Convalescence

A shot of me, or rather my hand, in hospital the morning after my appendectomy.

Hobobservations I

Can't afford no mausoleum
for my dropped-out bones
poor as a butt-fuck in the woods
and nerve-dead to the waking
wriggling world of them who do
and in so doing make a buck
and spend a buck and otherwise
postpone death for one more day
one more run at low-priced goods
one more consummating breath
in rooms where new beasts
are bred, old breasts are sucked.

But I love all you wealthy, walking
pods of flesh, your convoluted
matter sitting gray and empty
in your skulls and above your towers
the sun blotted out by clouds
radiates the void to what grand purpose
to what inexplicable design
no one rightly cares or knows.

[c2006jbb]

Male Pattern Bonding

once
1985
i saw a guy
dash across the street
and die
he died
didn't make it
a lady nearby who
must have been his wife
i saw her cry
she cried
she couldn't take it
and we
my father and i
continued to drive
hoping no one could see
our license plate
and ever since
i have been guilt
incarnate
the total turtle
making space for space
having never enough of nothing

[c2006jbb]

Love Leads Us Into Death

Dreams of pencils
penile and paper
reams in the penitentiary
holed up in the library
paying my fines
my debt to society
perpetually

please you said this
could never happen
here
where we join
loin to loin
and conquer fear
though it was that coming
together that spreading
of oil on the gears
that conveyed the disease
in hot white tears

now i cannot move away from here
this place of dwindling returns
and no beer in which to drown
perchance to shear
one more month from my last
remaining year
with this face and these sideburns
this simian brown frown

all from eating too much shit
each of us has his nasty habit
or two
yours is lying
and thanks to yours, mine --
mine is dying

[c2006jbb]

American Fragment

baby
you're as american as an american guy
who makes another american guy cry
you're all guns in the american sky

and i wish i could make you
feel cute but you aren't
and i was raised to tell the truth
and that's no lie

[c2006jbb]

Some days the joints

Some days the joints
other days not the joints but the muscles
the bones in the left hand
the weepy eye the
what's that bump between my thighs

oh it's you

Some days the ligaments in the knees while
other days not that but always, always and forever the brain,
its incessant outpouring of thought and worry and nonsensical aspirations and dreams

what is true

What was true
was youth
but having faded, now rued, youth
i long to forget completely
the joys making boy noise with toys

How easy to be eight
to destroy and rebuild like a god
fantasy states
Looming above great tonka freeways
how easy to be eight
to pick rocks and wash plates
for room and board
to love only the dry sheet
and father's stubbly chin

we were all lonely
when the door was closed
and the monsters pressed in
taunting and thin
the questions they posed
in their silent acrimony
approaching the bed
lengthy appeal to the underworld
where black is as black does
meaning shades within shadows
unknowable and resolutely
dead

how i slept that night, alone
awash in my anger
eight and a half
at the dodge-ball game
chosen last
at the baseball game
everyone laughed

i could have killed you all

c2006 jbb