posted 12-31-2000 12:58 PM            

You and Lansky and dragon just rule, OK?

Happy New Year!

posted 01-01-2001 10:59 PM            

INSOMNIAC LOVE SONG

My pen, spouting
birdsongs & burning skies only
she saw
the same
as me, in
argument,

silenced each time she spoke

My pages, wet
with spilt beer, as
all beauty
of Dawn, negated
by argument, until
we must drive
once more, hearing
other lives, birds, as
they wake, while
we still are, for
some arcane
reason that
doesn't
really
matter
any
more

Memories
blanket my eyes, as
the denied
mind of
the argument
reclines in one
corner of the
bed, her dancer's
body all
unbearable
light. She has
a boyfriend
in the
middle of an
argument
across
the room, and
no one
cares
what she
has to say
but
me.

Her boyfriend
sits &
shakes, eyes
jaded without
hope of help, drunk
out late when
nothing stays, gone
cold from
cynic lack of
breath,

An easy answer
he forgot, lying
there, in easy
reach of
his hands, his
death wish, his
argument
perpetuated, in
direct
defiance to
the glowing
body of the
solution, wishing
he'd just
shut up &
kick us
all out, &
lie down
beside her,

While all
of us sprawled
out, drunk
& arguing,

As if there were
none so important
to him that he'd let
her reassure
her desire, his
fate, our
argument, just
some visual
handmedown I
happened to
catch the music of,

the oceans of her mind
whose locks I dared not pick

She lies
in front
of us, silenced
each time
she speaks,

inspiring me
to louder songs,
to show
her boyfriend all
he does not
see, lying
right beside
him, needing
him the
most, when all
she really
needs is
the drive
to
speak
anyway.

THE CATCH

I learned,
long ago, to never
keep a life
I caught, merely
feel its
pulse and throw it
back, or else

the glimmering fish
become frozen meat, the butterfly
a crucified cookie-cutter

Pondering this,

in a bed so cold,
'neath loose boards, & pipes
that scream & cry,
in hard-packed earth
so cold,

grateful for any
warmth

but never understood
that I was

wind seeking flame,
acid burning
out the base, made only
bitter & alone

In cupped and trembling hands,
The butterfly froze solid

Down here in the dark,
beautiful freezing
couldyashouldyawouldya

...curling one gargoyle batwing around
an impossible Zippo phoenix
who keeps fading, no matter
how I try to shield
her flame. She was
so brave,

to follow me down
into darkness she once
prayed to see
firsthand, a place
she'd only
read about
before

Now stiffening
in memory, beneath
my wing, her mouth
all alkali, nightmare
adrenaline. Another
wretch before
my time frostbit
the flesh
behind
her light

In flaming Dixie sunlight long ago,
Papa's front yard, the flowers
burned so bright, & swarms
of chromium butterflies,
poems made flesh

And I, five years old, fast
hands, gentle voice, never
realizing that I was
Death

to the trembling
Halloween-colored Monarch
seizing in my hands, her body
withdrawing, her eyes
only alkaline darkness,
so cold.....

I opened my hands, and
gave Her back to the sun

COLD READ for jon goldman

Breathe deep,
& close
yr. eyes, yr. spine
burning in frosty
threshold winds, skin
alive with coiling
light, yr. mind---

I said keep 'em closed.

Push it all away,
lift one boot

and walk out onto the ice,

World drops back
to scalpel curve,
burnt breath
in smoky seashell wind

one single
leap, perchance
to freeze, but
you just
laugh

Walk out onto the ice,

Never bending
to the wind that
whips your hair, never
shedding a snowblind
tear. It hurts
too much to
cry,

no matter
what,

Push it all away.

Walk out onto the ice.

THE END

The End will come, as ends so often do,
With something that you never would have guessed,

Demanding, every time, a
sacrifice,

& wide-eyed snowstorm hush,
not necessarily leaving you
mangled & broken, but really only
on your own,

weary & pale & knocking on wood,
crackling with ancient voltage that
only grows,

hearing crazy homeless saints bellowing
that for whatever it's worth,
it is done. and now,
you get
to wait.

Lift up your glass and light
the way, all songs now
sung, hoarse thirsty
voice conceding
to the jukebox
still running
all this time
beneath.

Lift up your heart.
The End has come.

All your passion
rendered ash, essence
flooding your blood,
knitting bones, fusing
scars into
stories,

raised from rotting
leaf-piles of blank
pages that once
choked your
path,

now snows of
petals, swirling
round you on
the first
warm
day
in
eternity..

Lift up your heart.
The End has come.

posted 01-01-2001 11:27 PM            

She thought she kept her Library alone.

It was Hers, by the fates. No one
Would compromise. No one
could smile in there, only
that frozen endless

Los Alamos, unsmiling
screaming
stress

even
Her fat old
bulldyke at the
gate

frozen in place

She thought she kept her Library alone.

good gods
those maple
gymnasium floors in
there, those
endless vaulted
ceilings. Only
a few hours
till all
sentences
suspended

celebratory
balloons tied
to the backs of
chairs, forgotten

bobbing

sometimes

my sane crusaders,

sometimes

o ye tough &
battle-hardened, oh ye

done the best you could

sometimes

all you need

is for

an uninvolved
foole

to saunter in
off the
elevator in
the middle
of a dream,

hobbling
on a cane,
swinging
a sledgehammer,

at the right hand
of someone so
brave, his
undeserved
angel, showing

her true
face

blowing out every
sealed
window

in there, and
the frozen stone
receptionist

smiles for
the first time
she can
remember, knowing
not of most recent
codicils that led to
such horrid
stasis, yet this
heedless
deliverance

"take me to her." your undeserved
angel says
to the
receptionist through
clenched teeth.
"NOW."

but you walk on and
in, spontaneous, glancing

round at every
table, seeing
so many
old friends looking
up and thinking
that room
hopeless and

frozen forever, not yet
recognizing you

and you take down
a balloon, knowing
in that frosty seemingly
insurmountable moment that
sometimes

in the face of all that
terror, the only way
is to fully
embrace what is
there and
thus reach
all the way
inside, and beyond

that terrible
vacuum, only

one
single
memory

separates you
from them, from

Her who
officiated over
that sealed
library where
all books sealed
shut
at the moment
just before

and in that tiny spark,

as your angel blows wide the door, the only
way to
call Her
out---

You smile
at your
old friends,
remembering

a trick

that made you
be yourself, that made
them all
laugh, and

set you
free, and you

bite open
a balloon, inhale

the helium to the
head,

and that small still elfin voice

begins to sing them all
awake this
time.

The workers stand
and fold their arms, and
sing at the
top of their
lungs

They look
around at
each other, laughing
fit to split, and join

in, earsplitting
harmony

whose vibration

makes those walls
begin to
crumble, and
implode.

your angel
beams
at you

across that waxy maple
floor.

she didn't have
to lift a
finger, and

as that hymnal tumult
swells ten-part
harmony, swells
silliness, as the
walls begin
to crack, as the
spell begins
to reverse, as
all wasted
time

begins to crumble, render
down, and that
poison
librarian
clenches
impotent
inhuman tantrum
fists in the middle
of the floor,

you realize
that you cannot
stop

crying

but neither can you
stop

singing.

posted 01-01-2001 11:32 PM            

Eyes on the storm. Up with
landing-gear, down with
my flaps, lift&
drop&
drag
&
click--

Forty-five
degrees of still, deep
breath. Every hair
on end, tickling down
through arch &
instep,

grounded
from within, & clear
for takeoff.

My nose cone:
Stainless steel. My fuselage:
coated in silicon. My tailfin:
solid copper, just in
case,

shooting into Biblical thunderheads.

Bring it:

Eyes on the storm. You already
loaded my
dice. No more
expectations.

I offer up
to Ground Control
every hectic, terrible
coffee ring round
every eye, every
shock, shriek, aching
drain, infectious healing
itch-- NO.

All baggage only
seeds these clouds.

Eyes on the storm. Only
one
careful, gentle
fingernail, coaxing
lightning, teasing out
meaning, & all
totally
unaware
of final ability
to cry
with relief,

as that first
improbable
raindrop
breaks
all patterns
wide..

Eyes on the storm. Strained into
Cockpit video-screens--

Heat-flash. Strokes of
thunderbolts, pushing
red lines on every
gauge.

All ballast dropped but
single inward chase
to complete this
final circuit,

and in that kamikaze flash,

rebirth

at thirty thousand feet
and climbing

Eyes on the storm. No more
Ifs, only
Whens. Original
promise,
rewired.

I am your billion-amp
socket now,
at forty-five
degrees, thirty thousand
feet. You gave me back
these skies.

posted 01-01-2001 11:34 PM            

Thanks for the memories.
You fulfilled your promise

of giving me no shortage
of material.

Thanks for being the one
to move me out West where I
belong, these vast
wide spaces, ancient
forests, endless skies and
everyone moves in
geological
time.

Thanks for giving me
the greatest forums
all these vast and endless
open mikes where
their eyes
shine at my
megaphone, and interminable
meets of mad minds

Thanks for teaching me
who my real friends are. Thanks
for bringing me here

alive and reading
comic books, dashing
to a job so unjoblike I cannot
believe I get
paid what I
do,

thanks for dropping me into the lap
of one who is lipstick and glitter and
cool morning breeze,
one who is more than I ever
imagined would
wish upon
my star,
whose eyes
shine when I read

Thanks for giving me the chance
to learn to love. no greater
than that which is
all around. Thank you
for the 45th Paralell. Thank you
for the chance
to spill my guts in print and
get paid for it.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

[This message has been edited by Lansky (edited 01-01-2001).]

posted 01-01-2001 11:39 PM            

IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA
just before dawn, some homeless drunk
camped on the front stoop of Mad Ave
sign company, harsh
racking breath of sleep

beneath
that giant
neon
flag

IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA

delirious, blistered,
chafed,

I cool out beneath
Hawthorne Bridge at onset
of a long rain, here in the
last corner puzzle-
piece of the
dream

vast green springtime sunlit
McDonald’s, Sixth and
someplace

foggy hayfever psychotic weather

IT’S MORNING IN AMERICA
and i can already tell it’s gonna
be one of those
days

Always
so surprised
& petrified
to start, something
old in my
eyes now, walking
against
Space & never
learned to
swim

and yet

at one
am,
you pour
over me
light as
patient
as the
moon

so careful
heard it all
and for
some reason,
stayed

in the
endless
negative space
where yr. head
was on the
pillow lives
the angel who
invented
the blues

Be my
fourth wall, all
the audience I'll
ever
need

Do we
have the will
to carry out
this night?

we all do

we all will

others
lifted
from below, all
possibility
on our
side, they just
don't
know it
yet. just
give it
time

(deep breath)

this is so
done to death, & yet

forward we grasp
at dandelion seeds,

& no straight
lines, grown fabulously
twisted & never
broke the
soil
& yet

must know what you're

rejecting? embracing?

back to the source & again
under the rose
teaching the soul
to burn once more,
clawing at the womb,

coaxing the serpent
back up the spine, swinging
on snapping chains, turning
outward, toward the
sun

here in the final jigsaw corner
of the dream i sing
your name

through Dionysius' Civil-War burnbarrel stink
& at some point

AMERICA you chew the sacred mushrooms of Tikal in the popcorn diesel air of the St. Louis Airport, over the arch to Oz, er, well, sometimes close for just a tired moment when a single brick of instant translation shines on through

AMERICA you are an unstable alloy after the forge, recycled, stripped, annotated, thrown away & lining the shopping-bag shoes of Atlantaean saints made refugees. They know you at the ground floor, sing your
name, so loud, into bright
places that elevators
don't even
reach. They know what you
could be, and love
you
anyway. You're all they've
got,

huddled in spliced-power hidden wings of Mission St. junk hotels,
you are the pigtail in their black-eyed peas
squatting in the greenhouse up around Washington Square, you mike
the voice behind the voice behind the voice of the ghosts who invented
gutter punk just off tramp-steamer steerage from Tyreelin

AMERICA you come and blank my mind at close of brutal days, and make me
want to run my mouth.
AMERICA you play the field, the jaded lidded eye of CNN, constant buzz, highest bidder and the lowest
screaming
hope

Aaaah,
fuck it. This ground
too rocky to bury in.
The cowhands
cut all the meat they
could, & then left it
for the hogs

posted 01-01-2001 11:39 PM            

off the very last
edge,

nothing

but sky

the whole

way

down

i know it’s just
optics, but
jesus is it
creepy

shadow of the
plane on the
water

as an oil tanker
there to
kill the
vertigo

its pollutive
wake
swirling
in the blue

out of the spiral, one
tugboat moving
on to
shore.

but just for a second
clean break
clean off
the
map

posted 01-01-2001 11:43 PM            

Final peace of stars
disintegrating former life, shedding
skin, looking
skyward, into
blinding
home,

Feeling raw warm tingle, final
change, oceanic
roar of moving
out beyond flesh,
caught in terror
of outside
sight, and animal
power too far
gone for
punctuation

Raw, hoarse
battlefield smoke
drifts from
your mouth, even
speech releasing
elemental powers
buried since
elementary school (Patrol-boys
walking over home,
down past-vert windy graveyard hills,
stumble
across a smoking hole
in earth, and peer
within. One died. One is
writing this, amidst
a gully-buster nosebleed
just as then

Still running,
after all these centuries.
Time slows down to a buzz.
Cold, dark encrypted fear
shines out fluorescent
nighttime crossroads
where every signpost says
that nothing real
comes without
pain

as I sit
in the Nicotorium,
cranking out Chaos,
looking toward Mexico, in
twilight's last mushroom-cloud, flash-
frozen, the Way We Were....................people, then,
not pushed up under
this claustrophobic
bubble in polar
ice..

All this time,
I have only been
watching, from
outside, fully aware
even before
I inhaled the smoke
from the graveyard
meteor, and saw
everywhere we've been
before

BACKYARD

Too many empty spaces
in the night. The way
is paved with
broken
glass.

Sun still gonna
rise, the train
still gonna
come, but now
it's cold out
here in
orbit. Bring me
back. I've seen
enough.

MORATORIUM

No more Vietnams.
No more terror,
cowering in darkened corners,
endless profusion of locks on
endless profusions of doors to
endless profusions of worlds of
endless profusions of pain--

No more addictions,
No more casualties
of the Pleasure Principle,
shouting up Babel's tunnel
at the stone ears of
frozen gods.

No more riots,
Shining chances ruined
to starting gates, Centurions
pounding shields, sabers
rattling, through bleeding
gums the second
dragon's tooth.

No more prisons,
Locked down, unable
to belong, hiding
everything apart
from chance.

No more freak scene, no more
Drama, no more endless wrenching
death-instinct. It's time
to peel the numbers
from our arms.

No more weak-ass typewriter ribbons
that don't even last
one
whole
poem.

No more empty, ugly
rooms where only the cold
water works, every time
we write, to drain away
the sense that it's
all wrong--

No more. We can't go on
like this, forever
backward. Nature
screams, grinding
gears of grinning
gods, random
generators far beyond
our means---

But what
would give us
this chance just to
let us drop? And how
to reach within our
burning lungs---

Always like this
to start. We never
think we can, until

we do

MY MOTHER’S WOMB

They tore it down today.

That warm and nighted
space before where the
whole damn
spook show
began, preprogrammed
in light and
thunder, every
extreme, in
totality.

There can be
no going back
now. Knew this
consciously for
years, but that’s
Being Told vs.
Shown..

They tore it
down today. I stood
three thousand
miles outside, hearing
only
static
implosion

knowing that
it had been all
up to me for
quite some
time, but some-
times people
like me just
need to get
beaten over the
head with the
physical
evidence when
the bridge
is
burnt for
real.

BLOODY MARY
for leslie freeman

not even the beautiful midget
pausing outside to watch
you read could break
your beat, my
unblnking
awe

I thought I kept
that 3AM alone,
but you know

that backward neon shield
after such rage, unbelieving
applause

you have the floor

stun-gun in your
throat never a
rerun, no one
on earth
luckier
than your
kids.

You gripped
our hearts with
pale trembling
hands frozen by
circulation, strangled
by Moebius
cords

and still somehow

your song
louder than the sighing
silence of last night’s
snowstorm, transformers
blowing in daisy-
chains down the
block, unnoticed
but drowning out
my amazed
tears the
first thing
after
work-

posted 01-01-2001 11:51 PM            

It's been often
said that over
time, pets come
to resemble
their owners.

My time
not yet come, to
break from this
box not yet
my own, frozen
at semester's
close, in
transit, where the
ones en route
who watch &
care leave only
scraps, never
able to get me
off the
street. night security
leaves tuna
cans but
cats aren't allowed in the dorms

Picked up
a stray too proud
to domesticate
from the tarmac
veldt, not much
of a pet, but
beggars can't
call fives.

She lives
for the back doors of food trucks,

for blinding blue North Philly skies
just before dawn, when those
monster rats get lazy, and
garbage trucks redistribute
the wealth.

She came to me late,

prowling beneath
the picnic tables

when work had worn
my hands away, & I
could see my
breath on
break, down at the
trucks where Rich stays on
'till two, hearing lonely
saxophones of steam-
pipes beneath Park
Mall, cab horns and
bagpipes and maracas
of SEPTA buses out on Broad.

In those small hours,
so much needing
done, barely
time for
dinner before
midnight
& no one
to talk to so I
kinda know
how she
felt

She came to me late,

prowling beneath the picnic tables

her dreadlocks cold Chinese street grease,
slat ribs, and twisting
scar across her
back
(the price
of love.

She came to me late

ragged. vulpine. beautiful.
Stiff with pride, nobility, the lump
in my throat not a wonton, when she
melted in from smoky shadows
at my vision's bloodshot edge.

she hopped up on my table
crawling with fleas and sorcery

sweet gutter breath peering into my face
reading, in her way, scratching
out my fortune on the
tabletop, for crossing her
steppin' razor claws
with the shrimps out of my
egg roll,

She sang for me,
Sang down the stars and the
semester, in the voice of

billie
..holliday

oracular Moroccan panflutes rang
from twisted plains at
Park &
Berks

She sang for me, so late,
and warmed me to my soul,
and drank out of my soup,
and brought me back to
Earth, & bit me
on the hand,

when grateful
tears rolled down my
face

her eyes grew
wide. slowly she leaned
in, and licked them
raspily

away

she sang for me so late
and in those moments,
she was mine

MOTOR VEHICLES ONLY

Damp boggy earth,
a moat
of litter
off freeway
berm,

before
fencerow woods, under
a mountain foot,
whose name
I forget

My bike
full of creaks &
groans, my hands
handlebars, my shoes
angry wet vinyl,
burrs & thistles throughout.

I would abandon these shoes, in favor
of running through underbrush, winding up
sleeping through late long mountain hours
until exactly
dawn...

In screaming Mack trucks' babel wake,
my sigh
spooked a doe
grazing well upwind
of that old toxic site
never a mall.

The doe ran like she had wings,
those woods still hers
(for what they're worth)
Beyond roadside garbage,
trucks,
timetables,
hers. I stood, and
wondered why,lighting
a cigarette, beneath
a bridge much
further than
the fence that
wrecked my
plan.

In a moment's
rest, amid
exit-ramps up and
around a hidden
lie, and rumble-
strips to warn
you when
you get too
close to
Nature. STAY IN
YOUR CAR. LOOK
STRAIGHT AHEAD, &
KEEP ON DRIVING off
the cliff,
impaled on
bones of
mastodons. At least
she had the
sense to turn
and run.

WINDOW ON THE MORNING AFTER

Leaves almost gone--
I want to
make them
green.

Bare white walls
I cannot
change,

static hills
on factory ground. Even
our landlord wants
to chuck it all, & head
for the
woods.

I cannot stop these leaves.
I cannot stop
the sky, only
lay here &
read, too
exhausted to do
anything
else.

SLEEPING BEAUTY SLEEPING BEAST

Must become
all that you
fear in order
not to..

At times too scared of
what might
crawl up from
those subterrene
reaches, lower
forty of coughing,
chewing, spitting, snarling

Sleep

Like a balloon, losing
altitude, fluid dreams
drain away. Open
your eyes, little
boy, and floating
in poison primordial
stew of ancient
swamp

floating

changing

twitching

it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts &

getting there is all
getting there is all

beneath the sleep
time out of mind
assume the Beast. do not
despair. crawl
up onto the bank, &
move on, for
nothing
is personal
is
nothing

Imagination
stirs, at
base of skull,

swimming out
through toxic waters
clear as
mud.

posted 01-03-2001 02:58 PM            

i sympathize with the moon
gazing upon this earth
with bright eyes
while the many people mingle
i stand watching from my cold spot
while they continue their grandiose display
They cannot touch me
for i am a million miles away

i'm the light that you
ignore in the dark
i am the one drawn to
your blue orbs
yet you tease me like
school children and
swing me round and round
if only i could reach your
life

posted 01-04-2001 12:39 AM            

i guess i'm cursed
i guess i'm not good
at being a girl
friend
oh well
just another dizzy spell
got a million cigarettes
and not one light
c'mere sun
i'll show you some real fun
son

met your parents
guess you hate me
at least they love me
so what now?
back to my old ways

started smoking again
today
and yesterday
and the day you dumped me, too
why do i feel like the fool
when you're the one
that screwed up

wish you'd take me back
wish i wanted to be taken
but i guess i'm happier
single
alone
talking to a broken telephone
after everything you haven't said
there isn't much more to say

posted 01-05-2001 12:18 AM            

I wept.

[This message has been edited by Lansky (edited 01-05-2001).]

posted 01-06-2001 06:45 PM            

morning skin
worn pale and thin
feeling slightly naughty

make up and hair
smeared everywhere
this is what it got me

posted 01-07-2001 09:35 PM            

dusty memories
drifting into my mind
i can still smell the mildew
long forgotten popcorn
tossed on the floors
half drunk soda sitting
forgotten by empty seats

we were gods in our dreams
now our kingdom is nothing
locked up and rotting
waiting for a brighter day
when images carved onto
a white portal
got us through our lonely nights
and nothing was better
than lasertag in the dark
or a taco bell run
at 1-o-clock

the laughing ghosts
in my mind
both real and conjured
still haunt
that place, that time
between
growing up and growing old