a city boy's guide to the south

Welcome, friend, to the ramblings of a southerner by choice.

Sunday, August 21, 2005

switchblade



the handles' fake plastic, yet
comely in dragons, the rib's sporting
crossbars to parry the blow
it glitters; it shines:
the neck, burnished, furrowed
it flits in your hand, this cold steel.

slip hickey from pocket,
silk-screened obeisance
infanticide fantasy, wield
closed to my side
one push on my hilt,
deft cracker, slit
cranium
know i deal death:
my erection

Gourmand

I shall eat freeze-dried curds
of lentil and fatty lamb, steamed,
or better: a stew vacuumed
in polypropylene oven bags,
perhaps a repast of collards
and shoulder meat
fit for the gizzards of gods.

Let's teach this broil of halibut
fresh caught last night on Aisle 2,
to sizzle and pop
in its microwave pan
appearance bisque-mocking
the serving suggestion
enraptured in paint
on the lid.

Top it off with a lemon sauce
and, oui m'sieur, it's properly dilled
with hefty doses of pepper tossed
from a plastic beaker
several times warped
by the broiler plate's
convection.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Leaving The Vampire Breathless



Snow is a vagabond oat, dear.
It permeates winter: this wandertime
stooge who'll traipse, come to town-- thin
vanity semi-schooled, fluorishing
six-tongues unholstered.

We'll call it shock-- the toxic
accretion of some comic pain. Your hand
is a sandwich for children
who magistrate--
On your sad knees!
Sodding river.

The meter slows-- hammer on tarmac.
Decant the old words, crack
one rust-colored fuse. I've licked
the sparse wine from the glass-stem
in what you
laughingly called a silk suit--
Bus stop posing.

When were you radiant, angel?
What stray cull stillbore you? You cradle
thin bowls. Lend me one,
Danaud, I'm bailing; I'm bound
to your side by a stone.

Come, come aerie!

Take flight to your reason-filled haven.
Perfection comes ordained: it's sanity, rouged
by the miracle images kept of ourselves,
untarnished by parallax cues.

Too, too cozy.


Stop bleeding feng-shui on my table.
I take back my life. I have no wish to be your
white-coated gentleman of needles and plums,

Tick
tick tick tock

tickle


(coughing)





Wednesday, June 08, 2005

gas can man vs. the homeboy twinkies

(i)
his mind sings of the flower-
the macabre day lily; declension

a mako of rare pearls and gardens
pilched on 4 seats of the red line

a mako? no shark, he: a scion!
low e train torn from its railing

mere tensored greenbrier sprawl
pilched on 4 seats of the red line


(ii)
exotic drippers slappy ! ! happy day
be done, dude travail shalom...

fly this train to grain, when
!windsanity
"pilch these no more tonight"


(iii)
sug fish brawl entempest fugit
toe knee muscle macaque mud stone
salt-
ambucco choose cheery choke cherry
gloam knee-lights pantwaste kirk loam?


(iv)
snapback!
fordude
this can
can
can you

slopsy
dripsin
dresden cream cone

phartridge phondue
you nasty-cracker

--backpack--
attack!
! jumpback
napalm!


(v)
brave molly, come save me, the train's at the station
loge fishbowl commuter gun gear-grind etude
velocipede-steeded grey dudley do do-right
imprison the mantis who damps us in crude


(vi)
his mind shrinks from the flower-
the macabre day lily; in tension?

declension coal-smokes his eyes
this mako of rare pearls and gardens

and jack all, no card he, i spy him
low e train scorned for his railing

manacles tangle and jangle the mangled one
pilched on 4 seats of the red line

slats from the marriage bed

Suppose this fall we go install new shutters
on our windows. You know the walls have not fared well,
old neighbors spot their every bruise. The possibilities
are endless. You would choose a genuine wood:
a cedar or cypress or west-coast pine while I would opt
for dripless caps in plastic from Home Depot. I think
I'd paint the damn things black. A sentient clerk could propose
a lighter tone to soften our brick facade.

Then in spring we can chuck it all, take a trek
along Schuylkill, past the kirks and fabled malls
to my folks' house in Walden. They have cottonmouth
under their bridge. It's a lonely place
with aging wood, they bought it cheap and then condemned
their bliss-free years to salvage the wreck
and bring it up to par. With shutters caked
in many layers, my father worried and scraped
the paint; then lost his life in his attempt
to find the wood again. At times, I envy him.

Or, say one night it rains in Versailles and there
you'll lie alone in bed; listening to clatter
as mid-winter gales shear the pins inside the holes
of lattices bent on slapping blindly. One floor down
the fury unmoors the railings from the building.


*

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

borderline

 
on the mexican sidewalks:
pudenda and beer and crones
almed with cones

for sport, toss nickels
to chicos off bridges
they'll snatch them
or suffer
their bones

cigarettes (horseshit)
and switchblades for sale
chess sets-- black onyx/soapstone
always the pull

of the strange, strange man
with lurid sorties to sell (she's swell)

cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes!

(pontiff, i care) beware
there's always good tail
yo, mato y picadors bend
bend send lend ears
corrida!

look on me! soon to be! frail!
and aware

unmuscled, soft-
heeling through shoals.

it's carnivale!
haloes and parrots all
shuck-beat
the worn path from hovel to woods

candles burn lifeless, hymns
sting the mass. i sing
quarterflash: harden
my heart

and, i'm in ecstasy
clinging to mud

hurricanes slung through my veins

Saturday, June 04, 2005

primordial arches in fungus, ebullient

Start at the toes.
Those pristine phalanges of mental confusion
contain in themselves a most sublime cachet.
Savor each growth and each razored, palled bunion.
If the middle toe's longer, then just run away.

Yes, I'm a pediphile.
Most days I'm up for fromage du pied.
Champignon toes are parfum to my nose--
a whisper of ginger: a roll in the hay.

solipso, in tenso blotteau

We extruded our ducks and sought carapace
among the last motels in Lobsterworld.
But, always some puny task
required my needing.
So, I merely clove sallow smoke.
You remarked, "Only invasion can cure silent creep."
We were two storms behind the near fall, uglying
into sinister when candy time came.

Out in the real world of shrimp
shacks and cheap beer, oysters shuck
themselves. Tiny feet pit-pat and juice-scream
from their shells. Hairless
clits frog off as the bar band
flambes, "Ode To My Sister, Irene".

Ever notice how noon wind will bark at trees
in crafty earth ditties that drive you insane?
Or how one windsong tearfully sung
keeps you one leaf ahead of the gutter?
Or how the laden branch always shears off

always ahead of the rain?

hurtling towards the creamed-corn miasma

seething mass - rat-tangled lines
explode reckless in the air
horrid clap - maid snapping sheets
angel one, you've got the gall

naked, brazen in the wind
orange pumpkin with screaming thud
corn field bound at speed of light
diving to ripe melon fall

jettison with mind-numb speed
falling, twisting manticore
colonel's bucket slowly turning
(invite me in for one last call?)

corn field rises up to greet me
find the ripcord, i implore
reaper, keep your cold derision
angel slaps me by the balls

Shoe Fly Pie

I was angry with shoes. I would walk
in the secular meadow, watch rivulets
churn the red earth into chasms.

My cold thighs would shunt
butterflies aside.

There, in the stream, striders
feast gaily upon the remains
of damped insects. I kick

one grey carcass, a crawfish dead lately
into slow waters; it sinks.
Gives up its cargo:

A spatter of houseflies heels
to the surface, beetles
flock to this meat.

Those pattern-toe sandals you left
in my care,
find their way to the water.

elizondo

elizondo reruns his dink
juke-joint dive, scum
sucker, hey you fucking schoolboy

the register reels to pink
madrigal rants, it's thursday
cock-sucker, eat hamhocks

and beans, do you fart?
well, then leave, pussy boy,
you eat my shit, you'll want
the water

and so it comes 'round
to thursday again,
what say we go see elizondo?

Platinum BBW

Soooey! Big and gooey! Selma, sizzle; Rock, love kitten!
Electrify my mornings with your wrinkled, tinkle love.
Mercy, mother sturdy, how you perch upon your mittens
To accentuate the curvy, evanescent, nexus hub.

Blonde bestride the Simmons, no you're not the perfect sleeper,
But a juicy little moosie perched atop a mattress, spread.
As nighttime flits to ether, on my pole you rate a keeper,
And I'm certain, should we find it, we could take your maidenhead.

ode to the sock-puppet penis

titty-bar boner--
he's got one.

the mescaline freak
with the twelve broken teeth
shouldn't smile as he pulls on his wad

of fives. or, maybe he's packed it--
fives on the outside, tens in the middle, fifty
peeled off

to the squeals of the bar ho who
scampers
to pimp him, hand him
a night of primped pleasin'.

and all's I can think
of as she slaps
that snapper is:

It looks like she'll need bigger garters.

a close brush with cosmic tranquility

Expect her to pounce
into your august lap,
all snarly and smelly,
this small deranged kitten,
ready to spread
her glorious scent
insolently
on your bare legs.

This little kit
starts her motor again
she knows she can wag it
and I'll just come running
like some poor addicted
leaf-hopping mantid
hoping to get some
before
she lops off his head.

firefly shuffle

I saw a breast of chicken
and I said the word promiscuous
while walking down a toe-jam street,
pedestrians vermiculous.
A tested piece of gelid cat poo
threatens now to swim on us.

lawsy, mama, step it on home.

I dodge a dumpster's tendriled berms
and snort the words that-crap-can-stink,
through slime-culled alleys swain to grease
and syringes of blind-man's ink.
Copulating color-coupons
line the walks of Adams Street.

lawsy, sista, step it on home.

I antler through a busy park
and scrote the words squat-kootchie-play,
past spit-tuned clumps of purpled plumps
and hindquarters of lover's sway.
Aluminum sings crunchy songs
as I stride blithely on my way.

lawdy, poboy, step it on home.

I Wish My Boat Had A Futtock

Atlanta: City of pearl
shoe shines and poison
Gone now the arbolest and arbors
laid waste
in densecity of cowbones and hookers.

Coca-cola, koala, new ochre.
Maidens bend, maidens form bros
Trudge on through shows of Columbia,
Take umbrage!
Sailors festoon altars with warship.

Heave me skywards, pynchon--
slender, mellifluos patron.
Schenectady beat a steel rail
in retreat
yet entreats me to gossip with laymen.

Gloria, glorious est!
Silk tarpon adorn your brass
railing they reek; yet chum
Mathilda shall rum-
mage and bandy
hill cochlea with chatter.

julie anne

Are you naked under that apron?
Your sagged breasts smell of saffron and meat.
I knead, whimper rosebud
My hands grip the playdoh, twin
velveteen rabbits. I slink

mottled glimpses between straps of canvas
these nothing honey-mead links
You've rousted my monkey with fatback rouladen.
Your vichyoisse louses the cupboard.

The Springtime Reformed Catholic KMart Landscape Poem

Give me the 2-foot aphasic Jesus,
I crave the lobotomy of lawn--

that beer-tale 'smatter of urbana
cum fescue
squirreled in amongst oaks and hydrangea.

I'll prune to the roots of my celibate
store card and brandish the plastic; abandon

this dog-winter ague in favor of banquets,
the thrall of the Chaminade rose.


Then bathtub bisque porcelain
Mary shall sing
from the depths of her tangerine grotto;

(she's blotto, you know)--
the suburban rye stone queen
adored by spore lichen,
vermilion.

Bangor Torpedoes

When Bangor torpedoes explode in the rain,
while others just stare, I will often refrain.
I'll be a gent, get them jewel-boxed again.
Yes, I'll help the girl with popped knockers.

Some snow-bunny barely-there's slipped on the slopes.
They hung there with frostbite- entangled in ropes!
I massaged firmly till sure they could cope.
Yes, I helped the girl with popped knockers.

When lawyers' addendums solicit the breeze,
or Rosie's steeled rivets POP-- (metal fatigue),
should meter-maid's coinage expire confines,
or Venus' fine bodice shells ease from their vines,

If grandma's great goose-eggs pate-de-fois grin,
(A horrible thought!-- It's the mind-set I'm in.)
or pray, Madame Bovary's fountain-tableau,
or Julia Child's start pounding the dough...

Those tennis-pro diva-ducks quacked for the queen,
"A scandal!", some shouted; while others,"Obscene!"
I raced from my chair, yelled, "Let's get them sun-screened!"
"This doxie can't flopsy unblocked. See, they'll steam!"

So claim I'm a timberwolf cruising dim lakes.
Am I the one watching those boob-tube retakes?
We don't want sugar bowls! Give me cheesecake!
And I'll help the girls pop their knockers.

Carbon

"Yes, this is available for your pets."

Advertisement for LifeGem Memorials--
the company that specializes in turning human
remains into diamonds.





When I die, I'll be hard-pressed
to turn into a diamond

a yellowed husk of half-gram weight
estoppelled by my sojourn

from claiming polish, fit or lustre
quality or clarity

unfit to live among the stars
or any singularity

And what will Mr. Saint Pete think
when I, mortal, uncoil?--

he'll treasure gems of better cut
and send me to a mohel

to facet forty days and nights
in carborundum, tempered

by blasts of heat upon my seat
until I shine, then pester

him to try to smuggle me
past borders, snugged in colon

he'll tell me then to kiss his ass
and I might just oblige him

I'll climb right in and trust for once
as I eschew my fate

those puckered cheeks won't up and say
Oh, what ameliorate!

The Fried Clams At Fenway

I say they're hale, these summer quahogs, globbed
in dixie cups, fat-bellied: sumos trained
since day of birth to tango in the vat.
They deserve the tangy tartar sauce daubed,
nay, slobbered on top of their crispy corn-
meal and flour soups on jackets
that give them their oversized bite.

Chew-chow-boogie, here I'm talkin' nubbins
of succulent bivalve mustered from the oven
replete with house salad and spank-me French dressing.
I find myself guessing
if anything's better with sea salt and lime.

But Jose Cuervo never played right field.
Dwight Evans did, yet he didn't make it
to Cooperstown. Perhaps the selectors
felt more at home getting
those greasy thin-necks pawned off by Johnson's
(those treacle-born scalpers of flotsammed sea meat).
And don't get me started on Mrs. Paul, please,
or that fisherman nerd from Connecticut.

If brocade fabric were beef

I'd starve, yet
why not decorate with meat?

Much swill can distill
in a sea trunk
while you still pack high C in A minor.

Studio, studio
apartment, flat-foot walk-up,
five stories high, I
offer you decor of meat,

the longtime trappings of forebears
and homeless, pennywise suits.

A pre-cambrian floor art exhibit,
this stain, this daub,
this bobble
of applesauce
radiates out in relief

and reminds me last week I drank
a frapped mocha
no wait, it was two weeks ago.

Oh, stay! Please stay! We'll play
one game,
one game of ravioli niblick!

Don't bogey that dumpling; that pastry,
though tasty,
is riped and ambitious to breed

green odor that caroms
off sidewalls
en route to le petit jardin.

Why only last week, I met
Charles Bukowski
surfing e.coli on ebay.

quimdiddly

crooned the flitter song
~to 'doris: quite the peacock-- plumed

by sun-stroke-fingerbunny, gasping
frozen air

when Old Wallace spoke to me,
he said

~chantsea subtum vigor

as i terraced lovely dawn,
-stretched a yawn, back-flipped inside

corn silk radish - straddled! bent her
caught in stockings, longed to render
verses meant to catch and send her

d
o
w
n

to read the paper loud

then amanita: your
sweet bud, yes!
- then, was it me?

walking like a wolf, like a fish, like a blowfly...

kaintuck heaven

Banded by sawgrass and tall, crusty willows,
the secret lies hidden at Jefferson's Pond,
where forged copper kettles spin wonders with sugar,
drip toxic nirvana in old Mason jars.

Stoked by a wood-fire of hell-meat proportions--
Jefferson poked it with billows of iron.
At midnight, he tapped it, I took such a sweet sip
it foamed off my eyelids with kids of its own.

Smooth on the fingertips, smooth on the barrel
rolls 'cross your native tongue, tightens your loins.
Metal on foreskin, it charms like a little
slug on a bottle inch-worming along.

Slathers of catfish still jump from the whirlpool--
briskets with whiskers caught fresh from the pond.
Saute in butter and serve with a handful
of pan-fried potatoes in parsley and lime.

All night elixir free-flowed from the bottle
and we were transported to regions beyond.
I dreamed of eggplant and lusted elusive
diaphanous maidens from all nearby farms.

Married by morning to Hayden Frock's daughter,
a wise-made desicion once I weighed the odds.
Save me from bacchanal spent in one night of bliss;
save me from Winchester marital bonds.

dirigible sisters

There! There!-- Flocked in a swoon:
sky-dancing, drifting dirigible sisters.
Frolic with mirth! Usurp the sparrow hawk.
Shinny-dip, skip through the sky...

Anterior whimsical, musical laden spheres,
one dropped, dear jesus, on our house today.
The bastard basenji broke both back legs barking-
dirigible sisters came piffffffting his way.

There! There!-- Sandbags of soil-bound,
sky-dancing, piffffffting dirigible sisters.
Frolic with mirth! Usurp the mighty shrew.
Sisters, dirigibles have come to play.

aloha jehovah

if i should sink, flowered, into the wet sage
nor heaven pursue its sidereal cote
sing semper fidelis, albeit cock-knave
aloha jehovah \ alcoa alcove?

if i, in the shoes of the dead maven bluesuede,
should gainsay my mewling, sling on my headstone-
"agnostic, repackaged", then setby slewcoldgraves
sequoia. annoyed? yeah! !-- a mohel, soft-stoned....

spring to me plantings, let autumn's chrysanthemums
slide, mama, can'ya? blastoma dead son
who entered heaven with new soul decanting.
westminster pet-spinster, this winter: catcomb