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.