Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 3 (the Afterbath)

Wash daily, we're told.
But bathing is a dirty trick
to remind us each of how quick
even the hottest bath turns cold.

I sometimes, alone,
soak naked in an empty tub,
a cast iron maiden when she's free of all
our shiny bones & blackened suds.

I'll draw a bath, but not bathe;
just a plug & hot water to the brim.
Moonfaced, I loom over, too much like Li Po,
hunched down to tongue around
the furled brink of that always frigid rim.

Let me back in the bath.
Remember me. Won't you
wrap my face with celluloid film
skinned from the veneer
of our antique bathwater?

Everybody back in the bath!
I will scratch & scrub
the itch on your back,
the filth from our forms;
I will never drain this tub.

Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 2

See my bathwater hotness scale.

Scrub my empty disk.

A Void. People. Life. Style.

Pinned down by the tub's clawed feet.

Ladies in high heels
march plastic pinwheels
across the surface of the bubbled bath.

I'm bailing water back
inside the hull of my bathing boat.

My rubber ducks fly further south,
me at the sink with nothing more to float.

I'm all wet. I guess I blessed myself
with my head in this heat.

I'd like to one day be dirty enough.
Splash. Dry. Repeat.

Parade from Love to Lent Pt. 1

Here I go stretching
the boundaries of credulity,
adolescent cervix,
clenched camel toe to pass through,
eye of a needle. Sew what?

I am living out
of boxes that would make great boxes
if each could be unstuffed
of so much, such large
rubber-ball-gaggery I am giddy
to jettison bounce
out some astrological orifice.

I, believe me,
wanting to push you away,
push you back on your back,
asphalt cradling your rocking roof,
wheels burning while in spin.
Even then I'd pry back my pie hole
hot press my skin to your peeling paint
and suck out your car alarm.

On A Saturday Night Before I Leave My House

Where do you stay?

When all the ticket buyers buying tickets say
I'm gonna go ahead and go. One is more
a destination person. One more like go ahead.
And go. Like say a wheel
or a wing I remember
getting carried away.

The one who does laundry meets the one who does dishes.
Who gets down with your demands,
who's short pennies for wishes.

One with too many choices meets the one who wants more.
Who drains the fuel from jets,
who knows what time is for.

How long do you stay?
One stays away. One stays behind.

I am trying to buy property:
it's a-guy-walks-into-a-house kinda joke.
Some even more real estate,
a jughead believer, I somehow build broke.

With a death grip she comes
down hard with a spike.
Time lived is the sum
of days that I "Like."

HAMMER a way

Shiny rims rolling under such chronic keep-on-truckers:
just jump, get off, or fall.
Drawn back, swing stilted like a stay-at-home sucker
punch potholes in the dry wall.

Where you go won't say where you stay;
I pound the hammer for punching stakes in.
Name a certain place along the way,
live there & wait for leaves to rake in.

That pickaxe you jacked,
I want it back to break ground.
Swing it hard to make place,
call it home, stay in town.

putt-putt gulf water park combo

I'm up the neighborhood.

Oh yeah.

Back up the barbershop.

Pole dancing on the candy cane.

Try the #1 #2 #3 FADE.

Give it to me so I can look fresh.

Spanking new. I'm going to war.

Spartacus. Stallone. Whenever.

#ilosttheoneilove

The basket on my bicycle rattles as I ride.

I hear my haircut looking down at the basket bounce.

Lemonade Flash!

Snowball!

Play Money!

Go-Go!

Federal Spending!

Let's relax. Let's talk. If the music is soft

I spit out my gum.

Tired of chewing, I find people willing.

To the dirt on Dauphine I say

you John Lee Hooker.

Now let me brood over your horrible day.

Joke.

Orange Juice & Asphalt.

Pulp Friction.

Joke.

Grand Opening tomorrow.

Back by popular demand.

THINGS GRAND.

There's this postscript.

Cousin mosquito sucks.

To wit. Slap Stuck.

Get it?

The evening sun goes down.

the bitch slap baby bottle blues

At the moment, I can recall every Monday I've spent in New Orleans. I remember moving here on a Sunday night. I remember my first morning waking up in the Monteleone Hotel. That was Monday #1.

'nother Monday waits in crowded wings

for 'nother Sunday to say she quits

while brother sister rock and sing:

twosomes that shimmy in sexless fits.

DEAD STOCK

rhythm blues

tax dues

rumor news

crossword clues

popular mechanics

email

my bicycle

swiffer pads

smack cracker urine

floods a souvenir crotch cup

big heart sausage slices

give my pie more power

I give you all my gas lights

I take off all your dance tights

I make up all our last nights

I memorize our slap fights

I'm silly with the south,

grip my face with your mouth.

I'm a stick-my-visa

-in-your-wasteband kind a tipper.

Crack your back against a levee,

get willy-nilly with my zipper.

I done got wise baby to the way these women doin'.

The city smells like a pack of pals purging. Or barf.

I done got wise baby to the way these women doin'.

The city sounds like a tarmac of tourists tweeting. Or flarf.

Ain't no reason to tell a tale that ain't true,

If you want a story baby I google it for you.

Cut up a Second Line with a 2 Live Krewe,

I got the bitch slap baby bottle blues.

PARADE, Part 2 (for Nada Gordon)

Be where the thighs of marches

are stomping on your neck.

Be the electric battle axe barbaric

but unreal, old fashioned.

Be the stack of bills folded

in the fattest wallet snatched.

Be the rutty fingers fumbling

with twenty minutes of wet matches.

Be the popular belief in public

knowledge, collective shame.

Be the boogie woogie pianist

in a cave condemned and cool.

Be the exotic dancer buying

Sugar Daddies a dollar each.

Be all you can break with a bat,

scrub with a brush, or win with a bet.

Be where the soil sops up the oil

and love the winners leave behind.

PARADE, Part 1 (for Nada Gordon)

There are 24 new hours on parade.

In defense of marching.

In the middle of my city.

I miss nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Confetti dumped from balconies onto streets filled with sunshine.

Rain on, Parade.

Confetti withering.

Phony wads of pulped pigmentation.

Funny dads who gulp perspiration.

Confetti is for fertility. Link.

For celebrations we want you wet and ready.

Programmatic and descriptive.

Parade. Outside your home. Parade.

Put your parade trash in the parade can.

Show me your parade face.

Full of paint.

Saints.

Sisters.

Service Industry Workers.

Seraphim.

Sanitation Specialists.

Society Sugar Babies.

Sweaty Sock Cops.

Sports Fans.

Smiling Soldiers.

Second Line Stompers.

Strippers.

Stripper Tippers.

Strong Men.

Salsa Dancers.

Strange Attractors.

Streaming Users.

Staff Counselors.

Storefront Beggars.

Salespeople.

Stiff Drinkers.

Storied Immortals.

Soft Porn Graduates.

Song Writers.

Shifty Crowd Pleasers.

Left. Left.

Left Right Left.

One. Two.

One Two Three.

Glitter, smaller than confetti, is universally shiny.

Such shiny sistered faces.

It sticks to my pillow. I'll split her

into however many it takes two

three four.

I split her in to march. Suddenly separate,

it takes several.

Early Frame for a Difficult Poem

I am thinking now about the difficulty of everyone, how nearby strangers are, and how it's wrong to feel crowded.  On the train, for example, you should share the floor-to-ceiling hand-poles with the hands of other passengers. You place your hand somewhere along the pole, and others will place their hands above or below it. When I walk onto the train and hands are already stacked up and down the pole, I hate having to find a place for my own.

I am thinking now about the difficulty of someone. He speaks too loudly. He wears a style of clothing cultivated first by poverty, then by freedom from poverty through crime, and then by the excess of unwarranted wealth.  He is always nearby and it is wrong to feel crowded by him.

A paragraph of uncharitable meanings, I am surrounded by the margins.

I know that I am thinking about the difficulty of everyone; we could use less.

Auxiliary Thoughts for a Global Supplement

Terror should not be a thing we have to understand; terror rejects the difficulty of everyone.

There are radical Muslims who turn deserts into the last bastions of immovable ideas.In my country we are free from immovable ideas. Our thoughts are soft-lined, we pray for all the dead.

I agree about the climate changing, hoping our diminishing returns.

Some futures cannot be inhabited: the internet, so much better than the tower of Babel, is not a habitat.