Hey Mitchell Roth; if you ever come here anymore...comment and let me know you live.

THIS IS WHY I WRITE said the Gods, unaware that his/her/its memories were missing: and so we write; we wish we wrote, wish we took pens with us to bed, covered our blankets in paper, filled our pillows with ink and rearranged our dreams in terms of consonants and syllables and meter. We miss ourselves in memories of ourselves; we ache for what we have not yet known, could not have yet known, but still yet know: words remember; language remembers. Everything that we remember and all that we cannot remember is all a memory of the same silence, the same nothingness, a chain of memories that is tethered to us and dangles from nothing. And so we write. THIS IS WHY I WRITE. And the Gods begat a Son, and a Daughter, and another, and another. The words are already remembered; nothing is ever truly formed or created or learned, only recalled. Memory preexists. And so we wish we wrote, wish we could write, knowing full well that nothing is ever truly written. I/we acknowledge the silence as much as the silence is personified and takes on my/our shape. We are all silence. THIS IS WHY I WRITE. Because the Gods, posing in Charlie Chaplain still-frames, are not the photographers. This is why I write. We are all memories of motion, of noise. We are the memories of each other. I/we remember in silence until all that is left is the silence, the holes and torn edges between what our bodies remember and our minds remember and our hearts remember. Our hearts collectively stutter, then still as breath is measured, accounted for, counted on to convey messages between us and from us. This is why I write.

Funeral

 She wore a red dress to your funeral,

standing straight and straight-faced
alongside of your black clad family.

She didn't seem to notice the sharp stares,
or feel the stinging sneers,
and when the Priest glared at her she glared back.

It seemed a long time that we all stood there,
sneaking glimpses of red,
stunned into silence by such bold grieving.

Finally it was over and she left,
weaving through the tombstones,
spilling blood among the polished marble.

And In The Beginning; Lava Lamps

 When I was seventeen, the world was a psychedelic oyster...everything flung color; bright, boisterous shades of flourescent orange and scream green, purple haze (Ha Ha) and sunshine yellow. 

Nothing was dull, and nothing was still. 

It all twirled and swirled and sprung in twisting masses from our every object; even our T-shirts seemed to move. I like to think that the person who invented all that ass-kicker acid was just looking for some way to quiet it all down and it back-fired...we used to drop window-pane at Andy's house because he had blacklights in his garage; we would pour Tide washing powder on the floor and trip over its phosphorous contents twinkling through our little piles of detergent...it would be a couple of years before I would learn a few other uses for phosphorous. 

Yeah, those were simple times; I should have paid more attention to them, I should have ate all that color so I could've spit it up later when it would have really meant something. 

Lava lamps were the shit; you were nobody unless you had one in your room...and the cool moms had them in their dens. Joplin and Hendrix ruled the world, the Dead guarded the gates. 

The Stones had just hit the states and everyone hitched to all the best concerts...all the girls wanted to blow all the bands, all the guys wanted to be roadies. Nobody ever did, of course...that was for the kids from California who were lucky enough to get backstage passes; the closest our little southern contingent ever got was sixth-row center at a very memorable Joe Cocker gig...we knew all the words to 'Bathroom Window' and never missed a beat. 

We thought we were so cool. Just as good as those west coast kids. Plus, our pot was better, we were certain of that; we grew it ourselves...no infra-copters back in the day. Fifteen bucks bought a five-finger bag of prime red-bud; ten more got you a sole of hash to wrap it with. I miss that stuff. Nothing beats a good hash milkshake...and later on, nothing would beat a good dose of smack; pot would become just foreplay, just something to keep the jungle bugs at bay while we sat and waited for the movie to start...and that was the thing; if the horse was hot enough, you could get away with pretending it was all a Fellini flick...for a few moments, anyway. 

And sometimes that was enough to get you to the next day.

It's a good thing we didn't know what was coming, I think most of us wouldn't have believed it if we had. The summer of sixty-six was winding down, the acid was turning into to mescaline, and Janis still had four years to live...longer than a lot of my friends. 

Nam was just a blurb on the TV news, the body counts during dinner were still a year or more away, and body bags were for the bad endings on Dr. Kildair. Some of us had brothers or cousins or uncles and dads pulling their time already, but nobody we knew up close and personal had gotten killed or even shot...not then. No one was protesting in earnest, not in our little corner of the planet, and all our teachers were talking about how it wasn't even a war, for christ' sake. Nobody seemed too fuckin' concerned...not then. 

Only our mothers looked worried; but they always did, so we never really noticed. And when we did, it was too late...High School was over, no money for college; all of us country boys had gotten our invitations by the time the spring of sixty-eight rolled around. Only Andy made it out; his dad had an aunt in Winnipeg and the next time I saw Andy he had three kids and a suit...he acted uncomfortable when he shook my hand; but it was OK, it was his folks that made him go...

 I guess. It WAS your folks, right, Andy?

Can You Hear Him now?

Been thinking about Andy again, he's starting to come and go like a cliched ghost; and I seem to be sittin' up with the dead.

I haven't seen him since his dad died twelve years back, and we all went home to Catawba county to say goodbye...all of us that were left, anyway. We made a pitiful bunch, actually; hand-me-down suits and thrift store ties. All of us but Andy, who had done well in Winnipeg and wore a three-piece like an honest-to-God businessman. 

He had spit in his hand and passed it through his hair while we stood around the casket talking about how good his dad looked. Some things never change. That's funny, isn't it...how everyone always seems to think folks look so damned good when they're dead. I'll bet the dead ones don't think so...I'm willing to put a few bucks on the fact that they would probably rather look like shit and be able to tell you about it. 

I know for sure that I want to look terrible when I get to lay on my satin; and I hope all the people that come to stare at my corpse have the good grace to say so. I don't want to die handsome; it seems like such a waste. And I don't want to be laid out all dressed up...I've left word that I'll haunt anyone that tries to pin those fuckin' medals on me. 

I really don't believe a whole lot in God or Heaven or everafters; but whatever is waiting for me is just gonna have to take me like I want to come...wearing Levi's and Hane's cotten. And no socks, please; it's a thing with me. Had a lot of jumpers here lately; maybe that's why I've been thinking so much about Andy. You know, him jumping the draft and all. Word association and such...I've heard it can work like that. 

Anyway, four jumpers just this month; two off the Tar River bridge down at the rocks and two more off the I-95 overpass. The last two were a real fuckin' mess...shit everywhere. It took us the better part of a morning to get all the bits into our little red bio-bags...every scrap or the state boys get pissed. Can't leave anything for the public to see, when wer'e done, the Fire-house pumpers come in and hose away the spots. 

And these two had took their dive together, holding hands like goddamned love birds, said the bewildered witness who had called 911 to report the incredible event on his cell phone. Can you hear him now? Hardy fuckin' har har. 

By the time we got to the scene, he (The witness) was talking to the cops with his attitude showing...he had done his duty and now they were going to make him late for his tee time; he didn't PUSH them, for christ sake. It would have been more interesting if he had...nothing new about suicides. 

All I ask is that they get it right the first time so I don't have to work so hard...it's way harder to try and fix them than it is to just scrape them up. One thing is certain...no one will be standing around these two caskets speculating on how good the deceased look; these two are gonna fit in a shoebox. 

And I say bury them in the same one, size seven ought to cover it. After all, it seems they wanted it that way...just ask the pissed-off golfer who saw it all. I can hear him now. 

I love my job.

Hey, Tinkerbell

 Hey,Tinkerbell,

come on back from never-never land.

Peter's long gone, fell in with the wrong crowd 

on his way to find Wendy- he's history. 

All the little lost boys got together and went uptown, 

maybe you can still find one or two along the strip, 

if you want too. 

And after all that, Hook just blew the place; 

why hang around looking for trouble at a dead party? 

He might even have found Wendy,;

the two of them shacked-up in some other fairy tale. 

So anyway; 

hey,Tinkerbell- 

Come on back from never-never land.

My Aunt Lucy

 My Aunt Lucy had big blonde hair that wafted around her head like the sticky silk of a drunk spider.

My Aunt Lucy wore her skirts too short, violating the public with fat pink thighs thicker than her waist. 

My Aunt Lucy drew her eyebrows on, and painted her lips with vaseline for a seductively greasy shine. 

My Aunt Lucy wore six inch spike heels that made the fat pink thighs look like cold pork popsicles.

My Aunt Lucy wasn't allowed at our house, but she always gave us new case quarters whenever she saw us on the street. 

My Aunt Lucy died when I was twelve; somebody saw the cold pork popsicles sticking out of a bin somewhere.

My Aunt Lucy got her name in the paper, the sisters chipped in for a longer skirt and buried her in the back end of the yard.

Thoughts While Reading The Obits

 She would die at Twenty-Seven, learning to fly from a ledge. 

But we didn't know that when we were eight, we chased endless days down to dark; 

summer dripped time thick as honey. 

Hours spent at nothing, tilting at windmills in our best mindless fashion. 

Summers shifted when we were thirteen, honey grew thin,time ran faster; 

we left our youth behind and lost each other on the way to our lives. 

She would die at Twenty-Seven; but we didn't know that when we were eight.

View From A Flying Jimmy

Listen: hounds loose their run trill reveille behind the lines
of white pine and cedar and elm that guard my seclusion.

I pretend I'm dreaming-then I am-waltzing with Jane
barefoot and ballgowned through a wood: music howls
somewhere beyond the gray, somewhere in the black.
So I oversleep and wonder when I wake why my feet are ice.

I fly to work down back roads that turn suddenly
into streets miles from my driveway graveled and
tucked between menacing rows of black-hulled pecans:
they bear on the third year and I keep their fallen ancestors
packed naked in blue tupperware tubs stacked in my freezer.

The cockpit of my jimmy is strewn with dead coffee cups.
Jack-in-the-boxes lay discarded and dying on the floorboards
-similar slaughters of necessity-ketchup clotted to their sides.
Last month's cable bill flaps under the visor like a battleflag.

Tobacco whips by on the left and on the right so fast
each leaf on every stalk stands out in surreal base-relief.
I taste the sharp and bitter tang of suckering plants:
it reminds me of my father's pall malls and politics and
the smell of money seeded from blood.

Barn swallows rise-in lazy tourbillions-from the fields
their beaks and bellies full of yellow and green hornworms.

I wing past Buck's BBQ Pit (You Can't Beat Our Meat)-past
Lucy's Do-Lounge where the girls serve more than shots
-past Big Jim's Quick Mart: the stoner kid who pumps gas
raises a hand in reflex. I don't wave back in sympathetic apathy.

Most mornings I stop to kill coffee cups but today I'm late.

Tenant houses rush by on either side, their concrete blocks
painted with Kudzu and mildew: I think of abattoirs and
oubliettes and other inevitable exits. Children and dogs and
cheap molded toys from the plastic plant over in Elroy dot
the tiny dirt yards-little boys and little girls stand in stagnant
ditches chunking rocks at death while their mamas are inside
fucking the mailman or watching General Hospital on TV.

I see slide show flashes of their faces and I hope I don't
have to come back out this way: scrape them up, heads
cracked open, futures frying on asphalt like so many eggs.

I pass the city limit sign-some of the holes are mine-ringed
in rust and canted to one side. Courthouse looms right,
county buildings lurch left and blocks ahead day meets night
where tracks split the city: segregation in iron ties old as time.

I pull into my lot-number six, section twelve-filled with cars
and trucks and bikes but I am the only flying jimmy.
Everything ticks: engine, watch, pulse-alpha papa charlie-
the people that mill outside my windshield tick with tension.

I want to turn the key, turn around, turn into my driveway
where squirrels sit stuffing my sweet meats in their jaws:
instead I clinch mine-name rank serial number-open the door
and step out.

Listen: animals sprung their cages snarl in angry unavoce
behind walls of brick and steel and glass that guard nothing.

The Semite-Anti

I knew a Semite, once-
who was anti-anything that wasn’t
his own concept, or concepted to his own
intimate reality and you would think that a Jew
would know a thing or two about tolerance;
about the consequences for the lack of it
or at least realize the danger of narrow roads

yet he rides a bicycle around
his university town, because the chance
tuning of a classical station once led to Domingo
singing to angels, eating bread where the road
got narrower still; the pleasant shock turned car
into flaming tree along the landscape littered

highway to Barnes and Noble,
where he goes to find his roots, goes to cry
over CD’s sang in the mother tongue; the notes
dripping like the snapped strings of guitars-
sometimes as he leaves, he feels he can walk straight
through the brick walls like gamma rays but

he pedals instead, home for dinner;
a fish sup of mackerel displayed on his counter
like the art of poetry lays upon the page and he hones
his knife on the sharpening wheel; slits the white belly,
removes bright innards, washes the gutted carcass
beneath tap water as cold as the Aegean sea-
as it boils within the gray water of domesticity
he knows that later he will write of it, for writing
is a noble task and he is nothing if not noble

and after, he sleeps; and as he sleeps
he dreams of apples; falling apples, forbidden apples,
the apples of paradise that an old woman bids him
not to eat and then his mind shifts and he is standing
among the broken pieces of Palestine and Greek sculpture
that lie in silent discord at his feet, the feet of the elite
athlete who in his youth slapped decathlon ass
while shit smeared his hands and he thanks God,
thanks Jehovah for the privilege and then he wakes-

just another forgotten old man
with dried spittle in his eyes and on his lips,
the cupboard stitches in his scalp tingle, mingle
with the fluttering remnants of fucking the Venus De Milo
while dream-Nazis cheered him on, their dream-faces
set in sybaritic leers so he draws a bath to cleanse
the night sweats; dives beneath its warm surface
like a submarine -hard, true- and emerges flaccid,
limp as the pink mackerel dinner and somewhere
in the back of his mind he wonders who will grieve;
who will sing the liturgical dirges for him.

I Am Not

I am not an artist because
Erich smokes Marlboros.
he wears a cherry jacket and cherry socks,
a ghost shirt and ghost sweater,
and carries the box of Marlboros.

Erich, lying on my bed, spills blood and snow
on my raspberry and coconut spread,
smoking.

So I paint the picture.

And the critics say "whatsa matter kid,
you don't got no other crayon
but red?"

I am not an artist because
the strange boy has a fat neck.
He wears the same shirt everyday on the bus.
From the collar grows a neck
wider than his head.

So I split the neck and head on paper,

and the experts say "there ain't no one
looks like that why
dont'cha draw flowers?"

If Erich smoked Salems
the portrait would have been balanced.
The heavy red and white
would have been blown apart
by a mentholated breath of color.

The critics would have said
"This carnival of rainbows combines the
double enjoyment of a striking portrait
and today's pop art."

If the boy, instead of a fat neck,
had been given big, round eyes,
the portrait would be seen as a charming face.

The experts would have said
"This visage expresses the whimsical fantasy
of a child found in an adult's face.
His warm eyes thrill us
with a 'je ne sais quoi' sensation."

I am not an artist
because the critics and the experts
do not understand that truth is beauty
and beauty is truth-

Acknowledgement to J. Keats.

Buddha Theory

Asked what he was,

Buddha replied "I am awake."

I sleep, I don't sleep.

This morning, I search for a headache

because that pain would be an equalizer.

I watch weed, I smoke the weather;

Sidharta watches from his shelf,

a cold ceramic face that never moves.

He oversees the pull of necessity,

then the slow push of nirvana.

I know that all night, he has watched

the water trouble and turn.

Once, in a physics class,

I explained to a professor, in his language,

that G times EM into I was theoretically nothing

to a theoretic me; that I was just a microbe

whose outcome was probable- a vibration

through fluid, a string of membrane stretched

across the light of everything.

The professor had tapped his meerschaum

against his heel and told me that the space

for my grade was to small for him to identify.

This afternoon, I lay

on a plush red divan in the back room

of a store-front posed as a fish market

and let a vietnamese man massage my thighs;

he pressed his palms against my theoretical knees

with each fluid stroke of his hands.

I watched in a mirror hung above our spot,

tried to convince myself of its reflective nature.

I turned my head to avoid myself,

but Buddha was there, perched on the sill,

his gold face painted with a smile.

I just settled back into red,

a constant relative in my fixed background,

and wondered if he smirks like that

while the water rushes its angry banks.

Fade

I lie on my back
where land draws up,
forced into bank
by a river that has its way;
water troubles and turns,
a slow diminuendo like
the fading of old scars.

Movement in the shelf of sky
is only a loss of light,
a bone moon reveals its face
along a scarf of cloud.
Heat bears the night electric,
chalks tree against slate
in skeletal bas-relief.

I watch the set of day
cast valley into flame,
the silence of sheathed wings
leaves a stir of italic rain.

Validation

This mind turns on its axis.
Continuous thought uninterrupted
by the vicious sleep of reason,
breeding Goya's monsters in ground fertile
with preconceived knowledge.
The grease of time speeds the spin.
Disoriented, weak against the chain,
links of assimilated concepts layer like brick.

The whirl of intellect births ideas.
Intrinsic contemplations on a mental screen,
infallible doctrines speculate
on suspicions whispered to living rock.
This mind trips on unearthed reality.
Forgotten voices speak for themselves,
startled hands bring pen to paper,
validation stains the page with creations' mistakes.

And I hear the scream as I write the words.

Logic (A Rare Ryhme)

By my hearth I've often sat,
and curiously wondered at,
the circumstances of my current state;
how it is I came to be
such a hardened, jaded she,
laughing at the irreversibility of fate.
Quick of wit, a learned mind,
taught to mingle with my kind,
if I only knew just what that meant;
I only know I won't conform
to what is the considered norm,
so does this mean my tree is slightly bent?
I never asked to run the race,
they can't make me stay in place,
the way I live my life is unaccepted;
and so I ask, with heavy heart,
if my free will and I should part,
would all I have accomplished be respected?

Invitation

They haunt this place. Invisible footfalls dance,
they rise in ghastly ballet; grotesque arabesques
against bone-colored walls, murmurs without voices.

Low laughter ripples beneath flesh, crackles along a dead line.
Strange shades waltz beyond the corners of perception,
twirling to a spectral band; the sweet scent of Mignonette
an undefinable presence, it's decay lingers on the air.

Revenants in party dress, their passage kisses the skin;
they whisper close, seductive invitations to the dance.

Good pussy

My cat purrs
like a dick-whipped woman;
fat orange tom, his cream stripes
run through my fingers
in spermy ropes.

Milk And Chapstick (Edit)

She used to be Viola, cornfed daughter of dirt.
Baby fat blonde jumped the nowhere bus,
bootlace flapping, gritty chapstick in her pocket
pasteurized milk in her daddy's scotch thermos.

Fate est. 1977, she walked away on rooted feet,
now she shakes a disillusioned ass at a titty palace
called the Maraschino Cherry; screaming red walls
full of glaring Warhol and polite bouncers in suits.

The clientele speaks of Paris, of summers spent
at Archipelago de Colon in knowing voices.
It brags like a regular Studio 54, but it's just another
downtown hard bar, the regular fakes licking Kismet
from squares of cellophane, faces pulled in passion.

The stage pops and snaps, the crackle of charged air
makes her think of the spark chamber she saw once
at a county science fair, when she was still Viola,
baby fat blonde the crowds called Sapphire,
because it was spelled out behind her on a backdrop,
sputtering tubes of violent blue spitting static at her back.

She sways on rooted feet, runs a dry tongue over drier lips
and thinks of chapstick, of warm milk in a plaid thermos.

Colors

He sits in front of  Bea's Corner Store
(another shiftless nigger)
a perfect Rockwell
by the rusted Grape Nehi sign.

He hand-rolls cigarettes,
ponders the color of a God.
He hears cicadas buzz
in harmony with memories
of when it wasn’t wise
to look daylight white men in the eyes,
because they might come to call at night.

Now old, those men pass
on their way to buy Bea’s shine;
they call him by name as if they’re friends.
He wonders what they choose to forget.

On Saturdays, little white boys
drop their battered bikes,
head into Bea’s for colored popsicles.
But he needs to see them colorless,
and can’t help wonder
what they’ve already learned.

He has heard of the change bought
with the blood of those more bold,
now he’s too old, too tired, too black to care.
So he nods to all, while he appears
to focus on a patch of oil that darkens the asphalt,
and stains the scent of Gardenias in the air.

Illusion

I like the way I look in car mirrors
if I'm on the side and it's dim through the glass
or I look in the lighted one on the visor,
over my school-marm glasses
right after I put on honey lip balm.
It's easy to pretend it's not me,
the distortion creates beauty where there is none,
not like walking down short halls with flamingo legs
above everyone else in the sand;
this is an Irish face, flat and squash,
mirrors add dimension like a photograph from a autopsy
but in the end, they usually find the body in the trunk.