And what, my dear, is your point?

I am writing this
poem to get some shit
off my back

I am writing this
here poem to get
published and get someone else to read it

I am writing this
sentence to prove
that I can infact write and that you are reading me

I am writing this
goddamn poem to get you
to change, to get you to listen, to get you to love. (me)

I am writing this
poem as an asset to my catalog
of poems; to my aesthetic portfolio, to someday be liquidated.

I am writing this
mother of a poem to be buried in
to have poured over me and to have flapped in my face like a bible verse to a gay man.

I am writing this
facade of a text as
the shell of a poem, as the headless mannequin with some denim atop its plastic hips.

I am writing this
this still-born poem as a labor
of fruitless love; the lover of dreams, the lover on-top of my dreaming subconscious.
trying so hard to make another.

Black Friday

What it it about
crass consumerism that
brings a family together?

is it the new shit smell or
the trampling lines of people
outside the Wal-mart or

is it the way the green
gold feels in the morning
flying like moths from a closet?

"today is the day, I'm freeeee"
the moth screams and then it goes
into it cocoon and turns into a

flat screen tv or a new laptop
or a gps system or something
else made overseas that makes

our complicated lives more
simple and easy and free
and patriotic and

tired and arguing and
empty and barren and
in a pit of debt.

dadada dunt da-dunt!

CHARGE

The International Space Station or ISS for short

The International Space
Station at last; we have
made it here honey atop
the trees and the mountains
that looks as flat as
text on the paper

the great wall of
china is a white vein
in the arm of the
landscape from above;
God must have had such
a funny sense of humor

making creatures to exist
making existence, maybe everyone
who was meant to be saved has already
died and so God had no other reason
to stick around, so he's out on
vacation in S45O7G Quandrant 6, sipping

tall and cool metaphysical martinis and
getting loaded, joking about his old
flame, Earth. He might say "oh yeah
she's doing fine without me, she knew
what she was doing all along and she's
better off, but those kids are gonna mess

her up one of these days. I mean she's been a
good mother, but I always knew that without
their Dad, they wouldn't be the same. I mean
I tried to tell her, but she just never responds.
She's just been so damn cold and quiet, almost dead
I hate it when she gets like that. But hey what am I

telling you all that for? You wanna nother round!"
There's my God. He exists, but he's not around.

Finding out what it takes to be a Man(atee)

A Man(atee)
should be
openly
physically
spiritually
emotionally
available
to his partner.

A Man should
avoid spending
too much time
away from home
because he might
get cut on the
back by the blade
of an oncoming
love affair with
alcohol

A Manatee should
prey on small
biblical fish
and grind them
up like surf-feed
seagrass or Maui-Wowi
and smoke it up like
a cow on the BBQ

A Man should
question when the
phone rings and there
is no one on the other
line for days, but when
his wife answers, she is
always scheduling time to
see her sister, an oncoming
blade and another finger of
alcohol becomes that much closer
that much more near

A Manatee should
find the cure to his
curved-back pain, the cure
to what ails him and should
eat all of the sweetest shoots
from the Florida roots of that
clear and whole water in
the gulf, in the shallows
where the light of heaven makes
little manatee freckles on his
plantation-lacerated back.

While I'm awake and you sleep

while I'm awake,
you are sleeping like a cat
at the foot of a hearth to
the stone fireplace of
God, happily bathing in his
flame-like warmth

while I'm awake,
you turn your head to oneside
and roll your shoulder to move
that yellow hair from your
hot morning mouth; asleep
among the cats with wings

while I'm awake,
you are gliding on the thermals
of a purple-hilled lavender coastline,
the spearmint painted waves push your
feathers and fur, they lift you to kiss
the sun and purr

While I'm awake,
you are dreaming of a better life
a life where I won't be around
and it is cold when your snore mocks
me; you know I am allergic to cats
and I still can't fly.

When pain comes across as cheezy

I try to write
these poems all
the time, where
I talk about the
wound inside,
the kind that
won't let go
and that we
can pour liquor
on and drizzle
in sex; that
bleeds a fountain
pen of invisible ink.

the kind where I can't
find the blacklight to
actual see where all that
pain has gone. Instead it
just vanishes as quickly
as the cuts from a lover
or the welt of your father's
disapproving glance. the
chance that I will try and
stop photographing this
feeling might be near,
it might end here.

clearly I've already lost
my invisible chance, the
faith that the ink might appear
if I stare long enough.

Bumbling Along

Imagine me
teaching an essay called
"Teaching the N-Word"

Imagine this
man standing up infront
of expandable eighteen-year-olds

Imagine me
saying "Nigger" like
a Mark Twain or a Jay-z

Imagine Jay
son mumbling those violent
thick molasses phrases into the

Imagined ears
of my students; it hurts
to hear like a fist twisting

Imagined tears
into those little ears.
And I made more than one of them cry

while I, I knew I was doing what was right.

Camp Pendleton

eightyfour miles
an hour, humming
south through Camp
Pendleton

Sunday Nite and those lights
coming north sit soft,
thousands in the marine layer
doubled in the marine air

and as we whip past them
those thousands of people
sitting and running their
little engines, talk radio

or K-Earth or Ciento Siete
Punto Cinco, it's hard not
to wonder how many are doctors.
Are really one in ten not working?

a third of those cars were abused
once in their life, and half divorced?
I mean like 40% of those cars siting
right there don't have health insurance, seriously?

I try to count every other car and think
you know that guy might be all those things
at once. maybe that prius was in the 5k
I ran last year. and I kinda recognize

that chevy, that one was my dentist or
maybe my pharmacist on dunn st.
he's probly out of work. oh look
there's who made my egg mcmuffin

last week tuesday, and there's
the extra for "Law and Order" from the other
night, right there in the Porsche. That
principal who lived across the street from my

mother's childhood home, the guy who sat in
front of me at church in the dodge, the person
who stepped in my gum at Sea world, a cabriolet,
my mentor at AA, the dude with the good hops on

the pick-up basketball team near holiday park, those
sisters from the magazine, the Forrester from sixth
grade camp who lectured about constellations, my aunt's
ex-husband's son, the fat kid from junior lifeguards,

a ford truck, an el camino, a lexus, a geo metro,
a toyota pick-up, a suburban with spinning wheels.
the thousands of soldiers waiting in line to get
to where they are going. I'll get to where I'm going, pretty soon.

Buddy Guy

While you
were going out
someone else
was comin in.
Ho Buddy you did
ever come in.

the smell of smoke
and walmart in that
elevated indian casino
in that small dance hall
after some wine. and there
you are, like on the stage of
a highschool fall play right in
front of us, my father and I, you
are just right there. When you throw
your pick it flys between our heads and
and when you speak away from that microphone
it's as if your speaking right to us, our ears;
and as you slip between the highs and lows, hills
and valleys of the Louisiana blues, we are there, in
your hands, in your eyes, in your throat, in your words
you've fucken got us, Buddy. you've got the ears and heart
and genitals of every patron in the room. you got hendrix that
way. you got grammys that way. you got millions of fans that way
and for what. a few thousand dollars from this indian casino? to still
be playing hard at 73? to drink until you have gout? no, I think it might
be because you've got a battle of the devil beating God in you, a battle that
started before you were born. that battle that the blues can only temporarily fix.

Mother's Day Gift

I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep
quite like spaghetti in the sink,
it clumps and breathes in dainty heaps,
I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep

scissors as spoons, mixing sauce deep
the blood from earlobes fay and pink,
I'll cut your hair, just while you sleep
quite like spaghetti in the sink.

Down To The Cellar

2122 longwood avenue
that flowing heat and calm
that comes from his
belt that sits
over the counter top

it's an ocean wave crashing
against a sunken volkswagen
its a large budweiser in a can
that you have to open with
a can opener

its those sixyearold afternoons
that made you cut the lawn
the longway and the shortway
and then it's the clippers to make
sure not a hair was left

so dance in the afterlife Henry
dance with that little sparrow in
your heart and let him out to
shit on the gates of heaven
(play it back again. again.) don't try.

Tonight, without the internet.

a little bit of freedom
from that chime or farmnoise
that shows you've got mail.

I'm switching my machine off
and down because I'm under the
california weather. the santa ana

weather, that winds change and
change my mind away from the hustle
and puss of the soupline

of meaning and nothing and
the hallow taste of knowledge.
It's information ala the internet is

like diet knowledge. It's sweet
but goes down fake, like aspartame or
surcalose. It's not really anything

but chemicals. well I feel like
gorging in heaping spoonfuls
of sugar tonight. the sugar of

books and antenna tv.
the sugar of national public radio.
that honey pot of the phonebook

or the molasses of the backpage of
the newspaper that shows the weather
forecast, that's at least a day off.

I want a day off. a day to get
well soon. a hot chocolate postcard
or a paperback mango smoothie

a day to get fat on the comforts
of consuming paper and ink.
a library buffet and a nap.

Language: I am done with you.

it may be a better fate
to die now forgiven
than to live with the knowledge
that my existence does more harm
in the world than any good.

I am the perpetrator of a corrupt
and destructive system. I am the home
buyer, the builder. the land-taker,
the bread-winner. this was never my land.
I need to treat this as a state of tranisition

a knockdown and dragged out fight between womb and
ground. a laughing god who answers no prayers.
god is not dead, he has gone mad and he just points
and laughs like a homeless jesus ready for a
simple fix. camo ice or four loco beer or mickeys.

we all have many deep and profound addictions.
especially to information. we need a constant IV
drip drip drip of image and sound that the world
can give us. and I am so fucking sick of it. I
never want to read another word again.

but oh boy. I will write. I will never read
but I will write. I will produce without any
where to keep my offspring. I will send them out
into the world like sea turtles or tweets.
like little mistakes left in a basket. bastards.

poems are bastards and they sit crying, waiting to be fed.
just never read again, and they will die. dead. In the crib.
In the manger. In the open canoe. they will fall asleep
and then they will turn to food for buzzards. carrion for crows.
bring the birds. bring the crows. eat it all up friends; just don't talk.