A Memphis Introspective

Forgot all but your spine-rattles
Under garments, white
You filed your talons
On my houndstooth jacket
We sat through marble
And pall altars
Foiled were our plans
Mapped without jurisdiction
Where does the heart turn
Against bristling earshot
Where does the mouth meld
With symbolic alignment
Zippered, with no aim
Bruising, flapping adverbs
Binding woe in the slats
Of the Memphis sun

Church Wall Jesus

Daddy doesn't like robots
The words fell organic
Onto the plate and pitched camp with peas and carrots

Mommy hallucinated church-wall Jesus
Over the high branches of Oak Hill

And it was well with her soul
Jerry never came home
Her baby lost in the trusses of a million highways
And daddy never came home any more
Stranded, of mind, in the annex behind the laundry room

Welts formed on the family name
"I've had an experience."
"Yes."
"I've had an experience and I don't trust myself any longer."
"Describe this experience."
"My nails ran white with time, grown adequately to pick pennies from
Mother Earth's embrace."
"Yes."
"She sent me wrath long disguised."
"Have you shopped genres? Have you nodded in time only to save critiques
for the pillow?"
"I think I'm done here."

Abner Jay

I was born during the hard Depression days, O my Lord. In July in south Georgia, where the sun was hot as a blaze. My folks were sharecroppers. At the end of the year, we had nothing, we had nothing. We had nothing but grasshoppers. Looking back over my life, O Lord, I'm so depressed. Help me somebody, I need some rest. O Lord, I'm so depressed. Every boy needs a girl. Every girl needs a boy. I'm a boy so full of love. I have no one to hold my hand. Tell me how long must I wander. Tell my how long must I cry. Will I meet someone? Someone to wipe, dry the tears from my eye? Come on baby, rub my head! Rub my head while I lay down in my bed! Kiss, kiss me! Kiss me baby 'til I feel alright! 'Til I feel alright! Hey! O looking back over my life, O Lord, I'm so depressed. Help me somebody, I need some rest. O Lord, I'm so depressed.

warper

I skimmed 1,000 car grills and
trolled infinitely along the lines of conversations
And I don't find it difficult to write
poems and I don't wrestle with its
ease. I duly cringe at my own
outpourings and swallow the
residual drifting feelings.
I studied the topography of my
mother's scalp through the strands
of her fleeting hair and I felt fourth
grade in a nutshell

"What's a Bidet, Player?"

I went crazy for 12 hours
my dreams bubbled over
into waking and the world turned
Weird.

There were wolves perched on
spears as I held Latin verbs.
A girl had buckshot wounds on her
back like Hawaii splatters across the Pacific

Nashboro

This afternoon I sat in Fort Nashboro
and flayed my mind for wanting more
and for staring down the
mouths
of snakes ringed with statehood
and warning
Thine eyes aren't too far spread for
one
solid
strike

Little City

Little City
what has dropped
tween your seams
and burned spotlights
across jurisdictions
through dork realms
and cool motifs
and overlapping themes
and motifs

On skyscrapers I've seen
three thousand windows
they've spelled your name
and cried for dimes
and held shimmering in the
heaviest of days

the welds fight for support
guilds draw sticks
secret smokes in dark
Throats
black

When It's Wedding Time Down South

Hording Georgia gorges

Raffling Savannah porches

Torching Decatur forests

Touring Milltown florists

Combing empty beaches

Dreaming of future nieces

Truing heart-spoked wheels

Adorning fragrant blazers

Holding freetown doormats

Clutching heartache handbags

Tearstained velour dreamcoats

Foraging in swamps with locals

Diving into murk murk

Swerving into ravines

Jumping guns with Dixie

Starting fires, ziptie bracelets

Nobody ever makes it

The One bleeds y'all together

True voices ring

Droners relax

Your strangle

Isolated, Wild

Clouds so fast
I've never seen
Faggy burdens
Welted worries
Hard-won experience
Yeah we've got it easy
Easy street
Droolers
Drooling puddles
From gapes of wrath

I want to go when the world was
clean
I could fit neath fenceposts
Wade through foliage, thick
Come upon a great cross in the clearing
and be sore afraid
Hear my mother bounce words
from the perimeter,
Cross beetlebacks and grassblade ramps,
Cars churgling to a start
isolated, wild

I want to sit in the forest and graze upon my fears, a knee-hugging experience.

I want a damp leaf to graze my cheek like evading knowledge, I know it's there falling beyond my place in the state flapping to and fro, into the great whiteness that is the flash before sleep and
the flash before death

Cool Cat

Was a cool cat in a heatlamp gauntlet
Hard-pressed for answers
The Vespa and the bicycle had an
affair
What an intriguing world
Secret service swarms like dead flies
tied by strings, gimp fanatics taking gravity
by the balls and wiping me down
faster than Boosie

Dead-arm rainbows
and black-tie touchdowns
We argued over Phoenix with sprawling
syntax
Clover Bottom calling
pick up line two
How many deadbeats does it take
Til your teardrops melt whiskey-like
into a river of cornmeal and kids
ablaze with fire drawn curation
How many dollars would you auction your soul for
and how many times has a sad song met your
hard heart and shivered back on itself
That cell tower gross-out really slammed your coffee, palm-up
It really exploded your wormcan, dark and dirty
Hardly a good show, Plato in the biscuits and Jesus in the teabags

Dee-Bo

He came out
at the drug deal
crying to ICP
His tattooed
tears gleaming
Conventional tea
sweet sweat; Dee-bo wept
"The drugs dogs crept,
the drug dogs crept."

Using Dreams

Had using dreams last night
I was surrounded by verdant forests
And hippy tribes
Esoteric dances
Pointed breasts
Shackles draped like tabletop tassles
I
Bore a suburban queer-bait
He drifted between the semis

Spinning Cold

Spinning cold
Through the white eyes of God
His justice casts huge shadows

All I know is myself and syllogisms
And so I really know myself?
Do I really have a grasp?

Had Too Much Vision

The weirdo and the wild one
yeah, that's what she'll call it
Starbucks trays stacked
onomatopoeia mountain
hikers

We were trained for tracks
placed elsewhere at last
We've run amok and sprouted
wings

you stacked your matches like
Black Flag
novel, you thought
but trite's the style

how'd we get here
between rough stuff
and the softness

the devil is in the sideburns
drank
too much
Tramp Stamp relay
dream date barbie
dream student Barbar

you little stinker
Katrina got hold of his head
Drank too much
Had too much vision

HAD TOO MUCH VISION
HAD TOO MUCH VISIO
HAD TOO MUCH VISI
HAD TOO MUCH VIS
HAD TOO MUCH VI
HAD TOO MUCH V
HAD TOO MUCH
HAD TOO MUC
HAD TOO MU
HAD TOO M
HAD TOO
HAD TO

No Commitment

Took a shower
Ate some food
Watched the game

Gone with the VVind

my chair collapsed
I lay supine on the floor
raising my hands
my shadow flew twice
my size
and splattered against the wall
I cried out to the neighbors upstairs

these days really are heavy
We're swept up in movements
I'm collected in bins

Gone with the vvind
is what they'll say

Facebook'll have me forever
and my fiance wilt
upon reviewing

EMP doomsday
Just me and my bike
I'll skim the coast with paperbacks
wind down with cassettes
of old friends
and times in youth
when we had the scene
by the nuts
we really were giants
we really had nothing

there's a certain power in
such and such
there's subjectivity flowing
RAPIDLY THROUGH ME

twice
we'll live
RIGHT

HAD A PET CALLED
STUDIES

HAD A MISSION CALLED
FAILURE

HAD A KEY WITH NO
LABEL

HELD THE HANDS OF
STRANGE WOMEN

RESTED NEATH
ULTRA MEGA SKIES

REAL FOOD
INGESTED

REAL TALK
IN SPACE

GOD WITHOUT TIME
WHY HAVE YOU FELT MY FORM
AND MOLDED MY MIND
INTO SHARP PITS
FROM WHICH THE OOZE
OF FREEDOM ROTS
SLOWLY INTO MOUNTAINS
ONTO MY PLATE

Fawn

I have fawners
They flock as suds
Twelve disciples
Collection of muds

Your dead hands fell
Gravity tribunals
My head lopped
From ear to ear

Tornadic Activity

air tangled
with trying
and wanton speed
gaseous Doom

The truck well waxed
won't slick you now
your clothes fled promptly
atrophy hunks
propped up in the strong oaks
like 8th grade Christian
Art
of heritage and hard times
broke ground and broke hearts

WalMart bag Betty
garnered a fullsize (in color)
with tears halfway posed
as a question to God
"where is Your mercy?"
vanished like the sod

All My Trials

All my ex-girlfriends
Will pack up
Peace out

Waterbed wobblies
That aren't morning
Sickness

All I need is Christmas
The other days don't
Matter

I want my vows
To sound like cannons

You want your pasts
Squeaky set

You want my pasts
Dumbed down
Annotated

And held overhead
Like it's not going to kill me

A Poem A Day

A poem a day
Keeps the mean reds
At bay

And the hammer falls
sickly
wheat whoosh
muffles
and flesh wound
troubles

Does your depravity
Walk free?

Have your means
Ended?

A red balloon sits beneath my heart
pericardial sac

And you're the prick that airs me out
It's never coming back

Your ring, it had some syrup
Beneath the stone set

A note, backpacked
A hushed relax

God's Tonsil Stones

I'm gonna marry a mountain
And move it
Switch bodies in the caves
With Plato coming out my ears

I hardly choke anymore
when I swallow the Truth

It's sad that I value form over
Substance

But I'm as flawed as the State
And corrupt I'll be 'til my corporeality
Leaps faithfully
and is dashed upon God's tonsil stones

Masonry

I got grandfathered into the Masons
gonna get real free
fall on my sword
you'll flash before my eyes,
my life
and at Christmas time
some future place
I'll pull out the old
harddrive and swell my eyes
fat with liquid nails
"papa is feeling sad"

A Golden Eclipse

I held you between
Those silly surf songs
Told you all your troubles
Would capsize if you harbored

Awash in webs
Forth from spindles
Our fingertips, really
Our tongues

Wompy jog
all out of whack
Natural philosophy
worth the leap?

I told my doc to talk to the hand
and and he saw a Rolex peek through
A golden eclipse
He said, "I have one too, we have so much in common."

I wear silver teeth

As a metaphor for

How my words are

Second rate

Row Houses

new castles, vinyl sides
dystopian sheets
starched hard
against the earth

in rows like graves
beds made
DIY feng shui
heavy dread

Crap Hound

My baby, my burden
Kept me in check
Had a bulletproof tongue
Mind like a train sans wreck

I'm a crap hound on point,
Baying in the night
Never letting junk spoil,
Mosey, or take flight

King of the blip-stars
Giant-slayer ethics
Southbound brainwaves
Nashville genetics

Planet Hollywood

my heart splits
as West End and Broadway do
two post-quake crusts
deep tissue trauma

and somewhere along life's trip
Planet Hollywood scrammed
And I'd really never fill Travolta's footprints

taking long walks in the strange nights
the air misses the point
Something is right elsewhere

Hopefulness is not a universal
But a proper accident
Naturally

Gem Thief

Virtue skewed
and virtue true
I've got nothing better to do

But ride my bike
and contemplate
read a bit

one time I crushed on a girl
buried beneath the beach
She waved her toes at me

I smiled the sea into her mouth
She felt thorough
I watched some real Gonzo shit go down

Natty light at the helm
Holler at your boy
Something happened then

That can't be pointed out
A deep concern for the immaterial
A deep concern for issues not articulated

But recovered I ain't
And my ship still holds water
Holy buckets!

I Found Dust Beneath Clear Skies

I was swept up in the times
The night I felt the window
And the conversations woosh by
On the flip side

The night the ground and I became very acquainted
The earth hugged me like no Mother before
A thousand aunts couldn't squeeze to death
Like that matronly grip

The pines dripped sap
and shut my eyes
and I found dust
beneath clear skies

Jort Flips

I went mad with acting
Trouped myself into rites
Burnt limbs and chunky yarn
Browned my senses

I glided on lasers to your bedside
And splintered your mind
A smart bomb in deed

My face went crazy
With frothy contortions
And I pretended Chickasaw
Barreled through my veins

I'll circle out slowly til my legs
Cry out Jell-O!
Then I'll heave and spritz the road
With ether and berries

Swimmingly like the boardhouse banquet
We shared in Vegas
I always want to swoop down
On East Tennessee

And smell the freedom
On the knife side
Scope out the edge
Microns across

Slicing the Carolinas
Asunder