2004 #4

traveling metaphor #6

your asphalt grip is set to strangle me

the weight of 70 straight as an American flagpole

miles of hot August road

buckles

then sags under the weight of this afternoon's fist

your fingers long as legs and legs long as the dream

of last night

urban buzz and silent

insect dawn; there’s a headache awake in your skin

your skin as finely poured as the newest road in the

newest subdivision of my over populated old soul

your steamroller wrist is full of diesel veins

tracking heat between orange hands

like caution flags moving fast in the convection winds

and perfectly graded elbows moist

with oil

i’m wet under your sprinkler gaze

tickled like new grass roots

soft  Ky31 (that's a mighty nice stand of ) fescue hairs

rising up to meet summer

let me breathe again as i travel just once

near your landscape

i promise

not to make you grow

too much.

--geo

notebook '03/'04

i think this was one i read at the Eno River Festival way back when

2004 #3

french fries

 

last stop for the night off I-95

the diner is loud

a little too bright i guess

smells good i guess

the beer is cold and nameless in scratched dull glasses

clean i guess

everything sweats on an

uncomfortably warm

april p m

he’s trying to pace the last of the pack

2 smokes for each beer from the looks of it

i’m watching from the last seat left

menu choices dwindle after each night repetitive and the waitress grins clenched almost patiently as he ciphers

scribbles

do i really want fries to go with that?

sure...i guess

--geo

from a notebook '03/'04

2004 #2

Let us pray: 2 poems for all those who have been shot without their permission

1.

Thank you for today

The daily infusion of ignorance

splashes of self righteous comment

colors too many impossible to blink impossible to

hide

the daily dosing of disenfranchised

thank you for the dysfunctional and the disaffected

because they could not be here tonight to thank you themselves

Thank you for the mouths too swollen to speak, the eyes too damaged to see, the ears and hands too broken to navigate through your spastically cut up and ruined landscape

thank you for all this wonderfully distracting noise

thank you for the bleach and water all the disinfectants too strong to resist

the disproportionately unseen are neither held nor acknowledged yet always in need of a good honest scrubbing

the contracted beyond contact the contained beyond reach the counted only as a guess from an office in a galaxy far far away

thank you for the equations to justify all this overwhelming

Thank you for the release from the box

the sac

the cell

the skull

the pin prick

shifting plates

the fissures

the forgotten spaces between

the daily ejaculations of unkempt meat the procession from father to son from infant to slaughter

Thank you for hell

and heaven looks great on the side of that tractor-trailer leaving feathers in its wake

thank you for deep fried angels and every night lit up like the fair just coming to town

thank you for the ghost

thank you for the coffee

the pavement like a coffin

the stream of cigarette smoke and blood sandwiching freshly bleached glass

the camera click and the soft tapping of feet rushing always rushing

away.

2.

Give us this day our daily ghost

our daily phantom

phantasm

nightmare

creepy holy fucking jesus mary AND joseph how how how how not even why but how?

The mild

the annoying

the profound

the sick

the surreptitious

the meek and the sacred

the lovely

the profane

Give us the strength to dodge the next insane ballistic free weight

The shift away from blue lights

the shift away from red lights

the shift away from yellow lights

the shift into darkness where all light is safe and dead

Give us the badge and the mag light

The billy club and the suit

The photo op and the blood, like another’s words, taken out of context and without permission

And give us, O holy horror, you egg stealing raptor, you bullet throwing cocksucker, the chalk to mark the spot where we will last take breath

Give us a helicopter ride to the top of the graffiti stained water tower the hunger for sterility and a liking for bags that seal

Give us portability and a head’s up when the next idiot crawls out from the back of sane to take a shot

Give us the will to push the damn things out of our faces and out of the faces of our children

the guts to slice an eye out if the shit really starts thickening

the video feed

when we’re hungry

the audio nutrient when we cry out and when we cry out

ENOUGH!

Give us, O ghost, the will to flush the toilet

--geo
jun '11


(this one was rewritten from a poem i was fortunate enough to have published in Oyster Boy Review, #3, i think...that was way the hell back in 1995)

2004, or thereabouts

The next posts will be words i first put down 7 years ago. i recall that writers in classical antiquity would write something and stow it away for 7 years. they would come back to it after that time to see if the words still held anything of the art that they thought they did at their inception.

song for calliope

(This song is not a song unless someone listens)

and he reaches for another cigarette 

before finishing the last 

regretting that last drink 

and nothing now but blue remainders of 

smoke—smoke 

where something was 

sung—a poem 

a song once, now only 

words—words 

etched in haste like webs of filigree 

line spun out into the unknown 

night—words 

scribbled in 

fear—words 

inscribed on the night’s parched pavement 

or rolled into another hasty 

glass—words 

poured onto the ears of fish 

deaf ears still ringing with memories of songs from another 

stage—words 

lost in the rush of fluid, 

the rush of crowd, 

the rush of 

wind—words 

blacked out by 

pain—words 

drawn in to suffocate on loose 

boards—words 

filleted and vivisected under eager eyes, 

eyes of strangers, 

eyes of friends, 

all eyes the same in the end, 

just more 

holes—words 

pummeled under the weight of more words, 

crusted in ash, 

barnacle-ridden and naked under the tipsy light of third 

watch—words 

corked and left to float in foam on the open 

sea—words 

spinning out on another thin net only to be cut 

loose—words 

lodged in blowholes and gill slits and filthy warm 

fissures—words 

scribbled on the wall in the privy, 

anxious and always 

alone—words 

tied up in 

tentacles—words 

married to unnamed things, 

things below the light, 

things beneath the 

water—words 

sucked in quick and blown out strong 

in great blue rings and rainbow-edged 

sprays—words 

snatched from the very edge by a northerly 

wind—words 

dropped and spread see-through over ground

glass—words 

lost to the rush of a foreign 

tide—words 

scratched in 

sand—words 

alien in another alphabet, a foreign 

meter—words 

abandoned for nightfall, 

left for less tiring games, 

beached, left for 

dead—words 

taken from him just before they were 

uttered—just 

words—just a few words—just a few words before I go…

ink already dried from a hundred tiny wounds, a loose bundle of man and paper dives for the edge, gagged, singing to you until he hits— 

--geo

jun '11