Write About Your Favorite Color

I like orange. But not the bright and bubbly kind. The dirty kind, like rust. The iris of rock doves, or pigeons’ eyeballs if you like.

I also like its neighbor, Dirty Yellow. Like mustard. The color of forgotten couches and curtains smelling of mildew and… dirty yellow.

I even like my pink dirty. Like intestines. Or a ballet slipper stained with sweat. And on the darker side of the spectrum, a dead rose, crusty like dried blood.

Imagine if every color were named after the dirtiest version of itself. “Burgundy” becomes “Dried Blood.” “Teal” becomes “mold.” Now mold is a versatile color. Everyone’s favorite color can be found in mold form. Mold is prismatic, polychromatic, breaking barriers, breaking…moulds. The Emperor’s New Clothes was just mold all along. Kind of ironic seeing as mold is one of the earth’s oldest life forms. The Emperor’s Old Mold. Beautiful.

And All That Shit

For Christ’s sakes, Mary, Joseph told her.
You’ve got to stop crying and staring out
that fucking window. Face it, Jesus died 
on the cross, no matter what that crazy bitch
Mary whatshername says, and that’s that.
He’s just not coming back. Ever.

This was in the summer, months after
the crucifixion. Mary had barely changed
her clothes since then, spent her days 
in total silence with cigarettes and bourbon.

It’s more than that, Mary said as she walked 
over and sat opposite Joseph at the kitchen table.
She lit up a fresh Marlboro, told him she had
something to tell him. What’s that?
her husband asked.
You know that whole story about the virgin birth?
she asked. When he nodded, she continued,
Well, don’t get angry or upset,
but it was all bullshit.
Jesus’s father was some Roman soldier, definitely
not God. We met one night at a club,
we were so young back then
and drinking and dancing and doing Ecstasy 
and he promised to pull out, but . . . 
Her voice trailed off into silence, she made
a little palms up gesture. You mean, you weren’t
really the Virgin Mary after all? Joseph demanded.
Hardly, she replied,
then made a sound like a snorting horse.
Joseph said he felt like throwing up. Mary pushed
the bottle of Jim Beam across the table, urged him
to have a drink instead. 

Later, when Joseph had finally stopped crying
and the bottle was almost empty, Mary was back
at the window. She asked him how in the hell 
he ever believed her ridiculous story anyway when 
everybody else in Galilee knew she was a party girl 
prone to big lies. I don’t know, he replied sounding 
like he was going to start crying again. I guess 
because life is so much easier if you believe
in God and miracles and all that shit.
Ha! said Mary, still waiting at the window,
fucking tell me all about it. 

The Quick Side of Night, Wailing 

Rita is on the edge
of town tonight 
the sound of the rails 
are coming in like rain
through a hole in the roof

just one more thing
you can’t keep out

when is love not more give than take 
the car is rolling and there’s no brakes 
something about the levee can’t hold back
when the floodplain / the vein / just gives right in

been through the burnout / rehab stints /
the decades of bad luck / bad checks /
old story / you know it?
then don’t look down like that
on what you ain’t, for one second,
been in knee deep
and no way out

trash bag on her car window
it’s no fucking metaphor
it’s making due
with whatever you have tucked
underneath the driver’s seat

there must be light
in all this somewhere
or else why even try, right?

you open the book
and not a damn word of it
feels right tonight
Rita’s chucking bottles at trains 
screaming about Ray and Daddy 
and when
oh fucking when
is it gonna end 

you think the night is long?
you’ve no idea 
how fast it goes 
down here

Doing it Right

Everything, and I mean everything, is burning.
The night of her 31st birthday: the smell
of the car tires squealing, pinning me in the garage,
the rush of blood from her slap across the face,
pussy juices on the couch, the lingering of fucking
in the air like the house was haunted,
streaks of dust across the glass, small grains
spilling down onto the rug. A tiny white landscapes
where generations of ideas will die and be reborn
only to be forgotten in the moment of insertion.

She will split the difference across the arms
of the chair, every orifice, every pore – wide open
and yearning – a flock for the shepherd. Some
bearded wet Jesus in a dirty bathrobe, screwdriver
and blackberry stained, Guccione’s corpse
on a bender, grave-stained and dick hungry.
What burns harder the fire or the skin under
the flame. Flesh peeling off into its own dance,
Yanvalou summoning until the entire room
is a gnawing mouth shape, a vulval vestibule
that swallows and swallows and swallows.

The end of the night shits open the cracked curtains,
the neighbors, the cats, the birds rattle the walls
like a concert, no one bought tickets for,
and the mountain erupts because it is always
about the mountain, the eruption of bleach
and pineapples, hands sticky and wiped on thighs.
Thick bubblegum. Ripped panties don’t
always spell passion, sometimes just desperation.
Spitting into opens mouths, a long stream down
the face, the sheets ripped up into a skull
and crossbones flag of attack.

Passion is crucified and dirty speak sounds
like Annunaki shit talking. Heaven is not
on the end of a penis or three fingers deep.
It is not pupils as black as dead moons
spinning in a dead orbit in a dead circle,
because what matters is the lava flowing under the bed,
the raw animal machines, pegged time in a ball gag,
the right here and right now of the in there and down there,
the spitting blood and the flowered grotesqueries of fluid.
Because if you are not doing it right, then don’t do it at all.

Thumbing It

Do you remember being young, that time when you were so well hung
that your favourite part would stand, almost on command?
With the aid of gentle foreplay, you could cope five times a day.
Now that you are very old, your shrunken member has grown cold.
Arteries harden, not your dick, every joint makes a loud click,
beta-blockers do their worst, but don’t worry, you’re not the first.
Old age makes you quite sclerotic, which is not at all erotic;
and as you swallow your diuretic, you realize it was not poetic
that your lover scoffed when you were thumbing it in soft

And the Beat Goes On

Dropping from the air 
upon ears like paper blotters on willing tongues,
raging at the bloodlessness of cardboard cutouts
against a shrinking sky,
through psychedelic lenses
let me seeeee, let me beeeee the pulse of silent rage
that rails against the vulgar machine with words
that organize, legitimize, minimize, super-size, tranquilize,
proselytize, tantalize, infantilize, sexualize, stigmatize
the suckled teats of long-conditioned truths.

Poking the bear, disturbing the seas of featureless beige,
stirring the comatose anima with battle-cries of sight and sound
that pierce dusty eardrums like sterling icepicks,
repressed wants teeeeem, solemn faces beeeeeam,
liberated in the warmth of a sun that breaks just beyond
the horizon on coffee-house stages, rousing thoughts
to gestate, ruminate, conjugate, propriate, sublimate, fornicate,
obliterate, determinate, propagate, exfoliate dangerous visions,
birthed from the unfetteredness of a purple haze. 

Fueling the scribblings of furious hands upon white sheets
with whisky and cigarettes,
Making, naked, ugly underbellies of the angst-ridden and inflamed
with the glorious promises of their ecstatic treasure-trails,
let’s revel in the coolness of poetry’s heeeeeat,
indulged in pollen-dusted skin so sweeeeet
within the honeyed tangles of poets’ asymmetries
to detoxify, dulcify, intensify, demystify, purify, glorify, magnify,
beautify, electrify, sanctify our bodily streams of light
that sugar lips and candy fingertips.

Tearing away at the fabric, unraveling,
woven from Gloopstick youth and plasticine smiles,
repulsing at the hordes in their mindless quests
for extra-flavor and double-coupon days,
looking for a steeeeeal, wanting to feeeeel,
as hollow dollars crumble to coins when plopped upon
unsated palms and countertops.

Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! 
We are on the brink 
of the Fall of the American Empire. 
Dig.

*

Originally published at littledeathlit

there’s something funny about people nowadays

oh how I long for a renaissance 

do you remember the days when art was beautiful?
and we never heard of butterflies devouring flesh

we worshiped fickle gods with funny names
and courted beautiful women 

we knew the sound of death at a young age
(but I suppose that part hasn’t really changed)

men sang of young maids 
surrounded by flowers

never mentioning those soft
but sharp butterfly kisses

sweet roses around each neck
to mask the stench of death 

oh how I long for a renaissance

of men?
of art?
of love?
of suffering?
of life?
ah-
fuck it

for now I guess I’ll just finish my whiskey

and dream of the days of warm mead
and maidens with flowers in their hair
(butterflies in tow)

In Las Vegas

I once took
a girlfriend
to Las Vegas.
It was a gamble
but I knew
I was losing
her anyway. 
We didn’t have
much money
and the casinos
seemed peppered
by aliens. 
All I can remember
is her deathless
breasts, a topless,
white-jeaned
blowjob on
the hotel bed. 
She left me
soon after we
got home and
I never went
to Vegas again. 
It also might
have been the last
great blowjob
I’ll ever have. 

Lay Me Down

Yeah, well, fuck this shit!
I’ve had my fill of this crap.
Lost the job, money gone,
Can’t get no damn credit.
Title Loan was happy to
End up with my car.
Makes life hard on the feet.
The bar’s full of losers, but
They’re doin’ better than me.
Bitch kicked me out the house.
Sometimes the magic shaft
Ain’t enough to please her.
She found some new peter
With a steady income.
Got a damn future as bright
As that of a back yard dog
On a ten-foot chain in a
Nine-foot flood.  Jesus!
Jesus, baby, show me the way.
Gi’me a plan outta this mess.
Take that last long drink,
Empty the bottle, toss it away.
Lay me down on wood and iron.
In the night, the distant blast 
Of the horn hails the approach
Of the ‘midnight special’ and
End-game salvation.

In America, the good ol’ U.S. of A.,
Over two hundred people a year
Commit suicide by train.
I will not be one of them.