Who Novembered When ? 2.0

November 2018– Updated 11/23/18- Left overs update

When Black Friday comes

the Consumers of Gridville

huddle in the parking lots

in predawn frozen blackness

waiting for the sensor doors

to activate and swing open

so that the ensuing stampede

into the widget warehouse

can gush cheap trinket

torrents of electronic desire

to purge themselves

of what limited imaginations

they have left and haven’t

squandered and impaled

upon product acquisition

suggestions programmed

to them by fiber optic

daily behavioral vampires

so well appointed

with glistening fangs

of fashion compulsion

obsessive consumption

in a GPS vortex

instantly alerting them

of the nowhere

they lust….

 

Is here

In stock

On Sale

And they simply cannot

live without it.

 

from- Sometimes Grief Barks up the Wrong Tree  2012

*

The Ancient Mariner reading Lucky, Lulu, and a Cat Named Bo (Cold Turkey) for “K’s” Ghost City Cabaret II Halloween Edition @ Cornelia Street Cafe October 15, 2018 – Video courtesy of Mitch Corber

All Souls Day

November shrugged at the time after the masks slipped
Stripped away in the face of high wind warnings as if in this season begged advisements cautions

Still mild that morning fooling few to believe
That this day would pass swaddled in gray soft gauze
While the light diffused diminishing increments

Was that encroaching mist unraveling like a ball of yarn
To cascade down a slope of cotton

Falling needle pinpoints liquefied

There was this puncturing of scattered shallow puddles
Reverberating in sound wave concrete circles
Auditory auditions sharpening a deaf set of eyes

In these stains of ink
Lurk faceless memories I think
Past Persona gone non-grata

November shrugged at the time the masks slipped away
To reveal the naked face of high wind awnings
As if this season begged advisement cautions

Stripped away now in alibis and warnings

Uncollected 11/13.

Maybe Some Novocain?

 

Chock Full of Nuts

is no longer

a  heavenly anything

anymore

Transparent as black coffee

understood at last;

He was now merely

half a pound of chopped chuck

handed over by Bruno Kisski

Who spoke fluent tracheotomy

to an over the counter fool

wrapped in stiff white common paper

with the price

penciled in on the top.

 

All I had to do back then was pocket the change

and deliver it back around the corner.

Once it ticked upon your face

and the sound escaped upon your ears.

The price

The time.

All that you never conceive being true

Merely justify the overhead

and defined the bottom line.

 

So now you try to force the black hands forward

Faster than they are supposed to go.

While a single slim red finger

that sweeps so sure and fine

that seconds soundlessly slide

in an inkling of eviscerated hope

 

The movement imperceptible impression

toward an inevitable destination.

Maybe some

Novocain in November

Maybe not.

 

This would then plug your ears

To hear any further

Than just you what

You didn’t want to hear

To believe this;

the texture in this request

to embrace the selfish din

and when put to the question

to the naked test,

“Where is it have I been?”

 

Smile and nod and start with, “Listen….”

 

I would pull the fingers from deep your ears

and lick the wax

that accumulated in there

to harden, numb and deafen

 

Next  I whisper now,

“Watch”

You just watch

Then tune the tongue out

in time to match

the mute with the deaf

over a bottomless cup of

freshly brewed

numbness.

• From Sometimes Grief 2012