Hook him up to the machine.
Shock his brain into
mediocrity.
Death stalks him;
he is aware.
There is too much
flash in his eyes.
His brain needs a reboot;
he needs to forget,
like a goldfish, like
a monkey in the zoo.
Hook him up to the machine.
He is too sentimental.
Salmon swim in his blood;
he has a paisley heart,
and a tie-dye soul.
He can smell colors.
Hook him up to the machine.
He has Van Gogh eyes, and
a Bukowski gut; he walks
like he's lost in a maze;
hunchback sadness,
butcher knife nerves,
Hook him up to the machine.
He believes in love,
and has too much trust.
His vivid green memory
is a curse, we need to
crash it, **** the eternal spring.
Hook him up to
the machine.

In one of
my many
lifetimes, when
I was a child,
my dad had a
sprawling stretch
of land in
Missouri.
He had 200
head of cattle.
We used to run
the cows we
bought at auction
through this
shoot with wooden
beams that closed
on their necks.
My stepmom took
this gun-like object
and put an orange
tag in their ear.

My brother and I used
to play with this black and
white steer.
We called him old #56
because of the number on
his tag.
We chased him, and then he
chased us.
I felt bad for
him, the tag in
his ear.
I talked to my
dad about it.
He said if the steer
ever got lost,
we could find him.
I felt good about that.
I didn't want to lose him.

One night
the following summer,
we were sitting down for
dinner.
I hadn't seen
old #56 for a while.
I asked Dad where
he was.
He didn't say anything.
We were having
t-bone steaks.

As I write this,
my black and white
kitten, Bukowski,
bites at the pen and
tries to wrestle my
wrist as it moves across
the paper.
I'm glad that he
isn't a steer.

Tweezers
buzz
"butterfingers"

and bulbous sneezer
that is touched
by a feather

to make it
sneeze
and tickle

the funnybone

On days that
I have a
difficult time
writing, I let
my mind wander
to another
place and scene.

Today
I imagine a
musty attic.
It smells like
mothballs and
old perfume.

I stumble upon
an old trunk.
And when I look
inside
I find hundreds
of my poems that
I wrote and
forgot about.
I thumb through
the brittle pages,
and read.

"Hey, not bad.
This one is pretty
good.
Hey, here's one with
multiple layers.
Writing as a
metaphor for
******."

This silly exercise of
mine just netted me
this poem.
Wanderlust of the
mind promotes
creativity.
Now I can nap,
after I ***
of course.

A blast of the whistle
and a slide down the dinosaur

it's quitting time

for life to  begin
again

A long time
ago
when I was
a teenager,
I had a
wonderful,
tender-hearted
girlfriend.
She was patient.
I was wide
awake, and green
as a frog.

She said,
don't rub it so
hard, you will
hurt it.
Think of it as
a new toy you
discovered.
It's small, and
you need to be
careful.
It isn't a
pimple that
you are
trying to pop.

I can still smell
her hair, lilacs and
pond water.
And on
gentle summer
nights, I hope someone
is being kind to
her love button.

When I was a boy on the farm in
Missouri slaying dragons and
making swords out of sticks,
my Dad got me a coonhound pup.
He named him Festus.
Dad was a real Gunsmoke fan.
Festus grew, as I did, and we
traveled every inch of
that 120 acres.
There were two streams that
ran through our land,
and a pond south of the house.
We had 60 head of cattle and
several calves.  Festus would
help me chase them.
When I went to bed for
the night, I heard crickets and cicadas,
and always Festus, way off in
the distance howling and barking.
He didn't mind touring the
farm with me, but he
did his best work on his own,
late at night.
Now that I'm an adult, and
Festus is long gone,
I wonder if anybody can
hear me howl in the
darkness.

No commitment
no devotion.
I'm like a boat on the
ocean with you;
tossed and broken by
the waves of your emotions.
Your hurricane is dangerous.
I'm heading for dry land.