THIRSTYMAN

Pillow Talk

2008-04-24T22:47:00.001-07:00

Your songs are leaping teeth
In cascading masquerade
A celebrated hourglass
I hang upon until the last
Sound falls, and I am mute
Before the deafening

Blindfolded Poems

2008-03-25T23:53:00.000-07:00

The thing to remember, always to remember, is that consequence is earned and nothing sacred stays sacred forever. Eventually John dies and eventually he’s a punchline and eventually someone writes a damn book about the damn book that the guy had read. I think we can all remember that alone in the dark, at the right angle of down, listening to the snoring sounds of someone we love in the lamplight with an old book my our right hand.

All the time at a glance I think I see bloodthirsty. I think about dying a lot, not because I’m depressed or have a shit life, although I have been and into each life rain must and will fucking fall, but it’s important to think about the big stuff before it’s too late, I think, and the biggest thing I can think of is not thinking, or blinking, or conducting mitosis ever again.

The sensations of silk astonish the body as sure as sugar but if there’s one thing you can’t do it’s blink your way out of something unless you’re a hostage or something. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh pair of eyes to look through buildings and you don’t need super powers to do it. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth mentioning. That doesn’t mean it’s going to help you in the long run.

I see what everyone else sees and blue is the same to me. I know it empirically because. That’s all you have to know, no matter what it is, that you know it, and it makes life run a lot more fucking smoothly for you. It doesn’t make you happier but it makes you stronger. I figure the last thing said on earth will probably be “See?!” and then he’ll slump over dead. That’s what I would say.

Never be afraid to look foolish and never be afraid to be different. I could tell you stories or write a whole book about stories about guys I know…not personally, mind you…but if you look around it’s everywhere. Right man, right moment, and you just never know. You never know until it’s over and really you never know unless you succeed. If you fail you never ever really get to know what you lost. Good.

O pull back these forsaken gossamer shrouds and let me see the sunshine for the first time in years. My skin is so thin and it burns at the touch and chaps at a gust of wind and slides around like an old orange when I move. Can it have been night? That alone? I triumphed over cities, I ruined my enemies, I overcame myself and this is what awaits me.

First Sight

2008-03-19T23:40:00.000-07:00

Within my landlocked veins a poison beats
A grace antique whose pressure cups my heart
Mercurial in kiss and still with depth
A picture of my hand asleep and black.
A pool of blood for Lady Crocodile
Memento of an idol’s face of white
The Longing Goddess swift of vanity
Her crescent glass all full of dust and dross
A ring of calm upon a chain of seas.
Close streets and tidings washing over me
A madness on my cup she smelt, and thus
Begins the drowning season’s rush of gilt.
While rising from his chair a man of coal
Has seen a lily new in harvest light.

The Hollow

2008-03-16T19:47:00.000-07:00

Two o’ clock moon broadcasts a
Pall borne by my haunting helm,
Reflections of liquid sleep running
Out beside me glinting in the bi-light,
Peaceful warrens overlooked by
Passing shadow make-believes
And predators of principles on parade
The dead are dead or dyeing ghost orchids
A mock-up of an institution against exposure
Celebrate celebrate the sins of place
Conscience of tapestries suggests
A collector of minds beguile the while a
Way to moor the marrow of my mirror
At the expense of lace hosannas reckon
The disposition of tinkling symbols discarded
In the beginning back past fury and song
In the end words fail backwards
Leaving thinking leaving calm continuance alone

Remains

2008-01-17T15:36:00.000-08:00

The phoenix which did not come back arose one great gray morning to see what walled-up Sun could show him. Coquettishly Sun shone its bright roving eyes through great gray morning and beamed down at the phoenix on the blue-brown world. The heart of the phoenix, that great bird’s fire, leaped and quickened in Sun’s shine gaze. But Sun, as he does, went away. And, angry, the fire in the phoenix consumed him, his eyes still on the great gray wall. And Sun knew this had happened because no wall can truly keep out the Sun. Now phoenix, he would return if the Sun came back and shone down his smile. But the Sun had been burned in its heart, too, and would not look back down where poor phoenix lay. The phoenix which did not come back remains today under walled-up Sun, and between them great gray morning goes forever.

Two Elevators

2008-01-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

Floor two
Down too
The only other floor
I take the stairs beside the pair
On purpose
Between floors
In defiance
Among prepositions

Bang!

2007-12-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

Today is the day of the Arizona State Speed-Walk Death Valley Penguin Five-Kay. The runners are at their marks and the bird to beat as always is Aloysius “Parka” Parks. The crowd is eager but surly as old Mister Sun is doing his job well today, a-hah hah hah, so let’s go down for the lowdown from Cid Clancy - Cid?

The race has been delayed momentarily as the ghost of Richard Milhouse Nixon has descended on the course and has begun screaming at the contestants in some…some language, Tom, I don't know, eliciting shrieks and honks and coating the already treacherous course in a film of thick, oily sweat. Tom I’m getting word, the race is about to start, someone found the signal gun

It’s time to shoot the bird...

And they’re off! Feathers Mulligan kicks up a cloud of dust and regrets as he leaves Parka Parks in his wake, leading into the turn around Desperation Butte and UH-oh, fast and low from the outside! Heeere coooomes CHEEP-CHEEP!....

Chemical Christmas

2007-12-05T00:05:00.000-08:00

I remember this time that I probably don’t; we’ve all been there even when we haven’t really. The point is there was snow, which is a tip off right there, but there it was. And there. Kind of wherever had a general there-ness about it, there was snow also in big blobby blankets. All I could think of was the Shmoo. I was surrounded by thousands of tiny Shmoos.

By the time they wrestled the jacket over my head I knew this was going to be a great big great day. I would have been right, too, except for the Mole People.

Fucking Mole People. They’re always doing that.

purple bear

2007-12-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

Down corrugated powdercoated corridors aimlessly ambling, friendlessly seeking one gift to say absolutely nothing meaningful whatsoever and, really, doesn’t that say it all

Finding a purple two-eyed teddy bear nobody bought or thought about buying only notable for having two eyes because one is stitched lower than the other, not to mention stitched to the back of his head

If anybody notices they’ll have to do something about it or think about it or at the very minimum acknowledge that as hard as they try (well as hard as someone tried at any rate) someone is going to fuck up the bear and someone is going to try to sell the bear anyway and somebody is either going to have to buy the bear or send it back to the factory or eat it or something or the damn thing is just going to sit there forever looking out into the vitamin D-free light with its 20/-70 plastic button vision

Purple teddy bear seeing time grow old and stars die and seasons change and prices fall but never seeing anything outside of aisle 7-C, not for the last umpty-six years or so by the look of things, and the dustbunnies accruing behind it have turned feral and kill the flopsy wopsy Happy Easter toys in the night to protect their territory

Made in USA Made in China Made in Taiwan Made in Hong Kong Apparently creating useless crap knows no nation or creed which is comforting if you look at it from a dystopian apocalyptic perspective, but why do that when chauvinistically speaking our useless crap is slightly less useless because we’re so awesome, and yet we can afford to have it be as useless as we want because we can afford anything here (as long as we don’t have to pay for it, especially not to China)

Having all the stuff and the rest of the world makes us more stuff and Korea and Vietnam make little green and tan plastic US soldiers five hundred to a bag for three bucks which ain’t our fault but is pretty damn funny

2007-12-04T23:50:00.001-08:00

The Morals of Bluebird

2007-12-04T23:40:00.000-08:00

Pretty bird, pretty blue bluebird, long time past, did not marry young. She always wanted family, but she waited for love. Each year callers made sweet song. None was fit to be a father. Singing, singing, as if there was nothing to do but sing and dance. They had no ambition.

Blue bluebird, all alone, living alone in a cottage. In the clearing she pined for lost love she never lost, love she never met. She sang, sang sweetly, songs her mother taught her and randy songs boys sang when she was young. She heard neither in the forest.

Long time passed. Came by black and brown sparrow whistling from time to time. He did not know any tunes but that never stopped him from whistling. Come to the cottage he called, “Who lives within?” and blue bluebird, pretty bluebird called, “I alone.”

Bluebird, happy bluebird, she and brown-black sparrow courting in the cottage. They chased one another in the rafters and let themselves be chased. Sparrow charmed Bluebird unlike any other. Sparrow had seen the world. “Nothing compares to thee,” said he, and though she knew it was a lie Bluebird blushed.

Bluebird, pretty happy bluebird, married sparrow there in the cottage and bore him five children. Contented she slept, and as she slept sparrow shoved them from the nest, and they broke upon the ground though Bluebird slept on.

Sparrow, wretched thing brown and black, woke bluebird, told her of his sins. They cried together for what sparrow had. “I forgive you,” said blue bluebird. “For that is the way of sparrows.” She sang never more, for she was in love,

and no star changed.

An October

2007-12-04T23:36:00.001-08:00

The cool cool air swept steadily across the sparsely peopled lawn, the low low sun casting such shades to shelter the reclining entirety. The air was filled with bells, ringing by the trees, but quiet calm pervaded the scene.

I should have written. I wanted to. These words ring inadequate, always and always will be, I should have written then. But the moment felt damn perfect. I didn't want to diminish it with activity.

The Oops

2007-12-04T23:30:00.000-08:00

The Oops crawls ‘round
Inside your ear
And when you sleep
Climbs in your bed

It paints with night
The things you fear
Along the walls
Inside your head

The Oops records
With every tear
A journal kept
Of things you said

Don’t go to sleep
It’s always here
Oops! Look at that
You woke up dead

A goodbye

2007-12-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

Softly as a glove on a cloud
Come by come by under that orange eye
As the heat goes to sleep
Tucked inside a shadow
Inside a shadow
The nick of silence
Stinging
Between us

Hot dry day
Hot dry heart
Glow of the lake’s reflection
Wetness of a warm breath
A word

And there is cold
Shadows
Solitude

Airlock

2007-11-16T21:10:00.000-08:00

I’m safe all alone
In my airlock
Nothing can get to me in here
I’ll boldly stay where no one’s stayed before
I can hear echoes
And scratching
But nobody I know makes a sound
I’ve got some rations and magazines
Nothing to do but wait here
In my airlock

Let’s go exploring
The final frontier
What the hell was I thinking, dad?
Maybe I should’ve just become a dentist
Now I’m afraid
It's standing outside
I’ve got a feeling in my gut
Wonder how long the air in here will last?
Keep on sending distress calls
From my airlock

I can hear it knocking
So I grab a cold beer
I’m surprised at how much porn the crew hid in here
Contraband sustains me
But the glass is still half empty
Someone get me out
Someone get me out
Of here

I’m not going to make it
Can’t say it’s a shock
It’s sitting by the door and waiting
Now the scratching is coming from the inside
Single white female
Desperately Seeking Savior
When have those ads ever worked?
Might as well face it: I’m a goner now
And I won’t be alone for long
In this airlock

I can feel it kicking
Now the time’s at hand
The pain has become more than I can stand
First I see my spacesuit stain
Then I feel its exposed brain
Something’s getting out
Something’s getting out
Of me

Single Green Xenomorph
To the male outside the door:
Saw you outside the door and thought you looked cute
Why don’t you enter the passcode and step inside?
What are your hobbies?
Right now I could eat a horse
Maybe you could call me sometime
I’ve got nothing but time on my pincers now
My turn-offs include
This airlock

7 Spontaneous Free-Form Meditations Composed on the Batman Villain Mister Freeze

2007-11-07T21:22:00.001-08:00

1. We can’t all be Frank Gorshin; that’s a goddam fact of science.

2. See, if I were Mister Freeze I’d just join the Russian mob. There’s no need to complicate a need for freezing cold; just go where the cold is and be a normal killer.

Maybe I should say, “if I was Mister Freeze.”

No…No, I shouldn’t…Were is good.

3. Walking around with a retro spaceman bubble on your head you know you’re doomed before you’ve begun, because when you tell your henchman to tend to the laser array all they ever hear is “Wom wom wom wom womwomwommmmwommmm.”

4. Mister Freeze should ride a polar bear everywhere he goes. There’s no reason for this other than the obvious reason of dude that is awesome.

5. How fast do you walk inside that big ol’ suit of yours? It has to slow you down. Does it bother you to know your boys probably died long ago? Oh, boys means balls.

6. What you have to consider is that your dead-ass wife wouldn’t want to come back, knowing what you are deep down inside. If you can become that and you honestly believe in your heart you’re murdering and stealing in her name I imagine she’d probably throw her recently unfrozen ass in front of a bus. Would you freeze her again? I bet you would, but, then, there’s little chance of an imminent cure for being under a bus.

7. I thought you were awesome in The Picture of Dorian Gray but you haven’t done well running California.

Spill Your Guts You Dirty Jackal

2007-11-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

I know you know much more than you let on. You might as well come clean and save yourself. One day I’m going to know what you know, see, and then, my friend, your ass belongs to me.

It’s not even a secret. The things I’m looking for never are. Yet still, you filthy rat, you sit and try my blessed patience looking solemn and repentant. Holy God you make me sick.

I’m going to find out one day so you might just speak up now, save all of us some trouble, and put this thing to bed. One day I’ll find out what it’s like to get out of this room and I’ll see the things you see inside your head.

It’s not a lot I’m asking, I just want to know some stuff about the way the world looks when you've finally seen enough.

Weogufka Is

2007-11-07T19:36:00.000-08:00

Just a word really
So much
Happens in Weogufka, though
You wouldn’t think so
Such a funny word
Weogufka, though
People live there
As it happens

All the same
Abandoned
Little houses
The kind where kudzu breaks
Down the walls and
Grows up
All the holes
Abandoned
Little store
Fronts facing
Each other
Selling things they never actually sold

Weogufka Weogufka
Say it loud
Spell it carefully,
Though

Things like
A matted old hairbrush
Crawling thirty-seven miles
To the border
Vibrating the ground like
A tiny tank
Full of brown
Unnoticed in streets
Nobody ever actually strolls
In you know where

When nowhere
Is full of lots of nothing
Weogufka is

Mister Love-Me-Some-Pudding

2007-11-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

MLMSP shows up
At five fifty three
And, finishing
His fruit cup,
Goes fishing
For compliments
So to speak

Incidentally, I would rather like some delicious pudding
If someone has
Any they don’t need

He keeps up
This nonsense
Mister Love-Me-Some-Pudding
Sharing
Only his greed
So to speak

7 Spontaneous Free-Form Meditations Composed on the Film Jurassic Park

2007-10-27T23:39:00.000-07:00

1. How hilarious that this is what they think hacking is? This is the danger of cloning, the promise of DNA technologies? Anachronistically speaking they could only date this movie more with an overweight actor stuffed into a rubber robot suit stumbling and colliding with the set, warning the Hu-Mans of approaching dangers and struggling to understand what we call “Love.”

2. AAH! A MOTHERFUCKING VELOCIRAPTOR IS MOTHERFUCKING EATING ME! HOW THE FUCK CAN THIS BE FUCKING HAPPENING? WHAT A FUCKING UNEXPECTED CIRCUMSTANCE! I’M IN MOTHERFUCKING AGONY, MOTHERFUCKER!

3. Listening to Jeff Goldblum is like listening to a drunk guy in a bar explain the rules to scrabble, only the bar is philosophy 101 and the drunk guy spits acid. Wait, wrong movie.

4. I must have seen this movie a couple-dozen times and the thing I keep coming back to is damn they must have torn through the amber to find mosquitoes that even had dino DNA, and different dinos’ DNA, and enough that they could work with it, and where did all that amber go? Did they just sell it in the gift shop?

5. How does a guy whose response to a dinosaur being right fucking there is playing fetch get put in charge of security? Did he blow the old guy during the interview?

6. The fundamental flaw in Jurassic Park is not a scientific or logical one but one of timing; if they had beat Terminator 2 to the box office they would have gotten Best Picture.

7. If these guys wanted a theme park the entire world would come and see…honestly, guys, how hard would it have been to get your hands on some DNA from Marilyn Monroe? Or, hell, just repopulate the buffalo. All the money and imagination in the world and the best way you can think of to improve the world is put the most dangerous monsters that ever existed in all of time en masse in the middle of the Atlantic and then drive families of t-shirt people out for a weekend getaway? I’m glad the dinosaurs ate you.

Two haikus

2007-10-27T19:48:00.000-07:00

Where did you come from?
You surprise me, chickadee.
Pleasure to meet you.

Rivers in your eyes
Pure and clear washing o'er me
Run deep as our heart

the color blue talks to God and goes crazy

2007-10-27T19:05:00.000-07:00

Nobody can see me: this is what I know so far.

No two people can ever see me the same, so we cannot be entirely certain that I do, in fact, exist, lending credence to my possibly not existing at all, frightening in prospect, prospectively horrifying in practice, meaning as it does the uncertainty of objectivism

For if, as posed, none can perceive me I stand neither observed nor measured nor repeated and only posited, a shorthand for an abstract to which can only be applied additional abstracts and subtracts by degrees credible substantiation of existence for believing while not seeing can’t justify the expense of mental energy sustaining a notion only learnable as, itself, a notion

As I go-go so goes physics for if substantiation or transubstantiation are, similarly ascertained, touted as absolutes distinct categories for concepts disintegrate, soldiers can be beggars, tinkers poor, rich men thieves, Marley was dead to begin yet someone’s knockin’ at the door, somebody’s ringin’ a bell, someone stands at the heart and knocks, open the door and let Him in

Open all the doors

Open no doors, sitting and waiting until the tiger goes to sleep and the lady wanders off and the whole court have decided to go play badminton or carol, it’s a good way to survive but no way to live, alternatively walking through all the doors, traveling every different road and walking through every wood, fun-house mirrors reflecting everything so many times you disappear into worlds of yourself and of other things and then there’s the ones that distort things so you’re tall or fat and if all you can see is yourself how can one be certain there is anything else outside of himself, and if even perceptions of self are so thusly skewed how anybody can be sure of that is a mystery…

So goes reality if so goes perception because it becomes a Möbius matryoshka, inside God is the universe, inside there’s the world, inside there’s man, inside is the mind, inside is God is the universe is the world is man is mind is God (damned foreigners are always starting stuff like this) and it keeps getting deeper or bigger and one can’t tell which for if observing changes phenomena implicitly thinking changes additionally and after qualifying every absolute they’re only possibilities and it might as well be turtles all the way down

Paradoxically I think, therefore I am, which raises new problems but that momentarily aside proving the existence of God disproves God and if man on any level creates God he am not either, ergo these thoughts have got to come from somewhere and, sure, logically physical objects should be able to exist in a vacuum but surely that’s a point of faith, too, if even mathematics and physics are rules borne of perception, and can be changed, because learning is the act of changing itself

For instance, as an argument, if thought is but chemistry and electricity that’s fine, but that’s what the universe is, too, so for that matter the Big Bang could still be going on and every thought and experience merely singular flashes of arcing energy across the nebulous nimbus of destructive creation, starting as this philosophy does with change from something to something, energy to matter to energy to other kind of energy, or deeper still inside the doll the sum of existence, perception, and the vacuum could be but one flash within the vacuum (within the flash) meaning there was only one perspective or, quite possibly, that this astronomical thought is every thought and every perspective which could ever be which sounds an awful lot like omniscience and an awfully awful lot like how many describes God, meaning that God might not exist but also that man might not exist or that they are the same thing in the vacuum, just a flash or a series of flashes in the explosion, a gaseous cosmic burning brain that is the only thing that exists which sounds like how some men describe God, too, and this is where man starts getting ideas of killing other men because there may not be any point or they themselves may be the point or even God might be the point but that gets back to differing perceptions of God, and maybe that’s the only thing that matters, which certainly would make it worth killing for but I don’t believe that, because more than I even believe in myself I believe in believing in myself almost by definition since I am, in fact, abstract, and perhaps on the other side of the madness lies sanity in the same way man resides in the universe resides in man but the only way to be sure is to open every door because, sure, one should always beware blasphemy but believing is neither seeing nor accepting sight unseen, believing means looking…Don’t you think?

“I’ve always tried not to think about it…”

Fenton

2007-10-27T18:07:00.000-07:00

I find a purple sash lying in the street one day and give it a home in my pocket. Neither beautiful nor expensive it had once been a minor element of ornamentation and presently resided as a fist-sized flaxen tumor wadded up in the right of my trousers, drawing second glances from anybody who bothered to glance at me at all.

There’s a café I like to frequent because they serve this little coffee there with onion in it and I’m assured that’s all the rage somewhere overseas though attempts to come to a more specific conclusion have only produced an eventual elaborate confusion on my part regarding the subject of geopolitics, reasonably assured though I am that Fenton does not border Greenland and is for that matter mostly made up. Every time my check comes I find myself charged for water I did not order that is brought out to me compliments of the house. Every time I point out that’s not what compliment means I get yelled at in Fentonese.

Today I’m wrapping this purple sash around my head when he comes because I’ll be damned if I’m letting him get the last word.

Stony

2007-10-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

Upon his church, perusing a brochure
A gargoyle made out his retirement plan.
Jamaican cruise, or Andes hiking tour,
Or lazing in the hot springs of Japan?
“I’ve done my duty like an honest man-
Like-cold-cast piece of statuary, right?
Therefore, I’ll treat myself the best I can
And get away to some exotic site.”
Where, though, to while away the lonely night
Where one need not stay lonely very long?
And suddenly the answer, like a light:
“I’ll learn to surf and buy myself a thong!”

The gargoyle said, “Brother, this beach feels good
Although not as good as I thought it would.”

compostmodermis

2007-10-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

This is a story of love about a rat and Osiris, god of death.
They met in denial
And shared a meal
And a cab
They watched many a major motion picture together
Sharing popcorn

Hello this is Osiris
This is rat
Leave a message after the squeak
SQUEAK

Dude, Osiris,
It’s Odin
Congrats on the engagement, yo

Dearly beloved,
We make now a covenant
Of eternity
For better or for worse

Naturally if you’re spending all eternity it’s going to end up turning to worse

Ring around the rosies
Pocket full of posies
Ashes to ashes
We all fall down the rabbit
Whole

Eventually the rat began to drink

Dancing Coca-Cola Can

2007-10-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

Dancing Coca-Cola Can
Your shades are most becoming
The little way you shake the ass
You don’t have is impressive
(Seriously, I’m jealous)

You never judge me
For songs I cannot sing
Or play, and only smile
(I think you’re smiling)
And nod or bang your (head?)

A Second Verse

2007-10-16T00:04:00.000-07:00

Celebrate a song
Come calling cuckoo cuckoo
In harmony with water drops
On crystal Monarch wings
Here come the instant intimates
The doors flung open wide