shepard fairey



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gustav dore

our boys

death and burial

wm

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Is Everybody In?


spake the lizard king. I sure was. The doors slammed behind me.
An urn tumbled from an ancient pillar. A large black bird took wing.

Slowly easing myself along a low stone wall, with designs on
a sofa-like thing I’d spotted on the far side of the republic,

I tried not to think about how I was getting out. Crashing
sonic booms in the muffled distance. The ground beneath me

was gravelly, uneven, and now I could make out dim light
coming in here and there beneath the walls, which seemed to

circle a thirty foot wide depression, or pit. I couldn’t tell.
Other than that, nothing. More booming. Breathing:

close, beside me. A sense of terror took me, though
I made no move, nor did I even know what I feared.

It didn’t smell well, that much was certain, which was a call
to action. Preferring an uncertain future to the one right here,

I pitched myself headlong out into the dark interior,
and fell into the pit and died. You could say, I should have

stuck, no telling where I’d be now. Yeah, bubba.


Tolstoy Had More Patience Than Me


Hemingway more commitment. Einstein was
probably more gifted, in certain areas, and
Montgomery Clift originally did have a profile.
my contact with you is limited to this,
concealed within triplets of nonsense. The Queen
of York embarked one day, in June, with her
requisite entourage. There was fool King Philip,
I must see you tonight, I’m dying. Call me Zorro.
Call me Zarathustra. Call me Jimmy Jazz.


You Could Say That I Wasn’t Watching My Back


or you could say I just slowed down. Either way it’s the dust clapper
for this kid. Brimstone tickles my nose. And makes my eyes run.

The quickest way home is seldom the best. Nor is the longest to
envy. Not even the truest path has much to recommend it.

Weirdness and whimsy seem best to carry the day. In that vein,
I offer this, Pilgrim, a rest for your head at the end of the day,

a warm spot for your feet.


Commitment To A Cause


in the face of all that defiles it; sticking when
it’s easy to run. These are learned, painfully,
by shortfall. Harder still is giving in
in the right time.

Bricked into his skull was
the secret to surviving,
which died with him.


Meet Me In The Pumphouse, Molly


I feel an aubade coming on. Sestinas resist me
like the plague. I don’t know what it is.

Even the limit lines of the limerick escape me.
But to that I say this,

meet me in the pumphouse, Molly.

a lyric there takes wing, a bawdy and crude verse,
no worse than the first; and in the morning,

all throats will concur round the note:
Molly’s gone for a sailor, and the world is off cant,

our initials scarred into its floor.


Nature or Nurture


No one could decide. The best minds put their heads together.
The boy’s future looks grim. If he were to resort, as we predict,
to low practices and shady activity, if he consorts, with the
poor and malfeasant, no nurture would be obtained,
from the tit of a whore, they phrased indelicately. Rose,
stung to the quick, as it were, took a hike to Toledo, I grabbed
a rail and rode it out. Which took ten years or more. Rose
is a phone psychic now in Vegas. I’m a ball boy at Forest Lawn.
An actor, really. The sensitive sort.


A New Social Governance


were it to descend on our heads
would be cut up, diluted, and washed away
before having the first chance to
collect in our hearts
much less reach our laps.


Après Vespers


we lounged by the carp pool; reflections of her hair
fell across the surface sweeping darkness
willy-nilly. My main maintainers of mojo
shrieked an eerie chord, my brain screamed alert. At
that very moment a grand piano spectacularly
entered our dream, descending all in a rush.
Julliard took her. Then them.