"What is that noise?”
                      The wind under the door.
“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”
                      Nothing again nothing.*

A blustery day. The wind drives
its chill through the cracks
in this old, groaning house.
It is the voice of the world
screeching: Let me in!
The same world I have struggled
so long to keep at a distance.
Both wind and world persist like poverty.
Seeking safety from everything outward,
I have tried to build castle walls
against a foreign, hostile world
in a little, shabby apartment.
Respite. Anonymity. Shelter from the storm.
Safe from the charms of money and women.
All effort in vain. It just can't be done.
No walls are thick enough
to quell the horrible screams
of this slowly collapsing century,
the sadly frigid remains of the dying day.
The undead bang on the shutters.
No cat fierce enough to fend off tomorrow.
A mind too weak to live in solitude.
A body that can't say no to desire.
Like a ghost of the future,
I am trapped by the tyranny of now,
listening to the wind beneath my door.

"the sound of rushing waters..."*

Give me the apocalypse,
give me prayers upon my lips,
I've come to know
what lies outside tradition.

Each time I've tried to change the past
I've heard a trumpet's mighty blast,
I know that morning will not help,
it's ending.

The vain escape from the womb
has only led us to a tomb
and in between just shadows
and delusions.

Life is hard and life is smart,
it drives the dagger into your heart,
it doesn't care at all
what you wish for.

Take the lovers, accept the gold,
do exactly as you're told,
fall in line, you know you're nothing
special.

Take up your apocalypse,
lift those prayers from on your lips,
no one's listening anymore,
it's over.

See all the breaches in the wall,
this culture is about to fall,
thank those cold barbarians
for closure.

Do not resist and do not fight,
your time is over and now it's night,
be grateful for the darkness
and the silence.

We tried so hard, we tried so long,
it wasn't worth a line of song,
accept your fate, it's over now,
surrender.

alles klar herr kommissar*

Write it all down with painstaking haphazardness,
carefully constructing nested memories,
exotic confections, negligible nuances,
dubious symbols of great insignificance,
an absolutely truthful pack of living lies.
Your readers deserve exactly what they get:
stumbling horses, nuzzling cassowaries, dead flowers;
the impenetrable clarity of an imagined life
imagining its mind imagining itself.

Ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.*

Live too long and words echo.
Sentences lose their bearings.
In the twilight colors wane.
New faces feel drably familiar.
Even the warm bodies of women
become gelidly generic.
Lovers live in other worlds.
War's clamor dwindles to murmurs.
Everything old, distant, familiar.
Memories as flea market post cards.
Wins and losses cancel out.
Too old for Jesus or ******.
Steady hands begin to tremble.
Books become a single manuscript.
Movies dim to one blurred screenplay.
Tomorrow just another cold front.
The future an inaudible rumor.
Caught in the evening of life
for a few more fading frames,
reluctantly faltering to the end.

This tiny apartment,
snug as a coffin,
claustrophobic as a tomb,
just large enough
to be a staging area
for the real thing.

I ache in the places where I used to play. LC*

Silence reigns
in the caverns of song;
the days grow short,
the shadows long.
Where are the flowers,
where is the sun
in the waning days
as the race is run?
Running out
of things to see;
running out
of things to be.
Dreams and lovers
lost and gone
and nothing waiting
further on.
With each new dawn
of each new day,
fewer reasons
to wish to stay.

The ones I loved,
who made me what I am,
dead or dying.

Jim Harrison,
Leonard Cohen,
the other Saints
of word and song.

Death spreads like ink
from an octopus.

Not so long now.

I'm running short
of things to be.

With each passing,
my broken heart
breaks again.

for Leonard Cohen
RIP*

That holy voice that undid the buttons of dresses
whispered them off shoulders onto the floor;
songs that celebrated the pellucid sky of Greece;
the dark confessions of hustlers and junkies;
Abraham poised with the knife of obedience;
the desperate Hallelujah of broken kings;
razors in the hands of beautiful losers;
generous assignations in dingy hotels;
the singular Glory of the god of Art;
spoken in the minor chords of death;
celebrating the discordant mystery of life;
danced to the very end of love, never missing a step.

An obvious homage to AG*

America it is time for an update.
I am still sick of your insane demands,
just shut up and try to listen.
America, it's 4 AM. November 5th, 2016
and you have become a shambling giant
crushing us all as you stumble on.
America we have come to a parting of the ways.
America your founding fathers
were rich white men who sold their truths
for power and then ***** their slaves
and whipped the People into shape.
America Clinton and Trump
really are the best you have to offer.
America I am voting NO!
I no longer accept your vicious lies.
The Wobblies and anarchists were right.
To rise from the ashes something
must first burn and die.
America I am holding a Zippo.
America I am thinking about you.
Your cities are scoured by ******;
your heartland drenched in ****.
Your jails overflow with potheads.
Your police have become assassins
who cry like little girls
when their victims shoot back.
Your banks have stolen
all the money in the world
yet I am broke as usual.
In the 60s I actually thought
there was some hope of redemption.
Youth and drugs create such illusions.
Now I live alone with a sociopathic cat.
My friends are dead or scattered.
I am a poet in a country that can't read.
America your brainwashed minions
stare into their TVs, awaiting further orders.
America I don’t own a TV.
America we are well and truly ******.
America once I fought a war for you.
I would never do that again.
America you have turned your guns on hope
and devoured it, feathers and all.
Now that is a Thanksgiving dinner.
America don't you ever weary
of eating your citizens' dreams?
America let me get to my angry point.
I am declaring my independence from you.
I am in you but not of you.
Stick your baubles up your ***.
You have enough slaves. You don't need me.
So long America. I gave you an honest chance.
America, don't call me, I'll call you.

Darkness and cold
press like death
upon my windows.
Each year,
harder and harder
to fend them off.
Slowly, surely,
each winter,
they creep deeper
into my soul.
Light and warmth,
only fading memories
of spring, youth
and you.

Look up,
only withered
husks
you don't
want
to see.
Look down,
the nubile
freshness
you want
to be.

Weary of the same old same old?
Don't flee your imperfections.
Instead, double down on them.
Stand naked before a mirror
like the one in the Bardo.
See what is really there rather
than what you'd like to see.
Your soul will either
turn cold as a frog's *****
or explode like a **** lab.
Instantaneous suicide or
blinding enlightenment.
Die, awaken, or just
continue to muddle through.
Corpse, Buddha, Zombie:
     Which of the three
     would you rather be?

Nothing in the world is softer
or weaker than water.*

Water is soft,
stones are hard.
Which would
you rather be?

When boulders
are worn beyond pebbles
only water remains whole.

Fill a bowl with water
until it brims and overflows
dripping on what's below.

Soft drops rain down.

Each drop of rain,
inexorably falling,
wears away the boulder
until only pebbles remain.

Each teardrop of time,
inevitably passing,
wears our lives away
until only memories remain.

The pebbles of life
begin as boulders
worn by time and tears
to their own perfection.

Paradox of life:
we must be worn away
to become whole.

When boulders
are worn to pebbles,
and pebbles to dust,
only water remains.

Time and teardrops
fill a pond
ruled by stillness.

Be still.

Know that enough's
enough to know;
that to live
until you die
is long enough.

Be the teardrops
not the boulder.

350 million
petulant toddlers
throwing tantrums
in the dark.

For the longest time,
it was all about the future;
then, there came that
strange, unexpected
and terrible moment
when the past began
to take control.
Oh that tragic feeling:
nowhere to go.
Everything is ending
and nothing is left
to begin.
Sterile loneliness
of the eternal now.
Dawns like snowfields
of the Gulag.
Days of vapis vacuum
Nights tucked into
an empty bed.
Where does hope fly
when you need it
the most?
How do you soldier on
without it?
Time, which never lies,
will tell.

Disappointments and delusions
make time scream by so fast
our pasts, so full of freedom,
seem to have belonged to others.
If only time's roaring train
could be slowed a bit,
we might enjoy our complete lives
the way lovers enjoy every inch
of each other's bodies.

ἐγγὺς μὲν ἡ σὴ περὶ πάντων λήθη· ἐγγὺς δὲ ἡ πάντων περὶ σοῦ λήθη.

How many streets,
how many times,
has he strolled
in this irrelevant
town?

Fifty years
The perambulating
flaneur.*

Change must be
but often arrives
glacially.

Crows on wires.
Nonchalant bunnies.
Indifferent children.

These ancestors
of that first ramble
take no notice
of the white haired man
with a cane.

The scenery never
comments on the drama.

Walking old streets
where many lives
have lived and vanished

brings neither sadness
nor nostalgia,

only the reminder
of time's inevitable,
ineluctable vortex.

Sometimes
all you can do
with a broken heart
is close it up
for repairs
hoping to
to reopen it
later, shinier.

Most folks
live in small yards,
their vision
curtailed by walls;
eventually the walls
become reality.

This is also
known as death.

the brilliant morning
no longer invites

every TV show
is a rerun

books that screamed
now murmur

even the body
speaks in the past tense

now becomes was

the falling away
of self
into shadow

even when time
falls and freezes
like winter leaves

the urge to consciousness
resists surrender

how we long for
bright new moments

right to the brink
of nightfall

even as the white flag of death

slowly unfurls

Make mine Velveeta.
Cheese is only cheese.
As Janis Joplin
once observed:
*It's all the same
******* day,
man.

The nervous afflictions
of poets drive
doctors to dismay;
it is difficult
and dangerous
to diagnose
a chameleon
in a thorn bush.

Integrity:

All these decades
thirsting in the wilderness
and still he refuses
to drink the kool-aid.

Delight:

He has lived alone
so long that
he has learned
to hug himself
and enjoy it.

Where is the illness
in either?

Tempus pro nemine manet*

It's the day there comes
a knock on the door
and you open it to find
a government agent
with a glowing, hot iron.

You drop your drawers
and OLD is eternally
branded on your ***.

It is painful, sad,
absurd and funny.

Sweet relief, too.

Never again must you
worry about getting old
or dying young.

You are old. It is official.

From now on there is
only older and older
until there isn't

and then the mystery.

Merrily, merrily,
merrily, merrily,
life and death,
but the same dream.

the bright morning
no longer invites

every TV show
is a rerun

books that screamed
now murmur

even the body
speaks in the past tense

now becomes was

the falling away
of self
into shadow

even when time
falls and freezes
like winter leaves

the urge to consciousness
resists surrender

how we long for
bright new moments

right to the brink
of nightfall

even as the white flag of death

slowly unfurls

"War - I know it well, and the butchery of men...*

A few old men don't forget.
Each generation passes away.
Millions of young men
swarmed the rice paddies,
struggled up the mountains,
destined to be butchered,
****** and forgotten.
This generation passes away.
The world sings its songs
and time passes as it must.
But for just a while yet,
a few old men can't forget.

riverrun, past Eve and Adams*

in the end there is a beginning
that must never end.
It is hardly difficult to argue
that this is no time for the fatuous
and that nothing is more fatuous
than scribbling poetry at dawn.
But compulsion and desire will out.
We must sing of this world
not some better unknown star.
The given is the wool we weave.
All times are equally terrible
and equally sublime.
The eternal politics of horror
must never stifle the human heart.
Which serves to make clear that

Rhododáktylos Ēṓs*

Good mornings,
rosy fingered promise;
front row ticket
to creation.

Bad mornings,
gray diluting black;
thundering kettle drum
of Armegeddon.

Both mornings,
exactly the same
morning.

Only one life
in which to awaken.

How can
our hearts survive
so many battles
when they
can never be
satisfied and happy
at the same time?

After a certain age,
morning becomes a relative term.

Three, four or six,
you wake up and get up.

Battle, marriage, divorce,
kids, lovers, fear:
sleep becomes a dream collage
projected in your weary skull.

The past lurks at night.

What remains begins again
when you awaken.

The two blend like a smoothie,
both bitter and sweet.

Lift the glass and drink it down.

It tastes like the only future
you have left, like the first
drink you ever took, like
the first time you ever kissed,
like another shot at awe.

It supplies the reasonless reason
that keeps you
plodding onward into the unknown.

The only place you can live

*now.

Here I stand, with all my lore,
Poor fool, no wiser than before.*

We die right now;
not in some alien future.
Some days, the sun shines.
Others the gloom gathers.
Wisdom is a fleeting moment.
Death does not defeat life.
Experience is the path
to transcendence.
Take it all in
before you can't.

Quis est iste puer?*

Not even the
sterile, serious
hospital scene
can diminish
the wonder.

Your wife
glows radioactive.

Something new
in this old world.

Love made flesh.

In her arms,
your child.

The Cosmos smiles.

Everything changes
forever.

Hoka hey.*

Each day a death and a loss.
Old friends, old lovers, old heroes.
A brain that draws a blank.
Knees that hurt. A back that aches.
Tentative steps down the Ghost Road.
An age of slowly letting go.
A time of things falling away
like leaves from an autumn maple.
Where we all go, in our own time.
A track through twilight to darkness
and then, we hope, into the light.

Wraiths pull strangers
into imaginary embraces
and pretend to feel
what isn't there.

Like butterflies and breezes,
some intimacies should
always be reserved
for the flesh.

Autumn,
a coffin closing.

Winter,
a coffin buried.

Spring
violets on a grave.

Summer,
the season of amnesia...

when we forget
all other seasons
and begin again
because we must.

Gaze into the mirrored face
of the aging drunk man.
See the blurred innocence of
the departed boy. There are
no other worlds to conquer.
This one holds danger enough.
War, women and whiskey
dance their destruction.
We only get the face we earn.
A man becomes what
a man does, but sometimes
that can’t be helped.
Eternally recurring Mulligan,
of boundless hope.
The turning Dharma wheel.
Perhaps a thousand more
lives must be lived
to undo this doing, to
break the bonds of Karma,
to finally sink into
the warm, welcoming
arms of peace.
A weary trek but worthy.

So many lives
to come this far.

Each story fragile,
imperfect, incomplete.
Still, the Bardo mirror
says more to go.

So sad to know
that Love remains
at least another
life away.

not so much writing as stuttering, said L.W.
no matter. The whole always false. donut.
only the peace meal may be milled to flower.
periplum. plot a coastline. only pieces seen.
fear unity. seek multiplicity. in a grain of sand.
rethink. remake. re-imagine. explore chaos.
old trials lead nowhere. only blind allies.
forms remain but meaningless. void. nada.
sweet sounds engender projectile vomiting.
foundations all rotted. build anew on a nothing.
chains do not signify. schizophrenic fragmentation.
the world and everything in it. complex system.
complex systems temporal. made of time. tick.
turbulence & unpredictability. not unlike weather.
poem a piece of time. complete universe. hole.
prose means. poetry makes. difference of kind.
form is meaning. words only place markers.
never theory. of stuff. practical & experimental.
art desires dissonance even as the ear rejects.
polar bear on white canvas howls to pallid moon.
take up tools. create the unknowable knowable.
      who surfs the froth of anarchy’s wave
      reaps only the freedom of the brave.

OK. Today may be dull. It happens. Sure.
But tomorrow remains rife with possibilities.

Podcasts of Trump on on the value of modesty.
Street fights in several extinct languages.
Hillary wins at Detroit poetry slam.
Jihadists explode poodles in crosswalks.
Island countries wave & grin as they sink.
***** flicks found starring Merkel and Putin.
A sane, reasonable presidential election.
Angry cats with opposable thumbs rebel.
Men & women speaking & understanding each other.
Brock Turner announces *** change operation.
God announces: No More Mulligans!
Gender wars conclude. Everyone’s dead.
Debut of lost Bach Partita for Electric Kazoo.
New, hip-hop production of Treblinka: The Musical.
Shakespeare cloned. Buys poetry anthology. Dies.
End-up, instead of start-up, launches in Palo Alto.
Smart phones install apps with annoying ads on users.
Common sense becomes common again.
Victimless rhymes decriminalized.

This is America! Never two dull days.
Take Heart! Tomorrow, there be Wonders…

Es ist in der Selbstbeschränkung,
     die ein Meister zunächst selbst zeigt.*
         - Goethe
We are,
by definition,
our limitations,
especially
those we choose.

They trace
the borders
of our being,
create our
distinctive,
singular
humanity.

Lines we cross
at great peril.

Omnia *** pretio.

The door slammed
like a gunshot.

His life had
just left him.

No respite.

Now he had
to learn
how to live
with a whole
new life.

It's always
something.

Dulce pomum quum abest custos.*


He loved her
like his own death.
The one thing
he could hold onto
when all else
went away.

Night of no moon. No twinkles. Poet time.
Murk of morning not yet become. Stygian.
Sky of two minds. Janus of covering clouds.
When does when begin? When does then end?
A dash of light tips the balance. Revision.
Syntax of the soul at 4 AM. Garbled images.
Why do bards embrace the darkness? Home?
Shades of past lives stumble in the gloom.
Portals to worlds lived and lost. Open.
Lovers with forgotten names once more whisper.
Friends long in graves stir and grumble.
Every single thing lost names itself found.
A slow sharpening into definition, detail,
becoming what those They insist is real.
   Wake to a world that’s barely now,
   live in a now that’s then. Somehow.

I have heard rockets and mortars fall,
the screams of wounded men, heard it all.
In my deepest sleep, still those soldiers creep
into my dreams and beg me recall
that they once lived and still they exist
as more than names on a dusty list,
but each one a soul, though no longer whole,
whose memories must always persist.

The universe has
a millions signs
that say no,
but
only a few
that say yes.



Everything is fragile
except the rope
around your neck.



Just another
day in paradise:
exciting as a
hole in the ground.



Please send me
a difficult woman
with a mind
like a razor
and a kiss
like a shotgun
blast.



If you think
with your ****
expect a few
headaches.



All the world's misery
is caused by people
who wear suits.



Sometimes, you must
must open a window
in your soul
just to let a little
oxygen into your life.



My anscestors
marched to war.
I flew.
Maybe there is
such a thing
as progress.



Why do we
fall in love
instead of
rise in love?
Because there's
no such thing
as a rise with
a thud at the end.



Cat's know everything
but divulge nothing.




Death waits
patiently as
a dead cat.



Enough now,
I am moving to
Lake Michigan
where I will
hunt wolverines
for a living
and learn
to eat ice.



Have to flee,
there is a warrant
out for me for
everything I
never did.



So difficult
some mornings
to face the
ugly emptiness of
the sober page



Wanted:
a future
without
a perhaps.



If you turned
wine into water,
made the living dead,
and called in demons
would these
be called miracles
and you hailed as
the new messiah?
Might be dangerous.
Listen: the sound
of hammers and nails
calling your name.



The Law is the Law;
**** is ****;
do the math.



Try not to **** away
your life on nonsense.



While I wasn't looking,
the whole earth was
zoned commericial.



There is always
another corner
around the next
corner.



Never let clocks
control your life.



Waking up
every day
is another
chance at
Spring.



Wherever you go
you carry along
all the places
you've ever been.



We are
breeding people
who will
have no place
in the world.



It takes
a life's work
to recognize
the mystery
of the obvious.



Much that you see
isn't for your eyes.



Exactly how long
does forever last?



I keep waiting
unsure of what
I am waiting for.



Sometimes, you walk
through doorways
in you mind
and can't get out.



When you are sure
you can't stand more,
the worst is just beginning.



We must learn to appreciate
our fatal savagery.



Don't disrespect alcohol.
It provides consolation
for the inconsolable.
Not a small feat.



Sometimes, art must be foul
in order to scrub the soul clean.

*

There are no
brave, new worlds;
just this one,
over and over,
until seen clearly
at last.

It is hard
on your soul
to admit
how often
you have
been full
of ****.

One more same same morning.
Ah, but there are perks to poetry.

A flick of imagination and I am gone
to a warm country, green, with beaches
and castles and four poster beds
in one of which I am just now
waking to a vision of a lovely lass,
ready for a dash of dawn plunder,
to open a day of azure skies and heat.

In some ways, poetry doesn’t pay well,
but in others, it can make you rich indeed.

She holds the cards
of your heart:
aces and eights.
No woman more
alluring, deadly
or desirable
than
a difficult woman.

Word salad. Everyone a poet. But use the correct fork.
Sometimes you’re the road sign, sometimes the weary traveler.
Woke up craving attention again. The cat was unimpressed.
Pay no attention to my browsing history. I’m a writer, not a serial killer.
Women never want much, only everything you are or will be or can’t.
He said he would stuff my taco unlike any man before him,
and boy did he! So full! I’ve always wanted a man who could cook.
Some day’s, you just know that the jail time was worth it.
Dementor support group meets Thursday evening at Starbucks.
Cows who give milk for free only meet lecherous farmers.
Australia’s Oldest Man Knits Tiny Sweaters For Injured Penguins
Relearn the dying art of thinking before you ******* speak.
I scream. You scream. We come. Police come. Awkward.
Jumpin’ jizzimy Jehoshaphat. Sticky patrol cars. Safety catches.
Thought it was a loofah, but it turned out to be steel wool.
A few moments of pleasure. A full year of skin grafts.
Onan’s Handy Man Service. No job too small. Try me.
Sixty is the new 40? Try getting your ***** to believe that.
Often lost but never alone. Handy to have a hand handy. True love.
You meet the love of your life and find out she puts ketchup on pizza.
I never flirt with danger but danger just keeps on insisting.
Life hits like a girl. Thing is, like a girl that hits really hard.
She almost put on ******* today, it was a clothes call.
She lost me at: Forgot the safe word? Excellent! Here we go.
Her ad slogan: my greatest satisfaction, awakening your passion.
She dumped me because I just stood there with my moves drooping.
Watching Internet *** is like ******* without arms.
I bet that pride of yours doesn’t enjoy snuggling like I do.
Sobriety, never as delicious as an exquisite bad lifestyle buffet.
Ask your doctor before beginning the ****** and whiskey diet.
You don’t have to be desperately lonely to tweet, but it helps.
Yep. Something is happening. But you won’t know what it is.
The only fact is that you’ll never understand anything at all.
***** anything you like. After all, only everyone will see it.
Sleep children. Sweet Dreams. Dreams of angry cassowaries.
Nanny will be here to sweep up the pieces in the morning.

A Ballad For A Thin Man.

Understood backwards. Lived forward. Life.
Haunted by diverging others. Us but not. Wraiths.
Ghosts of what if? Who then? What might have been?
Leave room. Turn left. Lovely house, wife, retirement.
Leave same room. Turn right. Shack, loneliness, poverty.
Theorize games. Physik quanta. Slide down strings.
Into Wonderland, Oz, Middle-Earth. Narnia.
All the places that don’t exist and matter the most.
Where doors open up to impossible possibilities.
Fight your way through every day. Pit bull of potential.
Just do your work and be kind.* That is a separate peace.
We may be others in other universes, but here we are just us.
**** it up. Love your life. Do what you must. Soldier on.
Real realities can really hurt. Take it like a Man. Or Woman.
Be grateful for your trials. Trials are you. Struggle.
Mount the philosopher’s donkey backwards, advance.

An Uncomfortable Poem.*

Kicked your dog? Beaten your wife, husband, kids?
Cheated on your spouse, your taxes, a test? Cursed god?
Had *** to get something? Done a *******? A babysitter?
Shot ******? Been a secret alcoholic? ****** to inflict pain?
Sold drugs, your integrity, your body? Been *****? ***** someone?
Bullied a weaker soul? Kicked someone already down?
Betrayed a confidence, a lover, a coworker, your country?
Hit and run? Been in prison? Stolen money, credentials, a poem?
Alienated your partner, your children, the world?
Killed someone in a battle, a street fight, by accident?
Broken a heart on purpose? Been cruel? Lied for advantage?
Walked away from another’s pain? Sold out love? Spurned it?
No? Never? Not one? Not once? Really? Perhaps you are a Saint.
Only one person knows these things for sure.
What we leave out becomes our Gothic narrative of secrets.
The wheels within our wheels within our wheels. Churning.
   *We are what we choose to reveal. Only that, no more.
    Everything else hidden behind a closed, locked door.