An update to today

Nothing seems more right
then reading Bukowski while taking
a shit; and why do all the little
girls in Chinatown wear purple
winter coats? Yesterday I slept,
woke up, got a bus, slept, found you
sleepy and sick in your bed, slept,
dreamt I was Apocalypse coming to usher
in the end of the world, I reveled in that
thought, the end, the beginning, death and
life and all that, I was in a theatre, someone
had written a musical about my godlike feats,
I watched it from the balcony VIP, but I couldn't remember
her name, I called her Ashley and was wrong,
woke up had dinner, a cold turkey sandwich
from 7-11 (Joe would be proud) then turned in
for the night with you coughing and wheezing, and
me feeling you up,
I am sorry
I left for the night
into my running head
to nothing
and now I'll leave Bukowski
in the bathroom for you to find and ask
why?
So I can laugh and we
can go to
bed together
because it makes sense

Merry Christmas Ma

Hey me and mike set the decorations up,
we set them on the tree, weighed the branches
found the empty space, Renee took a picture
from the couch, hey we set the lights,
two series and the gold garland,
my mom watched wishing she could help,
she loves Christmas, loves the magic,
I act like a child for her (even though
I want to be a child for myself) she needs this,
she needs her family and the lights and the cheer
to make make up for all her years growing up
with nothing, that's what's up the chimney, you
see, not the dark, hey that's what I understand after all
these years and I'd give them all, I do, We want to, and
I'll act like this forever because she deserves it, I'll be a child
under the tree, watching it glitter with ornaments nearly
30 years old, the accumulation of a selfless life
is worth anything I can give

We look at you

I saw your craigslist ad,
I nearly cried, 39 years
old and no one left to watch tv,
looking for someone 30-40
to hang out with at their home,
or someone elses home, a home
you don't know, haven't known,
they've lived all their lives without you,
you starting over at 40, on the internet
looking like this, typing this and leaving
it for us to find, and we look at you
unable to understand what makes
someone do this, on white screens
with black type, and it's like
every lie we tell ourselves about
life before bed were washed away,
leaving nothing but the truth we pretend
isn't there

The Corsica

The window above
seems open, tho I can't
feel the winter winds burying
my old car in ice across the street,
so tomorrow, with wool hat pulled
down tight and jacket zipped
up to my chin, I'll be out there like
an ice fisherman chopping away at the outside and,
Christ, the inside of the damned thing
all frozen, and when it melts it'll short
out my radio, drip by drip
causing the digital clock to read
1:Ho or 1:68 and Joe says it like,
"Oh, it's one-H-zero!" outside the diner
where Den had to get Spaghetti and garlic bread
with no meatballs, and we drank coffee together
into the night thinking, what are we gonna do now?

Dreams in December

You, I saw you in my dreams
clawing at me again, it was like
the reality I feared, that you had been
planning for me, and tho in the dream
we had never left, in the world I'd
forgotten you came for me, in the subway
a chance meeting, someone tried to help
me, to get between us, but you're always
so angry, so pained, are you like that
still? If so, I won't believe you;

I ran and found a car, maybe in this
hard yellow light I could escape
but somewhere in my dreams
I end up losing control of the car,
the wires are crossed or...another
thing...I forget about you, and what
you want, if it's anything at all,

I gasp in the seat of the car
curled up and freezing in the cold
metal of the cold outside, I gasp and
come to terms with this shaking reality,
it's the morning, it's December, you're
out there in the blackness of black hole
space maybe dreaming of me too, I let that sink into
the frozen blanket that's my memory

My Plastic Sunlight Room

The sunlight's got a look
like plastic out my picture
framed window, but inside against
the white paint chipped sill everything
looks old and dusty and oil painted,

I can see every layer of the third
dimensional space getting older
and even myself, my cells bursting,
dying, aging, bursting, dying, the slow
process of death washing over me,
inevitable,

I watch the plastic sun smiling,
giving off no heat, only shadow light,
but still beautiful and somehow new,
new even though it is
untold billions of years across time
and running the same old route everyday
unfathomable,
and I am here forgetfully insignificant
hung up mourning the irony of the number 27

Gray

I thought about publishing a blank page
but then I started typing
and it all seemed foolish, like the sun
coming out at 4 o' clock
when it looked like rain all day
even when I walked you back to work
though I forgot what I did coming
back, I do that sometimes
think back and wonder if maybe I crossed
the street into traffic or fell
down a manhole, maybe I'm not here typing
in some serotonin nightmare final
gasp, maybe the sewer doesn't smell
as sweet as your room, maybe I'm
just suffering down here with
a broken leg; I don't know,
it all makes sense for a few seconds when
I gather up those memories and place
them one by one beside your
cold bed

Visions of Chinatown

"Mommy, are we in China?"
says the cute little girl in
purple flannel patterned winter
jacket,
as her mother buttons up her hood,
"No baby, we in Philly," and
they're looking for something to eat
that isn't this rundown dirty tiled
bus station, while they await the two
hour trip to New York where their
cousin will pick them up, I overheard
when she was using some guys
phone (he had two for some reason, took one
out of his pocket for her to call, he must carry on
in case strangers ask for his phone;
he thinks ahead)
wearing a button down and a sweater
over top, it was purple too,
I thought that was kind of a funny
coincidence, while I waited and then a
green vested guy called, "New York bus,
New York bus, outside!" and everybody
ambled out to fight for a spot in line,
except me and a loving couple sharing
their lunch, until I realized it was too small
containers not one, so they weren't sharing,
They were huddled together tho,
and that's something,
I guessed they were headed to DC
too, or maybe they didn't care about getting
to New York on time,
either way we'd sit across from each other
saying nothing

Memories

Remember when I sat on that
couch in Hyattesville, MD, I all
but owned the first floor and the
shower in the corner past the kitchen
with its black ants crawling up the
wall and getting wet by the hanging
shower head--crawling on my clothes,
sliding into the sink--those fucking ants,
I couldn't save them and they
followed me into that small green
tiled foggy cell;
Remember how I'd watch them
uneasily while undressing, like the slugs
slithering across my kitchen floor in
dead-winter, thinking, "What the fuck am
I doing here?"

What Dreams May Come

Opaque sky splitting heaven
and I sat on my back looking up
at the ceiling and imagining the time
we had left, that I can't count because
only you know the date, I left my hoodie
on and my shoes and I just watched the
darkness growing old, thinking is life
ever going to stop and why is the earth
cursed with the passage of time? I hated it.
I fell asleep and felt I was falling somewhere
too soon, do you think maybe after we lose here
we could meet again? I was hoping so when it
all seemed so unreal, but now it's heavy and my eyes
reflect the sun, my shoulders are sagging toward the
page, I cried that night and ignored the feel of the
tears running down my face, it was 5:37am

I dunno

There's pulsing lights
that work to numb my brain and whit
watches me slowly drowsing, he's
slowly drowsing, into the night
only a touch in front of the morning
like all nights growing darker then suddenly
empty and bitterly engulfed by the sun;

I saw you hail a taxi
somewhere beyond my memory

I crashed, I'm disgusting, a sleeping wasted
soul on these hardwood floors
my mattress barely holds it's shape
tonight

tonight is never brightening night
Whit takes a long breath reflected
in the mirrored glare, re-situates himself
waits for my hand, often he's meowing our
heads off, but now he's in another space,

what am I thinking? eh--
I jump up, my chair squeaks
my chair is thinking these things
by itself, a glass is cleared
and the morning yellow fast approaches;

I don't want a lot for Christmas

The radio is already like "Hey,
you piece of shit it's Christmas
get to buying those presents!" and Mariah
Carey is trying to tell me that there is
something more beyond what we see,
I don't know who to believe sometimes
but I do know that ABC family is not yet ready
to countdown those Debbie Macomber 25
days of Christmas programming when my mom will be
baking baking baking until we're all so tired of
cookies and she's crying watching an angel
save a father/son/mother/daughter relationship,
I mean, it ain't even Thanksgiving and I'm supposed to
imagine Rankin Bass claymation in the streets? I'll play
your music anyway, and my little statue of Jesus
is probably gonna cry because my uncle prays all
night but hates the Christmas tree, I guess he's
read Ezekial...shhhh that's a secret too; my secret,
and last night someone vandalized? vandalized the History
Channel Ancient Aliens Wiki...with a long grammatically
incorrect cryptic message about angels and extra-dimensional
beings and B101 was playing and I said to mike, "Jesus Christ,
I hope that mother fucker is right."

with a glass

Gray skies on a Thursday look
exactly like they did when that storm
wouldn't leave us alone over Indiana,
and we traveled at the same speed east until
the mountains stopped one of us, but not
our car which was going 90 without traffic lights
or shitty Pennsylvania drivers, who shit on you
and hate to be passed and hate to let someone
in their lane because you may get to someplace
before them and they just couldn't take it,
casting hateful suspicious faces out their windows
scowling at the driving world they race against, and
I drink my orange juice
silently in the morning gloom,
scratching my head and
thinking about these things

cute little love poem

Sometimes sitting by your side
I become enamored with the world
but lose my sense of it, I walk away
without a thought or memory of
what I saw, what color were the trees,
what did you say to me as we tripped
over uneven sidewalks, how bright was
the afternoon sky, were there clouds to shade
our eyes? Sometimes leaving you
numbs me until I stare out moving windows
for 3 hours without a word, sometimes I wonder
if you feel it too, sometimes I pretend these
wheels are traveling back to you

One Long Road Poem- 1: Sunday

Outside Dayton, Ohio
on our first night and
black cats won't cross our path
even near old windmills abandoned and
broken down where we stopped to pee;
we passed Pittsburgh & Columbus in a
flash, I barely saw them at night but for yellow
bridges and lights; In Murraysville after
Raystown and Frankstown we stopped for
salty soup and no apple pie
or maybe Dutch apple pie; the waitress
small old (and I think wearing a red wig) mosseyed
along to check, she handed me a pie list, the place
was Dick's Diner and no other choices caught my eye
like Route 40 goes on forever in Ohio
cloudy than clear sky-- forget it, we're only in Ohio
with two entire states to kick our ass until St. Louis
where I'll drop a rose into the Mississippi for you,
my love because it'll travel all the way to the Gulf
of Mexico and then around the world floating in the salty Caribbean
blue waves; This hotel is fluorescent lights in bed
ready to wake up to tomorrow's filled with
Cincinnati chili stacked five layers high and
three states worth of miles;

2: Monday

On Nevermore Rd with a
blueberry muffin in my empty
Ohio stomach, I lost my hat tumbling
to the gods of the road, I watched it blow
back to Dayton in middle America blue skies
that I saw all day through Indiana & Illinois
where there was nothing but those
amber waves of grain, golden fields of corn,
cattle grazing and an occasional silo breaking
the tumbling plains and the towns had names like
Terre Haute, Brazil, Effingham, when a lady in wool
skull cap said, "long way from home ant'cha?" because
I was, little towns along Route 40 called the National
Road, and it was the first cross country highway in
America, I think, and I was also thinking that
 there'd be nothing but the St. Louis arch
was something like vertigo and I couldn't believe
as my stomach turned that Dave was abducted by aliens
and I finally dipped my hands in the Mississippi and the baptism
I'd dreamt of for so long, long was silent
at night under the moon and only the sound
of the waves and Joe and Dave in my ears alone, we
had it all to ourselves.

3: Tuesday

Woke up in St. Louis
and took the Days Inn yellow brick road
to a nice old lady and biscuits and gravy,
we walked under the gargoyle fox, sat and tasted
ice cold beer from the tap completely free, after
the Budweiser factory I raised my arms with Brett Hull,
and on the Mississippi shore dwarfed by the arch
I tossed our message to the ancient currents of America,
we left Missouri in the gray rain and rolled over
Illinois amber fields and
Indiana amber fields and
Joe hoping for tornadoes, Dave
driving 24 hours, we almost ran out of gas somewhere
along Route 45 at eerie Mill Shoals population
250 dreaming nothing but nighttime grain silos
and no gas stations only vacant white walls bluish in the
dusk, until finally we crossed back over the Ohio River
into Louisville, Kentucky but we wanted to sleep outside
so we found Jefferson National Forest, 20 miles
south of the city on 891, Top Hill Road was winding horrifying
darkness, with slim lanes that barely left room for a car
coming the opposite way, and one turn looking like a road
but really it was a drop far far away, and we crawled up
the hill in that total darkness, where at the top a dog found
our car, and Joe said remember what Bukowski said
about the ghost dog because he was a ghost dog,
the ghost of old Kentucky wilderness,
in the end we decided to camp another night
and took keys from an old Indiana guy that lived
in the hotel office & Joe sneaking in unnoticed;

4: Wednesday

I'm somewhere in mountains
of Tennessee Big Ridge nearby Norris
Lake deep blue that isn't blue at all in the
night, sorry I didn't call baby, there's no
service this high in the Appalachians, today
we cut through Louisville, Frankfort, Lexington
and tomorrow the entire Shenandoah lies ahead,
under the full moon I apologize it's a beautifully
cool silent night with crickets singing for the coming
winter and me on a bench in the dark
writing to you, my love, it's November,
Dave and I will be sleeping in a tent and Joe
in his hammock ready, I'll drink some Port
I swear it, I'm a road bum trying to be a
Dharma bum, it's Wednesday turning to Thursday a
few stars above outside Knoxville, where we tried to
light a fire but the rain had soaked everything in the
last few days was a mortal enemy and failure is
darkness embers dying orange, are we impervious
to time? Is there time at all? in the wilderness it seems
there isn't, when was the last time I held your hand?
Felt our bodies together in the night? Dave got a text message
from an hour into the future, are we lost? I wonder with the
night Tennessee purple, you've never seen darkness
like this, will the clouds ever point our way home?
We are the road.

5: Thursday

Last night we fell in lakes together
obscured by the moonlight and haunting
trees, remember that dead forest and how
we left our pants and shoes in the mud,
wandering and singing in nature, in the woods of
Tennessee with no one within earshot, or miles,
just the coyotes who scoured our camp for
beef jerky and trail mix, tossing aside the coconut
shavings, we crawled up the backbone of Virginia
after a hearty southern breakfast and I waved
to a truck driving girl and she blushed so innocently
and where in the northeast suspicious highways could
you say that would happen? I finally saw the Shenandoah
in the drivers seat and although Joe hates the state you
have to admit that dandelion yellow sunset I saw in the
rearview was something you've never seen, where in
Staunton we had some homemade BBQ and just barreled on to
West Virginia, Maryland, and homey Pennsylvania except the
state park was closed so we cut down a tree (Dave pushed it over)
made a fire, ate some beans, spaghetti in meat sauce,
and curled up like caterpillars in our sleeping bags with Dave saying
he was gonna drive like that in the morning and Joe
wishing his hammock was hanging outside, and we dreamed
the night away in the car we'd driven 2,232 miles.

6: Friday

In Pennsylvania state park closed

morning we woke up in our sleeping bags,

the car was dripping condensation and we 

had our final day ahead in Gettysburg

twelve miles to the east then Route 30

the rest of the way to Philadelphia, we toured 

the battlefield, the great open breathless green

country that God sent down just so a battle

would be fought there, one of the birth places of the 

America we'd seen first hand and so lovingly close

these last 6 days, in a roadside country stand selling 

apples we met David (another David not the musician 

with big white beard who apologized to Dave in St. Louis) 

but a third David with a long white beard himself (too,

though his was tied at the end) and he asked us our 

names, calling me Thomas even though I said Tom

and he wanted to know why we were interested in

battlefields, he was an old hippy soul but a good man,

he even gave us an apple each for the road, running up to 

our car as we left with the fruit cradled in his arms, they were

crisp and juicy, delicious, our third tour with free gifts (he showed

us his house filled with pottery) and we

were ready for the non-stop terrible drive home with traffic

jams that you apparently only find in Philadelphia

and I said to the road we left behind that I never wanted to 

quit going. 

7: Conclusion

The car was 49 hours old
but much older, with us sleeping
in it the night before, and the city looked strange,
stranger than when we left it in the morning
slowly spinning behind us 6 days ago,
America is high in the east but it lives
in the west, I know that for sure, like
I know a travelers life is for me, and so I
dedicate this long road poem to the spirit
of the American road, the jokes, the love, the nights
under cloudy skies, to the spirit that is
once a caring mother, a raging stallion and
a quiet river, the artery and life blood of the land, this
poem is also for the Dukes running free and mad
over routes going west and south and regretfully
east, may they blaze a trail from Mill Shoals to
the sea, I'm happy to be home just to realize
I don't ever wanna be home, I want the road
and running and loving and going, non-stop, so
c'mon boys let's sing again to the moon
in Tennessee mud, we'll never grow old,
or out of it, or fail, we're all an innocent
meandering idea, and I'll think of us
that way, on the road, laughing forever;
This is my truth.

Evening

It's time to write something pretty
about artificial light shining in my face,
unplug it like god will the sun on some
Mayan afternoon. It's a prophesy I am
sure I came up with and am about to
implement in my mind in the world
I'm still not sure is real on the eve
of leaving and returning--

I'll pack a picture of you
maybe in your bathing suit to remind
me what I've left behind on the road, remind
what's in front of me on the road, but
what do I need that's alright? alright,
what do I need that's real? Real, I'm
not sure yet...I'm not empty yet,
to be ready to fail and laugh and love--
I've got wheels under my feet
and that's just the way I hope it
always stays. Ignition.

collage o' collage

It's the nature of space
to blip-blip-blip out existence, and
some asteroid is eventually gonna smoosh us
without the satellite laser to protect
the techno-biological-mind that
thinks for the masses and tucks our babies
in at night; that's a fairy tale though, because space
is only time that's infinitely empty, the truth is
under the stars closing in, the cold
stars that cut like diamonds through indigo
Philadelphia skies; you can't see them
my love, the stars, you'll have to imagine them 'cause
we're somewhere's else entirely,
somewhere in the pretty marsh
that exists after time, that isn't anything special
at all, that is as always was inevitably uncolored,
a shrinking iris, a beautiful smile.

Yep more while reading Endymion in the park

The trees are fall
and frost is winter
in the car I'm safe from all

A spider's abandoned web
sun's cold reflection
our silent thoughts are the past

No paper to capture
this mornings sunrise
only my weary eyes

Suicide note

I was going to try
trying but it's hard with all
this aspartame bleeding me out

and if you wouldn't mind
I'd like a sip of water so
the fluoride can drown
my aggression, I could get up
but apathy is something treasured
in tents outside government buildings
fighting a power I don't understand
or you don't understand; it's not the 1960s
brother, power is diffuse and it moves
and watches and thinks before we do,

so pass me another brain lesion and
I'll take our sorrows like a shotgun to the
back of my fleshy 98 degree mouth
counting the fucking seconds flat

The End; A science fiction story

Lost my keys in a cat accident

kneading my computer like

a soft winter blanket, to get

my writers attention, so now I'm

without the windows key which became

the T because it's more important;

O phantom of morning
when I cross your path
alone in darkened house
I fear to close my eyes,
the hair standing on the back
of my neck since childhood
I ran home in empty moonlit fields
never fearing the stranger but the
ghastly, that I wished for
at the same time; to prove this
blue globe a lie--

the clouds fall at my feet
taking everything around me into
itself, the sea born sky, she cries
like the creature I imagine behind,

My mind is haunting
the world-void, pushing me into
stereophonic schizophrenic insanity;

the voice
dream
angel
knight
brooding in the goopy afterglow
is a visage
unarmed,
is a lover of my life,

is a self-fulfilling fear--

I cannot find it in all my years,
though I search the alleyways
beneath my conscious cries,
it is the beginning.

Westernized Haiku :D

typing away lost poems
on my thankless computer
a night so dark

at midnight I wonder
what it's worth to wait
until one o' clock sleep

An angel of my mind
sleeps so beautifully
miles south and sunny

Whit curls up on the couch
in knitted blanket
I'm glad it's not the closet

Survive

"Well here we are," is all the same
and time is an illusion built
by rifled guns on the rolling hills of England,
we little piggies fight like it's 1960 when
power has moved on and read our books
and removed them from circulation. So
we fight to learn at school nothing but replication,
why do they advance and we sit outside
and think protest works? Why don't we
understand what's going on? We fight them
with the weapons and the ideas they control,
we need a rucksack revolution not a
wall street occupation, 'cause truth be told
they've already won and I've been saying it
for 15 years, we need a new strategy and
it's called survival.

More Western Haiku

my word is mountains
grown gray into the sky
and snow capped

Afternoon in the house
no light through my windows
no whispers

Friday Night

I thought, "Shit my
phone is melting," but it was only
Harry Potter's 3-D glasses on the
stove, the phone was dripping in my hand,
I panicked until someone
built a castle on top of me.
I'm a pawn taking a walk, maybe
I'll take a slightly longer walk, but
only if I'm just starting out, outside
the stars are sparkling at night
though the sky is indigo with old
red white and blue reflections;
who lives there across the alley
with their serial killer 4:08am lights on
in every room but their bedroom and
the door is opened wide, whit and I
are playing a floor above and three stories up
under Tif's covers at the foot
of her bed and his fur is so soft, and shining
black and white, I hold him tight,
I fall asleep, and sleep and sleep
a dreamless tired sleep, dreamless but felt like hours
so maybe Tif the nightmares and what we talked
about are untrue, maybe there's just
nothing and the end.

Spider Spider

Tell me something 

that's grand, that makes no sense--

I had a spider crawl down my arm

into kung pao Armageddon today

cleaned his white spotted arms,

couldn't escape it was so sticky,

I took a straw wrapper

because felicia asked me to, and

he crawled up inside, disappeared; spiders

will jumped into anything in front of them

imagine that, so will people; I dropped him 

in the corner but he didn't come back

out, I think we should swim in the 

ocean this winter, under the tundra sun,

it's a god you know-- but that little spider

he'll be in that place forever, with green covered

lamps and general Tso's. Let's do it for him;

Western Haiku

Another spider

in dim lights invisible

an overpriced buffet

a misty October rain

footprints left in grass

where I walked alone

stuffed animal slumped over

sea foam green couch 

and me without a seat

Typecast on location typewritter kitten

I'm saving it all up.

For the revolution.

I'm dissolving the mark.

I'll fight in heaven.

I'm a phantom.

A spook, glooky in the missive.

I'm a sentence already written.

Watch the end descend from the stars.

It's meaningless to me.

I'm saving it all up.

For empty cans and beans. 

revenge revenge revenge

Break this down

bring this to the void

a street corner taco vendor

not outside

somewhere outside

away,

is all this uneventful life

a true blessing, or

sadness and suffering--?

a couple with heads down

shoving tapas into pearly mouths

at 10 dollars a piece

with money and no thought,

trimmed violet dress, pretty shoes,

designer button down shirt

spilling gravy, the masses covered,

their children glooming in heaven

which is the handkerchief abyss of existence-- and

in emptiness, 

the waiter mouths a meatball

fuck

is a lie,

the only truth

in a line, drawn in line, typed in bold face

but truth and nothingness

are--

a whim.

Far

far off far off far off
editing this hulking mass
I'm a poet pretending to write novels
about what I have to say

the sun an old man creaking between
high rise apartment buildings
for the unemployed

I've a copy of a book
a bridge unto the afternoon
soon I'll be running miles
soon I'll be dying by the minute

I'm dying now
with everyone else
alone,
I'm happy

untitled

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 :-*

untitled

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.

poems i haven't written

Jack wrote some bluesy shit
that sank like jazz in the afterlight
where everyone forgets and prose
is so useless/ I'm writing I'm writing
all the time except on here which I've
forgotten I'm writing. There's poets out there in
the why don't we read what we say
lemonade/ the bodies in the street
on little feathery birds being pulled
down in the wind, splattered all over the bridge
and that's fucked up/ I can't shit
shit I can't talk/ I feel sad when their eyes close
they don't teach us anymore they won't
tell us anymore, shortly ever after
what sun never comes up over the gilded golden
leafy unnecessary globe? ah-Ha

Dad

Out in the world distance
swirling something like
rain and sun and clouds
Can a text message
break your heart?

Rowing south on 95

In the furnace of the city of
Baltimore, the buildings cook
in brilliant infinitesimal orange
light, even one-eyed Natty Boh--
the sky is swirling wrecking
ball blue and my mind rides the
ups and downs of the clouds
cutting thinly white between the
fires, I pass it in a 60 mph
instant--
the city cooked into the
night--the tunnel--to heaven's
darkness,
the floating membranes of
Earth's belly

statement

Why does eternity appear
like a drape about my beige floor?
I eat the infinity symbol because it
rots like paper on car windows,
the world is shit turned blue and green,
I am a lost soul
typing my mortality away.

Ocean Pome

I just wanna drink beer on
the beach and dig you in the night,
your arms around my waist and the
salt of the ocean foam to get us high
I wanna curl up on your brown
legs and feel the waves lap
at my feet from europe or africa
or somewhere, we'll find a clean white hotel
out there on Coastal Highway and I've
got so much energy it's crackling
from my finger tips, I'll shock you
I'll paint madness and hapiness and love
all across the sea-fogged-over stars

I thought about Sleep

I got home pretty late
the lights were on upstairs,
hours later Whit would catch a mouse
its tail dangles from his mouth
he's black and white, Whit not the mouse,
he was gray, We left for center city,
but first I rinsed my mouth out with
mouth wash--refreshing mint--there were no
taxis outside so we waited in the middle of the street,
Broad Street, it went this way south and this way north
into as far as I could see in the night,
which wasn't far before all the red lights became
all the green lights and all the lights were one
big blinding mist, we walked on a cement island
I stuck a weed in my mouth, Joe said it looked
like a guitar stretching off into that north distance
I mentioned, it did, but there were no cars going north
and it was getting late, Philadelphia readied to tuck me
in my bed, it was warm when I took a breath
I was orange in the orange of the street,
I thought about sleep

Presently

I grab this computer at 5:07
I write in present tense
I stare off into space
I have nothing to talk about
to noone here
I am not sleeping
they are sleeping
they does not begin with I
I type on the computer in the dark
it is 5:14
5:15 time is constantly in motion
unnecessary motion
noone thinks like this
especially while sleeping
I write my dreams down on paper
I say, "I dream I kick the can it rolls
across the floor and stops. I stare off in silence."
It's a can
I'm a can
flesh and bones and blood and plasma
presently growing old and living
I ramble
it's 5:17
You're asleep
I put the computer down and stare at it
I write a few more lines and I scratch my beard
I stop to correct a spelling mistake
thank you Tif
I am done with this poem
the world is still floating
I think about how many dimensions there could be
there could be a lot.

Dark Step

The trees look pretty at
intermission like your eyes
dark sparkling lover of my
heart and your lips blare like
pink kazoos like no other
sound around us and who cares
if no one remembers our names
or faces? I remember; built
sculptures in word by word for
you on red carpets of the mind
mad world spinning fairy tale--
look up with me--

that music
in heaven are
angels crying

terrible things

I've been too afraid of your window
beaming gray into the night
my night like mid-afternoon sun 100
degrees we melt the earth with our stare
our feet jogging-- incoherently mumbling on
corner of nowhere Broad Street and 7-11
is a building a farce a herald of the dead
selling pretzels until 24 hours is up
and there's nothing left but poems and poets
endless words saying saying tell us be us love us tell us
terrible things

Flute

Is it coincidental that
reading Lawrence Ferlinghetti
at the John F Kennedy Center
he mentions a man with a flute walking
by, and I see, while reading looking up,
a boy walking by with a flute in his mouth
not playing but I imagine the serendipity of
the sound if that's an adjective at all--
I don't care and I put down the book to
write what I'm writing in the silent hall
and bullet holes zing to walls
like time going by--

excerpt

Where are we now? Where am I—? How—

            You say, oh, There’s just too much time slipping since I’ve been out wandering, and, oh, there’s just too much time passing since I’ve been gone—and I think that maybe if we all stayed young without noticing that would solve it, but I know somehow our minds would die finding a way back—

Here—

To the big round ikea Raymor container, glowing life urban outfitter’s bulb, where there’s just too much wasted time to empty out; eventually—

It’s scattered ashes everywhere where we’re going.

By the pond

God's given me the chance
to write so I waste it on vacant stars,
I'll carry my little treasures like Byron
in my back pocket, my back pocket's too
small, too small the flags of our states are ubiquitous
in vast room, and guess where I am with a man
his head's blown off and chunks are steel &
marble, there's a stage and leather upholstered
couch,
It's a love seat Jackie-O it's a love seat.

Summer

And thinking of you I realize
often leaves fall up
to trees back & forth paddling
     and fall is backward over mirrored pond
grieving by empty grave
     for my summer nearly
gone and gone are honey bee reflections
     fat and tormenting children,
when I was young they were
everywhere in pink grass
and now like ghosts
     so nearly gone, and
now like us, our flowers
     so nearly gone twisted
round and round and round
so nearly gone

I don't care anymore, this is my life

Who'd ever heard a'
gas station turnpike New
Jersey swamps? Driver AWOL and
no ones got the balls to step up and drive
this sonuvabitch double decker blue beauty
PA bound over quotable Ben Franklin
& his darling bridge (also blue)-- My
murky brown-green waters like jewelry
in the sun, crackle hiss miss
in golden summer rays rays, this
must be the road the gators take
to New York sewers circa 1888 on
weekend vacations from Florida
tired a' golfers lost their 80 dollar
Topflite balls and go divin' clear
everglade water hazard arms dun
been bit right off "Oh, holy shit Christ!"
the government'll reattach it, or watch ya
die, just mark off your sosh, three-two-four
it's what ties us to those great heroes
of American pasts, Oh, and the income tax, too

Now let's get this bus a' rollin' south mama so's
I can ice this knee Broadway tired
and Broad Street stoned;

We're alone on Bus little sailboat, sailing down
only you and me, we're floating home
or away from home or whatever home is
anyways, and where we're going?
I don't know...

Seems about the right time

Boy the East River looks nice today
though I hear it's really shit
and that's what Long Island looks like
if that's what I'm looking at (or just tagging),
no wonder the Islanders are bad
(but young), makes me think--
passing under "safe" pedestrian tunnel--
I amble--never made my peace with hero
Doug Weight's retirement (how we're all
dying--older dying, gray haired dying--
look at me-- dying) still wonder
at that old number 39 magical passes in
the offensive zone coated white ice,
transition back check between those blue lines
While I'm here at East Riverside Park not
sweating under the trees, little sickly New York
sad trees, safe from computer entry, every website
BLOCKED, slave labor internships about ready
to say BYE-BYE New York skyline,
hello New Jersey, rest in the orange grip
of Philadelphia--
some currents on the surface are brown,
Where fore swims the fishies, oh?
Why
they
swim
so
fast
crying, burnt out in the waves?

Reachin out to the my past so pillowy gone

Why there me Newark in the fog,
what must be goings on on
Broad Street? There I'd get
peanuts (one dollar) walk with bottle
water and catch the sunny glint off
big Prudential cause all the buildings
in Newark say Prudential, at least all
the ones I seen, even the one
that buried Chinatown, Planes
takin' off to their towns
other towns & cities America other
time zones urban sprawl and
dying, wouldn't you say? so say that
other Penn Station down near Market
Street gateway to the Ironbound, Brazil,
Men in old jalopy yellin' out windows
traffic struck not movin' an inch, Portuguese
is what ya hear & music, ya there's music
coming from off by the railroad railyards,
but I'm past it (years pass) Budweiser ever
crawling, even on wheels, double axle--
back-n-forth
back-n-forth
Oh, Newark
for soft bed and rest

Suns over Newark

Crash stars go heavenly Passiac
waters steel skeleton rusted
holy angels, boney rot rot
golden man's sun on
New Jersey, wherefore did'st
thou star tumble in blue globe
upside down, I must be watching from
the Milky Way yeah, See all the
cute dead burnt circles dwindle teeter
blinking out
million miles away

Stormy Bus Stop

Brown funny high rise topped by
wooden water towers and
my little 5 year old self
thought they were made up
in my youthful Spider-Man comics
and villains  terrorizing New York Water Supply,
sun dips below the hard blue
cloud ridge, solid and only its light
a memory, memorial; It's beginning
to look like Megabus standing in rain,
winds got that summer roll on
thunderstorm feel and track to
track regional NJ Transit lays
down foreboding prelude, time to
rain, saw Noah's immemorial pasts
preparing for God's sad storms

Goin'

Here I am without tv
and writing comes so
naturally (Oh, without internet too)
just pencil & notebook,
adjacent to my table- two men
one high on heroin? Saw the
needle used, showed his friend
(grand scheme) one cop I guess, said
He'd have shared but bathrooms
locked and buzzes, my shirts sticky
with sweat almost forgot it's-- warm outside
in the climate controlled AC, it seems like
winter or some calm fall day in paintings;

that's a lie, it's balmy-- hot,
felicia'd say it's like Taiwan,
almost, cept less humid-- how that
could be true, I'd hate to know and
clack of walkie-talkie down the aisle, if
only my phone'd charge I could
get to the bus station, sweat and wait
for my driver-- throw my shit inside;

I'm going- south Philadelphia
hop the bus
home.

I had a religious experience

Grays outside across street
woman in gold skirt and low cut
black blouse takes cellphone stance
(in building opposite) and watches
teeming like 1950s Times Square
crowds sense of loss--somethings
ubiquitous--
Wow a cd player, its been awhile
UFO saucer shaped player of
useless shit, I listen to the haunting echo of
footprints, cash register tolls, men
holler to each other 'cross street
construction caverns,
the NOW classical music of the
urban fantasy, tall buildings overlook
tired souls, oh, we're empty like little
sad pigeons pecking our way through shit
and precious stones--
     smell of concrete crumble,
I just realized it's over cast--it's
what I meant by gray outsides
and no rain, are you kidding me, no rain
just cloudless cloudy gray sky
whirling endlessly magnetized
growing cancerous cells whyxxxzl
Hail Mary mother of God
pray for us ignorant masses
diving headlong into bleak subways
inhaling smokey plants and
cellphone tower waves, pray
for us who have been dead since birth
sleeping on street corner madness dying
     knock down our roachy walls
our brick-a-brack terror dreams
slipping molassas thick rises
purply dawn--
grant us your womb
so that sadness and life the living
death, aging may release its golden
liar grip
     I've fallen like bridge and choas
white--
Bus gurgles hours off down 95
straight away sit floor above n' roll
two hours older
I miss all my suffering ones
Your youthful eyes

Thus it is
forever today and
never
never--

D E -

With trolling voices this is
when I--
Aww Hell, I conjure you face
sweet smile & dark hair cut now
but once wavy over your eyes,
I'm ready to say "fuck"
and walk out, hear the road
crunching outside underneath
the subway lines out Brooklyn
to bus station & anywhere else,
Great West stretching to
mile wide Mississippi or
southern heat and fresh fruit river delta
instead of bluey floors
water treatment tanks
talking bitches
and
boring ass videos-- beep beep deep deep
Cas Calloway--

Moses traveling the East River

No sun & no stars, that's you
Manhattan mid-town sky,
it's night-time blue glow
eerie phantom spectral sunset,
reflect blackened windows go-go-go
up 30 stories easy
new-age pyramids commemorating
corporate greed, CEO bonuses
and high-rise offices (how cliche')

Dear old Robert Moses-asleep
face up in pretty grave-
how many flowers are laid at your feet
still? You take them,

we take one glance at shiny grinning face &
walk some 20 blocks,
Oh, well a poems in there somewhere,
Ya love New York.

St. Patrick improv

I make believe (I'm a child) childishly
that I'm sitting strung out facing Kerouac New York
in his seat at foot of St. Patrick's Cathedral
dusk and rush hour
heavy wood romantic doors behind
rushing crowds run off to live to die
come from Times Square ignore marble steps
but heartbroken there's a restoration
project & stained glass window
Visions of Cody is obscured
ah, there the police are going again,
so murdered at birth we are
an' linear streets go-ooooooh
North and South
over the bland walls left stranded,
I'm contemplating the setting sun already set
in reality not really setting just floating
or falling? Or not even there?
The end of a sentence & fire rages near
near hot dog stand, what's a cop's care in
Old York but terrorizing the ice cream man?
We sure as hell are fucked,
right?

Pencil shavings

Went back & walked NYC
without you, felt alone beneath lonely tall buildings,
like I could cry for all the children growing old
unknowingly in 5th Avenue penthouse apartments
talking on wireless headsets & dodging traffic--

Hey me! Retarded anachronism sketching notes
on white notebook while you're on solid blue bus
rolling south on I95 steady, everyone of
those passengers locked into G3 matrix reveries
awaiting the AI messiah, I'll hold you for the rapture
if it comes, where it's extra-dimentional insane--

and why, oh, why won't this notebook scroll down?

Stupid

Car breaks squeal at steady intervals
light switching NYC street
up above I catch the sound
with my hand with my ear with my nose
inside two story raised roof terrace
rooms rising (fallingrising) up two more stories
Chelsea Star Hotel like
Arabic Middle Eastern Flag logo
brown & sandy under
heavy powder blue sky sifted,
the world's so small for eyes
yet big & clumsy & beautiful (sometimes)
for the mind if only we'd
see it as it is on strings spinning round
firey gods, timeless and young--

Me

What time is it? Jesus...
I can't tell and tho the
light's off I see
everything like shit
's still in the toilet and this
last beer tastes like I'm only
trying to finish it to sleep and
is that all I am container for
poisonous gases liquefied, how
I've forgotten to write anything
but the truth that burns
magnesium bright in tonight,
or wherever whichever how I am
an estranged idiot who works best
as holy spectre, respected only
because I'm never seen walking alone,
I'd drop my head to the sound of roving
cars outsidebeside wide open sky
blue blue fireball ozone thrill, Me
I've many miles to bleed for the horizon
all lonely skeleton x-rayed paradise perspective
like my little boy stoner voice
bewitched bewitching fucked

Food

Who'd sit across from me?
Would bury their head,
do bugs strike same wound twice
like i think they did,
itching my leg, trying to
conjure images of no sensation
which don't work all that well
with rambling and a lot of
words start double u--

it's obvious
and lighthearted,

decaying in my bag are
nectarine & orange,
look at the food square,
pyramid, circle,
it's accurate & important,
Yes--

untitled

Well when I sat at that
church near Rockafeller
decadent plaza

in NYC

Did I raise my head from
angry parents, tight skirts and fragrant lunches
to catch
filtered light on stained glass relief
50-->60 years

back

flies on charcoal colored trash cans
an' finnish kid sleeping off 15 hour
jet lagged awkward convo

in room

when I gotta shit (and do)
real quick, get outta there,
let'em sleep yes

I think to ask him--
what the fuck?

Reread I'm nothingness

One chapter of my great epic
     complete (minus editing/
a reread) on to progressively
     denser stuff--

It's daunting
     me poor poet of Philadelphia
born teller of disjointed
     impressionist illusions
jotting jotting pencil marks
     typed word document reading notes,
prose--

I saw Monet today,  he frowned
     read Kerouac, in some spa
cried of lonely nights
     and mosquito bites
doused in second hand smoke

Drag'em

Nice of them to open roof terrace
when I'm paying over
50 dollars, one night
for a room smaller (and not to
mention with less privacy)
then a cage motel in 1940s skid row
oh Lord, or St. Francis of Assisi
give me my bum accommodations
bless these tired feet with
your stigmata,
umbrella rotates counter-clock-wise
back-and-forth in the windy
late afternoon
two floors up and I've
no dinner--
some trail mix,
afraid to leave my bags behind

Rainy

the night's a sequential imaginary

beer can filled left to right chorus and

the rain's pit-pat-sheeeeeerrrrvvvv

chaaaachaaaaeeerrvvvv tiiiiiisssssss 

fillin' up the street vinyl gazebo it

won't stop falling and we're stuck

like first thing I thought of's gone

raspberry sun and morning milkshake clouds

A Poem about Manhattan

Motor carrier NYPD Safety Unit
leans on courtesy, professionalism, respect
white & blue police van nice slick hair and
authoritative face officer-something-something
wave to passing fire engine going
west on 31st street toward
Manhattan fires or crazy
taxi cab yellow car collisions,
help us cross the street
that River Styx buildings
so high they siphon light through steel tubes &
look like Hades New Yorkers
fear death and worship downcast faces on Broadway
lit up golden

Loading

Starting to taste the
unsqueezed lemons in this tea
ha ha um I cool down 99c on
31st street and 8th ave
laugh to myself bout guys gonna
park to wheel in a bunch'a yeast
labeled fragile on the brown cardboard box-- well
my hat sinks lower but
my head burns softly
in hours closer to 6pm
where yesterday the sunset lined
up to flow of streets (how rare! the urban plan!)
the great get-away
my my empty trunk slinking
home when work & day is done

Chelsea Stars

The Chelsea Star Hotel
what's there to say?
It's a piece of shit with
this metal sheet floor,
little diamond shapes like the
back of a fire engine
luggage goes tunk tunk clunk
four beds to room,

woo hoo
I can't wait to clutch at my pillow in sleep
waiting for the pretty breath
of dorm-mate girl (saw H&M bag
but you never know)
and the glint red moon
of her knife

untitled

Beginning to suspect
Subway & Dunkin' Donuts are
owned by the same monolithic
gobble-up mega-corporate
entity,
unless they just play the radio
under mahogany lights and
I'm the jester catching
subliminal messaging--
and how?
'cause I hold my bags real tight
no one'd take'em
I'd like to see them try
got one eye on them
and my feet
always

I AM

Wonder if all these heads
thinking, believe I'm a phantom,
a figment in the psychological
filament, like I know they are rainbow
creations of my fevered god mind
what fool horror I am to birth this world
to see everyone die in fear,
unknown eating the fishy afterbirth gluttonous
monster, stalking the aged, the young,
the pretty ignorant couple, the saint,
sinner, the rich, the poor,
criminal of all Aeons purged

It was Anniversary of D-Day

I wanted to sleep
along sound of cars
passing sadly in the egg yolk night,
I packed my pillow, tucked
under right arm, black socks
and black comfortable shorts,
old cut at knees sweatpants &
eternal white string-already-tied, tip-toed
downstairs, taste of toothpaste
linger, sat on white couch too
small for legs but closest to
window over street, the damned music/
the misty myth, outside
boiled up in gurgling water (dangerous),
I rest my head above angry four wheel drivers, and
where's this road go but north and south
it's lovely-what-I-wished-for-sleep

Hostile

Thinking of sleeping in that hostel
is making me rethink this whole
internship New York DEP thing
Me and five maybe six other
guys in dorm beds coveting
each others suitcase bags left overnight
all sleeping open eyed
clutching zipper & strap
thinking off into Chelsea night
wonder at who carries a knife
and where the train for Brooklyn leaves
tomorrow

Eyelashes

So I'm sitting
diagonally behind
this Asian (Korean) woman
in crazy plastic wrapped head gear
samba music & smell of
hair salon everything is
white cept four chairs are red
and four are black,
the fans are shaking and spin
dir dir dum dum durm durm
and it's funny we're the only two here
she's got her head down in
black bag sirens going off
outside rushing by on New York
32nd Street & 5th Ave
I've got my book open
hiding this poem from her
'cause I'm embarrassed she might
think "This sulking stalking
behind me guy in gray shirt
is something else, writing about me,"
because I am
while I'm waiting for Felicia
Hollywood big eyelash extentions
and my books got tiny black font
I use an Office Depot Fine Pt. pen
black ink
I stole from USIP
to write

told ya I wasn't done

$10 dollars look, hey
it ain't the 1950s
when you didn't even live
just wish ya had--
and Megabus rollin
where the Greyhound ruled
toward yellow mornings (turn your head)
where the sun folds up the Potomac
to Largo, the Metro affluent
chugs slow clug clug clug over
bridge (little guard towers)
miles away,

we stare back at ourselves over bathroom sink,
every wrinkle, every scar,
cry for the humanity I can't forget,
closing our eyes--

First of the night

America runs on Dunkin'!®
buries me like a fool
looking for greater things
in our pasts, collective
waste water plants on East River
edges of Brooklyn
and the Hudson is cold 
even in winter like 
I wouldn't eat fish caught
at Coney Island
or New Jersey for that matter-
tattoos of orange-purple-white
on all our eternal faces 
undigested paintings
belly-- 

second night

Ice my knee at
30th and Madison
8th floor window 8 floors up
(old and worn out I'm--)
watching little black dog
in white apartment
how he plays so light,
how does he pay? to live so good, watches tv
on the couch-- Columbia campus sprinklers
to wash the sweat of day walking in New York,
little boy says "thank" you for his ball,
you gave it back to him, sounds so
Hell, bikinis for everyone in Central Park
the Night ain't getting any younger
just found morning and there are no
stars in Manhattan and bar full up with
old men puke on grates outside in alley ways
under apartment windows are brains that
think of life turn yellow, alive and
die, unconcerned

Parks

While you slept I played with
your hair in the park
snuck a look down your shirt
touched your legs (as a joke)
you weren't awake,
thought up all these crazy thoughts things
to tell you, but you were out
I forgot them
sleep sleep under trees
where it's not so hot though hot (as away from them)
saw a guy hit in the head by Frisbee throw
worried you would be, (me protecting you)
there're no professionals out there,
brushed little pollen drops from
your clothes, you eyes closed
thinking what?
Dreaming what?

White Horse Tavern

Dull blue shingle corner bar America
1800s dreary Village kids forgotten
printed over history--
I'll take the cheapest beer, yah
Budweiser for $5?
dull eyed bartender
wipes black sweat band arm band
and I'm sure when you wrote it
with Jack dancing drunk
or fighting,
it wasn't a cheap trend,
So I had to, black pen imperfect font,
leave it 50-60 years
like

"GO HOME
Jack!"

and ethereal white knights die in misty
ole New York

Tilt my head

A wonderful nightmare thing
I'm unaccustomed to afternoon drawling on on on
window open and air-conditioning--
I turn tho my voice is raspy and low, somehow
try to tell about the portrait painted,
a likeness paint and colors and crying
but I'm quiet, sound is weighed by gravity
how funny, I'm dying like Gerard
explaining his oil and water and acrylic lyric
I don't remember why,
He died 58 years before
blood soaked I lost my fight with
bleak existence

A wonderful nightmare thing

A continuation, How will they
believe I'm married twice
in my uncle's split level cul-de-sac house &
Dave & Buster's like carnal video game hell.-- I thought
the first was a dream-within-a-dream--
it was, the second was groggy gooky fog,
brail-deaf confusion, two events at once, and Dave pulling
string cheese from plastic barrel, I want to go home,
to uncle's place? the only place I know?
My family not yet returned and where's Felicia?
And African prince gifts me large coins, are they fake?
look like cookies on the inside--and little lost
Africa girl eats pretty flowers on the invisible window-wall outside,
Now I have to tell my parents I married...can't remember
an Stoney, "So small," I keep saying "so small"
rolls in a kind of sea foam shrinking, I pet him--

I've given up my mind

I've been named ruler of Japan,
I'm already emperor of China, I unite the Kingdoms
they pick me up in marching line, it's morning, no time and
we're already there. I'm walking toward
my coronation ceremony, someone is
laying a path of swords to follow, a regal affair
walking chest high and powerful, I hear the
commentary, perched above the worldly threat, looking
down in case I step on shuriken, blade, knives--
A voice compliments weapon layer, apparently
he's very good and available for most events,
I wonder will anyone notice I'm gone, will the
Japanese be offended? I've worn green Mao cap,
should'a worn a better shirt, it's like gray Super bowl 1995-1996,
I finally descend the stairs, I'm powerful scary
a white man yells (wearing gray suit hunched in corner by woman shrouded)
"Donovan McNabb! Donovan McNabb!" a sulky laugh, I turn to Tommy asking why--
He tells me, under darken, night time sky,
McNabb could have been great if he'd tried--

Stoney

Remember little one when I could hold you in my hand,
when you strode on couches above the snow,
when sleepily I wrapped you against my chest
all those years ago?
now we wait, your chocolate hair mixed with gray
and hopping back and forth between our beds,
I'd listen for high pitched meow where
you'd be like, where's my food or where's your food?
Oh my yellow-green eyed baby, looking up
I'd carry you to see the world, I'd carry you
home.

Dreams House

Three survivors, a small house,
why when the time came were they there?
No caskets, containers to drift into dream,
only beds and a kiss, some alien beast,
some good samaritan hunger terror,
she fell in love with words and the fantasy
my thoughts-- uneasy,
Did they drift away immortal? Were they devoured
in sleep? In dream--
a dark room seen from overhead-- single home peach colorless
square eternity and the end of the world

*dreamed on the morning of the Rapture May 21, 2011

Eternally

Some sort of death camp mad cap romance,
my afternoon's shirtless spitting raspberry seeds
into plastic bag reveries, rain beats to neighbor's alarm,
wet outside and purified earth, red carpet to rapture,

I decide
to walk slowly
in cleansing showers,

walk backward under
dripping moons
and heartless star,

wet shoes marked
by grayed escapes
alone,

storm picks up stereo-sound beating down
cover your head lower your head
shield me eyes and sweat mixes with drenched hood,

cool May and where's all that spring yet to come?

how's the seasons revolve around the sun?

Travel home on Broad at south street light

And they stand on corners 'cross
America from screaming,
my angelic bards of night and tattered clothes,

the taxi cab blinks backfire cool green
smell dust and construction zone 2am

I'll walk home if I gotta
desolate souls--

Bus is tired blue sadness
and minds estranged,
We're all silence waiting,

It's late--

We think of home,
not running engine at light
subway stops above ground niteowl early Tuesday,
we think of home--

heavy bag, cheating wives, dvr'd tv's supplication--

burnt offerings, savior prayer, my knees in aisle--

our night or mad gods or fire--

what're we all doing
up so late- alone?

Mornings of May

Church bells bounce from
somewhere beyond the blue,
a soothing little chime- humble and
treading faithfully over rooftop white glow-
when it's over and trailing off I expect a cheer
in the silent, bird chirping windy silence;
I clap at my chair, alone,
creaking, and weighted to
my deathly sensational existence,
the weakness in the loving minds of men,

Oh, fleeting dreams
so deep I can never carry them to wakefulness

Merely lacking proper sleep is a valid excuse

Ugh, it's muddy rain brown rain

glooking glopping slop violet haze

and Oww, where's that cat last night

who kissed me good bye and stared

"Idiots," she thought unmoving, I dump

those clouds on street corner damp turns,

waaaaaah bend in extra-dimensional pows--

firework's caged sunset torrents, it's steady,

mouth silting after immeasurable moorish formations,

a battle overhead, great invaders of the East, my directed thoughts--

and writing down the world trickles by,

is a challenge that tastes like bone marrow jelly

cooked by peasants on shrinking shores,

my play--

Joking

At night wishing I could film this image
open (tore back) ceiling where I'm asleep
(no death from sudden adult death syndrome fears)
waiting for someone (Joe, Tif) to climb stairs and find me
alone on white couch under handing light serene,
but I'd have ta play two parts like Lon Chaney or
crazy fool Lindsay Lohan teen remake, ugh
what a thought, right...I sorta entertained it for 20 minutes
reading Book of Dreams I'd be asleep
but flash so clear in mind's-eye what a view from heaven
what a joke without a punch-line clever spin

Saint

Time to scratch this magic
chipped pencil (sitting in for pen
that's shown up blue or red) at
window glossy, green weeds grown
around sunken roofs of row home houses,
little corner bars and sandwich shops,
Rusted black circular monstrosity
wavers and rises and laughs in far
to background blue sky, streaks
of white illusion conceivable depth,
the ozone layer, the magnetic field, the lie;

looting by the sun on my window perch
day-time whispers of afternoon scrawl;
how to know so fortunate a singing pigeon
tick-tapping on silver flap (the kind beholden to
dryer exhaust) he peaks listless--chiaroscuroed
in the alley, plaster cracked below,

monochromed hero of avenging distance
jester of outer space romantic fantasy,
truth in hand under tornado tsunami command;

lighting bridge barn doors on fire
like Brooklyn bridge Armageddon,
get to your feet and melting shoes,

It's all in Revelations,

my squinting affairs lil' wings--

My entrance escaped

You struck me dead of night
when I forgetfully dream,
notebook placed near pillow
and silly thoughts of sightless Philadelphia skies
alleyway skies over city to blinking red light
it's getting brighter- across bounding horizon
my vision my eyes my caring near-sighted glass anomaly,
I write that down I pay the toll I,
jersey turnpike tool anonymous clerical beast
oh that's funny, I dropped it on my shoes
samba soft sole black Adidas 1968 (don't
cost much) 4:11amdrearysleepdreamtime,
you're angelic chrome blades
I'm wrapped against may chills
calling backwards into daylit revolutions
Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!
my bloody arrival.

And this little notation

Sequential image lantern slide shining light illusion
my life's become like 1800s technology a fantastic show
with missing pieces, I leave them in different places
some dark hole cosmic blunder suffocating endless worlds
where your hair likely blocks out billowy suns,
billowy suns? My mercurial visions revolving closely
about our starry stars, my star; Remember when you wink
I die a rapturous death, gladly--
your silhouette dances at each click,
old-untimed switch and day dream attics,
alone I think of smiles that blaze bitter night
I'm wrapped around you
at the center of the dimensional black hole
You raze solar systems, I stand by your side
You hold onto my arm tugging my sleeve;

Waterfront-SEU

Everything's tinted
grey-blu melted sky,
singing Amazing Grace
under my breath for all
lost creatures;
Thin wind breaker & matching
hat trying to decide at
trash can Kleenex,
dog shit in plastic bag
above the rim,
*siren* *siren* whirls,
along the Potomac
river smell & southwest wharf;
no coffee at the Cantina Marina, old;
Open for Nat's games &
setting sun would be beautiful
1 pm in afternoon
gently down the stream,
song is haunting when I think now,
as a child innocent
confident in infinite years,
Life is but a dream,
wrinkling--
Cloudy & lonely rock,
it scares me to sing
paranoid & aging
when I was a little boy
would I die? Laughing into night forevers
& wizard immortality
with the sea like uncaring
beyond the river flows
and I hum,
god black crow on
light transparent orb welcome entrance
black steel tree,
there's wires within,
beating red blood--
I see world vision out my eye
like devilish spiral top
blinking place to place,
so I sense sometime
I left my realities behind
drowning
in greys--
the river murmurs
merrily, merrily 

a violent anachronism

Har har crippled ark
me Blakian love like
craggy rock teetering rock
starve us to the bitter seas
call doves shit rain melds
gravity,

I'm incoherent
abstract painting (frenchie)
thick waves of oil paint
and smell of turpentine

Quick!

I brush your slender hips,

O they're gusts o' wind
in purple streaking hell
made altered reality
on canvas,
breathing-
a vision-

and it's worthless to write this poem (while I write it)
with maggots fill my mouth (in brown ground dirt)
and paintings will rot and rust (in warehouse art museums),
and I'll age and wrinkle and forget and die
leaving disembodied words to be forgiven by
clean servers seeking new spaces deleting unreadable text;

Dream B

I'm sitting precarious on slim wooden dock boards
fevered head under pillow dreamy like deep green water
rushing displaced, there's unearthly whale turning starboard
black with white marks and looking like heaven crashing,
I'm wondering how all life is moving sleeping, tide rising
should be under, under; cold belching nothingness,
It's telling me, I can reach out touch it's breaching skin,
It's god on earth and I'm leaping still, it's passed with
waterfall one thousand feet, no bottom to the sea
only green abyss sucking at my feet and splintered hands

Interviews and Interviews

get bus to New York
the subway leaves 27th St goooooooin
uptown 42nd (old den of fairies stalking sailors
park bench and night time wine)
off at times square and on the (7)
Grand Central's next (still on 42)
couple blocks to the hudson on foot
FDR drive/Warehouse
change of shoes (no hat;forgot tie)
back out half-hour lapse--
won'dring how my mind
rushes off on its own, do I scratch my face?
cross my arms? Hand's in pocket?
I'm hyper-normal or something
I'm not sweating, walk the eight blocks to 9th
cause to 31st is my bus- supposedly
it's two hours late, I need this bitch complaining behind me
for sure-
but it's here, engine roaring ignoring
the jacket I zipped up an hour ago,
I stare pretty hard, but acquiesce to it's wheels
they'll take me home (o'er 95) to
just miss Joe's tuna salad,
and the house smells like I'm tired-
I change.

Dreams A

If she wants these turkeys boiling morbid
from now on she's gonna have to drop this
poison herself, pock marked day-glo lime
melting the ground in sick greens sucking earth grass bubble shit
all for some BBQ video game fantasy
I'm stepping over thousands (some so small and colorful)
outside their sturdy terrible cage reflections, why can't we
just take some bullets while my vomit
continues to flow deep dark forest colors, I'm soaked

If you can make sense of this it's for you

There were woods, a forest in this dream
I had rushing through when a murderous eye
peering from unseen eons broke my stride
bounding down church stairs (I was,
                                            not the eye,
                                            it was implanted in my
                                            memory or the background,
                                            sinister)
took one step, then three
I lost your face, those starry eyes
we held some dark secret, huh? Right,
in a way I recall, like blood as I kneel
above my sister on Nana's stoop
                                             (It was so red)
Only you would know memories
that pour from my mind drowning
I rip at them one by one, stretching
to get to that core, gooky and all gobbled up,
pulling branches when I hit the door
the air is like it's not even there, when you think about it--
like it never cares, just remains invisible watching us fall,
sound is a vacuum too in my little dream space
that seemingly insanely spans my mind (A ticking bomb
                                                           you love, and listen
                                                           lovely)
Alarms buuudooop dooo daaah kitch baaaa
preloaded LG nightmare rescue groggy,
maroon curtains ha ha-ing at me 12:30pm
they block out the day the sun the day really do
o
o
oooh
Hold me, in my dream curse
in this aging life smiling
kiss my reveries and I'll love you
like I always have
as we whiiiiiiiiir whiiiiir whiiiiiiiiiir
with spinning dizzy earth
Amen.

Benediction

I smell mango on my hands
pins-n-needle fingers tapping remote control rubber,
and ages ago the Dutch thought
these things and put those villagers to work
probably killing them, or in the very,
historically correct, least hastened their trek
to afterlives of their own creation (volition)
Which is why I don't question your existence God--
I welcome it, in the brawling imaginary sky balling home
tears and mana and hellfire
and when I look back you turn my wife to salt pillar
in a way so the Dutch guy over there swipes
his finger a taste and wishes it was sugar ha

Anyways

don't cha know the rain's got this street all closed off
and this cops got Kevin Arnold innocence pouting
torrentially on dark features in the night getting later,
the train bridge arching through time stamped in place
on old suburban roads off the highway rumbling center,
my feet damp from running few blocks to car
20 minutes or so ago and two detours, my heart heavy
missing something I can't place in the leaning hours toward daylight,
the bed groans, my head sinks, I think of sleep, love,
the windows streak, I move toward them perpetually,
I miss the turn and the street rises on long ago primordial hills
and I'm sure some dinosaurs or the ice age, I tap the wheel
so the cd skips, thin opening in window forgets the song,
I lose the sound
and hey, I'm not sure I was ever listening

Disappears just white enough

Hey, if I cover up my shirt (bright Orange)
no one could see (but it's cold or it seems to be)
clear and wispy cloud sky disappears just white enough
to obscure god, like my glass (I washed) only to pour
some milk, (it's neverending that cycle of human understanding;
it has to be washed/someone ought to wash it/drink it) left in
metal tasting gray sink to wash and rail on stainless steal,
a dog yelps under clever powder blue somewheres past the dryer pipes
and unused chimney grave yards, I hope he's okay invisible...
I change and remnants remain looking up at me, bubbling,
thoughtless-- I'll take a page from the book,
look it over, plaster it on the sky wall, the deep horizon pillowman,
the America that keeps on rolling, the text that reads like water,
silently waking toward better mornings

Dinner

House takes on
warmth of dinner
tip-toeing in from kitchen,
scent and oven beat against
rain streaked windows
of gray outside,
and who is God but a little girl
returned home from school?
In my joy-misery earthly reverie
uncontrolled I ask--
Where is my mother- who?
preparing dinner highways away
anyways, smile for her and dress up,
wait for steak (london broil), sweet potato,
brussel sprouts, bread, and wine--
A misfit refugee little family
settled down to eat
where cheers in clear glass
safe from hateful stars,
a red moon titan world

Library

Standing outside library on hustle to-and-fro and north-south street she

thinks of other libraries in the cold elsewhere biting her lip, flipping her finger

like lighter at hem of skirt black against slender tan legs, 

doors stare back, cold reflections protect shelves and novels, old women

shuffle, speaking, ignore; a boredom,

a closed library-verse multiplied space with infinite doorway entrance,

outside the flowers grow and the tv's blaze and language dies,

If I'd hold her in my arms and she'd cry

I could forgive my dried up voice

And she’d likely sing

“Besides—they’re only plastic coated,”

(forgetting her overdue books)

Houses fixed by roadside stare

The alleys reach that parallel nowhere

Bleeding left to right one-way dimensions,

There families wait and eat and wait

Watching from protruding tri-window ledges

my olive corduroy pants and Mao cap

passing by, labored by maybe noticeable limp

and slouched posture (I’ll have to fix- sometime)

and no destination but absent-minded wonder

under yellowing sky weary blue cloud cluster dusk 

Like Fractured Happiness

And like fractured knife impurity

It ever widens, ceaseless sky

Rotated upside down, so I’m

Holding my breath or vomit,

Pretty fairy lithely drowns us believers,

Though we’re the only ones

Massed and twirling at dawn

Inside twisted city ruins, walls

Show brick cracked and red brown

Under plaster that takes cue from rough seas,

And beware the rip-tide at night,

Undertow doing that silly harmless

Dance, harmless until skies grow blue eternity

Sparkle imageless and die,

Like where are the stars that guide us?

A childlike question I’m prone to ask

But with illimitable vast consequences

That I mean to mean but

Meaning much more than my words can gather,

Old owl in tree miles away spotting prey, inland—

Ignore my foamy hand and tight brow, my tattered hair

And fading youth—