I went to the self-help section
To feel less alone
I was reminded by the cool book with the blue binding
It’s called self help because, in other words, you have to be alone.
So many of us stood together alone
Here in the self-help section.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged bookstore, poem, Poetry, Self Help | Leave a Comment »
Tangled in the sun, the bird he flew
Came back, didn’t say what he knew
Came back with a song he knew only as a scream
Came back in a life he knew only as a dream
Wax in my ears, the siren quakes the sea
I don’t know what the sirens sing to me
Basaltic rock you wake dead or as a king
When you hear the sirens sing
Stuffed my ears with the wax from the bees
I don’t know what the Sirens sing
I ate a bird, something that flew
I wondered if it he knew he was through
I fly when I dream and that means I fly
People think they can’t, I don’t know why
Tangled in the sun the bird he flew
Came back didn’t say what he knew
Wax in my ears the siren quakes the sea
I don’t know what the sirens sang to me
Basaltic rock you wake dead or as a king
When you hear the sirens sing
Stuffed out ears with the wax from the bees
I don’t know what the Sirens sang to me
(Lyrics to the song “The Sirens,” now available on the Salon de la Guerre album From Sour To Cinnamon, copyright 2019.)
Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged Alternative rock, From Sour To Cinnamon, Music, Salon De La Guerre, The Sirens | Leave a Comment »
The magazine split open between us
“It says here a couple must share values.”
Cosmopolitan broke into our fight like an outspoken drunk aunt
“If you can’t agree on religion or money, you’ll never agree
On anything else that matters,” she said with true hurt.
Well, sign the divorce contract on my back, then!
Helen Gurley Brown, the ghost witness to the tearing paper
And the rending pen.
Then three drinks of sad well silence
On the next page: “How to please your man!”
Posted in Poetry | Tagged communication, Cosmopolitan, Helen Gurley Brown, magazine, Relationships, values | Leave a Comment »
My car was white, hominy and dead in the sun
I had burned out the starter. I had not kept the tank full
She divorced me by dying
And sent me to move over land in a bus’s guts
“We are responsible for our own happiness,”
I said to her as they towed her away
“You were the wise one to leave me.”
So what a shit would I be to say a bad thing about her now
When she’d helped me see how relationships are?
I mean with a car, of course.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged car, poem, Poetry, Relationships | Leave a Comment »
We bounce on the Siberian ground
The snow absorbs the laughing sound
Your breath has shards and your voice is weak
And when the soil breaks, its gas will speak
Of the sometimes lips of Siberian birds
On their grocery rounds, speak in minor thirds
They too act with a unitasking brain
The gas on which they float is sane
Find its idiom in childish lungs
Stentorian notes and Götterdämmerung
Mingles and cocktails with poisons in the air
And the masses of people who once lived there
Gas gives its spirit, its spirit released
Its valediction, the ocean its priest
And when its moment of flower has ceased
The human hole seeks to close in peace
Find its idiom in childish lungs
Stentorian notes and Götterdämmerung
Mingles and cocktails with poisons in the air
And masses of people who once lived there
And it got too hot for us to live there
But our letters remain, its past we share
The flowers open, the flowers stare.
(Lyrics to “Methane Moth,” from the new Salon de la Guerre album From Sour to Cinnamon.)
Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged climate change, ecology, environment, From Sour To Cinnamon, global warming, methane, Methane Moth, Salon De La Guerre, Siberia | Leave a Comment »
The boy sparrows on the cigarette sidewalk
Came smiling dressed with their black beards
I told my son about the alpha males
How these tiny black chins
Meant those sparrows swung the biggest dicks.
But then I had to add the part about empathy and pity
And how to feel for and not dominate what is small
What is brittle, what is beauty—so he can be,
You know
a
better
human.
My burden and my fear, to teach him softness.
And meanwhile nature mocked me
While those tiny little birds hopped around
Pushing the girl birds out of the way
And swinging their tiny, little sparrow dicks
On the cigarette sidewalk.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged alpha males, gender, machismo, poem, Poetry, sparrows | Leave a Comment »
The trash bag goes out.
My trash is the fossils of the feelings I had two days ago
And no longer remember
Hunger. Angry checks sent. Fear I’d starve the kid
And now my anxious beer bottles go porpoise-nosing in the green Pacific
Angry wrappers of chocolate. Cigarette butts that gave your lungs gas
And the thrill of paying for a small whiff of death
All these little skeletons, the spirit gone out of them.
Possessed and unpossessed.
While its despondent eyes turned toward new lusts
For breasts and thighs and legs and skin
And other things the soul makes into paper
Posted in Poetry | Tagged ecology, environment, landfills, Pacific garbage patch, plastics, poem, Poetry, trash, waste | Leave a Comment »
The latest Salon de la Guerre album drops this week. It’s called From Sour To Cinnamon, and it’s a slate of big candy-like pop songs with a dark center. Check out this track from the album, set to release Monday.
All the wrongs on this album were made by yours truly, including music, lyrics and production.
“Amphibious Grandkids”
By Eric Randolph Rasmussen
Copyright 2019
Take them to the aquarium
Take them to the Grand Canyon
Set your grandkids loose to swim
While you sit at look at ’em.
The froggy skin and the set of gills
You never knew we’d have them
But these fish were spawned from your loins
You’d never know to look at them
Your grandchild no longer walks the earth
Or plays his video game
A patronymic and a set of fins
And the memory of land
Your legacy in sedimentary rock
Your fossil of vestigial hands
Cause you bequeathed your sons a water world
While you drove your car around
Your grandchild no longer walks the earth
Or plays his video game
Now he plays with a set of flippers
But still has your name
A patronymic and a set of fins
And the memory of land
Your legacy in sedimentary rock
Your fossil of vestigial hands
Cause you bequeathed your sons a water world
While you drove your car around
Once you thought you’d take Manhattan
Now it’s all Long Island Sound
I don’t believe that he glitch-killed me
It was crazy enough to kill you
Amphibious grandkids swim away
Too hungry to be mad at you
Posted in Music, Salon De La Guerre | Tagged Alternative rock, Amphibious Grandkids, climate change, college rock, ecology, From Sour To Cinnamon, pop, power pop, rock, Salon De La Guerre | Leave a Comment »
She gave him a choice—
She’d sleep with him on the first date
Or he could wait and let the relationship develop.
All of her at once, one and done.
Or he could wait and maybe be her boyfriend
Share more days, perhaps more months, more years—50 years.
Funerals marriages miscarriages births rent checks bridesmaids
Wills estate planning
“But no do-overs,” she said.
“Fuck me tonight, and you’re gone after that.”
It was like haggling over a color TV
On Fulton Street
But he pawed at her. Yes, shit, of course he pawed at her.
He couldn’t help it
He had had had to have her and lose her forever
“I’ll call a car service.”
My advice, gents, is wait.
You will never go wrong with somebody
That specific
How good would it have been to be wanted
By somebody who knows exactly what she wants?
Posted in Poetry | Tagged poem, Poetry | Leave a Comment »
“Hi. It’s your drug addict family member again
You know the drill. I’m asking for money.”
She didn’t even hide it anymore. The way the sun bleaches
The bank buildings in the morning. The way the
white stone and travertine hurt your tired eyes
on the expressway
And your stomach’s tight as the shadows are all splashed out
By a humorless sun.
“Can’t hide from me.”
It was kind of like that.
Posted in Poetry | Tagged addiction, poem, Poetry, travertine | Leave a Comment »
Beauty is Imperfection 