On Grief

The garbage burglars are outside on the curb,
rifling through recycling and making enterprise of the corner.
Good for them: their Ford pick up is overburdened with cans
and the general meltable refuse of the wealth of the hollowed outs.

How does the face in the window pane know me?
I don’t, and in the grief and uncoming of dark,
imagine he gives the murk to the light
like soft death to life.

My gods are of chance; savage and romantic towering
manifestations of equally brow-knotting impossible equations–

hump backed specters of patented invention whose lanterns illuminate prophesy:
shake my eyes in rooms where my father is dying,
where I am,
and the nausea of the living fills me
to the point of intolerable uncoming
when all unseals all breathe softly,
lightly, wretched anatomy, lightly.

and this in the shadows:
catheter piss coming from blankets encrusted in nameless desperation–

while suddenly found on the roof
the inexplicable truth of the summer night time.

On a Bird’s Skeleton

The herd mentality of capillaries,
the quiet plumbing clusters
puckered flowers of blood in
each small hollow nook
without the least rattle

later is music, when rhythm, deferred
by the death of the drummer is back
wrist twine
to twinkle resonance of emptied bones
humm
eyes closed while the cackle shakes up
the arm to pinch skin into feather

the last smell,
as faint smoke
hangs there.

On Midnight Walks and Sunglasses

Midnight walks in Paris,
and sunglasses,
when the garbage trucks hold court and city sidewalks
seem to chuckle beneath the rubber report of our soles.

So sue me: Achilles, even, had his heel
in the easy spires; the medieval brutality
made to reflect our greatest humanity!

O how faithfully we string him up,
dead and blood across Ecclesiastiland.

But back in Paris;
when the clock struck eleven
we were still in bed as the sooty brass
complained the hour.

You said, “j’écoutais Veruca Salt et Frank Black,

and I said, please spit out your french for I haven’t the knack.”

Just then a passing bum turned his dead suns to us,
so we giggled over another glass of the good stuff
when from the street their echoed the phraz

“Sous les pavees la plage!” and “Vive le LSD!”

So we shrugged off our shoulders the coats we had always been borne
descending the crypts to save our skins from the warmth.

On Kepler-22b and Hula Hoops

back when we were young, and the circle seemed not so cruel
nor such a fickle one with her always coming back around:
diameter,
clouds and what’s their character

to me it’s all matter:
of fact
of the air vibrating laughter
and plastic circuits ringing
the frequency of daughter:

torn around the corners,
Super 8 soft focus–

back then it was purpose:
all gravity and halos,

heavenly dynamos to the starry eyed
Greenwich Village inevitabilities;

but now the hula,
done for the setting sun’s return

seems not so sacrosanct
if this Earth should shrug us off the furniture
to send our own rich pursue another.

On OKCupid

O what a laugh, what fun to expect
in the fun hall all decked out American Apparel rodeo!

The faces are stacked and, like all young Jacks of
All You-Know-Whats it’s all there in the blink
or the botched skin and bread crumb pimples
of high school fantasies when

what who why (how if you were trying) and where
seemed to satisfy lithe Mrs. Hackmatt and why not?

She is from the time before *shrug*

so what if she’d known what was to become

of her pupils,
their genes,

bleached seeking relief in a sea of meaning
as brief as a semester with Derrida

would she be proud of the notes we passed undercover?

On Mechanically Separated Chicken

Good, it’s still raining without preamble,
without the usual hush or lull or fire schtick
in the dark of established ritual.

Naked, there are several things wrong with this picture–
for one, I’ve never been keener on that piece of me
being squeezed through the rigorous training
of a trim sterling spout;

the ecstasy, is inspired (no doubt) by the busy laboratory
of machine elves at work behind eyeballs and brains
to sex your salivate glands and convince you
you’ve got black friends

all lovin’ it unconsciously

when the rain speaks timidly of we.

3 Haikus about Chicago

I clatter and clank
along with the El train
hanging and sloppy

Pointedly, streets meet
where Polish intersections
sear in the snow banks

Lazy me and rocks
recline upon the lake shore
waiting for winter

A Haiku, For Some Drunk Girl

ambulance porridge
proclaims its own innocence
disco radiant

Some Haiku, For Some Drunk Guy

intestinal worms
keep the best of company
though it’s soon passing

For Francis, On His Departure

We woke on the banks
of the bleeding Mississippi
to the snore call
and screech of
a teetering locomotive.

Blear eyed and hungover like old poets,
wily prophets, we thought the same thoughts
of morning paralysis
against the beauty come in dawn.

We’d left our ancestors,
slimy, stuck to our heels:
sucking noise, oil spills,
smoke smells in a bar,

taking sinking old Chartres before it’s a park

and that look as you pass in the dark.

Nowhere else.

In the West the sun melts into the water
and traffic music matters more.

Experience hills with wonder,
(they would do the same for you,
if they had the chance)

but don’t be afraid to corner the beasts you need:
their pelts and frozen growls
are proof of daring deeds–

that they die for you to feed–

as you one day will bleed
between boots and Mississippi.

For Robert Kelly, Are a Few of These Poems Possibly

On the ghost of a pretense
I’ll proceed.
I speak now in accents,
as ever, but this in the voice
of one I’ve known personally.

Proud son of Eire,
at least in his surname
he seems to have always been old
and craggily handsome
gazing out like a hypnotist
below the cliffs of his eyebrows.

For Some ‘Lovers,’ in ‘Love.’ Oh and She Likes Sunflowers

Sunflowers seem to love to crack–
they are doing it constantly,
microscopically thunderous
and here on Earth
just a tiny morning gasp of life at last.

The morning is when they’re at their highest,
eager and hungry from the cold
and dark and creening desperately,
simply, sweetly

as we do, weakly
tangling limbs beneath the white kiss
of the sheets

your hips rise in prayer
and my eyes closed
I see it all clear.

For Some Dudes, on PBR and Gutter Punk Bands

Spun froth gold to the working man,
the drunk or ungenerous man
and his frontclothes of poverty–

all things in this metaphor must sparkle,
seek to counterfeit in words
the warmth of fork tines
lightly in the stomach.

Carrion luck bands rove the drink,
sailors of Huck Finn daring
upon a scratched and sketchy redoubt
perched cranially above a banjo

they all cradle PBRs in the crooks of arms,
finally caring

paternally leering at the world going by.

For the Cupcake Lady of Frenchmen Street for the Free Cupcake!

Bluntmaker I name you!

Wrapper of sugars not the least of which
I am sure
of the many fine rolls you’ve made
to the delight of the crowds.

All hopeful smiles are
after all
simply sweeteners added
for the medicine proper
which once delivered

administers a promptly linger feeling

like of fingers.

On Sensimilla

Sensible seeds these.

Millions of years,
chancing again and again
to create budding
a small well of wonder

incredibly useful
when inhaled deeply among
a concentrated hellish combustion,

destroying all parts
to transform molecular thoughts

what a gas

to be back in our blood and relaxed at last.

Not About Flowers

Lengths of living sisters
giving birth and twisting
their tracks behind them

upward to the brain and autoerotic enstrangulations,
the always source of poet’s choice–

some vice, some inhabitant
that would not vacate the property
without first blanching all the walls with lye,

a stamen by any other name…

My apologies to the same:

the rows of careful cultivation
and pain waiting on the tips
for fingers too curious

or flexed with unearned strength.

For an Obnoxious Man, From His Polite Wife, On Going Home on the Subway

Testy now in the gloom of the station,
3:15 am and no sign of electric light
rolling salvation

only thoughts of what’s waiting

patient

and living.

This labyrinth then,
the stairs and yellowed stains in the stench

are gone

and time seems less a weight
than some last minute invitation to lay aside the day

and anticipate the subway seats;
orange and yellow and tangerine.

For Cthulhu, Dread Cthulhu Entombed in Sunken R’lyeh

Tentacular homicide–
a crime? or the will of gods making good
upon the mortal name?

As for that only the passing claim a lack of ignorance
and not for hacks and coughing cries

do they leap to their demise,

whose who have seen Him with their own eyes.

The maelstrom blinks and the waters rise.

The same strength destroys mosaic tiles
as the fire that gave them life

while Unicorns are hunted for their aphrodisiac spice.*

Even He whose ancient rites
know simultaneously the sun in white hot birth
and blood cursed twilight
will die;

and blinking,

He will rise.

*this mention of unicorns here, while somehow satisfying, was inserted as per the wishes of the client.

A Sonnet for an English Teacher, and Too Much Fantasy Reading

Sheltered from the churlish grasp of weather,
the windswept rock closed tight and dry as a hearse
while the lashing tide sweeps down hearth and heather
she, the treasure of a man whose love is cursed.

So locked away in languish by the sea
for the crimes of her inventive, wicked tongue
her brazen boasts go unheard (though loudly)
as she awaits the man she knows must come.

Cloaked he was by moonlight pine dark daggers
fleet the foot he trod down upon the rocks
slipping through the stitch with nimble fingers
to easy in lonely bliss, sapping other thoughts.

Dawn light came cracking as she knew it must
to paint scattered bones and raise a song in dust.

Poet’s Choice, On Passing Popsicle Women

Tantalize me glimpse
of these young skin things,

their drape revealing one small patch
of fleeting passion feeling–

O joy, look at my time fly!
Look at the ash heaps on their motorbikes!

First gear to cry by,
to show the silent multitudes true style

and go spinning skinned across the turnpike.

But then Bubblegum smiles
and turns on the old beguiling drama.

Proper white tiles grinning promises
easy as you pleases

but never a thank you
to gild the empty space between those teeth

nor the ink wings she preens.

For a Young Model, Looking For Direction

Who can say with certainty who it is
that’s born behind all the masquerading
honeyed words and soft, silk scorn?

So heavy cloaked by the stoop and cowl
of all the other pretenders

we’ll bow and scrape and whisper late
some lost childhood reminders:

a life lived and framed by the glimmer love of pictures,
in words and light made for enduring the expectations of others.

See here!

No there!

And quick as tearing fabric,
the map torn beyond repair–

it’s the same muttered curse
and scrabbling grabbing at the air.

Always and forever,
these pesky stares
and soiled toilet paper heels

running never getting anywhere
but sheltered by the emptiness ahead;

cloud bleached weather stretches steadfast–

clad by memories and bits of heather
still clinging
from the headlong
dash jump and flight from fetters.

Here and now it is better,

where we live and strive and die each day

old husks of selves cast off in litter.

Gross, “A Romantic Comedy with a ‘Happy Ending’” for Some Oldsters

Guy walks in,
blondish,
good chin
holding in his hands an infant.

He’s bleeding,
and seems to have come
from the most dire of circumstance.

He collapses
and then
black

fifteen years hence

she’s a grown woman
and lordly suitors
follow her
every step

But the one she loves
the best
get this
is a chick

and king must needs an heir to carry his crest.

Now,
two medieval matriarchs
in one family feudal fun
of a blockbuster comes

Birthing Madam’s Son

Starring:

Hugh Hefner, the kindly duke
whose donated spunk to the duo
fuels the peril and heightens the puns!

Oh yes, and the come.

Listen it’s quite droll
and if you don’t believe me
it’s all easily illuminated
in John 3:16

On New Orleans and Alabama, for some people from the latter, who liked this poem, God knows why

Flashy lights
off the whites of your teeth
in smile clad face masks
against the marching of kings

gesturing fools sway
their scepters of spirits
and call out:

A penny for my kingdom!

Each drawing umbilical
from the statehood
Bamalamahome

each stumbling
in herded comes,
in overcombs

and against the hum
the tight itchy stitch
of Polo Ralph Lauren

pitted stains
and layman’s tongues

drying in New Orleans sun.

Love Poem for a New York German

Your limbs all at once,
each moving in orbit to the sun
of your stomach and giving birth
to the moment;

precious and growing,
eyes opening slowly;

colors inflame me

your smell,
your moon and rhythm
flowing god given

slipping as effortless
as rain from the fingertips

to land dimpling the Earth
with promises.

On the Moon

Moon flow silver I suppose

Moon go shiver along the space
inside your elbows

and I too, somehow
awake now at 4:42

the sole occupant of space
and haze and all
the inbetweens.

I hada healthy sheen earlier,

this morning when the fire still burned
and lace light I lay upon the blue

so simple now

yellowed yesterday’s news–

I know to die dignified

and full through the window.

For Los Angeleans, Lost

Striped and broken light ahead,
dap dappled in the passing asphalt orange

LA blooms florid exhaust

out tunnel, out blood
out damned spot from OJ’s glove

but overhead,
in love

floats signs Hollywood
and from

you could pledge your trove to
whoever

really

and lit so,
from below and stars

dead and now above

what luck:

angelic goosebumps pucker skin

in the headlong
downtown flight
home again.

How Do You Not Imagine The Secret, Inner Workings of Bums?

How do you not imagine
the secret, inner workings of bums?

Their subterfuge and shifting
checkerboard alliances,

turf disputes

and all the usual internal drama
of any group slowly dying.

It busts your ass to smile and dance for a day

and to get, most often,
some withering disregard
of some snivelling
snot of an adult–

man babies with fat rolls
and foolish notions
of how high socks should go.

Hold onto the curses meant for the cashiers
and for the simple, pitiless stares
that blanket bank doors

and bar smokers
enjoying a beer
but got nothin for ya,
bro.

There’s A Lesbian Over There

There’s a lesbian over there
smoking a cigarette
and I tempt fate,
making fun of her hair.

Maybe she’ll come over here
and be such a lie to turn
my grandkid’s hopes to tears

and all my wished for
prosaic monuments yet to build

will crumble dust
as her gaze me wilts.

Or maybe she’ll put out the butt
and plod off in her Birkenstocks.

Smiling to myself

Smiling to myself
in the bike shop store front
mirror is a feint:

the true object of my ardor recedes
out the comfortable corner
of my left eye

as the man beside the U-Locks
lies wryly.

Why Make An Enemy of Us, Mathematics?

Why make an enemy of us,
mathematics,
when we have so much
in common,

and seem familiar
in tree form or else
mosaically making amends

to share the greater part of the same end:

to go spiraling,
exploding,
through some worm’s
digestion

to beat rhythm against
future brain stems
and erupt from
a suddenly bashful
New Orleans

claiming what was promised
when the last bit of blame
is penned

and waking to discover,
underneath the stares,
the same stem
and the same snares
awaiting them.

For an Actress, Aged 52, Just Getting Started

The lights clap on,
at attention
and tape residue flickers on the stage
as curtains rattle aside

and page and page upon page
flutters, illuminated
by the woman whose lines
are of wisdom not the paper.

There out amongst the darkness,
half-felt faces swim obscured and
gilded by the promise of applause
and cast families long hours–

Each a father and
each a mother,
a daughter

the whole swollen garden
of lives lived,
of kids
and seeds departing from the soil.

Until the last encore
and even then
leave them wanting more.

For Ruth, Whose Friends Were In New Orleans

How many times have I thought
from my bed of my roof in Paris,
the lights arching overhead
and cycloptic Monsieur Eiffel,
his spin and slow dread

only background scenes
to my cloak wrapped and hiding
salvation in time,
lifting as only the bottom
can vault people higher
by Vouvray or God
or leaping from spires;

only circumstance gives us
the fat for our larders

when later the winter stretches
long in her hours.

O Ruth I miss the time of the day
when all the statues and monuments,
perfectly arranged,
belie their age and seem healthfully draped
by the crack and the fissure
of crumbling French faces–

and you too in your floppy circus hat,
your Italian bartender
and what I thought about that

and the teeth in your head
as you grinned after the fact;

thirsty and satisfied and liquid
in your attack.

No wonder that this island in the past
is unreachable, and perfect,

buried under glass.

For a San Franciscan, Seeking Tranquility

Each place, a book once said,
is vibrating with a special energy vortex;

and then went on to some other nonsense
before decomposing on a Goodwill arm rest.

But now as travels teach
and lie as easily as human smiles,
and feelings guide about as well as
Lonely Planet files

we might as well get on board
with cosmic crystal projections–

for it’s New Orleans and San Franciscans
radiate domestic perfection.

And hold in heights the proper
bits of mortal hesitation

before plunging down
the sloping town
and ending reborn
with the fishes.

For a Brooklyn Jew, On What To Do On Easter

Build a cabin out of lox
out of time as Easter paradox
passes by and Catholic school boys
get all worked up, playing with Roman toys–

the cup, the cross, the body and the blood–
bacon curse to the Talmud
and the long-haired Hasidim rockstars
in the subway cars
and Fords Taurus…

Find that egg! Crack that keg and celebrate:

look at it this way–

you could be gay

then what would God say?

An Impersonation of Allen Ginsberg

Who were humbled and blinked at by the bored state guard
and his flashing disco casual fascism,

whose hair and feet and arms and endless, endless
copulation by the sad, sentimental dawns, once known,
could never be unknown,

who cried and creened and wrestled animal
against their better nature, their slipping nature,
their bar room sleaze and urinal natures

and when they fell exhausted to the bed
were too drunk to even dream,

whose tatters worn as battle dress–
the struggle brothers the struggle
must not relent O My Brothers
as the High Life tenements
rise up above the windows, dusty,
of their skulls.

Who were blessed in Slidell, who were
baptized in Plaquemines and who in the
unforgiving rapacious stew of a mosh pit
found Jesus Christ (he had long hair
and a piercing in his neck)

who carry on and on their grudges,
their homestyle mashed potatoes
and all the hate that’s fit to print
on family reunion invitation

whose eyes and flecked,
spacial tenderness was always tied to the weather,
or the beaten, gross untetherings of Hank’s

–everyone goes to Hank’s–

dying

For Another Schoolkid, This Time About Soda

My word what decibels in your teeth
are stripping fast the collective
enamel wisdom of family dentists!

There is guile too, in those
pops and cranial cackles;

birthed in Atlanta Coke bottles,
in innumerable cafeteria scuffles
for the best tummy rumble and
limb shuffled caffeine bubbles
in the afternoon.

Whole classrooms of addicts!

Whole hallways scratching for their fix,
the after swoon and running home
stay up all night kicks.

O fructose, sucrose calling–

I am but yours
if you’ll have my oral offerings

For a Highschool Girl, On Highschool

There, I saw it,
in the corner of her eye was
an optical testimony of all my failures,
the nights spent crying and waiting
and wondering if after so and so
and this and that
and the dust settling horrors:

could it ever be the same?

Or am I insane? Her back receding now,
the silent tomes of condemnation;
these are written words I enslave,
tangle in my brain and tempting sense from

giving scent to,
invention springs in Da Vinci elf shoes.

I am an epic poet of my own humiliation;
of the certain craft of exclusion, hatings
and the swift blush of too-soon statements.

Did we share that moment I’ve been claiming,
or are my thoughts alone,
echoing my own stalemate?

Poet’s Choice

Blowing car horn bullets bark
against the pressing night time’s faded
wasted larks while high heeled
flamingos fly from their perch
ever homeward;

pizza men and surprise organists
lay their greasy wares against
the glassy Frenchmen stares,
and at the close of nocturnal daring flights
all here will stand naked.

But now in greatest feathered swoon
as clouds and light obscure the moon,
where palms prick parked cars
and dancers soon are lost inside their shoes–

there is home
and there is glued my sole
and cherished stomp ground.

For A Middle-Aged Woman, On Soulmates

The search (or hunt)
as it’s known to some
is all the worth in all the world
and unraveled, globes soon come undone.

The pounce–
that hungry moment when all is given,
and briefly, so sweetly so,
all hackles fall unrisen,
all worries are smitten
beneath the light and slowly falling rhythm.

The moments are eternal,
if anything is at all,
and like the soul can spin infinitely lost
or cherished,
made to grow through seasons
of interminable frost.

Mates are made by mutual accosting,
the meeting of two solitudes
whose orbit each enfolds

and trepidation of the spheres
spins greater still in bones

A Haiku, For An Uncomfortable Pair of Shoes

Her bondage sandals
skip to the loo and dance
her slow way back home

For A Local, On Plastic Wrapped Display Plates in Front of French Quarter Restaurants, That Never Get Eaten

There in Leninist repose
lies the hymn of past
skeletal linguine alfredos

and beckons call to each passing
Midwestern squall of children,
human adult parents in the thrall
of Hurricanes! The High Life!

No pause to recall where all this Greek
afterlife Troy-trodding merriment
sows her roots–

how this eternal carnival of fools
can eat past the cellophane spools

to find, at long last, lost fast;
in the Bywater there is a flavor
that casts her ribbons over the
flayed remnants of the day

and staying, gives permission
to the palms to sway.

For A Patron of the Arts at NOMA, On Hangovers

Rising from the misting Styx
of a too-bright April morning,
the birds in malice drag their song
across my eyelids
and gurgle stomach’s rushing

me to the porcelain running oracle.

Prostrate, awed by mortality,
and heaving to an ancient
Roman rhythm,

I am a geologist:
the strata of night time,
of cheap wine
and fried faces dancing glazed,
reflected,
the waving nationalism,
the mottos of good times,

all in a sudden academic rush
to the trance at Delphi.

Exhausted, purity shakes my spines
as crawling, my bed enshrines.

For 3 Women On Hustlers, Liars and Assholes

The no-anthem,
the pause, skip eye glance
cold shoulder sudden slacking–
habitual untruths and half nods,
trapped in the prison cell bars
and crippled by that old, familiar hunger;

here is written the last Gospel of Lies–
the eternity of misinformed
and clatter floor boasts,
the parable children rising with the corn
–that never existed–
coming undone as the eyes lie against their stitch
and filled, crimped forms.

No fathoming such depths–
no unraveling the childhood clenches
that drive adult human beings in these directions;

however it’s lessoned,

the learners learn
while professors
teach decrepit.

Poet’s Choice

The crack of doom echoes the silver loom,
where fates and one-eyed gossip shrews
snip continually possible paths and blue devil
secret plotting pasts all guide us
ship shore searching castaways;

meaning soon evaporates,
what sages spit
and TVs pray–
that hundred dollar sitcom fates
hang ripe all around you.

But prophet’s scorn is the same key
as morning bluebird warble songs,

the same wild destiny that binds and finds
all creatures equally
dumbfounded by where the worm went;

here against the battered wall
where birthday marks chart upward progression’s fall,
as lip-smacked we gargle the morning
and all God’s gifted evenings.

And though the script is dog-eared,
and the roles are all filled

don’t worry now
it’s barely dawning.

For A French Teacher, On Titty Fucking, Pearl Necklaces

La bete humaine,
her hands in furious tempest
tossing necklaces of precious pearl

while across town,
latter-day precocious saints
snooze and tossing
turn their thoughts from draping tricoleurs,
Imperious, unfeeling, cruel

Gallic superiority
and crude contests of the subjunctive will
battle for the hearts and minds
of America’s Future!

Dread foreign influence!
Dead, powdered nasal Continental poetic flatulence!

There can be no peace with such unnecessary pain–
this blood letting,
this flat-chested, titty-fucking rug burn
insane clandestine excuse for a langue;

no quarter for Latin potentates,
their concubines and demonic
Libertine sexual appetites;

get behind! Back up the conjugal impalers–
those cruel almost perfect
temporal black sails

and spread some bonnes nouvelles:

that class is canceled–
it’s Revolution till the bell.

For A Woman Who Wanted A Love Poem While Jimi Hendrix Played Across The Street

What a typical twist of irony for you,
O my lovely,
that your very embodied truths
preclude my always adoring you.

Your roots,
twisted and comely
cough as shoots of doubt spring up,
themselves owed their due
by sun and seed and heart;

to grow trunk-thick and warm
and wait the woodsman’s call–

that is the fate that lazily we all attend,
and to speak softly:
I love you
is the same to say
I will leave you

if only to kiss the sky.

For A Cutter, Who Stood Bare Armed Before Me, And Demanded I Be Inspired By Her Scars, Right Now

Searching in that same old human condition,
driven as by sex, a lot like sex,
the slow agony and not for this
were apples taken from snake to lips.

What, after all, is one more–
whole cultures chart
their pubescent wars and great,
gory defeats–

what’s the difference
if like honeyed teat this life flows so–
evidence of what would stay hidden,
below,
not for this lifetime to know.

But what is shown cannot be unknown,
and climbing ringing ladders
presupposes an end
when there is no.

An Epitaph For The Headstone of a Mummified Cat Found In The Attic

Here in new found final repose
rests the unknown feline,
her paws now curled,

her manxome memories
of prideful furs be lain to sleep

her bones echo underground cathedral songs,
give worship to the moles

whom in life she hunted
and in death take her home.

For A Filmmaker, A Character Sketch of A Conman

There between the iris glimmer
and that casting landing hook and sinker
is stretched in slow measure the worth of a man.

And no wonder women surrender
to the promises and champagne grins,
the late night heart-skinning sessions
while the birds wake up
and noisily go hunting.

Something for something,
the barter wars that shave and slake
generations of wayward philosophers:

sages of the human way
choosing still slavery and toil’s pay;

as shrinking,
flight seals the day

For A Woman In Blue, In Less Than 8 Lines, Troubled and Optimistic

Last night in the flashing pursuit of blue,
when the indecision of the rain clouds
had marred their dappled surface,
there, in the water’s chorus I heard her voice
and saw her humble vices tumbling forth like cards.

The sight to read is not mine,
her Universe too large for such to cage in lines.

Let the memory speak enough
for the time and violet cloth.

For A College Student, With Her Mom, Who’s in a Hurry to Know Who She Should Be

The forked and bending metallic in the stream;
the myriad ample tearing seams and all this
laid against the creening of debts piling
pay and where and what and why delay

but stop this foolishness parading past,
Disney automaton ambitions
wrapped in collegiate shrink jackets–

and know your problems are bigger than that–
of love and loss and rodents past

all the human brimming cups
and juicing breakfasts
to fill young stomachs while digestion lasts.

And if words fail the test
let go fastnow them
relent troubles

sent heavens.

For Another Writer; Poet’s Choice

Where the apple’s core
is knotted by the worm’s slow indecision
and the hallelujahs still ring
clashing in your ears,

there is where favor slips
her bracelet from her wrist,
and silver clatters
as the choirs sear.

Oh thank You my microscopic cosmos,
in the wasted breath of years
you have washed from sinfully

stirring stirring

wantonness and white sheeted
banished youthful fears
of when I’d meet her, where and waylaid
would our first kiss unsheath and
never more happy than here?

O who is woe is we

and once so made–
unmaking’s just another
certainty.

For A Law Student, A 5 Dollar Poem About Justice

For the price of admittance
you can see all you want;

tour the cages and broad, grand balconies–

the press box and bleeding hearts–

it really is quite a show

and always running justice
knows her way around the ropes.

For A Woman in a Crisis of Choices

Each seed, each life
is begun in the same fated promise song:

that what you do and what you would have done
shall never meet, nor cry
their oaths to one another.

Too many, these tendrils,
whose every snake and bow
births new possibilities
stretching unslakable from the now–

and for each life, each love
that could have ground down all resistence,
is that same love, pacing ancient
and forgotten in her wedding gown.

Such wonder are we making,
such unterritorial chartings,

and turning wine from water slaking
give new meaning with increased volume.

So funny! So wow!
And limping we take our bow;

The author and the audience one and same
the meaning now.

For A Fellow Writer On Sidewalks and Obsession, Stream of Conciousness

Howling concrete incisions
in the midnight neon dawn
and what crowded bubbling decision
is written long on these
honest Wisconsin faces.

Unheeded their minds go by
my obsessing eyes,
judging and unjudging
with guilt enough to stack both sides.

Always the painter,
humans hum and tempt surmise–

and always the haters
we cringe and grope and cry.

For a Gaggle of City Planner Types

Underground, block by block
the secret workings of cities
count their tocks against the bang
and cough of steam pipes.

And the shadows pulse as we knew hearts would,
the veins and arteries tangling and lewd
our figures silhouette
the sheet’s slow swoon
and rush hour’s coming bounding.

In the dusk that follows the horizon,
where stars and peaks of mountains
give a geological smirk to the heavens
and twitching stars wink out

while city lights prick blooming heathers
all along their shake and shout
and twinkle down where mortals frown
striding city streets.

For A Pushy Woman on Her Existential Birthday

The layman on his couch,
whining away his salary
to the bored and polished pate behind him

he knows in his words and spaces more than he lets on–

the tug and pull of the many faces that inform this carnival of memories.

The pause, the guile,
that seeking searching look
to come unravel motives written
stylish human books.

Meaning? Punch line is more appropriate
as each dappled cathedral evening
tolling the birth of the world,
of the lithe and female fortunes
coming undone and unfurled

begs of the birds, in their warble far afield
to echo human vanity and immortal
cravings for the real.

Shrouded eyes are ours to forever be
and clouded come unstuck
searching futures in our memories.

For A Nice Canadienne on her 50th Birthday in New Orleans

Here, in the humid twirling decadence
and hurling thundershower steel pellets
of that fabled, riddled South,

as anniversaries bark their garbled yell
and invite the champagne bubble devils
to speak their humble spells–

moving enchanted feet to rhythms,
to the felt-tipped cue and follow through
of the city’s barbarian insistence.

Oh New Orleans, where Rebel yells
were uttered far before Fort Sumter fell
and the rebellion we breed
is the forked lightning satan tongue of human greed
and statue’s needs

as museums build themselves from neighborhoods
and dwelt ghost-fitted plumbing copper shelves
are all that’s needed, all we heed
in the red raw dawn and stars-bars-and-swell.

So the ages tell us,
and so we must them follow

and give thanks for each bowl we pass
and drinking, life we swallow.

For A Guy on a Bike on “The Art of Living Life”

Laziness I’ve known by her shellac and easy coat–
that roll roll and gasp curl of the noontide
rooster’s crow;

and so too those glory heights,
those incarnations of Jehovah light
that seem to spread in unending
unraveling remarkable sighs.

Praise crazy! Crane necks
payattentionme
and all the other somersaults
of children’s hex-stacked unyielding
meta-crisis attack.

Ahh the sweet relax, why bother
with such seated tacks and change it up–

a longue silence, as they say in other songs,
where craft sampled crumples lost

even this is immune from total frost

even this is lost.

For A Wealthy, Impatient, Obnoxious Guy From Miami About to be Married

In the highest handed down tradition
comes such sunlit quiet unyielded ambitions
as mouth-bled oathes are freely given
and such gilded new lives are surely smitten.

Ah it was a lovely verse,
the spell cast glimmer
and quick reverse,
the quiet similes and swilling words
are always hidden carriers of worth.

And so without weight of refrain,
without the sly looking humbles slain–

be happy and in prosperous lay;
remark idly at your end of days.

For a Poetry Professor, Insisting I Not Think Before I Write About ‘Syllables, Oysters and Mangos’

Syllabic stylings of mucosa membranes come,
give no warning as the pernod sun blooms
blossoms above the mango guns
that pointed give to tree-lined shrubs
their polyamorous shrugs.

Perfect in the ink and crunching in the mud
the juice runs freely
and gives teeth something to love.

For A Woman Whose Friend is Dying of Cancer

The forces that spin and stir the mud of lives,
that mixing blend in caked and dried riverbeds to flood again,
lift houses from foundation’s grip and send all plans
careering past the county lines–

such strength in natural surprises, that growing fill up spaces,
and guided by voices, wherever speakers crackle instructions,

speed haste, free hands to take hold
and grasping, grunt prosperous from
furrowed garden folds.

What happens where the roots entwine?
And generations grassfed by the seasons passing
look up to flying clouds, whose tendrils creening
seek to shroud the daylight.

Futile stuff–all that bluster
huff huff blow the winds away.

Better to know the way the paintings lay the landscape
by heart by all other accounts
is lost to historians counting;

better to shower the day than wait
for clouds delay to do the lifting,

and as the faces come unstuck,
to and of the light on windows’ glinting,

reflected and new minted,
a new day,
growing insistent.

April 7, 2011

For Oli

There was that time at Cowgirl
(and how many West Village stories start like that?)
when Jack Friedman,
ever the gentleman,
suggested spinning bottles
as a way of getting at Ali’s chest.

And Heinz pointed to you
and our eyes were locked and careful

and I passed within a hair’s breath
of giving you my first kiss.

But our lips they never touched–
you kept mum and gracefully
our gaze unclutched

while Jack’s best laid plans went bust.

I thank you for that,
in the formal, metered fashion

and watch your love of Sondheim’s wolves
write across my simulacrum.

Funny how the stars are flung–
how one sun births another

until the gears somehow align

and the distance comes asunder.