i'll tell you
fingertip secrets
whispered
softly
inside

your blouse.

you taste like candy
and i am starving and swallowing your tricks
i dreamt of a greasy hotel and
a box to sleep in.
i am not a cannibal,
i am not a sky diver
& and i am not a pilgrim,
but i hunger for your body
and i'm falling for your holy curves.
i will hang from your window and dance in the sunlight
even though i am not a pink velvet curtain.
i am a garbage-collector poet,
fresh from the allabaster market
who has found the words once lost
in a dark fox hole
near the bend of a lazily flowing river.
all i need is a dime and a glass vase,
a short story and a wet cigarette.
i've come back to town--i climbed right out of that stop sign
standing on a shotgun bullet-holed volkswagon
with a 7 day hangover
holding burning grace in my hands and you say
"lead me to the garbage"
carrying with you a bag of soggy french fries
and i stop to show you a dying tulip,
and we watch as it floats into a cloud.
we'll hide all our money in a glowing furnace
and as i try to write this with a water logged pen
you show me pictures of shirley temple with her head in a noose.
my name is not moses, and i do not want to be remembered.

Mike Arms--1 day ago
write a few lines, I'll match em. Can you do it ?

david badgerow--14 hours ago
banjo strings frayed by broken fingernails
fistful of downers to sleep this night away
i open my eyelids out of dream, singing ladies'
eyes downcast thru fear & tobacco smoke
wake up, roll joint, get this day started.

Mike Arms--10 hours ago
being pure ether ain't no ****** picnic
this september looks right at ***** smearing
its pale arms reaching clearly into murderers
lungs groping mute celibate
if you beheld her whole form means silence

david badgerow--10 hours ago
lying back on the car seat, her eyelids heavy
she breathes diamonds and pure electricity
in an endless velvet desert, radio warbles over a hill
"oh, if i were young again, legs spread leaning against a table."
hard labor, aluminum tubes between
continental divide
echo chamber vibrations plunging
their tiny lamps in and out of her eyeball

Mike Arms--8 hours ago
Hard Luck Man
crossing floods
inanimate intelligence

is assassinated
they cross themselves
a world deaf

*** revolution
worst gamble
you remain

to be honest, I'm exactly what i wanted to be
i came here looking for the truth
and to find someone else out there
who holds something i want
more than anything else in the world,
someone else who breathes diamonds and electricity.
i have an audience now,
and its time i came to grip that
you all are more important to me
than any girl i've ever touched,
i'm ready to admit that.

every man for himself--am i a man or a self?
wearing long suspenders and
smoking my tonsils raw
a handful of questionable virtue
and inexpensive self confidence

i am no longer your folk hero,
but rather a jolly youth that hates degenerates
i'll fall out of my chair to keep
my ear to the ground
i must listen for change

yes, and between the mattress, shrieking
and the myterious column of faces
appears the fog in twilight, swallowing
***** tonk doors and vagabonds whole

i am a strange left handed moon man,
i'm high
i have that paralyzing lonesome feeling
i have nothing new to add, that feeling
i am an ambassador without *****,
almost pornographic

if i wake up,
i will kiss the lips of a thousand
raindrops

if i wake up,
i will feed ten thousand
starving children

if i wake up,
i will crush a thousand
dreams

if i wake up,
i will ring ten thousand
liberty bells

if i wake up,
i will light a thousand
green lightbulbs

if i wake up,
i will drink ten thousand
mingling rivers