Sea-Frost

The white of snow spun on the path
no footstep laying trodden black
and sunlit West against my side,
the horse quickens while trotting back,

and as we pick up pace Northward
to hear the sound of ripping sand,
the slinking tide sips cliffs of time,
they melt in mother nature's hand;

Pacific moon! you've shown your face
against the mirrored ocean's glass
like dolphins spinning in the waves
while jumping toward the ever-last,

solemnity defines her smile
without a wink to me or mere,
those golden rays of mist, so while
we gallop home, she guides us there.

(so sleep my moon, while horse is tied
don't shower me with your dismay,
my window's tight, my eyes are wide
your fullness tricking night for day

those cracks that glisten from the waves
around and through these wooden slates
will keep us sleepless all the while -
the Sun, he comes galumphing back)

Open Fly

when we dance, I make it look
so easy and effortless like
a fake-haired Fred Astaire

but no, this is a pain-
staking labour-driven process,
that you don't seem to care for,

you bat an eye and thumb a nose
at the process, you snot-nosed
24-year-old, who thinks poems

will fall like dice on the table
or like crystals made in a cave
stars in darkness dancing free

doing what they were made to be.

Ooga Booga

The Nightmares comes, my hotel room it brings,
the ceilings high enough for minds to sing
cerebral core-text jumping, switching spheres
night terrors aren't the only cause of tears

a phone call in the alley way of droves
the call-box rings and rings. the door is closed.
that muffled sound of ringing under sea
a dream that picks its knits relentlessly

like molten parrot locked inside a cage
who squackes robotic meter in outrage:
"I am the voice of death with flapping wings,
the black-eyed soulless creature who won't sing

my master taught me how to say these words
and once he's gone, this poem won't be heard"
So as I wake and see the parrot's won,
he disappears, evaporates, undone.

Say "From Charms"

My God is a Stage Manager
with a list of queues as long as time,

the kind who says "house-lights up"
over the headset every morning, and

who counts the beats for the curtain call
between sunset and darkness;

She has a short purple haircut
and a "Mama Mary" tattoo heart,

She gives great hugs after the show
even when your sweaty and unbelievable,

great big hugs that smell like Dr. Pepper
and Gin mixed in a Carl's Jr. cup;

My God reads every moment and every line
from her clipboard-script, mouthing all the words

She doesn't cry when Willie kills himself
or when Hamlet sees his Father, No She

saw it coming all along, and though she
doesn't take a curtain call or clap once,

She will be there with her hugs, right off the wing
with sparkling eyes, a smile and a Dr. Pepper kiss.

Sister, Mother; Asleep On The Sofa

tinkling snowmelt sings little
pitter-padders on the steel rail,
spring wind's across our mountain-
top lake; and there you two sit with your
legs-scrunched
up like slinkys, inside the thirdfloor condo
with a lake view.

with the camera on the ceiling, we see
the two ladies laying perpendicularly
across with there steaming-heads almost
touching, genetic copies of the next
(folded half envelopes tucked neat near
blankets)

a small gas-fireplace is open and
unlit, the shadow of its dance glazed
still in the brick
with each page turned your eyes get
heavier and heavier, the sofa softer

there we are - the three of us
in 2010
laying there on the sofa, alive and
careless - undone and uncoiled

from above still, the viewer can
see the two ladies and me, us three
each with our brains simmering

I rock on the glass kitchen table
whilst among the tree and the two

ladies - the sound of snow sings on the rail.

Nervous

A funny feeling
like a piece of surgical
tubing is pushed into your throat
like a permanent plastic lump
impossible to swallow

today should be a day of liberation
of moving up and onward, but no
I am afraid, and my stomach can't
keep food anywhere near it and
I fear that with these hairs being

cut off, I will forget a piece of my identity
I will give away something more than me
that my power will be gone
mr. young, the barbor, will be my
Delilah and I will cry a single tear.

Long brown and blonde to my chest like
a lion, a zion-breed warrior, a tribal
chief or some other "other" of my imagination
all those men I love with long hair, I won't be
I won't be in the club anymore. Just the men I hate.

I will be the men I hate.

The Coffee Cup

Play - youtube buffers
there sits Dave Grohl
the 40-something drummer
from Nirvana
which you should
pronounce "Nerve-Anna"
like a cheese filled
Milwaukee Disc Jockey
from 1991 who is saying
that name for the very
firsttime on the radio

"Here's a new one from
Seattle's own group
who, from the press photo
look like a grunge-y bunch,
called... Near Vanna"

I can only imagine what it
would be like to be from
Washington DC, from a conservative
family during the Reagan Era,
and to join the biggest group
of a decade at the age of 19
and then to have to grow-up
and out and old with everything
you built dead. dead and parodied

It's no wonder you are addicted
to coffee and while you record,
as we can see on this internet
video, you scream out for your fix
"fresh pot"
you joke around now, like it's no
big deal, but really you want that
coffee;
you want him back to jam another
few songs, to get bald and fat with,
to talk during the rock and roll
hall of fame acceptance speech,
to make fun of and to joke around with
to create and change the world
the bus rides, the interviews,
the late night drug runs, everytime
you look around and see his face
on t-shirts in the audience,
his ghost of youth's past.

Untitled #1

Only silly poets look around the room
to find a title, a physical place-
holder that will plant an instant seed

not the seed that pushes a sapling out
in the middle of sleep, scribbled in
a hurry on the Houston hotel notepad

nor the kind of memories tapped like
sequoia you climb on, with your childhood
treehouse filled, our storage deck of emotion;

No, this poem will be a poem grown like a
Che-aah pet or a mold that greens in the shower
of some locker-room you see but can't place:

"Was that poem from San Francisco, or Topeka;
from Dublin or Mumbai?
Has it been in between my toes all along?"

Just stop writing when you have nothing to say,
spare the titles of "Tv Remote" or "The Coffee Cup"
or even the infamous "Piano Keys like Ivory"

Sow the poppy seeds out into your subconscious
and sleep on whatever you think you have to say,
let it grow and cross-pollinate; let it flourish.

Recipe

Starting out we find
where we are set
(a desk in a room)
and how many lines: four

then, we see him
compare the desk to
something like a
rock, shrinking in waves

he is washed over by self-
awareness but still he
expands the corridor of
mirrors underwater

then surfacing, he makes a
clever rhymed pun hit
in time, taking a sun lit
breather, above himself

we stand, looking over him
from a distance and then
he gives us something,
a little ocean kiss or slap

some kind of moment of
resolution, where he
and I (you) can become one,
and we say something like,

"Oh yes, I remember
how my face felt,
so sweet and so cold;
what powerful desk-waves!"

Dynamite

squeeze squeeze
and squeeze that
stick like a pencil
between your fingers

the way you would hold
it while signing a check
to your first apartment
or a court order, that tight

now light that wick and
don't confuse it for a
drill, your hand will
soon be pieces

chum, scraps, tender
giblets infused with
bone and a ring or
painted fingernails;

spat, slung, strewn
about the room
like strawberry ice
cream topping on snow

sweet sticky lickable
lashes of strawberry
hunks packed down with
explosive force in snow:

you might try to search
for these rosey medallions
in the drift, the bank
but one handed snowdigging

isn't easy or pretty
it's pretty hard, messy,
like that icey cream -
even in dreams.

Quotes to Die By

"thinking never leads to sex"

"youth remembers kindly to the old; age imagines hopeful to the young"

"heaven is like peanut butter on a spoon (unless you're allergic to peanut butter, then its hell)"

"betraying a person is betraying yourself; betraying a dog is betraying a mirror of God"

"Man is God's best friend by Nature; because without man, God wouldn't exist"

"Take big risks. Jump up into the clouds and grab stars because we will all fall down, but only some will have the chance to burn upon descent, scattering our ashes into the minds, ears and books of the world."

"carry a ring, a guitar pick, a condom and a gun. you never know when your gonna get married or kill Slash to take over one of his guitar solos on the same day."


"Talk like you think, think how you feel, and feel what you say."

Things to keep open: doors. mind. eyes. hands. ears. heart. guest-room. friends. couch. floor. band. government. museum. internet. breaking waves. after-school art program. time. country. in-n-out burger. books.

Things to close: mouth. legs. gates. broken waves. wounds. cupboards. prisons. poems. tombs. regrets. frig. achievement gap. caskets. education gap. graves.

you are only as strong as your worst reader.

eye-contact is underrated and terrifying.

Ode to Long Hair, Not Yet Cut

think of a man you know
wait, think of a man you
know with long hair

now imagine him taller
fatter, whiter slumping
over a computer with

his long brown hair
touch the keyboard,
he looks heavy-eyed -

That's me, there I
am. right there on
the page. here.

Now pick me up
like a dough-
filled "Ken Doll"

and take me to
the garage of your
imagination,

place this poem
down and wheel me
into the the vice

grip on the work-
bench that your
dad or husband

hasn't used as
long as you have
known him,

brace my imagined
knees tight into
the metal grip,

go to the kitchen
or the office and
get some clean scissors,

now teleport back
to the workbench
to your little screaming

doll-sized nerd; as fast
as you can, quickly
cut off all his dollhair

and as you do this cutting,
he will turn into an army toy,
a GI Joe with muscles;

he will never
talk, write or feel
this way again.

Just Garbage (my mother)

I took the "Tall Kitchen"
trash bag out from its card
board box under the sink,

It is the last plastic bag
of sixty from that little
brown box, now empty

with the bag in one
hand, and the box in
the other, I slide it

open and shake it
out - fafump -
and then place the

empty box, once a home,
inside that expanded, opened
and grown-up bag,

now he is out in the
world, doing what he was made to
and he took the box too; together.

Census

When you
live alone
at twenty
four

and you
are young
white up-
tight

stayin up
all night
feeling
outasight

the lonely
pages make
you reflect.
reflect you

Learning How to Scuba Dive or The World's Whitest Activity

The First Rule
in learning how to scuba
is don't talk about
learning how to scuba

the second rule in
learning how to scuba
is don't ... always
breathe, just blow bubbles

little blubbles, and round
and free little air pockets
trapped beneath your mask
and your tight rubber suit

underwater souffles trying
to bake and rise up to
the sweet sunshine, the
pacific predawn breeze

to my right sits the
"Open Water Diver manual"
a book from the 80s that
has three smiling young faces

right on the front cover
"you are going to be joking
and going nuts, having fun with scuba!"
the tank must be full of laughing gas

wait, wait; don't act so bitter dude
it's just some classes, a few days of
learning to force air into water
and force my ass into a fitted unitard

made for inhabiting hours of underwater
activity. what kind of repressed fascist or
navy drillman dreamed up such sexuality;
"I wanna see all your body without seeing any of it!"

So there, imagine me - Long lion-mane
skintight rubber onepiece with
a pack of old fat white men
sitting cross-legged on the bottom; bubbles.

Pinata

(Read with a Gary Busey voice)


Blue Dinosaur,
you paper-made
triangle toothed
shell

red eyes, red mouth
white teeth, brown back
split open with a bat,
rope from a tree

slicing you in two
and the crowd gathers
round, hot street park,
bbq swingset

opencardoor radio with
the bass rattling the
cans in the trunk, the
chocolate and papermache

smashes down like melting
snow on the july 4th curb
running with little shoulders
brushing faces, hunched over

"it's mine, gimme that
gummy rope!" "the gum
i'll trade gum for
that luca salt"

There I am, set-up
camp on that knoll
under the pepper tree
with my legal pad and my

metal foldingchair;
don't worry, I won't
take any pictures,
I'm just here to write.

just mocking us

objects
things that are not living
I envy them

obligation
that's what makes us real
water between cells

electricity
pushing the heart to move
compelling our will

nonexsistence
the state of non-being
undone weave of the spirit

If time is so important
and things exceed human-life
if non-existence has a longer
threshold that existence, if
objects exceed their makers
than we must (MUST) treat things
like they will be around forever.
Living creatures will be destroyed
and they are expendable, but an
object, a thing, will last, if
uncompromised, as long as Earth.
Dumpster babies make more sense
than plastic wrap. the inanimate
the lifeless is here just to
get our goat. the box will
rot slower than the corpse.
it must be worth more.

a gentle reminder (THIS IS NOT A BILL)

so you wanna have fun
do you?

you'd like to see the sun
rise from the top of the L
the left L of the Hollywood
sign

you wanna get me to make
music, I heard?

you ask me to play
that encore song, the
words from my parent's
basement, my tombstone

you need me to give you
some money, just for food?

begging me at my front
door to let you in -
sure, raid my liquor cabinet
and eat my figs

you want me to make you
laugh, make you think?

well take out a sheet
of paper, get out a pen
and stick that pen up your
nose, leave it up there.

call your mother.

Did you find what
you had been looking for?

Maypole

little girls
with your white
petticoats on
dance around the
maypole

smiling boys
with your suspenders
flipping off your
shoulder, dance that
maypole

you two weave
your peach-skinned
worlds together with
blue and red ribbon down
maypole

proud mothers
got those arms filled
up with sleeping infants
stomp your feet at the
maypole

spilling fathers
with your drinks
and your friends laughing
lemonade shoes round that
maypole

you two weave
your weathered hands
and your hearts, let them bend
so they start on the
maypole

night-time dreamers
on your sleepless adventure
catch the light before dementia
ties your tongue to the
maypole

whispering sinners with
your minds off their leash
about boys, it
won't cease, prey on
maypole

you two weave your expectation
that's hung on belief, and then see
that these strands won't provide
your relief, they were made
by a man, who is always
a thief, that's our
Maypole.

Catalina

Immanuel Englesia
right down on Wilshire
by the old coconut grove
ambassador hotel where
jack fina and count basie

blew that house down
and bobby or some other
kennedy go his chops
licked right there.
my grandparents they

got married in that church
on the corner near north
catalina and I got a pre
monition that they wanted
me to start looking around

that the spirit of that
place, of that road or
that island had an un
settled ghost, a cold
hand on your shoulder

while you type
the kind that you can
feel while reading with
a light right over you.
stop. look around.

see nothing's there
not the mirror image
of your grandmother
in a newspaper article
from pasco

the homecoming college
queen, waiting to tell
me a story in my black
and white dream. no
she's been resting for

years in the pacific,
between the two trees
from the porch a triang
ulated tomb built to
set her free, so why

send me looking for
Catalina, why push me
to look for the street
or the island, what are
you telling. to get free?

Record Player

my family and my family's friends
those aunts that aren't really aunts
even the custodian at my Mom's work
started giving me all their vinyl

I don't own a record player,
I don't understand what an
RPM is and I cannot see
why you have to put a record on

clicking or cutting or
typing and sharing,
stealing even,
I get those things

but needles and polish
skips and brushes
dust jackets, sleeves
40 pound boxes of music?

-

I moved 5 times in a year
with these 6 postal crates
packed with records that
I have no way to play

carted and shelved
a second-hand dream
that all my parent's
people pushed on me

"no no, he gets it,
he gets why these were
our afternoon hours on
the floor, ceiling gazing

he's still young, he hears
Hendrix like we heard him,
that monstrous noise is still
Mozart to youth; give him all of it."

So today, I'm going through each box
and searching for the mp3 of every album
so I can play these analog masterpieces, these
two-track bible burners, through this little laptop.

Fingers

touching those dimples that
forehead and your nose,
we each get to worrying
when we are alone

but together we smile
in hopeful harmony,
we act like days and
minutes don't expire

together we hold
our heads like a mobius
strip, tangled in the color
of the afternoon light, see

a cloud gives birth on
its pacific trip across
the plains, dancing a
sun-electric slide

upside-down, we see
this cloud reach its
forelorned fingers up
into the mountain's top

hanging like stalactites
to the grassy cave ceiling
and that electric-blue cloud,
that transconitental traveler,

is nothing more than an
afternoon apartarition
a flying phantom on
its way to atlantic nothing;

dazzled, undressed, defeated.

Calling All Spirits

On listening to evening, there is rain;
the wonder of this sourthern california pane
of window glass that streaking like jail bars
that begs for answers, weathered by the stars;

it asks us how the water landed here,
this place of sun and smog that lasts all year,
it simply cannot understand the hurt
the clouds express on finding out their worth;

these constant banging drums of rhythmed drops
who wake me in the night like ticking clocks
relentlessly devouring my will
these winter winds keep trees from holding still

uprooting all the years of labored growth
the leaves and bark lay on the pavement both,
and trunk asleep upon its tattered side
that brown will turn to black when leaves have died,

these dreams of drumming dance beneath the sea
and swim my subconscious cerebrally,
so as the rain lets up, I stir in bed
a dream of desert flood that never fled

Oasis in the starry palm-frond sand
the moon she lights my mirror with her hand,
and I alone will wake with beating heart
relentlessly, I pray for rain to start.

The Gareth Jones: Devilish Debauchee

My friend his name is Gareth and he's suave,
his pubicees are shaved or come in mauve,
but frankly I don't understand the draw
cuz shaving sack should be against the law.

Via Email: I Understand

peanut brittle with a pickle
between bread
we stay up all night
and act like we're dead

but we is ain't still
dead you zombie
surf rock kid
you eleventh hour
thirteenth floor
xboxer,
and exboxer
who killed a man
in the ring.

well I think
that pulp fiction
had better characters
than bruce willis
playing a boxer
playing bruce willis.

the thing is we might
not get that much
this time around
but we have to tap
dance atop that stuff,
we have to turn that
shit into 5 dollar coins
and sell it like a drug
into the veins of a car
like a war-made mafia
jungle junkie. we must
consume the fruits
of the earth and roll
the pine trees down
a trail to build your
barbie dream houses,
to cut deep cuts
in our daughter's heart

OH COLORADO
don't you know what
America is singing?
Have you heard that
street song on your
high mountain peeks
the sewer singing leaks
little lashes against those
snow capped ears
well I fear that the broken
bottles swimper might not
make it up your mountain
and that the birds hymning
clear clean air are little
deviled angels flying
fast trips up and down
the spine, the very backbone
of your collective unconscious.