star_prayer.html

Janey Jane Jane,
Aint that profane? 
From the burnt fields of cheap Virginia houses 
Umber flaked asbestos, I was born in you
And you surf my skin like lifeblood chalk.
They made me shoot a gun at age 12.
I spent hours at the faucet after, scraping
Till my skin stained red, but I know theres
Decades-old lead still tucked under my nails,
Like I know my mother kept a wire star 
necklace tucked in her palm in second grade
Pickpocketed from the department store
Shed serve coffee at eight years down the road.

Ill be OHara, Ill be Ocean:
Ill be boy and Ill be motion.
Ill split my skull on Oregon cliffs,
Crash my car and smoke my spliffs.

And down the road, I realized my mistake:
I needed a needle like a fire escape  one day in a million.

Ultraviolet boyviolence soared
Above the cloud layer and slammed
Into my stomach like a gunshot,
Spilling viscera across a car speeding by,
But Hemingway wiped the guts off the 
Windshield, and he kept driving,
And he turned out fine.

You've got to scratch the record to mix good music.
With every fallen strand of hair comes a bit of skin.
It's unraveling in this room - breathing the same air,
Over and over and over and in and out and in again
Out in out in out in Jane I love you Jane. I love you
Jane slaps me across the face and suddenly I see the 
Tears streaming down her cheeks red and ruddy.
Knee my gut shut throat open clasp closed metal
Fasteners and a little starshaped necklace.

Well, what else?

The girl boy wolf thing chases its tail
And accomplishes nothing.
The clouds roll and rain and block the sun
And the dog drops two shits outside the pharmacy.

There is a boy in Madrid sitting in a bathtub
Playing darts with his girlfriends head.

There is a body in the countryside with wooden bones
And rusty veins pumping well-water blood. She screamed
Through the labor and, exhausted, thrust me out onto the grass.
I run my fingers over the back of my skull to trace her outline
And listen to her murmur - susurrus of the roadside daisies
Before the seeds were crushed by a wayward bicycle wheel
Of a kid taking the long route home.

Profuse flagellations aren't worth much to my west-wind gods
So I'll stack pennies from the street along my windowsill;
Save 'em for wishes, chucked into the streams of city fountains.

It's always easier to be the torn-up page of a pulp fiction novel
Next to shed onion skins in the bottom of a grocery bag.
I don't know why I thought I could make it.