Goodbye Jukebox

Given up to Lake Michigan’s stomach.
The green bottom.
Green of cat’s eyes.
The air that hovers
above a hornet’s nest.
An ancient philosophy
brought you and I here together; the
timely togetherness of death’s ring.

It was born out of it and now I doodle
its figure in the margins of a napkin.

Exasperella

The cat breathes audibly
while she
on the other hand
snores
and the
angel in the room goes blind with cataracts.
Horses whinny
when they hear the name of God.
Here I am in the birdhouse, the
shed, the
mineshaft. Here I am
in the straightjacket
poolhall
hospital bed. Los Angeles
stretches
its legs and
saddens me. Children
crawl
from the tar pits of La Brea.
I recall pasts
that aren’t mine. Dunces
walk
the streets as geniuses and mock me.
The white room
oscillates, the
jail of light, the moon rings
like an alarm clock. Prey in
my
cat’s mouth
is my father as a hand puppet...

She left it at my feet.
I do not
recognize him.

TV

the dummies wear
bathrobes
while the president eats
bone marrow
salad.
the ranch is dead. bull
mastiffs
sniff the corpse
of
jughead’s sister.
mary ann never got
off the island. no one
voted
that way.

Who Knows

It was he
who
ate his man
in bed
with
the lights all off
Murcury
giving
red light to the room and
everything around
it swollen.
like a porkified summer.
like the knees of
sinners. as the morning sun
picks a fight. daring
the night
to
eat as much without
so much
as a belch.

Valentine

Left over. Left
with teeth marks in it. After
Ghandi proved
it was violent. A knife
shaved his whiskers
down
to mathematical impossibilities.
Clinton
gagged on the
pit of a peach.

Curmudgeon

Some people say
they
don’t like people
but when I say it I
really
mean it. I
don’t.
It isn’t anger. It’s
just a preference. People
bring about
such a
gooey trail of damage.
Inflicted
by
friends, teachers, bosses, the
government, enter-
tainment, and most of all, our
parents.
Loving and
eating us up, butchering
us with their love so
that we really
don’t
stand a chance.
We are stormed
by the glow
of
day. By the
skeleton’s face
in the mirror. The chair
at midnight like
one’s own bones. Murky
in their puddling. Masters
of empty clouds, anaesthetized. And
you know
that the future is a weed
covered
island in cold, choppy water
made of salt and iron
and it will only warm itself to you
once
you’ve given in; disarmed; laid
back and allowed
its mystery to greet you with
trust—as in
trusting
a cougar crouching in the
tree above you; or with its
fangs and tongue at your throat—trust
that this is occurring not in
your control or
anyone’s
celestial, divine or
terrestrial.

The Weed Gatherer - Poems by C. Kursel

I have digitally published a collection of poems entitled "The Weed Gatherer," utilizing www.flickr.com.

Many of these poems have appeared in this blog, and three have been published nationally. However, here they are revised and organized, including cover art.