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.

FLIPPING LIFE & DEATH 

 
So how's death treating you.
How long had you been at life’s doorstep.
Fie! to be struck down in the prime of your death!

As you lay there pummeled half to life
Did your memories take on a death of their own—
To be struck down by a Young Death bus & its kids 

All but shouting “Life to Infidels!” & “Choose Death.”
Kids we can’t convince Black Deaths Matter.
They look bored to life, strangely mute

On paramilitary life squads pacing their mission countries.
Their grandparents on death support, their parents 
Ask again, “Is there death after life!”

Well, certainly, death is short, & life is inevitable. 
And you’d been so happy with a new lease on death. 
Truly, yours was a fate worse than life, 

But you never let death pass you by. 
For all your near-life experiences, 
How sweet you can still die death to its fullest.

You called him the love of your death—
Until life do us part, you said.
His folks say he had a life-wish 

But you call it a mid-death crisis
He wreaked a trail of life & left not a one dead. 
They put him on life row & threw away the key. 

Until his sentence was commuted to death. 
As the fat book says, the wage of sin is life.
Well, where there's death, there's hope. 

Yep, there is a remedy for everything except life.
Everyone should lead such a charmed death.
O, forget it. You’re live to me now.

1) Some Stranger, Waiting


I followed the string
I’d reeled out for myself so
many lives ago,
through twists and turns, only to
     find some stranger, waiting there.

Wired

What was I thinking
when, without qualifications,
except for being as cold
as anyone all last season,
I ran to get elected
County Commissioner of Winter Heat?

I was thinking of warmth,
of course, the irony involved
in commanding the motion of electrons
within a fifty-mile radius of my
two-fold ignorance: geometry
and electrical engineering.

And what was I thinking
when I yearned to prefer
the official wire required
for the job rather than
the under-the-table imitation
available for a little gift of graft?

I was thinking of the Second Coming,
of course, that seek-and-ye-shall-find
system of irrevocability, how
I would want a seat up front.

What I wanted was
inclusion, to be connected,
wired if you will,
to the universe of painlessness
unavailable to those in pain,
by which I mean everyone.

And if I gained favor
by following the ritual
of water-into-wire
then you could count me in,
count me among the sheep,
not those goats also spoken of.

What I didn’t want was what Mugsy
got: jolts at inexact intervals
from an on-going present eternally
separating him from any wire at all.

spirits

when the body dies
the spirit rises up to Heaven
on wings made of pages
from the Communist Manifesto

the American Empire
has slaughtered countless millions
in the barrios of Latin American
in the rice paddies of Asia
in the slave brothels of Eastern Europe
in Gaza

but the dead are NOT gone,
America

they will come back as millions
upon millions of spirits

and each will be the spirit
of Che Guevara

America, your time is coming
a time that’ll be 1000 times worse
than the fires of hell
even worse than the fires of 9/11

America, when your time comes
your throat will be slit from ear to ear
your eyes will be gouged out
your guts will be ripped from your belly

America, I am not warning you—

I am laughing at you

and we will ALL be laughing
when the blood flows in your gutters
and you wonder what happened
to your stock market
your football players
your fat-ass baseball players
your wiggers
and your slices of apple pie
laced with cocaine and fentanyl.