it
takes
a lot of
desperation
dissatisfaction
and
disillusion
to
write
a
few
good
poems.
it's not
for
everybody
either to
write
it
or even to
read
it.

Blue-eyed and bright of face but waning fast
Into the sere of virginal decay,
I view her as she enters, day by day,
As a sweet sunset almost overpast.
Kindly and calm, patrician to the last,
Superbly falls her gown of sober gray,
And on her chignon's elegant array
The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste.
She talks Beethoven; frowns disapprobation
At Balzac's name, sighs it at 'poor George Sand's';
Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands;
Speaks Latin with a right accentuation;
And gives at need (as one who understands)
Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation.

When the fat ***** spat in my face
and called me a hippie,
I wasn't sure if it was
better or worse
than being called a hipster poser
in the city.

The fat ******,
the ****** poets,
the lesbians,
and the saliva
are all the same.

Pointless plot twists in
a headache of trite storytelling.

And you can ask Plato if his
"is-ness" really meant all that much,
and you can ask Bukowski if he
found the celestial kissing the *******,
and you can ask the drunken Catholic dukers
if the clover has a **** thing to do with it,
and you can ask the caterpillars that
don't want to be butterflies,
and they'll all bark the same interwoven tune:

nobody is right,
God is a coward,
my boss owes me reparations ,
and any dumb dog spouting off superiority
needs a steel muzzle and a molecular transfusion.

Drinking my tea
Without sugar-
    No difference.
                                        
The sparrow *****
    upside down
--ah! my brain & eggs
                                        
Mayan head in a
Pacific driftwood bole
--Someday I'll live in N.Y.
                        
Looking over my shoulder
my behind was covered
with cherry blossoms.
                                        
        Winter Haiku
I didn't know the names
of the flowers--now
my garden is gone.
                                        
I slapped the mosquito
and missed.
What made me do that?
                                        
Reading haiku
I am unhappy,
longing for the Nameless.
                                        
A frog floating
in the drugstore jar:
summer rain on grey pavements.
        (after Shiki)
                                        
On the porch
in my shorts;
auto lights in the rain.
                                        
Another year
has past-the world
is no different.
                                        
The first thing I looked for
in my old garden was
The Cherry Tree.
                                        
My old desk:
the first thing I looked for
in my house.
                                        
My early journal:
the first thing I found
in my old desk.
                                        
My mother's ghost:
the first thing I found
in the living room.
                                        
I quit shaving
but the eyes that glanced at me
remained in the mirror.
                                        
The madman
emerges from the movies:
the street at lunchtime.
                                        
Cities of boys
are in their graves,
and in this town...
                                        
Lying on my side
in the void:
the breath in my nose.
                                        
On the fifteenth floor
the dog chews a bone-
Screech of taxicabs.
                                        
A hardon in New York,
a boy
in San Fransisco.
                                        
The moon over the roof,
worms in the garden.
I rent this house.

[Haiku composed in the backyard cottage at 1624
Milvia Street, Berkeley 1955, while reading R.H.
Blyth's 4 volumes, "Haiku."]

I strip you naked,
leave you firmly fixed to the spot
in the cold
encircled by a metal
fence.

You're rooted to that spot.
Without me, you'll never
leave
and with my cold metal devices
I will find the disease in you.
Driving it out
for fear it will reach the core.

--

You're curled inward,
dense limbs jumbled  
hindering my stare.
Arms overlapping,
heavy with dew
clinging to each blond hair.

I carve voluptuous curves
out of your jagged exterior,
slicing membrane cleanly.

My body is worn thoroughly
and I want so badly to stop,
wrists sore, plastic catching
anything I drop.

--

Everyday is aggravated
by the sweltering sun then
you're purple in the aging cold
and wilted you sleep half done
in the embrace of dark.

I worry in the morning
I will find you gone,

but I don't burn with it
rejoicing for you have no
tongue.

--

I have untied you piece by piece
from your wire and wood cradle,

and will with loving care
hang
you.

As you **** and jiggle
hop and knock
slip and giggle
keep a foot forward
and the other forewarned.
Slack jawed and hackneyed
you're endlessly forlorn
slack kneed and jack knifed.
High on strife and ******,
car crashes on black rock
cracked streets and hard
sweets lined teeth so
stained with self love that
your internal apathy fits
glove-like and I am hungry
struggling against your
thundering angry words
filled with fifty year old
angst ugly with stretch
marks but more from
the sadness dribbling
down your philtrum un-wiped
like I was and the only thing
I now want cleaned off is my
memories of you smeared
erratically and etched eternally
onto my life.

I'm afraid the bombs will never fall,
the summer girls will never return my calls.

I'm afraid I won't claim any kills,
I'm afraid I won't ask when they hand out the pills.

I'm afraid there will be no couplet,
to satisfy the end rhyme.

I'm afraid our movement
is as meaningful as an ellipsis...


All we know is the suburbs,
the mailman,
couches,
Thursday night tv.

All we know is settling down,
settling on a wife,
settling for whatever's on sale,
whatever won't send us to hell.

I'm afraid no one wants me dead,
I'll be alone in a queen-size bed.

I'm afraid Jesus won't come from the sky,
I'm afraid when she can't love me, I'll still try.

I'm afraid every rule was a crime,
all the freedom ends with the end rhyme.

I'm afraid I will drive an SUV,
I will buy my headstone, while still alive...

All we know is the pattern,
work at 9,
Coffee with Cara at 5,
in bed, sleeping pill in head.

All we know is all we know,
a flood of morals,
a cancer spat upon,
by all the greatests that went on before...

i open the envelope of night,
*******, the stars have never been so necessary.
with one deep breath i declare genocide on all my worries.
in this late hour, passing pavement is worship,
cigarettes, the Rolling Stones, and left lanes
are the holy trinity.

i'm a righteous man, honey.
you can be righteous too.
what are you doing right now?
nothing?
good.

time is a starving dog from hell,
and we spend the days
carving ourselves into steaks,
tossing ourselves away,
only to sit and watch all our favorite parts
get devoured.