No Moonbeam

Lying in bed,
some faint stirring of a dream
nudges me to wake.

No moonbeam through the window,
enveloped
in perfect darkness.

Perfect.

My eyes,
sealed shut.

Only on paper
will I survive past
living memory.

To my legacy
I leave only
recognizable
“commonplace thoughts”
and “dead” metaphors.

Get Out of Jail

In 1973,
as a nine year old,
I sat in a church with my Grandmother.

The Sun streaming through the stained glass,
a bell choir,
hard wooden pews,
I was in the House of The Lord.

Behind my eyes,
sat a pain.
I asked God to please relieve me of the discomfort.
No shit,
in a few seconds the pain left me.

I would hate to think that God had one “get out of jail card” for me,
and I wasted it on a headache
when I was nine years old.

Dad’s Shirt

Dirty shirt hanging loose,
wind whipped,
under silver clouds,
like a solitary,
poker faced old man.

Thin,
age soiled,
broken by the decades,
flag like
twirling in God’s breath.

An Oyster Shell

“The eyes”,

the drunken shaman,

choked,

black stumped teeth,

alligator breath,

shaking a bone,

“sing the song of misery,

rejoice in fire,

revive the ghosts,

of women twisted in ecstasy,

create the mythology.”

My eyes,

framed by deep creases,

like those on the underside of a rattlesnake,

cut from the corner of blood-shot milkiness,

to die among grey thistle.

Bathed in scorpion’s venom.

A thousand beers and sleepless nights,

piss weak,

a shaman’s curse.

All the print,

on everything,

these days is too small.

Damn.

To pluck a new pair,

from a sleeping baby.

Or scoop fresh,

with an oyster shell,

from the skull of a stone drunk indian.

Cafe Lattes

The girls swept the porch
in a frenzied waltz,

while the ” touched” man,

stained and bruised,

clapped.

 

 

The spectacle that was the murdered dog,

shot through a dozen times,

dragged through town,

was politely discussed.

 

 

Hushed tones,  cracked lips ,

gnarled handed,  cafe lattes.

 
The ghost of Johnny Cash
passed through the room.

 
Ask the blind girl,

she saw it all.

Injun Incorporated

Lies sold as ceremony,

photo by hungrybison

“traditions” dreamt up by white men in suits,
sold prepackaged,

and branded,
to “new age injuns”.

Salvation,

like fuck,

is but a word.

Souls piled high,
like the bones and skulls gathered from the prairie.
Piled high,
to be ground into powder.