A few moments without you

Wihle I hear the shower water
breathing with your body and
you blow your nose into your
wet hand. I get a few little moments
without you to diddle this little poem.

A poem that sits like amber
the ocean diamond in a current
of memory. The ocean floor seems
different than the shore and I
send out this sap from the plant
of my fingers; this orangic little
trade into the ocean, into the sea

to be found many years later
like a children's faire tales
discovered again as an adult
rereading it to make sure that
it's ok for his child.

I really
can't believe that
children would read
that parents would read to
children about a woman
who was born at sea and
returns to sea to die
loveless, away from home
alone and dead.

"are you awake"
she calls from the
shower as she towels off
only to discover her little
boyfriend clicking away
rapidly from this little
poem.

the Irish Ringer

Death, you silly little falcon,
you, drifting on the heat from the canyon floor,
the little themals of my subconcious, you get to come and scare me
whenever you damn well please
well please leave me alone for just this once,
this one little moment.

a callused short breathing life isn't a life is it
death?
the black maltese stone-face glance
that is unshakable and unbreakable
lets me face-out the innards of the
carrion that is respect and dignity
and whatever shred of lifeness you
once knew you had. that things is
gone. Just think about it. NOw
we only get this one moment this
little dance and snapping of the
clapper with the snip. a little
reading and writing and poof

right in the kisser. gone.
Unimportant and destroyed.
a salty after-taste in the
ocean or topic of dinner
conversation or a memory
that doesn't last. a name
the is no longer known.
a fragment.

I will have no visitors
to this apartment in
los angeles. I have
no Otto to re-tell my
story. I won't die soon
from the greatness
but more like a
spider down a
water spout
but the sun
won't come
out for
this
rain
not
now
oh
no
dr
op
pe
d
d
o
w
n
a
g
a
in

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to me

I was walking out there
a stranger on the sea
above the peaks and crests dear
those sirens wait for me

a song I couldn't quench
like a desert thirsty
soaring 'bove my head with
wings spread openly


like the arms of the proud
parents holding the newborn
like the shadow of a black cloud
waiting it's silver turn

They cover my ears with
the warmth of honey
the beauty of their voice girl
a toothed whimsy plea

They dance in the moonlight
like needles from a pine tree
spinning with nature's wings
opened gracefully

like the arms of a child
around her parent's neck
like the shadow the trees smile
that the morning sea reflects

my feet skim the surface
like a tongue atop teeth
the fish see my soles
i feel the bubbles from beneath

the lord comes down
in the form of a winged queen
whose eyes are like amber
stones veiled in the sea

the arms of lord consuming
my heart
the wings of the angels
tearing it apart.

like the arms of a child
around her parent's neck
like the shadow the trees smile
that the morning sea reflects

Flames will arise and Devour me

I have such a new and dark
unsettled FEAR that my new
life, with this new job
and this new hair cut
and slacks and fat gut
will turn me into you.

you the drinker
you the cheater
you the snitch
the unconnected eyes
the joker in serious times
the destroyer, the plastic
injected culture, the waste

you are the waste, and I
I am the one who must look
for newness in something
broken, deprecipt
a tainted world of signs
with no signfier
of religious men
peldaling pornography
4 for $20

and I get right in on it
buy 3 get 1 free
you could fit those SKUs
in that slot there,
move out the Vitamin Water
and that juice is getting
pulled

my brain quakes and melts
with uncontrollable pain
when I say these
when I repeat these
words. I am already there.
the extra large ale is waiting
and the tv embers.

I didn't think I could hate
this world anymore. than I do.
now I can't. anymore. I have.
I have said that "No means No"
but you relent and push and
hit me until I scream that
I love you.

I love you.
I love you.

8 Days in Mexico

The best is yet to come. An open window for the closed doors above and below. A home to fall from the sky and the flies will come in a pack. Hordes. The question of right and wrong will seem trite once we haven’t had decisions for years. Generations. Let’s destroy the greatest nation in our history. You and I. calling all zombies. All burnouts. All wastes. Calling all self-righteous thinkers who are “a#1.” King of the hill. We have a chance to destroy and rebuild. A chance to change the world. A chance to look out over the landscape and say “I burnt that” “I killed that dream” “I am the king of regress”

Oh oh the king is dead. Adios Del Rey.

Answer me this question: are the questions worth asking? Because once we know that we don’t know, what else is there: tolerance? Acceptance? Understanding? Or patience? Endurance?

Waiting buoyantly in the shallows, we all know that we must swim out into deep water. The bottom will drop from beneath and we must know how to swim. We must. Our eyes and our ears and everything, will be enveloped. This waiting and wadding. This act of attempted stability. Is just a little game, an ongoing joke between the all-knowing and the ignorant. A lost coin toss. A jack of all trades played as a spade, but its really a heart. The big trick of our world is that our voice and our thoughts and our views and our eyes. Our whole fucking identity dis. A. pears. Is no longer. Once we are no longer. We get to keep nothing. NOTHING.

So what is the deal with everything, when nothing is so important. Why do we make everything so important. It’s nothing that’s important. Lets focus on that. The absence. The darkness. The without. The tar that clings to the bottom of your foot at the beach. The pupil in the eye of a killer. The elevator shaft on a New York skyscraper. The space between your legs. The heartless spade that sits at the bus stop and acts as if he will live forever. We will never live forever. I will live for never. I am not alive. Not now. Not while you read this. I have become a gooseegg, an emptyset, ashes. I have heard a voice of the dead before. In fact, that voice is pulling on my chest and I have been told that I once remembered a God, but when you are prepared for nothing and you get nothing, it’s not that bad. But I am not prepared. No one will ever be. Not for the absence of existence. Not for death. Not a 23 year old kid. He’s not ready. Not anyone younger or older. They are fools to dance when death’s on its way, but hey. That’s all we got. A little dancing. A little breathing, a little loving, a little something, it’s so much more than nothing. And that’s that.

On the condition of Human Tiredness

A spinning ceiling fan making dangerous
Halos above the toothless infant
And I rest, back to the carpet
mesmerized by the
Click clak ting tong of the chain
Against the wood. The pull string on
Hi cooling that napping wonder
In her nappy
This hypnotic bladed clock
Keeps time and spins backward
Like the wheels of a car
In a movie. My frames per second
Aren’t what they used to be
cuz
this little gem, in her elmo
footy-PJs may never believe
that I brought her here
to this august afternoon room
this little home on the hill
to replace
her father
and her mother and
all their little adult problem
with about a decade of joy
a decade of worry
a decade of pride
a decade or two
of grandkids
and then we’ll call
it a night


My Last Year of Growth.

In a weeks time, I will complete my
Twenty fourth revolutions
around the sun on
This watery hunk of carbon.
This means, thanks to all the billions before
That I only get to grow and build bone
And learn new things that I will retain forever
For a few hundred more days. After that I have the
Privilege of a slow and steady decline into
Shitting my pants and forgetting my address.
Keats didn’t have to do it. Neither did
Those kids in the bus near Minneapolis
Who skidded into the ice. Those fictional
Characters that may never appears in
A mugshot or on the street or in Iraq or
Near that one corner store on his cellphone
Talking to the lawyer about his divorce.
At the bakesale, spending the extra five
Bucks on homemade turtle brownies
So the sixth graders can go to DC.
Wiping the wheels of the car so
The salt from the snowed-down road
Doesn’t ruin the rims. Not in the back
Of your daughter’s college photos
with his face painted at
the football game. Not on the radio
In a helicopter during a traffic jam.
Not handing out water during the
NYC Half-marathon. Not even flipping
Your wafer-thin burgers or curing cancer or
a cut with a band aid. Not cleaning your
Teeth or typing the court report for
the malpractice lawsuit. Not even in the
Damn jury box. They can’t even check a box.
They aren’t a census figure. They were.
They aren’t moms and dads or tias y tios
None of it. I get to die way more than they do.
I get to die twice and live through the first time.
James Dean. You had it right, man. You had it
Right.

(OK DEPRESSING POETRY OVER!)

The best is here.

Laying down in bed with the laptop on my
Knees. It’s hard not to feel like I’m still
Out in the bay, on the two –hulded sun
Cooked drunken snorkel adventure
That the locals seem to hold as
Every punchline. Well I drank
That punch and got in line and
Boy oh boy, I can’t wait to
Relive this day. At least in this little
Poem. This is not a winter poem.

A horse’s knockkneed tropical
Mud stepped pathway and I
afraid and mystified
can only tell that it’s raining
from the drops on the near by
waterfall. The water is as warm
as the air is humid and the sound
of the boom of the rainwater’s
descent in the form of
a river of life cuts knives
into your little airport
apartment. This little
trick candle of an image
lets you sing and have your
cake and eat on every un-
birthday. I may be mad
as a hatter, but oh today
today. Today with the
chicken mole and the
pelican’s fearless dive
the shameless dancing
the dual-world of arching
sky and reef and eels and
language and feeling
and friendship and family.
A day to keep like a
Groundhog day in
Heaven. Puerto Vallarta.

The Winter Poet’s Slumber

When filmmaker’s talk about
the process that they call
“my hobby that I get paid for”
Or “the magichour” and
“you can never get used to this
kind of day in hollywood,” you can
See the myth seep into the camera
And onto your livingroom rug.
A sand-dripped gum drop
On an Indiana suburban floor.
A relic of dazzling glitz that
Is only comprised of its appearance
So outta place here, next to the
Clap-on-lamp, the decoupage and
The bronzed bowling shoes that
It can only be a joke. Well

Today, I might believe that
Hollywood lie. I sway with
the sails and the inner-
Ear of tapioca. I dance
A waltz of pacific
A memoryless burst of pride
An explosion so
Radiant that, though it comes
From the deck of a fake pirate ship
It expands, glistening
A broken agapanthus encrusted
In rain water
Atop the coal syrup
Beside the white and red
And blue ashes.


A Poem for Esperanza

The sky that’s begging for
Love in your brown shoes
Is the sky that kisses the mango
Street with a whisper poem.

A poem that you wrote for
Your dead aunt; a thousand
Violins in the cielo trumpeting
An answer to my questions

Sandy, you are my age, you
Dance in the mirror with
Your skinny swimmer
Legs and you plunger

Brown shoes. You write
A Chicago dream that
Tastes like metal and
Tropical sunscreen

Your sky forces the windows
Of my eyes and my soul to
Let down their hair and let
In all of it. A simple worded

Wonder, you are. Alone on
The rio and on the range, you are
so Why?
Why did you let me in?

Am I the sleeper in the attic
Or the visitor asking
If that poet is a rat?
The Mirror

Hello one eyebrow higher than to other, one eyed a little wider, one ear a little lower and one shoulder a little tighter, your neck flinches as you reach for the next key and you right arm over but your left stays the same your mouth. a little the eyes again, you hair is pulled back. Swallows. An almost frown. A droll look on the lipped twenty something unshaven man. With his hair pulled back and oh wait he turned to the side to look and face the window for a moment and the eye brows raise and those blues eye catch the light I haven’t seen them before. Those blues eyes twitch the long eye lashes and the heavy brow. Don’t look that way. You are ok. Your eyebrows are two fraternal twined mammals; a seal and an orca. The seal rests on the shore while the orca comes in to feed wading for the right moment to strike and use the waves to eat the lazy brown seal. Come close together with distrust but never touch, you two mortal changed creatures. Come near in confusion, each resting above a world, a whole world of ocean. of galactic blue, a sleepy blue world that reaches deep. Deep into time, and ends with a subtle blink.

Death of a Person(ality)

We have a funny term in English
Personality,
It seems to blame like the wrong
Answer on a boardgame. “what’s
Your personality?” almost to ask
About a favorite color.
Light Green! Seventeen! A Schnauzer! Bingo!

But personality, that word
Has a semantic issue that needs contending.
We give things “personality” and make identifiable
Marks on things we really shouldn’t. And
The thing we miss about people when they die is
The way they put together words or the sound
Of their breathing, the things they know you like
And you know they like.
A foot rub. Playing cards.
Daiquiri ice from thirty one flavors.
The sound of the dishes in a certain
Tonal order with the radio on.

The nurse doesn’t turn on the radio
And she doesn’t even look like you or
Smell like you. She isn’t why I worked
In the post office for 37 years or loved for
53 and six months. Or forever. I didn’t
Retire to spend my nights with a woman
I don’t know. who went to night school
Wit the hopes to
Put her kid through college as a nurse.
She once had a dream of dancing in New York
On broadway. If she knew that I had to leave
The real broadway dancer for the dreamer, she
Would be just as mad at death as I am.

She would be mad at “personality” too
Because that party joke that fits into the same
Words as “where would we go on our first date?”
Or “If I were an ice-cream, what kind of topping would you be?”
Disgusts the years, the lifetime of love. An endless
Pouring of love that doesn’t fit into a half-hour segment
With Clorox ads and Ed Macman’s giveaways.

That dancer is dead, and I have to forget her with
That joke. That box of light. The jestered irony
Catching his white glove in my face.
You newly-weds who met online
And think you know the world, a love that’s caught
In youth’s black and rain-covered web. The
Widowed death will come, with her red
Hourglass. She will take your insides and
Liquidate them and suck them out and
You will be forgotten, like a game
Show question.

Departures

The airport signifies something more than travel
A place where new worlds come faster than concepts of them
They signify a change; a change to extrapolate the difference between spaces
A cattle call of reflection. A Brain Eno soundtrack that opens doors
To subtle opportunity. This week I will have that change. I must embrace
This moment before the world a fakes, phonies. Of disgust brings me
To it. With a crowd. A shouldered onlook of passers by thinking and wondering
Questioning the diffidence, an open book, a fast typing long haired
Kid that leans and dances in his chair, waiting to

Ok they have left. He stands at the window with his hands in his pockets, overlooking the
Fueling of planes. The movement of gates. The dance of covered-eared and yellow vested locals. A little answer. A little something. Just a taste. A taste of today and that tomorrow, won’t actually be that bad, when you have a poem like this. I have had the best, and it is yet to come.

How to Become a Prostitue in 28 hours. Or my new life as a SALESMAN

Step 1: take off your clothes
Step 2: fly to Colorado
Step 3: get picked up by some weird dude in a van
Step 4: drive around different Liquer stores and Gas stations in the ghettos of that god-forsaken state
Step 5: after midnight, check into the suite of a Hilton in south Denver
Step 6: get fucked.
Step 7: wash. rinse. repeat.
Step 8: Cry, Drink, Quit, have serious psychological damage. laugh it off. and do it all again.