Cottonball girls with Q-tip legs dance gently
On Epsom salt beaches
As waves of rubbing alcohol lick their feet.
Father, let us run among them.
Let us clean and clear our faces in their festival of mirrors.

We shall rebury the awful jewels I found
With the failed veiled assassin's prescribed directions.
Rx marks the spot.

You may keep the map, for it keeps you in knowledge.
I do not wish that curse upon my conscience.
You may keep the knowledge, for it keeps you in power.
I do not wish the crown in that course.

Molten

Molten


Forty milligram
Molten
Sterilehappy

Hollywood, oh Hollywood.
Oh Hollywood, oh Hollywood, oh Hollywood.
It's the end of the roadwork.
Your timepiece has come,
And it's a swatch.
Notch one more crotch on your bedposter -
That glossy, ten five twenty-two eight
That I have to pass every day on my work to drive.
Five days an hour, eight weeks a day
Hollywood, you make it so!
You make so,
And you make it so easy.

But no more.
I'll not have it.
I'll not have your scientists of magic.
I'll not have your tragic matches
Acting as hatched from practiced scratch,
Far detached from my actual batch.
I'll not latch.

Holly, I enjoy woodburning,
And I'll be ****** if I let you talk me into
Buying wood in sizes I don't need.
"It's bigger and looks better, and it can be yours!"
Well, so can the forest, Holly.
So can the sticks and bits and wild peach pits.
All for free, all for me,
All without fashion, death, or ****
(Unless I choose to use them).

Hollywood, you are my tenth grade English teacher.
You should be teaching math,
But you been subjected to so much juvenile crap
That you sell your contributions
As though they were miracle cures for a dying language.
BUT.
You're in a rut.
You don't know it
(Most 70-year-old virgins don't),
But you are.
Go on, get ******.
You believe in formulas.
Hollywood, this movie
(Yes, the one I'm typing and you're reading),
This movie would never make it in your classroom.
It has no meter,
Just a hint of rhyme,
And very few explosions sixty minutes in.
If I can't mumble it to a children's tune,
I get neither "A" nor award.

Forgot
Soul of dew
Hurled.

Dried by midday.
‘Tis a sensible hour.

He is the one who is called
Forgot.
I am the one who is called
Soul of dew.
I am the one who is now
Hurled
Into an evanescent being,

Only to dry
Much too soon.

Forgot soul of dew, hurled.
Soul of dew
Hurled, Forgot was too late.

Johnny in the garden
Cut his hair real close
Now
With the mower.

Says he's got a fever,
But you don't believe,
Yeah,
He's a liar.

Spanish Inquisition
Rocking through his heart
It's
Trying to find that

Very special section
Lets him love again.
No,
We can't have that.

Let's drag him down.

Shards of glass and pistols,
Mirror in the face,
We're
Out of focus.

Dart him in the eye.
Dart him in the eye.
Dart him in the eye.

Johnny's in the attic,
Hanging by a bulb.
He's
Left the light on.

Music's running over
Running out of time
See
How he's running.

Let's tear him down.

But we don't play that anymore.
Johnny's got a different score.
It's a song of roaches
And cathedrals that he sings -
An ode to ***** scatterings.
A white ribbon on his right *******.

Cigarette in limbo,
Space between the ears.
Dust:
Mite-specific.

Books of strings and theories
Numbers on the shelf
Un-
Finished papers.

He's so fine.
He's so fine.
He's such a

Passionate disposer,
Decomposing you.
So
Decomposing.

Let's yank him down.

Johnny, in the innards.
Lot of help, those ribs.
How
Much protection?

Never in a million
Needle in the hay
One
Into many.

Brother John is dying,
Agonizing pain-
Ful-
Ly apparent.

Choke, choke, choke.
Dance, dance, dance.
Chance, chance, chance.

Johnny Roach is down.
Johnny Roach is down.

That line is shorter than this line.
That line is longer than this line.

This line is shorter than that line.
This line is longer than that line.

"You know, I used to be good at math,"
He says,
A cigarette cradled in his fingers,
Spilling ash on his blue jeans.
He rearranges himself, removes his jacket -
It's much too hot for leather now -
And reveals a Dean t-shirt.
Too cool for school, I suppose.

"The rules just got too crazy, too specific.
Too dependent and tangled.
Well, too much so for the effort I was willing to exert."
He's frank, I'll give him that.
How does he make utter sloth seem so innocent?
Too cool for school, I suppose.

He calls himself a Methodist.
Not like that, though.
He says he's just figured life out.
He means the hows, not the whys.
The stops along the tour of personal success.
A Methodist.
Too cool for school, I suppose.

As it Is
Was,
Were that Is
To be a
Has Been.

Lonely Jazz Man.
Man of Jazz.
Man for Jazz.

The solitary piano player
Rattles off old standards
In the hotel lobby
As the busy patrons pass.

He breaks between numbers,
But hears what he expects -
No applause.
That's because
He is out of his time.
The place is wrong.

He plays for no one,
Even though he is not alone.
He plays for no one,
Not even himself.

Nimble fingers -
Blood to
Black and White.
Bled by
Green.

Hide-a-ways and drive-a-ways
And Solitary Spots in between.
I say
"Robots are good looking
When they wash and do your cooking
All the time."

You say
"Poems are the best
When you can put them to the test,
And they still rhyme."

But they don't have to rhyme.
At least, I don't think they do.

Of hidden drives and allergies
A tall hedge is like a violent sneeze,
And you break the windshield of a car.
You break the windshield of an oncoming car.

To the dusty sneakers of the world:
Get wet, get *****, get defiled.
I say
"Problems are fantastic
When you wrap them up in plastic,
And the answer's there."

You say
"Plastic wrap is pointless
Unless pointedly anointed as a joie de guerre."
How morbid, Claire.

I don't have to win.
I don't have to be the best.
I don't have to get the girl.
I don't have to.
I don't have to.
I don't have.
I don't have to be.

My day of labor,
Spent ill at ease,
Is drawing to a close.
My sleeping neighbor,
The winter freeze,
Has begun to lift his nose.

The last dregs of sunlight
Seep weakly from the sky.
"Come comfort us," they seem to call,

"As we descend to die."

"How terribly conceited,"
I in my rest did say.
An old man grant the setting sun
The cosmic right of way?

My day of errand
Spent but to give
Amongst the earth and sod,
Draws not a fair end.
For I must live
To see the death of god.