Aching for the past,
and all the people who are
there, just beyond reach.

No fish in my sea,
no stars in my sky, no warmth
in my night; nothing.

Washing my feet in
a river ... a bird sings a
melancholy song.

She had written this in her journal,
while she was still able to . . .

We were both 14.
I had to show him how to do it.

He had never been with
a girl before.

He barely had an hair yet, and
he was afraid to look at me.

He kissed with his lips
closed tight.

He came in an instant and
sprayed his ****** *** on my
deflowered cotton dress.

I later burned that dress
in the backyard barbecue and
saved the ashes
in a small cedar box.

Twelve years later
she would sprinkle those ashes
over her mother's grave,

a parting gift
for having played the game
so poorly.

Living in the
woods of death

rocking on a
rotting porch

staring out
into the endless night

listening to the
birds ****.

Old women with their
electric lawnmowers,
waiting to die, thinking

they're going to
meet their husbands again
somewhere up in the sky.

Somehow
I don't breathe
right.

I'm too busy
thinking
and I forget to breathe
deeply enough

And I think
that if I would just breathe deeper
my lungs would be healthier
and the cigarettes
wouldn't be so bad.

But that's just more
thinking
and I'm still not breathing
right.

When I have less
to think about
I figure I won't need to
smoke as much

But the day I stop
thinking
may very well be
the day I stop
breathing.

Just one more
no win situation.

Boy meets girl.

Boy wins girl.

Boy loses girl.

Boy kills girl.

To wake up with you

and share the pleasure of
coffee with you

so simple

yet so hard

because eventually

it won't be enough

and there I'll be

just me

without you.

We were like a beautiful car wreck.

I don't even know what we hit.
Just that when the smoke cleared
it was all over.

But what a beautiful ride it was.

I need new memories

to bury those of the woman
I cannot have

like a fresh blanket of snow

concealing all the dead beauty

underneath.

Tina hates jazz, but
Jazz loves Tina, pearl blue and
seven years away.

Eyes beaming pure love,
white wine *******, and legs like a
perfect cup of tea.

for Chrissie*

Your coffee cup
in the sink

bearing the traces
of the lips
I awoke with and kissed
in the dim morning light.

I resist washing it

hesitant
to wipe away
this tangible memory

but I do,
confident in the knowledge
that your next
lipstick print
will be left
on my lips

red as blood

and
just as warm.

Others have relationships.
I have infatuations.

Pale-skinned blonds with
kind faces attract me.

Joan was one of these.

I went after her
and found she was as nice as she looked.

But
someone else
had gotten there first.

It depressed me.

I refused to forget about
her.

I walked past her apartment door
hoping she'd come out.

The door had a number 13 on it.
I knew she was
behind it...doing things.
Living.

She never came out.

I saw her once in the laundry room.
She was with her boyfriend
but she said "hi" to me.

I later found out she'd
gotten married and had two kids.

Why'd she have to go
and do a thing
like that?

What seemed so
special
was just
everyday life and
what seemed so
unbearable
was just
more of the same.

Like music in a
dream, the whisper of your skin
sounds like love to me.

I think of her, and wish to
be with her,

my love for her having been
repeatedly tested like
an air raid siren.

Our love is authentic
and true and as permanent
as the effects

of a
nuclear war.

If things ever got so
bad that our money became
virtually worthless, it might be
possible to use poetry as a
medium of exchange.

The better the poem, the
greater the value.

A Pablo Neruda or David Ignatow
would be worth something like fifty dollars,
whereas a Rod McKuen might buy you a
candy bar.  Maybe.

Richard Brautigans would buy plenty, as well,
but make you question why you were
buying it at all.

A Bukowski poem
would be worth
thousands, but
looked upon as
foreign currency.

Of course, with the current rate of
inflation, one would need more and more Nerudas
and Ignatows just to get by, and eventually a loaf
of bread might cost as much as a short story.

To buy a car, one would need to come up with
two or three novels...good novels...a couple of
Haruki Murakamis.

It would take a wallet full of
Raymond Carver stories just to buy a
motorcycle.