the merchant of Tau
in his fortress of sand
burying his thoughts
beneath a wind
bleaching the fence
that
separates
the sea
and the sand
bleaching his thoughts
with red death
and willfully
foregoing
a minute amount
of
hope
in the time machine
his sand clock ticking
and his memory wrung clean
kicking the acre of black boot
reminders
to stand at the vessel
to sing when spoken to
to sling a stone in Gabriels
face
and say is that scorpion for me
or you

tempt me oh lord
to brave satan's
cool visage
when the sweat is pouring
from my brow
for I am lost in the city
seeking a book
that no one has written
and never will

but fate plays a merry game
of ring around the posey
and we can shop online
and still be calm and poised

The hither lands speak
for the ages
subdivisions and new malls
our pathways are blocked
now with Ford Taurus
and Lincoln Mercury

we use the lost gods
to sell cars
but we have found war
is affordable

and I had no recourse
but to set sail
I could not
swim back

If I'd left the door open
while smoking
I'm not sure how these things are related:
I was given a poster for a candidate
to put in the window but no,
that's not it
we're talking about time's insufficient
ability to revive a certain type
of mannered effectiveness AND
the 1939 Yankees

a brusque burden
to a rolling stone
is answered in spades
marimbas by Amyl Nitrate
and Robert Frank
made a film in 1972
called Cocksucker Blues

I'd almost forgotten;
the lights down the arroyo
flashing lights
down near the lake

as the layers
of thought are
removed
the tears
at the skin of the
onion that your father wanted to eat whole at
christmas dinner
are revealed

slapdashery
extolling the toll
of non invective victuals
vituperatively invincible
I'm not looking a for handout here
but I can't get past the opera star
of course this means nothing to you
even less to me

a poor donkey
wandering the spanish
night

I had run out of potions
pushed all aside
tried to find meaning
in cereal boxes
Ahh the Lucky Charms
magically delicious!

I waited for the clouds to pass
to sad to think of
what might be left
So I in sudden thought
did see
an antelope with eyes for thee
and would I care to dance she said
Hare lip i screamed and ...

If I had a hammer
for every nail that found it's way into christ's
tissue
I'd be born asunder
rended mute
and frozen to the spot
that God in his infinite wisdom
would choose

post-glitterati
redundancies diffused in an arrythmnic
condensing microbial solution
basted for a minute
and left to wait in line
storied she swept her lipstick across
her mouth like a kangaroo
in the outback
and feasting on heat treated animal flesh
she coughed up an opinion on Truman Capote
"He's evil"
What? he wrote a book about between this and that
and some chameleonesque tales
but never mind she was being spurious and
evasive again
luckily she always came back after one of her
sorry tirades about altitude
and the effects of subdermal tissues in deep water
I fixed another martini and lay back on the veranda
waiting for a reported large rain cloud to appear
she burst into tears when she heard Truman Capote had died

i've left the darkened
woods
the archangel spoke
smite not thy brain
for thouest hath not brain cells
to waste
and seemingly good advice
I took the long bow and
towards the evening shore did
find
a toothsome hag
"Beware the morrow's eve
twill bring luck ye shall not wish for"
so I thought I should buy a lottery ticket
unfortunately
the secondary defense was impregnable and nothing was on
any of the other channels
I decided to see what was up on Facebook
the doorbell rang
I ignored it.

as the frozen
settlers left their
pre fab igloos
i was left with
a thought: do the birds leave the prison of the sky?
and then I remembered birds lie a lot so it wouldn't help
to ask
of course, settlers lie also. in fact they have no
pre fab igloos
and they aren't frozen
Damn lying settlers!
such was the fate back in
the old days
before the delorean cars
and Dan Fogelberg
back when mushroom clouds
were still a good way
to spice up an evening meal
and pepper spray
was made by Nabisco
We've learned alot since then;
Jesus was actually not a carpenter
but he did lay wall to wall carpeting
and was known to do mudding for wall board
in the sub divisions in and around
old Bethlehem township
As science progresses we are actually able to see clearer into the past then we
can our own here and now. Amazing!
George Washington, in fact, did lie quite a bit. Especially to Martha.
Darwin never really went to the galapagos islands. This was determined by igneous deposits in the pre-cambric shirt dept of a 1985 JC Penney's.
Martin Short was actually one of the founding fathers.
And Lionel Barrymore never actually existed.

We watched the sentinel light on the other side, passing the time smoking.
No three to a match lest one of us end up hit with a tungsten projectile. Strange that this would still be true. Since the colonization we've found many similarities with the past.
Lepzig says he's been trying to keep a list. I think he has trench mouth or trench foot, I don't remember which, on it. Also the three matches. Dysentery, fever, foot rot(maybe that's trench foot) anyway he seems to think there's not much difference between what we are doing and WW1 two hundred years ago. I say horses, where are the horses? And he counters what, we're living beings fighting robots and droids- same thing. And I guess he's right. Funny thing about robots- after a while they break down in the mud. But they can still kill you. It might be sitting there for six months and if you walk by it'll blast you. But there are certainly a lot of them that will never harm anyone again except perhaps by leaking their infernal bio-oil fluids into the water. Rudy says I-Corp has a vast filtering system before they send out the fresh water to the troops but I don't know-sometimes it doesn't smell so great. Charlie got flambe-d last night. Torched the whole left side of his servo suit. Luckily we got him out in time. He should back on the line in a few weeks.
We got cigarettes yesterday. So that means we're going out soon. It's a sure sign we'll be sent out. As much as we love the smokes we dread opening the supply drop and seeing them.

what I got so far from Otra Vez

Ernesto's meanderings
hunger and asthma
letters to his mother
and being difficult to enter
countries
no great sense of linearity
mate mate
a kilo here a kilo there
and photography and talk of
personalities, politics, poetry,
and character in less than a sentence
description
somehow money and studying
more photography
and more asthma
now he's married
and a description of chichen itza
I've started skimming ah well

the lazy beast
furrows in a wrinkle in time
scanning the multiple universes
for second thought
and breathing in
and exhaling deep smiles
of downward expectations
and meandered revisions
promulgating a time/swerve on
a mortal plain
pushing aside his eggs and bacon
reaching again for dark roast with skim
milk and wondering about the barrista's new glasses
"ah yes Wisconsin. The Badgers"
he sighs and a great paw swipes at the bacon

fergettin
the forgotten
borrowed
on a whim
breezing to the
finish line
I quarreled
and quivered
shook the
water from my back
bent under the load
and tortured myself unnecessarily
was not kind
to myself or the agent of god
and broke the boundaries
which are unspoken
punished with
furies
lashed to the mast of
my own bed
sleeping through nights
of shuttered dreams
and windy nightmares

as I operate heavy machinery
under the influence
of blood pressure meds with a GIANT
drowsy eye
and Statins and water pills
one of them says not to consume Grapefruit juice
or Grapefruits
another says it makes me sensitive to sunlight
so the things I need to avoid:
heavy machinery, Grapefruit, sunlight.
my sister used to accuse me of being a narcissist but I think I was
just smoking too much pot (to escape)

Florentine barrage of EM Forster
leather clad dueling pistols
embracing the David in Plaza Vecchio
but preferring Moses by Donatello
paintings by Claude
and a thousand religious scenes
I'm wandering outside the Ufizzi after
being kicked out due to a "general strike" for the
last two hours before closing
the Leonardo cartoon
Mary, Anne and jesus and john
that's a big cartoon

Goya
Velazquez
(bellockweigh)

Gypsies in Rome try to get their hands down your pants(pockets)
cats in the Colisseum
thumbs up

wandering at night through the winding streets
of Naples windows open people everywhere
wood burning pizza ovens
look out for vespa thieves
they'll drag you down the street

the cops are crooked too
with a shrug

The american consul seriously told us not
to take candy from strangers
probably good advice but this was thirty years ago.

meanwhile a basket of starving kittens mewling and sickly by
the interstate
so profoundly sad
cars blasting by

off to Capri!
the blue grotto
Tiberius

Tyco Brahe? the Danish astronomer with the bronze nose, did he live there?

We nearly got shot by a pheasant hunter on the hill by
the church
where they had so kindly invited us to
join their outdoor luncheon
The hunter ran off down the hill with the live pheasant under his arm

forge valley forge
RIGHT NOW RIGHT NOW
the children cried when they learned their
Halloween candy had been eaten
while they slept

as the fast of weary sighs
unremarkable in their uniformity
scaled back from
unrealistic goals
and untoward glances
from a computer monitor
HC has been accused
again
of untoward advances
and I feel like going outside for a smoke.

as whirring
noise
the dervish
destroys
amaru
Tupac amaru
from
concentric
whistles
burnt
offering
in mummified
hay
stalling for time
in
between the element of the look
in the thiefs eyes
cold as it were
from the cold
from the mountain cold
from the goddamn mountain cold
and eating snow
will only get you
so far and frostbit lips
will only get you so far
but the gun metal is cold
again
and a drink of whiskey
from a cracked glass

from the echolalia
echolation
echolocution
echolocation
identification of object from
sound waves
the marvel comic book hero
what was his freakin name
Daredevil
blind superhero
like Zatoichi
the blind masseuse
he can HEAR what number the dice will land on
Or Raymond Burr Old Ironsides, no he wasn't blind-
just in a wheelchair
did they have any blind detectives?
Blind Mannix?
Blind Rockford?
Blind Columbo?

Blind dolphin
detective speed racer
Go Speedy!
blind monkey
in a race car

my pumpkin has a mustache
actually it's the invisible man
pumpkin wrapped in muslin
with yellow ray bans
and a blond mustache
it was made based on my likelihood
likeness
(at least the mustache)