Compost Heaps:

Mixed up with the earth, we
mix with the earth.

32 years a poet,
may my blathering skull compost
as words do in
dictionaries and usage books—

slowly while
fecundating.

I know why kids like playing in dirt—

the greatest joy
is returning home grimy. 

-for Bryan Garner

Love the Quick Profit
“Want more of everything ready-made” – Wendell Berry

Get hired, get fired, do everything but quit;
discern your profession and love the quick profit.

I’m no prophet, it’s just what they say;
delay your ambitions and love the quick profit.

What’s your hours? Did you hit the mark?
Don’t be a sinner, love the quick profit.

Do it, don’t stop it, clock it, don’t cock it;
Oh, are you tired? Here’s the quick profit.

Money makes you sick? No, money makes you
rich, don’t be a bitch, love the quick profit.

Money makes you click. No money makes you
hick. Don’t be a dick, love the quick profit.

You’ve got the 401k, so all will be O.K.;
you’ll retire one day, so love the quick profit.

Eat your collar and put your yoke;
here’s your eggs, baby. Love the quick profit.

Get hired, get fired, do everything but choke;
your breath is so important, so love the quick profit.

into oblivion

 
write out the pain

press down hard
enough they will
at first believe it
is a suicide note

alas, just a plea
for love

for our better angels
to find the time to
give a shit again

not some childlike 
belief of peace and
tranquility

we are better than
ourselves

whatever fucking
we you happen to
be thinking of

raise your glass
and dance naked
in the rain

there is nothing
on the other side

all those bright
lights are a cold
destiny into
oblivion

the urgency of
now has never
been greater
--------------------------------------------------------
rhetorical in nature

 
it feels like torture at times

finding the right words
to explain or describe
blah blah blah

i remember when the
words would flow like
wine

a soft liquor on the
shoulder of a beautiful
woman clearly lost in
all those clouds

now, she's just a crazy
bitch with a knife telling
me to dance for her
enjoyment

a cousin once asked
me why i chose to
be a poet

i told her every blank
page is another chance
to cheat death

is that why no one
makes any money
until after they die?

Tapioca and...

Eating pudding
in the cool of this night.

In my one room apartment
costing me a fortune.

My skin summer fried
from the scorching day.

Phone corks in my ears continuously
listening to my favorite podcasts.

Slow picked and ready to pop,
everywhere and everyone

working endless days,
loneliness an accepted fact.

Retirement will be a trick of tales
down a road and over a cliff,

where I will laugh on the way down,
full of tapioca pudding and a good burp,

but feeling so guilty
that I didn't listen... to God.

RAW HIGHWAY
                      for Ravi

 
I’ve been walking inexact dimensions, expanding towards
odiferous sunsets, bedazzled by the contours of skin and sin
driving my bones towards shadowed balconies since time
was invented.

This morning you asked me if I believe in God?
Me, an old mammal daddy, spouting whale song and bullshit
between bites of egg and gulps of black coffee.

Yes Rav, I believe the divine intelligences are just like you
and me. They have no idea what they’re doing and they too
are consumed with joy and terror.

We are cursed prophets inhabited by maps of Vietnam.
The word sighs an ancient shadow, breathes the flesh and
bone of first love. Fish tracks on our breath. The scent of
roses drained blue by time.

My love rocks you in the luminous arms of the sea.
Be bedazzled son, wear rainbows in your hair. We dance
to the eternal rhythms of life-death-mystery-love-terror. 
Heirs to dolphin joy.

If I Can Find the Words

 
If I can find the words
To share my joy
I would like to give
All of them to you

If I can find the words
To relieve all my sorrow
I won’t keep a single word
To myself

If I can find the words
To express my surprises
I hope you can thus understand
What shocks me the most

If I can find the words
That can truly express myself
There won’t be a moment
When you give me an empty look

If I can find the words
I would keep them all to myself
Never share with another soul
Just to be proud of myself

 

Dog Days

The day is hot and sticky,

a wet fart. A Massachusetts

man claims to have been taken

by flying saucer to a planet

made entirely of drugs. In Linz,

Austria, a wooden sculpture

of the Virgin Mary goes into labor,

adding to the general hilarity.

Dogs, overcome by confusion,

at last stop barking without

having to be told to shut up.

OLD HABITS CHANGE

The drinking has changed of late as
My body struggles with the hangovers
& my mind struggles with the idea of
Even drinking in a bar so now, with
Little else to do, I sit at home doing
A combo of the cheapest red vino
& the always ubiquitous smoke that
Just about keeps me sane & not
Wishing any harm be done to this
Life that, seems of late, to be getting
Back to something like a normal I can
Get used to even without the thought
Of going out & getting drunk in a bar.

 
MORNING JOY

That first morning of real weed after 100 days
Of despair is something to delight as
Finally my mind can rewind,
Relax and
Tune out to a frequency I have missed,
One that fucks with a cool retaliation to your
Boring normality and takes me back to
A place I used to live but which I now
Only occasionally visit.


STONED

I’m stoned, that’s for sure
& why the hell shouldn’t
I be, when it’s just another
day in this stoned out life,
In our stoned out town &
I don’t ever see it changing
Not here, not now, maybe
Not even in this lifetime.

If our mothers could see us now 



Once, you bought some rope
and tied a 22 year old beauty 
from Bulgaria to your bed—
butt naked and flushed 
and showed her perversions 
she will never shake off 
or find somewhere else

now, your red eyes 
search the ceiling 
for a place to hook 
that same rope
and tie it around
your scrawny neck

now, midday, drunk and desperate 
you visit an AA meeting at a church 
and everybody looks so clean 
and content and absolved 
and they’re so nice to you
it almost embarrasses you
in its unfamiliarity 

some in suits even—
so well shaved and pure faced—
there’s a relief in their faces
you envy
as they tell stories of old
painfully familiar to your present

if my mother could see me now
you think to yourself 

with a broken right hand 
and a bruised up face 
and a broken toe
from when you kicked
a barstool at someone’s face
as if it was a soccer ball

now, at the cigarette break
of the AA meeting 
you wonder off outside 
and far from the group 
feeling like you’re going to
burst into a weeping fit 
because of the kindness 
of these once broken souls
offering you coffee and cookies
with a soft tone to their voice 
as if talking to a mad man—
voices like the Indian flutes 
calming down the cobras—
offering you a chair amongst 
the circle of them 

now, if my mother could see me now
with my busted wing
and my plastered up face
nourishing scars that will remain
for the rest of my life

but it’s always about that higher power
that’s helped them 
which makes you feel lonely 
because you don’t believe in God—
you don’t believe in people either 

you are tethered by nothing 
to nothing 

you can barely wait 
for the meeting to end 
so that you can limp away
from them, chasing that drink 

the imposter, the liar
the bad son, the bad brother 
the bad friend and the even 
worse lover 

now, you drink in the pub 
betting your rent money 
at a football match—
watching the game at a screen
as it all goes downhill 

as your loss is as impending 
as liver failure 

sitting now at a barstool
waiting for that next bourbon
a fella next to you
looking at you 
waiting for the same thing 

You look like you been to war
he says to you

some battles 
you respond 
but the war is still ongoing 

he laughs 

You don’t happen
to have any jobs for me
do you
you ask

he glances at your casted hand 
I was about to ask you 
the same thing 
he says 
and you both laugh 
a hollow laugh.
nobody’s really laughing here

We’re just waiting for the add-on
to the pause, we’re just waiting on 
the reprieve 

from the mounting bills 
the grief of spouses
the increasing silent desperation 

so quiet in our need of help 
too cowardly to give love
a second chance 

I decline romantic offers—
last one took me by the hand
like a child
and led me to a ketamine hole
and a well of alcohol 

swimming from one addiction 
to the next 
and truly wondering 
how come you don’t 
drown yet

a steep decline
steepening by the day
to a free fall

some people have to hit 
rock bottom to bounce back
and others
and most
expire there in that lonesome darkness

all eyes glued to the screen
gamblers with downwards faces 
in a dour looking dive bar 

Lord almighty 
and all the angels above 
you think
standing up to leave 

if only our mothers
could see us now.

Tangerine

we slipped out into the baking night
with our skin glistening under
sweat soaked shirts. 
we stumbled like sailors on dry land
with feet teetering 
underneath tangerine tinged streetlights. 
we swayed back and forth along the road
with cars that honked shrill horns at us.
we drunken fools, lost in a moment
alive on cheap tricks
which works for a while.


Ain’t whistling, am working

these jobs have us
by the nutsack
no matter the place
it's always the same
they need to squeeze
everything out of us
leave us pumped dry

so we think about quitting
sometimes we even do
then it's no money
yet the bills
forget to quit too
so you go back to the job line
yes, sir. no, sir
i am a team player
i live for hard work

we tell these lies
to earn jobs we can't bear
because we like to live
in homes that have
lights that switch on
and with these pleasant 
roofs over our heads


PILLS

garbled mind,
unclear in speech,
spittle forming besides
stale lips.
it is like he is here
but he isn’t inside.
pills in the psych ward;
time well spent.
his mum says they keep
him stable 
they will keep him 
alive