Just Just Just Just

When I was a toddler
my father was in prison,
brushing grout on tile floors
on all fours, for forty fucking
cents an hour

he hurt his hand
his right wrist while
fucking filthy floors
with a forty-cent brush,
but today -

right now,
I write this from a
computer he paid for,
in a house he helped
buy, you and I, and I

I spend it writing
poem's made from
broken mirrors,
(clear frames, but
cracked cent-erz).

Can he still hear
the sound of the
Warden or the chimes
over the loudspeaker,
while mother and I

sleep so silent?

Pour **** on the Broken Places

Love is
seeing
perfection
in

imperfection.

Can We Start Again

Can We Start Again
Go back to what it meant
back then?

My closeness to
the candlelight
with inkpdippeddeep

deep darkness drips
from my quill and
I'm still ill with

pregnant passages
morning sickness
nigh-time nausea,

my mind is still
the capture and the
master, the terrible master

pushing out spirits
and ghosts and
spinning old flames

on the dance floor
of memory again
-

I've seen the glory
of the coming of the
Lord, and he spoke to me

Jason
You are insignificant.
These words are alone

like scrolled-bottles
in the sea, or dead
soldiers in the dump

sent away from me.
Just dance and love
and be a wild / free,

that's all you can
ask, that's all
you can ask of me.

Don't Smile

With coldness, we long for warmth
With heat, a longing for cool
with boldness, this is a desire for comfort
with intelligence, the fool.

Why does a road always crumble?
Why does a man always fear
that when we walk, we always stumble,
and in the end, we shed no tears?

Oh! I've been waiting for so long to find someone to call my own,
but I can't wait

I've been waiting for so long to find someone to call my own,
but I can't no more, No I can't wait!

Single in New York

A Small apartment with one window
where trains can whistle or birds could
100 years ago

Those cheep cheapers are long gone
and there has been a new boos in town
since before I was born

new york is wet asphalt
grates in the sidewalk
construction and trashbins

new york is the light at
the end of a k-hole tunnel
and the top of every suicide

I would settle down there with
my books, my littlelaptop, a coffee table
chairs, orchids, paint, crown molding

I would stroll through streets like
no one was there; I would never forget what
hot hay smells of on a hot summer noon-light day

high heaven have mercy on me,
I'm still here with my dreams at bay
and my vision of New York is from 1993

The Plaza, the toy store, the taxis in
the snow, the ice-rink, the frozen boardwalk
the millions of minutes with no place to go

my mission now is to try an live a simple
little lie; to try and find my New York life
on the other side of a 3 day drive

I would be the best version of me. Sweetly manner.
Solid sleeper. Kind and honest. Not half awake
on drugs, slugging out fruitless desires as past

Oh remember when Dad was young and thought he might
live in New York in his imagination? Well,
that's where this story starts.

Generic for Ambien

my goodness, I keep making mistakes and typing letters that just don't fit, that don't sit right on the page. They squirm like children, and I scream out Act your Age. And now, I can bring myself to thinkwithout moving my hear slightly to the left. I can't even look the computer straight in the eyes. Too white, Too bright. Like a chalkboard on a movie steamship. I am that ship, and these feels are my sound stage. The drugs have brougt on the lights and the swaying sensation; quite right quite right. pause.

now my back feels like a skyscraper; thrusted down into the river pushing the dancing, the dancers in my mind, like the rocking of the sea storm is almost over. That the shaking from the open windows, letting all the cold air in might change our composition. Instead, our master, our maker, is 3 sheets to the wind on the sea of "lackofsleep" and all he wants to do is go home to his wife and dog and sleep soundly by their side. Instead, he is held captive by pregnant daily ideas that pop, and pop, and pop, like an earthquake, but only at night.

Now I am on a see-saw, and my huntched flesh is creeping and folding over each solumn keystroke, each pathetic, drug-induced ounce of dreck. Why would any of us that this sludge, this shit, this shadwell, and try it for another go. The only mildly redeminaing factor in this whole exercise is that I'm writing this; these terrible phrases whilst on DRUGS. It's that our through-put? The selling point? "He worst this on sleeping pills. on Heavy , call the doctor and have him send em in, fucking sleeping pill.

What I can say is that following. I am in my underwear. I am rocking back and forth. I love and hate the off-white light shinning on me from below. If nature is embodies in the light of the sun, Hell must be covered with phosphorescent tubing that flickers. Then the real question is: How did the Devil get his hell light up here? Because the light of the night, the light that is made by man and dinosaur bones millions of year ago, it creates the shadow where all evil can reside. The is a dim and flicker light in hell. And we have many duplicates here on earth.

Now, I want to make something crystal clear; I am writing for God. I'm writing to find a way to salvation. I'm struggling to find what kind of language you want me to use. I am half-gone to evil, but I'm still awake, here, strugglin. Waiting for the wicked to come-undone. Can't we just weight it out and the wicked will win? Can we just all be wicked? Aren't we that way anywaY?

Once, an older woman, about 58, leaned over to me while I was working my day shift at the bowling alley. She leaned over the top of my deak, above the shoes and the shoesclean can, and she had been leanin that whole time because she wanted me to take a hard and good look at her Tattoo. A Tattoo on her tittie. Her big left purple titty. (the keyboard has changed shape, and now it's harder to type. It's now round like a bowling ball, or like tits. I'll keep at 'em) It was a tattoo of "Where's Waldo" and in that moment, I got it. I understood the book. I understood the meta-textual game of waldo and his stuff. I understood how to fool billions out of trillions all you have to do is keep them preoccupied. As this older tatted titted troll lent her unique talents to my visage, I realized that from underneath, I was getting robbed. Reilly and his tit-tatted wife had thrown on over on me. BUt what they didn't know what the register hand less than 7 dollars in it, as it was the middle of the day. I would pay $6.74 every day to get a view of those tatted twos.

Now what's done is done. I've got drugs in my system that are trying hard to knock me out. So people play games with sleeping pills; this is my first. I think the game is, can you type until you pass out. (Bonus points for being able to get to bed, shut down your computer and not vomit on anything you like. Note: Pink Slippers are extra points if covered in chunder-barf.) Yes, the effects seem only to be physical, as I can turn and move my neck in peculiar ways and with much greater ease than previously remembered. My eyes are seeming to cross at times and when I rub my head all of my sense start mixing and clustering and custard and jam. When sense was once external, has now become internal. When I rub my head, I can feel the inside of my skull with my fingernails. Feels like the hull of a ship, or the hollowed out innards of a pumpkin. Like the smooth of a conch shell once discovered on the sand. Or at least the 3x5 sand display box in this New Zealand Gift shop. "We can wrap it up for you," She says kindly as I finger the inside of my smoothed down skull and flick out pieces, flecks, debris or my brains onto the page.

Fuck you for getting on my case about how I'm writing this. I really don't know where it's gonna go or when it will get not there. I've stopped. The drugs are starting to beat me. And I will not go out in a bang, but in a limpy misspelt whimper.

It seems that moment might be coming nearer still. I just sneezed 2x and sneezing on drugs is like sneezing as a acrobat. Your head moves longer and further and slower, more majestically like molasses readjusting it's course.

I'm still here, now, 26, not sleeping, at my dinning table, on some prescription sleep meds that have made me blather up a nasty and frothy concoction.


I wrote so much more than this that got deleted. I wrote another 20 minutes about what it would be like to be single in new york. It's really all I want. less than I want you.

see now I'm sober, so burnt that I'm going up to bed. Watch your head on the way out.

fuck

ZOLPIDEM

Hello little friend,
Hello you tall drink
of clear water

Hello jazzy keys,
those black notes
hanging like stalag

tights right on that
straight black line,
don't rewind the tape

the sound of the player
whipping in reverse,
past the solo, oh oh

so low on the ivory,
thumping like a headboard
when sailors come home from sea

icy cold drink, clutching
your 1 milligram coffin,
your mechanized murmur

swollowed swallowed
swalloed down
whole

On Dog Piss

While we were waiting to take him out
he happily piss on the rug

not the nice rug that I don't like
not the one that cost hundreds of dollars

from the garement and rug district
in Downtown LA; no, not that rug

the 10 dollar rug from the warehouse
store, the big Seattle based chain

the one I loved, and Yes, I'm
angry, Yes, I'm very very fucking

angry, but no, it's not at you
nor is it at him, our beautiful

big black dog, our brooding
dumb carpet-pisser; No, I am

angry at myself for not just
taking him out when you asked

for giving him that 30 seconds
alone, in front of the door,

Not 18 hours alone, on my
way back from Las Vegas

stuck in traffic, where he
held it the whole time,

not while I'm at a funeral
or at work, but right

after we both played with
him together, right as we

are standing there watching
him, deciding which one of

us will take him. THEN.
Then. That's when he pisses

pisses right there with
a little smirk in his eye

on the best carpet, and
Yes, we cleaned it out

and Yes, the carpet will
smell like piss for 2 days

and be fine, but what
won't be fine, what won't

be fine, is my hand that
I put through a mailbox

on the walk I took
30 seconds too late

the hand that throbs
as I write these dog-shit

prose, the hand that I need
all the time, not the 10 dollar

rug from Costco, not the
time or the money, but

my hand, my right hand
my swollen purple hand

that I wish, I wish
it was covered in piss.

Love

Anticipation
the sound between when the garage door
opens and when it closes
the 7 times my heart beats in my
ears, waiting

for the garage door to open
for your heels to hit the
tile floor and smooth onto
carpet stairs, for you
rhythmic steps, trudgning
to my heart beat, like

your heals are helped
by heart strings, and
that sound, right before
you open your mouth
when your purse hits
the coffee table and
the keys inside move
slightly, right before
you sing-out my name,

I hear you breathe
and in that breath
you are my universe
my every moment
my singularity

you are my reason
and then, and only
then, do you say

"why did you
forget to take
out the trash.
It's Tuesday!"

Moments

I only have a few fleeting
moments alone, like little
lilts built into a classical
melody - like cotton clouds

caught at the top of
mt. Shasta waiting
to whisp there weightlessness
right into not; into the ether.

Testosterone Party

A young British Boy
with a simple swoop of
black hair to cover
your acne-worn brow

you stand alone with
a microphone in some
bar, some venue in
downtown portland

in downtown oregon
and from there
you tell us about
the new UK punk

about how your created
it, how you created
the spotlight and
how all the frat

boys, who look just
like you, are coming out
to your shows, in droves
and you detest them.

Just Long Enough To Sing

bury my head in my hands
and keep the flood at bay
keep those waters, once fresh
out in the ocean for another day

when tides come knocking
as natural as young children play
like hands on clocks, the sands of time
will slip each granule, tuck it away

Yes! Time! the child of motion
spun to twirl and whirl in grand Ballet
Performing an opus for his father
who embraces him with each glowing ray

"Son" says the Sun "you were made,
put here, only to decay"
And Time just jumps and spins,
built happily to obey

So when we are all gone
and we have no more say
then our Time will stand still
with no name, with no way

though He will not be Time
he will just be the day
and the night and the cycle
will never betray

He will go, he will be
the gold rope will not fray
and the world will be flipping
when we have to pay

but today! yes today!
we are still on our way
and with time at our backs,
we will sing, we will say

"After I'm gone and my soul hits the hay,
No, I won't come a-knocking, I'll dwindle away,
Yes, after I'm old, when I'm silver and grey,
Just know that I lived here, at least for a day."

Note to Self

Don't forget to write a poem
about watching the glass-cutter
the crystal cutter, making his
plate pieces in Edinburgh
in the 90s

you are the crafter
you are the cutter
you are shaping the crystal
for people to buy

don't forget that

Darkness

While you all slept
I crept on keys
I kept the sleeping world of fleas
from flicking, drinking on their knees

now as the morning makes its rounds,
and dreamers dream their pleas
before the plants and diners flick
to "open" signs and seeds

long before the morning fog
from ocean side reseeds
and just before the sleeping dog
will yawn, she calmly breathes;

He, awake, with wandering thoughts
the black and white, he reads -
collapse, he's done, his pre-dawn fun
a poem, there it breeds

so bring the mirror closer Sun and
show us daylight's greed, when
dreams are gone, the night's undone,
we'll watch him as he bleeds

Pain

Can we forgive those things,
those people that hurt us,
that keep us stinging long
after the pain is gone;

Is our memory the wind or
the water when the waning
fire, the flickering flames
are almost ashes, extinguished;

Can we use lasers, shots,
or knives to clean and clear
the scars that sang blue
blooded blues on our heart's skin;

Is it forgiveness that drives us
or the need for forgetfulness, that
yearning to let go of the rope-swing
above the lake and photograph ourselves

before we hit the blue surface?

Adulthood

Oh the glamour of being grown up
of being able to buy candy whenever,
to be able to just drive whereever

you want, whenever you want,
where everyday is a little adventure
and the weather in the windows

fills the whole window, where
crouching down and seeing street
lights and clouds is all we need

As I child, I could will the
signals to change with a little
phrase and hard gaze, there they go

green all the way home; today
as a real grown-up, I'm sitting
in my office, afraid to drive

as I no longer see the clouds
or the street lights, but
the road, the cars, the people.

Is there still a place for Art?

Is there still a place for art,
a space for it to be,

like water deep beneath the roots
of some forgotten tree;

have we all lost the time it takes
to drive down to the sea

to face the everything at once,
to set our feelings free?

Lisa and Luther Late-nights on SMOOTH JAZZ

the red light on
the receiver clips
as you laugh into
the microphone

oh and we know we
are on with a few
listeners at home,
waiting to call in

lying on there
beds lusting after
the smooth AM sound
of the late-night morning

and the sound of
a Goddess comes through
those speakers, tasting
the ears through the microphone

making them want for more

On Giving Up

Getting by
at the McDonald's
drive thru

at the dealer's
house, at the liquor
store, cards, magazines

Getting by
at the Safeway
Chicken is on sale

at the soccer practice
on the freeway, highway
my guns come by mail

Getting by
at the Golf Course
with my patte, my

lemonade ice tea,
tee-up the high
ball and bring me

my clubs,
my aces,
my spades

Americans,
the jack of
all trades

but what about
newspaper on the streets
pissing and no eats

what about mental illness
how about some Crack
and gin for sleep

Getting by
and saying goodbye
to all the living things.

Vanquish Fear And Panic

untold stories of people
gone for months
trapped

sing to us your song
oh silent ones
your name on a list with others

a list that shows you were
alone
sing, friends, sing.

Unopened Boxes

This poem is a gift you got as a child
For your graduation
For your birthday that you
Never opened, that never made

Any sense to open, left under the bed
Under the dolls and toys
In a coffin of anticipation
Forgotten

Now, right now as an old man,
I've found that imaginary gift again
A check from my 7th Christmas that
Still hasn't been cashed

A check for 25 dollars from
A grandmother, my grandmother
Who hasn't cashed checks for
40 years

What a strange outstanding balance
Waiting in limbo
How I wish that gift were a pen from Boston
Or a book about the home of Mark Twain

How I wish it were a poem
Waiting to be discovered
Under the imaginary dolls with real
Buttons for eyes, forgotten and found.

Swedish Tattoo

you give me the sweetest
taboo, that's why I'm
still in love with you

oh professional cheerleaders
with your dancing and your smiling
and your whitest white teeth

have you ever seen
the ocean's blue
after a sunset in July?

Have you seen no make-up
and no drugs on a Sunday
when your breath smells

just like the rest of ours;
you Bob Baker girls
with degrees

smarter than me
little lefthanded stories
some sweet lives ahead

marrying a real estate agent
who sleeps with his fat receptionist
while you lead at church camp

you are too much for us you know,
too much object, a self-aware creation
both Dr. Frankenstein and the monster

you have come to kill us inside,
because men, us men, can never be enough
not with the money or looks or tans or teeth

never enough

On Finding God (again)

Opening a book from Junior High School
left to collect years of room-snow
a silly child's book that for years
seemed to go over my head or
under my feet

In truth, I was an agnostic
and now I'm not. I was an
unbeliever and now I believe.
I was a self-involved and
now I'm disposed

Trees From A Great Distance

The chin of some slumbering giant
or the hair on the back of the
neck of the 13 year old boy in
geometry class

shaved by fire or
barber's razor
once a month or
a millennia

--

Now mountains from a distance
with the humid haze of Mediterranean
summer evening beneath, framing its peaks -
Those are just mountains

like gelatto caught on a creamy white
cone, a cone cooked with local
water, holding the drippy melty mess
until it's consumed by sun.

Delphi View (Before Sunset, Twilight)

Fingered bay slipping
past mystic haze
caught in nets of land
and trees, night and days

birds speckling a close canvas
with spinning chirps
like a floating iris filament
or Corinthian swells

what debris comes into these
lungs, exhaled on this page;
what clean and simple lines
the sun makes on your valley

an indescribable visit
not captured in pictures,
on pages / words or phrases
corrupted by eyes, power-lines

(ah! it's get a free slurpee day at 7/11!)

Give Me My Month

You are not a forgotten book
not something I have put on
the shelf

You are not my chased lover
whom I have left for someone
else

You are not the snow and I am
not the spring sun, come to
cure your winter dream

You are not an unloved puppy
ready to be put to death because
of your lazy eye

No, you are a not the fat girl
or the tall girl or the brace-faced
one without a prom date

you are not the unplayed violin
with broken strings collecting
dust in the attic

Still not the train left to
rust off of the pacific railroad
tracks

you are not the spider web swept
up by human hands waving waves
at unseen spindles

you are the red wheel barrow, the plums in the icebox,
the moving metro masses, the petals, the bow;
you are catalina island just out of sight,
an autumn apparition placed in pacific paradise.

Alone Together

what kind of guilt
keeps you up at night,
the kind that explodes
behind your cardiac muscle
pushing poison plasma past

open arteries or is it
the kind that simmers and
bubbles like a pot full
of tomato soup; the kind
that wakes you at 3am

with strong acid reflux
with heartburn that can't
be fixed by pills. Oh no
it's almost light out again
and this time you win, you win.

Elder Brennon Hawkins

Your address slipped
from the dust jacket
of a Lou Rawls LP

TOO MUCH
the title screams
at me

and you roll
all the way back
into existence again

Brennan, you were lost
and the missspelling
of your name, and your

address in South Carolina,
isn't what I'm after at all -
it's more about the lady who

wrote your name and "ELDER"
down on the card, and what
she was sending you, you the

lost boy, the "modern day
miracle," you the inside-
outside, never on the wrong side

boy, and boy oh boy, you were missed;
your mother kissed your lips like
an apple with a lisp, wind whips

and the sun slips behind the
world's lips, darkness with
the hint of lipstick.

I hope the letter made it to
you my boy and I hope you got
exactly what you deserve.

After-life (to the point)

Son
today, now,
you and I have never met
you aren't someone yet
I'm just imagining what you
might be like, and if you are
anything like me, which I'm sure
you will be, then you might survive in this

so my Son,
and I might have two or three
or one or none, we'll wait and see
but Son, my Son, I've come back again
today to say a simple message from yesterday
that I love you, even though we have never met
and your some stranger in my head and somethings
different now that I'm dead, I will still love you again

and always and always and always and always,
so friends if you're reading this message
that I wrote before his life had begun
a message written for a party of one
please make sure he sees it and reads it
and knows what I've done that I wrote this
for him and for him alone, that before he was born
he had a home, that he will never be lost, just free to roam;

I love you, I love you, I love you, my son.

After-life

If you are reading this,
and I have died, and I
am dead, then something
truly wonderful has happened

I still have a voice beyond
my mortality, at least for
a moment; moments ago, I was
kissing the hips of one woman

the only womans hips I have kissed,
and it hit me, like some needle
in my teeth or a piano on my foot,
that this was the only woman and

this was my only life, so
so if you are reading this after
my life has passed, then I've found
another woman after my last or

maybe I've just got to kiss those hips
and those lips one more time, in some
young imagination or in some coffee shop,
in some class or some corner of nowhere

for a moment, I am there, again.

Beth / Rest

E piano
those keys I've missed
in the midst of some lost time

New York
1988
when saxophones felt like money

the halls of places
where the classes have
long been dismissed

what we are revealing
where it's soft and cold
my life before I was born

oh the big city without
crime, a street so clean
with bright colors and

subway grates
brownstones
newspaper on the gutter

it was found what we
looked for, oh a western sound
like a marlboro poster in the

morning shadow or
garbage truck picking up
smells from the night before

early. no drums.
just synth and mist
and your epiano

your ununderstandable mutterings
your sound is a voice justin
saxophone so high and fake strings

drums in the distance playing
a solo that hasn't been played for
twenty five year

this is axiomatic of a time
that has been long forgotten
like fan-fiction pushing us

back to a place that was
only real in the movies or
in some world of the imagination

some hollywood soundstage
that had no crime or hookers
and just a longshot, a crane

quite.

Wash.

a world of pianos
in three on
your knee

is all we know
this world
when thought, we thought

distant and close
growing up in the innerear
all too soft a sound

three of you singing harmony
break
strings come in big so heavy

and light, we nearly forfit
ahhhhhhh I'm going like a quckening view
im telling darkness from

OH PEDAL STEEL
OH CHOIR OF ONE
AND STRINGS STRUNG SIMPLY

hard pan right
just little taps on the keys
little loops

home with a --- child
come strings come
we findly crack oohhhh


still holding still
with the left hand
coming in and then again

those strings again
NOW SOMETHING MORE
drums and in triplets even

even triplets
left and right
right and left

these lingering notes
stillness of strings
still pushing

you just at the end of a corridor
playing us out in major keys
rain. Do I hear rain?

Perth

Trains clicking like
a clean obsession
maybe the sound of dinner plates


then guitars in stereo
drumsticks and licks
oh the sounds we've missed

CHOIR
SINGING
SIMPLY

drums
snare
I'm tearing up across

voices as instruments
soft and cold but together
around this little fire

all together now
ride cymbal
downbeatittous

Just in your time
we sway like leaves
on a river of revenge

wardrums tap tempos
so tepid
what I know what it is

cymbal cups
breaking ground
rushrushrush

doublebass I hear
and stick clicks
downdowndownbeat

still with violins and
the guitar lick and horns
andtaptempo of warm war

spring in the horns and
ferns fall from their tops
out of the mouth

slip splash and lick
those little licks
chaos in a blender

crash
crash
trains and sticks and crows and plates.

Dried Right Up

solace, thought,
lack of eternal
connection, ego
and alcohol

these are the
things that make
for great poems;
Tivo, facebook,

youtube, webcams
foxnews, the onion,
these things all
hurt, they are the

machete to my sugarcane
and I know I shouldn't complain
but my output ain't what
it used to be

so instead of writing
more I'll just want my
MTV, the numbing Novocaine
of nonsense as sense

the piles of content with
no means for history, the
slippery, the swiss cheese,
made to be consumed and destroyed.

Rarities, B-sides and Outtakes

It's funny to think that
every song or photo or movie
had other brothers and sisters
that didn't make it

maybe Bukowski wasn't drunk enough
nor Sylvia depressed just right,
maybe Hughes didn't feel like dancing
because Bronte had lost her romance tonight;

artists seem to be like
mother-birds that push their
art out of the nest for flight,
but so many fall, fail, flail

like this darling and disfigured
poem, that tastes more like prose
than like a pro with a rose or
seeds sown in rows ready to grow,

and then all the king's horsemen
and all the queen's men
stand around and point and laugh
and write there little reviews

that will soon be wrapping
fish and chips or
used a kindling to start
some other artist's fire.

Easy Listening

I'm sitting in my office
in our office, while you
are at a bridal shower,

and I'm secretly writing
our little life together to
the rest of the world

like some kind of simple
broadcast, a smoke signal
that a few may see, but

someday that smoke will
come back to me, to us,
and I might think of it

a bit differently, but
for now, for now, I will
turn around and open

the balcony door to
let the evening air in
on a day where morning rain

and pacific wind are still
so fresh, that the smoke
from the page is swept up,

it's churned for a moment
then swallowed and forgotten
by the sounds and smell of

Spring acting like Summer,
with birds and barbecues and
wind and a dog barking in the distance.

Leila (#2)

Like some half-eyed
teenager who comes
downstairs for dinner
and leaves after two bites,

you spend all of your time
in your bed, retired from the
rest of us, and now your tail
won't even wag, not for chicken

not for guacamole, not even for
the afternoon-treat we would share
where I would come home and you
would greet me, meet me with your

eyes, and tail, and little licks
like praise; oh those were the days,
but now your black coat has covered
the sun, with blinds shut, you're done.

Birthday

It's your birthday once again,
another year gone by,
the best of gifts I know to give
between us, you and I,

is a gift that costs not
very much, at-least not from my pocket
it's not a piece of jewelry,
nor diamonds or a locket

it's just this kinda sing-song rhyme
with little time to pay
to say that you're my very best friend,
and I'm glad that it's your birthday.

more of 2006

Loving yourself: it's about time.
Look around. How beautiful do you feel? Take a minute to think about all the gifts that you have in your life. A computer. A home. A Friend. A Family. People who love you.

These ideas are the things that bring smiles to my face. And you know when you are smiling, you are looking beautiful.

Oh Well

Once I fell down into a well
that some might call adulthood,
and I knew this well was coming
but I didn't protect myself

no no, I knew what to
expect, that I couldn't
get out of it, yet that
prospect never bothered me

I will soon die in the
dank darkness, alone
on a blind journey
stubornly digging to China

Rough

Editors, with colored pens,
bring your swoops of red
down on me

I won't move a muscle,
I'm here to stay and
your clinical strokes

those hands that have
come to tie my shoelaces,
won't reach this time;

it's clear, right here
that you might be writing
"WORD CHOICE" or "REDUNDANT"

and I won't come fighting,
no, this battle was over
long before you were born

and the wrong side won,
so honey bun, just set
down that pen

put on some music,
let down your hair,
and run, honey, run.

DFW

Something points him
toward you, his fingers
flippping fast enough

to underscore that seat
you held with underlines
Roy E. Disney

what a joke was
played on all of us
your universe imploded

on the page, and friends
and loved ones come close
to hold the light up to

your acned face,
let him rest in peace
david, let him rest.

My First Poems (2004)

Two Broken Windows Intact

I’m sitting snugly in a plush two thousand
and three plastic chair. Three fingers for
one hundred and thirteen keys. To my right
giant panes of glass that are double thick

sleep coolly and jealous. Six are motionless
but two are shattered, designing their visions
as they choose. Showing everyone what they
are thinking. How they have decided to let

me see the oak or the green sidewalk or
the brown grass or the opaque figure of
a child holding a balloon in one hand
and his mother’s heart in the other, so

careless with both. He’s like the driver
who moved his cart into the building
claiming the full walls of glass as his
own. He didn’t know if he hit them just

right, he could give them life, where they would
stay up and let everyone see through them in the
prettiest way. Soon, without explanation
they will be replaced, with new transparent panes

just like mom. She won’t understand when he
leaves for school or falls in love. She longs to
hold him and tell him stories, just as the two
panes have done for you and me. If the child,

or the mother or the balloon could see me at this
moment, would they feel like we do? Would they
sing a lament for these poor and happy windows
and pray that the repair men would take an extra week?


Happiest Place on Earth

Have you ever paid to wait in line?
Paid to park, to pay to wait in line?
How about paid for food
After paying to wait in the restaurant?

Ever seen the look on a child’s face
When they step foot inside this façade for the first time
Where puffy bricks and screaming doorbells, clinch hearts
As tight as my grasp on your over-used hips

Thousands of them without cares
Warming our souls into a metallic glow
So our cold copper-plated core
Can give off warmth just for today

Just for tonight, you love me
You could be my Fiancé coming in from 3-days in Chicago
Or a high school sweetheart ran into at a bar
“Funny seeing you here, Façade. It’s me, Child,
Can I buy you a drink?”



Nineteen sixty-nine Gibson SG; white

Her skin has turned from pearl,
to a translucent tan smear of age and regret.
My lover for all of my days.

Waiting for me.
Why has her hard shell broken down with time?
Once so beautiful and shining
a metallic smile
radiating love
silently.
She always cherished playing,
and when she was young, she sang bright

louder than church bells
sweeping the countryside.
So soft and strong,
still singing the same songs
of youth,
but her tongue
has become the bridge
between her missing teeth.

Her missing years.
A rusted character and
hidden glow covered
with smudges of being used and neglected.
Her warn body screams
“why not love me like you did?”
Neck curved from tan to bruised black
since my hands squeezed so tight.

And when the fists release their clutch
from her slender neck for the last time,
she will never breathe again.
unstrung,
unplugged,
lifeless.
Carried in a beautifully
padded box to lie
above the ground.
In an attic, forgotten.
Until a garage sale
or when we move house.
to be thrown away once more.



Sunsets Reexamined

This twenty-third night of
Watching a firefly boogie. He has the net
And the jar and the high hopes. He has the tools

And the ability. He just can’t catch it.
He can’t hang on. And she will never
Know that she’s stretching his soul

For the chance, just a chance to
Get it. Always dancing in circles
Around his head, lighting up the night.

In a ballroom evening dress of gold
That coats and heaves at every man’s
Heart in the room, taking a piece from each

His hand twists the small neck hairs below the hairline.
Searching and reaching for the sound of capture
For the music and the gold and the body.

Now I know what your thinking,
But this is different. I can see him
Sitting at his desk, with a book in front.

This is key; this moment is imperative
What he doesn’t know is that he is brighter
Than the brightest fire fly, bringing her closer

The sun is attracted to his light and now
He caught it, and wrapped it up
And I watched him hold the sun.

In his arms while it bled to death.
She grew so pale next to him.
The world is so pale next to him.



Driving To Kinko’s To Bind My Final

Old sky, grey and close
tapping at my windshield.

It’s raining soft and windless like a pretend sick
day, where a “soar throat” would win
for 14 hours. I lay under the yellow
blanket grandma knit. Snug with the sound
of rain and warm with contentment and cherry
cough drops.

For an instant, it seems like the stereo and the wipers
and the rain are all drumming together.
Cha Cha Cha Clap

With my eyes closed, that old blanket reappears below my chin.
In comes the smell of my first home.
From ten years of sitting on the back shelf of my mind.
Sweet and crisp.
Full of lavender and the window’s orange tree.

There is this place
between the buried and me,
that’s different for everyone.

When my ride comes,
I hope it’s raining out,
so I can breath this in again.

Metonymy

Would it be weird to dance
on Broadway, in front of the
Roebuck store,

Or move to California
and find what Hollywood
is for?

Or fly to Washington Dc
and sit on top
of the hill

and think of hills
in LA, so far from
white house kills;

Like Frankenstein's
waddling mumble,
his unrecognizable tongue

the queen of the hive's
buzzing bumble,
the workers will feed her their young,

I don't mean that
Westminster's worthy
to represent blue-collar taste

the sweat of the laboring
hurried, to feed bears
on Wall Street in haste.

3rd Annual Poetry Night

Hello Students
Tonight is the Night
where we will laugh
and cry and golf-clap

intention, direction,
rhyme and meter don't
matter here, they
dance on 18th century

tongues, bourgeois
but no, not us kids
we will be free he he
letting go of all form

and the need to appear
like poets in language,
just wear black and
sound deep, deep, deep

all the little birdies
sing deep deep deep
like underwater diver's
rental suit. cheep cheep cheap.

On Letting Go

This poem would be
much longer and more
substanital, like a meal,
if I didn't have to pee

you know, urinate; that
thing you did this morning
and around lunch and and
all the damn time

the thing that reminds us
that we are all animals
with pregnant skulls,
our physical needs, our gentiles,

well I planned to write
a poem about transcendence,
about forgiving and renouncing,
about acceptance, compassion;

my image, the image is of
myself as a child, on a
San Francisco trolley car
releasing the leather strap

that I had held so tightly
and trusting in gravity's
maternal grasp and in my
own inner-ear and knees, my feet

but I have no time for such
imagining - not when the white
office urinal speaks, it beckons,
it pleas: Pee! Pee! Pee!

Guilt

I'm a horse
that Bukowski
bet on, in some track
like Santa Anita long
after they had Japanese
interment

and, as that horse,
I feel earth pulling
past fast and I only
see tails and dirt
airborne dirt flying,
push push

so the old and young
the white and fat can
get drunk, can drink,
and swear and spend
and I won't understand
a single word of it.

On Deception

I lied today
to tell the truth,
I called you, Melissa,
after 3 months and

told you that I'd
written it late
that I didn't
mean it, that

I'd made a mistake
and then I called you
back. I called you
back to tell the truth

and you laughed at me
in your surprise, and
I have the feeling that
this, all of this, will

trick trick trickle down
and get me fired.

Food Is Sex

Blood
Blood Orange
Orange Soda
Soda Pop
Popsicle
Otter Pop
French Fries in Ketchup
Mustard
Chicken Wings
Lemon Meringue
Huckleberry Tart

Beef
Hot Stewed Beef
Game Hen
Sorbet
Watermelon
Dark Chocolate
Melted Cheese Sandwich
Toast w/ Butter and Jam
Navel Orange
Blood Orange
Blood

Frown-Smile

Back in 2011, today
we had these tabs
that sat ontop of
our web browsers

mine read as follows
facebook
crescent moon
heygirlfriend

www.unchangi...
write space
Diva's departm...
The 50 best fo...

Blogger: The F...


NOW. You might know what
this all means, you might
understand why I've told you
or this might be so far in the

future that words like browser
and blogger sound like buggy whip
or flapper, like parchment or scroll,
but that's only if I've done my job.

While Waiting to Sleep, I Lean Over and Say

I don't think adults
are smarter than children,
they just have more
practice at being alive.

Mexico

sidewalk to pavilion

inside we are waiting

music and dancing

a movie a boatride

not work nothing waiting

just escape and safety

heaven in mexico

Magical Ship

To a place
where we'll go
where no one ever knows

and we'll show them

and we'll show them

You and I brother
We're gonna take on the world
(take on the world)

We'll show 'em what we've got
show 'em that we're hot
break 'em til we've got what
we want / what we want

we're not gonna take it
we're not gonna fake it
this time,
we're gonna make it this time

so fire off the cannons and
batton the hatchets,
this ships pulling out in
the moat

to New York!

We're setting sail on
a Magical Ship
to New York
Christmas time in New York

In Seriousness

Much more Mick
Jagger than Rod Stewart
more Martha Stewart
than Martha Washington

even more Bill Gates
than Steve Jobs
and more jobs
than poetry

much more a stripper than
a dancer, more a taxer
than a free-lancer, an
argument than an answer

more like a rottweiler
than a retriever, an infection
than a fever, the quarterback
not the receiver

you get the picture?
the play-maker! the pirate!
the taker! the anthem-writer!
the soul-shaker! the orgasm-faker!

they will be the one's shoveling
the dirt on your casket long
before it's lowered, so let them,
let them, let them do it.

Tug-a-war

take my face, right off my skin
and put in on yours, tuck it in

take my voice, from off this page
dip it in your throat, without my rage

like the limpness of a teabag
arising as Atlantic Sun

like a image of Jimmy Carter,
on a Popsicle stick, with no eyes.

An Argument

I am the trumpet
and you are my clarinet
and you wail like woodwinds wail

from Fresno to Bakersfield
from Boston to Seattle's heals
we wail! Oh we wail!

and yes! I knew you might
have been right somewhere
near Delaware or on the Biloxi Bay Bridge

and my Ocean Springs reply
was no match for your Lafayette,
no excuses in Houston, you'd

hooked me in Las Cruces and by
Tuscan, I'd knew you'd won
and I forgotten how it had begun

but then by Vegas, we made love
in the back of the bus when I
remembered your affair in Dover,

Delaware. Oh Los Angeles came with
a breeze like winter orange trees
from the 1930s; some Pacific sneeze

onto our faces, then we'd laugh
at all our old places, baptized
on our knees in Venice Beach.

Sonnet for Sleeplessness

when everyone is sleeping sound at night
and your awake to click and clack; to write
to script a shallowness in lack of sleep
that search beyond the "interesting," the "deep,"
this kind of worn out passage one will find,
the steps, the marble treated so unkind,
and doors that swing so smoothly during day
will creak of untuned violins' decay
and yet, the lucidness of beat and meter
arrives as fast for author as for reader,
so read alloud these verbally-minded phrases
between the two, at least the one sings praises
for as the dark brings lightness to your dreams
this poet's rhythm sings, or so it seems.

Caught

teenagers in the window
children with the cookies
executives and their taxes

caught
caught
caught

oh the priests and the widows
the jailer and their pillows
the sailor on the bottombunk


caught
caught
caught

the Mayans and their scarific
the scientologist's advise
our Christian brethren; jesus CHRIST!

CAUGHT
CAUGHT
CAUGHT

to language in finite degree
to sigmund freud, shock therapy
and all your known psychology

caught
caught
caught

my sleepless night of poetry
where words will get the best of me
my muse, my fish, cast out to sea!

caught, caught, caught.

On Stillness

white noise
seems more gray
to me, like the

song of fog
scotch mist

like caskets closing

a noise not of
ghosts but of choices
chosen crudely like

burnt morning muffins
ten lords a leaping

ashes and ashes in snow

oh oh, slow, no slow
hello hello, like a white
afro, touched with picks

or fingertips
little licks

not like a TV with no signal

no, not a radio with no answer
a musicbox with no dancer
not a vixen with no pancer

oh no, just just maybe a
river of garbage or plastic

yes soothing, yes moving.

Rain Dog

Ho Ho
I've left high and dry
my son

like a cadallac
margarita with no
salt or

a nun with no
nightly prayer,
no way to hear

those silly
slick tongued
answers, not our

gold green dollars
or our agapantha
moonlit glancers

you've been to the
park, with the lighthouse
the silverlake echo place

ho ho,
I've known you before
you fat-faced little breader

you slender slung
hung
little reader

your eyes like thighs
and milk and cream
pushed desperate on the screen

simple answers nothing
mean; imagine my children
shaking hands and heads

look what he said!
Look at what the OLD MAN
SAID!

Light (and his dance on our eyes)

Fred Astaire
no one spoke about his rug,
his slick toupee tucked tight
Nono, not Fred's fake-hair

We stare at Fred, at his other
end; we watched the wonder of
his feet. That magician's touch
like air is his medium and

those tap-shoes are only
choosing when to grace the
ground; our Fred was free
from gravity and school dances

and awkward glances.
Christ, he could have had
a Davy Crockett Coon-skin Cap
or a stinking slicked-down skunk

but no living soul would care
about one hair on Fred Astaire.

2am

It's been about a month since I understood
what it meant to write a poem, or thought it could;
the conditions, the fluttering, the sleepless brain
the hunching the leaning the mild backpain

an A-typical assortment of words and phrases
orphan children of semantics: "who knows who raised us"
this callused singlemindedness, staggering graceless
like an man who fishes after youth with adult braces

Oh now! I'm not that kind of man who fains at sonnets,
the silly heartless blatherer pretending he's on it;
only a fool could think that he could sing his own praises,
but 2am has come again and I know she's faceless

My lord can you give me the tongue for speech,
cuz words and poetry seem out of reach.

Our Future (zeitgeist)

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Restlessness #2

A dark office
long after those
other workers went
back on the train

to their families
out in the 'burbs
outside of Manhattan,
with their frontlawns;

I waited here for this
I waited here for you
in my dark office
with the white shades shut,

I stuck it out for you
for us and soon I will
be brought back, caught
and shackled, cuffed for

our little escapade,
I played hearts instead
of spades, and this dream
will wake like subway steam,

Something unravels when
morning makes mush of my mind,
when writing words will whisp
away like monday's manhattan memory.

Cheating

This is the first time
I couldn't sleep while
you are in bed

and I know that you
will never know that
I wrote this poem alone

unless it's published
and you read my poems
while on a plane or

to some friend for
the firsttime. There then
you will know that

you slept through its
composition and maybe,
you might feel like

I deceived you, I
took something from you,
but that's not true;

It is you who dreams
sweet dreams and
coughs in her sleep

while I ticktock
away little plastic
keys of consciousness,

while I belabor
reflexivity, you get
to let go of the handle

to the San Francisco street
car, to brush off your
friend's comment or sleep on the plane

and I'm still stranded
back here at 1am in
the spare room; typing.

Jack And Jane

Jack and Jane went
up his brain to
fetch a pile of
cocaine

Jack feel down
and broke his
frown and Jane
went freezing after

those frostbitten friends
went round again and
Jane went vomiting
after

again and again
in arms and in friends
with dollars and
no nonsense

the mirror the night
the morning the fight
the frenzy of powder;
pubescence

Jack and Jill, they
found some pills
to stretch the
all night bender

then Jane came home
to needle her arm
found Jill in arms
in their bed

"Oh Jill Oh my God"
Screamed Jack, he was gone
while Jane just jittered
jonesing for smack

She didn't ever care,
just sat in the chair
rolled sleeves and
eyes from the bread

The three of them there
one needle to share,
horse singing the songs
of the dead

"Oh Jack and Jill Went
Up The Hill to fetch a
Year of Rehab! Jack Fell
down and bumped his crown

and Jill came tumbling after!"

6 Semesters of Teaching at Private University

Most teachers are afraid
of losing the mind's of
their students, of losing
the respect of their students

so they puff up their chests
and raise their voices and
"know they know everything"
all at once, everyday;

but some of us let our
hair down and show them,
the class, that we are
still humans; we let

them take us and forgive
us and relate to us.
We are the truther,
the "keep-it-realers,"

who always get bad evaluations.

Memory

I know that I won't
remember writing
this poem; I won't
recollect composing
these words, never

no not ever. Instead
we should have some fun
with "old" me, my memory!
Did I write this on a boat
outside of Crete,

Or was this written
in the nude near Needles
Neveda, with a woman
in the bathroom before,
well...with just two moments?

Did I smear these words in
a notebook on my waterbed
in the 9th grade or outside
the IN-N-Out burger, watching
the planes land?

You'd bet I wrung these
five-lined rushed proses
out while watching some TV
or eating a nectarine or
even grading papers;

But really, I'm still 25
in a grey shirt and blue jeans
sitting in my office
in the dark, staring into
my computer's screen

much like you are now.

For Satan, Forsaken

did you guys
know that drugs
make holes
in your brain?

Holes the size of
your nostrils,
Holes that reflect
the blow on the table;

oh! let's not forget
the money that
went up your nose!
Have you forgotten

those fucking fabulous
fantastic times. Are
they the ones you blew,
the years you blew away?

Leila (#1)

moments ago, my lady
was waiting and
staring past
my eyes

her brown and
black rushed
me back to where
dark beauty lies

and as I sit
at my laptop
and mouse
around the screen

the ghost of
sphinx, that
little minx
has disappeared unseen

Hump-day Waltz

With hardly enough
time to tap
out these phrases

my neighbors are
screwing so loudly
it's crazy

"oh god, oh
my jesus
your fucking amazing"

my headphones
won't stop them
from screaming, from praising

won't pound on the
wall when they're
pounding it for me

this is awful
appalling disgusting
abhorring

is that
their old tv?
he must be quite boring

she screams
and she shouts
with cannned laughter applauding

what fine midnight acting,
she hides
while she's yawning

he must not be that
great or
very exciting

those screams
and the moans
keeps her frown kept in hiding;

are we,
the young listener,
wrong for this writing?

Or should we read
fiction instead
of confiding?

Say It Ain't So, Joe

crickets skitter
like skittles

rainbow poppers
crusty broken bread

oh you wanna
crunch me

crush on me
crush me dead

won't we wait
for that boulder

to come for
our head?

in our dreams
on our pillows

sleeping time
slumber, in bed.

Exhale With Sound

We are waterfalls
of speech, unconditioned
unmitigated lovers of sounds

the sound of our voices,
my voice, as unrelenting
as a river spilling from

a cliff onto boulders
below, trickling into
ears and minds of others

other lovers, other brothers
who slip and re-spill those
natural streams, liquid prose

splatter and cover miles
and meters; minds and meteors,
mines and bullets, my own bullshit

laid out, stretched out in the
sun, to sparkle and glisten, like
water now listen, see what we've done

The Dead and The Hopefuls

Give me this,
at least this,
to have
on my own

like a
softball sized
lump above
my eye

I've fought
with you for
days about nothing
just punches

and kicks and
knives and nicks
i'll take my
lumps, take my licks

youth has held the
cards so close to
her heaving breast,
I guess I'm singing

simples songs to
songwriters who've
past long ago or
who are unborn.

Silver Splinter

betrayal mostly starts
when you've betrayed
yourself.

My mother once had
a restraining order
against my father

those are some
nasty roots
to bear blossoms

what kind of child
might turn out kind
when glass is in the soil?

how can we drive
when the gas-tank
is packed with sugar?

I'm the kind of man who
can't understand a plan
when it's written or told

hungry and cold,
juvenile or old
italics and bold

oh no, don't show me
that silly smile
where gold gleams

just past your gums.
I've done enough for
you. Let me go.