Broken Elevator Book Club

I cheered a distant silent flutter
you finally found him
the Author
our conspiracy now transmogrified
a new night moth born
a penetrative sin stroking something deeper
love like the pearls from the anus of an angel
he flummoxed you
he flummoxed me too
was the mad Pluck white?
or black??
he is most certainly with the mountain monks now
oh, he is indeed their problem

we underline scriptures in hospital scrubs
in Eve's leaves
quoted verses, made a progress of some sort

we found something from afar
a new kind of fingering in the wet temporal lobe
bed of paperback pages
slick pen slash stroke against yellow flesh
suspended typeset like a taunting worm
a witch's curling finger beckons us
where candy lay
where magic lurks

I picture you there across the million miles
fingering his crooked spine
following his mischievous modifiers with dangling perversion
a mouth full of rain and coffee water
stoned on the vapor trails of bygone lovers
aroused by a novel's unknown owners
tickled lightly to beginning
later lasso'd
ah, this new chapter in our love affair.

TA

Losing the Tether to Myself

These days
I mostly hug my mother
in parking lots
outside Mexican restaurants
we catch  up sharing stories sharing chalupas
the long talk about her grandchildren
nieces and nephews
we talk about family, mostly
we sound sincere, I guess
and repetitive no doubt

she gives me room to find myself
whatever it might be I'm chasing
chatter about lost goals
my invented hope
I update the terms of unbound existence
my quixotic ambition
sometimes we even cry together

everyone seems to be someone I've seen before
that kind of guy
this kind of woman
adults playing dress-up
I remember these faces from when I was a kid
looking up at the unfolding story of my parents' life
a baseball collection of cast members
trying to place them in proper sleeves
figure them all out
which fits best
I wonder which one of them I've become

none of us are new under the sun
we are all flotsam floating together
is anyone ever anchored?
my god! half my concentration is spent
trying to keep quiet
silence the loud death wailing inside of me
for something lost

we are all labels on a foreman's clipboard
supervisor of a factory floor in the ethos
kindly cerebral gentleman
sadness that can't be healed
quirky fixer upper
lost in Neverland
gypsy daughter
misguided and misguiding
petroleum brain
thirsty for sin
little sister
forever in a fight
good son
playing the bad boy's part
wanton wife
miserable in her love

no one in my mother's bloodline will become an astronaut
I'm beginning to see that now
I conducted an orchestra with a lead pencil
I hunted wild rabbits through the poison green of the deep south
I slept with an alligator in the mud
we rolled together like lovers on the banks of a drainage canal
but he was too strong.

TA

Robert

Robert my dog
and Robert my woman
these old calloused prints
bundle of fetched red cedar
from cranny
from nooks in the rock

I spear the fat horny bull
fat flank muscles and velvet crown
foot pursuit through fetid fern
the gilded hunting horn bellows
Robert my dog sniffs the blood on the bark
and Robert my woman waits hungry

Robert soft and downy gold
Robert with a witch's smile
she greets me hysterical
an animal taste on her tongue
she finds my girded hips and pulls me close
Robert in sin
Robert in gory detail swallows the bull

I am fecund, tonight only
I am engorged with blood and lust
Robert my beloved
Robert my steady right hand.

TA

Perse Reflection

No angered angel stays buried
my black heart heavy with want
your resurrected figure
the weight of your pressing down on my senses

I eject your name into endless starscape
out o'er lonely cliffs whose names we've mostly forgotten
to lonely listeners
an orchestral herd of canyon elk
chattering squirrel disruptive
wake the brookie sleek
thrown willy-nilly into moon's cold shadow

they take turns to mourn with me
to climax with me
into pine scent and powder
into constellation epiphany
sobbing over phony photographs
and lewd memories

I come near a crawling cuck
through wooded trails
through graveyard aisles
through your front door ghost house
to cover you in a crown of cum
(of love?)

I'm here still living trying to say a something
so much something
I guess I mean it?
in some strange temporal out-of-body kind of way

sparkling calligraphy of coke dust on your tits
poor child of mania and fury
of lust and fever
wild animal doomed to violence
if I could only trap you long enough
I would love you forever

smoking cigarettes and rolling
the last exhalation of a bruised purple poem
a song like a memory
out my open window into the night
slipping my waxen tongue
a taste of your waning tableau

that illicit white kiss still forever on my lips
a numb rumor fading now
a whisper of a moment
when you somehow
(maybe)
did exist.

TA

Hot Tub Lamentations

Pretzel position pearl boiling
my white ass in redacted jacuzzi in a motel in Mississippi
forgotten and misshapen tub angry angles silent portals
my blue veins bulging full of gas station chemicals
a mystic plastic pantomime
grasping at miracles

she wore color over every crest and turn
arrested fearless spandex mannequin tossing her hips into the drywall
nuevo Jane Fonda tight as an Abrams tank
"the women are coming" she warned me in spital
a faucet of sweat in her hills and dells
wrestling knots of wet red muscle underneath her skin tight clothes
building that beefy bulky armor for
the future war

peptides percolating in our bloodstream
we've come here to meet our mirror self
dancing twirling flexing eye-fucking that handsome reflection
caffeine fascination doing long lines of black bean powder
too hard tonight to make dumbbell decisions
clean the inside of my heart with high octane gasoline
smash the fourth eye jewel over the stiff spit of my spine
soaken towel of terror
me calling from the skunkworks of phantasm to your tantric ghost

Return!
return so I can love you
with the my consequence of strength.

TA

I Should Tend to the Campfire

 but I have Monet's madness
haystack fever
captivated by evening's descent
every breath brings a new color pattern
a fresh gold
an aging chartreuse deepening into lit periwinkle
a thin shaving of the light

in electric cursive a lonely lightening bug
pirouettes in his sporadic penmanship
writes an incandescent poem
o'er darkening forest palette
about every five seconds or so

so let the fire die
I cannot be bothered
I have the last of the world's color to worship.

TA

A Mardi Gras Psalm

We throw hands on the front porch tonight
we chase the dinner cock at sunrise
don't show me your face, stranger
let me fall in love with the mask
     and then be surprised

somebody's cousin up on the back of the flatbed
french crooner with a fiddle crooked in his hand
crack strangers in a roadside ditch like unleavened bread

these Carencro boys aint built for a brawl
aint nobody's fault
hot glue poets parade to pasture like tattered hens
into sacral mardi gras tent
two-step and pass the copper liquor around.

TA

Killers on the Radio

Just when I think I'm done
writing to you
Human is playing
when I start the truck

I am suddenly back in bed with you
strangers intrigued
throwing toilet paper into the ceiling fan
your new gossamer skin
on the black wrought iron
gom jabbar at the edge of the bed where the
cat's claws cut and rend

teetering towards the edge of the world together
bandaging your clumsy blood stains
falling dancer
fucking in the tall trees
the dying firelight

you carry my handprint like an artist's signature
you carry that empty wine bottle like a caveman's club
driftwood smoke and the red sun in your hair
silhouette your naked lines
so sad to be this happy
in love for just a few days.

TA

Corpse of a Friendship

We buried the body in the black dirt
corpse of a friendship
the gravestone was an old empty redwood tree
gravel stains on your naked waist
wild curling wrestling in the starscape
flashing the dark forest
   like a crime scene

I lost count of the miles by midnight
blurry highway lines become your ribcage
cavern of your phantom laugh
a little girl crying for caress
a specter moaning evergreen
I am haunted by that perfect terrible fit
   of your skin against mine.

TA

Captive Repetition

I am prisoner
enjoy this library, I think
someone else chewed tennis ball on my soft
swollen lip
dance flamenco

at my typewriter proud and plenty
woozy pissing beer every thirty minutes
aggravated assault

entrapment
glass cage of manhood
glass hood of man's cage
little boy is happy lost
in the sugarcane field
lost
rescue me next, please.

TA

In The Green Sea

A climbing violet bruise belches from the sugar mill smoke stacks
we rut like feral dogs in the black dirt swill rows of raucous stalk
dark mud smearing across your hard rust nipples

parade march of knotted cane boogie woogie on windy breath
a violence in the harvest
a little taste of rotten mulch
drunk on the thick sips of sweet molasses from the open wound of your hungry mouth.

TA

This Is The Last One

No more pretty poesy
of the chicken soul
written just for you
this stuff ain't for dead girls

besides

you broke my heart when
they said you vanished
but I won't admit
I cared enough.

TA

Roach Motella

Felt a little like Jack Kerouac's dispirited specter
crawling across the faded cum-colored carpet
ghostly chorus calling beatnik rhyme
hookers in the hallway drumming on the sheetrock
night cops catcalling crime screeching radios
whoop whoop the speaker shreds
do a dance in the strobe light
stroking midnight's throbbing whistle

I leech to moldy leeward
plumb off-center to avoid some soiled stumbling stranger
pinball wizard in the labyrinth
an exotic spice spilling from an open door crack
faceless violence and muffled arguments
my head retreats into the safe fortress of my shoulders
some exuberant orgasm in apogee

the door is locked fast but the seals are public
Missouri's morning alarm clanging into my consciousness
I go slipping from sleep to sheets to permeation
He is risen
the tornado sirens decry
twisting swish swish spreading the gospel on tangled ribbons of barn tin
the motel a mezzanine to purpling concerto
chorus of the cavernous industrial washing machines
in the downstairs lobby
behind which a gelatinous receptionist flashes a sad gray smile.

TA

Toothless Landry

I heard you gurgle in the parking lot
a life's last breath blown through the open cupboards
where teeth used to be

his royal highness
Mexico's highborn jailbait
young buck with a paperback book tucked in his back pocket
popped you in the mouth hard
and squeezed your neck

you were strangled in the back of a pickup truck
you're gonna lose your job, man
I only knew you for two months
we told each other I love you

you brought a woman to a Silver City hotel room
but she only wanted coke
we're out here in the desert, man
what the fuck are you doing?

born from a bastard bartender
your father is immortal in the coastal parish
he dates them young
your best friend does

I heard you gurgle
your blue face six inches from parking lot pavement
you helped me with my flat tire
we told each other I love you.

TA

A Banana a Day

from my knees a heathen still
pressing penitent pushups into the stained hotel carpet
witch's brew bubbling in my plastic nalgene cauldron
caffeine inquisitors drip drip drip
interrogators of my dramatic impulses
blood sacrifice to fast-twitch science
I filter mushroom creatine through a pirate's twisted moustache
twinkling gleen of green soup
sword swallowers and men in black masks
my childhood hero parade

coming up red face
aging into a corset I am battling with sugar babies to control
they play a big black piano on my ribcage
I play a mouth harp on my guts
sallow mush of self-hate shoved into my cold morning mouth
once, I was a boy splashing in ditch water
now, I drink that ditch water daily
a mud tongue love affair
a hundred yellow years

could I save a baby burning on the stove?
could I catch you if you stole my purse?
I guess it just keeps getting harder
my lungs like a pair of suitcases stuffed with weekend cocaine
my bank account stuffed with canceled streaming services
I'll die penniless in panties and torn stockings
my gams finally conquered
my torn heart burst on a perfect pair of pecs

but not just yet
oh boy
the best dressed poet in Montreal has confessed his sins
there are still a few of y'all left to meet
without our clothes
kissing when the sun comes up
my hope is to wear this skin well
this suit for the world
for all of you.

TA

Buddy

I'm too hot to drive the tank tonight, honey
I'm too zippered to look away from the screen
cracked glass portal sucking us off
slurping side-scrollers and first persons and voodoo news
twitching and rolling our eyes back
the precum of coma
techno digital side-hustle kind of new world order
old world monkey kind of orgasm

Buddy runs loose in the hallway and the Indians chase him
shake his collar, call his name
Buddy

BUDDY!

life is a thunderstorm formed on the prairie
a Missouri grey clusterfuck staring downward angry
naked stranger in a hotel room
cold grey cusp of some god's wet wool beard
peep as I collapse this world around me
try to spin silver smoke into thread
coiling snake escaping through the open window
it does not seem to bother the bird nest
     or the eggs

but also maybe
maybe it's the slate soft feathery clutch
the cover of the Labia Olympus Mons Pubis
my lover the solar system
perhaps what I escaped to is greater than what I lost
when I left
and when she peers in - that covetous voyeur goddess
she will see
    I made the right choice

they call for him again
beyond the heavy bolted door of my monk's quarters
beyond the framed emergency escape plan diagram
Buddy!
     the Indians call

Buddy
Buddy,
have I made the right choice?

TA
10/25

San Antonio Pornography

hirsute
him in handsome fleece unshaven and stable fair
grey muff to match the desolate greyscale
junkyard no-man land guarded by miles of mangled metal fence
dry river bottom misshapen trees decorated with bowties of blown plastic sheet
pueblo boy with the thin mud-stained lips
pueblo boy unbutton your flimsy blouse flaunt your brown breasts
he sucks in his birdcage
a dingo carrying a flea circus dead around his dusty sandals

upstairs motel shriving pew
a song of intercourse blues through the open window
sleeping drivers pluck the tarmac strings while I whistle green grass
unconscious chords in floating clouds collect along the popcorn ceiling
grey fighter jets fly in and out growling like angry bees
nail the landing
children in dress blues sob with their parents downstairs
in the distant desert dog packs rape my peace of mind
I've been drunk in enough hotel rooms to know where this goes

long pale rider jerking off the ghost of Jack Kerouac
lo, poetry is the granny porn of virtuous craft
one last dying orgasm
tonight I am a weatherworn and dusty cowboy hot from the trail
danger at the edges of my sleepless eyes
dry mud in the cracks of my old boots
a handkerchief bruise from the rope
horny in the town saloon.

TA