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?

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