432 miles to Manitoba/Hank's best girl

Hank's best girl

stronger than most of you
or me

across oceans and universe as
pixie borne through
hells and lifetimes more
than most alive

stronger than most of you or me
seen it, like i seen it
motorcycle slides head
knocked of in the
red veiled helmet
or alone when i ran
at seventeen in D.C.

flex your head
XXX

stronger than most of you
or me

the unyielding tide-
-the acrid piles of
nutmeg
sweet nightmare
that forces backs to
bleed on bricks

stronger than most of you or
me

the cigarette deaths
and steam soaked streets
the billion broke up
stars that scream;

wrap it in her hand's palm
now...
feed for the birds on
Avenue B

stronger than either you
or me

-if i could sit and
cook a story drown in
silence of the drunk's


but watching and dadding
and waiting for sinking
just hopeful wishes and
wishful hopes and some
blueberry muffins and
432 miles to Manitoba

media schrapnel

humans believe.

we/they believe
what is comfortable,
chicken soup, hot cocoa
and diaper ads

if a mouth on television,
on the interwebs
on speed
tells them
"the president is from Africa"
they believe it
-the congresswoman
was a witch
hey laugh and smoke pot and
sell it

a russian team shot down a friendly plane
over a war it
sounds favorable to friendly
defensive fire.
when a rocket blows up near a park
and hospital
they tell us the bad guys fell short
it wasn't from the same crew that has lost
43 humans to
the devil incarnate while
mowing down one thousand and
forty hellions, devils and kids
of that scum.

why do American Humans believe so little
about our figureheads and their intention
while believing
nothing from the black man
handcuffed, kicked and beaten
on his own couch
by white cops in a black neighborhood
???????

it's all on the news

who would your Jesus bomb?

“last night, for the first time I baked confections sprinkled with salt and grains” (three books)

we never know.

and worse for us that
thinking that we do.
-that is when the
iron falls…

i watch old friends grow
comfortable as cities
shrink to rough oil scene
-the quest recedes to
beach routine.

and my friends are sharp,
they cut to remind my
calm the place to find me,

beside Miss Morphine
lying now where the blade
no longer signifies
-where the air we
breathe is cancer.

speak to me in seven days
and I am told to go
or stay, seven steps
to heaven’s nay as
all this life I danced with
8…
and 8 will bring the answer
then, open the un-earthen gate
where news supplanted
by dancers.

“Pete, impale me now.”
it says…
the God inside the fox
and hound.

purple flower

it’s what I see
the concrete on fire
the streets of addiction
the holes in the colon
an ocean of glass
and volcanic, and manic
the power
depression
impression of mine;

held back by
broken bones
and wrenched neck
as I stop
and stoop
to pick and hand
her one small
purple flower
-my first baby
daughter.

while leaning against
it to
keep it behind me

hypodermic boulevard

juggling ice with
buttered hands
it’s how we
it’s what we do
because

in traffic, I
rode behind one slow
lamming through the
gnats like silent dull bangs
his tail to my
nose as he drives too slow

i lay back smoking it
and I forget for a second, the
rats and race and cracked dead
slate turtle shells and drift
away into the wisps of mallows seed
and
the one behind me makes me push.
rear view and double yellow left
and isn't that how we
do isn't that what we are
are?
Just hate and push the one
in front of us and hate and block
the one in back of us who would
but for some peering tasteless gas
lay waste and cancel
the one in front

and isn't that just what we do?
juggling butter in
frozen marshland
hands in wasteland
mind in chains
the continuing host for
the evolution of the viruses

juggling ice-brain waste caves
in spent sharp rigs, and birthday cake cans
and cigarettes.
hypodermic boulevard and the
late
late
shock./ the
setting sequined supper of
the sixth great extinction.

standing behind me; some thing
pushes me to push the
thing in front of me
and that is what a
human does to life.
what we do, we are.