Bad Coffee

Grim Coffee

Ah, he thinks, the glory of sitting around the apartment with a cup of lukewarm coffee, reading contrasting views on the relative worth of Ezra Pound and fascist insults. He grits his teeth, choking
on the brackish aftertaste of the java he tries to sip; tepid now, it's color a dead blackness, foul to the taste on the tip of the abused tongue because the pot was left on the heater for two unattended hours.

Just the way he liked it.

He couldn't read Pound at all, never could, although he might admit to himself that he hardly tried in all the years he thought of himself as a poet and a taste maker. The politics were one thing, and all the
revisionist cant about him being a misguided, deluded romantic with no mind for political thinking does not absolve him of the fact that he endorsed fascism as a preferred method of restoring a population's enthusiasm for wholeness. Doubtless Pound was thinking of coming with a society, a culture that would preserve the rights of the artist to chase avant gard projects, but more than that he desired to have the artist in charge of making public policy. Dangerous stuff, he thought.

Dangerous because just he could politicize and exaggerate and otherwise enthuse that cold, brackish coffee is the living end so far as caffeine consumption goes, so could the poet , the artist, the posing dilettante espouse grievous nonsense and make their machinations seem so, so attractive and worth investing every resource in. World War 2 ought to have settled that notion.

Or maybe it doesn't. Suddenly a car horn blasts from the driveway and the coffee tastes like cold crap
in a cup. He grimaces, a tight, downturned frown. His wife kisses him with this foul taste in his mouth.

What was he and the world thinking?

MSN Slate Magazine

MSN Slate Magazine

boom

boom

there are minutes
in an afternoon
when all i want to do
is light a match and
toss it over my shoulder,
walk the way,
imagining a glorious
slow motion sunburst
to lift every empty car
in the street
as fumes, flame
and wind lift the
flaps of my long rain coat,
which is awful light
for being bad
of black
badass leather.

Whispering Train

Whispering Train

It's all sweetness when he thinks about leaving through the door he came in through, he made sure his chair was always near the exit sign. The fast way out. Short cut to the sunlight. The glare of artificial lights played crazy music in the nerve ganglias clustered through far reaching convolution of brain activity.

If not sun, though, what? Might there be a building to stare upon, tall enough with enough windows lit and dark for to contemplate intricacies that fall outside his vision's ability to sort and order the flux of what occurs in front of him. Maybe. Outside is a trolly station, and he would weight for a tell tale yellow light coming from up the track, around the bend, past a residential hotel that had been built during world war two that had a large sign on it's roof buring it's name over the street life and tracks under it,"Kensington Arms".

He rested in his seat, put down his coffee cup. Christ, he hated to read his work. Worse yet, he dreaded not being asked to.

A day without singing is like the sun without an earth to shine on.

A man walks his dog but the dog holds the leash between bottom and upper rows of teeth that know chew toys and biscuits as distinct from the rest of the world contained on these few blocks to the park.

The man lights a cigarette and drops the match in front of the swings at the playground where he sits on a bench, waiting for his dog to find a favored spot to remember in later days when it might be a kingdom for a friendly scent when there is only barking from behind the fences the two of them pass gong to and from the store or some such place near home.

This winter the sun is caught in the bare branches of trees that have surrendered their leaves to the season, the light of the sun is cold on the breath, man walks dog in jerky steps, the dog raises his head and growls, drops the leash from his teeth, a car passes by and a dog in the back seat has head sticking out of the window, yelping against the wind the envelopes his face in a perfect wrap of jet streams pinning his ears to the back of his head,

The man's dog runs after the car, barking and baying along the street lined with snowdrifts and grey, runneld slush, gone into the cold, leash less in the cold gasping for the man's hand and the leash he swings like lariat catching cattle the size of boxcars.

russell at claire de lune

applause or the lack of it drives him further into the corner, sinks him deeper into the chair, the cushion springs sing eternal groans as every song he tries to hum comes unstrung and tuneless as every set of lips on each beautiful mouth chats away at every table as though he weren't there with his tattoos and high heels, banjos and dobro guitars around his feet, twelve strings of nothing to say swarming about him as he sulks over the grinding beans and cash register ka-chings!, a spooked avenue flashes on the other side the window as bottle bar slides down slack key frets, headlights swarm over art deco marquees bragging of fabric sales and homecoming days, there's a slight glance of a pusher looking through the window, spitting on the sidewalk, he walks on, side streets go deep into the dark where street lights cannot pierce groves of trees around school yards and bungalows, our singer croaks, snake tattoos run up from his wrist and up his sleeve, emerge at his neck where veins look as though they'll pop on his next high note, books are stacked on the tables in front of him, the student raises her head from a note book she she writes in to drum her lip with the tip of her pen, she returns to her writing, no music will sway her, no applause will console him, a shadow falls over the stage, a stage light as burned out, cups and dishes on empty tables, there are instruments to pack up and trash cans to empty, there is no one to talk to, and thank god for that...

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