warm rain brings centipedes

i stand beneath my
live oak

leaves, branches
heavy with warm rain
as i move in and out
trough them, among them
smashing my cigarette;
we've survived another
winter

now together
we bear the
burden
of
satisfying
the unfulfilled

walking up the
concrete
i hear the
centipedes
crushing
popping beneath
my feet

i hate them

on a good day
i pick fifteen
up from
my floor

i disagree as
i crush and
flush them
but the
thought of them
crawling in my
mouth and ears
overrides
the ego behind
my ideals
so this is the
life now

shoreside and midnight

ahhhh, that bitch blows
hard here again
that angry Nor'east wind

sending hundreds of
women and men
scurrying to pile sand
all along highway 12
like winter's residents
pile mid-western snow

winter is here to
rip apart again, rebuild
for spring, and nourish
this home so thin

thunderous crashes
where barrels would break
that beautiful glass crash
replaced by her roar
above traffic
above television
above reason
and all else

this is the life
of the land we chose
soon to be tales
of before the sea rose.

blue wild angels (01/08/2013)

well,
there it be.
laying by the street that
old and young
christmas tree

county pickup was yesterday

but i just drug it out,
figuring
some local late-
winter dune builder will
stop and throw it in his
truck.

or, it may burst into
flames of blue wild angels.

it grew seven years to
warm the hearts of
one small family and
guests for about a month.

pre-old Christmas Dream (01/07/13)early.

what a good and
ironic day
to have awakened

i turned in early
after giving up
on the natural path
thank you sleep aid
eight, maybe ten Klonopin,
(i stopped counting)
but i wanted it all
to shut up

i remember waking
around one and fifteen
-ay em
and walking outside
in inappropriate dress
and insufficient shoe
a cigarette, fast
and a swig of Coke
(this i can varify)
also
Holley and the babe
switched to the couch
as in my stupor for
the commode i kicked
the kiddie gate left
in the wrong spot.
(also varifyable)

i asked her to come back,
she assured me she was not
mad
just coughing
i returned to bed
sure that i would not sleep again


four hours later
i could swear i was awake again, still
and through the slit in the curtain
i could make out the shadow
of an S.U.V. parking
near my house
so i fumbled for the shoes and the
pants again
and a flashlight and made
for the encounter
(also sure of a buzzsaw in a neighbors yard)
i endeavored to yell and scream
the buzzsaw vanished but the
man was in my side yard
dis-assembling lawn mowers for scrap
we talked as everything changed
i told him my father in law does the
same.
he left. then i woke up
for real, looking for the
flashlight, and out of the
window
as my wife and girls slept
on that couch...in a daze
standing near the Christmas Tree
in the darkness
i wondered if any of this was real
that vision
once fading, i realized all but
my stumble to the
living
room
in
old
shorts
was
dream.
i remember getting out of my room was a
swirling of colors
all hallucination
i knw not up nor down
could not find the door yet
i stood among my family
them asleep and me the idiot.

i crept back into bed
and snuck in, and slept
in real time again, this
i can now confirm.

today is a wonderful morning to
have reached.

"all i want for my birthday is what you all want"

"thirty one years ago,
tomorrow...
as i had been asking for coffee
as a child my
dad
walked into my bedroom
as i woke, sat a cup
of coffee with sugar and milk
on my bed side table
and said "happy birthday"

i usually get a stomach ache when i drink it;
the acid ya know?

but lately i have been drinking more,
here's to you dad,
the best birthday ever,
i was a man, and
twelve."

place i've been before

there were so many visuals,
some have got to make sense
there was a red room, a green room
and others of many colors
some were doors which led to more doors
seeming at first like dwelling quarters
but leading into brothels and opium dens
there...in this dream, in a
place i've been before.

it was like a small city

from the outside the buildings
looked like fast food chain stores
but no lights were on,
no children on playthings
and the windows were purple black
reflective tint like secret service
two way glass
names i cannot recall that mocked
mcdonaldland and kentucky eff sea

i drove up in a ninety eight
with fake gauges and a steering wheel
that fell apart like handle bars
(it made the driving away hard)
there were a couple of friends there
who i did not know, and her
as another friend
and then her girlfriend
there were also the players

they lived there all the time
they ran the boat
but they
appeared as janitorial workers that
pimped the girls there on the weekends
it was only open on the weekends
rest of the week it just existed as
a vacant and false city block
in the middle of some warehouse district
whorehouse fit for demolition
in one of many junkies' dreams

the players

at moments they were my friends
getting me drinks a sofa and a match
other times they would amuse themselves by
threatening me with shoulder launch
rockets to my mouth
laughing with them i
held back frantic tears as i
moved to slide into another room

inside
then outside

into another room where they offered me
whores
young women
one
was pale
blue pale with backward vampire teeth
crusty nipples chewed by babies and
swollen with puss
her bottom
half torn
she took me into her arms and offered her sex for
one hundred dollars
i asked her friend who looked more like me
more tired but sexy
she said no she was waiting for her boyfriend
she said she'd had no sex now for seven weeks
i offered her forty dollars to take a shower with me
and to let me eat her pussy
she said yes but then i toppled
fell into another room
her was ordering mexican food by telephone
for me for her and for her girlfriend
and for no one
who sat beside me
i listened as she said
some words i did not know in spanish
turning laughing eyes to me
then sealing the deal

the latino called to ask directions and i
canceled the order as
i would not be the center of
further games

returning from the front desk
the room was now a restaurant
people sitting motionless
dimly lit and paneling surrounded
my waitress ex lover
i told her the food is not coming
i told her there was no joke
i would not eat those chicken testicles
she screamed at me again
threw napkins balled to weapons grade
and i wished i had no sense to hear now
could only sit and watch her cry
there was so much more twisted in this
concrete garden scene, penis shaking contests
and a guy who i swear was
silent bob
only he could turn his tongue piercing
into a vagina
he took his dick in his hand and
went searching for a bottle
i left the room before the orgy came

next was a grand dining hall
valerie's mom had roasted thirty
maybe fifty different loaves of meat

it had snowed outside

getting ready for the party now
the players were gone and also
my friends
ex lovers had been frozen still and
we watched the rest of these as etchings
there was a snow plow speeder
that could carry us down the fluffy
road at rip speed
all was in place now
sitting on a porch swing
i could watch the frozen fallen
and falling
i felt just past alright
just warm enough
and a cool crisp breeze
like in one of those new style gum commercials
i had cooked pork barbecue for the guests to
eat while waiting

the party was to be tomorrow

a broken china thumb on an old rag doll (from a dream this morning)01/03/2013

i don’t remember much
such is the nature of

but starting my brother Patrick and i
were watching my parents’ house and
it was in elizabeth city and
we had friends over only
the few or two at first
which grew into a dozen
and disrespect
at first my two had a
little weed to share
and then the rest showed up
bringing babies and badness
tire tracks in the grass
sand on couches and floors
and I turned riotous

GET OUT !!! I screamed
ALL OF YOU, THIS IS NOT SOME
FRAT HOUSE
THIS IS MY MOTHER’S HOUSE NOW
GET THE FUCK OUT!!!
they were like roaches by then
here, then there, leaving returning as if
none of them got the message
or they just kept ignoring
and doing
my first two turned mean on me and
then the rest as they began to
leave and Patrick and I surveyed the damage;
doesn’t look too bad, I mean
we can clean it up and maybe
they won’t notice, mom and dad
and Patrick agreed but pointed
out a broken china thumb on an
old rag doll; mother’s favorite
and then rage set back in
some still there I repeated
GET THE FUCK OUT!
and as they left reluctantly;
breaking and cursing me
all I remember wanting was for them
to be gone, but they stole my
brother’s car, than a chase
while we petitioned the owners of the junk house
where they had taken it
they got into my ford, took the door panel
off and glued all the inner guts to the window
micturated upon it, I heard one of them
the taller one say “let’s see that window roll now”

pissed off I entered the garage
there were many of them there but a
few elders as well, and to my surprise
they rejected the violence of this small mob
towards me, ran them off like with brooms
smiled at me like the ones who freed
me from Jamaican cops
but a chase was on, my brother and me
them and more of them
one, leaving handed me a syringe
“is it clean?”, I asked “three quarters”
He smiled and replied, I set it on the arm of the couch

we went block to block
brother and I until we found cops
and shared the story, pointed them
out as they chased, punched some in the head
and eventually, surprisingly inevitably, we won

i don’t remember how. But as he and i
back home and cleaning up, assessed the
nature of things, would they know I asked
-mom and dad I meant, and Patrick said
as I said “it looks pretty good to me”
you can’t tell…and “no” he said you
can’t
except for this broken china thumb on this
old rag doll.
I awoke mad, without feeling rested, confused;
and this is all I can remember of that.

speech to the hypocrites on the hill

I stand before you today with a simple few truths to bring to light. I was asked to be invited in to your hallowed halls, but I see that we are welcome on your sidewalk instead, in your streets. And I want assure you that we are not here…to occupy……nor are we here…to drink tea. We are here to bear witness to the wrongdoings of greedy men and women, and the misleading of failure to lead the very people whom they were elected by, to support, and speak for, and not to take more of their money to give yourselves pay raises. I am here to carry on that dream that sick people tried to extinguish in Memphis TN, on that balcony, in front of room 306, in 1968,and I am here to remind all of those who had water hoses and dogs turned on them while marching for equal treatment under the laws of this nation, that they did not sacrifice in vain, they weren’t beaten and jailed for nothing.
I also find it a fitting metaphor that we should stand in the street while you sit in your House, wishing these pesky field workers would go away. There is an all too familiar separation in that picture, of former slaves being divided, and pit against one another over privilege, or the darkness of their skin. Yes, I say to you, divide and conquer, is still the rule of the day. We stand here representing the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the man, the woman whose job has been shipped to India or China, to give the CEO’s that lobby you for their own gains, and pad your pockets a chance to grow richer while refusing to budge on a little help for the poor. I will not go into details right now; I have come to serve notice. A whole generation has awakened, nations of people worldwide are standing up and telling their leaders “we have had enough, this is not good enough anymore, we refuse to be beasts of burden to the machines.”
And I proclaim that it is time to wake up the children of this nation. Many of us will not make in a lifetime what many of you up there on that Hill will make every year, even after retiring, yet we pay that salary, while you give us table scraps. We are not dogs, we are human beings! We ARE HUMANS DOING!!! Most of my fellow countrymen vote for one side of your body or the other, in hopes of that promise for a better life, yet nothing ever changes, no matter the party, all we see is gridlock and childish argument, false piety and false tears for we, your people. As I stand here today, none of that has changed.
I stand here today, among brothers and sisters, dreamers and drummers to beat the drums of change. My message is as simple as that of Jesus to the money changers; “GET OUT OF MY FATHER’S HOUSE, YOU HYPOCRITES”! I mean by Father, our founding fathers and presidents over the past five decade that warned against this kind of America, one in which the power of the corporation far supersedes that of the Congress, or The White House. I am here to proclaim to ALL Americans, no matter what your social status, color, creed, or sexual inclination, that a grievous injustice has befallen us while we slept in the darkness of blind trust in this type of so called leadership. I have come to bring into the light the fact that we do not, as so many have been taught to believe, live in a true democratic society anymore. We struggle to pick up crumbs in a corporate oligarchy, where the prices of everything that affects our everyday lives, and feed the most basic of our human needs, a society not governed by those elected to do so, but by the corporations which have bought those who we mistakenly trusted as honest and sincere when they said “there will be a change.” There has not been, my brothers and sisters any such change, as we have all come to understand so well.
You say that we are the leader of the free world, while our children go hungry, families homeless, and all the while the financial institutions which fund our Government refuse to give us loans, even after being bailed out by our tax money and soon reaping untold billions of dollars in bonuses, NO this cannot represent the hope for a brighter future for ANY American. Deregulation of the lending institutions, manipulation by a select few… of the worlds actual wealth, wagering on the future success or failure to profit from our losses by the Wall Street Kings, has all contributed to where we are today for a people. No money goes to education. There are many more empty houses and buildings than there are homeless families, and bankrupted small business owners. This MUST change, in order to re-establish a solid middle class, one which allowed my father to raise a family on a shipyard salary on, one which my grandfather fought for in Germany in World War Two, no, THEY created my America, your America, what people once called with pride, the greatest nation on earth, but no more.
In conclusion, I propose a new America, a new revolution, but without guns and bombs. I can see a vision of a nation where it’s military, and National Guardsmen earn their pay, not in the killing fields, but in devastated neighborhoods. I see the combination of empty homes and homeless, of empty buildings and new small business, and I not only see, but call for an END to the monopoly, the subsidizing, the tax loopholes and the shipping overseas of American jobs. As the great Dr. Martin Luther King said the night before he was brutally slain while in Memphis, to help 1300 garbage workers get their rights; “all we say to America, is be true to what you said on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions, maybe I could understand the denial of certain First Amendment privileges because they haven’t committed themselves to that over there, but somewhere I read, of the Freedom of assembly, somewhere I read, of the Freedom of speech, somewhere I read of the Freedom of press, somewhere I read, that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights!” And I say that in the last ten years, we have seen a stripping of those rights and a loss of basic freedoms, and a great and growing disparity between the haves and the have nots. This cannot lead America down a prosperous path for the future. We must unite, and petition these leaders, these plutocrats and corporate oligarchs who have sold our freedoms and this nation to the highest bidder. If necessary, we may have to pull them out of OUR House, and the White House, one by one like weeds from a garden, a beautiful garden that is we the people. Or surely, the deaths of every man, or woman, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers who have given the ultimate sacrifice while believing they were supporting true freedom, whether on the battle fields or in the streets of this nation, will have been in vain. That is my message, now, who will stand with me? Who will walk down from your high office, your Congressional seat and stand against this plot against the future of America? We are waiting, we are waiting, you promised us change, and we are waiting still!