There Is Beauty Everywhere

 There is beauty everywhere 

if you take the time to look and stare 

you have to look beneath the trees 

at worms and bugs and even fleas 

there is beauty everywhere 

even in the trash 

there are flowers growing there 

you look in the ash 

there is beauty everywhere 

in cars and trains and underwear 

beneath the bridges above the buildings 

even in the air

There is beauty everywhere 

even in your smile 

as long as you are looking 

it will come after a while 

there is beauty everywhere 

even in the sludge

 there's something waiting there 

for your mind to budge 

if you look close enough you'll see 

that underneath the thing will be 

something beautiful 

that doesn't care 

something for your mind to wear

that beauty can be all around 

even when it's time to frown

that beauty is in traffic jams 

that beauty is not in lamb 

but in the toilet

and in the sky 

in your tears 

when you cry 

there is beauty everywhere 

you have to find it  

you have to care

This is not for a Birthday

 I hope you find this when

you are alone and it pushes you

in the wrong direction 

I hope you start praying to Jesus 

to ask him 

for his lost protection 

I hope you find the pain

that you hold tight and

that you have long been avoiding

I hope that this hurts you 

as much as it hurts me 

because that would be so rewarding 

oh and I hope the ash from 

your cigarette butt lights the 

trash heap ablaze 

I hope when you read this

it sticks to you and pushes 

you to end your daze 

because we die

yes, we all die 

we're all gonna die 

I just hope your death comes before mine 

I hope you fall asleep 

behind the wheel, 

the radio plows through your chest 

I hope the waterslide breaks 

mid-freefall, you scream 

while you're clutching your breast

I hope your mother rests 

beside your bed 

while you're in a vegetable state 

I hope these words make you

squirm and recoil 

so finally I can relate 

because we're gonna die 

yes, we all die 

maybe tonight 

I just hope your death comes before mine

A Poem for Weary Boomers in Autumn’s Repose

 Crisp morning air

Caught in the outer

Branches of your lungs

Your love once hung

In that air, on the bus

To school, her perfume

Dancing in lilac

And jasmine, her

Hair in pin-curls

For Dr. Dennis Gowans 

Your loved-ones

Hang in the balance

Between light and sunrise

Oh, how has love

Come again between

Summer and Fall

We fall like leaves

Like sundresses

That undresses in one motion

Our pink young and

Healthy hearts naked

On the beach

In the desert diner

On the back of the bus

A kiss like grape jelly

And then the sun again

And then the dawn again

And then awake again

And then, and then again -

A world full of possibility

Of second chances, of light

Feeling like a woman again

 Sometimes I yearn to feel like woman again

Even though I’m a man

And technically, I was never a woman

Or even a girl for that matter

But I used to dance and used to sing the high part

And when people called my parents house

On the phone, and I answered, they would

Think I was my mother.

I remember sitting in a group of older

Women, my mother’s friends, and

Just hearing dirty gossip

that I didn’t understand

We laughed for the sake of it

I still want to cry so hard that I think

I may never stop,

to make love like a symphony

I want to smell like her

And as I resurface, I see myself

In the mirror, at twelve, in her dress

And her heals, in my mothers bathroom

So young and so beautiful

now I’m a father and now

I am sloppy and I sleep sitting up

In the laz-e-boy chair like all fathers and

Grandfather

And now I get anger

And make love like a construction crew

And I smell like coffee and Ben-gay

And the men I’ve always hated.

Sept 30th 20

 Touching the inside of your elbow 

where the needle would go 

with the end of my middle finger

You, with your cream dress, 

and me with my suit 

We veer past the red carpet 

And I lean against the elevator button

it opens and closes 

we descend lower, beneath the stage 

Son in the Bath

 I write with my son in the bat 

with my word in waiting, with my 

world holding still 

the bath is deep and my son

is still two and he sings 

little splashing songs 

he doesn't dance the dance

of breathlessness underwater 

with bubbles and blood 

his pink and blue bronchial

breathe deeply with flush 

of smiling cheeks 

pinched by December - 

oh shit, he just stood 

at on the edge of the tub and 

I throw my laptop down and he

 sits so effortlessly, so gingerly 

"daddy I want banzan" 

"Vitamins?" 

"Yeah banzan" 

Banzan it is 

 

The Tide of Anger

 Here I sit on the couch

six feet from you, typing this

as softly as I can so that you

won't yell again

you don't have control of the

words you say or the things

that you do, you react 

like a buoy in a storm

miles off the coast of 

healthy

I recoil and hide in

my shell of muscle

and macho, my man-mask

You seethe, a soulfilled shrill 

scream, a hot haunted house

in your lung and a barbed-wire

band bound round your helpless 

heart, your fingers fly on phones

pushing pain and hate to all 

who will listen, my finger 

cuffed and gagged, typing

so timid as to not wake the pain. 

Wait Weight

 oh you motherfucker 

you dangling participle 

you clostrophobic cancer 

I gotchu 

I gotchu right in my fuckin' sights 

I begged to dance 

But the knee on my chest

drilled down deeper

sternum shaking breath breaking 

bastard, Anxiety! 

You have had your last dance 

with me motherfucker and

I am coming in the night 

with black-masks and 

pipes to kill your wild 

dreams motherfucker 

I am not playing 

I am not paying 

some Yale doctor 

two hundred dollars 

an hour for you to 

fuck with me

I am the fucker 

motherfucker 

You look different

I stand at the edge of the quarry 

waiting to dig some unrecognizable sludge 

from beneath the surface of my heart 

- what broken pathways and sanguinary 

offices breathe in labor and in 

love - to the drum of a long-forgotten war 

- what young man went to battle the 

patterns of his parents to realize 

no, remember he is them, 

still battered, still punctured by 

bullets of fathers and father's fathers, 

still bloodied by breasts of other mothers

no other lovers bring the milk  

the guppies and the seed, the swimmers 

of a forgotten dream, laid to waste 

on the tightly woven carpet 

of a motel room, near the window

with the spread and the decorative pillows.

Boulders in the Living Room

When almost every mother would avoid

and every father would be twice as hard 

for she's the one who wants to fill the void 

and he would rather work out in the yard 

the bedroom's dead and they have had a vigil

with floss and pads and unburnt candles old

the romance that they had was not official 

and when the wedding came, it lost it's hold 

the silverware and china stacked in boxes

the top of wedding's cake was never cut 

still frozen in the back, the paradox is 

they always knew the why but not the what 

and now, with children grown, away and lonely 

she walks by neighbors, gyms and yoga class 

yet he still works out in the garden, only 

with his attention's on Bermuda grass 

The young instructor in the yoga window 

without a shirt without a care, he smiles 

the laps she walks to get sight of this glow 

the hopeful shine of youth, she'd walk for miles 

on corresponding couches, they recline 

so silent for so many years, they've stayed 

in virtue and in pain, their soft decline 

a whimper of the love they never made 

a life of love not lost but just deferred 

not friends to the unfaithful or to sin 

No begging, pleading, yelling, not a word 

each waits for other's death, so they can win. 

Buckets of Roses

That line that Meryl says when

she wants to make the room and

the world perfect

I want 

and they arrive roses on top of roses

wafting through the tv screen 

white and pink and marigold

the music in her voice 

is as lavish and fragrant 

and the aluminium handled buckets

Buckets or Roses 

She wants them and there they are

both decadent n the film and decadent

for a film crew to buy eleven hundred roses 

just for our incidental joy.  

CoVid Sonnet

What days and months give all that we require
to every bit of isolations'  heir,
we sit alone to shun the washed out choir
for death and death alone is in the air
He dances in the unsung songs aloft
he waits for weeks to glean his gangrene grin
the lungs of young and old are each so soft
he beats you with no mark upon your chin
But as the days make days and nights make morning
and as with Winter's frost comes florid Spring
we'll have our ample time and ample warning
to let the cough met death and Freedom ring
Let's all stay home and let that be our cost
for in the night, the dream of sun's not lost.

Mental Illness

In earnest, all I desire is
to write something fun
and simple, easy to quip

a nursery rhyme for
adults, some bumper
sticker phrase that

leans out in chrome
like "don't short the
tall stuff" or "an coke

a day keeps the
dentist getting paid!"
Instead, when I breathe

I shake. I take benzos
for tic-tacs and wake up
at five am with my mother's

voice perfectly recited in my
head like a recording, mispeaking
words - my brain serves up the problems

and I don't care if this is anything
anymore I just want to give you a
piece of myself so that you can
grow or show the world that someone
actually lived for fucking once
my brain gets so hot that I will
cry over nothing and weep when
youtube videos are mild at best
My best is hidden somewhere else
and this is just all of me
I am so broken and so ashamed
for being a person that it has drove
or driven my crazy - like medically
nuts - I hate people and I am a person
and that's fucking crazy.

Bacon For Breakfast

It's usually muesli or
sometimes chocolate chip pancakes
but rarely, and today, it is
bacon

the plastic pack split down the
center and little slivers skitter
in the cast iron pan - oh hot
bacon

The steam and the wisps
and the pops from the stove, the crispy
crackle, the applewood smoke
bacon

-

I take the pan, once its stood -
the sheen of grease turns white
and grey; smear my hands in the fat of
bacon

the neon blue dish-soap like
phosphorescent lemons
splits the spit of fat from crusted iron
bacon

and my hands still gleam with
grease that grace these keys,
coating these arthritic creases with
bacon.

For Joanie

I have a homeless friend
who may have made it to his end
cuz now that I'm stuck inside
I have the feeling he's on his ride

to meet the universe again
the shelters have closed and then
the food doesn't come so fast
and just like us, it won't last

he sat on a bench outside
the Chinese restaurant, I slide
these little lines between
my thoughts of him that seem

to hold no water any more
his morphine gone, a blacked door
he made my car smell of cologne
and I just left him on his own

He called some simple words
more angry than you've ever heard
"You didn't bring the money you
left me here, you fucker who

promised me you'd help me out
and from the grave, from here, I shout
You fucking mother fucking fat
fucking piece of shit and trash"

He died alone alone alone
no home no home no home no home. 

Desperate

My wife just said "it's really late"
 from the sofa in the other room.
My children sleep and
are still babies.

My neck is sore.
My jaw clenches.
My fingers fly
before the creepers

climb the sides
of this chair to
pull me
back under.

I only have this
moment to send this
message to you
from here.

Go stand outside
naked in the sun.
Dance and jiggle
and let your body

bathe
in its fleshy fashion.
You are only you
for so long.

When I'm gone,
it wasn't so long.
My wife is waiting.
Soon I will sleep

and so will you.

The Gift That God Gives

The gift that God gives
Grow cold in soul’s cellar
Sold to paupers for simple
Seeds, sewn among weeds

We each eat Nietzsche’s lies 
like itchy sand, she knows my cries 
at night are not bestowed 
below her thighs, 

oh my! My god! I cry 
for simple words and
Simple lies like Abraham
With son held tight

Let us all believe, for I can’t
See the glory of the coming of the lord. 
We have come to see the honey 
and the milk upon the shore, 

and all the green in Arizona 
can be canned in heat, 
we sit and weep alone
with salty streaks that dry so sweet

all the children’ve gone away
And gifts of youth expire today,
When words won’t work and
Fingers flee, Will we still squint

To watch the sea?