I fell to earth with a rusted knife

I fell to earth with a rusted knife.  For many years I nested on a tree-shaped cloud like a wicked bird.  One day, for no good reason, I blinked my eyes and plummeted to the ground.  Wicked birds do not fly, they plummet.  The ground was wet.  I rubbed mud on my face.  My powers were immense. 

I landed at the feet of a poor stupid man.  While he stood there stammering, I undressed him and cut him into five hundred pieces.  Each piece was a perfect cube.  It took me less than one second.  The smell of wet earth made me sick.  To diminish my nausea, I performed a meaningless feat of amazing physical and mental dexterity.  With my eyes closed, I stacked the man’s remains into a menacing rectangular prism.  It was perfect.  God did not weep at my evil act.  He laughed if he noticed at all.  I laughed too, gazed at my knife, and lithely pressed it into my left eye.  This game continued until the rusted blade peeked through my right eye.  I did not blink, though the movement of the knife was very slow.  The experience was sublime and lasted exactly 56 minutes. 

Elegy for Some Ninjas

Ninjas laid siege to a convenience store for three days during last year’s endless winter.  They came from nowhere and slid down ropes tied to leafless willows.  Though frost covered the ground, their feet left no tracks.  Soon the ninjas were nested upside down, like spiders, peering through the corners of windows.  As dust settled on boxes of pop tarts and rows of gum, as hot dogs slowly wheeled around their small heated cell, these silent killers waited.  Their patience was empty, because the world had already ended.  These ninjas were the only men left alive, and though they were the last to go, they too soon were dead.

"I can be anything"

Behold this bloodless god,

   this blind statue of death.

with white sockets

      that radiate merciless night.

In a coat of colors, 

he straddles the world,

 which he fell like a beast.

With one foot on its throat, and one foot on its tail

            A deranged arc

                   LeVar Burton glows

   in the still and endless void,                                  

                       a Reading Rainbow.

Searching for my lost shaker of salt...

Have you ever dreamt of that giant shaker filled with writhing infants? Three stories tall, or more, stuffed to the top with muffled screams and half-bald soft-skulled humans dripping in brown slime...do you know it?  It haunts me constantly, both when my eyes are open and when they are closed.  It haunts me as I blink.  I can never see where it sits.  Perhaps it is floating in space.  I have seen it turned upside down by who-knows-who, shaking up and down in a horrible arc that covers the face of the moon.  Babies tumble out in a cloud…like wingless bees thrown free from their nest by a half-benevolent god.  What a sight.  

The view from Annapolis

Through the terminal window I watched angels sucking jet fuel from stationary planes through gilded straws.  Gracefully, these giant ghosts knelt down and shepherded planes from the air onto the tarmac on flawless olive palms.  Their bearded faces were obscured by clouds.  As I boarded my plane, I watched an angel pluck a harp with strings of fire in my mind’s eye.  I imagined myself to be a giant crater filled with lava where tired angels are melted into nothing.  So long angels!  That’s what I said.

Proverbs of Ghost Cheetah: I

Being is a murky vapor.  There is no frothy swamp or aging creature.  No skeleton to gnaw on in the filthy muck.  There is no muck.  Only a disembodied stench, half-steeped in the slime-shadow of unthought mountains...the shredded and poisonous furniture of unreality.  

Letter to Maureen Re: 5 Leaf Clovers

Maureen,

Let me tell you about my cousins Doug, Brodigan, and Harvey. They were good boys. I mean, they read books about vampires, did lots of really intense, mind-bending drugs, and they all worshiped Satan...you know religiously. But they were good boys. All that weird stuff was kind of precious. One time Harvey was in a bit of a jam. He had stolen a purse on the subway, and because he was too drunk to walk all the way back to the flat, he buried the purse by the side of the road in a spot covered by shadows. There he fell asleep. The cold that night was bitter, and you know what? by the time the morning rolled around Harvey was completely dead from hypothermia. He had a bottle of orange juice in his pocket that was frozen solid. I drank it later by mistake. In any case, Harvey was dead and nobody knew about the buried purse. The night Harvey turned into an ice cube and died, Doug and Brodigan had engaged in a particularly intense, and uncomfortable prayer session in honor of some grand Satanic festival season. Their swords crossed at times tenderly, at others carelessly, but no one complained about the clanging. Doug ran out to buy some heavy DMT. According to accounts from the scene, he tried to suck it directly out of a sleeping dude's brain on a wobbly picnic table. In any case, the drugs were not properly derived and they became deadly weapons. Doug and Brodigan injected heavy DMT into their brains. They both also, at the same time, purchased identical revolvers. After purchasing the guns, Doug and Brodigin continued on as two iterations of the same satanic being. Anyhow, sometime later Doug was standing in a field shooting his gun at flowers when he noticed a five leaf clover. He picked it up and married the first woman he saw. Things turned around for Doug that day. You might know Doug by his real name: Harry Dean Stanton.

So, I was on the phone with my brother...

and he was telling me this story about the time we were at my grandparents when we were kids. He said he was messing around in their bathroom and saw a cup he thought was filled with soda...but it turned out to be denture water. He didn't realize what it was until many years later he did the same thing as an adult visiting our parents.

story excerpt

"While it is true that all good things must come to an end, life is not good and it goes on forever. All life is unending. Though we may cease to breathe, love, and yearn for physical love, we carry on yet in the shadow of the world; in the realm of dreams. This is so for all things that live: wooden ducks, dead rats, and potatoes. Even Indians dream, though savagely of white women, horses, and wampum.

At Barrow Gulch, the dream shadows of the departed hung heavy, like the unmistakable residue of blood left in the streaks and creases of an exquisitely crafted wooden duck. The wooden duck laying sadly amidst the throbbing and bloody shards of Char's manly shattered brain was larger than one might have guessed. When Char had carried the duck wrapped in fabric, tied with rope around his neck, his broad and muscular back grew weary with its weight."

Magic Bird

Magic Bird,

I have a golden saddle.

On your radiant feathers,
we shall sail across the sky.

The clouds taste sweet
infused with honey.

This gentle rain that falls
silently past my ears
reminds me

I also have a knife.