I feel like I am neurologically deficient
That a lot of my brain cells are missing
Like a punch drunk doped up punk boxer
A pimply muscle bound ***** on steroids
Hanging out at my old high school locker
No shocker that I am no medical doctor
But I always thought I’d be just a bit better
I guess on average I am a little bit smarter
But the bar is set so low that it requires
Very little to grow and go over it, you know
In comparison to the other young men
I may be grandstanding and one upping them
But when it comes to grand scheme of things
When compared to past people
Who shared my glorious dreams
Like Percy Shelley and John Keats
Like Ginsburg and the other Beats
I think I am drifting of course just a bit
Lest we all forget the **** cut the crap to fit in it
Maybe I’m okay few travel this way anyways
So who’s to say if I’m doing it the wrong or the right way
But I still feel like my brain needs a chemical treatment
A diet with more nutrients and sufficient Supplements
Because I’m feeling neurologically deficient

spring omnipotent goddess thou dost
inveigle into crossing sidewalks the
unwary june-bug and the frivolous angleworm
thou dost persuade to serenade his
lady the musical tom-cat,thou stuffest
the parks with overgrown pimply
cavaliers and gumchewing giggly
girls and not content
Spring, with this
thou hangest canary-birds in parlor windows

spring slattern of seasons you
have ***** legs and a muddy
petticoat,drowsy is your
mouth your eyes are sticky
with dreams and you have
a sloppy body
from being brought to bed of crocuses
When you sing in your whiskey voice
                                        the grass
rises on the head of the earth
and all the trees are put on edge

spring,
of the jostle of
thy ******* and the slobber
of your thighs
i am so very
                glad that the soul inside me Hollers
for thou comest and your hands
are the snow
and thy fingers are the rain,
and i hear
the screech of dissonant
flowers,and most of all
i hear your stepping
                      freakish feet
                      feet incorrigible
ragging the world,

some greedy little bitter man has put together a picture-perfect person and out of pure laziness and malignant attempts at control he pays off a psychopath to make it happen but we’re just a little body, flesh and bones come between them and their paychecks so why not make it easier? they made a factory out of our garden and nothing grows in factories it’s manufactured, easy as one two three four five six, we’re all sitting on an assembly line waiting for some alcoholic man to shout at some pimply-faced twenty-something “FASTER! FASTER!” so it begins! press of a button, we’re created, step one: your parents were given the baby books, kids! infants, they’re all the same anyways. they’re not individuals yet, they haven’t been encoded so relax, parents. want them turn out like you? sure, do what your parents did, worked out well, eh? been occupying this factory your whole life, then? well anyways, step two: they spend less time with you because you’ve been in this world for three years so it’s time you get out on your own…. step three: they gotta YELL and scream and children aren’t supposed to touch things or say things or scrape their knees because that’s more work for the adults, and they work all day, just like they were programmed for, good little machines 'cause they forgot what it’s like to be a baby or an animal or a plant or a God but also the resentment, a child wants to live but how ridiculous? there’s no life in industry… all about the money baby step four: you buy your education because it builds your character because money says power but when did meaningless power equal respect? I don't know but they force you into reading the same old instruction pamphlets left in the break room at the plant for the past century or so and five: your turn to work for fourty years in this polluted place because it’s hard to break free from twenty-three years of moulding into a cookie cutter you never did fit, that’s why it hurts so much when they try to push you through, your muffin-top is sliced right off and you’re contorted to fit the view of perfect sugary sweetness but just to make sure you're ready they coat you with vanilla icing to cover up your imperfections, perfect, now step six, and this one is the doozy, and because you’re **** broke: go back to mom and dad’s and grab those baby books and again and again and again the cycle repeats and repeats and repeats….

we play with a retired professional but
none of the other kids mind—
his alcoholism has gotten the better of his muscle
memory and god doesn’t he look bad

the ball is an old piece of garbage made from
a kind of industry plastic
half-flayed alive by loving kicks
that expose the moldy gray rubber inner-
sphere like some soft eyeball

and, behind one of the goals, the
boy who plays goalkeeper only on Wednesdays
lounges like a pimply Greek sculpture—
unable to move as an epileptic fit lazily
puppeteers his body while the players pass the ball into his gut
and I step aside, too—
my stomach aches so badly for the crispy joy
of cold cereal I can’t play—

some days are like that—shed of their seriousness
because it’s more fun to play without a defense
even though we’re always losing **** it I just scored
a goal!

Ewww
Look at you
You disgusting little girl
Your hair’s a mess
Greasy; pimply; ugly
Teeth not white enough
Eyebrows too thin
Makeup done wrong
Just give up already
Walk to the mirror, tubby
Your thighs too large
Your arms flabby
They say your skinny
Who believes them?
You don’t eat some days
You say you’re not hungry
Plus, it’s too “mainstream”
You love food
That’s your problem
Think back on today *****
You yell at them
You think your life is so hard
You make theirs miserable
Ruin what little happiness they have
Worst sister ever
Why should they ever love you?
You don’t even know what love is!
You think you do
You don’t

You ruined another friendship
You thought you were in love. Ha!
You ruin everything
You’ve ruined yourself
Arms out
Wrists up
Examine the scars
Anger and hurt
Permanently displayed
Scars; burns; signs
The world can see
Just another ******* statistic
You like that, hipster?
Didn’t think so

Oh the labels
Do you want to be classified?
Hipster; depressed; hippie; cutter
How do those even go together?
You confuse people
You don’t even know what you are
What you want
What you want to be
You wear your heart on your sleeve
You dress like a freak
Outrageous clothes
Stupid hair
Trying to make an impression?
Make people remember you?
It’s working
And not in a good way

Are you crying?
Wipe the tears from your eyes, you baby
You cry over everything
The last 48 hours
And yet you smile
You disgust me
You hide it
All too well
Are you faking the tears for attention?
Or are you just plain manipulative?
Manipulative of yourself
Your thoughts; feelings
Disgusting

Oh, stop crying over him!
It’s your fault
Remember?
You broke his heart
Like a twig
The day you broke up with him
You gave up
You quitter
You were scared of his love
Scared of your feelings
They weren’t perfect
So you ran
You’re so messed up
You ruin the good things
The ONLY good things you have
Do you think he’ll want you back?

Then another
He was a great friend
You were scared of him
Of the things that made him him
You cancelled
Again
Lies and blames followed
Mad at each other
You said good bye
And because you’re a stubborn ***
Don’t apologize
Erase him from your memories
Cry over what you had
And lost
You ******* baby

Go “escape”
You dreamer
Escape your reality
Dream big
Then give up
You can’t make it
Isn’t that what you always do?
Blame him; I see
It’s not his fault
You just can’t remember
You have no motivation
No goals
You quit too early
I can’t stand to look at you
You disgust me completely
You’re the leftovers
The flaws no one had room for
ALL wrapped up in you instead
You want to be too many things
Everything you’re not
Can’t just be happy, can you?
You want to be the good girl
Want approval
You want to be the bad girl
Drinking
Smoking
*******
You want to be crazy
Not a care in the world
You want acceptance
You don’t even know
You’re greedy
Jealous
Foolish
You clown
Stop embarrassing yourself
Don’t be proud
It’s not nearly good enough
Stop trying
Maybe one day you’ll get it
We hate you
We all secretly hate
But we hide it because we’re good people
There you go
Just go cry sweetie
Act like everything’s ok
You fake
You poser
You loathful creature
I’d hate to be you
Oh, wait
I am...

Look, I just want to move you.
Woo you.
Shake you loose but never lose you.
I want to
Savor the glazed reverent silence
Of your gasping, ungrasped breath.
Sip it down till there's nothing left
Yet still explain all the rest.
See, it's time I unearth some gold.
Nothing here sold.
Just given freely to slurp up,
served up cold.
But I dare not go it alone.
Not when there's so many heplping hands
Beyond my own.
So I first court Eloquence.
She's an easy mark to find,
volubly masticating volumes
while leisurely lathering her tanned,
Leather skin.
Dolloping her monocle-bodied features
In librarian sin.
She says...
"My dear boy.
Berate them NOT
with your false start,
lethargic oddities.
Your penchant,
Melancholic falsities.
You must but grunt through the trudgery
Of your muddy misgivings,
And birth only accessible
Pertinent notions.
Neither precarious nor
Incongruous to the truth!
Robby.
You must simply relinquish your
Intrepid, frenzied paucities!
So I dismiss the diss.
Since
her big scary words are kinda lost to me.
Evidently, though,
I must need a Joe Blow.
An Everyman.
A Streetcorner Clairvoyant.
I turn to
(drum roll)
Raunchiness.
His beer belly **** and **** jokes
And dollar store aftershave suggest
A pleasing 'pull-my-finger' charm
that just might turn the trick.
He licks his lips,
And chides through a buck-tooth,
Spit shine smile.
Sheeeooot, boy,
That there one's easy.
All you gotsta do is
Go down deep
And speak from your gut.
Tell em how you feel..
How you REALLY feel.
Tell em..
shoot, tell em they rub you just right,
You might well feel as ***** as
Your gas gauge after a good pump.
As ***** as a McD's wrapper
Corner-pinch-discarded like
A used diaper hammock.
Yeah! You tell em your as ******
As a receptacle
For used diaper hammocks!
Hells yeah.
Girls will eat that **** up!
And say you're as gay as rainbow gold
As straight as an arrow-head.
As misled as finding your folks are still *** fiends
or as contradictory as ***** like me!
Boy, you are as con-fused as the
Lumpy, stumpy, pimply dimpled teen who finds out
Santa Claus IS real!
And he's hanging out loose
In every single Hustler Magazine!
Now hear me boy.
If they still don't care,
Or they see that you're scared,
Just say you feel as guilty as midnight dials
From parents of Girls-Gone-Wild,
sneering,
"Well shoot, sugar plum.
You sure ain't been feeling
Real secure in awhile."
And as he loosely labels me
As awkward as **** thermometers,
As misunderstood as **** plugs,
I give Raunchiness a dismissive shrug,
And return to the mystery
Of what I've missed from me,
Whatever still may be
My own poetic style.

who is she?
i’m not saying that in a cute, quirky, self-confident way either, like
genuinely, who is she?
i don’t remember when i morphed from a
bony, pimply, bowlegged teen into a
soft, dimpled, hunchbacked “adult”.
there are still remnants of her--
my forehead still bears the marks of farms of blackheads
and my collarbones are still visible when i allow them to be--
but her
this “woman”
looking back at me is still as foreign as blood pudding.
i still feel the same, relatively, as i did when i was 5 years younger.
i still tend to wear clothes that are comfortable over flattering.
i still feel my stomach tied into itself at the thought of making a doctor’s appointment on my own.
i still feel like me.
but her?
i don’t recognize her.

cross-legged on prickly cord,
picking frayed edges
that don’t quite meet the wall-
stealing pimply-glassed heat and
pretending to live
in a house, where warmth exists
beyond window-spills and
a broken gas oven.

unflappable shards
of broken glass
tinted red with blood
in your feet.
you pick and pick and
make it worse
it hurts to walk but you say
**** it
and pull on your socks,
tie on your shoes,
and go about your business.
eventually the pain starts to subside
as you forget about it.
how did it even happen?
you try to remember,
something about being drunk
and broken bottles.
whatever.
you get home, tired,
ready to go to sleep.
you're afraid to take your shoes off,
see what kind of a torn up mess your feet are
so you leave them on and hop into bed.
your sleep is light; you keep waking up.
these terrible nightmares about teeth falling out
and other *******. it's a real pain in the ***
but
you finally get to sleep an hour before you have to go in to work.
the alarm rings and groggily you start to stand up
but your legs give way and you fall.
you crawl over to the light switch and flip it
your bed is soaked with blood.
it's smeared all over your hands and legs and face
you cut the laces with a pair of scissors
and slowly pull them off, it hurts a lot.
your socks are black and crusty, holes cut through them,
you pull those off too.
...
your feet are fine. there's nothing wrong with them.
you look at your bed. the blood is gone.
did you imagine the whole thing?
you stand up and go to the kitchen. put some eggs on to boil.
you look at the clock. you were supposed to be at work
minutes ago.
you grab a beer, open it,
slowly eat the eggs.
its been another half hour. your boss is gonna be ******.
you pick up the phone and dial that number
you've dial tons of times.
your boss answers.
hey, dale, (or whatever the **** his name is)
you say
what the hell! he says
you were supposed to be here an hour early! you said you were coming in but you're *******--
you dont let him finish
hey, dale, (or whatever the **** his name is)
i quit. go **** your fat hedgehog of a wife you pimply *******.
and you slam the receiver down.
you drink the last bit of your beer and look around.
today's gonna be a good day.

Elegy for the Forgotten Oldsmobile**

July 4th and all is Hell.
Outside my shuttered breath the streets bubble
with flame-loined kids in designer jeans
looking for people to **** or razor.
A madman covered with running sores
is on the street corner singing:
O beautiful for spacious skies…
This landscape is far too convenient
to be either real or metaphor.
In an alley behind a 7-11
a Black **** dressed in Harris tweed
preaches fidelity to two pimply ******
whose skin is white though they aren’t quite.
And crosstown in the sane precincts
of Brown University where I added rage
to Cliff Notes and got two degrees
bearded scientists are stringing words
outside the language inside the guts of atoms
and I don’t know why I’ve come back to visit.

O Uncle Adrian! I’m in the reservation of my mind.
Chicken bones in a cardboard casket
meditate upon the linoleum floor.
Outside my flophouse door stewed
and sinister winos snore in a tragic chorus.

The snowstorm t.v. in the lobby’s their mother.
Outside my window on the jumper’s ledge
ice wraiths shiver and coat my last cans of Bud
though this is summer I don’t know why or where
the souls of Indian sinners fly.
Uncle Adrian, you died last week—cirrhosis.
I still have the photo of you in your Lovelock
letterman’s jacket—two white girls on your arms—
first team All-State halfback in ’45, ’46.

But nothing is static. I am in the reservation of
my mind. Embarrassed moths unravel my shorts
thread by thread asserting insectival lust.
I’m a naked locoweed in a city scene.
What are my options? Why am I back in this city?
When I sing of the American night my lungs billow
Camels astride hacking appeals for cessation.
My mother’s zippo inscribed: “Stewart Indian School—1941”
explodes in my hand in elegy to Dresden Antietam
and Wounded Knee and finally I have come to see
this mad *** nation is dying.
Our ancestors’ murderer is finally dying and I guess
I should be happy and dance with the spirit or project
my regret to my long-lost high school honey
but history has carried me to a place
where she has a daughter older than we were
when we first shared flesh.

She is the one who could not marry me
because of the dark-skin ways in my blood.
Love like that needs no elegy but because
of the baked-***** possibility of the flame lakes of Hell
I will give one last supper and sacrament
to the dying beast of need disguised as love
on deathrow inside my ribcage.
I have not forgotten the years of midnight hunger
when I could see how the past had guided me
and I cried and held the pillow, muddled
in the melodrama of the quite immature
but anyway, Uncle Adrian…
Here I am in the reservation of my mind
and silence settles forever
the vacancy of this cheap city room.
In the wine darkness my cigarette coal
tints my face with Geronimo’s rage
and I’m in the dry hills with a Winchester
waiting to shoot the lean, learned fools
who taught me to live-think in English.

Uncle Adrian…
to make a long night story short,
you promised to give me your Oldsmobile in 1962.
How come you didn’t?
I could have had some really good times in high school.

For Ricky

*Ricky Williams, Miami Running Back (2002-2003, 2005)

When the news broke and the camera pointed at a torn tent
on the outskirts of Miami where you sat knees-up-to-chest

professing enlightenment, the football world sacked itself
wondering how good your *** really was. Must have been

growing straight from Buddha’s back yard because to give
up 16 million like that, to go from bachelor pad demigod

to hippy hero of the pimply *** smokers, requires some
kind of unfathomable spirituality. I wonder if the Sadhu

could even find a desk big enough for your frame. All 230 pounds
lurching forward with brittle bones towards some kind

of endzone sanctity not represented by a smiling porpoise
but a transcendent 1st and ten where maybe you’d be happy.

After your final game I imagined you’d do what so many
washed up athletes do: find meaning in the parking lot

of a used car palace or open up a Dairy Queen, maybe
join your kids PTA and tell fourth graders stories that

you now half-believe. I didn’t think it be like this: you smoking
****** under a mauled tarpaulin, brushing fly’s away from

dingy dredlocks, running forward, exasperatedly free,
while a nation wonders why you’ve failed us.

there’s something unsettling about convenience stores. the fluorescent lights resemble some planet far away from here. neon signs with a letter broken, now flashing “be r,” beckoning the broken, the damaged, the lost boys. the home of those who don’t fit in. they buy the greasy pizza, rubbery hot dogs, and chemically nacho cheese which imitate something edible but scream danger on the tongue. haunted by the souls of the the pimply teenagers working the register, lips stained blue from blue raspberry slushy, slaving through the evening for the nocturnal souls buying milk and bread in the wee hours of the night. hushed arguments on the phone about forgetting to buy toilet paper and why don’t you ever pay attention to me. the pungent smell of hair dye boxes, the stink of attempting to be someone you’re not. skeleton children with messy hair, ***** fingernails as well as thoughts, up to no good back for more cherry cough syrup and furniture polish. soon after 3 candy bars will be found missing from inventory. detergent bottle caps, once neon, now faded with gathering dust, residing next to a dented can of campbell’s chicken soup. an organized chaos. the land of misfit toys.

Now
I posted a poem or two
which grabbed the eyes
of a dozen or so
like glue;
but now I’d like someone to tell me
what I should do

1
I mean,
I got a few followers, right…
“Latenight ****** started following you”
said the notice from the website;
and: “ Moonface at Window started following you”
but I got no comments from the followers
so I have no idea what sort of people they are -
and now, hey, I’m so afraid of all these followers
(these Moonies and Loonies)
I constantly look back over my shoulders
to see if they are following me
And everywhere I go
every other person looks so sus
and when I’m out
(wont to water more often, as it happens at my age)
I visit public toilets (McDonald’s is often cleanest)
and I get this feeling
(deep down in me)
my followers are hiding
in the ceiling
watching me
dadadidado –
But please, O don’t look down on me!

And the rest of you decent people -
will you please tell me what to  dadadidado?


2
And look,
I got all these likes -
which is good, right?
“Pimply Whanker liked this”
“***** TouchBottom liked this”
is all it says
And don’t you hate it
when they don’t leave a comment? –
And now, I’ll never know
what it is they liked…


Can someone fix me right -
what should I dadadidado??

Standing in front of the mirror
pinching, pulling, tugging
twisting, rubbing, covering
Sighing.

Flat, they said
Their sausage fingers pointing
Their sickly mouths snickering
The others laugh; agreeing quickly
Those ugly *******
like they're any better

Are they?
Watching all the pretty girls
and their boyfriends
and their fake smiles
and their push up bras
is that the only way now?
the only way to be liked?
to even be considered?

Baggy eyes
Puffy hair
Pimply face
Scrawny legs
Hairy arms
Who's ever gonna love that?

Someone; someone a thousand times more special than twenty of those ugly ******* combined.

If I met my soul, wandering…
Would I even know who it was?

What of me would I recognize?
The pimply skin of teenage years?
Who says it has my color eyes?
My wrinkled face so on in years?

Walking with my familiar gait?
Which of my many styles of hair?
Would my soul dress in clothes I hate?
Or look like me enough to stare?

I’m not familiar with my soul.
Life’s only constant that I get.
The very thing that makes me whole
I’d ignore if we ever met.

My soul’s the me that I can’t see.
Strange here but in Heaven clearer.
To know my soul with certainty,
Know myself without a mirror.

1.

I’m told it’s a “living thing”, a given thing and, moreover, is a terrible thing to lose. ‘Nuff said, ‘kay?

2.

What was she doing at the reception? Why was she so envious of his riches? How many drinks under her belt since she started on that glass of wine she‘s holding in her hand right now? So possessive.

I always seem to run into her at the drug store. I wonder what kind of medication she takes. Some incredibly strange desire to know this floats through my ghost. Some generic anti- depressant or maybe something stronger, along the lines of thorazine or haldol. A bizarre sense of arousal consumes me as I fantasize about popping those pills with her. I don’t care what kind they are…if they cure what ails her then they’ll probably take care of what’s wrong with me.

I remember…it was just a week or two ago. Once again I bumped into her at the drug store. She was looking good. Real good. The prospect of reading the labels on her medicine bottles was overpowering, finally knowing the names of the many prescriptions she had filled once every month.

My plan was thwarted, however, when she ordered a soda. I never did find out those drug names, but I learned something which I felt could very possibly change the odds of she and I hooking up. And that is this: her favorite flavor is cherry red.

I don’t think she has a boyfriend, but there is this guy who is always coming around for no real reason. He seems to think that he’s her old man. I often pretend that I believe it as well. One night the three of us went to a karaoke bar. I got just drunk enough not to care if I made a fool of myself having fun. The other two in our party had no problem nominating me for the opening act.

I walked behind the booth and introduced myself to the DJ.

“Yo, yo,” he said, after I told him my name and shook his hand. “I’m DJ Crackhead. Steady chillin’ and ill feelin’, I got the wax and the tracks if you got the crack, Jack. Now get off my back ‘less you got somethin’ you want to karaoke to.”

“Actually, I do have a request. Do you see that hot little red head in the ******* tank top? The one sitting next to the pimply faced weasel? Well, I’m wantin’ that dame for my own and I need to lose him. I need to shout out respect to my ***** and be dissing this dweeb at the same time. Can you play some Stones? I’m thinking ‘Satisfaction’ or maybe ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’?”

“Gee, G! I can float them joints easier than the pope be funny dressed. ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’, baby?”

“Only seems fitting. Let’s do this, Rider!”

As the short, sharp beats of the song bring down the house, to thunderous applause I strutted to the microphone. “People!!! All 6 of you! That’s not counting the bar tender or the wait staff, so we can’t really count this as the largest crowd we’ve ever had attend one of our shows. But I’m gonna tear the rood off this sucka’ with a brutal Rolling Stones tune I’m gonna send out to my gal’s old man, Jimmy!”

I wailed the hell out of that song. Jagger would have been proud of me, that’s for sure. He would have invited me back to the limo to maybe mainline a little smack with him. Everyone in that place was getting into it, but not Jimmy. Oh no, not Mister Jimmy. You could tell he was getting into the song itself, but not the singer.

As the song faded out I returned to our table, sweat dripping off of me like raindrops that fell into her wine glass. Wiping myself with a napkin, I turned to her and asked, “Did you like that one, babe? Did that spectacle turn you on?”

She replied, “O God, yeah! Yeah on both counts!” She leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, “You know, if we could ditch Jimmy I would sure be up for some kink-a-dee-kink. All the time you sang about “not hanging around” and how “two’s a crowd” on your cloud, I could only think of this leach. You’ve got to help me, sweetheart, you’ve just GOTTA!”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said quietly, then turned to Jimmy. “ Well Ol’ Jimmy, Ol’ Jimmy “ Boy, what did you think?”

He looked me square in the eye. I knew he meant business. You could tell by the squint in his eyes. He blinked once and said one word…”Dead”.

3.

Did we really count to one hundred? Why were we counting and perhaps even more important, WHAT were we counting? Why did the object being counted need to be counted to? Was 100 the exact count? Could we count further than 100? Did we have to keep counting even if there are only 79 units in total? Can you explain? I can’t.

4.

You got a big mouth. You know that’s an undisputed fact. When it comes to informing the town about the fine details of my alcohol problem…well that‘s where I draw the line. You are one hypocritical, self-serving, self-righteous biddy who doesn’t know when to shut up.

Everyone knows I’ve been drinking and foolin’ around. The Lord knows I’m sinning and God knows sinning ain’t right. But we’re gonna chat it up tonight, and if you want to see a change of attitude and tone, well I suggest that you stick a sock in it.

5.

Chewing on a piece of grass.
Walking down the road.
Wishing on a falling star.
Waiting on the early train.
Aging with time
Alligator lizards in the air…

Interlude.

All is quiet, save the ringing in the ears. The darkness envelopes me completely, I’m lying in it’s arms. Insatiable demands we’ll make against the wisdom of the Overlords. Who see it through those eyes that criticize all they don’t understand. They don’t understand me or you. You or me.

6.

Sometimes I just like to sit back and take in a good nostril or two of pungeant skunk stank. Years have come and years have gone but one thing has remained…I ain’t a-offended o’ the smell o’ Pepe LePew.

I don’t know but that my opinion might change if one o’ them little rascals were to saunter up to me and spray his stench on my leg. The buck will probably stop there.

But anymore that stuff just reminds me of the killer bud.

7.

The wolves ain’t the only critters howlin’ at the moon tonight.

That’s what she told me as inspiration swirled down the drainage ditch into the vat of apathy.

“Jump in, Jim, let’s go for a swim.”

She took off her clothes and I couldn’t help but stare.

It is hard to say when she started disliking the
Girl in the mirror.
It was probably about the time they gave her braces.
Surely, she began to take only glances
When she got pimples her hair wouldn’t cover
Try as she did with different lengths and styles.

The worst of it started when her friends began
To round out and she stayed all lines and angles,
Like a child among young women discovering themselves.

It drove her inside herself,
Further from her friends, one of whom
Struck a devastating blow when the Girl overheard
Herself called a pimply stick
Just so a boy of dubious morals would laugh.

She started hanging the towel on her mirror then.
She told her mother it dried better that way.
The woman accepted this
And so the Girl in the mirror locked herself away.

Mirrors cannot show the heart or wit
Or the steadfast love within.
There is only the reflection of beauty soon gone
And cast aside for that.

If only the Girl could see beyond the pale reflection.

Assertion
Clammed-up
On the relay
Second guessing
The shrunken head
Of old therapies

The clock says
It's time
To nod off
Greet the morn
With withered fist
Rationalised fury

Trying to
Replace the
Pimply face
Of ******
Angst baseless in
Content
On the tether
Of just another

Addiction in a
Succession
Of spiritual
Vices perpetuated
By the nonchalant
Visage of a world

Uncaring
In derision
From calloused hands
Caused by
Hard work
With little or no
Monetary avail

Hand to mouth
Foot in mouth
Hand on crotch
Crotch saddle sore

What's the point
Of a worn-down point
Dull but
Double-edged  
Just to prove

The sword of Damocles
Is still hanging
Over the head
Of your enemies

Who pop
Their heads
Up over
The hedgerows
Like pictures
In a shooting gallery
At the carnival of
A battlefield distant

Filled with relics
Of another
Dead-end
Ill-purposed war
Of the worlds floating
On the crest of
Mine-dotted airwaves
Prompting viewers
To drown negativity
And to salvage
The positive

A broadcast from
Bipolar formats
In living colour

Double-edged          
Double-standards
Double-dealing        
Double-meaning
Double-minded      
Double-jeopardy
Double-troubl­e        
Double your money
Doppelganger leading
Double life

All propagated in
Double-time
Best
Double your efforts
And tune out!

--Daniel Irwin Tucker

Eleven hours past'
Since I left her nest'
Thorn thistles are whistling
I gotta' soul that won't listen

Tell me little darling
Are you the one I've been thinking about
Or is there something else
That's gotta come out?

Corner stores are empty
With our favorite fruit berry punch
I never was enough
Or ever that much

Long through the reeds which whistle naked and seethe
Toward a black horizon with no starry sky
Only the depth of the human lie

At last the point of knowing
Has reached its end
I can longer urge
To bend to send

Toward the peak of ego
Which breaks and lets me go
To and so far fro

Yellow lined start ups
Telling their substitutes
Their temporary
Absolutes

Knowledge dances in-abolished
With nothing holding itself back
But the collage of
All of it

Where the scream of the butterfly
Dances while it
Sighs

Weary word traveler
With the internet at hands,
What voice is there
But the trickling of grained' sand?

Where do you go
When you have no more paper
To pound your sorrows into stone?

To the mall
In the fall
Where you know (in secret) your already in the
Fall?

Or to the woods
Where you should
Put that ear down
To hear that sound?

Enough of the laugh riots
With the sight of the tight knits!
Enough with the misery pits
And all those pimply zits!

At last the scream of sanctifying ceremony is nowhere
Where the wings of fortitude don't exist in books
But in
Reality!

Saving the last note before the
Entrance
To paradise

The echo of one's
Pound
Share's the echo
Of one's
Sound

I was a pimply-faced youngster,
fresh from the soot and grime
of London’s East End.
Removed unexpectedly
from the bomb and blast and buzz-bomb
of wartime London
and deposited precipitately
in the midst of South Wales
in the heart of rugby-playing country.
And I a soccer-playing kid from grubby back streets.
What could I know of scrums and back-passes and blindsides?

But I did my best, while ashamed to admit to my ignorance.
We put our heads together.
I thought it was a team consultation.
(They told me later it was a scrum.)
Someone shouted “heel”.
I thought he was being abusive
and the ball was so elusive,
and I turned too sharply,
and the upper part of my boot
detached itself from the lower.
(Our budget didn’t run to decent boots!)
And the team coach came over to me and said
“Didn’t you hear me say ‘heel’?”
And I, on the top of my form, replied:
“What shall it profit a man to win the whole game, but lose his sole?”

At first, pimply faced and shy to look and touch
you took the stars from the sky and implanted them
into my crisp clean English Essay as if the words
were silhouetted in the embroidery of the night.

I was struck by this teacher who lived in a space
that filled his skull cap with beauty in everything.

Soon the floodgates opened and my own words
mingled with ecstasies and rituals of writing,
danced across the page in rhyme and reason
and spilled over into vast tracts of books and
writings and thousands of printed pages
all with your signature hidden in the prose
and poetry of teaching me to search for meaning
in every single word. What a journey.

Today as I shift some words and visuals
into subtle pictures I remember the first ones you spoke
to a shy little boy, afraid of others seeing his writing:

" Go dance with the delicate, spin magic with
every sentence and dress those pictures in tailcoats
and ties, so others may know that your pen is
dipped in poetic polish of a special kind"

Thank you Bro D'Arcy.
Author Notes

A tribute to Bro D'Arcy, my English Teacher at St Josephs College, Coonoor, who first recognised that my writing was different. The good man never ever made  a negative comment and each time he looked at my schoolboy writing, he would delicately carve his calligraphic handwriting suggesting how better I could improve the language.

Sometimes, I would write and re-write a poem dozens of times until it merged into the best poem possible.

"Every word spoken or written with part of you in it makes you a better person"- Bro D'Arcy

I owe Bro D'arcy, a lifetime of learning to write better.
© Marshall Gass. All rights reserved.

People come in and out of our lives everyday. Whether it be the shy, pimply-faced kid behind the counter at the local coffee shop, the pretty, young girl who seems to be eternally waiting at entrance of the station for someone who will never come, or the 83 year old man who breathes and sleeps through his own musky scent of mildew and mothballs while standing up in line behind you at the grocery store - each of them with stories to tell, lives to lead and, ultimately, holding the potential to change your life; if only for that chance opportunity.

Sometimes, we return a smile, a gesture; we exchange a fateful glance (if such a thing exists). Maybe the accidental encounter ends there. Even then, we’re fortunate if we’ve made a difference in someone’s day at precisely 3:24 P.M. on a Monday afternoon. And then…. Oh, yes… and then, sometimes, what seems to be a simple matter of being in the right place, at precisely the right moment, we find, in that instant, what can be explained as nothing less than ourselves within another; someone who reflects back to you the person that you are and that you want to be, mutually and at the same time. It is at this instant, this recognition of your self in another human being, that you whisper promises to “never let this go”.

But promises were made to be broken.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed…”

                                       -Allen Ginsberg


No. He didn’t.

He helped mediocrities self-destruct
Through formless howlings in their lonely minds
He pushed them to their deaths with obscene smirks
No more connected than foul faeces flung

Against the good, the beautiful, the true
He pitied himself, and called it rebellion
He squealed out his pimply scatologies
He destroyed the weaklings he could have helped

The best minds of his generation pitied him
But kept their children far away from it

At fourteen I learned to sail—
The difference between true wind and gale.
I learned that babies do not come from prayer
And wondered if we were all wanted,
As my mother often said.
At fourteen, I stopped myself from caring
What kids on the bus thought of me,
Or whether I ate school lunch alone.
How unnecessary had been all that fear,
When I learned that I liked myself
Without their praise.
At fourteen, I learned that other girls
Cared only about pimply boys
And the dates, rings and ownership each claimed.
What a small, unexceptional life, I thought!
But at fourteen, I was too selfish
To pity them, much less humor their desires.
At fourteen, I realized that my dad was imperfect,
When he dodged the excise tax on his car.
Did he commit this tiny sin to rebel
Against an unappreciative wife,
Or did he feel the vicissitudes of life
As I had just begun to do?
At fourteen, the world was opening
Like a lotus flower in a teacup,
Soon to spill over and fill my soul
With longing for passion and logic,
But for something else ineffable.
I would find in later years
That the wanting itself could be enough
To stir those depths into song or quiet joy.
Of all the things in my soul and mind
And in the world beyond, I would learn,
That the only absolute is inexplicable—
The only perfect, human thing is love.

There’s many legends told of those who tended to the nets
Whose talents brought grown men to tears, made bookies hedge their bets.
One man’s special gift was to make the goal lamp glow
Therein begins the woeful tale of Red Light Racicot.

The story starts at Granby in Quebec’s junior ranks,
Where pimply youths have slapshots which seem fired from tanks,
And flashy cat-quick goaltenders will often steal the show;
Alas, no such heroics came from Red Light Racicot.

The ease he was beat stick-side left his goalie coaches dumb.
Granby supporters prayed as one that they would trade the ***
They called him “Ancient Mariner” (stopping one in three or so),
Surely Les Habitants would not sign Red Light Racicot.

But indeed, Les Canadiens dragooned him in the draft,
Fully convincing one and all that Serge Savard was daft.
Children throughout the province prayed Dear merciful God, No!
Don’t let our Forum bear the taint of Red Light Racicot.

But then came a stretch where Patrick Roy’s work had been poor,
And Hayward and Vinny Riendeau had each been shown the door.
And Montreal fans heard the saddest words they’d ever know:
…Starting in goal this evening is Red Light Racicot.

He flailed at wobbly wristers and wound up on his ****.
And gave up much more five-hole than any village ****.
Even cross-check befogged Savard knew it was time to go
And mercifully, he released poor Red Light Racicot

In Heaven there’s a glowing rink where gods of hockey skate:
Maurice Richard, Howie Lorenz, all of the truly great.
In one net, Georges Vezina makes saves with stick and toe
But someday they’ll all float soft goals past Red Light Racicot.