He never went to Vietnam
  He's not Jewish
  Liam and me
  we're gonna fuck you up
    Damn it Walter

sometimes you eat the bar
   and sometimes the bar eats you

the fierce
  endemic
ritual
  sneezes loudly
     some still sacred cows are
pasturing in the violence
  great
   leave the broken stone walls
      battered
   and
provoked
   there's no shade
 there's no
rocks under the snakes -
 nothing is hidden
   that you don't already know

     
  

why
the wherewithall
   the somnambulist
     centers
the stony bridge
 seeks
and escapes
the narrow confines
   of his own doing
    yet still
     seems sleepy
    shakes the ice coffee
      the ice rattles
footsteps in vans
 worn and stickered
    reading the pavement messages
     "joey"
    "this city sucks"
     "jewish"
    a man runs through traffic, laughing
  

flowers didn't exist
  when there were dinosaurs
nor did donuts
or any number of things
 mammals were mostly small things
they took to flying
 birds are the only modern dinosaurs so
they say



 

Careering
   down a mountain side
    catch your breath
       and watch the sun
burn a hole in the
...
 


 

the bent freezer of Samadhi
   burgers and
roller coaster
  wait staff

PUM/POP ©2006

I guess the advocacy of tin cans as shoes was not a
defining moment in my circuitous
route to Happiness

Nonetheless, things being as they were, I was intrigued by
the notion of memorizing
a reasonable contextual event,
in my memory, as it were

Therefore I eased the brakes on the 2003 Astro van®
and thought about the White Rabbit (not a car)
It was called a Caribe in Mexico (the car)
-some unsavory mechanic in Puerto Vallarta
stole it from my aging father

I was there (in Mexico) to deliver the sad news
that his brain was getting smaller (physically)
He accepted the news and then attempted to move
a light bulb on the ceiling because it was "too close to the ceiling fan
and might shatter"
it had been in the same place for fifty years
I steadied the ladder as he removed the bulb

down by the
 sun
   drenched
 alligator
  tears
you cried
  I built a log house
  filled with desperation
  and bad jokes
  and bad poetry
it was nice for a while

i gotta keep moving
  there's no rain
    blues falling down
       i'm standing at the crossroads

I guess I sold my soul
  sometimes you just don't know
    he seemed like a nice guy
       his face seemed a little red

(beatrice has a phonograph
   but it ain't got no winding chain
      -we played it on the sofa
   we played it side the wall
   my needle has got rusty
   it will not play at all)

Sketchy

a real shit show
   back it up
 the streets are full
       don't talk like that-
    you memorized the entire poem
and would recite it for a nickel
   at the dinner table
       penny a minute
     listening to julian bream
play portugese arias
  still the pumpkin pie was homemade
as was the whipped cream
and coffee
after much wine
le blanc de blanc
  you stumbled out into the hot sun
to whisper to the lizards
   run run or i'll grab your tail
   

HARD PALATE ©1999

the ambitious ambiguity
        amphibious
           and amplified
                appealed
                   like an apple
                       apprehended
                           with aplomb

Cendrars NGFF

serial monotony
like a toad
      like  a road
    serial thoughts
         seemingly original
        serial thinking
 our thoughts
think us
 stuck on the road of thought
        the pattern
               repeats
                   in endless decay
simplicity and complexity
   so hard to see
we're the white lines or the dead armadillos
    'the middle of the road'
     stuck in the headlights
         danger
               bison crossing
                   the train derails
                   if it comes off the track
                   be a headlight
cool Colorado range
 head out
light out
   get off the road
         of decay
                               
 

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stone faced allegories
  I'm sleepy
 I hear noises
  boom
ka-boom
   oh, no, that was last week
  now, just the wind rattling the blinds
and the door
  sleepy
  sleepy
sleepy