Gamer

Some dreams
are like video games.
The more you
repeat them
the better you become
at navigating various
levels. Practice
doesn’t always
make perfect but
dreaming the same dream
multiple times
over multiple years
enables me
to accept situations
as they unfold,
recognize realities,
prioritize options,
evaluate relationships,
locate where I am
in the shifting shadows--
to stand firm in chaos,
see the dangers
and respond in new ways,
use new powers,
and rely
on secrets previously solved
to unlatch truth’s door
in the hallway of endless lies.
Fear transitions to anticipation
as I become familiar
with the dark
and make peace with enemies
now known well.

dream & nightmare

i had a dream
it rained spiders
all those legs
running all
over my body
as i lay in bed
then i woke 
to true horror 
i was nothing but
this blood-thumping
lung-bag panting
carcass strapped
to bones 
alone
at day break

*****

some days

some days yr shower stall becomes a torture chamber

some days yr bed becomes belts of nails

some days yr reading chair becomes electric

some days yr records become acoustic weapons

some days yr skin becomes a straitjacket

some days the alphabet becomes black ants
crawling yr arms

some days the light becomes papercuts across yr eyeballs

some days the walls become a compactor

some days the door becomes a vertical grave

some days you just sit & wait for the beautiful night forever faithful to its shape

My Final Act
 
I lie down in grass, run my fingers
through the blades, watch clouds
tiptoe across the sky. Birds swoop
in and out of frame. Mother Earth
sings, beckons me. Soon, she will wrap
her arms around me, bring me
to the meager creatures in need
of my body for sustenance.

Waiting Room


white walls beating
against chest the hunger
of you calling my name
in my illness to write
me cheap pen longing
in a letter from one coast
to the other an expertise
in unfulfilled desire
unknowing the nature
of the institution
I will wither in

THE DISEASE INVECTIVE

 
To discover the causes of my dysenteric experience at every event,
they poured ink, a huge mistake, into the cannula of the gastroscope,
the medical pathologists, and diagnosed me with invective disease,
associated with literary reflux, surging down my oesophagus and oxidising my gums.

When, as a cynical dog with a collar, sniffing out the smell of bad morals or the stench of egopathy,
I can't tolerate the other-worlder, a victim of excessive xenophobia,
I forget all forms of fair play, sink into the fog of the Berserker,
furious and black as a Zulu forced to put up with an Afrikaner,
speak Roma to Sinti, Sinti to Gypsy, Gypsy to Romanian, Romanian to Roma
and I can't stop myself shouting Hitler Aleikhem Shalom.

If I don't digest you, I'll hear ‘hou, hou, hou’, like Leonidas at Thermopylae,
identifying the worms encircling me, hence the rise in my eosinophils,
I emit excessive hydrochloric acid and stop disinhibiting the proton pump
with the despair of Mazinger rejected by the bionic woman,
spitting hectolitres of cyanide in my face with the skill of Naja nigricollis
and it annoys me to be condemned to do anything.

To understand the ethos of my life in need of ataraxia,
the barbarian meets the citizen in the chôra of anti-‘poetry’,
all of you, no one excluded, will be forced to venture as a group 
in the labyrinthine meanderings of my invective.

The Fat Man

Christmas Eve the fat man came.
Yeah, that's the only time.
Once a year.  Takes him that long
To save up enough money
For a quality lady at the house.

in a world of yesterdays

speed up to slow down
seeking a fresh tomorrow
in a world of yesterdays

the closer we are to the
end the easier it is to
reflect, remember
and then release

no need to hang on to
baggage when none is
allowed in the ground

ashes to ashes

we are all going to die

food for worms

fertilizer for the plants

a spot for the dog
to piss
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the dead of winter

it's these cold nights
alone in the dead of
winter

when i dream about
my face buried between
the cheeks of your ass

licking to the rhythm
of a nine inch nails
song

i'd like to believe if
you live long enough
any wish could come
true

i look in the mirror
and see the gray hair
and the lines of pain

i'm testing that damn
theory everyday now

The Moment of Forgetting

You cannot remember
The moment of forgetting
But that is a moment
You’ll never forget

What did you forget
A key to your house or car
A pot cooking on the stove
Now you notice your forgetting

The moment when you notice
Your forgetting, you long for
Years of youth when you laughed at
Forgetting, delighted and innocently 

Gone by the days of your ignorant past
The new knowledge is the opposite of
Wisdom growing. Forever you’ll remember
This never-forgettable moment

The Kid


Palms without callous, shiny boots,
unstained jeans, arms without muscle,
a bologna sandwich bagged by Mom,
eighteen on the first day of my summer job back
when they called me the Kid.

Like my dad, his dad before him,
I labored for the Southern Pacific,
me on a gang out of L.A. erecting signals 
that dinged, wagged, and blinked in '64 
when they called me the Kid.

John and The Boss rode in the cab of the truck,
I sat in back with tools, a generator, a coil of wire,
Abie the Wop, Wally-Gator, an Indian named Chief.
War vets with stories to tell on freeway rides
when they called me the Kid.

Climbed wooden poles to hang wires.
swabbed signals with aluminum paint,
shoveled holes and trenches, scurried to the bin
for wrenches, wire cutters on sunburnt days 
when they called me the Kid.

They laughed when they’d tease me,
“You ain’t never been in the saddle, have ya, Kid?”
And “You’re a chest man now, but when you’re our age,
Kid, you’re gonna be an ass man like us.” I always blushed
when they called me the Kid.

The Chief told me about riding home drunk from a bar,
turning sober at the sight of a grinning Devil.
Abie described life in the tenements, stickball and craps.
They knew I’d respond with wide-eyed attention 
when they called me the Kid.

After carpooling home to a suburb, 
I’d shower away grit and paint, 
sit at my typewriter, listen to the Beach Boys,
carpenter the words of my first novel at a time
when they called me the Kid.

A confident swagger, sun-bleached hair,
money to pay for state college, buy Big Boys
and popcorn for freckled blind dates,
muscles to flex, dents in my naivete on the last day
when they called me the Kid.

If I worked on that crew now, they’d call me “Gramps,” 
and I’d lean on my shovel, ruing the dust 
that befell my novel about Abie, Wally and Chief,
heart-heavy remembering the hopes of that summer
when they called me the Kid.

Straight Arm

The IV is dripping
I can see each drop
but no soundtrack
I don’t last long
counting them
Keep your arm straight
or the fluid will cease
an alarm will go off
like a truck backing up
from here to Siberia
if the nurses and aides
are busy elsewhere
It’s freezing in here
Gridiron receivers
use the stiff wing
against defenders
Hell I raise my arm
a few times
as if curling a barbell
as if drunk
and challenging
the world to
arm wrestle, to try
to slam and crack
my knuckles
Help finally arrives
gently pushing flat
my illegal limb
she just says tsk tsk
Button pressed to
revive the stream
and mute the dumper
I check my blood
pressure on the monitor
121/86, a hoop score