Of Gods and Mice
Open my mouth
starburst spray
I’ve loved you for centuries
you never felt it
like the purple chez
that crushed velvet so plush
it feels right to run your hand over it
or revel in the crunch of boots over fresh fallen snow
I picked a basket full of moon-glow for your melancholy
place it in the corner
it births a milky way
I cross over to pull you out
drag you by your feet
back from the dead - back from Herod
Clean your track marks
ripe with infection
bathe you in rose water
dry you
pack you up and send you off to try again
and again

Still I Write
Try to make sense of the data
all this input
no output
where’s it all going
cuz I got nothin to say
and nothin to give
Yet I keep pullin it in
day after day
Instagram after Instagram
this uninteresting
batch after batch
of people
I don’t give a flying fuck about
what they’re wearing
where they flew to over the weekend
I’ve got a mortgage
I multi-task at least forty times a day
trying to do things that I can’t
but have to
cuz what else is there
Still I write so much
as a dumbass clock
that’s broken - it’s right twice a day
Somewhere in this gibberish
has to be something
of interest
some inspiring words
of wisdom
that will later be on
a Facebook post
under a daisy photo
some shit like that

When Jesus Went to Get a Tattoo

When Jesus went to get a tattoo
The Philistine dude who runs the
Combo head shop and tattoo parlor
Suggested all sorts of cool designs.
Crosses?  Too many bad memories.
Hot babes?  Near naked hula girls?
Sweet smiling Spanish senoritas?
Maybe too hot for the Son of God.
Snakes?  Totally out of the question.
Wild eyed devils?  Oh, right, sorry.
Unicorns?  Quite popular right now.
Perhaps, tribal art on the privates?
I take that look as a definite ‘no’.
Fancy script?  Have a nice day?
Ride to live, live to ride?  USMC?
Your place or mine?  Hell bound?
Free spirit?  Deities do it better?
The ever popular: Satan sucks?
Gods just wanna have fun?
With so many choices, it was just
A real heavy decision.  Doobie time.
Laid back and mellow, with a casual
Scan of the room, he suddenly found
Just exactly what he was looking for.
If he’d settled for anything else, I’d
Be surprised.  Super job, looks good,
A big heart with MOM across it.

ON A NEW YEAR’S DAY, LONG LONG AGO
 
Loneliness caught up with me in a mirror.
There I was staring back at me.
The eyes were mine and no one else’s.
Same with the mouth.
And the arms draped at my sides.
There was no one to ask,
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Or who inquired of me,
“It’s New Year.
Why haven’t you taken down 
the Christmas decorations?”
The light above tried to come off as a halo.
But I was no one’s angel.
Just my own fat chance.

 
THE RED OR THE GREEN
 
And do I cut the red wire or the green wire,
say something or not mention it at all,
concentrate hard or let my thoughts scatter –
the unexploded bomb has its reasons,
as does the fault in you that can’t be blamed
completely on the stars,
and my mind is only totally free from outside influences
maybe one or two times a day –
best just to look at my reflection in the window 
of the tea shop.
 
A simple play of light and glass
is better than a soft slap in the face.
Everything else is too complex.
If I leave everyone undisturbed, 
they can’t blow up on me.

BRAUTIGAN'S BLUE MOON

I pop a couple 
of marijuana gummies---
one green, one yellow---
and I'm soon asleep.

Fade in: 
I stand on a deserted beach
under a pale gray sky. 
A sharp wind cuts my face. 
Whitecaps tell me that 
the sea is angry, impatient.

Several yards off shore, 
I spot a man standing 
half-submerged in the water. 
Waves hit him at thigh-level. 
He's a tall, lanky guy 
wearing John Lennon glasses, 
a walrus mustache and 
a navy surplus pea coat. 
His shoulder-length hair
blows in the wind. 
And, he's sinking. 

I'm startled to recognize the man. 
"Richard Brautigan!" I call 
out to him, waving my arms. 
"What in hell are you doing there?"

Brautigan shrugs. "I'm stuck out here.
Nobody reads my books anymore."

I shake my head. "Bullshit!
Look man, just paddle back in.
We'll discuss this in a warm bar
over cold beer, my treat. 
Summer's over, you know?"

Brautigan pulls a red bandana
out of his coat and 
removes his glasses. 
He calmly wipes the lenses 
with the bandana. 

"Believe me," he says, "I'd like 
nothing more. But it ain't my choice. 
I didn't want to die twice, you know?"

I take a few steps forward;
icy water quickly reaches my knees. 
"What's your deal?" I ask.
"I don't see any water wings. 
Were you just curious about 
the slow agony of drowning?"

Brautigan pockets his bandana
and replaces his glasses. 

"No, I told you," he says. 
"My books are rotting on the shelves---
shelves that still have them, I mean. 
In minutes, I'll be washed away 
like Rod McKuen and Edgar A. Guest. 
So mosey up on that seashore.
Nobody reads your books, either."

I stumble back to the sand. 
"Listen," I yell over the waves,
"I have all your books!"

Brautigan folds his arms. 
"Hardcovers?" he asks, skeptically.  

"Mostly paperbacks," I reply, 
"alphabetized by title on their own shelf!"

Brautigan chews his mustache. 
"My ass, you do. You're always 
reading Bukowski or Lee Child. 
You haven't cracked a cover 
of mine in a blue moon."
The water is up to his chest.

With my sleeve, I wipe 
ocean spray off my face. 
"Okay," I say, "you got me. 
I admit it's been a while. 
But I've always said that 
you're one of my great influences."

Brautigan locks his hands 
behind his head, keeping 
his elbows just above the waves. 

"All show and no go," he scoffs. 
"You're nothing like me!
I'd never ramble on like this.
None of my poems runs 
over eight lines long---
which you'd know if you read
Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork."

"I'm sure I've got that one!"
I exclaim, with a pounding heart. 
"It's locked in my storage space.
Come with me and I'll show you.
Please swim, tread water, something!
Don't let yourself go under this way!"

Brautigan chuckles bloodlessly.
"I've been treading water since 1984.
With luck, I'll wash up in Japan." 
The ocean laps his chin.

I claw at my hair, pacing the beach. 
"Christ, Brautigan! What can I do?"

"Read, dumbass," Brautigan says,
as the water encloses him. "Read."

Fade out. 

PILGRIMAGE 
1. 
     I always roll an American flag because I AM an armed convoy. I’m young (not that young) and these people aren’t my friends and they’re not sexy and I could never love you. The evening starts at Neurolux, support the local death metal band, and bond with the people cruel fate has forced on you. Later, potsmokings and drinks in the private after-party of the Northend Boise. I don’t like this band, it don’t matter who’s playing the accordion. “Get this hipster shit off the stereo, no! I don’t care about your fucking records!” What stops me from firing off a shot in this party, ending the night by turning their puff-puff-pass and their poetry-slam into ptsd for everybody - the gift that keeps on giving - a horror untreated for years, and then spilled out on the floors of 12-step groups, a truth as dead as you, and how will you live then? The only way is to search the world and find Jesus.
     I found Jesus artificial; unsatisfying, unhistorical, alkaline and unmythological in the way those Bible pages stink, like the back-damn-rooms of the church stink; it stinks of not being true, not true enough to save you, despite the rows of rooms standing at the ready to tell you the Greatest Story Ever Told. Heaven is exclusive as the hipster roll-call, a gated community of do’s and don’ts, where they take and you beg, of aristocratic wills and wont’s in the mirrorlike-death of privileged certainty. Once I broke in, drunk, and slept it off on the hard sunday school floor. Alcohol was always the bumpy ride, not far enough to the other side of a nightmare where things are better, where I’m not just the angry loser I try so hard not to be.
     My Mom loves Jesus, my Grandma too, everyone except people like me love Jesus - and there’s so few think he’s a sissy-ass, judgmental, effete little perfect-son my family never had. He don’t like rock n’ roll, dirty words, booze or cigarettes. Jesus goes out and gets a job, and gives money to his mother, informs on his co-worker, squashes the union and tries to be friends with the manager. Truth is, nobody really likes that little motherfucker, though he makes them nervous - just a little down the dial from being scared, because he’ll tell his daddy on you too… That motherfucker never masturbates, never talks back, comes in on time, never fails to count his blessings or remember his place, and he calls the cops if you make too much noise. No-one takes this personal of course, because he died for your fucking sins and he won’t never let you fucking forget it.
     But not me. I ain’t no soldier in the army of the Lord. I was a shitty soldier. I was never good at doing what I’m told, cutting my hair, and bringing in the fucking sheaves. The magick is used on you, you may never use it unless you are a sorcerer. They have a system where you are always wrong: you are lying, but they are speaking in faith - you are drunken, but they are in the spirit - you are talking to yourself, but they are praying - you’re a faithless unbeliever, but they legitimately have doubts - you won’t give it up, will you?, but they hold steady in the faith - you cannot be reached, but they will not be moved - you are drowning, but they are baptizing. Until one evening you walk in to the sizeable middle of their intervention – it’s their attempt to enter the kingdom. Mine is to wait for temptation to happen – no, to court it, train for it, and be ready when the diabolical calls… 
2. 
     It was a sunshiny day – I don’t recall whose money it was, prolly not mine. Just enough to buy some booze, maybe some beers and they go down easy – easy enough and you go down swingin’ – erase your girlfriend’s worried face and the whispered prayers of your Momma. Maybe you’re never going home again, half a world away I hope they’re worried I’m carried away my addiction is affecting you in the following ways. I’ll be home by Thanksgiving, maybe even my birthday. The only reason to be afraid is what if no-one cares. The only power is – will I step off the Greyhound again in this town and see the sun? This Generational Sin is my magic, my spell is watch me destroy myself: first a little, then a lot... 
     So, I plunge into life – I fall in love with the world! When I tried to leave my smalltown in the late 80’s (until the mid-90’s), my preferred mode of travel was either the Greyhound or the speedbinge - I didn’t let it stop me. Get me a headstart on the Holy Ghost - let the moment/situation/lover/drug take me to bed and fuck me, stroke my fur first the right way then the wrong way and then duck me. Move out when I have to go to work. Go and find another me, a more successful me - one without failure in his eyes. One with more options and less lies, more effective tries. Why did my mid-80’s start all Night Ranger, all “Come on!” - all rights and no wrong as I escape my smalltown. When does the optimism turn to death-metal? - “Lift Me Up” quickly turns into “Burn it Down!” and so you do…
     The bus arrives deliberately, slowly. The heartbreak is a lowly funeral march as I lose out on another dream I may never really try again. Heartbroken, left to bake in the sun, or freeze. And it spits you out to swim against the riptide of your lonely mediocrity. Dishwashing, floor-mopping, prep-cooking, factory floor, truckwash, tire-shop, bussing dishes, working graveyard, lurking at Denny’s in the dark, or Burger King, MacDonalds, Carl’s Jr. The bills will always have to be paid, and you can never do it on the dayshift. The sins of the Father fall down on the Sun and burn into your skin your own damnation, soon to come - but do it on your own time, cause time is money. 

Hitchin’ and Hoppin’ Blues
 
If you believe in prophecies of astrological stars,
you’ll know why Neal Cassady and me roamed near 
and far, refusin’ to be conformin’, bored, fenced in.
Our February births twenty years apart blessed us, cursed us 
with Aquarius in our Sun, Mercury, Venus, makin’ us
freedom-lovin’, proselytizin’, playful, inventin’, rebellious  
against stupid rules, cool, stubborn, amoral, crazy actin’, 
knowledge hungerin’, not a mushy type bringin’ marigolds, 
disgusted with injustice, bureaucrat mistrustin’, wanderlustin’.
Were born bouncin’ like joeys in the pouch of kangaroos, 
awakened by the lullaby of the hitchin’ and hoppin’ blues.
 
Teenaged years in California, read Kerouac’s “On the Road,”
the beatnik bible idolizin’ Dean the Holy Goof mad to live, 
mad to talk, mad to be saved, read about Cody in “Big Sur,” 
 “Desolation Angels.” Didn’t know Neal was Dean and Cody, 
who made me dream of boxcars, Vee Dub buses wildly painted, 
oasis-like truckstops, highways windin’ toward the horizon. 
When I was scrawlin’ verses to the hitchin’ and hoppin’ blues,
Neal quenched his beery thirst, added, “The time has come, 
everybody lie down so you won't get hurt when the sun bursts.”
 
February 3, ’68, two days ’fore Burroughs turned fifty-four,  
five days ’fore Neal’s forty-second birthday, nine days
’fore I was twenty-two. After a party that night, in cold rain, 
groggy from downers, Neal shuffled toward his Mexican abode  
until he slumbered on wet earth in jeans, T-shirt, no blanket.
That same night in an L.A. depot, my two younger sisters 
and I boarded a Dog...a sighin’ Greyhound bus...keepin’ 
our plan to hitch to Maine a secret from Mom and Dad.
 
February 4, Burroughs’ common law wife Joan Vollmer,  
would’ve celebrated her birth if she wasn’t shot dead in ’51, 
felled by a bullet fired by Burroughs imitatin’ William Tell. 
That morn Neal died from exposure, kidney failure, overdose.
In Arizona, I smooched with a pen pal named Pixie, days 
’fore my sisters and I ditched the Dog, stuck out our thumbs.
That odyssey widened my wanderlust, prepared me to hitch  
in lofty Tibet, the vast Outback, the South African veldt.
When I’d idle on a roadside, I’d smile, amuse myself 
by humming the hitchin’ and hoppin’ blues.
 
The next winter, seekin’ notes to write unpublished novels,
dropped into skid row, two bucks and extra jockeys
stuffed in my jacket. Bunked in a mission, earned change
pickin’ carrots, met some buddies, hiked to a hobo jungle,  
chewed peppery Mulligan stew ladled from a charred can, 
hopped onto the first of the racketin’ freight trains rollin’ me
to the boozy, jazzy, bead-tossin’ madness of Bourbon Street. 
Not wantin’ to be trapped, didn’t slide the door shut
against the cold, so crammed newspapers in my clothes,
walked in circles on the undulatin’ floor, wigglin’ my toes 
in sole-worn shoes, stompin’ to the hitchin’ and hoppin’ blues.
 
Thumbin’ and rail ridin’ are part of my distant past,
but I’ve got a backpack full of funny stories to recall, regale,
so I’d like to meet Neal in a diner, buy cups of espresso,
stir our memories sharin’ golden reefer from Acapulco,
banter and guffaw about the histrionics of our histories.
My Sundays as a stringy Methodist acolyte lightin’ candles,
his as an altar boy carryin’ a cross, ringin’ a consecration bell.
Mission grub (split bean soup, stale bread, weak java),
ear-bangings from hell-spittin’ preachers, smelly dorms  
rattled by tubercular coughin’, moanin’, mother-seekin’ sobs 
in the dreary skid rows of his Denver, my downtown L.A.
The flower-powered hippie scene in good-vibin’ Frisco:
psychedelic light shows, bedazzlin’ twirlin’ dancers, 
acid rock bands entrancin’ at the Fillmore and Avalon, 
crashin’ at the Diggers’ crowded pad in the crazed Haight.
Drivers who gave us lifts, bought us fries at greasy spoons, 
railroad bulls chasin’ us through clamorous freight yards.
Lonely chicks who beckoned us to be their vagabond lovers;
we snuck away without wakin’ them ’neath their bedcovers.
My Mardi Gras night in the noxious New Orleans jail
for revilin’ a cop on Canal, my FBI arrest and probation
for resistin’ the draft, his years encaged for car theft, cannabis.
Our Southern Pacific jobs in California: his as a brakeman, 
conductor, mine as a clumsy signalman, half-baked carpenter.

After we confessed all our felonies and philanderings,
we’d drift into silence, feelin’ our feet itchin’ to amble 
toward different dusty roads and other destinies. 
Then we’d move our heads, tap our scuffed shoes, groovin’, 
diggin’, trippin’, snappin’ our fingers to the free-floatin’,  
hopped-up, sax-riffin’, horn-tootlin’, piano-plinkin’,
bongo-beatin’ bebop of the hitchin’ and hoppin’ blues.

Attrition

They are into front porch
motorcycle maintenance,
greased monkeys, Pink Floyd
concept albums, Mad Dog 20 20,
heavy leather, teenage girls,
rolling monster joints one handed,
spooking the mailman, worshipping
the devil, modifying things with
tire irons, cutting up with census,
shoving policemen through picture 
windows; one by one, over the years,
they kill themselves off.




The Family Reunion

begins outside, rows of picnic tables
pushed together, steaming red hot grilles,
quick fried foods, quarter kegs of cheap
domestic beer.  The children hit hard balls
over the fence, off neighboring houses,
the women are yelling: "All this infernal
noise must stop!" But the children are into
screaming games, tying the youngest wrists
together: Let's see how far we can stretch
them behind his back.  The men are playing
Black Jack, five dollars a hit, chugging beer,
ignoring the women, saying, "We are doing
something, we're playing cards.  They're kids,
they're having fun." Every year the cops are
called to break up their men fighting with broken
beer bottles, rusting church keys, gravity
knives; after the fighting, they cut down
the forgotten children hanging from the trees.

I Wish

I wish I could
go back in 
time, to when 
my rickety
self esteem 
didn't come from 
strangers liking my 
poems, but from 
knowing that I'd
done right by a
woman I loved,
really loved, and
who had loved
me for 18 long
years.

But, unfortunately
we can't turn back
time.

I guess that a lot 
of people have
regrets, and wish
that they could do
things differently.

But, the constant
backwards, and
forwards of time
would cause that
much paradoxical
activity that the
world would implode.

Still, I wish. As most
of us must.

"Stuck-Up"

Many of them
don't know
when they're fooling
themselves
thinking they're more
than they are
so full of it
staring in the mirror

imagining people wanting
to be like them
strutting on the street
along the beach
taking a bow
on the stage of vanity

do they realize
the monster inside
the blind ego
ass in the air
smelling like they're
too good to wipe

what a fall is coming
in broad daylight
in front of everyone
a nightmare
they cannot awake from.

Cultural Diversity
 
She herds six kids ranging in
age from a few months to maybe 
eight years old, into CVS store.
One kid is half Asian, two others 
different shades of black, one appears
mostly white but vaguely Hispanic,
and a couple who could only be described
as mutts.  All of them hers. 
Is paying cash, in small change, pennies, 
nickels and dimes, for Home Pregnancy
Kit.  “Don’t know why I bother.”
She says, “I know how this ends.”