Radio's Gone

Take me by boots

Or take me by plane

What’s in the water

By Lake Pontchartrain?

My old America

Gold in its youth

Gunned down on Fridays

By John Wilkes Booth

Safe in the schoolhouse

Not safe in the yard

Wander like cowboys

End up at the bar

Speak like a Frenchman

You lose your respect

Take away, son

And you know what you’ll get

Yell in the mornings

It’s just what you need

To fry back your earlobes

From justice diseased

I’ll throw away my life

If you throw away yours

Let’s go get lost

Out on Emily’s moors

Guiled by the watchman

And stole by the clock

Warped like a werewolf

Who’s stuck in the pot

German directions

To occupied France

Jewel king collections

A marvelous dance

Hey, what’s that you say?

Radio’s gone for the day

Take back the teachers

And beats like the praise

Walk on the plank that’s

The cat’s favorite place

Think like a Martian

They’ve invaded us once

Hats on your guns

There’s a reason we won

Castles in whiskey

And sand in the sky

Halting like grenadiers

We hang our July’s

Takeout Chinese food

And Facebook’s our lives

It’s no mistake

We’ve done said our goodbyes

Tomorrow is a Drag, Man

I didn't write this, but God, how I love it. The poem is from a 1958 film called High School Confidential (which I have not seen because I have been unable to track down a copy, physical or digital), and has a debatable title. Check out the video of its recitation here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzywcEgjlhw.

Tomorrow is a Drag, Man

My old man was a bread stasher all his life

He never got fast

He wound up with a used car

A 17-inch screen

And arthritis

Tomorrow is a drag, man

Tomorrow is a king-sized bust

They cry, “Put down pot; don’t think a lot.”

For what?

Time? How much and what to do with it?

Sleep, man, and you might wake up

Digging the whole human race

Giving itself three days to get out

Tomorrow is a drag, Pops

The future is a flake

I had a canary who couldn’t sing

I had a cat that let me share my pad with her

I bought a dog that killed the cat that ate the canary

What is truth?

I had an uncle with an Ivy League heart

He had life with a belt in the back

He had a button-down brain

Wind-up, a belt in the mouth

And a button-down lip

We cough blood on this earth

Now there’s a race for space

We can cough blood on the moon soon

Tomorrow is Dragsville, cats

Tomorrow is a king-sized drag

Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick

Turn on to a thousand joys

Smile on what happened

Or check what’s going to happen

You’ll miss what’s happening

Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum

Tomorrow?

Drag

Sunrise in New Orleans

Sunrise in New Orleans

I’m hungry but not without pity

For more than just the birds

That sound like bats in their vaginal

V-shape formation

I sing songs, too, but they sound

Less like laments and more like

Leaves

Leaving homes and hellos

And sacred hallow coastal cities of dreams

I miss a face

So nearly betrayed by these

Wild ways we live

She paints

I write

And like chimneys in a storm

We weather the beating winds

Of long-distance love and

Remembered laughter

We languish, still, in the moonset

Of another day in our separate ways

Basking silently in the sun soon to come

Again

Quiet streets in the ghost town are

Punctuated seldomly by lost headlights

This mist rises

Into the dawning heat

The rays of an old friend often forgotten

In my introverted calendar cycle

Leaning toward inspiration

I have a family, too

And they are not far from here

The moon is blotted out by clouds

And the sun begins his round

I worked for two hours in a café

With ungloved unclean hands

Swatting cockroaches away from

Cheese and shrimp grits

She forgot to salt them

But they will be served anyway

During this southern sunrise scoped through

Maze of telephone wires and poles that

Blend with the trees

Spanish Moss hanging good morning

On lonely branches

I think it would be nice to have skill enough

To sketch so in-motion a subject as

The travelling impressionist clouds

My stomach is aching

I should eat

Or sleep

Again