Heartbeat

4 AM Monday morning in Beverly Hills. A little convoy of rag-pickers rattles down the street with their shopping carts, and every bump is amplified, like a dub-tape at 300 BPM, heartbeat of our crazy world.

Date

Would you mate with a photo?
Did you ever ride a rodeo-torpedo?

Do you live in your car?
Were you born in a bar?

Am I the tear-drop under your trap-door?

Rare Metals

I live in a dorm.
My room-mate abuses his urinary ramrod.
We ate the sultana.
We ate her eardrums.

This is probably the end of the world.

We ate the download.
We ate the doodle.
All of us are dying.
We ate the vacuum.

Spree

Are those galoots in cahoots?
They stole my cobalt!
I sold them my papoose!
Now they want my cockatoo!

Are those galoots in cahoots?

Am I fiddling with the void?
Of course I'm paranoid!
They turned my brain into tapioca and
so what?

"Shoot them in their ugly fucking faces!"

Who said that?
Are my cuff-links talking?
Do they want to snuggle?

"Shoot them in their ugly fucking faces!"

Can you ride the ancestral unicycle?
Is this the hour of absolute translucence?

Is this the hour of absolute translucence?
Are those galoots in cahoots?

"Shoot them in their ugly fucking faces!"

Late-Night TV

Flocks of crows turn into mudflats!
Emeralds bleed!
Even mule-drivers tremble!

Will the familiar
river-bed
ever
be
re-
televised?

Will the familiar
river-bed
ever
be
re-
televised?

And if not,
I'm not watching any more of your crazy transformations!

As if I had a choice!

As if I had

transparent

wings!
 

Deer in the Headlights

There's no air in my house!
I lost my hat-rack!
A hearse follows me all over town!
Owls are groping my potatoes!

Proletarians!
Maybe we should hire a battalion of lip-readers!

Comrade

How much did we pay for the cult of personality?
Comrade!

How much did I pay for you?
How much did you pay for me?
How much did we pay for the sky and our
little pink houses?

Comrade!
How much did we pay for the sky?

My blue mist of infinity!

Orchid

Bourgeoisie got the blues!
Got the slob-blues like goobers!

Wanna buy a used eggbeater?
Cheap!

Cheap! Cheap! Cheaper!
Cheap!
Please buy my eggbeater!
Cheap!
Cheap! Cheap! Cheaper! Cheap!
Please buy my eggbeater!

    I used to be
                                a real
                                                    orchid of the bourgeoisie.
 

Born Again

Break the ligatures!
Brutalize the augur!
Re-elect the ovarian
cadaver and...

Save the giblets for grandma!

(This advice is ultra-gratis.)

Are you ready for adventure?
Are you ready for radiance?
Do you want to play
nerdier
than
thou?

My girlfriend is an ocarina!

My mother was a cow!

Quiz

Are you really worth saving?
Are you really worth saving, my friend?

Are you really worth saving again and again and again?

Summer Rain

Hooker walking down Hollywood Boulevard in the summer rain...
Voodoo hooker who ruined the Imam of Abbottabad!
Mambo-god of atomic honkies!

Hey babe! Can I mooch a little bacon?
I'm a yahoo-tycoon with a yacht in my condom!
All-American goon!
Mambo-god of atomic honkies!

Fetish

Peeper buys a third eye from a passing Cyclops.
And why not?
Did you want to recycle the same
creepy debacle
night after night after night after night?

Are you servile?
Then serve an imbecile!
Learn to drool!
Elope with Oedipus!
Change his name to "Mr. Pus-Lips!"
Strip for Jesus!

Résumé

My first word was "fart."
I won't moo at your goat!
All I own is an umlaut!

Aloha!
Aloha!
Aloha!

I don't bleed!
I can't cry!
I forgot how to masturbate!

Please!
Let me die!

Map

Brain full of bugaboos,
bus full of goofballs,
bums impersonating bedbugs
on
my
bus-map...

Map as big as the world.

Shiva Pumpkin

We share millions of genes with a pumpkin!
I'm the suntan of millions of suns!

Welcome to my nutshell!

Shall we sing a duet?
You can borrow my tonsils!

It's the same old song...

God turns into a pumpkin.
Pumpkin turns into God.

We share millions of genes with a pumpkin!
I'm the suntan of millions of suns!

Spokesmodels

I hired a hog to sodomize Mitt Romney.
Same hog sodomizes Barack Obama!

"What the heck are you doing," I scream!
"I didn't hire you to sodomize Barack Obama!"

"I'm sorry," says the hog,
"But once you start sodomizing spokesmodels,
it's hard to stop."

So here we go again!

Same hog sodomizes Ashton Kutcher!
Same hog sodomizes George W. Bush!
Same hog sodomizes Michael Jordan!
Same hog sodomizes the corpse of Ronald Reagan!

Russian Wah-Wah on Sunset Boulevard

I bought a Soviet-era wah-wah pedal from a vintage shop in Silver Lake about a month ago, and started dragging it around from venue to venue without ever playing more than four or five notes at a time through its weirdly erratic circuits, but eventually…

About 4 AM on New Year’s Day I was all alone in the debris of what was probably a fairly good party in a high-rise on Sunset Boulevard, so I looped a few chords on an abandoned suitcase piano and wah-wahed through forty or fifty bars of a suitably mournful little riff, looking down at the lights of west Los Angeles.

Pacifica

Raise the western seaboard!
Compress the ocean!

All the turtles are coming home!

Are they coming home from a faraway nebula
or a bar in Malibu?

Were they waylaid by kisses?
Will the angels confess?

They created our world,
then they wove her a dark blue dress.

Rich and Sexy

What's your fetish?
I like to itch.

I'm the sexiest pig in this pig-sty!
I'm the sexiest stripe on the red white and blue!
I'm the sexiest hair on the everywhere!

What the fuck are you?

Rock Paper Scissors

Rock Paper Scissors...

Are you my voice?
Am I your oppressor?

All of us are
crisscrossed processors.

Rock Paper Scissors...

Are you my parrakeet?
Am I your hijacker?

Parrakeet secretly
wants to be a peacock.

Peacock secretly
wants to be Jack the Ripper.

Rock Paper Scissors...

All of us are
crisscrossed processors.

Invitation

Melt in triumph!
We accept you as is.

Do you need a thematic heat-pig?
Rivets for your trireme?
Panoramas of iodine and vomit?
Condescending innuendos?

Will you be my invisible friend?

I can't be your invisible friend!
I'm not invisible!
All I want is a basket of elderberries!
I can only pay with birdseed.
What kind of dream is this anyway?

Plutus

This is absolutely
spectacular heroin, says the
motherly roadie for the Rolling Stones.
So what if we live in a plutocracy?
All you really need is one good moment!
Think about your all-access pass!
Think about Michael Jackson embalmed in rose oil!
Smile for the camera!
Smile for the camera!
Smile for the camera!

So I smiled for the camera.
Then the hammer came down.

Sunrise

Sometimes I'm a wristwatch.
Sometimes I'm a bone.

Sunrise is my witness.

I was born in Jericho.
My mother was a camel.
Later she emigrated to
Amsterdam and I became her informercial.
All five of my fathers are still paying alimony!
This is why I believe in Creationism.

Sunrise is my witness.

Guest

Cool water, clear glass on my balcony.
A blue wasp stops to drink from

one spilled drop.

Langweilige Puppen

Boring dolls on the beach at Southampton,
phantoms on the autobahn...

You have your Mercedes.
I have my smut.
You have your pharaoh.
I have my snout.
Did you miss the punchline?
Did you miss the putt?
Can you hear the archaic harmony?

Far out at sea,
a shrimp cringes.
 

Stroke

What instrument do you play?

I play the clitoris!

And how do you play it?

I play it like syrup!
I play it like winning the lotto!
Riot in a sorority house!
Like an ivory loris!
Lyric ocelot!

Diastolic!
Systolic!
Diastolic!
Systolic!

Passacaglia of slaphappy sociopaths!
Echo of a cephalic apocalypse!

Memoir

The story of my girlhood is written in cologne.
I own every goblin in Borneo!

Mithridates of Pontus is my maternal uncle.
Did you drool on my clone?
Did you nibble the braille off my billboard?

I once bought a blood-wig on Ebay!
My anemia emanates from the Big Bang.
I am born again in a beachfront bordello!
Lichens agonize in the sand.

In the afterlife, everything is freeware.

In the afterlife, everything is freeware.
You can't sneeze, but your icon can tango!
Tango of the neuronal war-monger!
Repeat after me!
I want to be a soldier.
I am the game.

I'm the winged tween of Troy!

So what else did you ever want to be?
Dybbuk of an unlucky multitude?
or just another
sad old drunk
in the jungle of mommy?

Hippo

That bra makes you look like a hippo!
I'm not talking in parables!
That bra makes you look like a hippo!

I'm writing a book about hyperbolic hippos!
There's no such thing!

Zit Sacrament

All your sins are forgiven!

Did you flirt with wrens?
Fart and hurl at your mommy’s fatwa?
Eat a narwhal?
Whatever!

All your sins are forgiven!

So what if it cost your life-savings?
How much can you spend in a nuclear inferno?
How much can you spend on an ecru decal?
Can you really afford to dance merrily into the Nothing?
Did you miss the count-down?

Nerd! Now nobody can even remember your zits!
All your sins are forgiven!

The Future Is Cold and Dark and Slow

Our little truck is
stuck in
gridlock from
cradle to grave!
Only angels can save us!
but the angels
either
don't exist or don't care or
don't know we're in trouble
and the future is cold and dark and slow.

Hollywood

I live in my limo.
Sometimes I recite voodoo jive.
Sometimes I yowl and moo.

Am I holy, or just another
icon of the infinite wow?

You decide.

Do you love all your seven step-mothers?
Is this a memo or a hymn of envy?
Mayhem or a yam?
Are you alive?

I live in my limo.
I live in my movie.
I park it in my
Hollywood word-salad and dissolve
all seven step-mothers
in the oil of
open
vowels.

Worm

u cAm outta ur hOl, u wurm!
nah-ow ahm gonna gitcha!
Cops call it a senseless attack.

Scalene poetess, are you wearing clean socks?
Her stepson cackles.

Yowl yowl yowl,
thou enuretic glue-pot!

I define thee with my one
wily neuron!

Now!

It's too late to grow wings!
Grin and wring its no-neck!
Neighbor! Worm! Scalene poetess!

I define thee with my
one
wily
neuron.

Moody Generations

Is your mood an omen?
Heed me!
Heed my sexy emoticon!

I met you in detox in 1987.
Your cooties mooned my economist.
My economist mooned your cooties.
Is that your lipstick on my tux
in this fugly mug-shot?

Then you ran away to London
and what was I supposed to do?

I ran to New York and evolved into
mayo and oats.
You evolved into manatees and
after so many
annoying switcheroos and genetic mix-ups...

Now we only coexist
in the city of incest.

The Grand Ump

I killed the Grand Ump of Wal-Mart!
I killed him in a snowdrop!
I killed him with a radish and a roadshow!
I killed him with rosin and sonar!

I killed the Grand Ump of Wal-Mart!
I killed him with a handy pair of trawlers!
I killed him in his underpants!
I killed him on Shrove Tuesday and Michaelmas!

I killed the Grand Ump of Wal-mart!
I killed him with prawns and a rat-trap!
I killed him in Jerusalem and Petaluma!
I killed him at noon and dawn and all the nameless hours!

My Typical Evening

My typical evening begins with me in
knee-pants and buster-browns until 9 or 10.
Then I hit the road to selfhood.

What's your favorite appliance?
Can you lactate on demand?
Do you dwell in a heliport?

Is that a typo?

My typical evening began in 1987 and never ended.
Is it always the same?
No, it isn't.
The only real constant is my tentacle-
Telecaster and an ancient
Peavey Deuce
that leaks so much static
it's more like a bug-zapper than an amp.

Enigma

I wanted to be an enigma instead of this
infinitely fractured fish-boy!

Home-boys! Faux-naifs!
Forgive this fish-voice or if
not him, grieve for thyselves!

Wait a minute! Wait a minute!

…

Is hog-bane the same as begonias?
Enjamb my iamb, Grandma!

...

I was famous!
I was famous!
I was famous!
I was famous!

I was famous
in another life.
 
 

My Friend in Asia

I have a friend in Asia.
She lives in Mumbai, Maharashtra.
I live in Hollywood.
Her problems are my problems.
Her backyard is my backyard.
Are you keeping score?

Last night I dreamed about my friend
as she appears on a map of Asia.
Is that you, my dear friend,
in that micro-mini-dot?
Is that you, my dear friend in Asia?
 
 

Vacuum of the Uncanny

I live in the valley of the uncanny,
Sally!

Your world falls in.

Welcome to my cartoon!
Your navel looks like a vulva!
Your vulva looks like a valve!

Instead of love you got
noodles and a null
agenda, Brenda!

"Are those supposed to be your gonads?"
Brenda/Sally replies.

"Egad!"

"I shall write a novel and avenge
millions of generations."
 
 

Myth or math?

Myth or math?
A moot totem!

Myth or math?
Hey! Is that a great question, or what?

Hoot for love!
Hoot for compassion!
Hoot for abundance of life you can't even imagine!

But we choose between ennui and a fecal empire.
 
 

Bedroom Repartee

Am I your first famous girlfriend?
Were you the first whore on Hollywood Boulevard?
 
 

Bruja

Detail of "Bruja" Jacob Freeze, 2012

My much-delayed mural "Bruja" was unveiled last week with the rest of a major renovation of one those breezy old mansions constructed in Las Lomas way back in the Twenties for early grandees of the PRI, and while the guests slam down champagne and murmur appreciatively inside, I drift out to the street where my friend Miguel and the other chaffeurs and bodyguards are stomping around and singing snatches of pop tunes to keep themselves warm in the cool night air of the hills above Mexico City in the middle of February.

"The boss says to me, if that crazy yanqui painter don't finish my mural in time for the party, Miguel, you take him out to the farm for me and feed him to the hogs."

"But I like you, I don't want to do this thing, so I say to the boss, It is very unlucky to kill a crazy man, worse luck to kill a painter, and to kill a crazy painter is as the curse of seven brujas."

"So the boss thinks it over for a little while, and then he says..."

"Kill him anyway."

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Our little mob of drivers and mercenaries laughs merrily and congratulates me and Miguel for our good luck that I finished the mural, and then they go back to singing and stomping around until a passing car slows down on Paseo de las Palmas, and all of them suddenly fall silent, glaring into the headlights.
 
 

I'm talking about global warming!

Q: What what what are you talking about?
A: I'm talking about global warming!

Q: Why don't you stop nagging me?
I'm normal! You're boring!
Grow up! Get a girlfriend! Get lost!
I've had enough of your gnarly wailing!

You sound like an aging lawman
who really wants to gnaw my owl!

Gnaw my owl!
Gnaw my owl!

Gnaw it, gringo!

What?

What what what are you talking about?

A: I'm talking about global warming.

Porno Archetype

This man is my chaperone.
I am his polyp.

You can call me "Miss Peony"
or "Penny Slop."

I make penis burn like acetylene rhinoceros!

You want tonsil typhoon?
Penis fit in one nostril!

Phooey on my loins?
I shall preen my seraphic oyster!

This man is my chaperone.
I am his polyp.

Golden Calf

Is that the tide or some kind of
uncool coital influx?

Flog the waves!
Squeal and drool on the throne of Xerxes!
Are you from Iran?

Are you hiding a gun in your butt-wool?

I'm the Golden Calf of Southern California!

Do you worship the sun?
Is it ogling my titties?

I'm the Golden Calf of Southern California!
Icon of the ironic cowboys!

Don't laugh!

URL

Memoir of a therapist:
I bled her in my yurt!

She hurled and blurted.
He observed.

I rode thy butler hotly through the tooth hotel.
She beheld the bleeding rubles.
He hurt the lute.

Head-butt the holy turtle!
Lube the ruby throttle!

Ether in her beer,
blood in my étude!
 
 

Boulevard St. Michel

 

 
 
I meet my 
therapist (Baudelaire) 
in an intimate 
café on Boul' Mich and while I
blather about my silly problems 
he stares moodily at the passers-by 
or writes pitiful letters to his mother...
sometimes six in one day!

Now he's threatening to beat up some geezer...
his best friend!... and the geezer's 
wife and children and burn down his house!
At four o'clock exactly!

I look at my watch and explain
that he's booked for another session
and another and another and another
all afternoon and yet another
busload of 
British psycho-
tourists is already en route!

Baudelaire is infused with relief and self-abnegation.
Would I beat an old man?
He's my only friend!
I'm in love with his wife!
His brats call me Uncle Charlie!
My mother made me do it!

So he writes her a pitiful letter while I
blather about my silly problems and the
golden 
evening 
decends along the Boulevard St. Michel
from Notre Dame de Paris to the Luxembourg Gardens.

Oven

"I bake my mud-cakes in the sun,"
said the crazy baker.

"My beautiful oven!"
 

Wisteria

Last remains of a farm...

               Wisteria in bloom
behind a truck-stop.