//The Impatient Corpse//

//The Impatient Corpse//
Yoke the body,
bait the corpse

A stark outlaw,
I strive for passions without desire.

There's a less developed Promethean end to this tucked away but this first part is what I was happy with up to now besides maybe the use of the phrase "stark outlaw" by which I don't intend to convey any sense of machismo but rather just an intense alienation.

Left

unwrapped,
the joy we had
yesterday before
your mom called
to say your father's brain
tumor is cancerous
has staled
and must be thrown out

Crumbs

for three-quarters price, marked

down for clearance, making room
for something more relevant

this is my love, bought on a whim:

gifts, cheaply tendered
by the drug store, chocolates

offered sheepishly in the bag
with the coupons that bought them


and this room, when I open the door

first and take lead, dropping clothes
to their piles, takes stock of me;

crumbs buried in the carpet, small
plastic pieces of garbage, soda

tabs dropped, unpopped kernels, bits
flicked and brushed, long strands

settled invisible under foot

Spitwad

this is your revelry -- Christmas light lit,

all bodies in clothing unmoving and jostled,

cupping the sound like a hand on your ear,

a hand on your heart

but a hard slap, a hot Cuban hand on the head

of the drum will unstick like an arrow, stick like

a spitwad on a chalkboard, stick and peel off

all flat and impressed

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

//Blackout, Out-black/Plea for a Palindrome Prayer//

‘I’M NOT HERE.’
‘I was NEVER there.’

I wake up dreaming after one second of infinite rest,

My brain
is minced
behind my eyes.

My pale hands quiver to a pallor
-fingers like so many shakey spindles

The beer is flat
and smooth.

The things which I thought were forward are suddenly backward.
-----
.drawkcab ylneddus era drawrof erew thguoht hcihw sgniht ehT
I should have spoken some palindrome prayer
so that I didn’t wind up on the other side of some looking glass.

Now

light shines
in the places I least expect
it.

(-Last half should be printed in a mirror reflection so that a mirror has to be used to correct it to be read. Uncertain as to what the title ought to be. Yes, it's pretentious as hell, in fact I even half hate the thing.)

//Stockholm, August//

//Stockholm, August//

A dead steady sigh on the telephone line
sizzles
the sugar in your heart.

Tea With The Moon

I was dreaming

Swilling from a broken glass

Clarity of mind and depth of soul

Honored and kept throughout

Born to break hearts

Jump cracks in the sidewalks

Through the branches of trees

Through the blades of grass

Was I not dreaming, sipping tea with the Moon?

The basis for a series of downtown handouts, possibly.

You know, to expand the public's mind.

//Gaslit/Fooled by The Flicker of The Light//

[Original scrawl]
//Gaslit//
A storm comes
and the power goes out.

The rain stops.
the town goes on a long smoke break.

In the middle of the night
the light comes on.

The cancer comes back.

--------------------------------------------------------

[Milled]
//Fooled by The Flicker of The Light//
A storm comes
and the power goes out.

The rain stops.
the town goes on a long smoke break.

By candlelight and glowing embers
-- a minute is an enormous expanse of time.

In the middle of the night
the electron light comes on.

Gaslit again,
the cancer comes back.

There was a storm a few weeks back. I scribbled this down as I ate Chinese food by candlelight and finished it in the hard light glow of a computer screen later. Tell me which you prefer/don't (if either) and why.

Deliciousness and parlor tricks

"Good evening.
I'm the fool, the dancer, the idiot.
I'll be taking care of you tonight.
I've donned my hair-gel jester cap;
groomed myself gaudy and pretentious.
Take your table and give me your coins and change
to complain.
I'll listen. Hell, crucify me.
Like my song and dance? Laugh.
Spit on me, and for a dollar
I'll catch it all in my mouth
and gargle.
You see, all we serve on our menu here
is gluttony
disguised and renamed several times;
put some chunks of it on a plate
and wring the rest into a glass.
I'm here to pluck rotted teeth
and twirl intestines,
wear everything around my neck on necklaces,
like leis.
Anything to keep you entertained
as the choke of extreme corpulence
stops your heart.
Just leave some cash folded under a cup
or tucked in the sleeves of a black receipt-holder.
Anything you want.
It's not the money I'm after,
bills to pay or not,
but rather the satisfaction of killing
bastards and bitches
with deliciousness and parlor tricks.
Some are wise enough to last off of
water and bread, and maybe some booze.
No matter.
I'm shit for the next hour or so.
When you leave, I'll write poems and ballads
about our night together,
store them in the little bells on my feet.
In a few years, I'll come and dance on your grave
to remind you.
Anyway, I'll be serving and slaying you this evening.
What can I get you?"

Initial draft of the gathered frustrations of being a waiter.

The speech I wish I could give when greeting a table.

WARGEARS

"Shadows rose from our feet as men."

A poem I've been working on, based off of the premise of the GEARS OF WAR video game series, and probably a large number of other unrecognized sources as well. Didn't post it whole, since it'd be an annoyance to scroll through.

An attempt at reviving the heroic/warrior tradition. I've tried to favor narrative over originality, to whatever extent of success or failure.

//A Soft Rent Sunday//

//A Soft Rent Sunday//

She buries apples at her mother’s grave

Dreaming of a Sunday
under the soft rent Earth

in the colourblind darkness

From her flowers
grow corpses

The fruits of labour
lay next to pulpy skeletons

Those which disappeared
in the shadows of the tree’s splayed splintered branches,
sprawling out over the field

Smoulder and swelter cold;
the odd ambivalent apple falling not far from the tree

Told to stand up straight
you step into the stream,

But the water’s moved on.

And just when you think it’s all over
You get dragged back into the same old game.

Unsure as to whether I'm happy with this.

The sudden disorientation and change in tense is intentional to indicate the sense of disorientation and self-loss so strangely inherent to growth; a sense of (the consciousness, a new self-awareness? perhaps that's too lofty) being born when you least expect it.

//Nothing to do anything to//

Stockholm, (Eriks våning i Tjustgata, Söder), 7th August ‘08
(I think it was under only a moment or so:
the little white-lies quarreled together on the balcony and then clung together as it began to rain).

Pigeons cling together in the rain
Feeding on the manifest destiny-
-. - --
--The tired death
of daydreams.

The lure of the bed is ever near.
The parade will not pass by.

[Heavenly sickness paints
Hell on the wall.]

Nothing to do anything to,
I am cloven before the doves on the balcony.

[So many swindled moments
laying between so much seed]

The sea awaits only for pigs and chicken-shits
under cloud-tossed skies.

From one of my research workbooks.

The stuff in [brackets] should be indented (blogspot fails to recognize indentation).

Kings and Counselors

Once departed I’m fated to struggle
Among the kings and counselors
In those desolate places
The broadening spaces
Meant for ruffians and thieves.

We’ll sip the brandy from God’s lips
While straining toward the sun:
Burn all the skin off our skulls
We must grow new faces!
The better to conceal our rottenness.

Predators with crowns of thorns
And scepters stolen from sepulchers
Collection has become our trade
For there’s much to do for the dead
But yet more to do for the living.


I'm still unsatisfied with the first stanza, but felt inclined to post anyway. Brutality in the comments, is entirely expected and welcomed.

//Pt.II//

Pt.I
At a fancy restaurant
People eat
Shitting heartache under the table

I’d rather wait in the hay
Watching the goats grow,
The Devil go by and
The soft sentimental ponies die

I’d rather
The moon drink up all the shine.


Pt.II
In cul-de-sacs
Pretend depressives cheat their demons
Jawing down their days like pills

Their souls becoming crumbly and white

All my joy is in the rain
Beyond the masses of murmurs,
Chit-chat, and broken tea-cups;

It's beyond nature’s chemistry;
A Cherub’s arrow cutting time

All my joy is in the hills marching away,
Rejoining my solitude in the pouring rain and
The happy loss no longer a sigh.

Been milling away at the second part of this on and off for quite some time with various working versions and plans for a third part in spite of not being entirely certain on where to take it.

This is the latest version.

La madre

I have found the great mother, the last mother.
See how she enters?
How she draws the dust in,
world-worn but not world-weary.
There are bits of everything in the dust--
snakes and cattle and the South,
the sterile stability of the corporate North--
that subtly settles and ages everything; ripens it.
She has the world wrapped up in her clothes;
samples and scents layered in linen.
This woman, the final matriarch,
a penultimate token of bygone,
family-bound times.
She has come to break me down.
This world is built on her back,
balanced on her broadness--
you can see it garrisoned in her garments--
and she knows this,
knows that cities shake when she shrugs
her coat from her shoulders,
that she is the cradler,
the carrier of our kind;
knows that everyone is hers.
Wise and worn, but not weary,
she has come to break me down.
Cities tumble as she shears off her coat,
children scampering from about her legs
like startled doves and deer;
dust drawn away.
She shows me the smoothness of her skin,
wipes away her wrinkles;
works the weakness from her hands and turns to me.
Yes, this woman, this last-standing mother,
our world is built upon her,
and she is the keeper of our kind.
The wretched responsibility of compassion and care
wielded by woman grinds down on her,
layers dust and dirt and filth and ruin on her frame;
wrinkles her flesh-wealth, but never tires,
never trumps the timelessness tucked between her breasts.
She is the smooth-skinned preserver,
and she presses into me,
crafting man to child, to grow again, improved,
offering life and leaving me with lessons and lotion.
It is how she manages mankind.
The mother breaks me down.
She gathers her coat and the cities and
the children that she keeps
and kisses them, coaxes them along.
The dust departs; withdraws.
And I,
I, the infant, begin to crawl.

Commissioned by and for the venerable Patsy, a coworker.

Of course, the only refined, clean copy I had is now in her possession (or perhaps somewhere worse), so there are a few rough spots that I can't recall the solution for.

Bioshock

Carry your shield or come home on it,
I am sea-floor Spartan.
Wielding wrench and radio,
I control the flow
of all good things that enter into
this city,
this fathoms-deep Sparta; rapture ruined.
Yes, this is where man has come
to devolve,
fish-to-man-to-fish,
to fish, to reel, to hook
the high tides of humanity
and heights of hubris beneath
salt and storm and sun.
No kings, no gods.
Only man and wrench and radio,
to carry himself home on shield
and shards of ideals.

Inspired by Bioshock, a piece of software that essentially ends the debate against video games as art, and a History Channel show about Sparta.

Not particularly polished.