Simmering Sickness

Do microwave ovens
take our genetically
modified foods, and
change them again
at the cellular level?
I need a microwave
that turns my dinner
tame to the natural
formula without
scientific alteration,
without artificial
preservatives--if you
see this particular
model at Buymart
or a big yard sale
I'm interested in
the original recipe
radiation that can
cook a campfire
style pot roast
without the silent
horror movie hum
where unknown
chemical decomp
meets unsuspecting
digestive tract in
scream of the
bombarded cells


Beyond The Defects

There are defects in the database
of public opinion. That's why I can't
trust Love's pink turtlehead perennials,
or fountain grass, nor the silver edged
iris, nor those fire-colored forget-me-nots,
but the Black Forest lily has become
my confidant, my compass, my map

of new beginnings, my new amazement
at the stars above her steps, her smile
across the perils of unclaimed possibilities,
my black shutters of shame fly off
like scarlet birds in high winds, high
wants. There are perfections in the pink
pampas pool of eligibles and I love.


Brickology

When the housing
project crumbled,
I used the bricks to
build The Economic
Justice Center tall
as the infallibility
of the faulted high


Altered Appearances

The poor are locked
into high risk working
and living environments
as if they were Schrodinger’s
cat while the CEOs keep
all the money claiming
to take all the risks as
lobbyists and politicians
go around the globe
cutting deals for them,
and may log more
frequent flyer miles
than their private
sector assassins


7 String

Death metal
dominatrix
wears her guitar
like body jewelry
jamming her
chords into
a sparking
spiritual form
of frenzied
candlelight
counterattacking
suicide’s submission
holds on half
her paying
public as
she sings
black rose
stem standards
for roaring
reasons beyond
her crematory
critic’s molten
misunderstandings.


Beyond The Postmodern Mounds
Dedicated to All The Guys Watching
Way Too Much Mindless TV

I drove along the landfill of pillows—
the worlds lost love archeological
dig site scoured by crows and ghosts
of families past. Once there were
kisses and kids, but now just ghost
thin men with torn mattresses strapped
to their backs scouring the ruins, rubble,
The lost lives as told by honest pillows


Sidewalk Candy
Dedicated to Kell Robertson
In Memoriam

Her blouse could
have been called
day labor lingerie,
as she dug hard
as the other men
pushing shovels—
made me think
that she belonged
in a Kell Robertson
poem or song
asking for coffee
wash downs
waiting for some
temp worker to
take her dancing
or give her his
Manuel made
straightjacket


Cranksters

Mythic meth residue
Surfs a neighbor’s wind

Unabated to your daughter’s
Open window ledge lungs

Metric vagaries matter
As hydrous ammonia men

Converge to cold medicine
Mounds cooking ingestible


America’s Coldest Case

The constant wars,
and corporate welfare,
siphoned off the people’s
money mountain keeping
the help, health, and vast
social improvements from
ever happening, as the
unexamined monetary
policy was just another
uncollected criminal
case file hidden high
in the unfathomable
dashabout to deceive


17 Cents A Pound

The counter attendant watches
the old rusty truck frame-windows
as shattered as the customers
recycling muddy aluminum cans.
This is Mark’s Iron and Metal, you
can grid search far off grounds
for carbon nanotube cables or
a neutronic fusion reactor, but
each time you creep in across
the parking lot grey it’s the
last spider cracked window on
the 35 Chevy pickup seemingly
knowing the can scavenger’s way


Highest Bidder Hit

The electromagnetic war
mongers roamed a mystical
Marsoid strip where
unintentionally absorbed
lightmail messages
about deep bat taxidermy,
bacterium documentary
biofilms, and wavelength
bombardment had been
intercepted for lightyears
by an unbalanced crew
previously studying thermal
equilibrium and the stress
hormones of humanoids
emitted before battle maze
engagement now focused
and equipped for the war
mongers overrunning to
requisition their computer
chip cryo-files for a rogue
particle radiation researcher
in high planetary demand
for imploding dwarf speed
bubble ships shootouts


Banjo Dan

He cut his first 30-bracket
aluminum rim right out of a
hubcap found in a milofield
off Missouri Hwy 13.
Just hybrid homework for
a banjo playing boy destined
Uncle Dave Macon Days
in Murfreesboro, Tennessee
where clawhammer hooks
& modern creativity creep
around each sacred mountain
of melodic frost, as mythical
bootleggers get their
jangling comeuppance or
hard lot fair pay for
exquisite cornliquor.
No musical matter, some
more depression era mug
shot men may escape a
straight razor romp through
custom shop strings only to
be gunned up good two
fast frets down on this
hazardous homemade
narrow stretch of maple
neck needed in the next
town now like the tenant
farmer wearily walking to
an obsolete oil field near
Sequoyah County,
Oklahoma in the next song's
smoldering breeze.


Findings

From the burnt monument
near my father’s grave

From my fury as an enlisted Marine

From the halls where I earned
a master’s degree

I have maintained a highly
developed sense
of magneto reception

I have been able to find

            everyplace,
            everybody,
            everything,

            except

                        the

                               zen
       
                                      bliss

                                               zone

                                                        of

                                                            belonging.

2 comments:

  1. Absolutely brilliant! Many of these poems contain enough horror to fit our impending Halloween.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love all these, especially "Highest Bidder Hit" and "Banjo Dan." The alliterations serve the music inherit in the poems and amplifies their intensity.

    ReplyDelete