Standard Issue Manifesto

I.

I’ve lost myself in a thinking well

Thrown off sided by a backwards remark
Culture slipped through my fingers

Broken down so fine it’s become nothing

All things new and equal

Do not speak to me of old men

Who have lost their fingertips

Fuck You. Wars revolve

Like disco lights in empty space

Red-faced, no money, walk funny

With my tale in the air

Advertising spring-time

Young thoughts that pour from an old cracked vessel

Is not the event itself or intention

A firing line that marks a boundary

Truth can be explosive

Or can die with one sad whimper

A firing line marks off property

In standard issue manifestoes.

II.

Biscuits for puppies

Served with tea

Lace hanging from thigh

“Remarkable weather

We’re having.

Would love to eat your socks”

“So I read this article

In the paper about

How down is the new up

And I talked Paul into investing

In some of that down.
We want to be well-equipped for

Our golden years, you know”

III.

The Alzheimic disassembly

Performed by minute elves

Santa scares the shit out of me

With his hoes, his bag of tricks

His ice-grill, slick racing kit

Going down in smoke. Coming up lit.

My memories screen in Technicolor

I write everyone into the plot

Because the doors of my perception

Have a twisted hinge and won’t

Shut all the way. There’s a draft

In my thoughts of a story with the worst

Kind of ending

When the howl of defeat becomes the clarion call

For a generation of subversives with no clear intent.

There’s a wind that creeps beneath my door

That carries in it the scent of fire, blood, and ash

And I carry on pretending

That I don’t notice it.

A blood-red disc

Of wheeling fire,

What was once called Pity

Ruthless and abstract

Cold iron black

Backwards walking

Into uncut time

Forever sifting

Kaleidoscope gel

One veiled layer and one

Of desire bursting

Burning

Bleating for your breast

IV.

Sad-eyed lady

With icy tears

Your wounded chest beckons me

I think I might have

Been born out of it

The daydream of your heart

A merry-go round of a million

Vapid lapidary lures

Black cages barbed

Black iron bars

I’ll lick you up and down

Flay your skin like flavor from gum

Julia O Julia

O Devoured Julia

Julia devoured Julia

V.

Was there ever a face that spoke to me

With all the eloquence of an Elizabethan

Cast out of time or functionality

With the empty wonder

And graceless tremble

Of a flower in a gale

A young girl weeping

Sweet tears rolling

Cutting irrevocable routes

Into ruddy cheeks

Tender valleys to learn the rough hand of

Time her old Master

Weeping for love unrequited

Unremembered remote embers

Pale reflections of her lunar

Vision

A vagabond in empty space

With only recollections for landmarks

She charts a course between the stars

Armed with dissolution and an old hat

To fall at the feet of the ages

Cast in a gaping maw

The abyss of the sea of the abyss

drifting

drifting drifting

like a piece of driftwood

drifting

drifting

America, old England of my heart

With your stunted traditions and

Six-toed cousins

In-bred well fed cheap by the dozen

Bought for a dime and paid for with time

Every second of your youth

Ticked and bleeding onto a sponge

Three for ninety-nine cents

In this clearance of souls

Plus tax

So she drifts

Drifting like a piece of driftwood drifting

“It takes courage to drift”

She hears someone say

Time ticking on

Flickering time turning

Gyroscopes, Falcon’s Feathers

Descending through the Magnetic

Dance of electrons

To reveal the gray anatomy

Gyrating hips devoured

Jack in a box devoured

Slabs of meat in dress

She devours devours dreaming

Of being

Devoured

Her smile belongs in pictures

Her brethren live in blinding lights

To wash out every flaw

Yet behind those smiles lurks

The black expanse of pasteboard facing

The effusions of her innocence.

Channeled in the blood of our cities

Emptied of all hope

Every morning about eight

Black expansive maw

Time is your music.

You must ride every turn exact

Leaned trusting into it

Play it like a symphony

Or don’t play it at all.

Those are the stakes.

We only play the game with those stakes.

Those are the highest stakes and those are the only stakes

Do not play it again for Uncle Sam

Do not play it again for the Master of Rats

The Builder of Dungeons

Out of the Dungeon and into the Labyrinth

The labyrinthine twining jungle

Dungeon of my desire

Acid rain eats away the Statue of Liberty

My heart weeps for her ugly stone flame

Crawl out of your impotent sterile sewers

Follow me on my merry pipe

VI.

Angel angel

I love your fist

As it closes round my wrist

To bring me unto you

I feel heartbeat

Blinking time

In fevered rhythm abreast to mine

Print a picture

There was no beauty not found

On your face

That I saw not wasted

By my tattered brush

Enshrine the lie in us.

VII.

I have created a hell for my lioness

Saith the Serpent

She shall dance and make merry

And love me in my brave disarray

Trees dance when the wind invites them

As flesh decays in the trap of old age

Caught in a will never endangered

By consideration

This inexorable will

Seen in death spasms

Hung by heartstrings