Poems in the key of KABLAM

[flaggwalkstheline]

La división reflejada del costera imaginado de la noche
Malleable symbol carcrash wet rose
Digs into my wrist upended pavement pyramid slabs
Connection the insects sputter
Sip melodious liquid through my left eye
Nag of a lie rising no past except memory
Water is at both ends of the cycle muted sunset televisions
A man with a red beard all torn edges
Flicks his cigarette dovish and graceful
Into a pile of dried leaves smoke curls upwards
A question mark of hobo-djinn tears soft cough lungs filled up with melodrama
Clouds roll on in vaporous wheels turning
The diving board I am flammable way up here
Pure yet chemical paradox blue swimming pool
Shudders once twice the plastic creaks
Suspension of gravity attempting recreation oxygen intake
Make sense of the mumble birds above a telephone wire cackle
Then you hit it gasp drink from this telescope
Stop the width of a boxing glove
Expectation of swaying sound push the wall and dusts shake from the very top
Fulfillment of concentrated time the waves ahead of me
Sniff blood in the circle blue lipped lion
And the one behind me endangered panting
Crushed by the weight of inevitable smash passion symbol of a moment arrived too late
Age of intended balance self-extinguish moth tension
Insurance planned morning breath buddhist suicide complex
Cold coffee in a hospital arctic mug ice black feast without ripples

[flaggwalkstheline]

Beep
Woke up with chest pain

Must be the muscles, you know there’s no way I could ever know what real heart pain is

Wheezed and coughed and clutched my torso all through my western civilization part two class

When asked if I was ok I just shrugged and said,

“Hearing about the English civil wars just really gets to me I guess”

Afterwards outside, the highschool track runners were rushing in a pack around the block

Already the old guy at 21, I stepped out of the way and they thumpingly outpaced me

I thought to myself, “this must be the annual running of the teens”

I thought this thought was funny enough that when I sat at the bus bench

I said just that to the other plodding college students

They just looked at me and I felt stupid

When I got on the bus

A retarded man sat next to me and said, “hi how are you?!”

I scooted away and he looked hurt then forgot about it

When he got off he went across the street to catch the same bus on the way back

Just riding and riding all day and never remembering anything except people he never met, bliss

Also there was a woman with an infant girl in a papoose wrapped around her back

The child’s ears were already pierced and she had a cleft lip

Too small to know about her own deformity but hidden behind her mother’s back already

And there was something attached to a chainlink fence that looked like either a dried plant or a wet sock

And I realized that though most people claim to love the daylight most

It’s the night sky that we’ve named

And the way the late afternoon glow pooled bouncy on the concrete

Like the last drops of water from a plastic bottle

I wanted to share these things with you

Because when I see something beautiful you’re the first person I want to share it with

Anyway call me back if you wanna talk

Click

[flaggwalkstheline]

Etched on the spine of equinox

This is déjà vu radio coming in the same as always

I’ll be your operator for today as soon as I can find my scalpel

Repeating an often repeated pattern of fake moaned mysticism

Bite into the apple of my eye ha ha ha

Nobody here but harmless gardensnakes

Believing in havoc by phonograph

Habitually this daydream injected inflection expects too much out of a poor chimneysweep

Hallucinatory questing for the shattered daisy chain

Storage space between what I want and what I have blurring materially schizophrenic

Tin cup jangles at the bottom of the pile, can you spare a quarter?

Gold trashcan digging opportunities and a forgotten revolutionary toilet paper half mast banner

Ash toed jesters with eggshell business cards stepping carefully in the cardboard garden

Fingernails painted the same color as optimistic nervous aches of down pillows

I can’t bring myself to speak that epileptically inhaled crumbler word into the telephone receiver

Denying a nearly awakened woven tight chant

I want to take the destructive love-supreme legacy in my arms and kiss it goodnight goodnight

Insomnia in the temple waiting for the whores of Kali

Not what I had in mind for a religious experience but it’s the only one I can afford

Right around the corner are wheelbarrows full of burning dollar bills and I can’t wait for that party to start

The minister of shameful maturations said I have a distinct lack respect and was so right

I don’t get down on bended knees to kiss broken condom stained concrete

Nor do I bow samurai to steel smoke spired into pneumatic imitations of tree

To them we were all prime cut supermarket slabs of marbled red

And now I can’t erase the slicked image from my tongue

The vegetarians twitch in their rocking chairs too weak to telegram for help

There are absolutes that don’t care whose romanticism is being liquefied on them

Walls so high nobody knows they exist until they scale to the tops and hear a smokers’ cough breeze

There’s always somewhere higher to get to when you can’t go back

Climb spidery through hospital hallways scrubbed of campfire

This is not my sweatgambled world of mirth and sometimes the willows seem so tearjerked

I never shoved forward through the crowd of plaidwearing iconoclasts and said all this can be yours

The wish to be a fictional legend was absurd, riding Dante’s tourbus next to Holden and Gilbert

Condensed shamans either shake from disappointment or wooze murky with cheap beer

Either way leads to the same bellbonging moment of tombstone

Raindrop slips from small apples down onto the etching

That same deafened rock and roll preacher said I’d never speak a sonnet that wasn’t butchered

Gurgling sick and lusty at the sight of raw meat, the transformation will happen at the start of the harvest

If fiction is beautiful and meat is ugly then fiction will be my bread

Slamming the hammer down on a wooden heartcarved table

We remember the sweetness of ripened morning glories

How they closed gentle around a child’s delighted nose

There was a hunger to that voice much like my own though they’d never admit it

Uprooted or perhaps never planted in the first place

Though all my loves have carcrash piled on the two lane highway of my apparently edible skull

Those headaches once kept me strong and full up with clenched should-haves

I thought of you effortlessly again

Saint of germaphobes holding hands

It used to be I needed to recarve you everytime I wanted to hear your compartmentalized laughter

At first I had to push to conjure the contours of your eyelids

Shuddering cunning in the arterial sunlight

We wanted to be electrically sexed

But somehow keep mysterious and veiled vavoom the rocketship builders could have had so much to cheer for

As effervescent shadows seem to coalesce

I have never seen pyramids or oceans swaying soft as wheatstalks

Once there were endless fields made just for wandering mumbly

I’ve never seen mushroom cloud sunsets forcibly asserting their gorgeous finality

And I’ve been told there’s a look of lightning that can spark tango contortions

Pass violent flirtation with abyssal history and ticking calculators

Torn down with a haphazard sudden screwdiver fitting perfectly

My creations are puffs of hooka smoke as are most

But I have tasted the deepest saltwater sting

And come back to try and tell you that it runs more sweetly azul through us than we ever initially suspected

I cannot force this sensation into a swallowable hardened ball of mellow regret

Some people have that cruel gift but it’s not for me

That’s for the boys who chuff to eachother about sports teams

Some are winners and some sit on the sidelines grinning mad scientist grins with mercurial fists wide open

They will someday sit at desks cultivating cardiac arrest

Me, I’m fine sharing the wish from a dandelion

Mutual hypnotism just isn’t happening

Jitterbug this dysfunctional nostalgia isn’t hilarious anymore

Aahh that’s the barbecue and illegal fireworks that used to give me so much emberhooded joy

So much from so little, I never learned to sway my hips correctly

Breath as far in as possible at the very barren top of these young continents

Because the downwind ride of smug fulfillment starts here on your mark get set

Go back in the cloud of dust and decorative formaldehyde muses pinned on the wall

The previous yelpers understand more than their stopwatches would have you know

They know suicidal whales will continue to beach themselves into obese extinction

And the well oiled quaffed and coiled machines will continue microwaving breakfasts to eat in their oversized beds

Loneliness is what hogties us together

We could have been dolphins swimming and spinning beyond that window into shivering aquatic desire

But please know this endlessly in a repeated dreamsong number sequence

If I could I would place a drugstore diamond with my last shining gulp zap between your knees

Cranked on the scribbley spine of the hypodermic equinox

There will be a way past keyholes and barbwire summits on disarmament

Where the blue can pass between our eyeballs

Telekinetic desperate lunge for the finishline

Don’t turn off the nightlight I’m not ready to make my demands yet

All mushed with blueberry piefaced midnight snack joy

Arthritic clouds on high ride towards atmospheric illumination

Someday we will be strong enough to grab hold of their ethereal folds

And follow them to that strange green place near the mucked river

Hubcaps peeking out of the mud sticky with detached longing

This livewire of unboiled drinking water droplets the changing of thick winter coats

There will always be toystore wastelands, even if the neon infested people living there don’t realize it

I want to walk with you mind to mind through the grinding streets of slowmotion progress

Waking up the primitive torn blue jean grope deprived minutehands we’ve heard so much ticking about

Where even the curious cicada choirboys are silently blinking

Effortlessly blendering into an anticipatory growl forward forward into static

[Jon]

Beep
Woke up with chest pain

Must be the muscles, you know there’s no way I could ever know what real heart pain is

Wheezed and coughed and clutched my torso all through my western civilization part two class

When asked if I was ok I just shrugged and said,

“Hearing about the English civil wars just really gets to me I guess”

Afterwards outside, the highschool track runners were rushing in a pack around the block

Already the old guy at 21, I stepped out of the way and they thumpingly outpaced me

I thought to myself, “this must be the annual running of the teens”

I thought this thought was funny enough that when I sat at the bus bench

I said just that to the other plodding college students

They just looked at me and I felt stupid

When I got on the bus

A retarded man sat next to me and said, “hi how are you?!”

I scooted away and he looked hurt then forgot about it

When he got off he went across the street to catch the same bus on the way back

Just riding and riding all day and never remembering anything except people he never met, bliss

Also there was a woman with an infant girl in a papoose wrapped around her back

The child’s ears were already pierced and she had a cleft lip

Too small to know about her own deformity but hidden behind her mother’s back already

And there was something attached to a chainlink fence that looked like either a dried plant or a wet sock

And I realized that though most people claim to love the daylight most

It’s the night sky that we’ve named

And the way the late afternoon glow pooled bouncy on the concrete

Like the last drops of water from a plastic bottle

I wanted to share these things with you

Because when I see something beautiful you’re the first person I want to share it with

Anyway call me back if you wanna talk

Click

This work stands head and shoulders above the rest of your work... in my opinion. I would LOVE to blow it up to poster size.

[flaggwalkstheline]

that thing? i knocked it off in 20 minutes when a certain ladyfriend of mine who i ocassionally find myself pining for like a typical 19th century nancy boy didn't pick up the phone I very nearly spoke that stuff into the answering machine, luckily i didn't and settled to turn it into a short piece

eh here's another one i finished last night

Locomotive hallucination number 7: an afterlife quibble

Let’s start in the middle ok?

The arsenic seed core of the matter

After all, middles are where heartbeats, drumbeats and rational thoughts are all supposed to originate

So let’s skip past the bureaucrats, gossiping deathbeds, water coolers and dented sedans

The suits, bikinis and pursuits of shining new world spires

Throw them crowing out their own smog infected windows

The insomniac browser pages and dinner reservations

They’re ancillary gold sticker honeycombs compared to true sweet dripped vision

I can’t have a midlife crisis, more of a startlife stalling after the initial burst

Enginous ingenious squall

Edges can come later, they’re where I started

But we can start here

In this tinny night vision adjusted room with alien computer screens glowering on one wall

And five hallways yawning out from the other edges

It would be best that way

The computer screens here occasionally flicker green

And all the doorways are massive tarnished iron fillings

Flung wide open, party hats on top of Himalayan frosts

I haven’t brushed my teeth in ages and have no reflection in a possible submarine

Hallways going out to everywhere like tributaries from a dried stream

Burnt in aurora borealis veins of giants, I think they once pumped wonder

The water drips from the ceilings and I collect it in a crumpled plastic bottle

It’s the prolonged green flickers that allow me to write all this down

Brief flashes of future candles melting Halloween-pirouette

They stare at me expecting the toothaches to start flowing any day now

No beds either of course, sometimes I miss jumping on the bed

So I just ball up my clothes and sleep naked on them

It’s warm here in the center above the furnaces

(I’m assuming it’s the cool center)

I got used to echoes clamoring their empty bowls

Afterparty, afterbirth, aftersplash trashheaping lollypop sunrise

Licked into dull sickle cell glint comprehension

If something were coming to hurt me it would have done so by now

Time is an illusion, here and elsewhere my watch got busted when I touchdowned

I remember the land beneath my feet breathing gravelly slow intakes

This I where I thudded coughing when I finally broke the barrier

There was a sound like drumming mach three

Heartbeats on the inner ear

I dropped reaching for the fish-hook

Market crash through the windshield of a red automobile

Abyssal spinning tire track mark get set

Blinking eye don’t want this

Scabby Gepetto smiled mountainous

Crush locust swayed carving Mayan cities

Membrane my three ship myth lobotomized

Quiet little drip drip myna bird

Short of breath desire for butchered

Starbright apple of strife

Kneeling between Eris’s violets

Slick metal trough all eaten all singing

All dancing roach clip congress bitten wormy through

I mispellingly dropped

Cheshire cat far from mechanical


I was floating there at the tip of the fork

Gulfed marshmallow
Shipwrecked everywhere

Engulfed black and blue liquefied and shining

There may have been lightbulbs clicked on somewhere

Grounded in a swirl of attempted sense making

Flickeringly I think it started at the polar bear habitat in the zoo

There’s a thick plexiglass window underneath it peering childish into the light blue icy water

The polar bears sometimes swim in front of it only now there aren’t any polar bears

I’m holding hands with a woman whose face seems to shift every time I look for it

She flicks a wrist and gulls shout strife

A clock curves in her blurred crimescene eyes

Translucent moonburned skin twitch

We’re at the concrete barrier dangling our feet in

Giggle of waves, concrete dams that took lifetimes to raise up swept away

No polar bears tonight (is it night?)

I’m both there and watching

Split vision burble a luminescent marble

The water is warm and I think I can cross over

We dive down into it, this is not a zoo anymore

Though I still hear roaring, I am all out of spin

(this is the sighed fuel of mystic coral flutes)

We dive down into it and become loomfleshed dolphins

Spinning threads of silver splintering

Turning tick tock boiler-room

Thrash the seashell counterclockwise put out candles

Temporarily conjoined-twins spat firework eulogies

Twisting, I have been here before

We are close to that place between drowning and floating

All tangled in prepared lines, the boats breathe in their nets

Not caught except by the moment being over

Salted ballet, she slips away from me and bubbles off towards some chthonic horizons

And I sensed that I was close just then

Closer to a citric gamma way of orchard wandering gateway than I ever was before

Whistling past the milknova layer of height frightened fish who know not to look down

Perhaps I won’t ever be there again

Then again there are these five esophagic passages

All opened mouths making easter island OMs

Sometimes I can sit in front of one of them

Crosslegged contemplative into the imitative void

All ribs and amplified grin skeletal string of bones clatter

Turn my satellite ear just correct

Tuned to the deep frequency of digital unease in a atomic pasteurization

I hear the blanklooked straw sipping of seafoam lattes

Sophisticated sham, far beyond my reach

[Jon]

I always find a ruby in the mountains of gold you grace us with.

"Burnt in aurora borealis veins of giants, I think they once pumped wonder"

[flaggwalkstheline]

I always find a ruby in the mountains of gold you grace us with.

"Burnt in aurora borealis veins of giants, I think they once pumped wonder"

thanks dude, i'm always eager to share, speaking of which i should be sending that disc in the mail to you within the next week

Mothwing stomp telegram stop

Sometimes I almost hear singing in the stones

Seashells far from home

And then it hits me

An oncoming train all over again

Déjà vu, really is a shiningly bright metallic hospital kind of punishment

After all, how funny is it that we live out our first and last days in the same place and just as helpless?

But it could also be the jangling of bootspur shackles that itches my eardrums

Momentarily slowing my armchair racecar philosophizing

Marching snazzy out to hyper-romanticized liquorquickened showdowns

Lurking in the back of most brains, the dogwhistle desire to grow up into a cowboy still resonates

I think I know who’s responsible for this iron arthritic ironic twist

Because I woke with a frost on my frayed lips

The hallways here are cream colored, the hands cold

Hypnotically unclear where one room begins and another ends

Follow the stains on the carpet like they were a magellanic map

I see the way the churchbells sway but do not hear the sound

There was a deer in the grass where the interstate meets a trimmed remnant of wild

It glowed in a bath of electric oooing as it chewed

Sometimes I do attempt sometimes to slip under the barrier into the green

Make a leap for a past I can’t really lay claim to

But I get turned around and rescued before I even have a chance at being lost

Yet in the deepest blackened willow crack in the wall

I once found a vein of binocular distortion

A spike of cloud on a dulled mountain

Stomped into a pearl relic rumor

I’ve heard the emperor no longer has a face yet still finds ashen space to smile

And that he buried a ship in the wreckage of last century’s designated palace of absurdities

If he did, it would be shrouded in the dust of unread books

Slowly pooling evening circles

Western curtains flap like mothmunched bridesmaid gowns

Wide as the cavernous gasp in Joan of Arc’s pupil

Both of them are fossilized colossal frivolities

Stretching lungs into atmospheric bending

All memory warped amber into honeycomb anecdotes and back again

Sparrows swoop after insects regardless of my machinations

Learning to mosh on smashed glasses filmed with milk

A big game of still red leafy erashifted hunter hipster curves

And a cirrus key with no lock waits heavy in my palm

They struck the matches on concrete and scampered

Down whitelined modern paradisical test tubes

The teetering rusty weight of the sonarpinged moment

All fullbellied with possibly fresh roseycheeked viruses

Bubbling beneath the ache of overscrubbed teeth

As the tide yawned in a lazy fisherman baritone

Swallowing sandcastle shrines to supernovas

And fevering so soft among fictitious divinities

I dreamed the dewdrops on your forehead again

[Jon]

As always, your work has closure but leaves me thinking that there is more.

[flaggwalkstheline]

Vallhalla sodapop ignition

Fôlkvang is the ninth, there Freya directs
the sittings in the hall.
She half the fallen chooses each day,
but Odin the other half- Grímnismál

The possible child stood there at the top dressed in folds of green

The cornstalks rustled, aware in their plaguemunched way

At the top of the hill, genderless immutable scarecrow

I huff shove puffed upwards and when I got there

Dusksplit stones staring lost in raindrop details

Half a platoon of mangled soldiers, they don’t look so bad to me

Lay the leaves on their chests and set them afloat


Send the remains of my silk shirt to Freya

She understands the way of the weaved breeze and will not flinch from the responsibility of burning

My only duty is to follow that Easter Island headed voice towards a western shout

When the doctors pulled the microchip from my skin I thought I almost heard it hmmm hmm humming

Someone calling down subconsciously dark subway tunnels

If only the myth that there are seven suns above and we can only see one were true

Some catchy electronic popcan crinkled song from an amorphous future

They lay you down on soft pillows and spoonfed a creation fable

Though today all you know are spires of soot and wonder

First, there was sound (and I’ve said this before)

Then there was a sea (open wide)

Then a sky (I promised them a radioactive lullaby)

Then a seed (deep underneath where you can’t see)

Then a mountain (someday we’ll climb it)

Then a tree (I’m not the man you think I am)

Then a forest (so tremble, the sun never shone through the thick branches up top)

Then a parking lot, a smokestack hiccup jetfever forever winks knowingly

You know it sipping warm beer from a green bottle, know it like a hunger pang

It’s time to get back to that gravity shunning vomitwide tendril of blue

My lungs are filled up with shush

Playing cards shredded royal flush hand in the cookie jar

Tonight was supposed to be for clicking the tiny flames out of plastic gas station lighters

Split amoeba particle board of directors
Accelerate hackjammer laughspam anagram hidden right in your locked diary

Kiddo, you don’t quite understand

Maybe when you’re younger again you’ll get it

There are deadlines beyond yellow dangertape put up to keep squatters out

They’re hungry but they still gotta watch the ol’ calorie intake

When did people stop eating doughnuts? I’ve got a whole box leftover and no takers

This was, like much else, predicted in retro viewmaster musings

I’m writing this letter to tell you heavily

Sugarfiend got the electric armchair

When you make the Arcadian pilgrimage, step carefully over his snaking heart monitor jump-ropes

Melting caramel down onto the basement floor

The little birdies open their beaks wide and expectant

Too many hamburger angels sprawled sleepy on the moldy stairwell

I never quite have enough to solve this iron maiden ruby rubix-cube

Trying to bite out the virus just makes it more irritable

Perhaps I’ll go bonkers for the nearest lightswitch

A sudden leap of faith in machinery

Reach for the remote and hope it has batteries

Voyeuristic tendencies get the best of me every time

I took of my shoes and walked the last mile home barefoot

Eyed suspiciously by suburban housewife amputees in minivans

So much to learn and eventually forget

Time to get down working at the bumpersticker factory

Ahehheh-hem I think this fatElvis microphone is on

So if any of you prospective Van Goghs can’t hear, chuck an ear at me

In the year of your lord 1054 a great light shined from above, even during daytime

Chinese astronomers kept meticulous records

We know now it was a supernova

Not a divine nervous breakdown

Only stars dying quiet like winos in the alleyway

I was nearly run over by a supergiant semi truck

Carrying insulated cage full of cows, 60 mile per hour bovine

Fossil fueled short term pleasure

Where we’re going, legs and scythes are needed

A very long time ago we threw water balloons across the street at eachother

Remember the way they neon splatted our grins on the funhouse mirror concrete

Kiss me spinning with a mouthful of drillbits, what’s your name again?

The only way I remember mine is by the letters from insurance companies

I missed the magic hour, my head was turned away too busy trying to take credit for the hypnotism

I’ve been waiting for a surprise in the mail everyday for a month

I don’t know what it is, that’s why it’s a surprise, no good can come of this ticking

Flick on the device, it’s time for another learning experience

On television I saw footage of a man kicking a woman in the head at a teaparty rally

His defense is that the camera caught him kicking her in the head at an unflattering angle

When politics fail, the boots of frowning fat victims prevail

They stood in a circle as he put his best foot forward and she looked on in liberal shithead disbelief

And my woefully effective memory peachpreserves every ohfuckno wasptwitch horror

Spark moonbeam creamsoda aspiration inhalation

Crack open the window weight shifted even the elephants are laying down in this heat

The bedsprings creak self consciously alone, something’s coming down the pipelines

Crow circle the bonfire desert squawk message from your mother radio

I just wanted a stomp blackout insect finishing telegram, I don’t know what it is

Change jangle lightbulb filament towards planecrashing understanding

Strung revved up through buboe cornfield gumlines

Lamppost metal cools the sweatbeaded forehead

I told you I don’t have what it takes, whatever alien charisma necessary to survive in these climes

Though perhaps I have the means to maybe break the stasis saltwater safe combination

Turn the wheel and aim the crossbow engine trajectory

Something new, numbers glow hot halloween on the ceiling

I turn the key, a pair of willfully ambiguous green eyes stare in at me through smudged glass

Something new, I turn the key

[flaggwalkstheline]

Nate Maxson’s 119th dream
In one of those
Strange egotistical smoke choked daydreams
That can later be balled up in your hand like a dormant chunk of coal
I met Bob Dylan among the rain-glimmered trashcans behind a bowling alley
Very late on a Sunday afternoon
The sound of rolling balls and pins reverberated through the bricks
I asked him solemnly,
“Bob, are you my angelic mortician?”
And from a cowboy hat mask of mirror and wheeze
He just smiled

[flaggwalkstheline]

Symbiosis
I read a news article on my computer

Saying that the last tiger could be gone by 2012

A small blurb on yahoo, safe from any roaring flesh

A scoured prophetic electronic landscape

I didn’t have to really do more than skim it though

Some things you just know lifetimes ahead

White snow screened rose up all drained of pouncing

Sterilized except for the cookie crumbs and beerbottles scattered on my bedroom floor

And all these books, overexplored old friends lounging moldy

When the final fanged intruder stomps his last prey, razoring ballerina ferocity

Hunger incomparable to our own red streak

Will there be enough tragedy in comfort to slow the wheels to a quick and painless growl?

In my circular daydreams the doctors nod sympathetically

Sharpening pitchforks for the villagers in the backroom hospital poolhall

And hours after the feast, worshippers wait in the black-Friday cold

Shivering anticipatory outside lightless stores

Mystified as oldworld raggy pilgrims gazing up at godhouse pyramids

A sudden vertigo stumble will neckpop the fearlessly sallow future

I never intended to end up looking at kitchen knife displays more than as an occasional treat

The joke’s on the blunted errand boy

No cell phone reception in a redwood consignment casket

And nobody knows morse code anymore

Aww how cute, those jiggling secondclass backbones

Don’t know funny until it’s sticking between their ribs

Obviously, a streaming coinfilled rustwell is the only non-nauseating pixel

And the art museums are stuffed with taxidermied rebel causes

Go on touch em, their dictatorial genitals are just fossilized snickers

I am spoonfed an elephantine truth by one hand

And forcefed a sweetypie fib from the other

Quietly, I reached for the clock but it was too high up to get at

Ticking extinction for the second best predator on earth is now a foregone conclusion

George Washington’s coal bits wet-dream breakfast cereal

As sure as the Berlin shadowpuppets follow a click click boom flashlight command

There were no lions in Iraq and believe you me we tried

Pardon my politically flatulent posturing

But Pax-Americana only lasted fifteen years

Fleetingly we were the uncontested top dynamite shit-heap sheepdog

The numbers never coagulated

And in one generation (T minus Y ignition)

When the kids looks out onto their smaller sliver of unknown joy

They will see only matchsticks and desire to become torchbearers

Not that I’ve ever seen a tiger in the wild, or been in a real wyrd jungle

Only at zoos or designated hiking trails still focusing on what preservation will consume me

Pacing nervous in my well furnished cage, it’s getting worse now

The paradise machine parachute factory is just about out of fuel

Puffing orange and black fumes

Wear a ski-mask when you leave, the sugar-smog is feeling bold

Eating the old ways (all of them) would be oh so rude and presumptuous

All the wincing green is shrunken, even vegetarians need to eat

That which covered continents in a permanent aetheric sneeze, plugged

Great white way shark attacks on the Florida coast have hit an all time high

They tell me these things easily, the pills are smooth and round like stones

A garbage isle swirls industrially gleaming ejaculatory bile

Bulldozed their Sherwoods and set eventually butchered cows loose among the stumps

Skinned off their pelts so as to know what design to replicate for fireplace rugs

Here’s a bandaid now get back to work those files won’t alphabetize themselves

Belching nowhere near extinguished inflated coronary herds

No more Tonys or Tiggers or whatever cuddly corporate deity it is you pray to

The obituary of the “great god Pan” was premature by millennia but correct nonetheless

With innocence mistaken for rapist-smiling

And vultures prolifically crouched in the Vatican outhouse

I wanna climb the ironlunged hills

And wheeze sickness down on cities birthed for cars not feet

But my rage is only a drooly flicker of the gangrenously beautiful

Bite sized morsel mortgage engagement ring bonfire

I wouldn’t know a real clean heat until it scorched my sarcastic eyebrows

So let’s play a nice game of spin the barrel to pass the time

Whoever lights the fuse and strikes the homerun blackeyed sulfurhead, gets a secret name

A slick dolphinous coup de tattoo

The tin fisted orangutan repoman always flails first

I want this juvenile prehensile age of precocious steamrollers paving the way for nursing homes

To put down the heybaby bottle of superstitiously expensive pixiedust

Having risen up (Look who thinks his walkman in the reincarnation of Syd Barret haw haw haw)

Now cometh the customary slide back into lobotomized indentured and insured servitude

It was closer this time, the listening breath on the other side of the wallpaper

It’s not my choice to knock five times, rarely ever is

Closer, but not enough to withdraw proper amounts of X-rayed inhibition

We’re store the stuff for winter so if you hear squealing it’s just the new glass ceiling settling

This is the sound of a former hunter stepping off into gunless suburban fogbanks

Maybe next time the tigers won’t get caught in the toothless armchair crosshairs

The plug got yanked without painkillers, only one volt milked

In my self induced ipecac visions that come mewling like waves of spraypaint

I walk, a humble student of emerald loves through unafraid forests

With the poison escaping out my veins instead of into them

The surgical separation anxiety all but symbolically complete

I can’t apologize because some languages run deeper than syllables


Maybe next time

Symbiotically there will be one pure eight limbed willow

And the choice will be mine, not made for me

Perhaps next time

[AlishaRiley]

I love your words.
I'm not sure what else to say, though it seems I should say more.
You're holding something very beautiful, Sir!

[flaggwalkstheline]

glad you appreciate my poims
I'm just eager to share them

[flaggwalkstheline]

½ cup recollection

My friend and I meet up at the videostore at ten at night

A spur of the moment plan, enacted on whim

I bundle up, a scarf covers my whole face, nearly

The last evening of November shines blue all around

For some reason nightcold is much more pleasant than daycold

My breath is fogging up my glasses from under my scarf

Through the haze the street lamps have all grown halos

I tell my friend to try this and she too purposefully exhales mist into her glasses

We watch headlights drift by like iron snowflakes

Deciding to climb down into the arroyo, massive dry concrete drainage ditch

Manmade riverbed flowing with warmer air

One of the trees from some person’s backyard looks like a huge green man peaking over a wall

We watch a shooting star crackle atmospheric way up there

Laughing as we traverse what we’re pretending is a secret path

Having gotten cold, we sit in her car talking for a while

Exchanging secrets like kids at summer camp

We swap glasses and marvel at eachothers’ blindnesses

Before I go home I kiss her once on the cheek she returns the favor gently on my forehead

It has a peculiar heating sensation, like drinking brandy

I unlock the door quietly, my sleeping stepuncle mumbles on the sofa as I pad across the carpet

And when I climb into my bed shivering and grinning

I can still feel an invisible mark, pulsing just above my left eye

[Jon]

Vallhalla sodapop ignition


Then a sky (I promised them a radioactive lullaby)

Split amoeba particle board of directors




LOVE the title!!!!

[alinda]

[flaggwalkstheline]

Smirking with the jack of lollypops up my snotstained sleeve…

Let’s start the funeral early this year since we all have places to be, alright?

Smothered in the same softly drunken whisper as last week

Eating cookies off the warehouse floor has lost rebellious luster

Visiting dignitaries pick their noses and feel jealous of my monocle

Scraping the dirt off my boots after digging a dog’s grave

While the prairie wind ruffles my fur coat
Sometimes the funniest pun is the one with the thinnest muck and the fattest spoon

Lined up outside a coal powered soupkitchen

The lottery tickets are simmering in pots with stuffed animal cuteymeat placebos

A pinwheel of soot crows blindly blink towards smogged out destination mapmarks

Somebody tried to brainwash the slowshudder IV dripping desert

He spoke in a language that was only fifty percent gorgeous freakout and I intend to steal it

Sitting out on a faux lighthouse rock fishing for a warmth the foghorns interrupt seasick knitting circles

We remember the gold and green embroidered graffiti backpacks left out in the mud

Thrice spat midnight out onto the teapot breeze

Spiraled against the morning and glowing with sensory deprivation

I sense a subtle twang to the mechanics this time

Circling powerlines solid and black rubber transformer

They should have returned south to some Patagonia by now

I may have discovered a new way but I don’t have to courage to mold the key

Turn the lock and take a peek at disappointment in previous lives

I’m on the hunt for a deal on reincarnation-insurance

Clack clack typewriter romanticism feels too much like pushing for nosebleed pipedream academics

Bundled up before stepping away into potential winters

You have to listen between the subliminal indoctrinations to really get the scraps

Heaps amigo, are what’s popular this holiday season

Everybody wants to finish it lying on a heaving shrieking ribcage HEAP

I climb wetshoed to the very steaming top and look down

This is the edge of one world, all tarnished from here where the road slopes down

And up ahead a city of cheap gem lamps hisses

I wanna remember falling on the floor like the lizard king with my tongue out and still speaking

Sometimes I imagine boats swaying like Atlantic daisy stalks

Newspaper headline states the dolphinboots kid only wanted to swim

Trial by fireplace of the century

The captain’s hat stays on his head except when it’s windy

And nobody ever appreciates my tragically public Charlie Chaplin impersonations

That may have been the wrong crucifixion to become fixated with

Last summer a duststorm took our barn

Reality is such a chalkmark outline borehole

I’d take a computer screen seizure shortness of electric breath over your concrete

Any day, the termite icebergs are gonna come home to roost

These images of Mexican restaurants and addictive dreamers fit together sighingly

Warm December sabotaged, this was going to happen whether the shopping list got smoked or not

I don’t have the sparkplug apparatus

Digital messages coughscribbled into the sky

Somewhere a man is sitting at his desk signing checks for scorched orphanages

This bureaucracy is going to short me out

Pasts were joined in gloom through the hips, apologize to the nice lady now

Swallow all your sweetness quickly, you do want to be freer don’t you?

The sound is weaker down here where all the sewerwillows died but remain erudite in boney splendor

Watch the symphonic movements for possible shadowpuppets

Having never heard a whale in mourning I can only make stabbing hummable guesses

But I suspect there’s a jagged brightness to this enduring lack of genuine silence

There will always be the click of dry throats in undrinkable seas

Last night the mountains loomed like a wall

I marched from one coast to the next and didn’t remember

Automobiles zip with great metal exhalations on their ways to wherever, there is always a choice

A band of dull pink spans the cerulean spattered horizon, acidic smell of fresh paint

I am the only person out walking with the scarred earth beneath me

Everyone else is chained holy to their nonexercise machina

Wheels spinning sparks up towards unimaginable or maybe nonexistent contraptions

I am the only one out here twisting my head left then right and trying to look carelessly

Over shoulders, some of steel and some of cartilage

When the atomic howdy stewshanks get gnawed down you’re gonna crawl under the house alone too

Twisting a neck calculatory to capture skyscraping incongruities

There were insects and bats and flying futurecars all bumbling about circulatory

While dbelow the Neanderthals snowshoveled their driveways

I could scritch all these selfimportant moments down on a Rosetta solid artifact

But really there are just too many patches of cloud spoilage to properly imitate the curved lip

And they’re all ignored in favor of circular migraine movements painted anemic meadow

Always trying to crane bronchial tubes towards that new shining west

Hawkshit spires chronically oxygenated, I only wanted to win

(The lark wishbone snaps)

Out of reach to the desperately chameleon

[flaggwalkstheline]

The Best Kind Of Machine, A Confession

Now I’m not catholic

In fact the nuns cross themselves when I wink at them

But the concept of confession, of feeling decent only because you tore off the scabs

Well, it just makes my scabby jewboy hips quiver

Insurance policies for the dead have the possibility to gather unlimited interest

Buy up as many as you can, prices get radioactive rather quickly

Let the ritual begin, hoist those porkchops

Chefs and surgeons test the broth cautiously with their pinky toes

A barn radio coughs out the dust of boiled giraffes while the little children laugh

The market is up today but let’s all try to control our hyenic anticipations, hmm?

Now gentlemen of the jury, don’t leave the operating theater before you see how much blood I’ve poured into this production

How many quivering muscle black-mass YMCA dance crazes I’ve flippantly butchered

A mound of chicken bones demonstrates the difference between Colonel Sanders and Genghis Khan

My advice to you posthistoric petticoat tyrants

When the colonoscopy train comes whistling through the wall have your grimaces rehearsed

There might be humor now but in thirty years I doubt the longevity of it

Hitchhikers perch on the boundaries smoking patriotism wrapped in crow feathers

Man that empire better be a metaphor or we are eff you see kay ee dee taxidermy

I wish I could ladle out a blue sound with my fingers, the prison sentence trails off

The best kind of machine,

Intones the starved out jazzdreamed patient zero, broken fingers all in plaster casts

Wouldn’t know he was a machine, got me?

I can’t snap, but

Sometimes I get suspicious, the mood goes green

It peeks through crystalline keyholes at other superstitious twitches

When the time comes and the seaturtles are in heat

I can get you a discount on the antiseptic highdive yolks

He’d just, go about his business and leave it steaming on the grass



I intuit futures as a concrete mad travelling salesman in a music-man hat

Walking lamphue illuminated suburbs ruminating on the number of footsteps left

And passing on sad-sack orally fixated traditions of genetic detritus





So there I was, riding my mule on the shoreline

When outta the seashell hums this gal in a polkatoothed bikini

And she says to me, “There’s a fella back there who wants my secret recipe so you’d better get rescuing me”

So I said, “sweetheart this is the 25th century and I am in a monogamous satanic pact with this mule so, rescue yourself”

But I see why you wanted that recipe, made her into one hellofa soufflé

Now hold this cable here for just a sec while I adjust the tape measure



Ick change the channel this old dude makes me soft and chokey

Atomic bigbands honk wheatfields in the crater of someday

That was the sound of buzzbombed optimism and shaved metallic honeycombs

Standing spinal to the gleam promised smokestack

Calm before pushing arms into frenzied semantic sharkchurns

There’s going to be a moment you’ve felt before

A static hush we lie there on stained sheets after sex discussing a mutual lust for fame

When you make a choice, these yellow spectacles are affecting my hearing

The noise should be pure, cerulean

I picture one of my possibilities

Saccharine rags wringing gasoline by the drop

In the tunnel lips of New York City

Briefcase full of smirking miracles

Pointing westward towards the saxophone graveyard

They always toss their holy tricksters into volcanic has been holes in the ozone

I hope to choose the side of titans, instead of your sterile hymns

I’d have the curved lip of Elvis instead of Saint Paul’s pompadour

Spewing gourmet ambulances round charcoal corners

All I remember is the ice, pain is temporary and ethereal

Teeth loosened in electric sockets upon impact

It’s only a solar needle, don’t look, I know it’s bright

It might sting a little, like turning a record over to side two

When I opened that door miles below astorian tombstones

I set out to find real deserts and oceans and all I got were puddles and sunburns

Screaming for naked heatstroke before the chainlink gates of city hall

Ignoring the momentary borealis roar always heard just before spoonfuls of winter sleep prescriptions

Just a slight little bee buzzing in your ear, that’s all

Choice or not, hunger remains the primary concern

You’ll know perfectly well when to reach for it




So this then is my confession, served hot, vague and hemorrhaging

I comprehend like a foreign opera engraved onto the side of skyscrapers

Languages whose shells I can’t crack from the inside or otherwise





Beads of water slip up speeding glass

Accidentally dynamiting the therapy exit

Tractor tire sculpted soil edges a landfill heaped with reaching mannequins

Cars fall like raindrops across the interstate

[flaggwalkstheline]

[B]Knitting and knitting macaroni funeral shrouds [/B
]Clumping into the restroom at a McDonalds

Are we ready?

Horseraced, terminally snickering trite hunger

Nightvision switch kicking in filament transformatory

Eleven at night, closing time in an hour and my shoes sound loud on the scrubbed floors


Not sure why I’m here, a momentary wave of nausea or nostalgia perhaps

A snort of propane and perfume, we only sell cardboard crowns here

I came to this city in the sand expecting black-leather Kool-Aid

Across boardwalks where I could hear the sea but not see it and carnivorous cityhalls

To find the visionary gene pool of failed architects

Stacked as high up as they go low, cats dart in between toxic lightsockets

Trashcans floating through space, yeah this is progress

Somehow, we haven’t perfected the technology

Velocity approaching maximum absurdity

And most toilets have that quarter inch of decay between them and the linoleum

Between the apparatus and the antiseptic tall tale:

Four mercury-pricked angels entered my body through carcrash tinted tearducts

I have unraveled the swagger and now sweat consequences

Say something serious now, we don’t have all week to wait for your alleged virus to sprout

Pogostick into the forgotten ice-cream flavor

Headache simmered drift epileptic disco medicine ball

A luxury cruiseship full of frightened walrus minded millionares over a roar of niagra engine celebrations

I recognize the Rosicrucian narcotics agent by the tattooed plans on his pale shoulder

The deepfried dagger trembles musically

Bong-hits of Haitian earthquake

Televised juicy live pandemic of tainted sweatpants

Unbuttoned poppoppop anticipates a microwaveable suspension of gravity

The adolescent pharaoh’s gold clown feet kicked, once

And the rope groaned soul exit stage left on a faberge neck

Federal schoolgirls vulture under his twitch with wickerbaskets full of bats

Broad shoulders breathe like black bagged lungs

Perception split atom twins

Oh but the nails sure are SWEET

Each eye lazing in a different oasis

Marathonic huffing gardens of voodoo tomatoes

Audible altitude of a gushing bite, I bring you this gift of fragrant concussion

The fields with stretch on gusty with chunks of concrete ghost sirens poking out of hilltops

A shepherd only learns his real purpose when the sheep run out of grass

A car horn blares, feelin ok in there buddy?

Two red headed seven year old boys lick popsicles in their endless June swelter

While farther down their trainwhistle timelines

Split lip iron blooms of industry faked floral orgasms

Dud firecrackers fuse to bacterial nova vacuum cleaners

Finally the lush of former springs slips a green hand down my cheekbones

Patient gasps on a cold silver screen table, we’re losing the spark

The purpose of this pyramid experimental scheme

I find no forests, only a heat wave stopsign redder at dusk

The goal (don’t laugh, I know your works) is to clone time, it’s the only currency worth anything

Recreate the moment and hope it doesn’t fang the rose-stem

I vaguely recall a net dipping into sedated waters, moonlight drips everywhere

God and man evolve in the same way

With same flaw of lethal intelligence we both give in at the end of the cycle

Possibly circular, Quetzalcoatl flees into the sky

Or possibly, intelligence is a fatal dead end genetic pile-up

We make our successors gaze upwards with blemished circuits

We evolve until we disappear, leaving behind a trail of spat black mythic pomegranate seeds

[Jon]

"The goal (don’t laugh, I know your works) is to clone time, it’s the only currency worth anything"

[flaggwalkstheline]

I'm rather proud that that poem manages to reference both peewee herman and the book of revelations

[alinda]

I seem to repete this every time I come to comment on your poetryIts all I can manage, for I have no words next to this work.

[flaggwalkstheline]

good news everyone

within 48 hours my book, Vaudeville Jihad will be available on amazon and other fine online retailers

I finally gave in and self published with createspace but ooooooh I am soooooo excited over this

[Jean]

[flaggwalkstheline]

48 hours may have been a bit of an overstatement, that was how long it took for me to order a proof, which is in the mail now, when i approve it THEN in goes on the market, but still, things are moving fast