Your ***
Which I have never seen
Remains
A thought a guess
A sacred cow
The Unattainable
Mandela wrapped in denim and lace
Your ***
Which I have never seen
The Grail the Moslim War
The True Keats True Plato
A sign of Heaven the Way
Your ***
Which I have never seen
Parker Davis Monk
And Choir,
Oh the Choir never
Sang so Sweet!
And angels in black
Triumphant Angst
And jesus with smirk
And god all giddy with
Satisfaction
Your ***
Which I have never seen

grab crazy
from twisted minds
and hurl handfuls
onto brick walls
and watch passersby
cringe and cry out
in agony, seize their
sanity like a gun
and shoot wild
into the night

I heard
Siren songs
of Established
In search of
Identity,
And the smile and
Smell of Successfulism
Began to clog my
Lungs and arteries
Until I was
Completely alone
And slowed and vibrated
Glimpses of Truth
Wrapped in smoke rings
And sunrises

Now,
I don't claim to
Know Truth
But have observed
Its twiddling thumbs
In morning hours
Lost in thought and
Utter purpose
And now,
If you look
To the East or the West
On a day when the sun
Reigns and the earth cries
You can almost
Stop it all,
Or slow the process
Enough to toss a few back
And smile

When deprived of
Rational thought
For long enough
The brain begins
To gather knowledge
From the smallest
Crevices of humanity
And in the cracks and
Crags of Know and Is
Runs tributaries of
Emotion and Touch
And the whole thing
Is a metaphor
And the whole Ship
Is a crazy illusion
In the mind of an infant
Vibrating nonsensical
Everything throughout the
Walls of human record and
Memory,
This is my doctorate and thesis
This is my final showdown and hoorah
This is staring down eternity
This is laughing with god
This is feeling it and running it down with bare hands
This is the how within the why
This is you me all the faces all the ads and fables
Every leaf and grain of sand in
Every toenail and cornea
This is poverty hunger sickness anger frustration confusion bliss
This is life love and the pursuit
This is the final frontier, the jumping off point
That comes every so often
Like an old friend
To remind you to
Get it all together
Into a single image
Of worship and Holy
And see it and eat it
And spit it back up
In bulimic flowering
Yeah, this is war
This is the last supper
This is Rexroth and Bukowski
In love with Hate
Saying, "Give me something better or get out of my way."

Way up
on the highest branch,
the can't reach don't
try too tall up there
******* with the best
leaves and a couple
flowers that bloom
slowly so you know
they mean it branch
well, on that thing
sits a girl
not a girl but a woman,
at times, others a kid
others an old lady
but always beautiful
and up there, really
up there in every way
sittin' there, just
sitting, no where else
to be but there in this
moment and I know it
and I see a flicker in her
eye and I know its on
and I should try with all
of my being to connect my
chest with hers in a way that
only crazy over the top lovers
will ever get and enjoy
and worship as Holy with a
careless laugh, yeah the good
times the ones that feel like
a warm blanket over your fears
and expectations and take your
soul for a ride down the block
a bit until the morning, and
its all real and rough to the
touch like creepin' grass
and she's up in that tree
on that limb with the good
leaves and flowers that let you
know they exist and she's there
and I'm here on the ground
with dirt and rocks and
creepin' grass where I know
I can flourish

Corso told me that
there are levels to
this [poetry] thing:
talent; genius;
Divine,
"Ok," I said
and put a gun
in my mouth,
"Wait, wait!" he said,
"What are you doing?"
"Joining the divine," I said.

I looked to the West
with strained neck
and weary eyes
where roads stretch
over hard ground
and boots cover
beat-up toes from
industry from nature
from time and the
morning starts before
the dawn in the starry
mourning ours of the
midwest skies that
keep going, further
than humanity, and
tomorrow is a lifetime
and lead paint is the
only god you need
aside from the warm
solitude of another
struggle that eats at
your brain but sings
your heart in the tune
of the wind that howls
through your being--
straight through to
the other bitter side--
and in that thin line
that separates god
from man and stretches
clean through to the coast
I saw a purity of thought
and of being in the very
struggle of the sun
over that ridge that
seemed to strangle
the earth like a necktie
and I saw the spirit
of the spirit, the old
one, the first one
******* and bound
with hopes and dreams
and furniture and gold
and television chords and
bits of blue cheese, bibles,
and bad skin and so forth
and the whole scene made
me sick until I puked up
all that I had swallowed
in my youth and my
stomach was anew and
fresh and filled with sunlight
from the horizon that went
on into the forever where
poets rest their brains
and god sits and reads
Bukowski to the angels