Poems in the key of KABLAM

[flaggwalkstheline]

Almost too prudish to post the following poem, which is why I have to



I
Went to bed with a smoldering headache
And had a vivid sexual encounter in another life
I was lying with a pale skinned woman on a bed in a dark room
A rainstorm tapped on the window like wet fingers
Her legs smelled of cinnamon twisting around me
She pulled my head close by the hair to her mouth and whispered
“Which one of us is dreaming?”
A lightning bolt passed between us
Arching her back and gasping she mumbled, “Don’t go to sleep again, don’t leave me”
I woke back in my own bed, sheets twisted in every direction
Looking for the jagged crack in this reality that I slipped back through

[flaggwalkstheline]

I returned to the city of the gods
I returned riding a red wind, dead tide, tossed aside
And found it quietly, blissfully
Choking on it’s titanium spittle
Abandoned in it’s overgrown cradle by it’s former glory
Weeds grew fingerlike from between the cobblestones
Ashtrays spilled on shining marble courtyards
Burned out, earned out
Spurned like undesired ambrosia
I was stoned, red eyed
Left barefoot in darkness with no music to guide me
To feel my way along the outer walls
Listening for the raven’s calls
Cast snake eyes into the desert
But the desert spoke to me with it’s pointed tongue
The desert rattled at me in the language of laughing sand
Gave me sunlight to drink and desolation to bathe in
Fire to spit even as I was licked by cacti
The hairs on my arms rose like sunflowers
I returned to the city of the gods
A dog slid across the sidewalk
Fear on my heels hands like electric eels
Rats in the clouds weaving funeral shrouds
I remember once we were still convinced who we were
Building temples in which to pretend the bitter fruits of our labor were sweet
We walked past sundials and turnstiles
Sure of our ability to toss lightning bolts
Heads or tails?
Spinning the trigger repeatedly and walking away
The quantum bullet misses every shot
Spinning in the barrel
All the apples ravaged
The crayons melted and savaged
Ah city
I have smellled what your embryonic perfume hides
And your hyde is as soft as mine underneath all that grime
The machine’s convictions are weak but currently confident
Sure of what we are not
Wearing the big people’s ivory suits
Which we made ourselves out of rubble and bones with hypodermic knitting needles
For gigantic shoulders we had never seen
A voice from the clouds said “Do you want fries with that?”
I returned to the city of the gods
My burnt feet striking cement like matches
I returned to the city of the gods
And watched the people scurry like moths afraid of their own light
The last time I was here I forgot the name
I returned like a hurricane birdsong on repeat
Only this time
I heeded the desert’s words



Massively updated

[flaggwalkstheline]

well it's official, my first book is going to be published by december!

[Jon]

Cool fucking beans!

Perhaps a signed copy if I purchase an unsigned copy??????

[flaggwalkstheline]

Cool fucking beans!

Perhaps a signed copy if I purchase an unsigned copy??????

I don't know how I would sign a copy for you, though if you can figure that one out I'd be happy to do so

it was really funny, so I went to wendys today and oredered one of the GIANT hamburgers and nearly puked it up, I didnt though, i fought off the nausia and wrote a really funny poem about it (which I'll post tommorow) I performed said poem at the open mike I was at but during the second poem the hamburger tried to come back! I was this close to upchucking everywhere in the middle of my performance!

[Jean]

[flaggwalkstheline]

thanku

Now heres a very sexual poem about hamburgers and puking




Ode to a cheeseburger I nearly puked up

O! glorious doble-cheeseburger
I almost lost you forever on the carpet
Seven dollars for your flesh
They called you the Baconator
And you nearly annihilated me
Seven out of my last ten in the bank
For your false advertised all beef slabs
Lettuce, tomato and shiny bacon that tasted like evil love
When I saw you there on a picture in the window
I wanted you
I wanted to possess you
Consume you
You were the kind of hamburger a guy could talk to like a whore
I want you to squeak for me
Fuck me you slimy cow!
Fries coke
Mmm right there
I climbed a mountain of salt
Licking my lips I lifted the engorged bulk to my mouth
Swallowed it one steamy chunk at a time
And then the gag reflex
Three gleaming bites to go
A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum
The fat man in my head hollers
“You wuss! You pussy! DO IT!”
The wendys dining room spins like a discoball
Show that half pounder who’s boss
Be a man!
Slay the greasy dragon
I felt like rocky at the end of the movie
My whole body destroyed
Ya gotta put me back in! ya gotta!
O! Hamburger
I held you down and finished you
What kindof American would I be if I couldn’t eat the whole thing?

[smcicr]

I saw the title and went 'really?'

yup

"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"

and

"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"

It's just great stuff ;D

[flaggwalkstheline]

Reconsideration

It came to me in a burst of blue and white light
This reconsideration of genetic instinct
I know I have distant relatives who fled nazi germany or pogroms
And envisioning streets gleaming in gold
Came here on smog belching boats clutching only their old testaments written in yiddish
And I have heard from my own mother, who grew up in the holy land
Of how the arabs want to drive us into the sea and teach their children hatred of us
And maybe they do…
My mother certainly believes so
I have not forgotten jerusalem and the promises made to and for it
Yet
Watching on cnn as fat women in burkas wail at american news cameras over the rubble of their huts
Or seeing the “chosen people’s” tanks ride into gaza to punish the wicked with western fire
I can see the choking strings pulled tightly
The harp sings a bitter biting song by the waters of babylon
Twisting nooselike from puppet to puppet
No real puppet master calls the shots or jerks his fingers
Only tangled wooden children
Only the herking jumping dance to the point of ventriloquistic collapse
They pull and pull their hair to the snapping point
And all of us march closer towards the ocean in chains
It came to me in a burst of blue and white light

[Jon]

I saw the title and went 'really?'

yup

"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"

and

"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"

It's just great stuff ;D

I'm tellin' ya' The man ROCKS!

[flaggwalkstheline]

I saw the title and went 'really?'

yup

"shiny bacon that tasted like evil love"

and

"A slave in the belly of a burning Viking ship
Keeps rowing out of habit
Beating his drum"

It's just great stuff ;D

I'm tellin' ya' The man ROCKS!

thanku
yarg
I NEED to get ahold of a digital video camera so I can record some of my performances and share em here!the open mike reading was sooo INTENSE I felt like I was speaking in tongues or something,
I'll post the poem I read tommorow morning but it's just not the same

[flaggwalkstheline]

Poets walk these friendly streets
Ignoring eachother and looking for isolation to escape from
Crawl outta the bushes with a handful of daisies
The lilacs no longer bloomed at the same time this year
I wish every day could be the day just before Halloween
Before the disappointment of stale sweets and razor-apples

I whine my self important questions out
Dine my presumptions into complacency
They fly from my sugarcoated lips
Like bratty airraid sirens
Luring answers to death on the rocks

The boat sailed across the melodramatic oceans with no incident, captains log day 5

If I said I loved you
Would you take off that ski-mask?
Maybe smile malignantly across the barbed wire
Or would it be obvious I’m a pity soaked liar?

If I told you I love you
Would I become brighter?
More
Than a grain of dirt on the soul of your boot?

Can I have a biscuit
The kid whimpered over his revolvers
To eat out of a mud puddle?
I pick at my acne sores when I’m nervous
And when I’m nervous I think of how many sores I have
The more nervous I get the more my stiff hair falls out
The more I suck my thumb
Close my crumpled eyes
In a corner under a sink and a dripping spout

If I said I love you
Blinking profusely
Would you stomp in my pond water face?
To see if it improves my buggy smile
I have never felt
Even the teensiest bit of stirring
In my lukewarm bathtub heart
I hate the fucking word heart
I despise every adjective used to describe love
All the words associated with it

Attraction !!!
!!! Infliction
Kiss !!!
!!! Crash
I said it, now smash !!!
Romance I burn thee
I detonate them for a spiked punchline
With cartoon dynamite
I free myself of all but
Red red can can dancing rage
A bouquet of a dozen rages
Zen monk with a chainsaw
Cackling the way I do when I wake my self up
With wonderful jests forgotten in seconds
I dreamed last night
The poet gurgled through a mouthful of broken glass
That someone beautiful beat me to death with a tennis racket
That was what made her beautiful
I detonate my dreams
Gleefully stomp
Mushroom cloud the whole swamp
Gleefully I want to goosestep across your burial mound
Pushing down on the plunger watching through sand scratched goggles
Doodles in notebooks, dripping popsong body fluid and long walks through the slaughterhouse
Screaming orgasmically into the zeusless sky
Like severed limb fireworks
I tear the barcode on my soul to shreds
And burn it the way people used to with draft notices
I have nothing concrete to rebel against
My bruiseless head spins planetlike in a starry void

The very word soul is a much a lie as money or fame
Or anything meant to mold shame
Meant to keep a person cleaning bedpans or serving burgers
Right up until that third strike, you’re out
Bring in the bearded new boys
And fire up the crystal balls, they need polishing
If I said I love you
You’d probably plaster fliers all over town saying what a small-dicked ignorant shit I am
No one needs to know that unless I said I love them
We ought to describe where that emotion is generated as being in yer pants
I dig my chewed down nails into the sidewalk
Neck snapping chokehold on reality

The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

I have never felt even the slightest bit
Of legendary un-reality
But then
Neither have any of you
Not in the dampest holes of your heads
People think they should feel
Something
Like children convincing themselves repeatedly that there IS a santa claus
Or the very pious feeling god’s hand and not the priest’s

I haven’t found anyone to lie to me mutually
Someone to spit or bleed lead tainted candy lies into my gaping babybird mouth
Shove me outta the leafless tree
To break my unused wings on the cold truth
Break my cheap whore metaphors
Bash their widdle lips in
!!!!
I have never
FELT
And
My only wet dreams are of me jerking off
Which is funny because I’m the least attractive person I can think of
How’s THAT for grand comedy
Cmon and laugh you crap flinging dirge singing monkeys
Clap your hands and say
How embarrassing

So bring the boots, the booze, the tennis rackets, the hatchet and the TNT
Consider this an invitation to a mutual crucifixion
We’ll have a tuberculosis blast
Revving chainsaws and coughing
And playing tag like coffin-caffeine fueled kids
I’m
Fucking
It

[smcicr]

Ok, so bear with me for a moment...(this isn't meant as a criticism)

Perhaps it's because this is one of the longest poems of yours, thus allowing me to fully experience the sensation, but it struck me that on occasion i feel like i'm trying to understand (connect/get it/click?) through binoculars - the see-saw back and forth of the focus wheel, did i just...? was that...? as things blur in and out of focus.

As above, this is not a criticism - I don't believe it is the job of the writer to lay everything out for the reader, I think it's more rewarding when you've involved yourself in something by having to think about it. I guess author's are a bit like the people that set crossword puzzles (wait for it) if you do the same puzzle, put together by the same person for a period of time then you start to get into their head and be able to read the clues that much easier. Even at this point I am pretty much guaranteed at least one moment of complete synchronicity reading your work (that also often ties in with everything after it hitting sharp focus), this time it was:

The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

which is just smack me in the face brilliant (it's impact actually accentuated by the fact that what preceeded it was eluding me ) and from there on it seemed to shuffle itself into order and run like dominoes.

I also think your point about the live performance aspect is particularly apt here - I can very easily see these taking on a whole new life in that arena.

Looking forward to the next one.

[flaggwalkstheline]

Ok, so bear with me for a moment...(this isn't meant as a criticism)

Perhaps it's because this is one of the longest poems of yours, thus allowing me to fully experience the sensation, but it struck me that on occasion i feel like i'm trying to understand (connect/get it/click?) through binoculars - the see-saw back and forth of the focus wheel, did i just...? was that...? as things blur in and out of focus.

As above, this is not a criticism - I don't believe it is the job of the writer to lay everything out for the reader, I think it's more rewarding when you've involved yourself in something by having to think about it. I guess author's are a bit like the people that set crossword puzzles (wait for it) if you do the same puzzle, put together by the same person for a period of time then you start to get into their head and be able to read the clues that much easier. Even at this point I am pretty much guaranteed at least one moment of complete synchronicity reading your work (that also often ties in with everything after it hitting sharp focus), this time it was:

The women I jump through hoops and juggle for
Are artistic, intelligent
Looking for a gorilla to brutalize them
Give me thirty years and five thousand beers and we’ll talk, sweetheart

which is just smack me in the face brilliant (it's impact actually accentuated by the fact that what preceeded it was eluding me ) and from there on it seemed to shuffle itself into order and run like dominoes.

I also think your point about the live performance aspect is particularly apt here - I can very easily see these taking on a whole new life in that arena.

Looking forward to the next one.

glad it made you think, I like doing that to people heh I know what you mean about that set of lines bringing it into a sharper focus, I felt like the ones before it were almost becoming too abstract. They work but any more of them at that point would throw off the whole thing so the line about "neck snapping chokehold on reality" and the following ones are meant to kinda ground the thought process and pull the poem back from becoming too metaphorical, that poem almost sorta doubles back on itself with the "cheap whore metaphors" thing
huh I usually dont analyze my own writing quite like that but your response prompted me 2 do so

[flaggwalkstheline]

The finklestein shit kid rides again version 1.0

Robert Mitchum raises his tattooed hands
and tells the congregation of werewolves and bureaucrats
to simmer down and let their copper cauldron bitchin christian witches jew brew cook more slowly
In the beginning of the 20th century when the atmosphere was new
When the trains were snoring smoothly and cocaine was in the sodapop and the oil flowed like it would never stop
The 19 century was hidden away in a locked closet
In our youths our hearts were filled with fire but the fire grew higher so we leapt into the sea
Touched by an ocean we forget all trace of yesterday’s book burning head turning churning
All of it forgotten
The whipcrack brick-a-brack sad-sack sound of muskets on smogless mornings
The burning of sails in oceans where the fish never laughed except at the sun
Which sank into a black sea for all empires the umpire declared it OUT!
English, Russian, German, Soviet, Spanish
Their glorious statues of conquerors on donkeys tarnished and cracked
Stand lonely saluting suicidal leaders who built them in their image
Sentries in empty courtyards keeping watch for the day the tall ships return from over the water
But the tall ships will never return because they never left they were torched in the harbor
Forgotten
History repeats it’s own jests over and over until somebody doesn’t laugh
Rust to rust
Boom and bust
Doom and trust

Ten years into the age of aquarius now and where is my radioactive paradise?
The steel umbilical cord from one war to it’s bronze fisted mother
Is pretended to be disconnected, severed or contained in lead
The gun sits on the wall, forgotten but unrusted tapping it’s yellow and black foot
Waiting to be noticed and used
Fired finally after 100 years of waiting for release
When it happens
Some of us will laugh because it was sure to happen so why not just get it over with
Get it over with, the flashbang release of starpowered tension
All of you have forgotten
You accountants with all your numbers
Have forgotten the 19th and are now forgetting the 20th
The smell of gunpowder in the trenches or the soot of violated rice paddies
The age of numbers grows fantastically and the implodes in a shower of uselessness
You lawyers, you bakers, you butchers, you users, you pushers
Yes, you with all your knowledge still look to the same psychopaths for salvation as you always have
You have forgotten
The primal whistle of arrows through the green
The dread sound of beating drums
Behind a wall of screen broadcasting atrocities from every corner of the world
You have forgotten the feel of dirt between your fingers
And will only remember when the soil swallows you up
The walls of the garden are soundproofed and you can’t see the stains on the other side of the mattresses
You scientists and makers of fire and lightning
You spit metal and dream-stuff into the sky with only the purpose of knowing
Yet
With all your time spanning brain scanning magic tragic planning
You have forgotten as thoroughly as a dog forgets not to jump on it’s master
Your shiva-esque grandfathers reforged and unbottled zeus’s thunderbolts
But you have forgotten what happened to the old gods
Forgotten, their fiery arms wait on the wall patiently while oppenheimer laughs in his grave prematurely
Ah but there are men out there in the small and mean world with minds that span time
Waiting in the last deserts, the last mountains, the last mines, the last undiscovered hells
They ring the bells and poison wells
They bring the fire with them like bearded crack head prometheuses
There are men who desire to wear the wolf skin of fenrir and stomp around in the ashes of valhalla
They have long memories
Though their lives have short fuses and they go off like firecrackers in the hands of children
They stretch on and on like vapor trails clinging to the naïve native sky

A wasp circles a dumpster
Ignoring nearby flowers
The leftovers of a big picnic, she devours












The finklestein shit kid rides again version 2.0

Robert Mitchum raises his tattooed hands to the roof
And tells the congregation of werewolves and bureaucrats
To simmer down and let their copper cauldron bitchin christian witches jew brew cook more slowly
I hold the remote in my hands and think of turning the lights out

In the beginning of the 20th century when the atmosphere was new and didn’t smoke a pack a day
When we knew how to build steel and iron with our bare claws
When the trains were snoring smoothly and cocaine was in the sodapop and the oil flowed like it would never stop
The 19 century was hidden away in a locked closet with fine dressed skeletons and told to stay

“So tell me young jester”
She speaks syrupy through shining teeth grinding armadillo eyeballs on the clean bathroom stalls
“Are you my fuel, my mule?”
An airplane flies by outside the plateglass window as he adjusts his tie roaring like a fly 5 floors up
“Or my mirror?”
Shards of broken fairy tale embedded in my retinas
So as the snow queen sucked faster I pushed the shards in deeper and snickered so wisely, so surprisingly
“I want some more”

In our youths our hearts were filled with fire but the fire grew higher so we leapt into the sea
Touched by an ocean we forgot all trace of yesterday’s book burning head turning churning
All of it as forgotten as gum on the underside of the table
The whipcrack brick-a-brack sad-sack sound of muskets on smogless mornings
The burning of sails in oceans where the fish never laughed except at the sun
Which sank into a black flooded outfield for all empires the umpire declared OUT!
English, Russian, German, Soviet, Spanish
Napoleon never accounted for what would happen when winter finally landed
Did the land and the flowers weep when their gardners stomped trampling them?
Their glorious statues of conquerors on donkeys tarnished and cracked
Stand lonely saluting suicidal leaders who built them in their image
Sentries in empty courtyards keeping watch for the day the tall ships return from over the water
But the tall ships will never return because they never left they were torched in the harbor
Forgotten
History repeats it’s own jests over and over until somebody doesn’t laugh
Rust to rust
Boom and bust
Doom and trust
I rode a white horse with a gasoline mane to the farthest shore of this desert
The snow princess spreads her legs and all the little birdys on powerlines shiver
All I can gasp with a shrug and a quiver is I want more

Ten years into the age of aquarius now and where is my radioactive paradise?
The steel umbilical cord from one war to it’s bronze fisted mother
Is pretended to be disconnected, severed or contained in lead
The gun sits on the wall, forgotten but unrusted tapping it’s yellow and black foot
Waiting to be noticed and used
Fired finally after 100 years of waiting for release
When it happens
Some of us will laugh because it was sure to happen so why not just get it over with
Get it over with, the flashbang release of starpowered tension
All of you have forgotten
You accountants with all your numbers
Have forgotten the 19th and are now forgetting the 20th
The smell of gunpowder in the trenches or the soot of violated rice paddies
The age of numbers grows fantastically and the implodes in a shower of uselessness
You lawyers, you bakers, you butchers, you users, you pushers
Yes, you with all your knowledge still look to the same psychopaths for salvation as you always have
You have forgotten
The primal whistle of arrows through the green
The dread sound of beating drums
Behind a wall of screen broadcasting atrocities from every corner of the world
You have forgotten the feel of dirt between your fingers
And will only remember when the soil swallows you up
The walls of the garden are soundproofed and you can’t see the stains on the other side of the mattresses
You scientists and makers of fire and lightning and all things gorgeous and frightning
You spit metal and dream-stuff into the sky with only the purpose of knowing
Yet
With all your time spanning brain scanning magic tragic planning
You have forgotten as thoroughly as a dog forgets not to jump on it’s master
Your shiva-esque grandfathers reforged and unbottled zeus’s thunderbolts
But you have forgotten what happened to the old gods
Forgotten, their fiery arms wait on the wall patiently while oppenheimer laughs in his grave prematurely
You good kings who only want to set forth and pillage thy neighbor
You have forgotten the dirty fingernails which place cardboard crowns on bald heads
Ah but there are men out there in the small and mean world with minds that span time
Waiting in the last sands, the last mountains, the last mines, the last un-re-discovered secret places
Fields where the grass has never been scythed
They ring the bells and poison wells and have not forgotten
They bring the fire with them like bearded crack head prometheuses
There are men who desire to wear the wolf skin of fenrir and stomp around giddily in the ashes of valhalla
They have long memories
Though their lives have short fuses and they go off like firecrackers in the hands of children
They stretch on and on like vapor trails clinging to the naïve native sky
I take a deep frosty breath and remove pale hands from my shoulders

A wasp circles a dumpster
Ignoring nearby flowers
The leftovers of a big picnic, she devours

[Jon]

I'm seeing a change in your work sir.

[flaggwalkstheline]

really?
how so?
I'm curious how others percieve shifts within my writing style

[Jon]

It seems more involved now.

[flaggwalkstheline]

oh ok

[smcicr]

The finklestein shit kid rides again - it desperately spits it's bleakly resigned anger and says (to me), it's going to get f*cked up and you probably can't change it so treat it like a backdrop and be incendiary in front of it. More good stuff.

Really like the imagery, especially in the first part. Also, I think it's partly me and partly because it suits this piece but I like the fact that at times it feels like it's almost going to come apart. It's a fast ride. Thanks for posting.

[flaggwalkstheline]

I got the title for that poem from cheech & Chong
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWr4NcRN2Uw"]YouTube - Cheech & Chong Up In Smoke 1978[/ame]

and the updated version of that poem is now posted under draft 1

[flaggwalkstheline]

Bullfighters don't cry

The matador waits regally in the arena
His shined boots planted holy in the dust
Clothed in gleaming cosmic red and purple cloth
To the children watching he looks like he could bring silver fire down on anything
Lion, bear, train, highway, ocean
The bullfighter puts a mask on and stands in clouds of golden hard dirt
Conquers his deified enemy, denies muscled fear
He does it every time and he makes the task look sublime
Matadors don’t cry
There’s no doubt that he won’t fail to dominate
His hero sword glows like a vengeful star
The monster was tenderized before it comes out bleeding
Yelling that the game is rigged nobody listens the silence of death makes it impossible to hear
Anything but the rustle of the red cloth and the bull stomping on the ground for a gunfighters death
And the steel element of goodness tears into ferdinand
Some of the people in the bleachers cheer and stomp and shriek at the death of the beast
Others just jam more popcorn or icecream into their mouths
Waiting for the red flag that will signal them being herded into the arena

[flaggwalkstheline]

I’m not afraid of drowning anymore
I’m not afraid of rising up to spit in the face of stars
I will drink from the river’s secret name until my lungs are sore
I looked up into the cumulous eye and realized
If I’m to become as one with the tide
Then let it sweep me away with a grey hand
Let me wash up coughing with joy on a gleaming foreign shore

[Jon]

Very nice Flagg.

It's fun to watch you evolve.

[flaggwalkstheline]

thanku jon, u and others who read this thread have a birdseye view of that evolution