Mad Cow Revival

This could be the age
when the masses rise up gleefully
to write romantic poetry

all signs are power pointing
to a great awakening

imaginations are leaping 
off the cliffs of reason

voices are shrilling

mad cows mooing

souls are speaking fever dreams
head banging reality
performing fruit loops, hand stands
and pirouettes

fools are crying in the wilderness
flocking into the streets
shopping ’til they drop
disconnecting the dots
extrapolating moon shots
in deep state of the art
haiku memes
invidious elegies
inhumane manifestos
soapbox allegories
cynically hatched plots
Alpha-bet soups
booyah broth from A to Q

a disembodied slumgullion 
of paradise lost
and democratic vistas
composed in free verse invective
grand old poetics
antiquated limericks
insensitive bullshit
unhinged psychobabble
and mad oratories
slammed at tent revival parties
by a new breed of bard
defending the indefensible
dry-humping nihilism
fondling patriotism
making off-kilter pronouncements
courting supreme injustices
swamping Florida
kneecapping Georgia
back-stabbing Kansas
bitch-slapping Texas
jack-booting Idaho
screwing Wisconsin
beheading Philadelphia
taking pot-shots at sanity
and tossing Lady Liberty
on the loony bin of history
where she sits in shambles
singing God Bless America
while the people wonder…

Who will deliver us from evil?



Premium Bullshit

That’s it!
I’m maxed out.
Had it up to here
with petty chirping
about cholesterol counts,
pet food recommendations,
cable TV bills,
and garage sale dramas
about worthless crap 
cleaned out of basements
then sold on the internet 
to some poor schmuck
who didn’t know any better.

I don’t want to be pestered anymore
with dull monologues by cranks 
caught in their own feedback loops
who think my purpose in life is to be their audience.

I can’t stand to hear anymore repetitive gripes
about how you got screwed out of a promotion
by some back stabbing weasel
or whining about the wife not loving your dog,
how effed-up everything is,
how much you drank last night,
and the stoner woes of your adult children. 

I’m sick of all the sanctimonious handwringing
over the sad state of the world.
The Middle East?
How about the middle finger!
I’ve been hearing about that pissing contest
since I was a child,
way before insane suicide bombers and hijackers
started clogging up the headlines
with their blood feud tribal fanaticisms.

Can we check some of this shit off the list?
Stop talking about it?
Are you really that full of it? 
Don’t we all have enough problems as it is?
Can’t we just dispense with the bellyaches?

I’m exhausted by the barrage of boring bullshit
and tedious mumblings that pass for conversation.
I’m tired of hearing about the deer you shot 
in the 5th grade for the umpteenth time,
your lame half baked schemes for fixing the world,
your addled reasoning, circular rambling,
and misadventures in stupidity.

From now on I’m only interested in premium bullshit.
Stories that swing for the fences.
Make me laugh ’til it hurts.
Rip my guts out with glee.
I want to hear about far-fetched conspiracies
that involve millions,
UFO abductions at Walmart,
underground space alien colonies on the moon,
obscure meaningless minutia with global implications,
rock ’n roll trivia that never happened,
dead pool probabilities,
Magic Christian pranks,
implausible scenarios,
whacked insanities,
mind games, escapades, and stunts,
rambunctious banter,
nonsense,
horse sense,
mental graffiti,
fantastic tales of sex on Ferris wheels,
unbelievable exploits not shackled by facts,
and no, I don’t want to hear what you’d do with the money
if you won the lottery.

The world needs more premium bullshit,
batshit crazy stuff.
Ordinary bullshit isn’t working.
The daily news is killing us.
It’s a steaming pile of horseshit.
Just give me the premium bullshit.

ghosts


thunder and rain
on a warm summer night

alone in my apartment
always alone

alone in so many ways

I mostly remember my father
and hate him

then sometimes I forgive him
and hate myself

did you ever wonder
what the rain
thinks
when it’s falling?

there’s ghosts wandering
the playgrounds
under the night-rain
wishing the moon
and the stars were out
so they could remember the past
too.

The Last Day


At night the whip-poor-will’s soft lullaby
caresses the dunes
sweet rhapsody envelops the mist
echoing the sorrow of those below
forced to leave to parts too well known. 

sea foam laps at the shore, a silent embrace, 
reluctant to return to the waves washing 
against the sand.

shells scattered as offerings, gifts from the depths
home of the humpbacks
the sun rises gently lifting from the edge of the surf
a quick ascent, tangerine rays fill the sky
lighting the world anew 
ushering in possibility

royal terns and killdeer gather
paying homage to hope
stirring silently

pelicans and cormorants come
gliding
grazing the surf. 

Toward a Hierarchy of Kitchen Utensils
 
There’s no mincing the truth. The chef’s knife is king of kitchen cutlery. It slices and chops and stabs vegetables in the heart with efficient fluency. But for more delicate work, deveining the hot devil soul of a pepper, or excising the offending eye of an assailant, a paring knife is supreme. It’s murder in the kitchen when the knives come out. The teeth of a bread knife saw their way across fields of soldiers dressed as wheat. The filet knife bends its will along boulevards of bone. Once or twice a year the carving knife thins a sacrificial breast. When you were in your prime, beef was a bargain. Your steak knives have long since lost their edge but haven’t we all. 

Monalisa Smile

Midwest amongst my july days
Some stayed and Some left
My bouquet of autumnal florals
Smelling of hydrangeas
And forgotten bleached Scarlet
My red red heart
Overthrowing at your beautiful decay
Like I am owning
My Monalisa Smile
And My Beethoven dreams
Where we hide in our
Planetary swirl
That's why The autumnal bliss
Is always my own
Where I can own my
July days
And My red red heart
Speaking of safekeeping
And the mystical Night jewel.



Autumn

Autumn passed over
My window blues
A cosmic palette of
Monographic silhouettes
A feathery carnival of
Hooded blasphemy
If you keep searching for
Answers
You fall down
Jugglers Metaphors Imagine
Just Imagine
Beyond the green above
A cosmic garden of
White blue diamonds
That Rains over
And Creates a mansion
Xanadu of my own fervent dreams
It's called mystical
A Rose like luminous
Moon beamed white
Nemesis is necessary
You never grow
Until you discover your wings
A bright blue butterfly knife
Just imagination
Well keep on
Your blue ribbons
Your pink shoes
Attached scrapbooks of my
Kindergarten schemes
How fragile how beautiful
How magical place it is
Stars and shimmer
Sickness meant relief
You get Care you get Love
Still crossed a threshold

Surpassed the oceanic blaze
The hardness of mountains
The green monsoon wet
I was growing up
Could feel
The freshness the berries
The innuendos the forever
Opulence of your smile
How it hides behind
A rare diamond
We found
Finally
Crossed the threshold
And Autumn bid me a goodbye.

Four Leaf Clover


I found your life smiling
inside a four-leaf clover.
Here you hibernate in sin.
You were dancing in the orange fields of the sun.
You lock into your history, your past, withdrawal,
taste honeycomb, then cow salt lick.
All your life, you have danced in your soft shoes.
Find free lottery tickets in the pockets of poor men and strangers.
Numbers rhyme like winners, but they are just losers.
Positive numbers tug like gray blankets, poor horses coming in 1st.
Private angry walls; desperate is the night.
You control intellect, josser men.
You take them in, push them out,
circle them with silliness.
Everything turns indigo blue in grief.
I hear your voice, fragmented words in thunder.
An actress buried in degrees of lousy weather and blindness.
I leave you alone, wander the prairie path by myself.
Pray for wildflowers, the simple types. No one cares.
Purple colors, false colors, hibiscus on guard,
lilacs are freedom seekers, now no howls in death.
You are the cookie crumbler of my dreams.
Three marriages in the past.
I hear you knocking my walls down, heaven stars creating dreams.
Once beautiful in the rainbow sun, my face, even snow
now cast in banners, blank, fire, and flames.
I cycle a self-absorbed nest of words.

An Obituary

 
Whenever I
think about
my father
I feel
quite
sad
and I am
sure
it is the
same way
he felt
whenever
he thought
about me
and all those
years
we both
threw
away.

 


Art

 
Today
at the
art
gallery
there
was a
young
woman
weeping
in the
permanent
collection.
Standing
alone
in front
of an
Impressionist
landscape.
Everyone
was
concerned
but me:
I felt
optimism
for the
first time
in a
long
time

Screen Door Summers

Dusty and distraught the afternoon laid out
like a sun-shaped jewel ahead of us. 
Our marble eyes will fill up with salty tears 
and the rivers will swell until they drown 
the glittering meadows in madness. 
Our screen door summers will be like 
shattered blue china and so we will trudge 
through the day lilies and clementines 
alongside the infinite stretches of power lines 
that run the hillsides. 

We are the late bloomers and the daydreamers. 
The ding dong ditchers and the hide and seekers. 
The hopscotchers and leap froggers. 
Living among the star magnolias and mimosas. 
Our sun drenched world was full of fragrant bursts 
of flowers and pink clusters of fluff. 
Spongy moss and delicate wisps of grass served 
as our place to nap, right there below the copper 
stained sunsets. 

Take me back to the days we poured cherry soda 
over our vanilla ice cream and crunched on crushed ice. 
The evenings we gathered sticks to burn as defense 
against the insects and mosquitoes. There was never 
an issue with illness and that was all thanks to the 
tablespoon of apple cider vinegar we consumed daily. 
The best stories were told while sitting in rocking chairs 
on the front porch. We chased chicken hawks like wild 
hyenas and made up our own special calls whenever 
we lost each other in the woods. 

It seems we all lost track of time during all those fights 
and parties and birthdays and graduations and baby 
showers and weddings. It seems all we have left of those 
days are photographs and scars. Maybe even a little 
heartache. 

But one thing is for sure, we left our mark.



Speed Demons

I live for that feeling of complete 
weightlessness, when we speed 
down back roads lined with 
corn fields and rolling grasslands 
that stretch all the way to the foot 
of the mountains. 

I would tighten my arms around his waist 
as the speedometer touched 140mph. 
We zoomed through the darkness like 
screaming demons on two wheels. 
The sky peeled away like a panoramic 
screen unraveling past us. 

I drank up the crisp air, I saturated 
myself in adrenaline like a junkie. 
It was just the two of us, phantoms 
of the night, spirits of the asphalt, 
our souls aligning with the road beneath us. 

No one could possibly catch us. 
Dedicated to the ride, locking pinky 
promises with the highways and 
interstates, always swearing to return, 
to meet again with the meditative route. 

To me this is much more than a form 
of transportation, it's a lifestyle, a way 
to soak up your pure bliss, a form of 
peace and harmony. 
It's being born to ride.

Call It Lazy

Okay, call it lazy.  ‘Nother one of my pieces
Getting posted on-line and they want a bio.
Man, I’m tired of listing all my stuff.  Look,
It’s a lengthy roster of my published work,
Along with awards I don’t give a shit about,
Old enough to be, for me, incredibly boring.
I’m just into mixing words with the world,
Something you do while you’re still alive.
So, I’ll give myself a break and borrow a bio.
Slap it right up as if it were my own credits.
Yeah, use their catalogue of ‘published in’
Publications and their Push Cart etc. awards.
Even add their personal notes.  That’s easy.
Lives in a cabana on a west coast beach
With three kids, four cats, and a husband.
Husband?  Crap!  I’m stealing the wrong bio.

Beatnik Blues


The night moaning like a whore faking 
love, red neon pouring whiskey on junk- 
ies watching their blood ejaculate up into 
a syringe, eyelids fluttering on Whitman’s 
finger, dance boys dance, blow your har- 
monica until sunshine orange drenches 
the shadows, prisons, and asylums over 
flow, spewing detritus, talking rats with 
yellow jaundiced eyes and bebop cats 
 
William S. Burroughs cut off his finger 
in 1939 out of love for Jack Anderson 
and sent it to Arnold Gingrich at Esquire,  
later he said it was an initiation for the 
Crow Indian tribe, he hoped his words 
would be published, Gingrich sent Bur- 
roughs a note back reading, “I greet you  
at the beginnings of a wonderful career,  
when do I get the corpse?” William had 
love for heroin, morphine, and marijuana 
 
His work was of mystical, occult, and mag- 
ical themes, William’s totem animal was a 
green reindeer, his life was fleeing from one 
troubled place to another, he killed his second 
wife, Joan in 1951 while drunk and went to  
prison in Mexico City for 13 days, they had 
him for culpable homicide, he fled to Morocco 
where he was accused of importing opiates, he 
fled to a rundown hotel in the Latin Quarter of 
Paris, to meet Ginsberg, Corso, and Orlovsky 
 
Burroughs cooked the dragon with a burnt spoon, 
a step ahead of the law, snapping fingers, to the  
bongo beat, chasing daydreams down the street.




Cherokee Rose

 
Prolonging the heartbreak, baby 
baby, your love leaves me on a  
ten story ledge watching the side 
walk artists below creating master- 
 
Pieces vanishing in the rain, they 
smile like hundred-dollar bills are 
pouring down, they know that every 
thing is temporary even blossoms 
 
Floating on the xeric wind, apricots 
and nectarines make fiery love and 
replace the sun in the cinnamon sky, 
watching a video of Tommy Castro 
 
And the Painkillers, play his song,  
Ride, pretty ladies dancing, while he 
Kerouac struts past City Lights Books, 
keeping me alive like a Cherokee Rose.