the singing black birds
melt thick snow-dusts with flash songs-
stirring deaf watchers.

Dogs

When does a dog, struck by a speeding car
border over into suffering, dying,
and finally encore into roadkill?
There must be stages, segments in the
process of wandering the highway
lanes lost or left behind.

When does the green collar stop signalling
home-broken and start reminding
rubberneckers of the special sting of dog
tragedy in people? Thank god for closed eyes,
the entrails are easier to pass then.

But when was the dog only injured,
only still searching, only owned?
There must be a decomposing
logic to the decomposing;
even death must makes sense in scenes.

the Übermensch, now a cockhold,
lay sulking in a three day drunk
singing old Elton John songs, fat
with the comfort of calories, sobbing.

(Mona Lisa must be laughing; the same
berserk stare in Goya's Saturn's eyes,
gorily devouring a man top down,
plastered in her waxing cackle-gaze.)

With bile usurpation in his throat,
the Übermensch trundles to his side, gazing
out the Cambridge blue beck of the window,
all Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and cookie dough.

Misogynist Love Song

“Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.” – Norman Mailer

I. Context

1.
Out of the corpse-mud,
the feting soup of rank flesh,
flashes of dogwood.

2.
Ivan, a rebel,
arguing drunk with brothers,
explains away God.

3.
Wolfmen curse the moon,
baying lunacy towards their
dirty Diana.

4.
Mashed against the door,
her face throbs beneath my hand,
cheeks bruising in palm.

5.
Moss grown and jagged,
the boulder of Sisyphus
descends from apex.

II. Romance

1.
Mr. Rochester,
blind lust hands your heart warm blood,
but Jane flies distant

2.
Black nips friendly smoke;
(epic lines tied to dead chords)
Black breathes night's music.

3.
Drifter: shanked, bleeding.
Hemingway's manly courage
preserving the Good.

4.
Dancing too close, we
two-step off beat without pause
over dirt dance floors.

5.
Virtue rewarded:
Pamela, half-raped virgin,
weds her assailant.

6.
Nursing the cooing
bastard, we grate past soft grins
like we gave a fuck.

7.
James Stewart lassoed
the moon for a Christmas bitch,
drowning ambition.

III. Reflection

1.
Two arid flirters,
hearts deep inside tumble weeds,
tangle in sand-dust.

2.
High now, my lichen
fists thirst for your lush neckline,
writhing in gravel.

3.
Hulk Hogan's gold cross
torn from his neck, kids mourn their
hero's defacement.

4.
Bertha Mason falls
guilty from a burning roof:
demonic, lovely.

5.
Numb fraternity
stoked around maypole ribbons
and blooming dogwoods

For Norman Mailer

Finally, you are stabbed
and an honest silence

stuffs the room full.
I am as much a bastard

as you are a bitch.
I am sorry.

I call the police
in the rusting seconds after,

there is no reason to deny
this horrible affirmation;

this manly affirmation.

What?
These fog eyes?
These mist eyes?
These steel curtains
falling slowly, drifting
through to sleep?
What?
This thick rest
resting on my brow?
This hovering end?
This dying ember?
What?
This mute attempt?
This flailing burst
toward conquered
time and hostility?
This crooked back?
This tilted head?
What?
What?

on cool sober nights

i have friends who dont sleep anymore and on cool sober nights when the rain seems as steady as biology their thin ankles remember my umbrella hands and how i snake them into soothing massages against the nightmares of cough syrup drunks and mouth memories of fuzzy pills stuck on the backs of their tongues before they dissolve or swallow down and i am a relief to their crumpled eyes but only for as long as i allow myself to dote on them ignoring the real twists in my busy days playing a good friend and storing favors like money when i need it or rides when i am lazy but they dont know i dont have a raincoat or dont think about that when they call me during the nightstorms to rescue them from their monsters so usually i stumble up to their rooms (always upstairs) soaked from the double dark clouds on cool sober nights for sleepless friends