A Sign

It was probably a sign
When the old preacher,
Who, these days, did
More funerals than
Weddings, topped off
The ceremony with,
“I now pronounce you
Husband and wife…
Rest in peace.” 

INDIAN HAU

White man and all his heavenly court

Of warriors and pedophile priests

Be murderous colonizers

Hypocritical, obscene, deceitful

Thieves, looters, rapists

That all their effort was

Fool and hallucinate with little mirrors

Trinkets, stamps, crucifixes

To a whole people and nations

Who worshiped the Sun and the Moon

Some making human sacrifices

That have nothing to envy

Their daily femicides.

Hau Hau

Your fight against our Indian chiefs

Is the same that held Priapus with the Donkey

Letting us see who else murdered, raped.

Thanks to your crosses and swords

You left us embarrassed and defeated

Naked, stolen our jewelry

Our wives and daughters.

You used so much ardor to violate them

That you left your Castilian surnames

In the land fortunes

Where our dead children were left.

The few that got away

To leave their heads lopped off

They only got

Thumb sucking

Being left as slaves working

In the shadow of their own eggs

Suffering remembering

Your very obscene actions.

Damn with You White man!

NOTHING TO DO BUT LOSE YOUR MIND

As the minds start to stir a

Dollop of madness into their

Mixes the lock-down drags

On leaving some with

No recourse but to disconnect

And let go for there is nothing

Else worth doing.

The library in town is shut

Whilst my own catalogue is

Being read with a gusto that

Suggests i wont have much

Left for my planned old-age

And then the horror of no

Pubs being open. 

 

It’s been the three longest

Weeks of my life until now

Since i last walked in and

If it weren’t for this here

Writing i’d surely have been

Dragged off by now by a

Mental health nurse.

The other night i was sat

Here, because quite frankly

What else is there to do,

Nursing a beer and some words

When the downstairs flat

Came alive with a voice

Booming out song after song.

Childhood memories of hating

The pop music of my adolescence

Came to haunt me as first she

Tortured me with some heavenly

Delight courtesy of a former

Go-go and all i wanted was to

Either hide, remain silent, or

Put down this laptop, climb from

My chair, pull Damaged off my

Records shelf and blast it until

She learnt not to confuse me with

One of those losers she used

To hang with during her school

Days as i think we’re about the same age.

Sometimes when we

were closing up
at 4 AM after last call
the Irish owner
and I would have
a pint. Watch as
the students paired off
and went who knows
where. “I hate to see
that.” He said referring
to a red-haired colleen
arm in arm with
a black guy.
I said. “I didn’t mind.
They’re young,
in lust and consenting
adults.”
“Her parents live on
my street back home.
They’d lose their minds
if they could see her now.”
I thought, that’s one
of the reasons she left
with him. So, you’d see
her, tell her parents.
So they’d lose their minds.

-

Doug wanted to


Climb the water tower.
Add his initials to ones
already visible from
the Sunrise Highway.
I didn’t ask him why.
It was a Mt. Everest thing
I thought. I sd. “Everyone
will see you. It’s like a
totally exposed staircase.”
“I’ll go when it’s cloudy.
Or better yet, when
it’s raining.”
I didn’t point out how insane
it was. He was determined
to find out on his own.

Next time it rained,
off he went with a spray
can and a pack of butts
he filched from his mom.
He’d light one when he
got to the top. About halfway
up he was discovering what
that: Slippery When Wet
sign meant at the base of
the stairs.

I knew he saw me waving
at him but he just stood there
holding on, not waving back.

Yellow Ashtray


on the night 
horns grow from my head


my father 
is on the back porch smoking
a Winston

the yellow ashtray 
like a runny egg of moonlight
on the cracked stone step

he looks 
at the horns 
but says nothing 

rolls up 
his shirtsleeves 
& stubs out the Winston

I follow 
the thread of violence 

& clip him
with a parting blow. 




Front Hook Spin


the kids 
with fishing poles 
& stolen Vodka 
decanted in 
hairspray 
bottles

find him first 
& pull him out 
of the millrace, 
lips blue & front hooked 
with the last night 
on earth  

pole dancing girls 
spinning go-go hard-ons 
at the Novelty Lounge

must’ve
taken the tracks home
& fallen in 

scared 
all the 
fish 

William Taylor Jr.


There’s a poet
I admire,
William Taylor Jr.
He’s kind of like
the underground voice
of San Francisco.
He’s not aware
that he’s on
my radar
but maybe after
this poem.
If I get a chance
to talk to him
I’ll say
listen,
enough with
the references
to the old writers –
Kerouac, Ferlinghetti,
and Bukowski.
I’m guilty of it,
too –
I know
you miss them.
But all this
name-dropping
isn’t going to
bring them back.
It’s up to
you and me
now
to carry the torch.
We both live and write
in California.
You cover the North
and I’ll cover the South.
We’ll be correspondents
for the written word.
And if you get
a collection published
with City Lights,
would you mind
name-dropping
for me?

The State of Poetry


A poet whose work I admire announces on Facebook the recurrence of her brain tumor. Another has already been admitted to hospice care. A third, a clear case of burnout, is giving up writing to attend mortuary school. And people wonder if poetry is dead!

&

The doctor looks up from studying the x-rays of my battered and crumbling spine and asks, “Do you do heavy labor for a living?” I almost laugh. Do I do heavy labor? No – unless you consider sitting hunched over a desk every day for most of the day, straining to lift words onto a page, heavy labor.

&

Then there are the times when I feel cast out, abandoned, a mutineer marooned on a speck in the ocean and forced to watch from far off as words, like the black ships of Magellan’s armada, their sails puffed out and all their flags flying, plunge over the edge of the world.

Atomic Blueprint


The molecules arrange themselves 
into human shapes

according to the elements of fate

in nuanced forms of expression
and blunt atomic reactions

colored by happiness and suffering
in the not so visible spectrum.

This all takes place
at the outer heart of inner space

where worlds collide and lovers lay waste

to the compound structures of fable

seated at the periodic table

with all creation’s carnal relations

jealous of eternity 

and her sex 

and her power

and her appetite for death

at the banquet of experience

where the earth spins naked

and the moon blows kisses

and the sun winks knowingly

and the stars dare us to be
more than what we see

on this inexplicable journey.




The Poetry Racket

     
A few nights ago I attended my first poetry reading.  ( I’m 67)  It was sponsored by a local poetry organization whose website I’d just discovered.  I liked their mission statement.  I knew nothing about the featured poets or the bar downtown where it was taking place, but after a little internet sleuthing it seemed like it might be the right opportunity to meet other poets and share a few poems during the open mic.

I was hesitant, but it was something I felt like I had to do after running alone in my own private poetry marathon for years.

Almost a dozen people attended, (mostly scruffy old men) and it was a little weird trying to read poetry in the backroom of a bar next to the biffy, with a shitty microphone, no mic stand, no podium, poor acoustics, and lots of boisterous noise competing from the crowd of beer drinkers in the next room.

But I’m glad I did it.  Winter’s coming, and I don’t think I’ll be driving into the city after dark again until spring.

I’m trying to be honest with myself.  What’s my motivation for riding through the valley of the shadow of poetry?  Is it the desire for public approval?  Love in the form of recognition?  Personal accomplishment at an affordable price?  Camaraderie?

I’ve worked hard to get my ego out of the way and write poems that are both cathartic and artistically satisfying.  I like exploring ideas, crossing internal boundaries, self discovery, becoming more expressive, less emotionally constipated.

When I first started charging down this road I was so naive.  I had just crawled out of a factory.  I thought poetry would connect me to a better class of people, enlightened rogues and mystics, explorers, brothers, sisters, bird men and women, a contemplative tribe of confidants and sun dancers celebrating life.  What a fool I was.

I’ve seen the stacks of unwanted chapbooks gathering dust in bookstore wicker baskets.  I’ve been patronized by academics, ivory tower sentries, and effete personalities hiding in their literary rabbit holes at credentialed membership clubs.

Not long ago I was reading some essays by Robert Bly, Wildness & Domesticity.  He spoke disparagingly about much modern poetry, about its emptiness, its deadness, how it took a wrong turn years ago.  He told a story about his friend James Wright being snubbed at a U of M  English faculty party for complimenting Walt Whitman.  WTF?

Yesterday I veered onto The Loft’s website.  They have many resources for aspiring writers.  I can get personalized help for one whole year while trying to get a book published at the low, low price of $7600.  Astonishing!

How many chapbooks would I need to sell to break even on that venture?  It sounds like a great vanity project for anyone with a lot of extra money to burn.

And so I continue to ride through the valley of the shadow of poetry, “bloody, but unbowed” as Invictus said.

I’ve had some poems published in various print and electronic magazines.  There were a few where I had to pay for the privilege of reading my own poems. 

A year ago I read a poem on Rattle.  It was an outstanding confessional poem by a dead author who confided how it took him 40 years to make 15 dollars for his troubles.  “Why" by Robert Funge.

A couple of months ago I submitted poems to an online publication.  I received no acceptance or rejection response, then I sent a query letter.  Crickets.

Maybe real poetry has and always will exist only on the margins of society where touched individuals from all walks of life talk in crazy fractured heart bursts attempting to convey whatever divine message streams in through the broken windows of their psyches.

Maybe that’s what poetry is, a lonely lifelong marathon of men and women who belong to no tribe but their own.  Consider the old Chinese poets who walked into the mountains and disappeared in the clouds. (Hello Gary Snyder!)

Poetry is an ancient art, as old as any.  You’d think that with all the billions being spent on endowments, museums, institutes, public parks, commemorative statues, etc. that some visionary philanthropist would have thought to construct a dedicated poetry pavilion in a city park or attach a small quiet annex to some public building in a central location where poets could easily have readings, share, discuss, and hear themselves think above the din. Perhaps I’m still a fool.


Guy Roads

November 12th, 2022

Amethyst / Doomsday Clock


Without knowing 
Exactly what living is

these days of quiet abundance 
Are spent with
Frugal abandon 
In 
Sparkling Amethyst daydreams

Keeping true to the visions
Of 
Rolling in the grass
With
Our toddler and dog

In kaleidoscope wonder
Of 
A new age utopia 
Of our own making

The fading glory
A rapture of declining return 
Like
Fluttering digits
On the doomsday clock





Forever Young


Cadillac smokes
And
Old timey chimney sweeps

Singing “Sweet Jane”
In raspy crackling harmony 

In bed 
As soft morning light leaks through 

vivacious breath
Explores the rhythm of your hips
In languishing daylight  as time approaches infinity 

Between the synapses
The image of your breasts
Takes hold
Of
Giddy plans

Reveling in
new traditions 

handing out pamphlets on Election Day 

staying up the rest of the night
in candle lit revelation 
Of the meaning of trust
And best practices 

Laying out a protocol 
For 
Bad mental health days

Romantically insured
For
Mornings I have to throw you in the shower 

After a week of sleep

Opening the pores with sultry steam
As the eyes dilate
Focusing on the new day

Timetable


dropping 
by the depot 
on Saturday afternoon

few games 
of pool, pitchers of beer
a girl

it’s cold in the back 
room & the baggy wool cardigan 
banking her neck

is as familiar 
as the bar’s wood stove—  
a half-empty flickering, unattended

passengers ticketed through here 
for almost a century, weekend trips
to Kingston Point 

they’d sing all the way back,
the Catskills echoing 
with music & laughter

as the U&D railroad
linked the last 
terminal 

bad luck 
to look 
back 

just a spot 
for nine ball 
on Saturday afternoon 

& pitchers of beer 
with a girl whose cold breath flutters 
like pompoms on game night