Trouble Teller

Soon as the page goes up bright
and post-modern white most of you
little shits scatter to the scourge of
cockroach mathematics but I am
a teller, and the tale won’t leave my
hand alone until I play every
soft trombone moment its lullaby.

Every day my mind thinks up reasons to
create worlds for characters who could
stand up to those of HBO’s The Wire
the kind of characters who if they were
ever forced to live a day of the written universe
of Friends or Big Bang Theory
(the ugly ginger step-child of Friends)
would just go absolutely fucking nuts and
meta-slaughter that place dry, a-light the

margin highways with the
Men and Women who bleed
Crayola Red & Crayola Blue.
And Hooker Green, too.

In the end if you want me
I’ll be on top of the credit unions
in another more hyper violently set off Fight Club redux
with Al Swearinjun and the rest of Deadwood,
and fucking finishing what was fucking was started,
kicking the shit out of every AMC zombies with three from Romero.

Maybe just floating around with Zooey Deschanel, making sure this is
her last shitty sitcom. Making sure we all get to bed just a little
Unsettled- that’s me. The Trouble Teller. So if you want that clean,
trouble-less America Idol bedtime story told in a flash mob or Glee-fuck?

Keep moving.
There be dragons up n here.
Talking Omar-Style.

A Post-Mother’s Day Poem for My Mother, by Digi-Post to the WordPress Factory

Mother

I was studying for my Psych intro course
genetics and hereditary traits in people.
And I took some comfort in knowing that,
basically, I am 70 percent or so you and by proxy
of my father much like the Heffernan men I am
proud to name, when I do. They did these tests see.

On twins. Some of the twins had been separated at birth.
Some of the groups weren’t even twins either, they were
adopted children who later found their adoptive parents.
In all cases the Intelligence of the kids got further
and further away from the average of their adopted parents.

Slowly, over our lifetimes basically, we become more like the people
we come from, just naturally. So twins will always be twins.
You and I will always be more like each other than most.
So when I was trouble in my youth, and survived it, it
shows this sort of over arching star that we all have in us, that
cuts across all our nights of misery or loneliness or desperation or fear.

It takes us on a trajectory, and often we are separated irreparably for periods
beyond our control – indeed some never even glimpse their roots,
it doesn’t matter because we are slowly meeting them in ourselves,
genetically, the way we need them most, as we become ourselves.

So in a way you became and continue to become (your only young)
more like your parents. It might not feel like it, but I think you get the best of them.
I thought of you learning all of it anyway, and it is Mothers Day which I hate
as a day more than any of the hallmark ones, because mothers days are everyday…

I thought it might be consoling to know that, despite never finding them in the flesh,
Science proves that all along, in the most important ways, were bound by life itself with the task of finding more and more of you.

And what more can anyone ask of another than the literal reserve, the strength, to carry on with or without them on the days that count, right?

I Drank the Kool-Aid Just to Fuck With Them

The whirlpool of the internet
churns out its daily pantomimic
consideration to the better vibration
of Miles’ Silent Way I’m back on his
planet again. I am free from the heady turmoil.
light extends from a skull in some cave
of some forgettable asshole who was
either too afraid or brave enough
to cut his arm off a’ la 127 Hours,

Yes! But, we can take solace in knowing
with every one that cannot, dozens more
one day will be, and will Will their being,
into better positions. It can seem cold to see
it all in such mathematically romantic symmetry,
or it can be the single meme of peace to
reverberate for a minute before being
comment ripped to pieces in caplock
der-der-der’s all the way through Sunday.

The wave of hate that churns out one Hitler
Meme after another churns out more truth
some days than the national news media
summons in a season. The layer upon layer
of new and inventive ways of rubbing the
shit of Monsanto into people’s unknowing
faces and the rapid spitfire insurgency of
Alex Jones para(noia)phernalia alongside
pictures of blue skies and white lines, it all
fuses into one collective kerfuffle and like
deadly unpopped kernal to the proverbial
mouth, shatters the only thing keeping us whole.

It all builds in crescendos, and fills the division
between the real and the believed and the disbelievers,
if anything, further adding to the Conspiracy Theory
and others of the franchise, so now
Thomas Pynchon may just as well be writing for
National Geographic and American Scientific
and that dirty, word hungry Popular
Mechanic, well he just keeps drinking and
clicking and re-posting the night away,
by most readily definition,a purists and divine WASTE.

WASTE- We Await Silent Tristero’s Escape

Glass Slipper

Here, another secret love song for the ephemeral lady of the ages who,
shining in the atmospheric disparity of now,
manages to still make me smile.

I wanted to let you know you were exceptional
and you have no worries about anything bad
getting the better of you because you are one
of those exposed nerve types who braves way to much
of what is really going on to ever lose track of yourself.

There is this beach in California that became beautiful
as a result of all the garbage people flicked off a cliff,
and slowly, over the years, despite an awful thing done,
the beach became overrun with perfect, rounded globes,
rounded glass of green from the sprite bottles of the 70’s,
and orange from rusted car windshields, all of it now
given over to the strong argument for light and truth.

And even though the same people originally responsible
came with the hordes of others and slowly with shovels and
gallon buckets pilfered her new suit, leaving a couple rubies for
the desperate late comer tourists to hustle amidst her sandy locks for,

I still think it is amazing and remains worth nothing that
the struggle in everything is like this. It permits us these moments,
and we can all race rapturously to accumulate a chunk of it,
or we can lay in a bed of precious trash made glass or
we can be the beach itself, let the world make us
its temporary Prometheus, and either way I had
to say to you that you are like that California beach to me.

(Or I’ve lost myself in the allegory and given over to the infamy of romance)

It is only a matter of time and the world will take most your jewels.

You will still be perfect to spend days with though.
You will never get boring to me.

I am your biggest fan.
Sign me up for the newsletter of your heart.

Yours,

The blade of light that cuts across the page
of the recent tome claiming you which,
stinging eyes, washes up just a little
more rounded, more solid, soul
than before, kept warm, loved.

We’ll have a kiss one day.
I have a sense about these things like
a photic sneeze that
last’s one hundred nights, finally giving over
to a glint of waxed moon, giving
over to the precise waves of time,
giving over to truth.

Get Me To The Geek (or) Better Dancer Than Me

He would dance sometimes

high out of his fucking mind

and it would be like something

in the background of Mass Effect

or some character in the movie Strange Days.

He was free only then.

Other times it got sloppy like Kurt and Goldie in

 Overboard, more booze than uppers and maybe

a few too many nights in a goddamn (“I say God-damn”) row,

and he looked more like Elaine dancing on pain meds on

Seinfeld

Seasonally, a haggard rendition of Chevy Chases

Fred Astair and Danny “fucking” Kay rant

while twitching like something in the background of

Scrooged during the X-Mas party scene

where Bill Murray could’ve totally gone home

with the cute secretary and has to watch it

all in the Ghost-bleachers with that crazy cabbie fuck.

Maybe a rowdy alien at the Cantina, busting a Jedi-Funkified remix.

He would dance sometimes like the white kid

In The Power of One, but that was strictly for the purest high.

He would dance around a glass table and finish al the lines

like a champ. Like Rocky meets Hurly Burly,

On K he was MJ in Moon.

On whites he was schitza-a-shiva on a tilt a whirl,

an arcane hunter of shadows.

Bob Marley on 9 hits.

Enough of everything, and the mother fucker floated like

Powder, or that patented Spike Lee head/shoulder angle,

ghetto blaster over the other.

A big, bad motherfucker like Uma and Travolta in Fiction.

Like Carleton on Fresh Prince.

But no matter how blasted, how gone how other worldly,

how Sheen-i-fied or Scottied

he might have gotten he never,

ever pulled a Risky Business.

Dance magic Bowie? Enough shrooms and sure.

The classic Julia Stiles gets taught to dance “black”?

Enough pheromones and Beer from a brown paper bag,

and anything is possible.

Finally done, he’d head home.

Find something to watch.

Huntress

I want my flesh to be torn off
in a million dreams,
all of them ending
in your rescue.

I want to slowly breath
the ocean in and empty it
at your feet.

I will write all of your
hidden and unknown names
on our city scape.

I will use chalk
because it was one of our
guiding, falling-star-motifs.

Oh yes dearest,
I made it to the East
After everything, it was all you
hoped for in Hilroy,
spiral-red ink dream journal.

The world ate you up
with the rest of that day’s appetizers;

A shoeless joe soul,
another of Egyptian origin.
And someone who never really
got it together,

Never danced freely,
never got out of town.

Hater

You mean I will die alone?
Not another soul to
stink up my bathroom
and fuck away my meager
(if even existent savings?)

Oh, how tragic.

Seriously.

I love being alone.

I can never get enough of me time.

And other people smell, and
say stupid shit, and don’t know me
like I know me, or my friends or family
know me.

I will die smiling, mouth full
of smoke and word and truth.

I don’t buy into the catalogue order life,
and I never have.

Your resident asshole,

Le Ginj.

A Series of Drawer Poetry

Drawer Words (i)

While its nothing as cool as
Ray Bradbury’s office on the show I ate up religiously
I do have a drawer that functions the same way.
Today seems like a drawer day.

You release your demons, your Kraken,
your ancient angels and your dragon girls.

Here’s a little flyer for the night
me and an artist buddy of mine
teamed up with this real smooth cat
“Lou” who used to work at a check cashing place
in the West End of Van City and he always told
such vivid and entertaining stories.

In one, this real jerk was giving
him a hard time,
but Lou, never one to be moved,
since he did have a couple
inches of bullet proof
between him and said antagonist
he very earnestly gave him
the international mime-sign
for “blow me”, even using
his tongue to create a phantom
cock protruding awkwardly out
one cheek at a time,
to which the asshole entered
fully-automatic fuck head mode,
and this just made Lou
all the cooler, a shit eating
have a nice day grin on his face
retelling the story, matching ours.

He ran his own promotion company
which consisted of
him and his token white boy
(as much a necessity as a partner)
and I remember dropping
my words on him
(literally a binder full on his lap,
I was so young and no decorum at all)

And he had a look like
“ah, you’ve got rhymes, but can go freestlye?”
and I likely gave a returned petrified, “Nope”.

I did my best that night,
my friend was experimenting with some
slide projection art,
and as I gave my best anti-Bush poem he
drizzled red paint on a slide of his face,
I realized performances
are often much more effective
in your mind than they ever are,
but still we managed to shock
an Arrested Development-style band
from Georgia who I will
never forget the look of fear
said they’d be
too afraid of getting shot
to ever pull a stunt
like we just did,
back home.

Fuck This Job

I know he was Korean because he always took the time,
after insulting me in his native tongue, to translate.

“You know what I just said? I said
‘You Are a Useless Fuck’ in Korean!
That’s what I said.”

He would actually get on like that.
His life seemed to be pretty empty;
divorce had him haemorrhaging cash,
he barely saw his son, and he was always
miserable and convinced employees were stealing.

(this was exacerbated by the fact that the lead bartender,
some guy form Barrie, who gave me a job after I showed up
there and spent 100 dollars on Absinthe, was indeed ripping him
off, and good, for quite some time before I showed, then he quit.)

And he left me in his place to do a job I was untrained to do,
instead my training consisting of a long prolonged Korean lesson
or two, each time I attempted to do anything- serve or cook or clean,
and he would watch me, and wait until I needed to be told “No”.

This all only went on about a month, until I finally pissed him off
and he fired me, but not before I threw a glass of Absinthe
at his wall and told him to go fuck himself, in English,
using my hands in non-official ASL to even translate this lament.

Back then, anyone who insulted me in the workplace got a similar
farewell. I could go through 3 jobs a week in BC and never run out
of terribly oppressive managers to tell the same to. It was great fun.

I guess my super power that counter acted this villainy is that I did
bust my ass pretty good for the kind and generous few who taught
me better words, and received in return similar encouraging.

If you treat yourself
like you deserve
to be told off in
any language
you will universally
be saying to those
you encounter that
you are worthless.

You need to know when to say
“Fuck this job, and you as well”
in the universal tongue.

And that’s what the old fucker taught me.

He would hold after hours parties at his club
and all the young girls would flirt with him for drinks
and I figured that was pathetic and I felt kind of sad for
him just before I looked at him smiled, slammed what was to be my
last Absinthe at Tribeca on Georgia, and heaved it in his direction.

That stuff always did bring out my inner Bolshvik.

My Walk Becomes the Music Video for “Hurt”

For two weeks I have watched
the mountains of snow
slowly eliminated by the
Atlantic in April, and eventually
revealing a crude patchwork
of garbage, lost items, and animal
carcass’ for me and the rest
of the neighborhood to jump-step around
anytime we wish to take the catwalk
to our beloved Esso and Timmy’s.

I make the trip 3 times a day
when I’m working from home.
Each day for the last couple weeks
I have had an added adventure
of watching the decay of snow,
then the slow perusal with my eyes
of all the treasures left behind:

condoms, ziplock baggies,
hair nets from Tim’s employees,
cigarette butts from everyone,
children’s toys, lighters, and
of course the pigeon and the rat
I took to calling Pestilence and
Vermin, as though they were characters
in some mystic saga I wasn’t writing.

Vermin’s tale had started to look
like a frayed mop’s dirtiest strand,
and he was forever frozen in a position
as though leaping in the air like a sheep,
except thin like paper now.

Pestilence started out the week
still retaining much of her shape,
and the crushed Purple abalone of her breast
was slowly transformed like
The Artist Formerly Known As Prince
Into a spectacle, something grotesque and carnival,
before finally succumbing to the
Dirt and grime of exposure.

Now, her intestines are zombie-grey and fiddle head-shaped.

Now, the Spring comes, to re-rapture life.