A few poems from the last five years
The Edge of Gentrification
On park benches
what shakes
past plastered flyers?
dilapidated windows?
Offices can stylize epitaphs all they want
still,
motion proves
pendulums poke through.
weeds shoot
pavement crossings.
They mopped the blood off
7th. Looks nice.
Once teams redo that parking center
we’ll have a
real piece
to catch eyes.
- 2019
Panhandle Blues
Weathered men, what tempest hast blown
thru your perpetually liquifying assets?
Under paint-chipped
blue-banner mourn
basket-full work hands
Automated empiricists already rationalized
debt with corny devil wristwatches
set.
Fiber-titillators have electrified
current movements
modern human meat
team-up with plastic
bayonets + water
pistol intifadas.
Antifa sediment panned out everywhere
“Goddamn shit’s near 5 dollars!”
15 more miles of panhandle.
- 2021
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What We’ve Buried
Under plastic skin
Bulls’ eyes POP!
On hand-out cards
Re-printed to mark halls.
As bartering over blood ties
Semi-Macbeth smiles
Through Parthenons and
Pyramids,
Dust never consumes.
Only surfaces.
Blue-white, red-black
Half flag past mast
Dropped/dragging in the wind
Like some knock-off gimmick
Trash sold from flea markets
For “not alot at all”
Embroidered with glass wrinkles.
Flat breath gives over
Dump heaps where
We bury our dead metaphors.
-2021
Imperials
Old ideas leave a burnt tungsten taste
eyes fume, fingers stiffen
everything fake save
idealism.
Brushing through catalogues from ashes
salesmen toss
each random address
anonymous personality
matrixes.
Caste systems run round, lapse-after-lapse
each random address
like cleavers
dulled by crude men.
Each waking window, blondes with expensive
breakfast croissants
peer through barred balconies
Wondering how they speak Barbar so eloquently
-2019
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Neoliberal Nightmare
Ever since the incident
Her eyes caught everything
Every saunter, every smoke-stack
Don’t wanna go ‘round blundering
Cumbersome if one really thought hard
Tent canopies were of interest
But suddenly vanished
Tangos outta sight
She wondered if Reagan really cared
Or if decades transpired only
Through sleep deprivation and squeaky street sweepers
Ever blunt with friends about
That cataclysm while skirting truth
Just slightly, just enough
Don’t wanna see them shivering
Every tinted window with a bumper dent
Every hood that meandered
Every pop held a significant situation
Like a palm filled with trickling gold.
-2020
One Word
Vanity, like brokenrecordman
Checks glass mirrors repetitively.
Ghosts bounce back everytime.
Hollowed eyes become darker,
Bones scratch at epidermal surfaces.
Indexes of smiles, tears, the works,
Become more present.
Monotony of rhythmic life.
Each day a toll on the framed mind.
-2016
Watermelon Rinds
At the tense tip of saying something profound
empires lose their crowns.
-A sticky sweet death on banks of wisdom
Thumbs-up for sold eyelids, thank merchants
number incremental predicaments.
First-in-line gets hands-chopped-off
-June 2020
Bops and Ish
Late kings gon bop till they perish
Climactic pinch pockets what you cherish
Lick car batteries unfettered hectic
Birds circle tear in, femur bone’s broken -
off record
jump
tangled tongues spitflames,
Spaniards inquire
whatever-the-fuck
shit’s insane over the border right?
Shuck away and ride
The wave ride em days
Ride the waves.
It’s OK hayseeds riot on wallstreets
Black pulse pickled sins easy dump
Pollute, dumb astute
where’s the chair to sit in?
bar what you serving
barred outta service
bark at the sermon
Stark with no bite
caught in net shrivel with detergent,
easy bleach spread paint white-out
history seek movements to pimp
like a slap in the church
dick riders write off ledges
Legislation: slack to pull
ropes hanging —
lagging.
Branches break under corporate handouts
A slush funded drinker under hot suns
also rise where screams go fried
shock the doctrine wide—
open fuck a free-man with pride
Pop sizzling
Top’s spinning infinitely
Crop human images to
Stop real energy
right…
Shuck away and ride
The wave ride em days
Ride the waves.
-2020
