Missives

The summer is over
The harvest is in
And we are not saved.
The blow up doll
Has fire engine red lips
But no tongue to satisfy.
Gennifer Flowers had lips
Built for pleasure
And electing a president.
These are things one thinks of
While drunkenly stumbling through Skid Row
On Oscar night.


My life is grafts, intervals, spacing
Leftovers
Wet dreams, epiphanies, regrets
Fuck you
And dualities and multiplicities that shatter hope
All I have left are those games that I play
A process with no remorse
So I play the role of cheerful chipmunk
Ringmaster with a hint of naughty
Know far too much to conform to what's prescribed
But care enough to be engaged
No filter is the answer
A Messianic urge to not urge
Free associate and embrace the surreal
Start with your vagina
Your perky tits and Colgate smile
Wear that strap-on with pride
Show me what's on the inside
You're my catharsis
My wish fulfillment
The Real.

Random and fleeting
Like the lone palm marking Griffith Park
This is the passage from minutiae and ennui
To mountains and landscapes
They say you get the big picture before you die
Night in Edendale
A table of Paris Hilton clones
Speaking in one collective grating voice
The voice of trust fund babies
"Ball gags for all of them"
You hear your friend say
The delicious irony isn't lost on me
Snicker
Deep down I know though
They're the ones that make it
They drive the machinery mom and dad created
They'll take you for a ride
Just be compliant, entertaining
Be the useful idiot they want you to be
Just for a taste of the good life
Your fifteen minutes are up so fast
Your American dream.

Is it war yet? Is this war?
Omnipresent 800-pound gorilla in our midst
I don't fight . . . can't fight
Fair
Or I won't fight at all
You with your territorial pissings
A lie for any and all occasions
A cult of personality built on a make-believe bogeyman
Larger than life in more ways than one
A pathetic self-parody
You're the parasite in our midst
Built your name off the backs of others
Buy your friends
And scare the little children
This war was truly over before it began
No war of the gods here
Or spectacle for tourists
Just a cautionary tale
For whomever comes next.

Waiting for Electra or someone like her
But in the meantime
"I want to be your Julie Ruin"
Eyebrows raised, that emasculating gaze
"Precious. . .
It would be fun to play with gender roles
But I wouldn't want to sit on it."

If I were to build a shrine to John Dorsey
It wouldn't be Disney worthy
No tours for the would-be gentry
No faking it.
Someone told me to hit the streets recently
Rediscover what's real, vital
Base and unflinching.
This is where you can be found
Away from the flowery bullshit
Away from the trust-fund posers and swine-in-training
Downtown
L.A., Manhattan, KC, Denver
Unholy Toledo.
Every time I take the speck from my eye
I look to you.
Mind being my focal point
For my middle-class breakdown?
Not middle-class anymore at any rate
Sell my soul for coffee, cheeseburgers, and cigarettes
A mercy fuck from any anonymous muse?
Settle knowing the art is the gift
The gift requires work
And the hustle is the only solace there is.
You taught me this
My friend.
Been meaning to ask, seriously
Is there such a thing as hope?
Never mind that you are a Norman Mailer book title
No insult intended, of course
I've answered my own question.
You wander through the spaces, ruins
The degenerate paradise
Finding the delicious morsels that make life sad and comical.
Mock the psychoanalytic irony
The self-flagellation of the apologetic.
You are without apology
A voyeur of the grit of Americana.
I have just begun to mark your footsteps

333AM
Self-contained yet restless
Darker dreams pervade my consciousness
While others flee the gloom
I probe by torchlight
Nothing is pretty anymore
Of man or made by man
Yet I would revel in the texture of decay
Let the darkness take me.