Steve Abee
Steve Abee lives in LA, has KING PLANET out from Incommunicado Press, and a CD called JERUSALEM DONUTS available from New Alliance Records. He can be reached at abeecat@earthlink.net
John Future
Dark Night siren thunder making maniac worded midnight smoke spiraling from the sleeping heads of ashtray thoughts and window dreams, geranium caravans hold up their floraed train to the Yahweh sky. The needle breaks the surface of the night’s water, drink does not quench the fire that burns us machines rolling loud thuddering guts, faceless rubberingmoon mauled eclipsed dreams, the broken yolk of the emerald bird, the grail in the naked teeth of a moonless sky, the vowels hidden in the spleen of the street, each word, each word is some kind of skin, falling from a beehive head full of Angels and Pain Dogs.Love is the smell of hated Anglo locutions of deranged pentecost lexicons, beast of stardust feather winged seeds, Mayan Traffic clowns juggling petroleum diamond diseased snake headed finger tip sins, K-Mart sugar plum shoplifter darling daring Dairy Queen drive thru for a heart cure, shopping cart choirs at the off ramps of Panorama Sunshine hold the blinking ravaged eye of this animal, frozen gasoline in the mindfood aisle, time: so tired of counting what it doesn’t believe, just fifty more cents please...
Get a job.
I am the son of revolution, living the dark fumes of the final solution. I am a nuclear Abraham, a square root survivor of galactic crab debri, a carburetor diety breathing helium popsicle air, I am a temple sacrifice looking for a loving face, I am rosebush weary street map to the bottle cap tree, I got a broken alarm ringing in the next dimension, I am shiva cutting off Jesus a piece of the sky, Angel dust tracks in the firecracker wind, white trash krishna, I am the future, I am the future, gimme a hot dog, jesus chirst, Aztlan Hercules, caveman tears on ice, hit with the devils photon, cursed with theHoly Roller Honeysuckle Zap Doctor Tooth Man flaming glass eyeball tongue, star fart frost bite, tulips on the run, car part dendrite byzantium junkie, fevered suburban jungle sidewalk singer burning tyger television light, falling down, falling down, in the love sick grass, sipping rainbow juice in the glass of this car crash--What kind of work can I do? Nobody’s gonna hire me for fifteen minutes.
C’mon, just fifty more cents...I need a buck seventy nine. Gotta win me some garbage, gotta make a bet on a dog, I need a big ole pile o crap. A lady gave him a dollar. He went and got a bottle of strawberry Cisco.He came out. I am futurlord. I am future. The way for tomorrow. Don’t she know, can’t she see the sap of the tree of life comes from my fingers. I have ridden with demon freight, caught plastic eyed lucifer at the stop light of time, told king Monkey Man I did not need his dimes, ended the dilemma of suicide by counting backwards with the mind of time as it came unglued from the stitched face of the moon--It’s true. The Angel gave me a Taco of love to cure my disease, the Virgin met Zoraster andthe crescendo brought heaven down into my cup-- so here have a drink of my poor soul.
He starts thinking about going home.
20 Cent Water
Let us speak directly of our being as it appeared to me down at the 20 Cent Water Machine:
. One man fills up his plastic jug and I think:Yes, is this not, surely, who we are: Made of water mostly, A form drawn in shining dust, drawn in darkness from the hole in the middle of the sky, golden oceans lost in our heads, splashing on the sides of a Sparkletts life. We all have corners we refill at. We fill and fall and die, born with brains that are glued from splinters of things we did not do: hands of mezazoic jism jangle through our celestial rush hour haze, a drunken trumpet spills notes from a rooftop, a radio in a creakey car passes on by, one man listens to Beethoven on his radio as a gangster does not, but does. The water is on. The walls and doors are spilled with spilling, our music does not rust.
This wine of being burns a votive dawn sparrow breaking the brow of the convict sky dripping tatooed names of galaxies into the flesh of the sidewalk, into the flesh of sight, into the flesh of talk. The flower of our fluid pearls petals in a drop waiting to roll down the leaf into the dirt, into the next life, into the roots of somewhere else’s dream, this flower with no name spills the saliva and sweat of its seed on my shoes as it swims for the sun.
Our mistakes are what make us run the engine guns for the flame that licks blue lips around the heart of a bird that holds a starry glacier in its eye, the world is a cold place and I know it; the world is no place, so what; the world is round, I have felt it; the world makes smells and I have them; the world kills itself and I was born here; the world is an orchid with roots crawling from the ashes of some other’s end.
There is a gift in these razor lipped dew drops cutting us out of time. We are not contained in bottles or in the ultra violet of this eye , what we are is dark swimming ruby eyed stardust through the man hole covers and the trees, while the machines roll loud down the street and an unknown kindness holds up the sky and yes, here, we touch the sleep of extinction in the water of our miracles.
Steve Abee