Hello the Devil for me, I'm going to the mines. I'll see you when I have shuttered my eyes with coal black war paint, when the fire is gone from me. I want to swing until I bleed, I want splinters driving into my flesh, I want knives prying like sickles under my fingernails. Topple the towers in a cracking mind gummed up with feathers and philosophy, despicable druggish foolery.

For Christ's sake, I don't believe in me.

What would you do for a smoky chamber and hot metal kiss? I would lick the barrel clean; I would oil the trigger with tears; I would laugh while loading; I would whistle and bang away; I would scatter my skull in silence.

There is bliss in annihilation.

I don't believe in a drop of it, not a mouthful of the blood I am spreading too thin. Won't God give me some solace? When will his thunderous jaw clatter down from between those glass-eyed stars of his and give me a bit of a blessing? Or is this favor, and are my mutinous mutterings fuel for righteous wrath? To argue is not blasphemy, my God, my raging God. What world is this that you have made, that reveals itself and shakes your hand while fingering your pockets? Are the flaws that squeeze our veins in tight cages about our red throats your concern, or your amusement? Jesus, God, the more I discover, the less I know.

Can't say as people love anymore. They love not wind, love not crying, love not love. It is a paper passion, a morgue of gold and bribes that lay me down.

How much does it cost for a funeral?

How much will it pain your pocket to throw some dirt in my mouth and separate my rot from the beaks of crows? Which will be cut deeper, your soul, the earth, or your wallet?

Jesus, God, what black clay did you use? What bitter, brittle bone did you draw forth from the face of the deep? Was it the thirsty wishbone of broken Rahab? Is that the flesh of which we are formed?

Goddamn it, God. Some answers would be nice.

Run.

There are stones of light scuttling up the walls.

Run.

Why my throat--a dessiccated creek?

Run.

Bring me some water.

RUN.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE WATER?

Have you seen the water?
Is there blood under my fingernails,
Is there a burn in my eye,
Have there been any more twilights?

Have you seen the water?
Somebody say to me yesterday
Johnny Fairchild, you got to git out a yo head--
Next I looked, they was laying like sculpted ash,
Bloodless and dry.
Didn't even get no time to cry.
Have you seen the water?

It ain't no Jordan,
But have you seen the water?
Christ, but they all licked they lips,
Gave up nervous sighs, and throbbed out blackly,
Like damp candles, smoking
Have you seen the water?

You only blacken if you stick your head out the Dodge windows,
If you crumble yourself in broken moon orchards--
I been inside too long,
But have you seen the water?
It look cold and torrid, I bled myself on the rocks
To get here.
Christ, somebody got to go in.
You die if you git out again,
But I reckon I can float awhile, fighting currents
And drowning like slow maple leaves.
Somebody git my harp all ready--
Johnny Fairchild's clambering into that water,
And there will be no more twilights
Until he as bloodless and dry
As sculpted ash--
But he will have seen the water.

CRY FOR THE MOUNTAINTOP

Morning, concrete.
The asphalt eyes troughing tear dream streets
By your windows--don’t crack,
Don’t slumber, don’t shudder sweet gorgeous.

I get crying
When spiders nudge the stars over silver falls,
When you funnel your tongue into my throat--
Sweet gorgeous, I am not your voice,
Sweet gorgeous, you are the cold dawn water
That soaks my chest and gives me birth.

In your white clay,
You are unsunder-sullied, you are childless,
Barren of shame, sweet gorgeous, but you
Crumble beneath accordion shadows,
The fumbling stairways slattering nightly upwards.

Get to crying, sweet gorgeous,
Ain’t no mountaintop that didn’t take crying to get to.
I walk beside you, cry too if I got to.
But cry for weepy feet, cry for weary suns--
Don’t cry for shadows, don’t cry
For the pale illusion of a cloud.

Have you breathed of despair?

Something reeking of possibility has stolen upon me.
I hate the possible.

Fuck it. Fuck possibility and what can or will or shan't or should be. I will burn like a funeral pyre on the mountaintop, and I will shudder with the quiet power of what can't be done, because I will fucking do it.

Stop me stop me try and stop me, I'll run through like a red-hoofed bull.

I just want to tell the damn story.

How loud can I play you before you tear me out? Lord, when that harmony cries up it sounds like its shelling out the ghost, throwing pennies onto eyes for the dead.

Do me right, and love me for when I lose sight and when I lose sleep. God, but I could sleep for days.

Lack of sleep has been bringing me down.

Today, I will buy The Killers new album, and so help me, I will find the Cold EP that is supposed to be at Target. And if it only comes with the Psi-Ops game, Target shall fear my wrath.

I need to know more black people.

I ran this morning, it being a Tuesday, and Tuesdays being nice. It was the clearest morning in weeks.

I would like to know Miss Bonnie Valentine better than I do.

White boy gonna make a black boy movie.

Must have air.

How did your weeping rip forth my song, when did you become my sighing voice?

I haunt to your harmony.

Jesus God, but you've got a hell of a cry, sears like lit oil or burning violins through my lungs. Your fingers strum along my vocal chords, fly upon my veins--shiver shiver.

Interpreter, I know you're hurting. Are your troubles in your mouths, ringing against your teeth, ringing out like dirge bells, oh beautiful, that you can sing me so.

Sing me.

Sing me so.

When the moon shuttered her raggy windows last night, I felt her pouring and grinning like a Cretan widow with a lover waiting in the orange grove, scented with olive oil. The glass of her window was the deep green of heavy jade, black and scattered over with shards of light. I know she felt me good. I know she loved me like motown, because Cretan widows are as dark as pale gets.

Hey Gorgeous, did I play that accordion right? Did I sung the keys like you done told me with your lips as perfumed as lemons and peaches, with your hands like soft eyelashes, like you done told me? Oh, my blood can play the banjo like summer fire on the porch, because you've twanged it and jangled it and given it the swift heel, fast as little Jess Davies and his sassy mouth harp, you heard him play come last Sunday, did you not?

Ha, but you give me the soil and the sugar. You got me going, and I don't like stopping.

I want every one of you who reads this journal (I have no idea who all that entails) to get the song "Blackout" by Muse.

I would perhaps throw my latest poem on here, but I know that every one of you would think it was dirty, even though that is not what I had in mind when I wrote it.

But all I got is sweetness for you, all I teem with is the eloquence of my sweetness for you. Don't let nobody say I ain't sweet for you.

Ah, Lord, have you got a nail in my spine? Those wretched haunts of clouds crouch over the mountains, tearing at their hair, yowling. Oh but gently, I feel ghosts. Where did that song go? Where where did that song I was singing go? Reach on and die on, your fingers scraping under my eyelids, somebody's blood in my hair (oh baby, is it yours? I swear I think it's yours). There's white-rooted grave dirt in my nostrils and, tombstone of mine, I didn't tell you why.

These quizzes: I am strangely disturbed at times by their absurd accuracy. Perhaps I should read this book. Thank you, Bonnie. By the way, I own "Catch-22," it being both a hilarious and marvellous political satire. May your life forever follow its tragic circular logic. In a good way.

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ain't you in love with anybody yet?


GOODBYE MISTER SORROW MAN

Hey Mister Sorrow Man,
Have you got a breath to say goodbye, crammed
Between damp walls of wist and regret?
Mister Sorrow Man, everybody’s got to leave sometime,
Ain’t it true, did I ever lie to you?

When you and me danced in Rio,
Mister Sorrow Man, you and your mocha woman
And me and mine,
I got scared and ran across the threshold
And tripped with sour heels.

Here is my map, Mister Sorrow Man,
And these veins are my red highways,
The simple spirals toward nowhere I’ve been
And everywhere I’ll be
While you’re back here being sorry Mister Sorrow Man.
I’ll be tearing hell, I’ll be spitting on worlds,
I’ll be thumping giants, I’ll be thrashing Olympus
While you ferment among bottles of tears
Between damp walls of blindness and decay.

I ain’t scared no more, Mister Sorrow Man.
Let my mocha woman touch me, let the dance
Coalesce into fiery shots, I’ll down them one and all;
There is no time for doubt,
Only for leaping.

So get your hands off me, Mister Sorrow Man,
I’ll claw my way free from your crying tyranny.
I got songs to roar and blood to beat.
I won’t see you again before I die,
Mister Sorrow Man, but I hope you get to heaven, somehow.
Remember, though, doubt won’t get you there.
Only leaping.

THE SATISFACTION ORCHARD

To that tune,
I’d sweat it out among orange blossoms
And lemon redolence pouring into the air,
Tearing night from slender strings
And tender songs, like gladiolas slipped behind the seashell ears
Of raven women, the quiet gleam
Of a sweet and mortal God
Taking a sweet and mortal stroll
In the cool cool of the evening.

Ever seen an orchard that didn’t give
Satisfaction?
I could sweat it out
To the sly beats of
The glass cymbals in the leaves,
Feeling pretty damn good.
If you could feel it like I feel it,
Strumming like sap in my fingers
And on my cheeks oh baby
Some good tears and a shameless dance,
Oh scandal, to dance in an orchard
Beneath the rampant heart of a bare moon,
The sour wet heart of a bare naked moon,
Feeling pretty damn good.

I can hear the throaty scent
Of your soil, I can smell the silent mountain
Of you, a cool seduction of me
Under stars as pearled as garlic;
You are the sweet and mortal orchard.
Be my shivering midnight, a trembling
Under the bare naked thigh
Of the freshly rampant moon.
I declare,
It’ll feel pretty damn good.

I remember last year's thaw.

Instead, here we count eyelashes made of lonely guitars, the glaze of your skin breathing on my face. Looking back, when they look back on me, I hope they do not look back upon my looking back, that it is not all they remember. If I didn't remember, I wouldn't cry at familiar songs, but the honeyed static of memory is far too underwhelming to be the bones of life.

Play some old guitars for my sake, for mind's sake. Deafen your fingers on the steel and give it easy. It'll be worth it, I hope. For my sake. For mind's sake.