PARENT-TEACHER NIGHT
 
Leave early,
Beat traffic.
Sit at your desk,
Grade.
 
6:00:
A few parents in the hallways;
None come to your room.
 
6:15, 6:30, 6:45.
Much grading.
 
7:00: a woman enters,
Along with a girl—
One of your students.
The mother asks
How she’s doing;
Fine, fantastic
(she has an 81);
Love having her in class
(she barely talks).
 
7:15, 7:30, 7:45—
Over the P.A.:
Parent-Teacher night will soon end;
We hope you had
A productive evening.
 
7:59: stand by the door,
8:00: lock it.
 
Driving home,
Remind yourself
To tell Melissa
That it was nice

Meeting her mother.

Insectopia

It’s a country one only hears about when there’s a military coup or a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, or when the bird flu crosses the species barrier to humans, but it’s where, after the clock wound down, I ate a picnic lunch beside the grave of the patron saint of outcasts and rebels, and later, wearing a knockoff of Kafka’s barbed-wire halo, I climbed the steps carved into a hill to visit a holy spot once reserved for virgin sacrifice and now a gathering place for toothless old women in babushkas who believe it’s bad luck to ever kill a ladybug.

Ragged Angels
 
Young ones 
in small rooms 
chasing the poem 
chasing the story 
 
going crazy 
 
starving for something 
they cannot name.
 
Drunk 
at noon 
and midnight 
and four a.m. 
 
Young angels
wandering 
hard streets 
with desperate eyes 
angry 
and in love 
 
lost on the edge 
of nowhere.
Beware them.
They are vast 
and magic 
 
as the moon 
soothes nothing 
as the sun 
burns their eyes 
as the sidewalks 
lie hard 
cracked 
and unforgiving 
beneath 
their holy feet. 
 
They are
explosives
meant
to shatter you 
 
and keep daggers 
hidden 
in worn notebooks 
which you will someday 
plunge willingly 
into your own heart.
 
They need nothing 
you could ever give.
 
Heaven means only
the right words spilling 
from their hands.
 
This is their salvation 
all they ever 
desire.
 
I know them.
Beware.
 
I was once
among their
host.
 
 
 
 
How It Goes
 
The girls in their pretty dresses 
protected by desks and distance 
from the dumb, eager boys 
and the old letches with their books and chalk
and dandy dreams, heroes of past seduction
and then the hallways 
packed with no one wanting to be there 
and the girls in their pretty dresses 
and first-try makeup 
lipstick bright and shining 
sometimes sad often laughing 
these queens 
of every imagined romance 
objects of hard desire 
and all the old men 
in the teachers’ lounge 
heading home to old women 
or empty rooms 
while the bright, clear day 
becomes dark 
and soon is years past 
and years more gone 
and the girls in their pretty dresses 
try to remember the good times 
of their glory 
and maybe laugh at the awkward boys 
who wanted them 
way back in the day 
with no thought of the old teachers 
who watched them come and go 
and come and go 
until they finally died 
as the girls will someday die 
and be taken to the last place 
in pretty dresses 
with one or two left to think about nothing 
but home and a late lunch 
a cat to feed
and what they might do tomorrow 
who might be around to do it with 
and maybe something 
about the day after that
 
 
 

Wheelman

This run is my swan song 
after tonight this smugglings gonna  stop 
every headlight in my rearview mirror 
looks like it's a cop 
all these kilos in back
they're weighing heavy on my mind
I can't get busted 
Lord knows I'm too old 
to do anymore time.
I sleep with one eye open
I keep the other on my gun
I'm the only friend I've got
and I'm not sure 
he's one I can trust
you think it's easy cash 
But it cost far more than it's worth
profit from broken lives
The money blood stained and cursed.
I run on stolen luck and unanswered prayers
no guarantees in this business my only insurance is some criminal’s word 
I’ve used so many aliases 
my real name I’ve forgot
lost a wife and family
and too many friends to count
Don’t judge this life of mine
don’t blame me
I'm just the wheelman
Supplying  you, you and you
with what you need.

no, just, no 
 
somebody told me once 
“god never closes a 
door w/ out opening 
another” 
& i thought, what shit 
if anything that bastard 
bricks you the hell up 
into a tight little shit house 
where you pound & claw 
until the walls are smeared 
w/ almost everything 
that moved thru 
yr goddamn vessels 
& you wait for death to swing 
its dark sledgehammer 
cracking a crazy hole 
the size of yr cadaver

talking to the dead
 
i walk outside 
91 degrees 
late august 
& i sit & braille 
six beach stones 
i collected after 
my mother died 
it was her birthday 
two weeks ago 
then i decide to examine 
the backs of my hands 
protruding 
vessels just like 
my mother’s hands 
we’ve always had them 
even young 
these blue rivers 
gathering at our wrists 
i imagine rivers smoothing 
rough stones into glass 
& the knuckles 
like five little adam’s apples 
jumping whenever our hands 
performed something 
i remember my mother 
always chopping basil 
& slicing green bell peppers 
as a child i thought her hands 
seemed separate 
from the rest of her body 
the adam’s apples jumping 
her hands breathing 
fed by a web of blue rivers 
i can’t talk to the dead 
but i’m lucky to have the same 
backs of the hands 
these breathing hands 
i open & close them 
beneath the hot august sun

ride the starlight 
 
i tried 
to be 
a recluse 
in 
the womb 
but i was 
trapped 
inside 
the hell 
of another 
human 
& surrounded 
by 
others 
so i kicked
the walls of 
the blood 
cocoon 
& they thought 
i wanted 
to be born 
but i just 
wanted 
to ride 
the starlight 
back to 
my true home

my old home 

never had shit on my heart  
while chilling in the stars 
now i have an ever-growing heap 
so i go out into the night 
gaze up at my old residence 
& my dark heart-strike mimics 
the tapestry of silver winks


 

The Bears

Bear it alone.
Bear up.
Bear your grief.
Bear your pain. 
Bear your fruit. 
Bear a child.
Bear the cost.
Bear a grudge.
Bear your soul.
Bear your weight.
Bear arms.
Bear witness.
Bear in mind.
Bear any burden.
Bear any cost.
Bear any scrutiny.
Bear right.
Bear left.
Bear with me.
Bear my grief.
Bear my pain.
Bear my weight.
Bear my fruit.
Bear my child.
Bear my cost.
Bear my burden.
Bear my grief.
Bear down.
Bear it alone.

Spieling a Good Line
 
It would seem I’m spieling a 
Good line to this woman at the bar.
She’s set on comin’ home with me.
I see the two fresh heady drafts
The barkeep just set before us.
So I say, “Let’s quaff”
She says, “Oh, wow.  Is that anal?”
 
Then, it’s, “Can I bring a friend?”
Whoa, holy moly, a threesome.
“I’ll just call my husband and he’ll
Come over with the goat and whips.”
There are times when one excuses
Oneself and just slips out the back.

ALL THESE SMILES OF CHILDREN
 
All these smiles of children that life has slain
In the microscope of its reality.
I have found a smile in this one memory
When I was a boy and digging for dinosaur bones in my backyard –
Something that has come to me
As I fold my shirts and think about how good it felt
To fold my children’s shirts and put them away
Another life ago when I was with them every day
And they were my only reason to look forward to tomorrow
In a life of otherwise torment.
 
All these smiles of children that are removed by the realities of life:
I can see them now thinking about my dinosaur books, my wildlife books,
My book on the birds of North America
And how I would use them to draw all day and night
Back in those days
When I was not thinking for a moment
That anything was possible or impossible
Or what would happen beyond
The next day or week or month.
 
All these smiles of children and I think about
My children who do not smile 
And sometimes it is because of me
And I hope they have memories like mine
Of digging in the yard or whatever they loved
At a similar moment in their time
And that it is possible I helped to give them
Such a memory
And it keeps them warm
On this cold cold night.
 
Of that I pray
And it is my only
Prayer.



LOVE AND DISASTER
 
I loved her when she hated me
And now that I hate her at last
She has decided again to love me.
It’s too late for me, 
I’ve already been ruined by her
But I think about her decision anyway,
Knowing that no matter what happens
I will die alone one day
In a bed without affection.
These magical threads
That twist, hold us still and bind us –
Part mud, part thunderbolt
Slogging through and jolting our veins,
Gunking up and jumpstarting our flabby hearts –
Of human confusion and nuisance
That for thousands of years
Have linked love and disaster
As I grow older but not wiser,
Standing in my doorway waiting
As the shadows overtake me
The way they overtake us all –
Slowly and without notice.

Booze, bondage, B. Street

I grabbed two from the cupboard, 
left by his ex-wife, Maria.

“Forget the glasses,” he said. 
“We’re far from the crystal type.”

It was cheap vineyard grape, along
with the left of the leftovers, we threw
in with the Sunday night sauce.

So we chugged it straight up, then 
played in his den; whips, chains and
cabernet, clinking our bottles. Two

etch a sketched poets, bare feet on land
mines, in uncharted fields, where
we’d landed this moment - a moment
best left, undefined.

Naked Truth
"Famous isn't good for a writer. You don't observe well when you're being observed.'' 
Ken Kesey

I mentioned to a poet friend of mine, one of the few I respect, if he believed a writer could consider himself a success by the amount of nude photos of women and surprisingly a few men are sent to him.
I'm not sure how to measure my efforts as a success or as a failure. My point of view is if I am doing what I've always wanted to do as a profession, then I have achieved success.
I've mentioned my somewhat modest expectation to others when discussing the subject and it has received a variety of comments. But the comment that has been most popular is; "Bullshit! You can't tell me you don't want your book to be a best seller or  have your books made into movies and make a shit load of money. Come'on everyone wants to be famous and I'm not talking the Warhol fifteen minutes kind."
That would be a wonderful perk without a doubt but it is not my reason for being a writer. I sincerely am not concerned if what I write is accepted or rejected. Rejection letters are just fuel for my creative fire. I selfishly write for myself not for an audience. Twisting your prose to fit the perimeters of an audience is a fucking trap without any hope of escape.
A true writer knows this predilection is actually a curse we're born with. It manifests in our souls, with an insatiable need to be recognized. I described a writer in a poem written years ago.
"A Poet is an Artist that paints in darkness
Words of the poem are colors creating light 
A Writer is blessed with all of the answers
Cursed with the search of which questions to ask."  
It's the first time I've directly quoted myself.
"Okay, but get back to the  naked pictures, will ya. No one is interested in this boring literary mumbo jumbo." 
Who said that?  I was just thinking the exact same thought. Now that is an incredible phenomenon. 
So I've been receiving what I consider a large amount of nude photos on my WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and Gmail accounts and have become curious about its relevance in determining my success as a writer. I've researched the subject to investigate if other writers have experienced the same anomaly. I haven't discovered any mention of it being so. I surely can't be the only writer out there that has received this type of appreciation in response to their work.
I don't write erotica although I've described brief moments of sexual activity in some of my stories. 
So my poet friend said he'd get back to me, it was something he had to think about. Although I judged him as an accomplished poet, he turned out to be an unreliable counselor. He would've made a terrible bartender without the ability to give advice. After a week I contacted him to ask if he had made a decision concerning my question. He first apologized and then started laughing, commenting he didn't think I was serious. He believed it was all a joke, a setup or research for a story. Now I had his complete attention after convincing him my question was authentic. 
" In order to make an educated decision I'd need to look at the pictures. Do you think that could be possible?" He inquired.
" I'm not sure how seeing the photos would help in determining an answer to my question. Besides, all the senders asked me to keep them private and not share them."
" How many photos exactly have you received? Are the women totally naked and can you see their faces?"
"I guess close to twenty five including the three photos of men."
" Were there suggestive messages with the photos? Also, are you sure they were sent in response to your writing? Are you on some type of dating site?"
"Yes, some included sexual messages. Most mentioned my poems and I'm not on a dating site. So, what do you think?"
"I rarely receive more than fifteen comments on my poems when I post them." He said with a sarcastic  tone. "So I'm going to conclude yes, it does have a relevance in determining your success as a writer. Although, the most viable explanation is that your poems appeal to a unique audience of sick, twisted and perverted readers." 
The phone hummed a dial tone without a goodbye.
And I thought; What was with the Dutch uncle's attitude? Why did he say it like it was a bad thing?