The Drugs on the Microwave

You have an expired bottle of
Oxy sitting on the Microwave
from your C-section
that you never took

and in my dreams, I put on
a leather jacket and stand out
in front of our house
lighting a cigarette

before crushing up a few
pills with the heal of a
butter knife and cutting
it up on the coffee table

with the scribbles from
my daughter's crayon set
and discolored scuff marks
from her Velcro shoes;

floating above the stained
sofa with my heals eclipsing
my head, straight out like
a cadaver, I slip and skitter

on frozen flames that
call out a din of doom,
collapsing in on myself:
a neutron star -

I wipe up the blood with
this page and form
it into letter, into
words.

Benedril and Coca-Cola

A lighthouse sits beyond the sailboat's bow
It's focus ever steadfast at the sight
the Captain never knows just when or how
his vessel finds the line, it finds the light
For where is Jesus in the the depth of hell
when Satan has forsaken sinful souls
and if the poker player has a tell
then fire down below means heaven's cold?
Yet I still sit down at this old computer
to find some satisfaction big or small
I know not who will mine my smelted pewter
but fingers on the keyboard say it all
I'll set my sights on heaven at all cost
even though I know all souls are lost. 

Waves Above

The embers of the flame of love
are burning out, inside --
The woman that I married left me
long before she died.

We slowly drove Dalmatian cliffs
when wedding bells did chime --
the honeymoon was broken
when I lost my fucking mind --

We drove around for hours and
I had no soothe avail --
the man she thought she married,
hardly there, beyond the veil;

Flash forward twenty years and still
I'm working on my soul --
the lesson that I learned is she
would never make me whole,

so when you find this poem that
your father wrote is grief --
remember there is always more
that's going on beneath.

Doctor G from Lynwood

This 

seventy-something 

white-haired

LSD-loving 

gun-shooting 

desert-driving

Ph.D 

with a Goatee 

lives 

in your fucking 

poolhouse

and is 

fucking 

your wife. 

a Little Strange Inside

When I was 16, and it was winter
near the coast in San Diego,
I was listening to music in
the middle of the night
on my headphones,

when the outline
of my step-dad came
up to the door and
I asked him what he was
doing and my voice

must have been loud
because he charged
at me like a drunken
frat-boy pummels
a foreign exchange student

while she is in a country,
in a city, in a school, in
a house with greek letter that is
not her own,
that is not her home;

after he left, I wept -
even though at 16
I had inches over him
and I had muscles over him,
he was still my father

he could've beat me
if he wanted to, and
now, I am so much
bigger and so much further away
that the music in my headphones

is still playing loud
I am quiet
so still and so quiet
closed and quiet
but still I weep when I'm alone.

For My Children

Sometimes I hook my thumbs
Under my eyelids and flip out
My eyes to dunk them in water
Like tea, to drink up what I see

The blue tea tastes of tears
Like childhood First-aid
Like father-less afternoons
Like cherries to ripe for pie

And I take my tear tea
And spill it in rivulets
Into white-cubed trays
to freeze, for my children to taste.

Fighting Old Men

I'm here to fight the old men
for the title but Ol' Hank has
still got his dukes up

I won't try, I'll just fly
and I'll swing and I'll cry
but Hank is still hammerin away.

He hammers and he types
and he drinks and he fights
and my edge is alright
(yeah I'm ready to cut with a blade)

yet unlike those men
who sleep away in stone boats
I've gottum on the ropes

I'm ready to choke
them with words of the living,
they're still all dead

They're still all dead
they're still all dead
don't try.

For Ms. R. Jones

Delicate, she plays
all 12 notes, the same twelve
pushed and plucked
for hundreds of years
from Bach to Basie

She counts the beats
with her feet and she
lets her dress drape
and dart daggers into
my chest,

How rash, she
floods the keys dawned
and drives my head
down between her
notes, not waiting

for the silence of
fifty years of filthy
matrimony, from
separate sheets to
separate beds to

separate movements
genres, homes, not
smoke-filled clubs
but houses high in
the Hollywood hills

oh, and like the rash
that she is, she clings
back up again and cold
to the touch, the ebony
and ivory sing -

Rashida, play your
delicate tune for me
on the other side
of the smog,
on the other side of the screen.

Restless Legs

the people you see
on the subway or in the
conference room or out
to dinner in a nearby town
who move their legs
up and down or
in and out or
jiggle them like
gregory hines on
broadway are doing
something secret that
is hard to admit
they
are comforting
themselves by
moving and pressing
their genitals with
their legs to feel
a little, little bit better

and with your pants on
you, my deep dark diner,
should look over your shoulder
and try it.

Feet of Fire

how can the
grass be green
on the other side
when my feet are
made of fire
how can the
soul and the spirit
deflect the grim
and sin of the
flesh when
we are bound in
broken bodies,
bruised and bent
battered and tattered
my tattoos don't
show on the outside
my tattoos don't
show on the outside
my tattoos show
that I'm not right
but bring back my
green grass to me,
for the hope is the
only thing that keeps
me from a fate like
david, swinging
from the rafters
on my patio
in the california sun.

The Unspoken Truths

I wish I could put into words the
unsaid feeling that lurks beneath
my heart and under my breath;

It's a weight like a dentist
pressing his latex-gloved
hand onto the roof of the mouth

and every time your step into the
room and I hear your voice, the
twisted knot loops over again

and pulls that much tighter,
like a tickle in the throat that
can't be staved with water or coughing

like a noose of cancer that spreads
from right beneath the surface -
a tumor where the heart used to be.

Numerology

Like the flashing green lights
on the top of the stove or
on the microwave oven
or in the dashboard of your automobile

we have to make small corrections to
our numbers, when the power goes out
when it's time to save daylight
when we want to be early

for me, I went to a small booth
in the parking lot of a Dollar General
where the lady asked me when
I was born and at what time and

she told me that I was here on
Earth to teach people and to
help people and to show
them how to write and to

right their wrongs and
sing their songs, side
by side by side,
besides she said I had

some karmic debt
that I stole in relationships
in my past lives and that now
I was here to pay

so I paid and I am
still paying and it
is all starting to make
a little sense.

Coming Home

My son, my son, my newly born son,
you've spent 4 long days away from your home
you were born on a Friday and tomorrow's a Tuesday
come home, my son, come home

Inside an incubator, on the second floor,
with Mother above on the third, tending to
wounded waist and women's waters
and father below on the first, with

his heart broken and battered and
bruised, oh son, my son, you already
knew the pain of your father before
you were home and the voice of us all

your sister has yet to see you and
yet to hear your cries and yet to hold
your hand and yet to kiss your eyes,
I hope she holds you longer than I am alive

Son! Son! My glorious son! You will be home soon
and will be home forever, for there is no turning back
your purgatory, your whales' mouth will all be washed away
and cleansed today. A car seat, a home, a family.