A poem composed by blacking out words in a trashy romance/action novel

Filling her cup.
Not that I'm grateful
Should have offered his bed.
Sorry about that
A little drawn.
Why would someone want to skewer you?
What sort of shit
between her hands,
legs curling,
mouth went dry
between her thighs.
...Oh, she was talking again.
She feeds it,
tucks the fucking thing into bed at night.

Another Poem

Sorry
about the seemingly broken
refrigerator.
That is to say,
the succulent cold
in shining pieces
(hardly cinders)
lies
trembling, stupid,
not dangerous.

Allways: a draft

Sweat down neck.
Slick palms.
each step against;
abandoned;
clung to.
A fine dust
somewhere crept.
Tightening the howled
life.
A dog.
Three failed attempts
and he had
a black plastic bag;
a preference against
the wall; an empty
hallway greeted deep,
filthy.
Concrete stretched,
testing the unlocked,
dark paper.

1123 From Omaha

...And his wife was dying. Six days without a shower.

Maybe the one organ left in good condition. To take it.

Rumored Burials*:

1. Three individuals by the name of Boards
2. Two individuals by the name of Page
3. Possibly Phil S. Stein
4. The Sea, an enemy
* per research done by LeMar Ennemi

(They had been talking about donating her liver)

History: - not available

Maps: - not available*

(He must have knocked. Had to have gone inside.)

It was usually held up every week, and occasionally daily.

*Lizards have to carry water bags out here.

Buried in same lot as
(Made the water too hot intentionally. Libation. Cleansing.)

Done swallowed it.

The highway did/was not:

1. Crack and fracture as it rose.
2. Remind me of dry, flaking tree bark.
3. Or scar tissue.
4. Radiate heat.
5. Sweating.
6. Phlegethon.
7. Sleeping.

Buried in same lot as

Hear Pipe

Our poor Pud usually insisted that his name was neither an acronym nor a slang term for penis. There were times of course - playing his old flute, barefoot and shirtless in some alley, the issue having been raised by a stranger - when he would do just the opposite.

The hell kind of name is that?

Stands for Public Unity Development.

What kind of stupid...

And of course, it was back to the flute. His story, gasped through musical phrases that tottered between subdued and moribund, was always approximately the same. Was always given ethereal credence by the subtle grayness of his skin. Scrawny limbs. Salient paunch.

I reckon I's born out one a them yawning gutters. You know the ones. Don't make em like 'at anymore. That metal that turn green with all the rain. Faces, you know. Them new ones is just bars across the gutter, grates. Squared and ugly. Well, them old ones aint like 'at. They was made to be punished, to slurp up all the city's filth and bear it. Now, some 'em will talk to you, you catch 'em in the proper light. That there's how I got to be named this way. They all full of sympathy. Can't help it. So I took up this hear pipe.

Paper

Paper. The dull, dun, dry husk of departed life. Flaked off skin. Ground to dust, to waste, to nearly nothing then sopped and pressed into the most featureless plane possible. A plane on which mendacious accounting's might be made. On which the world will narrow, now framed. An aperture to reign in your volubility.

A Long, Slow Decline

I can not provide a sufficient preface for this anecdote, I just can't. If I did, it would be a novella. In fact it is one - at least in length - though it's scattered and sloppy. My dad is strange and brilliant and frightening. He has been "followed by spirits", great rings of scintillating distortion in the air. He knows a place in the desert, decayed foundations of forgotten structures scattered across the canyon floor, where NOTHING can be heard. No wind, birds, bugs. A silence so absolute it will prickle your skin and you'll have to gulp for air despite yourself. Once we stayed at some abandoned campground. Run down, unused. Dad was gold panning, I was a little kid. My sister, ten years older, grabbed my hand and started to run. To scream. I didn't understand. Still don't. Someone is watching me, she kept saying. Dad didn't buy it. Someone is out there. He looked for a while. I couldn't sleep. Dad was having nightmares. It was them real old indians, you know. Anasazi, Moqi, Fremont and them. They met up in this place, and there was some real rub between 'em. Oh they had all kinds of things. Squash and smoked meat and fish and dumb shit too, like farming tools and stuff to dig with. And that corn god, he was someone real.... like he had... status, you know. Well, his daugter was kidnapped and he was looking for her and thought Kimberly was his little girl. I just remember, that can't be right. Pale skin and blond hair.

Just after dad's birthday I came home through wyoming. Liz noticed that our map listed a profusion of ghost towns so we stopped at one just off the highway. It's a junkyard now. Are there any ghost towns near Clear Creek Canyon, I asked. That's dad's haunt. Yes, she replied... there is one named after your sister.

So I looked it up. Kimberly utah was a hard drinking, whoring town. Had the strongest jail in 12 countys. It was full of murder and whiskey and gold. Untill it fell apart. Here I am, on the internet reading about this place. This place where the grandfather I never knew worked in the mines. Where his brother, Melvin, held the record for staying down in the mines longer than anyone. Here I am. I do another google search. By accident - wild, breathless accident - what comes up besides Kimberly, UT?... Me. Kelton Utah is stuck between the stink of the great salt lake and the government testing grounds in the desert. It used to be full of chinese immigrants. It has the record for being held up more than any town in history. For almost a month it was held up every day. People talk about the money buried in the hills around the place. Outlaws who buried treasure there and were caught or killed before they could collect it. The town? Well it died down when the railroad left. Got smaller. Then, and I am quoting wikipedia here, "Kelton was hit by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Utah. Great fissures and holes opened in the earth, muddy water gushing from them. Houses and other buildings were severely shaken, and the Kelton schoolhouse was left leaning at such a precarious angle that it had to be abandoned." All that is left is one foundation and a graveyard.


Last thing: three of the four sources in the Wikipedia article are published by Western Epics, a company owned and operated by Sam Weller's books, where I work. I used to be in charge of those books. I shipped them out. Collected checks.

Regulation

imp
lantern
nu-skin
transplant
a ribbed age
communicate
hands free
blue teeth
for free!
been digging
this hole
some time
sky that way
if the pits deep
sky you've known
shrink away
leeward flow
rendered plain
sagging
breathing
blink your eye
the sting
wave an arm
the smoldering
silhouettes
blackened walls
sallow shells
maps of streets
statues
palaces
embers fall
flutter down
bright birds scared
from a darkening
canopy
of smoke formed trees
to die
appreciate their brevity
brief history's written
tautologies opined
inks of hackneyed symbol
blood, ash urine lime
and the obscenity
more stimulating
when confronted
from behind

T/APE

In Mylar there are dark

things

jungles, incest, coffee

unless projected

some white screen, pages

likewise burrowed

pitchy holed speech

as booked

laps drink

the piss

from puncture

wounds

Speech is dumb too it

cannot speak

though slowly

bores as beetles

do when through arboreal

darkness they

boring chew and chew

Duane/Duane

1. Your wounds are nu-skinned and slating flaking; plastic carapace is wondrous and protects us.

1. Duane works twelve hours, drives home, parks the car, and just sits there, just sits there.

2. You are a glorious house of decay.

1. Duane renders rings of ghostly light over dry red deserts and wonders what spirits brought them.

3. Do not crown me, I am too savage.

1. Duane believes the evolution of man, that beast whose shadow is protracted so permissively by the sun, was orchestrated by extra-terrestrials.

4. Your appetites are true, steady, constant.

1. Duane’s daughter is much sought after by some long-dead, befeathered shaman.

5. Let children sleep on the backs of white buffalo.

1. Duane’s grandfather made armor out of wood and killed bears with a knife for money.