Read The State of Old Lines Page 2

crumbly and crummy

  Amid a phase of hired hoes and crimson haze

  He sneezed and we artfully seized monocles and money

  He fought for age, for a liar's loans, for the unfurled page and deeds

  He's a hypnotical dummy, rumbling grungily, a fallen faery

  With famed tan fades and freed particles of spunk, glee and honey

  An untamed panphage, he's solitary-taught like a grump-skunk

  His sheen of scum seems cut-free and sun-shamed in dun ways

  His bible braises graves for days with bar-knuckles, smutly

  As he lazes through rival raves. His tar suckles bluntly

  With scars like barnacles and chutney, and tattoos a tribal fan-page

  He shouts a libel rampage through the ever-damp haze

  Of fire-kilned ugly in his forever tramp-age

  The Unhittable Grin

  He began in a shack, brimming with crack, limning lacks with tack on trim shims

  And winning thin tracks, raising hackles. He's callous and twee

  As his team tackles with malice and glee, his ballast is free

  His ramshackle palace is foul as can be

  Lambs crackle and flee, his phallus is dumb, faculty-free

  Rain trickles in creeks, his bowels are loose as stragglers leave

  Pain tickles his cheeks, his jowls tighten the face that daggers do weave

  Gaggers mean green per scene as the laggers seem keen

  He's seen what he's seen, his saggers deem him racially clean

  He's facially lean, basically teen, his words are curt and phrasally mean

  He nasally fiends, hurls flirts and blurts screeds at fae-silly peens

  He steams up spas hazily dreamed

  He knows one day he'll be lazily gleaned from the days he'd been weened

  Amazingly preened, he'll forever be creamed

  He knows no women at all yet about him they flutter

  His smile is ferrous, feral and garish, they sputter and stutter

  Like a mugger in cheap perfume, their skin is unchurned butter

  His mind, a bodega with a weak curfew of clutter

  He interviews humbled fuckers in huddles, he mumbles and mutters

  Of mirthless measures in random scansion for suckers

  He finds worthless treasures in abandoned mansions and gutters

  He meanders lifelessly towards land, lost with a broken rudder

  He strokes oars for whores, and involuntarily shudders

  When love comes to shove, he'll gracefully gut her

  He flits about and flaps wings where there are no kids allowed

  No pink trapping, no rinks for lapping, no laws against slapping

  No cartographers mapping, no pornographers fapping in the derrière crapping

  All the cherry hair-free Marys are napping with ideas like vapid padding

  The wisely unwary fairy is rapidly adding crabs to alleys like labs in girl-dwelt valleys

  He lisps like Susies or Sallies, hurls melted galleys at pelted trollies

  He trips, oozing values and whirling welts at taboos and dollies

  The faery's fabulous follies fail to fulfill fat fruits who frolick

  Like dicks with colic and cash, sad truths do call it and ashy tics can bawl it

  The flashy faery crawls quick and hauls hicks for pricks, mawls nicks

  And measures only the thickest of sticks, the deepest of rifts

  The faery fists, hisses and misses lists of gifts, gives mental kisses

  On clandestine trysts as he gregariously grifts, starts tiffs

  And passes out mescaline tricks like Mexican licks, hilariously riffs

  He supplies spliffs to mess with him through stiff winds. He guesses new trim

  And profitably dresses his unhittable grin

  Present Bull

  She's a garden of hardened blooms

  Like rotted tombs, she's unmargined, exhumed

  Too rude too soon, ultradoomed, unbooned, her mind well-looned

  A hell-goon whose pell mell tunes rose and fell anew

  She brooms up rules and tells fools of moons

  Her womb looms like dunes and booms like bells

  In the cacaphonous wells of spume, she fumes and zooms

  Her diaphanous veil spews sales few and hale

  Her after-male failed at bail, to adequately rail and at laughter in jail

  Her craft hurts like shale, like grafters flail and nail privates

  She'll shaft her grail and drive it, then wail live kits

  Like her knife hits are wifely wits, rife with brittle life pleas

  Her strife-glee fits her wrist nicely, unwisely

  She spicily flies high sigh-lean and lively

  And dies, surmisedly unrightly

  She was chesnut glory, unrested, her bust the best and hoary

  She sorely chored her pest, ignored his whore-seen story and more fees

  A blossom of more peace could not be more forlorn, nor free of gory floors

  She was a rose amid thorns and ivory Moors, a score-needy mistress of sorcery

  More Circe than nursery, she threw purses with glee at persons too weak

  Her worst part is her bleak, her Maryland meek, her encursening cheek

  Her barely and garishly chic meat is her best, her furnishings unblesséd by beauty

  Her untested cooties are lessening unduly, she smiles sexily, unruly

  She won two trees from moolies and outran police cruelly

  Love fuels her few flights of beauty; her unhoneyed duty and bun-buggered dun booty

  Spark mutiny and spew many cutesies up chutes to mute seas

  Her flutes flee from mooks who shoot cold hooch and uproot the endless down duke

  Her face is a gown of gold loot

  Her voice is hearty and full; her parties are pleasantly dull

  Her love is presently bull, of heaven she faithlessly mulls

  She eventfully pulls, unwholesomely crows and lends lows and levers

  To cruel Janes and heifers. She even helps hos with web-lures unrevel

  In leavened hellfire and devils. She tells buyers to rebel

  With treble she tries her mettle, unsettled as cops scurry to kettle

  She truthfully heckled their speckled wrecks of curfews and nettles

  Unfettered by betters, she dentally flees on relegated knees, her anise, unfenneled

  She lettered in kenneling her dog, a collarated fraud, meddling abroad

  She tolerated his rod, his unmitigated baud, his lauding of hot broads in sweaters

  For him, she was better than God

  A Rat I Know

  There's this rat I know

  Whose whiskers are long and sinewy

  They stretch, and he gracefully meanders

  To deep crannies cast in shadow

  He snorts like Colombian kings, and dances with glee

  He preens his daily facade, and gathers his leashes

  His tail is stubbled and scaly, eyes pink and dry

  But his smile is wide and white, and it rings true

  His charm goes on for miles; he lies in fathoms

  And misleads in spades; he brings no tools

  Nor arms nor legs

  He's a hollow rat, and vain

  There's this rat I know

  He pimps garbage like gilded glitter, robs white folk

  And grabs gobs of gizzards. He never gets injured

  In spite of his schemes, he tap-dances away

  From his nestmates fairly slain. He feigns offense,

  Gives with respect to widows and orphans, like middle-aged bosses

  And enlightened landlords. His eyes flicker lightlessly

  His smile is a plague, his coo typhoid, his gifts are always rocks

  His lips spray lies and brainpox. He knows who he is

  And what his words will always have wrought

  Pain and fear

  He's a hollow rat, and taut

  There's this
rat I know

  He packs and rants in carefully-torn slacks

  Sports hats and mistreats acrobats

  He never wants for long any single thing that he lacks

  His lady rats love how he struts brusque, slaps brats and lazy sluts

  He headbutts flats, cuts tacks, bucks fats and hugs tats

  When solving a problem, he backs hacks and schemes to the max

  He goes all out as he attacks flacks and whacks the American pax

  Protests the pimp tax and cries like limp sacs for wizened girls

  Nevermore lax, he hurls and harps

  He's a hollow rat, and sharp

  There's this rat I know.

  He builds his nest like a queen bee

  Eyes hives with malediction, lies to lemony chives

  He freaks at stupid beasts, wonders why

  Bears don't pay taxes, spites mice like a

  Vindictive cat, he's hip to jive turkeys

  Ready to give thanks and eat allies. His fur

  Is lice-ridden. He likes girls rice-lidded

  His heart is basalt and blood, buried boldly

  In bricks by big hicks

  He butts bitches and gnaws on britches

  He's a hollow rat, and thin

  There's this rat I know.

  His teeth grow like kudzu fangs.

  Ever-sharpening gums, his jaw is a blade.

  His eyes flare with green, verdant and jealous,

  Running wild. His jaundice catches and

  Fatly forages for fruits with cash

  Like yellow cowboys, he ruts in stews

  That simmer in tempered pots. He dances

  Writhing amid jungle beats. Women wet,

  Issuing vaginal wine which he drinks

  Like Russian widows

  He's a hollow rat, and wise

  There's this rat I know.

  He seduces maggots with vinegar and sweetmeat

  They crawl to his claws. He snaps like crabs

  And harvests clams who wiggle whitely

  He'll bring false hymns to churches globe-wide

  His sumac armageddon will fall in flames

  Whose smoke cloys spices he spat snidely

  He has a face that rips lonely ladies and plants lilacs

  In grape fields. Grabbing toes and lemons

  How he mines hearts from heaving breasts!

  His teeth name eyes

  He's a hollow rat, and lame.

  My City

  My city reeks of battered lace

  Its haunted by ghosts whose brittle tongues hide their shattered face

  Mile-high porkpies with egos that preen and prance like flattered waste

  Pretty ladies, dancing sickly storms for seconds in some scattered space

  Tattered alleys turn and