The glittering
skyline 
lurched dizzily
The sidewalk 
below
lunged towards me

If, somewhere
in the rushing mid-air
between the roof 
of the garage
and the shadows down there,

I could recall some happy moment,
grab hold of and vanish into it,
and finally begin
to make 
better decisions . . . 

The Seam Between Two Instants

When you’re as empty 
as the bottle
you drank from,
discouraged, 
and unwelcome,

gaze high beyond the night sky,
into the swirling cosmos,
drawn close

Look up
You’re home
Look up
at your home
Look up

When you’re as empty 
as the bed
you woke in, 
exhausted, 
and broken,

resolve to dissolve
like mist, like hail,
like the breath you exhale

Look up
You’re home
Look up
at your home
Look up


A Song for the Time When Songs Won't Help Anymore

Whispers and soft light,
Vespers for the twilight
bookworms.
Thou art hard to read, 
reserved and
collected.
We lead,
as I expected,
still lives
hanging in the archives.

Evening prayers
in reading chairs.
A haven there – 
in a word, “sanctum.”
In the Word, 
a sanctum.

Whispers and echoes,
Vespers for the shadow
acolytes.
Thou art hard to picture,
drawn and faded.
We were
an item, roughly dated.
Still lives
hanging in the archives.


Late Afternoons at the Morgan

High up in the Hollywood hills
High in the Valley too
Cheap motels
and gallery openings
Floating
Floating
away

High up in cliffside mansions
High on Skid Row too
Back alley clubs
and church basement meetings
Floating 
Floating
away

Your sun never rises
Spitefully, you snuff it out
Eternal night, elusive prizes
You’re floating, floating

But even dimming stars
can melt your wings

(A quick, crude experiment mixing Apple loops and sampled percussion.)

Another Icarus

Who sang those Thorazine lullabies 
that drew me in to the oblivion 
of your dry-ice eyes? 

Does anyone else hear the sirens 
that lured me towards the hospital doors?  
First mournful, then silent.

Past the vacant
nurses’ station,
down slow-flickering
corridors,
to the room where you 
lose your patients
in an endless series 
of either/ors.
Well, I know what
that scalpel’s for:
dissect my mind from my brain.
Discharge whatever remains,
a seemingly functional
person again.
	
A soft voice still coos in the distance.
It beckons me to a reckoning		
born for, and dodged ever since.

Subject Redux

Trapped in a mirror landscape,   					
you’re only here in silver flashes 					
that spark and disappear.  						
That’s how you escape.  						
In these bedazzled days,						
my past with you never passes.					
Always, I’ll forever wish you had stayed.					

Mapped the watercolor lights						
that blur this quiet, soggy city.					
Will I ever find you?							
Almost but not quite.							
An atlas of heartbreak						
for our thwarted posterity.						
Take me back, please, if only for their sake.				

Rapt, watching the clouds sprint by					
and hurdle over that famous bridge					
in a rush to cover							
someone else’s sky.							
This is a fleeting gift, 						
an unexpected privilege:						
Uplift on a day that I needed it.

Rapt

You get tired, we all do
Run down from morning to sundown
Sometimes we need to
relax, 
but in a kick-ass, twin axe kind of way.  

Douse the sparking wire,
encasing it in jello
Shock therapy of calmness,
what I call Turbomellow
					
You get tired, we all do
Feeling half-alive but in overdrive
Sometimes we need to
relax,
in a super-fruitful kind of neutral.

Close your blinds,
fluff the pillow,
set your alarm
to Turbomellow

What I envision is
turbomellow fortresses
where the weary are immersed
in an Eno soundtrack universe
And when you’re ready to emerge,
rested and resurgent,
we’ll be here to say hello
‘Til then, just be 
turbomellow

Turbomellow

And now
as our day
winds down,
you stand on this
torchlit terrace,
facing the Western sun,
the molten bronze and copper sun
that brands your silhouette
onto the pink-streaked horizon
and casts you as a statue,
an instant antiquity,
more real and more treasured
than the person 
the blue night that cools it
returns to me.

A Work in Progress

The Legislature passed a law abolishing all laws.  The baffled populace found itself divided into two camps, the Literalists, who interpreted the new law to mandate total lawlessness, and the Expansionists, who viewed its paradoxical terms as a model for investigating a variety of political, philosophical and other concerns, beginning with a desire not to desire, a promise never to make promises, and an attempt never to try.  There was also, as there is in every society, a criminal element, in this instance made up of those who defied the new law by adhering to the old ones.

Plans for the first Brutalist nursery school have been approved following an exhaustive search for the architect most in touch with these times.  The winning architect, whose design was selected from well over 10,000 submissions, explained that it is intended to evoke a toppled pile of charred toy blocks.  It is hoped that such nursery schools, of which this is only the first, will prove instrumental in the development of the loyal, patriotic citizens necessary to ensure the continued health of our nation.

Following the announcement by NASA officials that outer space has been reclassified as a suburb of Earth, agency scientists have determined that the stars are not composed of dust and various gases, as was previously believed, but are instead distant television sets, each one broadcasting beloved shows such as Lassie, Little House on the Prairie and The Twilight Zone.  Because the so-called multiverse theory remains unproven, physicists suspect but have not yet confirmed that these shows feature an infinite number of beginnings, middles and endings.  They do acknowledge, however, that the stars are as distant and unreachable as those cozy nights spent watching TV with our parents, who were then so young, beautiful and strong.   

Pop singer Morrissey, long known as an ardent animal rights advocate, has sued a Morrissey impersonator who has appeared in a series of dairy commercials featuring the slogan, and I quote, “There is a butter world.  Well, there must be.”

Two or Three Versions of the Future

Power to the peephole!
The one I’m peering through
Power to the credit checkers
Give credit where credit’s due
and “Smile . . . 
You’re on Surveillance Camera!”
Say something nice into the listening device
And say hello to the folks who
monitor your keystrokes

I “Question Authority,” sure,
ask its permission to spy on her.
I’ll send a signal to signal jammers
They will scramble my message so it makes sense
And maybe they can decode what it was I meant
There was something about an L, 
an O and a V.
There was something else too,
but what it was escapes me

There are hidden landscapes in your own backyard
If you can’t see them you’re not looking very hard
There are hidden landscapes in your neighbor’s backyard
If you can’t see them you’re not looking very hard
I remember standing over the toilet,
hoping that the cops wouldn’t come and spoil it
And I remember crawling through an air vent
wondering if she got the flowers I sent

(Been low on inspiration lately, but here's something from the vault.  This was basically recorded in one take, owing to some very irritated neighbors, back in 2000 or so.   Thanks to my compadres, M (drums) and G (bass).)

Power to the Peephole! ("band version")

Music and artwork by Holocaust Nancy
Lyrics and vocals by Marshmallow Fortresses

I asked the great Holocaust Nancy if he would come up with music for a new version of this track, and I was elated and incredibly grateful that he gave me this.

Crochet and rayon 
captured in crayon
Sea Green shag carpeting
stretched beyond our bedrooms 
into Red-Violet mornings 
in that “Blue Marble” decade
	
Denim and rayon
captured in crayon
Raw Umber-walled 
rumpus rooms
fluoresced with
Saturday cartoons
in that "Soylent Green" decade

Color in the ‘70s
I’ve tried to stay
inside these lines	
Saturated, heavenly 
Keep the Shadow confined
to the back of my mind

Courtelle and rayon
captured in crayon 
Burnt Sienna cars we drove in
to the cold Cerulean 
pools we dove in
in that Barry White decade

Polyester and rayon 
captured in crayon
The Sunset Orange setting sun
torched the ocean 
and haloed everyone
in that "Mahogany" decade

Color in the ‘70s (Holocaust Nancy remix)

The way you turn your head towards him
is an unsolvable problem.
It’s a fraction of
the fading sunset,
a subset of this exhausted era.
The logic of your new mascara
and the rosy gloss
spread across your lips,
in the applied mathematics
of the over-dramatic,
lead to the conclusion 
of our relationship.

Why is the value of your ex-
undefined
and your feelings the variable
in the pitiless language
of zeros and ones --
of zeros 
and the ones
who leave the zeros behind?

The way you glow when he’s mentioned 
is a futile equation.
Fractal versions 
of my worst moments,
a sequence of sordid hypotheses
along the axes of impossibilities
that cut through the extremes of desire 
to shame and out liars.
This is the applied physics
of the chronically heartsick,
the shortest distance 
between two disappointments 
unspooling in a line 
on an average day 
in the mean time.

Your heart’s already
accounted for,
minus me  
and adding him instead.
But when did I
stop counting in your head?

[And here's a joke that didn't make the cut:
"You put the fib in Fibonacci"]

I Stopped Counting [as always, click on title for lyrics]

A torn, makeshift curtain
can be your only shield
to keep the world from rushing in

And a hand-me-down futon
in the middle of an unswept floor
can be the life raft you float on

Don’t turn the lights on
Don’t turn the lights on
Don’t turn the lights on
Please

You get used to the darkness
The lighter I hold
is just light enough
And I can’t care, 
and I can’t carry, 
any more than this

Somerville, Mass.

Before the entrance to the pub stands a doorkeeper.  Inside the pub a small crowd has gathered:  Lou Reed, Jonathan Richman and Mark Eitzel, Morrissey, Robert Pollard, Paul Westerberg and the elusive Don Lennon, the smart men from Wire and the surly Philip Larkin, Paddy McAloon, the good folks of Underworld and Yo La Tengo, Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, Ian Curtis and Lisa Germano, Annika Norlin, Stew, Mark E. Smith, Babybird, Rilke, and still others.  To this doorkeeper comes Marshmallow Fortresses, who prays for admittance.  The doorkeeper thinks it over for a moment, then answers, “Not now.”  
	Many days and years pass.  The pub door is always open, and through it he hears one miraculous song after another.  Marshmallow Fortresses repeatedly asks to enter so that he may  commune with his heroes, but the doorkeeper always responds in the same indifferent manner: “Not now.”  
	In time Marshmallow Fortresses grows old and his hearing begins to fail.  He gestures to the doorkeeper, who curtly asks, “What is it this time?”  In a creaky whisper, Marshmallow Fortresses observes, “How does it happen that for all these many years no one but myself has begged for entry here?”  The doorkeeper bursts out laughing.  “Are you serious?  Every  aging Smiths fan has been crowding this door since forever.  But, as for you, I’m now going to shut it for good.”

(An altar to Franz Kafka)   

tl: dr    Wire did it all, and did it all better


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