Regrets

Well I rode into town and I looked around, their really weren’t nothing much to it. A church, a few stores, what looked like a whore, and a few old crumbling hovels. But there on the edge, a place I could drink and try not to think. You know I weren’t looking for trouble.

You know that’s the way Mexico is
Beauty and dirt
And a whole world of hurt
It’s here I decided to roam

So, down in a cantina again, trying to make a señorita my friend.
She had black eyes that shone like the sun, and i told her I wanted some fun.
She smiled and looked in my eyes, so gorgeous I wanted to cry.
So I bought her a drink, and she liked me I think, so I stayed there and bought her another.
It wasn’t too long, a man came along. He said he was her brother. No problema, I said, I’m just here to make friends. He said bien, and introduced me to some of his hombres. You know I thought i was dead, but sometimes it’s just how it goes.

You know that’s the way Mexico is
Beauty and dirt
And a whole world of hurt
It’s here I decided to roam

It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, most men would just let it be.
Go back to the states, admit their mistake, and go on with the life they had led.
But I need a bit more, the mistakes I’ll ignore and pray that my dreams will come true.
But although I will try, (I’ll never know why) to go to the cantina again, maybe make a new friend, and all the while pretend that she’s you.

You know that’s the way Mexico is
Beauty and dirt
And a whole world of hurt
Where I decide to be alone

So I’m back in the cantina again, and finally I found me a friend. Thinking I’ll give up my ways, take her back home, and hope for a better day.

On My Plate

The peas and carrots
Are neatly separated,
But my wife mixes them
And eats them down
Together. “It all goes
To the same place,”
She says.
Once again the door
Opens and she catches
Me peeing in the sink.
I shake it off
And say, “It all
Goes to the same place.”

God of Concrete

A gloom, 
A decaying morning 
That is not night yet. 
Suffering in between. 
Beaten and caked 
By season's disharmony
We live like dragged time. 
We wake everyday 
To make it a better day
Resolutions do not work
Unless you lay the work. 
Listen more to the silence
It teaches you to speak, 
Where does a flying cotton go? 
To be one with the air. 
We met in the cafe
Surrounded by people, 
I did not forget to say 
That my name was silence. 
I need to feel the love 
Not just be loved by someone. 
With heavy heart I was injured 
From the past. 
I only speak in muteness. 
I am a god of concrete, 
Waiting to cultivate faith. 
In silence, the eyes see. 

Lexicon


Scrape rock bottom
with a rusty razor.

When you’re trapped
in the pit, just look up.

Spy a patch of blue sky
amidst ominous clouds.

Let rain wash away
rage & indecision

& float you to the top.
(No backsliding now!)

Last night’s horror
is tomorrow’s mythos.

When will you stop
playing a film extra

in your life’s epic?
Paint in broad calli-

graphic strokes; write
in a dead language

to an obscure song.

High-T Testing Not Needed for…

…Marine battalion on Okinawa. 
As eight hundred green clad souls ache for home 
and island’s August moon illuminates
bright on a makeshift outdoor arena,  
all ranks derive comforting distraction 
via intramural boxing smoker 
violence. Fire and maneuver take back seat. 
Tonight, rifles set aside in favor
of gloves dispensing morale building fun.
Grunts aiming to smash each other’s faces,
like jousting medieval knights squaring off
in front of a castle’s king and his court.
In this case, C.O. and staff sit ringside –
waves of trigger pullers surround four flanks.
Flurry of hooks and uppercuts rattle 
jaws, evoking measured sense of blood lust
while relieving troops’ pent-up camp boredom.  
Boisterous cheers accompany each punch.
Any mention of low testosterone
levels superfluous. Macho tone so 
thick, lean Lance Corporal’s jabs rip a hole through
humid, swaggering sub-tropical air.  

 

AN IMMIGRANT’S TALE

It was a wide sea
in those days,
when I was seventeen
and the world was screened off
by sky and clouds,
staying put was the only scenario,
with me on land, grounded,
still in the clothes my mother paid for
and with just a few dollars in my pocket.

I could barely flow with rivers
let alone cruise the jet streams.
There was no clear way
out of my life and into any other.

A rumpled look,
a few friends,
a limited knowledge of sensation,
I really felt my age –
young but preordained.

So how did I ever get here?
From an uncle’s advice
at a backyard cookout
to the other side of the world?
From a warm Christmas with family
to a long December with snow on the ground?

I could give you a list of snap decisions,
coincidences, odd choices, haplessness,
hopelessness, pure luck, and a youthful
preference for romance over responsibility.

But I prefer to end this with…
here I am.

And I can look back.
There’s still a sea out there.
But I see beyond it now.
There’s always another shore.

 

No Mama No Papa No Whiskey Soda


I live exactly there: among
the ruins of you… ranting
and looting and raving—zooted
off to a liminal extreme

peanut butter and honey and a pipe
riding a mind—inside, an empty
pool built of desiccating susurrations
I am lonely but I survive

even thriving—the water yells out
its inane tomfoolery—picking at shells
I excuse myself… also you: I excuse you
even though… well, I really shouldn’t

English boy, English boy
surrendering more every passing day
an empire for the sun—no longer
conquering me

Off to the park

Just inside black iron gate posts

Along a row of pew type benches

For bemused parishioners

Two frizzy haired priestesses

Clad in street-stained joking suits

And a beard-spittled medicine man

Cloaked in a 30-gallon trash bag

In case of rain


Bob and weave

Rock and sway

Kick and spit ritual howls

As they pass

A brown bagged pint

Of cheap communion wine

Back and forth

Up and down

Gulp and giggle

Sublime and fickle

The universe favors

The compassionate

As the offer prayers

To the hawk and wild iris

Here I Am

Here I am,
a simple man,
an older man,
I am estranged
with the term bride.
An old flame
is on my mind.
Can you believe that?

I feel nothing,
only loss.
The weight of life
has made me stall
the next chapter.
She is on my mind,
and she’ll never know.
What’s wrong with me?
I feel nothing.
I call her name.
I weigh my loss.
This poem will
will save my life.
I call bullshit.

Approach with caution.
Rip up this poem.
Cut up these words
and close your eyes.
The poem thrusts its
tongue and tucks it firmly
in a cheek. The left one
if you need to know.
There is no rhyme or
reason. The hour is late.
I take my leave.

Poetic License

Bound for the Tetons,
I made my first stop in Missoula
with an old friend from undergrad.
He was still married to a curly-haired art major
he started seeing after a line from Virginia Woolf’s debut novel
provoked him to dump his high school flame.
Now he was an editor-in-chief of a lit mag who knew
some MFA candidates I spent the night drinking with.
One guy named Sam said he spent years
submitting serious poems to a prestigious magazine.
They accepted one last fall and mailed a check for $1,000.
Sam bought an apple tree and blew the rest on cigarettes and beer.
The tree survived one harsh winter in the front yard
before a drunk driver plowed through the chain-link fence
and demolished the fruits of Sam’s labor,
which he assured me over karaoke
was far more poetic than anything
he had, could, or would write.