How Sad

Talking to myself
about the lines
crossing old railroad ties.

So many gloves
for one hand.

Seldom to the East,
nature never leans.

Factories
dot the matrix.

This sentence is about
itself complaining
about it's circular nature.

Well known map.

How much target practice
shall we demand
for our first date?

She swore it was all true.

I saw you last night
sitting next to
Charlie Weaver,
who was napping
when circle got the square.

She swore it was all
true , that our talent
were different
from the average bear
and that any attempt
to unite them

Would change the course of
mighty rivers,
unhinge doors,

Make us desire to
bend steel in our bear hands.

Cups rattle right off
the shelf.

False diction is all there is.

Moonlight on bath tub water.

ANIMAL RIGHTS

So the laughter takes us all
to another day that is after
the latest worse day to grace
the pages of diaries whose
ink runs and blots on the page
in the rain,
where you were writing,

So spins another day laughing
at the runs in the stockings of
pretty women for whom legs
are a religion of length and shape.

So laughter is not the cure for all that
ails the soul in the unnamed center of night,
but it is song that’s barked like the glee
of seals in a circus act performing
Bach on so many tricycle horns.

So the shoe horn one brings to the jam session
can only play sole music is enough to
make us laugh again by the rise of the sun
when it comes over the hills
and gutted mansions that
ruin the view of the coast line
loops along the curve of the continent
that grows redder than lobsters
in a hungry man’s trap,

So the leather that was wasted on the sidewalk
is gone but the feet survive all the blisters
sweet potato blues could provide in a stretch of
giving some one else a hand for merely showing up
in not just a nick of time, but the whole block of wood as well.

So there is no peace under the stars
when we laugh at the sins of the fathers
that visit us in any hometown that can be hidden in.

So there’s a sign up ahead.

So who’s laughing now?

A hat in the sofa cracks

A hat in the
Cracks of ugly sofas
Ain’t nothing to
Brag about on Sundays,
Pally boy.

marry me during the commercial

the hands of my watch have stopped
dead in their track, frozen on the dial

and the spoon full of steaming soup
is an inch from my mouth, arrested.

the cat looks to be posing for cute posters of
cats knocking things over, like it's done tonight with

that drink that is stuck in mid air , in front of the TV
with the beer ad on where no can even lick their suds

because time has stopped for the time being because
you're out of the room, on a cell phone , smoking

a Camel as you probably conspire with a girl friend
to stuff me in burlap bag and leave me

on a corner in a bad neighborhood, thinking gypsies
or blues musicians will find me and give me something

to do besides moon over your image, holding my breath
until you come back into the room,

just like your doing now, coming through the door
reeking of filter tips , cell phone in your grip,

looking at me askance when you see me exhale,
blowing out candles in the process, oh yeah,

I mean it's okay, really, I'm just glad you're back
from the break you took in the middle of my proposal

which means that all the breakable things left in the air
in your absence can now come crashing down to the

hard tile floor , all the bric-a-brac and my world particularly
getting bruised, bent and shattered and breaking wide, wide open,

my heart is broken again
when it's time to swim

and there's nothing funny about this at all,
I mean,

you're kind of cute, the way you
reduce me to rubble
even in my finest
courtin' clothes.

The Drive Home

The boy whistles half a song
he heard half on the car radio
when he was half listening
with the other ear to his Dad
who was half asleep already
after the long party where Mom
took his keys and pulled him the coat sleeve.

“Please please me” the boy finally sings
in the middle of Dad’s story about
the time when he was ten and he swung a bat
and hit the ball so hard that it sailed all
over the globe and came back  that
where the game was played and broke
an apartment window that made
the old women scream
and the young men cry,
“Please please me, oh yeah….”
the boy sings,
Dad smiles,
Mom drives,

“Oh yeah what? asks Dad,
rose cheeked and  slurring
as Mom fires up a cigarette,
with the electric lighter,
“Please you what oh yeah?”

The boy looks at Mom
who is looking  straight ahead
as they drive the country road
back to the city at night,
billboards  for A&P and Ford dealerships
passing by until the sky brightens with
street lights and neon that makes
the snow on the grown look grey,
full of suit.

“Oh yeah what?:” Dad asks again
and the boy coughs from the cigarette smoke,
thinking that the car no longer smells like new leather.

“ Please please me, oh yeah and I love you”
he sings, his voice cracking as he reaches
for a note that miles beyond  his grasp.

“…AND I LOVE YOU” Dad proclaims
and now looks out the window,
silent now and soon snoring
as the boy notices that
there are more houses passing by
and less wooded groves,

“Dad is snoring” he tells his Mom,
who was singing “Tennessee Waltz”
with Patti Page on the radio and
every violin player on the planet,

“Yes he is” she says, turning
into their drive way,
“he  loves even when he’s sleeping”.

Larry Rivers History

Larry Rivers History LessonIn spite of everythingthat's hard and coveredin cigarette burnsThere's not a ghostof a chance thatthis exact world hasbeen here beforeI entered the museumto stare at statuesand rooms full of soaked canvas,Washington crosses the Delawareas though posing fora glossy magazine ad for whiskey or fabulous airlines,Manhattan is nestled inthe forests aroundGreat Lakes country,Those who fire firelong riflessee only the bloodtheir red coatsincite in the eyesof those whose farmsthey burn on sketchy grounds,History and advertisingoverlay each otherand leave their tracesas rough drawings wrestling for control of the wrist that holds the pencil,The world in outline,fading reds and bluesdrifting out of the lines of what the eyesees in one viewing,the easiest dimensionThat shimmers, blurs,stutters on viewing,repeats itself endlesslyalong with so many deathsand births that crowd thecalendar days,Damn I wouldwalk a mile for many a Cameleven thoughI smoked my last oneten years agothis fall.

A PILLOW BETWEEN OUR WORLDS

A PILLOW BETWEEN OUR WORLDS

I am sleeping
while I make the
eggs the way an army likes them,
guys with guns
and armor
who came by last night,
looking for a party,
finding religion instead,
the only thing to
do when there are no women
in the house and no war to
fight except a yawn
and some obscure itch
at the scalp line,
an army of scared rabbits,
a  receding hare line,
a joke the eggs me on
snoring as I flip
the eggs, scrambled ,
like an alphabet soup,
onto plates, snoring
and sawing logs with nostrils
flared like pants on a ballroom dance floor,
an army praying for women, just some one to pick a fight with,
I find myself chewing my tongue, head against the pillow, awake in the light that comes from the bathroom , there is water running, the sheets are wet with sweat and drool,
I see your mouth glisten with  lipstick,
your dress hangs on you
so right and precise as it molds itself lovingly over your breasts and
hips that it hurts me to say goodbye again, I know what you will say
when  you see me watching,
“You’re still asleep, friend, go back to the
other dream,
an  army waits for you
that could  use your knowledge about
things to do
when everything is done”,
so I close my eyes, a tail of your dress
whipping around a corner, through a door ,
and  there are dirty dishes,
guns and armor all over the carpet, tired men
with out wives or girlfriends
to love them
mediating on uniforms and regulations  in an age
when war is only dreamed of
in philosophy,
this world
fades, the shadow
at the end of each street
I  think I can enter into passing by
in cars and buses,
doors and windows looking onto other dreams
of armies naked in their
lack of  dreams, a religion of standing around,
waiting for a whisper,
this dream before the next one,
a pillow between our worlds.