“A Sensible Choice at 6:29 PM”
 
All I wanted was to let my madness
dance on the blank page,
but I had unclog my toilet,
deshell the eggs I boiled for my lunch
for the next three days,
brew some decaf coffee (a sensible
choice at 6:29 PM), and smile
at remembering my friend complaining
about the drunks at the mall
on a Tuesday morning,
wondering what was wrong with them
and thinking I must have been joking
when I told him they just understood
life better than most.

Flowers


Off to visit a sick friend
In the hospital, Daniel
Would have picked up
Some nice flowers to 
Bring but there were
Too many witnesses at
The cemetery.

Junkie John

                   "I sing the song because I love the man"

                                                           --- Neil Young


In July, he wears wool sweaters
to hide the potholes
of his arms' bad blood
staining the starched white 
linen of his dress shirt. 

He shoots meth 
between bells,
locked in the faculty bathroom. 

By three he's picking his cheeks,
itching to hide at home
the night that sleeps
eyes wide until morning. 

Broke
he combs the carpet
for a bump,

flush with twenties
he watches CNN for a week
without eating.

The wife, the cat, the car
move in the middle of the night
to Montana

before the salad mash
of his mind
collides with the cops

and they kill him 
with a .12 gauge
for thinking he's back in Iraq

but his family
won't state his name 
in the paper ---

Gone, gone, the damage done.

But I was more than
just a setting sun,

a little part of me in everyone. 

The Lonely Ones

The lonely ones
keeping the city sane.

Their auras soothe
all the hate and pain.

We just have to concentrate
and feel with our hearts...

Joining the lonely ones,
making a huge crowd.

Keeping the city sane.

Thin On the Ground 

 
Don’t speak, 
They don’t want to hear.  

Never share,  
They’ll never care.  

Don’t waste your breath – 
You ain’t got much to spare.  

Screw the reasons,  
They ain’t got guts. 
Screw their worries, 
The jealous  
Will just call brave, 
Nuts.  

Nobody will admit it,  
But we’re all headed down,  
On the same  
Nowhere lanes. 

Don’t quit-on yourself, though.  
Don’t do like everybody else,  
Be brave,  
Go for broke.  

It’s the only way  
A long shot 
Can cope. 

Thin on the ground, 
Nobody wins,  
There’s no fangs of meat to fear,  
Stay crazy between the ears,  
Brazen belly of hope.   

 

October in the Edgware Earth
	After Jack Kerouac’s “October in the Railroad Earth”


There’s a big road in London called the Edgware Road, back of the Marble Arch station, where me and all my neighbours live in a building that falls apart called Dudley Court, with leaks, and creaks, and drills all year round, where people come to buy drugs, where Airbnb guests scream Mate, the lift’s not workin’! while the concierge mumbles Short-term lettings are illegal in these premises, but hands them keys anyway — the road is loud and proud, its rickshaws booming with sound, and motorcycles revving out into the night! — there’s foot traffic, and maybe trafficked feet — ‘merican tourists clickity-clacking their suitcases from the Hilton up the street to see Sabrina Carpenter sing in the Park, gazing at bars with shisha smelling like ice candy burning on the stove and at pawnshops with ol’ rimless spectacles and snus and flags o’ Palestine paled from rain and hopelessness while bootleg Labubus and cabbages next door blacken from exhaust and exhaustion…  Madman, madman — people say — coulda lived anywhere in ol’ Great Britain, but to me, this here is Great where people dance and pray, though soon there’ll come an end to our sadness and our gladness and though I know my neighbours will be kicked out before me (I can try to butter the right biscuits), we will all have to fall eventually and burn again through this October Earth…

VOLUNTARY REDUNDANCY

 
I dream of curry.  Not Steph,
Thai green, Indian red.
You are mouthing a word,
Referee or refugee when
I awake above the cloud line
Thick cirrus nestled in the valley,
The sky a circus blue
Like the fixtures in my grandparents’
Bathroom, the shag on their toilet seat,
Every other tiny floor tile.
That room always smelled
Like toothpaste and recent use—
Cold, crisp, fluorescent, human.
Generations feed one another.
We toss some things, carry others,
Pretend what’s left is uniquely ours.
Now I lie here in this cabin
Three hundred miles from decent curry
Mt. Gardner above my toes,
The pixels of the universe
Like fireflies gossiping,  
An entropy so pure
The mind makes patterns
Where none exist. 

Celebrate the Ends


She said to me,
“God, you’re so hard to
live with. Why do you
always make it so 
difficult for people? 
I mean, you’re always
so damn serious. Why don’t
you chill the hell out? You
intimidate people, and I don’t
think it’s a coincidence. You
also embarrass people. Why?
What’s your damn problem?”

I looked up at her and laughed.
“What’s it matter? Nothing
matters – you, me, them.”

She screamed and shouted,
“God, I can’t take this shit
anymore!”

After stomping away, she
slammed the door behind her.
I gazed after her, thinking
about the way her haunches
wiggled when she walked
and I felt strangely alone.

It was a good feeling.

 

Write what you know:

Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809).

Alles ist das, was du daraus machst, auch du selbst.
—Joseph Goebbels, Michael: ein Deutsches Schicksal in Tagebuchblättern (1929).

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.
—Noam Chomsky, Syntactic Structures (1957).

Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Don't leave your torso.

Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Write what you know
with piss on the snow.

Write what you know.
Stale tobacco.
Pistachio.
That one talk show.

Sweet potatoe.
Negative cash flow.
Cheap ass merlot.
Cigarette glow.

Right what I know—
I dunno. I dunno.
I dunno what I know.
Write what you know.

Write what you know.
Write what you know.
Hell if I know.
Seeds must crack to grow.

Four Things Writing Needs

For me, memory is only one half of writing. Invention is the second and lightning the third. A fourth might be innumeracy.

“Old Courage”
 
There was an old bravery
in my younger days,
when beer,
hidden in a paper coffee cup,
tasted like courage
instead of yellow flowers
commemorating the inevitability of death,
and I was content with my hangovers
being just another punchline
in a joke I thought would always be
funny, until I realized laughter dies
the same as the rest of us. 


“Blood Memory”
 
I’ve always had this strange vision
of sitting at my kitchen table
at eight or nine AM
drinking rye on the rocks,
and I think this is blood memory
from a grandfather who drank
himself to death
before I was even born.
 
I guess some ghosts
don’t need rattling chains
or footless footsteps in an attic
to prove they exist.