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

.

The Night John Tart Fell From the Roof

John Tart held with his fingers the crippled crumbling brick
The orange dust valleys and dells of his fingerprints
Cum-colored sweat and brillow bush head hair
Ferry the dingos
And chase the kangas off the golf course, lad

We climbed on top of tubas
And round bass drums white paper stretched tight
And snares
And dented trombones
And strings for wood delicate and finger prone
And the chalkboard with the dick chalk drawing
And the air conditioner hanging half way in and half way out
And the rows and the columns
And seats where sat asses cotton and pleats and the militant young bones of our boys and girls
We climbed to the roof
And we defiled an institution by dancing to the enemy’s anthem overlooking her shoulders and the stars

John Tart’s thighs worked like pistons buckled to his baseball catcher’s cup knees
A smoker’s heart
A tub of guts
Spider webs in his lungs
The lips of an eagle
A brain paralyzed by fear
Were the engines that drove those pistons through a dimly lit tunnel under the city
Dead men and ghosts called like cats through the steam pipes
Haunted sirens sounded in the black expanse behind my flash light
Whisper press on press forward ping sonar bats in flight

Ever’time I talk, you cry, he said
I don’t rodeo no more, I said

Too dangerous, he asked
I jus’ don’t love it no more, I said

He let go
And the bricks that fell after him
To land heavy on his empty chest
Were like the words I kept inside, always wanting to be said
Hurling themselves from my heart
After him
Because after all
They were his anyway.

9.2013

.

Thoughts Born In a Dark Cafe Booth

There is madness afoot,
In and around the corners you always seem to fail to look,
Where nothing is stirring but life still exists,
Perpetuation,
A continuation of things that passed before,
So someone screams and you think you hear a passing wind,
Some detail of your story has been corrupted,
Mismanaged,
And you’ve deviated from our society’s heathen systems of corruption,
Perhaps finding what matters,
Perhaps dabbling in love even,
From whence you were born,
Swimming unevenly in the soup of your parents’ bygone ideas,
Love that demands a satisfaction,
Grounded on the inevitable truths of selfish malevolence,
Hardcore violence,
Insatiable sexual satisfaction,

Does any of this make sense?
Make for you a veritable timeline with which to judge your own,
A sample of the perfect imperfections in your ghost,
The marriage of haiku and iambic pentameter,
In which King Henry’s insanity is overpowered by the notion of his mortality,
A simple three-line thought served lukewarm,
Spat from the crimson mouth of the prophet himself,

There is madness afoot,
Up under the blankets where your toes meet and your skin tingles,
Where life sizzles and seems to have meaning,
Infatuation,
The misinterpretation of historical proof,
You can’t help but claw his skin and beg mercy for more,
Some aspect of your vision failed to pass,
Beyond salvage,
And you’re left – lonely flesh and bones in a graveyard of perspiration,
Maybe even calling home,
Maybe even the words “I love”,
So it is given the time you’ll die,
Following in the footsteps of your faithful parents beforehand,
Love that merits every pain,
Founded in some kit fox lie of a black man’s card trick,
Following his hands,
Everyone needs a little magic in their lives.

7.2010

The Road's Conclusion

For one final time, I closed Jack's book on

the auditorium floor next to the stage
     where we were waiting for Dylan.

I fled New York for Denver following the footsteps of Paradise,

not knowing the road beneath me was the original beat home.

And there I was alone in my fascination of

a newly discovered musical consciousness around me,

opened to me by my lonely quest for miles

that led me to sit at the feet of a rock and roll legend.

What was this need to be impressed?

I was caught in the illusion,

swaying to the rhythmical current of the crowd all

lost in the sounds that were alive to me for the first time,

out on those same streets,

the inner workings of a magnet that Jack surely felt too,

finding Denver a stop-over that could not be avoided in

the long list of American wonder.

We all wanted to dig this place, yet up until now,

the only digging I had known was Seamus Heaney's.

Jack taught me the confinement of that dream.

I finished his book and woke up realizing

that Bob Dylan was a real human.

4.12.05