Punching Time

So these
are the 40 hours I have to pawn.
Worth many times what you will offer
but I have bills; rent,
electric; I need to feel
like I’m headed somewhere.
Lick a thumb, bend
your stingily haired head
and count out my cash above
your button threatening stomach.
As much as I will hate myself
I will reach to take it;
that little roll will not be an insult,
will bulk my pocket,
straighten my shoulders walking
out into the weekend, something
to bounce my step
until Monday’s time card thunk
like a closing door
on five days, five fingers
counted down
to clutch the next wad
pushed through the slit
of the greasy plastic
separating me from you.

Improv Man

(sung to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”)

It’s six o’clock on a Thursday
Chris and Thor arrive late
While players stand in a circle
Shaking down beginning at eight

Ryan says, “Give me the name of a movie
One that’s never been filmed
I’ll play director
And you’ll be the actors
I’ll give notes and suggest obscure frills.”

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please

Now Mark with the beard is a Santa Claus
I saw him last week at No Kings
We met at audition. It felt like perdition
When I bombed with that hillbilly thing

And the players avoid talking politics
As the students slowly unwind

They ask for locations and maybe vocations
But keep tonight’s skits unaligned

Now Nate is a standup comedian
Who does open mics at Hop Knot
I read there one night, under black light
My books sales were not all that hot

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please

It’s a pretty good crowd for a Thursday
Though the church basement smells too much of pee
The heater’s been broken. I’m not even joking
But hell we get it for free

And the players, they all channel Spolin
On four chairs set in two rows
One hitchhiker mad, another one sad
That’s how tonight’s session goes

Make up a scene you’re the improv man
Or maybe a game of freeze
Well, we’re all in the mood for some comedy
And add physicality please

Conscious

The Medics had put
him back together again with
gauze wraps, adhesive tape
and shot him full of enough
dope to stop a full grown
elephant from walking anywhere
for a week but you could
still see the look despite
all the junk and the pain
the disbelief, not-me it said
it can’t happen to me

Carbondale (Tales from SIU)

College days, sometimes roving about on a slow night.

Always entertaining out there behind the train station.

Late at night there’s mostly the old black men sang of

In Steve Goodman’s City of New Orleans. There’s a

Better known version by Arlo Guthrie. Wisdom? It

Comes from toothless men high as hell on Muscatel.

Rants about life and experiences sometimes colorful

And sometimes sad. Sad to the point of pure misery.

Jokes and laughter sometimes escaping others’ grasp.

It can get a little wild.  A stumbling drunken stranger

Comes up and falls and passes out. The lead reveler

Of the night gathers the flock to anoint the now fallen.

Save the Muscatel, unzip the zipper and spray some

Peter juice, “I christen thee loaded, my son.  Amen.”

Endless War
 
The last seismic bomb 
exploded off the coast. 
The decimated masses 
scrambled through the slag, 
shuffled on their knees, 
cried in holy fires. 
But then a silence surged—
and surged, 
like pollen drifting high. 
The war had ceased 
at last. 
Under monsoon rains, 
the crowded skies 
were filled 
with undiluted laughter. 
People drank cheap wine, 
as the ozone breathed 
like God. 
Yet, some still yearned for static, 
and one more doleful strike; 
to obliterate the plains, 
to crack the world’s insides. 
But they’re just sluggish beasts, 
with perforated hearts—
they ache for constant war, 
with propaganda eyes.
 

Your Face on Social Media

I saw that picture you posted:
Your arm draped around some guy
At a concert I wasn’t at.
But the shimmer in your eye—
Was just shy of devotion.
Your smile: softer than a butterfly
For the one you had chosen.
I was reclining at home alone
Watching TV and petting the cat.
Suddenly, I had something to say.
So, I said aloud to no one at all,
Sounding like a sad-ass castaway:
“I wish to God there was someone
Who would look at me that way.”
My cat turned his head to stare
At myself. I said: “Not you buddy,
I was thinking of someone else.”

 

Karma
 
In the parched Mojave Desert,
I’m workin’ a summer job
on a railroad survey crew
in '64 when Larry taunts
and kills a rattler 
with our brush-cuttin’ axe,
disrespects it in death,
hurls it into the spines
of a 
Later, a train surprises Larry,
kills him standin’ between tracks
at the end of our lunch break 
minutes after I leave his side.
A butchered serpent,
a mangled body.
I ask myself, “Is this what 
they mean by karma?”
 
Seekin’ experiences to write about,
three years later I get dropped off
alone in L.A.’s squalid skid row
with coins, a razor, a spare pair
of underpants in my pocket,
two bucks hidden in my socks.
After a few days three buddies
and I hike from a rescue mission 
to a jungle next to train tracks,
a ravaged landscape where we dine 
on peppery Mulligan stew served 
in a rusty can offered by an old hobo 
missin’ teeth, wearin’ greasy overalls.
While we’re waitin’ for a boxcar
to fling ourselves aboard,
my buddies size up a wino
shufflin’, stumblin’, shoutin’ nonsense.
Willie says, “I could sure use his coat.
Mine’s ratty as hell. Let’s roll him.”
“Nahhh,” I say. “That’d be bad karma.”
He asks, “What’s karma?”
I answer, “Let me tell you a story.”      
 
 

“My Worse Addiction”
 
Looking for one more line,
even one more word,
just to make another poem,
as if metaphor
was my worse addiction
instead of the empty bottles
that treated me better
than all my old friends
who I haven’t heard from
in years.