i almost forgot to mention the one prerequisite of modern love,
they caught the ****** in Scandinavia -
the punter, got punished - not the *******,
the punter - for crossing over the signpost
obstruction: illegal to cross, legally there, illegal to cross -
if you want an antidote to British xenophobia
watch two Brits having *** - esp. those who are
dumb enough to invite omnipresent, omniscient,
omnipotent Onan - Buddha's third and experience
how much they talk during ******* -
and why do you think most people experience
a fall of libido? professionals in ***?
sure, you can just hear behind that professionals
in carpentry - nail it! nail it! you can just hear it,
Chelsea accent and a swear word -
this is Darwinism as much as i care about a panda
bear having 36 hours to be impregnated per annum,
i watch **** out of curiosity - it's a bigger omen
factory than Halley's comet - in every one of us
a Richard Attenborough - well, trans-categorical
monism, **** sticks together - but listen to the Brits
while *******, i say *** ought to be meaningless
and onomatopoeia fuelled - she moans he plays golf,
he ******* she goes on a shopping spree -
wordless, learning a new alphabet -
but hearing xenophobic tongue on the streets of little England
and then watching British ****, you just tend to
'ave a laugh as to why you have to talk so much
when the primeval cuckoo call is already said -
******* is a curiosity for me, having professional
actors in this area was bound to undermine us
and question our libidos as mere friendships -
sooner or later men will pick up on this and will be
like **** prenups, **** marriage, **** female friendships,
embrace solipsism - Paraclete Union -
but it's just weird that modern love needs a prerequisite,
a ******, even if it's acted out, elsewhere translated as
stage-fright - the fear of someone watching -
20th century complaints of serial killers - impotence -
well, we know where this impotence came from, David
Attenborough in the background in hush tone
as if to not disturb - the female mantis teases her Saudi
billionaire into her **** nest to impregnate and then cut
his **** and assets off like a harakiri execution -
as a humanist and not a naturalist my playing field is
bound to be via a third eye, the attributes of the Almighty
reduced to filth of Onan (third eye omnipresent,
omniscient) - but it's modern kosher - Zapruder -
the first to ******* - there ain't no black
in the Union Jack - there ain't enough white
in the Stars and Stripes - one song lost among Prince
copyrights from you-tube - Manic Street Preachers'
ifwhiteamericantoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfall­apart,
they deleted it - Prince never got radio on the internet;
album? anthem anorexia - the holy bible / went missing
in Shanghai, lived the rest of his life away from the
spotlight, curating fields of rice into origins of geometry.

I am older now
than you were then.
That day still lives
in memory

Did you hear the rifle's
echoing sound
as you passed me
in your Limousine?

The next,
like a Zapruder film,
plays out
in my unsettled dreams.

I saw a spray of pink
and blood.
I heard shouts
and a woman
scream.

Panic filled
my childish heart
I saw fear in
my Father's face.

I am older now
than you were then
that day
the world changed.

in response to matthew zapruder's "come on all you ghosts," section ii*

I.

I see what you mean about fathers; lately
my father has been the only ghost I know. He
mostly stands in doorways, mostly to say goodnight.

II.

Please tell me more about what it’s like to listen
to your father cough. Mine never has; I wasn’t even born yet
when someone stole his lungs, hid them away in a graveyard.

III.

I think I want a keychain like yours. No not
a keychain, but something just as much a corpse. Mostly
just a portrait of my father, maybe I’ll take your keychain
and onto it I’ll paint the portraits of everybody’s fathers.

IV.

I know I’m being called, but I don’t
feel quite like my father yet. There is
still so much pavement left for me to see,
and one day I want to be able to list all
of the names of places that I’ve lived in.

V.

I’ve lived mostly in wombs. Also
there was the taxi, and then the apartment skewed
with a crib and rats and some gunshots
from down the street. Later there was the house
by the river, and there was upstate, where
they sat in beach chairs in the parking lots
of gas stations and watched the cars drive by.

How many times and on how many screens has JFK been assassinated? she asks a few minutes into the commute.

Someone has said that to me before, I say.

And I notice, now for the first time, even she is a rerun or a ghost
or an unfortunate reminder of the one who came before her,
from the artfully mismatched polish on her toenails to the way her wrists wrap around each other as she talks her quiet talk, her fingertips balancing her iPhone, which streams Jackie Then Kennedy scrambling toward the back of the Cadillac. Its the Zapruder footage in slow motion and somehow in HD, and she touches the thumbs up icon when the footage comes to a close.

Across from me sits a dead man. I'm sure of it—his death. He lounges in himself, his belly fat imperialistic in its expanse, moving beyond beltline and claiming a space all its own on the torn, blue cushioned seat. The dead man looks a bit like Marlon Brando, post-Tango in Paris, when the depression set in and with it the weight, but like Brando, there's still a cool magic in the deep lines of the dead man's forehead, something forlorn and knowing in the drag of his eyelids.

It's here that I remember I'm a writer. And moments like these, I'm supposed to render in belabored yet fragmented ways.

That's ego, she says, not looking up from her phone.

What's that? I say.

The way you pigeonhole me. Rerun, ghost, et cetera, she says. Maybe I've made love to a sad man like you before. Maybe you're a trigger for me. Maybe I know everyone you're going to be, everything you're going to say.  Like I was going to tell you these pants, these pants are lenin pants and I got them from Bali. And I didn't say it because I already knew your response.

Are they ethically made? we say smugly and simultaneously.

And the subway car does that screeching sound you hear in movies and the tunnels outside do that motion blur you see in movies and I try to kiss her but she says that uh-uh cowboy line you know from movies.

Brando had affairs, I say.

Kennedy had affairs, she says.

Have you ever had an affair?

It was exhausting, she says, the performance required. All the effort in your vocal affectations, those terrible 3 p.m. lunches, the pet names, your obligatory passion and one-liners, the secrecy for the sake of secrecy, the purchase and disposal of lingerie. If I could get the time back—

I'd spend it alone with a glass of red wine and a good book, we say.

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy
To many this has always been an unsolved Mystery

JFK was shot in Dallas, Texas on the 22 of November
We are still mourning him, and will always remember

Abraham Zapruder had no idea what he'd be filming
Would be under scrutiny by the public for viewing

Some said the shots came from the grassy knoll
Where they came from no one will ever know

Jackie Kennedy in terrible shock, crawled out onto the limousine
She could not recall doing this, when the Secret Service Intervened

Walter Cronkite reported this shocking news to us in tears
And in all his years of work, he will forever be revered

Jackie in her blood stained suit stood beside Lyndon B. Johnson
When he took the oath of office to be next president of our nation

Oswald told the world that he was a patsy
Jack Ruby shooting him on TV was ghastly

Life Magazine chronicled the events
Filling each page with all JFK contents

To this day there still are reenactments and movies
And everyone like me still feels this is newsworthy

Copyright 2013
All Rights Reserved

Come On All You Ghosts


<>

I heard a little cough
in the room, and turned
but no one was there

except the flowers
Sarah bought me
and my death’s head

glow in the dark key chain
that lights up and moans
when I press the button

on top of its skull
and the ghost
I shyly name Aglow.

Are you there Aglow
I said in my mind,
reader, exactly the way

you just heard it
in yours about four
poem time units ago

unless you have already
put down the paper directly
after the mention

of poetry or ghosts.
Readers I am sorry
for some of you

this is not a novel.
Good-bye. Now it is just
us and the death’s head

and the flowers and the ghost
in San Francisco thinking
together by means

of the ancient transmission device.
I am sorry
but together we are

right now thinking
along by means
of an ancient mechanistic

system no one invented
involving super-microscopic
particles that somehow

(weird!) enter through
your eyes or ears
depending on where

you are right now
reading or listening.
To me it seems

like being together
one body made of light
clanging down through

a metal structure
for pleasure and edification.
Reader when I think of you

you are in a giant purple chair
in a Starbucks gradually leaking power
while Neil Young

eats a campfire then drinks
a glass of tears
on satellite radio.

Hello. I am 40.
I have lived in Maryland,
Amherst, San Francisco,

New York, Ljubljana,
Stonington (house
of the great ornate wooden frame

holding the mirror the dead
saw us in whenever
we walked past),

New Hampshire at the base
of the White Mountains
on clear blue days

full of dark blue jays
beyond emotion jaggedly piercing,
Minneapolis of which

I have spoken
earlier and quite enough,
Paris, and now

San Francisco again.
Reader, you are right now
in what for me is the future

experiencing something
you cannot
without this poem.

I myself am suspicious
and cruel. Sometimes
when I close my eyes

I hear a billion workers
in my skull
hammering nails from which

all the things I see
get hung. But poems
are not museums,

they are machines
made of words,
you pour as best

you can your attention
in and in you the poetic
state of mind is produced

said one of the many
French poets with whom
I feel I must agree.

Another I know
writes his poems on silver
paint in a mirror.

I feel like a president
raising his fist in the sun.

My
lens is myopic
as the lunar lights reveal a replete and sallow stillness
I close my eyes... stuck on her


Our
slow motion
Zapruder film flesh hostilities play out
They
Lurch further toward me from the worst part of my mind

This is an
ante-meridium rerun wrought familiar

Those slow motion frames serve as a reminder
and I tell myself
“not again”

It’s always destroy, withdraw, withdrawal, return
No thrill, no endgame,
but we (i) play it out just the same

Renewed, resolvent, arisen,
(my) stake is wooden,
(she is) wet, crimson lipped and collapsing
Rest coldly now, unmoved upon a moribund midnight heart

These Thoughts of her feed on me in the night.
Images that prowl, project and play like celluloid

wanting her I toss and turn,
till, I lay,
languishing, and losing
lifeblood
lost and dreading daybreak
a living dead type of drained

Forlorn Feelings brought back from
damnation
soulless and predatory
This vampire lust won’t die.


But still I doubt Nosferatu had an *** like her’s

Warning: I rarely drop f bombs in my poetry...but this is most definitely an exception. Please see link in notes. Thank you!


I was thinking on the way home from work in my car that has no air conditioning because as we all know, air conditioners in cars rarely last past 100,000 miles and make a great excuse for getting a new car. That’s why car manufacturers put ******* ac’s in cars. That's why car manufacturers don't like any new ideas like something other than that **** we've been running on for 100 ******* years. Ever wonder how we can make an electric car for the moon in the 60's, but for the most part we're still running on Exxon 50 years later?! Ever wonder why there's been no new innovations in getting our fat ***** around? Ever wonder why the few electric cars we finally have are so ******* expensive? Jesus, wake the **** up! Anyway, I was thinking about how this was the 3rd day in a row of 99 degree temps and how anything over 90 degrees was a rarity when I was a kid. So I gotta say Al Gore had his **** together…Inconvenient Truth baby! So, what the **** happened to Al Gore...thank you! So I get home and stand in front of my ac for 10 minutes because I’m sweatin’ my *** off. Then I turn on the tv to relax for a few minutes and I see that oil is still leakin’ in the Golf. Haven’t they fixed that **** yet? Why ain’t these ******* in jail? Millions of gallons of oil going through a pipe into a boat and they got no ******* plan to stop it if it ***** up? Way to go BP, you stupid *****! Oh, and thank you for keeping an eye on this **** for us…whatever department we are paying taxes out the *** for keepin' an eye on this **** for us! Also, gotta’ give a shout out to my buddies at Exxon once again who dragged their ***** through court for 20 years and ended up paying 10% of what they were originally ordered to pay for dropping millions of gallons of your precious oil into the Prince William Sound. Did you send thank you cards to the Supreme Court for kissin’ your ***** you collective pile of ****! How many thousands of lives did you ruin? Do you think about that…**** no! A few years ago I laughed when I saw somethin' on the web that said the 911 attack was planned. Now that **** was even too far out there for me to believe. Then I saw Mr. Bush tell a reporter that he saw the first plane hit the first building on tv before he went into that school. Think about that **** for a minute. JFK assassination…after years of reading books on this and seeing documentaries…I found out that even the Zapruder film has been spliced and diced from the get-go to possibly cover up a head shot from Kennedy’s left side. I said ‘possibly’ because I just don’t ******* know and none of us will until somebody that does tells us the truth. The truth...remember what that is? Maybe not...because we rarely hear it. God knows enough witnesses tried to tell the truth. They ended up either dead or scared of being dead. Ever hear of the Harper fragment? Look it up! The one thing that plays over and over in my head that points me in one direction is the two Secret Service agents being ordered back into their car filled with other secret service agents and away from the back of Kennedy’s car just before it headed down Dealy Plaza and seeing the one agent shrug his shoulders twice…as if to say…’why the **** do you want me to sit in the car doin' **** when my job is to protect the President.’ I bet you haven’t seen that, have you? Do I hate this Country, No! I love this country. What I hate is lies. What I hate is being manipulated. What I hate is greed…and those things have worked their way into our Government, our Corporations, Our media, our Courts and our thoughts. Even Eisenhower tried to warn us about this **** and Kennedy tried to stop it. Last President that actually had the ***** to stand up to these ****** that own our country now. Too many of us feel we are betraying country, neighbors and friends by questioning what is happening. It is possible to love and question. There’s a great line from a Clint Eastwood movie; 'Don’t **** down my back and tell me it’s rainin.’ Well, they been ******' down our backs ever since they slaughtered the original owners of this prized piece of real estate. Google 'Trail of Tears' and learn some history...cause you won't learn any of it in our wonderful educational system. **** it’s HOT!
I’m nobody…but if I was somebody and this was published in Rolling Stone and one week later they found me dearly departed…the victim of a drug overdose, a fast moving cancer, a karate chop to the neck or a single car accident in the desert…would you question or would you accept…question or accept….question…love ya Dorothy!

(for Alice Bridgwood)


At some point, we simply say to hell with it:
Whether undone by the shortcomings at our craft
Or by the simple bulk of our mere humanity,
We come to the conclusion that certain mysteries of the universe
Shall remain exactly that—oh, we’ll still have
The odd glimpse of the Platonic,
The glimmering flicker of epiphany
Bestowed upon us a few frames at a time,
Grainy and Zapruder-esque,
But, by and large, we will remain sheepish
As some television weatherman who,
Though ostensibly trained to understand the behaviors
Of sluggish storms making their way lugubriously from the Southwest
Or brisk mid-February Alberta lows,
Must admit he, too, was bamboozled
By the sudden deluge or foot-plus of snow.

What, then, do we make of one
To whom the inscrutable calculus of the spheres
Is an open book, as simple as connect-the-dots
Or some child’s paint-by-numbers
(But augmented with shading and shadow
Until the picture is not simple rote coloring
But something else, something finer and all her own),
Whose words move us to follow where she may lead,
Like medieval peasants, dirt poor and bewitched,
Who flocked to the Holy Land
Following the charismatic little shepherd child,
All hayseed and bucolic charm
(Yet all of that simply myth arriving whole cloth,
A mish-mash of sloppy scholarship and errant translation;
She’d have sussed it in an instant)
Hoping that some smattering of his grace
Would trickle down upon them,
Not unlike the prayer of the farmer,
His lands parched and salted, hearing thunderstorms
Rumbling in terrible grandeur in the distance,
Hopes the odd drop or two reaches his fields.