I AM SO HAPPY

8/2/2019 I AM SO HAPPY

1/45

I

I AM SO HAPPY

I COULD HUG A REPUBLICAN

POEMS AND OTHER PARANOIA

1999--2008

RVMARTINEZ

FOR MY FATHER,

PIOQUINTO CHAVARRIA MARTINEZ

Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklick.

-Rainer Maria Rilke


2/45

II

Copyright 2008 by Ricardo Valente Martinez

All Rights Reserved.


3/45

III

(PARANOIA)

THE MIRACLE RECEDING IN THE BRAIN

A PSYCHIC READING

AFTER BACKING OUT ON A TATTOO

BUTCHS LAMENT

FROM A SECOND STORY

FIVE YEARS OF FATE

THE STAIRCASE OF OUR FALL

A FREAK HEAT

SUNDAE MOUNTAIN

LUMP

THE SMART BOMB

QUOOQUOOEY

ZOMBIE AFTERNOONS

( DRINKING TO LAREDO )

TIO MATIAS

MARIACHIS

ROBSTOWN 1932

ENTERING FLORESVILLECHRISTMAS SIXTY-SEVEN

AURORA DEMANDING

VALENTE

DRINKING TO LAREDO

TACO BREAK

CITRONS


4/45

IV

( MAS PARANOIA)

THE SOUND

AS THE MINUS IS MULTIPLIED

NEAR THE TEXAS THEATRE

CANTICLE

I WAS DYING TO HEAR THE NEWS OF YOUR LIFE

JUST IN CASE OBAMA WINS

WINDOW SEAT

SPRING WINO


5/45

V

P A R A N O I A


6/45

6

THE MIRACLE RECEDING FROM THE BRAIN

transferring its own embryo

of change,

the policy of doubt inherent

in its own gestation,

torn terribly from times hollow

mausoleum,

cryptic reminders of odd occurrence,

sad refrains.

The last haunt of forlorn ghosts bent on

redemptive duty,

stranded in dimensions, moaning inaudibly,

through sheet-rock,

the husk of a hallway, falling silence,

the muted quiet of the soul,

the terminal spirit collapsed uponitself

dissolving in a mania of utterance,

subdued and restrained

---detained.


7/45

7

A PSYCHIC READING

Who knows whose ego you are enhancing,

dancing

to their lime-light, mirror-ball spirituality.

All my frugal attempts at saving my soul

for you

were wrecked on stale cigarettes and lite-beers.

I am getting drowsy just thinking about it.

anti-depressants

at war with each other, name calling, not waiting

their turn, raising their voices in my head

to be heard.


8/45

8

AFTER BACKING OUT ON A TATTOO

The ever present line, down the divide

dotting our lives and our times, equating

our apprehension into forced rhymes, that

subdivide and subdivide into

subdivisions too plain to hide with our

painted skins that beg uniqueness, but

coincide, with advertisement, a neon-lit

pronouncement so smug, like a candidates

commitment to stem the tide of losses.

Losses he cannot hide,

weapons buried

so deep in his imagination

that a busy nation has no time

to worry his use of myth

into a crime, but carry on, bury on,

unfertile ground is ready to receive

the soul-exited remains, releasedof their vengeance and their pain,

their dry-mouthed la-la-las

echoing over the sand grains,

because there is no justice.

There is only Darwin.

Now that we are the fittest can we out swim

the tide, or will our internals, full

of macroscopic cells implode from the inside?

Steal the yellow jackets nest from its unique

height, destroy the larvae in their parchment

caverns, the strays still return to the sightfull of glorious brute anger, wobbly might.

.

Sleep now, sleep now, there is dream -journaling

to be done, life-styles far more entertaining,

than dying in the sun, people trip through

turnstiles, enter elevators, board planes,

and soon, and forever after, are interrupted

from their days

.


9/45

9

BUTCHS LAMENT

O my eyes have seen this glorified landtheyve dreamed it into existence

blind to the indignant man

Cold to the persistence

of the questioning sex,

and the raindrops that keep falling on my head,

until I am dead,

they keep falling,

so Im free,

But can I tell you what is really

bothering me?

Since the bull stopped chasing the bicycle?

Since the posse lost wind of our scent?

Since the railroad man blew up with his train?

Its this.

Whats to stop us from stealing into a bordering land?Blowing a safe. Living like a rich man

in a foreign country, like a European,

but on the cheap.

Only the Lord could find us,

defeat us,

bind us,

return us to the prison of poverty in America.

Theyre not taking me alive.


10/45

10

FROM A SECOND STORY

Exasperation bled

from the orchids still waning

in the humid night breeze.

Ever-present ash trees soaking in rainwater,

all the disordering discipline

a storm can afford.

Boredom has its own requirements,

distilled in concise droplets,

ping-

ponging, in the echo-hungry night,

but I was a camper,

backpack-heavy with happiness,

leaving

a

trail

of

cigarettes for some one

tofind my smoky self

and inhale,

with unfiltered puffs

all my crude cruelties.

I long for screened-in porches

and

sick school days,

let us scamper without hampering

our desolation

in the polite moonlight of summer,

before harsh winter

plucks the leaves from the Chinese Tallows with all theirFall agendas of faded greens, yellows, and reds.

Until we are dead,

for dying makes us all the same.

No need for hospitable doctors, nurses, and bloody emergency rooms.

How can it be cathartic? If you are not Catholic or equally Protestant?

he threat of the red army has added white and blue

to its palette,

while you were upgrading to DSL.

Eyes go blinderand so full of sand.

It is surprising that you never thought of what you think

as contraband.

It is so tiring, all the farenhight heat of this Bradburian future,

and if Orwellians believed in hell

they would be living in it now,

instead of tanning off its brightness.


11/45

11

This and all politeness aside,

it is your innocence that has died,

all the past empires have subscribed

to these growing pains,

they just learned to check their guilty consciences at the door

That and PBS did not yet exist.


12/45

12

FIVE YEARS OF FATE

1

Greetings from a very hot spot,

warm climates are welcome here,

helium evaporates into the atmosphere,

but you already knew about that.

I dont have much news, so lets just chat

about thoughts I might have forgot.

The women next-door finally gave up the ghost.

Mysterious cancer cells invaded the rumor mill,

the ladies fought bravely ,with their shaved crowns

fashioned with garden hats, but still

could not kill what was eating them

from within.

Their children dispersed throughout

the city, the state, the country at large.

If they could have afforded it,somewhere in Europe would be their final domain,

for instance, Spain, that family said they were

Spanish all along, or so they claimed.

2

In the stronghold of my own armor

I light my love.

I ache for tall trees

and unconsolable breezes.

I identify the sunlight

and try to unbend its beams,

but it seems there is no living without it.

Industrial nuisance

treads dirty on my soul.

I try to keep it Holy.

O, but for how long?

Until the dancing girls

dance into the song,

then I am gone.

The ocean call of ecstasy is minutes fast,its hasty love evaporates the past.

I sense a sunshine

at the cavern crevice,

but it is a long hike up an unguided path.

Time for a wait in line, for a shower or bath,

to wash my sins away.

The flaming spirits zing

pin and needle pain at me.

I drink up all the misery, the well tarnished luck.


13/45

13

3

Say I to the savior:You went through worst.

He fires off a shot of love.

The mental anguish was the hard part,

you live beyond the martyrdom

of physical pain, lifeless bones.

Sense of betrayal wrecks at your mind

for empty ones you sought to save,

I could not save them all,

before they killed me.

Hows that for a perfect God?

I wait for sleep to vanquish me

I try to keep my sanity

counting sheep backwards

from one-hundred and three.

Seven finally arrives,but the alarmed clock forgot to buzz,

and I, late for a job I hate,

ease into the grind,

ease into the fate.


14/45

14

THE STAIRCASE OF OUR FALL

The giant is ambling

down the concrete staircase.

He is a proponent of fun,

music is allowed,

crowded dance-hall jitterbugs

with several whiskey chasers submerged in beer mugs and

clouds of cigar smoke too thick for thin patience,

and then the behemoth bursts into the party-lit conversation

having invested all his horror on a social situation he cannot adequately

explain.

He stomps his feet.

The guests concede he has vocal skills a politico would kill for,

he bares his teeth,

Yes, noshing is a fashion that they could get behind,

not too discreet enough to

decline his warring tendencies which mushroomed

into conservatism at a most

appropriate time as if somebody else was not to blame ,

as if somebody else was not to blame this time.

Time is the only asterisk we have not visited

in all our mooning exploration.

We hover over it in a countless march of dimes

Until the loan office informs us of our crime.

The Masters and Johnsons of an infinity

Gone dull in the triangle of of our breeding.

We move on, still speeding away from

the monster we have chosen

to ignore, take lightly, adore. We gaze into the ions

With our sleeping souls so content.

We consent. When did the giant get so gigantic?

Molecules from now we will knowwhere the nucleus was hiding when the gray matter

Became so gray, and so ashen.


15/45

15

A FREAK HEAT

Trees hang heat-stricken

In the last days of August

The drought has not subsided

It will continue until September,

Even October,

Until Halloween has spooked us

Into a cold fright;

A terror ripe for sweatshirts,

Sweaters:

People running for their lives.

This year everyone has Bush-heads

And Gore-y faces,

At dusk it is hard to say which horror

They represent.

The unforeseeable future or

The apparent one.

It may be as cold as fifty on the 31st,

Until then that cool dream is harbored

In the minds of Austenites

And they will have to live on

With the wave of hot air as it

Exhales onto their faces

Forces them into informal wear,

Into swimming pools, lakes,

Rivers, and coastal regions.

Noon is so extravagant in its warmth

Most unbearable at three-oclock

Where sweat and perspirationReach their zenith

And heat takes a hiatus

In the confined cool of air-conditioning,

Fall still quite far off,

Winter, only an imagination.


16/45

16

SUNDAE MOUNTAIN

The sun is up

and all is well, pterodactyls

rest at our borders still,

but we marochino cherries

are safe from the kill;

sitting on our sundae mountain,

sitting on our sundae mountain.

Perhaps prehistory was meant to be

a creative endeavor

a solar vehicle plummeting to sea,

but we desert toppings

were meant to be

sitting on a sundae mountain,

sitting on a sundae mountain.

I first begged that neanderthal,graffiti artist of the cave wall:

Why such childish scribbling?

He answered me while dribbling:

Ug ug nuk nuk ang gik gik kung

Oh? I replied.

You think someone as fruity as I

Has never thought to outlive life,

through art? I ,a garnish, at best?

Well, let me tell you,

when you find yourself sitting

in a red, delicious syrup at mid-life,

you have to question the very validity

of your own being.

What is next?

A rum drink?

A jubilee?

Could there be more?

And this is what he and I both failed

to see, that this is where I was meant to be

on a mountain of transfixed vanilla

that I scaled after emerging from

the sweet-candied slime,

I do not know how I managed that long,

or whether to condemn my lifeas a condiment as wrong.

But I stood fast on that peak,

in the lotus position

for so very long,

exposing myself to freezer blasts

among boxes of forgotten pot pies,


17/45

17

like monk in muted meditation.

And this is what came to me.

Do not oppose.

Do not agree.

Let your cherry sweetness

free some throat of pain.

Find a mountain of ice cream

and climb.


18/45

18

LUMP

Even if I were a tiny lump of coal,

And given the choice,

I probably would choose not

to be a diamond someday,

simply because a diamond

is such a cold, impersonal rock.

Its shiny, I like shiny.

You can scratch glass with it,

surprise your girl or someone elses wife with it.

But can you fuel a train on it?

Can you keep countless burglars from

coming up with heist after heist schemes

until they are bored with the entire idea of theft?

Even the idea of out-foxing the local police will

no longer make burglarable objects worth burglaring.

All this geology at work and a portion ofthe population has had their mode of living

rendered into dust because someone was not

happy with a fossil.


19/45

19

THE SMART BOMB

My wish was to be

drummed out

of the navy,

it was to be hurtled to sea,

but I ticked someone off

and they exploded.

Seems some folk dont like

to be debris.

Every memory I have

is an ignition

Every drag I take is

destined to kill

Every fuse is burned and gone,

so fast and so long

I wish I had the time

to feel your pain


20/45

20

QUOOQUOOEY

The coyote are restless

Wincing when they howl

The moon is dissolving their eyelids

Their voicing at the mercy of misinterpretation

The night, disjointed and obsolete

Absolute in its quiet

They poke the raw flesh

Dreaming of garbage drums

Knocked on their sides

The contents arrayed like a feast

They cannot limit their sinning

Injustice smells indifferent

And the spoils sweeten in the heat

They hear the owl , the human faced owl

Propositioning the business wind

They know his true name is unpronounceable

They wish to capture him by daylight

But the daytime is overdressedTrying overly hard to impress the diminished


21/45

21

ZOMBIE AFTERNOONS

They ask me always

Am I plowing

I am bowing

So sad, knowing

That the sour grain will be the pain I endure

Until my spine frays away like a poor guitar neck

Fretted through rusty strings

So sings the CANCER in our lives

crabs take over us sometimes

We are at war with parasites

And Paris cities

Whose logic offends

Depending on which abyss you are staring into...here comes the crank

He is handing out pamphlets

In the hall

Yanking on the handles

Of every stallHe wants to hear our verdict

But we have found the funnies

On the floor

REST in peace thoROughly Over Mountains

Valleys,

Creek beds

Reeking of Deadheads

I pulled my pistol from its case

and shot an angry round into the air

And itnever did come down.

Gravity stole it


22/45

22

DRINKING TO LAREDO


23/45

23

TIO MATIAS

After all my restless imaginings, my mother finally reveals

that my Tio Matias, fathers older brother, leapt to his death

into the violent current of the Rio Grande, and probably not

pushed or involved in an intrigue. Of course, the story changes

every time she tells it,

with every visit to the old house on the Westside,

over barbacoa tacos on a Sunday morning,

after my father heads off to read the Express/News in the john.

We time our conversations on his flushes, at the sound of a flush

we know to change the subject, for it still pains him, sometimes

his eyes get glassy, and then he switches subjects,

hiding it in humor. Insulting my mothers family,

their tackiness, their lack of shame, questioning citizenship, he teases,

they go into a bit with all the fury and high comedy

of a Desi and Lucy episode. You can tell she saved himfrom the brooding darkness of his families soul

their stubbornness and alcoholic recklessness

My father never said whether Matias was discovered drunk,

only that he was found on Mexican side of the river,

bruised, perhaps badly beaten, they were lucky to get the body

back to the Laredo side of the bridge.

I had another Tio who was thrown down a staircase in Chicago,

he loved seven card stud and dominoes, maybe he was tipsy

and took the wrong step, which is what the police reported

to my father and his nephews when they drove upto retrieve the body.


24/45

24

MARIACHIS

At the restaurant

With the four dead Mexicans

On the roof,

Dinner is served

And breakfast tacos

Are also offered.

Bacon and egg,

Which means scrambled egg portions

Conjoined with bacon crisps

Sharing a lonely tortilla

In segregation.

Separado.

Sabes?

The four dead Mexicans

Are cast in ironand painted happy,

happy to smolder in the hot North Austin sun,

almost like in real life,

except they cannot walk home

down along the earth-moving

reconstruction on 183,

in the hundred degree heat,

because they are caged in metal,

smiling their conjunto smiles,

singing Arrancame La Vida


25/45

25

ROBSTOWN 1932

I will not sun these children here,

Nor quiet them under a harsh moon

Only to wake, hour upon hour

At the creaking night

The cold collects on windows,

Encasing their fears

Enshrouding their futures

To this undemocratic fate.

Democracy or no democracy

This is not the only country

They will ever see, smell,

Or hear of

I will take them to the mountains

South of this home

Descend them into free-falling valleys

Which they might question me of,A nature that I could never retrieve

All the infinitesimal answers to,

Their mouths hung open, waiting.

I will feed them mangos and avocados

Shook from the trees of our very own yard.

But they will be free

Of these cold-hearted men

With their burning crosses,

Ghostly impressions,

And blanketed bodies,

Not so brave men, not so smart,

I am acquainted with all their voicesI know the shame of all their names,

Coaching their sons to swing at a baseball,

Sleeping on a chair, resting my hand on my rifle

Resting my mind on the bible

Driving my sons and daughters

As far from the home of the brave

As I can drive.


26/45

26

ENTERING FLORESVILLE

Everyone had their eyes peeled,

on the lookout

for the largest peanut

in the state.

At the rest-stop,

we had Shasta lemon-lime

and orange sodas,

grape was a favorite

although its bubbles

scraped my throat

Mom gave us a solitary wiener

tacoed in white bread,

Buttercrust, from the blue gingham wrapper.

My sister and I scratched sticks

across an army ant mound

until they came scrambling out in chaos,looking like Martians,

with their antennae in an uproar.

I would run to the ditch

where the train tracks were,

because there was always

a turkey vulture lying there dead

with its wings unfurled,

like it was shot right out of the sky

in mid-hover by Clint Eastwood.

Others complained about these trips,

the heat, being forced to listen to Flaco Jimenez,to realize he had a twin brother who sounded

just like him,

but this is what I liked about the drive,

all those dead wild animals.

Where you could see them up close,

Where they were supposed to be.


27/45

27

CHRISTMAS SIXTY-SEVEN

Anticipating Christmas on its eve

For those of us who still believed

Would come at midnight

If we were good and patient

Although, all we wanted

Was to unwrap it

And leave it littered

On the floor of the New Year

Next to champagne bottles and cans of Shlitz

And stacks of Guy Lombardo and Perry Como

Plates and plates of tamales

Some ruined by ketchup

And Tios getting your name wrong

On purpose

Tias in a bouquet of perfume

Pinching your cheeks too long.

All this you must endure

Way past eleven, even though

You know you will not

Make it to that last, painfully,

Talkative hour.

Which gives the holiday

Its power and you awake

To its magic and say:

Why didnt you get me up?I wanted to see him.

You wanted to see

how Santa climbed into a house

with no chimney.


28/45

28

AURORA DEMANDING

The day has dwindled down to its more menial portion.

I stay aloft in my netted hammock, trying to maintain

the effort of swinging, book in hand, ideas locked in my attentive grasp,

every once in a while, I will strain my fingers in search of my icy glass of grape kool-

aid,

while my mother rasps against my subconscious with a rusty leaf rake

upon a backyard so hopelessly mined with German Shepard turds.

She is scraping them into leaf piles, the dry white cubes

along with the smoother, fresher, more pungently enhanced quantities,

trying in vain to get me to dismount from my reflective trance.

I know she is there. I can hear her cursing in Spanish,

I could not translate it for you, but I get the gist,

the mood of her intent, subtlety has never been her strong suit.

It is not that I do not want to help her, it is just

that she has chosen poorly as far as the time continuum is concerned,

my chapter is in mid-crisis, it is mid-morning with the breezes quite intoxicating,at this time of day, and aside from the fecund odor of Shepard shiest,

this could be a valuable day of reading and mis-reading,

were I left to my own resolve, but there she goes, scraping along again,

damning the dogs penchant for poo

and in her plants of all places.


29/45

29

VALENTE

I had a Tio who died in World War II.

Named for him was I,

A soldier, who was snipered in the Holland woods

He could not pronounce his surprise in English.

There is a hint in the wind as it winds

Through the cypress tress

standing straight

In formation down the boulevard

of Fort Sam Houston

more than ordinary flocks of careening doves

in unified spirit tear into the sky

like the moans of a mother in morning.


30/45

30

DRINKING TO LAREDO

Drinking to Laredo

Accordion rhythms poking at my ribs,

The advice grows distant in the dauntless

Headlights of the nighttime highway.

How do you get there?

Past Kennedy and Kelly, where the airplanes

Rest, sleeping.

Too many hard cans of Schlitz.

What?

Are you not brave enough to follow?

Back to a place where everyone speaks

One language.

Are you that afraid of where you come from?Never be afraid of that.

Im telling you.

Listen...you like?

Thats Jose Alfredo Jimenez.

Singing of Chihuahua.

No Ive never been.

He was the best.

He is the best.

No, he isnt alive anymore.

Ah! haa! huy! huy!When his hearing is equal to his loving.

Ah! haa! huy! huy!

He taps on the steering wheel.

The blue Pontiac is an instrument

As well.

Why, why do we drive to Laredo,

Whenever hes happy,Whenever hes sad.

Sometimes my mother and sister

Convince him to retreat.She threatens to drive and my mother

Cannot drive when shes sober.

Can after can he drinks to Laredo.

He drinks to Laredo whenever he can.


31/45

31

TACO BREAK

Here in Austin, illegals have invaded

the untended landscapes, denying work

to the poor-whites who have lost

the opportunity to turn lobster-red

in the Fourth of July sun.

They motor through the sidewalks

hoisting their weed-trimmers at hip, like oarsmen,

they attack an apartment complex,

engines revving together in servitude,

grinding the gears of concentration,

chasing quiet to the loftier limbs of a sycamore.

The same peeling tree that competed

with the telephone poles all its life,has finally overcome them in height,

now shorn of its dignity,

its very branches, of direction,

by state workers, legal Mexicans,

Americanized enough to value a well milked clock.

After clearing enough limbs until the tree

becomes freakish, they leave the downed bramble

to loose piles on the scorching asphalt

and break for tacos.


32/45

32

CITRONS

I am visiting my cousins in Laredo

and we are in the backyard of my Tio Lalos house.

Picking citrus, lemons, limes,

oranges still green in their unripeness,

we wear the sour faces

of taste-testers, lobbing all half-eaten casualties

toward the alley behind us, until we become gamier

and reach the hovel of a house

beyond the fence.

Trying to beat my cousin Quiquis best distance

He throws like an acrobat,

with his entire body,

going for the roof, aim for the roof.

Enraging the neighbors dog,

he bays at us with his red eyes,

we mock the mongrel with our red eyes,our hiccupy laughter and our howls.

We toss him the gigantic lemons

with hides thicker then our own.

We aim for the sky, hitting only earth,

and we are fastened to this earth

for as many tries as we miss.


33/45

33

M A S P A R A N O I A


34/45

34

THE SOUND

for Geeg

Either you throw all these words that are not

in your vocabulary onto the page,

re-arrange them so there is a glimmer of meaning,

and suddenly you are half way across the bridge of doubt.

But I doubt it.

A metaphor is left standing alone clumsily

on the landing with shifting swales and careening

voices of seabirds screaming off the sound.

Fresh moist air, cool from the cold, so new

you can taste the oxygen.

Existence abounding in a circling forest of green;

as the view from the hundred foot dropgathers another gulp from your heart.

Where are the wings you once owned?

The flapping madness inherent in your spirit?

You have landed on earth for the very last time.

Tasted the mud in your mouth,

black clay so rich in childhood,

staining your life with uncleansable phantoms.

Raked against the rusty leaves of fall,

the cold storage of winter

with its wetness, and red noses.

Father kept warm by a bottle of Ancient Age,staying up Friday nights until the test pattern taught him to sleep.

The flapping has stopped.

The voices stifled,

the air is more musty than when you began.

But the wings are still intact,

having molted on experience,

So you leap out onto the sound,

Screaming out at God,

in hopes that he still hears our fear,

leaving science to the earthbound logic,

and flying, yes, flying.


35/45

35

AS THE MINUS IS MULTIPLIED

This is a poem about nothing

It says nothing

It means nothing

And yet, there is nothing

It cannot explain

There is something

Of nothing in everything

And all the negative positives

Cancel each other out

There is nothing on the horizon

And it is what we do not fear the most

That our lives are nothing

And they will become nothing

When we are buried or burned to ashes

We only live to mid-sentence

Nothing is beautiful

And nothing is horrific

Nothing gives us personality

And nothing distracts us from our flimsy character

Nothing aches at its heart to become something

And aspires to become anything

But it was born a nothing

It went to school a nothing

Graduated as a nothing

And majored in nothing in college

It worked day shifts and night shifts at nothing

Measuring the tedium with the boredom

With sighs and cries of nothing

When something finally happened

It was too good at nothing

To recognize something was something

It absolved itself of nothing

And became an anything

But something was too important now

And it realized that an anything is really nothingBecause everyone can have anything

Anything had too many molecules

Too many alternative DNAs

What nothing really wanted

Was to be everything

And that position was already off the roster.


36/45

36

NEAR THE TEXAS THEATRE

Davy Crockett's ghost haunts the bedsprings

Where he hid before he died

He fought bravely to rid San Antonio of Mexicans

He had no place to hide his musket

where it would not make a sound

and the flourishing swagger of bayonets, daggers,

and the biting sound of their music in his ears

Almost as loud as the Tennessee legislature

waltzing an argument to its dull death

Driven by duty, by honor,

by blah, blah, blah

Another cannonball has fallen,

a league away, his mind explodes

into destroyed dirt sounds, his young mother calling,

and he does not want to give up the game,

he has his play soldiers surrounded,

he awaits their surrender, his stomach,

growling.


37/45

37

CANTICLE

-and he began to decipher the instant that

he was living, deciphering it as he lived it,

prophesying himself in the act of deciphering

the last page of the parchments, as if he

were looking into a speaking mirror.

Garcia-Marquez

The drought is almost over

I can feel it in the drops of hurricane

The clouds circling my eyes,

the bathing tears of ocean water

My mistress is drowning

and she is drowned,

all the swirling current ever found

was a notion of faith left on the wire

of a clothes-line tee from bygone years

to bygone years, to years gone by

the will of the tragedian sea-captain

with kelp at his throat

Sea gulls offer an annoyance

and hover and glide and ride

out the gleam in his eye

as he sees for the first time

that merits are mistaken

and fingers misshapen when under water

but the seaweed is in bloom,sand -castles have walls of sand,

testing the tenacity of the tide

and the vice and venom

inherent in the sea-snake

breathes doom into his poison

and release into his fangs

He awaits the appearance of a fin

like a student awaits self-consciousness

and every sigh is a lie

and every moan a distraction

a reflection of the truth

and as they are sifted up into a fearful soup

the gray whale denies his apology

the whale shark denies his apology

the sea-otter breaks his back on a wave

and cracks an oyster on the anvil of his chest


38/45

38

There will be no pearls, nor wisdom,

nor barnacles to age you with

There will only be blue water

when the sky is blue

and gray water too

and land, not really,

only for the optimist

who haunts the dreams

of a sub-conscious submerged


39/45

39

I WAS DYING TO HEAR THE NEWS OF YOUR LIFE

for Kurt Vonnegut

Verbs accumulate

Nouns accommodate

Predicates lead the young

Into ungrammatic clauses, lost causes

Adjectives bankrupt us

In our semi-colon lust

Our diphthongs are determined

To inaugurate an impasse

The horizon is as horizontal

As the ambiguous is vertical

An ambit splits the distanceAt a whistle stop:

Poo-tee-weet? Poo-tee-weet?

Our prayers were broken

On laws chiseled into stone

By God's hippie

Tattered words on skin

To warn friends

We were frozen artifacts

Swollen in ice

At the mercy of extreme temperature

With no meter to measure

You stood at the dais

Floating clouds of cigarette death

But we invented truth

And we invented lies

We even lied about our inventions

Which became our life


40/45

40

JUST IN CASE OBAMA WINS

Glad rags and sad rags

and enough with the Beats, already.

You can serve up all the spaghetti

awareness at your dinner table,

hand out the tum,tum, tum, tums,

be benign or cancerous

regretful or regret less

all the maximums and minimums

and the single harsh explicits

in a single uncensored minute,

revolve around an inertia

that is quite inordinate.

Ah, we sleep with virtues

that dont want to cuddle

and sheets of mattress

that get lost in our pillow.The drama is fatigued,

and all our skirts

are worn at mid-drift

suspended from scary

Rapunzel heights of hair

I am left with a totem,

a sacrilegious sarcophagus.

alive and well

and the epitome

of earths own anxious spinning

because sinning

was just a past timekept warm in the bosom

of our religion

crossing the tees

of symbology

and exhaling conversations

just to fill a room.


41/45

41

WINDOW SEAT

Seething,

a functional savant.

Rare wine, crispy nuance,

discharging and flagrant,

ambushed by layers

of skeletal veins.

Pathways and quadrants,

diadems stripped of their vacuity.

O embittered parchment, thirsty paper,

cardiac unrest has unraveled my ape-ish

tendencies toward an air-to-air evolution

of desire--- fed by remembrance,

castled by kings---turned, and torn,

and plowed by unsavory peasants of indeterminate manners.

Every fingered cotton ball scolds the skin--

the palm is its own sensory pathology.

The artist is draped over his canvas,

sprawled out and terrified,

deified and distracted,

eyelids---lead-heavy with paint,

smear after smear, knifing the scrape,

nearing the ill logic of his own roaring imagining.

Needlework to be done,

threading the armscape and the darksideof the kneecap---the epicenter of lust

has made hungry hungers seem like weak demands.

Cloud vapor and exhaust tearing the nasal expressions,

sallow in his injections---retrieving the beast

---summoning it like a demand.

Moistening the fuel,

ticking the speedometer, the lost common denominator,

a grease stain to please us,

lamp fire in the mold---lucifer tears

---morning madness,

awaiting the rigor mortis of the century plant,

its grayish-blue bladed husk,

and succulent fingers pointing with needle intent.


42/45

42

I dehydrate in the desert,

when the moon is not shining,

when the stars are not clustering.

My adobe is cool as clay,

it perspires as I expire,

it is a shame that terra cotta is not a color,

but a necessity.

All cities taste their end,

buildings are abandoned and ghosted,

you can smell the fervent noon

as the sun dilates its pupil

---you sing out, but all I hear is sobbing

---there is nothing quite as lonely

as the thorn-full prickly pear.

My eyes are brown, but they don't see brown,

they see hair follicles frozen

in the evening ice-rain, my spiritus escapesin circles in the sky,

I am vulture,

scavenging the sand grains,

I want to eat death,

rip it from the carcass of the reborn,

while the desert sleeps and dreams

in sunlight,

trying to keep my mind warm.


43/45

43

SPRING WINO

Theres a fine hat

Chewed up leather, forgotten,

rubbery as the soul of his boots,

but that does not constitute his goat-tee,

all brillo-pad streaks of gray,

like Beelzebub,

sad lieutenant

dressed in royal,

loyal blue.

The confederate governors house

reeks of righteous cancer,

an Earl of blight,

clothe the rich,

they seem so naked now,

pattering through traffic

on winged footwearthey carry their bottled water

up to heaven,

no deposit, no return.

Sad Hat mouths a Parliament

in a blue London Fog,

all his live oaks are strangled

by English ivy,

if you count Homeless Sam,

seated near the driver,

elated and full of prose,

local news,

all the useless minutiae;poll results,

football guff,

starlet rehab advice,

daring strangers to converse,

until they reach the Transfer center,

end the begin.


44/45

44


45/45

Documents

I AM SO HAPPY