There's popcorn on the ceiling,
a million bajillion clusters that I've spent days trying to count.
In the 1950's these ceilings exploded into popularity.
And until 1977, homeowners blasted asbestos covered popcorn toward the sky, letting mesothelioma fibers fall back to their floor like it was harmless dust.
I take a deep breath, letting the air settle deep in my chest before letting it back out.
My ceiling is probably not made of asbestos.
It's probably styrofoam or some other cheap, paper-based product.
I take another deep breath.
The EPA banned the use of asbestos in these ceilings.
Apparently, inhaled in large quantities, asbestos causes lung disease, lung scarring, and lung cancer.
Another deep, deep breath.
I continue counting the probably not cancer causing popcorn.
I wonder if I would be able to feel the particles swimming in my lungs like fiber glass–thin, delicate, sharp.
I wonder if it would **** me.
I wonder if my family would file a claim like you see on those old commercials screaming,
"If you or a loved one developed mesothelioma you, yes you, could be entitled to compensation."
Or, something like that.
Breathe.
The air tastes funny.
My ceiling is most likely not made of asbestos.
But, I probably wouldn't care if it was.

there are so many places to hide,

in my home at 17th and South screaming death threats at my roommates laughing diabolically playing  videogames and Jeopardy cooking quinoa stretching canvas the dog going mad frothing lunging  spastic to get the monkeys or the wookies or whatever random commandments we issue forth  drunken while Schlock rampages the backdrop,

at my uncle's row house on 22nd and Wallace with my shoes off freezing skipping class to watch March  Madness unwrapping waxpaper hoagies grimacing with each sip of Cherrywine or creamsicle  soda reading chapters at my leisure,

in the stacks among fiberglass and eternal florescent lima-tiled and echo-prone red-eyed and white-faced  caked with asbestos and headphones exhuming ossified pages from layers of cosmic dust  presiding benevolent,

in University City disguised in nothing but a name infiltrating Penn club soccer getting caught after  scoring yet still invited to the pure ***** joy of hell and heaven house parties of ice luge jungle  juice kegstand coke politic networking,

at Drexel's nightlit astroturf with the Jamaicans rolling blunts on the sidelines playing soccer floating in  slo-mo through billows of purple till the early morning or basketball at Penn against goggle- eyed professors in kneepads and copious sweat,

in the shadow tunnels behind Franklin Field always late night loner overlooking rust belt rails abandoned  to an absent tempo till tomorrow never looking behind me in the fear that someone is there,

at Phillies Stadium on glorious summer Tuesdays for dollar dog night laden with algebra geometry and  physics purposely forgetting to apply ballistics to the majestic arc of a home run or in the frozen  subway steam selling F.U. T.O. t-shirts to Eagles fans gnashing when the Cowboys come to town,

at 17th and Sansom in the morning bounding from Little Pete's scrambled eggs toast and black coffee  studying in the Spring thinking All is Full of Love in my ears leaving fog pollen footprints on the  smoking cement blooming,

at the Shambhala Center with dharma lotus dripping from heels soaking rosewater insides thrumming to the  groan of meditation,

at the Art Museum Greco-fleshed and ponderous counting tourists running the Rocky steps staring into shoji screen tatame teahouses,

at the Lebanese place plunked boldly in Reading Terminal Market buying hummus bumping past the Polish  and Irish on my way to the Amish with their wheelwagons packed with pretzels and honey and  chocolate and tea,

at the motheaten thrift store on North Broad buried under sad accumulations of ramshackle clothing  clowning ridiculous in the dim squinting at coathangers through magnifying glasses and mudflat  leather hoping to salvage something insane,

in the brown catacombed warrens of gutted Subterranea trying unsuccessfully to ignore bearded medicine

men adorned with shaman shell necklaces hawking incense bootlegs and broken Zippos halting conversation to listen pensive to the displacement of air after each train hurtles by,

at 30th Street Station cathedral sitting dwarfed by columns Herculean in their ascent and golden light  thunderclap whirligig wings on high circling the luminous waiting sprawled nascent on stringwood pews,

at the Masonic Temple next to City Hall, pretending to be a tourist all the while hoping scouring for clues in the cryptic grand architect apocrypha to expose global conspiracies,

at the Trocadero Electric Factory TLA Khyber Unitarian Church dungeon breaking my neck to basso  perfecto glitch kick drums with a giant's foot stampeding breakbeat holographic mind-boggled  hole-in-the-skull intonations,

at the Medusa Lounge Tritone Bob and Barbara's Silk City et cetera with a pitcher a pounder of Pabst and a  shot of Jim Beam glowing in the dark at the foosball table disco ball bopstepping to hip hop and  jazz and accordions and piano and vinyl,

in gray Fishtown at Gino's recording rap holding pizza debates on the ethics of sampling anything by  David Axelrod rattling tambourines and smiles at the Russian shopgirl downstairs still chained to  soul record crackles of antiquity spiraling from windows above,

at Sam Doom's on 12th and Spring Garden crafting friendship in greenhouse egg crate foam closets  breaking to scrutinize cinema and celebrate Thanksgiving blessed by holy chef Kronick,

in the company of Emily all over or in Kohn's Antiques salvaging for consanguinity and quirky heirlooms  discussing mortality and cancer and celestial funk chord blues as a cosmological constant and  communism and Cuba over mango brown rice plantains baking oatmeal chocolate chip cookies,

in a Coca Cola truck riding shotgun hot as hell hungover below the raging Kensington El at 6 AM nodding soft to the teamsters' curses the snagglesouled destitute crawling forth poisoned from sheet-metal shanty cardboard box projects this is not desolate,

at the impound lot yet again accusing tow trucks of false pretext paying up sheepish swearing I'll have my  revenge,

in the afterhour streets practicing trashcan kung fu and cinder block shotput shouting sauvage operatic at  tattooed bike messenger tribesmen pitstopped at the food trucks,

in the embrace of those I don't love the names sometimes rush at me drowned and I pray to myself for  asylum,

in the ciphers I host always at least 8 emcee lyric clerics summoning elemental until every pore ruptures  and their eyes erupt furious forever the profound voice of dreadlocked Will still haunting stray  bullet shuffles six years later,

in the caldera of Center City with everyone craning our skulls skyward past the stepped skyscrapers  beaming ear-to-ear welcoming acid sun rain melting maddeningly to reconstitute as concrete  rubber steel glass glowing nymphs,

in Philadelphia where every angle is accounted for and every megawatt careers into every throbbing wall where  Art is a mirror universe for every event ever volleyed through the neurons of History,

in Philadelphia of so many places to hide I am altogether as a funnel cloud frenetic roiling imbuing every corner sanctum sanctorum with jackhammer electromagnetism quivering current realizing stupefied I have failed so utterly wonderful human for in seeking to hide I have found

in Philadelphia

I am in a crate, the crate that was ours,
full of white shirts and salad greens,
the icebox knocking at our delectable knocks,
and I wore movies in my eyes,
and you wore eggs in your tunnel,
and we played sheets, sheets, sheets
all day, even in the bathtub like lunatics.
But today I set the bed afire
and smoke is filling the room,
it is getting hot enough for the walls to melt,
and the icebox, a gluey white tooth.

I have on a mask in order to write my last words,
and they are just for you, and I will place them
in the icebox saved for ***** and tomatoes,
and perhaps they will last.
The dog will not.  Her spots will fall off.
The old letters will melt into a black bee.
The night gowns are already shredding
into paper, the yellow, the red, the purple.
The bed -- well, the sheets have turned to gold --
hard, hard gold, and the mattress
is being kissed into a stone.

As for me, my dearest Foxxy,
my poems to you may or may not reach the icebox
and its hopeful eternity,
for isn't yours enough?
The one where you name
my name right out in P.R.?
If my toes weren't yielding to pitch
I'd tell the whole story --
not just the sheet story
but the belly-button story,
the pried-eyelid story,
the whiskey-sour-of-the-****** story --
and shovel back our love where it belonged.

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black and a red powder seeps through my
veins,
our little crate goes down so publicly
and without meaning it, you see, meaning a solo act,
a cremation of the love,
but instead we seem to be going down right in the middle of a Russian
street,
the flames making the sound of
the horse being beaten and beaten,
the whip is adoring its human triumph
while the flies wait, blow by blow,
straight from United Fruit, Inc.

There was a house fire on my street last night …well… not exactly my street, but on a little, sketchy, dead-end strip of asphalt, sidewalks, weeds, and garbage that juts into my block two houses down. It was on that street. Rosewood Court, population: 12, adjusted population: 11, characterized by anonymity and boarded windows, peppered with the swift movements of fat street rats. I’ve never been that close to a real, high-energy, make-sure-to-spray-down-your-roof-with-a-hose-so-it-doesn’t-catch­ fire before. It was the least of my expectations for the evening, though I didn’t expect a crate of Peruvian bananas to fall off a cargo plane either, punching through the ceiling, littering the parking lot with damaged fruit and shingles, tearing paintings and shelves and studs from the third floor walls, and crashing into our kitchen, shattering dishes and cabinets and appliances. Since that never happened, and since neither the former nor the latter situation even crossed my mind, I’ll stick with “least of my expectations,” and bundle up with it inside that inadequate phrase whatever else may have happened that I wouldn’t have expected.



I had been reading in my living room, absently petting the long calico fur of my roommate’s cat Dory. She’s in heat, and does her best to make sure everyone knows it, parading around, *** in the air, an opera of low trilling and loud meows and deep purring. As a consequence of a steady tide of feline hormones, she’s been excessively good humored, showering me with affection, instead of her usual indifference, punctuated by occasional, self-serving shin rubs when she’s hungry. I saw the lights before I heard the trucks or the shouts of firemen or the panicked wail of sirens, spitting their warning into the night in A or A minor, but probably neither, I’m no musician. Besides, Congratulations was playing loud, flowing through the speakers in the corners of the room, connected to the record player via the receiver with the broken volume control, travelling as excited electrons down stretches of wire that are, realistically, too short, and always pull out. The song was filling the space between the speakers and the space between my ears with musings on Brian Eno, so the auditory signal that should have informed me of the trouble that was afoot was blocked out. I saw the lights, the alternating reds and whites that filled my living room, drawing shifting patterns on my walls, ceiling, floor, furniture, and shelves of books, dragging me towards the door leading outside, through the cluttered bike room, past the sleeping, black lump of oblivious fur that is usually my boisterous male kitten, and out into the bedlam I  had previously been ignorant to. I could see the smoke, it was white then gray then white, all the while lending an acrid taste to the air, but I couldn’t see where it was issuing from. The wind was blowing the smoke toward my apartment, away from Empire Mills. I tried to count the firetrucks, but there were so many. I counted six on Wilmarth Ave, one of which was the awkward-looking, heavy-duty special hazards truck. In my part of the city, the post-industrial third-wave ***** river valley, you never know if the grease fire that started with homefries in a frying pan in an old woman’s kitchen will escalate into a full-blown mill fire, the century-old wood floors so saturated with oil and kerosene and ****** and manufacturing chemicals and ghosts and god knows what other flammable **** that it lights up like a fifth of July leftover sparkler, burning and melting the hand of the community that fed it for so many decades, leaving scars that are displayed on the local news for a week and are forgotten in a few years’ time.



The night was windy, and the day had been dry, so precautions were abundant, and I counted two more trucks on Fones Ave. One had the biggest ladder I’ve ever seen. It was parked on the corner of Fones and Wilmarth, directly across from the entrance into the forgotten dead-end where the forgotten house was burning, and the ladder was lifting into the air. By now my two roommates had come outside too, to stand on our rickety, wooden staircase, and Jeff said he could see flames in the windows of one of the three abandoned houses on Rosewood, through the third floor holes where windows once were, where boards of plywood were deemed unnecessary.



“Ay! Daddy!”



My neighbor John called up to us. He serves as the eyes and ears and certainly the mouth of our block, always in everyone’s business, without being too intrusive, always aware of what’s going down and who’s involved. He proceeded to tell us the lowdown on the blaze as far as he knew it, that there were two more firetrucks and an ambulance down Rosewood, that the front and back doors to the house were blocked by something from inside, that those somethings were very heavy, that someone was screaming inside, that the fire was growing.



Val had gone inside to get his jacket, because despite the floodlights from the trucks imitating sunlight, the wind and the low temperature and the thought of a person burning alive made the night chilly. Val thought we should go around the block, to see if we could get a better view, to satisfy our congenital need to witness disaster, to see the passenger car flip over the Jersey barrier, to watch the videos of Jihadist beheadings, to stand in line to look at painted corpses in velvet, underlit parlors, and sit in silence while their family members cry. We walked down the stairs, into full floodlight, and there were first responders and police and fully equipped firefighters moving in all directions. We watched two firemen attempting to open an old, rusty fire hydrant, and it could’ve been inexperience, the stress of the situation, the condition of the hydrant, or just poor luck, but rather than opening as it was supposed to the hydrant burst open, sending the cap flying into the side of a firetruck, the water crashing into the younger of the two men’s face and torso, knocking him back on his ***. While he coughed out surprised air and water and a flood of expletives, his partner got the situation under control and got the hose attached. We turned and walked away from the fire, and as we approached the turn we’d take to cut through the rundown parking lot that would bring us to the other side of the block, two firemen hurried past, one leading the other, carrying between them a stretcher full of machines for monitoring and a shitload of wires and tubing. It was the stiff board-like kind, with handles on each end, the kind of stretcher you might expect to see circus clowns carry out, when it’s time to save their fallen, pie-faced cohort. I wondered why they were using this archaic form of patient transportation, and not one of the padded, electrical ones on wheels. We pushed past the crowd that had begun forming, walked past the Laundromat, the 7Eleven, the carwash, and took a left onto the street on the other side of the parking lot, parallel to Wilmarth. There were several older men standing on the sidewalk, facing the fire, hands either in pockets or bringing a cigarette to and from a frowning mouth. They were standing in the ideal place to witness the action, with an unobstructed view of the top two floors of the burning house, its upper windows glowing orange with internal light and vomiting putrid smoke.  We could taste the burning wires, the rugs, the insulation, the asbestos, the black mold, the trash, and the smell was so strong I had to cover my mouth with my shirt, though it provided little relief. We said hello, they grunted the same, and we all stood, watching, thinking about what we were seeing, not wanting to see what we were thinking.

Two firefighters were on the roof by this point, they were yelling to each other and to the others on the ground, but we couldn’t hear what they were saying because of the sirens from all the emergency vehicles that were arriving.  It seemed to me they sent every firetruck in the city, as well as more than a dozen police cars and a slew of ambulances, all of them arriving from every direction. I guess they expected the fire to get really out of hand, but we could already see the orange glow withdrawing into the dark of the house, steam and smoke rippling out of the stretched, wooden mouths of the rotted window frames. In a gruff, habitual smoker’s voice, we heard

                                      “Chopper called the fire depahtment

We was over at the vet’s home

                He says he saw flames in the windas

                                                                                                                                                We all thought he was shittin’ us

We couldn’t see nothin’.”

A man between fifty-five to sixty-five years old was speaking, no hair on his shiny, tanned head, old tattoos etched in bluish gray on his hands, arms, and neck, menthol smoke rising from between timeworn fingers. He brought the cigarette to his lips, drew a hearty chest full of smoke, and as he let it out he repeated

                                                “Yea, chopper called em’

Says he saw flames.”

The men on the roof were just silhouettes, backlit by the dazzling brightness of the lights on the other side.  The figure to the left of the roof pulled something large up into view, and we knew instantly by the cord pull and the sound that it was a chainsaw. He began cutting directly into the roof. I wasn’t sure what he was doing, wondered if he was scared of falling into the fire, assumed he probably was, but had at least done this before, tried to figure out if he was doing it to gain entry or release pressure or whatever. The man to the right was hacking away at the roof with an axe. It was surreal to watch, to see two men transformed from public servants into fingers of destruction, the pinkie and ring finger fighting the powerful thumb of the controlled chemical reaction eating the air below them, to watch the dark figures shrouded in ethereal light and smoke and sawdust and what must’ve been unbearable heat from below, to be viewing everything with my own home, my belongings, still visible, to know it could easily have gone up in flames as well.

I should’ve brought my jacket. I remember complaining about it, about how the wind was passing through my skin like a window screen, chilling my blood, in sharp contrast to the heat that was morphing and rippling the air above the house as it disappeared as smoke and gas up into the atmosphere from the inside out.

Ten minutes later, or maybe five, or maybe one, the men on the roof were still working diligently cutting and chopping, but we could no longer see any signs of flames, and there were figures moving around in the house, visible in the windows of the upper floors, despite the smoke. Figuring the action must be reaching its end, we decided to walk back to our apartment. We saw Ken’s brown pickup truck parked next to the Laundromat, unable to reach our parking lot due to all the emergency vehicles and people clogging our street. We came around the corner and saw the other two members of the Infamous Summers standing next to our building with the rest of the crowd that had gathered. Dosin told us the fire was out, and that they had pulled someone from inside the gutted house, but no ambulance had left yet, and his normally smiling face was flat and somber, and the beaten guitar case slung over his shoulder, and his messed up hair, and the red in his cheeks from the cold air, and the way he was moving rocks around with the toe of his shoe made him look like a lost child, chasing a dream far from home but finding a nightmare in its place, instead of the professional who never loses his cool or his direction.

The crowd all began talking at once, so I turned around, towards the dead end and the group of firefighters and EMTs that were emerging. Their faces were stoic, not a single expression on all but one of those faces, a young EMT, probably a Basic, or a Cardiac, or neither, but no older than twenty, who was silently weeping, the tears cutting tracks through the soot on his cheeks, his eyes empty of emotion, his lips drawn tight and still. Four of them were each holding a corner of the maroon stretcher that took two to carry when I first saw it, full of equipment. They did not rush, they did not appear to be tending to a person barely holding onto life, they were just carrying the weight. As they got close gasps and cries of horror or disgust or both issued from the crowd, some turned away, some expressions didn’t change, some eyes closed and others stayed fixed on what they came to see. One woman vomited, right there on the sidewalk, splashing the shoes of those near her with the partially digested remains of her EBT dinner. I felt my own stomach start to turn, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t.

                                                                                It was like I was seven again,

                                in the alleyway running along the side of the junior high school I lived near and would eventually attend,

looking in silent horror at what three eighth graders from my neighborhood were doing.

It was about eight in the evening of a rainy,

late summer day,

and I was walking home with my older brother,

cutting through the alley like we always did.

The three older boys were standing over a small dog,

a terrier of some sort.

They had duct taped its mouth shut and its legs together,

but we could still hear its terrified whines through its clenched teeth.

One of the boys had cut off the dog’s tail.

He had it in one hand,

and was still holding the pocket knife in the other.

None of them were smiling,

or talking,

nor did they take notice of Andrew and I.

There was a garden bag standing up next to them that looked pretty full,

and there was a small pile of leaves on the ground next to it.

In slow motion I watched,

horrified,

as one of the boys,

Brian Jones-Hartlett,

picked up the shaking animal,

put it in the bag,

covered it with the leaves from the ground,

and with wide,

shining eyes,

set the bag

on fire

with a long-necked

candle

lighter.

It was too much for me then. I couldn’t control my nausea. I threw up and sat down while my head swam.

I couldn’t understand. I forgot my brother and the fact that he was older, that he should stop this,

Stop them,

There’s a dog in there,

You’re older, I’m sick,

Why can’t I stop them?

It was like

out in the mountains,
when my feet are pressed and purpled
from pushing the world to roll her callused breast,
then each breath, deservingly,
funnels the friction into fire.

but here our milk flesh thumbs
flick the ridges of the flint
and through trees we **** a Bic
just to exhale flame again.

oh-two deprived at altitude
or getting high with all the dudes
you’d count them as two trails that lead to the same place

but that’s just what the map says.
neurotransmitter math has
sold, by weight, the dopamine
wrapped like gods great gift
in threads of nervous lace

and you forget that different paths
never summit the same
if steep, or shallow, the peak can be
epiphany pleasure or just good ****

in green pill bottles, they trap the trees
and plastic cages hang on me
when the weight of our minds
bends our necks towards the asbestos sky
where porous plains of ceiling tile
have us counting holes in the light

so you see my disappointment,
when you were too ****** or drunk or cold
and said it would be better
if we just went inside

as we circled up the stairwell
you stepped easily on plaster pieces
of white ceiling that had fallen to concrete

perhaps it is from fear
that some can find a comfort
having heavens built so brittle
that they crumble within reach

the torso of stars of the constellation of scorpio is dying, it's weakening; the venomous scorpion tail still shines brightly, and the pliers are bright enough to see even with immediate light pollution: but no street lamp shines brighter than the stars, even the the distance disparity, and indeed if the last constellation of the zodiac becomes dim, i'll begin to worry.

i was given three christmas presents this year,
the third i can't immediately remember
but the first two i can:
two houses side by side,
one had twelve black bin bags and one orange
recycling bag for collection -
the other had a skip in its driveway
with a sign in the skip:
PLEASE TAKE YOUR DOG ****
FROM MY SKIP AND NEVER DUMP
IT HERE AGAIN!
ah... the third present, it's january
and i'm walking without gloves,
in converse, with a short sleeve shirt
and a hoodie and nothing else:
newspaper "dialectics" section writers
say northern england floods of recently
are not due to global warming...
i wonder how much this writer gets paid
to say the floods were caused by orangutan farts,
or the dairy factories of ukrainian methane punch
politics; i really do wonder...
i guess newtonian physics' principles
died with einstein's theories
stuck in the deep end of einstein's parabolas
of solid objects dipped into: speed of light
indeed, it gains momentum because it travels
via parabolas rather than straight lines,
hence the parabolic acceleration: up-down
up-down trigonometry linear functions of
either sine or cosine... the third trigonometric
allowance i cannot explain but it doesn't really
matter when it comes to what i'm trying to say:
relativity of immersion as a sinking into:
time relative to space means it equates at some point,
either death as a point of departure
or life as a point of constant engagement -
and as for those who say the theory is too difficult
and your interpretation of a theory in a different
medium is stupid... well... do the mathematics,
my mathematical + and = are equivalent to adjectives
and verbs (e.g.).
no, what really bothers me with this problem
of the global warming debate is the synchronised
activation of denial with doubt missing,
if it can't be doubted (cause & effect), and if
nothing is to be done about it... the only solution
is to deny it: block a punch... get a tsunami back.
it's bothersome on two levels...
english as the language of globalisation (
not exactly the old lingua franca), but rather
the encircling language, the language of constraints,
lingua amplexa / lingua stasus quo, hardly a language
of trade, a language of monotone -chromatic politics...
is very prone to bombastic expressions:
it has not philosophical narrative in the sense
of a book of philosophy - it merely ushers in
a maxim to stop any philosophical narration or dialogue.
on another level though, it's immersion in darwinism,
educational darwinism of post-colonialism is horrid,
if all that scientific positivism was the zenith of science
between the 18th and 19th centuries, the nadir
came with darwinism... because with science being
tricked to encapsulated popular imagination
the greater proportion of the populace had the easiest
of accesses to a scientific theory (aristotle kept in
the **** in the dark all this time), an with a popularised
imagining of darwinism hell broke free in the 20th
century... indeed darwinism killed off scientific positivism,
and by doing so... all noble and human ideals died
with it... came the mechanisation of society,
the death of the rural life, a detachment from nature
as man took to live above nature rather than parallel with it;
and the new zenith that's the zeitgeist of today?
humanistic negativism, humanistic negativism...
the death of the novel, the death of an interest in
philosophy in the english speaking world...
take as you like...
but when you're a sensitive drinker as i am,
and you watch the 2014 film *i origins and don't cry...
well... then i guess anaesthetics won't work
when your heart can't feel the calm good apathy
with your many stage frights concerning your
next ingenious plot-line over a little hurt or a little
scare... not courageous enough to hurt the one
that hurt you, but simply passing the hurt onto
a stranger.

p.s. YOU RENTED THE ******* SKIP!
       AND DOG **** IS NOT REALLY ASBESTOS!

Gun metal and asbestos
The tundra of your father’s eyes
His heart left in London after the war
Stubborn, your mother clung to the lie
Hide the shameful sight
Your hands left over right
Roll a crochet ****** under your blanket
Picture perfect mask the missing
Digits and appendages
“That child’s not mine…Ma”
Shoulda put ya in a home

Whispered sins and indiscretions
You slept with your sister in silent rooms
Peed in a porcelain ***
Defiant, Old Nellie in her witch gray wool
She won’t latch the outhouse again
Keep that abomination strapped to your thigh
Crossed and awake at night
You came out swinging when he touched you
"Shoulda put ya in a home…."

Pick the rock salt from your hide
And never cry
Secrets sting more than saline bullets
You bared those knees in a hand made dress
And fled…newly wed
Birthed that ten toed baby girl
Relegated yourself to the drain of domesticity
Brownstones and picket fences
When did you cast the first thread
Spiderwebs and pyrite
Whispered sins and indiscretions
Broken dishes…
Broken bones…
Broken vows…
You lied so much better than you lived

That crave for validation in your fathers’ eyes
Drift away over his open grave
You played Taps in the shadows
One last time
I was an open wound in a house of pain
You couldn’t love your child
And swallow the shame
That little redhead down the street
Baby boy you couldn’t give
Fed your shattered ego with fear
In my eyes
Notch your bedpost with ticks for lovers and fools
Man eater never sated
**** point met….She’s not your daughter
You left him in an empty room
Payback is a jade eyed snake coiled up in your marriage bed

That High school Knight
Greasy hands and milk toast breath
You fled again
Tell me you’re happy
When he’s gone from dawn to dusk
Catching crappies* and suckin Pabst in a can
While you pickle yourself with cheap *****
And soap operas
Buried your crazy mother, your Witch of a sister
And the **** you married first….
No ripples of remorse
In the cement of your soul

We only speak across miles
Unreconciled
You will never apologize
Little dreams strangled
Wet ******* around my neck
Soap in my mouth
Welts and belts,
Wire brushes and hangers
Fitting discipline
Can’t leave my own alone with you
Drown your grandchild in the toilet bowl
Rather than ask for the truth
From a terrified child
Who had only begun to adore you
Now I can’t love his scars away
The truth is bitter, cold and lonely
Love cannot grow in a heart of stone
Chiseled bitter by the sins of a mother
A father and another
You never had a chance to be
Complete….
02/24/10
For Barbara....
*crappies are a pan fish.

he could play a frakkin' minuet
with his hands, this dude,
with perfect pitch and key --
and birdcalls of a timeless cult.
he'd hangglided in volcano rainbows,
had meathook *** from rafters.
reciting Shakespeare, conjured instant goosebumps, tears --
towering heartwise, intellect vast
whatever roles he played at night to model for our soul
we ripped the roof from off my fathers house, sublime,
wearing attic soot in all our pores,
asbestos grin contracting into mycophile hopes
flirting with the passing birds
in leaves and pizza parlors,
tanned and buff, shingle tar on shoulders, nails,
iron hard for her and her and her
the beating sun-breath coughing under mask
each tack an instant echo for the breeze
to take direction from a symbol core
no symbol ever truly held..
refreshing airs to bleed away the vanity,
yet halfway on the ladder there
an interrupting brag, my father's fascia beams
report card scores as if a better world they made
in money pitted recess taxing hidden filth- -
thank you,
Bach, to break up pride with existential high
new melodic rain to cover over thousands lost to sell,
settle dust,
handwind bard, aesthete
innovate human
you turn me on with tales of your amazing wife
bareshirt in your unfinished house, lusting eaves,
backyard grasshoppers on the counter,
****** as insect brains can be
to tilt their eyes with me at unreal fullness spectra-circle on a cloud
not possible the wholeness found
in wish fulfilling living roofs
of ecosystem awe and sunlamp bottles
here, and here,
under moss on backwoods skillion
or trussed on tree spread wide, open-hipped for skylove --
contentednesses missed the meaning now
of mother-art to birth anew the endless homes,
ecosophy's abundant cheer
laughter even in the nooks of dying nails
extemporaneous arcology of barefoot
ridgetop feardance raked in soffit shift
from gray to green
invulnerable vigor gained and gone
and grown again
from marginalia to universal veil
'happy evermore' no matter this or that
a swimming hole of naked sayings streamed,
inner wash of salt and sweat, an afterthought deluge
to challenge dormer crease-dive of a dogma drain
structured, learned pillage ivory still
though greensulated soon








.

Somebody is shooting at something in our town --
A dull pom, pom in the Sunday street.
Jealousy can open the blood,
It can make black roses.
Who are the shooting at?

It is you the knives are out for
At Waterloo, Waterloo, Napoleon,
The **** of Elba on your short back,
And the snow, marshaling its brilliant cutlery
Mass after mass, saying Shh!

Shh! These are chess people you play with,
Still figures of ivory.
The mud squirms with throats,
Stepping stones for French bootsoles.
The gilt and pink domes of Russia melt and float off

In the furnace of greed. Clouds, clouds.
So the swarm ***** and deserts
Seventy feet up, in a black pine tree.
It must be shot down. Pom! Pom!
So dumb it thinks bullets are thunder.

It thinks they are the voice of God
Condoning the beak, the claw, the grin of the dog
Yellow-haunched, a pack-dog,
Grinning over its bone of ivory
Like the pack, the pack, like everybody.

The bees have got so far. Seventy feet high!
Russia, Poland and Germany!
The mild hills, the same old magenta
Fields shrunk to a penny
Spun into a river, the river crossed.

The bees argue, in their black ball,
A flying hedgehog, all prickles.
The man with gray hands stands under the honeycomb
Of their dream, the hived station
Where trains, faithful to their steel arcs,

Leave and arrive, and there is no end to the country.
Pom! Pom! They fall
Dismembered, to a tod of ivy.
So much for the charioteers, the outriders, the Grand Army!
A red tatter, Napoleon!

The last badge of victory.
The swarm is knocked into a cocked straw hat.
Elba, Elba, bleb on the sea!
The white busts of marshals, admirals, generals
Worming themselves into niches.

How instructive this is!
The dumb, banded bodies
Walking the plank draped with Mother France's upholstery
Into a new mausoleum,
An ivory palace, a crotch pine.

The man with gray hands smiles --
The smile of a man of business, intensely practical.
They are not hands at all
But asbestos receptacles.
Pom! Pom! 'They would have killed me.'

Stings big as drawing pins!
It seems bees have a notion of honor,
A black intractable mind.
Napoleon is pleased, he is pleased with everything.
O Europe! O ton of honey!

My water tower in the sun, my pillar in the dark.
Rust on a warehouse door, **** anatomy of a shark.
A hidden, naked cartoon, vulnerable and hurt.
The afternoon rays of light, exposing my empire of dirt.

Squid in a dark room, forgotten seat for you to ****.
Discovering rotten apples, the fruitless empty pits.
Far on the *****, the eye is negligent to mankind.
No on has *****, yet "American ****" isn't hard to find.

From this floor to the next, watch out for the holes.
Stalactites are forming, between the rods and the poles.
The gang is all here, each with a gat.
Questioning Detroit, wondering "where da party at."

A symphonic silence, from abandoned piano keys.
For the love of the city, the birds and the bees.
A ladder to assist you, in anything but a climb.
Wasting away the day, when all you have is time.

Where they once opted elevators, they now offer only stairs.
Peacefully residing, in the asbestos, grime, and the glares.
The walls they're all puking, a paint chip epidemic.
No chalk at the chalkboard, a failed academic.

Some sign walls in scribble, some bless us with art.
Beautiful light fixtures hang, while sanctuaries fall apart.
The debris and the rubble, wooden frames and the splinters.
A back road in the city, in the dead cold of winter.

An altar to stand at, with no sermon or expectation.
A pew a sinner can rest, with only God's examination.
A wall devoted to an *****, hymnal at hand.
Stained glass more exaggerated, with shards in the plan.

Dancing on floorboards in rafters, climbing up to rooftops.
Wandering and trespassing, trying to avoid cops.
Panda bears, pillar ****, and playing in the snow.
In the shadows and the blackest rooms, I really like to go.

Pussycats in hallways and the golden lightning kitty.
Posing seductively in vacancy is where I feel pretty.
I've seen the light at the end of the tunnel, I've found King David.
Interrogated with the whys and don'ts, though I wish they'd save it.

Picasso in the projects, Sloth and Marilyn Manson.
Fairmont Creamery Company, a view held for ransom.
Some window panes are for looking out, some for looking in.
Struggle Buggy Snow White still sleeps, forever strugglin'.

I've seen them ask for me, "Warriors come out to play."
Detroit is to me, what night is to day.
I caught Pikachu and have seen a **** elephant.
In the frost of the Fisher, I found a heart that was spent.

But the cardio made of brick, spoke with such sass.
Resting bones at the Packard, in an armchair that's trash.
Patriots are nosey and robots attack.
Never putting an hour on when I'll get back.

On top of the world, or looking up from the bottom.
Abandoned buildings, schools, churches, there's something about them.
Where a tree has a better chance of rooting and planting.
When a society suddenly seems a bit slanting.

Color a flower on a wall that's been broken and charred.
Breathe life into a battlefield, encourage the scarred.
Take away ego and vanity, glance into a filthy mirror.
Don't just listen to a person, actually hear.

Sure maybe at times I may seem a bit morbid.
And my words can be harsh and approach kind of forward.
But when you're standing alone, in a hallways that's dead.
Whose last bell has been rung and last book has been read.

Then you hear footsteps from the floor up above.
It's in that uncanny awareness.
And fear...
I find love.