Viking Standard

lots to do
up and away from this
this puzzling scene: a funeral mound
of pillows gathered
from too many houses
the pyre pile of paperbacks
and magazines
and newspapers nobody'll ever read
looking at me like, "hey buddy
where's the torch?
we were promised a torch."
but all my matchbooks are under other things
like some maybe abandoned poems
short stories
and there's too much to do

and all of it isn't here
it's all up and away
maybe out the door
it should be out the door, but
the hollow cardboard
the eaten shoes
the blue jeans with the crotches bit out
and all the junk
all the junk it all just crowds around
this bed
this puzzling scene
and it hollers and it all wails
and it makes bullshit demands

what a mob!
what a truly unruly collection of spoiled
maladjusted little bastards!
all bullying their way into the day's schemes
like suits and ties and bad attitudes
spitting on authorship
running around Hollywoodland in farty little cars
all parking and sneering at the valet
what a mob!
i can't find any of their keys and
they won't stop yelling at the borders of my bed
won't stop spitting on authorship.

if i could find those matchbooks i'd send the whole place
up to some kind of Viking standard
i'd make it all like Darth Vader under the fireworks
and the Ewok song
but all that sulfurous potential is hiding
all that flame is smothered by other things
probably in weird places
near the empty cans
and emptier glasses, stacked like Russian Dolls
who are all the same size and fighting for a place
near the coffee mugs full of pens & markers.

nah. the fire's all gone, man.
it's hiding and it doesn't want to be found.

and that's fine, really
that's okay
because there's so much to do
and it's all up and away
out of here.
i gotta get to it
gotta throw off the junk mob and their crowding
and their honking
just push past the piles and climb over the pillows
and forget about the buried fire and all the
murder and suicide and orphans
and get to the lots to do
just get to it
gotta get out of here
gotta get up and away.
there's so much to do
and i gotta get to it.