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

Dealing with Delmore
 
So, I’m playing poker with Delmore Schwartz
and I want to know what he thinks
about the state of current affairs, but he’s working
on an inside straight and I’m tempted to fold.
“One,” he says, and I deal him the one he wants.
I can tell because he’s shifted in his chair,
settling back. “Women will rob you of
your passion,” he says. “There’s no poetry in that.”
I hear about his wife’s infidelity and try again.
“What of the nature of art in the information age?”
He ups the ante. “What about another drink?”
He raises me a Jackson and wins the pot.
“Let me tell you about art,” focused now
and leaning forward, “one minute you’re a genius.
The next you’re taking out the garbage.
It’s all the same to me. Either way,
you end up smelling of week-old sausages.” 

raison d’etre
the children have come home,
unhappy and smiling as always
no matter what they come home to.
wash hangs from a line;
soda is substituted for potatoes;
relevance falls down the stairs and
aftershave smells like boot black.
he flies an american flag, most
likely to remind himself what country he lives in.
i suppose it’s hard to remember even simple things
when news channels encourage a bumper-sticker
mentality. we’ve talked. we’ve bloviated.
other times, one-word sentences passed for
conversation. the last time we talked, i said,
“don’t give me that patriot bullshit. that’s
tired, man. really tired.” there wasn’t much
point in saying it again.
there’s a large oak tree in the backyard
loaded with nests and swings. a
woman who seldom leaves the house. maybe
his wife. maybe his mother. maybe the children
aren’t his. maybe a robin flying backwards means
the earth has stopped revolving. maybe it will be
dizzy when it lands. i need to drive a bit and pick up
a paper to see what day it is. maybe the hours
are moving like the robin. but the day doesn’t
matter here where so many have to remind
themselves where they live. look at all the
televisions, never off; all the flags fluttering
in the same direction. i don’t know if the earth
has reversed itself or not but i’m having
difficulty recognizing simple things: what used
to be thought of as sanity. there’s this flipping
in the breeze. underwear, tee-shirts, white sheets,
flags. snapping to the crackle of fireworks that never end.

The Gunman

I've never killed anyone in this country...yet.
I let some bullets fly in the sand box but'
never ever went to check out the results.
Most the time, I carried a malfunctioning 45.
The pistol wouldn't feed from the magazine. 
I had to load one bullet at a time by hand.
For a while I waltzed around with an AK.
Not a souvenir, just a found reliable weapon.
Closest I could have come to shooting anyone
was when I was a 'tower man' as a prison guard.
None of the cons started any trouble in my area.
I did shoot a small refrigerator in the tower.
Blew a hole in the door with double aught buck.
Tore up the insides real good, but it still worked.
I called the shift captain, said I fired a round.
Accident of course.   I didn't hate refrigerators.
Captain says, "What the hell you doin' up there?" 
I say, "I guess I'm fuckin' up."   Silence then,
Captain bust out laughing and couldn't stop.
He sent a lieutenant to the tower to check things.
Lieutenant takes the gun and shoots out a window.
It was determined that the gun was defective,
Or, maybe we both were.  I taped up the refrigerator.
I think it's still there (Tower 3) after all these years.
Curious people would ask, "Why'd you shoot it?"
I always reply, "'Cause it was runnin'."



Book Burning

Hot damn!  Book burnin' at the church.
Pure filth and trash goin' up in flames.
Opportunity pounds upon my door.
I gather a stack of my own vulgar books,
Run down to sell them to the faithful.
Yup, make some money from the sales.
But, not enough.  I sell them slightly
Above what they cost me to print.
Stroke of genius, I print some covers,
Book covers with nasty nasty themes
And wrap them around books I find.
Books I find in the trash or get free.
They sell like hotcakes.  "Brother, buy
A filthy book to burn,  Sister, of course
The donation goes to the church." 
The church of my empty wallet,  It all
Worked fine until a cover falls off and
They see that we're selling fake cover-
Wrapped old Nancy Drews and Mother
Goose Rhymes.  That was when they
Considered throwing us into the fire.
There are times when one can run fast.