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I don't hear much but the church bell
it's 10 o' clock, my eyes are adjusting
to the light, does the void consume us
in lonely hours when sitting alone I think
maybe there are countless parallel universes
where each time we die one linear thread is
created, and each of us lives one life until
old age and thousands of deaths, until
the final death we can't escape and in trying
waste our life on worry and regret, never
understanding that only to others do we ever die
horrible deaths, early deaths, unfair deaths, we exist in the
greater dimension, the suffering, the sadness,
we are one cog in the universal machinery of death
and rebirth, I fear the moment of realization
when I'm dying, I've lived it a thousand lifetimes,
I've seen all my threads, I've broken the wall, I've
been an old man on a porch watching the sun fall, a dying car
crash victim holding his chest thinking "no", a young father
clutching his heart thinking of his abandoned family, the years
he's left behind, In those dreams the church bells never rung,
in those dreams without blue sky, it's 10 o' clock I hear the
echo of silence, and the clanging, ringing, life
outside.

More Western Haiku

Felix the cat
smiles with no teeth
silently on walls

Day old iced coffee
draws rings on my desk
in the shade

There's no expiration
on an old blue moon
when it's empty and washed

black rusted pipe
on white reflective roof
a lonely arrow to heaven

In one hundred years
we'll graze like cattle
behind barbed-wire fences

Maybe when you go
to Paris in the winter
there's nothing to do but look

under my sleepy cat
a sheet of cardboard
an empty box crumbled

when you wake up at noon
no clouds and faded blue
sky has that afternoon look

I think of your body
in the cool breeze
tanned and warm to touch

above your smile is lovely
orbs of the void truth
crystal depths and black ocean

Step Ladder

I have seen the laugh lines,
the bitter tries, all cuddled up
upon your bedside, it's something
somehow I'll never regret, it's
little kids and anarchy when they
haven't discovered the concept yet,
I broke a window throwing a baseball
bat, it was my neighbors and I was 8
years old; he murdered stray cats
I found them on dry pavement in the summer,
I broke his window and he deserved it
little cats done nothing and only a few
months old, down the street a wolf
eyed my legs hungrily, he was a beautiful dog,
a happy dog, he was 8 feet tall from hind legs to
nose, now someway I'm very old, 27 years old
and what was I like as a little boy? Why can't I remember
what I thought, who I was, because I'm ethereally
nothingness, going to die, growing to die, learning to die
will I remember how I am now dying an old man
alone on his bed? What voices will I hear?
Probably nothing, but that's okay in the void, same void I
pull this thought out of, the same nothing and suffering
the same lost love, the same last dime in my pocket

Preparation

I figured getting a
few flannel shirts and
maybe some old boots for the trip
would be a good idea,
but it was already cold out
so I had to get to the
thrift store bundled
up, I've got a month left
to prepare to run around
america looking like a logger

It was an adventure

Left a note on your car
and tweed seats waited for the
morning when you'd find
my drunken scribbling on a torn
piece of paper with
blue bordered rows, the night was
washing madness and Tommy knocked over
a port-o-potty, Dave a tree--
we explored, I hit my head, we switched
hats, I vaulted over the toppled bathroom
square, while dave chased us all
with Paul Bunyan branch in
Jefferson Park--
Tommy climbed a fence to
abandoned hospital pavement worlds,
I hopped into Dave's car upside down
on Broad Street , Jujy Fruits in the
back seat, he must have stopped off--
Glass was broken, it's a shatter
whirlwind waste--
It was an adventure

Always and afterwards

I am interested in unhappiness,
in feeling, in countless souls dying,
lost in this gone out blue world, in the
always where no one watches, fleshy
thoughts wasting away--
I'm looking under street lights for the answer
to our emptiness and everyone expressing
feelings so robotic like a tv show host
where children learn their vocabulary from
Icarly marathons and grow up and fuck
and fuck up and fucking die--
I'm interested in the end and what's
really above those clouds so other worldly
over our heads that no one looks at
'cause no one looks up--
I'm always wondering
about our square jaws and craning necks,
I think the sun brightly glorious
shines out of the void and illuminates the golden
fields of imagined farmland Midwestern America
I stare at it hard for answers, I squint into the eons
and it burns me to tears

Roading

The road travels by itself in
its own fourth dimensional brawl
and soon I'll be on to it
learning how the trees find other things to
wrap their colorful orange leaves,

Soon, I'll be caught up in the
immemorial valleys of the American spirit
soon we'll be those American heroes
we've lost,

soon, we'll bathe in the
muddy Mississippi baptized
in it's heavy old currents and
cleanse our modern lost souls

Western Haiku(s)

Jogging papers

reminded

of Inquirer Friday nights

A scanning sheet

per email lol

omfg forever

worn gloves
dry on radiator coils
winter rain outside

free of bowl
and spoon
soup boils on stove

My notebook
at the end
tattered ink

Quiet home
for six stuffed sardines
slow internet

I miss my cats
in Pennsylvania
far away

Without a title
rain drops in fall frozen
I mourn

Bright and early
lonely kitchen
sun streaked tiles

Early on in September
remember your birthdays
etched rainbow

maroon recliner
unwanted in corner
motionless sea

drowsy eyes
on subway travel north
doors close

one can of Yuengling
pop fizz flat
another night lush

My lamp casts
an empty light
onto empty room

She places boyfriend shoes
tired and dry
under creaking bed

A Supplication; The Road

I can't write poetry anymore
if I'm not on the road going
somewhere taken by wheels somewhere
on the great roads of America
under that purely American sky
that blankets our whole land-that we take for granted-
under it's breast, leaves us in mouth open awe and kids
go "Whooooo-" and I do too-
until I get looks like I'm crazy
walking from the bus stop in a
new city south going just to prove America
is red/white/blue eternal with god watching over, so
I can see its soul
Which is all our souls
stretched out like white clouds and
heavy--

And I think there's no
other land like ours that
makes you bleed like it does and
love like it does, the girls all over think
we're mad, so maybe we are--

But it's green lovely holy trees
skitter-scatter and I see into that soul that encompasses
our history and I find myself inside it--and I breathe
deep and love like a child running through fields
of empty madness,

How I hear those roads calling!
How I feel those wheels whispering!

Ghosts stretch south
on my pencil sketch
the ghost of the west and
America blares as it always has
eternally golden toward the Rockies
the Pacific wide Texas plain and Arizona desert sun beyond,
and looking back when I get THERE for the cold Atlantic coast--

it's all there for me--
waiting for me
someday--
to catch up to it.

One long sentence with me and you and the ocean

I just wanna drink beer on the
beach and dig you in the night, the
way I think it, your arms around my white
t-shirted waist and the salt of the ocean to get
us high- I wanna curl up on your brown
legs and feel the waves lap at my feet, we'll find
a clean white motel out there, we'll find a pearly
conscience out there, we'll find an endless ocean
out there on coastal highway green lights forever and
I've got so much energy it's killing me, I'll shock you,
I'll paint madness and happiness and love all
across the fogged over stars.

Bliss

The road to DC is green
with broken tired trees collapsed
along the journey but in place
straight arrow south except for
this fantastic break of wide beautiful
brown river silently drifting, I
imagine I work on that cliff side
farm of eternity, over rocks
one hundred foot drop down to
riverside railroad tracks, what
a life in those fields, alone
and free somewhere between
yawning cities, the summer scent
of long grass in the breeze,
a mile west on invisible
peninsula little cottage houses
range out in the running water,
it's not so deep, it's peace away
from the bridge I pass in ten seconds
watching the frozen image-- making
out the passing lives, the curling currents
I stand on the edge of that
forever and jump to my
weary bliss

Afterlife

Why do I only remember
clearly the bad things I've
done? Like cross myself a
hundred times in all directions
at first Holy Communion and a little
boy like me looks over and says, "That's
not funny," God? And when I
tied that boy's shoelaces together
under the playground bench? He fell
and cut his knee, and
cried,
But I make up all those times
I did my chores or held, for some
old ladies, the door, overlooking--
I guess Saint Peter wrote them
down, well I hope he wrote them
down, so when he brings them up
I can say, "Oh, yeah that was clearly me!"
and he can say, and smile, and say,
"Congratulations!"

Is it too short?

And I asked, "What's a foyer anyway?"
Why do your Skittles cost
$3?
Are you trying to bankrupt me,
so I run to your foyer to hide?
And what's a foyer anyway
like anything else?
Where I've seen one before
all the rest disintegrated
by falling nuclear bombs
turned to peaceful salt & ash,
I'm pumpernickel fluffy all
that's left are severed cocks and tits
and terror, my skirt survives, but
is it too short :-*

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Let us cross over the river
and rest under the shades of the trees

That's what Stonewall Jackson
said in Chancellorsville-wilderness-
Fredericksberg-somewheres when
he's dying out there in
thickets & the Civil War
leavin' him behind
& this golf course is a relic
of that probably built over it
so rich assholes can say
nice shot, good show, four
and my dad can hit a golf
ball into some heavy woods,
while I sit in the cart and
think, "Shit"--

Heaven

Afterwards when I do that
will be the bridge of my life
that marks my passing,
When I'm ashes gone nothingness
open me up over that
snake railroad & ragged
offside farm--
I imagined many lives there
many lives grown old lives
simple without suitcase and
acres instead of 137 miles,
but what can I do?
who can I be?
frozen watching those spectral
bridges--in heaven.