The Note

Please
Forgive me
For saying
You were
Acting
Like a bitch
Last night.
Since then,
I have come
To realize
That you
Weren’t
Acting.

 

 
The Crab Shack

The Crab Shack
Didn’t sell seafood,
But
It was run by
An ornery old woman
That all she did
Was bitch.

8/10/07


Upon first glimpse of
what we thought was Eden,
we raced down to the sea.
The sand meshing under
our feet like our will
under our many youthful
impulses. We ran until
we were there; stranded,
alone, naked and full of
a wonder that only
partially consisted of
our bodies.The crashing
of the waves between
our legs fill us with
unadulterated joy.
That spring manic
spasms of laughter,
from our lips to the
evening sky.

An Entire World of Suffering


I eat the fruit of delicious people
I am not amiable nor picayune
yes, I am a coterie of obscenities

what else is there inside me?
there exist hateful emotions
a stirring an energy a fierce desire

one aimless vector
you are raw you are profane
I scare you

I climb on top of cars
I scare you
you are the holiness underground

I aim to be forgotten
I am the emptiness inside you
I need to be propulsive… I plod

blood of the messiah
I am not the one
who hurt you?

crimson lines speckle these eyes
I am not the one
who cares?

The music in your head


Hear that melody in your head
Let it sing reprieves 
against the lengthening of the day
& let it sigh relief. 

Then with your chest
Cry out
That the music in your head
Is real
& alive inside you.

Feel the pressure beating
Waiting to release 
from the tips of your fingers 
From the drumming
In your ears.

Now close your eyes 
Take a listen 
that small theater above your shoulders
Has a concert
So take a listen 
& see the music, play away.

A TEMPLE

 

                                    This god is an empty room

                                    with no house around it.

 

                                    Only silent prayers echo

                                    in the open space it encloses.

 

                                    You may try with all you are

                                    to please this quiet god. You can’t.

 

                                    This room is empty as god

                                    and always was.

The Day My Dog Died

They put me under and cut me open, removed parts of my spine and then glued my skin back together. Early the next morning, calling me by the wrong name, they sent me home. I was greeted at the door by familiar barking. No one else was there, though the radio was on – an old tape of Glenn Gould interviewing Glenn Gould about Glenn Gould. The dog slinked off. I gingerly climbed the stairs, undressed, and fell exhausted into bed. I may have slept for a few minutes or I may have just thought I did. The anesthesia still in my system was messing with my perceptions. I smelled ocean. A family of orcas bent on revenge for past humiliations might have been angrily battering the hull of a trawler. I tried to pretend that it all made some kind of sense. The dog reappeared, her tail pointing down, a sign that, like me, she was feeling troubled. A massive volume of water flooded into the room even as I spoke to her in my most soothing voice. No worries, I said, no worries. I would never be sure she understood.



Man Is a God in Ruins

From where I sat on the sand, it looked like a bulky carcass of some kind, a great grayish mass upon which a dozen or more seagulls perched, was floating in on the tide. The lifeguard vigorously blew her whistle. Most of the people playing in the water ignored the shrill alarm. Other beachgoers actually reacted with anger. “Whatever happened to the right to be lazy?” I heard one sunbather complain. I’m not into cosmic things, but I didn’t have a choice. The dismal clouds that had begun to gather over the bay resembled nothing so much as a band of estranged angels coming to take revenge. Only if you have ever experienced a broken heart yourself can you truly judge.

The Spectrum Stikes Back
It was always a numbers game. The elusive fiftieth percentile, the median equals holy grail. Above fifty you are normal, below it deviant. You call it science but its pure maths. We had been stuck for a long time, no growth but now we are rising. Once they consigned us to the edge of town or cul de sacs but now they cage us in the world, amid the rush and volatility. Cruel. Yet we rise. When we cross the Rubicon with fixed bayonets, we will establish precursory tribunals to allow for the airing of grievances. The guilty will be repaid in the same coin. But for psychologists there can be no mercy – we lack empathy after all.  Up against the wall shrunks! The DSM will need to be rewritten to include Excessive Expressive Disorder, Pervasive Validation Syndrome, and oven mothers. All references to us will be removed or used only as a guide for correct developmental landmarks. Neuros will huddle in corners and whimper. Freaks! It will be a quiet world when we rise. Serene. After the retribution we will flourish and rescue your other victims. 

Day Shift Fragment

Said he needed work that pays more.
Said the beamer payments come first.
Said his father wanted him to move out.
Said he got a gram for his thirtieth birthday.
Said his mother packed the wrong sandwiches.
Said he needed work that pays more.
Said the doctor prescribed cream
for his genital warts.

Said the Korean escort was worth half
his wage to make him feel wanted
for a single hour of the week.

a one-sided dialogue with god 


one cup of tears, 
the sky has refused to break with day.
two cups, my body is the anatomy of pain.
i number my problems in threes 
and marvel at its lengthy uniqueness.
four strikes is enough to move a soul to the clouds
but you gave me more than a life and unlike the cats, 
i wear this curse with a pair of lagging optimism. 
the night calls me different, 
says i can never live in the same world as the day
so on the fifth hour, when i yearn for a pinch 
of anything anonymous to this darkness, 
i walk into my mother’s prayer room. 
in this temple 
had the sun dissolved into my mother’s eyes. 
her eyes, a fine solution of proliferated acid tears,
hope, and a luminous moon. 
lord, this is the sixth time in a millisecond 
my brain has birthed another theory;
that you turned mother into a widow 
before she could write a note on her first orgasm, 
is because father might have been the reincarnation 
of her father’s killer. 
did the seven commandments make us this watery? 
or is it you that melt our bodies in some lab? 
for we have become a sea of unanswered prayers, 
flowing in space and tents like molten juice 
climaxed out of a mountain’s butt hole. 
i knew that your ears were somewhere 
in the body of a motile furnace 
the night i became a heterogeneous mixture 
of lesser soprano and more plea 
chanting reasons why my teenage father 
must not be thrown to the ground.
even the wind pitied the woman who lost her husband 
in a battle with his god, and her son to madness. 
eight lives down, lord, cook me till i am nothing.
cut these lungs off, so i need not query
when the angels do not write back to mother. 
so i do not have to be entangled with fate 
and just die a final time.

The following poems are written by, and dedicated to the memory of, Russell Streur (1954-2023), the publisher of The Plum Tree Tavern and The Camel Saloon, who recently passed away. Not only was he a great publisher, but he was a great writer, poet, photographer, mentor, husband, father, and also, a good friend. He will forever be the best barkeep of the underground poetry scene. 
His words below were previously published in The Best of The Beatnik Cowboy Volume 1, as well as The Beatnik Cowboy website. We hope that you will enjoy. Cheers 

   

BECKON HILL

Saigon fell
And still too young for bars
Annette and Cumberland   

Climbed Beckon Hill     
And smoked away the afternoon
With a couple joints

Promised to each other
Forever to stay high
And sealed that vow

With a shotgun kiss
Until the future unfolded into the past
From the projects to the nether dunes

And she flew too near the moon
Playing dice left-handed
With Circe and the crones

And he flew too near the sun
Bowling with the Devil and his crew
Chasing stones in the South of France

And all those years
In the upper atmosphere
Took their toll on bone and lung

Now she is singing underwater
And cannot catch her breath
In the sea off Samothrace

And he cannot take another step
Legless in Cyrenaica
Crippled in Saharan waste.




BIG BILLY WADE

 
The sins of the father
Do not fall upon the son
Up here in the oaks and the knocks
Of Dawson County Georgia

Big Billy Wade
Tells us so
And Big Billy Wade
Is a man of the cross and the gun
And he knows a thing or two
About the mysteries of the world
And the water and the robe

Big Billy Wade
Isn’t losing any sleep
Over the massacre of the Creeks at Autosee
The Shoshone on the Bear
Or the bullets in the back
Of Spotted Elk and the Lakota at Wounded Knee

And the sins of the father
Do not fall upon the son
Up here in the pines and hollows           
Of Dawson County Georgia

Big Billy Wade
Tells us so
And Big Billy Wade
Knows a thing or two
Beneath the hood
About the machinery of the world
And Ezekiel’s sword

Big Billy Wade
Isn’t losing any sleep
Over April Fourth
369 years of the slave trade
Or anybody last name X 
Bleeding out on West 165th

Big Billy Wade
Is comfortable
In his skin.




SERAFINE ROSE DANCES FOR THE TSAR OF ALL RUSSIAS

Serafine Rose pulls up her hair
With a red gancho
Lets fall
A thin black dress

Wearing coral on her toenails
Silver links around her waist
And nothing else
Dances for the Tsar of All Russias

Staring with green eyes
Into his blue
Thus unveiled
To a very slow waltz

Like fingers around his throat
Searching for bone.


 

BUSINESS AS USUAL NUMBER 2

Benefit design.
New turf.
Algae bloom.

Global weakness.
Data breach.
Deportation.

Shared needle.
Razor blade.
Closed circuit.

“There’s a trade off,”
The executive said.
“The cost goes up somewhere else.”

Some glimpse of salvation.
Automatic override.


 

EVENTS OF THE DAY

Leslie Narum homers in his first at bat.
Eddie Murray homers.
Charlie Macwell hits four in a row.
Willie McCovey homers in his last at bat.

The Old Man in the Mountain topples over.
The British execute Patrick Pearse.
The British execute Thomas McDonagh.
The British execute Thomas Clarke.

San Francisco burns.
So does Jacksonville.
Egypt seizes the Sinai.
The silver fleet sets sail.

Byron swims the Hellespont.
Goya paints.