B-Movie Scarecrow Contender

He was a contender

Or a pretender if the word

Punches through

Horseshoe meanings like

Prime luck

And choice cubes of

Square pepper roots

And skewered meats.

In any case his gold-ringed ear

Did sharpen

At my 'just arrived' ramblings

From afar, but close enough

Gabriel's the name, fables the game

All his winning ways

Got him too many celebrations

Now I know my weddings from my funerals, see

But even so:

The party sure depends on

Who's getting married.

Gabriel's, of course

Should be somethin' else

But he still got

Ripped from skin to bone

By an evil Oz speed wizard

Punished him so hard

He sat and rattled the forty-five minutes

Then punched him again for more

So his teeth seemed to shatter.

Spell-sick

The human fable then goes on

With ginger-red smarts

And two-colour shirts

And jack & jones pants

That he got put in a car

And all the while

He did think he would die

Because his heart was made of gold.

Sure enough

The stains were real

And the room quaked

With faces that tried not to look

Full of pain and dispositions

And got the ravens on his back

Like a b-movie scarecrow

With the bends.

But Gabriel bounced back

Archway angel and perfect

Got a muscle now

And goes for broke

Every time

With an ounce of speed, though

Blood-black and bothered in his heart

He goes to town

Where to find

Solace in a stranger.

And the beating seems to fade

Lines jump from scars to frown

XP points up one level

Not lawful good

Not chaotically evil

Some place else

With plots of earth in his mind

Like a bad movie

In a theatre he used to shoot up.

 THE STRANGER

THAT LIVES IN ALL OF US

The next person is the most beautiful, scary, important, mysterious, vital and hurtful thing we will ever have to attempt to know intimately in real life. If only we could ever fully know what its like to not be ourselves, then we would be ready for the next life. To shed all our hides; to think without the parameters of our own thoughts; to see without the visual archives and spatial references of our own eyes; to hear without the world of sounds and expected sounds of our own ears; to feel what another feels through their alien skin and foreign pores; then we would indeed be ready. But first, I would go back and meet myself. What a different creature I would seem: Or perhaps I would just recognise the stranger that lives in all of us.

Doctors Advice to Young People

(O.D.B. R.I.P)

Bludgeoned through

Rhymes like

Ol' Dirty Bastard

Dead before arrival

Eardrops to whale sounds

Deep below oesophagus drills

Through thirteen children

Off-spawn

Mathematical-radical

Over-mind.

It could be hard one day

To realise the 'pimp game'

Shot through to the hip

With doctors advice to young people

Crawl under your covers

And don't ever come up for air

Or play for keepsakes

Wu-Tang

Kong-Klan

Copping out so that others

Might collect dust

On their record shelves

Shop liftin

Weight pullin

Powder-faced villains

Never could keep a clean nose

Dusta-rhymes.

With this thought

Strapped to and raised up

Tyrone Jones; luck, dumb and smart

The saws and jackhammers of industry

Pounds workshop shy luddites

Other workmen come through

The song-mill churns

Inbox foetus make-dos and maybes

New York sun burns

How is a gathering of black air

To explain the night-time

Or your name on a paper mattress

Nothing good to lie on.

Resplendent cat killer

I dreamt of

Strangling a balkan lamb

The meat will sour if you

Hold it too long

Up for eye-shots

By unnamed western tourists

Such dreams

Are a sure sign of

Repoman garbage head theft

Weighted finely

To blast compartments of identity.

I read The Third Policeman's Atomic Theorem

And some bicycles do appear

To be men

Or custom officials

Whose uniforms seem tailored

To school productions

Not a terrorist state

With concentration lamps

Shining brightly everywhere.

His clothes

Had more traces of life

Than his skin

Hiding from the sun

Inside a security screening megalith

There was a voice about my life's work

And taking things away from me

Constantly

Either deep inside

Or way outside

Social stratosphere pilot schemes

It's a funny thing

When a white man wants to teach a lesson.

Perhaps Ol' Dirty

Eagle-mouthed

Owl-eyed

Dingo-brained

Elephant-sealed

Actually died in such a production

By invisible junior high school hands

Inside his chest

Lonely pains of the heart

Balkanic tremors

And innocent until

Proven dead.

All poems by PARKBENCH