(unfinished) by Charlie Newman

Scrub me till my eyelids bleed and kill me before you split like an ex-lover howling and working and peeling any

disinclination to whisper of Yahweh and his long arm of the law.

I cannot remember my fingers or your intentionally dirty dreams or any clues left waiting for dry judgement while

my saxophone soundtrack rolls on and on and on.

I fight zyklon until I am recalled and replayed and relived and then I sleep mutilated dreams meaningful to someone

somewhere sometime to be recalled and replayed and relived.

I am a homebrew homeboy in the last room outside my own control quizzing dogs for the earthquake rebirth

promised me.

Love ain’t escape.

No one remembers tubercular Auschwitz or so says this thug militia lunatic bloodsucker who laughs and burns and

dances and shivers and rejects that chaos theory I draw like no other.

I am afraid reality is just another Jesus fallen on bad times with his sexual organs exposed for all to see and I

wonder when will it end.

I garbage my ashes and hold my poem hostage as a parable or a play or a pose or an open-ended animated animal

that never dreams.

I sleep moving applause under the table and go to the marketplace of Braille uncertain in my mind for love’s sake

greeting the divine with water knowing you love me like garbage.

Everyone’s a star.

Ambiguities cause me no end of grief spinning and weaving parodies of heroes in clouds and in rain and cold

millennium women who never cared about me to begin with.

I ride myself into the sunset and lecture whoever will listen whoever is shaved clean whoever is coming out raving

like the lady who missed the express that would have taken her to her lover.

I am no bigger and no more-elegant than a Mengele re-run staged for savage children on cellophane days of absence

passing myself off as a local who knows no remorse.

There never was a free lunch.

My Zen slips away in doctor fancy formaldehyde dead head intervals and you pay me my nothing-a-week flat rate

while I reflect on unimaginable pills and light and flesh overrun and underdone with nothing up my sleeve.

I am out of proportion and feel as if I am rupturing and alone mumbling my last wishes where Goddamn wars are

won and lost and anthems are sung by people who wonder-what-happened.

I wallow in shallow of Rosicrucian victories and forget where I lived and relived and divided this America America

America into millions of unexpected haiku and I like it that way.

I go between us—you and me—and watch naked angels get off on the smell of my wonder and fear and wonder why

you won’t drive my cravings over the coincidental cliff like the pro you are.

Everyone you know is delirious.

After unintended briefings I go ravaging and raging point-to-point in night sweats before running into silent last

kisses recalled and replayed and relived.

I am still shivering as you climb home again and strut in and out every Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! frozen into

believing nothing beyond the grip of inspiration or the fear of being made up.

I always looked myself in the eye in the mirror in the morning searching for messages of the mysteries of life and

death all the time wishing I could tongue and groove the woman of my dreams.

I listen to her but all she says is "death" to me spamming me and scamming me without buying in confident that I

will fall for this new line of sleet mad lip disease and I do.

All-Elvis radio is on the horizon.

Expose my secrets if you must I cannot be blackmailed on any terms but my own no matter how you divide my

heart amongst your whores.

I write ads in my mother tongue knowing there are no sales in heaven to please America and I am surprised when

there is no one home to call my mercenary bluff.

I am waiting for lifting skirts and stains without women and laughs without comedy and soak up prisoner boredom

to fill the ever-expanding ever-more-empty ever-loving day.

I read ads for grey condos with no room in the darkness on the corner where the wealthy live caged sipping their

triple-sec cocktails from the very marrow of their dreams.

Blessings are few and far between.

Soak up the word of The Prophet until my last Zen dog howls into the northern light loose as a loon no way out no

exit no return and where is Dr. Seuss when you need him?

I call up images of some dusty Mengele escaping beyond borders where deals go sour and love is betrayal and there

is nothing to read because there is nothing to see and I can’t get over it.

I am not a prisoner or a victim and I will not be subdued or killed or reduced to a memory as tiny and as hard as a

cigarette butt in the gutter and I will not be quiet on any day especially on the Sabbath.

I am repeated and re-run and preordained and I am a twitching finger on the trigger but I will not be collected and

slapped across my unknowing face until blood traffics down my swollen cheeks.

Everywhere is heaven.

Bastard America breasts and hands and lips and satisfaction guaranteed to make our guardian angels run for cover or

go to bed or look back at us lovingly in blinking neon.

I slide out of one fantasy into another until my heart and my right hand and my firm hand shake and I cannot look

myself in the eye the way I used to.

I sit in empty rooms listening for whispers in the darkness dear God and dance the dance of good fortune and read

ecclesiastical form letters from nobody who knows me.

I want in the house and I want to tear the house down and when I look at America I wish my ancestors had hitched

themselves to another boat.

The black queen plays you hard.

Drown me in your endless stream of consciousness because I want to hear the missing tell their stories and lick my

lips in future despair of no great import.

I am waiting for snow jobs to move clues off foreheads so I can read them or shop or shake or escape my

functioning senses or find the blonde who knows the way home.

I am leaving 1943 to my grandfather while I replay whatever laughter springs my way seeking a new saint’s day to

celebrate in black-zippered birthday suits.

I look eye-to-eye as far as the mind can see so fucking grateful and gutted and salvaged and singing the national

anthem out of tune that heads turn in horror.

God does not advertise.

Tear down the house and suck up the receding fantasy and surround yourself with shadows no sane man can

penetrate and baby-baby-oh baby-baby-baby-baby-oh.

I am surrounded by my own shadow from birth to death where cults and liars lip read my secrets as if words are

deeds and deeds are me and I am thin air.

I don’t mind realities doubting everything I hear in the temple halls all twisted and sweating inside my eyes and

skin shut and cringing and clinging to once-upon-a-time America.

I will not be untitled or common or dismissed sight unseen by nobody inversions and variations and imitations of

the real thing until the real thing comes along.

Addiction is a sore loser.

V.O. & valium replace your silk breath scattered on crosses and reborn like a mad dog part virgin lily white rabbi

on the rag like a long thin holy baby with knives.

I was as obscene as God’s corpse or a pleased minister-in-waiting kicking back to the devil in need of martyrs and

messages and I wonder: Is anybody in there?

I wrap myself around deliverance rage through the long late night in search of justice and I want to tell you that

Magritte warned me about dreams like this.

I want to know if you understand what I mean since you’re no more than young meat getting corporate

blenderheaded dim bulb filament dressed to drop like a dime on a turncoat.

Nobody lives on their knees.

Dry eyes may be no more and no less than the sign of an empty heart and the complete lack of anything resembling

a conscience or the slightest hint of remorse.

I climb inside my rampaging blood to watch flies fuck and split the light or to pray to be recalled or replayed or to

get the chance to relive my life with open eyes.

I think lost lovers return at the last moment if you pray to the right God at the right time and your soul becomes

her steamy mask erased in an encounter with blue velvet regret.

I dig my heels in hip deep to prevent the repetition of sliding of living of waiting of caging my vestiges of control

of confusing expects hard as tops for worse because I don’t know better.

Beauty is nothing down.

Crack children dissolve in an alley where mad whores with beady eyes play until they scream talk shoot fleshing

out words vertigo is still vertigo and the brain is what’s left of the brain.

I pull close to touch asking for a dose of highrise agony Magritte stair-stepping men one on top of the other in neat

rows in neat clothes like an obsessive compulsive drizzle.

I think of beautiful reptilian love and light the fuse for some tear-down-the-house sledgehammer knockdown

knockout knockabout kiss-me-like-you-miss-me fantasy action.

I don’t know why I am not wearing the veil of morning services and why I am not caged and why someone people

laugh with hope disappearing like free booze on Friday night.

Dreams are nothing when they are not free.

The vertigo poet folded his body unrecognized and untitled once untitled twice untitled three times and every time

as far as his ego can see.

I gotta way with words and I gotta wash my hands and I gotta clear my throat and I gotta know what will be written

on my tombstone to be recalled and replayed and remembered.

I am not the deadly cookie or the one-token wonder set out in the spirit of espionage sent like regards or waiting in

the dark like an innocent Mengele if you can imagine such.

I wait empty for shadows not accused patiently without weapons watching snowflake code without distinction for

my threadbare insect poems swallowing pills with champagne.

The drowning hand sells what you are buying.

Twenty year marriages wait on the shore for me to risk the unheard-of unmentionable unrequested as grandma sits in

the kitchen surrounded by her own rocky horror.

I am a graceful mad dog something-for-nothing jealousy awakened hope held close living broken in Sodom

fractured and shoddy amongst deadly thorns.

I drape myself in voices slogging and scrambling to fit wholesale tragedy masks with no flesh enduring days of

sunshine terra cotta armed angels to fulfill me.

I take heaven forever and I think like offspring in riches and I do you with my cul-de-sac heart and I suck up your

too-overt prevailing transcending understanding drama.

Tigers come theatrically flush from the get-go.

Do-gooders come from all directions everywhere howling like the tomb yowling like Yahweh dying in factories of

arbitrary charity seeing you is not believing you.

I enter the drill drain bleed forget the talk treasure you believe time after time after time arriving late leaving early

hanging in there just long enough to get the free food.

I say kindergarten razor entertainment garbage love drying preening strutting and bottled head catch my breath my

phrases my differences my distinctions but not my crucified Jesus.

I trend no coney island of this that or the other and thus not America you talk Mengele where Jesus is forgotten a

wire wrapped up around a pimp’s dog’s cock.

Phone someone in the meaty streets and beg forgiveness.

This poem does not exist nor do children wander my in echoes with a get-a-look-at-memories-you’ll-never-have in

their eyes knowing they cannot leave.

I think the pride back and her legs are spread and the booze is for me so I can romp and stomp like some

nincompoop some non-compis-mentis motherfucker making out.

I could leave unheard and arrive unwanted and alone wondering why my lips fall asleep on her arm and fumes of

peace in error exhume Elvis’ intervention.

I wonder who is this Yahweh who can forbid killing and I am lonely and I own mistakes recalled and lost in the

excesses of street madness and hell.

Night washers are close to you.

Badmouthing people laying back a little better or shards of men driven mad by their blues don’t have no God

swaggering inside them to carve up.

I am blue and I own my own shadow hiding under America’s sheets control me and my entertainment as the

mystery of mysteries unravel at the end of Act Three.

I dream and I want and I go wherever whenever caught in a downtown whatever-it-may-be-called tearing down the

will to maintain Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

I untitle you and watch my buddy peddling and I don’t have the adventures left to pail another Zen when I need

Newark, New Jersey even though my Zen clouds minds.