he listens to his head scream again on the hook,

the Oldest Ghost's moans between the attic walls.

the Oldest Mother rocks in a mahogany chair

cradling a cat,

(Helena),

whose fur is worn

and mouth adorned

no more with taste or tongue.

he listens to the phone ring again off the hook,

(because he cannot SEE),

and the Oldest Child skips along cliffedge singing,

"and on good Charly's behest,

i am thrown to the pinkest of jest!

There's a drop to be seen from the floor,

and a purple-clad whore at the door."

and the Oldest Foetus takes flight and jumps,

as a crowd on the ground start to shimmy and thump.

he listens to the shifting of gears at a grind,

(driving alive on the passenger's side),

and looks through the eyes of the one at the wheel,

"i do wonder if we know

where you're going yesterday."

confused,

he looks to the lcd display,

and it's stuck on a number,

(write it down now),

between one and twenty-five.

there lay wrappers by his feet,

and six feet of black meat

cover is long-ago face.

he listens to a fire cackle in the night;

(they're burning the cart that brought the stones)

and here they will build an alter aflame,

with the wood and the sweat and the gas of decay.

"So pray, all ye, and fare to prey again!

the winter solstice is breathing rain,

you no longer have the choice to stay!"

he listens to the stars whisper out their songs,

of light long dead and forever in his head,

walking a land of redbrown sand,

clutching tight the eye of his dog.

Coming upon a moonbeam,

the circumvention of a clearing

of mossy rock and mudstrewn skree,

he kneels before a dying stream.

"Are you hungry?

i could fix you up a cut above...

Yes? Then listen to the sound of bluest steel...

You did say you were hungry?

They won't hear us from there...

One part asleep, the other half on the glide...

It's good to be home again...

Where was it you said you were from?

The hills? As am i, kin to the north...

With the Zephyrus....

You are hungry, yes?

Let's make it a date, then...

You are so beautiful to me...

So transparent...

No one is coming, but i'm here already...

i'll never cross you again...

You want more?

Well, why knot...

Better now. Let's not speak...

i am tired now...cold...what?

i heard it too...

"far and away a donkey brayed."

Say something?

No more...

Outofit...

OUT.

he listens to a donkey bray far and away;

and a metal beast with giant wings goes down into the drink,

into the ocean, the middle of the sea,

it's smelling black smoke and burning long,

a phoenix descends and finally dies,

and they bury no bodies in the dirt.

he listens to the phone ring again off the hook,

(because he can SEE).

"Your ass is calling;

we have no choice

but to repossess."

Dialtone, footsteps, oblivion.

-pmg-

Dramaticus,

My dream

You goddamned sundry.

A toast to you~

Marvel the thought~

Not one question

For your loins

You goddamned lion,

Ferocious to a head~

A fucking thirst

A laurel smile,

None of whom are mine.

Unrepentent.

Have just a dance,

You.

Trickle down the sparks

Modesty in light

A strobing flash

The might of flux.

Charge california,

Every syllable~

-pmg-

Did all the outcries singe your ears

when the hammerhanded stole your tears?

At the end of the lonely, swift summer,

the start of the fall,

did your boiling head reverberate static?

Shaking, faking epileptic usurper of choas,

were you a twisted corpse puking bile

of dying insect zygote charm?

Was it really that small to you,

that fucking far away?

A pain that creeps from darkest corners,

in the shadows of blurred ecstasy;

in the whirpool swirl of timelocked regret,

shunning it all in a fever-hot wretch,

was this how you gave up?

Luckfucked the very first round,

dawn's law conceiving a most retarded twilight;

the trite paranoia you clung to,

a babe at a wrinkled teat ejaculating sour juice,

did you suck at it again and again,

like it was your failing laste taste?

Was it the numbness you had to buy,

in trade for your bullshit and kitch?

and for all those nowhere questions you asked

and ordered from the lot,

the answers a thousand dreams in dementia,

postulates of a poisoned mindstream,

never vindictive,

at no instance violent,

until that greymass of fire and 'lectric

made it solid in the tightest blackhole.

Did you fashion a hempknot, a belt, a telephone cord,

or a subtle and sweet bullet crack to the mouth,

a spike in the arm.

(You were always such a goddamned hot shot)

And were you, who could never be moved,

finally swinging from the heights by the lids of your eyes?

Or were you,

who could never be proved,

skipping above the skinless bones of the diseased?

But you must be moved.

Everyway.

Once you start down that road,

well,

you know,

Stonewall,

break apart.

-pmg-

softly,

in the tongue you take for granted,

of how you came to be again for

the hundredth time removed.

What was it you said

of your dead oneandonly?

Did shiny metal nettles grow from his arms

as they grew from yours?

Was he as hard as you?

As raspy a rhapsody from the mouth hole?

Or was he supple, quiet,

contrary to your own insides?

And did he fall before you

like a bloody fool,

kissing those feet when he dropped

to a cold stone floor,

begging you,

without a breath,

to give it all back?

All the miserable love and vegetable nightmares

You cooked up and ate of?

And did you give it to him-

with your eyes,

your voice

or that oh so wonderful cunt,

as he lay dying

convulsing in the fuzzy sleep

of most viscous hot-shot blood?

Did you cook it for him?

Tell me...

With your Straw Men, number theories and drawing song...

I want to be broken...

Break me into you.

-pmg-

II.

We've come to an age of the misuse of the word,

(say it with us now),

violence.

But you have known the truth since birthlight-

kinetic friction

passion and heat

jazz and spunk

You. The embodiment of the loving,

violent america, universe-

Show me the face of your left hook,

an uppercut to the eye,

and your words afire,

a gorilla courting,

beating its chest.

and don't forget to leave out

the Whitmanesque androgeny

that sucks at every pore

of both our creamy souls.

That's violence in excelsia-

a play on the wonder-lust

fucking

body-snatching ways you cater to...

i'm there with you, i swear it.

So tell me what it was broke you.

Was it your death in my dreams of all-ago?

The constancy of the black elephants

we rode together through desert

storm and snow alike.

It must have been you with us.

Long, black mane whipping the surrounding air,

eyes on ice steering the gargantuan black beast,

Your violence a thumping, grinding massive attack

into the unknown childhood of us both.

i just need one more hit,

one more dream with you

and i set loose upon the world.

-pmg-

Were you born without heroes

like the rest of our kind?

Your first fix,

eyes to the archaic television set

set close in your high chair

mother below with a spoonful

of creamed vegetables

and oh so tired arms,

her dreams a dying museum

her future slurped down

into your lightning guts

(morphing jizm)

She wanted so much to be your hero,

your savior,

but you,

yeah, you,

were crying for more than milk and mamma,

(and papa, your girlhood messiah),

you wanted the juices of every woman

of every man,

to weep upon your sandpaper tongue.

(And at the magick age eleven,

on a summer-hot Pennsylvania avenue,

lapping up ice cream vanilla,

the blood lets,

in the folds of your dress,

and you ate of it-

between your startled tears

you ate of it-

paning to see if the zombies were watching

you ate of your own moonlit death.

-pmg-

At a bumfuck bar among

a working-class drunken herd,

you sip at a peppered bloody mary

and think of your dead oneandonly-

all the teste eyes of the men are on you,

incomrehensible man-pigs at pool tables

and stepdance floors,

still thinking aloud in blubbering sentiments

of their wives and kids and tractor-pulls,

they stare at your thin pallid form

and you hold your own with a laugh and a shot.

But all those smelly strangers share a little piece

of him,

in the subtleties,

their creases and crags and picknicking stupors:

"seven in the left corner hole"

"the drink is on you"

"scratch you bastard scratch"

And here's where you strut your best

to a table of drooling eyes,

smack your playcash down and smash!

the game is already won.

They'd give it all to you if your movements asked,

but you want to steal their collective pride

and drown their lackluster home-life

with a stick and some chalk

and a cynical smile-

Twenty bucks on the line and no pockets to reproduce,

you hustle them all

of their sickcock and balls,

and fuck your dead love in your dreams.

-pmg-

On a rickety boat-ramp along your river

Sits a man hiding face in hands.

He drinks a toast to you,

Yeah,

You,

Who fell from the sky on fire,

And he wets his lips with just a taint of your steam,

A paltry failure in his head of dreams.

He pours another glass for you

Because you're never there

And stabs the stars with his eyes

For never giving him his gun-start chance.

Realising for once and only forever

That the ramp is sinking below his bruised knees,

The bottle of precious wine a-bob in the muck,

His vision wet with the love of a game

He never wanted to play.

So he looks farther into the skies,

Aware for the first time the moon has made a pass

Over the tree-line,

Making for a bee-line

Into his crowded mind.

He wrests his hands from his face and throws them to the air,

Reaching for the moon,

Its face,

Its dew,

And decides it's time to stop the game,

To reach no more for the sky aflame.

Instead he looks down

Into the muddy waters,

All Huckleberry and Flynn,

Takes one last swig of swill and his hands dive in

To that reflective moonbeam that plays the river so deep,

Reaching for the light,

That imperfect union of flesh and mind,

And falls in head first with a smile

And a final toast:

'Here's to you, the moon of my now!

You're looking splendid tonight,

As always;

But i have just one fucking thing to ask:

Where was it you went into my dreams?

The dreams are mine,

So why do you hide?'

And the answer comes in murky brown bubbles,

Trailing downwards, trailing down.

p.p.fenderson.