Anthony and Cleopatra 
 
hey, he said, hey, 
let's stay in bed  
together. outside 
somewhere, the dust  
is settling. people 
selling carpets  
from car boot- 
backs and wine  
off from dusty 
back shelves. 
 
somewhere 
there's a horse 
turned to ribs  
by some cross- 
roads. somewhere 
blood flowing. 
it's 5pm here 
but there is light 
somewhere else, 
coming over  
the horizon like legs  
rising out 
of a bath. 
 
she looked up 
from where she was  
off at the window, 
hair on her shoulders 
black waterfalls 
falling on rocks, 
and she smiled and said 
yes, you want to stay in bed 
every day when I visit 
but me, 
I have things to do, 
Ant. 
 
I have friends 
and work to go to. I like 
going outside 
when the sun is up.  
like coffee on patios 
and music 
in jazz bars 
and sometimes 
outside them 
I talk to people  
I don't know. 
 
that's how we met, 
remember? 
and that's why you like me. 
because sometimes  
I go away. 
 
he rolled on the sheets, 
stiffened his resolve 
and something else,  
yes, that thing 
too. yes he said 
and rolled the duvet over, 
exposing the mattress  
to her side. yes 
that is part of the reason.  



Straight down. 
 
the best ones 
take feeling 
and get their hands in  
at the start –  
pulling it  
straight  
down and over  
the page 
like a windowblind 
hiding distraction 
or a coffin nail pushing 
some meaning 
to place. 
 
the best ones are rivers, 
and like that  
take courses 
going straight 
and invariably  
downward.  
only looking 
to the shallow  
eye like they  
meander.  
 
experiments in form 
are experiments, 
not decisions –  
exercises in not knowing 
which way  
words want  
to go, written by some people  
who do not understand  
where stability comes from 
or where their feet would go 
if they ever decided to stand up, 
pick a course, 
and plant themselves.

Camping for the Night East of Salt Lake City, 1972

  
After three days of driving from New York, 
we stopped at a Utah state park for the night, 
our bodies thrumming from the ancient Valiant.
 
Too wired to sleep, we sat around the campfire, 
and since I’d admitted to a Masters in Lit, 
Dwayne, Eva, and Brendan cajoled me 
into telling a horror or ghost story:
 
“The Cropsey Maniac,” the scary favorite 
at the Catskills camp where I’d been a counselor: 
A burned-down mansion and a madman avenging 
his bride’s death by fire-careless Boy Scouts.
I held the flashlight under my ghoul’s face
while I croaked the fate of the doomed troop.  
 
Had this been a horror movie, 
my tale would’ve conjured Dr. Cropsey 
into stalking us, picking us off one by one.  
Instead, we woke to the sun’s first 
eye-stabbing rays, stretched to unlock 
stiff backs, and sat on logs, drinking hot tea:
 
too many horrors back in New York City 
and Vietnam for us to be bothered 
by a cackling maniac gripping a scalpel. 

Psych
 
We were in Lynch’s dorm room,
fanning away the marijuana fumes
when Randy, the floor counselor,
twisted the knob, pounded on the locked door.
 
“Lynch! You in there? Open up!”
Randy’s inner Gestapo goon took over,
Jekyll-Hyde style; sometimes he was a good old boy, 
just a reasonable classmate.
 
Lynch sprayed Glade Peony and Cherry
from the aerosol can, while the rest of us
hid the roach clips and baggies.
“Just a minute!”
 
I dropped the needle onto the spinning LP,
like a licorice pizza pie on Lynch’s turntable.
Merle Haggard’s hillbilly tenor twanged
“Okie from Muskogee” as Lynch opened the door.
 
We don’t smoke marijuana in Muskogee
We don’t take our trips on LSD
We don’t burn our draft cards down on Main Street
We like livin’ right and bein’ free….
 
Randy sniffed the air like a bloodhound,
nose wrinkling, lips curling to a sneer.
The four of us in Lynch’s room snickered
like kids caught swiping cookies.
 
“You think you’re so smart,” Randy smirked.
“You’ll be sorry. Just like that hippie chick
out west who gave birth to a woodchuck
after she took some of that LSD.”
 
When Randy turned on his heel, left the room,
we all shot question marks at one another. 
 Nobody wanted to be caught being gullible,
but … that hadn’t really happened, had it?


Freitod
 
“As beautiful as an electric chair.” Jo Nesbo, Nemesis
 
I’d just pulled off the highway,
ravenous as a wolf after a day
of sales meeting and miles in the car,
greeted by a strip of gas stations,
fast food franchises, making me think
of the midway at a carnival –
games, rides, freakshows announced
by flashing neon, bright primary-colored signs.
 
I pulled in to a Chick-fil-A,
the most convenient drive-in on my right
with a stoplight to make the departure easier.
I knew about Chick-fil-A’s political agenda,
disapproval of same-sex marriage, LGBT rights,
but food is food is expedience.
 
As if in punishment, though,
I ran into Family Night,
a couple of single mothers
and a passel of kids
that made me think of a litter of puppies,
ketchup smeared across their faces,
jamming Chick-n-strips into their mouths
as if they were racing a timer.
 
“Sonny ain’t paid no child support
for three-five months,” the heavy mother complained,
more depleted than angry, her cheeks
sliding down her face like melted plastic.
 
“He ain’t got no job,” the skinny one pointed out,
an African-American girl whose collarbones
stood out like a steering wheel.
“Hey, Lonzo! Quit messin’ around!”
she called at one of the kids.
 
Suddenly I wasn’t hungry,
but I ordered a grilled chicken sandwich to go,
and the traffic light?
Turned green when I drove up to the intersection,
a smooth left putting me back on the highway,
a hundred miles from home.


A Hookah-Smoking Caterpillar
 
Keith lumbered across the darkened campus
like some demented ogre 
slouching across the moor
in a Nineteenth-century English Gothic novel.
 
In memory I hear a distant howl,
as if from an unseen wolf,
see a full moon curtained by fog,
but what I have no doubt happened –
Keith thrusting the peyote pill at me –
a translucent plastic pod filled with brown powder –
the frozen look of cat’s-eye marbles
in his dazed round blue eyes,
before he shuffled off, disappearing
into the dim vapor,
even as I thanked him.
 
I’d ingest that brown capsule
sometime in the next month,
even though I heard – and half-believed –
the rumors about Keith
shoving his hand
down a garbage disposal,
flipping the switch to “on.”

I Don't Even Smoke

I must confess that I have lived
there is proof in the soot rimmed candles I have burned
my lacy delicates hung over the shower
cigarettes I don't smoke left in my car
well-loved loafers boasting the imprint of my small feet

I have been loved, and sometimes have loved in return
my long brown hairs left behind on lovers' pillowcases
flowers slowly rotting in a ceramic vase
tear stained sweater sleeves
I have been someone's everything and then their nothing
and I have taken all of my love back and walked away into the night

street level 

dark shadows  
loiter behind 
giant shiny thrones 
to avarice & 
greed, 
while monuments 
of acquisition 
stare down the abyss, 
as citizens tremble 
from hunger 
inside houses 
made of discarded cardboard & 
plywood. 
 
gangs rumble 
threw Shantytown, 
demand their pay. 
protection. 
one dollar. 
american, motherfucker. 
 
and cops just roll by, 
in their shiny metal boxes, 
bigger fish to fry, 
their own shakedowns & 
fake takedowns  
to make, 
pierce the inky black night  
w/glaring lights 
of blue and red. 
 
no trust for the police 
as they just roll by, 
alone in a pool 
of my own blood 
deep down Los Angeles 
down near the concrete river 
i shouldn’t be 
cops just roll by 
just a dumb white kid 
in the wrong place,  
receiving end 
of the dumb white kid 
discount, 
 
all your money  
to get out alive, 
motherfucker. 
 
and the cops  
just roll by, 
 
singing: 
 
hey babe! take a walk on the wild side. 
i said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side. 

Oatsy,

Met him in homeroom class
In high school,
He was cooler
Than James Dean,
Even then.
No stranger to drinking
And fighting,
Known to the baddest around,
Loved by the coolest of girls,
And any who called 
Him a friend,
Never a bully,
Not one to start fights,
But if you wronged him,
You’d best make it right.
We drank in bars
All over the county,
We were known quite well
In those days,
We drank tequila 
South of the border,
Smoked pot a lot
And we took several trips,
Explored inner space together,
Laughing in unknown lands,
Survived the excesses of youth,
Like others, we mellowed
With time..
Now we are getting
Kind of long in the tooth,
Still friends,
And both, still alive,
I work with words
And I write...
He works on his Norton bike,
And a 49 Ford
He still drives.

Golgotha
 
You who believe the most astounding lies, 
who shake hands and then greedily sniff 
your fingers, who shrug as the last of the 
old-growth forests succumbs to mass su-
icide, any day now your streets will fill up 
with dancing grannies, and you will smile 
and nod, but when you look in their eyes 
for confirmation, all you will see is Christ 
being murdered over and over and over.

Vendetta 


I feed my gluttony 
to the page,
white and bottomless
it takes and takes
and takes;
its favorite meal is
yearning stew
and the big fleshly 
ladles that stir,
turning 
turning
turning
the contents
to a thin 
paint gleam
like the effulgent 
blood of angels.





In Response To Prestigious Literary Journals


I’m sure you 
expect me to sit
patient and crumb 
upon your nine 
month response
to words that weep
from my fingers,
as you take 
your sweet and careful 
time to tell me
no your tears are too sour.
I’m sure you 
expect me to smile 
when I send you money 
I do not have
for an automated 
rejection;
we wish we could 
offer a more personalized
response, but we simply
don’t have the time 
or numbers… 
I also,
magazine,
do not have the money 
for button click heartbreak. 
I don’t have the time 
for your 
no simultaneous submissions policy;
so yes,
I shall continue 
to carpet bomb
every magazine I see,
no matter how 
“rude” it seems.
Like all pain,
mine demands 
to be seen.





Emerging 


Last month
it was Ginsberg who 
uprooted my flowery words
and replanted them
in the spry soil
of famine India. 
Beginning of October 
it was Sylvia 
who beat nails 
of rhythmic craft 
into my paper mâché
soul. 
Now it is Anne 
who’s Sexton stories 
of fifties madness
and feminine isolation 
strangles my stanzas 
like the mellow fists 
of monoxide.

Seek Dolphins along the Crest
Miami Beach sucks me in
with tequila
and tits
and I - always so easily enraptured 
duck into a bodega
seek the black door
find a plastic lover 

Get caught in a rainstorm
laugh wildly
run through the sweltering streets
meet my death
it sucked me in

While dying 
in Miami
pulled again through the black door
find solace in the needle
wake to the waves
wonder about dolphins
and if they will disappear
by the spear
or the many propellers
worry in such turmoil
as if this 
is my only problem

Again 
black doorway
run into my death
for the third time 
we become friends
he (death) asks 
why I’ve been a cunt all my life
I
not knowing the answer
reply
just give me more time
to get another hit

The wave 
more immense and glorious
than before
pulls me back to the beach
to see a school of dolphins 
and think this is what
I’ve searched for 
stumble to the shore
under speckles of sunlight
I bathe in it

I see a double rainbow
hovering over the Atlantic 
such vivid stripes
of purple
yellow
blue
red
it arches right into a sailboat bobbing
along the crispness of the sunset 

How lucky to capture this bundle of color
while battling horseflies
in fear of dolphin extinction
I croon
over someone else’s double rainbow
dip greedily into their pot of gold

 
I See What the Drugs Have Done 
I.
Hunch back 
postulating sores
the nagging itch
white jeans
low hung ass
red long sleeves
it’s eighty degrees
wiry hair 	
try to bouffant it 
to take away from your neck
but my eye goes directly to the loose skin
almost see the tracks
ever so light around your collar bone
face more of a hull
less of a face
around your mouth – smokers jaw
those wrinkles crown the lips like an army
when cigarette meets lip the lines craft together
in an origami of wrinkles

II.
Those mid-heeled pumps give you some height
the heels are wrecked and the top lifts
worn down to metal 
when you walk that hard tap echoes
so loud
you just kind of slide into your step
zombie-like
this is what becomes of the life
after drugs
life after paradise

III.
You’re sad about it
about not having “it”
anymore
I’ll start to shoot again you say
if they tell me I’ve got it
cough a deep and guttural phlegm hack
light another
and pucker for that deep 
lung-spray drag
whichever way will kill you best

 
High School Dropout
if I told you in my heart I wanted to go to High School - to finish - to graduate with a diploma and go on to a college, perhaps Ivy League…..if I said this I would be a dead-ass liar as I lay out in the sun on the roof of the old movie theater five of us would climb the fire escape to the top floor we kicked in a window found our way through a storage room to a ladder and out onto the slanted roof with pitch black tarp we smoked angel dust then cigarette after cigarette  we’d lay our dreams across the black someone would have to make the long haul back down to buy some bagels and a Pepsi for us to share our throats dry as sand the sun melted us into each other we could share two bagels between four or five of us we broke them carefully like the bread from the last supper what did we know then but nothing we didn’t have a watch we told time from the sun from the passersby down below we would trudge home guilt ridden glazed eyes to the ground when asked how school was we would croak out a word or two through a rasp next morning we’d meet at the bodega and do it all again
 

What’s Love Got to Do with It?
 
Tina wrote her signature hit
at the age of forty-four,
eight years after she’d left
the abusive relationship with Ike,
six after the divorce.
 
My friend Rita tells me
her tits have exploded in middle age,
from the estrogen patches
she’s used since the hysterectomy,
which had caused night sweats.
“I’ve gone up a cup size,” she exults.
 
Recently divorced – likewise
from a bully –
Rita’s in the market for fun,
but doesn’t want a “boyfriend,”
much less a third husband.
It’s just about using her resources
while they last.