and I, like everyone, f**ked into existence
riding on the guilty **** of my elders
for whom my fate replaces

and I, like everyone, created in that ***** zone
of guilt and lust and floating downstream
constructed of taste and smell, of color

and I, like everyone, was chosen from that smoky crowd
among the legs, hair, and anger
chosen from them like a bright shining star

and I, like everyone, fell from my chair
to a lovely lonely bed of stale desire
of forgotten names and a hidden voice

- 1999

There is only so much Love in your life
it leaves and returns
in new shapes sizes and souls

a finite amount
in your strength to return
elastic
unkind

Pain, sweat, remorse, and glory
are four corners of a compass
that only point the wrong direction.

The secret is in the cool breeze
the ice on your burned face,
morning sunlight on shivering morning skin.

Sweet relief in the river,
The knowing embrace of endless night ...
Still the wrong direction.

The best way is no direction,
but a person,
a lover,
to find their smile,
and smile back,
and float on.

Everybody arrested
in Brooklyn
since they built the courthouse
ends up in
'The Tombs."

These days if
you require medical attention
when they cuff
you in Brooklyn,
unless there is some sort of 911 style citywide emergency,
you end up in Woodlawn hospital,
a medical institution no one
would ever choose for themselves
let alone a loved one.

First,
it is filthy,
on at least three levels,
and I don't mean three stories of building,
it is much bigger than that.

I mean three levels of hypothetical cleanliness.
Three levels of dust, muck, grime, and microscopic disease.

Second,
there is the track record.
A few years back a big fat mentally ill woman,
died of Jesus knows,
right in the waiting room.

High security.
You can watch the video of the staff stepping around her corpse
on YouTube.

I spent thursday night at Woodlawn,
handcuffed to a bed rail.

It wasn't my first time ...

A songwriter Brooklynite friend, who I am sure wishes to remain unnamed, noted this morning, with Agape' love:
"Hipsters are people just like any other minority class.
You may not like them.
You may not want to eat in the same restaurant,
Or drink from the same fountain,
but you have to respect them."

There is a reason folks like his songs to the point of stealing from them.
He has a way of distilling the truth of the matter and pressing send while I'm still working on my second of 10 paragraphs.

I couldn't help but respond"
"I don't care if you are the King Of Shiam.
You can't close my computer (especially when I am uploading said songwriter's video),
move it,
and steal my seat when I go for a cigarette
without getting a reaction from me.
I don't care if you are the ******* Sultan of Swing
or President Obama's mama,
you are going to hear about what an ******* move that is."

But I shouldn't have broken that window.
At the very least it would have saved me some stitches.
It is rather unpleasant getting stitches on one writ while the other is cuffed.
"Just a pinch" when they inject the local right into your gaping wound.
"Just a pinch."
Yeah right.
Maybe if the pinching is done by an angry pregnant wolvererine.

And I definitely shouldn't have gone next door,
ordered another mojito,
and thrown that against the door as well.

I like mojito's
wasting them in such a manner
is a filthy sort of sacrilege.

Outside
The wrath
Turns the night
Slowly backwards.

She pumps and gushes
A heart like the river
Like black ice
Cracking
Blue steel.

The hounds of vice
Screaming salty,
Swinging wooden
Narrative.

Addiction is the Great Deceiver,
Depression is The Liar,
Self-pity is The Trixter,
Who cuts your Soul with wires.

Let me be Grace.

Let me climb beyond me towards the blue,
Rung after naked rung and look down
Before I arrive at the sun soaked ledge
To reach for my brother’s stretched,
Bird pecked, and bloodied human palm.

Stand at her door knocking,
Let her do all the talking.
Break the fire on the ice,
Refuse the dragon’s vice.

Girl, let me be Grace.

Let me breathe and run through the cornfield
Naked in the light of a gently dying moon,
Slide like snow on a windshield moving down
The highway with State Troopers in pursuit.

He stands on strong legs.
He kneels then he begs,
Making love like a slow dance,
He can even though he can’t.

Pray, let me be Grace.

Let me die.
Let me cry.
Let me fly and
Feel her soothing.

I want to know.
I want to grow.
I just want it to slow.
But I'm grooving.

I want to be me.
I want to be free,
But I’m bouncing my knee.

Forget it.  We're Grooving.

Let me be the wind on my own back.
Let me lead my enemy on an attack.

Let me love
Let me learn.
Let my soul
Be Reborn.

Make me live.
Make me give.

**** my words and
Silence my will.

Please let me be Grace.

so ****** in the face of it
at the end of it, your perception
on the nose of it
this feeling in my nose
this tingling wall
this numby crunchy face on my face that blocks out the light and the truth and the life .... that's how it feels .... sorta
how crazy does that read?
i'll bet it reads ugly.
i'll bet it reads sick.
it should because its a description of drugs crazy people, ie. people like me take to try to feel less crazy
they make your ******* face feel like it jumped rebellious,
eyes, ears, nose, throat, turned traitor.

Escitalopram
Buproin
Nuvigil
Lithium Carbonate
Quetiapine
Abilify
Risperdone
Harpoon IPA
Johnnie Walker Red Label blended scotch whiskey

it seems there can come a certain special kind of time in a man's life,
when he can feel weird and lonely enough
to type a few words
and call it poem.
******* Bukowski.
this is his legacy.  the possibility to do what I'm doing right now.
without that disgusting, self-centered fool
I never would have thought to try and write these weird feelings I'm feeling.

a little attention,
that's what strokes this need.
a few incidental internet readers,
to read this strangely pointless pontification
on the bits of sadness that are me.

i wish i could find an open field
and lay back comfortable
in the crisp cold air
and feel the stars shoot through me
my heart pounding in the dirt
and waiting for *** or sun or wolves or rain
or anything else you might call "love."

i wish for more death
or more life
I can't stay here.

"Turn back the pages of history,
and see the men who have shaped the destiny of the world. Security was never theirs,
but they lived rather than existed,"
said Hunter S. Thompson
at age 17,

before he became The Duke,
and shaved off a leg in Doonsbury cartoons,
before he rapped the sharp corner of his shot glass,
so too many times,
on the inch thick enamel,
of the Woody Creek Tavern bar top,
and waited until closing time
to begin blowing lines,
out of the divets he'd made.

The people clapping,
the moon attacking,
the red bone blood of America pumping past his eyes.


After he died, everyone there had a Hunter story:

Hunter shot his hot girl assistant in the *** by mistake,
but he felt like **** about it.

Hunter had a dozen red cheeked lasses he skied with,
but he never messed with them.

Hunter showed up in a Cadillac convertible packed with
strippers dressed burlesque.

But it was hard to tell just exactly what he was up to with
the strippers, the peacocks,
or anything else.

Alot of the stories had ****** implications,
but what they mostly implied
was he was cool about it.
He didn't write any of those stories.

Despite all evidence to the contrary he liked his privacy,
and what peace he found in rare quiet.
And he made **** sure they'd shoot his ashes
out of a ******* canon when he died.

The canon is still there.
So are the peacocks.

Inspired by the late British soldier, activist, and explorer Henry Worsley …

I wish for the ice.
Wish for it endless.
Blue and black and white and gleaming.
Hard ice sparkling under a cold distant Sun
that rises and falls for me,
for you.

I Fight against but welcome Wind.
Wish to be a Good Man standing, walking,
cold, hungry, miserable but feeling that burn,
that burn of the existence of my destiny for Survival,
because I know better now that Survival is the capitalization of "god."
I ponder my place in Evolution, and feel in my chest the sad presence of a lonesome Ghost,
Feel that out there somewhere is a point where light and life are frozen,
but melting in Sunlight into sweet fresh water I wish to drink.

To walk further then further then beyond my conception of "Further",
navigating into the lethal helicopter-less void.
Legs aching then swaying then robotic they swing,
a perfect instrument of Man's will to freedom
but still simply humble rambling limbs.

I wish for the ice.
Wish for it endless.
Blue and black and white and gleaming.
Hard ice sparkling under a cold distant Sun
that rises and falls for me,
for you.

I Fight against but welcome Wind.
Wish to be a Good Man standing, walking,
cold, hungry, miserable but feeling that burn,
that burn of the existence of my destiny for Survival,
because I know better now that Survival is the capitalization of "god."
I ponder my place in Evolution, and feel in my chest the sad presence of a lonesome Ghost,
Feel that out there somewhere is a point where light and life are frozen,
but melting in Sunlight into sweet fresh water I wish to drink.

To walk further then further then beyond my conception of "Further",
navigating into the lethal helicopter-less void.
Legs aching then swaying then robotic they swing,
a perfect instrument of Man's will to freedom
but still simply humble rambling limbs.

This is my small history, and I realize why men
rarely make history alone:
The loneliness is unbearable,
but I bear it alone in this endless land of cold empty canvas.

To be so alone and close to death is to know it no longer matters if you are human.

To know nothing beyond the dark howling night and the strange redness amongst the stars Tonight.
To welcome the light but not care.
To push to keep moving anyway, slipping, stepping, determined with the sole goal of moving forward regardless of fire, or food, or how the bird flies.

In the Wind
I hear the band playing.
I feel my eyes weeping.
I feel my feet leaping.

Skipping forward, "progress not perfection," but remembering too much sweating is deadly once you stop moving it can freeze your sweaty ***** solid, gotta to be careful, but always moving.

My God, to scan the sun on the horizon
see the young women on the beach in bikinis,
but to move your legs with them.

To dance with hallucinations.
To live as a victim,
but be the crime.

To be nimble and quick and sing to God's children.
To be righteous and strong in the winds of God's vengeance.

No song other than a dream of tomorrow's music.
Nothing to visualize or interpret.
No more worries for Death or Life.

No "Being"
just transparent,
Endless,
beginningless.
A line never drawn.
An infinite negative number without digits or decimals or logic or rhyme.

You can't fix your broken past but still the Wind moves you,
or so the naked ex-lover moans as she writes,
unseen in the green growing tall grass.
She hides but she beckons.

The jail cell door swings open with a unoiled hospital sound,
open to a world I must recreate on my own from another place.
That **** symphony of a thousand clicking locks keeps playing bad blues,
I must start playing with that Band, and jam the music slowly into a form I can reconcile with my Heart.

Elsewhere the Wind breaks the sad old trees and they fall and break the houses and break the people in them and the people break my concentration.

The tornado holds no sympathy but only releases it to the news channels.
Its an odd weapon,
a brutality,
a misdemeanor of the Divine.

Life is Suffering,
its Chaos,
its more meat for the animals,
it's the frailty of old age and
its the helplessness of newborn youth.
Its Beauty, and carnage, and ******, and work, and Love
and paying taxes.

And the stars pierce the midnight and find me,
they glance and they smile and they talk.

They say:
"You be grateful, young Man.
You walk."

                                                                  - March 2019, Siesta Key, FL

in loving memory of Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

We must bring the light to the darkness.
We must agitate the fire,
hunt down
conventional wisdom,
hang it upside down,
and poke it
with our abandoned dreams.

God is Beauty.
We are here.

1.
The water spills down warm then hot then cool again
And when I slide down the shower wall and find myself seated
The drain between my knees ******* down the city funk
And I examine the sidewalk blisters on the souls of my feet
I realized yes it happened again, but it is over now
And I breathe deep, then deeper, trying to feel the medicine
of oxygen, of ginger ale in my broken throat, of bourbon, of lithium.

There are things only Angels can do, but their are plenty of Angels in Brooklyn.
Avie bouncing round the safe house, a bubbly "spirit in the night."
Will Powers slowly circling the felt, speaking softly of cinema,
The atomic dogs in and out of the bathroom, the scent of Columbia circling them.
Tony in the corner whispering in ears, his eyes on the till, his hands missing his Les Paul.

I feel it again,
In my legs, in my groin, in my hands,
In lands far away,
In visions of alternative days,
In dead ocean waves,
In blood soaked caves.

I feel like Crazy Janie
Making love in the dirt.
Like a child raised in the
Spanish country side by wolves
Putting on his first clean shirt.

Now I know I'm going down, and not just because she's not around.
It's because I find myself commanding a night brigade and there's still 5 hours till sunrise.
Big man assist me please, I got turf stains from Rugby on my knees.
I got Angels around me, but they don't want to hug, they don't want to make love,
it may be time to consider, my aging face, and my overdrive pace.

So I settle for Rock And Roll.
Follow Will to his roof with Strategy Matt.
And the city was bright shining
In red, white, and blue light.
I spun slowly and widened my eyes,
a little dance on top of the world,
pumped my biceps and pecs,
I unfurled and twirled.

You can't start a fire with out a spark, girl.
You can't truly be ambitious unless you are prepared to love the whole world.

2.
Working out in the beer cooler.
If I’m gonna lift boxes for twelve
dollars an hours might as well get
exercise, might as well feel that
Trapezoid pump and bump,
Fifteen left pumps of the thirty
Pack, then thirteen rights,
Step, renegotiate my balance,
Step, feel the calf, the toes, strike a pose.

Sweat cascading, anticipating
A delivery, an emancipation
From the slow tick of clock.
Make a label, flip a bottle,
Wave your racing thoughts,
To the periphery, make a six pack.

Customers - man the register.
Make it beep, penny keep,
Penny leave, find a box,
Watch the clock, slow your
Movement speed your mind.
Bet on how many more through
the door, flip the lights and sign.

3.
The last day of a manic episode is a bad day to pick up a paycheck.
The money is like oxygen to the flame.
It can reignite the inferno, leaving you another moth dancing on tongues of fire.
Or just a slightly over weight man in his late thirties flinging darts at a machine at the Blind Rhino.

Can't go on a date in Manhattan without ending up in Brooklyn a sleepless forty-eight hours.
Can't go to South Norwalk for **** and not spend the rest on beer and pool.
The night before I got fourteen hours sleep.  It was over.

It started again.  The walking the talking the smoking the spending the joking the posing
A manic puppet on the string of his own euphoric string, a lonely space cowboy
chucking faked darts at a machine that records me.
Buy me a whiskey.  This is my America too.

I of the insane, the crazies, the water heads, the criminals, the ******,
We will all "walk like Brando into the sun."
We will rage, riot, rebel, and revolt,
And walk the highways together,
Under a relentless sun,
And keep walking at night in the cooler soft light of the moon,
and keep walking at sunrise,
Through blizzards, and golf ball hail,
We will walk through the raining of giant toads if we have to,
and life will turn into a movie,
where all the cameras belong
to us.

Brown hair
The rare type that cascades soft.
Perky chest,
Smile like a warm wave.
Little back pack and a purse too.
She’s on the move.

Tight jeans,
Fitted shirt,
But the kind of eyes,
You could make love to in the dirt.

Should have tried a line,
Instead I stepped out for a smoke.
Spying her from the frame,
Then up,
She strolls into frame.

She smiles at me.
“Hi.”
“Hi,” she smiles.
She strolls.
“I’m disappointed you’re leaving.” I announce with strange authority.
“Do you work here?” She really wants to know.
“No.” I grin.
She smiles at me the smile of an excited dolphin,
Turns away,
And walks on.

I stare at her ***,
And wonder if there might be
A loving
Omniscient
All powerful
God
After all.