Baker's Dozen

I.
Thirteen
non-surprises
accumulated
over a weekend.
(regarding a life)

II.

When I was younger,
sitting in the back seat
of a station wagon with no
air-conditioning,
like other bored children
I would count the birds in the sky,
taking special notice of red-winged blackbirds.

I do not know why I found them
interesting.
There was something ominous
about the way they
wore those bloody patches
like a banner,
something different and dangerous,
a quirk that set them,
like me,
quite separate from
all the others darkening the sky.

III.

There is something perverse
about taking photographs in a zoo.
Even those not enclosed by bars
are trapped by the existence of
these terrible prisons.
When you see the animals in chains
it reminds you of your own life,
your father and mother and lover
and cage.

IV.

When my father was stationed in Korea
(not for the War, he is not exceptionally old)
the men in his squad would be angry
at him in the mornings.
He would sit with a coffee cup
cradled in his hands to keep them warm,
and hunch over it to smell the rich aroma of
general issue brew
until it became cold.
He would dump it out and grab another cup.
He did not like the taste.

When they had target practice
the peasants would swoop
beneath their feet
in search of casings,
and many times would catch them before
the spent cartridges hit the ground;
on occasion branding grasping hands
with five point five six
millimeter
brass.

V.

Those with blood
eternally stained
to fingertips
tell the same tired stories
of their torment.
They cannot be believed.
Gods do not feel sorrow
for those they murder.

VI.

Left alone,
a maddened king on an ancient throne
whispers orders to phantom legions.
He sends them to their doom
and they do not blink nor deign to shed a tear.
They are not the first to die.

A regal voice swells like a tsunami
and with four words prepares
a missive of death.
“I require a priest.”
You must appreciate that
certain men
do not smile upon being told
that desires are impossible.

The gate to his palace sports
a round dozen sun-bleached skulls,
all of them, in death, declaring their treason.

VII.

It was as though
he had stared into a flame
and seen instead the future.
It whispered in his ear, “I think you
will not like
the places you must go
if you
intend on achieving your aims.”

VIII.

Directly outside of the door
we have a table with
two chairs
an ashtray
two bottles of lighter fluid
a candle (rose)
and a chess board.

The tablecloth hangs
nearly to the ground.

When it storms
the tablecloth’s slack
is whipped up
on top of the table.

When the wind comes
down
again
the cloth flips down
and frequently
causes the chess pieces
(they are fashioned in glass)
to fall.

Most of the time a chip
or two
presents:
the crown of the queen,
the neck of a knight,
or perhaps a small theft from the
dejected feet of a pawn.

We put them back the same way
every time.

IX.

When I was six,
I had read what the Mormons
call “The Standard Works”
and was filled with what was
to become a life-long contempt
for the indignities
forced upon me.

My incarceration
did allow
the potential
for sarcasm
that entertains me
to this day.

My mother was indulging,
as she sometimes did in those days,
in a particular religious zealotry:
she had decided that playing cards
were sinful in nature and so
they were confiscated,
and either hidden away
or destroyed.
I do not know which.

I am particularly fond of
deviled eggs. In certain
states I have been known
to eat a dozen or two.

I was furious about
not having any right
to personal integrity.

I wrote a little speech
about how it didn’t
promote
righteous values
to have such a delicious food
with such an infernal name.
Pursuant to this,
I proposed a change to
“heavenly eggs”
and to my shock and surprise
my mother actually
changed the name
of the recipe in the cookbook.

One of my favorite ladies
at church
did the same.

I do not know if their books
are still around
but I’m pretty sure that they
never knew
that I wasn’t being serious.

X.

I would say that I was exhausted
but it wouldn’t be what I meant…

It’s like listening to “Femme Fatale”
when you’re coming down from mushrooms,
Nico’s voice totally full,
magnificently haunting,
taunting and tantalizing.
You lay your head down and close your eyes
and float for a little while,
lighter than you have been in ages,
as if the world had fallen
in the coils of the trees
and left you alone.

XI.

I make mistakes expressing myself
because I’m constitutionally limited to superlatives.
I’m terrible at nuance or subtlety or tact.
I write you cryptic messages
because they’re pretty close
to these thoughts firing
aimlessly in my head.
In me there is an element
of fantasy,
a suitcase of nothing at all.

XII.

I had bought a bottle of whiskey
that had been infused with honey.
The labeling was yellow
and I thought that I’d never seen
a yellow whiskey label before,
at least not one that I remembered.

We drank it out of glasses with ice
and water to cancel out some of the sweetness.
Christ, you should have seen her hand spun
around that glass, so cold and forbidding,
so far away.

Even diluted with water,
it looked gold like her breath in the morning
and when her lips parted
you could almost taste
the labor of the bees.

XIII.

When watching trains go by,
their tracks an endless
premeditated division of the land,
I think of tunnels
that Nobel dug
and how odd it would be
to stand on the end of one
and wait for a train
then jump
onto a boxcar’s roof
and roll a little joint
and ride out in that open air
until the sun hits the horizon.

Soliloquy for a Muse

I.

I’ve spent my life being crazy
for women that I rarely see.
It’s not normal, but I like it more
when no one shows up at my door

to remind me of songs I cannot sing,
the sorrow breathing in everything,
and the stupidity of my ambition.
There’s a subtle hint of rapturous friction

in the stories that the people tell
of all those separated belles.
It’s nothing that is not assumed
so I shut myself into a room

and smile at my empty walls.
I’ve turned them into waterfalls
when searching for a holy place;
or clawing toward the cold embrace

of vodka from a corner store.
It makes life less of a chore
when one can murder ticking time
with large bottles of cheap red wine-

the kind that whiskey lovers drink
before they lurch towards a sink,
and sometimes reject mysteries
that cause our loves and hopes to freeze.

II.

Shall I tell you who it is I mean?
I will paint for you this maudlin scene,
though in truth if I had a choice
I’d run far from her feathered voice.

I will not ever touch her curves
or know the way that her mind swerves
when she wakes, hung over, on a couch.
I like to think that she would shout

across a darkened room for me
to bring her something, anything,
to alleviate the painful thud
of poison swimming in her lungs.

I tell her, “Love, please do not die.”
She laughs at me and asks me why
she’d want to be in such a state
if death would not let her create

a place that’s free from all the pain
that twists itself into our names.
I say that what she says makes sense,
but it makes me want to take a rinse

in chemicals that kill the blood
and leave none alive after the flood.
There’s no response, and then I know
that she is not here to make time slow.

III.

My friend says these girls all sound the same.
He thinks I give One different names
to foil meeting anyone
who cares for what I have become.

I pop my middle finger’s joint
and think that he may have a point.
I could tell you her identity
if I was lacking subtlety,

how her soul, like Icarus, is free,
and our minds entwined like growing reeds,
but telling would take too much time
and requires a story that isn’t mine.

All I will say is who she is
and that will come right after this.

She’s a fading wisp who must not be kissed,
the reason the devil is an optimist.

Mortals

When emerging from chlorinated water,
it is like kissing lambs before their slaughter.
We perceive their childlike innocence
to be a vile arrogance
and feel no shame for killing fiends
so we can buy some diamond rings.
Is it better, then, to taste the soft
hold of air, or else to cough
our lives out from under shoals
(that with time will press us into coals
for distant descendants to cruelly burn)
and make the sunset our eternal urn?
Should we leave womb-like oblivion
and feel the world like a burning gun?

Oil Spill Blues

They were on an oil rig out there in the blue,
By now you know what it’s gonna do.
Gonna blow up.
One bright fire.
Eleven men dyin’.

Now we’ve heard a lot since way back then,
They told us that the rig was gone with that wind.
Don’t you worry.
No spilling.
Only a fireball.

Well it turned out that these things may not be true,
Someone may have been pushing wool onto you.
Oh, he’s a rich man.
Vested interests.
Wife’s a model.

Some people are saying that their lives are gone,
That they turned to ash under that April sun.
Must be socialists.
Goldbrickers.
Lazy bastards.

Some people are quaking in their rage,
And the President wants them off of that front page.
Says he’s trying.
Folks are accountable.
Under control.

Obama’s looking for an ass to kick
And I wonder when he’s gonna find it.
With both his pistols.
Those revolvers.
New sheriff.
Bad motherfucker.

I tell you, I’ve been called lots of things,
But I’m liberal if I care about those oiled wings.
Means I’m accepting.
Oh I doubt them.
But I’ll take it.

You know that in a decade it will all be fine,
You can invite me to New Orleans down the line.
It’s a party.
No long lines.
Kind bartenders.

Wal-Mart Blues

Was walking in a store searching for things,
Needed face paint, a sandwich, and some batteries.
Four of us walkin’.
Checking out women.
All those blue jeans.

We found everything we’d driven there for.
I was telling jokes and feeling like an apple core.
All used up.
No sign of the worm.
Disenchanted.

So I had an idea and I puffed up my chest
And walked up to a lady in a big red vest.
Said I need directions.
Need a product.
Can’t find it.

And her pretty face lit up and she gave me a smile,
Then gave a glance to those friends of mine in the aisle.
Said that’s my job.
What I’m here for.
Let’s see what you need.

I said I don’t know if you’ve got it here,
I want to give our lives a big old mirror.
Looking for ethics.
Eugene Debs.
Paul Farmer.

And you should have seen the look on her face
As she looked all around our concrete maze.
Don’t have those here.
Too expensive.
Most don’t want ‘em.
So sorry.

Water Notice Blues

Got a letter in the mail just the other day,
It detailed corruption in our water lines.
Pathogens had invaded.
Foreign bacteria.
They were coliform.

Well we didn’t read the whole damn thing,
Just lit up a bowl and put a pot on the stove.
Filled it with water.
Ready to boil.
Gotta get clean.

Then we read the rest, and wouldn’t you know,
They tested it again and nothing was wrong.
Got the water in a wine bottle.
Four liters.
Carlo Rossi.

It sits in a fridge that is inches from bare,
Cold above the compartment made for many uses.
Poor people keep lettuce.
Rich people keep lobster.
We have red apples.
I don’t eat ‘em.

Yeah, I’ll drink a bit of beer, but not too much.
My friends tell me that I need a different crutch.
Time released pills.
Plant matter.
A pretty girl.
Maybe batteries.

I thought that you pronounced the "t"

A man was sunning in the sea.
He took a life that wasn’t free,
but he wasn’t really sorry, though he died.

I thought that he was just like me.
I thought his eyes like mine did gleam.
It was years before I could pronounce his name.

I heard his voice in summers there,
his arguments beyond compare
as I walked in squares and slashed up blades of grass.

I read it inside of Bibles, too,
on Sunday mornings in a room
where I was forced to waste away my day.

A lover asked me long ago
about the title, did I know
the meaning hidden in those foreign words?

I told her that I was unsure,
but I thought the subject was a cure
for the plagues that drain us on each passing day.

It may have been the man he killed,
or monstrous sounds from windowsills,
and some people think the answer is a god

or the mother he had never known,
or the woman's hopes from which he’d flown,
or the way that he had always felt alone;

But l’etranger, it is you and I
and we find out after we die
that there really wasn’t any other thing.