Cold Storage Po 2.0

February 2013

Recent work as promised I guess or as Leonard Cohen once put it

….new skin for an old ceremony….

Good Night for Smoking in Brooklyn

Just mind your own shadow

this Sunday night

where there is this picture

where they just no longer

see you.

Make no futile attempt to

grab a strangers hand

to watch her recoil in true disgust.

Go ahead

ask Jimmy

the owner

He saw the whole thing.

Expected as much or little

out of you.

So you just sit there

real quiet like there dad.

Mind your manners

Keep your mouth shut.

speak when spoken too

mind the unwanted eye contact

scribble in your notebook

polish off bottle after bottle of beer

And try not to think about her naked

playing the accordion.

Just let be resigned to leave it be

a good for smoking in Brooklyn

and melt in the abstract water colors

running in the streets

and let that chilly drizzle

substitute for other things.

Uncollected 12/15/2012

Bloody Air Radio

Dreams come true

and nightmares too.

Can you hear that far away music ?

Was it ever really music at all ?

Singing past in all the senseless fury

the Terrible Now can echo such

unmitigated horror

into 20 little faces

sent to their rooms in eternity

without supper or Christmas

but all angels now as seven

collateral damage teachers

explain they have all graduated

from earth early.

Does grief stop at heaven ?

where all the tears are dried

and murdered children forget.

It was a nasty thing.

Madness personified.

At the very least they all left so innocent

and had someone to hold their hands

gather them in their arms

and guide their path by star light

to the big rock Candy Mountain

Dreams do come true

and nightmares too.

Uncollected 12/13/2012

Amtrak Mens Room

Depew 7:30 AM

12/12/12

Directly in front of the lowered little boy’s urinal

was what looked like what was left of a one piece

feety crimson PJs with some unknown cartoon

character discarded sprawled on the dirty sticky

tile stretched out like a crime scene chalk outline

of a very small victim with an empty plastic baby bottle

next to it.

In the stall directly adjacent next store was emulating

the unmistakable sound of someone defecating with

some difficultly.

I gingerly stepped over it

and took a very quiet leak

not wishing to think about it all

while instinctively holding my breath.

About twenty minutes later I returned

and the scene remained pretty much intact

but the stall was now empty.

Some childhood memories are best forgotten.

Uncollected 12/2012

The Lamb of God ended up in a Chop

(Thou shall not Park in the Handicapped Slot )

Blues for the 3^rd Sunday in Advent

What is broken here now

inside cannot be fixed

ever

Only time conspires

to take these sorry doors

ripped of their hinges

leaving open exposed

raw edges

and perhaps gradually

cover with a numbing soft dust

memory

till then what will remain

stillborn so very sharp

and only in the mercifully accumulating

distance now does that razor in recall recede.

Was silence ever designated for Virtue status

Who makes all this up after all ?

So Luke references

John the Baptist

who clearly stated he wasn’t the one

He baptized merely in water

and foretold the birth of one who

would have to work in blood.

Yea, verily this kind of talk

really annoyed some.

like Salome for instance

and made him pay for it with his head.

But…..only that one time.

Uncollected 12/15/2012

New Year Shorts 2013

Calling it Quits

On the cold shores

Of that Winter afternoon

Near the tail end of the year

Rather unprovoked

She declared

I’m calling it quits….

He nodded

Understanding completely

And remarked instantaneously

instinctively

It is better to call it quits

Before quits calls you

Grudge Instructions

Edna declared

I hold grudges…yes I do.

Ok I said

Why ?

Better yet how ?

And then I never even bothered to ask…

Where ?

Her Alabaster Blush

He would watch her turn pink

as she would think

and when she did speak

her alabaster skin spotted

a crimson blush that

would leak

then gush

soaking her

from her top

to her bottom.

I just Found….

I just found Waldo

Holy Crap.

And I wasn’t even looking.

Solving Tornadoes

What’s the best way to get rid

Of that pesky tornado in your life you ask ?

O you didn’t ask…

Well I’m going to tell you anyway.

The next time that son a bitch comes around ?

Hold your ground

Stand right there in the middle of it.

Look it in the eye

Defiant and unapologetic

Counting on it getting rid of you.

And your problem.

Uneasy is the Head that wears the Crown

Just got the word

That Julius Caesar

Had parasitic worms in his head

Well…..no wonder.

Shoulda Coulda….etc.

What should have been

Seldom ever is

And fully realized

Till after

It never was.

Holiday Buzz Kill

Man….she had this special gift

For ruining Christmas

Like a string of lights

That burns out on the tree

Before you even

Think about the time

To have to take it down.

Uncollected 1/2013

You on Ice

So I’m sitting out in the garage again

having another nervous breakdown

in black and white on a February Sunday

afternoon and it’s all pretty boring

and there is sound of dripping icicles

from the roof that having dagger like

razor teeth grinning at your emotional

illness and sweating drop after drop

of Crocodile tears that nobody is buying.

So I’m sitting out in the garage again

having the same nervous break down

using the snow banks outside the side door

as beer refrigerators. Each tall neck bottle

loaded in a snow cone slot like a 12 ounce

ordinance on ice.

So I’m stilling out in the garage again

trying to outrun another nervous breakdown

by retrieving and detonating the barley grenade

while the snow clings like white wire filings

of cotton to the neck on the bottle.

That’s the good thing about

having another nervous breakdown

while sitting out in the garage on

a black and white February Sunday afternoon.

No need to buy ice to keep the beer cold.

And you too.

You on Ice.

– Grief barks up the wrong tree 2012

Bride of CyberStein

Zeus was still pissed.

His punishment for Prometheus

while rather spectacularly gruesome

by any mortal standards

just wasn’t enough.

You would think sending an eagle

to eat daily a rejuvenated liver

of whom you felt had betrayed

your cosmic trust would have

been more satisfying.

Nope.

Zeus was still pissed.

Perhaps Zeus might have given

the cold and hungry men of earth

the gift of fire someday,

in his own time when he thought

they were ready for it.

But percipient Prometheus

by stealing the fire from Zeus,

might as well have stolen his thunder too.

Zeus decided he had to take additional

vengeance further, not only on mankind

but on Epimetheus (that would be Prometheus’ not so bright brother)

Zeus ordered Hephaestus (God of Smiths) to create and forge

a very special woman out of earth and water.

He asked Aphrodite , the flawless beauty,

Goddess of love, passion and desire to consult on the project.

So this new female creation

is a real stunner, and after the four winds breathed life

into her, a walking knock-out was created with a special mission in mind.

To bring mischief and misery to the human race¼especially men.

Each of the Olympians contributed something to ensure she was irresistible.

Hermes, the messenger God gave her cunning/boldness. Demeter chipped in

touch in the gardens, Athena, manual dexterity to weave. Apollo, her voice and gift of music and Poseidon bestowed a pearl necklace and the promise she would never drown.

A rather marvelous list of qualities which he made certain were counterbalanced

with foolishness, mischievousness, idleness and one more very important special personality aspect, we’ll cover in just a little while.

And who was this perfect little time bomb of a dish created for ?

Exactly.

Epimetheus. (The not so bright brother of Prometheus)

Before sending her to earth as a bride for him,

Zeus gave her a little going away party and a wedding gift.

A Jar.

A very special Jar.

Adorned w/ wonderful images.

But she was warned to never

under any circumstances open it.

And then never told why not.

Yeah Right.

The God knew that she had been especially seeded with

a streak of curiosity to equal a million cats.

Now when Prometheus (whose name means fore-thought)

got a good look at this fetching creature, he was stunned and very suspicious

that Zeus (of all people) would send this gift bride to his not so bright brother

Epimetheus (whose name means after-thought) and warned him he had better watch his ass around this woman that the likes of which had never been seen on earth.

So I think you might all ready know the rest of the story.

Epimetheus took his new bride home.

They set up shop, she was the perfect wife, in every way.

They were so happy.

Only two problems.

First was that streak of itching curiosity that Hera had engrained in that poor woman.

Second was the Vase.

What was in the Goddamn Vase ?

She struggled. Put up a good fight.

She had promised not to open it.

She even buried it in the backyard.

But then one night

in a half dream

under the moon light

She put on her robe

went out in the yard

dug up the vase and

holding it in her hands.

took off the little golden key

from the chain she wore around her neck

fitted it into the lock

and opened the vase.

Not such a hot idea.

An evil smell instantly surrounded her.

And forth came out all of life’s really bad stuff.

Old age, sickness, insanity, pestilence, vice, envy,

greed, crime, death, theft, jealously, famine, war,

pain¼.the vileness just poured forth endlessly.

But one of the gods must have felt a little sorry

for this shit storm unleashed as a wedding gift

on a girl who just couldn’t help her nature.

Perhaps the last and perhaps littlest spirit

to escape from vase stuck hiding under the lid was….

Hope.

Some say this woman was Pandora…

Others contend the wedding gift wasn’t a vase at all

But a box.

(and of course the famine revisionist of the modern times want us to believe

all this was a lie, the story all wrong, and all the good things in life

came out of the vase, the box, whatever, and men where responsible

for corrupting the god’s gift)

Yeah. Right.

So we all know her as Pandora

and her box.

Or was that Cybertina..

Bride of CyberStein.

The Terrible Now 2009

CyberStein

Bored and cold in 1816, which was known as “The Year without a Summer”,

Percy & Mary Shelly were on chilly holiday with their good friend the poet Byron.

Remanded to the indoors, huddling around the fire, they challenged each other

to write the scariest ghost story to pass the time.

Mary Shelly composed based impart upon the Prometheus legend where inthe hero steals Zeus’s fire from the center of the Sun. Now this is a big deal.The acquisition of fire allowed for the development of weapons and tools.Elevated and separated the human from the animals and maybe just a step closer to the gods.

Well naturally Zeus gets pretty pissed. Punishes Prometheus by chaining him to a rock in the Caucasus. Every night he is visited by an eagle that ate his liver.

(which of course grew back every day)

Meanwhile Mary Shelly’s take on all this

turned out to be in the form of

a strange tale about science run amuck

with a mad doctor experimenting with

the re-animation of dead bodies

invested with life into a

flesh and body living, breathing fiend.

Sacred the living shit

out of everybody in

the movies as Boris Karloff

lurched across the screen