loose in a fit of El Niño shakes no amount of
nembutal or gift-wrapped
baby dolls was going to
fix amphibious leather jackets with big amphetimine ideas
& a taste for Monarch butterflies impaled on a hatpin &
a few stragglers from Twilight Zone reruns whose hearts were parrot
hearts who sported Panama hats & had this nasty habit of chewing cuticles at the frenzied climax of
reveries about Plan 9 From Outer Space
Made me wonder what’s more lonesome
a campfire in Death Valley
or Warren Oates’ ghost which is mostly hungry sunglasses & teeth
or Rosie’s gasoline-burning blue eyes burning irrelevant
love letters up like so much neon
alphabet soup Christ
I was packing an imperial quart of Colt 45 in my once festive guts where it waltzed with
smoke from 17 Nuestra Señora novena candles that reeked like stale
Chesterfields inhaled in the drizzle It was
1 of those past life experiences
Rosie singing Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire in the key of
Nothing flat That’s when I’d known it was just about done for
All I was seeing were mangled brown
monterey pines still trimmed with
candy canes somebody’s false choppers embedded between the
swirls & them ditched on the curb on xmas 11-something pm & I wasn’t singing
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire I was
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire
Did I tell you Rita looked inappropriately lovely
like a phonebooth sporting a broken heart tattoo Christ
she was no help
I felt like a 1-way ticket to Oaxaca
only took me far as Juárez & there wasn’t much in my suitcase anyway
a Three Musketeer’s bar some garbled memories of mariachi ballads all the
dark matter strewn thru the cosmos between here &
Oklahoma & of course the rearranged faces of all Rosie’s
ex & future lovers & Jimmy was drunk as a fold-out scenic postcard as an
eyeless fish as Ernest’s Borgnine’s
teeth when he guffaws about Nearer My God To Thee violence in
an Old Mexico that doesn’t exist There was going to be a sunrise but who could say when
there weren’t any
angels at least not sober 1s There was Santa Claus though blind drunk & baring
pharmaceutical dexedrine teeth snickering
pink & green feathers & Tammy Wynette crooning
D-I-V-O-R-C-E on a country station transmitting
radio waves bounced off the Diá De Los Muertos
sugar skull that passed for a moon in those parts but
there was no Rosie except transformed to a freight train hooting
I’ll Be Home For Xmas as it highballed a zoo of exotic birds up the coast Christ
She’ll reach the North Pole someday &
I felt like an upright piano with ornery lungs & 1
dud G that stuck coughing up
Stranger in Paradise in the key of Fuck Off Minor Christ
stuff lay broken all over
falling stars like so many incisors & molars a left
uppercut knocked helter skelter Rita’s
unbearably lovely flat affect It could be a face on a matchbook
smoldering in a black plastic ashtray
that’s cracked leaking black black millipedes with a
more than 1 beer thirst for toxic
polyurethane smoke
It’s a shame they got squashed like that Afterwards Jimmy’s knuckles cracked
like an upright piano with a decrepit ticker stuttering
Blue Xmas the first few bars burning blue streaks every half note drenched in
gasohol touched off with stubbed Camel straights the butts
snapped at the blue print
& Santa’s smudged Foster Grants
cracked too reflected con-
cupiscently needless to say pretty faces pretty much like
Rosie’s foundering down in the bottom of his cracked beer glass Christ like so many
hearts like a broken-hearted bird-of-
paradise piñata a 34-oz Louisville Slugger swung level & eye on the
pill by Warren Oates’ ghost shattered nearly lyrically &
the way most things break apart in slo-motion