turning away from the bleeding horse

 in the end
we go nowhere

have i told you this before?

we hang onto the gift of speech
but we say nothing

we see nothing

the mother is beaten to death
and then her nine year old son is raped

and he is raped and then he is
raped again
and then he is raped again

he is beaten and he is raped
and he is nine years old and then
he is murdered
and this is a true story and
it is always happening

it has always happened

the wars no longer need names
and the air is sticky with
crystal meth

the cop is shot in the face
as he approaches the front door

has a wife and a child and
his body burns as easily
as anyone else's

his god has no arms

no legs and he is blind
like we are blind

he is hopeless like
we are without hope

it's what i've been
telling you all along

HIERONYMUS ROCKSTAR!!!!

Mike Davis

the myth, reconsidered

your words are not visions from god
and mine are only bad jokes
and this is where we stand

beauty caught in the tar of remorse
and that money is blood

that your pills are all dull knives
and every priest a rapist

ask your sons

step into the vague blue light of
any october afternoon
and consider how many days you've
wasted waiting to be forgiven

consider how many miles you drove
to reach the burning house

your father drunk
or maybe only dead
and whatever the last thing he
said to you was

the ticking of his watch as he
lay dying in a hospital bed

the first plane without warning
tearing the north tower
wide open

explaining the bleeding horse

man says
but this is just the
same poem written over and over

says america is more than
palaces of gold built on
the bones of indians

stops to take a drink and then
the door is kicked open

the cop shot dead

twenty miles south of
the town i grew up in with the
smell of meth and the
taste of ashes

the crosses on fire
and what i tell him is that
beauty needs ugliness to define it

let the dogs go too long
without food
and they'll eat your children

drag your enemy through
the streets of whatever place
you call home and he will
eventually be reduced to
memory and pale white light

show him mercy and
he'll rape your daughter

she'll tell you she
loves him

a truth that will bring
your house
crashing down around you

faith in nothing: a sermon in the age of confessions

the world is defined by
those who own the wars

holocaust they say
or rape camp
and the words grow flesh

i am given numbers
but not names

i am given vague descriptions
of massacres

blurred truths

what i want is to talk
to a man who has butchered
a pregnant sixteen year-old girl

who has pulled the fetus
from her belly with a  knife

what i want
is to watch him die

in the end
we could be brothers

faith in nothing: a reason

 early afternoon in
the land of murdered cheerleaders
and the hills without pity

the streets like rivers of dust and
filled with the shadows of whatever i hold
between myself and the sun

and i am not trying to define
a moment in time here
i am waging some misguided war of one
against impermanence

i'm giving the finger to anyone
who expected
even the smallest of revelations

listen

the man wore yellow gloves
while he butchered the bodies and
no one was sorry when he hung himself
and five years later i am still caught
between the ideas of growing up
and growing old

i am still receiving letters from
people offended by the use of the
lower case i
but at least the planes
have begun flying again

at least the children have turned
away from their own petty hatreds for
a minute to see how bleak the
future can really be

five thousand dead in the name of
someone's fucked-up god and then
nowhere to go but down

a review of said chapbook.......

w/ thanks to ralph hasselmann jr.

http://www.blacklistedjournalist.com/column62f.html

one of my chapbooks in university library small press collections

http://www.worldcat.org/title/free-kittens-for-dead-slaves/oclc/57129881

love song for the betrayed

all of us here in

this room without oxygen

waiting to be forgiven and it seems

like the safest place

 

feels like the fist of god

punching a million starving children in

the throat, and you know the

fucker’s laughing or else why would he

let them starve in the first place?

 

seems like the laziest of wasting all

that time inventing religions

instead of looking for solutions

 

seems like a world full of inbred

assholes with shit

spilling from their open mouths

a lifetime

in the silvergrey afternoon in the

last year of freedom had a

reason to love you and my hands on

fire my teeth filed down to

points had a photograph of god

had his address his number and all of

those children starving in the

streets w/ their bright

shiny tears

all of those days spent waiting

for the phone to ring

digging holes to

bury the unwanted dead

inversion

young boy on fire and

singing beneath the colorless sky

all sweetness and regret and

where are the people who

said they loved him?

where is the future that was

supposed to grow from his 

                                ashes?

titles available directly from me

shoot me a message for pricing, all payments thru paypal

joy #1

all lines equal to the
heart of the matter and then
all acts justified
 

all deaths avenged
and then again
until every ocean is an
ocean of blood
 

are you so goddamn stupid
that you can’t see this?
 

do you really believe
power is the answer?
 

picture your corpse rotting
next to mine
and no one left to care

To the sky

Job like a gun to the head but the bills

need to be paid and the children fed.

Gotta heat the house through those

dead days of January where everything

tastes like ashes and blood.  Gotta

crawl when you’re told to crawl.  Grind

all that shit & filth deep down into

                                           yr soul.

redon

birthday song, for dorothea

with dreams of metal towers

and of static, dreams of silver skies

and then waking up
 

the here and now is a fist

and so the future can only be

whatever pain comes next
 

i have no other truths
 

have only one hand that holds and

the other that pushes away

 

have only scar tissue and

empty ideals and with the music

up loud enough the sun

makes no sound at all

the baby sleeps beneath

the shadows of passing clouds

 

wakes up crying softly

just as the air runs out

violence

chasing headlights down december

back roads, not yet 6:30 and
already full dark

half-moon and sleeping houses

this man with

a mouthful of poison

wants to show you how easy it is to

hurt you
then wants you to beg for more

absolute zero when the knife goes in

small wooden cross on the

living room wall
 

cop pulls the trigger and

the child is dead and how far do you
have to look to find someone
laughing?

for how much longer will we

allow ourselves to
be a nation of assholes?

been a long

fucking time already

NEW COLLECTION FROM LUMMOX PRESS

fine art collection

READ THIS NEXT

self portrait w/ nude, on fire

and then late afternoon shadows and

the stuttering scratch of

leaves down forgotten streets 

the shadows of lovers, of

unwanted children and forsaken saints 

god and then no

god and then

all of the days i waste waiting to

                              see you again 

an empty room filled with ordinary ghosts and

no one says we have to be here but

no one gives us permission to leave 

this is called the art of standing still 

this is pollock in the

seconds before his death 

not acceptance but panic and

not understanding, not

ever

not ever

and i keep telling you this but

you still aren’t there

tanning

tanguy

one for yr ex-husband

  

dead man sitting in the
back yard w/ his eyes closed,
face turned up to the
dull silver sky
 

just wants attention so
don’t give him any

new piece at RUSTY TRUCK

CLICK HERE

ernst

klee

miro

after the age of giants

And this is not nothing, this sky, these

clouds, these hills, and it’s not the
whole story because nothing ever is,
but listen.  Distance is an important thing.
Forty feet from the bridge to the tracks
below.  100 miles between the woman’s
body and her husband’s faith.  And have
you ever tried defining yourself by
something other than sorrow or fear?
Will you crawl from lover to lover with
nothing to offer but fading bruises
and the promise of more?
 

It’s okay to pause before you answer,

to consider, to weight your options. 
It’s okay to accept the fact that we’ve
never really meant anything to each other.
This is why the sunlight casts shadows.
Why time only moves in one direction.
The moment arrives one hundred
million times a day, and then it passes.
The song is forgotten.  I wanted to
sing it to you, but you were married.
You were crying.  It was a sound
just like any other.

one for neverending love

and i will be me and

you will be the song i
sing with a mouthful of
blood and who was it that
ever promised you happiness?

how is it my fault

you chose to believe him?

why should victory feel

any different than defeat?

because love and hate

even here in the clean, cold light of early april,

in the solemn emptiness between
berkshire and speedsville, between  somewhere and
somewhere else, nowhere and

nowhere, the shit of civilization

growing up through the weeds and dirt, the

cigarette butts, styrofoam cups, fast food wrappers,

the wounded and the dying
 

the trees and the hills
 

crisp blue sky
 

no sound of traffic or of industry, but two

empty beer cans and a shattered bottle
on the side of a rutted dirt road
 

taste of rust when I
turn to kiss you
 

birds
screaming

you and i lost in the forest of meaningless symbols

the sound of human voices in

                          august rooms

the sound of heat or the

weight of it

thunder at the edges

mountains grey in the haze or

blue beneath a colorless sky

asks where’s the map?

answers why do you need it?

and both of them naked
 

both of them waiting

and pollock is dead, of course,

                              and cobain,
                               and christ,
just to give you a better idea of WHEN
                                                  and
she has freckles on her pale breasts

he is never quite comfortable

in his own skin

says i’d like to see the desert and

she smiles at him and laughs

says but i need to get home

you see?

there are always places to go but

they will never be arrived at

there are some reasons more important

than others, or at least there
those who see it this way
 

one more time he says and she agrees

there is here and now and then

                                       (later)
there is the idea that HERE and NOW
are fading into the past

sits alone in a darkening room

and begins to understand this

excerpt 1

* *

drinking poison all day and she

said she was thirsty asked
why all it did was rain and then the
needle tracks of course and all of the
tear-stained apologies

the white spaces between houses

the smell of the river and

the same old argument

said the baby should have a name and i

told her there was no baby and
she asked why i hated her

she asked why i kept denying god

and the police had a  clear shot

but then he jumped

the streets were empty all

afternoon but i kept hearing the
sound of laughing children
 

kept getting off at the wrong exit

knew i was almost home but

couldn’t figure out why

uncertain terms

someone and someone

was feeling okay was

slowly approaching
the idea of suicide
 

was four below

zero at two
in the afternoon
 

sunlight and the

taste of road salt

the ghosts of

old lovers

nothing to laugh at but i

was laughing there at
the highway’s edge
while the river froze and
the first of the massacred
children was buried

while the

conspiracy theorists
fucked each other
in curtained motel rooms

and i forget if i was

nothing but i knew we
were nowhere and it felt
like this mattered

felt like small birds

singing but without the
hope of spring

felt like frost filling the

cracks in the walls

colder than the morning

they found my father on
the dining room floor,
though the same shade of
grey, and at this point in
time all objects in the
known universe are
                  of course
still moving further
apart

at this point in time

your body
means more to me
than your name

seems like a waste of

breath to apologize
for things that aren’t
ever going to change

a cage in the forest

tell the blind man there's
nothing to see


let the politicians

fuck your daughters


don't settle for the facts when

the truth is what really matters




don't worry about man ray

dead now for 30 years in
paris, and i still keep
waiting for his call




i stand on the edge of the

porch roof, next to the

hole in my house where the

light pours out




look






the days are shorter now

and all of my fears that much
closer to the surface

no amount of poetry will

ever cure cancer




no man who would ask for

your vote would
ever give you his in return




these are things to think about

while you watch dorothea
undress, and when she asks if

you love her, you should smile

without answering






you should

kiss her breasts




words aren't the enemy,

of course, but it's always

best to act as if they are

four ghosts

sleepwalking

knew him when he was dead,

early spring or late summer, town filled
with the stench of decay
 

a parade for jesus on some

bleachwhite saturday afternoon

flowers and virgins, senile old men

holding rifles, and what i remember is that i
could no longer remember which
century was mine

sat next to an open window

listening to freeway traffic, someone’s
girlfriend screaming in the second
story apartment across the
street, then laughing
 

almost midnight

july maybe, maybe october

birds with broken wings, angels

caught in branches, in nooses,
and politicians, and terrorists, and all of
them concerned with butchery and power

all of them concerned with

vengeance and he said fuck this

said let’s go find a bar and i

knew him to be dead and i knew him

had dated his sister had slept with

his wife and i said wait

i said the parade’s going to start soon

and he just smiled and shook his head

set fire to the house

pulled the trigger

something stupid and dramatic and the

girls on the floats were all
beautiful as they smiled into the sun

portrait of beth (from memory) late in the season of doubt

the golden dog

or lives controlled by

need and not desire


end of summer and the
                  idea of fear
too large to be ignored

gun held tight in the

fist of christ

taste of gravel and of

              broken glass

cold blue sky over empty parking lots,

over the clean, meaningless lines
                             of gas stations

over the corpses of children

killed by chemical warfare, because
the world is always so much
more than your own small,
                      petty failures

the kingdom of ashes

begins at your door

the missing man is found two weeks

later on some weed-choked
stretch of riverbank
almost eighty miles away

his wife is with her boyfriend

when the news
makes its way back home

even now

the possibilities for joy
                   are endless

the enigma of the dying west

such ordinary fear

landscape w/ flesh & bone

the refusal

shoot the doctor in the

back as he walks away then
tell him he’s a coward while he
dies at your feet

it’s an addiction,

like humor
 

it’s a punchline

you capture the soldier, a

boy of fifteen or sixteen, and
then you torture that fucker
until he’s on the floor in a
pool of his own shit and blood

this is how wars are won

make your children

understand this

tell them how much you hated

your own father,
how much he hated you

show them the scars

explain how they can only

grow up to
repeat your mistakes

blood music 1

mapping the edge of the world

for dawn

knowledge and despair

sincerity

man on fire in

the street holds his
son tightly

confuses love and

hate like a
woman i used to know
 

says all pain is

meant to be shared

says silence is

a gift

nothing left of the

child but
ash and bone

excerpts from NOTES FOR MAGELLAN'S DAUGHTER

* *

 

endless unnumbered pages in the

book of pain and it’s here where you
write your truths and it’s here
you are written on

wars

  yes
and the more complex atrocities
                             of one-on-one

cupped hands

overflowing with blood

take her money

then dig a shallow grave
 

another child’s mother

buried alive
 

a small chapter no one

ever remembers








* *

tongue tied in

holy knots w/
eyes almost
blind he is not
speaking to god
he is not
speaking at all is
not sleeping but
dreaming is not
awake but
falling and he
is standing at
the edge of the
highway and
he is laughing
and she is
almost she is
getting into
the car she is
smiling and
she is crying
and she is
driving away
with the rest
of his life