Baking in my sleeping bag

You're on the other
side
being abstract, acting
distant,

I have a stack of
thoughts in front of me,
unfinished; have poems to
write, poems I
should be writing; instead

I'm writing this; an

alarm goes off, it's mine

saturday morning, you're
laying around somewhere,
Cootie Williams is blowing
Gator Tail; I shut the blinds

and the world outside
goes on and on and about
and out without me,

this poem is running, jazz is
dead, so are all those jazz
men playing, dead, but time doesn't
make sense anyway; it's
just going in circles, stealing
what it can,

which is everything,

we aren't friends; I can't see the
trees,

I'm hiding from the sun.

24 (that moment before sleep)

Want space to think
work my eyes in sockets
pick my brain in
your head it goes
tock tock tick roaming
tock pay for sterile
feelings make believe
me understand me fever-
ed night night
night becoming day becoming
sleepless becoming a day
without sleep woke at 6 didn't
ya? awoke at 6 awake,
Aren't you the same?
a little eastern phantom
storyteller no lie
no offense, I walked up
street this morning to bus
hat folded up in hand,
concentrate concentrate
try not to sweat, lasts all day,
what I did when I left, ah--ah--
what I--ah--what I saw say--
no rain but trick myself into thinking--
rain! I can't wait--there's none
space narrows, eyes narrow
nodding on couch--thought I saw
a rrr--gone now--lids down
lids--eyes--great--pan
flashing--oh you know know
I am running out, haven't put it together
turn off/on set to stand-by
gimme a few gimme a few
hours hours sleep dropping need
sleep

Short films

watch from two
holes in wall,

they become one; rotate
360°; bleed in and out;
focus unfocused make no
sense;

wall turns too, from
behind, from periphery
stabbing out

scene of river bed,
4 bodies, moving
north, south maybe,
gaining elevation,
going upstream,

one of them a boy,
so too, three others,

skipping rocks;

watch from mountain
perch, from holes,
from 9,000 feet above,

skip comets off the
surface of the earth,

listen to the magnetic fields

hummm hummmm hmmmmm

rock skips into space

burns
in
the
sun.

Tombstone

I am an imaginary
corpse,

I say things and
they are heard
but not understood

people nod their
heads "yes" at me,
people shake their
heads "no"

I think I am a crack
in the wall,

a cave on the side of
the mountain of
the world,

I have been replaced
by someone else,
and I do not know them,

I have been very careful
writing this,

I have to make sure they
don't hear me,

If I wake them up,

I am finished.

as long as it looks nice

there
are
times
when
all that
matters
is the
shape
and
look
and
feel
of a
poem,
Ill
jus
t stare
at it
ignor
ing
the
words,
bastard
doesnt
have to
say
shit
about
shit
anything
at all
and
its
fine
with
me
as
long
as
it
looks
nice

Finger Prints

I left the prints
somewhere in gusty winds
New Mexico
they're a hand me down
alright
regardless of how I
care to look at it,
they weren't my original
thought--I
     wouldn't have had a
notebook big enough
     to fit all that
THOUGHT
                   in it--
without running
low on lines
electrolyte pages
universal spiritual
economy
isn't doing well enough
to fight the alcohol/gasoline
cartel/horde,
     all my m$n$y & miles
surely the want ads
     will be enough
I paid by the AI ink blot
     I followed the
technological stratagem,
     stocked my head full
on them rules (I can recite'em)
     they're in the mail
right now, queued to my
address--directed to my brain
     injected into my healthily
diseased veins.

Behind the Counter

Corrode the middleman
corresponding to the cool
railroad ties of the present
indigestion, Same has his boys
waiting on the game, it's so loud,
thinking is harder than usual
impossible like usual,
sparkling hydroplane realities
continue as per the cost
per hour $25/to retire,
up to the equation
on the following line
Oh, my heart skips a beat
the radio rewinds
tortuously back-to-back
back to office report in
failure is on the horizon,
sandwiched between opposing
universes, and the grand stand
gold glowing speaker speakering
speaker cells for the fools to mount
the culling stead
TRAVEL ON THE BRAIN WAVES
FUCKING dark CORNERS
unbelievable -- irreversible 
climbing backwards on only 
GOLDEN tether
Last map of last purity
milky way galaxy galazy
we've knot yet scorched
wantonly,
a finger taps a table
with a mouth got
something to say
unheard over the mulling
rolling mouths of untalk
unthought pulsing earless
wurlds--through the galactic
windzzz--
She can't listen, tho,
kno, Sam can't hear,
it's a set up, get up,
get out now,
ANY WAY YA KEN,
I'm straight-jacketed,
won't return, can't remain
an almost familiar lost sound
on forgotten wind--

Stay for Dinner

the rain came down
on our pink umbrella
meaningusehelp-less
your sandals acting like
shovels, my shoes like
buckets, runoff flood-like
snake-like rivers and no
time for us to maneuver
just splash right through,
dark heavy coalblue sky
and your laughter and
my arm around your waist,
storm lasted the walk,
elevator ride, our kiss
goodnight and let up
shortly after I walked into
my room with one last
flash of goldwhitechrome
across the heavens.

Complications

I perceive my brain
like a broken stick in
the games caught on the
man-made pipes that
ruin the view, breaking rapids,
bundle leaves, tall grass,
growth in shallows, on the
unnecessarily blacktopped
edges of dirt seeking roads,

I am a closet phantom in
my own, only reality,
watching strangers pass,
writing their stories in my
fixed mind/meld  molten idea factory
bereft with excuses,
why & how & when &

does it even matter?

in the cosmos ending conspiracy
window, from soaring wooden
complex space station, I'm
drowning in applewood
smoke--sifting through
the membrane notions--
     waiting on the aftereffect
trip, the endless storyboard
of forgotten iconography;
     listen little lost one,
music grates like potatoes
on the slicing block fast food
assembly line falling in my
greased pan--
     boiled first I perceive reality
coming on, inventing itself.

Currently Broadcasting

consumerist American

pop culture surveillance

entitlement shootout 

plane crash damnation spectacle 

airing on the tired bright

tubes of the television set

fantasy--drowned out by

the griddle & eggs hatching--

at my table on 23rd,

no coffee, see I'm 

dying of some cyber-ailment

and can't handle the

caffeine, luckily my mind

still beats a slow average

pace or I'd be one with

the clean-up crew--paying 

attention, tallying the score--

getting outraged--sure, we

could be better, sure, we're 

progressive Trayvon

Martin's throwing skittles 

at the system,

Cops would'a gunned the

kid down anyways, 

I couldn't have cared either

way--both brainwashed

         zombies--melodramatic

         walking dead--he

         said, he said 7:17

         on the crucifix 

it's all shit, see,

it's all getting laid,

it's all what can I get,

it's all an inescapable hive

to protest,

and you can even

purchase that,

if you care enough to,

and if you feed into 

that void

you should shut your mouth 

& take it.

there's no right of complaint

in the BDSM knowledge-law-

fate-consumption-machine,

     you're a controlled thought 

     response robot

         so

         do

       what

      you're

fucking 

        told

         &

fucking

      believe.

Searching

You were sifting through
stones and sand and sea shells
as the sun set, rosy-hued and
baby blue, over the Chesapeake
bay, you told me the water looked
like velvet, and it did in a way,
there was a tree that had tumbled
from the cliff-side, had been worn
white and smooth by gentle waves,
stationary driftwood,
green algae goo hanging
from outstretched arms,
I stood on it's aged side,
tried to see what was beyond the
orange cliffs,
you found your fossils,
four of them, a gift for
your father, brother and me,
one for yourself,
I dropped them into my
shirt pocket for safe-keeping
and you held
onto my arm as we walked
back to the house (it was
getting too dark to see), pulling
on my sleeve,
thinking about sleep.

Last Para.

A car I recognized
pulled up
to a house I recognized
on a street I
knew from long ago.

I opened the door,
tossed my
bag on the passenger side
floor and got in.

I closed the door behind me.

Yellowed

Everything is coated
in a film
yellow dust,
some areas more
than others,
desk by the window
most of all,
I feel it on my
clothes, bed,
towels, on my
skin, in my mouth,
eyes, under my finger
nails, toenails, in
each fiber of the carpet,
chairs, sprinkled in
the cup of water by my bed,
I cannot escape it,
last night I lay in bed,
wool sock over mouth
trying not to breathe,
I feel it in my lungs,
sifting, sifting, sifting,
further down, is it
killing me I wonder,
will it kill me?
I don't even know what
it is, how it is,
why it is, I used a napkin
to wipe the layers
off my typewriter case,
it seems like dirt, is it
dirt? I'm afriad to tell
anyone about it, afraid to
ask, afraid it's not really
there, I want to by sanitary
wipes, but they'll run out,
I don't have any
towels, rags, shirts, pants,
to waste, I only have
a few more days, I am
buried in it, I am
yellow, sulfur is yellow,
death is yellow, suffocation.

Raining

watched the line of
piss fall from the balcony,
thinking even with the
rain falling hard, the
stream held together
exceptionally well, if
anyone was looking
out their window it wouldn't be hard
to tell what was going
on, then a car drove underneath,
five storeys down, I pissed
on its front bumper, its hood,
its front windshield, roof, back
window, trunk, rear bumper,
people inside probably didn't even
notice what had just happened,
and pulling out onto the street, they
disappearing behind planted
trees, brick walls, and
it kept on raining, and I kept on pissing
watching to see if the car would reappear
going  north on route 1,
but it never did, so I just went on
pissing five storeys down, waiting
for another car or an umbrella,
I really really had to go.

A Tunnel of Steel Reserve

Empty Steel Reserves,
individually bagged,
lay in a slim, brick-walled
tunnel under US route 1,
along with a few cans of
Coors and a beer you wouldn't
recognize side of tall boy
reading -IDE, offering
some kind of story of
night, from the night,
before, it's raining now,
cold, hard, January rain,
last night rained even harder,
imagine those hands seeking
respite from freezing wetness
of closing hours, darkened streets,
lonely highway passages,
imagined drunkenness, sadness,
un-watched aching eyes
peering into the fluorescent
bitterness of tunnels lights,
strange, english muffin looking
dripping ceiling scratched lengthwise
bladed hand of some horrible
nightmare beast,
imagine fumes of beer,
a story to fill last hopeless hours
of the day, day gone now, fading
into memory, imagine leaning
hearts, folded, buried, wishful
of old places, better days,
imagine a story lost
to time and ignorance,
speaking sorrowfully, gladly,
maybe regretfully to me as
I avoid the rain,as I
drink in the mornings
stories.