Second Verse: Same as the First

Infidelity ladies and gentleman I am a creep
Because I am incapable of infidelity do you
Know the kind of loyalty to one being this requires
Why the sand between my ears the oceanic soul
That is Elliot Le Ginn it does not comprehend
Poor old doughy belly poor old cock as limp
As a wet pastry the day dwells on me the day
When I should awaken covered in plastic having
To shit not knowing how knowing I got to put food
In this body before it weakens and figure out who in hell
Tied me up like this the ocean is silent the sand is grave-like

Infidelity ladies and gentlemen I am half-asleep
And I like it that way the moon is oceanic spilling light
Through the greasy lens of my bedroom mirror the sandy black
Behind my closed eyes my cock as hard as a red weapon
It’s going to be a bloodbath tonight in the arena of Le Ginn’s
Sexual brain but he plays with himself and cheats on his playmate
All the same are sanity and fidelity just about the same how they anchor
A man make him wrap himself up in what plastic no I can’t think
Not like this anymore the cruelness of loneliness what’s worse poor
Le Ginn! you’ve chosen to live this way, every day, again and again
Second verse: same as the first Second verse, same as the first

Episode From a Hamsun Novel

I had a dream I went out on a boat
With some ladies some gentry and a doctor
All dressed up real fine a merchant with a silver
Emblem on his shirt font doctor with a lame leg
Edwarda looked at me one moment the doctor the next
She asked me if she could come to the hut then she turned
To the doctor and asked him if she could feel his knee then
She turned back to me then back to the doctor I was uneasy
I was uneasy I was uneasy I was elated Edwarda’s shoe fell
From her foot onto the boat bottom I was elated I was elated
I was elated I was uneasy now what could have been wrong with me
My dog was tied up at home thinking of me I was elated I picked up
Her shoe and tossed it into the water

Some boatmen fished it out I apologized profusely for throwing
The shoe later in the ballroom the doctor made jokes about ecstasy
In the evening and talked to all of the ladies Edwarda sometimes and
She gave him her undivided attention he was my rival but I laughed at
His jokes nonetheless I applauded Listen to the doctor I said Listen
To the doctor then Edwarda approached me in front of a group of six
Or seven and spoke of how kind I was for paying the boat man
For retrieving her shoe from the water the shoe she had dropped by accident
But I had never paid the boatman and I told her so but she brought the boatman in
Oh boatman she cried and in he walked all hunched over she asked the boatman
If he had received some money earlier today Yes he began You mam gave me
Some after I retrieved your shoe she dismissed him That will be enough she said
And looked me in the eyes my eyes were watery red and dry That proves it she said

Later in the night I was the last to leave because Edwarda asked me she took my hand
She told me she was tired she said she didn’t want me to leave my dog was tied up
At the shack probably he was thinking of me But I am thinking of you too she said and
I just about believed her until I saw in the corner the cane belonging to the doctor
the doctor who was lame and I knew he would be coming back Why don’t you spend the
night with the doctor

Heidegger Was a Nazi Sympathizer

I don’t know anymore
About this poetry my mind
Has been made up for so long
What’s the use of exploring it
What are the car keys for mustn’t
I just go when sitting the world’s all
Too real the grass is something pullable
Can dirt scream it should the dirt should
Come flying upwards in anger this is what
I think when it’s poetry I don’t know anymore
I’d like to be like James whose fun is all in movies
Where the earth is in danger and he drinks so he never
Knows that it is saved eventually by grassy-headed aliens
And one beautiful woman, the fifth element, no, he never understands
So he passes out each night believing that even our fantasies are hopeless
I should ask him sometime because he might know if the world
Has ever felt as strange as it does to me when I think
Anything at all.

A Festival of Unhappy Men

I’m going to drive my car to Bradley’s tonight
He and James are hosting an indoor festival probably
There won’t be ladies but that’s alright we’re used to
Being lonely you don’t say we’re used to staring at
One another’s stupid beards and our eyes being so watery
Dry that we must be crying half the time and without
Ladies there will probably be a fight me and Bradley
Most likely I can see it now:

Bradley says to me get up and grab me a beer make yourself
Useful I am useful I tell him more sincere than I would like
I am useful I go to work I fall down what else make yourself
Useful he repeats and you can’t even go to work I say you just
Fall down and he claps me on the face another way to say
He punches me and I want to fall down as if to finish a cycle

What will not happen is Bradley exclaims you cannot end the cycle
Le Ginn that is completely against the nature of cycles the men
I know whom I surround myself with they live forever they’re always
Falling down

Grandma

My grandmother fell down the stairs
I was at the bar when this happened
Me and James, we were arguing about the sun
Was it going to keep up forever keeping us
Alive or was it going to get tired one day and fall
Into a Great Lake You’re not happy, said James

When I got home Grandma was a human mess
No human should be so fragile that you’re afraid
To hold her wrist even what if I pick her up too hard
What if she fades during transportation call me
An optimist but I knew then the sun would keep up
Keeping us alive for a long long time that this playground
Here with the merry-go-round made of bones and the aluminum
Slide made of desire and the swing set made of our genitalia
Because it’s funny that way was alive and laughing hell James,
I thought, I am happy I just don’t think it’s right that’s all

My Life is Suddenly Different

I don’t get invited
To dinner parties anymore
There’s a funny story
My skin feels gray
One time I pushed a woman’s hand
Over a cooked steak I said
Touch the whole thing touch it
Now you have to eat it
My mouth is yellow why

Friends don’t ask me
To do them a favor pick up
My wife at the bus station
My cock is gristle
One time licked a wife’s cheek
For slapping me and said next time
It’s your slipper now you have to eat it
My memory spiderwebs in all directions
At once

Sermon for the Mounted

Mom said be lucky
Marry a woman with money
I said shut up and drink your soda
And feel lucky to drink anything
Honey

My dad said don’t talk
To your mother that way
I asked him whose hearse this is
Go outside and get some air
Poppy

Later on in the mirror Gabriel
Came bearing white satin sheets
I asked him if he was prissy
Looking to score get your pink ass cloud-
Bound mister you’re giving me
The creeps

We seesaw all our lives methinks
Between talking trash and wanting heaven
To be as black as our tender assholes
My mother said my father said
I was intolerable

I save you all and welcome
You all to my sea-sky hearse

Elliot Le Ginn King of the Jews
Makes a living from his mother’s purse

Bad Song Can’t Get It Out of My Head

Traffic lights in my head
Swamp is my stomach
Concrete is my legs
My woman wants me to go

On a three day road trip
To a white clinic that serves soup
Every night my woman is a madman
She eats toast crust for breakfast
And smacks my love she smacks it
Whips my beard across the bedroom
Like a month-old hairy cream

Say there’s congestion in my skull
Wet rot in my gut
Legs hard because I’m nervous
My woman wants me to go

Bad Memory 1

I was married three times
Two I can’t remember
One never was my wife

Linda lives in true brain
Don’t want to talk about it

Linda is representative
Of nothing, a leggy woman with crabs
A death harbinger, a human playground

Wasn’t my wife
Don’t get thinking
Wasn’t a symbol

Sometimes I think an embryo
The way she collided with my life
Brings whatever’s bad and lays it there
Like a dead bird in the crib
For instance

I drove my truck into the side
Of The Hideout and
Almost killed a tramp
Named Linda

That’s not true now
Who is hiding
In my open hand
What woman haunts
Eat time, shit time, time time

She quivered in her slender
Competent throat and
Shrouded her magnificent
Body of light across my true brain

Exit Elliot Le Ginn

My goddamned body says to me
You’d be better off
Up in that tree
Dangling like Henry’s
Multi-colored lamp
Shining light on mule grass

Now I fucked a person first age eleven
Put soap on my body and shit myself pink
And thought I was different didn’t feel good
Felt like my body was made of wood

First hated a person when I was old enough to drink
A blonde-hair girl with eyes white like the sink
Led me to the bathroom and yanked at my pecker
Wanted to rip off the pink digit stiff as deadman's finger
And stuff my gravely mouth with the thing

My pal says to me, Elliot, your nightmares, fellow
Your nightmares have been teasing you
Like what a woman does to her hair
My mother, my hole in the ground

I’m swinging like a body in the air