Getting ready for bed
can be an arduous task.
There are things to turn off,
some to turn on.
flips and clicks
beep beep boop

A roommate of mine
used to say,
keep noisy things
out of the sleeping chamber:
computer,
radio, loud brain, tv

Only the necessary:
bed, clock, book, loved one

A massive sea beast came to die.
It lumbered up and lopped down
on the docks of a grey castled city.
It’s arc heaved as it breathed
the damp sea vapors.
A final groan echoed from
the core of its heaped flesh.
One bulbous eye peered dead
deep into the wet night sky.

The gulls found it first.
Then the fishermen,
while making morning rounds.
Then the young,
then the curious,
even the lords came
to mend the unsevered.

The beast lay still.

The gulls were scattered by
the fishermen’s discipline.

The young found new spectacle around them.

The curious began to plan.
Some saw the meat.
Some saw their signs.
Others wanted it destroyed,
burnt immediately.
“Let’s be done with it!”
they said.

The lords quoted and pointed,
like they do.

The beast did not move.

A merchant arrived.
He owned the docks.
He had dominion.
“It is mine!”
he declared
“Go home!”

Embarrassed, the lords cowered and mumbled.
The curious shouted and bared their teeth.
The fishermen took sides,
the young stayed quiet,
and the gulls watched
the flames from afar.

A rain came.

The merchant,
the lords,
the curious,
the fishermen,
the young,
and even the gulls
all sprinted for shelter.

But the beast . . .

Rain became storm.
The horizon was hazed
by the mighty torrent.

But the beast . . .

Storm became tempest.
The sea swelled and smashed
against the city’s north wall.

But the beast . . .

Tempest became wrath.
Scythes of lightning set ablaze
the flags atop the tallest towers.

But the beast . . .

And wrath became the toothed face of a new god.

But still the beast . . .
remained where it was.

Nothing was said, nothing was heard
as the rain beat down on the oily carcass,
washing it clean.

In December of '64,
40 years ago,
I was sitting in the Hacienda bar
on the South Side
of things
and here comes this cocker
spaniel looking
******* named
Roosevelt.

This man-man slides
in, slaps Sam Cooke on the juker,
then claps my clock with
a ******* billiards ball.
On the floor ****
tasting tooth..

It was my 33rd birthday,
but as God had-had it,
it was also Roosevelt's.
And that *******-man
had been drinking
bumpy face
and smoking jazz cigarettes
since 10 o'clock
in the morning.

Let's pause. Now. Now.
Now.
Now-you may be asking
yourself what a man like me
did to deserve this disrespect-

(Grins. Sips his drink.)

GOD is a white guy in his 30’s. GOD wears a royal blue Petsmart hat.  GOD has on a grey, short-sleeve button down shirt with a clip-on i.d. badge. GOD’s i.d. badge contains no letters or numbers, just a picture of GOD wearing an i.d. badge with a picture of GOD wearing an i.d. badge on it, and so on into infinity. GOD has cold sores on the corners of his mouth. GOD wears stone-washed jeans. They’re too short, but they have an elastic waist which is really comfortable, so it kinda makes up for the whole “too short” thing. GOD needs really thick “George H. W. Bush” glasses so he can open the rodent cages at work. GOD grew a mustache to hide the scarring from years of using old crusty disposable razors. GOD wears high-tops from 1998. They’re rather worn, but remarkably clean. GOD knows what to do with his hands, but not so much his fingers. GOD is in her 20’s. GOD is sad sometimes and she doesn’t know why. GOD nods. GOD once proved that the country of France does not exist. The fact that the country of France actually does exist makes the accomplishment that much more astounding! GOD is the dark and terrible Dragoyle! The first and last of his kind! GOD is a vicious, taloned beast born of the boiling pits of Borok-‘Tor! His reptilian wings expand across all of space and time and, with even the most gentle twitch, stir up a dense shear of molten flame scalding the skin of all Creation! GOD’s ancient black-diamond eyes, forged from eons of wrath and pain blast-melted in the great furnace that is his heavy heart, peer only inward, leaving him an uncompromising and limitlessly powerful but ultimately humiliating and repulsively weepy creature! GOD is All and All is king of all of All and all of He! GOD is the Unmirror. GOD is the final mathematic tragedy of what happens when we only ever try. GOD is the ghost of a dead thing that never was. GOD is the shattered, petrified shell of Pandora’s box cast down to the crackled crust of Pan’s windless desert. GOD loves you more than himself because GOD knows you are real. GOD farts on books! GOD sips on soup! GOD is a very serious actor in full make-up and costume doing an intense and superbly crafted representation of God, getting to the heart, the true reality of what it is to be God, the essence of Goddom, but in the end fears losing control and holds back, resulting in not genius but blasphemy! GOD masturbates to the Salt-n-Pepa 'Shoop' video! GOD caught you ******* to the Salt-n-Pepa 'Shoop' video! One time GOD got so drunk he forgot you were in the room! GOD invited you to the event “Max’s Karaoke Birthday Bash”! GOD knows you, but isn’t in know with you! GOD is 8,9,12,5,9,4! GOD is . . . ! -hha-hha- GOD is heard breathing. GOD breathes like you do when you’re asleep. At the start of each breath there is a very poignant yet very subtle lip-smack sound. The breathing is steady, never changing pace. Like that of Darth Vader only intentionally ridiculous. Like that of a ticking metronome only . . .  lifeful, which is a brand new word.

Our thoughts of time travel
burnt-up when Junior
sang The Blues.

Foreign creature.
***** voodoo muppet.

His spaniel’s moan,
a call to mud,
digging deep like
“woo-woo-woo”

Smacking the past in the chin,
he dipped a laden lead melon
in a barrel of black molasses.
A slow lowering,
tender sinew slackened.
Unclawed-
the orb traversed his finger tips
nicking his nails on the way earthward.
The black drink parts then
floods back where it once was,
coating the cold round load
as it sank down below
the Mason-Dixon line.

Junior gurgled in slow-mo
dipped his Gibson
and stirred the stew,
made the black brew dribble over
the barrel’s shoulders
and puddle in the thick sticky
corners and cracks of
the Juke’s oak planks.

He fished it out then
-bladaplowplow-
-WHAP!!-
split that melon in half,
no knife, they used the trap,
then Junior took his break
to take a nap
in Baton Rouge.

When I last tasted her,
her lips were still
a mysterious heavy.
A glossed *** shine
and her proud mother's grin
held me helpless-
a lioness jawing her cub.

A cowardly actor I was,
depicting a breathful, firm
man bored and unmoved
by this no more than textbook
show of affection.  No.
She's mastered that text book and,
by chance, written a few of her own.
My theatrical mask was shattered fast
by the calculated clumsiness of her
apricot kiss,
revealing my boyish face
as the answer to the question,
who now is her masked man?

And still,
being a scientist not a philosopher
She unearths more enigmas than
solutions leaving her colleagues
balanced on the fence, waiting
in merciless anticipation for her
theories to be proven.
But the essence of a theory
is that it's unprovable.

I, being human, need only
answers to questions,
her questions
which she insists I answer.
For she knows I will always answer them for her.

She, also being human,
needs nothing else from me.
So she walks away.

Mozart changes the color
of eyes from deep blue
to see green.
Work with me and I'll
summon up everyone's
artificial ancient animals.

Sleek thin machines
whizz with mechanism
pumping out more and more
machines to make machines
to make metals
for more machines.
Shine chrome greased
and spinning while
white coated retrievers
pace exactly random,
occasionally checking
their clip boards.
Machines whizz on,
we could tune a cello
with their perfect hum.
We could tune a tuning fork
with their perfect hum.
Machines for materials
for machines that melt
and remold old machines
to new.  Born machines.
Wet black discs
slide clean downward
only to spiral
upward again.

Clarinet to oboe,
slurred crescendo
back down in again.

Then forward:
Back,
Up,
Left,
and left music
back down in again.

"Where's our end?"
and back down in again.

"I see the top!"
and back down in again.

"Talk to me, please!"
and back down in again.

"Throw me a float!"
and back down in again.

And sink, and sink
back down in again
back down in again
back down in again

And Now . . .

as you figure
Out how I
Got in . . .

(don't forget)

at some point
You will have
To figure . . .

. . . How I Got Out.