Light Creeps Around Florida
Peeled wallpaper of a city's paunch
recently failed to exist.
Silverfish have their empires larger than Macedonia
all tickled by falling rubble
tricking damp-seat taxis away from dank and depraved pimps,
who ruled villages with their rubber fists.
We opened up our backdoors to piss,
stunning skylines in lilacs and blues,
wind-chimes, wicked cats poking years from our spine,
a litany of broken cocks
flashing the monochrome light,
Florida, 1940s shimmering noir, Jazz-hammered lights.
Sad hungry mad angry
spears stab my sideview mirrors
and the movie ends;
I wish I was Jack Lemmon,
even if he’s dead,
history has frozen the most important parts of him.
I have the wet black summer's midnight street
tarmacked on my t-bone shoulder, many people shake my hand,
some people try to take away my being,
the dead of Greece, weren't clinically dead, they inform me,
they were instead lacking in something.
Florida - green and pink 1940s dream in daylight its bayou sinners
who sail a semaphore of shadows in my room
turn dead from, earlier than cockrow.
I feel equal to a man who moved to a bedsit sooner than sorrow could,
a man who has a pizza delivered to him
sharing a cigarette
with the delivery boy from San Juan who'd promised him on the phone
views to die for, out on that beachfront real estate.
I put my arm around my dog
to try to figure if one of them means to kill the other one.
Tomorrow is ink in the sky,
midnight closes its page,
milk white light
on late night leaves, almost as humidly black as Sardinia.
The Grecian dead
are lacking something again,
they're so needy I want to stub my cigarette in their fossil's faces,
If they can conquer Egypt
they can at least strike a deal with death
Song for Mantana Roberts
The eight deadly sin is in serving cappuccino hot,
I warned Coogan of impending danger, the minute he’d signed that contract in Miami.
Last man standing takes the hardest hit, Coogan.
I knew Coogan well from our time sailing with the Wentworths, and Aunt Virginia, around Cape Cod,
I knew this was a fucking shakedown.
I feel sorry for these elephants in every room,
being made scapegoat for fashion-statement illnesses
none of these douchebags have,
I remember buying Pyromania, I was 13,
reading Mutt Lange had become so hyper-obsessed with it, its master-tape was almost in tatters
from all the overdubs he was making.
Miss Mabel, a sugar-plum sorceress,
did her hard-knock life dance
as her momma spilled a double miasma
all over her step-daddy never to be,
Miss Mabel has a sibling, Carlos - they call him Kid Brother, even though he's a little older,
it's hard for Carlos to speak,
he'll never be a star of summer pantomime and soap operas at 3 am.
Miss Mabel's mom told her boy Carlos try being mindful,
when he turned the other cheek
during Mable's Sandra Dumbrowski dance.
Mindfulness - or bullshit - as we call it in Latin,
would never teach Carlos
that mom's second name was Dumb Broad, not Dumbrowksi;
when life's not totally bellissimo
I check out Def Leppard's finest hour,
remembering Coogan's final meal was cappuccino minus any solids;
Sorry Coogan, old pal -
I sang songs of souls stuck in bodies
not made for straight-line red-light highway kind of living,
I'll dream songs Mantana Roberts' places in my brain,
instead of hearing songs
strangers killed when they crawled like fat and evil spiders
on the
colonies
of my face
(1)
Crow-shaped holes
filled and charred by sinuses of smoke remembered Saigon,
how its jasmine and sage seemed to age slower than a rattlesnake’s song.
(2)
A shadow, fat with morning's grief
drowned itself today on a beach populated by fury,
bent-iron monsters made for war surrendered to an unkempt century.
(3)
In newspapers they strum chords
for a dirty stinking angel, her shoes more flat than an hour-old pitcher
overflowing with beer, not something normally transcribed in morse-code.
(4)
Only when dust is electricity,
when lizards hunt gangsters in Jersey who boogie all night long to the sound of a 1940s big band,
can an age swollen with sadness for failing Mary Magdeline, find a silver knight tempered in peace.
(5)
Midnight was the longest winter anyone had seen -
driving the stinking angel and renegade priest from town,
their pick-up truck packed 15 feet high with effigies made from moonlight and copper
24 Hour Dinner-Party People
The boring bastards of Rock n' Roll
are whispering sweet nothings under my tenement door,
I’ve dealt with them,
I was a necromancer in my spare time
who brought Elvis Presley back to life -
tongue roots of stone and wicked heart of a father of snow I chanted -
electricity sparked,
a freckled light bulb exploded into a trillion freckled eternities more -
Elvis has returned to the building.
I am no longer a necromancer.
At dinner parties nothing sonic is nothing gained,
the concerned parents association wish to let it be known
the abomination is upon us.
Leon pops outside to text one of his students - she's 16 - she needs support with her exams -
Leon's wife tells me
as she tries to garotte me in a special mix of boredom, suburban death and botulism;
the abomination has arrived, Leon’s taking his time texting his student,
Elvis Presley has decided he will re-die. The abomination has joined us
Santa Clara Art Deco
A wobbly ceiling fan prowls
an art deco room in Michael Mann colours
waiting like a stylus-thin sniper
for night to make citizens into un-taxed shadows -
my jazz hat on the side of the bed, damp traces of innocence handcuffed in electric blue,
dangerous orange,
unbroken black -
things that made me think of that kid, I think his name was Kit,
at a checkout less than two days ago
who sold me my first beers in two years,
telling his next customer he had traces of metal in his spine,
but waited to share it when I was almost fully away : my shadow tuned in for me.
I have other things to toast, a wobbly fan, Michael Mann colours -
things that share their intrigue and guilt with me, all from the womb of Santa Clara Art Deco
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