maple-cured, smoked, rawhide hands,
tarantula hands bulldozing rice onto
tines like an icebreaker ramming through

glacial bergs, Holly
Golightly on the tv, on
mute, and oh those hips,

that figure, in that black dress,
banana hands cracking Alaskan king
crablegs and ******* the juice and eating

the meat, legs spindly and hairy
and soaked in butter, dripping,
liver cooking, roasting, sloshed on gin,

cribbage board patinaed
in dust, he eats his liver, downs
another gin, cracks another leg, crab

hair caught in his teeth, Holly talking about
getting the mean reds but he can’t
hear it, his luck run out,

his luck a prize from a box of ******* Jack,
and the snarling throb in his head,
cinderblock face, cinderblock house,

3-day-stubble, has he had enough (to drink)?
not by the stubble of his
chinny-chin-chin,

liver is gone, crab is gone,
so he eats the eyes,
dowsing his ******* Jacks

in gin, yesterday wine-in-a-box
and Cheez-****, sprayed right into his
unbrushed maw, a one-person wine-

and-cheese fête classy as it gets,
he’s Mister High Society,
Cheez-**** crust in his stubble,

and a cinderblock CRASHES to the floor and it’s
lights out, and Holly, still no one
to hear her, saying

she’ll never let anyone put her in a cage.

I was relaxed, and deep in thought
The type of talk that silence brought
When just in earshot it rocked,
tick tock
tick tock
"Must be a clock"
I told myself and resumed my thought

Though as the seconds passed I could not,
Despite the will with which I fought
Do to its incessant knock
Tick tock
Tick tock
I searched for the clock
Unable to find the train I sought

I grew more and more distraught
With each and every tick and tock
That find the clock, I could not
As the silence grew more fraught
With the knock,
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
I knew the pain of Lancelot

On and on it ticked and tocked
I cursed at the unseen dreadnought
It no longer merely mocked
But each and every tick and tock
Became an unseen onslaught
TICK TOCK
TICK TOCK
T'was 11 o'clock,
When my heart felt the gunshot

Though the shots I could not block
And on and on the bullets poured
Further into the fray I bored
Each foot a cinderblock
Weighed by war
I slowly walked
Tick Tock
Tick Tock
How I'd make it answer for

Alas
With little blood left to speak for Desperately I implored
"Restrain your hands that caused such gore;
We need not fight evermore!"
But when I heard the ceaseless knock
Tick tock
Tick tock
I new my words had been ignored
And slowly collapsed to the floor

****** and bludgeoned when I hit bed rock, I had still found no clock
But tick and tock it had forgot
The church bell rang t'was 12 o'clock,
Though mortal wounds the seconds wrought
I no longer was distraught
And as I lay in the hemlock
It occurred in my last thoughts
I would miss the beating knock
tick..., tock...
tick..., tock...

My father is an old truck
Sunbleached red

Breathes broken bottles
A faulty catalytic converter throat
All the smoke trapped inside

But the nicotine helps his brain function

Cinderblock sturdy
But skinny
A single pillar holding the roof up

A man built in a time when you had to tell things it was time to die
Leave them in a field somewhere and forget about

How do you write a love poem to a car of a man
Built in a time without airbags?
A car of a man who crashed with you inside so many times
You learned about rebuilding from experience
From trial and error

And how do you forgive a man who can no longer tell you he’s sorry?

Trucks
Don’t feel
Don’t give up
Don’t hurt you on purpose

Sometimes something inside just breaks
And no one catches it
And maybe you crash
Break a nose
Black an eye

As far as I know
I am not a broken man
But I’ve learned where all the parts go

And if I am my father’s son
A mechanic more often than a car maybe
Then I will be fine

The truck is dying
And beyond repair

You forgive it for that
It is old and past its time

And maybe it can’t say that it’s sorry

But there is a field somewhere that you plan on leaving it
To collect weeds
And rust
And be forgotten

So you forgive it

§
Battle of New Britain

Lieutenant Jim G Paulos led elements
of G Company in a savage counterattack
that ousted the intruders supported
by Lieutenant James R Mallon’s improvised
platoon of H/11, which remained
to help man casualty-depleted line.

Improvise (OED):
One: to compose on spur
of the moment; to utter
or perform extempore

two: to bring about or get up
on the spur of the moment;
to provide for the occasion

Three: […] hence to do anything
On the spur of the moment

Improvised platoon
Df James R Mallon:

When most of your platoon
lies dead in the pumice sands
of the South Pacific-Japanese
bushido bullets tear flesh and spirit
out of the corporeal—husks of limp
limbs you fought to defend and they you
Japanese mortar fire, machine and small-gun fire
fifteen yards in advance of the wire
how do you bring about or get up
the courage to grab whoever—
the nearest marine
talk through ears drums burst by mortar succeeding shockwaves
forget for the time the men
you spent months training
sipping beers in Australia
laughing over bar stool drunken jokes
men you shared your dreams about after
away from the mosquitoes
away from the constant moisture
rain rain rain day and night
soaking through fatigues through skin through bone
never enough sun to dry out
air already saturated
sweat or seawater—it is all the same
now you must find new men—men you have seen,
but do not know the same as your own platoon
their life and yours in each others hands
alone in a group of stranger-brothers
always faithful
keep composure in the face
your buddy’s entrails pouring into the pumice sand
hence to do anything
on the spur kicked into your side
to block what no man should ever be asked to see
and do what you can in the moment
to save your division from enemy fire.

§
Cyclops Black Eyes

One summer e’ening drunk to hell
He stood there nearly lifeless
A gal sat in the corner
And it’s how are ye ma’am and what’s yer name
And would ye like a drink?
She looked at him, he at her
All she could do was accept one

And rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ she’ll go
Through his pair of blue eyes

She knew not the pumice beaches and streams
Sometimes walking sometime crawling
amongst blood and death ‘neath a screaming sky
Where Cyclops black eyes waited for him
Was it birds whistling in the trees?
Always the Cyclops black eyes waiting for them
So they give the wind a talkin’

And a rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ he’ll go
Away from those Cyclops black eyes

And the arms and legs of other men
Were scattered all around
Some cursed, some prayed, some prayed then cursed
Then prayed and bled some more
All he could see were Cyclops black eyes looking at him

No Cyclops black eyes waiting for her
And a rovin’ a rovin’ a rovin’ she’ll go
And never know what saw his pair of blue eyes

Could she forsee in that pair of blue eyes
Decades he’d spend drunk to hell?
Sometimes walking sometime crawling
Rovin’ and rovin’ away from those Cyclops black eyes

§
Colt 1911**

I was nineteen when I learned
my Dad his father’s Colt 1911 pistol

when Dad was young he
and his brother found
the gun—hidden in the rafters
of the cinderblock basement
their father built; magazine bullets and pistol
on one rafter—separate, except
the bullets lived in the magazine

my dad and uncle, like any
young boy, were fascinated
by the pistol; though too young
to feel and know the power
and danger in the cold blue metal

when their father and mother were
away—home alone they snuck
to the hand-laid basement
reached around the rafters
through years of dust and darkness
feeling for the colt and mag
scrape-click-pop—ca-chick
round in the chamber—“freeze!”

so played boyhood fantasies
cowboys & Indians
cops & robbers
with a lethal toy


so my dad kept it a secret
locked in a tarnished steel box
locked through the trigger guard
magazine separate
four silver, dimpled, bullets rolled round between
their queue and releaser

I was struck by the weight—heavier than I expected—I felt the years of use polished into the wood grips—thick hand grease sweat blood humidity sand saltwater gun oil mud tears life saved and taken.
At the bottom of the wood grips ticked notches deep in the grain—both sides—different numbers; “What are these?” I asked running my finger across the nocth-ticks feeling their depths their absence consciously carved with his next best tool—kabar: workhorse that can baton through five inch diameter logs, machete through two-finger branches, dig a hole to burrow while machinegun fire mows down jungle; easy to sharpen, keeps an edge; full tang to hammer temples or tent posts

“I don’t know; the only thing we have is the lore.”

fI counted seven
the number the magazine carries
eight total, if you have one in the chamber

You have to commit to fire
a 1911, the cliché: don’t pull
the trigger—squeeze
is how the 1911 fires—a button
fits the crotch of the thumb and index finger
opposite the trigger on the handle;
to unleash the hammer then
lead, squeeze the two—firm
tight at the target; no shot fired
by accident—no Marvins with the 1911.

the year is two thousand and fourteen and something isn't right

maybe it's related to the fact that there is no more history on the history channel

and the only thing the discovery channel wants to investigate
is the depth of our bank accounts

the word 'integrity' has become archaic. obsolete. unnecessary, simply, because nobody has any anymore.

whatever happened to learning for the sake of learning?

who was the sick greedy ******* who decided that it was okay to charge money for knowledge?

our youth are being put into ******* for the knowledge necessary to survive in this society

of inequality.

in the 21st century slaves toil away in classroom as well as coal mines.

and those who dare to resist the path of post-modern peonage laid before them are doomed to a life of minimum wage mundanity or constant criminal risk.

there is something to be said about the quality of our reality if we are constantly seeking mind altering substances to escape it.

i too have become a slave. and a large portion of those who read this message have as well.

our souls signed away at the dotted line, sealed within great paper phylacteries adorned with the sinister sigils of Sallie Mae.

the chains of our debt will never let go of us. even upon death our progeny will have to hoist our burdens on their shoulders.

and for those of you who know not of our *******, i bid you welcome, like a Brother greater than I once said:

"welcome to the united snakes, land of the thief, and home of the slave. the grand imperial guard, where the dollar is sacred and power is god."

if your total net worth rests below a cool few million i suggest you stay away.

silly me. silly me, silly me, silly me. after all this country was built on generation after generation of genocide, **** and fraud, codified into the laws we hold so tight and so high, how naive was i to even expect civil discourse and equality from a naturally sinister state?

cloaked in the fog of pure ignorance we the people paradoxically bear the weight of our fraudulent federal government on our backs while simultaneously parasitically depend upon it.

parapets and gaudy domiciles all built with the blood sweat and tears of the disenfranchised. soft music composed of the screams of children dying from predator drone hellfire missiles lilts through the hallways.

news flash: the illuminati and the reptilian overlords are not trying to control your mind.

this is not about pineal gland calcification and third eyes but about the systematic disenfranchisement and subjugation of every man woman and child in this unfortunate nation.

they impose harsh sentences on small time drug crimes and outsource our only sources of economic stability.
left with no upward mobility, we then resort to any means necessary to simply survive.

'the world is your oyster.' they say. and they conveniently fail to mention the fine print which emphatically states that you may only possess the oyster shucking knife if you are white, male, and upper middle class.

this is not about checking privilege and white guilt. this is about the way that this ****** up world works. about the sinister cogs turning behind the scenes.

and if you dare raise your voice in resistance you'll find yourself staring at cinderblock walls, spools of barbed wire, reinforced steel bars, and armed guards for the rest of your sad life. your enclosed inmate existence making the coffers of the prison-industrial complex even deeper.

some say we should raise our fists instead and fight. and i say to them good luck fight the world's most technologically advanced military in its own home territory. Guerilla warfare and armed millitias stand about as good of a chance and gorillas armed with sticks and stones when the enemy possesses satellites that can see your face from orbit.

and i hope you don't mine being despised by the public of the modern world when you're slapped in the face with that dreadful catch-all term that is 'terrorist'.

but we can't just sit here and let the vines of greed asphyxiate our vitality away.

so herein lies the eternal question that i pose to you:

what are we to do?

Her laughter pumps the gas, dumps the clutch shakes and rattles from each intersection
Her wet feet leave monster tracks long damp claws arching across the cement
Her hair grows brambles collecting thorns and twigs with the best of bushes
Her senses, corvid, snatching up dropped coins, pencils, paperclips
Her tongue unfettered, butterfly breath reels with snips of story and songs
Her eyes hold drops of honey, sticky sweet lashes follow the sun
sunflower cheeks blush cardamom on yellow velvet
glow butterfaced with dandelion kisses

Rough, regular under hand, stubbornly slate, unchanged unmoved.
if her soul is a garden there is a cinderblock there
holding down the sunflowers,
along with the grass at her core, it grows roots,
     but no moss.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

I.

He says Call me Mr. G.
G for Gore, Greed, that Green.
An atypical stoner
with hair wetter than his mouth.
With more ******* than a pound,
he says, With an understanding of
all the suffering in the global delusion
that is the Earth. Mr. G, his name.

Oily brunette, Mr. G., would smoke
Marlboro Green Blend -- menthol --
and spit shot out between stained lips
after each extracurricular exhale.
The saliva would land, tremendously,
and puddles of Rasta shooting stars
would lay, stretching across concrete galaxy.

Hazel eyes invaded and shamed him,
for he wished to be green, like life,
but only envisioned a contradiction:
death (see nature),
for which he learned to embrace, stoically,
like a shepherd of an endangered breed
meant to die among skewed perspective.

II.

This house could be mistaken
for a cinderblock purgatory;
between color and absence of,
eternal and temporary.

A raptor laughter purged the tension --
he abided by no accommodation of civility.
As smoke followed his hyena howl,
the landline lay suddenly of purpose.

Resin raided the clunky, black buttons;
a voice was whispered like a blue phantom:
*******' cheese, pineapple, pepperoni
-- no, extra ******' cheese, extra pep --
Sure, add some more pep with your driver:
he, she -- honestly, man -- they better have
pep-in-their-******-step-you-feel?

Minutes passed like sentient matchbooks
dropping towards a skeletal fire.
G threw the phone across the room
and, like a disenchanted drunk dance,
his words wobbled over each other,
I ordered a 'za, a pizza for the layman.
About thirty, probably thirty-one
minutes, that is.

Passing me the flower-stitched ****,
I ****** in one, maybe two, three,
blasts that I swore
had some sort of nano-insects
bite and burrow into the holes
of my sponge for a throat.

Wringing my rubbery neck,
watching my words leave my toothy cave,
I found out that G doesn't believe in beer.
Believes in souls but not beer,
believes in green men, not beer.

Alcoholic splash is what we all need,
at times. So I told him the obvious,
I'm going to get a case of
(Insert your ****** choice)
and I'll be back as soon as possible.

G stared at me and made a guttural noise,
Do whatcha please, I'll stay here and
protect us from vampires.
You know, blood-suckas.

Pale stoner vampires.


III.

The leather painted door was wide open
like the legs of ominous spider cave,
but the doors of a car
I had never seen before
were as closed as the lips of a VCR.
There's nothing but silence in these situations --
is this one of those situations? Grassy knoll?

Approaching the mouth of purgatory,
I entered with the hesitancy of a lost dog.
On the plastic covered couch,
two people sat atop the invisible cloud
above the patterned fabric
and above the fingers of time.

Blonde hair sprouted from her scalp,
raining down upon vanilla shoulder blades,
her chest a harbor for two pale, freshly mounds,
with crooked, beige diamonds in the center.

She trembled when G said, Meet Steph
-- can I call you Steph, Steph? --
Meet Steph, the artist formerly known as
Stephanie, holding up her licence,
Vanmeter, of 441 1/2 Locust Ave.

That's creepy, huh, Steph? Locust Ave?
Are you something that lives in the ground,
comes up every several years, making noise?
Has this been years in the making?
Are you bound to make noise in my house?

You know this is a house, right?
Whatsa matter, unfamiliar due to ya
living-in-the-*******-ground
or is it because you share a house,
an apartment, Steph? Is it one of those?
Pizza deliveries ain't paying the bills?

G gets up, I, a coward, approaching him
about to say -- Hold up, brother, he says.
Not another move, pulling his hand from
behind her shaking, confused head,
a silver cannon an extension of his arm.

She's here to **** our blood,
She's here to ****. our. blood.
Whether she means to or not,
I know you don't think you want to, Steph,
I know you don't mean to,
But you're here to
drain-us-like-the-Red-Cross.

I tell G that she isn't,
What have you done, G,
You need to let her go
before this gets worse.
That cliche dialogue.
Because these things always do,
cliche or not.

Brother, you don't understand these things
-- It's impossible for a godless man
to understand the mechanisms
of something bigger, something holy --
but you need to listen, G said, You need to --
she tried to move, quickly,
but G grabbed her by her blonde strands,
pulled her back towards the couch,
She swiped at his eye, drawing blood.

There was a pause, a deathly silence,
by the hair, she was rendered motionless,
Oh, no, he echoed, Love, you shouldn't,
You ought not do those things.
Looking at me, he asked me to listen,
Always remember this wasn't your fault.
Sometimes, you can't be in control

Holstering her neck with his gun hand,
G picked her up, slamming her,
head first,
into the drug covered,
resin sprinkled
coffee table.

He dropped on top of her,
Looked at me, Remember, okay?
and beat her head with the **** of the gun,
until the cracking of a larger M&M; shell
muffled towards all eardrums,
maybe even hers.

With blood,
that could be mistaken as war paint,
swimming across his jaw and neck,
and sprinkled on his forehead,
G whispered, You are free,
and I was never sure
who he was talking about.

My feet left before I did,
I was suddenly in my car
with only the ignition
and G's voice registering.
I passed car after car,
pastel metal wagon after
metallic matte creation,
not sure if I ever saw him,
not sure if he ever existed,
if I ever existed.

IV.

Sheers of shimmering gloss grace her torso.
And I have broken her bones,
imploring that I love her so.
Blueberry lips belly the cold;
hold her too deep, hold her I'm told.

Waking up in a cavern darkness,
my dreams disintegrate from my eyes,
swirl in my headspace, evaporating to
heaven knows where.

Scattered pitter-patter
drowns midnight Seattle,
killing and washing away
cluttered, modern filth,
******* carnivorous minds
into hungrier gutters.

This is the part
where the screen of my life reveals:
SIX MONTHS LATER,
in yellow, stenciled letters.
But what it wouldn't say is
how I still feel like I'm dipped
in the ink of Ithaca, NY.

If this were the indulgent
autobiography of my life
it wouldn't say that
the distance doesn't matter,
because that'd be a lie;
I feel like I have only escaped myself.

The rain swells, sounding as
thick as blood, swishing around
the veins of the city.

Stephanie dies every night,
disappearing and reappearing
behind secret doors only she can open.

When she comes to me in sleep,
she is baptized in green, head caved,
Forget-Me-Nots sprouting
between fragmented skull
and select spots of brain soil,
the flowers singing jazz
with a different voice, every time.

One time she spoke.
With blueberry lips that belly cold,
she sounds like my mother:
I am so proud of you, she statically says.
You saved me. Remember.

V.

To be continued.

I.
Well you know that I sip on my sadness, my dear,
filthy palms, filled to the brim.
And I know that you watch trains
passing by, dizzy eyed, still drunk with sin.
Your teeth reek of reality lately,
You smile facts, figures and cracked calcium.
Now, once more with cupped hands
leaking, shaking delirium up to your chin.

Well I know that I’ve missed the point, honey
I should get it tattooed on my wrists,
but you know you talk like firecrackers
so flinching gets awful hard to resist.
I make believe that I’m right like craters
make moons believe.
So I’ll comment on comets and ignore
truths popping between parentheses.

My delusion has your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue...

II.
You say,
“It’s fiction we live in. You play in pastels
and fake hollywood rhythms and I’m tired,
staring up at your screen.

You're addicted to this diction. My voice is lost,
screaming these words you keep stealing
and twist for yourself what they mean."

III.
Your lips liquored up,
but I notice your tongue's not numb.
Drink deep, darling. Let's inoculate.

IV.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

It's this clothing, from bedpost to box-spring,
It's all wax-coats and smoke screens,
live lit-candle lasting
When did skin begin to fit wrong?

V.
So they say, one day
Or, one day, they say,
we’ll find ghosts sewed to the seams
of Fringe Wolf bones picked clean
who waltz wicked and crooked a foxtrot to show
that sometimes loss is beautiful.
And when I ask for your hand you’ll look tragic
like this dance was only ever for me
and my feet always fall off beat
Like I beat off any discreet romancing
To pretend that this dancing was
Anything more than masturbatory.
I guess I do dance the way I drink:
Heavy handed and troglodytic
And a little listless, but I always fight it.
So while you walk away, I’m drowning drunk in cinderblock boots; Toe-tapping a slurred S.O.S. like some song you kept whispering.
You keep whispers like keepsakes.
You speak so soft but
Baby, your voice sticks with me
like sickness.

VI.
And you say,
“It’s fiction we live in. It’s intended for men
like you, bottled, up-ended,
but I've watched you drain out in my palm."

Alright, it's fiction that we live in
It's intended for men like me, bottled, up-ended,
but at best I just seeped through your teeth.

VII.
I stitched script to my chest like a scarlet letter vest that attests there's no Soul here worth Saving but ******* come save me anyway.
Your voice sticks
to my ghost-sewn, sea-floor bound foot steps like sickness.
Tread lightly, my love. Let's inoculate.

VIII.
So when they ask for me at the after party
With neon eyes and harlot tongues,
You can tell them I traded this stale air in
For forest fires and tornado lungs.
Because I’ve been reading up in matchbooks
how to dance with disastrous fate,
and I'm finding my rhythm so wake silent
or sleep long, my love. Let's inoculate.

i. reward ten thousand dollars
it scares me to think you will drive me home one day, one night, one night when i am very drunk and the stars do not glisten because there are no stars left! i am sure of the reason:
upon being conceived you swallowed them all whole. this is not purposefully clandestine so much as misunderstood knowledge:
in our lifetime these celestial objects will be mistaken, much like a well-intentioned teratoma, for
cancer
countless times you will be plucked, yet unripe, from the fire that will as soon liquify your flesh and cleanse your soul

ii. wanted, dead or alive
psychosis is not a watershed.
it is an amalgamation of the bugs who have crawled up your legs and gorged themselves on your fruity blood before hibernating
it is a room of walls plastered with ******* of nauseating pale cadavers, of empty homes, of longing hands, of breast buds and tied legs and virginal lips and bare ***** and stained sheets
it was in you forever and there is nothing to blame but an imbalance, for
you are the duality of...girlhood.
you are soiled ******* and unkempt hair, abused plush dolls and sticky hands, infected wounds and sunburn sting, stale cereal and coloring pages
you are satin veils and vain slumber, tired tears and starving entrails, hesitant touch and static vhs, shrill laughter and breathy song
you are itchy bug bites. you are snow in my eyelashes.
you are a lissome angel pregnant, god bless you, with a fetal (fatal?) evil; perhaps my fear begins here, or perhaps it greets me when your aura bites my eyelids...alack!
it must be so. **** orange light suffuses my thin veins. the sun exudes apprehension and abruptly the car is totaled and
this is why you cannot drive me home. even when i have become quite inebriated:
it is not natural for the air to be so warm; only ere our galactic body closes her eyes.
surely you will **** me. you are no creature of the night. run me over; crush me between your toes; let my nectar grow trees in the cracks of this, our, every godforsaken town.

iii. have you seen me?
her neotenous thighs stick, like sap, to the concrete floor, water seeps beneath the cinderblock. dust collects between her fingers in which she clutches, with the brutality of youth, a softened - if garishly colored - carton of apple juice. four-o'clock sun pierces the thick glass window (if one will call it such) and she feels listless; rather than squint she pores over the illumination with intent that, in her unsuspecting naivete, she is not yet aware she holds. before she ***** in enough light to blind her she hears a voice that feels familiar:
come upstairs
soon enough it will be ruefully forgotten
soon enough she will realize she was bagged and thrown in the trunk
too late she will wish to exact her revenge