Our Friend

Sometimes ignored, it is a
Well know fact that in addition
To disease prevention,
Mister Rubber is also designed
To actually prevent a chance
Encounter from evolving into
An unintended situation of
Long-term responsibility and
Crumb snatchers. 

Help Desk    


He sucks in air as though
licking hard candy,
then leaves a message saying
something about an appointment
so maybe I’ll ring him back,
see if he’ll take that Friday slot.

But his record reads Deceased, same date
he left the message. Two hours
after he spoke the air in his mouth
was lying on his tongue
like a tourist on a beach, wondering
who’s going to breathe it next.

Perhaps it’s found it’s way here,
to my corner of this office.
I’m breathing his last breath,
chasing it down with a slug of cold tea;

trying not to shudder with glee
as I delete his words with the touch
of a finger. Perhaps they were the last
he ever spoke, panting down the phone

as the years sunk their teeth into his lungs
and ripped out his last breath. I wonder
who’ll breath it after me?

Purely Personal Dilemma   


‘Anxiety’ seems too small a word
for every revolver going ballistic,
every word nailing evidence
prosecutors will use to tear you
to shreds. Soon all that’s left
is the verdict. Your own, of course;
the court has more interesting cases
than how deeply you pored
over empty casings, ignoring
the bullets lodged in your back.
There's time for the appeal,
but who will hear your plea?
The court has closed for the duration,
hung up a sign reading

we haven’t gone fishin’;
we’ve just gone. We find everyone guilty,
including ourselves,
so there’s no need to pass any sentence
shorter than a day or longer
than a lifetime.
And now it’s done you can walk
free as a bird with its wings
shot to pieces. In a million years
or so a black hole will drop by
to clean up this mess, so I wouldn’t worry
if I were you. There’s no court higher
than your own, so why not
cut yourself some slack?

You did nothing wrong, boy.
Now go and get some rest.

Had a yellow Volkswagen

with black tires and a thin white line
running around the circumference.
Engine didn't purr, kind of clunked,
didn't go very fast, but then
I never seemed to be in a hurry.

Suzy was my girlfriend, not because
she loved or even liked me, it was
the idea of riding in my bug she fancied,
she said it was cool, hip, though
she didn't like when the engine
farted black plumes from its exhaust.

Once we tried to make love
in the front seat of the car,
steaming the windows on a chilly
night in late November, it was awkward
and uncomfortable, like everything
else about our relationship.

Eventually I sold the bug,
Suzy moved on to a guy with a VW bus,
she liked the roominess, it didn't fart,
and love was easier to consummate.

As for me, I bought a Harley
and dreamed of bedding
biker chicks in cheap motels

the American fascists


were always talking about
Jesus
so I used to think I hated
Jesus

but when all the “trans” bullshit
started
I realized that
America
is the enemy of God

so I read about the message of
Jesus

his REAL message

now I friggin LUV Jesus

and I know that God and Jesus
and the archangel Michael
will smash America
into a million pieces
someday

just as soon as they tell Putin
to push the button

and then the world
will have everlasting peace
until the end of time
under Jesus!
Amen!

The world doesn't end
because it's a sphere.

It ain't big either.
The span between reading Flaubert
and writing like Flaubert
dwarfs it.

True, literature is to the world what
literature is to toilet paper--
a poor substitute.
But it can do in a pinch.
And like the world,
it never ends.



A bare-shouldered woman
isn't what this poem is about.
It's about something else.
So is she.
What that is exactly
I'd love to know.



Aus Chur, Schweiz:
My first memory is picking mammoth bone from my teeth. The second, sacking Rome, followed by 13,972 moons hauling water, tilling cow shit, feeding my life to avalanches, wolves, fever, wind, infants.
Tonight, my wife sings in her hot shower while my daughter rolls on her playmat beside me, holding a unicorn. She crawls onto my lap and laughs. In her eyes glint flint tools, skyscrapers, satellites, collapsing stars. 

Songs That I Sing for the Departed 


I see the dead complacent, 
still aloof and souls set to fly.

Counter point, fizzle and betrothed,
no one remains from those days gone.

And now once again, leaves morph
from green into the yellows and reds
and oranges of autumn.

My ghost roaming, intertwined with
nature, always; while everything prepares 
for hibernation; yet again.

While you remain in black and white,
photos brittle and fading, epitaph, 
etched into stone, my ghost too, has 
grown weary and yearns for eternity.

She didn’t look like

the kind of girl
who would mercy fuck
a total geek in high school
but like the cheer leader
she must have been.
I could see, and heard,
she was compiling a
mental of all the bar
staff boys and having
them one by one as if
she planned to do hem
all. I might even have
been on the list, next maybe,
and I thought I should
tell her my boys were
ten years older than her,
easy, but I didn’t.

Leaping from planet__ a Bardic Meat Koan (for Michael C Ford)


Leaping from planet dousing the moon with gasoline
Igniting the tidal echoes of oblivion we breathe

How long the path’s been we travel at the speed of silence
Watching the power come undone memory blast seethe

The American night as described by Morrison
Is a flash grenade in the middle of a graveyard
During the black midnight we were born from;

The black ectoplasmic voice of wild eternal
Ecstasy

Note to a Closed Site
(or Can’t You Take a Hint)

After the frustration of
Several unanswered inquires
Reference my submissions,
It dawns on me that the site
Is ran by some halfwit asshole
(No relation, no really).  But,
I send them this note anyway,
Which will, no doubt, also go
Unanswered as well.


Up To Date Customer Service

“Pardon me, caller.  At this time,
Due to the new guidelines,
I can no longer address callers
As you and I am not allowed
To use the personal pronouns
He, she, or it.  Also, as the words
They/them are a bit awkward,
I will be using a generic term.
So, cocksucker, how may I be
Of help today?”

 

Mary Jane Makes Groovy Brownies,

says the young man in the long
hair, headband and bell bottoms
in Haight-Ashbury in the seventies.
Gimme a dollar and I’ll sell you pot.

His girlfriend in a long flowered dress
hands me green leaves in a plastic baggie.
I paid for a pot, I say. Pot and weed,
same difference, she says.

Neither of us drink tea in our twenties
so my sister and I bake the leaves in brownies.
It’s probably alfalfa, this Montana girl thinks.
But I didn’t see any cows hanging around.

The brownies are so delicious we can’t
stop eating them so we bag the rest
for the trip to Fisherman’s Wharf.
My sister’s boyfriend is driving us

in his blue bug, me in the backseat.
Whenever I tell him how to drive,
he says:  Give her another brownie.
We all laugh as I gobble it down.

I hand the ice cream man a dime
for the one scoop cone as I lick
the licorice laughing hysterically.
It’s a dollar, he says. I laugh.

It’s a dime in Montana. He barks:
This is California. I laugh even harder.
His face reddens so I reach in my purse
and hand him a greenback.

The four bills he gives me back
float like butterflies in the breeze
and I fly along with them.
She’s stoned, someone says.

Six decades later in Arizona I watch
Willie at ninety in a headband and beard
on the internet claiming his supplement
prevents and cures dementia.

Order it, I tell my husband. Is it Marijuana?
he asks. The advertisement says: Straight
from the cannabis plant and it is legal.
We don’t order it. Being stoned once is enough.