Daily Archives: September 18, 2012

Imagined

There will be no room for Jesus
or Mohammed or any old messiah at all
in my afterlife.

I will have a God
in charge of tomatoes,
wind, and rain. That’s all.

We ghosts will govern ourselves
by the rules of ghostkind:
number one, pass through.

Number two, it is over
and now insignficant.
Number three, pass through.

Come sit, have these good tomatoes
with me, I’ll say to every ghost
passing through.  There will be many 

and God will provide. We will suck the fruits
dry, pick more, laugh at how the wind and rain
shape and reshape us.  Do it all again and again. 


Ukulele Fight Song

waiting for a table
in this restaurant
and watching an ant on the wall

can I make this more sing song

watching an ant
watching an ant
watching an ant on the wall
waiting on the ant to walk the whole wall
making bets with myself
if the ant walks the whole wall before we are called
I will take that ant to the table
I will take that ant to the table
I will take that ant to the table
how much could an ant possibly eat
a crumb or two
a crumb or two
a crumb

do you know how perfectly privileged we are
that we have to wait for a table
that in this town people can wait for a table
wait for a table full of food

that in this town the ant is suspect
for making his way on crumbs
making his way on crumbs
when elsewhere the ant would be a competitor
the ant would be a thief
the ant would be stealing from us

can I make this more singsong
how privileged we are
how singsong sing a song we are

what this song needs
is a ukulele
a ukulele would surely help this song
this song is hungry 
and it needs more ukulele

that ant is disgusting
and I crush him once I shake
my generosity off
once they call me for the table
once I get my feedbag on

I’m going to buy that ukulele
and once I know how to play
or maybe a little before that
I’ll sing a song for hunger and ants
a song with a ukulele
song with a ukulele
sing it at an open mike
sing this song
fight that hunger and fight that ant
sing this song


Me Angry

walk around angry it’s an angry world.
lovers ain’t got it.  actors ain’t got it.
warriors, real warrirors, ain’t angry.
it takes a special bag of skin to be angry right.

take a look at the guys they want us to be
all cool and when they kill they wipe their heads
and get a little pensive, say it’s just a job.
no, no, no.  we can be better than that.

we’ve got that iguana thing in our heads
and when we get mad we slip the noose of
mammalia and get scaly.  don’t even know
what comes outta my mouth then.  angry

is an amnesia, a pure brain wash.  if you got eyes
you wanna wash your brain all the time.  angry 
pretty planet and its illusions.  pretty people
shocked all the time by the chaos of plain old life.

walkabout angry, sing a song of angry at every turn,
they don’t see how effortless it is to just be this way
and how clean it feels to admit the anger at play
is who you are.  scream it out: angry.  this world

makes me angry.  those clothes make me angry.
your innocence makes me angry.  my cynicism
makes me angry. optimism makes me rage.
pessimism makes me kill.  I kill myself.  break myself

on it.  lizards of glass.  me the angry lizard. me in shards.  
me cut the foot of the planet in death.  me spitting at you.
me know you care not.  you want love.  me not the loving kind.
thank god there is a me as balance for a you.

 


Missing Nothing

Did I miss something?  Woke
to a mouth filmed in blood
and a rude stomach.  Woke
to swift stumbling to the bathroom
and pain, first dull then sharp.

Did I miss a mystery?  Some doctoring
seems in order, but I wonder
where the body went wrong
down some dark alley of nutrition or
worse, metastasizing into this material dread.

I suspect it’s always one molecule that does it
for each of us, entering us, changing us within
and starting to kill us. It may take years to finish.
We may miss that mystery’s beginning
but are always there at the end

with clues like iron blood
on the tongue as fatal secrets
begin to rail
against us
elsewhere inside.  There will be

more mornings like this,
and fewer mornings to come
than have come already.  It’s cold
in here, though it’s still summer
on the calendar and early on the clock.