My Demon God

I act as any good supplicant would wanting favor from their god.

I crawl on my belly like a worm.

I approach his hazy golden altar with anticipation and a pain
that starts in my temples and travels down my face toward my nose like sharpened knives sliding under my skin.
It wasn't always this way:

I have breathed unadulterated air in my time.
 I never knew how sweet it was, at the time.

I didn't always need him!
Although he was always there.
Everybody smoked, come on!

My first sin:
I desired  those totems of my god's affection;
Heavy bowling ball sized silver plated lighters.
100 year old delicately carved ivory holders.
Ceramic hippy ashtrays.
Smoke.
Fire!
I craved a token from my god, to breathe out his own breath!
like, smoke.

My second sin:
I toyed with my god, thinking him not able to
exert his leafy power over my life.
I thought I had become immune to his charms, once
tainted with his adoration.

So here I am again, after a rather lengthy separation.
Did I miss him in the meantime? Did I ever think of that
fiery altar, that phlegmy pit where we would play?

Sometimes.


But I'm back my lover god, back
 to bargaining with the knives
in my head
watching the precious smoke
coming out of my mouth

*****************
Thank you Don Haggerty for the photos!

Why Did You Bring Me Here?

Goddamn these grey skies!
Living like a mushroom under your constant canopy.

Why did you bring me here?


I was born on a stolen island 3000 miles away.

Millions of people live there, MILLIONS.
But not me.

Rolling across the continent in my crib,
wedged between the middle seat and the front.
The scenery moving too fast for infant eyes to track.

But why did you bring me here?

Then older, running in the sun, playing on the swings in the heat.
It never snows!
Blue skies in the winter.
We drive to the beach and I play in the lagoon.
A wedge of glass slices my heel so I
spend the day sitting on the sand, bleeding,
content.

Why did you take me away?






Moving here, to the trees and the rain and the mountains.
Are we camping?
It's a forest, are you kidding?
And the hills, and the winding streets.

The rain, the mist, the rain.
The grey.


Why did you bring me here?



Is there a destiny for me here, a
prescribed sentence I'm supposed to
fulfill?
If it's all an accident why aren't I in
Idaho, or Florida?

I'll probably never know but I will keep asking:

Why did you bring me here?

*********************

The crows come out early around here.
You might call em ravens but i still call em crows, and it does so matter how big they are!

so like i said, they come out early, sometimes waking us up out of those last few precious drops of sleep, to their darn CAW! CAWING!.
Gall!

Then they tend to sit there all day, staring at ya.  One side of the house or the other.   Staring in that spooky way they have, where you can't really tell WHERE they're lookin.  Sometimes one'll cry like a little baby, then another will meow like a cat!




it's the truth, i heard it.

But I wonder; what do they feel for their kin? I know that their ain't a dinner table and all that, they're not disney-fied out in nature I know that. But they must have families!  A bird as black as them though.....as black as nothing else in nature except maybe a STONE FROM THE EARTH - what do they feel for their families ? Can they feel? I know they have hearts but do they act like ours?  Can a crow go crazy?  I have heard they mate for life. Hoo hoo, I can't testify to that because  I always see them on their own.  Or in very big numbers.

So when the crows get here early, I tend to lie abed and think about things like this.

 I pretend to fly.

***************

SIT DOWN

Well, listen to me because I have been around much longer than you have, sonny.

Yes! Sit right there, where I can see ya.

 Do you want to hear the story or don'tchu?


So it all started when that crazy carnival came to town, they had tattoo'ed women in there! 3 dollars for barely more than a peep, i can tell you that.
I can tell you, that in those days you wouldn't see a nude women ordinarily.  But anyway, That Crazy Carnival, when they came to town with their tattoo'ed women and their few mangy animals,

.
...odd things began to happen over at the gas station.
Well for one thing, oh I
just don't see as how I can trust you,
I had promised Them that I
never saw any of those
dead people.

What dead people?!

When they had the beauty contest that night,

my girl Sheryl won.  She was a stuck up Bitch, but so pretty that night.  I stood out in that crowd and clapped like hell.

We were married for 55 long years till she killed herself.  

Still don't know why.

I seem to remember there were these two twins in the carnival, used to sell tickets and tell jokes.  Said to have been naturally borned that way.  Radioactivity may have played apart.  They'd come into the hardware store, and steal tools and such!  Got banned from there anyway.  And that darn carnival was only here a week!
They were fast runners.

So now I've given you a perfectly fine story.  

I did! I told you the story of...the story of the carnival numbskull!

Oh.  The dead bodies.

At the gas station you mean?

That strange stuff?

Well I can tell you that there were 4 sailors at the carnival that evening whooping it up in the tattoo'ed woman tent and those 4 sailors never left town the next day.  Because I saw them being buried behind the gas station in a mass grave, and the diggers were an elegant midget and a clown!

I've never told anyone that story, sonny.  Whew.

Feel better now, sincerely.

You took a load off of my heart, just sittin there...

Tonight when I say my prayers and comb my beard, I'll send an extra something out for you, young fella.

You keep away from them damn carnivals you hear?

*******************************

Into The Night Two

Come on, let's go!

Out into the night.







It's not stormy right now or anything, just coooold.  Although that would be kind of fun, out into the STORMY NIGHT.

But you have to come on or we'll miss it.

Ok, so can you see that tree over there? No, turn your head that way.  Yeah that one, you can just barely make it out.   If it wasn't for that neighbors porch light shining on it.
Let's go over there first.

Ok, now crouch down I have to tell you
something.
Are you listening?
You are standing on the graves of 2 chickens, a rat and a fish.
Oh I'm so sorry, you sure moved fast!
I wouldn't be afraid of ghost chickens or rats or fish.
I'm sorry I scared you, come on let's go see the thing I wanted to show you.
Yes you can hold my hand you baby.




Be careful walking, there's lots of sticks.  Jim's light doesn't really shine back here, does it?

Ok stand here.
Look at me.
Now look up.
Do you see that moon?
It's the "mourning moon", the full moon that comes after the "blood moon" of  early fall.

It's so bright!
Just stand here with me for one more minute.

Are you ready to go in now? You should have worn a hat. You're shivering.

Come on, let's go.


*******************************

Into The Night

(He hangs suspended by a harness from the ceiling.  She is dressed explicitly by orders from him, Bruce, her client.    A feathered blonde wig,  a "costume" from the early 80's.  Nails done.  She is dressed as the first girl he had ever loved.)

Desire fades you know...

(She is yelling up at him, Bruce is hanging 6 ft up in the air,  his arms splayed, his torso and legs supported. It was from a tall ceiling; the room was gothic, really, appropriate with ornate radiators, somber yet extravagant furnishings, poly-fiber suspension unit attached securely from the ceiling.) touching him every now and then with a slender riding crop)

Desire fades and then it's like who cares?

I don't really even remember your face!
Your dumb face!

Or how you kissed OR how you made that ridiculous expression that I probably used to find
 SO adorable.

("no, no," he mutters, craving the crop and licking his lips and feeling his heart constrict and his brow secrete ugly little sweaty's all at the same time.)

Oh, the hell with you little man.  Yeah that's all are you are to me now a LITTLE MAN.  That pathetic card you tried to send to me last christmas? I got it.  Yes.  And you know what?  I tore it shreds and then pissed on it!!

("oh Carol." he moaned. "you don't mean it, you don't.  Think about what we meant to each other.  We were going to LIVE together.  We were supposed to get MARRIED." he writhed in his restraints.)

Ha! you think I ever would have actually married you! You twerp, I just dated you so we could fuck.

(in a completely different voice, "Bruce, you did say you guys fucked right?"  "Yes, yes!" he replied sobbing.  "Ok sure," she said.  "just checking.")

Yes it was just to have SEX.  Ha! And now,  you smelly, smelly worm,  I am happily married, ecstatically happy, with 4, no 5 kids!  And a house! And, and, a lawnmower!

("oh Carol.  OH CAROL.")

(At the end of the session, Bruce paid Marcia (mar-see-uh) her money.  As he left the building, he wondered what Carol was really doing now, just this minute.

****************

Sunken Treasure

I escaped long ago but now I'm going back to the ship.

The sunken ship, the one you can see glimmering under the water near the end of the pier.





I went back to try and extract what treasures I could, holding my breath while I dove deep, deeper.

The water was murky and cold, so cold.

Everything seemed to be fastened very securely to every surface, I could not pry off even one thing.

I tried! I did.

My hands cramping, nails bloody.

So I floated up and lay on my back, staring up into the dark universe.

I didn't want to go back.  But I felt so sad thinking about all my treasures so lonely and forgotten under the waves.


Could I just forget it all and leave it to the mussels?


Or should I dive again, maybe to never return?





So I tied a sturdy rope to my waist and held my breath again.


Down, down, down.

Every time I dive, I wonder if I'll ever return.


And if I do, will it have to be empty handed?


Go out to the end of the pier some time,
look down and tell me if you see the ship.


Am I there too? Holding tight to the mast, so scared
to let my treasures go?

There is only the endless sea and all of it's mysteries.

*************************

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