The Golden Cough

There’s a bottom, see
we’re spiraling in a digital way
toward the apocalypse

I never believed in a new age
but my heart is warm and clicking, see
Tom Brokaw on the television
in glistening high definition

He’s saying to us:
“Watch out fuckers
PEANUT BUTTER IS COMING FOR YOU”

The plant next door is moldy
with rust swimming up the smokestacks
and rats setting up shop, see
them against silhouettes of robot welders

Mountains of poly-soda bottles
shed red white and blue prisms, see
them blanket the horizon
with caffeinated mystical sparkles

Somebody is yelling RUN! under the purple jello sea
and we fear the marrow-terrorists
who strike from within
and we doubt the validity of our good credit
as our homes go up in blue flames

There’s a line outside of haggard men
slouching and ruffling through the valley
sometimes turning back and taking stock once more
of the monumental decomposing minivan
they once helped build in a rainy century

Doolittle

Here comes the snow
he says leaning forward the snow is
relentless
it even blows the huge Japanese chimes
on the balcony the ones that scare the neighbors
into thinking
someone is stalking them in their dreams

singing where is my mind
wheeeeere is my mind
dressed like a monk
all ochre and maroon and wind horse energy

the snow’s gonna stick this time he says
stick all winter
and metamorphitall into piss colored slush
that sticks to the road your car and your eye
and it won’t go away until April
so until then he says best to hunker down
and let your brain go gush
see it in the ice water it’s swimming

Kali After Lunch

That’s just beautiful
she comments smoke flipping from her mouth
beading up in her greasy brown hair the sun
breaking waves over her cheekbones the dead rabbit
slowing being taken away by a squadron of ants
amazing us both in their mindless efficiency

We’re staring down from the balcony
and she wonders aloud why such a grisly scene captivates
when in our electric souls we fear death and avoid it
at all possible cost

I can’t help but imagine butterflies bumbling upwards
from a kettle of molten iron swinging gently above
the most beautiful quilt conceivable
laced with neon greens and reds on a landscape of blue drizzle
little drips of silver destruction searing holes
and falling into a black infinite mess

And as the ants move along the rabbit becomes something
we can’t identify a mess of bones and fur and blood
she lights another cigarette and sighs
concluding something between her green eyes that
she wishes not to share

Found and Lost

Between every space there is a word
making the space possible

Owing it’s entire being
to that space

There’s poetry somewhere
in the cracks of the dull and divine ghetto
hiding and peeking around corners
afraid of being dredged to the light

We’ll find ourselves
here amongst the weeds
hunched over and coughing up drugs
digging around for the words

It’s our volunteer work
our community service
our reflex
our addiction no doubt
all rolled up into one juicy handwritten spliff

Satellite Minds

This doesn’t make much sense-
the green and brown beer bottles rattling together
on top of the fridge

Conan’s impossible hair bounces
and retains form even through the rabbit ears

she says
our antennae will be obsolete next February
so if we don’t get our act together
we’ll lose it all

lose what-
Conan’s hair?
I wonder aloud
breathing out smoke signals

even more-
she bites the orange and continues-

more than you could ever imagine

(static)

one of the bottles bounces off the linoleum
and suddenly I realize my trajectory
is not unlike
the fake metal
yellow-assed
supermarket chair I sit in:

half in the kitchen
half in the living room

there’s only two of us in the efficiency
yet I swear there are three or more
depending on what her story is

divided
repeatedly and possibly endlessly
in our electrified radio wave apartment
by satellite minds

the strip of golden plastic
delineating truth from memories
and forcing empty space between us

That’s Not Me

Who you see in that picture is not me

He’s some guy I found up North
and hired to be Shawn Misener

He only cost me a week a year
at this beautiful Lake Superior timeshare

***

Sometimes people recognize him
saying:
hey, you’re that writer from Lansing
or Flint or something

The guy who wrote that story
where the Cookie Monster screws this dude’s wife

To which the fake Shawn replies:
yeah, that’s me all right
but you better stay away from me
‘cause I’m a pothead and I’ve never been paid for writing-
not one single damn penny

***

But here’s where it gets surreal:
apparently I’ve been hired to be me as well

Maybe I’ve been reading too much Phil Dick
but I’m beginning to worry that the me who hired the me you see
isn’t me at all

It could be that the me you see
created the me you don’t see

Or, even better:
the me you see (or the me you don’t see)
is an android designed write words
and be a face on a (web)page
for mysterious covert reasons

I (he) could be anything

A creature from a paradimension
with eyes made of sweetgrass and salted butter
toting a skyscraper backpack full of scrabble tiles

The pissed off ghost of David Foster Wallace
shot back in time
to simplify his writing a bit
and recapture the American dream

Or anything else imaginable

But I’m sure the guy you see in the picture isn’t me
(him)

bob munchkin had a rifle in his silver pants

lungs rising from the smoke
the man dipped slowly into cement
wagged and waved
cautiously insane
creeping past the bed womb
with his eyes on the guy’s prize
ova paranoia on the foyer
past regret in a handicap spot
whistling Bob Munchkin
had a rifle in his silver pants
ova and ova
again

with the moon’s death
he would cease seizing
and finger the home from here
sleeping dead forever
‘till the bitchslappin’ sun
steals his chains and underwear
and people must be dealt with
one way or another

he would exist limitless
if he knew how to milk that cow
pale and centuries old
parked in the shade shimmering
with god stuff
and money bursting from the holy ass

The bottom’s gonna come up suchly
and kneecaps are gonna shatter
he knew he saw the future
somewhere close

Prophecy In Grease

1.
beneath an abnormally large Petoskey stone he found
the storied remains of Obama’s ancient scalp,
dusty and tough like dinosaur hide, unquestionably
historic, luminescent, holographic,
desired by all anthro-ish men and women
donning straw and canvas hats,
combing what once was the shores of the great
lake itself, Michigan, the wettest land of all,
all dried up and sold to the ticket scalpers
outside the ruins of the Silverdome

2.
fill this monster space with muenster cheese and light it with fire
say the scientists, then scream OPA! toward the nipply
Midwestern horizon, let the fatzos jump in,
have their fill, grease dripping from their asses,
hairy and cottage cheesed in the night’s once-humid atmosphere

3.
these dreams are as real as the pain of a hypochondriac
who actually broke his tibia, crying for his mother on the last rock
to the shore, howling at the moon for change and progress
and Obama, Obama, Obama until his breath is hoarse

4.
(from the North the migrants creep down like Atari centipedes
wiggling through the trees to the bottom, to their adversary,
who is much smarter, he simply blasts them and deposits their
electric remnants into the Great Lake beds)

5.
there is a room in the Bush Wing of the White House
that only has one thing in it, resting central on the green marble floor,
a two-cent piece honoring the fallen millions
of Iraqi goats and chickens, their noble heads serene and heroic,
the tail end being a single Afghan poppy, and the people say
“Bush’s head is buried under that coin”
and
although nobody quite believes the rumor,
none of them dispels it outright

The Wait

your shadow fidgets
under yellow streetlamps, waiting
as the red taurus squeaks by
and parks up the street,
just beyond the old train station

as usual:
a figure emerges from the car
large and hunched and impatient,

he begins tossing crack and porn
from his trunk in a rush

your shadow watches and waits,
and when the man and his car
are gone, you rush in
to devour the goods

+++

you wait every night by the station
in a canopy of an overcoat
feet attached to your shadow
unable to wake yourself up

My Side of Town

I.
I live on the corner of Wise and Jolly Roads, couched into the Southwest side of Lansing, Michigan. In my estimation there aren’t too many people who are wise and jolly around here.

II.
The CVS down the street was robbed last night. The guy on the security camera looks like my neighbor a few houses away. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him. I’m scared of that guy. He’s about eight feet tall and he walks like he can’t wait to kick some innocent fool in the nuts. Sometimes he cuts through my yard and peeks in the windows. I hide my laptop at night.

III.
The assistant principal at the middle school by Cedar Street blew his gasket last year and murdered his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend and brother at a Christmas party. I used to teach at that school. I actually went out for drinks with him and a couple other teachers a time or two. He seemed normal enough. Shit, was I wrong.

IV.
There’s a guy who rides by every sunset on a broken-down Schwinn with wire basket tied to it. He’s always yelling at the top of his lungs about how his woman wronged him, how he has no place to go if she’s gonna kick him out, and so on. We call him the Broken Record.

V.
There’s a haze over the neighborhood every year around the Fourth of July. Store bought fireworks from the market, illegals from Indiana, and homemade bombs blow out so much smoke that some of us here call it Baghdad 1991. We have to close the windows or risk lung damage, and we don’t have air conditioning.