Superior Elvis

As I race toward New Madrid,
the conifers drop sweetly
a gift to squirrels and other pearls
and gems of God's golden twitching

the still of the night in Dyersburg
a time honored tradition
of cool cars, cooler women
and food finger licking

the split that ran the river back
into a shallow place
across Tiptonville's track
of currency in faded jeans

A cottony caravan of His
story
West Tennessee, West Tennessee,

I bleat and bow and beg to thee:
Find a rood and find a staff
And help me grow tall and strong: giraffe
My daughter's out in Halls tonight

A tumbleweed of megafright
And like and duh and of coarse greetings
"Does this give you New York Times
Tinglings?"

Hoi Pollock

Hoi pollock
a Jansport bag strap
undone in Dover
forward in time
(future tense)
encapsulate
words
in time we'll be better
one step at a time
(presently)
gracias mis amigos
por favor, tu eres ustedes major
minotoros
quando, tu cumpleanos equals?

man, stop

woman, go

my cousin worked for a cheesery
they said he was a real cheese wizard

MEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEMEME
EBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBEBE
22222222222222
TINGTINGTINGTINGTINGTINGTING

Staint oops

recording of Seek and Destroy
a vein pops inside a boy

flirting with the golden gate
a hoodie of Ashbury & Haight

torn on tracks of curmudgeon
swing
set
on the neighborhood ring
of bellow
doors
and party whores

get up get up and do ur chores
like taking trash to trash mouth
where trash goes when it goes out
and cleaning where we do our dooty
the dooty mouth so potty so pooty

no no no no no no no
gone with ze WYNDE,
WI
GO

and peddle dixie to the mount
of sermon fish; cod, trout

a gill for God
a lung for God
a paw for God

this is not odd

Orca Games

Are you okay with making sense?
a dream a drop a second chance?
a rainbow puppy afternoon
where veterans sway and swoon

to a doldrum daunting doggy day
a smartwhip bottom, no delay!

wont wont a gyrated hyp
a hypnotist a shoddy glint

of jewsharp in the crik bed dry

 an apple of the alter eye
a pear for Tim in precious
cage
of Armada Imperial
V8 stage

for pressings of the left and right
who cares if we dye 2nite

a stewards call from crashing plane
dubbed and stepped just the same
into a trance of the unholy
where fists arise and
resemble the sea

Holler

This city apartment
is nothing to start with
like a home in a holler
on I-40 east

I pounded the batter
like potbelly deathcries
against my white truck
you beated my brains

A once-over cowgirl
told too many strangers
"the night was mysterious
and I never knew his name."

I told a big bopper
to twirl round the antiques
but crashing he went
with style and with grace

My dark haired Virginia
where spilling is nothing
as long as the cry-milk
is fresh every morn

a time honored rite
a time honored norm
a time honored sprite
a time honored roar

I saw a black doggy
in the sad drizzle
under the guard-rail
of some interstate

I put a blanket right next
to the child
on a tandem
a party boy down
no man down over here

my darling my darling I've loved
you forever
my darling my darling
I just want to
die

with you by my bedside
God's hatchet of course
pressed on my lifeline
I'm gurgling now

for Jesus hath spoken
and angels are knitted
in stockings o'er
cobbles and cobbler's
great-greats

bottles of sorghum
cans of grizz-green
dance in the moonlight
in Mentone, AL

Jongo

"So, you're a train punk."
"yep."
"You ride trains?"
"yep."
"Where've you been?"
"I've been to a tailgate party in Tuscaloosa. I've been to the Rock of Ages. I've seen that crazy tree house in Tennessee. I held the hand of a dead grizzly bear in Bozeman. I filed my tooth down on purpose because it was too canine and now I have no nerves in it. I slept naked in Overton Park and wiped my ass with Prince Mongo's wig. I drank whiskey with the Mayor of Olive Branch, Mississippi. I came on the side of an iron mountain in Birmingham, Alabama. I fell in love and out of a moving freight car in Asheville, North Carolina. I felt the love in a Margaritaville in Panama City Beach, Florida. I napped on a pile of rotting orchids in Roanoke, Virginia. I..."
"Have you been out of the South?"
"I said Bozeman."
"Aside from Bozeman?"
"When I'm in those places I still think a lot about the places I've been in the South. I think about them when I'm riding the Rockies. When I'm holed up in a recessed doorway in Cheyenne, I think of Savannah. When I'm out of dope in Tacoma I think of Ranger. When I find myself crying Oklahoma City I just think about Memphis. When I'm out of gas under a Redwood tree I googaggyf ff  fff fffffind myself in the interests of a good God atop Lookout Mountain."

Roots and Flesh

These roots

yet gnarled,

in rich earth

now barreled

into ethos

so quickly

bought

the neighbor's son

is smoking

pot

in shade of multicolored

wings

of umbrella

the retard rings

a bell for you

to shine like God

put a penny in the sod

revisit with musk

of genteel graces

smelling Memphis

in lonely places

as if to say please come back soon

"Have you really ever rented a room?"

bright lights fading

with dancing bears

and Jack Frost nipping

Pink Floyd underwear

us and them

and you and me

and shapely,

this yonder "thee"

truncated spoils

and woop-de-doos

are in the hold

of Jim's Sea-doo

calling toward the

brine below

the murky murk

the duck bones

riveting me with every

stroke

I hurry back

to the wood boat

teak and tall

yet ever-small

under this moon

Cool Springs Mall

the walkers there with

ebony eyes

CHAR

Super soaker days
Night smoke haze
a bramblewood chiminea
is the only indication of
settlers that have been before
a tribunal of their own making
"I thought they were half-human
and these people next door I knew not
I found their dog dead
in the drive,
a
RAID filled ball
with a smiling tear,
the smelly stuff porn
out
on the aggregate."
"Under these circumstances we
grant you amnesty and appropriate
your time well spent out back
with the trees blowing in the breeze
and the now-dead dog barking
at the squirrel den in the trunk of the
Tulip Poplar
and the dark cream of a windstripped
puddle in the base of a bowl
feathered and leaves falling
all about the
F
  A
     L
        L
season air that irrigates your scalp
the tundra of your mind
pores thru
the drive-thru
dramatic mean bug,

I wonder if you piled all of the cigarette butts
in the world into one
pile how many people would be displaced

If you never take anything away from 100 books
I hope you hide this in your bubble goose:
find a friend
cultivate gratitude
handle the hard
jog your jogger back
to the foyer
where the blanket read TONY
in script like a dying woman wrote it while
she was dying
with peach preserves long dried
in a shape not unlike
two dachsunds being biblical
DON'T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, TONY
GOD IS ON MY SIDE AND
I DON'T HAVE TO JUSTIFY MYSELF (I DO)
I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE JUSTICE
I GUESS YOU JUST HAD TO DASEIN (BEING THERE)
you'll remember the smells
of Pulaski
when it "wasn't you back there"

it will be a time or two or three more longer
to come out of this, Ruby Fall

1/1

Donald Davidson
on the defense of tradition
I turned my head
away from Her so I could listen

something rings true
but fails at the feet of Grace
absolute in its power
absolut Face

about face
timeless walkability
choice cut, dry heave
abandoned supermarket sleeves

chinstrap beard mentality
casual friday every day
hippies done won
but I'll be damned if the Dark One's
gone

supplanting Poem for
homoeros
Bucks Unlimited
tattoos of sparrows

ripped from the earth
and dipped in fondue
forever
Xtreme Dante
undashing, clever

the robot lawnmower
spake to the robot
harvester:
at least there's no more
yip yap a botherin' Her

instead the cold cleaves
to discs, and dusks empty
of men, REAL MEN
and farmers' daughters aplenty

ghost dog growling
middle of the night
people shouting!

it's a white person fight

crying slowly
chrome to the bone
ding dong ditching
cell phone on rome

charles horse
on my good leg
towards Christmas
I never beg

found a button
under the root
pressed that shit
made a sound, a poot

Sophocles
waking up dead
turtle doves smiling
because:
69, head.

Fraternoster

Of tea and pipe,
briefly to booze
in scenes I write
in scenes I snooze

a vaguery of ecstasy
what's a rave?
a train punk's destiny
as with Neal, I crave

the midnight hour
a soulful shift
from fourth to third
a verdant rift

between the folds
of frontal lobes
and in the cache
of my short soul

I long for you-a,
my supple God
I seek you out
on dusty sod

two tracks appear
in neck of woods
one spotted bare,
one interviewed

a silly thing
the mass of men
heads jolting forth
and back again

denying too,
the validity
of penchants for
virginity

of mind and body
of style and grace,
a burial cloth,
bears your face

the Jesus 'tod
of Burzum sinks
into the hand,
lottery brink

in lonely times
and simpler ones,
my race (be run)
a mask undone

corpse paint on dogs
and moonlit bogs,
revelry in dreambuilt
smog

the face of doom
is nigh, is nigh
infernal womb
for those to decry

and we all wept
after the sixth
hail mary said,
a candle, lit

a jaunty hat
built of dried straw;
you're from Nashville?
land of Hee-Haw

jumping jack flash
and a gnostic bumpkin,
flashlights on phones
for battered sump pans

and twisted metals
unto the petals
of this ripe Iris,
church bulletins

written in Papyrus.

Omen Omen Omen Omen,
have you vexed a door to open?
you are spilt out on the tarpin
you are split by vegan star-men

Jingle, jangle, jingle, jangle,
who is that, in whom you tangle?
gold-watched yankee under rose colored Kangol?
a pierced nip wildebeast that you must wrangle!

Pedal, pedal, pedal, pedal,
Sampson strength with each plucked petal
O! cross-eyed sculptor in to black metal
you've thrown the war, and yawned the battle

Terror, terror, terror, terror,
A child is born into a New Era
green t-shirt with Che Guevara
unto you, a child named Sara

Cryful cryful cryful cryful
the cursed mark of Cane's disciple
today's wages, tomorrow's rifle
he hates his daddy, "Mr. Trifle"

Give us this day our daily mosh
I think I'll poop in the shoes at Posh
when you ride alone, you ride with Gosh
prove to yourself that you're not lost!

What are the collars
of our shirts for
but to hold
back
the
burst

but a doubly insular
and keen witness
to our sweet
noggins
top
our
heads

those blues get
us down
and melt
obligation
to keep
a methodical
still
going

rock and roll?
the duress,
the exhaltation
the fine
release,
the mist

the spirit we mock
is the spirit
that moves
our bodies
to work

apropoganda

The sorority girl gasped
"no!"
"he's so... what a jerk!"
and the sky ripped in two
and down came the rain
dripping from the Land's End
logo
on
to

a bum tinkering
and toying
with the idea of Goebbel;
you know,
the arms stretched forth,
a sea - an inside-out man

and the affection
his own father jettisoned
for a troubled,
turncoat
voyage
across
the
Atlantic

to a strange name:
Soddy-Daisy

The fields are alive
with the sound of music

Bald Mountain

I was at the Pebble Beach Concours de Elegance
and my mind was blown
by the private reserve upon
which so few lived
in the hills outside of Monterey

the perfect grass and the perfect jug band
were perfectly positioned
near the symetrical splay of Hors d'oeuvre
in the aromatic nestle of some valley
with little shrubs like those on my
uncle's train set diorama

A heart felt hello to my father's gay friends
from far away lands
and as they sized me up
I shifted the subject of conversation
from that of prowess
to that of progeny, progress
and the man's Peking to Paris adventure
in a 1938 something or other

and I wandered off to the third coffee
of the evening
and my mind wandered off to a darkened Broadway
where I held her hand but it wasn't quite right

and then my thoughts turned to my
new love
the round-faced girl whose eyes
are cool pools of aquamarine
flanked by the fairest, milkiest skin

and I made a noise that I thought
a baby dinosaur might make
and I smiled

One Million Earths

It was a concerted effort,
the parking job

I watch football
and I believe in miracles

yet

it only takes one twist of the Knob
Creek bottle top

to

fumble the worldly wise
juggling act - I'm caught

redeeming for penny
fish
in Zip-loc bags

and after the confetti
settles

I remember the sun
fits one million earths

The Poorest Brahmin

"He's the poorest Brahmin you've ever seen."

The Fig tree
in the wind
a million leaves
shimmer

"He's the poorest Brahmin you've ever seen."

a multifaceted
synergy:
office parks
on fire

"He's the poorest Brahmin you've ever seen."

the thunderstorm track
in the produce aisle
with the hourly misting
strobe lighting, too

"He's the poorest Brahmin you've ever seen."

the lunch, broken
This is my Body
the cooler, broken
This is my Blood

"He's the poorest Brahmin you've ever seen."

For Willie T

Racoons in the alley
swatting knats in the
Nashville light pollution

and I'm moved to a creation
myth

it's about a boy turned tortoise
and when he rested; the cosmic

river swelled and Jones'd for
the easiest path,

a demiurgic TVA
drawn toward a three-star

moment
of triumph over a stagnation

so characteristic of the Devil -
the great agitator!
The great I Can't.

Behold, New Road

Timidity times ten:
tepid Tervis Tumblers
tear the trousers Tom tried
on
he hushed himself
how horrible has
this
been?

"I want to dig myself a hole
in the Scotts tough turf right about now.
I don't think I can make it past side dish X"
"Try this script on for size:
a man is dials the wrong number and its
his ex-lover's new number. They talk about
the old times.
Then, you hear a horrible cry and you find
out the woman has been hit by a motor vehicle
as she was filling up the generator for her ice cream
truck."
"Wait, this sucks; stop telling me this script."
"Man, this is the same shit I've been talking to my
shrink about. A sort of intellectual imminent domain;
like if the government bought all the Beatles songs
and chopped and screwed them for a Marines commercial
because by then the post-20th-century blackness
would have totally been imbued and thus transfigured
into the actual agglomerated consciousness of post-post
bullshit like "hey we heard that people used to love the
Beatles" like we do with Count Basie now. Every time
I try to pitch anything, it turns into a theft and bereavement."
"Man, will you lay OFF man!"

The End

The Inundation of Old Butler

progressive thinktank,
rolls on
sweeping the appalachian tail
"we're going to tame this river"

a slow inundation
a murky sumbersion
a drafty house
hidden

until 1983

"an electrified home for every man"
and we all know that Tate and Davidson
and the rest who transgressed and fled
the synchronicity of a new era
knew it would come to this

RELOCATION SERVICES
on the side of a flat bed truck

"we've got kin buried here."
"we're relocating them too."
and here's the line about
the permanence of the dead

now they'll have to float on top
where the bargemaster smokes his pipe
and the mates think they see something in the morning mist
those diesel babies shooting pulses
down to the diamond where the Watauga boys played

It's only land!

home is where the heart is
but if your heart's in the very soil?

in silt, it sinks

Things I Saw On My Walk

the sad origami of a crumpled receipt
a pile of rubble leaning agasint the shell of a payphone stand
rusted-out 100 spoke wheels
my empty bike basket; my book, stolen.

a fat sorority girl
a dogwood petal melee
a man replacing an intricate neon sign
I smelled my old house

a hawk circling 4th and Church
ICP chain on a neck
the delicate shoulders on many office ladies
perky half windsors on many young bucks

worming it to the yachtyard

two window washers cleansing the side of a building
so high

Things I Saw On My Lunch Break

A chubby pigeon
ubiquitous black Tahoes
"If it doesn't walk, we'll bring out the chalk." - Chicago Crime Lab t-shirt
the struts and sideways glances of several black men
white Nashvillian men on the brink of being Tony Blair's stylist
a man dancing and brushing his teeth simultaneously - the froth, a second beard
coal miners and kin marching in unison on a pedestrian path
a T3 Terminator Edition Toyota Tundra with vanity plate reading "PINCH"
a fat man in a red blazer
a prostitute shirking her duties, reclining in the park
my rusty bike looking useful and by its utility, beautiful
a million goatees
four high-toned children holding hands
FEMA backpacks slung on the shoulders of the indigent
a Dawn in poverty
a few dozen men who wouldn't mind punching another
a few dozen men with slob fathers
100 addicts
a Shriner's van
a schoolbus full of laughing children
Nathan delivering packages on his bicycle
a lovely day

Dork Lord II

My mother's voodoo
dwells, still, in my life narrative
"she really pissed in some Comet household cleaner
to see if you were a boy or a girl"
like what the fuck
I'm sick of vacant luck
balls on the bumper truck
whacked out kids on the halfshell
listening to Icky Thump
George Jones never had it this hard
and his was self-aggrandized
on a stage where the rose tattoo
meets the barbed wire baby boy
tears and fears and dreary days
Nerf gun boom boom
and I have a feeling my children
might get into noise music
and I have a feeling my children
will hate me

"she also did something with a spoon and her round young tummy."
"I think she rubbed it and then saw if it stuck on some onyx or something."

through the hollow door you
punched

through the glazed days you
worried
too much

a real man makes his own sleeves
the safari gentleman said to his wife (about the piled up African):
"He looks like tripod covered in dreadlocks."
African:
"He's going to wake up one day and find himself in a hollow near the river all covered in Patagonia."

"Yeah he ripped out the seats of his Lexus and made a rope and hung himself with it. I can't believe something like that would happen here."

in her pupils, a blue hurricane
The Spirit
furious interiors
she's hard up on clarification like
a bouncy ball in the booth at
McDonalds

O! Saddled Jewel

16th autonomous wonder!
your Memphian hilt
writhes along an aqueous narrative
the bluffs, a saintly calm

your limits,
a cradle to the self destruction
of a once grand place
conservation of motion
declares your Germans and Cordovans
the ultra usurpers
and the mem'ry of a limestone facade
crumbles with the alleyway liturgical
rites and the city exhales
and with every dying breath,
something new is brought,
and something spent is expelled
a delta distillation

next, we have the outliers:
a cottony kingdom
now in the hands of a few Jah Deerie.
Grandly, the earth crinkles
in a greaseless Ore-Ida fashion
and dips down as if it's being pinched by
the Devil himself down there in
the retirement swelter for all
humanoid ultimate deviants
who surround (with mirrors) those who
happen to find their slow road
ending

this lip pucks out
and pouts a little as if to say
boo hoo and hey what about me
and inside the pursed pinch
a trillion fauna dart in and out of dark woods
and driveway motion sensor floodlight
and the urban renewal really renewed
the faith of a dozen developers who were
trying a big boy way of life
copied from the back of double-breasted
limosines in Manhattan.
"I want to be like that."
But really the need for purification
and a real forgetting of the geo-social
and the swing low sweet chariotness
come forth to carry me quo
and set the Stage for a novelty
Central Business District,
a snarled ewy,
an abandoned baby
whah whah! lemme at em!
enough about Nashville

East, let's see: you damn near seceded
from us when we tickled the "great aggressor"
with a palm frond and a great Ankh'd machine.
Lay them down.
You can't walk over all those hills in one day.

Swoosh

apart from the Parthenon,

down West End

we all swooned

when we saw Athena holding Nike

like "That's what the shoes were named after."

and back then it's no shame

or big thing to have fleet feet

and to flop around when you run

it's kind of like ass-slaps in your favorite game;

we know the dance around the masculinity question

but for the violence and but for the brains

but for the Red Bull can pyramid

and the tapped-out soul

of a goy fresh out of the recovery zoo,

that carpeted utility

designated NPO

that wompy zone of bewilderment

tied tight with twine from mom's gift closet

a shark-breathed bottom,

a chortling, sinister construction

of a disordered soul

Catholic Cool

poetry-reading confessional
catholicity in the punk light
jaundiced leanings either left or right
and it's like wow man did you forget about the other dimensions?
my sphere of influence is most definitely a sphere
it's natural

pentagram tattoos are real punk
until the devil comes to your party
and steals all your shit and takes your girl
and burns the whole complex down and
then sits you down and says
dude chill
it's all good
and you wake up like what in the WORLD?

exactly