We look for Satan with the same intensity
that my mom and dad looked for God.

In retrospect
my parents were always pushing me to expand my consciousness
by huffing glue or gasoline
or chewing peyote buttons.
Simply because they'd done their time,
wasted their teen years
lolling in the muddy fields of Vermont
and the salt flats of Nevada,
naked except for rainbow face paints
and a thick coating of sweaty filth,
their heads festooned
with fifty pounds of fetid dreadlocks,
teeming with crab lice
and pretending to find enlightenment...
That does NOT mean I have to make the same mistake.

Sorry, Satan,
once again I've said the G-word.

Without breaking stride,
Leonard nods and points
to indicate the former deities of now-defunct cultures,
now warehoused in the underworld.
Among them: Benoth,
a god of the Babylonians;
Dagon,
an idol of the Philistines;
Astarte,
goddess of the Sidonians;
Tartak,
the god of the Hevites.

My suspicion
is that my parents treasure their sordid recollection
of episodes at Woodstock and Burning Man
not because those pastimes led to wisdom,
but because such folly
was inseparable from a period of their lives
when they were young
and unburdened by obligation;
they had free time, muscle tone,
and their futures still looked like a great, grand adventure.
Furthermore,
both my mother and father had been free of social status
and therefore had nothing to lose by cavorting ****,
their swollen genitals smeared with muck.

Thus,
because they had ingested drugs and flirted with brain damage,
they insisted I should do likewise.
I was forever opening my boxed lunch at school
to discover a cheese sandwich,
a carton of apple juice,
carrot sticks,
and a five-hundred-milligram Percocet.
Tucked within my Christmas stocking
--not that we celebrated Christmas--
would be three oranges,
a sugar mouse, a harmonica,
and quaaludes.
In my Easter basket
--not that we called the event Easter--
instead of jelly beans,
I'd find lumps of hashish.
Would that I could forget the scene at my twelfth birthday party
where I flailed at a piñata,
wielding a broomstick in front of my peers
and their respective
former-hippie, former-rasta,
former-anarchist throwback parents.
The moment the colorful papier-mâché burst,
instead of Tootsie Rolls or Hershey's Kisses,
everyone present
was showered with Vicodins,
Darvons, Percodans,
amyl nitrate ampoules,
LSD stamps,
and assorted barbiturates.
The now wealthy,
now-middle-aged parents
were ecstatic,
while my little friends and I couldn't help
but feel a tad bit cheated.

That,
and it doesn't take a brain surgeon to understand
that very few twelve-year-olds
would actually enjoy attending
a clothing-optional birthday party.

Some of the most gruesome images in Hell
seem downright laughable
when compared to seeing an entire generation of adults
stripped **** and wrestling on the floor,
grasping and panting in frantic competition
for a scattered handful of codeine capsules.

Oh my love
listen to my heartbeat.
Please rest your head on my chest and listen.  

You own each and every hammering beat.
Let them cuddle you,
let them be the time hourglass of your smiles.

Let their furiously sweet thundering be yours.
Let our hearts be the glass ampoules holding the sand of time
sliding from you to me and back, forever.

Let's learn what army-fightin' fun is predicated on, for a man with 1
arm won't double his fun by quickly having his only arm amputated
under the direction of a curse & ampoules of dope sorely calculated
over the indirection of 3 talisman on acidical tabules time-activated
from the minute of saturation when clinicians selfishly collaborated

Behind Bandana and Cloak

Where it holds value
Like ampoules of placebo
But sugar and water and hope
Driven in
An intoxicating swoosh
****** in, currents
That run down the American dream

A big brawny man with spike and hammer
Pounds determination into steel
With breathe heaving spit
Electrolytes draining from brow
Below the furrow a face the shape
Of white molten mud
Labor belts harmony with his spike

Ping
Ping
The placebo takes the rhythm of faith
Ping
Until the morning grace ....

An affluent nature would give him no title
Only stock in trade
The worth of his back
And it is broad

But where it holds value ..
might and vigorously hoping
And these you know,
Are the important things
What we reach for
Beyond capability

Behind the red fade
Of cotton hand me down things
Before time drops forgotten
From the hems of pockets riddled with holes

Ping and
Ping
The mend

In his bounty
Amen
Amen