outside
through the window
circling in blue
five vultures.
I sit here
and look at them
and think:
I am not dead yet.
something is dead or dying out there
but it is not me.
that’s not entirely true.
we are all dying in different stages
on varying timelines.
I might drop dead
on my way to the fridge
to get another beer.
heart attack
a stroke
a lurking aneurysm
a car accident
homicide or
suicide
anything might get me at any second.
sudden death
falling into the final dream
and then
nothing
that
is all one can hope for.
it sure beats
dying slowly
from
lung cancer
heart disease
diabetes
AIDS
or falling off a ladder
while pruning an apple tree
breaking your neck
and slowly
suffocating
to death
while
vultures gather
eager
and hungry
in the
last blue
of late
afternoon.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 6:23 PM UTC
I don’t
want to **** you. I want
to be in the same room
with you.
there is
something about you
that reminds me of myself.
yellow mayonnaise
and a pickle. that’s all that was left
after you left.
you thought I’d **** you.
you didn’t leave a note.
you left
that dress
hanging like a blue skeleton
in the closet. a green pickle
and a blue dress. I hold it up
to the disinfectant of sunlight.
smell it as I close my eyes.
I want you here
trapped in honey or amber
but when I look
you are no longer
in this
room.
Feb 18, 2015
Feb 18, 2015 at 6:52 PM UTC
for Hans Ebner
a battled
rifle
dismantled.
a naked
woman
trained
as a white
bird.
she coaxed madness
out of you
a slow milk
a certain science.
it was there
all along
that **** war.
twenty years
tight and untuned
since you
walked the earth.
and now
I bend back
thinking of
that **** war.
souls
easily stolen
as coins
spent.
gathered
like rain drops
on the screen
between
me and the world.
black and white
refracted back
there
but a short
moment
and
then falling
silent
without
appeal
or burnt
retribution
mute
in decline
like everything
that came
before.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:36 PM UTC
get
this cold
take it inside
feed it
to those
you are traveling
with
through this space.
tell them
love is a glacier
it endures
and is not remembered.
halve
the cold minute.
nurture it
and then set it free.
in
its absence
the warm
will return.
a tiding
a small child
who laughs
at the bitterness
of the
crime you hold.
a song
to be
rehearsed
a
misstep
to be
forgiven.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:22 PM UTC
lived
the life
you have to hand it to him.
lost that
cottage on the
santa monica beach
to the sharks.
the sharks always win.
the sharks built this ******
richmond
addicted to ****** and the poem.
sharks
don’t understand poems.
although
some sharks
are addicted to ******
they will
never get
the poem.
richmond
evicted and homeless
retired to a small room.
the
poem
had dried
up
like a
discarded
apple
core.
fruit
no more.
empty
toothless
abandoned
steve richmond died.
no pilgrimages
to his grave.
in the darkness of the sycamore tree
the sharks
count stacks of money.
this is
how they got
judas
too.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:18 PM UTC
sitting in
a fast food place
on the highway access road
drinking coffee.
five days of tramadol
five years of pain.
arthritis. the ******* doctors
slam the credit card
and do nothing except
prescribe.
call it in to the pharmacy
where I can drive-thru
for my fix.
they say this **** is good
for depression. hell
the whole world’s depressed
more or less
so put it in the water.
my
therapy
is the
word.
it will save my soul
even
if it never
generates enough
coin to pay
for
pain killers.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:16 PM UTC
*** sells
and so does sadism
sold to bored housewives
and professional women
breaking through
glass ceilings.
almost mid-way through
the sixth decade of existence on terra firma
there is a lot that gnaws away like a locust
at the soft underside of consciousness.
***
everywhere.
and the trap of biology.
women illustrated like circus sideshow attractions
ride naked on horses through the grimy marketplace
of stolen and bankrupt ideas.
*** minus monosodium glutamate.
you’ll like it better if you’re
tressed with plaits of golden silk
in a turquoise dungeon.
this morning
tortured by dreams. a ********** of the mind
teasing sunlight on a blasted dais. she’s a *****
worshipped by the masses.
madison avenue
hollywood
the sound of debit cards
in the wind.
the high art
of the american landscape
is kim kardashian
naked
her ***
blotting out
the sun.
while
poets drown
silently
down in
the shadow
of that wondrous
eclipse.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
she wasn’t in the bedroom.
she wasn’t in the kitchen. she wasn’t
watching television.
I had this bad feeling.
I walked outside and crossed the lawn to
the neighbor guy’s place. He had this big picture window.
looking at it was like watching a cinemascope movie.
there they were on the big screen curled up together
on the sofa.
betrayal like a sucker punch.
so I went back to our place and threw
all her stuff on the front lawn. it was midnight
and the stuff was piled up out there
under a beautiful bright full moon.
suddenly I felt a better.
I felt like a man instead
of
a mark
a chump
dirt
wiped from
shoes onto
a doormat.
it was a miracle nobody stole the stuff
considering the neighborhood we lived in.
they were
married and have been for more than thirty years.
she found the right man.
it is said time heals but that wound
had a scab on it for decades. it is not offended manhood
or anything like that. rather a man should never
trust a woman with a knife
especially
in the middle of the night
when his
back is turned.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 11:59 AM UTC
the worst thing is the realization
you have nothing to say.
the worst thing is
a collision of words spinning
deaf into a vortex of irrelevance.
you finally understand.
you are like the rest of them.
you have nothing to contribute.
silence is cancer
deaf and dumb metastasis.
it happens to giants and dwarfs
locksmiths and astrophysicists
mathematicians and short order cooks.
it happens to saints and serial murderers.
silence so deafening
it barters with suicide.
maybe that’s
why they invented
television.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 11:58 AM UTC
never
been in a
nuthouse.
might be time to go there.
most people are nice enough.
I’d sacrifice my life to save a
drowning child
or an old woman who has fallen
in the street as a garbage truck
rushes in
but
as a congealed whole
I consider humanity
to be a pathological disease.
individual components are worth mercy
while the masses are a global staph infection.
I don’t know
what the **** is wrong with me.
beer and xanax work temporarily
until sleep obliterates.
I have
never been
in the nuthouse.
no that’s not right.
I am in one right now
it’s called
civilization.
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 11:39 AM UTC