S.B.T. 240

glued

a tiny brown fingernail

shiny to the touch

i should have felt it sooner

sucking blood and such

pried it off with tweezers

a flat sideways strike

cuz the sucker gets embedded

if it's pulled upright

little eyelash leggies

brush my finger, touch

as they writhe like a zimmy

electric toothbrush

you told me 'put it in a jar

and bring it to the lab

have it tested, get a shot

and disinfect the scab'

but twas not the infamous deer tick

who carries dreadful lyme

just a regular old dog tick

living large, fat

and sublime

S.B.T. 239

"The Seven Sneaky Words"

Here I am, not so sneakily reposting the copyright alliance's post on fair use.

I do think the intentionally ambiguous is a widespread tactic used not only by lobbyists and their cohorts, but also by financial institutions, and in contractual agreements across the board. Not to mention utility business practices in general. (such as electric, phone and cable companies) The 'customer service' person starts out smiling and then when you ask for the surplus charges to be removed, they become brittle and snippy, the smile turns into a tight leash. Why? Because they know what is going on behind the scenes inside the companies they 'represent'. Once on the telephone a cable customer service rep was reading me some rule explaining the answer to a question I had about an extra 4.95 charge per month that suddenly started appearing on my cable bill. And she accidentally kept reading a part the customer was not intended to hear. "It is because of the state tax application, etc etc. Never tell a customer that the charge is..." (I won't continue as I would not like to be sued) but I said "What did you just say?" She pretended not to know what I was talking about, so I repeated it. She was caught, up against the wall. She stammered and tried to dismiss it. I said "But you just said..." and finally she said "I didn't mean to say that". Ha ha, oh really? So even the squirt customer service person on a remote phone in some other city is party to the strange and quirky permutations of the truth. I have worked for companies that make you sign papers confirming that you will never reveal "proprietary information" for a period of five years AFTER you may leave their employ. I guess because they figure no one would believe you after that amount of time if you told them that you were instructed regularly and systematically to deceive the customer. Being able to live with telling outright lies is a performance requirement.

S.B.T. 238

moulin rouge saturday night

"ok there's nothing like the feeling i'm feeling when we sink back thru the couch with our feet on the hassocks hooch and (just so happens to be) moulin rouge. like king kong, over the virtuous rainbow"
"and it is nice, you see, he he he," stirring the tea. his chin tilts upward so the smile looks taut on the cuteness of the curve.
i turned down the salsa music playing in the studio. it was satine's here i am section of the movie and i want to switch stations. a film noir in contrast to ridiculously blazing color. and it was obvious and sort of drag, still i liked the mint green glass of pearly absynthe in toulouse lautrecs grip. and the rooftop architecture, those peculiar ethereal spaces, the windmill circling in red lights.

one of the dancers, stepped out of henri's painting alive. her hair, with it's stubbled japanese fan of a bun, tied back, was the givaway, but she was a real noodge, always planting evil imagery in the minds of the unaware. trying so hard to make the lovers doubtful, or the boss suspicious, alas it did not work tra la. and in the end, someone has to die and it seems like the wrong person, but that's hollywood, ah i mean, life. about showing the way it is by way it isn't.

myself
and real, that
caring knot
but screw nihilist pain
it real, can shipload understanding, expatriate resay expatriate myself
and myself
hybridizing careens
trilled floorshow and reify
it everything
i heard, together
again
broke and pain can freshener
it that
it there
a blandisher caring
but again
i

S.B.T. 237

what are you doing they asked
what am i doing? (well certainly not wanting to add decorum to fragile impression)
well, a little of this, a little of that i said
they were looking rather spiffy, new haircuts, lapel pins
this guy jerry portnoy, yes thats him there playing with muddy waters, on the harmonica. i heard he was clapton's favorite harmonicassist uh hermonium player. there's a place on main street called the BBC where they sell an eclectic bunch of beers, he plays the sunday brunch. they came down from boston to see him. jerry lives here now and yeah he happened to mention eric. i told rick on bass about seeing ella twice at tivoli gardens in copenhagn. he said something under his breath, like geeez. he adjusted his beret and sat down for the next set. it was dark in there, the sun is out, i left before the last set started and still cant stop hearing.

S.B.T. 236

how can i explain? it is one of those bizarre things that happens to girls who have no means. i was being paid a great deal to make art for a counterfeit operation. that was okay, we did it all the time growing up. we took our giant grasshoppers with us and set them inside the museum galleries and echo halls stretching out a great world of masters and mattresses. we trailed their lines, exorcised and xeroxed them, filled in the colors with pastels, later finalizing back in the garrette...rabbit skin glue, yellow jars made from hollowed bones containing rare pigment powders and aged oils, and rotten egg tempera. it wasn't that the work was bad, the reason i left was because of the cameras in the ladies lounge. but it was in that dingy shop that i met the thumb man.

when i recall l'ecoile sinister capes and flags he wore, it all comes together, memories i would rather forget. if i did the unspeakable unforgivable and un unable and quit knowing the gothic film noir danger i did not care. i knew the shadows and how creatures would dodge sudden threads of light that flash a rind of a limish color. emphasis on a shoulder, curved, just for a second, in flight. a flash of red, the source of the wind, fishermen's boots shuffling in puddles, hoots of owls and foghorns then i saw him.

his head is a thumb, this tiny man who materializes from shadows. he turns slowly and points at me. his forefinger foreshortened seems much larger than he and presses flush onto my middle eye. up until that moment, i was just watching him, placidly, thinking hmmm how odd, but then it scared me. why? i wondered, because tho a criminal of some new and unknown sort, with a thumb for a head, he was my sweetheart, my darling one (he resembles a stocky owen wilson in danny devito's body playing the lead thumb role. doe blond and fair: an innocent pink but very mean finger to whom you wouldnot rent the room, if you knew.

somehow imagery swirls throo this velvet darkness, it never ends, in morph phases one becomes the next. the words to describe it r likewise. i open my eyes and it is still the same room although i hear an echo of wings flapping

S.B.T. 235

Joe Kennedy III, hooray!

Not your average Joe (Kennedy) | CapeCodOnline.com

S.B.T. 234

etching, the unborn

gowl, it suddenly dawned on the
creepy yellow sopa steam smelt
aching teeth ropeburned sholder
shriek spectre
aluminum smolder
ii cant even look at the words getting typed
for such gnossy slime has settled beneath
naw, right on the crust

fdrather
climb the lithograph boulder