FIRE OF LIFE

Cover me with your beauty
Fill the cracks in my heart
Without you
I’m a dried-up source
A standing river
I’m the road which
Leads to nowhere
Silent in helplessness
All alone without a splendor
Impersonal views
Staring at yesterday
Blind for tomorrow
So, don’t leave without
Turning your eyes around
Stay close
The night is descending
It’s too black and I fear
The shadows of darkness
Stay with me
Be the fire of life
That shines in me.

The Walls

after The 10547th Apartment, artist Osnat Tzadok

drip with the blood of ghosts
who have rented this cell before.
I can feel their eyes, straining
to break free of anonymous
wallpaper, beige. Tattered carpet
matches the inexpressiveness,
the mood lingers, whispers
in my ear. This is all you will become.
I cover my head
with a blanket I do not remember
buying. I am already losing
this life-war of attrition. Tomorrow,
I will be nothing but a dust pattern,
a footprint fading, swept off
the balcony without applause.

My Social Life at Nineteen

When a date pats my forearm,
tells me I’m a nice boy,
I know the next time I call her home
she won’t come to the phone,
probably because she’s sprawled
inside a souped-up Chevy
sharing a cigarette, a shoplifted beer
with a high school dropout
on furlough from the county jail.

DEMOLITION, 3:17 P.M.
Once the excavator takes the front wall,
the house becomes honest about its rooms.

Second floor:
pink wallpaper,
a brass bed frame,
one sock behind the radiator.

First floor:
green tile,
a sink still holding
the shape of its faucet in rust.

The stairs run upward
and end in weather.

People stop on the sidewalk.

We are suddenly allowed
to see where strangers slept.

A bedroom wall has pencil marks
beside the doorway:

MAYA 6
MAYA 7
MAYA 8 1/2

The half is underlined twice.

The machine bites the kitchen.

A cabinet opens
without anyone touching it.
Three blue plates fall forward
and break where the stove was.

Dust crosses the street
and settles on our cars.

For twenty minutes,
a square of bathroom wallpaper
hangs by itself—

small yellow herons
standing in blue reeds—

while everything around it
is sorted into wood,
metal,
plaster,
trash.

The excavator turns.

The wallpaper lifts once
in the bucket’s wind,

showing the white wall
that had been behind it
for however many years,

then tears clean
from the top.

Death Comes Knocking

loaded handguns
and loaded syringes
when you’ve stared both of them in the eye
the nights become different
the heart dies
the mind races
nothing makes sense
yet everything becomes important
death knocks
I don’t mind answering the door
tequila and bourbon shots
drags from glass pipes
loaded handguns and loaded syringes
they make most problems seem insignificant
they make most days seem quiet
death comes with a deck of cards
another night of betting my soul
as always, I end up with the winning hand

THE GREAT NORTHERN

“It’s so meaningless to eat!” ~ Frank O’Hara, Music (Lunch Poems)

It’s so meaningless to eat!
When I have £5 in my account
When this train is so dirty
With fingerprints of sausagy sauce
Smudged on the window and the
Squeaky metal table
(Not the most plant-based of surroundings)
The station we’re pulling into is
Dirty too
And even Bill Evans on my earbuds
Can’t dissolve the deep disgust
Of eating this WHSmith vegan sushi
With my fingers
     I’m afraid his plunking piano
     Might have to be assisted by a
     Glorious Boots wet wipe
          Who’ll sting my nostrils
          With alcohol
          sharp like a syringe

Avarice:


It was enough that she loved the part of him she knew[.]
—Leonard Gardner, Fat City

If only that were true.
If there’s one beer I want two.

If there’s two beers I want three.
If there’s three beers why not be beastly.

A dragon sleeps on its hills of gold
until its mass has grown too old.

Then it plunders ten banks per town
until a blithe smile replaces its frown.

Possession diminishes possessions
which in turn breeds fecund obsession.

Want and lust and greed have no end
except for one treasure: a friend.

The Old Man

Bukowski knew how it was.
He understood what you
are going through,
and why you keep at it.

He understood. He knew.
He also knew he got lucky,
and later, even luckier.

Good old Bukowski.
Buk. The dirty old man.
He could have told you.
Maybe he did
in his poems and stories.

There is no road map.
No business plan.
You do the hard work.
Keep doing it.

It is what you must do.
You know you have to.
Even if nothing comes out of it.

After the First Beer

After the first beer
I looked around the bar.
A long-haired middle-aged lady
complained about the music.

She said the song Creep
triggered her. I looked around
and spotted a golden-haired lady
complaining about a dirty glass.

There was a cacophony of voices
at the bar. A lean, red-head lady
with her man, laughed in unison,
drinking what looked like blood.
Every man and lady appeared to
be of the vampire persuasion.

There was a woman standing at
the jukebox swaying back and forth.
She told the bartender, Aphrodite

was her name. It was getting late.
The beer was getting warm
and bitter. I felt like I was being
bitten all over my body.

*

Remember the Rain

Did you remember the rain?
Wasn’t it beautiful?
Waiting under that awning
with all the other patrons
waiting to partake of red
or green chilaquiles or
enchiladas, or the fried folded
tacos with shredded beef
and cotija? The rain that
came down sideways
drenched our pants and shoes.
It was a summer morning.
We met up early and battled
the traffic and the rain
for about 10 miles, while
marveling at the needed rain.
It was only a day or two
when we complained about
the heat, the worst in many
summers past. We found
a new spot where the line
suggested this was the place
to be in Bellflower. We waited
over 30 minutes, maybe more.
We disposed of breakfast
quicker than the wait. On
the way home the rain
blessed us all along the way.

The Poet’s Pick-Up Lines

I must apologize well in advance
For the sticky sweet romance of valentines
That shall come your way this February.
It will take you a while to read them all:
For everyone knows, I have a lover’s lush vocabulary.
The truth is I woke up today to discover
That my heart had become a porcupine:
Bristling with the well-aimed arrows of eros—
And glistening like an unstained medieval shrine.
Did you know that porcupines are mostly nocturnal?
Unlike my love for you, which is totally eternal.
Day or night, my desire blazes beyond the verbal
And this loquacious inferno of combustible confessing.
Please, let’s move past these mere externals—
And commence with the Great Undressing.