Friday, October 30, 2009

New Mexico

Theres something about the desert
that makes me feel so human
maybe its the complete lack of anything
human around I reply

You wonder about those cowboys
why they are silent and
why strength comes hand in hand

We all know John Wayne
without seeing a single movie
and we all know Clint Eastwood
(boys have smoked rolls of tar
to try and perfect those guttural
vowels and ended up with nothing
but lung cancer and a failed marriage)

And I've been branded like so many cattle
for you my sweet American expanse
a landscape with a horizon drawn
sharp with a T-square
and an imperceptible curve unruly like
the sound of Charlie Parker's horn,
completely lacking in pity

That is the deepest love
that will crush your soul
to a shard of sand
and blow you down to Mexico

where you will end up crushed
on the beaches of Acapulco
beneath the baby soft sole
of a sorority girl
or wedged in the leathery cushion
between the 3rd and 4th toe
of a waiter taking his smoke break

There are more grains than stars
and what's more the grains
have a better view

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Yes he said yes he said
what about a back to back word
that is a gin and tonic
Sunday morning

The sense the sense I get
the sense of patterning in
the bleached spot missing
on a spray on tan

The love love we felt
in that classroom you were
the legless donkey and I
was the magician sawing
the box in half drawing blood

Spattering on the carpet on
the carpet on the alabaster
statues in the hall and this
is my theater

If it makes you hurt if
it draws you close then
my words the mother hen
and it pecks pecks

until stopping once
once it stops the drugs
are gone and my benzedrine
nightmare unfolds melting hearts