[None of] This is Accurate: William's Tell

Bill Burroughs went to the party and got high
or was high already, thinking and talking about boys and guns and liberation
Him and Joan got into a fight in the kitchen about where'd he been.
She was bitter about the boys and the drugs and her life
as a junkie runaway in Mexico
and was probably trying to get a rise out him
(we all have to make a voice sound)
He said "lets move to South America with the kids and live off the land:
I'll hunt for us."
and she laughed and scoffed hard and sincerely. She wanted to
de-thread the one thing that kept him a man,
by tearing down his violence, his ability to shoot a gun.

She teased him relentlessly and with the vigor of  Mexican stars 
about how the "kids would starve" and they would "all die" 
if they had to rely on his
hunting

They fought like cats in heat 
in the sweaty aquamarine kitchen, 
him high on heroine, her high on speed
both with the brain chemistry of angry chimps or toddlers
and he said "what about my shooting?" he said
"Put that bottle on your head" there was a clear empty bottle in the
sink, it was clear (I imagine Joan to be a gin drinker, I guess)
"go ahead" he said
Her brain was blinked with the thought
and she kew the only way to win this fight
or their tiresome common law marriage
would be to let him murder her there in the aqua Mexico kitchen
So she obeyed. Half awake
placed the clear wet bottle 
on her uncombed hair
& said "Oh Bill, you know how I hate the sight
of blood"
balanced the bottle 

like a professional
and closed her eyes and smiled
with the green fire of revenge burning up her thin tongue
He cocked and aimed the pistol
straight and hard, like a young erection
like he was going to bend over a young boy right there in 
the kitchen and fuck him
right there in front of her
and then he pulled the trigger fast and hard.
He missed the bottle by two inches
getting her right in the forehead 
and cherry blood splatted over the stove
and the little boy he was going to fuck
was actually inside him already
and the little boy cried out like a small wolf
and the pistol thudded
and the little wolf boy dropped to his knees
and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed
at the
world.

dream of a future memory

i have this dream of a future memory
where i am on a suburban street at dusk
and i'm a middle aged man
with sweat and dirt dripping down
like a polluted river
i am wailing with a sledgehammer
on my new laptop and my iPhone
scratches of shiny metal and plastic are exploding
outward and i have gashes over my arms and hands
from where the shards have nicked me &
the mothers are covering their children's eyes
as they stand on their emerald 1960's lawns
you just see their gleaming engagement rings
and slender fingers as eyes, and then the
little black egg of the kid's open mouth
and i wont stop until there is just a puddle
of silver glitter over the smooth black tar
but then every single thing that i have ever written
is also in the street
in tall surrealist stacks of yellowing paper
and I am pouring gasoline over the skyscrapers
and the gas is glugging out of the red plastic container
and sloshing slimy rainbows left and right
getting in my hair and into my pores, so everything
is wet and smells like danger
and then i light a whole pack of matches
a little square of fire in my stone palm
and i ignite the giant stacks of paper, which by now
have doubled in size
a giant SUV of paper
and finally there is a red bonfire the size of a house
burning my eyes and glaring
in the middle of quietly trim street
and the mothers are shrieking now and running
in to call the police.
i throw in my big metal watch which is ticking loudly in my ear
and then i understand why i still feel angry
so i jump in.

Hope-- our disorder; a confession

I wonder how many writers have the same disorder, where they share their bullshit so they can get enough pats on the back to sustain enough ego to keep writing what they really believe in. We share the mediocre, just enough to get a rise out of people, and never the treasure. Thats for the post-humous  party. That's for the cloth bound. That's for  years later when people have forgotten us entirely and we have grown accustomed to our new beards and disguises. I never share the work that I love most.  I would have done well in Sophie's Choice. I know the children I love best. I hoard their foldable bodies in my drawers that no one sees.  I rework my writings, with their lamb's wool, so many times, that they become frankensteins of their former selves; the edits could only be described as major surgeries.

The poems you see are just the gangly pre-teens of future refugees and guerrillas.  They can barely stand on their eight toes that I have written for them.

I don't know why I let you believe that this is my writing. It must be some kind of psychological thing. Some kind of hope that I never knew I had.  The hope that if I don't indulge your senses for long enough--feeding you thimbles, when the feast comes you will mistake it for salvation. Maybe you will forgive me with this confession: I am starving you, but I promise that the bank is growing fat so that when the oracle sends her message, you will eat like kings.

gend error

*

I’m not sure what gender is. Every morning I ask myself am I a man? Am I a woman? And the words are so non-essential, melted sopping paper that is no longer useful to wipe anything up, that they disappear in the mind. I lay under the pale sheet and touch my chest and wonder what it would be like to press my palm against my ribs without imagination. Isn’t the earth round enough? I want to walk the plank.