True Crime

Certain women joggers listen religiously to true crime podcasts, gathering survival tips. “Okay,” they repeat to themselves, “you don’t get in the van with the serial killer.” Neighbors install window bars and door cameras for extra security when it’s the agony in their own minds they should be protecting against. It’s them and their feverish ideas, in fact, that I fear most – more than sharks or the homeless or foreign terrorists. What a period it is, a time coated in dirt and flies that, years from now, people will view with something like wonder.

Not on TV 


One more saviour 
Drowns. 
One more art 
Is made muddy. 
One more heart 
Turns out to remain stranger. 
One more color 
Goes unnoticed. 
How will 
One more earth look? 
Same as this
My niece answers, 
And searches for 
Her sketch book. 
I turn off the TV 
And tell my dad, 
To start writing poems
On how my childhood was. 
Was I one more 
Hope for the clear days 
Or one more melting candle? 
I search for meanings 
In people's heart,
And not on TV. 

Consider the Moon

 
Cold face of darkness, shape-shifter
shadow-maker of the night

streetlight for space travelers
receiver of wishes and prayers

brief beacon for the unhoused
and those who flee their homes

strong enough to pull lakes
and oceans to their edges

the way the ideal of home
compels a child to return.

Ditch Road                     

                    
I’m trying to listen
to the day’s 

public radio news

driving home 
from work 

when suddenly two cars 

so full of teenagers
some are dangling out

windows race past me

and go squealing around
the next corner

into their parents’ subdivision

in such a reckless,
frightening daredevil move, 

I wince, swear at myself 

and almost forget  
it’s safe to breathe again.

 

Lessons
     After Reading and for Fred Voss

When you all I ever wanted
was to write. I believed all the myths:
the dying young, the tragic hero, and most
of all wild nights with a bottle in my hand.
I scoffed at amount people drank to get
high, quantities I needed just to get started
on a daily high. I could surpass them all
And while it didn’t escape my notice
that the people I revered were sticking their heads
in ovens, jumping off bridges, falling off bar stools
as good as dead, death was an abstraction.
I spilled my guys on page after page,
published some too but as I grew older
it felt hollow, necessary maybe, but if
you were going to end up in a derelict shack,
hearing voices and seeing shit that could never exist
before they put you in a halfway house to
the morgue well, it became clear
that dreams did have responsibilities and
that yes, as Hemingway’s bartender told the story
of the guy who said he the dt hallucinations
were fascinating on an intellectual level but
hell, to live through. You can’t write if being
alive is worse than being dead. Yes, it was
like that for a while, being legally drunk for three
years is overrated and then afterwards, the calm
that settled in is almost unnerving; one big blank
empty space. Maybe you really did need to be drunk
to write. All those memoirs by and about drunks
suggested the same things: once you get
to the end of the last bottle there is nothing left
but darkness, the end of all things including,
the alphabet. There is nothing abstract about that.
Now that you’ve been where the dead people
go, where the inseam live, it was time to study
the ones who survived. To cultivate the calm.
No one gets out of here alive anyway, you just
Don’t have to be 27 when you go. It took me fifty
years to learn I was already too late for the party.
How do you like your green-eyed boy now, Mr. Death.

r.i.p 2/2025

Outlaw Window

My window
Has a gift.
It never hides
The view
Of the paradise.
There are angels of grief
In my paradise
And I worry about
The Angel in the House.
The world wears
A painful color.
I am a broken flower pot,
Just a tiny
Nod by the so-called
Social Zombies
Will make me
An outlaw.
I live on my own terms of
Passionate grief
That is too meaningful
To be happy.
I try to keep the lights on.
My window
Never elopes
With the view. 

My 19,471st Day

My internet map app
has led me down a questionable path,
possibly to my death.

Instead, a trendy taco shed
where I get grasshopper legs
stuck in my teeth.

On the screen, a soccer match ends
nil-nil, all that running
for naught.

Funny how quickly
ice cream melts. Only a moment ago
you were a child,

dinosaurs roamed
the Colorado beaches.
There was less snow.

On the couch, forty-five
of my twenty-eight million minutes
simply dwindle away.

Name of the Game

It’s blank
That every look of it
Is clean.
A memory drop
Can grow like vines
And time can pass
Like aging wine—slow and full
Of tipsy journey.
Life is a sour fruit
To taste first and still despise.
How I see blankness
Is so colorless
Yet, colors can decorate
The naming and shaming
Of the game called life.
I stand with a philosophical stance
I take a risk to be misunderstood
By those who never express
Themselves and fill their blankness.
I reinvent myself
And rebuilding is the name
Of the game. 

Fuck Johnny Cash

 
I’ve been everywhere,
he boasts.

Big fucking deal.

I’ve been everywhere
and everyone, man . . .

Donnie T., Toledo, OH
Larry E., St. Louis, MO
Winston F., Andersen, IN
Samuel K., Washington, DC
Fred J., Miami, FL
Sylvester S., New York, NY
Alfred N., Spokane, WA

Hell, I was even a woman,
one Jana W., Tyler, TX

And this—well, this could
be your life, my friend.

If you stop submitting poems
to The New Yorker
and start sending dirty letters
to Wild MILFS.


 

 
Watersports

 
Working
as a bookseller
can be awfully disorienting.

Just the other day
a woman asked me if we had anything
on watersports.

It took a moment
to clear my head of filth
before showing her the books on
waterskiing, jet skiing, wakeboarding,
skimboarding, surfing . . . 

But no sooner
did she make a purchase
and exit the store
than the filth returned
with a vengeance.

Returned
in all its free flowing
golden glory.

 

 
 

The Pledge

In the dead of night,
We sit on a mound of dirt
Blitzed outta our minds.
Me, some 'shine in a jar.
Bill, a tab of something.
Willows sway in the
Half-moon moonlight.
We're honoring a pledge
That we'd made years ago.
It's the watch we swore to do.
And we're here till sunrise.
Ya never know when a buddy
Needs help crawling outta a hole.
Nothing happening, I guess he's
Planted real good, buried to last.
Sun up, we stagger on home
Brushing off the dust from
The cemetery.  Bye, Sam.  



Morning

Ah, morning at last.
The crisp cool air,
Dew and sunshine.
Birds all chirping.
Squirrels playing.
My trusty shotgun
Will take care of
All that and let me
Go back to sleep.
Don't nobody dare
Ring my doorbell.