XL

saturday night 999:

shit turn that up now

i've met a few chicks that i hit it off with

few chicks that i jive with thats right i was

bitchin like beefeater in a fine glass with

somebody famous or whatever like i was

slicked hair on top of the harvest moon

like i knew your father's ex wife and in

the biblical sense i am a heavy beat but

i go home with

my hat in my hands

i confess all of this to a dude at the bar that i

sort of know

and he moves like hes moving hair out of his eyes even though

hes almost bald

and just goes,

"CLASSIC"

"CLASSIC"

"FUCKIN' CLASSIC"

XXXIX

I think this'll be the first time I ever credited a quote

on this thing

so you know,

try to go somewhere and get this rare gold:

"yes yes shiver my timbers I want sardines for breakfast and a lemon for lunch

for a afternoon snack I'll get in a fight and you can keep my supper warm for

three days I'll take six foot of ground

sometimes a lonesome feeling gets me in a mighty good hold

you know a lot of the way peoples live is a pile of shit

don't put a After Six around my back I'd rather shoot the bones with the caddies

the help is always better than the ones in the bow ties

the loner that is me I loan out pieces of my heart like tickets to a picture show

where there aint nothing on the screen but solid BLACK"

-Frank Stanford, The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

XXXVIII

i know that in every terrible family

theres a hyperactive dog

i know that i know some peoples' parents

might have raised me better

i know that i'm not that smart

and even though i can get away with

looking at where your third eye should be

instead of at your eyes plain on your face

i can't get away with saying a thing like

our spirits danced

but i mean really fuck you you know what i mean

i can look at the world however i want and say whatever the hell i want

and it isnt my fault and it aint your fault if my mind is just

a pond filled with broken mirrors and frogs howling in the storm

i know that i pose as a workman and i pose as an orphan

i know that every lie i tell is part of my own mean truth

i know that when i'm going somewhere i dont wanna get there

i hear the gongs ringing

the biggest thing in my life was florida because florida took me out of it like a red card

my dad went down to florida for work

his sense of duty told him to visit his brother who lived there

in every terrible household there is a sense of duty that tells you to

pay a visit to a deranged and terminally ill guy;

thats uncle bob

my dad went to clearwater

and through the screen door

he could see the flies

and deranged uncle bob

moving in the shade gloom

uncle bob, brother bob

opened up the door

and brought my dad

in through the screen

where the flies were yelping

and the tv was like the air

and the rug was wooden varnished

carrying old bones and hexes in it

everybody say that uncle bob spraypainted REVOLUTION on a building once

I wonder how uncle bob could fit in the cock pit of a fighter plane cuz

that mother fucker is fat as hell

uncle bob

showed me how he could chug

a bottle of schlitz in one go

on my birthday

and on new years

and on easter

at every funeral i've ever been to

deranged uncle bob owns a computer

deranged uncle bob hasnt ever told me

if he knows that everything grows out of trash

that every daffodil hides its roots deep in shit

shit like my dad, and uncle bob, and me, and my family

uncle bob talks on about islamic conspiracy theories

the prayer rugs that they found in the desert

the cluster bombs that see like they got 10 eyes

the colors of freedom waving somewhere

maybe my dad's a weak bitch

maybe my dad's not crazy but when uncle bob was waving his arms and screaming and trying to move and just in all a panic about the towel heads my dad went on and said,

"bob you believe this shit you gotta get some help brother there are no jihadis hiding in arizona not every muslim lady driving a minivan round tampa bay is smuggling 15 tons of bombs in her kids' underwear and packpacks why don't you just give it a rest bob you look like you done expired on the shelf brother you look like you shook hands with the bubonic plague man"

and uncle bob said dammit fuck fred you one of them and

shot my dad in the stomach

with a pistol he had in his boot

i'm an orphan, because my moms always been dead

and my dads real dead now

and uncle bob roams florida

deranged and wandering

uncle bob came over my house on his new motorcycle

i asked what kind it was and he's all, 'suzuki intruder'

i'm like you're right uncle bob

you're like the horseman of wal mart death i can see you intruding in every nook and cranny

and doing just about nothing but intruding

why didn't you just get a harley uncle bob

and uncle bob stutters like he forgot his destiny and his last name

and just says son you'll know when you're old and live with the phone off of the hook

i say to that hey there uncle bob you aint never been on a harley in your life you're just pissed with jealous because those harley guys dont ever wave to you when you squealing around on your intruder

uncle bob wasnt intruding much longer because he crashed his intruder at a red light at midnight in the florida rain and walked away spitting bubbles

singing some willy nelson

passed out in one of those big booths at a wendys

when i heard he was in the hospital i knew

that it was all good

cuz i could go and just

live in that fucker's house

but he didnt have any food

and the tv didnt have an off switch

and there were bats in the couch

and i fell down the steps

i smelled blood and confusion all over that place

uncle bob sent me a letter from the hospital

first he claimed that he had borne a son

a new son named kai

that was a lie

i called bullshit on uncle bob and he hung up the phone

then he said listen here jamie jimbo james, its about time

that you heard the story of my fucking childhood

i tried to hang up the phone but i was in uncle bob's house

and even after i slammed the phone on the hook fatass uncle bob

was still talking through the walls and i could see the sticky orange tree outside

and the fruit flies all talking to me and uncle bob's hyperactive dog with its blind eye

all telling me the story of uncle bob

i knew it was time for me to go home

but whenever i figure that out

i always stay out

XXXVII

The boys sung over old Jim's bones

The wind bubbled and swam through old Jim's bones

and Jimbo came up and he was held like a baby

Old Jim's bones in the navy, in the blue midnight

the bones sang quiet, they sang about

tromping over the wildflowers, they sang about

getting caught playing hooky

The boys were far and far,

Nico dreams of the barn under the moon and the train

Ty Man writes letters that look like bones and hides the gems

Luke is on the mountain with the hat and the horizon

Ric is on the burning hog when the red towers are coming up

Sarah counts the lights down there and the other ones up there

Larry hears the violin on the balcony and the the gap in the trees

Tony closes the wound under the bridge and the cars keep coming

Bill has the ring and the flow that we seen while we sat on the wall

The whole city was yellow like the wall of the outpost in the desert

and all the boys stayed with the bones until maybe july

that skate park got bull dozed but its bones are still out there

The bones are set up like the smallest castle on the beach

the bones all sing and whistle in the waves

old jimbo's bones seen a few things and

they sing thank you thank you boys

XXXVI

When I go to the river after the flood and take off my clothes

I hear the season and the cycle of the moon shouting for me

It smell like pesticide and cow shit from the flood last month

It was a tourist attraction where the red leaves smile and go down

The brush is dead by the flood and I look over my left shoulder at the new moon

I cant help it even though I know I’ll be doomed to be a starving bottom feeder

so I curse this season cuz I’m hexed by every new moon that hides its face like a lost actor behind the curtains and calls from behind the curtain and interrupts the show

That call it ring and ring like the sinkholes and ancient craters I got in my head I say

Man mother fuck If you think im gonna to answer that tell them I got a message

Hello fall sweater! Hello misfortune I’m gonna beat the shit outta you this time

Hows that for a howdy doo cuz I don’t even own a phone anymore

Hiding in the canoe that floated downstream I float away like a drunk’s mother

I used to float naked but now I drift wrapped up like a wound leaking it out

When I’m hexed by the new moon I don’t even bother looking at the shore

I know that upstream is cow shit and pesticide and that downstream is black

And on the west and the east shore I know there are my friends and my hearts like

Wet leaves stomped down on either side of the shore and spread out in a x all over

They was the hexes who mourned in their rooms where no one had been

They were the friends that saw the oprichnik’s with their dog heads

They was the boys that smashed the moonshine in the garden

All the boys spread out like a hex

made by iron nail boots that go all

over this goddam country and it’ll be moons and moons before I find em again

I see my ladies that I knew stiff on the shore like the huge graveyard in Queens

I see my ladies on the shore far off like the Spanish and the French and the Russian peasant bitches cooking their pots full of hearts and time and freshwater tears

I see the ladies and how

they got a hook where

one hand should be

and a white hankie in the other

When I float under the new moon and its hollows all the houses and all the trucks in the country and the woods of the north,

they all

Stand up like guilty germans wearing long coats in the rain

Stand up like ghosts in the bell tower without the strength to ring

Standing up like spiked bulls dangling their feet in the dust and dripping out drops

I lay down in the canoe and float by the woods because when I get where I’m going

It wont come as a surprise to none of these folks because they’re where they’re at

And I’m floating like a baby sneaker down the styx and I’ll keep wallowing until

This eternal new moon hex lifts its cross off my back cuz I aint no stinking jesus