Tell Me Something Good

She always said she wouldn’t come back next time,

Then she really didn’t come back

Bim waited in the doorway for two days, just looking out

SingDead and ShoNuff walked up to the house

ShoNuff carried a green backpack

The white van of church volunteers drove into town

singing hes got the whole world in his hands

Bim was once a diver, at the bottom of the river

He welded the supports for the new bridge underwater

He saw indescribable terrors and quit the job

He sat in the diner and paid 

twice what he owed for lunch

and got sick in the bathroom

Rock went to her parents house

Her grandfather rolled a blunt bigger

Than a child’s arm and said

You cant ever trust the white man

The smoke billowed from the prison compound

The guards were dead or had retreated

At the sleepover, ShoNuff pretended to be asleep

And pretended to be talking in his sleep

Falling out of the window in pretend sleep

Lil Randy’s Yukon reflected a purple sunset and

A purple sunrise

He didn’t know if he was asleep or awake

Underwater or in his mother’s house

Partners all the way from Huntsville and Memphis

Lined up all the way down the block

Waiting for the gate to open at 8

The cops were sure that Lil Randy was selling something

Junk Baby was revered and adored by the children

And sniffed dope while he lay in bed

The church volunteers waited outside Lil Randy’s mother’s house

Holding paint brushes, buckets and ladders

They did not know that his mother was dead

The cops in orange raincoats smoked

and watched the prison burning

Rock called Bim to ask how were the children

SingDead walked home from school and listened

To her black friends talk shit

About her white daddy

Without saying a thing

When Lil Randy was ten years old

He saw his father beaten by the cops

He decided to stay out of life

He did not excel in school because

He did not care

But he did not fail out

because he was smart

He stayed in his room and listened to the old records

and when he thought he was going to cry

he turned the music off

After he quit the job

Bim rode a tiny motorcycle

from Minnesota to Mississippi

through a hurricane

to get back to Rock

when he saw her standing with the children

outside of the house

all of them in raincoats

Bim felt so weak that he couldnt blink

and the rainwater made him blind

sentimental and shit

megabeds, gaias:

the club full of weird racers

rainbow six,
vegas

i love you folks


keep grinning like cats
you guys all smile like cheshire cats
even after you fade off
i can still see your smiles



i'll visit every mansion in mississippi
imagine the circus clown taking off his makeup
and the tent collapsing in on itself from the top

you guys are known
for mischievous grins


lay it on em, cats, this is dairy country
there is so much milk and cream

i love you guys

i miss it because

its a part of myself,

parts of myself

naked by the bathroom door

watching me trying to puke,

the nothing that comes up,

white foam, all bits of evidence

comes in and rubs my back

puts me to bed

she never raised her voice

she must have wanted to cry

i must be strange,

i send strange gifts


when she wakes up
the eyelashes made small shadows
on the white part,
like a cup
full of porcelain

i'm whistling, sleeping, a big empty house

and when i t bomb
i chose to send the little heart




i remember new orleans
i ate an omelette
 named for a general

my baby my baby

you can beat the feeling
that the street is dusty
when you wake up early
sneak me out on the street,


my baby my baby
im sending you the little heart

the big one is for when
i'm back on bourbon
being a bad bitch

*god save all those business guys*


*pray for the bankers*



*the best part of a prayer*
*is knowing what you did*

1. i've never been very good at hanging out

2. i wrote a book for a girl
she did not read it

3. haircut like a buzzard in Malibu

4. god dammit gimme correct change

5. play at it long enough and its not a game

i said the hail mary,
i woke up in the late morning,
my things were scattered everywhere

there was once a time
when i thought that getting out
meant that you wouldnt be stuck anymore

but the aches, the bad guys and the eyes
will follow you to where the soil turns to mud

The Reverend Isiah Thompson’s House is black

The kudzu blanket is a thief, brash in the dark

SingDead and Sho Nuff

Climb to the top of Alligator Mound,

they watch the Homecoming Parade

There is a road that leads to other fields,

That steam in the morning

but at dusk,

The fields watch you in the memory of light

like a sick person in a bed

They can see the river and they can see the parade,

SingDead and Sho Nuff,

they brought snacks to the mound,

The town is poor

The tuba bumps the drummer and the order is ruined,

the parade goes on like it was dragged by horses,

The river is a tramp; like all young men, he once had plans

And dreams, but they came to nothing so he
just keeps rolling

There were fat girls, bearing flags that droop,
the girls carry them like they are going to the junk yard

An idiot runs like a figure eight, like a snake, banging the symbols

SingDead and ShoNuff know,

That beneath them in the wet soil,

are some bones of yanks, saints, Choktaws;

The town is poor but it once was rich,

most may have forgotten,

or they remember only in rage or in dreams,

that the color of the faces in the town

still reminds the world of death