Tennessee Titanium

"Suffering Jukebox" is the song
I tore a page from the 1964 Dyersburg phonebook
and scribbled the grocery list on it

Things have really gone downhill in this place
Before there were streets and trash on the curb
and now it's a toy strewn lawn
and the trash is inside

When people put the trash outside
we all win

When you ride with style
you don't ride with Kim Jong Il

When you wear Mickey Mouse ears
time still goes

"What is a ray?"

I’ve been sad since I was little, I’ve been bad since I was little, I’ve been not there forever, I’ve been outcast in weather, I’ve been found in the ditch, I have a daddy who is rich, but money doesn’t matter when you want to kill yourself. I had flowers o’er me, way up high in the tree and a thousand fuzzy seeds replaced my hair like disease, when the bell tower had gonged it’s very last ba-gong-gong-gong, I will wake up in the sunlight I will sit up, I will ramble on the hilltops of the Basin on the creekbeds that are crusted by a thousand bad pollutants and a dust so soft and fine; in the orchard there’s a fragrance that is lovely and so splendid, all my cares will wash away and the earth will softly tremble underneath my booted feet, underneath your floral dress, the fissures will gape open and the bad smells will come forth; everybody will be fainting like a druid ceremony when they became so ecstatic that the high priest had no more to say but when he fell over he was entranced by the moss on the edge of some shape that they thought would bring them luck, or misfortune on the bad guy because there’s always a bad guy and the world is white from space, and the men are white in space; I wonder if there’s a man or a carcass, rather, that has been shooting like a ray on a math board in a classroom in the outer edges of space, or if he fell into an orbit and was devoured by some planet, burned up in the atmosphere, or was he just merely jolly, with the angels of the medium of whatever sphere he’s called his end.

a Tacit, a Turn

On bended knee on the rocky Cumberland shore

I wept into the big body

I wept and howled like a wolf

And smote my breast

my knapsack barred me

from the wombish dew,

perfected by the Trappist Monks

somewhere cold

the fields, tended

What about God?

Have you tried everything?

No party should take away

from your seeking.

I've got my freedom.

O'er the Reeever and Thru Theee Wooods

upon a pitch black mound
a populist's son sits
twiddling his fingers,
licking his lips

orange moss creeps up
the laces bound tight
in more than one instance
on many a flat night

a tie bound loose
across the great bisection
of God's own image
of the Lord's loose perfection

a round town gal
a cream drunk dude
a smooth lace dream
a figure, a nude

a poem in the Japanese maple
that always looked like purple weed
a flouted banner
"I'm just trying to help you be a team player."
"That's all."

SOMETHING IN THE WAY, DOG

Orderly,
perpendic,
turbo fan in the cubicle
the only wildlife, a parrot mug
and ooo drip drip drop drop
new age music creepin through the partitions
chimes in the forest like
yeah right
iron age
iron stage
look at the clothes that my iron
made
flat

Olympus

Olympus, give way
to the rush-hour race-car drivers
and the pencil thin beards
adorned with great care

Somewhere a child is making a smiley face
out of mice turds
And somewhere a boss is making a mountain
out of another

And once in a while I'd like to bike home
and not have a bigot
bump dormantly,
or seethe in cloth seats
against a tapestry of young children

He Got Air Christian Slaters On

1. He couldn't have a job dressed like that

2. Window shopping with your mom

3. The pretty girl wore a magnolia bloom like an extraterrestrial shield

4. Someone cleaning their Lexus spokes was murdered Tuesday

5. You'll pop an eye out with those rockhard nipples, baby

6. Free beer tomorrow? What kind of asshole puts that on their body?

7. The mail-ladies' shape-ups: grime, canines, and guile

8. The baggy dress shirt

9. A Southwest ticket away from your sweetheart

10. Your mall, your life

11. Gay people in denial

12. Artisan worries

13. Pulpits with Peter