Ghetto Children in the Streets

The wintry Washington DC slums...

The ghetto smells of cannabis
Animal eyes staring at me below
     thick hoods and flat bills
A school bell rings somewhere in
     the grey distance
A shrill sound in the frost
Clear and loud and sharp
As if this entire neighborhood was a school yard
     and classes are over for all of us
The streets fill with gay voices
Swallowing the raw January air into their chests
Spitting it back out in cackles and songs
Like the Potomac gulls on
     the rooftops overhead.

1.19.2012

To Die With You

I want to die with you
Ride like fire into burning clouds and
     crash with you
Strapped to an engine
Police cars screaming
We’ll hold each other and fade away
     into the night
Tops of old tress marked
     by the absence of stars
Into that black hole we’ll fly together
Always chasing the headlight
Shadows and gravel
A fresh cover of recently fallen rain
Your breath on my neck
Falling sideways into the forest
Leaping with you into the abyss
     of our insane future
Broken glass
Flashing lights
And the emptiness of love

2.2013

Bags of Ice

Behind the bar where the action is as hot as a summer night melting cold ice as quick as I can pour it over the beer...

Smoking wet cigarettes in the back
of a jon boat waiting on this mad rain to blow
its load across the lake
and skate off satiated to washboard  waltz with a pillow-faced
old timer in alligator boots
     and a caterpillar mustache
She pulls me aside her spit tastes like piss or
     beer her tits sweating
Tells me to run for ice
Slicker suit tuxedos scrambling through
the potted plants houseboat neighborhood like this is
the last deluge anyone will have a chance
     to drown in
Where’s that little girl?
Where’s that lonely woman’s child?
The dance floor can’t hold up under this much
     weight much longer
Mama Sue Xien smells like chicken talks like chicken
Wǒ hěn xiǎng cóng nǐ de yīnnáng xī huīchén
Close the shop for the afternoon to
pull pale ghost shrimp from the shallows in droves in the
blood-stained coveralls and broken fish
     nets of a starving family
A gallon of gasoline and a quart of oil should get us home
She leans into my ear and tells me
     to wait by the car after work
Her thick swollen lips crowded around a jade glass pipe
     packed tight with glowing buds
Mosquitoes skirting the edge of that silver smoke like wolves in
the darkness beyond the campfire thirsty for action violent
     instinct trespassers of our civility
I would curse her the she-witch arms of faded blue
tattoos but she is damn good
     with her hands
Three bags of ice and a glazed honey-bun
Hé jīngyè zài tā de liǎnjiá

01.2013

Patty

A poem about the people we meet, and the side of them we'll never know, unless, of course, we happen to be one of their targets designated for elimination to ensure a stable balance of some far flung future catastrophe. Keep up - this one jumps all over time and space... 

2012
She let’s her fingers dance so that her mind can sleep
So that she can quiet the screams
So that she can forget the child she left behind
The hour is late and she is numb
Smoking a cigarette
Gambling away the pennies of a foreign president
Thinking long on the promise she’ll never keep
Her fingers flutter
Tap dancing over a digital display of bare breasts on the screen

She checks her watch which tells her it’s October 17th
A sad smile at the secret she’s had to keep
For them it’s the birthday of a friend
Although it is certainly when life on Earth for her began
She shares our genes and is one of our race
But her truth actually started a very long time away
She was pushed from her mother’s womb in the depths of space
On a Hospital Ship orbiting the dead star Caul Dron 10
Though human her origins require a vaster leap

She sips the drink offered by a stranger because she’s cheap
Though she’d like to - she mustn't fall asleep
Smoke seeps from her nostrils and floats about her face
She scans the room
Those sharp eyes trained to see through haze
Her tightly wound muscles under a blanket of synthetic fat
A sleek modified blaster in the waistband of her jeans
She has not yet healed and feels no shame
This target tonight is number two hundred and sixteen

10002012
“Why must you go?” her son asked beneath the sheets
Outside the view hole the black star and the last remaining human fleet
She smiled at the boy but refused to cry
There was more to fear than the ship’s reinforced steel and concrete
Ten thousand years after the last man left Earth
There were no more cigarettes
There was no more whiskey
“But I’ve never heard of that planet”, said her boy
“You will”, she said,
“It’s just that our memory is incomplete”

2012
She chose her path just as she chose that bar seat
She chose her path because the sun was a dying source of heat
In a world where the air smelled heavily of nitrogen
Humans fucked for pleasure again and again
And cars did not fly but were stuck to the street
She inhaled the last of her cigarette
This insufferable city of Lafayette
Watched her target stumble through the exit
She paid for another drink and signed the receipt

10002012
They called to tell her that she had ten minutes before the jump hole would close
     and her chance to save humanity be obsolete
She kissed her son on the forehead and told him to go back to sleep
Memorized the smell of his hair
The touch of his skin on her lips
Though she was to leap across time and stars she knew that leaving that bedchamber would be her hardest feat
“Will you be back soon?” he asked
Confident as children are wont to be
“Of course,” she said with her saddest of smiles
“You’ll see”

2002
Ten years ago to the day she stepped into that bucket seat
Rebekah Octavius Rhendering 3.0 “Patty” Marquez fell from heaven in the bright glow of a comet streak
Landing on Earth in what was a one-way only leap
Behind her gray eyes a list of one thousand names
One thousand human males who carried in them a mutated gamete
They’re extinction would balance the sheets
Make history once again complete
If not for her
For a son born ten thousand millenniums later
Pulled from her loins by cold machines in the pediatric suite
She knew she could never return
But that one day in the future they would yet again get the chance to meet

2012
She crushes out her night’s last cigarette
Primes the blaster on her hip
Before she turns to go she lifts her bloated hand to her lips
Leans over the bar and speaks into a hidden cassette
“Target number two hundred and sixteen
Carl Robertson just left.”

12.2012

We Were Never Safe For Work

These are the words that fall out in those moments at the office when I'm in-between projects...

There are those who feed on the
     children of mistrust
And there are those who feed
     their fevers with hot fires
Do not be deceived
For there are dragons hiding
     within every empty shadow
There are men afoot with
     horrible intentions
          who were born of horrible misdeeds
Men whose hearts are tattered wicker
     baskets holding empty dreams
Hunting over the land
Slip into the corners where mice hide
     and make not a sound
Sleep for a thousand years
Pray that in the wakening they who
     seek have fallen silent
Or have forgotten their mad course
Brief swollen rage flowing in the
     grey valleys of their hearts
Hollow threats start to part the sick
     smiles they leave hanging like
      dried leeches from the yellow skin
               on their faces
Cages within cages
Babies with empty bellies wailing
Cradled in the compressed mud of
     the beast's footprint
A sheet of falling rain
Hazy flashes of lightning
Leave us here smitten with injustice
Juries returning unanswered
There is a ding-a-ling on the loose
     where no one is fond of looking
But where all men must eventually
     turn their gaze
These caverns
These halls
These stone-lined tunnels the
     receptacle of men's screams and the
      final resting place of long, stiff
               bones
Better to die within the glistening
     stalagmites of a cave's teeth than in
      the fangs of the dragon who calls that
            cave his home
Rum and whiskey in a faded silver flask
Fear and loathing in a faded
     yellow smile
Courage does not pour freely from the
     bottle's open mouth
Nor from the aching heart in the
     uncomfortable grip of death
Ripped from a mother's breast
Milk ever sour now still present on his
     soft lips
I ain't never been fair my whole life
And life ain't never been fair to  me
If given the tit I'll use my teeth
Brush the tip with my tongue and taste
     the blood
Fresh from fighting
Fresh from the lungs
The trail goes cold in the forest
But you were too stupid to stop your
     crying
Crash through the underbrush
Trampled by the stampede of mankind on
     his way to a slow demise
Perspiration at your temple
Spots on your back
He who rides thereupon shall burn with
     an insatiable rash and be subject to
      an irresistible and all-consuming itch
His mind shall swim with uncertainties
His balls shall be as dry as the desert
     arroyos
And when the night refuses to give up
     the day
      he shall know terror
Such terror that roots in the lower gut
That eats away at the optic nerve
That spills a toxic mix of grey sewage
     from uncorked bowels
Man stands tall
Yes
But the sun still burns him
The Earth still covers him
Children still rip themselves from
     betwixt his loins
And the infinite distance from his
     lonely existence to the stars above
      still confounds him
Soul Spirit Black Whale singing in
     glitter and rhinestones
Bring home those that were lost
Storm tossed to the four corners of our
     planet
Granted asylum but never allowed to go
     home
Some were captured
Some surrendered
Some were burned from flesh to cinders
They traipse through the halls of
     modern design
Where faith is but a weak leg holding
     up the table of their collapse
Perhaps a stronger push
A stronger Father
Neither love nor dust nor the things      that float in between can save us now

05.2012