Of the Hammer

Where suicide lovers leapt to that icy stone
broken heart
broken bone
they shouted, it's only the storm that's growing
swollen momma clouds engorged towing lightening
     and the sounds of the hammer against Thor's forge
I've known loss
and the pain of lives like light tossed
but this

this hurts more

They said it's only a storm passing
I said it's only destiny laughing
old friends dancing with old faces grow in their graces

the crowd settles
the curtain rustles
everyone,
please

please

everyone to your places.

TA
2016

Over The Moon

She was absolutely over the Moon
I was doomed when she kissed me under sweeping tendrils of toilet tissue
reissued as kite strings swinging like un-tethered astronauts
unclothed knots of human flesh
no rest in the craters and canyons like pioneer pirates
no longer silent sailing the shadows in the Sea of Tranquility
kissing her nipples like the bejeweled hands of the nobility
Queen of Curls
Queen of Cats
ruling most royal a world of this and thats
unsettled in sweaters but better to wear panties than to buy bikinis
standing pale on the shores of the Sea of Serenity
her skin the fields of fertility
in my shower she proves her agility while the water rains warm
still her heart is an ocean of storms

what harm can a single clever girl cause this great wide world??

unfurled she charms like the yellow orb of the full Moon
but on the other side of that constant satellite
sisterhood of the dark sky
eternal night looms.

TA
2014
Image: Phil Noto

Her Spit

She licked her spit from that precipice of pink lip,
pussy for the boys with the guns on their hips,
the last life-jacket remains forever hung in the cabinet
     'cause the captain goes down with the mother fucking ship,
twist her ankle,
spank her and pinch those tiny tits,
she slips like venom through my veins,
like mixed feelings through Cain,
like the very heart of civilization through my stiffening dick.

2015
TA

For Blood

Who gave the wolf a gun
already threatening to tear his howl from my throat
festering in his fur
and hung
the wrong kind of smell on the air
beware the smell
of the gun powder
of the woman's wail
growing like a cock or like cancer
in the hallowed halls of my black lungs
the bullet cutting through courage
through my tossed luggage
through the diatribes of fussy pilgrims on a long voyage
hunting for the heart of anyone
but bound for MY blood
for blood
for blood
for blood
for blood
for blood

and fuck all the soft words
what's done is done.

TA
2016
.

Loud Pulsing Lewd Primal Proud

They called for my head,
the gallows high the rope strong the wood stained red,
let them gasp
   and find false hope,
feast like fools
   on the lies they've been fed,
me, I'm destined for greater things than death,
the drumbeat in the center of my chest
is loud
   is pulsing
      is lewd
         is primal
            is proud
but cannot be heard by ears in faithless rest,
turned deaf by lives lived in jest,

down with those who've forgotten adventure and who
no longer dream of distant sunsets,
   down with soft hearts,
      and your father's fears,
         and your stolen grace,
            and your sad eyes,
               and your miserable lives,
                  and your silly threats,

me, I lived my existence full,
and without regret,
everyday choosing life,
by my own free will,
   by my own hands,
      my cock,
         my sweat,

call for my head if you must,
roll dice for my clothes and place bets,
know this, ye unhappy fools:
my body is but baggage I'll have happily left
   as my soul flies away free
      on the last of my breath.

TA
2016

Wanderlust

I cut my teeth on wanderlust,
fuss at dawn
with duck calls and a blunderbuss beneath the horse leather under us,
trust the truck engine
and hope the pistons keep spinning despite the water rust,
tough is a thousand mosquito bites
and bull moose musk,
fill 'er up - octane and whiskey and bath tub suds,
have her wash the dirt
from the parts that hurt 'cause best buds scrub for love,
loud lake trout hitting flies from above,
naked in the cold shallows
but her lips feel as soft as the feathers of a dove,
all the million thoughts you think of,
all the brilliant children
who will never know life beyond being an urban citizen,
crimson cinnamon blood
floods my veins and stains the rocks in constellations of red,
led to the waterfall by the call of a higher power instead,
cower before the lord, you pale
earthly ape, whose tower is the mountain,
whose voice is the ceaseless pounding
of endless gallons of a clear forest stream,
the rough rocks of the world redeemed,
I cut my teeth on wanderlust
and bathe my bones in waters some only ever know in dreams.

2016 - TA

My Mother's Gift

Pig pork tabled on my tongue like
the nesting swallows in the corner
of my porch,
Dad's porch built with electric saws and
the beer-stained curses of the mouth of the man that pushed me
from the tip of his dick deep
into my mother's guts twenty-nine years ago this April,
Straining now with that same maw to
grind pork fat into digestible components friendly to the ulcers
that riddle the innards of his tight-as-a-drum distended belly of pale
sparsely-haired mole-ridden flesh,
The thick coagulation of slick slime coating that porker's succulent
offerings wedding my own saliva and
sliding greedily,
greasily,
into a belly that perhaps shares the same genetic code as
my elderly father but for fuck's sake best not
one day share that same shape,

He eyes the dry swallow nest vacant in the summer season
as if the swallows have some better place to spend
warmer climates than in the shade of
my porch with its peeling yellow paint and
drunken mosquitoes visiting in the cool evening,
His eyes are becoming cloudy - both in what we see when
looking into them and what he see's when he looks out,

"That bird nest," he says, "up there,
it reminds me of coming home"
The sun is splendid on his face forcing its way into
the cracks that have eaten their way
through those contours beaten both by the hands of time and
by the hands of harder men than he,

"How so?" I ask, later to repent for a question whose answer would
dig through my skull like a bobcat's claws in a rabbit's ribcage,

"Your mother would wait for me on the lounge chair by the television set,
That old blue faded piece of shit with the stains along the armpit,
You know the one,
Filthy sad springless chicken full of cockroaches and wood glue,
The one that stockpiled dog hair in its folds like we were gonna be short of it someday,"

I nodded,
told him I remembered the one,

"She would be naked," he went on to say, smiling,
at what he could clearly still see and I was only beginning to reluctantly visualize,
"Ripe as a green apple,
As white and smooth and stiff as a mannequin in the Dillard's window,
And that bird's nest up there,
It reminds me of her thick black bush,
Hiding her lovely pussy,
Between her long spread legs
waiting for me when I'd come through the door."

TA - 2013

So That I Can Be Prepared

Have you come to wreck my marriage?!
Sarah sleeps restlessly and weeps constantly
at the back of the palace,
Allen spends his evenings painting the dull colors
of the aurora borealis,
birth daughter of Mother the Moon
and Sun the Dragon,
the sad ballad of Atlas holding the world on his shoulders
but more impressively holding in his madness,
slip the golden band from my phalanx,
if I seem out of practice it is because
the planet is out of balance,
you've a talent for destruction
as powerful as a volcanic eruption,
and our vows were always full of corruption from the beginning,

weren't they?

tell me what they'll say,
about how the good always get led astray,
so that I can be prepared for my fall from grace.

TA - 2014
 

She's Got What It Takes

I never said she wouldn't make mistakes,
with a sly but honest hand I fanned the deck,
she pulled the Joker,
I pulled the Ace,
I didn't have the answers to the questions I answered,
random acts cast patterns tied in knots of chain,
of lace,
she may not have what you have, lads,
but she's got what it takes.

TA - 2016

Fingers Turned Red

Until our fingers turned red like the wine
like the heavy blanket of starry black cresting overhead to
crash like a wolf's howl ushering in the
long night
we let go the question of right
of wrong
gay with dark drink slipping from between our lips the merriment of song
she hovered over the sand
tall and long
smiling and smelling sweetly of sadness
of the strong scent of madness; that curse washed away
not long after surviving distaster
stir the night air with the spoon of your long neck and dance for
your master
until our fingers turned red like the wine
and we died like gangsters.

TA - 2016

Until We Meet Again, Mike

Gonna miss you, Mike,
when everything (hopefully) goes right tonight
and I'm sent ass-over-end
into shim-shimmering starlight,
past red dwarfs
and lumbering gas giants
magnanimous
and overly bright,
into the very epicenter of my
full young life,
taking a star-studded hike
past lonely meteors
made of the lion's iron
and the devil's sulfide,
long-running Voyager at full mast
fighting the good fight
sending its last message into the past,
tumbling
still
into infinite heights,
the might of that one heavy boot
to my poop-chute
carrying me into the imminent
unknown
beyond the thunder-dome
and solar cyclones
and the hidden birth homes
of infant galaxies,
glimmering
in post-natal ecstasy,
building planets from stardust,
filling them with
seas,
fishes,
monkeys,
us,
bombs,
roaches
and rust,
out into the darkness,
even
beyond love,
beyond reproach,
beyond God above,
until I return again,
on the back of a white stallion,
a stud,
and into every
man
woman
child's
waiting ears,
I utter

"wassup".

2015

ta

Heavenly Things

All of us heavenly things
some of us Jupiter's storm
some of us Saturn's rings
we're found in the Voyager' elliptical path
and in the math it takes to get moms and dads
to and from the moon
in the sulfur monsoons on Venus
the planets' pull is the gravity between us
the crimson carnal lust of Mars
calling from afar
Andromeda's trillion stars
meteors becomes meteorites
solar flares
the Northern Lights
our history evident at night
dust of all life in the sub-atomic planetary systems of our insides
microcosms
microcosmic
trail of the passing comet
trail of the heavenward rocket
the cockpit a pulsing organ taking man into orbit
the countdown a chorus
into that immortal night of the gods and goddesses
where we are all promised to return
from stardust we were churned
and into stardust we will once again be born.

2015

ta