Big Deal

A hundred years from now
It might seem as if
You had never been.
Same as with all the others
Who shot their wad at the wall
And found it didn’t stick.

You can’t bet on a future
You will never see.
What you do now
Is what matters,
Even if it’s only a sneeze,

Instead of that big wind
You thought you would cause,
One that would uproot trees,
And help you leave
A permanent scar
Where the supermarket
Used to be.

Circle

A formation of people in a circular square.
I am one of them.
Trapped by this circle, unable to get out.
Like the others, I was born blind.
A layer of grey mist covers my eyes.
Birds in the forest, in the thick fog, are terrified by this corpse-covered circle,
Screaming again and again.
People have died at different spots in the circular square.
They were all worn to death.
But I am full of hope.
I can feel the magnificent scene of blooming flowers in the distance.
People all believe
That the circle represents cycle.
But I feel that this circle
Can carry me and fly,
Fly into the spring scenery not far away.

圆
圆形方阵里的队伍，
我是队伍的一员，
被这圆困得出不去，
我和其他人一样天生的是眼盲，
眼珠被蒙上一层灰雾，
林中鸟儿在大雾里被这覆盖尸体的圆吓得连连惊叫，
有人死在圆形方阵的不同地点，
他们都是被熬死的，

而我充满了希望，
我能感受到远方来自鲜花盛开的盛景，
人们都以为，
圆代表了循环。
而我觉得这个圆，
可以载着我飞，
飞到不远处的春天的景象里。

AFTER READING DESCARTES

 
Is that Buster Keaton
or could it be a rhinoceros?
And am I breathing heavily
or are these really convolutions?
It feels like I’m riding in from the north
but I could just as easily
be crawling up from the south.
So what am I?
Shaped by centuries
or merely the shreds of a discarded
cardboard box?

Do I sip coffee
and look out on a violent world?
Or soar and dip like a gull?
And I’m in my parlor aren’t I?
So why do I hurt like
I’m sore and bleeding in some alleyway?
My eyes are brown surely.
And yet some are green.
Are those stars in the sky
or are they more like scars?
I live in a world
where there are no good answers.
Not even the questions
are up to the job.

 

 

Ten Days in Jail

I once spent ten days in the county jail,
in the bullpen with Zeke and JC,
who were guilty just like me.
we knew the trustee,
also guilty like me,
who brought left handed smokes to our cell.
The accommodations were rough.
The food was never enough.
When I got bailed out,
and got out and about,
I was glad there were still stars above.

waking up in Chicago


I drank atomic bottles of tequila in the tiny cubicle
Of a vast Amtrak train.
The eyes of weary travelers crawled
Upon me like velvet spiders.
 
And I arrived in Chicago
To swim in the blues and summon up coke
From south-side queens.
 
I settled in Union Station
Smoking until dawn, the wood benches
Near the tracks were feathers
That beckoned me to lay.
 
And with the sun I set
On the tracks with a soldier blind from Vietnam
And understood there the insanity of self-destruction.

She Says My Last Poem was Appalling

That’s me doing my finest Alan Dugan.

You think it approaches the profane,
but it’s the best I can do
under the present circumstances.

Yes, it stretches the bounds of good
taste and decency.
But what better subject to explore
than one’s own decadent desires?

Dugan crapped
on the couch cushions
after his mind burglarized
a couple of homes,
honoring art in all of its stinking glory.

Poems should be full
of such fecund imagination.
If I write about uncouth things,
it’s a bit much, I confess.

I aim for an elegant way to express
the inexpressible power of animal
lust in one man’s body.
I’m not always proud to admit it.

I should slink around like a dirty
old man, but the poem’s the thing
and it has to sing its own song.
I’m just trying to stay out of its way.

Damn poems run around
and grab ass and tease
until the shrieks reach my ears,
then I have to express regret
for the way my hands
touch you through the lines.

Anthem


If we think history’s anthemic,
think again. 

The soaring black anthems of jet engines
and nation-states from hell. 

They speak of transcendence 
but what of vacant lots 
with chainlink perimeters
and in the midground
the ugly human soul
and for me,
the paranoid itching 
of dull afternoons,
what of that? Do 
we contain the inventory
of agitation and irritability– 

The myriad cruelties
don’t bother me today. 
Neither do manic energies
reach me, like I’m 
plugged into the wall– 
today sunrise looked like sunset
more red than yellow
the ocean its ambient self, 
everything’s a landscape. 

All these years I’ve
written nothing
yet failed to see 
I thought 
in verse, 

an ashcan went full floral bloom, and bent. 

Education

 
After you forget
everything taught
at school
what is left
is your education

Someone once said so
How sharp that is
I feel the pain at once
as if I were cut
by my missed education

A Real Beauty


Sitting on the grocery store 
Parking lot and not expecting anything exceptional to happen 
I do this so much while looking 
At my phone 

And I see her, a real beauty walking,

Young cute face, long model-like legs 

I work in a large building with many women 

And she's easily more beautiful than them all

It's always unusual to see a pretty woman walking, they so many options, someone will always give them a ride

Whatever I was thinking about is not even a memory

But…

When is she getting out of the store I wonder 

Should I offer her a ride?

She comes back and she's staring at me the way a panhandler would stare at me, so she's friendly 

Greet me and greet her back, putting on the charm

She says, “ I look like the guy from the movie House Party.”

Oh yeah, i get aroused even more

I get her name, and she gets mine. I could use a friend 

She's carrying frozen packages of meat chicken steak roast as if she stole it

She's on a mission and wants me give her a ride to a local motel known hookers and drug dealing 

I tell her I can't go there 

Something bad can and will usually happen, along with the cops watching the hotel.

If I was ten years younger maybe I 

Would have 

But not now

This safe middle aged man, I am now


I go back to looking at phone,

And she walks away, heading towards the hotel

Away from me and my desire

a pending waterfall


sometimes writing is like
squeezing water out of
a rock

if you're lucky, you can
get lost in a lazy river

i prefer the chance for
death

so a canoe and a pending
waterfall will do

they think this is easy

just take a blank page
and throw some shit
down

decide if it should rhyme
or have the occasional use
of the word fuck

cross the t's and dot the i's
and there you go

they tend to forget the
sweat

the blood, the angst

the perpetual fear that it
will never be good enough

and they wonder why only
a few of us ever live long
enough to be remembered
-------------------------------------------------------
on a blank canvas


yet another rainy night

arthritis is the reminder
that you are old

make a drink

put on some jazz

and break out the
watercolors

let the pain drip on
a blank canvas

they say this is the
kind of therapy that
helps the insane

might as well try it

too poor for cocaine

too lazy to make some
coffee

a little red for the horizon

blue for a drying lake

where to put the fucking
happy trees

you have to wonder if
bob ross ever just told
someone to fucking find
another way to deal with
stress

i have found art is for
the depraved

the souls lacking
something

may they eventually
find it