some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be mony and ****** and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

don't feel sorry for me.
I am a competent,
satisfied human being.

be sorry for the others
who
fidget
complain

who
constantly
rearrange their
lives
like
furniture.

juggling mates
and
attitudes

their
confusion is
constant

and it will
touch
whoever they
deal with.

beware of them:
one of their
key words is
"love."

and beware those who
only take
instructions from their
God

for they have
failed completely to live their own
lives.

don't feel sorry for me
because I am alone

for even
at the most terrible
moments
humor
is my
companion.

I am a dog walking
backwards

I am a broken
banjo

I am a telephone wire
strung up in
Toledo, Ohio

I am a man
eating a meal
this night
in the month of
September.

put your sympathy
aside.
they say
water held up
Christ:
to come
through
you better be
nearly as
lucky.

the house next door makes me
sad.
both man and wife rise early and
go to work.
they arrive home in early evening.
they have a young boy and a girl.
by 9 p.m. all the lights in the house
are out.
the next morning both man and
wife rise early again and go to
work.
they return in early evening.
By 9 p.m. all the lights are
out.

the house next door makes me
sad.
the people are nice people, I
like them.

but I feel them drowning.
and I can't save them.

they are surviving.
they are not
homeless.

but the price is
terrible.

sometimes during the day
I will look at the house
and the house will look at
me
and the house will
weep, yes, it does, I
feel it.

You’re soft. Smooth.
And yet you want me to break you.
You want my hands engraving red marks into your skin.
Your sweet, soft skin.

I cannot.
But not because I don’t want to.

I've passed my past,
My whole collapsed
Into this moment,
Now.

My days long gone,
I soldier on
With just this moment,
Now.

How can it be that all of me
Is held within a thought,
The days I've had, both good and bad
Are gone and count for nought.

So is this it?
Is this all I can be?
Is this all life had planned for me?

Am I lost in a moment where all that I was
Is what happened?  Because
If I am then the wars that I fought
Were for nought.

I am lost,
Lost in the moment and I yearn,
Yearn for a change.

All I was
Was lost in a moment and I've learned,
Learned life is strange.

Now that I'm here,
Now that I've come to this moment and found
That my life in this moment is good,
Understood, for a brief single moment,
I know that I'm here,
And I'm here for this moment of joy.

But why?

Why did it take so long?

as a kid, movies were my life,
dramas, comedies, documentaries,
miniature worlds of love and strife,
i sat down and glued
my eyes to the silver screen
to violence and blood
rich reds splashed on green;
as i late-night consumed
an Iraq war drama flick,
i heard history unwinding,
wrapping its tendrils to pick
apart my thoughts one by one
flashback frames spin
past bloodstained orbs,
Iraqi bullets beat a din
in my ear drum echo chambers;
shouts shatter constructed dreams
of innocence,
sweating nightmares, muffled screams
i remembered stray bullets
ridding the body of a wayward child
red inking my green sleeves
as i cradled him, he smiled
and told me his name.
i jolt back to reality
blood forcing muscles to lift pen
capturing the totality
of my anger in writing,
film forcing finger
to tilt stylus to modern papyrus
worried thoughts linger
finger on trigger,
as I write a review,
criticizing needless dredging
of the past, through
cheap, violent thrills
meant to entertain
jaded eyes unfamiliar
with foreign terrain
my fingers move
pressing down with no direction
i transcribe his name
ink soaking a predetermined selection
of grooves, his name
echoes from the past:
Rahim.