another bar, another
carousel of faces soon
to become fodder for
unconscious theatre

another set of drinks
which don’t amount to
a single cell of entertainment

another distraction
a thousandth glance
at your phone another(s)
phone goes off
pretend to be
another person
but you don’t like many
other people
you like yourself
don’t you?
where did you go?

another dance to avoid
another song to sing into your drink
another’s eyes within orbit
another chance at looking

into a void, arms down and
fingers rifling
thru pocket frenzied and
pulsing

another cigarette
to light
another cigarette
to light
another cigarette

another night
wasted drunk another drink
and washed-out psyche
slips home

and sad
and brutal
to write
another poem about yourself
but you aren’t that interesting when


you’re just bitter, baby


you know even though you made it with her,
she don’t wanna be more than friends.

I

        Enough. I am done.
I have no dogs in heaven. Nor one of the Prince’s cockatoos
to leverage favor from. I am the ****** on a cactus.
        I have no more
languages to speak truth, but draw blood.  
        I am a coward,
My tongue not so sharp as a sword.
Remain still. Courage not so stiff as it once was.

II

Everybody inside. On their heels. There is panic
Breaking on the back of soundless numerals. Is it safe
To beg for mercy in the streets?

III

O mercy. The ever-redemptive lack.
And what words at my mercy not co-opted
by avarice, or Sig and his ivy-eyed nephew.
        Ah Um.
Too easy to franchise martyrdom these days, minute 2 minute
        Things swing as usual ah um
Sssome people get rebellion-medallions; most pawn them
in tomorrow’s liquor stores.
                                                         And swing.
O merci, Satyrs of a newly profitable goat-song!
        Who can resist them teasing out the milk?

It almost seems fresh, piped thru
        loudspeakers in Bentham’s skull
Howling ah, Um, Imagine:
Most deformed Society members .  .  .
Strapped to their rocketships, mingling w/ stars
         in corporate menagerie,
Senators and a gaggle of catamites.  .  .  
         On call
Young-things, playthings, old news; money is eternal.
Their’s is a sickness that makes mine worse.

IV

That said. I ain’t got a clue; or a word
to say. Without a code to program the spleen
        in my bomb of a heart.
All communication is shrapnel-blasted-out-shrapnel.

        Grinning over a screen.
No, Worry, slow down. Spleen, relax.
I’m just a man with a telephone wire
Not the sax-playing Mr. Apollinax
Sure can’t talk politic but ah um I can start a fire.

V

My robe swinging open,
        I hang over the balconies of twilight’s regret,
                exposed, and unhappy.
I wish nothing more , that the boon of despair
Drop it, an atom bomb and burst the windows.  .  .  .
Everybody inside, solitary: radiated by me.
Maybe we’d all smile at each other
         when we finally come out from our houses.

A green light shone and like ectoplasm lay over Yesterday’s

intuition of the future. Tomorrow suspended in the wriggling
fate of jelly before colloidal dawn. it transformed

when Tomorrow leaked out and became an animal
of almost ravenous occasion. hungry for blood

certainty. A tooth fanged for the squalor of success
without colon for the enemy of despair. I was there

when Jesus Christ transmuted miracle
into a happening. when Freud proclaimed:

Dreams are the crumpled chickenscratchnotes
in the fist of all beginnings. when Charlie Parker

played Stravinsky to Stravinsky
at Birdland. when Borges transcribed

those notes. and heard Cervantes laugh.
When Woolf confounded Odysseus, and

found Homer, oldcouragebearded, grinning
on the other side of three millennia. Was I there
before the green light. yes,

we were all there.

–What do I have to lose if America falls?
my body? my neck? my personality?
     .   .   .

I have not done my research, no
yet I am fat with knowledge,
yet I am drunk on symbols & poetries of excess—
yes, I am an american, what does that mean?
I couldn’t begin to tell you, yet I am
america imagined
in some pawnshop philadelphia
next to the gas station next to the liberty bell
i’ve driven by many times before i’ve seen
the ghost of Ben Franklin, **** out soliciting oral, & heard
          ******* whispers of, “O, poor Richard…”
I love like movie cowboys & policemen I love
a yankee vampire w/ confederate fangs
a working class hero story told in reverse
I’m beautiful w/o being pretty
I’ve got that trillion dollar smile
my economy IS my business
my mind is outer space pleasure cruise
my politics are bombs & ***
my cultural heritage is hollywood & skyscrapers
ford commercials & Burroughs in a nike ad
my religion is myself, no
that is no wholly american,
no, no holy american, just me
but I am america’s spleen
am its mouth, speak its rhetoric & give its head
am its fingers rubbing on redbutton starspangled fleshspasm
am its brain on drugs
am its soul
         on eastern flights

but I don’t take myself so seriously.

Rustled from sleep
by the bird’s whistling;
slow and quick, sharp songs
two of them framed
through a trapezoid
of morning sunlight
in the sugar maple
outside my window

                so I went back to sleep.

Moved from gray
artifice of work
and workplace concerns,
given dignity
to my passions
before I turned
as gray as the job
is blue as the rest of them

                and on Tuesday I said
       I’d cover your shift.

Called to love,
like a diplomat—
from my country
of isolation;
given the royal
runaround, and sent
back with eternal kisses
on my neck

                and that is
        about the time
when I stopped receiving calls.

You are separated from Du Fu’s sentimental visits;
His gadding between the mountain’s icy tower-climbs
And the blushing gardens of the temple precinct;
His delighted musings adorn the stone courtyards,—
wind-chimes and long-flourishing chrysanthemums.

You are separated by few, gaseous planets,
Held there by motorized, frozen rings.

Oh and the midnight boy teeters
with his yellow crown like a cymbal!
‘round the ennyhoos at the market
hoo-rah or boo-hoo-hooing. . . .
                                                     oh boy

beetlebrowing the barelyskirted girls
and gritting teeth, an imaginary rose-stem. . . .

Him, them, no tricks left: a partition ahead
Roped by an archaic madness under gas-lit halo

A ferocity bent like a triangle. Or a tuba.
And looking through to Xanadu

What does he spy? He is the moon’s lonely
lamp above a deserted parking lot

Deserted. . .
Save for the old green wagon
2 bodies inside, radio on.