Sick Sons

A glowing green and amber bright
Of an early night explosion
Atomic separation and divine speculation
Removed the dawn of blue
And opened on a man browned by sun
Lost between the crawling earth and sweetly golden sun
When his sight was in the venom of his thought
He coughed and spluttered so hard
His broken rib ached
And followed him out
The sprayed and sparkling green
Of the savannah's evening sun

And behold

Spring 9

Ambivalence is one of those words you never knew the meaning to
But said around saying like you meant it
-The puddles grow like mud grows around puddles
And flowers and buds on tree tips I pick
pull apart da da da

I saw it today and said Well Hey, lets look it up
-an emotion of equal opposites
Love and hate
Couldn’t care less but talk about constant

And boom thunder like “YES, THERE IS A WORLD OUTSIDE THE WALLS of your room, your home, your friends family and electronic interaction, down the 2.2 neighborhood that would be dirty brick fire escapes and light confusion if you had your way
I’m talking to you
me
Brief deposits of escape dressed as trip to bank
one day cash
and errands that recollect

Life like hate like yell retreats and yell again

All the interaction I can handle

Dying for stimulation of a cigarette worth screaming
three beer what the fuck I’m doing to my life
and pills that take you up down up down up down.

You see…
Spring time is a return to poetry. HOW POETIC
The threat of death returns with breathe. Life and funerals comment on your own.
Three years it was before the end. It being what?what?what?
Ask what I’ve done in three-
All things in three-
Did my colon explode? Thank god.
Did my lupus bring me down like a bummer? Thank god no.
Did I lose my mind and shit my pants and cry on sight my daughter?
Cry at the grave of my mother?

No. Yet here I am, pissing my pants and feeling sorry for myself. Inflicting scotch in place of psychotherapy. Pissing poetry in place of productivity. Here I am with my feet up demanding the unreading world PAY ATTENTION to my mouth farts
offer up the proverbial shit to my unbaring.
Spit it backwards and tell me I done did a good damn job.
Tell me I didn’t.

All in place of a walk. The dim walk a fresh rain provides the unbridled mind. Should I have taken one instead? Is a stream of self-referential-self-condensation unworthy of its own criticism? Should I have left it up to nature to provide me imagery and a consequence? Is it up to me to find the parallels in a puddle and a daffodil, or is it up to me to cry like I mean it?
Where in what does telling tell—who and why do mean it?

Spit it out!

Top it off and cover it in foil for the road!

Shit your pants and cry for sleep—fucking frightened the final remnants of your thinking crumble to the delugetime erosion

Ancient castles

Grandson curled against your four generations won’t slow the phantom color artifact spasms
corroding your brain

Can’t stop the rain and couldn’t save your bed

And I can’t plug gravity’s drain

Only with your death do I begin to see again
That bodies are what bodies are
And death is here again

Death is here again.
Spring is here again.
New life spits its answer back,
“DEATH IS HERE AGAIN!”

Vietnam

Tell you what…
If you hand me that drink there, boy, I’ll tell you one more story. It’ll be a short one. It’ll be a good one, but I don’t have the time to make it lengthy. I don’t have the time to take sips. Give me that drink and let me drink it down, and I’ve got one more story in me before I go.

It was after the war. You’ve heard that before.
Fwoom boom kill boom OH LORD OH LORD. One time on my LST I was gunning and BOOM shit got heavy. Friend O’Leary came and said we gotta ditch! And I said one more stitch
Bumbumbumacross a line-a trees they shootin from
And chop chop chop a line a trees went down.
He grabbed and spit ‘lets go yold fool’ and pulled me by my shirt WE RAN
And BOOM an RPG went bam

You’d never believe it. The thing went off right behind me. Poor O’Leary thought it ended me. He told me later that he saw the fire and that was that, thought I was gibbed for good. He hit the deck.

And BOOM the RPG went BAM. Before it hit I’s runnin and it hit I’s runnin still, and I look down and see my friend pissin hisself all knocked out and spread across the deck. I landed on my feet, boy believe me when I say I landed on my feet runnin, Oleary thought I was good as dead. I picked him by his collar and said ‘Lets get the fuck out!’ and I mighta been a ghost the way he looked at me. Wasn’t till the bullets stopped that he said he saw me dead. NO SUCH LUCK I said and took a smoke from’im. Never said no since.

It was after the war. You’ve heard that before. I was home again in my hometown, my homeState, VERMONT, and I spent a few months kicking it, that habbit, picked up, you know, from the war. It was like that there. My CO sold the stuff, and half of us was hard on it. Somin when we needed it, need that slow down cool down, shoot down sneaky fucks doing sneaky shit…

They’re not kidding when they say them little girls had grenades strapped their backs. Why you think we shot em down when we went into town? It’s no joke. All kindsa nonsense. Crafty fucks. You know they use’ta ride stationary bikes to power their hospitals down in them tunnels. HELL YEAH! No joke. Crafty folk. Now you see on TV some mother-fucking yuppie spinnin smoothies in his driveway thinking he’s the hottest shit since hot fudge Sundays. Fuck’em. I ever tell you the time they put up mines round the dock at HoTonWayne? We came in and luckily had a SEAL team at the time. One of these bad mothers on deck saw the bobbin porcupine headin’ to the side and he dived right in. All by himself he swam the thing aside.

But yeah, my CO sold the stuff and all us boys thought, ‘Why not?’ Hell, we used to soak our joints in the stuff and smoke before battle, sometimes spark ‘em if it came. You never knew when it would happen, but it did, and we were ready. I tell you what, if it wasn’t for that stuff keeping us calm, keeping us numb, that woulda been that. I took a bullet myself, stoned as fuck. If I wasn’t, It’d be a whole nother story! Took a bullet and kept going. Saved a buddy a mine. If I wasn’t, SHIT. I’da lied there like a bitch. It was just an arm, but that shit hurts, if I wasn’t so high I couldn’ta rammed him down that bayonet.

Red, a black boy straight offa farm from Carolina. That boy never owned a pair’a boots before he joined. Red, you know them kind, a little Indian blood in’em. Anyway, I heard the poor bastard went home and offed himself. He knocked up some whore and couldn’t get a visa to bring her home. After a dozen years he lost it and put on his dress, medals and all, he told his mother he was going back to Vietnam and BOOM, went into the bathroom and blew his brains out. They say you never get away; she’ll gets ya sooner or later.

So I got home and it took me a while to kick the stuff, but I did. Ever since I only drank, god bless. I found a woman and I found a job. Roofing, but it was a job. I’d saved enough to buy some land, and I made enough to buy some wood, so I built ourselves a home. Me and my woman lived in that home, we couldn’t have kids, but we lived in a home.

That reminds me, a friend of mine found a woman and a home. He rented it from his Mom, but it was his. At that point he was a cop or something, and he lived on the beach, I only talked to him on the phone—never saw it. Sounded like a good deal, but the poor bastard got cancer. Bitch left him. Yeah he smoked, but he was out there in the thick of it. Agent Orange. Miracle then, but shit, since--anything but. Uncle Sam saw him through, but Sam’s the one who stuck it in his chest to begin with. God damn shame. Couldn’t hold his head up by the end of it. Died at the beach. Not a bad place to go, but still. You never get away, she’s gonna get’ya sooner or later.

So yeah, where was I? Yeah,
So there I am in my home with my job. The home I built with my bare fucking hands. But you know what? That wasn’t enough. I “DRANK TOO MUCH”-- that bitch, blonde bitch. What she know? What’d she ever do? Suck my dicks’about all, and she got my house for it. So yeah, how’s that for one last story? How’s that for one last story? S’why I’m here on this bench eating the hotdog you bought me. That’s why I’m here in my boots with my guitar you’re holding. Why don’t you fuck off home back to your mommy?

Personal Mind

Tonight I’ve written the best shit I’ve ever written.
To some I’m somewhat drunk, to some I’m commendably drunk, to me I’m sufficiently drunk.
As such, my level of intoxication is sufficient as best, and should only be considered in the most subjective fashion.
I have heard that the most passionate of writers do their writing while intoxicated.
I have read that the most prolific writers write regardless of intoxication.
And I imagine that the most worthy writers do their writing with little regard to their mental or physical state.

I hope that writing is worthwhile in the end.
I enjoy the work of authors who completed their work many years before my birth,
many of whom constructed those works before the intricacies of my world were laid.
I hope that the world I live in will not continue without incorporating their ideas into its workings, and I pray that the world these writers have created will not exclude the sick meanderings of my own personal mind.

Quaf

Sometimes there’s the shear pleasure of it—I’m feeling it now.
I’m misspelling words,
Lolling towards the ceiling and gutting its headiness.

Perversion is involved.
My state is not capitalized,
But its God given status is being capitalized upon.

I am reveling in my mistakes.
The intake is a giddy misspelling
And deep breathing my sublime punctuation.

Tomorrow though,
Is another story.

Prostrate Peregrin

Under a brightly carved moon
I paused and lay, before adulthood, to think
A weighted metal box resting solemn on my chest
For a penance I've done three years hence

I leapt a chasm
Of solipsism
To split my legs between duality
And to confirm
Cogito ergo sum

I fled my parents thought
A reasoned path it made
To a home, I knew,
I'll never find rest in

I pitch my tent at the crossroads
And perform comedies for my friends
The pilgrims I meet walking past

Till finally my head is split

(And all my minds collection
Sane coins that I have mentioned
Would spill nameless on stones below
In the locations moonlight rarely shows)

For I chase a guess of love
Whos shy hair would brush past and mumble poisoned
Regrets in a saliva I find
On all the shirts that I like

Then I stumble drunken back together
Into the pale light I'd lay whole and hopeless in
A cracked and resealed self
Held together by the pressure
Of the computer sodden with poetry unwritten
Resting heavy on my chest