I caught

a fiery breath

beneath the mantle of Hell

caught the Purgatory Express

bound for Wichita

I have no memory of my preceding life

Except bonnets and flowers

  bonnets and flowers

   of a young woman

 

 Try

me

   or 

   not

   sullen 

waves-

    never turn your back to the sea

       sand 

              and burnt red skin

                          don't fuck with the wildlife 

asshole

    the lead is in the water

            the concrete is failing

                mercury in the gills

      fins

      fish smart

              the signs say

     - I don't eat rock crab

            but my wife will-

who knows

                 is this fish ultra processed?

       cast your net wide

                    

  

        

 I thought I was a turtle

turned out I was a snake

I thought

 I had years to go

basking in the sun

slow and steady wins the race

But no 

-my snake wick was burning at both ends-

I am Ourobouros

I never did learn how to spell my name 

they 

chopped me up

and made flags

 I sleep 

a lot

  escape 

    and rest

       Black night

     so

What

  Si senor 

 No tilde

     Sorry

    Mistakes 

      were made

       no typist

    no Remington

 no Smith-Corona

      clacking

     bell dinging

       Head ringing

      Sorry

   senor 

   no tilde again

Senior Taco

      black olives in super burritos

at the corner South L

   and Fourth

       where the old man got his van impounded

driving without a license 

wrong lane

 I tried the tumble

fidget and grumple 

memory chez 

I slept with mumbles

  left brass in the bed

     I don't know what she said

        Blood and tears 

  Blood and fears

  I shooed the shied

she went on talking 

to no effect

  and was mad at my nosy ablutions 

    In a steam shower 

In Per Lachaise 

next to Modigliani

   she cried 

For a dead woman 

  recently buried

We rode to Montparnase

  With Walter and Celeste

      Shakespeare & Co

   and James Joyce

   

    

 I tried the pinhole

   pinhead uses pinhole

No Zippy here 

  pinhole on East Avenue 

Walking to his shack on Greenville

He scared the crap out of me

They burned his shack down

Because of all the rats

 funnel vision

    wracked and twerped

by every day wonder bread 

realities

Reaching for that golden ring

but you're on a merry go round

ticket purchased 

 Buy the ticket take the ride

   and the plastic tigers aren't smiling 

and the ostriches

don't look merry 

   sinister go round

     as you laugh and spin

   Round and round

round and round

  We all fall down

     

 

  Crumpin 

  my socks are clean

got no words

no time

   for your nonsensical misgivings 

Adolph Netanyahu 

   Who's been Gaza'd

bulldozers R Us 

Lebensraum

   they cleared Eastern Europe 

   took all their food 

      all their livestock

        Those they didn't kill 

   starved

and they are impervious to 

Irony

    the Irony Cross

       thieves hill

The place of the skull

       There you go again

 Betty White-Ford

drove her white 2025 Ford F-150 with tinted windows to her driveway and remotely unlocked the gate. She and her husband lived nine miles out of town. Their nearest neighbors were a mile away. The hills surrounding their 2500 sq ft home were bare except an occasional lonesome  tree and were lined from top to bottom with the tracks of cattle raised there for the last two hundred years.

'Who the fuck is that?'

Parked next to her driveway was a grey sedan and a man was standing near it. 

'What the fuck is he doing?'

She sat in the truck looking at him. There was nothing around them for miles so it was unusual and alarming to have someone parked next to her driveway. With her tinted windows the man couldn't see her. She rolled down her drivers side window. The man was on the other side. 

"HEY! What are you doing?"

The man held up a camera. 

"I'm taking pictures!"

"You're parked in my driveway. I want you to move."

"I'm not blocking your driveway."

"I don't want you here. This is my driveway. It's my PRIVATE PROPERTY. I want you to leave!"

She'd pulled a 9mm out of her purse and released the safety. 

The man just stared but he couldn't see her. 

"Why you gotta be so mean?! What do you get by being so mean?"

She didn't reply. She pulled in through her gate and shut the gate behind her. 

"All right just go on home now. Keep being mean and see what that gets you in life."

The man walked away from his car and was taking pictures. She sat where she was and watched him. He took several photos of the hills and then got back in his car and just sat there. 

She drove up the long driveway and stopped and she could still see him sitting there. 

'What is that motherfucker doing?!!'

She drove on up to the house out of sight of the car but she could still see him through the gate camera. He hadn't moved. 

Four or five minutes passed and then he drove off towards the pass. 

 

 Fogtillion 

    east bayer skyline mornings

w Charlie

  he's so happy to be out!

Loves his walks!

Sniffing and peeing certain plants and fences

   the birds down the hill are swooping and 

darting about chasing each other 

  springing out of piles of gathered deadwood 

Flying into the trees

  The fog causes the trees to drip like rain

and below them the grass 

is green and bursting 

    this is CALIFORNIA in early fall!?

GRASS IS DRY AND WITHERED!

  not here Fog Patrol

Keep movin!

   on the trail

back to the second half

  roads and yards and cars and workers

 

 Snark table

     with a fin

like a shark table 

  at the beach 

snark

Snark

 Snarkel 

Catch a snobster 

   boil him in scalding water

    Snootster 

Bootster 

BAM!

   The Snark Table tabla 

      The remedy is in Jersey City

          an Indian restaurants tandoori chicken

              dried and burnt and 

     delicious 

 For a friends 15th birthday 

He got his parents to take us to see a couple 

R rated films at a movie theater in the next town over.

The films were 'What Do You Say To A Naked Lady"

  -basically Candid Camera with nudity

and 'Everything You Always wanted to know about Sex (but were afraid to ask)'

After about ten minutes of the first movie the parents told us they were going to wait in the car. 

?!!

 The wilds 

  of nowhere

a decommissioned nuclear plant

  giant silver domes like a fifties movie

in the middle of nowhere

a whole valley of nothing

dried grass and cow pies

   giant pylons

  transporting thousand of volts watts ? Electricity 

A rotting house and a barn half fallen over 

   a broken ceramic goats head

broken sign for an old redevelopment 

 

 

 We went to a party at a friends house

His parents were gone.

They lived on Morgan Territory Road surrounded by bare sun baked hills and nary a tree for miles. 

At some point the road thinned to almost a single lane weaving on the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the hills and the entire valley. 

One guy would take a joint out of a giant bowl light it and then pass it. Pretty soon everyone had a joint. There were no girls at the party. We listened to an Emerson, Lake and Pakmers album called Tarkus about a giant machine tank armadillo battling flying dinosaur birds.