Kiss the mug and smile like you mean it

If I could tell you all the shadow secrets that I am
I promise, you still would never know.

BBQ Buddha drinks and
Never placid, candy splintered shattered soul.

Last year I spent my whole spring break
Never less than eyelash deep in snow.

There are seven serpents that make the color of my eyes
They cry but will never again see the light.

Petal wet and trembling flesh
Bare breath in red that never reaches truth.

I have seven self given injuries all the blood has gone,
Battle scar piercing I can never live without.

For the truth is, I am the end of star light
A neverland dream delusion Donut dancer.

Pick and Choose Response #1: Jeffery McDaniel Endarkenment
A play off McDaniel’s “Heavy Breather Zoo” (10):

Hippie Zoo

Whatever happened to the hippie?
capitalist consumerism- Orange County, yuppy greed,
apathy, glass fences, substance control laws-
has rendered her free spirit obsolete. Who
will listen to her cause now? She is the floppy disk
of rebels. She tried leading a protest march
through Whittier College campus,
but only four people joined in,
which was a damn near heart breaking blow.

Should we go to Venice Beach or Berkley-
gather up the last few still out there, smoking
joints and painting banners in the wild,
before they go extinct, place them
in a special zoo, in eco-friendly cage systems, complete
with 2nd or 3rd hand furnishings- glass pipes, rally
signs, hemp blankets, Doors records and music
from “Hair,”- to recreate what their used to?

Perhaps a plaque that reads: Here
sits the hippie. She used to carry signs down
Pennsylvania Avenue and though flip-flops at
corrupt politicians and “The Man.”She lived for that
first rush of the crowd, the ground shaking cheer
that gave Nixon and congress headaches and her chills.

Amnesiac Phrenology

Kinetic energy and molten sensations,
Weapons-grade amnesia and plate tectonics of the skull –
Its boiling rock is diverging and converging and
Black sounds in the temporal hemisphere are erupting in arc volcanics.

Weapons-grade amnesia and plate tectonics of the skull
Send aftershocks that shake transform boundaries in the lips and eyes.
The black sounds in the temporal hemisphere are erupting in arc volcanics
As pooled ether cools into obsidian thoughts.

Aftershocks shake transform boundaries in the lips and eyes,
Creating ridge-lines and hot, infertile valleys of resent while
Pooled ether cools into obsidian thoughts
And rememberances of old scents and honeyed colors.

Ridge-lines and hot, infertile valleys of resent
Surround rigid pools of dewed memory
And rememberances of old scents, of old honeyed colors
Of aprons and the click of heels, of parasols and pinstripes.

Rigid pools of dewed memory –
Of laughter and mustard flowers, the white
Of aprons and the click of heels, of parasols and pinstripes –
Bubble and evaporate, soon becoming soothing cumulonimbus reminiscence.

Heavy with laughter and mustard flowers, the white
Clouds darken and release memory on the surface;
It evaporates on contact and returns to the sky, soon
The whole skull will be covered in soothing cumulonimbus reminiscence.

The clouds darken and release memory on the surface,
Where boiling rock is converging and diverging.
Soon the whole skull will be covered in cumulonimbus reminiscence
Maintained by kinetic energy and molten sensations.

Sour Grapes

Rimbaud, a country child not fit

for vineyards, rolling hills.

But city life bore no fruit and

destroyed his strength of will.

Where I'm Writing From; For Raymond Carver

These days your name is a

phrase that tears on my ears,

and writing is like catching my foot on a nail

or stepping in broken glass someone left behind.

A phrase that tears on my ears, that

echoes, pierces the fabric of memory,

like stepping in broken glass that someone left behind;

it reminds me of objections left unvoiced.

Pierce the fabric of memory and

scream yourself to sleep without sound, without echoes.

Spring reminds me of objections left unvoiced;

of reluctant copulations and uncomfortable sweat.

Scream yourself to sleep without sound

while frontier battles rage in your breast.

Remembering the reluctant copulations and uncomfortable sweat,

my tongue trembles on the seal of the envelope I don’t know that I’ll send.