John Wayne v. Zorro v. Radio Head

Itch, believe wider words.
Sand off the roughy sound
edges. Cup your
whiskers and look:
a thumpy jigsaw tree.

Beating rings, berry jam
hymns, sticky in a road stop
bathroom stall. Sometimes churches
are torn down and sometimes
they are overwhelmed with holidays.
TIMBER!

This is why there are so
many churches or why
there are no churches. You can see
them if you go gunslinging
across Kansas.

Our Ferrari wind-cabin, our mass
murderer mobile. Wheel your spindle
sabre 'round, stab the needle highway,
bob it all the way
back across.

Fog the windscreen and trace my name
in, tattoo myself in the eye-
back of the prairie. Whips
around our ring tailed
wind sock, our mischievous hymn
antenna.

Learn the languages of engine vibrations.

I drove from Duluth in one
night to Wichita, to prove
I am a lover, a burly
sailor. I bend my ribs back
repeatedly, building a hanging boat
bridge to see your breathing
sounds: your slow roll
up & fall.

I will roll you for
a cigarette, twist at the ends,
and spray ink on the insides
of my lungs. Geeer
up, boy, and shoot!

You, light catcher,
abusing time and times.

on the loss of hearing over time

this, an overheard tattoo's point:
nothing travels faster than light yet we have it
on occasion, mach it
but galaxies atrophy there, in the wider blinks
before you are or are not the father

and ambergris, too, may still be dropped in wine
as your matter’s handspike knows
which is just to say, does screaming light a whisper
or lightning dare a spark

i think, line the page ink knows
to be blank
and steep there---frequency doesn’t know it’s a heart
and eavesdropping, I heard myself in the wider point

which is to say elements in me blush along with me
or as the lights’ race starts, the point fires-blank and crests
roll up your own sleeves to the wider-needle there
before you are or are not the father
this was all just someone listening

I'm A Giver That Way

Masturbating on the interstate while driving like a cowboy
I like to think of the truckers
pulling off to the side of the road
on account of me

I like to think of cowboys masturbating
with chew in their mouths and spit on their chins
while listening to a revival on the radio

I ride radio waves like a horse or a pastor

I am the hymn of no tomorrow
carried on the wind

I like to think of truckers singing me
until they choke on their own spit

3-11-12
Rubbed One Out in Wichita
Driving/Methodist Coffee Shop
 
I breathed these bones upon your back,
muscles waving the hills of Kansas,
rain gray on the bluffs press breast on breast,
gold grass red hips breathe the windsplash on bus windows.

I rubbed one out in Wichita,
a church service singing in my head,
testimony crawling upon the floor under the bathroom door.

Their voices gasped the songs of your past,
pressing through the dream trace of my fingers on your skin,
a healing cough singing the space between our air. 

There Is No Day Here

I will cough on you—

we will share the sound disease

in the no one hears it.

But really, the rocks & trees

are persons coughing with us.

I recall how your back can arch,

a bridge between our lungs.

I can’t believe the words that hang

like murders between us.

You put them in syntax with tire irons

and a cattle press.

When my lungs stop rasping—

                it means I don’t lust you anymore.

3/6/12

if you cough in the no one hears it that’s a fact too slow to pretend with
after several days in a new place we longer for cough so much my back
hurts so much my cough balls hurt i would buy a ferrari and i would call
this cough poetry and cough like the heavens magisterial circles the living
bodies sunning the sounds of death cough rattle shtick stumble i am cough
almost too drunk to cutlass listening to cough mirror traffic eating year old
rolls in the back of my cough cough ferrari today i am a cat judging and
acting upon the world’s many surfaces on which to sleep here will be
cough very good there maybe not so much i settle into the microwave
nyquil forests my barometer boots my chicken feet the best way i can
describe it is cough cough cough cough i can’t believe a word i think

day/day/day

your ears are on the floor.

i treed your mouth            remind it

how to bay but

it only coughs mapache, mapache.

well mettled over and lacking acutely

i set out to track you back     through time,

resculpt the deadweight wax - 

the scent river trickled                cold

some time around a bare-faced day

six years ago maybe, your shoes off

so i tune fine synesthesia whiskers,

seek your rubbings on the yonders -

the boulder vibrations               dissolved

to a sandy detritus to sift, to sieve

for battered membranes

punched out by dadding.

                feet in mud with grass

                growing up through them.

hours dripping off

the nose of a lonely bottle.

i may find, might fight my way back

or hunt blue-faced through

grease puddle unframed prints.    clutching

artifacts wetly.

a ward. a t-shirt

worn a                       first day -

hole in one breast -

unwashed in a coon’s age