Help with Hands

Hands folded at Sunday dinner. Southern
pride shown through prayer. Cussin’
your cousin under deep breaths. What
is that loser doing here? He belongs to Jesus.
Everyone needs a little help. Embarrassed by
your words, he leaves and fixes
your tire
as he walks
home.

Train, Train

Train leaves the station. Crazy cravings keep me
inside “The Know”. Like “The Know” is a good place to be. Down in The Valley
next to Motel Hell. There is the
guttersnipe,
smokin’ the pipe.
Man is she ripe,
With the stench of not giving
A FUCK! Laundromat Libido Bathroom
Motel – rent by the slot. Twenty 5 cents for 15 minutes
plus a twenty for her troubles. All that to think…5,4,3,2,1
NOW GODDAMN IT GIVE ME MORE SHIT or I
will FUCK YOU UP!
Blade out. Flesh ripped. For what? A blood-stained craving
with a side of tears?

Cleansed

You
are

the
kindest

deluge
of

rain.
Washing

clean
like

redemption
of

the
repentant.

Re-wind / Fast-forward

Re-wind! 30 years before there was a question
of spiritual rights in our trailer park, everyone was
a Baptist. Bibles flew like buzzards
spotting up for the dead in the tilled fields. Poems were not
an option in The Church of Civil Wars. Mom and dad danced
with Disco’s Depression as I was the slave child
whipped with screams of ancient arguments and grand speeches
made.

Fast-forward! Present day
therapy questions my
aversion to God’s
glitter dreams. Normal childhood, “yeah
Doc, What the fuck ever! Daffy Duck was a
bitch and can’t play for the NBA either.” No more basketball,
no more color, everything white as the blackened snow-covered
earth.

Battle of the Bands

Who is the greatest?
The Beatles or Rolling Stones?
Hey Dude, Let It Bleed!

Light

Lighthouse being built, Red brick by
brick. Waiting for White light shining on mid
night Blue background, east
to west illuminating my way home.

Why is Johnny Not Marching Home?

I

LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT
Political prostitution pimped out Johnny.
making decisions out of grimy
greed for self-centered standoff between
Cadillac morals and his Pinto ideals.
Free as the oil being pumped into Johnny.
Prices being raised during
Santa’s seasonal Hooking for Dollars. We have sold
The American Scheme! Owned now by the Chinese for 3.4%.

II

Johnny won’t come home to Bud
Light and billiards with his buddies. He
won’t know a hero’s welcome. No ticker-tape. Except for paper
work he would sign saying the government isn’t responsible for his
pages of rages he wrote in his journal that Dr. Take a Pill
would tell him to keep swallowing so he wouldn’t suffer
from Pre Duress Syndrome.

III

Johnny was a sniper. Face in the sand, eye on prize.
Ready to kill: who they say, when they say, until Johnny says,
“Pistol whip me for I am your whore, I
believed you when you said we were defenders of the weak.
I am weaker than my enemy and the sanddollar.” Johnny waits…

LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT, LEFT,
L E F T.
BANG!

Drive-thru Redemption

No neon name, yet you
love, unconditional.
Asking many things. I do
Try to say thanks, most of the time.
Prayer courtesy. This
time I ask something
out of character for me.

How can I help?

I wish to look through your
glasses, they see courageous colors
after harsh storms. Religious
glasses I tried; too dark, too tight.
They fit some ok. I want
more than three wishes on the dollar menu.
Humanity’s hope for the abused
Aphrodite. Faith in more than the Church of
Frivolity and Peace in the Warheads. To help the lonely
meet and fall in…whatever gets them through the
night.

How can I help the oppressed
rise above their munitions.
A smile in their direction or free fries with their order.
Courteous cash back? “Come back real soon!”

May I take your order please?

Project

Once there was a project. Experimental.
Put all people with low hopes in tiny
turfs. Loathsome nights spent hearing sirens
cries, more crack in the family pavement. Father
tries to care for wife, children but fleas and rats force
him out before food stamps get lacerated by government
grazing. Children turned away from the buffet of the better
life. The cash cow can’t come home. She is busy being milked
out of her last dollar. Vittles not free,
except on TV, and then only dress
rehearsal for the electric
fence sell at Wal-Mart.

Irony

World of iron, gray skies
Indoors. Iron Icicles fall in front of your
face. Stone, brick, and steel toed memories
seared, not from want but necessity. Cigarettes
and booty buy you solitude. Porn acted out in private
igloos. Shields are there but don’t protect
the innocent and the guilty. They have the key to better freedom. Administrative
thrones for little men trying to be more
than kings, end up jesters in the court of humiliation.
A long way from
Camelot.

Transference

Phone rings, it is you
again, my secret
path to myself.
Whispers of indecent longing
waiting to pounce like a puma on my vocal
chords. You wait until you hear the first slight
breath before you gasp in flow for the first time. You
make me wait to hear you click the receiver
with enamel claws before passion prevails over
vanity. My voice sends you past
your future into a stratus known as ecstasy
plus one. Your cries muffle
my screams both praying that God
will understand why his name is mentioned
bu tnot needed. We reach out and touch only the heaven we have
created and wave our hands through lust, love, low lying
clouds of bittersweet. Knowing touch is only
the illusion we create to walk this tightrope
through the cloudbursts causing it to rain from
the same sky
that
rains on you
that
rains on me…

2500 miles away!

New Fish

Standing in the middle of the Ohio River. Fish
reached the end of my line.
Elated. First fish, first trip. Six years
old. Daddy said, “Boy,
God gave you that fish.” Daddy, you mean
God put the hook in his lip and made it hard
for him to breath . “No son, I don’t
mean it that way.” Pappaw was standing and grinning. He
must have told this lie before. Daddy
why did God hurt the fish for me. Does God
like me and not like the fish. “No son God likes all things the same.”
I started to cry. Daddy let the fish go.
I hope the judge likes me as much as God and Daddy liked
that fish.

Twister

Dark twists engulf
like a self loathing

tornado sweeping
away all hope like a trailer

park memory. There is one
cellar I can run to if I

hear the siren. But if she calls out too late I
have to hold on to the thread. Hanging. Pleading it to pass.

Winds of a crypt long closed, reopened
to unleash the harsher tempest, seducing

me to fly , but holding the
thread, hanging on by one claw.

OZZO

Nighttime is the hardest place
to soften these thoughts of dark
prisons taking new dominion of my
being to leave me pissing in the fan of my
beliefs-New day dawn shadows of normalcy
following me in the wrong
direction to OZ or ZO. Id
is my master of illusive whispers, promises, unfulfilled
with crown molding. Dolling out dinero for diapers
to help get the job well-done with a slight chance of rare. Holy
Jesus, save me from this crime and I won’t do it again, until the next
time you aren’t looking. Please put a stop sign in my
brain so I will get off this wheel to
Hell.

Deliverance

Never wanted to be associated with it.
Yet it’s all I ever pray for. I track it like squeeeeaaaals
off in the woods. Pulls both ways like a redneck finger trap.

(Deliverance Theme continued)

Hillbilly prophets try to pray me back home. Flights to the south,
deep fried. They want to celebrate me home, but all they do is burn me at the
grill.

Ridicule plays second base. Ump screams “YOURRR’RRRE OUT “. “Hey, I
thought I was safe here”. Automatic out
of place.

(Deliverance theme)

Uncle’s trailer! “Damn boy you write a mean poem, but you should get into a real trade like
right wing heating and air or join the Union of the Klan, they got a fine string of
benefits.”

Flyaway. Thinking backwoods. Driving back home. Hmmm, never considered L.A.
a safety zone.