Kurt Eisenlohr

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I paint peaches to come alive and be eaten

the work-clock
is the god-clock, is the god.
all other
clocks are irrelevant, false.

she kicks me at six a.m.
and again at seven.
there is sun and ceiling and coffee.
there is a window and a world.
I close my eyes and roll over into
sheets of terror and moan.

the blood pencils out of my nose.
too much drinking, she says.

insolence of smoke
is insolence of fingers in your eyes.
cancer is a factory, is a dinosaur
a giant bird.

rent is four hundred dollars, she reminds me
then there's food, heat and electricity to consider.
strips of bacon popping in the pan
cigarette pissing upward, the dark world
out there, hellish, brightly lit.
she drags a comb through her hair
and asks, where are we going tonight?

I am burning in the oil of ordinary
I am a blue building
knotted at the throat
on fire
falling down.

tuesday, june 14, 1994.
century, millennia.
the busses come and go with practiced regularity
the drivers part of the machine
a part of the part of the part.
van gogh's sunflowers
writhing in a japanese bank vault
july through september, at the indigo gallery.

we exist like hogs in the mouth
of a rose, she says, spilling wine down my chest.

the snake of time is egyptian silk
winding round necks and rivers and sky.
snakes have teeth, they are tongues.
time walks, time talks.
time carries a cane, rides a chariot
drools in streets of static flesh.

I pace the room in slow drunken circles
eating my own tail, endless.
no thoughts rattle this skull.
I am blood and bone.
I am American Made Automobiles.

we are having a party on the 17th, she says. your birthday.
be sure to pick up wine
and party hats...

the days and nights have edges
razors, all sharp.
the rain will not stop.
the world wants its chaos
to be my own
wants me to stand up and dance a death
dance for $5.50 an hour--help!--wants me
to smile.

walking into the path of the fan
the whirl of the blades
laughing.
she remembers this motion forever.

a cat shoves its head
through the window (broken)
I throw a hammer at the wall.
the cat disappears, the window remains.
shriek of birds.

this destination unites us all
in the context of our common goal...
a voice in the belly of my radio.
click it off...sit with the walls
this room.

I paint peaches to come alive
and be eaten.
I paint the spider and the fly and the web
that catches
paint the bombs and drop them
on the faceless menace
black white red purple brown...

Rome is going down again
Rome is put back together and
torn apart.
end of day. jackels
dogs of bad weather in my head.
a landlady waves hello from a sagging porch
sun exploding no visions.

we are out of milk, she tells me
we are out of almost everything.
dress, doorknob
curve of earth and thigh.

legs parted to climb on top
sink down on me.
don't worry...

everything is justified

like bottles against walls.


this krt poem was originally published in the fab but short 
lived downtown New York literary mag VERBAL ABUSE, "Sex & 
Macaroni" Issue #4

Thanksgiving Prayer William S. Burroughs

For John Dillinger 
In hope he is still alive



Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome American guts--

thanks for a continent to despoil and poison--

thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and
danger--

thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin, leaving the
carcass to rot--

thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes--

thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until
the bare lies shine through--

thanks for the KKK, for nigger killing lawmen feeling their
notches, for decent church-going women with their mean,
pinched, bitter, evil faces--

thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers--

thanks for laboratory AIDS--

thanks for prohibition and the War Against Drugs--

thanks for a country of finks--yes,

thanks for all the memories...all right, let's see your arms...
you always were a headache and you always were a bore--

thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest
of all human dreams.

eat

the town was Chicago
the night was like any other night.
my old man died in bed after eating a bowl of
onion soup and
they carried him down the stairs and out
into a summer rain
where a car that looked like
any other
was waiting
at the curb, and of course
during his 48 years
he had taken a lot of
car rides
but
this other thing
I'm sure
was a first for him.

the funeral service was held on the stage
of a high school gymnasium.
I sat there stiff
staring out at the gaggle of faces like an extra
in a student play
while a voice moved through a microphone.
we were all wearing nice shoes
and outside
the sun was a high, impossible
diamond,
and the past was
everywhere.

aunt laura died on a kitchen floor
after coffee
but before
eggs and bacon.

she had quite a service too
though it was smaller
and my shoes weren't nearly as nice.

the thing to do on a slow afternoon
is to quietly polish your shoes
and be sure
that the meal you make
is a good one.

Meat and Marrow

the providence of men
is madness
and when they disembowel you with lies
look not to heaven but to the tattered
self
reflected ten-fold
in a world of shattered soul

the great works of art?
gamble them against your hunger
pile them on the floor
naked so you see
their danger

everything flesh turns against birth

the bartender leans forward
yellow hands and lying smile
you drink
letting the arms of the clock
fall around your feet
your most precious art
pissed away
exorcised

the intensity of the endeavor
necessitates
the narrowness
of the life

meat and marrow
the breaking of bone
and time and mortality

did you really believe that art alone
could save you from this?

o child child child

your father is a stone
in a forgotten cemetary
from which no one bothers
to pull the weeds 

Gutless

it's been raining for 13 days but
God has been dead much longer

and I step deftly over the man
lying drunk in the stink of his own
piss at the corner of burnside and oblivion

my boots slap a puddle
part a sea
split a hair

a pigeon shits
and he shouts at my back

"hey buddy I ain't eat in a week!"

but I don't give him any money

cuz I'm as gutless 
as God was good

and I'm dying for a beer 

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