Yawp

Mealy tongue in my mouth
Severed, crumbles
Dregs stuck to the ribbed roof.
My tongue, most thick
Of muscles, most mobile, slopes into
The unuttering chasm.

The mouth takes in what it spits out,
Chews up what it takes down,
Words its cud to work its jaw
One hinge loose, two bolts rattle.

A mouthful of squirming copper
Jellies to gunk, teeth droop
Breathe tucks in a tight squeeze, soundless,
Unripe, wasted with vowels.

Crustaceous Gums, Oh you
Crustaceous Gums who rope!
Why do you cradle what writhes free?
The sameness, its squalid, septic rigging
Clutched tight to frame most palpable chalk.

Spit and rockets, temporal or divine,
Enthrall the tang of snot and syllable, dust and grain,
Aramaic, Catalan, the thirty-thousandth letter
Of fetid scribes, all their numbers, cloaked, bearded
Whisked to the depths of the sea.

Oh sky! Covetous sky!
Your one note trilled clean
Arches peaceable about our mealy globe.
Who primal yawped?
Me! Me ate thunder! Ate metal.

Mine! Mine! Mine!

use all six of your senses:
sludge, one, the ability to
see the undigested in a pile of man,
two, milk, you sucked it through a tatter
now bleed,
third, fire, all-consuming, you can form it
by keeping your object close to the mind's eye,
(and spin),
faux, sweat, wine of baked flesh,
let the sun throttle in from you,
five, jazz, errbody's got it!,
six, talcum, uh, chalk, it's in your bones
to grind as muscles worm down
for what governs every humor is what governs all:
the intrinsic pull of what's down,
everything moves down.

playboy

very early on, I was scheming
for an out
not so wakefully, but biding
my time to
scalpel every glob of spume

and using those words that want
what they denote: short, frank, economy,
man will say half of what he's already halved
to time everything aright.

say this now when a word yodeled
does to be yodeled
yodel into flesh
the very mist of your loins

tug handfuls of hair but fitfully
not sure of the consequence -- the force employed --
the meaning of the knot uprooted

thereof, therefore, you say to yourself
exist two approaches: gentleman, playboy

the former bon-bons and starched collars
the latter all pluck and dash

who is remembered? in what haze of ideality do its particles die clean as all must inevitably blink off, one day, maybe at a bus-stop, you'd tap her on the shoulder, introduce yourself, relay a smile, consider the inverted arch of her lips relayed back, scour it of good tidings, and shrink

or, in a crowd, shoulder your way
she glances
you glance back
trade switchboards, flip switches
roast, blister, and suture
all with your molten ego

but too, too late, gone

arm in arm with half the man you thought you'd assembled
in a quarter of the time it took to braid yourself
together

and how much braiding held? enough tendrils to chafe you into the semblance of trying in the hope that that trying, truly unseen, might be borne out by the misting that pervades all like the rainbow
spanning this world and the next

all the while balancing a soap bubble on the veriest tip of your tongue
stood on the tippiest of toes

unable to ascertain if the bubble is still there
or long dead,
tickles you yet

for what we know of the matter, where we differentiate nuts and bolts from gas and mist
and from mist a cheek's blush and from a cheek's blush, cheap rouge, and make-up
from the luminous forms ensconced in the ether.

what we know of the differences induces us to bet on what we can toss
drop, kick, and dribble,
knowing that though the hackey-sack remains in motion
by dint of deft limbs, we'd put down on the hackey-sack rather
than the ether pervading it, truly sustaining it, pervading all as it
does it,
ensuring, in its sensibility that so long as a something can be experienced
a something is eternal.

The kebab is one gaping
papoose
spice it, have a sheet of fingers
wrap it
maybe an elbow depress the center
eat it upright, not so much jabbing it
facewards but nodding earthwards
in a general direction.

trophy laced
with colorless veg
mayo drenched.
how is it that elements  huddled
in a tight fix will always find their
symmetry or, but, not amenable
to their mates, refine their symmetry
because hidden?
because the body does well to secret itself
just as these our soggy artefacts can
luxuriate
in pita or piada
or guts.

all comes out in the worsh, so be thankful for pipes and paper,
the mazelike artifice beneath your toes
and the great sun who shines down, yes, he is a god,
though I don't know which

weird tail

where do you find? whatmeans?

san Quentin quail is girlish boy

or womanish girl in pants or mini-dress or chunky turtleneck

is it possible that part and parcel all

flesh cheese upset column and latin conjugation

write out the same voluptuousnesses

to kip on. ok, there’s no guarantor

of the sun who rises because nothing better’s

doing but step in front of a greyhound and see

if it won’t take you somewhere…ticket or no

 

hazmat, has matt done what? he did one thing

for forever. not eating nothing. never saw a cheeto

touch his lips. here EAT THESE!

but there’s estrogen in MSG and cheez-wiz

in the flambé. who wants to eat this? who wants

to take one bite? I take care to put what I want

my body to think it wants  for my body’s benefit.

isn’t that right, brother donkey?

 

girls don’t fart they fluff, nothing so

lily white extrudes black pasted down

her inner thigh wants for my clammy

hands to clean her or at least move it

up to where it makes sense

 

 

think of the heart its so many

pipings gunked

tentacling to outer regions

so long that it knocks

we knock about        crumby

no girl, no job, no problem

ballooning ketchup to this end

to bring your adidases

unlaced soiled

to smelly It’ly

where sunned pukes

in genie pants and anoraks

feed their hearts kebab meat

heini swilling unloving and sound

S’no clambake

he said lacrimose

ill pretend she’s your girlfrayend

no rhythm, nervous energy, wants to contort

every which way, ascolana breath

beat back my chapped lips

“dat’s dead skin baby!”

he can’t just be an asshole. you need a reason:

he’s an asshole.

scapegoat - coast to coast - my
barechest is rank with question marks
i shed matters of fact
abundant
tangle in my cleavage
frosting my tailbone
but somehow, luminescent
my ribs delivered their meat
to my thighs
where a purple contusion fermented.
i like my me....fermented.

creole dirge

creole dirge, if it reach the frequency at which
quail eggs poach in their shells and asking thighs clap
shut
ill be a man yet!

cottage cheese thighs
quaver
          i cuff
          stuccoed incheek
          pimentos out
when tartar seals my dickhole
jewschnozz snouts the wires

two of everything: two eyes, two ears,
two shoulder blades, two cheeks, two shoes,
elegant

'zounds!

'zounds! I clean my toof with a chicken's foot
grope chicken-livered puppies dry, chicken-livered litter
mother was a mutt, had ears scorched like post-war
bombed out, in Milan, after dubya dubya deux
i made believe these two briquettes were
teenaged titties, chilled.

girls are lumpy boys.

wheels of cheese
tracked with dung
scabbed in places

belts of toothed impression
glassy chips of dead milk

roll the wheel and squash the snails
who ooze to be squashed, gleaming giblets
endowed with life

i gag on the edible
choke on rose-tinted lenses

people have funny names, joke names,
my supername is rudy

wear a strong condemn, spit on my chode

i want brisket gloves

my me rods zap
electrodes on my tongue
and it will lick fleece
stuffing from my turkey

i chewed a downy earlobe
kneaded the wrinkles from a bulldog's jowls

more junkboys tic 'yes' tic 'no'
foolscap, pergamum, i saw chess pieces
made of butter

suction cups caked with wet pencil shavings,
horses champ flaking haunches, dogs roll over,
women just lie there

"get" explain this word "get"
what is "get"?

my unsung teeth

my unsung teeth

ripple

like young titty-meat

pocketed

twixt hairy fingers.

snail

to want to wait, bolts thud

back, ab ovo, begin again,

nested in a blackberry’s

latched drupelets sleeps  

the patient pearl

purple-black bathed, ticking

with dreams of slugdom  

jams gandolfini

navel belched lint

skanky as in: melba toast, marmite,

blackmail, young Howard Stern, Sydney Pollack,

 

I can see the anger in your eyes,

without chemicals, he points.

this isn’t a watch And that’s

not the time you put into it

 

time of a different sort:

not made for watches

 

I find malls compelling,

but they give me a crick in the neck

a cervical disorder similar to:

wet hair in cold daylight, full stomach in the shallow end,

spray cheese. these have no skank.

 

they’re honest and well-intentioned

they say <<the road to hell is paved with good intentions>>

I say <<heck, I got a match, your ass and my face or is it…?>>

“hey got a match?”

“smoke cigarettes?”

“love ‘em?”

“hate ‘em?”

“Sometimes.”

Dot Dot Dot

“iuhno...you tell me.”

Same blank as in gap, mind it,

Go to Italy, lift weights, watch a movie,

All a distraction before ya die

 

we distruct

Harvest Moon!

Friendship thrives beneath the harvest moon!
Where no one does not love sweet wine!
They pity those who are not concerned
To revel for revelry's sake, and laugh at those
Who sit and think and thumb their nose
And open and shut and open big books
And sneeze at the doing of it.

For no one does not love what he loves to do
But that he sits and reads because he feels he should
At the right time but drinks at the wrong moment,
And though his parts disband some, his muscles unclasp their fellows,
Though he forgets his arms, legs, and curious shoulders:
He does not lose himself, He does not love wine,
He sees a moon, and sees it laugh, and does not know
That it laughs at him, or, if he does, does not know,
It laughs at all like him, not him alone.

So please, in the meantime,
Drink and Dance!
Without a thought of these words
And that man.

He's nowhere to be found
And the moon, unseen,
Still cackles.

For My Friend

I never noticed his knuckles

But then it seemed any of the ruddy indices

Of his body might have given me a clue, as if there were clues to be found

And he was composed of them solely, though one, among the others

Which had had him hold on, gave out,

Where I thought to moor

The first attitude of that early afternoon.

The past perfect and the present perfect compounded:

“he’s always been…,” and I’d thought, “no, he had always been”,

But the words stuck in my throat.

Now, as then, when one point in time lobs itself forward,

And you fail to admire the colors left in its wake,

The parabola is all too clear, its bent too definite,

Its trajectory too perfected.

He was Iscoceles with two obtuse angles,

Or the palimpsest, whose faded scrawl vies with the all too decipherable:

Of the two we read what appears to be read, what was written lately,

What is spaced generously on the blistering parchment.

Help us to read again and to right the angles

But also to love the hidden, the disjointed, that most felt,

Most sweet, most joyful, most gentle,

Handsome and quiet young man who often held his gaze

To the ground while in his head he cupped the silt of genius.

I imagine his knuckles were imperfect and I ask not which or why,

The conceit has run its course.

Concerning Folsey: Kitchen Sprite

Argument: How a young man of Visigoth extraction resorts to murder; with what instrument the murder was committed; the object(s) of his machinations; in what manner his agenbite of inwit makes itself felt in the presence of dowager during tea.

I (EXT. Graveyard, Folsey’s funeral. Pastor Erikson reads Folsey’s eulogy. Everyone cries.)

Pastor Erikson: Pilfering bristles, wriggling joy, flitting blithely from table top to counter…

Folsey the filcher -- A fornight dead.

Mrs. Porphyry: They found him slumped over a water chestnut.

Mrs. Wellbeloved: They say he did it with a toe-nail paring.

Colonel Wubbels: Found it under the couch. Seems someone had left it there.

Darcy Gracchus: Had a ‘Gothic’ aspect to it…at least…that’s what I overheard the detective say.

Assembled (wailing): Too much, too soon! Too much, too soon!

A toothless, blubbering woman gums the Pastor’s cassock.

The men shred their hats.

Pastor Erikson: He had no children, no biological family to speak of. He was survived by but a single unbutton…

The toothless woman savors the taste of her tears.

Pastor Erikson (voice quavering): And his memory trickles like Celestial torture, or, at times, lingers for a spell, and then, dissolves…Like the quiet, vacant labor of our lives…

Hat in hand, unshredded, Theo the Visigoth squirms in his chair.

Pastor Erikson: Gentlemen in our lonely hamlet will be devastated by the sight of an even number of toothpicks on the mantel…Ladies will suffer tacitly in their boudoirs upon discovering their thimbles are void of tickles...And children will have clean teeth for a very, very long time.

Unknown woman: What’s he on about? The bit about the ladies?

The Epitaph Reads: We once found a thimble. It contained a doll fart. Its holes were stoppered by we know not what.

II (INT. Theo’s Kitchen, nighttime.)

In a swamp of rancid Hamburger Helper, his hand soapily circulates, the mind folding and unfolding the scamp's likeness soapily, soapily. And nothing, not nothing, nor not-nothing will smooth the furrows of memory, nor explain its mystery, as all explaining is, to wit, explaining away, and after nothing occurs, not nothing will prise it from the glistening, crispate limbs of Time hurtling naked into nothing.

Why had he done it? Soapy handily circulates.

The lucre…The filthy, filthy lucre.

A Cistercian reliquary containing the following: the ponderous grape Good-N-Plenty (the onliest of its kind), the jawbone of Girolamo; the foreskin of the Kritios Boy; the eyebrow-comb of Ulysses, Baelo Claudian garum with the 7 apocryphal Lucky Charms’s marshmallows: beige tapeworms, scarlet Cartouches, burgundy miscarriages, mauve plankton, and three of Martin Scorcese’s five wives in alternating shades of teal, orange, and blue; Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite’s 14 limited edition Pogs depicting Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Julian the Apostate wearing a Yarmukle, Simplicius, and Gemistus Pletho; a gazillion bristles, and a bitten spud.

No more ketchup soup, no more dirty dishes.

III (Midday, Lady Lemonpeel’s drawing room.)

Lady Lemonpeel: Nother cuppa'?

The Dowager Lady Grapeskin: Why certainly.

Leif (fresh from pagan lands): “Half…no three quarters naked…shit in their hair…fucking brown and sweating…I got the fuck out of there ASAP.”

Several images of young, well-knit, bronzed savages flicker in Theo’s mind.

Theo fidgets in his chair, convinces himself his temple itches, scratches his temple, thinks the walrus on Leif’s helmet is stupid, thinks he’s stupid and pompous, feels hot, then cold, then hot again, deploys a smile regarding no one.

He hardly knew the little guy.

Smegma

That one is a smegma. He’d jell beneath any fold of flesh that would have him. Umbilical, he’s snug in any crevice: stringy, white, and wet, curdled with a wide smiling.