Earth Day

 
Just before being bored to death
people wonder whether creation is overrated,
life like a listless game
of pick-up basketball
played between bored millionaire basketball players
and everyone in Middle America
suddenly realizes Middle America is just a collective hallucination,
a broad black hole of nothing
burning through the conceptual center
of everything…
Happy Earth Day! cries Jesus
who bursts into the room
just as everyone finishes filing out
the door closing softly behind them.



Listening to Birdsong in the Predawn Hours

 
I hate it when I log on to social media
and die a thousand deaths
before I’ve finished my coffee. Even people
I might want to see on my screen
are buried beneath a barrage
of multinational advertising and how fucked up is it
that Dawn brand dish soap
advertises not with pictures of brilliant plates, glasses, and spoons,
but with fuzzy ducklings scrubbed
of planet-destroying oil?
In the dissolving gloom and looming new day
I think about the relativities of suffering
and die a few more times
before throwing my phone out the window
as pointless and expensive gestures
are all I’m capable of.
A storm has passed this way in the night
and the air and streets are clean
for the time being and all the trees very green.
Nothing but birds singing in deep green.
I hate it when I’m a hungover piece of shit
and life insists on being beautiful.

Behind Every Great Lion

 
A halo of flies buzz around his crown
Too quick for the snapping jaws
That bite down, briefly, in irritation:
They escape the click of his kingly teeth
In that gaping mouth which just finished
Feasting on Zebra meat. His Highness
Grows sleepy now in the unrelenting heat—
Having eaten, we might guess, to excess.
Nevertheless, his belly wouldn’t be so full
If such a pride was without a lioness.

Up Too Early

Maybe I’m up too early,
Not really awake yet.
Slowly crawled out of bed,
Drifted about the house,
Pissed in the trash can
Before I realized it.  Fool.
Wondered who that was
In the bathroom mirror,
Put a dab of toothpaste
On my razor and stopped
Short of shaving my teeth.
Good stuff, the edges of
My beard will be just a
Little “whiter and brighter”,
So say the toothpaste ads.
Morning meds.  Take them.
Maybe the night dose, too.
God knows you need them.
Was there someone here?
Did I have a wife?  Well,
Whatever, she’s gone now.
Really good party last night.
A proper bachelor party,
Women, booze, women.
I better get back to bed.
I need my rest before I do
The wedding tonight.  Oh,
The life of a preacher man.

White Lighter Society


Legend says

Every single member
Of the 27 club

Died with a white lighter
In their pockets

A memento mori

Before rock and rollers
Did yoga with millionaire gurus

And

Became shredded vegans
To fight the wear of time

One more celebrity scandal

Or perhaps

The machinations of unseen puppetmasters 
Sacrificing sensitive souls of particular brilliance 

For the New World Order, of course!

A psy-op to enshrine new gods

And tease the imagination
Of the curious and pathological

I put a cigarette
On the tomb of Jim Morrison

Summoning the mojo
Of some mystery cult

To tip the scale

Towards creating a meaning
Worth living for

Nesting


After months of building
painting and electrical work,
after sewing and embroidering 
beading and bolting
recycling and repurposing, 
after years of moving furniture 
and changing fabric
dusting, vacuuming 
and tidying up

you watch 
through a tiny peephole 
in the dollhouse
as mice move in,
building little nests 
from found objects, 
blindly tossing 
and 
turning 
in their miniature beds

the carving-knife moon 
hinged like a broken fingernail. 

"Paper Wings"


Why do I
worry

I've never had enough money
to make an easy run of it

but mostly trouble
magnified
by who I am and what I write

so I'm no longer squinting
over my shoulder anymore

at those with crooked noses
surrounding me
on the free corner of the city

I'm going to fly
upward
with my paper wings of poetry

over their
flat heads and loose suits

undoing my belt and pants
leaving them
with a spat in the faces!




"Doing in Ourselves"


Continuous Corruption
perpetual pollution

entire country full of flumes
breaking wind

cities shaking
bombs spreading babel

supposited leaders elected
atop private dunghills

bathtubs overflowing
with worthless dollar bills

ceilings covered with army ants
dropping mini turds

far oceans spying
full of periscopes and troops

doing in ourselves
pointing our fingers at everyone else.

Violence


Wanderings amidst snow cradled stairs
Lily footed innocence
A lighthearted Soaking
A Feather-like elusive disarray.

Then a leopard at night
Humanoid force
The violence is foggy
My tainted mirror sees it
The masks of forked paths
A string, a right left child's play.

After a nanosecond speed
The bullet proof vest
Marching through
For virtue
Death and dreaming
Glassinobs scented handkerchief
Shorting of breaths
Death over death's bosom.

The power of a couplet
The pinching truth
Salty with each throb.
The leopard runs deep down
Forests and pillars
Authority holds the shadow
The skeptical insomnia
A sharp finish
Morphine sleep, time's hole.

Hours hold on.
The river runs through
Shadows and bones
Chess game and vigilant mistress
A dark hell with my resistance.
I can't lie with the River.
It sees through
A wise grandmother and a woolen muffler.
Coils the structure
Men with law enforcement

Country's growth spurt.
The children feed on
Winds and brain smoked intelligence.
The play is ironic.
A blind stare.

Aborigines instincts a creepy vestibule
The river rings on
A music to ears
Lily footed innocence
It holds the strings alright
A juggler.
Mass extinction
Nature's yearnings
A blood dripping amazonian finish.
It devours.

BORDERLINE

eggs fried in 
butter, handwritten poetry 
in a yellow legal pad 
the hand cramps but remains
unbroken, words flow but the train 
has derailed, thoughts like a key change
climbing out of the goldilocks zone
over the borderline
madonna in coagulated egg yolk
droplets of chicken-fried genius ink 
and it doesn’t feel 
like i’m going to lose my mind
but i keep on pushing

 


HEARTS OF TALC 

sunglasses 
in the soft darkness

serenity now

cocktails 
in thunder-snow

in a hot tub 
in a tornado

we reimagine
everything 

vladimir putin in leather
black helicopters

toothpicks in an avocado pit 
the scent of burnt sugar

we witness
with hearts of talc

the end of one thing
and the start

of something
else

Hospital


So, here I am.
Back in the palace
of terror, and shame.

My dignity gone,
before I even got here.

Weeks of drinking,
without eating had left
me so tired, and weak
that I could hardly stand
up.

I had a bath.

Getting in wasn't easy .
Getting out was impossible.
Emergency services had to
come, and lift me out.

Then my eyes were a mad,
glowing yellow, like a cat's.
Jaundiced, hepatitis.
So they brought me here.

And here I've been since.

No drink.
No cigarettes.
No fun.

Witchy Halloween 

 
Inside this late October 31st night,
this poem turns into a pumpkin.
Animation, something has gone
devilishly wrong with my imagery.
I take the lid off the pumpkin’s headlight
and the pink candles inside.
Demons cry, crawl, split, fly outsides —
escape through the pumpkin’s eyes.
I’m mixed in fear with this scary, strange creation.
Outside, quietly tapping Hazel the witch,
her broomstick against my windowpane rattles.
She says, “nothing seems to rhyme anymore,
nothing seems to make any sense,
but the night is young.
Give me back my magical bag of tricks.
As Robert Frost said:
  “But I have promises to keep,  
  And miles to go before I sleep.”