plans askew, more to come…

“greed of the suck-fish”

gettin’ bombed watching sunday
untangle the last of her hours,
smoking cigarettes that go down
like water. rainfall outside fights
a rear-guard action keeping the
cloudy sky in place. the only
forward movement is in time.

whomever wanted it badly enough
could feel the electricity; inherent
in swallowed ovoid capsules.
transformational acrobats are all
the rage in this delicate town.
almost nobody watches the slow moving
grass waving in the foot-breeze.
short attention spans virtually
guarantee this misdemeanor attraction
generates moderate success.

by varying account, autonomics rule
the day as it constricts the loose
hours spilled out over the afternoon.
tomorrow is already given over
to a celebration of the old days;
today is the pocket the key must
pass through before being inserted
into the lock. pandoras box will
spring open on its own.

they come with questions…

“fantasy of movement”

i don’t know where we are.
driving through arteries soon enough
to be choked with other travelers
heading back to a lodge in the
crack shack with all the evidence
of arguments & bullet holes.

we are the lovers dancing at the
end of a silver string. all
our games are scripted but no
rules are enforced. willing par-
ticipants; every penalty a bruise
with a purple/yellow story. rampant
is the mistaken belief that
this chemical road turns to dirt
later rather than sooner.

signs of resolved struggle
dash through the afternoon, dancing
through car windows. sunflower
oil & black licorice leftovers
demand no attention; given
time the precursors reconstitute
themselves. we will discover
a new form only afterward.

sam cooke sings while i write…

“my own world”

there was talk of black
curtains to fence me in but
we didn’t need anything that
serious getting in the way.
natural light to one side
of the neural window; add,
subtract, see how it plays out
& never worry.

playing pretend with glass pistols;
billowed smoke playing the bullets
sprayed around the room hoping
for gawdsake that nobody
gets hurt. the psychonauts ride
again for points distant.

————————————-

It’s been a while since the psychonauts rode. The time is coming soon & if you’re not ready, opt for sanity and hope. All others 5 cents a head. That’s meat for the roaster; we are the fire under the spit.

the caapi tales (part 1)…

“vacation”

i was already sure i
had to taste something
other than the stale air
recycled continuously for my
benefit while a small crowd
watched for signs of life.

nothing says alive like the
plume of smoke coming off
another cigarette. all the shades
of green agree the signs are
good; so far everything
shimmies when i exhale & wonder
what can be so savage as see-
ing the world through new eyes
in hard to reach places.

mouth & hands work together
underneath a good mans
experimentation on the universe,
plant life, whatever. biota
at its finest.

hands shake the last drag
from a loaded cigarette ready
to fire. instead it’s smudged
into an ashtray & left to
burn out. ever as such, my
daily lamentation expressed
with my devilish smile. i
won’t even ask why i wasn’t
told all this a long time ago.

————————————

The boys at the home office have really been on my ass for a new series. After immersing myself in the proper literature as well as a hat/tip from a disembodied voice, the whole thing came together in a nice trip package. I’m guessing a four part series, but it that isn’t enough & psychosis fails to set in, there may well be more. Until we meet again… get a hat.

fortuitous timing…

“probably still is”

time given over to the past
for momentary subterfuge
on an afternoon shredded to
pieces by the usual assorted
miscreants & vagrant
ideologues fulfilling
all kinds of bloody-nose
fantasies. it’s all the same
to me; i’ve taken worse
(& seen more of it.)

clouds drift across the landscape
trying to cover the holes in
the sky where they usually hang
stars. maybe its too early for
anything but a snort & drag;
petunia fields won’t hold
a candle to the khandahar poppies
but the afternoon grows more
ambivalent all the same.

dotting through violacea,
playing games past tense on shattered
afternoons like a good boy. i
might have grown up a little;
just more likely not.

———————————

Inspired by Leonard Cohen.

late in the day considerations…

“& what are you, anyway?”

if i laugh too openly whenever
the razor closes in on one of
those mainline highway tours
it’s only because i’m holding
out hope that someday i’ll
grow up & be a cigar-store indian.
i test myself for sanity every
time i wake-up having watching
myself catch river-water in a net
under semi-dark skies.
everything is plural here.

next to the impossibly blooming
cigarette flower were palm trees
lining a riverbank illustrating a
pretense toward chalice duty
had the the sky not been so cloudy.
forgetting such experiences is
one of my chief preoccupations
& the way i spend most of my
starting into space time.

it fades to a regress of half
captured images memorable only
for the gaping holes in each frame;
the rest is mist, something about
the sun god apollo, maybe a
pattern in the camel smoke drifting
past my eyes. everything dissipates
into the same extirpated landscapes
& actions as actual rainfall
weighs on everything trying to stand
straighter tomorrow than was
possible today. cigar-store indian
training continues apace.

————————————–

Dedicated to normality. It’s more unique (at times) than one might think or expect.

warped fields & gravitational theory…

“& why & why”

twisted out straightened lines
tying the asphalt to the dirt,
holding it all back from strangulation.
all kinds of extractions stick
to evening hours already stretched
past endurance final strand. at an
unknown time it’ll break free from
formulaics presupposed by theory
when honest-to-life experience
disembowels already parsed possibilities
spit into discussions held at all the
finest institutions & asylum.

success in the aftermath of birth or
death played as desire for the non-
possessed. it won’t make sense
in time or space. we’ll do it
anyway mostly because of declining
potentialities.

atrocious gambles on short odds…

“fat chance”

thinking back & imagining
what it looked like from the
other side of the ocular divide
brought circumscribed attraction
to the fore.

mighta been an atrocious collapse,
barely prevented by slight
variations of entropy rippling out
from anthropocentric principalities,
a lidocaine memory smeared onto
temporal after-effects so
the whole thing lingers
on past closing time & coin
flips.

i’m playing my part with resig-
nation; there is no other
choice. hassling the victorious
would defy terms of peace,
regardless any competing desire
to reassure the faithless.
last of the first hours slip by
between shallow breath &
deep dreams. temporary exhaustion
finds long sought relief from
open eye syndrome between pillow
top mattresses & blankets.

all will move with local-photon
8 minute re-arrival. vitamin d
hangs in the air amongst amended taxes
& remains of mistakes that seemed
partly right at discovery. money-
good doesn’t getcha what it
used to, but it’ll get you enough
as long as a skosh is enough
for a life of plenty.

——————————————

Dedicated to the missing. Dependability is important, but it ain’t the only thing.

war as necessity…

“war as needed”

somebody is always asking
what kind of man Napoleon
might have been had he captured
his Corsican homeland instead
of burning the armies of monarchs
for fun & profit. maybe the
arsenic coulda been saved;
of course Bernadotte clan might
have something to say about that.

the rabble never tire of this passion-
play regardless of what Pitt might
have tried. historical role call
continues same as ever. Iraqi pr soothes
whatever an empty suit can’t
convince by blowing smoke. there’s
no shortage of bodies or donated limbs;
more that never changes in usefulness
to men with stars over shoulder
& dreams of fortunate valor
covering whatever limited
intelligence was there to begin with.

dead bodies can’t comment;
living ones can’t wait to replace
the fallen. as is, as was.
where else would a jobless fellow
find a paycheck & a chance
for future advancement?

—————————————

History as the past. Fun time to be 4F, especially considering what’s coming next.

sleeping through storms…

“waiting for a reason to move”

perched above an afternoon
self-motivated as a coma patient
with much the same attitude.
everything waits on the arrival
of short term lightning-in-a-bottle;
what we need is the cosmic guarantor
to make good the promises so
freely given. even storm-laden
august afternoons know that.

instead just more silent acceptance
& serenity prayers both ack-
knowledge easy borne truth of
timely dis-intervention. when i
was asked to take it all on faith,
i smiled my best smile but
my answer didn’t change.

—————————————–

In honor of deities & starvation. Starting with an easy one does not bode well for those of us waiting for answers to even bigger, more complicated questions. I wish I was hungry enough to eat a burrito. Those kind of things.