Dirty Joe
This is for you
wallowing through the streets 
when I was strung out
and you were too
we collapsed together
in the halfway house
clutching some mad dream
thought it would never end 
and we’d be clutching through eternity
now you're dead
I’ve got a bum hip
lingering covid
and a dead-end job
the halfway house
boarded up

This is me 7:49am
Tuesday morning
Broadway 
twenty-four degrees 
holding on to the railing
of twenty years ago 
afraid I'll slip and fall
into the who I am now

Or Else

 
All news arrives
from afar—or else.

We care less and
less—or else.

What else can we do,
if not to care？

Or else, we may deaden our hearts,
and pretend we heard nothing.

You’d better listen,
or else.

A sound touches the bell
inside our ears.

We close our eyes
to listen. Or else.

SEVENTIES SOLILOQUY


Long-hooded Cadillacs cruise through Bronx
streets. Their crumple zones crush VW
Bugs. Premeditated auto murder? Kids play
basketball with netless hoops. Stationery
stores sell action figures. Incredible Hulk’s
days are numbered. Pull Stretch Armstrong’s
limbs to the limit. Set off firecrackers, cherry
bombs and snakes. Remember P.S. 81 cafeteria
sporks and tater tots? Schoolyard Double Dutch
and freeze tag during recess? Good Humor
man sneaks a butt while children encircle mini
pugilists and yell FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
(Yo mamma’s got a pegleg with a kickstand.
Yo mamma’s got an afro with a chinstrap.)
View sci-fi blockbuster Star Wars in ’77.
Roger Corman’s drive-in movie empire declines
out in L.A., beyond dusty plains and ox skull
prairies. As seen on TV, cowboys still stick it
to Indians. Saturday morning cartoons look
great paired with Lucky Charms sugar shakes.
Hong Kong Phooey, stuck inside the file cabinet
again. “Mean” Joe Greene throws a jersey
for a Coke. Find Playboy in bushes. Bionic Man
and Woman sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g.
Moustache wearing father with corduroy pants
and Southern Comfort breath is back
from Dragon Lady Saigon. Feed local racoons
Froot Loops, as they line up like monks for alms.
Krazy Kat brings entrail offerings. Listen
to WNYU under the covers. Disco Sucks! Tune
out static as childhood fades away.

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.