Semis

He only uses both hands when he's bordered by semis
prudence is an idea
for pussies who shower
with gels and eat fruit and all of their greens

But no man is final if he's on the incline
my ears bleed and clot themselves silent
because silence is golden if you're on the olde tip
and preppy came back for thirds this season

Bowties and lamb's milk have me choking hardcore
all caught up in candystripe kidnaps
a bloodwave horizon spurts out a warning
against cultural sirens and wailing king-babies

Bully

Women juggle wolves
Men fumble planets

Ancient babes, they still haunt me
Ooga booga I can't stand it

I saw your face in SkyMall
And puked on my neighbor

and the plane rocked us wompy
like an all-inclusive bully

Jettison

Let's slump into Leer jets
and Travel the world
with well-weeded hands
and Ruby Falls stomachs

And after the close call
with dogs on the runway,
five blocks of Atlanta will
glaze hard with our puke

On down to Rio
with darling brown eyes
We'll ask for directions
from gold-toothed bowlers

They've pubic hair secrets
perhaps hearts or a spade
or street maps to broken homes
what a weird gamble

Germanic Pudge

In the summer, I smoke wet cigarettes
and execute perfect diving board
pullups

Weird girls with Germanic pudge
and sleighbell earrings come a-knockin'

But I'm only interested in the looking back

"I've ascended y'all!"
Date me, baby
We'll attend high art lynchings
and anti-irony seminars

"She was an early riser;
he was not.
He died accordingly."

Heavy Choices

I'd not be if not for Cesarian sections
We tree well when words come a-nippin'
I stare at my window
and picture explicit flight
from heavy choices

Pretend for a Living

I know some folks

Who take lots of drugs

And pretend for a living

I know some others

Who abstain from sin

And pretend for a living

And still some more

Who sip slowly

But they've got feelings too

And they pretend for a living.

Poor Souls

Your lipids are treasures
And after spilling beer on Jesus
You'll be crying into your lover's mouth

Reel Foot Lake

I stare at the moon like something from a bad movie
Because I know you can see it
And maybe it will reflect our energy
Turn us inside out and people will

Wonder what happened
Why does oil seep from Saint bones?
Why are these people inside out?
They are so far apart

But, like the earthquake that made
Reel Foot Lake
I'll ripple across the country
and ring your bells

Never Goin' Back

Alex Bleeker & The Freaks – Never Goin’ Back [mp3]

A Tango For Two

past the fairy forest and the heroin chic woodnymphs,

across the nasty divide that sears with Ferngully nostalgia

there are two drowning in pride pools

slipped during tag

which ran

twice too long

it's cute

until one of them dies

and they've got to black out,

slump about:

real criers

Warrington, 1993

the skid-stop kid

ramped hedges, green

on an orange Murray
and candlefire died
by cheers and claps

all the while
a face was shorn
in ancestral lands

a boy like me
locks of brown

ended toughly
prone on the pavement
with brains all out

Kanamara Matsuri 2.0

Monday Night Football
has supplanted old customs
of phallic parades
and rustic buxom

neo-barbarism
on gridiron stages
mindless wide outs
and linebacker bloodlust

rub dirt on your boo-boos
inside and out
Talking head heroes
rain cultural doubt

verity slips
and slides
down
hill

and
drowns
in   dark
ponds by
cattails of
Corn-dogs

LeTroy

I know a girl whose therapy
is sitting behind black congregations
and cheering herself on
with juxtaposition

She dreams of plaster dust
and dynamite sermons
a 16th Street fantasy is
something to stand for

But she's relegated to valleys a-buzzing
with sliding glass doors
and mock patios
cars on their tracks far in the distance

frogs grow in bubbles
that's all she learned
from backyard expanses
and the drains that ran through them

She knew nothing of Africa
or the maid's son,
a gold toothed boy-wonder
He was eleven

Now he works at the Krystal's
With a third on the way
Freezer kneels and fryer prayers
coupled with post-work hay

and rush hour breakdowns
where tears melt in brown hands
behind purple tints, peeling and faded
now where did those times go

when WCW was his sitter
and lawnmowers blew bubbles
and LeTroy felt so proud
to have another day roll

off of his back and into the garden
where mama's green beans
grew all year 'round
But the world isn't brownstones

and porch swings sit empty
in heaping trash piles
and dumps by the river
and he'll never go back when

shoes really mattered
and you could jump high
and run fast
right into the sun

30,000 Days

Walking down steep driveways

fetching Dear Johns

both sets of Gramps

held clumps in their hands

30,000 days

Is a long time to wonder

Whether choices were made

with prudence and thunder

Now my teeth are old

and it matters very little

Flood the Floor

Flood the Floor on All Fours
Jettison the bullshit
Take flight
Noble vagabond

To be extraordinary
is certain death
and renewal
within select circles

But Old South gonna
Whistle me home
And Moneybags'll
Try his damnedest

To lure my will
to the the beaten path
My back turned on
Magnum Opus

And I could foil myself
But it's too easy
to be a pussy
and drink yourself to death

I'll feel the good fight
with words from Thoreau
Championing beats
And other freaks

And tumbling through this life,
I'll try to do my best and not take shit
From naysay pricks
Like myself

Murals in Atlanta

One time I bought a big chain
Told it was solid gold
Asked the jewelers at the kiosk downstairs
she said "Baby you just got told."
"Baby you just got told."

Recurrent themes around me
Like flapjacks in Gatlinburg
And global unemployment
and salads with Iceburg
and salads with Iceburg

Thinkin' bout what you said to me,
How none of it makes sense
Flying low in an aeroplane
How all the people look like ants
How all the people look like ants

New York City

I went up to New York City
Looking for a girl who's pretty

Took the J train down into Manhattan
It's a shame that nothing ever happened

Ordinary Trials

I'm fighting the sunrise

with an arsenal of memories

that compels me to lie

in a bed made of shivers

Grinding along

joy it escapes me

our curious stares

they used to be good

Theurgy

We're spinning 'round

With French umbrellas

And you introduced me

To floor-based ministries

I'm a grief-stricken Pagan

Without a conversion

Our trysts were ablaze

With awkward precision

Songs have been written

About my weird sojourns

And six AM wake-ups

With Plato on deck

But we'll shuffle real cool

Down streets lined with leather

Inside debates, forever at last

Our hearts should collide

Until I lay still

In shadows corporeal

And someone shall find me

Betwixt dark brown wale

And I'll be a good ghost

With-out a sound

Cycling on damp streets

And running stop signs

Wild Orbits Around Peter

combination skin
and leopard prints

with studs and leather
and sideways ponies

prowling the streets for Rebels
and Nikon fairies,
O smog haired babe
with button-tough fingers
been sewing too long
earning proud divots and pricks

clean breaks with yourself
every so often
in wild orbits around Peter

Maryland Farms

Running away through Maryland Farms

Fuzz gonna scoop me up

Just like the old days

I'll die out here

Y'all Straight?

Hey hey! all you Transcendentalists

and generals of Vagueness

new Obscurists in a flat world

We're all in the wash

We're all rung to dry

like raisins in the sun

having so much fun

perpetually kicking habits and breaking thumbs

trying to hitch a ride out of nowhere

anchoring to no place

Gotchas on the ride home

time outs for the timed out

Forever Young Eternally Bummed

got it all under outer space

stars are just stale light

the world is wilting

but dynamism isn't dead

and we're churning

in neighborhoods

and basements

chugging and rolling

stealing spotlight

punks in the potlight

promisers with stagefright

Knoxville

Slept on the floor
Sucking the face of the morning
Stumble out to Farragut
Where your father "lives"

Dip in the creek
Like some Suburban baptismal
Remember the time
You were still five?

Coke bottle highway
Pickup for candy
Seersucker G.I.
Bill sprawled out of town

And the Vol Navy
Will send in the SEALS
Led by Walruses
In SunCatcher pontoons

The haze will settle on old Fort Sanders
Been clean for two years
This is why I had to
I heard you moan in paperthin closets

Took you home excited off of bad words
Ended up in Mule Hollow all wasted and cashed out
Drove toward that giant Gold Ball
Like some Kubrick Baal

Then the Angels in the Outfield Stumbled me up the hillside
And I slept til 4:30 and we had to lie
The drive home was awkward like the way broken legs look
"So now that you've done it, don't you want to die?"

No wonder we're fucked up from all the sad crickets
Who won't play when fights go all night
And only get lonely when we're thinking
And wash out our pre-dreams and turn out the light

So let's all get real cool and go to the mountains
Sit by the dark rocks and moss ourselves down
Wade in the thick icy fingers
And sail miniature sailboats in kneehigh socks

Once I slept while a bear was secondhand Krogering
Next to our car, I practiced fake sleep
My parents they tried to crack my silence
But I hung limp like mom's cousin's wrist at the grill-out

Treat me like Clinch and 12th where I summered
And wintered the hard times with temporal thrill
Timeshare emotions get trashed every season
Especially when Spring Break never ends

Relegation to Coupon Clipping

Dreaming of the end days and how many girls I'll kiss

Stage diving into despair politics

Because time's got my shit on lock

I'll teeter on that totter

Wayne loading me with Porsche dreams

And James Dean things

And maybe I'll go out and never come back

But keep coming back

I'll keep coming back

I always do.

So Jazzy

I have a new band going called So Jazzy. Here is our MySpace. Check it out!

Defenestration

Defenestration of the Latin Rite:

Catholics claimed that angels saved them

Protestants claim that they landed in shit

Maybe both were right

Untitled

My next door neighbor was a Berger,

She dressed her kids as condiments on Halloween.

She huffed keyboard cleaner and copied Pollock

with her blood.

Crosseyed and teary, garden hose playground driveways

Ramps for your babies into devotion to war.

Lifejacket riot vests and hockey stick Non Lethals

We can go down to Kosovo

We'll get there faster if we take it slow

That's where we wanna go - way down to Kosovo

Algeria

We once held each other in parks

And the fur really flew

I'd bring you lunch

Til' you retired and died

Your grandpa fell in Algeria

Crying to his mother

Non Kosher ways to go out

His own personal Eucharist

Exurb Excerpt

Pruning the tree of knowledge and arguing semantics with Ophidia.

God sent that snake.

It writhes blackly with yellow stripes in the exurbs.

Weighing Debts

Coo with me

We’ll go far

Chime on in

And we’ll stick like tar

You’re mothmouthed and dusty

I’ve done without and trust me

There’s no place like home

See, your papa was trusty

Neon Whips

My throat is tight like the neon whips above the bar door. My voice is flat like warm soda when I’ve yelled too much or sobs have robbed my chords like a stoner hand in mom’s purse. And the shades are drawn. The doors snap back. Tears bleed down my face like some wrestler paint of yesteryear as I flee the scene and the club sharks and all the Ambers and Kellys and Jessicas and the fake palms and dry gins and I’m tired of being the lacey Dick Tracy. I’m tired of squashing the fire in the disco with fluid movements. I’m tired of squashing the fire in my soul with fluid movements. I’m tired and I’m scared and I feel like I’m peeking during church camp prayer in 5th grade. I feel like I’m peaking in this awkward era; 22 and so many wasted nights, wasted times, wasted friends, just… wasted.

But it’s better now that 2002 has passed like a ghostship in murky, misty, midnight waters. 2002 is no Space Odyssey. There were no cues, no signs of stopping and my skull felt crushed from the beginning of time. But that ape grew up and learned to drive and learned to civilize. Dialing in. 7th caller. Tickets for two. You and me and the morning light – shimmering tuxes and draped gowns. Decadent shells for the descendents of light rail pioneers and cul-de-sac cowboys. It’s all mixed up, you see. We’re supposed to have it ALL. We’re supposed to be the driving force our generation needs to generate itself, generate culture, but instead we’re left whining and grasping and sucking on the proverbial teat of the taxes; “What a strange bedfellow” they say. No, only the nerds. The careful ones. Those who find middle ground between cowardice and recklessness. But that’s just Plato-minded drivel – stuff that makes your head swivel. Back and forth, a disagreeing “no,” I don’t think so. So? Let’s take this outside, no?

80s Aggregate

Watching Baby Einstein to forget that I've been kicking tires on so many phases, and most have wheeled away like deals from yesterday.

Driving old cars fast with cigarette precision

He rolls into Cleveland with a trunk full of grateful hearts

Smelling 80s aggregate and collective scraps of knees

Now you’re smelling it.

Putting Ed Hardy cologne on your soul wounds

You’ve got me dressing preppy

With powerful bacne

Binaca sprays into gapes

The marrow of life dripping off my tongue and fingers like

Local honey

I wanna feel you in the bike lane

I wanna feel you on the roof

I wanna feel you by the woofer

I wanna feel you thrice on the star crossed fire escapes

And it won’t be nice when your son won’t smile

At Christmas time

Cul De Sac crummy

Cut off from grit

But it’s a collection of the stuff

Can you feel lit?

Placeless Sleepovers

Placeless sleepovers draw capes out the door - mid night march under orange hums so bright. And skeletons fell to the tink of glass. You took karate. Mother takes you home. Home is where the wet heat husks purple sprouts waving across property lines. It's hard ground and that's where you play. GI Joe is buried for ancient aliens when they finally arrive; artifacts of youth and agony all sushi'd up in dirt because like the fancy folks say - from that dirt you came and to that dirt you do go. But not ghostfaced kids behind Japanese shades. They stick around. They stick like jabs and Kraft mac. Foyer chimes calling them out, pink marble surfers, guided by Reagan handrails. Ooo but it does you no good. They seen you lying, he's got that belt. Now you're grown! Swarms of sulkers crying "but it ain't our fault!" They're damaged goods, sick day Sambos, milking it. Tomming something hard for that soapy selfhelp. Curators of crap upon crappy crap; those memories of dark groves in Saturns and moonlit urges. Those heavy days crushing in. But you're stuck on the river, paddles of jelly, 5 AM road rage, leaves in the alley. All the world's creakin' along in their socks. Alone on the porch, alone in their flocks. Life ain't nothin but pain and cocks, dew and drops, peace and pops. God: that magic tumblin' fox; keep me ornate; keeps me goin til I plops.