"carburetor" poems
Pinto?
No, not the wild-spirited, color-splotched mare
with mane streaming like flames-thrown
behind in the wind
Taking desert inclines
with scuffing hooves on rock
catching her balance in mesquite
curbing?
The sage, dust
All
that nature throws in its pathway to knowledge
toward treachery of crosswalks?
“P-l-e-a-s-e don't slow down!
Stop signs--?
”No!
Just keep going!
Don't slow down now!”
“They'll hear us coming
3 blocks away!”
Pinto?
Clogged carburetor--?
No one much-mentioned
rear-end inferno reputation??
A mere twinge in my signature
Woman-without-a-clue
“Hey, it runs, right?
Gets where we're goin'?”
Kids duck in back seat
so as not to be seen
In the cloud of smoke
We make our approach
Hiss Spitter, Belch, Pop
and--
BANG!
--Like a gunshot
Kids take cover
on street, in backseat
duck down
so not to be noticed...
“Oh Ma!
MA!!!
Not right here!
Farther down!”
...so not to be seen
...by friends that matter...
in this ride
from hell!
Backfiring Beast--
“Friends”
skitter away
from what will emerge from the smoke and fumes
of high-risk-situation
Kids spill out through jammed door
to unexpected accolades
onto equality's curb
of laughter
Public school's
wake of exhaust and relief
I drive mercifully away
Start of another school day
Aug 7, 2018
Aug 7, 2018 at 1:11 PM UTC
Lips to the end of the chamber
Finger on the carburetor
In, ex, in
hale
Heat beneath my nose
Even with eyes closed
Feel the radiation
Orange ember
Melt crystals
At the edge of its embrace
Black chalk
Caked layers
Scrape, melt, smoke again
Mother nature keep on givin'
Help this man keep on livin'
Jun 3, 2014
Jun 3, 2014 at 12:50 AM UTC
My intake took your fuel and ran it threw
to this carburetor and disguised itself as a brain.
It took all the information thrown at it and combined it together, then a little spark caused an explosion, which led me here:
I stood idle and held myself in the ice cold rain,
Water began dripping down on my shivering frame.
Each drop adding a beat like a song’s surrounding pound,
Running thoughts drown out into a long forgotten sound.
Pulling the handle I choose to release this body's soul.
And I strike solid like a nut whose free from the tool,
And land with a force derived from deep set desires.
Finally free from the strong grips of deadly pliers.
My soul is free, therefore it no longer seems to mind
That I drove away and left my lonely nut behind
And there it remains in the heat of the black asphalt
Sinking into the earth because of mine own ****** faults.
Jul 19, 2018
Jul 19, 2018 at 2:48 AM UTC
it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse
a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...
it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
****** ****** robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can **** quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.
light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there's always ***** and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.
or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a car wash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.
suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
*** except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.
with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.
so be careful
when you
bend over.
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 3:48 PM UTC
Electric static buzzing in attentive ears, wondering how and why you ended up where you did. Stale smoke filling the air like the compressor in a carburetor.
Direct injection.
Vicious speeds.
Catatonic struggle.
The lisp of an old hippie, tracing his tracks in a wheel-legged fashion, up and down the streets of Seattle, looking for the kicks that previous nights were unable to provide. Supply and demand for bottom up approaches.
Roaches scattered in the living room. Some dead, some still glowing in the dimness. Empty cans of Campbell lint excessive consumption. The prevalent motif of the middle class. Stars and stripes hung in the window pain, above the static placidity.
Seattle stars
No such thing
I guess it must be raining there forever.
Apr 14, 2014
Apr 14, 2014 at 2:56 AM UTC
there are only 5 seats and on each end
are metal chapels. time slows down like a slug
climbing a vertical wall, or say, a drunken man
making his way towards the oblique recess.
the ignominy of an exhausted carburetor
is the orchestra for the night.
lots of women go in and out, out and in,
whichever is first, but the last is always
just as bland as any other truth:
we go, each foot splayed to cover measure,
and in the flash of a scene, gone.
I watch their skirts make gossamer tune,
like some flotsam or a poised note being led
straight to a trajectory disappearance:
the idea of the image is to glide
over them, over flesh,
over this fetal smoke that I will soon toss
right into the womb of nothing
and fall flat as a key from a tone-deaf cathode,
a spanked melodrama of television with dull cursive,
or as lithe as justly, the right camber of blues
ripping straight through my day-old denims,
peering through the tease of a thigh’s penumbral shadow,
the sound of the world being dragged into double-doors
echoing a metonymy: *silence the interlocutor, her mouth
full of birds. Dark birds.*
Feb 11, 2016
Feb 11, 2016 at 7:59 AM UTC
o, good lord of the streets
where a phantasmagoric sensurround
banishes the scream of youth –
a carburetor snarl taken
as unction of name. was it
your name that you whispered to my ear,
him dearth in the quietus.
first to go is grace,
what soon follows is bravery. a makeshift moon
of course, hanging by the earlobe of
her; I’ve been wanting to bite to break skin
her truly frightened symmetry
of a storm which is an onus of pain -
o, good lord
help me weave way later
when I’m down on my contrabass.
Scout Albano tonight’s a dark
expanse of regret
resonating a deep and hollow throb.
women on flay, cigars in mouths chucked
like busy streets on a noontime sun, the soot clambers
the billboards and their frozen, extant smiles
wring out the poison and drain:
we have no imposed god, an announcement to ear
shot into the flay of the bone that persistently
aches - like some unreal drumming of squalors.
we are ruined with echoes of many names that haunt us
with their gaping mouths
in frightful angles, but
when we’re drunk, Marc,
this will all be over.
Apr 2, 2016
Apr 2, 2016 at 1:28 AM UTC
i like the word epicenter
heard it one night all cranked out trying
to get drunk the juice like water
my nose sweating
amped like hell
wanting to disassemble the VW
bug
find what that sound was,
took apart the carburetor first,
sniffed and stood for half a second said, nah,
not the prob
looked into the glovebox
was sure the bug was in there,
a few screws later
the dashboard was on the porch
and still I had no idea what
that ******* sound was
walked in quick circles
thinking , almost,
it had to be the radiator
or a fanbelt or the tires!
Yes !
I took them all off, carefully snooted around their
hoses the perimeter of the fanbelts circumference
the radiators fins
the pressure
got to me of the tires was perfect,
had to be the ******
I sniffed down my throat went that
chemical taste like antifreeze
I took her out
the transmission
inspected her tip to toe
the servo thing the
valve body
went full bore into the
torque converter
it torqued
converted
now I was getting worried
it was the mirror was loose of course
I took her off
it was coated with a white powder
did a line straight to
AutoZone
for a mirror cleaning
fluid , they looked at me funny.
Feb 3, 2017
Feb 3, 2017 at 10:19 PM UTC
Pasay's no conversationalist,
unapologetic.
"Way sapayan, pastilan"
Ravenous snarl of
the carrier
The refined grit of
rusting fulcrum
The terse hammer
malingers,
The pompous talk of
carburetor
and the flagrant burst
of jetwash,
i am never grateful for these
subsequent cacophonies:
a steel orchestra. i could no
longer take the metaphysical spar of this hunted dialogue.
darkness weds the synagogue of
shadow and soon,
we will all drown in the rain.
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 5:34 AM UTC
you popped the hood
and ran your fingers
over the engine
stroking the piston
smoothing the dipstick
feeling the carburetor
and for once
i felt jealous
of a honda civic
Jul 17, 2018
Jul 17, 2018 at 11:34 AM UTC
You puffed out hatred
In blushing clouds that glowed against the hollow sky
And I writhed in the back seat
To the music of a broken carburetor and a lack of self-respect
Inky purple stains strewn across the dashboard
To match the ones on my shoulders
There’s a sky up there and I don’t think you’ve ever seen it
Because you say I’m a constellation that someone wrote the story of
Before they tossed me into the sky
So you toss me around like candy wrappers and train tickets
Because you like me when I’m crumpled in the center console
Below the strength of your hand that holds the cigarette
That you burnt your name into my skin with
This highway smells like gasoline
Maybe because I’m doused in you
And every time the road turns itself over into a new year
I tell myself that I’ll love you
Better than I do from below your feet
Peeking out from under your tread
While I’m treading water in the bottom of your cup holders
Or maybe one day from the passenger seat with your fingers pushing bruises into my thighs
You’re driving me towards the milky way with ashes in my palms
Away from city lights, away from myself
There’s a solar system next to my body in the trunk
And it always spins around you
Jul 15, 2014
Jul 15, 2014 at 2:12 PM UTC
He contemplated the viability
of an extended relationship
She, content with ambiguous design
knitted him a sweater
He wrote sappy love poems for her
about the swell of her ******* the curve of her thighs
She took on two other lovers
to fill the time they had to be apart
He came to her house, scribbled
obscenities on her bathroom walls
She copied them in an elegant calligraphy
illuminated with gold leaf on fine vellum parchment
She adjusted his carburetor
when the Toyota wouldn't start
He read out loud to her
from the Time's Sunday Supplement
She got drunk at his party,
puked in the kitchen sink
He put her to bed
then quietly cleaned up after her
The moon never
scrawled their names
across the sky
Jul 15, 2018
Jul 15, 2018 at 2:37 PM UTC
Rock And Roll Memoir
It was too **** loud
I never liked Bobo
our first drummer
or
was he the third?
The riffs? Stolen.
Lyrics written
by a callow youth
still torment me
to this day like a
s
w
a
r
m
of
b
e
e
s
My obituary
a bit of boilerplate
written by interns
at Rolling Stone
lays waiting
patiently
for the call.
I don’t remember
in any particular
order
the origin
of the band name
the outcomes
of
the lawsuits
what happened
in Houston
penning “Love Carburetor”
on the bare
***
of a groupie named Skyyy
writing
a song cycle
about the Laps
riding
in ambulances
limos
helicopters
or
punching
Bill Graham
on the sidewalk
in front of
the Fillmore
East.
If you say
we played Farm Aid
twice, well
I guess you would know.
I can’t ****
standing up
or hear a word
you’re saying
and my doctor says
we must get
a handle on my liver
before we think
about replacing my
knees
hips
corneas
heart and lungs.
But I’m booked
to a ten night stand
at the Beacon
with the New York Philharmonic
performing our first album
in its entirety
with our original bassist Ian
somebody or other
plus interviews
on Fresh Air and Morning Joe
to promote a concert
film by Jim Jarmusch.
Sep 20, 2016
Sep 20, 2016 at 7:47 AM UTC