When the Simple Man

I just want to be a lover
to just have her
to just breathe her saccharine smirk
to know who she is

I don’t know what Tigerland is
or rather what it's for.
Why we're sent by the thousands
to tread through those jungles,
to march through the rice patties,
and shoot the yellow man.

I just want to be a butcher
to just cut meat
to love it
to know what it is

I don’t know who the gooks are
or rather why they’re mad.
Why the lieutenant says it’s alright
to kill the gook children, their gook mothers,
to let their gook blood soak my boots
and forget about them, turn them into numbers.

I just want to be a lover.
To love her,
The way momma taught me.
To love any girl.
I know what it is.

Jeffrey

I stood in line one night
Waiting for the bus home from Seattle
The northwestern rain poured on us
Her and I, Me and her

I asked her: “Whatever happened to old Jeffrey?”
She stood puzzled, transfixed in confusion
“Jeffrey’s gone. We all know where he went.”
She tilted her head and looked up at the wet sky
The raindrops fell in her eyes, mouth, and nose
She closed her eyes and sighed
I looked around and smiled
The world spun, the people spun
We were all spun, Jeffrey was spun
Spun too fast, with the needle scratching out our destinies

The bus drove up with its exhaust seeping into our lungs
The rain still poured
I paused before getting on and looked back at her
She was still looking up

Don't Get Too Attached

We throw away our coins and metals
While bills float into starving bank accounts like flower petals.
A small gain for a large amount
of money that I don’t care to count.
Fiscal claustrophobia: I get diagnosed.
I try not to get attached, but there’s nothing I miss most,
Than when the brilliant autumn leaves turn to paper.
None of the birds understand this type of nature.
And centered on the front, the honored ghosts,
whose paper hearts stop any toasts.

This metamorphosis might go on for infinity,
but what’s the price of one's dignity?

Stella

I couldn’t help but notice
The piano was missing keys
The guitar was missing strings
And the singer was missing a voice

With that hole in her head,
I looked deep into her tarred soul
She spoke to me from it
“I used to be in here, but not anymore.”

Cigarette smoke filled the room
As she lit her next one
“I died long ago, sonny boy.”
I laughed

The rest of the band
Were puppets
They didn’t move a finger
To their decrepit, mangled instruments

“Stella, the name’s Stella, kid.”
I wasn’t wondering
“Stick around, you’ll get to see more.”
I walked back home

Puppet Culmination

"We, the puppet world of this desolate landscape, pledge allegiance to our every fear, every horror that has led us to our simple destinations."
Walk the line, little puppet. Puppet master will take care of you.
Walk until your compliant little heart stops.
Until you find yourself trapped in a hole,
Looking out of the grave you dug for yourself.
All of your little glitches and dilemmas
Pouring in as that black, worm-infested soil.
And you try to dig yourself out,
But you realize you're digging the wrong way.
You're digging circles, zig-zags, mazes.
You're digging everywhere,
everywhere but up.
Up and out.
Once every ounce of energy in your mediocre muscles has seeped out,
You stop, and sit.
"I choose acceptance and I accept my choice," the puppet says.
Oh, you wide-eyed creature.
You're too easy.
You're just a sitting duck,
a bulls eye in the target market,
applying make-up in the driver's seat,
masking your little insecurities
in Lite Beige and Coral.
The radio is on.
"And we're back with a chart-topper for you, this one's a hit!"
You have the volume up all the way to hide your self-proclaimed vile voice.
Between point A and point B, the scenery's real nice,
And you pretend to care, but it's real damn hard.
The news anchor and her crew on the side of the road
are filming some bullshit, tedious story on golf courses.
And as the cars rush by,
the news anchor imagines every different scenario that could take place with a car crash.
A sideswiped school bus, a spontaneous explosion of a full gas tank.
She needs some tragedy points to get those ratings to soar.
Planes crashing into sinking ships.
Anything to fulfill her wishful fantasies.
You drive by the park with all the tiny schoolchildren dancing around their totem pole playground.
You imagine them in executive positions stabbing their co-employees in the back.
You imagine their innocent eyes burning with procreating ambition.
The same procreating ambition their mothers and fathers have.
The mothers and fathers that have spent the last decade of their lives living in a 9-5 world.
And they're just dying to full that vacant heavenly position
that seems to be perpetually floating above reach.
Anything to feed those starving bank accounts.
You smirk and ride on.
You have a plane to catch, but you need to squeeze in a session with the priest.
A quick stop at the drive-thru confessional does the job.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I have to repent. I have to redeem myself of these sins."
"Alright, get on with it, what ungodliness have you caused?"
"I don't share, I eat too much, I'm too proud of myself, I'm jealous of my neighbor, I get angry, I'm too lazy, and I long for sexual satisfaction. And this was all in the last week."
"You have repented, and I will forgive. That will be $9.99. Please pull up to the next window."
Behind you, a line of sinners
in their luxurious sedans
racing, rushing to catch the next plane, the next bus, the next ferry across the river Styx
just from point A to point B.
But there's a house of prayer at every junction.
There is no need to worry.
When they get home, they sit in their cells, drinking the same holy water the were drenched with at mass.
Bottled holy water, plain tap water, flavor enhanced water, boiled, pasteurized water. Simple. Water.
And you realize you've missed your plane.
Point A to point B, stifled.
With your puppet strings attached, you ride on to your simple destination.
Ride on, silly puppet, ride on.

Sightseers

We were sightseeing, flying along the rim of the atmosphere,
When, down below, we saw creatures on a street.
They were all covered in plastic and textile
And spoke in a language so vile.
The street was called Symmetry Lane,
And on Symmetry Lane, they call everything else "just a stain."
Once we landed, we were accosted by a curious creature.
It was rainbow colored and had female features.
Our team of scientists examined its brain
But before that, we locked it up in chains.
"How familiar these steel links are!"
It screamed and screamed as we dug far.
The further we dug, the less interesting it got.
We couldn't understand this creature's thoughts.
They consisted of a timeline: birth, learn, pray, learn, birth, pray.
What that meant, we couldn't say.
We dumped the specimen in an alley down off of Disarray Lane.
It looked around the soiled ground, and realized that everyone is "just a stain."

Operation Iraqi Freedom 2006

Very interesting.
Operation Iraqi Freedom 2006. Now it is February 2008. How many more years? How many more victims? If these are the American victims, I wonder what the Iraqi victims look like.

Costumed

Tabloids and television help her strive.
She needs to be more than the perfect wife.
Incoming, outgoing trends she follows,
And Prozac to mask her hidden sorrow.
Her collagen lips and silicone chest
Seem to resemble those of all the rest.
She depends on income made by her man,
There is never a bad time for a tan
Or to visit salons and shop the mall.
Manicures, pedicures; she needs them all.
Bleached blonde, Brazilian wax; the perfect pair,
Only until she drops the kids at day-care.
Her life is defined by brand names galore,
All the fashions she pretends to adore.
But then the time comes for her young children.
Their lives are led by what she has chosen.
She sees herself as the most attractive;
Narcissism, she can well outlive.
Keeping up with the rest of the pack now
She can always make the people raise their brows.

Sol et ciel

Let's embrace the virtues of our Nature
And sing of what is beautiful and real.
Fathers and mothers knew of this so pure.
It struck me at birth that this is how I feel.

When the foam waves crash against the shore,
On which the sand makes a perfect glass floor,
The footprints of the seagull disappear.
Perhaps another day it won't get near.

Between my footsteps, I hear crickets loud.
Ahead of me, the buzzing of the bee cloud.
And the warm, summer breeze flows over my face
As the little armies underneath race.

Clear heavens, patched white mountains flowing free,
Even gray and dark, I don't mind to see.
Rain could be crystals or ice or morning dew.
In the end, it adds up to something new.

The Feed

I read the newspaper the other day
And it tells me the world will melt by May.
Twenty-five more soldiers dead in the war
And I can't read without knowing there's more.
Somewhere on the other side of the world,
Kids and their mothers are starving and cold.
In our own hometown, a family drowns
And through the newsprint, I can't hear their last sounds.
In the great, white North, a forest was saved,
But its importance seems to have been paved.
Tragedy makes for the best news story
As any chief editor would worry.
There are planes crashing into sinking ships
So the editors now run for the whips.
The ratings depend on thsi one headline
So let's see those readers pig out like swine.