The Street Charles DeGaulle Walked On

---

dans les jardins de mon pere, les lilacs sons floris


I already knew the big wooden sign
cut in strange foreign words
said, 'Children Not Wanted'.

The angry man had,
with his affliction of waving arms,
made me understand French

by saying it louder
each time he yelled.

I got off his precious grass.

Mon ami, would you like to see where i work?
It's just around here on the street Charles DeGaulle walked on.

He was new to this garden,
this oasis of sand
and I had already dug my moats.
So, I followed him

out of the garden
and into the street
all the way to the corner

to the place where strange shadows
grew in musty, cool air,

a big concrete building
with the

drip drip drip
of water.

He talked of his family,

then taught me to sing
his favorite song

in French.

He handed me his wrench
and said go ahead

so i shut off
all the water in Versailles.

Denying the Carnality of Onion

And what of those boys with bad skin, in Camaros,
ciggie butts snazzed up their sneers--
left, useless arm hanging halfway to hubcap,
other hand clutching a beer?

At eighteen, they left here, went cruising for angels
in towns with no names - like "Haiphong",
to cheer up those hoveled-down, domino bootie-boys
sandbagged by calls for reform.

No angel cum mannequin, backflushcunt angel can
ease their need for Cindy's charms.
What angels spit arrows?  What's left to repair those
lost boys who we took back with stones?

Let's fill up the dime stores with beer, porn and leather
meat slatterned by pre-packaged sheen.
Have Harlequin Cindies shag packages, grimly
chant mantras to what might have been:

  Inspire me, leftists!  Remind me why cameras wept
  cheers on the vandal-clad throngs.
  I'd thrill once again to trill "tear-it-down" rhapsody,
  gush to your vain call to arms,

  stop seeking salvation in disparate measure,
  let numbness salve holes left with guns--
  live elegant life as I hoped I would find: one
  more moonie coked up on darvon.

Log Rhythms

I've spent hours mauling
them. Next, I'll form rows,
nearly chest high, on iron dogs

out from the garage. Their length
has been coded to master design;
to fit snug, but not squeeze

over the firebox. Here, twenty-two
inches of free BTUs left over
from last season's hurricane.

Their prettier sisters have gone
on to be bookshelves or a bedroom
suite, perhaps an ergonome's chair

or some other new thing from Ikea.--
Think spotlights!-- and giddy
rushed spiels from the pitchmen--

think glowing
in halogen poses.
These will get picked up

by grateful new owners,
who'll invite neighbors to the unveiling.
Mine, cradled, just lie here--

in second ascension--
absorbing what sun's rays they come to.
At night, when the opposums come visit,

they'll pull on their cobwebs
and dust off their vines, ready
to proffer their sweet grubs by morning.

But mostly, they're aging,
if dislodged, left akimbo,
they'll be snatched by the lumberjack,

formed to the pile again.
Some romantic notion compels me
to gather them, burn them

to carols and wine.
Those that are younger, that seasoned
too green, may chitter, sap-swollen,

a time, in one massive flame
rose that won't tarry too long.
Would their beauty be fleeting

if beauty were viewed from this precept:
The embers and ash linger on
to be swept from the scuttle

with other debris
while their essence
is rendered to smoke?

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.

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)

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.


*

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

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.