The Smith

I still smith
Archaic tools
And hold them
To humanity’s flame
Like a fool
Returning home
With diseased meat
To feed a family,
Or the dehydrated idiot
Lapping feverishly
From the salted sea

The novel is dead,
Replaced and ignored
By the philistines
Who race towards the line,
Mouths agape
And drooling
Their bovine eyes
Drying in the breeze,
Their sclerotic brains
Knocking around their skulls
Like almonds
In a guitar

I have found the source
Of that
Cosmological
Sucking sound.
It is my fellow man,
Slurping oysters,
Hoarding shells,
And keeping the spoils
From the bowery boys,
From the urchins
And gamins,
The remnants
Of the fourteenth ward

They killed Coney Island,
They killed City Lights,
They killed Greenwich Village,
With the robotic
Torpor
Of their pathetic
America.

Har Har

I blame it on my ancestors. Those dimwitted bastards who after traveling hundreds- if not thousands- of miles, looked upon this useless tundra and thought to themselves, this’ll do. They set up camp, copulated with utility, and stowed themselves away each winter for generation upon generation, until I slid out wet and putrid in 1982. (Just as useless as the drifting kegs of snow.)

The Mammal

The mammal
Regarded her simply,
Wagged its tongue,
Sharpened its teeth
On stony words
And pressed upon her
With no remorse

I listened idly
With my legs crossed
Like a modern
Homosexual,
Like beta

Tears balked
At her tarsal glands,
Fumbled like shaky hands
on a greased knob

The mammal mocked her,
Smiled a thin smile,
And called her tears
Water

I entered the mammal
From the rear
And forced fingers
Into its eyes
Until they gave way
Like the skin
Of grapes

I looked at her then,
With its eyes
I Witnessed frailty
And used the mammal’s mouth
To say “I’m sorry”
Forming the words
With a pinch
Of the lips

Her skin flushed
And pricked
As I pressed a mammal’s hand
To her brow
And slid it to her neck

I withdrew
From the creature
And sat back down
Exhausted
With a clean conscience

Goings On

It’s official. I finally sent some poetry to the public chopping block. I mailed a couple poems to a handful of literary magazines. I plan on swinging by Target for some cheap frames for the onslaught of rejection slips that will soon pepper my mailbox. I figure I could cover a bedroom wall by the end of the year if I remain diligent. Rejection is frightening to most writers, but I look forward to it. Failure is confirmation that I’m trying. I won’t fail every time, so if shell the industry I’m bound to hit something, someday.

I’ve also been working on a few short stories. One of them is historical fiction, which required some research. It’s worth noting that a fair amount of pleasure can be wrung the process of researching a particular place in a certain time. My story takes place in ancient Persia, so much of the focus was on what sort of trade took place in Alamut, what sort of food was consumed, were there kilns, etc… I’ve no experience with this sort of writing and I’ve learned a great deal that will hopefully transfer to everything else I write. Developing a sense of place in such detail is helpful in the telling of a story. It helps to define your characters.

I’ve effectively put a hold on all things journalistic for the moment. It’s liberating to back in the domain to which I belong. I feel like less of an imposter. It’s time for me to drink with friends, so I’ll cut this short.

We Howl For Dogs To Join Us

We howl for dogs to join us
And sing
Our solipsistic songs
We bring the women
To the yard
And pinch their wings

We howl for dogs to join us
And rest our palms
On the wind-beaten foreheads
Of friends
Until the creases unfold

We howl for dogs to join us
And oscillate with the pitch,
Our bodies like bowls
And the tongue the apparatus
Dragged along the rim
So as to sing

We howl for dogs to join us
With the merchants of vice
To bathe our short fuses
Under softer lights
Until mortality
Seems tidied up

We howl for dogs to join us
And pray the sky
Doesn’t join the expanse,
Become borderless
And draw us in

We howl for dogs to join us
As we let go the wings
Or nail them to boards
Or simply take a feather
For a hat

We howl for dogs to join us
And forgive us our dread
As we forgive
The dread of others

We yawn
To the sunset
And yawn
To the breeze
And forget the toe
That broke the pond

We howl for dogs to join us
Weary of the wolf
Careless of the calf

Conan the Non-Partisan

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor of California in October 2003, many expected the actor to be a moderating influence in the GOP. From his criticisms of Sarah Palin’s op-ed piece on climate change, to his railing on the Tea Party movement, he has lived up to his roll. The past two days have evinced his stance as perhaps the only non-partisan individual among his caterwauling party. No doubt his wife, democrat Maria Shriver, is deserving of some credit. I doubt he would find a coddling wife at nights if he spent his days as another “get-in-line” GOP megaphone for misinformation.

On Sunday, Schwarzenegger administered a castigation of his party for rebuking Obama’s stimulus, while openly endorsing stimulus-funded projects. He took special aim at Mitt Romney for the fatuous statement he made portending that the stimulus hadn’t created a single net job gain. He criticized the majority of his party by saying, “they go out and do the photo ops, posing with the big check and they say: ‘Isn’t this great? Look at the kind of money I’ve provided for the state and this is money to create jobs’.”

The following day he brought his criticisms to light once more, branding the GOP’s wish to restart the health care talks from scratch as “bogus talk” and citing it as a partisan tactic. Schwarzenegger’s sane by comparison approach has been acknowledged by the white house, as he was the only governor to be granted a private meeting with President Obama after a joint governors meeting Monday morning.

Having been casted as the scourge to the Republican Party, and equally disliked by democrats, Schwarzenegger has found himself in a political purgatory. For this I salute him, as a man among mice, whether we’re witnessing the courage of a lone man, or simply his fear of marital reprisal. Despite the many grievances of his voters, which are well-founded in some cases, on this song he has been nearly pitch-perfect.

New Song Lyrics

The bivouac smells like the hair of a dog
Take your bummer's cap and fill it with hog
There's a hospital rat called Jimmy the Weed
When the ball opens up he's nowhere to be seen

I've got forty dead men in a cartidge box
And the fresh fish behind me with their wollen socks
So go grab a root and get up your grit
Or leave the pop skull and boil your shirt

I was wallpapered when the orders came in
So I found a Sunday soldier and stood behind him
I peacocked about like a high-falutin wig
Poking somebody's darling with a twig

A baby-waker rang on our eastern flank
As the breastworks came down we loaded buck and ball
And a peaked pie eater took his pig sticker out
He found a butternut and stuck him in the mouth

It's all you can do
to be a man