No wonder... I got the blues.

You're nothin', fool. Illusion
is the cross you hang upon. Buddha,
Allah, Jah Rastafari, and Jesus.
No one hears or cares. Open your throat to the desert,
unholy soul, broke, joker who played
his final hand. Now you fold,
dressed like a crow,
black as Ma Rainey's bottom, blessed,
fucked up, pill drunk and pussy stoned,
but where's the love?

No wonder... I got the blues.
No wonder... I got the blues.

Gather no moss, slippery stone,
roll over the precipice down into the pit.
This is it, your home. Regrets,
but you made it your own.
Bustin' with things of bling,
but fallin', old shack empty.
Her scent lingers, hangs
like death in the afternoon.
Time's  a'tickin',
but not on your side.

No wonder... I got the blues.
No wonder... I got the blues.


You're Sisyphus trying
to move the boulder, no closer
to Midnight, then Dawn
punches you
in the solar plexus,
Love dog bark, and Love dog bite.
Hole in the sky,
hole of holes. Bye-bye.
I bet You didn't know
so many ways to feel it.

No wonder... I got the blues.
No wonder... I got the blues.

Soul Baby

I was thinking of something old and antiqued,
words that could express sentiments just under skin,
pool into a spring, seemingly peaceful, flat on the surface,
cold clear liquid, but it's not.

Vanity
Pride
Insecurity
fast food
with bloody gristle on the side,
the stench of french fries, greasy chicken
gut bomb, bombastic, deep, dark speak,
crow-colored syllables with hues of blue,
greens of forest conifers,
the meander of rivers,
forgetfulness
like Lethe.

Damned those Greeks
for naming a path to Hell.
Felt it in my heart,
known it in my mind,
but what say you, Soul?
Mad-Hattered, yet holy, lovely little Buddha,
freakish mighty midget Jesus of Coney Island,
your Side Show Carny Barker Boss (not as amusing as Art)
will pimp you out until they carry you off,
lay you out like a prairie for all to see.

So...
Interrupt my life,
Baby Soul,
with Vesuvius orgasms,
ride my face in shaky, slow motion,
your funky, sweet peach juices flood my mouth,
your moans drone over midnight
like an Etta James chorus.
You, Desert of Delight, dying lovers
still lust for your perfumed Oasis,
hang their tongues from their mouths
to taste the air like lust-struck lions
needing it, cocks and clits slick and hard
waiting for your finger-fuck and stroke,
in and out, in and out, out and in.
Ride, reverse Cow Girl into the sunset
until I'm turned into a cadaver,
my cock still hard in the coffin,
died with that smile,
went home, fulfilled,
satisfied
like a Pharaoh
borne on a solar bark
to the Valley
of the Kings

Death in the Woods

Ah, to be the ceaseless beast
heart thumping, pulsing,
hungry, humping
just because,
not needing anyone or love
not a thing sucks,
no words worth
repeating
when the Blue Jay
sounds alarm
300,000 leagues away
closer to life and death
farther from anything
neighbor Doe will ever know.
He knows no better
but you're just a piece
of meat
it's teeth
locked on your throat,
dragged to the ground
spewing blood
gurgling
suffocating
seconds from the last pulse
miles from cliche
fading into mystery
you smile
knowing this was how
it was truly
meant to be

Death Wish

Hold me tenderly in your arms
I will one day return to dirt
covered in a grass pelt
fur rippling in the wind
forgotten by all
save the last murmurer
of eternity

White Sands Morning

A woman dreams


a breeze


across her body,


a lover's finger


glides up her calf.


She wonders,


should I wake?


Dreams die,


Reality sucks,


but possibility


awakens. Yes,


The Doomsday Clock


creeps closer to Midnight,


but that warm touch


makes her glow like


Uranium 235.


Let isotopes leach out into coolant,


allow subsequent failures


to breach the last layers.


"Hello, lover."


She arches back


silent


ready for meltdown


forever.

Song of a Fool

It sits
above his head,
a dark question mark,
he asks, "why
does this deliciousness
hijack me whole,
vibrates nerves,
balls, brain,
libido." He can't say,
stars wheel and turn,
and he, a desirous dirigible,
ready to burst,
dreams of that picture,
her legs,
thighs down to feet,
landscape of black diamond nylon,
fishnets,
a road less traveled, again.
Beyond,
the horizon is blurred,
uncertain,
fraught with pain, possibly
pleasure. His tongue
dreams serpentine,
slithers up a landscape
of salty skin,
happy-sad,
doped, drunk, hopeful.
She is a river of bliss
he swims down,
drifts in her current
in acquiescence,
surrendering
to the falls,
empty,
alone.

Hernia

Help me, I've fallen

into the pit of mortality,

the rot of the body,

the ruins of a being

I no longer

recognize.

I'd be happier, freer

as a Paramecium in

a Petri dish.

If only my skin

was a cocoon,

I'd wriggle out

into a new form,

not butterfly-beautiful.

I'd settle for mosquito

or amoeba.

Everything is enemy,

the sky, my work,

my memories

infest my hippocampus

like determined termites

burrowing into knotty pine.

Heaven is closed

and so is my colon.

Open, Sesame, please,

deliver me to dreams,

from nights of fearful,

fitful sleep.

I make my own music,

bark hard syllables

from mouth to feet,

a kick, a plead,

a cry over the commode.

My sphincter's frozen,

my bowel's busted,

my urinary tract's backed up.

I'm sick of being in pieces,

a cesspool of yellow and feces,

waking up five times a night

while the Moon limps along

like a broken hobo under

coffee stained clouds

and the wind blows sand and pebbles,

polluted music, across silvered stones.

I pray: Poke me, probe me, prod me.

I'll denounce beauty if need be.

Turn me hideous or Homo Habilis,

return me to some semblance

of what I was. I'll do anything

to live life again and pee freely

like an unobstructed

garden hose.

They Sent A Photograph

Oh, happy family,
silent and bright, smiley.
The oldest boy, thirteen, wiry,
a lean bean plant growing
at his father's side.
The younger one, Afro-ed,
exuberant, almost leaping
out of frame. Mom,
coy yet confident,
doing what she
must do - succeeding,
so she thinks.
Dad,
the pillar of dreams,
stands in the back
looking taller than
Kilimanjaro clouds
that push down
on the world.
He holds them at bay,
Atlas of the Suburbs,
but only for seconds, until
the shutter snaps open-close,
and he can no longer
hold that pose.

Monday Morning, Somerville

I rise out of body lighter than hydrogen,
avian, I leap from uncertainty, strife,
fly unhindered on fluid wings
like a Crow disappearing
into the distance.

Poem from an email

Clueless Gary, one of Cole's Steelhead coaches, reserved a block of rooms at a Red Lion along the Columbia. He meant well, but after looking at the place, I thought: "No way." Outdoor pool, broken hot tub, the ruins of 1975. We found The Other Red Lion across town, pleasing and new. Daviau and other lambs'll tough it out in the dump, while we'll be set up like Kings of Siam. Four games in three days. Sunday determines 1st through 8th place. So much, so fast. It all ends at 1pm. Then the almost five hour drive home.

Neighbors

When I let Pepito out,
I saw Ben and Kim and
a number of helpers
loading two trailers with
all their possessions.
I saw Ben. He saw me.
We exchanged hellos.
Two hours later,
they drove away,
and I
haven't seen them
since.

Last Day of March Musing

Should I disturb
the numb slumbers of
wayward seasons, recollections
of a windy March Wednesday
channeling Winnie the Pooh.
So sad seeing
time walk backwards
in the backyard,
stray leaves tumbling
at my feet
slow motion,
I crochet a documentary
half in shadow
half in bright sunny light.
A moment free of
all worldly discomfiture,
alibis, denials.
No place to be
but in that moment
held forever
in that lovely
memory address.

Home is not just an Address

Is that Jesus, 
mid-picture, cloaked in red,
misty, yellow ball over heart,
arm half raised with big,
bruiser, butcher's hand
about to bestow
a blessing?

Is he Jesus
of the Streets,
eyes like Tyger Tyger in the night
pointed, piercing,
ready to pounce on
persona-non-grata,
who, in his own ignorance,
might tra-la-la,
tippy-toe away
indifferently,
forget 'ah, the humanity,'
the line of them
flowing back into foggy,
one-point
perspective?

Of course,
The Four Horsemen are
at the front. 
Keepers of the gate,
beaten, broken, busted to dust,
creating a moment
for all to see.
Is it grace, indifference, arrogance,
spite, Deus caritas est?
Men on four points of the compass.

Mr. West: orange, radiated face,
blissful look,
stares into midnight
remembering Moon Pies and
other delights.

Mr. South: white billed cap contrasts
burnt umber skin. His t-shirt
is the sea. He holds
an Eleanor Rigby expression
in his hand.
Everything else
is gone.

Mr. North is free.
The wind repeats
a childhood verse
sing-song
over and over
classical Crimson and Clover,
an ever forgetful
tape-loop, tin-whistle
symphony.
He wonders
what's for dinner.

Mr. East, burgundy jacket,
once thought John Lennon
was the answer. Life led him
on an Easter egg hunt
with no way home.
Eternally topped with 
scarlet ski-cap, he lapsed
in and out of rage,
cage to cage. Prozac sailed him
on another course,
or was it just
the tides of time
lapping against
the jagged shores
that turned the werewolf
into
the lamb?

The End is the Beginning

Like a woman in repose,
on display, dead, or at peace,
the mountain stretches over horizon,

shadow for hair,
girl's pinched nose of stone,
her breasts free clouds,

they rise smokey,
Marcus Aurelius mist,
stretched and pulled toward mystery,

see them go
like Mother's soul
up it went long ago

under cerulean skies
where yard met scrub,
she fretted her hours

upon a dull kitchen floor
slip-sliding away, daydreams,
mop in hand,

transistor radio sounds,
Marvin Gaye, Mo-Town bus ride
she waited to go

but he kept digging holes
many holes
drier and deeper

some water,
enough to tickle
a dying one's tongue,

but never enough to raise
crops or quench pride.
He rode the ghost horse,

black hatted, villainous,
Eli Wallach contra Eastwood,
man defeated, burned up in sunset

left his hatred
pulsing through me
like a gathering storm.

I carried it,
this thing, this wound,
drifting nomadic, lost,

close to my own end,
I dreamed of the mountain
again

in sepia silence
amidst Charlie Chaplin tears
in the theater of 10,000 awakenings

swallowed by shadow
vulnerable and small
I let him go

Frank O'Hara

How did you negotiate
strange new avenues
forbidden for use
by those trusted to live
an incorruptible youth?

Did dim beacons blink
codes behind twisted trees,
thick shrubbery?
Did aged-faced uncles
whisper invitations
through speak-easy doors,
painted green to camouflage,
blend in,
make it seem so?

Were these the saints,
who, listening to your discourse,
set you on a course,
by which you groped,
instinctual, by sun and stars,
toward unexplored worlds -
love, lust, and hope?

Or maybe you just knew
as you chuckled away convention
ensconced in Manhattan shadows
knowing life is a poem
of one's creation
neither completely dark
nor obscenely light.

One morning at work

I'm left in a low orbit
circling my life, a planet
so far away,
it escapes me.

Two days in Albuquerque (Found Poem - Creem Magazine)

And the walls are beginning to close in.

Still waiting for Jaffee to find out

if Roeg will talk to us.

Supposed to meet us in the bar at 9

last night to give us an answer

but he never showed.

Returning to the room at 11:30

we spent half the night trying to call him,

but apparently he was amorizing

in someone else's suite.

Impact cut to: medium shot of the door bursting open

and John rushing in.

"He's out there, I just saw him!"

"Let's go."

Cut to: tracking shot.

A figure in green jumpsuit walks down the dim corridor.

As he passes the glass doors leading outside,

a flood of evening light illuminates him.

The shock of red hair alone is enough to identify him as

David Bowie. His shoulders rock from side to side

and he has the springy step of one endowed with

an overabundance of energy, even though

he has just completed

a full day's shooting

in 90 degree heat.

Stopping in front of a room, he knocks

but gets no response.

As he turns to leave,

he meets the reporters who have trailed him

here and are ready to pounce

like diamond dogs.

My Life (at the moment)

Rejection seldom
gets to me.
Once, it did, but
that was then.
I'm a lion after
missing the kill,
left in the dust,
throat on fire,
sucking wind,
no regrets,
no remorse.
Hunger drives me on -
my life, my curse.
Staring off
into the distance,
death will come
one day.

Scary Monster Teenage Blues

Well, I walked in the pouring rain
Up in the tower they're watching me hoping I'm gonna die

Pretending it's a whiz kid world
Blindfolded, chains, and they stomped on us

No athletic program, no discipline, no book
One flash of light but no smoking pistol

Silhouettes and shadows watch the revolution
The vacuum created by the arrival of freedom

And no one will have seen
and no one will confess

Shout it while you're dancing
Another piece of teenage wildlife

Not Fade Away

Well the bitter comes out better on a stolen guitar
Layin' on 'electric dreams
We've got five years, what a surprise

Of the mountain To the rooftops
With God given ass
This mellow black chick just put my spine out of place

Let the children use it
I'm back from Suffragette City
Praying to the light machine

You better hang on to yourself
Five years, that's all we've got
A soldier with a broken arm, fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac

Like some cat from Japan, he could lick 'em by smiling
Love is careless in its choosing
Oh don't lean on me man 'cause you ain't got time to check it

A brave son, who gave his life to see the slogan
I could make a transformation as a rock 'n' roll star
Then the loud sound did seem to fade

away