featuring
Wendy Schaffer, Angel Roundtree, Steven B. Smith
8 pm Wednesday 8 October 2003
Mac's Backs
1820 Coventry Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118 U.S.A. 216.321.BOOK
O listen now thou mad, thou meek
Receive and mourn my words oblique
Hear me - for I, Lucifer, speak
God's impotent envy me from heaven hurled
Manwards toward this god forsaken world
Where you in reward were Eden expelled
And I, once majestic, upon my belly felled
So I reigned in hell in favor a god
Forever, until upon me science trod
Then even from hell was I disbelieved
And from formal evil my duty relieved
Now no heaven holds atomic aplomb
Nor profits in neutered gamma ray tomb
Knowing crucified wish is unworkable womb
Huddled beneath behind
Green metal stalls
The tile encrusted
Yellow, he sews an
Empty money bag
To his crotch, watches
His reflection mirrored
In regimented urinals
five six seven
Decaying down the wall
Cradling his existence
Fraying five to seven
In staid erotic fear
Small spider woven
Through uninforming ears
Tired of heaven he sews
His money to his crotch
He huddles
Middle aged black man tried to ice-pick my stomach this afternoon
one block off Public Square at Ontario & Prospect.
"How do you want your prospect today sire, medium or serious damage?"
The bus almost missed him in the rain
so he loudly abused the driver all the way downtown.
I got off behind him and accidentally nudged his shoe.
He snarled: "Next time you step on my heel I'll hurt you."
Me - "Why don't you shut the fuck up?"
He - "What did you say?"
"Excuse me sir, I said why don't you shut the fuck up."
A lot of sputtering (this is a man in a business suit)
muttering about shutting me up when suddenly
he's stabbing at my stomach with an ice-pick
well used, with a red handle, he'd taken from his briefcase.
I can't help myself as I automatically out dance his thrusts
(I was after all on the fencing team at Annapolis)
I laugh and say "you're something else".
This infuriates him more so he shoves his briefcase at his daughter
who's been trying to tug him away and starts slashing at me.
I was wrong.
I should have apologized when I nudged his heel
or at least kept quiet when he snapped.
What I did was dance backwards across the street and call out
"You're one sick fuck, old boy"
and run down Ontario street, he & his ice-pick chasing me.
The man's going to explode with hate
and I fuel him further.
If I were black, I'd hate white.
Though he was an equal opportunity hater - the driver was black.
I've got to slow my tongue, fasten my brain
walk with compassion, cause less stress, not more.
I am happy. I should share.
Moroi, Moroi
We meet where
The cuckoo does not sing
The dog does not bark
The sacred yew my flesh
The warming gone
Though hidden behind
Paths in the park
I in my city
Am amphetamine hot
And see
Clean Grecian face
In crumpled wrap
Of excrement
On flesh
None descending the stair
Dare call patrons
Matrons of questionable ease
Strip tease
Sand not withstanding
For each beach is the same
Insane
Since neither retribution
Nor love of institution
(conclusions vague beyond repair)
Dare descend December day
Bring back the snake
Seems to me a lot of people
are sleeping with a lot of people
under various rules and regulations
while I deal in shadow
(for not all place bound in time)
I think it's neat sniffing sheep in heat
tho not my style
I'm more rock n roll cool cruel lean scene
with lots overlapping
I'm the high in Ohio
Fractals friend
Mom made whether
Dad's leaks and squeaks
(which is white of me)
Proof positive ant's scant
leather lash shadow due
I fear neither name
nor knowledge
for magic round bounds
joyous in-between
high noons weed easy
stones throw from sanity
optional
Step outside the lines
Stable tables
Video yesteryear's roarshocked
Inkblots new age pap
Mammaries for stars
Be one
Be nothing
Bananas brown Asian to African
Albinos weep white
Dark, as Africa used to be
My best friend at the U.S. Naval Academy was a self-made degenerate who was dating a shelf-made Catholic. She's also the lady who was to blind-date me with my unfortunate future. After graduation they got married, and she constantly semi-quietly chaffed at his sins, especially his alcohol-filled friendship with drug-infested me.
One weekend while she was visiting her parents to celebrate her pregnancy, he went down to Baltimore's Block to see Blaze Starr strip. During her act, Blaze came up to him and had him powder her big bare breasts with two large powder puffs.
Afterward he picked his wife up at the train station and on the long trip back to the naval base told her of the breasts and the powder puffs and she flipped - starts screaming the car is filled with powder unclean, to let her out. He does, calms her down, gets her back to base and treatment.
Over the next week she sinks into insanity. Refuses to eat anything because it is poisoned. Won't clean because it's filthy beyond soap and water. Eventually they lock her away awhile until her blooming pregnancy catches her attention enough to qualify her as sort of sane. He breaks off our relationship because she believed I was the evil in his life, and he tried to spare her what he could - but the last I heard she was a careful and loving mother, but not much of a wife, and he was set in sadness.
This is the woman who decided my future ex and I were made for each other.
My wife to be was also unstable. Not really her fault though, it ran in the family. Her sister was being treated for schizophrenia, and her father was a daughter molesting madman. He tried to smash my face with his fists the night we told him we would marry. Her grandmother was a vicious sharp tongued backstabbing member of the once rich who kept forgetting the once, although she did still own a second house on the Cape next to the Kennedy's. Her mother at least was a good person, though crippled with arthritis, disappointment and alcohol. Grandmother had disinherited them all because
her daughter had to marry this common farm boy who in order to support his new found family had to shelve his dream of singing opera to become a rather prosperous maker of partials, false teeth and bridges for others.
Bitch
I want things which to you are wrong
But for which I yet long
I want to caress your breast
And when passions mounted manifest
Take my hate in hand
And caress you all the more
Make you writhe about in uncommon whore
Then kiss the taunt of your innocent thigh
And wrench from your lips a cry
Of pagan pleasure all your own
The low human female moan
Shattering your sacred hymenal pride
Rampaging you full deep inside
So you feel my subfreudian lust
In each violent misogynous thrust
Of my hips against yours, dampened fire
Lashing within, exploding desire
For your certain no twists me inside
Till rape and respect, raging, collide
Let others munch spare frogslegs and things
Or their mother's tidbits so fine.
Not me.
I prefer wee bumblebee wings
With a pipe of blueberry wine.
I've no desire for porcupine stew
Aunts coated in chocolate yea thick
Fried crocodile
Ala flayed caribou
Or some other chef's table trick.
A simple table whenever I dine.
Not mine all these modern cuisines.
I'm quite satisfied with blueberry wine
And old fashioned bumblebee wings.
Just yesterday it was yesterday
Now it's already today
Confuse not mercy with weakness
Confuse weakness not with an upset liver
And confuse not an upset liver with love
It is the shape of the silence
Which defines the sound
Like winter rubbing against summer
Each refines the other
Only certain curtains can be drawn
The rest must be endured
The souring sermons
The centered self serving
The lion den Christians in Coliseum stands
Twixt ape and angel wandering
Torn between the knowledge
And the need
Do I worship the moon or sun
Or yet the blooded one?
I bloat and smell
Decay in age
The focus runs
It aint age.
It ain't sex.
It ain't race, religion, height,
gender, color, class or learning.
It's path, progress and position.
The road not not taken.
Be here now.
Hear now
o eyes unseeing
o ears unearned.
We're all perfect potential
cept maybe republicans, lawyers,
the true organized crime called police
the true whores called priests.
You can walk on water IF water wants.
Just ask.
Walk willing.
There ain't no dark night's ungentle light.
Ain't nothing outside but lies.
But even lie true ain't for you.
Walk within.
Don't need no god.
No catholic pimp pushing blood feast.
My lie's mine.
Walk my own walk.
Fuck the talk.
Grasshoppers gone wrong become ants.
Bad ants cry uncle, cry wolf, cry baby.
Goats goad sacrifice to sun.
Ritual requires repetition, release.
Nothing stays river's run
but drought's dry dirt
(and river still runs).
Rub your ears together.
Start a fire.
Flesh alarm.
Let gone go.
Lock lip.
