second

And whisper.

" that color really brings out your eyes"

Blue thing,

On the mantle,

Holds my change,

Hides my cigarettes,

Ugly blue thing,

Hollow and hallowed and holy,

Everywhere and fixed in time,

Ugly obscure blue thing,

You possess secrets,

Tell me the meaning of life,

Old ugly obscure blue mantlepiece thing,

I light candles in your honor,

Dance about with incense,

Bought from the kiosk on the pier,

As is written in your holy book,

Old ugly obscure blue thing purchased at a flea market,

Keeper of change,

Awkward wine glass when all other dishes are dirty and

Forsaken,

Share your sacred wisdom,

Save my soul,

Oh ugly obscure blue mantelpiece thing, purchased at a flea market,

made by a well meaning but untalented 8 year old ,

Fired in a kiln under adult supervision and given to a grandmother who secretly hated it.

Share your doctrine,

Form my opinions on,

Gun control,

Racial equality,

Sexual tolerance,

Please repress my urges,

Oh you wonderful and hideous blue thing that the previous tenant left behind because you were not useful,

Tell me how to vote,

Dictate which body parts are to be legislated and which are personal,

Tell me who to love,

Who to hate,

What to protest without knowing any of the facts,

I implore you,

Old, ugly, useless, blue thing sitting smugly in judgement on the mantelpiece, fired in the hateful kiln to save me from my own transgressions.

I need You

Please, ugly obscure blue thing

Wash away my sins

So I can blame them all on you.

Up too early on a Saturday morning, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, Summer starts today, and it's an abstract concept, like the function of clocks, Frank Zappa's brain, or falling in love.

Put you hand against the mirror, your breath against the night chill. Life as a midnight mist and a collar turned against the wind. I'm watching the sunrise with my eyes closed,

Damn this is good coffee...I still miss you.

Dear Mrs. Darling

After hearing of the plight of your missing children, I was moved to contact you and reassure you that your children did not runaway. They have fallen pray to the persuasive and charismatic charms of a radical cult leader that operates in and around the English countryside.

This particular group of survivalist hooligans preach an anarchist lifestyle of spiritual chaos. Their supposed leader (although they claim anarchistic affiliations) is a green clad lunatic that has promised his primarily male followers a way to cheat death by halting the aging process.

Reports from my task force, headed by Sargeant Smee , list Wendy and her two brothers in healthy condition at last sighting, but we fear their mental state may deteriorate as they spend more time in the company of their captor.

The cult leader, known only as Peter, has Sequestered his followers in a unknown location. They appear sporadically to hunt for food, raid a small village or taunt law enforcement.

Fear not, our undercover informant, known only as Tinkerbell has made contact revealing the location. She is currently attempting to separate your children from these miscreants and bring them home before Stockholm syndrome sets in.

We are currently doing all we can, please take comfort that your children will be home soon

Sincerely ,

J.S. Hook, detective inspector

St. Diogenes smokes them hand rolled cigarettes

Leans

Casually against brick walls in the rain

And muses

At the ghost dance contortions of

Plastic bag wisdom

Tossed about in an indifferent love affair of

Bitter recriminations and the deviltry of half baked puppies left behind like bile or shit, or afterbirth

St. Diogenes never closes his eyes

Never kisses you on the cheek

Only betrays you and walks away

Chasing smoke

It's another drink for the soul of

Elusive honesty

Another shot

Another misfire

Posing as a headline on the nightly miscalculation

Disguised as an eleven year olds'

Catfishing suicide hoax

St. Diogenes sails the random red rivers

Shades tired eyes

Covers the third with velvet and prays that

Odin is more forgiving that Jehovah and Bill O'reilly

Crying

Like a long forgotten song

Misheard lyrics falling

Breaking in nostalgic wakes and

Echoes

Say goodbye to Utopia

Say Goodbe to Lewis Carroll's perfect poetry

Bid farewell to another day of the Moses of Texas and the rest of the founding fathers

St. Diogenes drank another bottle of bourbon

Shared a needle on the docks with the angry ghosts of

Mother Teresa, Jesus, and the myth of fingerprints

Don't apologize for kicking beagles in the elevator

For poisoning the brand name soft drink that will litigate if I use their name

For the Judas kiss before I pulled the trigger

It's nothing personal

Just foam wiped from the mouth of a rabid alibi.

St. Diogenes vomited in the alley

Apathy held his hair and whispered lovingly in his ear

" don't worry baby, it'll be alright."