Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in L. Bangs' LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
10:05 am	Why'd You Do This to Me / Showing Me All I'm Good for / Is Watching You Sleep Spills Between the strokes He grows Fuzzy, A picture blown up, Indistinct grain, Dull color running over. She could be her sister A sloppy drunk Or a nun. Breathing is merely white noise. The razor sharpens Against skin surprisingly Tissue. Between the strokes, The spills and splashes Of raging red pearled, Of labored panting, Dim, Trail away. - 5/16/12 (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
11:49 am	Don't Know About My Dreams / I Don't Know About My Dreaming Anymore / All That I Know Is I'm Falling Carte Blanche Leaving lipstick on her napkin, Pouring salt into her coffee, She's butane aching for a spark. He's going to step on that spring again. Prayers hit the ceiling like cigarette smoke. They crawl, creep, Cloud the muggy room, Floating out the cracked window Only to blow apart in the midnight breeze, Fragile cotton strands Haunted by a whisper, A sigh, A moan. "This red could not be drier," She smiles. She has hurting on her mind. He's a hair-trigger, A dog ready at the bell Without reason, Too clueless for concern. The fan just moves the humidity in circles and waves, Above it all, Spinning only so much as required By the active current And the mute constraints of physics. - 5/15/12 (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 14th, 2012
12:32 pm	I Get Slandered / Libeled / I Hear Words I Never Heard in the Bible Consecration Pouring the cream, Skimming the suds from my skin, The grease and the steam, I am baptized blind and off my feet. The sky won't split, The doves are missing wings, But they sing, And maybe I understand. Slice the citrus and salted cheese. Everything begins again today. - 5/14/12 (Comment on this)
Friday, May 11th, 2012
4:36 pm	It's Like Learning a New Language Exodus So many stops. Before I can leave. Saw Jesus behind the counter, Enjoying the shorter hours And the steady check. Somebody sent him that bit About Isaac and his old man's knife And a threat of legal action From a prominent protestant organization, Shot him from the sands to the States Once again by way of Cairo. Now he's settled down, Making change at the bank, Happy in the suburbs Serving the the midlevel accounts And calling the cops on the bums Lingering in the lobby. "Have you seen the return on treasure in Heaven these days?" He grins as he hands me a pamphlet on 401ks I cannot care. Every radical Starts off shoving down pillars, But they're soon used to prop up the roof, Worn past recognition. I'm just need money for gas So I can jump town. - 5/11/12 (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
12:27 pm	Served with Smiles and a Noble Intent / I Think This Waiter's Got a Fake Accent Tobago Trinidad. You never know the power. Carve a notch beside the others. On the boat The daughter of England's highest priest Sees the men hid deeply, Barely brown between the tall leafy green. She cares little. The trees command her study. She longs to garden, water, Cultivate. The crawling across your skin You hardly notice after forty days. You never shake the soggy weight. The portly saint defies the damp, Hoarding tobacco in burlap sacks. He carved a flute he played for months, Silent now beside the bags. The pilot once wrote poems, The children told me back at bay. Now, he scans the seas, His dry eyes the only life Behind a face layered, A closed volume leather bound. Some of us sought for gold. Some of us hurt for expedition. Some of us simply left home. The naked boy in Margarita Fingered his brow, Threw his arms around, And offered yellow flattened suns. "Eyes of god," said the pontiff's daughter. I traded twenty nails. I am sure I never can return. The girls of Venezuela, Barely fifteen, Are warm and still can laugh, Though they utter spoken lava rather than words. My wife knew lullabies. The captain knows, As do I, Though we never speak of it together. Some might suspect but choose to brush it aside. Inside the jungle, The leaves enfold above our heads So thick, The rays of the sun cannot find us. - 5/10/12 (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
11:42 am	They're Not Making Plans / Because Now They Understand Autumn They've ripped down the movie screen. They're closing up the shopping mall. They made the televisions large. My pen rubs roughly over this letter Lying on top my wooden desk. I never see you. My friends and I spent college days Two to room, Painting the world we'd carve out From the ruins left us. They live away. Their cars are fast and gunmetal grey. Their words set off the laughter Of beautiful people. I doubt you drive at all. The evening we practiced breathing the fog While spinning slowly among the apple trees I still recall more sharply than any hour yesterday. I hear the earth give way beneath our feet, Crunching softly like a whisper, And the bark so spongy scratches Through the back of my wet cotton shirt. Can you smell the sugar rotting heavy, Sticky and sweet? It is dark. The alarm clock will blare before long. I miss you. Please write soon. - 5/9/12 (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
1:09 pm	You Make Me Late for Work / You Make Me Late for Church / So Hold to Me Never Meeting You blow it apart As the furry dandelion Decorates a sudden gust. Yet your smoke won't spread Your future. You're just losing in the stream. You never know where those eyes end, That vision dyed kaleidoscopic, That lemonade always lacking sugar. - 5/8/12 (Comment on this)
Monday, May 7th, 2012
3:35 pm	Take the Poison of Your Age / Don't Lick Your Fingers When You Turn the Page Insist I don't need beans, But I steady my sightline Through the stacks of cans. She's drifting Over. She's one of the ones Mistaking unconcerned with unawares. She sweeps away my words With her open hand And wonders why my focus won't wander Down the valley of her molded chest Open for exploration. Her eyes are plastic jaspers, Her routine intimations The set frosting On commercial snack cakes. She persists, Her shoulders square, Her forearms awkwardly approaching each other. She can't know Her bleached brown-sand body Bundles nearly everything I hate about the bored, The unanchored, The finished and the desperately confident, The America of the obliviously, Opulently worthless and wasted, The eternal mouth open I won't be stuffed inside. My pleasures are more acquired than they appear. Requiring longing not immediately saturated, Attention sustained beyond three minutes and thirty-three seconds, Half an hour, An evening with a definite career. I'm leaving with a tin of the black. She'll fill her own blanks tonight Or wash a little down the aisle. - 5/7/12 (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2012
12:23 pm	They Call Me Adam Yauch / But I'm M.C.A. Casting The core is a clod of stone, Figure without form, Devoid of detail, But the shell is breathtaking, Carved concave with mourning mouths And eyes upcast in sorrow. You can barely believe it does not breathe. The wax between fired Pours out Cascading. The molten metal Drains into the still hot hollow, Liquid days Until finally set, Inhabiting the hole. The exterior, The exquisite ecstasy of anguish, Is cracked and pulled away in crooked sections Like the shelling from a hard boiled egg, The obsession of months destroyed Releasing the masterpiece beneath. - 5/4/12 (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
10:53 am	Every Day I Look at the World from My Window / But Chilly, Chilly Is the Evening Time So that amazing woman I wrote about last year, the achingly lovely, fiercely intelligent one way beyond my reach, and I are getting married in a month. It has been a very good year. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
10:40 am	Baby, You Own Some Strange Control Over Me / Yeah, It's So Wild, It Hypnotizes Me 31 Days The air conditioner is ear fuzz everlasting, Demanding. The book splits apart to the chapters on Chicago, Norman, North Dakota, New Orleans, Ink set on pulp, Colors contained by territorial dashes Bounding, Promising. It is a little too cold in here. Cucumbers mixed with mango and honey Are hardly noticed, Though curried tomato sandwiches Ripe with mayonnaise Mandate a pause in poring over bohemian hotels And museums of obscure miscellany, All pulling with the gravity Of a promised future embrace. The breathing of the wall stops. The discomforting warmth subtly resumes. Through the curtains, A glow of scattered gold Undenied Weakens slower than sight Can catch. The temperature won't settle. The loveseat is too large today. - 5/3/12 (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
10:51 am	I'm Hungry / And the Hunger Will Linger (I was home sick yesterday, so there's no poem for May Day. I'm sorry / You're welcome.) High Pile The black hat On top the lacquered table Only hints, Never states or proclaims. A nylon snake Curves across the high-pile carpet, Slyly suggesting. The glass ashtray is sated. The bed is sharply made, Crisply flat, Clean. There is a strip of scarlet Starkly soaked into an ivory throw And a bowl of butterscotches Beckoning above. We still do not open our mouths Since they have ceased. With the bulbs burned out, The lightning throws electric sheets Below the raised bamboo Venetian blinds. We should have never come here. - 5/2/12 (Comment on this)
Monday, April 30th, 2012
11:16 am	Gentle Impulsion / Shakes Me / Makes Me Lighter / Fearless on My Breath The While The wail of the train Muffled by the water Amasses space. Is the spattering rain always so blue? Distance bedevils me Constant. The dull pulse of the tracks Trails into the clicker clatter of keys, Another rhythm of wheels Racing. Minutes are not miles. Running will not erase The churn of the engines While we chug away, Waiting with fingertips aching. - 4/30/12 (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 27th, 2012
12:13 pm	Realms of Bliss / Realms of Light / Some are Born to Sweet Delight Melos They slammed slim ships into the shores. They swarmed like suds streaming toward the falls. They buckled the gates and splintered the portals, Pushed over blocks cemented hardfast for generations old, And cleaned up with conflagration after the sword Hacked the old and forced the young To mean ministrations unspeakable. The inhabitants held up virtue as a shield And arms as inverted vaults, Praising the protection that would surely save the saintly. The pious paraded the past Festooned with deeds historic Proving constant charity and mercy While they awaited deliverance from the arrogant, amoral aggressors. Now See the occasional half-stone embedded in earth Or the broken piece of ploughshare stripped and partially peeled Lying alone and still Under the aloof sky. - 4/27/12 (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
12:00 pm	They All Have Hills to Fly Them On / Except for Lin Tai Yu Boundless They don't scurry for a door Or hurry toward the window. They absorb Imbibing you, As the atomized sun Soaks your skin, Making half moons Below your worlds of luminious seas Surviving near a wooden red nebula Curling about space unexpectedly creamy. They don't dash from. They travel astounded around. - 4/26/12 (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
10:20 am	I Was Drowning My Sorrows / But My Sorrows, They Learned to Swim Half She holds half a heart in her hand. Proclaimig in curly cursive, St Ends, Patron to the completed, The arrested, The left and forgotten. Rubbing the glass Only smears and smudges, Blurring observing behind. Whisper to the golden deaf ear. Maybe he can hear. St Ends, Heal us all, Baffled and abandoned. - 4/25/12 (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
11:17 am	My Bones Have to Move and My Skin's Gotta Breathe / You Pick up the Phone and I'm So Relieved Ours Ground, Banged-up, Hacked, blasted, and bashed about, It still maintains A shape of sorts. The scalding steam Yields no naked inch Open to grime. The onslaught of pounding abuse Leaves no free moment For rust to settle like a stain, Spread. There are some behind glass, Admired in museums by millions Momentarily distracted from the famous Glimpsed on glossy pages Decorating coffee tables. Those are beautiful In their ways, Untouched by ungloved fingers. We've the worked, The handled and utile, The worn and relied upon, Oxidized and worthy of unutterable wonder. - 4/24/12 (Comment on this)
Monday, April 23rd, 2012
4:28 pm	Go to Him Now / He Calls You / You Can't Refuse Finally Money is thick down at the bottom. Everything you put your palm to Is greasy, Spongy. You have needs, And you have needs. Memories of sandboxes and jungle gyms Feel fictional, A fantastical flight to shelter Always rotting to a cruel teasing taunt. You've left a scorchmark diary To tell all. The perfect pit calls. - 4/23/12 (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 20th, 2012
11:55 am	He's Not Like the Boys We Used to Have / Not Like Them at All Deployment Tonight I sat staring at the screen. I don't know if the flat bodies maneuvered To trigger funny bones or saw at my heartstrings. I only know you're away again, Away where the flower of fire Or the flying metal Might impound you forever. It's like living near the ice poles. Summer months see sun without cease, While winter wants for light, The late months Black and scraped with the scurrying of unseen creatures. - 4/20/12 (Comment on this)
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
12:03 pm	What You're Doing Downtown? / Tell Me, Baby Punge I drink As a parched man greedily swallows Mango juice, Open-throated, Implacable. You pull up shafts of wild green onions, Raging zestful and sweet. I drink you straight Until the world Warms and pulses Plushly. - 4/19/12 (Comment on this)