The Figure on the Threshold
Current mood: angsty
Category: Writing and Poetry

The Figure on the Threshold

Her name upon my lips,
an invocation to alien divinities
worshipped in secret
here and now.

The silence following her greeting,
knowing she recalls my touch,
a shadow out of time
threatening to swallow eternity.

A beautiful malignancy
rending the transparent veil
of timid domesticity.
I shan't succumb,
acquiesce,
or surrender,
but I may very well
evaporate in the heat
of tempestuous possibility.

Currently reading : Dead Souls By Nikolai Gogol

5:25 PM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

The Tedious Responsibilities of the Protagonist
Current mood: artistic
Category: Writing and Poetry

The Tedious Responsibilities of the Protagonist

. . . could've danced
with the buxom girl
of Russian winter eyes,
but he doesn't dance
anymore than Steve McQueen
would drive a Prius.

Real world worries
are beyond his grasp.
Frightened of paper tigers,
he pulls on the tails of dragons
the better to kick them
in the nuts.

The whimsy of cloud hopping heroines
has been ground up
in the gears of the god machine
and audience expectation
has him there
ready to make them a sandwich
after they fall.

Aristotle's ghost
yelled at me
to start this piece
in medias res.
I'm not sure I give a shit,
but I did it anyway,
and the protagonist doesn't seem to mind,
He knows it's all in the telling.

Currently listening : Scarlet’s Walk By Tori Amos Release date: 2002-10-29

3:06 PM - 10 Comments - 14 Kudos - Add Comment

Too Easy to Hate Los Angeles (draft)
Current mood: cantankerous
Category: Writing and Poetry

Too Easy to Hate Los Angeles

Someone once lived in the abandoned car.
The legal pad on the passenger seat
contains the sun faded verse
of a laid off machinist
who had just discovered Bukowski.
Inevitably,
a screenplay can be found in the glove box.

What use to be Charles Manson
in a community of sociopaths?
It's no fun when the clever cult cuties
are just as apt to corrupt you
as the opposite.
The stripper has the failed musician on a string.
Hooray, for the heresy of the free spirit.

Dead celebrities litter the streets,
and the day laborers are shoved aside
to let the mourners have their moment . . .

But there is no need to go on,
you know how each and every story ends.
These timid Tulpa are our creations,
our scapegoats,
our excuses to avoid living
our own lives.

Currently watching : The Day of the Locust Release date: 2004-06-08

11:58 PM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

I Want to Enter My House Justified (WIP)
Current mood: accomplished
Category: Writing and Poetry

I Want To Enter My House Justified

Mind ablaze with debt dread
and the friction of love buried
under worldly pressures,
I suffer insomnia
and drown in the wet cotton reality
of deep cable programming
in the hours before dawn.

Swaddled in sweatclothes,
big toe jutting from an ever growing hole
in an army surplus tube sock,
I grasp the remote control
as if it were the cliff grown wild strawberry
from the oft quoted zen koan.

This glass teat
this electronic narcotic
feeds me
washes over me
numbs me
allows a life of cowardice
and craven compromise
to become bearable
while a world of opportunity
passes out of reach.

Suddenly I wake
(though I'd never been asleep)
confronted by family.
My grandfather's cousin,
the old cowboy actor,
strides tall and proud
through the dust
of an old Peckinpah pic.
Alert, I watch
and watching, learn.

"I want to enter my house justified",
answers the world weary Joel McCrea
as he lays dying in the final reel.
No slave to robber barons
and the minions of Mammon
who grind men's souls for profit,
nor reckless rebel
bloodying the innocent
to shake the status quo,
he took a third path
and found it fatal.

He died not for what he believed in,
but because he refused to accept
the options offered to him
were the only ones available.

From near my undisturbed bed
the alarm sounds
as the credits roll,
and aided by a bit of celluloid morality
I don my spurs and hat
and head out to the workaday world
hoping to return home
justified.

Currently listening : Put the O Back in Country By Shooter Jennings Release date: 2005-03-01

2:22 PM - 8 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Haiku for Cuddlefist
Current mood: angsty
Category: Writing and Poetry

Haiku for Cuddlefist

Farming in America

Bountiful harvest,
plump in the land of plenty,
no sacrifice here.

There's blood on the plow
bones uncovered when planting
we sow in sorrow.

-----------------------------------------------------

These were written for the June contest in the Cuddlefist Poets group.

Currently listening : Graveyard Shift By Scott H. Biram Release date: 2006-07-18

11:41 AM - 4 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

The Coming Storm
Current mood: Grim
Category: Grim Writing and Poetry

The Coming Storm

It smells of ozone and cow shit here,
hog killin' humid but it ain't hot,
the grass slithers greedily over itself
eager for the heavens' piss.

The boss man berates me,
casting aspersions on my abilities.
Don't have much to say to that,
this is not what I was trained for,
this is not where I'm meant to be.

An abscessed tooth throbs deep in my head,
spreading rot throughout my thoughts.
There's no insurance here,
the VA won't see me for weeks
and the free clinic's got me pegged
as a pill grubbin' problem patient.

Pounding fence posts
is no way to earn your daily bread.
My sore muscles spasm
as the first lightning bolt strikes,
the sledge slips sideways
splintering the edge of the post
before thudding to the ground.

From behind me,
a curse is called out with my name in it.
I heft my hammer and wonder . . .
. . . just how much damage I could do with it
before the storm abates.

Currently listening : Grinderman By Grinderman (featuring Nick Cave) Release date: 2007-04-10

10:01 PM - 9 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment

A Comment for Sam
Current mood: blustery
Category: Writing and Poetry

A Comment for Sam

Sore eyed with reading
I will your words
writ on vellum
that I may revel in their texture
and know their weight.

The monitor taunts me.

----------------------------------------

. . . because I am a pretentious goof, I wrote this as a comment to one of Samantha Ledger’s poems.

I thought I’d save it here.

Currently listening : Mahler - The Symphonies / Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Sir Georg Solti By Kiri Te Kanawa Release date: 11 February, 1992

10:14 AM - 7 Comments - 10 Kudos - Add Comment

Justice is a Commodity (WIP)
Current mood: infuriated
Category: Writing and Poetry

Justice is a Commodity

Jesus hangs around her neck,
the crucifix askew,
thin gold chain accentuating
the purple and blue
bruises.
The emerald green
of weed and reed
conceals
the grey brown muck
her corpse sinks into
under the overpass.

The delinquent daughter
of a friend
of my girl,
I gather drips and drabs
of the tattered tale
of her untimely demise.

My misspent imagination
conjures a geriatric jogger
discovering the body
as I drive by a nearby
bike shop
on my morning commute.

More musings on the murder
picture a carnal embrace
grown vicious and violent
while my sweetie and I
were watching Fifties film noir
snuggling on the sofa.

The word came down,
drugs had been found
and the virtue of our victim
had been smudged.
The DA declared the case closed.
The possible drug death
of a chick with a runaway rep
and a rapsheet longer than most
allowed cops to neglect
the blood and the bruising
on the body
found under the overpass.

Work weary
and day job drained
I follow my sweetie
to a blue collar bar,
where the rowdy and raucous
are raffling off prizes.

I query the cause
of this furious fundraising.
"An autopsy," they answer
"for the forsaken,
but not friendless,
girl who died
under the overpass."

Cash is collected
and a check deposited
into the arguably affluent
account of the coroner.
The old man does his duty,
and with the quiet clatter
of scalpel and saw
proves the bad bruises
on the slender throat
mean the girl on the gurney
was strangled.

Cops come around
and ask the obvious questions
to friends, family and the odd
potential witness.
A single suspect soon arises
from amongst the mass:
a stranger to the city
and the man last seen
with the victim.

Cops call other cops,
a digital ear is put to the wind,
and the man is traced to another town.
DNA evidence proves positively
his hands were on her throat.

The news wends its way around,
and the blue collar bar
shouts in collective triumph,
as a distraught mom
graces the detectives with gratitude.
Somewhere outside the social circle
I grumble to myself
about civil servants
who only perform their jobs
when the costs are covered
by someone else.

There’s no counting
the number of corpses,
lying in the muck and mud
covered by the emerald green
of weed and reed,
who will never know justice
as there is no one
to pay for the autopsy.

Currently listening : The Executioner's Last Songs By Jon Langford and The Pine Valley Cosmonauts Release date: 19 March, 2002

11:17 AM - 13 Comments - 26 Kudos - Add Comment

Another Whisp of a Write Rescued from a challenge posting
Current mood: blah
Category: Writing and Poetry

Happiness

Obligation adds weight to
scarred fingers tapping keyboards.
Debt tightens the muscles
’twixt neck and shoulders.
The day stumbles onward
will we or won’t we.

. . . but a few flower petals
scattered purposefully among the bricks
can set the soul a-soaring.

Currently reading : Only Revolutions: A Novel By Mark Z. Danielewski Release date: 10 July, 2007

5:31 PM - 6 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Fiona and the Forever Tree
Current mood: cranky
Category: Writing and Poetry

Fiona and the Forever Tree

Still the maiden,
with the mother and crone
to come,
Fiona weeps nightly
for there are no more trees
in Eire.

Careful with the Craft
she fondles cup and dagger.
Working her will
upon the world
she longs for living
wood.

Soil, sod and seed abound
but the tired trees
of the developer’s art
mark the only growth she sees.

Ritual over
she cries again
and retreats to the kitchen.
Grandmother greets
with a cup of tea
and roots that last
forever.


-------------------------------

{meh . . . I wrote this for a 5 minute write challenge, I don’t think too much of it, but I’ll save it here and ponder its potential merits later}

Currently listening : Malediction & Prayer By Diamanda Galas Release date: 17 February, 2002

3:38 PM - 10 Comments - 22 Kudos - Add Comment