Johnny had a dream about the devil
Johnny had a dream about the devil
1.
I am at the Walmart
and I feel dead
all those who have loved me
and whom I have loved
have forsaken me
and last night I saw the hurt in your daddy’s Facebook page
in your eyes,
waiting by the phone for his call, giving me the somber news
that you’ve started looking on Craigslist for love
and have become an atheist
again
I am at the Walmart
and I feel dead
and the Menards don’t feel like home no more
because in my dreams it is snowing again,
and the middle aged men have got plastic surgery
showing off their new faces
walking the hallways of pale offices,
shining like God
with the people glaring and the flags waving
and the 50ft tall Hooters girl, bouncing
under her legs is the chaos at the beginning of the world
it is raining at night
the cold winds of March frigid and forbidding
to a Lynyrd Skynyrd, a TOOL song
and I don’t know what America means anymore
when I walk in through these sliding doors,
the people still don’t know who I am
all they see is another hurt girl in the bread aisle
when I turn my back, their eyes questioning
are you Allah or Buddha or Brahma
or J. Christ, star of civilization himself?
who is your God
and
what is your name
and
what land are you from
and what do you believe?
why are you here?
have you come to fulfill your destiny?
do you believe in the pyramids or the moon
or are you a conspiracy too?
why are you hiding in the gutters?
what’s the black hat and the game of chess for?
please, won’t you reveal that gruesome face and name?
in the bread aisle when all have left –
the P. Floyd song plays
Hey You
hello Judas or ANONYMOUS…
have you been reborn again like the Iowa girls?
have you been baptized
in a bathtub
in the middle of a modern Church’s wooden floor
on an Internet livestream
with everybody around you in a circle
watching you, shivering
just
like the Iowa girls?
hello Judas or ANONYMOUS…
I can’t seem to find you on Google
I’ve Googled your name one too many times
I’ve seen who you are
and I know what you’ve done
I know who you are already
before we even met
I know who is your mother and who is your father
and your great great great ancestors
I know what you like and I know what you don’t
I know what makes you weak and makes you fall to your knees
and now, knowing this I can dangle your whole life in front of you
like that game of chess
and now, knowing this I don’t have to find out who you are
I know who you are
before we even met
I am at the Walmart
and I walk in the snow
in the -15 degree weather
and there is a girl in the self-checkout line who I know from the school
she buys three tubes of razor bump gel,
a box of bikini wax
she looks around the store, nervous to make sure no one’s
looking at her
as if it’s a surprise what she’s gonna do next
but the security camera is staring her dead in the soul
asking that overwhelming question
I am in the self-checkout line with my father,
buying a loaf of bread,
three jugs of milk, a box of candy like a kid
it’s the dead of winter
I imagine her like any other American girl
in polka dot underpants with a bow, a polka dot swimsuit,
laughing in guilty water
(am I alone in my body?)
but here it is January
and there is no reason
to stand nude in a tub
wasting an hour
scraping skin
where is the hairy bellied woman
the world had so known and loved?
when I walk out it is cold January
and my father goes to the Menards for a minute
leaving me in a car to rot
with a rickety radio
with this head of mine
and the picture of the girl buying bikini wax seared through my scalp
is this what I have been put on earth to watch?
if this car were to set on fire,
that would be the last image I would see –
a red Pontiac is busted
one whole taillight out
a flag waves in the sideview mirror
I am at the Walmart
and I walk in the snow
in the -15 degree weather
and think of you and the beautiful music
Liszt’s Dreams of Love
Schubert’s Fantasy 940
(the piece of music dedicated to Caroline,
with whom Schubert was in (unrequited) love)
it was an O unholy night
it was snowing softly
you were locked in the bathroom,
in the backseat of an abandoned car
pulled onto the shoulder,
you took the weight of the earth
flicking a lighter to your tongue
burning one face into another
ready to bury yourself whole into the world
ready to give yourself away
to your first
Internetgirl
who wanted to suck the soul out of you
(Internetgirls with a greed greater than I’ve ever seen)
the devil prances around you and plays the tambourine
you were ready to lose all your virtue
only you wanted to hurt you!
I remember that day you lost all your dignity
in your eyes,
I saw the hurt and the hunger
Johnny, I loved you like my own brother
and now you are sitting on the front porch steps with your papa
saying you don’t believe in anything or anyone
anymore
rocking back and forth in your daddy’s arms
crying for the world
drinking milk out of his hands
he teaches you how to be a man
you glued pubic hairs to your chin
and showed your face to the world
like a man
ah you thought the world was a big fat nipple
always ready to give to you!
O how I howl these 80’s ballads
at the moon
in the middle of this dark, stormy summer night!
Johnny, I loved you like my own brother
is it selfish to feel like Christ?
am I supposed to smile, (knowingly), through the betrayal?
I understand the pain of him now
in this dead of the night
here lies my own Passion
here lies my own Agony
here lies my American Dream,
rest in peace dearly
Lord,
where are my brothers and sisters now?
God,
has all of my life come to this?
2.
Rotting in this parking lot
overlooking the graveyard
I play a grim game of cards
the midnite men come to mow the lawn
at 1am
and eat a KFC bucket of chicken on the callous earth
the rain pours softly
on people’s laid flowers
the tractors run over these cornfields
and the Iron Maiden song plays
over the full moon and the monsters come out in the dark,
the black trees shake
the Midwest boys stand stark naked on the seat
chewing straw in their mouth, their eyes glazed high on beer and drugs
shaking their shaggy mullets and the glock of their nude gun
with their middle pinkies up and the two bright eyes of
the tractor’s headlights coming straight at you!
they wave their hips and throw their hands and hats up,
closing their eyes, reaching out and singing
Hallowed Be Thy Name and Fear Is the Key
I remember a time we thought that passion was freeeeeeee
In the heat of the nightttttt body is a flameeeeeeeee
You're outnumbered by the bastards till the day you dieeeeeeeee...!
O Johnny,
I hear your silent heartbeat
I hear your silent crisis
O it’s just lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies and lies!
Do you too fear God in the dead of the night?
Do you too come face to face alone, with no hand to hold
with all the universe and all of its great chaos?
the gigantic leeches and caterpillars burst out of their shells
the zombies creep out and grab you by the foot that smells
love erodes
love dares
like a bunch of wet sand
walking in the desert against all odds
a wild voice crying out loud in the wilderness, eating honey and locusts
like a lion roaring
at the Chinese restaurant in the middle
of this green, dank city it smells like smoke
weeping in the ashes for you at the heel of the wood
you never saw my humanity
it seems like the Iowa girls always have somebody
to love and to hold
the wheel of Fortune turns
I sink,
another is raised
the wheel of Fortune turns
I am the one crushed beneath the bottom
I am the one flailing at the sides,
grasping for dear life
from the beginning of the universe, the 90’s grunge is forever playing
rotting in this parking lot
overlooking the graveyard,
the middle aged men message you online
asking you things,
and you, sit in the car
not knowing what answer to give,
put on those black sunglasses and play the game of chess
and you, sit in the car overlooking the graveyard,
listening to a cassette of The Queen Is Dead
the middle aged men message you online
asking you things
and when you give them questions for answers
like
who are you?
are you Jesus Christ?
is this a test?
is this the next life?
are you the angels of death?
am I next?
this is your life?
crying in the elevator? the bathroom?
white shirt ironed and crumpled,
beer and nuts in hand,
lying to your wife?
a dead man’s hand grows out of the dull ground
and it is April again
how do we
how do we
raise again the dead?
Johnny,
on a cold day in November
you rang the doorbell quietly once and kissed my cheek
and said God is dead
(or was that imagined? I was waiting and waiting
and waiting for you to come with blue flowers)
and now I am reading Nietzsche on the toilet!
Lord, forgive me
but all the Iowa girls just don’t understand
sitting in that baptism tub in the middle of a cornfield
with their arms up to the sky
proclaiming things
that I can’t make sense of
all the Iowa girls leave me on read
and pretend to be good Christian
(all I was ever doing
was reaching out a human hand!) –
you don’t see my humanity
the women run to God and renounce all pleasure
they rip out their hair and turn to bird bones
2007 divorced daddies walking into a stinky mall in
slow motion to Lips of An Angel
wearing skull t-shirts
growing their goatees
eyeing the raffle red sports car
the Harley Davidson bikes
eating ribs
looking at the back of some girl’s jeans
Well, my girl's in the next room
Sometimes I wish she was you
whispering into soft ears,
You make me feel so young again
running hands all over themselves, rubbing lotion
wandering round Illinois
wandering round Iowa
wandering round Wisconsin
stinking, smelling like cheese
slaughtered meat,
fur lined pits
every morning, Johnny, will you too have a mid life crisis
like your forefathers?
in the dead of the night
there is the Walmart stinking in the snow
of fried chicken
and Domino’s pizza
and now it’s too late for love
the women run to God and self-sacrifice
I mourn the blows of Fortune with flowing eyes
and really it’s a cruel cruel world
and really, you see
nobody belonged to nobody
and there was nowhere left to go
Johnny, is that head of yours bugging you any longer?
you never bother to pick up the phone
and remember me, your brother
3.
Earlier in the day it was windy like October
everybody came in their fur coats and windbreakers to mumble a few words
the women of the town
in pearls and high noses
pale salmon lips
such sweet parting of dead roses
withering in the rain
flaccid bodies laid limp
the big blimps pass through the sky
playing 24/7 television and entertainment
a lion, a lawyer, a liar, a leper
Fuseli’s Nightmare
in the earth,
there are rolling shadows
and you ask the same questions from 1000 years ago
the bones you planted last year…
have they begun to bud? will they bloom this year?
are you the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog?
are you Kublai Khan in the
blessed flesh?
a knife stuck in your back
are you Paul Revere with a bullet in his heart?
or are you Christ himself with grains of sand
still leftover from
forty days?
Christ himself with the flowers rotting pale and white in his eyes
as the Persians say,
sleep is like a rose
why doesn’t this place feel like home?
smeared across the dirt
nothing grows out of this cold winter,
down in a hole are all the buried bones from so many years ago
you look inside and scratch your head, question losing that own soul
O hoohohohohly night—
guy with the black cat tattoo and mustache who was an atheist
showing a thirteen year old girl his worn-in copy of
Paradise Lost
on a park bench in the darkening sunlight
later, they go to get sodas and talk about the last scene
he teaches her how to drive,
one hand over her eyes
God as a vending machine
with your hand out
you reach for an answer,
a pack of powdered doughnuts,
more cocaine
all you get is loose change,
a packet stuck on its own ledge
under a tree in the park the atheist and the little girl
lay in each other’s arms
hold each other’s hands
crying,
I need you
You don’t know the way I want you
a great panic
and the whole of creation groans
ashes of dollars
smeared across your face
ashes of dollars
across your hands
at a bunny ranch in Nevada
the hundreddollargirls line up under the neon lights
and wave
when you walk into red rooms
waiting for a chance
spread across the concrete men
sleeping cloaked in dirt
for there is warmth in graves
on Ash Wednesday
Money is my Father
and I sit at the blessed seat
and shudder
please bless these severed hands
smeared across the blind
reaching out for a human hand,
a precious and warm memory
at 8pm the middle aged men
humming to themselves
I’m in love with my car
it was a windy October
when I first saw them like this
and I thought to myself,
Christ Jesus
Jesus Crisis
it got dark and real cold
and they were still sitting there
in a high school parking lot
overlooking the football field
of days long gone
and a youth half dead
hanging by the threads
days now turned into a sterile fate
with no hope
days of loneliness
hunger
desperation
isolation
when they were gone,
I got out
and held my ear to the ground
listening for the secrets of the universe
but
the people believed in nothing,
not even themselves
I jump in the urinal and flush myself
down
and down
and down
in the broad daylight of a dreary yard
the ancient blind bard moaning those fateful lines,
Last Night I Dreamt!
Last Night I Dreamt!
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me!
you were the angry adolescent
a game of chess,
I don’t understand men or women
in the Kroger parking lot you say to me,
“I am nervous to-night. Won’t you please be kind to me?
And talk me down from this ledge. Just listen to me.
Hear my story and nod your head like you always do.
I never know what to think. I never, never. Please, won’t you love me to-night,
won’t you?”
Johnny,
is unrequited love the only love that survives?
I see the notorious wives at the Sunday brunch party
it was the same beautiful spring day
when we once went walking in the grass
and talked of love and life and poverty
I see the notorious wives at the baby showers
and weep in the corner
thinking of how you never understood my humanity
I try not to show her the notorious hurt in my eyes
but she can see right through
and I become again
just another miserable girl
the people see and
laugh at the Walmart
and all the Iowa girls just don’t get it
sitting there in that baptism tub in the middle of a cornfield
with their hands up to the foggy sky
proclaiming things
that I can’t make sense of
a rockstar wannabe 70s daddy in a garage
playing guitar in the late evening
over the sunset neighborhood
shrieking,
dream on brothers and sisters
dream on
while you can
yesterday smells so sweet
you never know what tomorrow will bring
smelling like beer and feet
o beloved John,
look at how he weeps
o look at beloved John,
how he lays his head down to sleep
on the hard ground,
look at his Passion
doling his love, doling in rations
Johnny never understood (my) love
the world was never kindly enough
and I never understood (America)
look at how this pretty capital splatters
Peter picked a pickled pepper
do me no good
more Midwestern girls with nose piercings
the middle aged men scream, applying Rogaine
on a beautiful snowing day
I paint nude pictures to Aladdin Sane
you’ll never really understand
these saddening glissando strings
uh huh huh huh huh huh
passionate bright young things hauled away to war
a motel sensation night
the large angry crowd
with their pitchforks and knives
always burned at the stake by their noise
and oh the lovers,
blinded by their love
those alone,
by their sorrow
the happy,
by their addictive ecstasy
the sages,
their own preaching
and last night, I saw a picture of two high school kids
getting married
and then another having a kid or five
and I thought to myself,
Christ
is this all that’s left?
God,
I wish I was an old man already
I turn my face kindly
so the world can slap the other cheek
kindness is complacent
kindness is self-righteous
who then is there left to call?
(I pick up the phone
and don’t bother, my brother)
come crying back to yourself in the dead of the night
the middle aged men message you online
at 11:59
a quiet neighborhood
white
parked cars
mowed green lawns
trimmed grass yards
the good children were the product of
vanilla sex,
box homes,
little glass chandeliers,
an automatic doorbell
that greets your name at the door
the installed camera watching
the people come to visit
in the living rooms
they come and go
speaking of vertigo,
J.J. Rousseau,
how they just got back from vacation
Florida or Mexico
they’ve found places to retire and decease happy
in the sunshine
a tequila sunrise in hand
the flesh melts away
they
drink wine
the women yell
the men get drunk
forty holidays come and pass
their vacation shirts rot
they die so slowly
they are dead but so alive
but it is ideal
footsteps meandering,
a
quiet average neighborhood
of winding streets
on the menu to-nite
lobster and butter
fish stuffed with flowers
onion marmalade
caviar covered in gold
hand on the remote, watching Wheel of Fortune
a dog sits behind a fence
a woman rips her hair out in the bathroom sink
a man nicks his neck while shaving
a kid in the grass gets a bloody nose
you get another shitty message
at a shitty motel
a brazen body reclining on the concrete
like a shining fish
your daddy has 3 mid life crises a week,
everyone looks you up on the Internet
human or animal?
the pundit had said
earlier that morning
as a sermon
you shit your pants,
the mechanic gets his own wad of cash and
tucks it in the back pocket of his denim
the car is waiting hot with frozen beer and a country cassette
he spits on the doorstep
and signs a cross
the victory speech autoplays on his phone
he slips on ice
a black cat and a car
run over his arm
your daddy has 3 mid life crises a week
O mama, the dancing Shiva scares me!
eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep
eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep
eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep eatworkeatsleep
hello, how are you?
4.
I am in the lonely boys’ basement
and the boys have turned into (so-called) men
I am in the lonely boys’ basement
(they are) dealing a deck of cards
sweaty teenage loneliness
the dog breathes on my face
they smoke from their vape pens
they have no emotion
the scruff of their pubic hair chin
scraping cross the side of some thigh
I nod and smile,
nod and smile
nod and smile
and stay for a while
the lonely boys
the slow sludge of time
the worms eat into their brains
they scuffle a handful of pills and take one,
take one, take one
at breakfast, lunch, dinner
little white candies, playing the card game
there was that never-ending ache
(where did happiness come from anyway?)
the boys take a swig of blue liquor
boys singing into the heavy heat of a lonely summer
playing their daddy’s rock and roll guitars
musty dank of an American family basement
the boys singing,
OOO I need a dirty woman!
OOO I need a dirty gal!
(who am I, watching them, sitting on a milk crate?)
only angst or anger
we eat pizza and have nothing to talk about
I shuffle the pack of cards and watch the fly enter the milk
searching all over with its proboscis
the air is psychedelic
they don’t need me
I am not one of them
why are you trying to take my innocence?
(gentle woman, why am I here?)
I was hurting myself over and over again!
here, I was my own mother, father,
husband, sister, brother, makeshift lover
when I get tired of playing the lonely boys’ games
I leave with a passionate smile and wave
and sit outside their house crying in the car
knowing I never belong,
while they keep banging the drums and screaming
I go the public park
and smoke a cigar
guzzle a pint of absinthe
and pass out on the bench
awaking the next morning to the stale heartbeat
of nothingness
I can slip on a stone and fall into the abyss
the crumbling earth can give way under my steps
Johnny, my brother,
I dedicate one week of the day to grieving you
your soul is dead
you have no golden heart
this whole world is selfish
and I go on and on,
giving and leaving,
listening to ZZ Top
all of my life has come to this
in a Walmart parking lot
Johnny,
why can’t we just start this life over?
Johnny,
why can’t we turn back all the clocks and leave all time behind?
Johnny,
why can’t we just run to the Paris sewers together and live a life in poverty and fire?
the high school girls became beautiful on Facebook
and I could see they were living beautiful lives
drinking wine in vineyards, prancing the grass,
milking cows, glowing cheeks in the sun, holding hands,
loving (the one)
their mommas and daddies were in the newspaper,
the townspeople holding their pictures to their chins
saying,
atta boy!
atta girl!
they gave speeches at schools,
their faces were plastered over the billboards,
everybody was staring at them at the breakfast table,
the gas station,
the toilet,
I picked up my copy and smelled the smell of dank paper
and held up their faces
and huffed
isn’t it strange
you said,
how the colors of the real world only come alive through the machine?
I have lost my identity!
in an Applebee’s parking lot
on a cold, windy October’s day
when it is cloudy but
the sun is shining and the gust is high,
the lonely boys make their confession
O I can feel the guilt come crashing down
it was torment in the third degree
there is that vast memory
of someone that could have loved you!
but you so tenderly refuse
teenage sorries that they’ll never get rid of,
that’ll carry to the grave
// I’m sorry I couldn’t take the burden
of curing their existential angst //
Kierkegaard’s soul was moved by love for a young man
lay aside your humble dress
in the crowd
come and take me by the hands
the Iowa girls
holding children,
posing in front of Jesus signs,
smiling for the pic
if they are so happy,
why do they feel guilty?
why do they want to sacrifice?
why do they leave me on read?
what takes up all the minutes of their life?
what is inside their heart?
there is hurt in their eyes
they want to take it away by having children,
a beautiful happy family,
a warm and comfortable home like a bird’s nest
with their arms wrapped around their man,
the world,
their tucked away guilt
kissing on the sofa,
over a sunset, in a truck
the lonely boys in the Applebee’s parking lot
ask me those overwhelming questions in their eyes
woman,
you are cold!
woman,
you are selfish!
woman,
you are boring!
woman,
you are a recluse!
woman,
you love no one!
why call you woman at all?
has this solitude has turned into exile?
the rain falls down on me
the rain falls down and down
O mother, I can feel
the soil falling over my head!
the lonely boys in this bitter Applebee’s parking lot,
look dead in their eyes
their hearts have gone cold and stopped beating out of loneliness
as they sit in the driver’s seat, melancholy and lifeless,
turned frozen to stone
with their arms open and ready for an embrace
I get out of the car and look up at the quickly moving clouds
in the gray lifeless sky and
wave my arms like a crazy shaman
wave my finger in front of the restaurant windows like the American flag
wave my body across the earth rolling on the dirt grass like a worm until
rolling rolling rolling over onto the Paris sewers,
where I will paddle across the Atlantic like a hungry dog
to escape
to dream with my eyes wide open
and sing that romantic aria
And the stars were shining,
And the earth was scented.
The gate of the garden creaked
And a footstep grazed the sand...
Fragrant, she entered
And fell into my arms
Oh, sweet kisses and languorous caresses,
While trembling I stripped the beautiful form of its veils!
Forever, my dream of love has vanished.
That moment has fled, and I die in desperation.
And I die in desperation!
And I never before loved life so much,
Loved life so much!
o starry starry night
o pale blue day
I hear the sound of mandolins
you were a virgin to the world
I saw the sunshine bleed onto your eyes,
the great mysteries of life,
you have been telling me that you’ve been having dreams
where you kissed me on the foot
and whispered
I shall like to paint you nude
by the sea
or under the pale blue sky
or my dreams
dreams
about Japanese kabuki
technicolor fever
Joseph’s coat of 600 colors
buses of strange people
urban decay and violence
the nuclear family living comfortably
how can I forget?
Johnny, you lost your innocence,
when your momma and daddy grabbed you by the ear
and told you what America is
I remember you as a boy,
my brother
when you suffer, so do I
you will get married to a good Wisconsin girl
and when you shall dance
and the children beg to be born
you will press your cheek to heaven
and the magnolias will come pouring down
and you will finally feel like a good man
there will be songs about Chicago airports,
suburbia in slow motion,
the slow sludge of time,
an American Dream come true,
a generation tugging at your knees
life will be lighthearted and new like
a sugary movie
and you’ll say
at last!
at last! at last!
what a thrill I’ve never known!
I remember you as a boy
there was the vast mass of stars in the dusky sky
there was the gentle indifference of the world
I was a stranger to society
there was no one for me
there was no evil
there was no truth
there was only love, weakness, mankind,
common good
Johnny said, “You’re not my 80’s dreamgirl anymore!”
and drove down a lonely Midwest road
feeling the air between his bent fingers,
an Arabian collected butterflies
the stereo groaned like a ghost
and you hummed,
yesterday, yesterday, yesterday
I was young
the lonely boys buy their girlfriends lacy underwear
door to door, a poor man begs for bread
on a winter’s night
travelling there are horses
you book a honeymoon vacation
the women keep getting pregnant
posting more pictures on Facebook
the grim reaper holds a lamp up to my face
and I begin to shake
(the fear of the Universe in the dead of the night!)
in the snow he is cloaked
in black and monocle with those leather shoes
(is he wearing socks underneath?
does he feel the cold?)
o shiny shiny boot of leather
please do not forsake me
I see the soccer moms and dads young and pretty
on a honeymoon in Vegas city
in each other’s arms
and I’m on a football field in the very frigid November
singing
“o I’m alone! I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone!”
fresh from the womb,
what a cruel world,
what a miserable existence
it was just Jesus and Buddha and me in the UberX
middle aged men
Mötley Crüe
Judas Priest
shaking their shaggy Anglo-Saxon hair
into the ruins
the maidens fetching water
to pour over them
bloody and back from battle
like the fifth goddamn century
in the back of a McDonald’s
the three people sip watery coffee
the mobile park women
in their big flashy earrings and
cancerous smiles
the middle aged men hold their head,
a decaying hand up to the sun,
when the blood comes streaming down
their white eyes crying,
rolling in the backs of their heads,
beat their fists on a bathroom wall
and piss all over
a hungry dog laps up the puddles
of red
and
they say again and again
Goddamnit!
Godddamit!
I’m having a McCrisis!
I would sell my soul for the 80’s
Johnny, I know well that the Internet girls are reaching out their beautiful hands
to you in the middle of the night
Johnny, I know well that you think it’s useless to love me now
but there is greatness in loving you,
my human-all-too-human
my ecce homo
ecce mono
I shall say,
behold my brother! in all his misery!
I hold his guillotined head above the sea of crowd and all roar
in rejoice
I shall say,
for this is the one whom I have loved!
5.
The nucleus of life
the intertwining of hands and minds
a field of blueberries
a sea of pregnant and picking women
happy, barefoot
they came for butterflies,
Hollywood,
forty wives,
angels to a lost heaven
a ruinous pimp
a destitute city
red sad women with a desperation so smelly
it drags them into the gutter
what does it feel like
to be the blood between your own legs?
the snow and rain roll over the barren wastelands
and April brings up those dead drudgeries
God,
I wish I was an old man already
the boys squeeze down the birth canal and push their way back in
they fall in love with the same thing that’s given them speed
life, and light
the pithy, seedy truth
I waited in the garden, playing croquet
with my topcoat and monocle on
black, shined shoes
oh enchanting night,
oh sweet breeze,
oh stars shining above,
oh clarity
Johnny, I think I’m in love with the idea of you!
Do you love the idea of me too?
what is unrequited love?
(modernity has failed us)
in their mama’s garage
they shake the stink from their poor dust shoes
the head pills,
play heavy metal guitar
the downfall of a man and god
have you got the farm town blues?
a bathtub full of leg hair shavings
you started listening to songs that had names like old boots, new dirt
cold beer calling my name
beer never broke my heart
Jesus Christ
Facebook mssging young girls things
calling them angel on your motel landline
if you wanted to be Jason Aladdin Aldean you shoulda just said
I woulda never come home from a Walmart grocery shopping
spree at 7am on a summertime morning
you started growing a goatee
a cowboy hat and two hoop piercings
got a snake tattoo
the fuzzy dice click against each other
the big men on TV slam down their fists
the green American money falls
over all of these dirty bones
I sit on the toilet and read Nietzsche
start shaking
I sit on the toilet,
start reading Heidegger
I sit on the toilet and wait for answer
aching
for the touch of a human hand
(modernity has failed us)
Who is this narrator?
the suffering of one human person
in a small corner
alone
crying
aching
please would you just help me
I’m sorry, but I can’t get to the phone right now
please leave your name and number and
I’ll call you soon!
you took a picture of your McDonald’s and posted it on the Internet
all the hotlines are full
I stand over this pond,
that grave,
this barren wasteland,
the shameless,
average
human
I piss all over the earth with my big fat whizzer!
I shake my bloody fist at the world!
kiss the boot!
kiss the shiny shiny boot of leather!
kiss the shiny shiny boot of leather then my cheek!
kiss the boot of the world then my kaleidoscope dreams!
I shake my bloody fists at God!
I shake my bloody fists at then my reflection!
I shake my bloody fists –
at the high school
the mamas keep talking
at the Walmart
at the mall
at the goddamn Applebee’s
they blab their lives away
and don’t shut up
they put their lonely pictures on Facebook
suburban moms drinking bellinis
wearing bikinis
saggy asscheeks
their cellulite butts hanging out in azure waters
posting pictures of their pearls on Facebook,
country clubs,
how well do you know me?
are you really my friend?
what’s my favorite sea creature?
goddamit! I said what’s my favorite!
the stench of the old woman’s death still lingers over your house
your mama slices deli meat in the kitchen,
tomatoes, and gives her life away to reality television,
blogger forums and Pinterest
she’s committed to smiling early
she knows things
every morning
and does the laundry, folding the children back up
into the slimy womb for comfort
she don’t wanna see the hurt
because she knows well and good enough
like her mama taught her
and her mama before that
shiny shiny boot of leather on her petrified face
kiss the boot of the world
and end all your suffering!
the TV advertisements play
$20.00 dreams that you can’t afford
you left the house to take a breather
overlooking the Midwestern neighborhood you felt things
there was fair weather,
sunshine in your stomach
the hope of a new promised land,
you were a real American boy
soul full of television and spoonfed
the promise that you were the biggest goddamned winner in the whole world
but you were a real American boy
and forgot about things as quickly as they came
everything was a high school football game or dance
for you
I once thought America was a coin in my pocket
a shiny silver dollar
that I felt
over and over again
like a greedy child
America
now a greedy old man
feeble,
moribund,
mentally ill,
with a cane and falling gold tooth
spineless,
confused,
sterile people
windswept into the barren wasteland
saddened to a point-blank stare
a pokerface at the dinner table
I give them all my sympathy
and go to bed empty
no pulse when I try to hold their hand
when their bare feet touches grass
they flinch and turn back to a home
that tells them things
upper-middle class dung
the dog barks
and the roses die
with a heavy heart and
heavy mind,
you grow old and retreat to that same bed
the air-filled stars and the planets
the leaden-stepped dance of life
you grow terrified suddenly
and come to a stark realization
proclaiming,
“My beautiful children have empty heads!”
that summer was excessively hot
you could see women taking off their clothes
in house windows
they didn’t bother to shut
the sweat,
your candle,
the cosmic carnival
was coming to an end
Nessun dorma!
no one sleeps to-night!
to hell with this
if it happens,
I won’t feel bad about the collapse
Johnny,
your mamma and daddy wanna kill me
they stand in front of that rickety Mississippi porch
with the bloodhounds, guns
you go to New York to sell out
and become an eternal man
O hoohohohohly night –
you were locked in the bathroom
ready to give yourself away
to another Internet girl
your mom drank a wine cooler in the garage
and called a foreign number
spoke in whispers
the soccer moms are like this
in their loneliness
over the darkness of a 7pm Midwestern neighborhood
they sit out on the porch step and smoke
that goddamned cigarette
under the moonlight,
in front of the small mealy houses
the hobos wander
like beggard flies
do you feel Nietzsche’s scruff on your stomach
as you close your eyes?
it was bitter in this January sadness
the melancholy of a cold town at sunset
browsing Craigslist for someone to love you
I walk in the snow
in the -15 degree weather
and begin to wonder
what times are the last times
all people are happy
before they turn into a
slow cut sob story
for their downfall
I stood at my window
and watched the soccer moms pass by on their daily walk
when I look their minivans in the eye
on a cold and rainy Tuesday afternoon,
Who am I?
America in shambles
America on TV
America the glittering pearl on the sea
the diamond of the King’s eye
she broke your heart in a JCPenney parking lot
at a wet motel
a swimming pool
a Coca Cola
a hot summer evening
there are so many of them –
sexy, young, college girls
who claimed to be God himself
there are so many –
battalions of
tired girls
so desperate on a newspaper headline
a bed
a baby in each arm
a science room
dissected,
desiccated,
dried out and
doped up,
drunk,
dark,
dreary or glum
I sat in the midnight hour
with the candle burning
in front of me
and spun the world on my finger – where
I watched as everything
everywhere was the same –
hunger, death, humiliation, greed, ignorance,
crime, depravity, blackmail, deceit –
the inhumanity of man to man
the fetters, the harness, the whip, the halter,
the bridle, the spurs,
finger on the caliber
man walking the streets of bloody New York
in a degrading suit and tie
lowest of low,
greatest animal of
all time
you go to Hooters on a rainy Friday night
it’s muggy, sticky,
damp inside
later that night,
you meet behind a dumpster
like a rat or sewer trash
some street boys deal you cocaine
and you do a line in the movie theater bathroom
and watch a Star Wars rerun
you look at yourself in the mirror
you feel like the last Jedi
you taste your millennial wife in the middle of the night
and lap up your tongue like a hungry dog
you are an aged peach
she doesn’t even make the noises like
she used to
the television plays psychiatric static,
French radio, commercial advertisements,
she goes to sleep and you play beautiful music
for her
for yourself
for no one
all you ever wanted was a good Midwestern girl,
your children to love beer and cheese,
and you, TV,
football, and sweaters,
going to Walmart four times a week
texting middle aged men
on the phone
I go for a walk in the cold, dark
to the pond
where the lamplights burn orange
and it smells like sewer
I drive thrice around the town
stroll around the galaxy with
big ass toes creeping around
and come to the bleak realization
I feel the Beethoven record
spinning round and round
I was just another miserable girl
6.
Days of loneliness like a desperado
we ride horseback to Pluto
you, with a flaskful of rust and
blood
wipe the sweat off your cheek where the thorns have cut
the Andromeda Galaxy
is where my house is
in the silent gas
I saw God in his fur coat like Antarctica
reading a murder book over a fire
and laughing at me
my only Friend
and Father
and Blasphemy
and I weep on His shoulder in the thin ice of this tundra
where I am cold and cold-hearted
like they always say
where I will never forget those words in the Walmart parking lot
you had said that fateful night
over a yonder orange-blue sunset
woman, you are boring!
woman, you are a recluse! a recluse!
woman, you never want to do anything!
woman, am I a fool? it is useless to love you!
and then you left the car and threw your hands up
at the sky proclaiming that you don’t believe in anyone or anything
anymore
with your arms up to the universe, like a shaman
shaking
with your arms up to the universe, in surrender
overtaken
and in that moment, I came face to face
with the still mountains of time –
with overwhelming fact that I’d sell my soul for the 80’s
for we rose together in our misery and happiness,
desolation and loneliness
sharing our sorrows
and what greater love is there than that,
my brother?
human-all-too-human
ecce homo
ecce mono
beneath the warm veil of brine and water
Christ and Buddha wiped the tears off their daughters
the mafia men draw their silver gun
under the pizza table
the old dark women
smoke on the front steps of the liquor store
I wrapped my arms around the whole world as my brother
and wiped its spit off my face
and there was nothing greater than this
and there will never be
Johnny, is that head of yours bugging you any longer?
you suffered from a bout of mental illness
and walked the misty moors of some mysterious island in England
sleepily searching for something you wouldn’t find
modern psychology has been cruel to you and mankind
are all these problems caused by ourselves
and not the world?
who is at fault? for all this pain, sorrow, and suffering?
Great Good God watches from an aerial plane
and boastfully laughs
jumping out without a parachute
spinning a monkey with one hand
where is Darwin when you need him?
am I part of the universal machine? just another chimp?
I sniff my pits and scratch my head
I looked at all your skeleton bones hung up on the gray brick wall
and kneeled and said,
is this what I have loved?
the boomed collapse of dust!
bring the torch in front of your eyes
In the fur coat of God’s arms
I feel pity for myself
Johnny, you never saw my humanity
I feel the guilt and the misery
still I see in your eyes the image of hunger
and the desperate cry
wasting
wasting
wasted
away
rolling shadows of the night
God grooms me on the head like a pet
there is no time to be wasted on the dead
we live in the eternal question
you’re still a mystery to me
a pledge of allegiance
to Christ
to die
to la vie, to life
to a lottery that’ll doom me
to the sun that hurts and came out too golden
on days like these I pranced the fields and hummed to myself, picking flowers:
hurt people hurt people
I dedicate one week of the day to grieving you
the lonely boys,
the middle aged men,
the Iowa girls
leave me on read
Johnny, is that brain of yours bugging you any longer?
you never bother to pick up the phone
and remember me, your brother
smoking a cigarette
laying down in the ice,
lost in a snow filled sky…
ohhh it might take a little time…
the entire world, a rotting fruit
a slush of modern melodrama
the light and the life of the human race, all one big train boarded to nonsense
unintelligible, intangible
open up your mandible
jaws of a cockroach
jaws of reproach
laid sprawled across a couch, seizing
abdomen, wing, middle legs
antennae, ganglion, mesothorax
were you the antihero?
were you in love with the idea of love?
[phony! phony! phony! phony! phony! phony! phony!]
God rubbing together His hands over a fire
Johnny, you disappoint me
the cold silence between us wastes away
any sense of compassion between
what once was
crowdsurf in your black hoodie and sneakers
headbang your way into nirvana
screaming about the government
getting high on a bunch of green cigarettes
driving thru Burger King
the soccer moms gossip
(who will I give myself away to now?)
rage, rage, rage, rage into the night!
rage into the light and life!
rage, rage, rage, all you human race!
rage, rage, rage, into the dirty ugly face!
so
the Midwest boys,
they are en nue
what am I to do?
in the dead of the night
half asleep
with a hand down the pants
reading Nietzsche and Spinoza, Tropic of Cancer on the toilet
Johnny, you make come to the realization that
nobody is never enough for no one
it was confrontation
all the doors have been slammed in our face
O mama,
why are the people so rude and cruel to me?
(All I was doing was trying to reach out a human hand)
O mama,
why are the people turning their back to me?
(They don’t understand my humanity)
O mama,
tell me, who is my neighbor now?
I saw them mutter the words
I’m waiting for a better day
I am watering this plant all alone
waiting a year for a telephone call
the Iowa girls after five months reply to my message
and say, sorry I didn’t see this!
So sorry I missed your call!
I nod my head
and say to myself, oh yes, this is how it is
and retreat to the sewers
you went to university and became a drunkard
your whole life was set up for a business office,
a suburban home,
an impending perilous doom
what makes you a God now?
you have become a slave to the crowd
in the middle of an abandoned cornfield
there’s a gentlemen’s club
LIVE GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
so after dinner I go in to escape
for some company and good conversation
I sit in the corner and watch the dance
dressed in corn silk coat, top hat, mustache
whispering,
the eternal masculine
the eternal feminine
the eternal human
the muscular bodyguard and his 6ft tall black bloodhound
these red boots
and black glasses
a Pepto Bismol to soothe the stomach, much to my nausea,
spinning head
I keep a shining smile
glint like that of a knife
a glacier
I give my life savings away to them
I go backstage to the refrigerator
and meet one named Pam
Pam I am
she said to me,
Would you like my green eyes and ham?
Would you like to see my green American money and ham?
she’s frozen inside
with the rest of the groceries
the broccoli, the EZ cheese, Great Value Peas
she shook it in my face and pulled me closer
asking,
Are you here looking for love?
I looked down, tired, twirled my four leaf clover
grotesque bodies dancing in the neon lights
my nausea
in the middle of nowhere
in the middle of the night
in a gentlemen’s club
poker
pac man
snakes
solitaire
the cards shuffle
with a leg up on my face, I wipe the sweat
my mom calls me on landline
I pick up in the phone booth
and say,
o mama, it’s the middle of life
and it’s so very lonely!
that robed figure
that gray sky
the wail of the people
the sorrowful sigh
there is blight upon the marriage bed
ruin, shame, death,
a curse
that flows throughout all the land
Johnny, I hope you get everything you ever wanted
how you can tell from someone’s eyes
that they looked you up on Google
the Internetgirls
reach out their tortured hand
because the phones keep ringing
because the messages keep coming
because the mail numbers are up to 25,404 unread
sitting on a toilet at a
birthday party
I can’t!
I can’t!
be still and know
be still and know
be still and know who I am!
I don’t know who I am!
I am doomed
the Internet people dancing and singing
shaking their nude bodies back and forth
[It is lifeless and all I wanted was to feel alive!]
Even after all of it,
all the hours of staring
yearning
postmodern madness
midnight misery
the happy smile face of consumerism
the expectation of capitalism
Where O where is my true joy now?
Where O where is my sense of compassion?
Where O where is my human connection?
at the end of the night,
I walk through the empty halls of the house
and look at all the closed doors
the ache of
everybody suffering silently by themselves
I take the computer to the kitchen table
and search and search
How to Ensure Your Kids Survive Your Midlife Crisis
I had a heartache
I searched for some-body,
some-thing
the warmth of a human hand
reaching through the screen
www.realpeople.com
but all I got was
Hey sexy wanna play? CLICK ON THIS LINK FOR SOME FUN!!!!
100% GUARANTEED SATISFACTION!!!!!
dream on my brothers
dream on my sisters,
I hope you find the one
I closed the computer and went outside for a walk
in the -15 degree weather
I feel the deepest sorrow
I made a fire in the middle of the room
and stuck my face in the middle
watching the skin melt
(I was) the pair of eyes that cried the tears of a thousand broken generations in one night
the entire pain and suffering of the universe pulsing through these veins!
a mechanical machine opening up your eyes
where everything becomes chrome yellow and phthalo blue
in a dark room,
eye surgery to opera music
look out at the world and tell me what you see!
I can’t blink!
Mama, would you please just take me back in the womb so I can hide!
ahhhhhhhhhhhh!
and there was blank darkness
7.
At 7am the middle aged men
line up their lives in the parking lots
and have their mid life crisis
against the firing squad,
the electric chair,
laying on the roof of red cars like Christ
watch the sun shine over their stubbled faces
the reek pile out of their mouth
their calcifying, cold hearts
fingers oily, full of grease,
smoke, booger,
sugar
lifeless bodies laying in the shadows
do you remember what it feels like to be alive?
smelly smelly
tonight,
they flick a cigarette
turn up the radio
put a finger up their nose
let out a fart in front of the coffin
cruise on a lonely road
all their windows down
to a Whitesnake, Skid Row, Poison song
divorced Nickelback daddies
that same old smelly jacket
I’d wish they’d kiss my forehead
and call me son
teach me how to be
real American
teach me how to lie with a smile and Midwestern politeness
how to smoke,
slaughter a slab of meat
and sit in the garage
to a box television game
watching for the neighborhood young girls
to go passing by
on a warm summer night
and wave,
offer them a can and place to live and stay
so, what’s it gonna be?
Taco Bell or Heaven
with their faces down to the earth
/ do you ever imagine
what went wrong? /
smell the grass
their camouflage
their deet
the musty white in their eyes
fog over a 5am field
an abandoned Farm and Fleet
dirty boots, snow covered brains
a forest, their bows and arrows
the cows mooing
their sweaty yellow pits
the wild wind of fall, their wet stinky jackets in winter
the McSauce dripping out of the bag
eat in the graveyard
now I am at the Walmart
and all those who have loved me
and whom I have loved
have forsaken me
and really it’s a cruel cruel world
and really, you see
there was nowhere left to go
la la la la la la la la la
spend your days full of emptinessssssss
spend your years full of lonelinessssssss
wasting love in a desperate caresssssssss
rolling shadows of nighttttttttt!
Lord,
where are my brothers and sisters now?
God,
has all of my life come to this?
maybe one day I’ll be a better and honest man
but God, it hurts
to look over this graveyard and sip my Cherry Cola
like its nothing
roll up my sleeves, close their eyelids
farewell! farewell!
cover up their faces
look at those dead eyes in the ashes
love erodes and hates
in the dirt
like a bad tragedy song
and winter was cruel
they reach out their hands to me
from the cold April ground like lifeless
lilacs brewing out of the barren earth
over sunrise to sunset
laying like a dead corpse on the car seat reclined all the way
the window is open
windy autumn
remind me of that October night
cloud gray existential
flickering, flickering
the thunder and rain bursting wet all over you
imagine a dark shadow standing over a grave
digging dirt over and over
all of the lies buried
skeleton of a tree and bright blue moon
in the windy autumn
they wait for an answer –
in a high school parking lot they get drunk
cry later in the work elevator
the bathroom, cigar, bottle of whiskey
flipping through a phone book or a phone itself
for a girl or good luck
the way their fuzzy dice click against each other
how they are from Wisconsin
an ace of spades tattooed on one knuckle
dream on my brothers,
dream on my sisters,
dream on while you can
I hope you find the one
8.
In the beginning there was nothingness or chaos
or America
and 90’s alt guitar
at 8:59pm
the middle aged men message you online
shake that shaggy Anglo-Saxon hair
over these wild lands
and sing the songs of your forefathers
play your garage
90’s alt
sing, I say to you!
my brothers, all you middle aged men
lonely boys and troubled women
sad faced girls
oh all you miserable children,
brought into the wickedness of this beautiful world
this is my America,
come to me in my
selfish,
greedy,
foolish,
arms
children born out of lust
born out of love
coming into this world
crying and bloody,
demanding
“who am I? what am I?”
the world with its dirty, hard boot upon your tongue
until you kiss it with the servile smooch
and say, “yes! yes, it is you I have wanted all along!”
are you myopic and pregnant
with big eyeglasses
nipples and feet
swollen and cracked?
you can’t hold your own weight no more
Johnny, you’re my 80’s dream fantasy!
I can’t hold it out no more!
I want the saxophone playing
and the wedding bells clinging in goddamn Wisconsin
I want to die in your arms on the dancefloor at midnite
but I don’t know if it’s right?
where is Dr. Freud when you need him?
(does wrong and right even exist?)
Sigmund, (I command you) arise from the grave!
(tell me, what are these games people play?)
resurrect, my postmodern Lazarus!
rise, I said, rise!
where is Darwin when you need him?
am I part of the universal machine? just another orangutan?
I smell my pits and scratch my head
the mime in the box performs
the crowd
throwing a handful of rotten oranges in his face
the Russian ballet girls twirl till their feet bleed
and I would die for the 80’s
the screech of a 90’s alt guitar
dancing in the living room to an 80’s song
in a pink dress
na na na na na my brother,
I’m a slave to love
In a Wisconsin bar later that night
we have time travelled to the 90’s
(there’s
beer and chips and a remote
the prosecutor turned his back half to me
under the flickering lamplights and the snow
it was so very cold
that January -15 day at the Walmart)
you yawn and say,
woman, you’re so boring!
(I was) a sullen girl watching a foreign film
cutting open the eye
saying weird things
on the Internet
(I was) a pair of eyes zooming in over the naked flesh
trying to see what others see in a grainy film
on a 5X3 5G pocketphone
(I was) a girl in a white nightie
crying for her mother on the wedding night
saying I’d rather take off my clothes by myself
and sleep alone in the bathroom
picturing you in my arms to an 80’s song
running my arms over your back
(in a sunshiney Wisconsin microtel)
words are meaningless and forgettable
but you are my friend and brother!
my moral dilemma
love is blindness!
love is blindness!
I don’t wanna see!
won’t you wrap the night around me?
these grotesque shadows and the skeleton light leaks through the blinds
us nude and innocent in the skeleton light
us lying nude and innocent on a crumpled laundered bed,
white-sheeted,
the pale shadow dances and holds my ear, beating the tambourine
making me believe
in the old mumble of my lukewarm heart
in a Wisconsin microtel and casino saying,
I can’t live!
I can’t live without you!
I must have you!
yes, I must have you!
I feel the gruff of your goatee on my stomach
in another dream we are in
a Wisconsin Baymont Inn on the top third floor
going to bed in the dark
the honeymoon suite
a hairy arm round my neck!
in a noose of amor fati
I hold and feel your hairy knuckles
and put my feet on your cold chest
in the morning when the sun shines through the glass ceiling
we drink mimosas laced with poison
and faint, falling over
never making it to the bed on our honeymoon night
in the honeymoon suite
with our eyes up to the Wisconsin sun
the whimper of our hearts,
squeeze the handle!
blow out the candle!
love is blindness
love is blindness
for just one moment to have you in my
arms
was nothing short of a miracle
for just one moment to have
in my dream
you say,
come with me
live and die with me
the mice were searching for a morsel
the cobwebs gathered on my eyes
O God, it feels so real!
and I am tempted to believe in that unreal city of fog
but again
and again
that pale vision dances
around beating a tambourine
I watch life like a movie on the big screen under a leopard fur blanket
cuddled beside a Big Shadow
closing my eyes at the part where the ship sinks
where the titanic hits the iceberg
and rubbing my nuzzle on the Big Shadow’s arm
for comfort
closing my eyes
Father, please save me
Father, please help me
Father, please love me
no one else does
Johnny, your daddy clutches you by the shoulder
and teaches you what America is,
and it is not me
he takes you into dark smoke of a Wisconsin pub in the middle of nowhere
where there’s (plenty of) beer and chips and cheese
and women and girls willing
(How you eye them under the scruffy gruff of your hairy goatee!)
there’s a remote and TV’s lining the dim wooden walls
he grabs a knife and teaches you how to eat meat
and cheese and cheese and cheese
fireworks!
June was the month we saw the billboard
divorced daddies
mourning behind the steering wheel
listening to Behind Blue Eyes
blowing fifty franc
on a bunch of local girls
who lean over your shoulders and blow beer breathed
hellos
the smell of fresh skinned leather
green hundreddollargirls with their greenAmericanmoneyeyes
blue oceans you’d want to die in
shaking their souls in your face
shaking that smile on a screen
touching your beard, saying,
she’s very pretty
very pretty indeed
in a bathroom mirror to themselves
stroking a bald face,
a goatee,
an empty conscience –
lonely hours
love as vengeance
playing Guitar Hero in the girls’ basement
talking about boys over potato chips and Yahtzee
a 700 pound dog jumps up on you
and the bathroom door won’t lock
you’re thirteen
the toilet won’t flush
and there’s bloody piss in there
go down!
go down!
go down!
is that spot on your underwear eternal yellow – apocalyptic brown?
do you remember the first time you bled?
was the glittering piano shimmering across the sea?
and now, they
paint her nude
laying in the bed with a rose in her mouth
and her eyes closed
(a pearl necklace)
legs together, shy
and both nipples out
freed
and now, they
paint her nude
with a belly bloated
breasts swollen
a hand over the lower half
and a glimmering smile
mother of the stars
have you got the nihilist blues?
on the wedding night, when we are getting nude
will I get too shy
like a child again
and hide in the closet, crying
with one finger up the nose
and the repeated hum of my heart
nobody understands! nobody understands! nobody understands
me!
9.
I am sitting on the centerpiece display case
of the Victoria’s Secret
en nue, covered in feathers like an angel or a bird of the winds
sitting in the fitting room like an ape caged
a mammalian baboon
a Galvanized frog connected to a lightning rod
I am in the Victoria’s Secret
reading Lucretius On the Nature of the Universe
an old woman drops a brassiere on my head,
a pair of lace underwear
falling over my face like Strazza Carrara
The Veiled Virgin
I blow through the mesh like wind and think
I have discovered
what they say it is to be woman
I think I have figured out
what (they say) it means to be woman
the old lady comes again
and hangs her shopping bag over my neck like a noose,
mistaking me for a mannequin
and douses herself with the sampler perfume
I am so still with the universe
in this Victoria’s Secret
reading the pages of a withered book
from 2000 years ago
smelling like vanilla Very Sexy eau de intense Tease
Mahler’s Second Symphony
those beautiful sad glistening strings
where the cellos end
O little red rose!
Man lies in greatest need!
Man lies in greatest pain!
those closing lines
Die shall I in order to live.
Rise again,
yes, rise again, will you,
my heart, in an instant!
That for which you suffered,
to God shall it carry you!
all I ever wanted to be is liberated!
the movement of the people in this lingerie store
is the life and the light of the human race
asking that overwhelming question
Why have you lived? Why have you suffered?
Is it all one great horrible joke?
Sterben werd’ ich um zu leben!
men and me
reading philosophy
in an old house
and the wind blows hard to-nite
I shall rather like to grow a beard
and smoke a cigar
have a cup of whiskey
and talk of beautiful women drunkenly, shamelessly
sail abroad a wild sea
I am just as much of them
as they are of me
I shall rather like to fish for another Gargantua whale
slay another
mighty Grendel,
grim and greedy
the earthlings asleep after their revel
the whole world barking at you
like a dog
(when will you love
have kin
get a job
do your 9-5 destiny
make your ancestors proud
when will you finally stop crying
like a baby and become grown
everyday
everyday
ticking
time passing away)
but this music is so beautiful
I shall rather like to push these questions aside
while the men leisurely hold a teacup
and adjust their brooches and monocles
and rock back and forth in their chairs with their pipes steaming
frost gathering on the windows
it becomes winter outside in these woods
I stop to raise you from the dead edges of society to new life
I shall say again,
I am Lazarus and I have been raised from the dead
(I was) the magi
plowing through the desert sand
digging my own grave under pale moonlight
searching for answers
giddy up, my camel!
in the ashy-grey twilight
the crooked figure walks on crooked legs
my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
why does no one feel like home to me?
everyone will forever betray me!
I shall always be disappointed in the human race
reading Nietzsche on the toilet
I deem myself a disgrace
do you remember Lazarus came forth from the tomb
bound hand and foot with linen strips and his face
wrapped in a cloth
just like the middle aged men who come out of face surgery
in my dreams
two nails hanging off a cliff
stick it in the coffin
greed, suffering, famine, hunger, truth, knowledge
at 9:59
the middle aged men message you online
the middle aged men push you off a bridge
tear you limb by limb
the middle aged men cackle
hold a knife up to your neck
the people have made their stories
the cards are laid, they sit in front of the TV
with their feet up
they don’t believe you
a people, so absorbed in who they are
they don’t know and don’t care who you are
for a bribe of thirty pieces of silver
for a moment of leisure, power, or pleasure
you give up your whole life
are you the ascetic?
are you the starving, wild-eyed holy man?
a voice in the ancient crowd
with hands begging up to the cracked sun
shouting,
“fortunate is the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked!”
it was an unexpectedly gorgeous day,
I am pleading with my wife to give herself to me
dream on my brothers
dream on my sisters,
I hope you find the one
I heard a voice
saying,
last night! this night! to-night
is the night!
is unrequited love the only true love that survives?
touch the hand of betrayal
Werther’s twelve hours of torture and agony
(for what? for what?)
buried between two lime trees
the funeral not attended by any clergy or anybody
you go to foreign stores with names you couldn’t even pronounce
and buy hundreddollarthings for hundreddollargirls
they’d give you whatever you want
I desire what I can’t have
that fickle force that overrules me
treating human life as a game
Fortune cuts down even the strongest man
for a hundreddollarlove and a moment of instant gratification
you give up your whole life, Johnny
O mein Gott!
the music is flowing and beautiful in the baptismal waters
and in the beginning,
there is no religion or heaven or hell
the Iowa girls got religious
and the others got enlightened
and suddenly,
I became very frightened
and I know now that the devil is not a creature
but the cruelty and inhumanity of humankind
Johnny, I loved you like my own brother
I stop to raise you from the dead edges of society to new life
my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
I wish someone would take me by the hand outside
and say,
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can. Just so.”
Johnny,
I ask that stupid question again
from 2000 years ago,
why have you not loved me as I have loved you?
10.
In my dream
my mother and father carrying me above their heads
shouting
the truth!
the truth!
the truth will set you free!
I turned in the womb to Luddy Wig’s Beautiful Ninth
I emerged from the womb to P. Floyd Empty Spaces-
Young Lust
I emerged from the tomb and Thus Spoke Zarathustra
turning in the womb to Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony
we walked out of the tomb
we all turned in the womb to O Fortuna
to be loved, is lucky indeed
but how much greater is
Dante gazing longingly at Beatrice in yellow as
she passes by him in the streets of Florence
Dante, in love with her until the day he died
is unrequited love the only eternal love that survives?
the most beautiful and mystic passages appear
Dante looks into the face of God
at that high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe
Johnny, you were the beatific vision that held the universe together
remaining infatuated throughout life,
even though she married another man
and you married a woman and had children
her salutation filling him with such joy that
he retreated to his room just to think about her
and in doing so, he fell asleep
and had that dream
in which a Mighty Figure appeared before him and spoke to him
barely managing to hear it say,
Ego dominus tuus —
I am your Lord
in the Mighty Figure’s arms was Beatrice,
sleeping and covered by crimson cloth
the Mighty Figure woke Beatrice and made her eat Dante’s burning heart
yet those pair of big kooked eyes
kept you awake and in awe
at night
was God the end of my desires?
I lifted my longing to its ardent limit
and just as the snow beneath the sun,
the light leaves moved, whistled beneath the wind
and all time was lost
God, you don’t need me to love you
but I need you to love me
God, spinning me with one hand
a monkey on a bicycle
a Tibetan theatre mask yodeling
O Light Eternal, what do you see in the world?
what do you see in me?
O Light Supreme,
lovingly smiling at yourself
and the whole world
the ancient crowd waves their torches by their eyes
Dante, with his heart on fire, saying to his friend at the parade,
"Why have we come here to these women?”
Dante trembling in a street corner
seeing the most gracious of creatures,
his heart shaking, humming,
Beatrice, Beatrice, Beatrice
the other women made fun of him
and he wrote that magnanimous sonnet
La Vita Nuova
any romantic exchange between Dante and Beatrice
no more than the imagination of Dante
watch the dead Christ between the towering thieves
benedictions of the Holy Ghost
O Morning Star of Liberty
O Fortune and Fame
O Glory and Name
O Pride and Foolishness
O the Living and the Dead
O Dante’s Dream!
it’s only been four years since I was seventeen!
Johnny, I had dream about the devil!
Johnny, I don’t believe in anything anymore!
I force your face to the floor!
lick the shiny shiny sole of tile
eat the dirty dirty specks of dust
Where O where is my faith now?
Where O where is my human virtue?
thus spoke Zarathustra!
thus spoke Malaysia!
thus spoke the 8 winged bug crawling on my window screen
thus spoke H.H. rocking D. Haze on a rocking chair
in the teepee
thus spoke the middle aged men
and thus spoke Johnny himself
holding me in his tepid, unenthusiastic arms
my brother,
here I lay my burden
the new Internet mistresses wander behind,
in front of my eyes
I see them waving with their benevolent smiles
and I don’t know what’s inside their hearts
O be careful what you wish for!
a vengeful ghost follows you on the opera stage
a spear is thrusted
blood red roses are thrown by the crowds
a loud clapping and applause is made
the light comes on and you take a bow
over a cold purple-blue sunset
in the middle of an Iowa town
over all the rickety small white houses
sitting on the front porch step
in the -15 January weather
the lonely boys message when they’re lonely
and rub their cold blue hands, greedy
like a cold demon
and the loneliest boy waits for me in the car
to which I walk slowly and languor
wiping the fog off the pane
and we languish the silence
over the grocery store parking lot
his body combusts in fire
and he runs out waving his arms and legs in the ice
our love has grown cold
over a winter snowstorm
which locks us forever in a Ford
we fossilize until 3000 A.D.
faces locked in Scream forever
the low blow of a cello
terrifying me,
O mama,
the world is scaring me!
would you just take me back in the womb so I can hide?
is it too much to ask or desire?
in a dark room
eye surgery to opera music
the eternal struggle between good and evil
O mama,
I open my eyes to 7 billion urns of ashes
just for a fleeting minute to look inside of myself
O mama,
what a beautiful world!
the violin’s crescendo
11.
There are always high school girls
sitting in a cult circle in a school cafeteria
eating spaghetti out of Tupperware boxes
braiding each other’s hair
before the basketball game
there is always that cold purple-blue
yonder orange sunset
I walk through these halls in the night
and get the strangest feeling
the lights aren’t on
it is getting hazy in the boys’ locker room
they are sitting smoking from their electric cigs
in their mesh basketball tank tops and shorts,
airing their hairy legs out
in the daylight, they board the bus,
scratching under their pits, gnawing jerky
my nostalgia getting the best of me!
curse this head of mine!
I go back outside and it is now dark and
months and years go by
everyone has left
to the bars, to the restaurants
to the Applebee’s
to life comforting and settling –
I feel the chilled wind of this October night
I wander these halls and
the empty football field to the 80’s music
in black sunglasses
with the skeleton trees waving back and forth
! TEARS FOR FEARS CULT !
it’s hard to be a man when there’s a gun in your hand!
shout! shout! let it all out! c’mon i’m talking to you!
we are broken! broken!
Oh God, how
I wish I could stay here forever!
the blow of a smoke cloud
these dark empty halls
everybody now somewhere and
so gone
do you dream with your eyes wide open?
your arms outstretched like a god?
are the planets turning? are the stars burning?
Johnny, do you remember when we were seventeen?
our love has grown cold
I wish we were innocent and seventeen again
I miss you when you were a boy
a face and eyes blooming out of the roses
and now, we had everything –
and nothing made us happy anymore
and now, Johnny, you kissed the boot of the world
to end all of your sufferings
and now, you are crying in a Taco Bell bathroom
over a broken whiskey flask
over a bent heroin needle, the beat of a drum
your daddy’s mid life crisis
over that head of yours, spinning and turning
a girl who never loved or understood you
a warm and precious memory
and now, on the back of the urinal
he laid both his hands
and screamed as he pissed
he imagined it was the world’s ugly, broken,
muddy face
and lifted his fists to
the ceiling
and screamed
and now I am reading Nietzsche on the toilet
while my conscience holds a gun up to my head
saying,
plead for me
but I am tired. I am weary
don’t you hear that
sullen noise of my broken heart,
my master deary?
and now the middle aged men are singing Whitesnake in their pickup trucks
Is This Love?
speeding down an open road,
smiling to themselves,
throwing dice
smoking in a parking lot in the snow at 5am
lifting steel,
breaking their backs
drinking beer, stinking, sweating yellow from the pits
my conscience holds a gun up to my head
(and the song plays I Want To Know What Love Is)
reading Nietzsche on the toilet
God is dead
notes from the underground
Dostoevsky
notes from Vatican City
you texted me, God please save me!
you locked yourself in the bathroom
ready to give yourself to another Internetgirl
you call to say you never loved anyone
and God is dead!
I look out the window and the earth waves with purple corn
the piano plays in America
in the gentle summer wind,
the Internetgirls
reach out their beautiful midnite hand to your tortured soul
O, the touch of a human hand meant so much!
the touch of a human hand!
was both the miracle and the mystery
we were so hungry and lonely
you kiss the Boot of the World over and over again
a thousand million dreams made of different colors
lick the crystal sand grains off of Jesus’ feet
the Internetgirls message me online
Hi is this Craig?
this is Amanda…
we matched on Tendre
I’m back in town
do you want to go around?
how do I look?
good 2 meet u!
this is so bonkers but u seem pretty cool
ur not a psycho killer are u hehe? ;D
want 2 get to know each other?
what do you like to do for fun?
I jus got back from a run…
I’m bout 2 hop in the shower right now…
want me 2 show u some more pics…?
tell me what you’d do to me…
oh fateful animal! what do I tell you now?
I am at the Walmart and I feel dead
everybody who has loved me and whom I have loved
have forsaken me!
O Father please make me a better man!
please forgive me
I hope to be a better woman
and a good person is hard to find
my moral dilemma
the American flag waves
I pace the world like a hungry savage, like a puma
sniffing the caves for God
you put your hand down your pants watching TV,
reading Marx
the choir girls
sing Two Black Cadillacs
they do their hair like Carrie Underwood
in the bathroom that reeks of boy piss
till it smells burnt crunchy of hairspray
the entire school comes to watch
and the wind blows
the school priest even likes the song
and drums his hand over the little pin on his vest
of Jesus and
the American flag
humming amen
amen
amen
at the church I came
because it is said that
god loves the brokenhearted
but god never came to me
as he did the Jesus freaks
and evangelists
I wish
I would drop to the floor
and squirm like a worm
like they do on TV
like they are possessed
by some holy ghost
that they would sacrifice it all to
I wish
I could sell a few pamphlets for salvation
I wish knocking door to door
someone would save me
too
the people in Mississippi yell there’s a conman coming
the tambourines shake, the bones rattle, the waters get gray
a little girl smokes a cigar
in the hot blue sun of Mississippi
12 years old, hand stuck in a cotton gin
the oily pimps line up in JCPenney parking lots waiting
cocaine on the dashboards
for their prey
with their big mouth open
twirling long, golden locks of hair around their finger
the soccer moms in their cars
rolling thru the hood
with a pair of dirty sneakers, a box full of oranges,
juice boxes
on the way to the nearest white picket fence
on the way to the next suburban neighborhood
on the way to their new affair
I stood in the rain and
gave my life away to an 80’s pop song
do you remember Nietzsche
and the horse?
at the other end of the piazza,
running to the animal getting flogged
throwing his arms around its neck
to protect it
and then himself collapsing to the ground
by the flame of this fire I read
the delusion letters
Caiaphas is put in fetters
Pilate comes waving his torch
the crowds sway his heart
Nietzsche caught by Freud at the call house
clumsily escaping
smelling of dank perfume and a dark room
seeing half a dozen apparitions dressed in sequins and veils
taking off their clothes
like a big Persian rose
blooming in the sewers,
the slums
the Madman who lit the lantern and ran to the marketplace
crying, “I seek God! I seek God!”
and like him, lost
I ran and ran
farther and farther away until coming back in a circle to that same spot
“Whither is God?!?”
“Wherefore art you God?!?”
looking to and fro like a little cockroach
the crowd in shrieks, throwing up their hands
and the shadow of the old Madman coming out of the shades
coming to the middle of that marketplace
“Do you not feel the breath of empty space?”
“Do you not feel the frigid air?”
“Do you not hear the bloody screams from over there?”
“Are the lanterns not lit in this morning?”
“Do you not hear the noise of the gravediggers yet
who are burying God?”
“Do you not smell the stench of God’s decomposition?”
“God is dead!”
“God remains dead!”
“And we have killed him!”
and in that moment
the crowds rejoiced,
and lifted up their voice, their
pitchforks and knives
and you dare scream up at the sky
a dark twilight gloom
a creature coming out of the swamp and reaching out its hands
saying, “I am God!” “I am God!” “I am not a man!”
I am not a God
I am a man
I am not a God
I am a man!
I am a man
not a God
not a God,
I am a man!
and he looked at us with his bruised eye, and said,
“Now which one of you will come forward with your rusted knife?”
“Which one of you will feed this fire to keep it alive?”
“Who will wipe this blood off us?”
“What games of atonement shall we play now?”
and then the lightning struck and I
saw the distant stars
a procession of black cars
proceeding to the churches,
tombs and sepulchers,
skeletons laying in the sands of the seasides
hair locks drowning under sanddollars
all of the people wearing black veils and white gloves
blood red roses pinned to their chests
weeping silently into a stale napkin, stolid
feigning their grief
loudly bowing down next to the casket, kissing
the cheek
Oh the betrayal!
holy mother of pearl
I clutched my heart and felt the greatest torment in the world
the Madman waves his torch in front of my eyes
the murkiness and black clouds moving quickly across the sky
thunder and a raven flying overhead
a big dollop of white shit landing on your head
and you scream up at the sky
a dark twilight gloom
another strange shadow coming out of these rooms
saying, “I am God!” “I am God!” “I am a man!”
I am a man
not a God
not a God
I am just
a man!
12.
A dream about a high school dance
where you are wearing a pink dress
but your hair is dirty and your nails are not
done and you
are in a rush
it was October and raining
by the time
was going
the girls were waiting
like little salon dolls in
their glitter hair and heels, earrings
waiting
like they had so much time to kill
waiting
like a soccer mom
to get pregnant
waiting
to get kissed
waiting
for one dance
the boys were fools
the boys lifted weights in the morning
the boys shaved over the sinks
the boys flossed their teeth
it was getting dark
I didn’t have a car so I
called my father and
ran from the church to the salon
and sat there alone with the silver polish drying
and no one there
when all the girls were done and gone
to dinner
(the clocktower striking)
I didn’t have a car so I
called my father and
ran from the salon to the school
as far as I could
but there was never enough time
and there was not enough time
and my hair, not wet and dirty anymore
but I made it there
just a little late
when the fur coated women
came out for their evening walk
on this cold earth
on black slick downtown pavement
the earth was tilting
before I went inside
a hobo leaned against the entrance door with me
and took a smoke
I watched him
as he spoke in weird tongues about life
in the gray October wind
and the chills go down my spine
I listened to him
then looked out at the world
the street cars passing by
the dimming yellow lights
the retirement homes
gas station
broken bike shop
the homeless wanderers
the wealthy walking women
and smiled
and went inside
to dance
in the meantime I rocked in God’s rocking chair
and stroked my growing 6ft beard
and thought to myself
my whole life
my whole life is a high school dance
dammit I will never grow old!
the eternal adolescent!
the eternal masculine!
the eternal feminine!
what more is there to life than this!
the clouds were golden and cream
and quickly moving
and Johnny had a dream
about the devil
take a bite out of your rotten apple
decades pass
at the high school reunion I shall dance
while the girls have become women
and the boys have become men
and I
still feel like a child
still feel like an old man
still feel like a child
they are talking old money or old
memories or ten years ago
and there are families,
children tugging and pissing at their pants,
husbands, wives dangling off their fingers
a newfound joy in life
cars, clothes, money, perfume, weddings, jobs, laughing, stress, crying
children
there are too many hydrangeas now and bank
accounts
dogs, exotic fish, birds and cats
9-5 laboring that makes life straight
and worth living
that brings a sense of satisfaction
to the human life
the girls now smell like women
like mama’s Chanel No. 5
the townsladies yelling at me, pointing their knives
in each ear
at the dinner party
telling me how to be woman
telling me how to be human
the clang, the clamor, the clash of spoons
forks, knives, their sweet perfume
La Dolce Vita
I’m going to Italy for vacation!
I’m changing my name to Tia!
(who put this brain inside of my head?)
I demand it
I condemn it
it cries and bangs its hands
against the skull-globe
I’ll always feel like a girl
the whole world smells like a flopping fish
life has become a chess game
a round of Russian roulette
a monopoly match
a checklist
the girls get old
the boys fall out of love
start browsing the Internet
hit the pub
with their hairy stomach out
walking through the aisles of a supermarket
in their Sunday best
for a gaze that would capture their beauty,
their innocence, once again
as if they were the last sculpture left on earth
they take more whiskey, rainbow rum, soda and
beer
the plastic pink tablecloths slide off
the lightbulbs burn out
the room now full of a drunken people
and a rotten stench
I
still feel like a child
still feel like an old man
still feel like a child
still feel like an old man
(do you remember the joy of dancing
of being free?)
(do you remember the pink dress and
your summer cologne?)
(the girls with their feet in paraffin bins
the boys faint of their daddy’s cigar)
(the boys’ black shined shoes
a girl’s eager grin
sitting on the sink of the bathroom
talking about love and life and poverty)
sopping up the tears with a brown paper towel
a glint of a golden earring
a silver bracelet
a locket with somebody’s picture inside of it
I am pathetic
I will dance again
I still do
13.
In the Iowa casino
I smoke my cigar
and gamble my whole life on some Internet people
who promise me love
after watching nude bodies dancing on the Internet
and talking to strangers
I get tired and make a glass of whiskey
and cocaine
Johnny, how can I forget?
you lost your innocence,
when your momma and daddy grabbed you by the ear
and told you what America is
I know the story all too well and
the scene is set like this
in a fifth story penthouse
she takes her skirt off
oh, to be a beautiful girl in a New York five story penthouse
lying nude on the sofa
standing nude on the tippy topmost floor
in front of all the glass windows leaning over the ginormous city
lying nude on a bed
overlooking a man
running over a silky hand
but in that kind of beauty, does not lie my humanity
it’s been a year since Johnny called
and I don’t know if he’s dead or alive
I play the slots
roll the dice
bet all the chips
and eventually Johnny learned how to
loosen the hooks of dresses
and shoe straps
in strange bedrooms –
how to
put silk in your mouth
drop taffeta with a smile
and close linen curtains –
a vulgar body emerges
twisted back upon itself –
now there is no more of Johnny’s beautiful music
or sun
it suddenly feels cold
but Johnny got used to it
I eat my chicken wings and smoke my cigar
more whiskey
more cocaine
more bets on horses
I want to win like a Wall Street Big Boy
I want a loveless marriage,
a lackluster life
I want to strike gold
I want the devil to pat my back and call me son
God grooms me on the head like a pimp
I want greed in my mouth
I want to be like Johnny
now
(I want what I want and
I want everything)
American Beauty is a girl in white socks
laying in the roses with Her feet in the grass
it is the sun shining on Her teeth and bare toes
it is the honey of Her skin and smile
it is the scent of a sweet melody
and finger up Her nose
it is Her wrapped up like God
naked in the American flag
in the American Flag in the nighttime in your arms
with a fire burning and meat on the stove
and a deer head hanging above you both
with money falling in her face
money and the
American sing song
smell her French perfume
look at her white socks
knocking gently across
upside down her head and hair hanging
in the coffee shop a man stood atop a table
and took off his shoes and tie
I remember it was the beginning of May
and the man held up his coffee cup and took a sip then swung it
with espresso spilling all over
and he said,
to have her hair in my mouth
her breathing on me
was nothing short of a miracle!
the rain had just dried up
and the sun came out
and the stars are breathing to-night
so very heavy on me
the mangled breath of the stars like the fangs of a tiger
glinting white silver
I nod my head
retreat downtown
and ask a nine year old thug for a handful of drugs
who, happily proclaims, with a theatrical grin,
I swear to god, I never even knew what drugs were!
madman,
mother,
I go to visit God the Father
as a yeti living in an abandoned cave
the nights were flaming with fire
I sit in the dark
and tell Him the worst dream was
the one in which is revealed man’s nature
Johnny flung his head and heart at the wall when he didn’t get what he wants
on the telephone he yelled at the whole world
later in a dream,
he calls me, very ill, and on the brink of death
his house was expanded inside and covered in Christmas lights
and the mother blab blab blabbing
the father quietly screaming inside
digging the grave
there was no snow on the ground
in my dystopian bubble
I feel happy alone
I and the youths down milk doused with narcotics
it was agony on the breast
it was tragedy turned up till the meter’s broke
can you handle a 2SecondJoke?
daddies listening to a Whitesnake song
Is This the Love I’m Searching For?
the soccer moms
set the fire burning in their minivans
frankly, baby
the Walmart
the Menards
don’t feel like home no more
isolated, I feel
guilty
(and seek God’s repose in The Cave)
in the way I deceived Him
and that chance encounter at another time
in another life
when it by no means suits my sorry convenience
to see human nature
face to face
Johnny,
in my dream
you are dying around Christmastime
and in front of your house all the solar lamps are lit
it was an unholy night
the last moments before your death
you regretted
you were locked in the bathroom with another Internet girl
where you say to me
those revered last words –
I don’t believe in anything or anyone.
I don’t believe. I don’t believe. I don’t believe.
there, I held your hand for the first time
like a precious and warm memory
and still, you never understood my humanity
I was just an apparition
the smoke trails of Beatrice
Dante reaches out his sober hand to catch her yellow dress in Venice
the darkness comes down and
the metal ballads come out
the middle aged men howling over the moonrise
the middle aged men howling awooooooo! in the dead of the night
I am just a newborn
beatified
I feel the sorrows of Christ on this cold, snowless night
and when your momma and daddy call me to tell me the somber news
and how you were to be buried in the backyard as an
atheist
the whole world melts around
the electric animatronics do a cabaret dance
the red silk curtains pull back
in Copenhagen ready to take the train for Paris
picturing the lonely boys (in the dead of the night) in my arms to an 80’s song
running my arms over their back
(in a sunshiney Wisconsin microtel)
words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm
but you are my brother!
my moral dilemma
I go to escape
I paddle like a hungry dog
and throw myself into obscure art,
foreign rivers,
1000 temples,
just like all the suffering women do
when there’s no one to run to
and no one’s shoulder to cry
no one to love you
your heart was on fire –
the object of desire,
the lonely boys and the middle aged men
walk down highways barefoot
to angry 90’s grunge
their beards have grown 100ft long and drag along the gravel
they stretch their arms up to the dry sun and call out a name
their white t-shirts have dirtied
no one does laundry
some day love will find you…
true love won’t desert you…
I await them with my arms open for embrace
on the covers of hard rock albums
there are monsters
Johnny, wrap me up in your flannel arms and long 90’s head of hair
under the dim lamplights in the evening night
were you the absurd hero?
who lives life to the fullest and hates death?
condemned to a meaningless task, again and again
Johnny, there is no God, there is no truth, there is no humankind, no good!
Johnny, what do I do now?
Everything, all of it, has been rendered meaningless
Nullified, annihilated
One giant X over the O of the globe
Where O where is my faith now?
Where O where is my human virtue?
rage, rage, rage into the shadows!
Johnny, I am at a standstill, facing the mountains of time all alone
with no hand to hold!
(Where are the Iowa girls when you need them?)
I don’t know what is wrong for me!
it’s only been four years since I was seventeen!
Johnny, you hung your head down low in denial
we sat in the car like two cousins
remember, there was that dream
I was in a car with three boys that teach me how to drive
(like a man)
I was in a car with three boys
(whose names I don’t know)
it was foggy, gray, and raining
there was a TOOL song playing
I adjusted the A/C or heat
and start playing footsie
I don’t know the driver
I don’t know the one in the passenger seat
I just know there was Johnny and me sitting in the backseat
I close my eyes like a toddler
it is 1990something
and dare not look at him
out of shame
out of anguish
out of torture
my shadow
change is coming…
listen to my muscle memory
contemplate what I’ve been clinging to –
(I hate my shadow!)
like an instinctive animal, irrational
undesirable
I carry my shadow
in the time of descent
hollow shadow, shedding skin
chaos, melancholia
insincere innocence
Mama, I don’t wanna open my eyes!
I came out of the womb
I walked out of the tomb
I danced into my doom
I meet myself time and time again in a thousand disguises
the goat giving a sermon
reject! repress! hide! blame! shame! guilt!
oh, guilt! guilt! guilt!
I roll the boulder up and up the hill
only to see it roll down again
here was man, condemned to repeat forever the same meaninglessness
the mysteries of life
the unreasonable silence of the universe in response
(was enough, enough?)
what was enough?
who was enough for each other?
(were there even any answers?)
in the garden that evening day,
when we went walking
Johnny said,
why do you tell me about
time and space when I am hungry?
I do not have a moment
for a penny
I do not have a moment
for all these things
when will it stop,
how will it end?
these great mysteries of life
at our fingertips
in the backyard of a rich woman’s summerhouse
they have tea
there is a spread of croquet and greenery
it is humid and evening
and the bugs keep landing on us
the intellectual man speaking,
“to avoid fear, take refuge in reflection”
thus spoke Zarathustra!
thus spoke Malaysia!
thus spoke the 8 winged bug crawling on my window screen
thus spoke H.H. rocking D. Haze on a rocking chair
in the teepee
thus spoke the middle aged men
and the lonely boys
and thus spoke Johnny himself
holding me in his tepid, unenthusiastic arms
in the tearoom,
where the sun is bright
you talk about atheism
in an intellectual circle
with your monocle secured
and your velvet coat pant on
as day passes by
and evening comes
everybody leaves the garden
and it is just you and I
and you continue talking
on and on and on
to the walls
to the stars
we grow old
weary together
the cancer of time
eating us all away
14.
At a Saturday dinner party
where the women teach me
how to be woman
they have served tea and laugh about their husbands
their purses are lined up on a dinner table
they walk barefoot, in kitten heels
it shall be Sunday soon
and they will not want to leave
they might sleep in the living room
this is their only happiness
they stroke my hair
and tell me under their boozy breath
‘wear silk pajamas
and play the music
call him boss
tell him he’s just dandy
tell him he’s beautiful!
and you’re nothing!’
when they’re done
and are too drunk to leave
I soberly take my coat and boots and leave the garage
to take a walk
in the cold
the lamplights burn slow in the snow
by the pond
the fish are frozen in
and the deer watch
there was eternity on the park bench that day
but the soccer moms they see me
they take a picture and tell everyone
they chant Fortune plango vulnera
the soccer moms,
their eyes are always watching
an automaton monkey says her last words to humanity
I am at a garage party in the 90’s
with the lonely boys
the soccer moms,
they slave their lives away to spaghetti
open your heart,
the women talk in whispered tones
Johnny, hold me
I don’t want to be alone
in the last dream
I see
the middle aged men get face surgery
reconstructed
remodeled
pinnacled hair transplants glued on strand by strand
miniscule, microscopic
pumping in more collagen at lunchtime
I embraced the middle aged men
I embraced the whole world as my brother
the lonely boys,
the middle aged men,
the Iowa girls
I left them on read
the sun comes out too bright
the whole world shuns its faces in the chapel corner
at a Saturday dinner party
where the townswomen teach me
how to be woman
where they crowd round a computer
and decipher Facebook pictures
(these are) the societal women
with their noses turned up
and their hearts full of tar
but their faces, beautiful, appeasing
throw their whiskey glass at the patio window
where it all shattered
one started crying and fainted
the societal women
turn up their noses and held her hand
in the red silk bed
and fed her cold water as she sat up and
came to her senses
they brought back the computer and showed her again
she grew repulsed by the picture and laid down then,
and said
I’m gonna puke!
in front of me
that age old painting
maximized to my doom
The Body of Dead Christ in the Tomb
it shall be Sunday soon
and them not wanting to leave
they might sleep
in the living room
what am I going to do here?
does disaster loom?
a woman
sits up in bed
sits at a dining table
fails to piss
a camera stares into her eyes
that are dead
she holds her head
the women complain
and say they’re growing old and sick and tired
and they don’t like the way Johnny doesn’t care anymore
do you like the way I part my hair?
are the children happy?
why do I feel no warmth on this Sunday morning?
you complain the women bleed too much
and stink so bad
they’re too good for themselves, and you don’t want to touch them
a middle aged man once confided in me
and cried with his head against the cinderblock wall
and I watched him
but then he told me the whole plan
beer, god, and guns gave him a purpose
now, he wants to run for president
tongue out,
tongue lapping for fur
the middle aged men are my brothers
blink like
gaudy casinos
like brothels
like lightning
like a cloud
like a beggar
a leper
a tiger
sovereign
O Johnny, your mental sanity is failing you!
Johnny, you rest your head on the concrete
and open your eyes to the sun,
both hands at your side like a brazen fish
(gasping for breath)
while a boy and girl linger in a little room
Oh Fortune, always waxing or waning, ever-changing, like the moon
dream on brothers,
dream on sisters,
I hope you find the one
what happened in the Garden of Gethsemane that fateful night?
the passionate story of that extraordinary evening for all to come of mankind
told again and again
sweating drops of blood
reaching out a human hand,
I cover our faces in thin shrouds and hide ourselves
Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head
Johnny, I had a dream about the devil
After having dinner with the beautiful women of the town,
I sit and watch them lick their lips and forks and wave their
beautiful hands like nothing
and I just know they don’t love me
that they’re faking it
and nothing is real
Fortune is bald like
the middle aged men,
whose heads shine in the sunlight
their yellowed toothed smiles
Fortune cannot be grasped
Fortune cannot be controlled by I
Quick! Call 911!
where is Jung when you need someone?
it was confrontation
I guess in the car I cried
that night
going to Walmart
watching another young girl
buying bikini wax,
shaving gel
15.
Under a tree,
on a beautiful, golden day
you wait for a Mysterious Figure who never arrives
eyeball sliced right open
metal arm holding you wide
slice by slice
carving human meat, selling it in plastic fishbags
the cloaked figures
the grim reapers
come to this black market, covering their faces
insanity
passionate delirium
on a dark and mysterious night, who dare seek the truth about love?
struggling, nude and beastly against the staircase
patting the slippery banisters
enchanted hunter
—oh, my darling
—oh, my darling
this intolerable bliss
Coughing, spitting, bleeding majestically in the bathtub
a room full of flowers
wrapped in a big, very close pink blanket
open windows, a delicate summer’s breeze
flapping and heaving
half your face blown off
the silence of a suburban neighborhood
You smoked your last cigarette yesterday
You are going to die in a moment
I want you to concentrate
Concentrate!
at the madhouse
you awake from your slumber
and go to the corner in your white garb like the ghost that you are
where you press your hand to the cold window
to the frosted mirror
where it is foggy and snowing very gently
and moan to yourself
with your hands in your smelly ratty hair
and all over your smelly dirty face
I can’t control myself!
last night I had a dream that I am
screaming for everybody to evacuate the room except my mother
I am lying down on the bed, where
I look down and see the outline of a baby’s hand poking out of the belly
and I smile for many minutes, touching the hand back
(reaching out for a human hand!) —
(overwhelmingly happy, like I am God or something!)
closing my eyes, the legs stray wide open to give birth
but I am too tired to give birth
the wild hair strewing over nude smooth skin
and eventually there is blank black darkness,
when I wake up,
I see the baby wrapped up and blinking and think to myself, my baby is ugly…
(AW SHIT!)
(I’ve given birth to another good-for-nothing face that screams, pAiN iS AN iLluSiON!)
the needle of time ticking slow
I force your ugly face to the floor!
I don’t believe in anyone or anything anymore
lick the shiny shiny sole of tile
eat the dirty dirty specks of dust
drive a spear into my side
drag me into the abyss
we look up from the bottom at the high darkness
throw yourself into the fire
shake your fists at the gate
the pale visions circle us with their tambourines
I’m at a pool table in a dimly lit room with Johnny
sitting at the edge
I wrap my arms around his neck
like forever
and start over (this time)
I hit the magic 8 ball
Do you trust me?
(No, no
no, no
I don’t)
splattering its blue liquid all over
chin made out of pubic hair
the lice were searching for a crumb
I close my eyes to see your brief reflection in my dreams
ignite the fire
ignore the smoke
blue is such a bad color for you
am I alone?
a gentle shadow comes behind you
one hand over the eyes
embrace you from the back
the earth was in flames
the sand grains of time slipping away
do you feel the sea breeze?
do you feel the breath of empty space?
do you feel the frigid air?
do you feel the sticky spit on your face?
I licked the boot of the world
sizzling hot tears coming out of the corners of my cut open eye
I held the black baby of slime
slit its throat
Isn’t someone going to come save me?
(No, no
No, no)
black is the night
black black
black is the night
we have failed each other
we live in a thousand disguises
it becomes Vivaldi’s Winter
the icicles form and hang down low,
like your head in denial
I close my eyes just to look at you
one more time
the middle aged men decked out in leather and chains
the fire flaming behind them
the middle aged men hold a silver gun to my head
I walk all alone
sizzling pistol on my tongue
smoking bullet under my nose
red-hot tears searing in the Mongolian wok
I put on a yodeling theatre mask to hide who I am
it’s hard to be a man with all the fingers pointed at you
my shadow creeping behind me
saying,
I can turn a girl into a man
Ah, that hurts!
Ah, that hurts!
Ah, that hurts, enough!
Ah—very painful, very very painful, indeed…Hah! God!
I held our muddy faces to the floor
you wanted to feel dirty
you buried yourself in all the scum
I got out the shiny shiny silver gun
began kissing it
in the glint of pale moonlight, crazy eyes
insanity, delirium
a nauseous hyena laugh
You should really be a little more careful
Give me that goddamned thing for Christ’s sake
Hold that pistol like a good fellow…
crazy eyes looking up at the sun
you went insane and insanity delirium!
kiss the shiny shiny silver gun
crazy eyes looking up at the glinting silver gun
holding it in front of your eyes
smiling,
smelling it
caressing it, closing your eyes
a gentle shadow comes behind you
one hand over the eyes
embrace you from the back
the needle of time ticking slow
you pluck the hairs off your nipple and glue them to your chin
your arms open for embrace,
and say, “Tania, I have come to love you again!”
“Now I am a better man!”
liar, liar face on fire
I’m sick and tired
there’s no one to blame
the 90’s grunge alt plays in a DMV
shined shoefeet tapping
you gave me a call
and repeated that age old adage,
life is very long when you’re loneeeeeeeeeeely!
sitting on the toilet,
reading Marx
I listen to The Queen Is Dead
I am getting bored of this
I hung up on you and didn’t give a shit
I proceeded to rewind the cassette
I put on my black trench coat and shoot my self in the head
watch her topple down into sweat, tears, a bloody mess
bury her bones in the murky pond
and scatter her ashes over my backyard
I make my self an excrement of the earth
[dream on brothers
dream on sisters,
I hope you find the one]
do you feel Nietzsche’s scruff on your stomach
as you close your eyes?
Nietzsche calling you doll and drinking milk from your nipple
now I’m reading
Hegel
Marcel
Rascal Pascal
poor Sartre
headbang your way into nirvana
you wait for a Mysterious Figure who never arrives
Mötley Crüe
Judas Priest
Skid Row
I’m too young to fall in love!
dundundundundundundundundunnnnnnnnnn!
Bang-bang shoot 'em up
your crime is time
and it's 18 and life to goooooooooooooooooo!
Johnny, I had a dream about the devil
Hello, hello? May I speak to Sir Edmund Husserl?
that ghost tiptoeing across winter rooftops and snow
haunting the remotest, coldest worlds
dragging the shadows across the icy groves,
o shiny shiny boot of leather
please do not forsake me
it’s only been four years since I was seventeen!
the whole world didn’t care
and went on laughing and smiling
Johnny, you touched the deepest depths of human despair
the blackest of nights, the tightrope wobbling
you saw the bleak, uninviting stars shining and reached your hands out to the abyss
and the cold silence hangs
of nothingness
between supposed lovers\brothers
I have nothing to say now or anymore
words are meaningless and no good
I stand at the bottom with you and reach out my tortured hand
we look up at the tall mountains to climb
and conquer
[Nietzsche, where are you now?]
the human is a frightened animal
taking the whole weight of the world on its shoulders
the snowy slopes,
the glacial, frigid, bitter wind
were we lovers or brothers?
it was all indifferent
were you the angry atheist?
I sat in a church pew, with hands folded
behaved,
like a tamed animal
I saw
God in the desert
cooking hot dogs
God warming His hands over a fire
at the 1980 prom
getting hurled into a brick wall
put a hand up to your bloody nose
balloons and gold streamers,
confetti and silver glitter dancing shoes
nuzzled,
hand in hand
girls necks smell like Chanel No. 5
the boys on their soft chin
of their daddy’s Polo Blue cologne
townswomen and men of the town have gathered
in one place, grilling burgers
the soccer mothers and football fathers
the pit pat of their feet on the end of September grass
their societal drama plays out in these streets
middle aged men in love with themselves
strumming their guitars
with their heads waving and rust
under nails
dream on over these fields
beating their breasts at sunrise
shaking their shaggy Anglo-Saxon hair over these grasslands
Nickelback daddies shredding
heavy metal guitar
Metallica
drinking beer, petting the big dogs that surround them
TV volume increasing
O mama, the dancing Shiva scares me!
the middle aged men decked out in leather and chains
the fire flaming behind them
they sit and hold their head, thinking about better days
it was the 80’s…
they begin, and never end
rage, rage, rage into the night!
all you human race, go on and fight!
tonight I see the middle aged men
listening to power ballads in the rain
in a Taco Bell parking lot
crying over their wife and kids
a midlife crisis
when they see them young girls coming out of the JCPenney
they snap a picture in their heads
the rain keeps falling hard
they’ll revisit the high school football stadium
and sit on the grass or bleachers
alone
and eat a whole box of tacos,
Coke
contemplating their death
and return home at 10:59 late
with the cat mewing
dog barking
people screaming
dishes banging
and they wish again
they might as well be on Mars
tonight I see the
middle aged men listening to power ballads in the rain
Burning pieces of paper in the middle of a downtown street dumpster,
we warm our hands in our coats and rags
Mama, I’m sorry! I should’ve listened
and died for a life well lived
Mama, I’m sorry! I should’ve listened
and followed the instructions
Mama, now I will die warming my hands by the dumpster fire
Mama, now I will die in the frigid winter holding this map upside down
holding blue flowers
O la vie boheme!
and the big men with their top coats and canes come to evict us
to brat and beat us
and run us over with their greedy hands
while the snow falls gently on our faces
the rain and the sun are gone
and the days have become black,
the stink of these sewers
living la vie boheme! I’m sorry mama!
the needles pile up and the street people shiver
while they are kicking us in the guts
the blues man plays his harmonica over smoke
that sad guitar Picasso blue
I’m so afraid but I don’t want to live any other way!
put your hands out like a beggar
and count the stars
how much water can overflow into hands that
are greedy
on Ash Wednesday
last night I saw the hurt in your mama’s anonymous account
and I begin to wonder…
in the heat of summer,
a fifty-foot woman walking across America in her polka dot bikini
eating an ice cream cone
she walks across all the wars and baby booms
all the Wall Street crises and decades passing like a spinning teetotum
waving the shaggy underwear in your
mouth like a (rabid) dog,
what the hell
I cannot seem to figure out
if I am a human or animal?
I check out in a Walmart check out line
Hey you,
would you help me to carry the stone?
a sixteen year old girl nods no
buys bikini wax with her own cash
and texts her boyfriend
I’ll be there in 15
you glued pubic hairs to your chin
and showed your face to the world like a man
(What is this life? What is this death?
Do we have an existence beyond it? Is this all one big confused fantasy?)
Oh, glaube, mein Herz
Oh, glaube, mein Herz
chinchillas from China that climb on top of your chest
black iguanas from India that haunt you in your dreams
in our space shuttles TVs line the walls
and we float in between the screens
in the blue light of our artificial suns
like embryos
we have become watchers of game shows
reality faux blows
the news and movies blab on in front of our
claustrophobia eyes
and the nights flame
the density of my destiny
weighs heavy in my hand
in mid space everything falls apart
and I am alone with the gods
w e i g h t l e s s
without space suits we free float
our beating hearts are pulled apart
by the black vacuum
at the edge of space everything is quiet
it’s only been four years since I was seventeen!
your footsteps trodding down a Chicago airport
sneakers, and a guitar slung over one shoulder
running to the one you love,
the wife and children
the sun comes out golden
and the wind blows high
I was just an apparition
I was the pale shadow smiling in the corner
I close my eyes and say that last goodbye
I was tapping my foot (to your (happy) song)
waving my hands like the conductor of symphony
Johnny, you were a postmodern masterpiece
Johnny, you were the beatific vision that held the whole world together
Johnny,
I loved you like my own brother
put your arms around me,
around this whole world
give us a kiss
go on, the whole world is yours,
be free
and live!
Oh, glaube, mein Herz
Oh, glaube, mein Herz
16.
Here I am at the Hot Topic
watching the thirteen year old girls pick through the toys,
sorting through Craigslist,
TEACH AN OLD DOG A NEW TRICK
the margins of idyllic suburban existence
at the door
the mother and the father and the dog stand and look at me
asking the same question in their eyes
why didn’t you love our prodigal son?
the thirteen year old girls fish through the propaganda
and ask mocking questions
the thirteen year old girls put on lip gloss
and steal clothes
the thirteen year old girls tell me they’re atheist
and truth is chaos
the middle aged men have got their facelifts
the Hooters girls spill the burgers and fries
the beers froth over onto the floor
the buttcheeks jiggle
the eyes pop wide open
the Hooters girls walk down into the sweaty kitchen
I lift my sorrowful brow and the black glasses come on
I raise my finger and ask them for a pint of milk
they take out their breast
and shove it into my face,
start feeding me
they stroke the side of my face
and caress me
the Mötley Crüe playing in the background
mama,
I wanted to be a real American woman
but mama,
I am afraid of the dancing Shiva
I wanted so many things
Johnny, we are fleeting
Johnny, we are floating
Johnny, we are shaking out of fear
the whizzing by of a train
glorification, speed, energy of the machine age
our enlightened future
Oh, whiskey is the life of man!
Whiskey! O Johnny!
Oh, whiskey drove my old man mad!
Whiskey for my Johnny!
the nights were flaming with fire
the sky was blazing
home sweet home
I hear the sound of violins
where is Darwin when you need him?
just one more glass of moloko
but time is running low
play these games of love
(what are these games people play?)
O my brother, you have left me
in search of a better life
in search of something that you would not find
modern society staring at you with those googly eyes
the crowd, with their pitchforks and knives
your mama holding you by the ear,
yelling,
are you dumb?
mama, dragging you by the hands away from eternal love
crying, kicking, screaming
you wept all over the linoleum floor
beating your chest like the middle aged men
and singing Meatloaf I Would Do Anything For Love
you became fascinated with exotic animals
got eye surgery again
became religious
were a monk, gained silence (but it was worthless)
purchased a llama and toucan
and dressed in a cowboy hat,
trained the llama to ride round the dining table for amusement
O Johnny, is unrequited love the only eternal love that survives?
life is finite and fragile
we all live in fear and disguise
O mama, you don’t understand all the pictures have been washed in black
all the love’s gone bad
and turned my world to black
tattooed all I see,
all that I am
all I'll be, yeah
uh huh, uh huh, oh
and now I am walking the hallways
of these stinky malls
like the middle aged men,
dressed in a skull tee and baggy jeans
my 1000ft goatee grown out
listening to Pearl Jam,
kissing my own arm,
singing,
Uh huh, uh huh, oh
I know someday you'll have a beautiful life
I know you'll be a star
In somebody else's sky
But why
Why
Why can't it be
Oh why can't it be mine?
Doodoo-doo-doo-doodoodoo, doodoo-doo-doo-doodoodoo
Doodoo-doo-doo-doodoodoo, doodoo-doo-doo-doodoodoo
17.
I opened my arms and embraced the world like a brother
it put its arms round me back
we lived and stayed just
like that
and for the first time
the large, angry crowd let down their pitchforks and knives
with the flames finally burnt out
it was snowing softly,
there was the gentle indifference
the whole world is my friend
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These are wonderful.