It’s Hard To Stay Happy

It’s hard to stay
happy when misery
is all around you.
Everywhere I go, there
is illness and pain.
Poverty, depression,
and desperation.
Happiness is almost
an unknown quality,
and there’s no quantity
of it, as far as I can
see. Some people, it
seems that they would
rather stab you than
smile at you. Every
single word is spoken
in a whining whinge.
Their only topic of
conversation is how
unfair life has been to
them. They live in the
first world, they are
neither hungry, nor
homeless. Yet they’ve
suffered more than any
other person in history.
As I say;
It’s hard to stay happy,
but I’ll never get as low
as that.
Just 5 minutes after
escaping from them, I
feel lighter than air.
I feel like dancing, a
huge smile on my
happy, happy face.

Nightmare Sonnet #15

You’re driving home in icy moonlight, straddling
that flat roadkill skunk below your moaning
tires, lapping mulled guilt oozing from
the cleft your marriage makes between your eyes.

Pale girlfriends curse within your house’s walls
and gnaw the nails on which your artworks hang
like weapons. When your rub your demon lover’s
scars, she rolls her Rs, and your reflection

bobs, a shrunken head in her saliva-
slicked incisors. Then it’s kiss, kiss, kiss,
your torsos grinding, hot gears misaligned

and belching putrid smoke—just like the stars
tonight. The blind mad god that built the engine
of the world is giggling at its wreckage.

can do

memory of a cartoon caption

hung-over morning
you sprayed paint in your armpits

then tried to deface a public monument
with a can of antiperspirant

Warm Ghosts

Star-crossed, cross-gartered, thinking hard about
dead bards. There’s music on and coffee left:
my dendrites and my synapses spark stout
as fuses treble-twined. My daydreams heft
the borrowed stories hammered into forms
beguiling and sublime: of villain, fool,
and queen; of women bucking culture’s norms;
young lovers reuniting; kings’ misrule;
heroic ambiguities. Hot blood,
cold tears commingle, pool to flood the worn
boards of my psyche. Words, words, words: the thud
of charged and fractured hearts; I’m healed, then torn,
then whole, then wounded fresh again. We’re just
warm ghosts: the verse might live; the rest is dust.

nothing to see

on the highway from
ohio to indiana

nothing to see as usual

and they wonder why

so many of us do drugs

___________________________

wished for your death

picture a sunny
day in late july

your father never
loved you and
wished for your
death since the
late 70’s

you swear you’re
going to visit his
grave one of these
days

maybe to even do
something other
than pissing on it

how to impress the editors

i read a poem about a woman
dunking her hibiscus tea bag
in her steamed hot water as she
stewed about her cheating husband

and there’s one about making paella
and burning the frying pan heirloom
the poet’s dead grannie willed to her

and the ones about the unrest, the
rape of Gaia and the atrocities in
countries i can’t quite pronounce

i write like me..sometimes it sucks..
sometimes it lands

my old hippie friend told me to write
more ‘fuck poetry’ from when i was a
wayward slut shuffling my body downtown

i told him to leave me alone with the clouds
and the sky and the sea…it’s safer that way.

 ON ANY GIVEN STREET

Okay so I made it to another birthday. This one a Covid

birthday. Let us celebrate with imaginary cake, ice cream,

and a dancing monkey who hands out balloons. Blow them

up and send them out into the world, and as you run barefoot

through the field, you may kiss the dead bodies along the way,

but please do not take anything out of their pockets as that is

reserved for loved ones and former teachers, all of whom

will be along soon with the test results to determine whether

you’re a candidate for enlightenment or whether it will mean

a life at McDonalds, eating regular meals of burgers and fries,

and becoming a regular fat person you’d meet on any given street…

                      NOT FOR ME TO JUDGE

This isn’t an immortal poem, but then I’m not an immortal guy.

Of course, I’m somewhere in-between immortal and a slug

crawling along on a warm day looking for a mate or something

to eat. Beyond this, I must say that if I had to do it over again

I’d prefer to do it as a lion, a killer whale, or a grizzly bear—

an animal that has no natural predators– which would allow

me to lounge around all day in my favorite chair and take in

the action, not all of which would be pleasant to watch, but

I’d just tell myself it’s all part of life, and not for me

to judge.

                 YOU JUST NEVER KNOW

First off. . . thank you for acknowledging that it took

courage for me not to commit suicide today even though

today was no different than most other days, except that

I was particularly bored, depressed, and while watching

television I wanted to slap many of the people, or have sex

with the pretty women who I’m sure would have rejected

me because of my age. They might even have rejected me

because I don’t have a lot of money. Anyway, I’m neither

glad nor sad that I didn’t commit suicide, but as I’ve said

before, “There’s always tomorrow, and given that I’ve

considered suicide off and on throughout my life, you just

never know. . .”

Honeymoon at a cheap hotel

it was the 3rd weekend  

of the month 

but we were going at it  

anyway. we sank,  

gone oak to bedroom floor; 

careful so as not  

to stain the bedsheets. 

I was on my knees 

while she was making herself comfortable 

and I slid in, 

feeling around and wondering 

at all the stupid 

male questions, 

such as the effect 

someone’s blood might have  

on the urinary tract? 

and it was slippy too, 

wet as a well-washed tile, 

but warmer, 

and when I came  

I came hot and soft 

and onto her belly 

just to be doubly safe. 

on the whole 

afterward 

there was very little blood – just the red shadow 

of my penis 

printed on her navel 

like an old round tower 

rising to cemetery view –  

but when she stood up 

and went to shower 

there it was – blossoming on the floorboards 

like we’d been fucking  

on rose-petals, 

and bright red squashes 

brushed across her ass. 

as if we’d been on our anniversary 

or a honeymoon 

at a cheap hotel 

and trying 

very hard 

to be romantic. 

Profit Motive

We need to get our kids back in the schools

profit motives, business-friendly tax-relief, entrepreneurship, growth

schools must open

even if classrooms become receptacles

for corpses. human anatomy anyone?

Prizefighter

1980,
lying in bed
staring at the ceiling

in the middle of a
Chicago February night,
I thought,

If I’m this depressed
when I’m
twenty-one,
what will I be
like at thirty?

I assumed
my despair
would multiply
like fungus,
devouring everything
in its path.

No one
could tell me
about giving birth,
or buying my
second house,

or the first time
I would see
my poetry
in a magazine.

No one
could divine
my trajectory
of fortune

from highest
to lowest,
and back again:

a loop repeated
over and over,
like a cartoon rerun.

Still, forty
years later,
I wonder what
I’ll be like at seventy,
and if I’ll be able to
withstand the pressure.

I can’t imagine
a worse ledge
than the one
I cling to now with
my perspiring hands,

but for some
goddamned reason,
I won’t let go
without another fight.

I Went to Prison

I went to prison today.
‘Go there most every day.
‘Work there from three to eleven.
Just another medic in the
Joint’s Health Care Unit.
I go in the cell houses and
The cons say, “How ya doin’, Dan?”
I usually reply, “Terrible.
Could be better, could be worse.”
“Yeah,” they say,
“It could always be worse.”
We all readily identify with that.
Some inmates got a different
Outlook on ‘caring’ for their
Fellow man, or woman.
Like my man what blew the back
Of this woman’s head off ’cause
He couldn’t stand to see her suffer
After he shot her twice in the gut.
Is that a tender heart or what?
Proof positive, chivalry is not dead.

Cowboy’s Mirage

My horse died,
but I keep walking
When will it rain?
I ask the Arizona sky

I pass the bone dry rivers,
abandoned crops,
and dying cacti
that barely stand

I’m the only one left,
while others go in panic,
abandoning their homes,
ranches and cattle,
and probably their brides

As I keep walking,
the mirage is ahead of me,
the pool of glistening water
invites me to strip naked,
as I cleanse myself
of all the desert dust.