Chacon Urbina: 5 Feb 1999
Greta Staubach revels in the fact
that nobody’s ever truthful
your excellency puts her out
for nerves it’s maybe a toothful

Gold
Orange
Black
Mumia Jamal Warner
before its tool
ate too much
someone just spelled “great”
enunciating motcher fotch

wapner got raped by koch
carson won’t tell his parents about leno since leno said it would make them mad
and funt part two
really
honestly
that should more than do

pier 39 has warf air
much so much akin to apes
kosovo
viets reel at stuttering ricochets
fumbling toward legitimate epithets

last may I spent nearly nineteen days
on lake erie
making sense
people tend to nod
when you push steel against their skulls
while digging cornholes the size of holes in all the pockets I’ve ever known
and taking it with multiple grins

she grins
you grin
malcom lost his hood

lee, too, taught alcinder
to dream taut and be loose
flex muscles you never knew you had
like that industry catnip
bought by the dimebag

dreidels fall over like the corner store
still the more you get spun the more for sure you ask for more

be proud my son since you are the bleedin’est
all’s I can say is two shots for the hedonist

NBA: 12 Feb 1999
Punk plaintiff recovered from an accident with a bede
Had that forlorn expression on his face
Like a cat that got
Picked on by a magpie
Makes you wonder why Bob Saget caught my eye
Who used to clock in at ten
Then took the time to tempt me with overtime (even though it was time and a half)
Though with J G Wentworth
You have to admit
Beat the hell out of three-fifths
Back before the time when
the cotton gin
was covered wuth skin

China Beotch: 15 Feb 1999
Earmuffs
innocence
varsity
covers your ears
the tried schoolboy bribed into being alive
shake your head
a broken pendulum
so ticked you can’t talk
you shake your head like doubt
that almost every day you see that time runs out
the taller the clock the slower the climb
and the less often you notice it chime
and the less pace
you feel well with one dollar bill
still once in a while you let it spill
ripping off everybody you know
everybody but michael vaugn lorenzo snow
with crap dating back to prostitutes
that even before you score with whores you shoot
and from mondaylighting one you recruit purple roots
you swing your face like discards
to things you’ve seen on front yards
the fancy friends of pink flamingos
from the run
the jackrabbit jurisdiction
from the one
from which malpractice makes everybody rich
you feel somewhat apey
from much needed and unnecessary therapy
you hit the deck like discards
you look to dad for advice
like backyards it starts to look nice
you scratch your head
and shoulder the silver cloud with the smokestack-colored lining
and speculate on the price

Draper: 15 Sep 1998
Can a man in charge
trust children to claim
as sad as acting against
fences let get small
to crucify to death
Elizabeth
the goodiest Proctor of all

Gary Gus: 19 Oct 1998
As of late
Honey drips get ripped
Dreidels slip
From greased-up Rabbi
Took in his square hip

Complacent blood donors campaigning
Without goals
Anemic rage pales
Hey. They took a break

Roanoke is eleven miles downtown
You’re all bloody clowns
Terry told me to take a toke
So I took trouble to frown
Clara used up her clay all day like a child
She put me down

What doesn’t happen: 9 Mar 1999
guy on ship
falls in water
hits bottom
mermaids
kiss
wake up

Posterized: 6 Apr 1999
These guys are lame because I took the smart route and said, “Did he face the hall?” and then some idiot said “Muslims have to face east,” leaving me thinking, “come on idiot.”

Ron Jax: 9 Mar 1999
farting and not farting are the two best things

Girlgun: 12 Oct 1998
Mezzosoprano
Mary Donoley
Is our best lecturer today
Flask for a heart
Tarnished something like
That start ends
Whatdoyaknow we’re forever friends.

haikfour: 16 Mar 1999
two neighbor fireflies
sneaking half-life LCD
take corpse position

jxf: 10 Sep 1998
greg the gorilla
cocked back his head
and frowned

Catscratch: 17 Jul 1998
There’s wetback intruders
The throb that’s diluted
A sigh that ain’t no lie
An archer’s pulling back
Because today’s the last day of school

Lift Car: 27 Oct 1998
I cannot count the lights, they move too fast
It’s like glass rolling down the theatre aisle
And when I smile it’s mostly cause she smiled
I cannot count the lights, they move too fast

Merriwether shook his dunderhead
An emulsion from the sky into my eye
It’s been a while since shifting to and fro
And Merriwether shook his dunderhead

haiktwo: 15 Feb 1999
an oblong eggplant
surgical and eggshell steps
swallowed with water

Mousey brown Hair: 15 Feb 1999
Southpaw journalism
Maureen O’Boyle style
Judeo-Christian married into Celtic
Malpractice greed 100 speed
Stamped my hand like a double click
Buried in something like bratwurst
Cantaloupe coulda been misspelled
Sweetwater fool says he’s marketing drool
Left over lanolin
Taking on some Pan Am mannerisms
Seven hundred forty-eight days
Jordaches got stuck on a date rape
Micelli slid in safe
With juicy fruit behind his ear
Followed dolor down Dodge
Spent some cash on a door mat

Schlomo: 9 Mar 1999
I guran-damn-tee ya
Some days drip
Sort of like sap
I guaran-damn-tee ya
That

Oyster, the: 11 Feb 1999
I dropped a corsage
Met a nailman
He was the fall guy for the scapegoat for every American Jew
Picked up sixteen pennies from a pile
Got quite a lot in the slave trade
Up against the wall
Try but there will be no denial
Holding the key to the hand grenade
Shivering still standing tall
Ducking like derailment
Waiting like husbands
Grinning like Valsalvas

Rosha: 12 Feb 1999
there are moments
when you simply drop your hands
lossen your lips
stretch your neck
in the best way
rove among the reeds
avoid the thought
of being shellacked

Tetris: 8 Sep 1998
fat-asses
set down on the ground
made murky
by the line blurred
by visionless sugarplums
dancing til they’re dead

undone: 10 May 1999
I feel like I’m stranded on a grand island
Where it’s tropical and humid
As opposed to human—with a cold
Stuck between what’s right
And what is the highly effective nephew of a weatherman
And I realize things are messy when a guy with a black bag of trash spits it out like ash
He swam away like fat
I’m still leaning back
Basking in my 3
No, 2 minute of fame
My feet hurt
Walt Whitman’s words—lame

Untitled
I turn my head
And all my dog-ears disappear

That Day
Please remember mom
Over
Stove and sweat and slob
Said father gots the love for both
Shared bed with three that’s
All she wrote

Don’t forget a dragging day
Starts in July
Ends in May
Make a hasty cake
And sing
Happy Day
Give back a ring

Recall a star I saw that rose
And smiled
And heated daddy’s toes
Then shooting stars’ against the law
But not the One
That daddy saw

At 9 a.m. a yelping man
His timepiece taking back
Her hand
A clobbered cog
Gave up his pride
That day
My father died

Frequency
Fingertipper walk
Over them dead cold
The night when they’ve all
Gone home
A dungeon A bed
An unreal belly-ill quench
The voice soon catscratched
For the flick fingerslip
Quiet clear
Calmness
Pale strong
Fear
Is cold and dank and empty
And there
That at none’s notice
It will end
ALONE
With a capital
“When.”

Beetle
A day ago
I saw
In the glass
A rageless phantom
Driven like an ox
Not like self-help
But
Into de-tox

Untitled
Galvanized I’m ready to go
Exercise my greed
On unsuspecting postman
Disgruntled and freed

Pinecrest
a shadow-puppet curled
and roared aloud
a laugh
a speechless chord
infiltrating the barracks
destroying perfect posture
and calling upon
blossoms
   to rise
   to revolt

Mexican Boy
cockeyed
comfort breeze
    can freeze
but worse on my knees
is that she’s asleep in Harrison Ford
and with my life I’m bored
so I untie my belly
and unite my lips
and try and
sustain on
pale skinny hips

16/4
the Mayflower
in silent fog
was merely a prologue
a prologue

Untitled
Every once in a while a baseball glove looks
like a human heart

Marcus Hodge, Part II
I won’t remember
Bellows empty
Flames quenched over
A still warm ember
And can’t forget
To no more dance
On legs that
Shake and
Can’t
Nor gain my life
On broken limbs
Nor walk on only whims
I stand alone for
Strength and such
But on
My knees
I found my crutch

Courting Swab
The white-haired barker belts
Fremont Ford
My claustrophobic ears
Thank God they’re not the brain
Squashed into recollection
Stymied into insurrection
My hands drop like mushrooms
And spread like frowns

Time and a Half
right now
I’m pointing a pistol
at change
and demanding
commanding permission
to tug at the trigger
give way to tradition

All They Found Was Silver
I know a pest named
Habit
The shadow he casts
Looks like Apathy
And wherever he walks
He makes faculties stop
Like the deadman on the ocean floor
With the mop

Convictions
Treading old soil
Same dirt on my shoe
The back of my hand
Is a distant friend
In a manner of speaking
I am alive
In a kind of a lie
I cry “Thrive”
Been left
Behind
But brought along
That
Nothing Makes Me Strong
My convictions only prove me guilty
I’ve grown a foot or two
But nothing’s new.

Corners of My Mind
Cold days a bit much
For feet met by bars
Roads rubbered for scars
Boys in fours
Cars
Never desires left
Dwelling for time
Like vomit for wisdom
Was mine
Words are burdens
Held overhead
No chance of life
For the dead
Still time for a clock
Tall ticking slow
Auctioning seconds
For gold
In corpses on nylon lie
Mummies alive
To steamroll
To glow
To deny
Vivid and dark
Doors lock for a lark
Damp shade denying a stalk
My bowels ache
For this my life to make
That I hold the hands
Of the clock

Tully Rd.
Hornet nests in wrecking yards
Dead things still shimmer
Pot-heads won’t see
Fast and Round
Racquetballs biting the ground
The imminent hairlocks
In ambitious mouths
Raise rocked fueled
By guttural ecstasy
To clouds

On earth
Between
 beats
Between
 hearts
Seconds drawn out as
Banality starts
The man of the hours
Punches a clock
Somewhere
By a bridge you can bet
A ball drops

Untitled
A L O N E
L I V E S
O V E R T
N E R V E
E S T E R

The New Age Hairstyle Made of Bones
Blossom on a wilted
Wound-up Hill
Bumble bee-slapping speed
Unknown
The drones slip by
Calm loud calm and gone tones
Resurrected fly swatter
A melting member sliding without
And catching wind en route
Gaping and gorgeous pricked
And alive
Full circle momentum dies
Footfalls
Free and fast
Fly past and knock the grass
Smiles go
To my proud red flash
Knows little the man
His return is
In vain
Once the engine roars
We do it all again

Hailey Mills Wanted Dead or Alive
She’s feeding and white
Wait
Pale
Thin-skinned
She want’s a leather handbag
The radiated raisin
The cowhide bag
Alone with a phone
Acquaints
She’s dainty
With a captured sun
Lets Him nit-pick for the big one
Lets Her a promise
Biopsy benign
Just marks
“Go ahead.  It’s fine.”

Joe v. Ambidextrous
That notion when
The iron is hot
The beautiful amber show
This half yes
This half no

Skorick’s Yull
Emerald is greeting cards
in matter-of-factish simple
jump-ropes all strung out
with morals feathered
but still no hair
spooky
set for Life
it’s just one
warm
old-fashioned brainwash
then doused in substance
then spring like autumn
if the cash is there
but still no hair

ODOM
The road to Denver is
Contrived
Your head throbs all
The way
Phonebook names burn
And your stomach turns
So you wonder
If he learns

22 March
22 Marches in a row
with what to show

Digits
Of all the knuckles
That knock
In a night the work
Of the clock
Fell prey
A chest of burning
Treasure
The door arose
From tired
And the silent glowing
  squeak
Had little choice but to
Let her
speak
Of my foremost chance to see
Nature preempted
By ten year old
 Teeth
I speak
Fondly and in disbelief

Beer
My lovely Carl
so ruined and closed
and lipstick-stained
Donate your brain

Untitled
Venison
Overlooked by fat women
Lovers of cows

Kings Are Burning
I may as well stay awake
Forever
I’ve never gotten away with anything
And I’ve got a feeling
Than when I finally die
They’ll have to close my
Face
Eye by eye

Bloody Glove
Capable cat
Agile black
Towering fume
O’er the room

Going On
I want to harness
the limestained streets
so working the corner
I’m bashless and vain
as I wait for the train
I’d call it incognito
were it not for the fruitbasket
on my head
yet I feel esteem rise
from the cracks in the street
and to my left
my head drowns in exposure
and doubts
impede but cant nip
my joy buds
when the question dangles
“Would Ward Stradlater even try
and finish the Catcher in the Rye?”
and the answer pulls
my lips apart