CHEATING PT III: EULOGY

 Gang leaders take note. Punishment is not a curse, but a strange blessing. The true curse is apathy & there is nothing if not the extreme. A set of snow white wings, a bleeding sparrow.

 Are there any warriors here tonight? Are you taking back the street? Do the streets need to be taken? … What of the earth? Is it right to be in nature? Is it right to be of nature? Our saint was heaven sent with a halo bent.

 The best person I have ever known, she is just one of a few children but a fierce light of her own entire. The love she held in her heart could raise a poor girl in the projects. This is what singers sang about when they referred to the ghetto. A spirit named “L-U-V.”

 Her height belied her tall capacity to give, a saint like no other but not unlike every other saint. She could transform an angel food cake into an avocado, frost to fruit, a bird into a stone.

 Have you ever really touched a satin cloth? Have you ever really felt a wedding gown? Does the cloak of a nun inspire thee? Would you blow into the ear of your oppressors? Our saint. Our saint.

 Imagine the air turned to glass. Imagine a halo of burrs. A crown of doves. The leaves of a pine. She taught me how to put on makeup. She taught me how to wear clothes so that I’ll always look my best: “A bow tie, a cummerbund, a single lace sock.”

 Who here helped at the funeral? Who held our saint’s hand? Were you there when they bit the umbilical cord? Did you say something sweet to your neighbor? Raise your hands or don’t; there is apathy, there is damnation, there is enticement, there is a hot cross bun.

 We sat in the basement eating bread. When I did not want starch, she showed me her bruise. “How shallow of me,” I thought. And then I tasted the bread.

LIVFE

CHEATING PT II

The roar of a cycle
heard in the distance.

Imagine a bad thing,
a bad bad thing.
Imagine a bad thing,
a bad bad thing.

Who were his enemies?
And was it the police?
Is there blood on his hands?
Or is he a thief?

Imagine a bad thing,

a bad bad thing.

Imagine a bad thing,

a bad bad thing.

The wind is blowing,

it's doing its thing.

Feeling it in my face,

dang danger dang.

Did he call his gal

a blushing who-ore?

And just how did he escape

with his thing caught in the door?

Imagine a bad thing,

a bad bad thing.

CHEATING PT I

His roommate was listening to us talk about a few women we knew. He asked us to talk about a woman we knew with redeeming qualities. My friend didn't know what he meant. His roommate explained: "That's what's the matter with you." Then he explained what a redeeming quality was. We tried to think of anyone we knew with redeeming qualities. It was next to impossible. We talked about my ex and we talked about her father who we called the 'potato on toothpicks' because he was a small guy & wanted to be tough so he let his stomach get all big but he still had twiggy little legs. Ever since then I've been on the wrong side of the law.

HER SHINING DULCET HAMMER

A band of frigid nuns overheard a guy:

"I'm a lucky one. I've not met a frigid woman."

He continued:

"I'm kind of living through a tension I have not known.

The feeling is almost of euphoria."

What would the movement have to say about this?
And could this man ever look at a baby and guess its age?

The nuns begin to converge,
the rapping of clogs of black leather on stone.

THE TAR FLATS

We were inside a Canadian cabin
with a boot of Canadian Club
and no deck of cards and no dice.

The forecast had been correct
but we don't want to be the kind
to talk of weather.

We're going to die die die
which is something we joke about
but seems feasible.

The door hasn't budged in days
and a dirty patch of carpet
reminded me of something.

A rubber blanket weeps sex sweat:
we weren't in a cabin
we were in a motel.

The dirty patch of carpet is here
and the tan flecks of skin
from sun beating through a sweater.

Move to Memphis and fall in love
and fall in love with Memphis
a kind of Memphis torture.

Soft skin, a heated argument over soup

"You look like a bunch of girls,"
he said to he.

THE MORAL COMPASS IS SO WEIRD...

A classic Christian execution
at fledermaus HQ.

And the moon burped at me,
the moon spit at me.

And I,
I farted at the moon.

Sometimes I regret what I said
about dreams
because this time
you were stripping in the car.

The bruise of horse manure

because it is pleasant
does not mean that it's soothing!!

DIAL-A-POEM

Someone wrote me, "I'd put money on this: you are one of two who didn't use Google to find out what i was talking about." We were discussing the current state of affairs in these dark ages -- namely Wojnarowicz's The Fire In My Belly and the Smithsonian's completely shitty, wuss-out -- and the above quote smacked of the such smug elitism. Maybe we're fighting the same battles over & over again but I'm convinced we're achieving great breakthroughs in cynicism.

The horrors of social network one-upmanship. Years ago, my friends called them "secret wars" and we all succumbed to the sting of paranoia and a subjectivity that barely kept in touch with its sibling. Now we're here.

And look here where it's not all that different and that's on me. There's a way of needing that I know now & it would be the bee's knees to chip away at that to reveal what's below. Trying to surround myself with that vibe is troublesome.

The wishy-washiness of liberals is horrifying & the absence of heart from the right is never surprising. I hope you're not sitting down cuz all that jerking of knees has gotta' leave bruises from the seat in front of you. That goes for me too, brother.

"Cynicism is my whiskey. And I had a few."

Congratulations to Pope John Paul II for making Time Magazine's Person of the Year.

And my apologies if that has seemed like a conversation between me & me. THIS IS FOR YOU.

RUG CULTURE

What if it were the last day of Earth & the first day of your period? Or if you hired strippers for your end of the world party & they showed up way too drunk? I heard a story about how a friend was ragging on a stripper's bodyguard for looking like Jared from the Subway commercials. He yelled "Hey Jared" one time too many & the thug flashed his piece.

The constant bombardment of information is so overwhelming that I don't think I could "tap into the zeitgeist" if I tried. What is the zeitgeist? Does it matter whether I can figure out what it is?

Drug culture is weird but this is the future & the future is so wild. There are whipped creams that gets you drunk. Four Loko has been banned but you can't suppress greatness. Some creep(s) will figure out how to make FOUR LOKO HOMEBREW.

Richie & I popped The Whip at Elks Lodge a couple nights ago and man it was good. I MADE A NEW MIX FOR THE OCCASION. Brad Hales was our guest and the selection was spectacular. If anyone has a line on even more "secret" bars in town, do let me know. Dark rooms with billiards & smoking in the back?

Last week I DJ'd an auction of prison art. This was my buy: "Passion Fruit." If you catch word of one of these auctions, you must go.

Home life is good. Someone said they thought ENB and I had broken up because I wasn't covered with bruises anymore. Outside right now it's the storm of the century.

Silence is golden, but a whisper is a treasure.
In the field of clichés
we straddled a horse together.

And when a baby kangaroo cried in the distance
how did you that make you feel?

EXCERPT FROM THE FORTHCOMING RELEASE, THE CATALOG: LANE

". . . it’s pure insanity to tear the zombies away.” A little booze changes their eyes into human “boob reflectors” -- which just goes to say that Lane’s boobs are pretty remarkable projections in their own right.
The semi-tropical atmosphere of the Wabangi Lounge -- home for such famous dances as the Watusi, and the old Wall Street slogan: “You bangi me, I’ll bangi you” -- adds background to Lane’s dancing style. After a couple of hours of pounding flesh, Lane begins to sound like a kettle drum. In fact, they fired the drummer because the beat she makes as her teats pound on her stomach, creates a more dramatic effect anyway. And once those old jungle sounds rise from the chasm of her chest, “honey” drips from the zombies’ erected cones.