CAREER JERK

there is no one left to jump
this fence with not enough
upper body strength to
haul the boxesafter
I cut through the pad lock,all
that good shit just going southt
to people who have money,

so I got a real
job to rob,

I showed up in
my paper hatand a piece
under my shirt,said gimmee all that cashand

I was goneup the street
and around a corner and up againsome
flight of stairs to
a door at the end
of the flightwhere some clown
busted my actionabout sorry mofos
and traction winders,shit,
he grabbed my piece and my money
and popped me three times like a tattoo,
telegraph and the next thingI remember
was thinking here I goto
some dark monkey palacewhere there's
no money either.

House of Talk

There are many voices I have
for every moon rising on a mood
which splinters into issues about
the weather and everything under
the atmosphere of that's tense
as white knuckles grabbing
the edge of the kitchen counter,

I am fine and you are so lovely
in your gloves as you new that axe,
your eyes are the softest gaze I've
ever had laid upon me as you scan
my neck, imagining brilliant pencil
dashes that come to resemble
perforation marks, wear every tears
in your outstanding order of dead things,

You piss me off royal and it's all I can do
to stop my fist from flying with an intent
of it's own to make your chin meet knuckles
or have your head meet a boot heel,
all that remains of the sunset is blood red
and the flushed rage of a setting sun that
sets screaming mutely as it sets off to scorch
another side of the planet, it's a car I want
to steal and drive into western towns where
motels rest at the edge of the desert, whiskey
and cigarettes on the bed stand, a revolver
on the pillow, a full box of bullets,


I hope you forgive me and let me
go somewhere to die, just to don't hate
me as much you might be inclined to,
I want only the best in the name of the Savior
and interest rates are good, it was all for you
and yours, but I fucked up, I fucked up bad,
I am worthless as candy wrappers, gum
stuck to the light pole, you are happier without me
calling you up at three or four in the AM and hanging up before you could take a breath, don't
hate me, let leave, I'll find some place to die,


My mouth is dry and tired from
all this talking, and the earth turns
on it's celestial wires all the same
despite protests, the choruses of
denial and rants, the rooms of
this house are full of talk with every
personality saying a line affixed
to the walls, the dry wall, the electrical
lines that go out into the world,
I practice each tone, each attack
and apology, there are no mirrors
in the hallway, no glass in the windows,
wind blows amid hisses and whistles
through the cracks in the brick,
I am silent again, I am voiceless.

Cop Poem

Cop Poem

Police men have a way of
dividing the world in half
with every hour they walk
the beat or grind it as they drive,

It’s about who they will
or will not put in jail,

Whose nose is arched
like bridges spanning
skylines over grievous waters
or flat and elegant as a small  pocket
on streamlined suit,

It’s about where they can park
when there’s nothing but
trouble on the radio,
or where they have to
drive away from when
the street comes up short on
bricks that were there the day before
and ugliness was an old house
junkies live in and not
the crowd that gathers on the corners
and will not stop glaring
until the glares become sharp sticks,
iron pipes, broken bits,

It’s knowing where your backup is
and where the shortcuts  come out to

and just how far
a dollar will go
on Saturday night.

Snaking under the ri

Snaking under the river to Canada

there were three moons in the sky
in the middle of the day
when darkness fell before
pants did the same,

the world just seemed to spin
like a bicycle tire, spokes
blending in motion against
the racket made by a baseball card,
and I remember something like a smile
on my face as uncut grass and
candy bar wrappers caressed and
pelted my face,

sounds of boots walking over
gravel, coming up the drive way,
the flower bed in front of the porch
where Dad stood with his tie loosened,
hands in his pocket, laughing out loud,
Mom smoking cigarette after cigarette
until it killed her thirty years later,

the officer says
it was a party they raided
that was full of high school kids
drinking beer around the pool,
I was wrestling with a lawn chair
before collapsing
into a giggling puddle of useless water,

Dad keeps laughing
and Mom has a scotch
with her cigarette,
fretting on the porch
about the future and
every bottle I might open
until the end of days,

“give me a kiss” says Dad,
and they argue until
I fall back asleep on the couch,
sawing logs loud as air horns
in traffic tunnels snaking under
the river to Canada.

A City Was Magic in Black and White Magazines

In a hurry and half dumbwith love, he walks through an alley,scratching his scalp,and whistles another country's anthem
in an age when TV headlines have itthat the sky never stops falling,He stops, sings a stanza in French, "My Cherie Amour", and skips mightily passed all the rear entrances and trash bins Simon and Garfunkel would have waxed and waned about in a language that made the obvious things in the city oppressive with meaning secreted among the rheumy lines of grime and gunk,
he laughs, thinks bunk, I need her armsand a good meal with amazing bread,
bottled water, baskets full of cheese, and thensomeone screams in the city,
a woman on a corner screams for life and more money
from whatever carpassed on a wet street, the night was filled
with screams and the hiss of tires slithering up back streets
and alleys that used to be short cuts in another decade
when a city was magic in black and white magazines,
there are many hours until the sun comes rises over the river,
light rays poking between the suspension cables
of sleeping bridges,days to go before something falls from the sky again
with all the heaviness assembled weight can bring on the length of the streets,
minutes away one of our own leaving the coil
that binds us as another joins the chorus,
too young in the first moments to hold sheet music
or know what we're attached to in these blurs that
come alive from their darkness and approach him in the dark,
he sings on,too late,he's asked"Where you from, "and he singstoo loudly to heara metallic clickand a bark of large dogs,he was expecting everyone to join in the chorusbecause love is all that matterswhen everyone knows the words,but instead the nightblackens all at once,a curtain drops,every line is unhingedas doors would bein a fast, devastatingheat coming acrossa flat Nevada desert,a city of jewelsburns high on amountain top,there is onlylight to follow,cordless , stringless musicat the end of corridor filled witha very white light.

Gatorade don't do it

Someone has to be the one
breaking the bad news over old bread,
catching us when there’s one arm in the coat
and chewing stale toast.
Seldom do you expect that
the length of the shadow
following you might possibly
be only one of many such shrouds,
all with names and families,
black or grey streaks falling across
sidewalks and brick fences,
each taking turns keeping you in line,
waiting your turn, motherfucker.
It’s getting so bad
that we’ll take a meeting
behind bars and resolve
that this is the year
we will throw away.

She said go deep

She said to “go deep”
as she handed me a football
which I dropped then
while I wondered out loud
how and why these goal posts
were erected in our store
to which she said
that she refused to
take her work home
but it was simply wonderful
to bring home life to the job.
As usual, I shrugged
and answered the
phone in my best
late night
broadcast
voice
and found myself
speaking to
a woman who had a book
with a yellow cover
that reminded
her of the dress she wore
seven decades ago
on her first communion,
in the spring,
when flowers bloomed
and relatives started sneezing.
She paused and
then hung up the phone,
and as I put my end down
a kid from the neighborhood
was at the counter
asking me the price
of every book and
pencil in sight
in between segments from
his gasping saga
of buying a tombstone for an
uncle who once got funny with him
in a closet
two holidays ago.
the kid laughed nervously, fast,
breathless, as I said,
and ran out the door
onto the cracked, pricey sidewalk.
My coworker
was doing drum solos
with number 2 pencils
along the glass shelves
that displayed the
heaviest books in the store,
she smiled and riffed,
pinged, rim shot her
way out of a tight
rhythmic problem,
the phone rang again,
she tells me to
get that,
but I get nothing at all
except a headache,
looking up from the counter
after I pick up the receiver,
some middle aged guy
in an MC 5 t-shirt
holding a mounted moose head
over the cash register,
a long stretch of Bullwinkle
waiting to be kissed,
it’s all I can do
not to look up
from the small holes
in the receiver,
it’s still three hours till lunch.

At noon all the cats

At noon all the cats
behind the bushes
and yowl for their rights
to milk and stiff fingers
scratching their heads.

Such faces they make
when there is one can left,
squinting under the sun
that’s not even blinding
the visiting team’s outfield staff.

She learned how to
read when the cuffs came off,
signs in hard English explaining
basic hygiene as it doesn’t get
mentioned in stacks of Elizabethan smut.

One bullet was all he needed,
one clear shot,
a gun would help, he joked,
and then a car pulled out
from a parking spot and
he stepped on the gas,
turning hard with a squeal,
gravel flying.

It’s just another
rumor of fires
behind the hills
where there are still trees
to clear for our houses
and meals with families
from other states.

Cats leave the pool alone
but sing to the moon instead
as jets make their way in
formations ready for desert blitz,

These are nights when
no calls get through,
cell phones go out of range
in the back of your pocket,

Emergency operators are
standing by as you stand there
staring at the phone and trying
to watch the ball game at the same time,

Did you say you’re from Detroit?
Great. That’s where Jimmy Hoffa
was sliced into a dozen Sicilian pizzas,
y’know?

Karl Marx wrote his wife
love poems for each daughter
who died waiting for him to
change the world.

San Diego is a home
that makes sleeping
seem a crime against
drugs and their use.

Goddamnit, I say
move the mountain
to Arizona, to hell with the Cross.

Every Floor Gives Way

You are a card carrying
waste of time
and I am
a prince and a punk
whose words make
noise like coins
falling on marble floors,
a rattle and a snap,
and then silence
like a big room after a wake.

One of us
talks too much
on right-turn radio
where opinions
are all you have
when the facts
are no where
in the vicinity.
The other of us
packs a lunch
every morning,
and by 4pm
notices the
long shadows of
buildings draping
over the park bench
where they
nap until quitting time.
The paper bag
clinks with
the rustle of
broken glass,
a police radio
repeats the name
of another child gone
missing from the
playground,
a child reads the names
of those who died
somewhere at work,
over a city that was
getting ready for lunch,
afternoon naps,
both of us
stare at each other
when the bad news
reaches our table
at the bar,
news stations
offering their best
screaming headlines,

All we ever do is scream
at each
other
I say,
And you
add.
That's the only time
we hear each other

I scratch
where it itches
before asking
you for a kiss
like you gave me
in the days
we were younger
and full of the future.

We'll meet for dinner
at eight you say,
we'll line our pockets
with knowledge
and bread,
dance
together to the news, weather, sports.
all notes
about forms of battle,
we'll raise our
voices
and yell the worth of
our lives and anxieties
into the mix
we'll pass between ourselves
while the
earth turns, cracks, splits apart
and the cries of the night
merge with the sunlight
and becomes a part our day
of yelling and screaming
and every floor
collapsing from under our feet.

No Birds

So much depends on sunlight,
a head turning the other way to
avoid a crash of sight lines,
long sails on the bay during
still water days,
hotel keys dropped in the sand.

God is dead asleep
in the hills
along paths the coastline,
the philosophy of dust
contravenes conventional wisdom
those beautiful things
last forever in the shapes we gave them
because the roads to the beach
are lined with abandoned houses
and farm equipment left
from another decade in arid fields
that turn into mire and mud
every time it rains.

Nothing grows here.

Catholic to the bone, look,
there are no holes in my hand,
Jesus must have dirty fingers
after he arose from his ales,
I baptize myself with layers
of deodorant soap, water circles the drain
in a funnel, and then is gone.

The tornado pulls itself
over the land and reconfigures the
towns and farms it ploughs through,
this land is matchsticks and glass
blowing over the hills,
windows blow out buildings,
everyone ducks into cellars
and door frames,

The shoreline boils and churn,
waves are white,
there are no birds in the sky.

A Wild Rotary Blade in his Pants

"I am tired of drying the goddamned cat by hand."

That was what he said. Drying the cat by hand and all he could do
was rant and spew about how much he hated being alive in a city
where no one knew the meaning of the fine phrase "get down." It was enough
to make a man wish that none of the riots of sixties had taken place
if only because it was time for a man to be a man and cram a wild
rotary blade in his pants.

"Why don't we go into the other room where we can can
figures some shit out and shit like that?"

"Fuck you, I want a copy of Commie Grelb Pants magazine
on my coffee table right now..."

I picked up a copy of Gravity's Rainbow and hit him over the head with it,
and kept hitting him until there was nothing to swing at.

Change for a dollar

Most of the change from the dollar
For the newspaper falls to the floor,
It’s all you can do not swear and smile instead
As the cashier with the greased fingertips
Widens her eyes, eyebrows pitching in
An A frame of worry,

A tiny smile on her face trembling as
She fights back the fear, her mouth
Shrinking to an ‘o’ of ‘oh my”, she giggles, she sobs,
Everyone stares past the candy bars and magazines
To see who made their angel cry,

Oh my back creaks like
A door on a corroded hinge,
My knees crack when I bend,
Snapping twigs are what
People remember for

Every penny is flat at your feet
And red faced as you stare hard
At several Lincoln copper tone beard
Tarnishing under the fluorescent light,
Round taunts lying on two tone tile,

You smile at her, you bend over,
Knees make the sound of snapping twigs,

Oh my goddamned back

Every dime, quarter and nickel
Has rolled under the counter,
Out of sight, having scurried
To some dusty corner
The janitor’s mop couldn’t reach,

I’m making the sounds my father made

And you swear you see him as you stoop
Walking out of an elevator and out the street,
Wearing a nice suit and fine hat from fifty years ago,

Around the time you were born
When all this wear and tear began.

Florida hat band

when speaking of fronts,
the back must follow
as would a shadow after
a figure in the full brunt
of noon day glare,
pressed together and
poetically obvious to
an eye that registers
each straight line
and ordered fold of evey
woven thing in the vacinity,

in between
only bloodlines
and tissue wrapped
around a matrix of bone,
a unity of
all things happening at once
for the good reasons
writ on chalk boards
in lecture halls,
phenomena not
stopping for slide shows,

a society of immense, overlayed functions
that sustain the apparatus
of the gesture that attempts to
soften the gaze that freezes ambition,
makes desire a dead, cracking flower,
the mouth a riot of
twitches that might
be words had
not so much depended
on the red wheel barrow
glazed with rain water
by chickens gone
platinum in the
depths of the Big City,

large traffic
stops the two sides
of street from meeting
in combat,
and Democracy
sweats like a Florida hat band.

Zip

By eight in the morning
all you had to do was sing
and think of ways to keep the neighbors
distracted with your long legs
and rumor of a shirt.

I tell that I cannot find the
part in my hair
as the poker playing dogs in
that ugly poster all look
as though they've broken their pose
and look at me from the side
of their eyes,
pupils full of need and confusion
following the stroked of my comb
while I forge a route, a clean, thin
line of scalp so my hair matches the
way your face flairs red
when I mention that you're singing
makes me drunk with memories with all
the sex I've ever had,

I say this and see you
go up like a match,

You sing in a voice that could
make Heaven confess
to sins that would embarrass Lucifer,
turn deserts green with envy,
make fish grow arms and legs
and new lungs so they
can climb from the brine
and walk a mile for
whatever it is you're serving,
all this makes me weak in the knees,
my bones rattle and I shake
with sensations of oceans
leaving me and making me feel spent
and falling into some
idea of subterranean afterlife

When my cell phone rings
a digital chill of a melody
long in the cruel face of
public domain,

Help me find my part, I ask,
no, you answer,
I have fish to feed and children to teach,
but come here and zip me up
I will be there in a zip I say
you will never see the hand that
makes you late for work.

Cloudless Black Tablature

There is nothing that drink won't fix
but the bars are closed on Sundays
so it's holy water instead of vodka
we'll soak our cam shafts in,

Yes, the library looks like a spinning top,

Regular posse mode gives broken disc
half chance to shred party dress with
flower vase shard and splatter guitar vexing
because every nerve is a note plucked with
a pick foregrounding power lines crossing
the white moon alone in cloudless black tablature,

Where there was language commerce has ploughed under,

Peculiar pajama party pizza slice Romeo
melts like cheese, runny and gooey at the
ends of centuries he had to chew on for tests
he was late for and gazed into rooms watching
friends at desks drum number 2 pencils against
top lips moaning grieving over
the Battle of Gettysburg all over again,

Meet the author and kiss him until
his wife writes her own book and
you may in turn change your taste
in scents and spices.

Tennis shoes on power lines,

Vacant room overlooking train yard
the way you were going 'til something
nameless crawled into your suitcase
and made it weigh more than your mortgage,
dollar signs made of brass and iron,

A bent 'h',

Let's leave the cross where it is
and move the mountain instead
one spoon at time, several times a day,
seven days a week,
we have too much shore line as it is,

Shelves full of empty aerosol cans,

Bird cages are left open
and there are feathers
spinning down from the rafters,
we cover our sandwiches
with duck billed hats,
there is a line drive to center field,
vacant skyscrapers in the background,
proud as men facing a firing squad,
A hand job going both ways,

A box of pencils,
a jar of paint thinner,
a gum eraser,

Lips around a straw,
Sammy Davis Jr. felt painting,
white men fishing before the black perspective of the news,
morning comes to the last dark crevice behind the dumpster,

Modified rolling pin sawdust splayer grinds off
another batch of odes and codes and stanzas that corrode
in the places they are positioned like pistons proud and
erect like men who are thoroughly fucked
with what this life has in store for them,

An apple on a plate, sliced into four parts.

Slate Magazine

Slate Magazine

His Love for The World

Slate Magazine: "His Love for The World

After we bow
our heads
under the railroad cross
and crawl across
the stone mason's floor
and boundless black sand,


He will love
me just a little bit more
as I hold my breath,
lift my last sword
and thunder stick,
stab my palms with
quills to write home with,
He will love us all
as he would love a storm
that breaks every limb of tree
that smites the eye
that sees only lands
pure and white with sterility,

He will love us
then love us
all the more until

There is no more
skin to bruise cut
or otherwise rent
with the talking points
of our crusade,
no more flesh to humble
in piles of limbs
and heads saying
prayers that return
to the lips of
the doomed which say them,

Not until
the last flag
is laid over
the last box
and are no more hands
with fingers enough
to grip
and squeeze the trigger.


"

Cloudless black tablature

(A cubist musing)

There is nothing that drink won’t fix
but the bars are closed on Sundays
so it’s holy water instead of vodka
we’ll soak our cam shafts in,

Yes, the library looks like a spinning top,

Regular posse mode gives broken disc
half chance to shred party dress with
flower vase shard and splatter guitar vexing
because every nerve is a note plucked with
a pick foregrounding power lines crossing
the white moon alone in cloudless black tablature,

Where there was language commerce has ploughed under,

Peculiar pajama party pizza slice Romeo
melts like cheese, runny and gooey at the
ends of centuries he had to chew on for tests
he was late for and gazed into rooms watching
friends at desks drum number 2 pencils against
top lips moaning grieving over
the Battle of Gettysburg all over again,

Meet the author and kiss him until
his wife writes her own book and
you may in turn change your taste
in scents and spices.

Tennis shoes on power lines,

Vacant room overlooking train yard
the way you were going ‘til something
nameless crawled into your suitcase
and made it weigh more than your mortgage,
dollar signs made of brass and iron,

A bent “h”,

Let’s leave the cross where it is
and move the mountain instead
one spoon at time, several times a day,
seven days a week,
we have too much shore line as it is,

Shelves full of empty aerosol cans,

Bird cages are left open
and there are feathers
spinning down from the rafters,
we cover our sandwiches
with duck billed hats,
there is a line drive to centerfield,
vacant skyscrapers in the background,
proud as men facing a firing squad,

A hand job going both ways,

A box of pencils,
a jar of paint thinner,
a gum eraser,

Lips around a straw,
Sammy Davis Jr. felt painting,
white men fishing before the black perspective of the news,
morning comes to the last dark crevice behind the dumpster,

Modified rolling pin sawdust splayer grinds off
another batch of odes and codes and stanzas that corrode
in the places they are positioned like pistons proud and
erect like men who are thoroughly fucked
with what this life has in store for them,

An apple on a plate, sliced into four parts.

LEAD PIPE CINCY

Five steps
down but
who is smoking three
on a match songbook
waxy buildup
and navy blue.

This is no way
to mop the floor
or wipe that smile
from your face
as we dig for
the penny caught
in the snuggest bug palace.

The trains
don't go
to Del Mar
in July
in the heat
of the races
doggedly horsing half smiles
and cigar strands
of moonless romance.

Days from now
it's all the same
snow you've been
plowing back into the street.

Contemplate other facts
and areas of growth
like pants too tight
this time of night.

Money doesn't
grow on trees
nor does freedom come
from a barrel
of monkeys
but banana pants bosses down
run it all down,
for keeps.

You see
all the sins
of the saints
in the mold
in the bread laid
before the dead priest's body,
now eat.

Five steps up chopping wood
front style like biker skronk melon
shredded on skunk bud, mac,
my cloistered quiver requires a point.

The rocket's red glare

The rocket's red glarehow drunk could be getbefore we began to look attractive to the flies that buzz around our heads ,against the broad strokesof red and henna coded cloudsthat set the horizon on fireas the sun sinksjust a tip under the blurred line of the planetwhere earth and skyare a duo that play one masterful rondoafter anotherone of us stands upto God and his whispering minionsthat he is tired ofsuffering the resultsof a good ideagone postal.i raise my head from my palms,stop studying the waymy shoe laces arecoming untied,i gather a sense thatthere is more to lifethan gas , food and lodgingbut would settlefor any thing because i hadnone of the aboveand no love for curbsand the drainage dreamsthey inspire, i ask "IS THERE AN ARE ART SHOWCLOSING SOMEWHERE TONIGHT??"the other one of uswas still drinking as he careened up the street,one side to the other,all the billboards should read "tilt","LOVE STRAYSAND STAYS ARID"he yells at a passing bus,i laugh, Jesus what a jerk,i will take the busand play music in my skulluntil it comes,i will be serene and leanon the vernacularthat's so spectacularwhen I'm in the bagand full of mean remarks,i will behave,i will be silent,nothing will upset me,i am invisible on the bus line,but even as my mantrais uttered and foldedinto a vest pocket of the soulover where the heart still beatswith what remains ofmy sense of my self andvirtues beyond the bulge of my wallet,a car approachesthrough the intersection,it veers closer,i sing to the streetlights,the fixtures on the power lines,the car slows down,i'm on the twelfth chorus of "Cherokee",something breaks in my lapand then I am wetwith waterneither painful nor holy,the car speeds awayinto the slim v perspectivethat runs right to the water's edge,i am wetyet am i blessedin such a state,i hum another chorus, my lap drenchedwith tap water andbits of burst balloon,and now it's darkafter eight pm in Julywhen the fireworks go offfrom the end of the pier,where i wanted to beto make a phone callunder the rocket's red glare.