At the Framingham Elks

At the Framingham Elks

at the Elks
the moustache count is high
all the wives are named marie
and the jackets say frank
on the shoulder
"fuck these new cigarettes
they go out"
"Fiya safety"
"id ratha burn down"
buncha good eggs here
drinkin in Framingham
"last week I was drinkin at O'Connells"
"They shut ya off dint they?"
"Oh yah"

Look, your phone is always
under your car seat.
realize that.
She's done with kids
yes she sounds like her motha
yes she sounds like Carol-Anne right now
but shes fed up
and if Johnny dont play her
fuckin song
right now
shes gonna lose it.

Everyone at the Elks is done
so done
fed up with Frrrriggin Obamer
fed up with modernity
and their cigs
right now.
But theyve got wingdings
and Baker Street just played
and its Trixie's 40th
and shes pahtyin
andthe theme is disco 70s
so they've come to the Elks
where she had her sweet 16
and met her hubby

theyve gut great antipasto
and blue ribbon babakew
pulled pok
and hutdogs with all the fixins.
Sweatshirt count is high
I am overdressed in all black
with a cashmere blazer
and marie's bangs are
glistening with product

but I've come to the Elks
with cigarettes that go out
because of the government

I do like pina coladas
and making love in
the dunes of the cape
but tonight im drinking
hahpoons and pronouncing
it that way
so the bartendress is more
comfortable
with my overall self
everyone else is deep into
captin and diets
and i sip a bit of
protestant whiskey
cause im culturally aware
and i know
many important historical dates
but the most important date
is tonight because tomorrow is the same
there's a man here who
im not sure is a midget (sean of course)
and hes covered in tats
and wonders
if ive ever been to the Villa
in Wayland
which he just needs in his life right now
his dogs name is murphy
and hes parents are trixie's neighbuhs
seans arms reach his kneecaps
but hes about 4'9
his dads a retired cop
and his brother in law
is named tom

theres some gambling afoot
the prize his turkeys
(thanksgivins next week)
his dad already won one
in a competition aply name
the turkey shoot

Bald spot count is high
as the lights are dimmed
and i eat wingdings
not because i want to
but because i have nothing to do
i only know phillis the exec chef
at the catering company
where i work tuesday through thursday

its a really hootin and hollering
irish american hooley house
hootenany with maybe one jew
and plenty of eyetalyuns

i am 25 which makes me
the youngest
and thats why i have come to the Elks
to be out of place.
mission accomplished
as i swig a fine beer
local as fuck and fuck local

im not hiding inthe corner
im just in the corner
because it prevents me
from being cornered
by the corny mothers and fathers
who introduce themselves to me
and drop their Rs
and ask if im from around here
which i deflect with stories about
washington dc and brazil
because the truth
would make them uncomfortable

as I should be uncomfrtable
but i am not.
but even so.
I leave the Elks
for the white collar
rich town of my youth
to pretend again
that my collar
is as blue as my blood

Rods and Cones

The thing that he liked
The thing that likes him
The object floating suspended
above the ballroom
was simply shiny
most mosaic material
reverberating light to his rods and cones.

Light too comes from his phone
And his now blue face
Matches his blue balls
"that's just a legend!"
the x had protested
"the myth is, men, momentary
"as they are, forget themselves somewhere.'

The thing was still there
The thing that he liked
The thing that liked him
was still a thing
an issue of perhaps
magnetism, mayhem, malignant
tumors on the sides of dogs

Picking through slop with hogs
With other malignant men
He seemed different
but was in fact not
was similar but different
still staying slow the course
reverberating with the rods and cones

but since now how the rainbow is over
several waves have subsided
since then and that dark time
though its echoes still reverberate
though its cicatrice still slices open
wounds on people thought impenetrable
and losing.

Dancing through the streets
and reliving the times that weren't
the endless duo redivides and combines
Approaching the objective?
The man that i love?
The road block that fills the void?
The sarcoid.

On that true love I do avoid!

PDM

The Edge of Unmasking

…and so it was that we began again.
a new kind of healing found us
as we, at the gates of new revolution,
teetered between knowing and going.
On the edge of unmaking we, who
knew no different, see a crescent waning
slipping away into nothingness.

The Quest

The quest for the thin joint
the anointedthinjoint
which never ends
begins at a point
where
I am a million pound spaghetti
where
I'm the new scribe
where
I suck
i simply do not care
i simply do not care
copy cut paste
hury
FUCK YOUR OWN FACE
fuck it fuck it seriously
not to be confused with jury
which in spanish is pronounced
hurry
and french for fuck youf5tn6hk jtmrnjyr mfjj
u˚jythrgbfvdsx
ny
ouch ouch ouch fuck
stop
it hurts.

But seriously,
the quest is pretty good.

red and blue

red and blue red and blue
all risen and fallen asking
what to do do you tell me red or blue
all come and gone happening
through and through
red and blue-red and blue

neither red nor blue
cease pulsation
i turn into you whether red or blue
i see you through the thin-skin veil
i know where you go and what youre for
be my color be my flag
be divided into one
and turn the time to now when our term is done
pouring hot and cold and both from on high
washing away all the crumbs of the day
rising up in the sky red in blue

it comes in waves

until she cries out of blood-shooting eyes i got the blues
the black has fallen again
red and black and fallen again in a flash
spreading red left a stain you cant see
red and blue shine and blink in the dark air
red and blue red and blue
and with a firm finger and cold hammer stammering out like a dumb singer say
i am everywhere
but you sir werent there soon enough
true enough

for forever till now
and hence
red to blue
too blue to red
but before you get to get going sometimes you gotta stop

-NDW

green and yellow

green and yellow green and yellow
last night green and yellow streets
made shine by the rain
in green and yellow
to-night the green and yellow
is on the tracks below the train
and too on the train
green and yellow train
green and yellow tracks

green lines and yellow lights
illuminate the cab and create
green lights
yellow lines demand i stand back
and keep hands clear
green doors and boxen at the station
frame green signs and benches on vacation
in the cold hut where is empty

where is
a green sign with white letters spells "centre"
but its still nothing special
"obstructing doors causes delays"
warns a sign coated in green light

it comes in waves
the green and yellow
first green
then yellow
then green and yellow

green and yellow green and yellow
golden green and verdant jaundiced
armadillos armed in golden amarillo
viridian skinned blonde caspian wardikes
hiking and hitching up
brilliant difficult daffodil britches
tossing shining coins all presidential
and green backed cloth through residential
neighborhoods as we ride and vibe
past other tribes, cast diatribes aside
like the trials we hide inside
our yellow raincoats
repelling grassstains
and leaping off trains not reigning in our pain
to feel it and feel sane and not complain
about green and yellow lights.

green and yellow lines adorn pipes painted red
at the station and say something poetic like
G 19 A
they do not say stop.
they say go
they say slow down or caution
but we here go faster

evergreens and yellow double lines
cut through green mountains
and green fences at interchanges
and cloverleafs
where leads
to a room devoid of green and yellow
but the tv is alive with
a green and yellow
uniformed division
absolutely fucking destroying
a blue and silver squad

and after red and blue invade
green and yellow are back again
this time reincarnates us
two trains
green, yellow
joined for 8 brief pauses
as green and yellow

take either green or yellow
or take green and yellow together
take them as they are
colors
divisions of spectrum
spectacular hues that
are similar
but different
not like red and blue
which meet
as purple.

back to me
back to the kitchen
the color of silver
i take a delivery of squash
typically green i receive
but today its green and yellow
and like that it comes back to me
green and yellow
green and yellow

why green and yellow?
why does green swallow me?
why do i swallow yellow
and then go green?
sick to my stomach
from too much green and yellow

back back
to green and yellow
this time in petworth
i wait for the yellow
but all i get is green
and my green bag with yellow trim
is packed brimming
ready to go for the yellow
to take me to the beginning
of green and yellow

...and god damn it
i am 1 am on my birthday
and the prudential is
green and yellow
and you've got to be kidding me
with this green and yellow bullshit
basking in green and yellow
like im not looking.

but now the problem
is that i only see
green and yellow
because thats what im looking for
like as i walk through the fens
which are
all painted green
i see no yellow
until i see that damn yellow light-post
in a sea of green
monsters.

seems everything in this town is
painted green
and trimmed in yellow
because its such a pretty pair.
or because these green and gold
natives still hold a grudge
against orangemen
and sometimes even red and blue
(on the Jack and not the Glory)
which gives me nothing but problems.

because im not in charge
of green and yellow
they act out and misbehave
in church and on the schoolyard
and writhe between dreams
and forgive each other
before theyve even gotten mad.

but its maddening me now because
im wearing a purplish shirt
and riding on a purple train
yet ive no cause nor desire
for poemwriting
no impulse to follow purple
on an a ultraviolent
mauve emotional tangent
seeking cunning criminal crimson or
deep malignant mahogany
marooned between red and blue.
i only see green and yellow.

i see on signs
banners on army barracks
bidding me to serve
or a street sign telling me
when to swerve to avoid
missing my turn
because you cant pass up
a chance with green and yellow.

And I pass rhododendrons
whose leaves are simultaneously
green and yellow
and trod on moss and lichens that
are neither green nor yellow
to my mother's house (from the purple train)
which is olive drab
and coated in christmas lights.

and I wonder
on the white bed
if I will ever be free
Free of envy and cowardice.
Free of revolution and corrupt gold.
Free of queasiness and disease.
Free, my man,
of green and yellow.

PDM

NEw Band

http://thedeuces.bandcamp.com/

great new band from spacemen

The Hawk and the Pigeon

"That's just what happens,"
the pigeon stunk
spitting out just what he'd thunk
and not considering more
than brutal truths, dehumanized
'bout death and danger impending:
"everybody decays"

"no, no, no
we must preserve what's become of us"

"and just what is that?
our self-preservation?"

"I've reservations on that proclamation:
to lay waste to honest truths
spoken centuries
would be a sin on centuries,
unacceptable"

"Un Ak Ceptabull!??"
the pigeon was simply sputtering
struggling to form words
which he knew for sure existed.
(In a twisted fashion he resembled
A trembling Lincoln in the pre-beard days,
Hazily reciting crappy campaign promises
without emphasis.
without Umlaut.
But that beard,
it gave attention where it was due:
the chin.
The site of moral origin.)

The hawk,
reasoning with our dear columbiform,
"Palumbo, Palomitas."
He stumbled finding words to say something other than
"Raptor that I am, I ingest only hate."
This was not a well received comment
and the taste it left was not unlike
a cornbread without baking soda
unleavened and chalky from
an impenetrable memory
of clear brothed chicken chili,
made by an immaculate alcoholic
red head mother of a man
loved by doves
but shit upon by pigeons.
And in living a less than perfect life
mum and da'
had finally fucked someone other than themselves.
Baby boys and girls bear in mind
Don't leave the angry past behind.

And the Accipiter, the raptor,
intercepting the transmission from heart and lung
received unto himself a new kind of healing
and forgetting about the old
he flexed and flew further from his initial reality
to the space inhabited by
who no longer can exist
and will not in our world remain.

"There comes a time" he exhaled (the pigeon he did)
"When a dove and a pigeon ain't no different at all.

"and that time is now"

PDM

The Gates part I (click for whole poem)

The Gates

I. 

There were wrought-iron gates by the riverside-
salvaged bits of a grandeur left untouched,
save for the bloody, hardened frost of untold years of creeping rust-
holding fast to shifting dirt, fascinating urban folk
and adding fuel to village lore, the mystic cause of children lost:
"Bodies pried from off the shores! victims of its demon claws
which wayward men invoked": this is the stuff of fairy tales,
which aging men stuff into tomes like photos into old shoeboxes.

So when young eyes were shied away in houses, 
and hunchbacked trees bent about these gates-
in the days of dying that define the autumn; 
the opaque days of winters lost to the beating down
of uncouth weathers-

shuttered sunlight rolling down past leaves
blasted flakes of those gates' splintering red metal
to soothe over churning riverbed sediment,
crumbling into metallic stones smoothed over
from the glancing graces of thousands upon thousands of watery hands;
and cracking crayfish on the bellies of otters did these old relics sink 
into blue Egyptian silt with the bones of their old possessors--- 
stirred in and bellowing with the riverside tides 
of the earth's foreign sentiments, 
where tumble and glide the endless confessors 
of the silent and placid seas.

(and thus so it went, 
that in the every minute which from it followed came a minute more, one...

two...

...and three hundred years would slowly pass
as the great ambitions of great-souled men
with all the wears of work and wine
would acquiesce to their too many days
let by them fly as purely wasted; 
with altogether too many dreams,
expectations and aspirations
let slowly simmer to smoldering regret.)

TSE


for parts II-IV
follow this link or click title above
http://www.box.net/shared/oxfsya3j5d

for raymond carver

he waited with his toes out from under the covers,
and muttered "bon nuit", rum-laced, heart blank,
his poems written and unwritten and at last forgotten.
he lost them in wispy clouds of catalogue lovers,
in bathrooms and neon motels without thanks,
with carnivorous fervor unleashed in peruvian cotton.
and without affection for his daughter's mother,
whispered, "you are nothing", tiger-like, frank
as cleopatra slept, forgetting the rotten.

JHS