My Name

Were you the ghost that jumped in front of my car last night
Shaking my old grey beard and the beads in my ears
It aint that truth be found
But that promises be kept
You mist in the shape of a specter
Playing the harmonica on the front porch
And rattling them chains

My broken heart was swept up with the moon

When the moon was thrown out
Sounds like an old lady’s short high heels on the linoleum
Opening doors and slamming cabinets
Calling my name
But my name isn’t mine anymore
Lost in the cold silence of space
Drifting eternally

It aint that truth be found
It’s that progress be made
I still think of you when everyone else is asleep
And where the wind blows
Over meadows
Over sad canyons wide
Does it blow through your hair
And when it does

Do you think of me?

9.30.2013

.

An Honorable Death

The city is on fire
Speaking in the tongues of mortar shell explosions like
     the strong but soft voice from a burning bush
Pillars of salt
Pillars of smoke
Black columns ethereal snake skin twisting their hidden heads in the clouds
Distance and desert and the hell of rock and stone
The scorpion bastard
The empty palaces of sand princes
Mosaic tiles of a multi-colored Muhammad in the lavish
     corridors murals
          and dust angels dancing in the sun
               as we crack those empty ghost-less tombs
Cutler in his thick-rimmed issue prescription glasses
     blue smoke falling heavy from his puffy lips
Smiling and passing the fag
A row of sand-brown helmets and a moment of
     rest
I keep Chora in my pocket where her half-naked Polaroid
     is near enough to the body part that misses her most
A minaret in the courtyard
Black helicopters low overhead like a loose bowling ball bouncing in your
     chest

I
am
a reluctant Moses
Older than these boys
     and fearless in a way they cannot understand
          because I have lived a life and they have not
Because they dream of Tennessee hills
Because they dream of fast cars
     with engines
          and stoplights waiting for green
Because they dream of parents and
     brothers and
          sisters they aren’t quite sure how to be separated from
Because they dream of city lights and taxi cabs and hustling
Because they dream of swimming pools and not these
     dried ceramic remnants of Jihadist get-togethers
Because they dream of fishing trips
Because they dream of roller coasters
     and movie houses and
          popcorn in the mircowave
Because they dream of dad’s textile company and
     the position he’s reserved waiting for them
Because they dream of wedding rings and a husband’s
     never-ending comfortable obligations
Because they dream of the seed within them
     with an eager desire to multiply and inherit the
          earth
Because they dream of colors other than the browns of this
     land
Because they dream of hunting deer instead of men
Because they dream of not being the hunted

Where
as I
I only dream of war
And the taste of it
And the sound of it
And the death
So like Moses
     disinterested but responsible
          I shoulder my rifle and am a rock for the children of men
I will wrestle with the serpent
I will displace the angel’s hip
I will silence the lions
And
     I will be the first to push my spear
          under our Savior’s ribs to pierce his broken heart
For when they cannot face their trials
These boys
They look into my face
And I
     into the horror
War is blood and water
Forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do.

10.10.2013

.

The Slick Trails

She slips like loose heat through his torrid memories

Cradling his sad existence in her outstretched arms

Pulls him in against her burning flesh

To search
     out the sound of her heart in the bellows behind her breasts

A stiff nipple in his ear like the doctor’s stethoscope

With an emerald ring
     against his jawline she fingers the tight chords of his
          neck

Where the blood boils in a mad haste to keep him alive

Tunneling through spent muscles to provide the strength he needs
     to push against her

To lift her by
     that fragile rib cage which guards delicately her lungs

Her hidden voice in those nebulous caverns

Like soft lips pressed to satin to subjugate her shrieks

Moaning trumpets in the dim light

Crawling along the avenues of his contorted spine

She climbs the nooks and crannies of his body

Counting the endless drops of his sweat

Until the
     numbers are like stars and
          there is no way to tell anymore

               which beads come by perspiration

or by the morning dew

or by tears

or by the slick trails left by her tongue

10.29.2012

.

Brother Clark Feedmire

She strokes my busted knuckles with the tip of her wet tongue
How is it that you hit so hard, she asks
I throw my hand with horror in my heart, I say
Born of slippery shadowy things in the dark corners of my childhood
Those distant years when I slept on the soft stomach of a black prostitute
Her pink fingernails in my hair
The stench of stale milk at her breasts
Train platforms at the edge of town at 3am
Gunshots in the madness
Brother Clark Feedmire breathing heavy into his harmonica on the radio
My daddy met a preacher in the Can
A panther who had strangled his own wife and kids
A God-fearing man
A soulless husk
I killed him, he told me
Holding the broken fingers of his swollen fist against the plastic divider
Wrapped in prison gauze
Days before they killed him too
The county
And the state

She settles down on top of me
Her eyes blue
Kissing me with blood on her white teeth
The taste of cigarettes on her lips
Kings of glory and the sweat of slaves
Trappers wrapped in furs and men who dig for oil
Preachers and prisoners
Our clothes on the wooden deck outside
Her hollow chest
Dogs barking ceaselessly in the night
We chase one another in some other man’s bed

What kinds of things do you dream about, she asks
I smile because I have not dreamed in a long time
Madmen cannot be trusted to keep secrets such as those

06.2013

.

Remember Sliders

Remember Sliders,
I’ll tell my kids one day in a letter written on brown Chinese parchment,
Remember when they had finally jumped back into their own world
But because the gate creaked like it once hadn’t
They turned around and jumped through that fucking portal instead
And were gone again
Sliding through the multi-dimensional alternate realities of existence
Little known to the majority of the world
But certainly known intimately and profoundly sad by a few
Always the possibility of home
Always the promise of a better place
Always the cry for peace
Please God, if you can even hear us anymore
Please God
Send us back
And end this madness
Remember Sliders, I’ll say to my kids in that letter
Because Daddy lives like them now
Slipping through the many lives of a single human life
Daddy is like a Slider
He can never come home again

9.30.2013

.