My plants need fire
The directions on the label say: please burn daily
I pick them up
And to the stock clerk I go
With a toothless smile she comes down from her step ladder like an old graduate
she looks me dead in my moon drunk eyes, hands me a gas canister overflowing
And orders me to pour gas on my plants every night
My plants are so pathetic and ugly and beautiful and fragile
They look like mangled screaming winter deer
But I need to burn them
That’s what the directions say
“Hey, take a look at this,” the fat bearded Irish American said to the fat bearded Italian American, holding Dunkin’ Donuts coffees over our helmets.
“You see the way they fight?”
“Little fuckin’ animals. Look at ’em fuckin’ go.
And thus, I fuckin’ went.
I know he’s dead
But you deserve a lover
isn’t it lonely when you wipe the counter and the sunlight
dances with the dust motes
Where the tunnels are a midnight park
and the gray trains scream like haunted witches
Hunker down in a bittersweet one-eyed dragon bliss
And drool dead-eyed along tracks of electrified veins
Crawl into holes un-holed
Take a nice spin around that cold metal pole
Feel your soul un-souled and sold
Where Gil scot heron once silently screamed alone
But god damn, did that man have a soul!
Did his voice not echo truths along peoples roads?
Did his poetry not shout the truth to people without a comfortable home?
Do his words not exceed his physical state in the undying ebb and flow of an ocean of pure soul?
Play with life
Like Blondie under the Spanish spaghetti sun
Stare calmly, cool lidded
Like velvety Rick in the sandpaper dark
Fedoraed in a Moroccan park
Or hunker like Bonnie next to Clyde’s car
Lipsticked and dressed slick in Texas
60’s hipped and Hollywood riched
through silent moves and gestures
infinite hectares of pain undone
My brothers face gives me pure joy
His freckles dance as he walks under street lights
His starry eyes glow like cigarette tips
on starless Essex county nights
And his thin mouth fluidly sashays as he talks
Words drifting in golden fragments
Completely ployless
Invisible ebony blankets hit the pause button
Coddling the body in restless rest
Pernicious slippers dress feet worn thin
Cozying bodies in utter jest
Pricey poison falls down and in
Rushing a slow beat and pounding the chests
of seemingly pretentious gluttons
Who are really just upset guests
(The vacation of the distressed)
Pillows surreptitiously whisper distractions
Robbing the brain of its regulatory best
Screens steel the brain for big ol’ nuthins
While echoes of truths draw pangs and yearnings for ones inaccessibly distant nest
Tides of milky red
Ooze out of my porous phone
And through the aged toshiba pixels in my home
And from the cracks in my works walls
And out the small pimples on my pale dome
Tides of milky red fly
Out of the mouths of bearded babies that get hard from the sounds of their own voices
Tides of milky red drip
from the stupid spittle of blonde toupeed gargoyles that are making big choices
Tides of milky red shower
the barren parking lots of night
Wetting and reddening the broken needles
Painting the crushed cigarette butts
Washing the matted hair of beaten down bugged out tattooed skinny white girls screaming in the silent dark While coming down the concrete catwalk to elope with themselves in a confused 2 am isolation horror show
Take us all straight to Frank Sinatra Drive
Jive right quick a gasoline Conga line up I 95
Where the skies are white and the wind blows cold through distant mountains old
Where sages whisper empathetic truths into the waning western light
When you lay your body down, and sigh a sigh that’s almost manly if you’re a woman, but so sexy, or hyper manly if you’re a man, but so sweet, after eating ground beef, or just being tired regardless of eating the aforementioned ground beef, sometimes you clear your throat a bit with a guttural gurgle and then, immediately, you slowly breathe out of your noise a pine tree winter wind whoosh that frightens my skin.
You rest with such confident and selfish-in-a-good-way eyes that possess a supreme level of non-self awareness, which could be you simply not giving a fuck, that rattles my brain.
You don’t even look at me with dog-eyed approval eyes, like I look at you in the morning when I have a stack of papers in my hand.
You don’t even turn around, like I do when I step on the leaves that crunch loudly.
You don’t even turn the locks three times (once to lock, twice to lock check, three because it’s the magic number, baby!)
You stare at your darkened eye lids in a rural basement, living life for yourself, while I crash into endless neon invisible mirrors on brick city sidewalks adorned with microscopes on each brick that have immense gravitational pulls.
The conversation of the street lights will pass as quickly as our words
With green
hellos
And
pensive
yellows
The pink noise breaths of night will delicately fall and rise from mouths like mindful birds
Drifting through the light cut dark
The occasional cop will slam through the wet lit asphalt
Shouting red and blue
While deer ease through the grass
Whispering brown and black
And automatic house lights that flicker on
Will turn off when you are gone
Going all out to go nowhere
Where venom drips slow
Going all in without air
Where blue and white corrode
And the red wrappered snickers ice cream bars
Cream guitars
White interpersonal cigarettes
Shiny New York cars
Fade into
Black Lard
We go all in it to come out of it
Where the blue and white have shone
And the water sometimes flowed
For good boys of days old
The way you talk
with a cold Schweppes in your sunlit hand is admirable
You’re a contagion to the blind
With golden earrings lighting the aisle
Not even caring about the temperature and carbonation
just swinging it about
Pan
Oven
Microwave
Glass
Plate
Bowl
Whatever method
Before arriving to the table
Is so different at a restaurant than when one cooks and eats alone at home
What will the platter look like?
Will it be as good as the text on the menu conveys it to be?
Will they dim the lights?
Oh, and when will it come out?
There is so much mystery and surprise
It’s almost magical when your delusional removed hungry body is anticipating digestion and taste
The vessel to bring the meal circles around the room, taking care of other people
Water is poured
Other steaming meals are delivered
Mysterious and cryptic checks are signed
Hellos
Goodbyes
Do you ever miss your waiter or waitress?
If you do, the feeling of the food arriving is much greater than if you didn’t
When you see their smiling face
Chipper gait
It’s a relief
It’s addicting
But At home
You are the vessel
You are the commander of the process
The veil is broken
You don’t go looking for yourself
You don’t ask yourself for anything
You don’t see your chipper gait
You might not even have a chipper gait
Without the mystery
It might just be another meal
Simply from a
Pan
Oven
Microwave
Glass
Plate
Bowl
Whatever method
Before arriving to the table
*It breaks into my heart
a moral thief
Stealing sorrow
And murdering grief*
It comes in waves
Gshh
pause
gshh
Repeat
And although I never ask for it
It tumbles under me
like mountain scree
Interrupting my long climb
Setting me back a bit
Challenging my patience
But Cultivating challenge
Which I’m grateful for
Sun-blind,
go west at 5
Where orange Baby Lizards bustle and jive
And Sweet Old Jews wither and die
But before that, you’ll see them try
(They are truly 16, vying for guys)
So Kiss them on their cheeks if you go by
Because we all have weighted lids
that cover truth,
that cover needs,
that cover comfort,
that cover acceptance, to pry
I can confirm that the contents of honesty and truth and love and loss and regret and interpersonal connection deeply shine
When you give to and receive from those under a fluorescent sky
When the radiator behind the
Rolling Stones postered door hummed heat
And our plaid pajamas and brown wool socks were covered by comforters and the glow of yearly tv specials that were birthed from the screen like familiar babies
And the sky was half blue half the moon
from the tree branch dividing our window view
And our dad was dying in the other room
You told me you saw 7 reindeer
To go with him
To go home
To be gone too soon
There was a Waxing crescent and a Virginian milky blue sky translucence
While taking my son from
his home his mom his friends and New York
And the Worlds Light was too high
So We settled for streamed ceiling fluorescence
And enjoyed the trains inner sanctum Incandescence
Strictly Ticket holder acceptance
Tangled in each other and the trees and the true Virginian dark and the southern pull to his new home
And man, the way his eyes shone
At The prospect of a moving breakfast
Shiny eggs and bacon and seemingly mountainous orange juice while trees flower laced train tracks grazing cattle and farm workers and a sky in its most royal attire: sprinkled with cumulus regalia, blew past our car and we blew past them
And when the train came to an unexpected halt in the deeply darkened woods of South Carolina
And only little strips of his tiny face showed from scattered light
And his thick black hair melded with the dark and although barely visible, swayed left then right then left then right then left then right in quick movements under the humming ventilation system
And his now dark iPad screen showed me my own face barely visible but content
I could see myself and a mother among us quietly answering our children’s silent words in smiles
Beneath the glory of a pinkorangebluesilvermagenta fundip dusted sky, the truck slams through the deserted twilight streets illumined by twisted neon green orbs that authoritatively dictate above the silky half and half cream colored, crossed, and strong legs of suburban mothers who sit along the main drag gabbing.
A thousand dollars. A thousand stares. A thousand fucking times down this sick road where my head pounds from too much sugar and hotdogs and the toxic glowingly phosphorescent frozen-to-the-package sludge that warms and glides through my torso into the disaster pit of my pale war-torn horrible diet affected stomach. And I know it’ll come out guns blazing in the morning, when I’m cold, ready to stare up at me and say, “what gives!” And there is no languor whatsoever, which would be so nice
The dying dog under the hood ululates its sick cries down the highway and begs to have the key pulled from the synaptic ignition to its motor brain and the demon in the wheel screeches on tight turns throughout roads giving bullshit gift baskets of OCD accident scares and every-bump-is-death-crazy paranoia
So I scream loudly again and again down
the pavement in this smorgasbord
Slicing through the crisp yellow divides
Trying to beat the inconvenient turning of the earth so I can maybe see the light in the sky untarnished and unboxed
On cold nights when I’m lost and damned to rot in confusion
Ostracized and bleary eyed
Slam jam me with thousands of blankets of understanding and freckle faced love that pours out of every word and body nuance
I’ll return the favor with a big smile and a bigger bite into your delicious Polish chocolate
Looking at a dead body elicits a unique feeling unto itself
You shudder with intense eyes
Non-action emotively draws to mind what was hyper-action not too long ago
Indicative of everything in its good bad wrong definite place
And to see the body after
In a gorgeously painted box
Propped above the crowd
Conveying a persistence of the soul
Or an almost worship like state of the body
An idol to love
Adorned with various flowers
Compounded with subtle music
And tightly wrapped mints for all
Good breath for good greetings can be even more chilling
The dead in their best clothes
Eyes shut and skin painted
For all to peruse for a few hours
Everything good bad wrong definite scrambled into its right place according to loved ones intent
I once took sadistic pleasure in empathizing with the clear pain of a boy who bullied me in middle school as his frail body and face caked in pimples lightly shook when he stared dead-eyed at my dad in a casket
“Pier 11 Ferry to Belford”
Brooklyn bridge sun
Throws yellow grace at Jersey City towers
Steve, Tom, and I
look through yellow sunglasses
Ripping through untouched waters
“Sea Bright to Asbury Park”
Everything the same
Then,
Mansions
Sweeping walls to block the opulence
Or to block the unwanted
Mansions sweeping mansions
They must have snipers
-Reality check-
Through the Asbury Park Boardwalk tunnel
Impassioned carousel music keyboardist
Cigarette dangling
Hair dangling
Teeth dangling
Life dangling
Talent raging
With a huge smile
And we smile back
“Asbury Park to Seaside”
Picture with B&B proprietor, George
His sincere excited grin like my nephews
Swiss army backpack has to go
Giant welts on my back, oh!
Inland detour
New backpack from army navy surplus
Big ass camo
we find our way to
Point pleasant’s people and cigarette caked Boardwalk
The sun casting powerful rays all over
“Route 35 Mania”
Shark fin flippers for torpedo powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr -breathe- errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr -breathe- errrrrrrrrrrrrr (drawn out for goofy comedic effect)
(said in an old man voice):
uhhhhhhhh help meeeeeeeeeeee no water the sun the heat our legs our feet the sun the heat nail clippers are what I need please please please nail clippers are what I need give them to me!
Water from a hose on the highway was never so tasty
Seaside sand graced, we
Boardwalk cheesteaks ate, expensive not free
Mozzarella sticks and fries, tasty!
Sleeping on toms construction zone house deck, yes please
“Seaside to Motel”
Stop at rite aid
Cover up cuts and blisters
Break, eat almonds, drink water
Stop at rite aid
Cover up cuts and blisters
Break, eat dried fruit, drink water
Stop at general store
Cover up cuts and blisters
Break, eat almonds, drink water
Stop at rite aid
Cover up cuts and blisters
Break, eat almonds, drink water
Sun block in my eyes
Toms legs fried
McDonald’s bathroom flushing will surely fix my eyes
B
R
E
A
K
Into
P
I
E
C
E
S
And über to a motel
Where
Everything’s closed
Out of water and we can’t even find somewhere to buy it
There’s a nuclear power plant nearby
Let’s just order a pizza pie
And not buy drinks
But be dumb and not think
So order water and something else from dominos
Chocolate lava discomfort follows
And getting really choked up by
the ending of Finding Nemo
“Motel to New York”
Was Route 35 mania
Then Route 9 depression
Now GSP North Blues
And Immense Blister Horror
But godammit we walked 70 something miles
And it was wonderful
To see strangers seem familiar
Thousands of rubbernecking friendly smiles
Our Good Ol BoyWho art in a jacked up truck
Hallowed be thy 35s
Thy women: taken to a cornfield
Thy will: be done
As it is played in adult bars, purportedly, in a middle school dance too
Give us this day our daily catfish and ice cold beer
And forgive those who think of something original
And lead us not into downtown
But into copulation under the guise of hackneyed repurposed studio beats and not-even-subtly sexual lyrics that shower young minds
Amen!
I want to tell you I know what it’s like
To feel dumb and worthless
and
make mistakes ripe
But don’t you know there’s golden wisdom
under
the skin?
Watching little league
behind a tough Italian
Scary
Big
Huge
Divine presence
Facade
Nice
Family friend, I guess
Figures
Just a guy with
gold chain and cross
Warm dark
brown eyes
Slicked back jet black hair
Thick hands
HowyoudoinTighthandshakelookineye
Track jacket
Track pants
Like my dad
And all the other old souls
Spinning away from the sun
Unfolding bones
With weary magic
Look closely and see
On an island staircase
Underneath burnt skin
And stinging winds
tired faces that walk
And token bus token surprises
That Chug chug chug by hibiscus sprinkled hills
Opening and closing
Rising and falling
In morning glory time
Tailored sharp Suited gargoyles With death covenants Promised by Life
And Pretty girls in tight black
Sometimes bothered by wannabe sugar daddy’s words knives
Who roll life’s precious bones
all Perched on circular red leather precipices
But thank god there are cheap ramparts
For those who need transient escape
Like the human mosquito attraction glow
of
screens
screens
Sports
Sports
News
Sports
Screens
Screens
Screens
Screens
Sports
Sports
News
Screens
And more screens
So You can cop-out
From an all too real mis-en-scene
Because of the angel breath of 10 pm evergreens tangled in streetlight
that sit next to large purple stuccos in darkness
surrounded by thousands of woodchips
And sitting with my one-eyed cat
his quiet disabled divinity in soft black
Or walking with pendulum arms that we let swing wildly behind the middle school
to savor every bit of cold strawberry ice cream
laced with rich chocolate sauce that stains pants
(but who cares when you’re under a blanket of stars and the orange cream New York City pollution light glow?)
And lovingly,
The generous southwestern hug of the sun
and her overwhelming Jewish mother ‘optimist in adversity’ consolations
that grow to be a bothersome pain in the neck
but soon after are greatly missed
And strangely,
Wide Eyes
above loose motorcycle shirts
baggy blue jeans
and dirty white reeboks
agape and starry
on
the uncomfortable strip of 42nd between 7th and 8th’s dollars cents and nonsense galore
And curiously,
the workings of a notion because…
I practically ran
from your shimmering emerald eyes
that looked wild in the twilight
to give my cats food
and pick up their shimmering poo
that quietly hardened under a stair light
