Samson's Dilemma

Time/Life on a rampant commercial spree

spinning daylight into the last foreigner -

the kind of American sunlight that grows

soybeans and corns like weeds through

the dusty bowl of our morning breakfast,

like a cancer of undulating grain broken

now and then by the late retort of a wolf,

howling to welcome in a new nighttime.

Moonlight and sounds of bullfrogs beating

lasting treasures into the earth, as if they

were a drum that went straight through

the iron core of Western civilization;

as if they knew we were all doomed at one

time or another, and it was their job to

drum away our lives through the endless

saturn night, leaping around the edges of

our dreams. Such is a task of multitudes

to continent contentment into a massive

lily-white bowl, serving banana and sugar

cane, looking like day-old, truculent gummy

masturbations. They are leftover messages

from imperialistic platitudes, jumbled

like canker sores on a prostitute's lip, so

magnetic - gleaming to be touched, fondled

and forgotten. Here I sit with quicksilver

on my cap, and running through my veins

and I can think of nothing but how tired

the bull I ate today made me, how I would

love to regurgitate him into being again,

float him into a field somewhere and tell

him to fuck as many cows as he possibly can.

I would love that. But nope, I just gotta

wait for him to come out the other end,

like some submarine traversing the North

West Passage, traveling under deep ice,

frozen away from everything, maybe never

to turn up again, but to continue down

into the iron core of the Earth, meticulously,

thoughtlessly, and tirelessly, like a rapist

stalking his next target. A wolf stalking

the edge of night.

50 Cents

The internal motion serves up a menu

of ripe fruit, raw seafood, and bad karma;

expostulates, in the driest of ways, a little

bit of heaven, while plunging deeply into

the madness of hell. It is a little bit of a dream,

a little time to wear away the hours between

sleeping and waking, when all seems so

possible, so positive, so in shape, and so

improper, like a napkin folded under

a spoon. I like to think there is a place

out there without any spoons that respects

the merest human intelligence a tiny bit

more than the overbearing weight of custom

and propriety. I like to think there is a place

where I can go where no one is tied to anything,

where everyone is entirely free, without

possessions, without manic hatred, without

languid love. Sort of like a play where the audience

comes because they want to see the show, not

the actor, the idea, not the lighting, and the

dream, not the reality they so fully come to

expect, doubt and nullify. Do they dream,

then? Do they know what their lives are

made of if they cannot imagine themselves

into someone else's shoes, like a clown imitating

a horse in a river, very badly? I want to think

there is somewhere that I can live without debt

and labels, and trying so hard. And running on

everything and empty, so empty, so devoid of a

genuine human interacting, which is so vital, so

personal, so heartfelt, that we cannot and will not

let it into this fake world of money walls we have

built around each other so tightly, wrapped around

so rightly that all I can do is drudge along, like the

world's biggest idiot, knowing full well its problem,

pointing to it and laughing, but like a court jester,

completely without the power to deliver a mean-

ingful message. Believe me, I am angry. I am

sad, and woeful, and doleful, and spirited all at

once, thinking of you there, underneath your

umbrella, tramping against the rain, when you

know that in every play and every movie, rain

means change. Rain means change. And we've

been getting so much it lately. Rain means

Change.

Sex Poem

Let me fuck you.

I want to know

the inside of you,

weeping out,

staining the sheets

with self-evident

passion. Let me

want you. Don't

say anything. Just

moan. Just cry.

Just scream.

Become draped

across the underside

of the present and

for God's sake

shut your eyes

and feel it. Run

your hand across

my back;

the starry sky is there.

Grab the hair

on my chest;

the deep dirt

of gods' hands

are folded and trapped

with the dust of my mind.

Unlock the struggling

hawk, sunlit in the fire

of passion.

Suck the very soul of me

and digest the waste

with your pleasure.

Let me fuck you.

Let me say nothing

but horrible things and

let me grope the orgasm

from you. Give me

stripes to wear proud

on my back and

I will make you forget

every bad memory

in a blinding flash

of head and sweat.

Let me fuck you.

I promise you

will want it again.

Headache

My head hurts. I can't concentrate

because the great brass bell

of thought is spinning wildly

through the contours of gray matter

landing on nothing but pain receptors

making their bedraggled way down my

neck, shoving my head forward

into the future; a grimy stressful prospect

encumbered with weighty cucumber

decisions, growing and growing,

greener and greener, until the fruit

needs picked. Clang! Clang!

My brain shifts in its skull case,

moving right to left, leaving filthy

rusted imprints on the insides

of my eyes, that are popping out, ready

to implode upon the sucking vibrations -

the necklace fabric situations that make

up the sorry sad days of late autumn

windiness. It's too dark and my heart

burns listening to the sarcastic palatial

edifices of language spinning around the

hallway, landing dead on the sandpaper

carpet. Time out, as I retreat into shocking,

gut-wrenching emotion, moving the air

in pitch and swiftly, my head to the past.

Devil's Mouth

The distraction of the unstudied mind

brings talking to the forefront, while it

blasts away the patient intellectualism

forged in long long hard hard sessions

in front of the devil's mouth. Such a man

is no man, until he strips away the sucker-

punch jovialism conjured up by the images

of his mother and father copulating. He

can't leave his undressed adolescence

at the doorway and simply let go of every

TV show hero he's ever seen; rebuking

reality for a fat paycheck at the end of his

convenient diatribe about "the girl he did."

The didactic quality of a high school jock

culture breeds every insensitive tendency,

while the untapped resource of the sore

chest stagnates in pools of bloody belt

notches. He speaks with utter un-self

and puts on the face of a court jester.

Closeted Girlfriend

He talks on the phone to his late-night,

underachieving girlfriend, "Why are

you ignoring me?" she asks.

He senses malice and makes up for it

with, "I didn't get your message till now

and - " He's cut off by her un-obvious

attempt at a joke. The probing, prying

questions of mistimed conversations

swell like an off-key sonata, unmade

by the fact that the tuba doesn't trust

the conductor and the flute ran off

with the second violin. He talks.

His cadence rises, an irregular march

toward - what? The final blissful chord,

screaming endurance and faithfulness,

surround the air, melting the fragile

dissonance once held so permanently

under a veneer of conquettish gossip-

talk, donut-shop sexuality. If all women

want is sex in the city, then what happens

after? Did you? Did she? Did he?!

What a terrible man, breaking her poor

heart. He talks more.

She listens to the unbroken stream of

consciousness, browbeaten by her own

lack of sickening commitment. Her

veil fades and she can't wear white

any longer, a product rich in the disinfected

kitchen sink whitewashed laziness of the

Upper 90's. A beep summons her awake.

A lamplight draws out the distance.

The staccato pulse of her hearts drums

the sounds of the boys away. She unplugs

the drain and her eyes come leaking out.

What did they see? What did she mean?

How did it end?

The skittles of plain time

are falling like last minute ova

across the pimply face of the

Milky Way.

Heartburn

Somehow I have very little time

to even think about you any more.

It's like the sadness you wrote

on the insides of my eyelids

is very much gone and now I can

close my eyes comfortably without

being reminded of your perfections.

Because you weren't anything more

or anything less than a perfect illusion

in my fevered brain. Like a mouse

picking its teeth with sawdust in a

mansion made entirely of stone,

you were somehow out of place. Like

the place you occupied in my chest

wasn't the traditional heart-space,

but maybe a little up and to the left,

so I always felt like there was something

more to digest, something stuck in

my throat, somehow something left

that stuck with me like an python

trying to swallow a crocodile, whose

skin is thick as armor and bone.

Like an owl catching a mouse in the

moonlight painted by an open window

in a house made of stone.

The last great architect of the Western World

stood up from the table he was working at

and let out a deep sigh. Let's see where this

is going, he thought. He blew a deep walrus

note through his nose, bristled like a brush

ready for the teeth and masturbated on a bunch

of toy soldiers.

That seems about right, he thought.