ON PAGE TWENTY SEVEN, ROBERT DOWNEY JR

In the doctor’s waiting room,
I thumb through a magazine
that I would never spend
a cent of my own to purchase.

It’s all romantic antics,
or fashion frolics
of Hollywood actors,
the royal family, pop stars, 
sports figures with legal issues
and z-list celebrities
from reality TV.

There are headlines
to draw in the undiscerning.
And articles
that are just an excuse
for more pictures..
And something called an unveiling
of “The Sexiest Man Alive.”

I can’t wait to be rescued
by those magic words
from the nurse -
“The proctologist
will see you now.”

P.S. –
I admit I’m not up
on the laws of libel.
I wonder if “People” can
sue a poem.

At The Social Security Meditation Center 

bingo parlor waiting room game 
on the 6th floor of the 1st National Bank Building 
in downtown St. Paul on April 30th, 2024

everyone was waiting for their number to come up

there was no escaping the lengthy meditation

the underlying human hum

the om mani padme hum 

the low grade headache

the anxious social droning
the helplessly hoping 
devotees 
sitting for hours 
pondering unacceptable koans 
that brought them here 
from different circumstances
to practice citizenship

they were meditating 
in wheelchairs
on crutches
with one leg
with no legs
in sweatshirts
in tennis shoes
in ballcaps and burkas

they were praying for mercy
they were privately weeping
they were silently screaming
they were clutching shreds of dignity

some smelled like work
some smelled like weed
some smelled tired of living

bored senseless 
on metal benches 
standing, pacing 
climbing the walls
staring at phones
sitting crosslegged on concrete 
zazenning without pillows
chewing gum
and waiting for deliverance
from a good social servant
who could help them suffer 
less

all colors, creeds, and specimens
of zoned out citizens
confronting bureaucratic forces
and clerical reckonings
while security guard bodhisattva 
gatekeeper with a gun
monitored intractable sufferings
of 
the disaffected
the disabled
the sick, the poor, the elderly
the downtrodden
the broken 
the agitated insane man talking to spirits
the frustrated mother at the end of her wits

the woman who waited all day yesterday 
and was told to come back today 
so she could meditate 4 more hours 

the unseen lost soul down a hallway
who went berserk yelling profanities 
at someone in a bulletproof glass cubicle

and everyone else whose patience was taxed
until a number freed us
to proceed with our appointments

we sons, daughters, and orphans 
of these United States

meditating on social insecurity 

while waiting in American purgatory 
for the system to love us.

a different kind of success

 
these are the nights you look in the
mirror and can't muster the strength
to lie and say everything is going
to be fine

these lines on your face

the scars on your hands

all for what

scribbling words at two in the morning
while the woman you madly love is
thousands of miles away sleeping
peacefully

do you think she dreams of you or
the guys she goes out with on the
dating site

all the years have raced by

friends come and go

mostly go and never swing back around

blood brothers

well, you have one of those left

the others found wives, successful careers

although one is a criminal that has
eluded capture

a different kind of success

graduated high school thirty damn
years ago

still trying to figure out how
to be relevant

Going back to Alcoholism 
has never felt so appealing


Strongly suggest against this
the psychiatrist tells me over
the phone—Dr. Singh

Her calmly composed voice
with a mild Indian accent—
first she ever called me
upon requesting psychiatric 
help from the obese receptionist
behind the counter of my local GP,
with a stamped bored look
on her wide face I have only 
ever seen on bulldogs—
for an instance as I walking 
through a windy street 
plugging my left ear hole 
with my index finger, I thought
Dr. Singh was a scammer

Now, living in an apartment 
two months behind rent and looking
outside my window to such dark clouds
that seem like exhaust fumes
of old power plants-possibly soviet made,
Dr. Singh wants to stop me 
from quitting my meds 
cold turkey as I have done in the past
and barely survived to tell the tale.

I’ll prescribe a lower dose, she says 
and you’re going to taper off it gradually.
Dr. Singh wants to protect
my brain’s addled chemistry
or maybe she wants to protect her job
because one time in the past
while on mirtazapine I told her 
that I had violent thoughts
that could potentially become actions.

Okay, alright I tell her
but my insomnia is at an all times worst
I don’t remember the last time I slept—
I think it was Wednesday.

She agrees to prescribe zopiclone.
Months of effort this,
to persuade a prescription of sedatives
so that I smile over the phone.

That’ll work, I tell her.

I light a cigarette and half smoking it
I try to half assedly clean some of the 
debris that became my apartment 
after a whole month of crippling depression

I line up all the beers cans 
and grab a black bin bag
and I drag a chair close to them
and I sit on it and start to crash 
each can before chucking it into the bag

all the while reminiscing of teenage years
and my clear predisposition to melancholy 
wondering how did nobody see the signs
wondering how did I not see them either—
me who back then was the most conceited
brat of all.

I notice all the wine bottles gathered 
at a corner of my living room and all
the dirty laundry left and right 
and I just stop doing anything at all
and I just lean back on my chair
with my arms hanging next to either
side of my torso and my neck back
on the chair looking at my ceiling
seeing through the burning ambers
in my skull,memories of a blonde kid
who was once me— fading in form,
disappearing into the scorched earth
of the past.

My father always telling me
back then, be happy, why can’t 
you just be fucking happy?
Open your eyes, life’s beautiful!

Life’s all the adjectives but fair
you old fool, I tell my ceiling 
and stand up and after quite possibly
a decade, I start to iron my pants.

My father really liked women I think
ironing slowly, maybe that’s what he meant
with open your eyes. Life’s beautiful.

Maybe it was all for the human pussy,
a suspicion I’ve had since I was twelve,
so I book an hour with a local prostitute
and after shaving and bathing myself 
like a proper gentleman—
a strong rain comes down 
and a strong wind starts blowing—
the nemesis of my patience.

Forty minutes of walking in the rain
and the wind with a small umbrella
that snapped backwards with each gust
that I had to fix again and again
as I contemplated suicide 
or murder suicide.

At the prostitute’s place 
she of course looks nothing
like her photos, closely to a decade
older and out of pity for this catfish
I agree to stay for half an hour.

The sex as terrible as predicted.
Don’t do this, don’t do that.
Hurts my throat to go that far.
I wanna tell her I’m slowly dying 
just by being here with her.
A vagina sizeably vertical—
a vagina that’s birthed at least four.

Outside her apartment I book 
another prostitute, definite in my attempt
to test my father’s notion that life’s
beautiful. That I should open my eyes.

My eyes did open wide 
as the second prostitute’s
tits were big enough to stifle one,
to snatch the soul right out his body.

I spend all my money on that damn 
lustful grip of those tits— a grip
that loosened three hours later 
and going home at dawn
holding my broken umbrella in my hand
I wondered if it was truly a kids toy 
there in the corner of her bedroom
and possibly a child or two sleeping 
in the next room.

I’ve seen so many group of homeless
men laughing with each other
that I have felt jealousy in the realest sense.

I drop Dr. Sigh’s tablets down the toilet
one by one deciding that in a few hours 
I’ll go the chemist to get some tablets
that them too I’ll drop, one by one,
in the toilet, thinking that my old man
was full of shit about a lot of thing

but not for pussy.

Chorus

We could all be old white men someday
Me, you, the hot dog vendor playing disco in sacramento heat
ABBA, father, holy spirit
white beards and all
crinkly vapor skin
milk on the precipice of custard
beat poetry the grass patch where ants munched on whitman
I am not a beat poet
beat is just the wind
and I am made of fire
on the sidewalk 
I inhaled two hot dogs 
as the wind pulled on the sleeves of my cardigan
I rejected it
I wanted to curse
tell it to stop breathing on me
tell it to fight the sun instead
so beat kept moving
past me
searching for another passerby to sing its chorus to

Rodeo

Blood on a shirt, and blood
on the ground, raw aroma
tearing the senses, tearing
the stiff skin, tented
around a bruised heart.

A horn button split
some light cloth, ripping
open what was hidden,
what never met our eyes.

His belt hung on loops
on hitched jeans, his knees
raised on a bull's back,
both of them bent in a curve.

His gloved hand palmed
braided reins, released
and tightened, bouncing down
the last breathless leap.

Clowns, like painted angels,
hoisted him after the fall,
and handed him his creased
hat, still wet from the ride.

After reading This Present Moment by Gary Snyder__

Just north the muddy Muscatatuck river
An Indiana vein flows

Torrential memory rush
Cold winter rain

“This present moment”
This resonating instant

“this our body” dragging
The southern Indiana
Pistol City sound

Where the Great Blue Heron
Stands one legged

Waiting for the fish of
Impermanence
-----

(automatic poem) walking a tightrope_

Walking a tight-rope
Between worlds

Arms out-stretched
Balancing a book
In each palm

Never-ending leaves
Rustling in the vacuum
Of space

Never dying lung
Living song
Of being

----

No Coincidence
--------------------
It's been a bad
couple of days.
I overindulged
on Thursday, I
still feel awful
two days later.

When I was a
serous drinker,
I didn't get any
hangovers at all.

Now, I'm fucked
up for days.
I don't drink anymore,
really, but today is
three years since my
wife died.

It's no excuse, but it's
no coincidence either.

Birthdays

 
As a child
I loved birthdays,
eagerly anticipated each one.

As a teen
I was anxious to
count more candles,
16, 18, as if more was better.

In my twenties
I wished birthdays
could delay their arrival,
28, 29, as if less was more.

As I have
grown older,
I have grown to
appreciate birthdays
to the grim alternative.

As I grow
older still, I can
imagine there may
come a time when I will
be content to have them no more.

One day,
when time
is no more and
love is all there is and
now is all there will ever be.

“Check Out: 11:00 AM”

There's a peace to be found sipping beer
in a hotel room,
where the walls have horror stories
they'll never tell, while someone coughs
down the hall, sounding
less like a death rattle than death
clearing its throat
before letting you mumble
the most unprofound last words,
but the flower coloured beer is calming
as a wreath bought on a credit card
for someone you loved enough
to bury yourself alive in more debt.


“The Greater Crime”

Theft the colour of an empty glass
with mostly melted ice
all that's left
as the whisky dulls
the knife reality holds to your neck
everyday,
and the dead musician you're listening to
gives you an alibi
that no one will ask about,
but the greater crime would be doing nothing,
letting another Saturday night
die in its sleep.