Write, Rant, Scribble, Scrawl

I’ve hardly written anything
for the last couple of months.
I’ve had a lot of stressful things
going on in my life.
It feels so good to feel the urge
again, the future looks like one
huge, white, blank page. I’m going
to write, rant, scribble, scrawl,
and draw surreal caricatures.
Take photographs of the mind,
snapshots of my surroundings
in words.
Poetry, prose and all points in
between, whatever I choose,
because there are no rules.
I’ve never understood those who
talk of the tyranny of the blank
page, all I see are opportunities.
Places to place my phrases,
playgrounds for my sentences.
I’m excited about the uninvited
writings about to issue from
my pen.

About Some Meaningless Events

The TV news anchor is counting on her fingers the day’s number of meaningless events. You can wait for the darkness to lift on its own or you can try your voice and rattle windows, shake pictures off the walls. Your fate is a matter of indifference to the oligarchs, who only pretend for the cameras that the opposite is the case. You have acquiesced too long in the charade; you might even be okay with living in a cage if it had Wi-Fi. Wake up, wake up. There’s nobody to teach a child to not step on a caterpillar.

Ahoy!

Lady Ogre was working out on her Peloton bike when she felt faint and dizzy and puked up a junkie. Downstairs, her sometime boyfriend, alias Captain Dread, stood with one booted foot on an alligator skull, preparing to address his talented but perverted crew of underground cartoonists. “Don’t let the page be gray,” he said in his best pirate growl. “Make it jump! Make it crackle! Blister their irises!” While he spoke, a tree had grown out of the grave of Tom Paine, patron saint of outcasts and rebels, its leaves rippling like lacerated flags bearing the skull and crossbones.

Melancholy Melody

There were weeks of paralysis when I couldn’t make rent. The landlord, who smoked in bed and was always catching fire, had finally seized my belongings – books, furniture, etc. – while I was out at the symphony. I rolled my coat into a ball just to have a place to sit down. The only other option would have involved a gas station stickup. I stared across the room at the empty space on the wall where a poster of Chagall’s cheerfully nihilistic “I and the Village” had been thumbtacked. My blood sang in my ears like a nightingale with a toothache.

a prayer for times of desperation

let me sink into the arms of the Mother

and clutch my way back to her hidden and sometimes barren womb

that once claimed me and held me infinitely

and balanced my embryo between space and time.

spared from the range of human emotion

only an egg and a sack of skin and flesh and bone

tightly wound in a sequence of repeating letters

of primordial stew.

let me be seated in the arms of The Virgin Mother,

wounded and bleeding and wearing a crown of thorns

that I have fashioned out of my own desperation,

the thorny and wild crown that seeps into my skull

and where milk flows from my mouth and eyes

let there be honey instead.

and let there be the sweet lilies adorning my crown

while Saint Peter paces at the gate waiting for my return.

oh, my prodigal son!

let me crawl into the mouth of God like a moth

with wings and all,

gently seated on the back of her tongue

where I will devour the soot of anger

and swallow last Sunday’s cigarette butt without any qualms for I will

be the gift that keeps on giving.

The dark side of car karaoke

Gene Kelly can get drenched

in the summer rain if he wants,

singing and hoofing

from lamp post to lamp post

as a change in weather

intensifies the drops

of a passing drizzle

to a muggy monsoon.

I’d much rather turn

the volume knob in the dry

cabin of my true blue

Accord as high as can go ,

caterwauling to whatever

classic rock tune comes on

for the millionth time

on a steamy August day.

I bypass Boston to attempt

a Bohemian Rhapsody solo,

multitasking Freddie Mercury

lines like a fucking Vienna

Choirboy strung out on speed

hyperventilating vowels

as the wipers tango

across the windshield

till at the only light in town

some guy in a copper

colored pick up truck ahead

of me rolls down his window

in the pouring rain and waves

a burly arm tattooed

with swastikas and flags

of a southern confederacy.

I figure with the rain and all

maybe the big malcontent

needs directions or something

but then he’s screaming out

faggot this and faggot that,

stomping towards my car

and I knew his GPS was looking

for a face to land a right cross.

Bully pulpits make wild dogs

mad enough to unleash

a hurting of biblical proportions

so the foam drooling out

his toothless mouth and an NRA

bumper sticker gave common

sense a pregnant pause

to consider flight or fight.

I unholstered my only line

of defense of a recording

smart phone to combat

the stupidity of hate as drivers

leaned on their horns ,not

to protect my ninety eight

pound weakling ass, but to get

to wherever the hell they had to go.

A cop came around with sirens

blaring and Anytown’s finest

ushered the heathen back

to the truck and sent him

on his way before pointing

at my cell phone and saying,

“I’m going to have to give you

 a ticket for using that while driving.”

FAIRY TALES

my dearest daughter 

how absurd is it that we

should not know each other

after all these many years

part of it is my fault

my parental responsibility

overshadowed by my hatred

for that woman

you call a mother

in another universe

maybe things would be different

but I never read you 

fairy tales as a little girl

and I’m sure as hell 

not going to start now 

Who The Hell Do You Think You Are

I’m a recovering Catholic 

drug fiend and addict,  

a drunk, a thief and an ex-con, 

musician, writer,  half assed poet, and fighter, 

a grifter , failed husband and father, 

horrible dancer, an excellent cook, jokester and scholar, 

a liar, a crack shot, and a great driver. 

dog person, sports fan, trilingual, and a smuggler

too old to do any more time,

so I’ve retired.

In A Far Yet Near Land

–

They come to tear us down

For we have suddenly been outlawed

–

No longer appropriate to salute and stand for

They enter our sanctuary of graves

–

Our tombstones tens-of-thousands

That fought and died for them

–

We cannot stop them from where we are

As they spit and kick

–

Knocking over our crosses

Our cemetery being bulldozed flat and forgotten

–

And you ask could this happen

In a far yet near land as here?

too much dysfunction

i have never

been a big fan

of the holidays

grew up with

too much

dysfunction

i suppose

and as much

as i try to put

on a good face

for my mother’s

sake

everyone involved

knows i’m fucking

miserable

happiness anymore

comes in a bottle

a lonely saxophone

wailing in the

background

The Elements of a Crime

One night I sleepwalked into my parents’ room while they were lying in bed watching TV. “Here,” I squeaked in my 9-year-old voice, “take the knife. I killed him.” Then I sleepwalked back across the hall to my own bed. The next morning my mother was laughing and smiling when she told me during breakfast what I had done, but I felt – I don’t know – discredited. I had never sleepwalked before. The fact that I could act without being aware of it badly spooked me. It still does. Every night the sky is seething with headless birds in zigzag flight.

Trophy of Action 

My grandfather made a jackalope, 

A monstrosity, an abomination,

Out of meatless corpses and antlers shed. 

How is this any different from a poet 

Conjuring a fearsome critter from thin air?
I’ll tell you, she says, and then 

Old Jackie sings a raspy Lucinda Williams lilt, 

Turned up from whisky, she spills herself over the logs by the fire

And laughs when the bottle drips dry. 

Oh, a trophy of action! 

She lines her shelves with glass, takes one down,

Passes it around.