Leelanau Red


“Leelanau red, Leelanau red,”
I chanted silently in my head,
noticing the bottle of cheap wine
on the shelf at Peninsula Liquors,
channeling the old 1970’s song about the guy who’ll
“steal your woman, then he’ll rob your head,”
but really, to us kids, a pot song, Panama Red
a buzz term like Acapulco Gold;
a song by the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

It brought back memories from my youth
in northern Michigan, summers smoking joints,
guzzling cheap wine up here in MAGA land.
They’d always been gun-toting, flag-waving “patriots,”
long before Timothy McVeigh and the Michigan militia,
at least a generation or two before Trump came along.

I remembered the guy in the pickup truck
pointing his pistol at us on the beach,
calling us “dirty longhaired hippies,”
boasting about having served his country in ’Nam.
Lorie, Chet’s girlfriend, screamed at him,
both frightened and outraged.
“You murderer! Pig! Get out of here!”

The guy sneered but put his gun away,
went back to his truck.
Lorie’d been fearsome;
bullies always turning out to be cowards.
“You doin’ both of these guys, girlie?
Or I bet ain’t neither of them’s got any balls anyway.”
Then he peeled away in a screech of rubber.

“Can I help you?”
the young woman behind the counter asked.
I put down the bottle of Leelanau wine.
“Can you recommend a good Riesling?”

Twenty Years


Twenty years
I've been
writing poetry.

Over 20 actually.

I think I wrote my
first one in '99.

I ask myself;

am I any wiser ?
am I richer ?

Fuck no !

But, still I keep
doing it, again,
and again, and
( you guessed it)
again.

I still don't know if
it's a gift or a curse

Three Alarm


Joseph Brodsky!
My first alarm,
I sing to your discarded cigarette filters,
your broken samovar, your Brooklyn cafes.
Across decades I look out from your
unknown future.

Charles Bukowski!
My mirror of failure,
I sing to your bowery, your handicapping
algebra, to your San Pedro lifestyle and
chicory cigarettes.  I call to you from
out the vagueness of eternity, imploring
you not to try. 

Richard Hugo!
My symphony of resemblance,
I sing to your overworked Duwamish,
to your Chevrolet miles through
Big Sky Country, and the taverns you
have forsaken to save one year. 

Man’s mind, stretched by new ideas, 
never retakes original shape.

Hear these words, O my deities, and sing.

Sort of a Sage



Andy Warhol

got it

sideways

when he said,

“In the future,

everyone

will be famous

for fifteen minutes.”

Well, the future

is here

and it turns out

everyone

is famous

for fifteen people,

duration

to be

determined




 

3:15 a.m.


It should be the big things but it isn’t.


Crossing a flood to say goodbye


or your hand on a withered body


when everything is gone.


It should be these things


and others like them.


Betrayal.


Horrible outcomes from horrible luck.


Love that never happened.


It should be something like that.


But it is only the empty night


with morning swinging toward you like a fist.


The commonplace horrors are still horrors.


These things are the things that gut you,


fast and slow.


I can see it in your eyes.


I imagine you can see it in mine.

THE FUTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHS

 
Decades worth of photo albums tumble
Out of a garbage truck into the landfill,
Exposed to the sun, with wind seizing the
Heavy pages as they open among the rest
Of the useless trash of no interest at all
Even to the seagulls who flock and spiral,
Overhead squawking at anything that moves,
Constantly looking for edible morsels
Which are not to be found amidst the
Personal history of a single old man of
No importance who has died at last
Leaving behind too much stuff which
Was never of any value to anyone save
Himself and now his body is in the oven
And his photos will be viewed by rats.

The Questions of Gunshot Season


Last week I marched my fears out to Jericho
while the walls were still piled high
and the desert blank as a halcyon sky.

Hyenas encroach on the vultures
that feed on the carrion
on the side of cobblestone roads,
their weaponish beaks pecking
until a creature can’t flee anymore;
until they have no legs, no spirits,
no heads.

— and that reminds me of a story that I need to tell you right now:

It’s about a boy who lost his face
to a gunshot, which cracked
in the middle of the night.
The gunshot cracked
because love’s never love if it isn’t cracked;
we leak pain when our spouses become infidels;
and time is a river whose current I am lost in.

These rivers swell, but not with blood,
unless it’s a biblical rain, the kind I dream of,
frequently, harboring feelings for the sun still,
and yet devoting my life to the uphill boulder,
because I am tormented – yes, I am tormented, followed
by the leftovers from the diffusion of a human skull.

Yes, it follows me.
Do You follow me?

I am afraid that I will be lost to the blackening sea of time,
its spreading and staining ink; I am afraid that I will be found
weeping on the side of the highway, thinking that if I could just
get my hands into Creation, I would fix what You could not.

Yes, You.
Were You listening then?
Are You listening now?



A Company Tour


Welcome.
Last I was told there were bones beneath this floor,
but don’t ask me, ask the foreman.
He would be the one who, if asked,
would know the man and his family too.
He would talk to you.

(I think he gets lonely out here,
tell you the truth.
Did you know those hands
are the reason
this plant
is still standing?)

No, it wouldn’t surprise me too much
if there were ghosts in the place.
All this is toxic and to get too close to it is,
(whether you do it spiritually or what),
to get too close is to welcome
that you stand by yourself, really,
that you would no longer get the camaraderie
of standing next to what amounted,
I suppose, to our hosts of this briefest of lives:
The people from whom you refresh your drinks
and ask for directions to the restroom.

May be old but I'm not dead yet


This morning I put my shirt on inside out,
nobody noticed or cared.

In the afternoon I walked around butt naked,
because I'm old and I can.

Last week I gave the finger to a kid
who almost ran me over with his bike,
he started to cry and said something
about telling his mother, I gave him
a tootsie roll, dog shit sold as candy,
he felt better, I laughed all the way home.

Tomorrow I'm going out to lunch at McDonalds,
will order a Big Mac, large fries, and a milkshake,
doctor says this stuff will kill me, after he informed
me I only had six months to live.

Next day it's my Thursday routine,
sit on the john reading Winnie the Pooh,
a play on words that I enjoy immensely.

In a couple of weeks I'll write checks
for my nieces and nephews to come pick up,
that's the only way they'll come see me,
need to send smaller checks more often.

Sometime in the near future I will die,
hopefully I'll get to eat an Egg McMuffin first,
die with a smile, full stomach, and
a final up yours to my doctor.

__________________________

Self-Talk


Each morning about seven
a man clad in grey shorts and workout shirt
walks by our house seemingly talking
to himself about a Netflix movie he saw last night,
his need to go shopping for deodorant,
or some other form of drivel - of course
he's not really talking to himself,
just married to his cellphone.
(too bad he doesn't talk about his sex life)

Then there's Sam walking
on the treadmill at the gym,
singing the words to a raucous song
only his earbuds can hear,
sometimes banging out the rhythm
on the machine with his hands.
(it's hard to be near him fearing he will fall)

The man who puts out the vegetables
at the grocery store talks to himself,
saying things like, nice color, smooth skin,
good size, nice fragrance, looks fresh
as he professionally stacks
the incoming treasures in the bins.
(tempted to walk by saying bananas suck)

My mother was of a similar persuasion,
she'd murmur phrases throughout the day
about the weather - nice outside -
or a spring flower she saw in the garden - nice color -
even the score of the Dodger game last night,
she never seemed bothered about,
not getting a response.
(wish Hoffman would learn how to pitch)

Our dog barks for no reason
discernable by any of us, sometimes just
a single yap, other times a sustained series
of yowls or just a low guttural growl.
We suspect he's tired of just sleeping
on the coach and being ignored.
(despite his yamerings, he's still ignored)

CAN I GET A LIGHT?

I 
sit
with
an
unlit
cigarette
musing
hoping
something
gives
me 
a
light

apprentice


all you 
do
is strike 
a 
match
toss
it
on 
the gasoline
& 
flames 
accelerate
like 
stock 
cars
on
a 
speed
way

Narrative

 
I have a pain
in my mid-section –
possibly my liver.
Cirrhosis got Kerouac
and the 12-gauge
got Hemingway
before Cirrhosis
could.
The ways out
for writers
are bleak
in most cases.
I should probably
put down
the bottle
the same way
we need to
put down
this narrative
about writers
killing themselves,
voluntarily.
It’s a tired,
old narrative
and the people
looking in
from the outside
don’t understand
that it hasn’t
been written
by writers
themselves.
It’s been perpetuated
by pop-culture vultures
who need something
to feed off of.
Fate can be
a cruel bitch
who always gets
her way
and writers succumb
to her lure
which keeps
the narrative
alive
when it’s
iconic writers
we should’ve kept
alive instead. 




Quarters


I went
into Wells Fargo
in downtown Anaheim
to get quarters
for laundry.
It’s the biggest
pain in my ass
besides rats,
roaches,
and termites.
The charm
of living
in an old apt.
building.
There were several
homeless people
in line –
one with swollen,
purple hands
like potatoes,
and another
with a dirty,
dusty
Duck Dynasty-type
beard.
All of them
withdrew
hundreds of dollars.
I watched the one
with the dirty beard
hobble into
a parking garage
next to the bank
and surrender
his envelope
of cash
to a drug dealer,
whom didn’t look
as banged up
as the homeless man.
He drove away
in a Corolla
that needed
new tires.
I wondered if
he was taking
the cash
to buy a set,
but probably not.
We tend to neglect
necessitates
for pleasures
and put our money
where it
fills us.