White Grins

Lotsa white grins
starting to look awful ghoulish.
like a hidden hangar for billions of buzzards
all waiting on that jaw to open
all waiting on my surrender with a single cough.

my skin's gonna peel off in their
sardonic pecks
like wet Budweiser labels
just another empty bottle in the sun
without a name.

white grins at the restaurants
in foreign realms under key lights
white grins at the department stores that
i can't afford to breathe in.
white grins who've never heard a good joke
as funny
as mean as their own barricades.
white grins, barbed and electrified.

Lotsa Budweisers in the sun.
Lotsa Luck with the toothbrush, pal.
My grin will never be so white.
Carrion can't have the vultures on its side.

Bones bleach like a rich, satisfied smile.

Supposed to Keep Going

we're driving toward the sun
she's not in the thing with me
not exactly
but we're driving toward the sun

and i know i'm supposed to keep going
all the way to where the crushed glass meets
the trashy salt and all those finned ghosts
all the way to the endzone
with possession

dodge the stink
hurdle the roadkill
drive to the sun
until i drown in its bathtub

i wanna nap
and not know when i'll wake up
wanna have no faint idea about it
but i'm supposed to keep going
i know this

she's got something she needs to see
and she can't get there alone
can't even get there with me really
maybe i'm crazy
because she's not in the thing with me
not exactly

but we're driving toward the sun
and my face is melting
my ears are horrible telephones
with eight billion friends
and nobody to answer them
i'm so tired.

i'm so tired of driving.


...
well, there's a new one.
-andy

August Tenth

it was like some terrible tailgate party
starved of laughter
all the bulbs held red for miles
like everybody wanted to tell me to stop
it was too late though
i was already here

the flares on the asphalt somehow made it worse
and the music didn't help
there was too much of it
too many tinted windows
and too many bored or frightened
or hateful faces grimaced by too many nightmares
in the windows that weren't

the uniforms were weary and lifting the body from the shoulder

it was covered
thank Providence, it was covered

even when the lights went out
and the smoke stopped grumbling
stopped telling me to stop

even when the blood started trickling
and then rushing again
it was still terrible
i was here
but i didn't get it
didn't know where

it was all just a big swing around the everything
like i was some particle
accelerating
no prayers other than a collision in a billion years
like the tailgate party was a seance
or a tarot reading

i was a wandering spectre who
couldn't find a hallowed smile
to lay down in
Resurrection Mary
with a car

but at some point
a friendly voice put a palm out flat
and flexed its fingers toward itself

i was alive
i circled the length of it
the clammy premonition defeated
i was here

and when i got out of the car
the entire street smelled like flowers


...
so i realize it's been a while - almost a month - since i last posted on here. i meant to put something up for my mom's birthday and mother's day. but i didn't. i'm a horrible son. i'll have those pieces up soon, i think.

i've been writing plenty and busy working on a bunch of other projects and undertakings (details on some of them will be forthcoming). i've also been sort of lazy, i guess. or maybe just afraid. or maybe some part of me wondered if anybody would miss my work. i'm not entirely sure.

this one is about driving into Los Angeles on my big move out here. that first night, there was a bad, fatal accident on the 10 and then i got way lost. thankfully the Little Joy was only a couple blocks from my new home and i got to drink a bunch of beer with my new roommates/good friends.

anyway, i plan/hope to get back to regular posting and that. cheers.
-andy

Crumple

yeah, like i threw myself in.
because it was easy
i had so many creases and folds from before
that i crumpled up like it was nothing
didn't even have to put any rage into it
it just happened
i just gave in all the right places

and i was light
so i went far
i threw myself in
all the way in
so fast i swear i heard some asshole's ears pop
my wake changed the arrangement of a girl's hair
or two, maybe two

but i went so far
so fast and so far away
it was hard to find me when it was over

and i had crumpled so easily
that i had crumpled so tight that
it was hard to recognize me when i opened up again
when it was over

not sure i ever quite got totally smoothed out
but
i'll probably never throw myself that far again

probably never crumple that much
and throw myself all the way in.
not after that shit, probably.


...
i'm sure it's pretty easy to decipher what this one - and the one before it, for that matter - is about. right?
-andy

Finally Heaved That Corpse or Stink & Forgiveness

finally heaved that corpse up and out of the bed
got sick of it hogging the fuzzy blanket
and the cool sides of all the pillows

got sick of it fucking my shit up
got sick of the goddamn smell
like somebody left their religion out
long after it soured and turned brown
got sick
and sicker

finally hacked its limbs from it
had to saw through bone and snap em off
had to break the whole thing down
into pieces that didn't look at me so crooked
pieces that sneered in a way i could laugh at

i'll say it was a holy, bloody mess
and it made me even sicker for a minute
and i had to open the forsaken windows
and strike twelve matchbooks down to nothin
had to let the neighbors see and
get a few major lungfuls of all the crap
in all that smoke
pouring out of the scene
bright by over nine-hundred candles
smudging the walls perfect again

but i didn't burn the body
i didn't want to choke or vomit
i just threw it in a couple black garbage bags
and tossed it in the dumpster
while the landlady's family gawked
their eyes welling up with stink
and forgiveness

i finally heaved that corpse up and out of the bed
feel better now
i can get some decent sleep
maybe have some lucid dreams
just gotta be careful and
not let anything else crawl under the covers
and die there.

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.

For My Father, On His 61st Birthday

Wayne
was given his breath down there, deep and snug in the heart of the thing
maybe someplace where it meets the stew
around the border of the gut
right along the dotted line
Wayne
loved that whole deal
despite the heavy temper he had to dodge.
Squeezed between all the women
all the girls, he stretched his sleeves
over his hands
and learned to take the quietest steps.
he crossed the creaking floorboards
and walked down the stairs.
He tiptoed through whatever it was
that bothered
whatever it was that crashed old cars
into trees
or other old cars.

Wayne
caught cowhide and pigskin
in dirt-smeared fingers that held it all tight
like detasseling corn
or like he never wanted anybody to ever leave.
Wayne
found his new religion and the strength in his legs
under the skin of a cold body of water
found how great his arms could hug
along the steel rails and ties
along the green rows and mosquitos
under the insistence of a hot star who puts its palms
on us all.

Wayne
saw more.
Africa and Central America
Wayne
watched the bad cells gallop with weapons
down the fragile corridors of whole families, painting
the walls ugly and punching holes
watched the helicopters disappear behind treetops, smoking
watched in confusion as lots of things just went plain wrong.
Wayne
made up his mind about war
and blood
and the things a person owes to the living
and the not-so.

Wayne
makes up his mind about these things and others
every day
year in and year out.

Dad
gave us these things.
The baseball and the football and the pond
and the railroad and the sun and the piano
and the clarinet.
Dad
sees his sons and smiles.
Dad
gives us these things every day
year in and year out.

Wayne laughs and holds us like he never wants anybody to ever leave.
We won't, Dad.
We won't ever leave.


...
i'm a day late getting this posted. 61 years ago, yesterday, my father - Wayne Arthur Sell - was born. Happy Birthday, Dad.
-andy

Said I Should Swallow It All

the clown told me i should stop writing about death
he said love stories were the new thing, the way of the future
i laughed, said tomorrow ain't been penned yet
he laughed harder, all "exactly, because
you've been too worried about the suicides and murders
and accidents n shit."
i told him i didn't want to talk about it anymore
the clown said he couldn't hear me anyway
said my mouth was too full of bullets
said i was stuffing em in there faster'n i could
spit em out.

the clown told me i should just swallow it all
let my tummy hurt for a while
take a shit
move in with the future
eat it out
buy it a ring
said i should get on this with this motherfucker
already

i told the clown i didn't appreciate his familiarity
but that i'd think about his things anyway
said sometimes the death poems are really about love
more than the death shit
said i had some places to be.

Crazy Brain & Skin

It's Crazy how
my Brain can still remember her Skin
how soft it feels, like
right down to the dead dust mites
the micrometer
It's fucking crazy.

It flips through the files quicker
than anything
and brings up her name and
there it is, right in the folder.
The Soft, Crazy Skin.
It points and clicks and drags and double-clicks and maximizes.
And all this while the rest of me doesn't work
lies limp like it never did anything
or just did way too much.
Like death, maybe, but barely breathing
through congestion and a crumbling atmosphere.

It's crazy how
it just runs through those stacks like
a library long after closing.
At Midnight, even.
It runs through those stacks, racing time
playing Hide'n'Seek with Dewey Decimal.
My Brain, forever It
grabbing titles from shelves
shuffling index cards and
listening to hollering
"Olly Olly Oxen Free" and
opening little drawers and
there's her Skin.
It finds her like research.

And it's true.
It's Crazy how I reach
through sleep
and touch a shoulder - a specific shoulder
under the covers and it's warm
but not hot
and there's a coolness in one area like
it didn't get quite covered completely.
But i knead there, and massage there
and that Skin responds and the coolness fades
under my fingerprints.
And she says something, smiling.
I can hear her giggle, even with her face full of pillow.

Crazy how that tangled mess of wires
soaked in slime and spackled gray and
pinched into my skull like that.
Crazy how it got that right.
The things fired and the other things fired back
and there were maybe some lights flashing
or sparks
and then, while i snored with my right arm like a chicken wing
under my head and the rest of me wrapped like a burrito in blankets
and then there was her Skin.
And I woke up with a Hard-On.

Somewhere Around the Mountaintop

somewhere around the Moutaintop
somewhere near a place that can't lie
we've been told there's a God of History
and we'll have to choose somebody to answer the questions
that sound from its center
someday

somewhere around 1968
somewhere near the Balcony
we've been asking for a chance to apologize
and to be heard
we'll probably want a little girl to write a letter for us
and fold our forfeits into the envelope
like they're just these thin things we don't need anymore

somewhere around a lunch counter
somewhere near the back of the bus
we've been heard mumbling
whispering
sneezing
where we used to shout
where we used to sing
and holler
and orate
and share the meanings of our dreams
where somebody made a bunch of us feel like we'd lost something important

we got it back
we think we got it back

"now it doesn't matter now"
now with our threats
sick and white and
wandering, some in the open
posturing for flashbulbs and pistol-blasts
others keeping secrets
indoors and dark, with periodicals in patient stacks
counting down
counting backwards from a number they couldn't get past before

now with troops surging and
sand waiting and
the world sneezing all over and
"Difficult Days Ahead" and
Great Crime
"it really doesn't matter what happens now"
now with our new dogs and hoses
now with urgency

somewhere around the Lincoln Memorial
somewhere near the Promised Land
we've been heard asking how long it will take, stuffed into frustrating hours
and, fearless of man, eyes soaking in Baptism
he tells us
"Not Long."
shouldn't be long
any day now

Glory!
Hallelujah!

Glory!
Hallelujah!

Glory!
Hallelujah!


...
for one of the Greatest Poets ever.
-andy