LOOKING FOR EGGS

WALT WHITMAN PURSUING BEAUTY

                       Heroin History

I was flicking through a book,
Earlier today, on the social history of  Britain in the 20th Century  and I have to say that
I was absolutely blown away
To see that Heroin was only
Made illegal in 1956.
Nineteen Fifty fucking Six !
Can you believe it ?
At the time, according to
Government records, there was
47.5 heroin addicts in the
Whole British Isles. Before you
Even begin to think of what
Makes up 0.5 of a heroin
Addict, 47.5, in the whole
Fucking country !
Prohibition worked really well
There, didn’t it ?
The only winners that I can see
In the whole, sorry scenario
Are drug dealers and criminals.
How to make 47 turn into
Hundreds of thousands.
Call me sceptical, or cynical, but something doesn’t quite add up here, for me.
You might possibly think that in the ’50’s with the birth of the
Teenager, and suddenly large numbers of working class
Youngsters going to University
And getting educated. That
Those in power would like to See a lot of working class
Youngsters opiated and numb
As I said, I’m cynical, and a bit
Of a conspiracy theorist, but
It’s just a thought

ANOTHER BAR, THIS ONE TOKYO

 

“Another,” he said,

his knees pressing

against the mahogany panels

of the old bar,

“and keep them coming

until I can take no more.

There won’t be

a last call tonight.”

The clatter of caroming

billiard balls cut

through the cigarette smoke

that curled against

the etched, streaked mirror,

over the din of karaoke.

As the bartender rinsed

and wiped the glasses

with a beigy cotton towel

and walked to the storeroom

he lifted the shot glass.

“This one’s for you Ginsberg,”

as he had earlier for Lowell,

Reznikoff, the others.

Much later as the sun

rose slowly, as his head

rested in his left hand,

he struggled to grab the small glass,

lifted it painfully

from the ash littered bar top

and in a sodden, slurred voice

whispered, head falling

against the wood, “and this

is for you Corso.”

 

To Ex-Girlfriends

 

stomping, glorious shapely gears, dangerous curves

turn on your large hips and walk away,

mumbling “fuck you” fumbling ample breasts

back into the bodice because I bounced in erect

with no bullshit and wouldn’t say I love you

you can’t reverse gears now you’ve

swallowed me you hate me why you hang

around me I could make nice or we could

watch fireworks later, settle into why I’m not

how you are how many times you lie on me

angry you tell me you faked, tell your friends

“I never fucked him” meanwhile I meditate,

meshed, mashed mouths into you

I never lie, never sleep without you, not

asleep, in love with someone else

unable to matter to you, to be your friend

and lover, you think love and law guilt

and sin and blame coven and covenant

I think like a man, a monkey merely

filthy and “pussy” scared you know

you let me in I tell myself you would

do it again I awake a world away a married

man 12 steps from poetry to slavery

love and sex and pure knavery and not

regrets

 

 

Curriculum Vitae

 

It is important to practice your craft. Try to hone your poems down to concise and finely tuned statements about the true beauty in the world. Send these pithy ruminations to magazines and publishers who seem to share your view of the arts or to those whom you admire. Be persistent. No one likes a quitter or those who are easily discouraged. Try to get a foothold in Academic circles. Much success for a poet can be had with those who read and are conversant in the language of books. Maintain an air of humility as you continue to sharpen your skills. Let others make the seminal observations about your writing and your character. Garner awards so soon your newest collection of poems will have some sort of a medallion on it or at least some addendum to your name signifying you are one of the true young lions of the literary world. At some point it may be necessary to formally approach poetry with a book of sonnets or sestinas or historically highly regarded forms. A language phase may be added consisting of words which ring and shine for their own sake. Actually, settle down somewhere back East or in some mystical locale made famous by your own verse. In this time speak of the spirit of the place you inhabit. Even use the term Zeitgeist and see if you can get away with saying Weltanschauung. Become obsessed with the plight of some group and their struggle and devote two or three books to heroic songs of justice in their name. Get a job at a university of your choice because you love to give back to young people. Write your observations on the world to your local paper or even to some lucky periodical of which the editorial staff will be so thrilled to have your input. Become an actual charity or an endowment of some kind so people will see and hear your name when they watch PBS shows and other younger writers can get money and medallions and addendum on their books. Champion a few of them and maybe have some affairs. Get to know some famous people but make sure they see you as aloof or somehow above everything that goes on or inexplicably dark of mood. Become some kind of living national treasure whom someone undoubtedly will say the very advancement of letters could not have been possible without your contribution. Design a building for your foundation. Scratch that. Have a committee design a building for your foundation and hire a famous architect to build it. Probably on the grounds of the university you are now an absolute bulwark of culture within. Make sure the building is expansive and ornate with wings and futuristic furniture and green over there and orange over there. Go out of fashion quietly and without unseemly protest about how you no longer understand the world or young people. Understand that the smell of your books will be slightly musty and reflect your death in the way a poem never could when some literature professor you taught tasks a student with writing a paper about you and your poems which after all is said and done are exactly what always came first.

RODE INTO FIVE HAIKUS

 

Bones turn to dust

Sunburnt Woods lonelier

Dogs going back to earth¡

 

Owl’s head our freedom

Even if it did blow over

To pick up and go.

 

Ghost Gioia

Is what makes this place

Intolerable.

 

Billowing clothes

As little as possible

Billowing homes¡

 

Sky and Earth

At the edge of silence

Translucency in it¡

these lonesome nights

 

sometimes these walls

feel like they are closing

in on me

 

some might think of

that as a nightmare

 

i consider it a wish

 

these lonesome nights

alone

 

looking at the stars

and wondering which

god did i piss off this

time

 

and there goes the one

you love

 

off to go drink in a bar

with all the men you

know you can’t compete

with

 

one of these days you’ll

find the courage to tell

her how you feel

 

perhaps after that bottle

of gin is empty

 

perhaps after the

ammunition is

purchased

 

perhaps after she walks

out the door once again

Observation #6265

 

 

Have you ever taught

in the same shirt you slept in?

 

I just did.

 

Not because I lack respect

for myself

 

but because I lack it

for my colleagues

 

too bad for everyone

I liked

wearing a tie.

 

 

 

 

Prophecy in the Modern Day,

(a how-to manual)

 

1.

Address Me, Ancient Muse

with a “Oh No You Di-‘int!”

if I talk outta turn.

 

My Muse is Kali-Ma,

and Ma’ keeps me acting like

a gentleman. She also gives

me courage to say some Truth.

 

So Reader, don’t worry too much

About my Karma. There’s too

much of that nowadays anyhow…

 

Christian America!

 

Remember when that thing you believe

in is bullshit? Remember, Truth:

 

Remember not being stabbed by her,

that lack of a knife, for a second hanging in the air,

crueller than the unpardonable sin.

 

And then, like breathing out,

Remember being stabbed by her?

There is no price for the moment

the Statue came down off the Pedestal.

And then I was born:

son of mother and father, son of heaven

child of many, far too many, child of abuse,

child of pentecost and television

Jerry Falwell, Jim Jones, Ronald Reagan

child of hitting women and children

child of alcohol and addiction

theft and parole and probation

begin with a child of smartass and detention

child of a thousand demons, psychoses and sickness,

unfit for polite mention subject of those old

church ladies’ gossip and attention

child of absent fathers, children of a dying revolution

 

2.

Parents tried to tell me

 

“Go outside and play!”

…turned evil, turned into the Devil’s way

 

Turned from the Son of Man, turned toward the Son of Sam

turned toward prison, toward debt and delusion

turned into just another illusion

Error turned into my Generation, “X” a symbol

Of the Abomination of Desolation (whatever that is…)

Are these words nonsense or are they tongues?

Are they Prophets’ Revelations?

Soar! Thee, Six-Winged bum or Seraphim (with dirty feathers)

Take a coal to burn your soured eugenics!

A Non-White Jesus Forever Frightening your Master Race of Cynics!

You Agnostic Caste of wannabe Mystics!

 

And your children, the half human hipsters, conditioning

the beard of Dionysos, so contaminating with your

effluvial cool, you children of the unholy Caduceus

clowns in a sickening impoverished Culture-Circus.

Acrobatic in your denial, your devout refusal, only you

Think the Angel of the Lord won’t touch the coal to your

Filthy Lips. Untrue Generation, I’ll Make You Speak!

 

3.

Interlude: The Seraphim and The Coal.

Isaiah 6:5-7

Then I said, “My doom is sealed, for

I am a foul-mouthed sinner, a member of

a sinful, foul-mouthed race; and I have 

looked upon the King, the Lord of heaven’s

armies.”

Then one of the seraphs flew over to the

altar, and with a pair of tongs picked out a

burning coal. He touched my lips with it

and said, “Now you are pronounced ‘Not

guilty’ because this coal has touched your

lips. Your sins are all forgiven.”

 

The first time the Angel tried to press the coal to my lips he just dropped it. They’re Angels with Six Wings, and it’s just not easy for them to carry about earthly things like you and I do.

 

The second time he got feathers in my mouth. “PTOOOEY! What is this shit?” I exclaimed, and ruined it. It was technically the first time I had swore . . .

 

The third time it occurred to me that is was going to hurt, and why does God want to make you hurt? The mood has to be right to do it. You can’t just get burned and zip you’re a prophet like that. It has to be right and you have to be in the right frame of mind.

 

 

. . . I don’t know if you get any more than three chances.

So, I went and got a job at a Denny’s near the Freeway.

4.

If you’ve ever seen a Denny’s get slammed at night, standing on my feet all night and washing dishes and pulling bus-tubs and taunting my best friend’s ex-girlfriend by making her cry – talking about Greg all the time and he was dead only he wasn’t – just hiding from a dealer he owed – so not really but I was bored and she wouldn’t fuck me so fuck her. Anyway – the bar crowd – a couple of buses – truck drivers and then it becomes a mini-singles scene and all of that means – dishes – coffee cups – with and without vomit or napkins or french-fries in them – plates – bowls – monkey dishes – spoons and knives and forks – steak knives – and a million discarded orange slices – parsley sprigs – blots of white gravy and brown – half eaten chicken fried steak – water-logged hash-browns – phone numbers for waitresses – written on all manner of paper-scraps and cards – discarded bindles for speed and coke – cigarette packs – syrup and creamer kettles – sticky or milky-greasy in turns – dollops of creamed butter or margarine and soppy flaps of the triangular toast – except the sourdough – which was always round – a hamburger or cheeseburger discarded would always piss me off because I could not always afford to buy one – so why would you take two bites and throw it away? – your wasted food is a taunt – an insult concentrated and dissolved in hot water and dishwasher chemicals – definitely alkaline – you throw it up throw it away – pinch the waitresses’ asses while she hauls it away – and someone who hates you will haul it away again – and rinse it off – and put it in trays – and run it through a dishwasher – in the back where you can’t see – and recycle it – for the next asshole not to appreciate – even worse is the overly appreciative person – going out of their way to interact and actually “thank you for the job you do” – and maybe they even – peel me off a dollar – but it just reminds me that I’m just a dishwasher – and I get a dishwasher’s share – I never forget – that I am washing and busing for dopers and truckers and meth-heads and the odd serial killer and other lone-travelers – while I needed to be resting for the big things that happen during the day – and you can bet your ass the Second Coming will happen during the day – I could be left behind and the Denny’s will still be open – because the closers will need cups of joe and pancakes – they need me to stay late in the morning with the graveyard crew – but the dayshi(f)t crew went to heaven with Jesus – “we’ll let you pick who but someone needs to stay and we can do inventory and G.I. the kitchen while we’re at it – clean out the fryers and soak the hood screens and polish the stainless – and what did you think salvation was for you too? – there’s too much work to do – get saved on your own time – pay your shitty rent to your shitty apartment – and live your own shitty life on your own shitty dime  – Jesus don’t have time for you – and there’s too many grand-slams to be served – too many Angels passing through and” – fuck you Brad! You’re just a Denny’s Manager, you can’t serve the Lord’s plan – Fuckin’ Brad – I’ll Make You Speak!