by Rick Young | Jan 31, 2014 | Uncategorized
Carcinogens can be found in aisle C.
Around the cabbage, cukes and cummerbunds.
Just before the coke and cocoa, comrade.
Cigarettes in cartons, if you’ve funds.
Careless castanets cascade around us.
Chokecherries and chainsaws caterwaul.
Cell phones and cicadas seem to call us.
Canted carousels have their own wall.
Continental cuisine packed in cardboard.
Cellophane and cake cohabitate.
Cold cream, chili, coconuts and cordite.
Cards that cry you must congratulate.
Carry-alls that celebrate consumption.
Craven chessmen carved of cedar wood.
Cans that cannot conceal cruel corrosion.
Chemicals would choke you if they could.
Cash and carry, credit or cold cash:
Cancer capital is its own crash.
by Rick Young | Jan 23, 2014 | Poem
Tonight we face our frantic god. Hillbilly period over. Period. Only backfire prevents
soaring. The inevitable machine of want. Waves of personnel, dreaming beaches.
Triumvirate lighting and smoke deodorant. Cooking with gas. The lawn on loan.
Banjo on the brine. Tumbling from the sky comes another basement story. Sick feet
down and rising. Here an industrial guitar takes possession of the voice. Crestfallen.
(cut one)
We stand on clouds, tending our rigid definition of sky. Lonely is the bird averse to eggs.
We ride the downhill grain, pretending toward art. Affection is the second step toward
nature. Naturally, we send our best pinch hitter up there and he belts it on the roof.
All is lost. Our lives are sold as advertising, bones torn out for furniture.
Shirley, Goodness and Marcy are drawing straws for the remains. This powder must be.
(the soul)
We chew cud at the post office, spit blood at the tax museum. Four stars fall
out and shoot right through our eyes. We’re back "in the fold," grown old,
and farmed out for pleasure. Too late for hobo life, too early for mourning tea.
The pasts we have wasted now surround us. Our profile’s on the thirteen
dollar bill. Try dancing in elevators for misdirection. Paralyzing anxiety beckons.
Tonight the weeds will finally take control. Central planning will realize
the ghost it fashioned. And we will be standing in wetsuits on mountains,
waiting for the ocean of regret. Singing songs to old teachers and fictional pals.
Remembering the horse that got us to the path that got us to the end zone.
We must watch as the battle floats upward, enveloping all notion of good haven.
We pledge ourselves to grandpa’s bomb. The fury of the vessel intrigues our senses.
Dance this weigh. Tons of love. The heretic’s heredity. Watch someone watching the skies.
Somewhere. In the archive is the essence of an old war. We gear up for retreat.
Tiptoe through a smoking land. The bull loves the blood. More satanic babies buzz
the vatican. The pope is pasted with advertisements. His cherry blossom skirt reveals
old thigh. We make him eat nutmeg and recite the blues. In big clown shoes and pasties.
He’s wasted on the scent of Christ and we’re feeding him clues. Nothing stops this fear.
On the road to something better, led by saints and stock assassins. Skipping stone
with razor edges. We elevate the mean. Without meaning. We escalate and
expectations fall. Bags of garbage, crack and money are exchanged for body bags.
We are a bagged nation, boxed in by our frustration. Gestating clean designer death.
We dance wildly by the grave, waving coupons and pointing away. Not today.
Our hosts have bled us dry and tossed us in the combat ring. Sycophantic
calibrated expedited atrocities. Monstrosities and their machines. We’ve the means.
Foil of Camelot. Discarded packs of spoontime filler. We are lashed to the massed
hysteria. Chewing the fat news. Pulling away. Conditioned to the constant sound
of sirens and the squealing of the muse. In black shoes. We planned to fight the power,
but the power went away. The story awry. We can only lionize the pain. Rock candy rain.
by Rick Young | Jan 19, 2014 | Poem
The cat has used up all her lives.
And leaves us with tears in our eyes.
Bequeathed soft memories of fur.
We’ll miss her knead. We’ll miss her purr.
by Rick Young | Jan 18, 2014 | Poem
Boy who squawks meets promise boy above the straight and narrow.
Everyone is happy with the tally on the square.
Peasants balk perceptively and irk the minefield pharaoh.
Massive waste of paper is occurring everywhere.
Machines learn to babysit and greed is just a specter.
Somewhere sullen women lip-read Nietzsche on the train.
Automatic autocrats devise a better vector:
Easy on the underground but taxing on the brain.
Past the wash of history, the dirt of time unravels.
Cheaters speak of eloquence and highwaymen of peace.
Politicians pontify the latest scams with gavels.
Liquid loving landlords conjure up another lease.
Man who squawks tells promise man that nothing they did matters.
Crowds who cry at movies unexpectedly take flight.
Leaping lords and devil dogs mad dance as kinship scatters.
Oil-encrusted meaning slowly covers mother night.
Ghost who squawks and promise ghost are fading out of sight.
by Rick Young | Jan 17, 2014 | Poem
I’m walking in the city with my lobster pal.
Ragged Claws (after T.S.) always draws
bemused stares, and an occasional passerby
will stop to ask why he’s green instead of red.
This upsets the poor creature to no end.
He blanches to think of friends and acquaintances
who’ve been broken, buttered and consumed.
Bad enough to live one’s life skulking for garbage
on the ocean floor. But to be hunted, scalded, eaten,
was a fate no creature deserved. He calls all humans
"Quasi’s," for Laughton’s magnificent boiling weaponry.
We stop at the occasional store window,
move quickly by pet shops and restaurants,
proceeding toward the Museum of Natural History,
where he’s pledged a shift to protest the new exhibit,
"The History of Deep Sea Fishing in New England."
After that, we’ll get takeout Chinese and head home.
And tonight, again, I will try to extract his d.n.a.
in my fervent attempt to grow a claw of my own,
following my lifelong dream of a career in the WWF.
I’ll call myself Super Snapper, and no hissing sheik,
six-hundred pound farm boy or dog faced muscleman
will withstand the power of my terrible shell.
I envision a red cape, a hood with tentacles,
and, in the corner, my crustacean friend,
egging me on with the frantic wavings
of his own viselike appendages.
