Pedaling Old Town

lean back and pull up on the bars

five stair drop

-easy-

let the coffee course

and your beard go white

fuck the rules of them

their candy ass bullshit

if you contrast your blood with

their copulation and debt

you will only suffer

like they do

the only division being

your awareness

and while life

is not a contrast

keep an eye away

from those who

don't tread

deep water

but right now

fuck them

pedal, sweat

and think of

Nabokov, botany

roll past the

young ass and

flowers and find that

perfect spot

red brick bar outside

blasting Ozzy

lean the bike

and order the

Jack Coke

talk to your waiter

about Rome

about catacombs

or Chicago

your life in a hotel room

while you drive the States,

pause for a week

to

live again.

Back out here

in the wind

ignore writers who

bitch about age

it's all bullshit

their bullshit

keep your body lean

keep drinking

keep the fire in

your eyes

and the sex

sexy

the rest is there

only to pull you

down

by

their weak

grip.

The paint is not peeling off the wall

So why am I so anxious?

My standards have become

Unbearable

The life of a perfectionist

Revealed

everything

understood

Categorized

Into tiny boxes

in my brain

Alphabetical

Apocalyptic

Mathematical mayhem

Distance and proportion

Disorder and dishevelment

Pi

Measured daily

My eyes map

The diseased equation

Flip

Color

Sound

Search endless

for any kind of

Beauty

Both sides

Of my brain

Overactive

Reactive

Non reactive

Radio

Active

It is my own

personal Hell

If I could stop

I would

Fuck the terms

PTSD

OCD

Artist

Writer

Lunatic

Hypochondriac

Conspiracy fairest of them all

Titles titles titles

People donʼt like what they donʼt understand

Itʼs all a bunch of bullshit

Kiss ass mother fuckery

I am hyper aesthetic

Sensitive

I have visions

I am empathic

I am unbearably me

Because

the world is on fire

Every day

A new apocalypse

I struggle to breathe

Smog

Controlled weather

Politics

Info wars

Marshall law

Bank holidays

This corruption

These things

matter to me

Our world

Matters to me

Our children

Matter to me

I just wish that they would stop

Mattering so much

Oppression

Obsession

Order

I've come to realize that it is easier to remain

Silent

Bite my lip

Until it bleeds

I just canʼt turn off my brain

Everybody is in denial

Itʼs grotesque

I guess I should just keep my mouth shut

Until I am a corpse

In a FEMA camp

Consume the consumers

I know I should shut up

After all I have everything

Or

Nothing left to loose

My tweezers pick out every flaw

and yank it from the base

root of existence

Never verbally

Just mentally

So this is my cry

This is my stand

God is in the details

Ego a master of disguise

Lust a plight to exaggerate and escape

Sex a primal instinct that mellows with age

Abstinence a choice to remove the blade

Alcohol a filthy liar that seduces all of the above

With screen shots on file

Paste and cut to the side

With single minded madness

The world whips past in mania

To suffocate and seduce

everything in it with fear

Ignore the beggars

they are scam artist

They arenʼt really hungry

get a new tattoo

travel to the zoo

come hear the lions roar

try this snake oil

drink ACV

dirt is bad

donʼt play outside

wash your hands with genocide

try this new toothpaste 

close your eyes and 

buy buy bye

The history of the world has seen this all before

The collapse of civilizations

I hope that I am wrong

I will continue to create

I will continue to debate

mimic purity to the best of my ability

and do my best not to engage

In any rhetoric

wipe down the mirror

swipe it clean

from all the hate

pain and betrayal

just outside my bedroom window

Dive deep into

Dead Sea

Kabbalah

Thomas Merton

Transcendental meditation

Red reading glasses and xanex

Disappear into a nanosecond

I polish the eye of a needle

Expecting it to shine

To catch a phrase that

releases the tension

To move my spirit

for just one moment

away from a screen

As the world

Grows ice cold

I shiver with it

Jaded green

The ugliness

Solidified

Stock up on water and wine

I search the streets

To find a cave

A safe place

Nothing

Just alleyways

Helicopters

guns and the beginning

Of a real war zone

Not over drugs or the cartel

Not on the other side of the tracks

This is a war on freedom

I wait

Paradise is

somewhere

Out there

We each have our own

Maybe

I know

It is not what I see

Here and now

Bits and pieces

fractions of time buried

devouring truth

Inch by inch

Hidden by texts

Stolen Emails

And a false pope

I stare at the red button

DELETE

My thoughts a nuclear missile

To solidify destruction

My city burned

to acid and ash

Wake again

tomorrow

to start

another

day

On mute

The real war

A phone call away

Watch what you say

This is America

I pushed you across the sand

Splashing water from the hose

Into crack after crack

Until the desert around us

Seemed wet again,

The earth gasping

As we laughed,

quenched.

Letʼs not fucking reduce it to play it safe

the drink isnʼt the conduit or reason

or a fucking weak road to write the truth or

an excuse

to hate without disclaiming anything

burn the reasons why not

burn the fucking effigies of

centuries-long bullshit

tricks of the old page

manipulation of the weak and trusting

adulterers and thieves and con-men

working under the guise of loving

Christ,

of bullshit virtues

repeated forgiveness of sin

fuck each and every one of these

deficients

the still and nowhere dark of death

waits for them like everyone else

the earth will harvest them

as fast as the dead before them

and behind them is

the damage left for theirs

through which to sift and work

while honest men bleed

or give until they bleed and

and some of them need to

women misused and abused

and some of them need to be

the damage of all this infects the children

mass-connected and sprawled out

informed and dead and lost on risk

soft in the gut

soft in the instinct

all our lives 100 years left

at best

pigs rooting in greed

fat ass fucks

take at the trough

steal with smiles

our children raped

with ideals of

kneeling pigs

with one eye

on the door

the lack of grace and the forgotten

feel of cold sun at dawn

the first kiss

the first caress

the first sounds

of the water breaking shore

or the metallic taste of

stardust beneath the

panhandles of road

and dirt

extinction of travel,

of the hunt

the love of us relegated to

acceptance of anything

that stays out of the way

regardless of its size or stupid

recklessness

while outside the moon bears down

upon a tired old mother

polluted and disfigured

her oceans diseased

with the dream of pigs

but beyond this filth

the stars still shine

upon the artists

the blood from broken

calluses

the heat of

animal sex

the riffs of loud music

the clay of sweaty smocks

the stretching of new canvases

the words that run across the page

you know like I know

the truth

is ours

still

and the

true world

is here still

for us to dine

upon the

flesh

of

pigs.

8 years ago today was my younger brother Scott's wake. His ashes are scattered in the woods behind my Dad's place in Dickson. I know that Scott would be glad to end up in the woods, but it seems ironic, considering my Dad threw him out for "being a drunk" when he actually had a huge brain tumour causing him to hallucinate and suffer horribly, also to self-medicate with beer. As if *anyone* wouldn't seek relief from *something* in that circumstance. Scott was to have ended up at our little cottage in Tazewell; what he possibly could have done to survive alone there is something my Father didn't consider. All he cared about was renting out the house Scott was staying in, and--it seems to me--punishing the living dogfuck out of my brother for being a "drunk". Such is the kind of Christianity practised in Dickson, TN. So, after promising his children, my nephews, that Max and I would help their Daddy recover--SOMEHOW--I followed my brother from Nashville to Tazewell, 250 miles in a pounding thunderstorm, knowing Scott's windshield wipers didn't work. I watched him nearly die by running into semi trucks 2-3 times; when we got to Tazewell, he fell into a coma, never to awaken. I was the one who had to make the decision to turn off the machines keeping him alive. His wake, an Irishman's wake, was a joke--no sad songs or poetry were allowed, though his sons asked me for them, and there was no whiskey. Drinking iced tea and Kool-aide at an Irishman's wake...watching T.J. O'Rourke's video for some toy he invented as if it were a commercial at half-time...what a joke. My brother was sent down the road to a bad death for "being a drunk" by a person whose friends once all got together and sent *him* to Cumberland Heights to dry out in luxury. As you can tell, I am still angry about this. Scott might have, probably would have, died anyway, but he would have died with his family instead of being tortured a long forced drive first. I also sinned: I should have told my Father: "NO WAY am I doing this; can you not see something is bad wrong with your god damned child?" Wow, I'm even angrier than I thought I was. But gee, at least I got a story out of it... (see "Taking Rayland Home")

taxis trumpet

together.

pine necks

stretch towards

busy clouds.

the seamless face

of a grey-silver

cement pool.

cleansing scents

of a flamboyant forest –

the woods

are starkly quiet.

a student

streams by –

her rugged face

paints

a sunbeam gaze.

a harshly manicured

garden is a

western metaphor.

strutting scholars chatter,

not lamenting

that they are

idealists

in a bleeding world.

i stop

for a pop

feeling

the world’s tension

with poetic attachment.

5/5/1995 Evanston, IL

9/29/2016 Chicago

At the table writing to War Pigs Saturday, summer hanging on

tooth and nail

shot of Blanton’s to drain the

remains: jockey riding cork and riff and the

fucking weight of these vocals

the distinctiveness

the acid blood encased in metal

giants ahead of their time

sitting here thinking about

the music that raised me

from classic country

to punk

to thrash

to Coltrane

to Jane’s

to Slayer, Simone, Buckley

Don Williams

and along the entire thread that spirals

umbilical

from

the head to the keys

as it was before any type of screen

and like it is now, across the

static of technology

remaining still is the grip of

centuries

the ink well of Dos

and the parchment of

Schopenhauer

the speed of a laptop

or touch screen

all of it is a

vessel of speed stopping time

with words to music

all the greats who’ve gone before

to pave inroads

for such broken thoughts

of youth

that ran into cities of age

and somehow

boulevards of luck

after alleys of shit and sweat

and gamble

rolled over and exposed

the fields lush green

the smell of published books

the scars less visible across

the knuckles

the bullshit edge of

labor fields at dawn

or the fucking faces in the factories

and warehouses

traded off to anecdotes,

to stories over

beers in Europe

or Texas

or from the table

while Black Sabbath

reminds me how bad

and good today exactly is

the metal pours out

from the speakers

across the table

down my arms

onto the

broken roads

and boulevards

into the cities

moving

toward

you.

We flattened the road

As mourners all over

flocked to his death day

Beyond the curtain of trees

a single bell rings

After the procession

we returned to the brown wheat fields

Pregnating the land again

Almost drowned out by crows' mocking coughs

a single bell rings

The next day we traveled to a parched creek bed

The only source of water

We dissected the earth

Trying to seek that wealth

Almost footsteps away

a single bell rings

and rings

Strapped to beds at night

We listened--

No sound visited us

Twisting and turning

We prayed--

Cicadas whined

Heading to church

We strained heavenwards

And then 

Ring

RingRing

Ring

The broken bell beckoned us

from the church

One member investigated

But found no bell

No bell

Only a little gnat

Consistently inconsistent

and in a constant state of

discomfort

the blades of change

carve out new routines

within the status quo

selfishly wishing to disconnect

but afraid of what it feels like

to be unloved

Knowing others are the only reason

one would bother to trudge along

the mundane

day to day

depressing

hopeless

fuckin pointless

tasks we assign ourselves

to feel we do something of value.

Roles like

mother, friend. brother,

caretaker, lover, employee,

confidante, rock--

I never realized I had been

fulfilling the role of

token friend who

is an emotional mess.

You're supposed to surround yourself

with positivity

but even positivity can only take so much

of someone who is down in the dumps