magic castles border the alley way please lie down and snort the day and the she night will fall upon us yellows oranges whites and grays we see it going to school every day no amount of hatred or political correctness can help the souls astray talk at me tell me what my people did wrong correct me embrace my essence in your doctrine of the truth do you think i bowed to baal when the spirit lifted us higher inclusiveness is nothing new other than the pillar of what to stand for the new language proposal falls like lead into the lakes of empty hearts we know what forked tongues look like my mothers’ shed blood and spirit for the words embedded in my throat and the thoughts of freedom incubated in my mind in the name of equality for all translated into only yours i will not yield my inheritance blindly
Stream of Consciousness
father’s abstract
i’m dreaming i’m a dude with kickstand and all the equipment i’m not bad looking kind of like Easy Rider Billy hmmm funny how i walk to the whiskey even in my dreams it’s just a dream right oh there’s a chick hmmm she’s mouthy i don’t care for that my middle tingles toughens up a little warmer than before that brunette is quiet her cigarette is sexy what do i do my jeans are super tight i need to wrap my arms around her waist another whiskey man two children who are they hmmm i’m a father the photo says why do i feel like crying shit the guys at the end of the bar will think i’m a pussy oh my God am i really asleep yeah man i’ll take a hit where you from brother Bakersfield i think what brings you into town running from a rap is that your machine outside i suppose it is what year is it brother 1976 my heart it beats fast and heavy the sting of speed is gone a man is a man but inside there’s something wrong fuck no time for that i gotta make the trip yet still i have the nagging weight of Lucy and the kids
mommy issues
it drips and mingles
marries with the blood
soothsayer to what comes
slashes through the confusion
of the heart ethics
of good and not
so much evil is
her delicious name i
a groupie of her’s
claimed soul punch the
mirror to break the
soul it’s cloaked in
tones of luke warm
vengeance clouded in the
wine and chemicals entwined
don’t need your knife
to stab my back
i can self destruct
in searing pleasure do
you know what love
is i didn’t think
so and words fall
from your corpsely lips
corrupting my intentions to
provide a safety switch
to the runaway train
that is my conscience
rage and anger exotic
sisters of pain and
trickery demons extraordinaire in
the doctrine of auto
annihilation i rebuke myself
turn to junkydom cliff
soul
inside between the breastplate and the heart there’s a tiny little nook with an itsy blue butterfly her name is soul and she came to be in the mountains of Kashmir when the atoms were still babes blue prints in the grand masters eyes soul lodges there time immemorial and waits measures holds back explodes forward what the mind judges to do at times mostly in the dead of night soul flutters a little spirit revs up becoming restless and soul makes it right she spreads here sky blue wings to dry the tears welling in my eyes blue soul corner stone of secrets and filter of the lies the weary life the prices paid to walk in fields of grandeur right before crystalline morning comes mind rages war on blue life soul her wings crushed under a stream of poison
different circles
in my mind i had run away again it was just a fantasy a longing to be missed the truth was i was often absent from home and so was everyone else who lived there a modern family i thought about visiting Mr. Petrucchio but it was early evening he was probably asleep in his green upholstered chair with his brown Ferragamos still on and Perry Como on the hi fi killing me softly was his favorite
a weathered bench behind the Cecil was waiting for me old gray plastic too hot to sit on in the summer and always damp in the winter very decisive for a gray bench
i went to biology class today the teacher spoke about how eggs become fertilized funny because in English class we talked about how eggs are a symbol for rebirth life all around i took out a clove and lit up watched the smoke defy gravity up past my nose my eyes head and eventually gone to be part of the universal ozone
my mind went slightly blank and into daydream mode thinking about the electricity of boy chicken sperm fertilizing the girl chicken egg i chewed some of the black polish off my left thumb and came to the realization that i had been an egg too life was so intricate and fragile but forging forward man and beast go forth and multiply
out of my dream i snapped there was a four lane street between my bench and the old warehouse across the street with the permanently shut back door that transients used as a Murphy bed or toilet depending on the weather
at first there was a loud white woman skinny like a sausage casing she was yelling and flinging her arms wildly then two or three black folks gathered along side and spoke loud enough in religious tones he dead he dead Lawd take ‘im ta heaven po’ sona bitch
my watch said 5:57 p.m. another homeless person had passed in a door way i wasn’t sure what to feel i was no stranger to corpses my grandmother chose to pass at her home when i was a little kid and we didn’t have to wear seat belts driving through the north 110 speedway i witnessed a man dying like a fish out of water he was riding his motorcycle before that but had been hit and just left there i didn’t do it then because i didn’t know i was just a kid but every now and again i say a prayer for his soul
a small crowd gathered at my bench as they watched the coroner’s van pull in to the site one of the coroner’s people looked across the street at us and began making his way toward my crowd while the dead man’s crowd shook their heads smoked laughed yelled covered their mouths with their hand and then slowly left as the PD hung their yellow tape the sign of seriousness and solemnity
from west to east
unleash the ancient bones from the sewer sarcophagus what tribe did they come from and is there crude running through the cavities for we need another Dunkin Donuts on this corner for L Ron’s sake can you please scroll faster my children tasted human contact and i don’t have the time send the nanny to my third grader’s botox session i have roast goat yoga what is it the Bhagavad Gita is that the new shoe store at the center can you believe in something the tires of incongruence are filled with the holy toxins crossing the bloodlines of the time while religiously binge ignoring what’s around the glamour shots bus bench adverts warning homelessness is deadly unclear who they speak of and all the while for 17 just 17 i dream of Mulholland Drive on a two wheeled Pegasus can you hear me Jean Michel tell Andy that i love him the side swiper in the ‘vette looking for the boys long in the teeth the industry landlady needs new meat the volcanoes goofed on mick don’t feel duckie if he fails to bring them mini daisies to their oxy chambers pharaohs in their visions but down in the river racing cars on stolen clouds and i have a hardy laugh spray cans looming large can i paint the past pantheons of our minds yes i believe i can drop dropper dropped watch the hands watch the hands don’t look directly in the mirror while you’re under a spell quite the riveter you are i am the walkman helmet Rotten Johnny and Afrika Bambaataa with the Kiedis house band weaving eckankar in my drums while we carve our knees into the side pavements i didn’t know we couldn’t fly nothing takes out the stains of blood
little generational differences
laughing a little in the dream i had a roasted turnip with paprika for breakfast maybe that’s it it’s noon on Alpha Omega how does that work for you there is loneliness in her jeer but she keeps at me i’m not beautiful like a spring breeze i’m not delicate like a feather i cannot be a ballerina with two stone feet i am nothing and i cannot write pretty words like the zenith is your eyes i write rusted words like hurt me with your tongue knife and my ideas weigh like mercury on mars but she the Venus does not mind when i do her bidding our way of seeing life is very different i smitten with the downtown proletariat she with uptown well to do’s i can’t believe you are my daughter i know i say that i agree with you it’s too late momma i’m half way gone it’s best this way no hard feelins’ right i know punctuation and the grammar rules real fine but my lips shoot out the poisons thought of in my heart perhaps if reincarnation does abide the cosmic rules she’s supposed to follow i will come back as a super model just for you but now you’re gone and i see you in the clouds above in periwinkle linen and jewels the color of God’s eyes i heard you mother all of our unhappy life together and while on earth your words did bite me i also learned to use their teeth to cut my noose i ran away and did it my way it nearly killed me too but rest assured that in your way as a mother that you were your raising helped me through
to Clyde with love
the vinyl floors were what i really loved about King Eddy’s bar i just never ate the nachos or any of the bar food cooked in the back i just drank their booze the storm clouds had passed i was on long weekend from school by choice of course not because it was any particular holiday secretly i was hoping to see Clyde he was an older gentleman with property out in the desert valley not rich a Salton Sea Hawaiian shirt straw fedora wearing kinda guy he was smitten with me but for a long time he thought i was a very effeminate boy we couldn’t tell each other’s intentions my heart grew fond of him over the months in a time span of almost three years i knew he had been a hustler back in the 50’s and 60’s he knew the entire history of Pershing Square the seedy stuff of course not the pretty ribbon cutting ceremonies and the ice rinks at Christmas i came out i suppose by accident i was cramping pretty badly one Tuesday night and the girl bartender wasn’t working that night but Clyde was there many times before i had seen him hand out aspirins to friends so i thought he might have something with knitted brows he whispered jaggedly you’re a girl and i said yeah i’m not very femme but i didn’t think i looked that butch either ok goldilocks he laughed i was gonna ask you out on a date you see i prefer the company of gentlemen in my private life too not just in my industry wink wink i was confused but flattered thus began a deeper relationship my excesses slowed down i put on weight and i went to school more i read all of my books wrote all the papers took all of the exams and actually enjoyed it because of Clyde’s interest in my education there was a time buttercup he’d call me that when i thought i wanted to go to law school but i got lazy and time just passed me by you’re young kid i’ve been eyeballing you i know what you do why do you go to the Cecil he asked knowing dam well why i went i wasn’t angry at him but rather surprised and then creped out dude are you following me no he said but don’t forget i know lots of people around town buttercup don’t throw your life away is all i’m saying the feeling of genuine care felt like a boulder it was too overwhelming so i split
two sisters
during the teen years i became smitten with two sisters i’d take them from the pockets and purses of the people i knew dated them too my wayward street girl path hit the thickest part of the city jungle in my early twenties with my ruby mouth cigarette dangling out i would work through the summers at whatever i found i loved the way the first sister built up my courage i felt like a god she was so very soft put her in my mouth and fill my nose with her essence but like in all relationships i couldn’t trust myself to be faithful i needed more more more insatiable gaping fool on an empty heart hurt in the prime of the blossom so i cheated with the second sister exotic delicious i remember the first bang like it was three seconds ago my God what a fuck and then the downfall the second sister i had been forewarned by all the zombies before me little girl that lady is forbidden fruit but i chased that wild dragon sucking at my tits what a beast of a filly the things she would do send my clitoris up to Neptune and soon i had to pay dues and in the foggy LA morning they found each other out yeah i was singing the blues so we experimented with a threesome their death plot foiled by an angel on the street after running in traffic and taking a beat lost in the dessert of old Mission street but i was too much my father’s daughter i couldn’t be a slave to these beautiful women we know them by name a prize on my head said sister one i’ll blow out her heart crooned sister two no angel no devil could free me from them so we tried our ménage a few more times and it came down to the fundamentals their soul or mine i quit them cold turkey they dragged me to hell i brought up our pre-nup they tightened the screws sent their foot soldiers to give me the news entice me with freebies and i had to say no and the soldiers those soldiers they understood gave me a green light and i’ve been running ever since then
ain’t Nutbush City
1989 was a period in life when all back doors of an imminent hell opened to me my loved ones were self-deceived and in their view doing well so i let them linger in their truthful lies
the Cecil was really falling apart at that point a metaphor for the characters in my life i being a bit player young addictions mushrooming everywhere with most here and there would be one character more sophisticated than the other that player was Amos
the other being my mother she fancied herself a feminist with her valley feminist friends me i wasn’t sure what i fancied but started to steal more of my folks booze and pills it felt good to be honest about my thieving it took the edge off the lies that we told about how bad ass we were in controlling our demons
Amos’s demons would wear pink hustle old has been business men for a suck that never seemed to happen they were rolled here and there after falling asleep taking their pants off on the faux zebra stripped bed
my folks never knew about my life in the city i was just a latch key mess 4.0 gpa high school back door graduate i went to college i don’t know why or even how or how i got a 4.0 shit just happened growing up i had to think faster than your common drunk or cokehead or devious spoiled beautiful caged in their superiority women who struck me as being in horrible painful relationships what was heart breaking was that in their fantasy of being happy and better than thou they were murdering their true potential with worthless crap
Amos wanted to be so much like those women but she just couldn’t go through the medical change or even tell her mother back in Haiti whom she adored i was ignorant as hell when it came to identity i just loved Amos and wanted her to be happy i saw a lot sex violence addiction pain tears orgies more violence but in a way i’m grateful to Amos she did the best she could to raise me if i happened to go by the Cecil drunk or high and she was home i’d had to stay there and get lectured until i passed out
for Amos life had to go on and the hustle continued i’d pretend to sleep or if a fight broke out i sneaked into the bathroom or the murphy bed on the wall no biggie i was a pro at hiding and by that time swinging the punches too on account of my folks and their way of life in a very twisted way sword life might not always kill you
in retrospect i somewhat owe my life to Amos she taught me many things such as using protection don’t go home with anyone don’t walk the street alone “be good kid for Chris’ sake” don’t ever leave your drink alone stuff like that
words less spoken 