butterfly tears and castaways

theres a tickle on my cheek

as i lie here in the weeds

it's a speckled butterfly

sipping at my tears, waking me

and scaring her, she flutters

off to seek some other salt

where a cougar urinates

in the sand beside the creek.

i hear that song, the one

that creeps into unwelcome

cells, you'd recognize it in

a second, from the beginning

of a sitcom, the seven

castaways on a three

hour cruise? ridiculous

i know. wish i could make it

go away. so here i am

stretched out flat, waiting for bliss

surrendered to wildflowers

pale scent, watching fickle clouds

changing dance partners above,

and then that song slips across

the border, blotting visions

of wood nymphs and fifty nine

t-birds, eternity and love,

the oneness of the cosmos.

so sit right back and you'll hear

a tale, the tale of a fate………..

dem bow riddim

dancing like a cobra, up against the door,

she's got the riddim and the clothes,

her back is what she's showin'

all the rhythm's in her ass,

she wiggles with no face,

writhing for the boys to watch

on smartphone videos.

hooked on the snare, the blare,

huffing pipe glue in a paper sack,

it's a forbidden scene, but

we're all in it together,

know what i mean?

in these cities with no horizons,

we citizens without worth,

have got our sounds and fury,

because you know,

they're often just the same.

so the place we say it

is at the party or on the street,

our attitude is youtubed

and inked into our skin

when style is all you got, some sparkle

and some skinny pants, fire alarm hair

spiked up for the doggy dance,

we got to take the party to the metro,

the underground.

at the station,

the destination will be found,

the combo's all together, before we're

hounded by the policia and fearful gangs

who mock our phony gold and hats.

they jam us in a subway car

cleared out for this occasion.

we have no money

but that don't really matter

the only dancehall for me

is a deserted factory,

'cuz when you move like that,

i want a little more.

so come a little closer, bend over,

and wiggle like a snake.

when you dance it and give it

from one side to the other

you doin' that dem bow riddim

dem bow dem bow dem bow

sally

sally don't like apricots

or chardonnay

she rides her bike

against the traffic

on her way

to hunt the hogs

that root beneath

the oaks for acorns

she refuses to accept

the doomed savanna,

the conspiracy

of sudden oak death,

suburban sprawl,

and feral piggy appetite

instead, she hides

behind the chaparral

with a winchester,

waiting for the pigs

to trot out from the thicket

where they've spent the night

fornicating and scratching fleas.

sally kneels and unslings the rifle

chambers a single shot

slows her breath and heart

smells the cyanothus

and coyote bush, the dry leaves

crushed beneath her.

the sparrows in the manzanita

break their hush and resume

their boasting. sally smiles.

she's ready. and now

the pigs are snuffling

and peering from the trees

to see what lies between them

and the oaks out in the valley

in single file they head out

and sally sights down

on a wooly boar

and pulls the trigger

the steel jacketed copper round

zips through the boar's skull

and he drops to the ground

brain dead but still twitching

the rest of the small herd

scatters and races back into

the cover of the thicket

as sally walks over to the kill.

she unsheathes her knife

and cuts the boar's throat

his blood slowly drains

onto the ground, steaming

in the cold morning air.

sally drags the beast

to her bike trailer. the kind

that people use for towing

children, and straps him

into the seat.

on the road back into

the mid-century

modern subdivision

where she lives with mitch

an unemployed executive chef,

the drivers coming up behind her

honk until they see the pig

strapped in the trailer

and the rifle slung across her back

below her purple hair.

mitch can grind the hog

and craft his cranberry ginger

wild boar sausages;

sally won't, she don't cook

she stalks and slays them

mitch can flay and grind 'em

fill his coolers for the

saturday farmer's market

make his thousand bucks

from sally's hunt

while she stays home

and cleans her gun

washes down her trailer

fills her pipe with cherry blend

and sips a glass of coffee

cuz sally don't like apricots

or chardonnay

at diamond lil's in idaho city

at diamond lil's in idaho city

the first sip

of kentucky bourbon,

bites before it soothes

the heavy glass sits on the bar

where antique currency under varathane,

shows buffalos and indian chiefs.

a five dollar silver certificate entitled:

"electricity as the dominant force in the world"

depicts a winged goddess holding aloft a light bulb

red christmas tree lights

frame the potions behind the bar,

a warm enveloping womb

the regulars on their stools

watch the seahawks fight the titans

with the sound turned off

a wurlitzer jukebox,

with robotic CD guts

delivers sixties songs 

softly bouncing off the walls

of faded photographs: gold miners

posed in front of the water cannons

they used to wash away the hills.

or in their best sunday black

for a fourth of july parade and picnic.

dollar bills with sharpie-marked inscriptions

dangle from the ceiling, rustle in the door breeze

beer signs for vanished brews,

rusty license plates, strange implements,

a john wayne quick draw movie poster

a urinal filled with ice melts beneath hot piss

and pictures of naked women

stapled to the wall

the football game goes on, 

the rolling stones roll on

the conversation turns

to squatters rights in costa rica

where the bartender spends his winters

and the lady sipping amber ale

has a plot of land

with a thousand mahogany saplings.

they agree that she should look for him

at the taco joint in hako this february.

he plays dominos there daily

from noon til three

guy with a ponytail

sticking out of his baseball cap

orders a shot of ice cold jagermeister,

says it's the only shot  that he can hold

the seahawks whip the titans as night enfolds

the bar, the courthouse, the ice cream shop

the toy store, the catholic church,

the men in camo standing around

their harleys and their four by fours

grousing about the president

and the world they fear

they've lost.

saxophone

My old gray saxophone from Elkhart Indiana

has sermons and marches by John Phillip Sousa,

moaning and preaching from pulpit to sidewalk inside.

The bell is tarnished with the slobber

of a dead dairyman's uncle

who blew speakeasy hits on hot cornfield nights,

running on reefer, and wadded up panties

under the seat of a '29 Model A coupe.

From Shanghai bars,

where brilliantined men threw back shots

from a bottle of cobras steeped in whiskey

before they lurched down the streets of the Bund

from brothel to brothel to bar;

my saxophone remembers it all.

All the years in the attic awaiting parole,

the sounds imprisoned in it's cold metal throat

just requiring a fresh wet tongue

and a firm lip to make its secrets flow,

to whisper or croak, to listen to mine:

About rain gleaming on cobbles

or how that miniskirt hiked up her thighs

when she shifted gears as we sped to her room

where she gobbled and squeezed out

all the fight and the vinegar i'd been hoarding.

And my absence of mind, 

I heard the crunch of linden leaves on the grass,

and carnival sounds, the sweet drip

of the ephemeral spring

where it snuck through the moss.

A diesel train growl, kittens mewling for mothers,

the impatient horn blasts of traffic.

A river chuckling through boulders.

sobbing dark chocolate notes, shop door bells, sirens.

The squeal of bed springs and hinges.

Humpback whale songs, machine guns.

The rippled pink lips of a conch shell

where i'd play a duet with the tides,

and press ear to ear,

listening for radio static from Jupiter

and gypsy violins.

It's back in the case now,

unplayed and unplayable

for the last forty years.

Instead; this is the merry-go-round in my head,

where a calliope plays Miles Davis

and the crows sing manifestos.

if trees had lips

if trees had lips

do you need a fly's eye to see it

or a squirrel's ears to hear it?

what the sandstone has to say

about the way that water cuts

through notions of eternity.

the trees know this better than we do.

even the ones beside the road

we used to ride on big red fat-tired bikes.

some trees had rusted strands

of barbed wire embedded

in the trunks where the bark

grew over it and left a scar

like tight pressed lips

that refuse to speak

about the rod and gun club

that posted all the signs

that warned of fines and prosecution

for trespassers and violators

of property. they had exclusive rights

to hunt for meat and trophies.

antlers nailed to the trees

around their rustic camp

a string of bare sixty watt bulbs

drooping from limb to limb

a pool of light under the bay laurels

that spice the whiskey, beer 

and t-bone scented air.

they left behind for us to find

some mildewed porno magazines,

with leprous swollen pages

that we carefully pried apart

to gawk and gaze at mottled images

of women doing things

that enflame the minds of men.

why then did they tack the centerfolds

on the trunks of those old trees

and pepper them with twenty-twos

aiming for the tits and crotch?

the parts that we most wished to see,

the curves and crannies of female anatomy?

the bulltail ranch hunting camp

was stripped from it's dim hollow

when george lucas bought the property

and changed the name to skywalker.

if the oaks and bays could speak,

part the lips of those old scars

and move their heartwood tongues

they might laugh about the hunters

and spit out the bullets that pierced

their knobby skins. i hope those men

are dead, and with any luck

their rotted cocks and livers

are fertilizing the roots

of buckeyes, bays, and poison oak

what fits into a soda can

when the youngest are the first to die

how small is the urn, will the ashes

fit into a twelve ounce soda can?

cremains sounds like a non-dairy creamer,

the box should have a black carnation

if all the hair and skin and toe nails I've shed

were gathered together in a great big pile……

i wonder how big that would be?

bigger than my present sixty one year old body? probably.

it'll join those sheddings soon enough.

not to mention the unmentionables

that have already rejoined the biosphere

and i can imagine that a day could come

when a smear of dick cheney's shit

or a shard of  vlad the impaler's skull

a snippet of mother theresa's pubic hair

could be stirred into a jar

of genetically modified stem cells

and then……… what? it's not preordained.

they might just turn out to be:

the mean village dog catcher

or a border agent, a cashier, or a banker

a cook or a librarian

none of that will come of me

no clones or kids,

just this. and all the bits and bytes

that outlive the ink and platinum fiber prints

not to mention this flesh and bone.

well, all those ones and zeros

occupy some molecules, somewhere,

in that sunlit upland called the cloud

and even those days that bathed

in a golden summer of oaks and grass and lust,

-that went on for years …….and years

all these little scraps of thought

or images….mute pixels,

they have an actual physical existence:

molecules on servers.

and if you gathered them all up,

bit by bit by byte,

i bet they'd weigh a lot less,

than twenty one grams.