It’s Never Tomorrow

My body is shaking, it feels like my skeleton is dancing underneath my skin. I’m not moving. I’m lying down. my hands at my side. my hands are now on my chest. My heart is beating like a machine gun. my bones grind. my hands are back at my side. I can’t fall asleep. I have to fall asleep. Maybe I won’t wake up, I hope I don’t wake up. My skeleton is hitting it hard, it wants out of this body. My hands are back on my chest. My heart is spraying and praying. I’m already on tomorrow. My dog rattles in the crate. My hands are back at my side. I want to turn over but I don’t want to start all over. Just lay here. Don’t move, ignore your heart, ignore your slam dancing bones. The sun is creeping through the dust covered blinds. The dog stirs. Birds sing. I’m making my body a million promises that this is the last time. It knows I’m lying, I know I’m lying. I’m back in tomorrow. I’m thinking about the first beer. My throat taste like bleach or what I imagine bleach would taste like. It’s dripping down the back of my throat. My whole body sweats. My bones are slowing, waltzing. I hear the morning calling. My hands are on my chest and my heart hates my hands. There is a mutual resentment going on in this bed. I’m licking my lips. I’m up. Looking for the baggies. There has to be residue. Something to tide me over. The bags are splayed across the table as if they’d been dealt by a blind man. There’s an ashtray mountain, a metropolis of beer bottles, a Cd cover, some rolled up bills blood stained, a pipe and a bag of weed. Nothing! I did this at 3 am. I’m in reverse again. There is nothing in here. I grab a bag and shove my tongue into it. Nothing! I cry but try to ignore the fact that I’m crying. It’s 6:35 am. I look away from the clock. I move to the fridge. I drink a beer. I drink another. I’m right sized. I’ve put my skeleton in it’s place. I have you for one more day, tomorrow is all yours, tomorrow you can run out on me. i don’t know who I’m talking to. My skull isn’t listening. I need to reload my heart. I pack a bowl. It burns the back of my throat. I snort. I can taste last nights guilt already. The sun is rioting outside. I pack another bowl and grab number three. I’m gonna need more beer. I smoke, I drink and admits it’s just another day. It’s never tomorrow.

Local Blood/Holy Dead


Illegal paraplegic parcels
Fell off the back of a calico truck
The cancerous rust around the wheel well
Prospered at it traveled with the cursive
Title of "American Nightmare"

The insecure exhaust dredged
Black memories from the
Flounder and blow fish that
Flopped in digression along
The shattered spine of a
Whaling village in-decline.

The Trans-Atlantic travels of
Sailor songs and burnt earth policy
Tourism drained the local blood that
Was born from heroes who were
Once whalers. There was a progression

From Chalices encrusted with blue claw
Blind eyes, brown tide teeth, homesick oars
Saturated with mutinous stories,
Acrobatic mysteries of the barn swallow,
Taxation without representation and a
Slow mutation that carried the local blood
Into the holy dead.

The corn and potato fields fell first, soulless
Speck houses spawned in the nightmares of
Farmers. The Whaler's Church was dismantled
And auctioned off. Scallops died and squandering
Seagulls screamed like grave robbers, perched
Atop wind beaten anchors which decorated
The salty dog burial grounds.

Flesh fell off the bodies of the holy dead reenacting
An April snowfall. No sheltered island was sacred.
Soon the only song that remained for the local blood,
The holy dead was the slow drowning murmur of
Last names that were historic and full of honor.

The long wharf sunset memories
Melted into the belly of the sea,
Throwing drunk red light and fire whistles
Against fishing boat that docked at the buoy
Never to sail again.


That whaling village was as guilty as its
Love for its local blood but waterfront property
Was a vampire.

And finally all the local blood had transformed into
The holy dead with a remission of last name lineage.
The unwanted pilgrimage was born on a sunset highway
Choked pine trees.

A whaling village transformed into a Mecca for jean clad
Slaves who believed in freedom but couldn't pronounce the
Word. Murders of crows surrounded the cornfield
where calico trucks loaded and unload the invaders dream.

The holy dead moved along the land like stoned angels,
Remembering heaven and ignoring hell.

From the Anti to the Christ

I built the murder in the night
and asked if I could give it your name.
I coiled the bones around your ankles
and blamed god for the splinters.


How I yearned to see your ribs
extend in the wind and your
back arch but you never
moved again.


I never saw the hand that killed
you until it was digging your grave,
I never said no and now wear
your skin, bury my children in it.

I built a city of light and broke
it against the darkness, I knew a
devil too young, we never named
the day you died but I never forgot
the morning he was born.


I burned crosses in back alleys,
i taught in tongues and gestured
in sin, begetting my knife and
bleeding your blood.


Warrior king, in the days
that follow your apocalypse
i hope to be sitting in a leather
recliner cursing your father
and praying that your second
murdering was not in waste.



dear dallas i hate your cowboys.

Storm


thunder nearing
a bay at the end
lightning lunges across
a viper sky
of seagulls

black birds cross

sea like a tractor fire
on a field of indian corn

a furnace of panic
in the ruts of the
land

raccoon dying on a
mountain of clouds
osprey roaring on a
belly of sin and fish

thunder beats the sand
a bay at the end of
nowhere
rain fills the
mouths of pines
fire opens there cones

oysters in the hoofs of deer
geese refined along a field

black birds invisible
black birds invest

deer dead on the road
gulls picking at snails

thunder hunts
fire burns
at the birth
of lightning

Rusty


There are blood stains
painted on the canvas, black
and white photographs from
Dublin where you were out
built by celtic metal.

Sounds of chains and the
decomposition of tin. A
graffiti carpet bombing in
the bathroom.

To this day my phone rings on
a heartless wire and you draw
skulls and crossbones on decapitated stalls
and light poles.

I feel like a Francis Bacon debauchery,
so strayed I would grind at making love and
the dial tone in your art is as faraway as
antarctica.

I draw an X on a my hometown and regret
that I am a rusty panther and you a steel
sick child.

The Things I’d Do

I’d break out of jail just to coil around your ankles
for a night
watch and distort the glands of the
earth to be hand in hand with the diamonds of
your eyes lighting my soul afire with passion
and life.

I splay my songs together to give you an orchestra
of rockets and nautical stars. I’d build a robot
army to liberate a land and sink a thousand
ships if it meant receiving the gift of your
velvet lips placing a kiss on my cheek.

I’d carry on through infinity for your last memory
to be a sparkle of glee in your hands