It felt as though the humidity itself
carried a hint of liquor as we walked
out into the night, wanting only to escape
our lives for a little.
Deep down in Vieux Carre
twisted brass clashed with a piano
running half step from the crowded clubs
on Frenchman Street.
We filled our lungs with the city
and found her to be like certain kinds
of dangerous doses--
intoxicating.

It was our second night
and the more we drank
the more I began to see glimpses
of the specters spoken of by locals.
They linger in my peripheral,
watching me with their sunken eyes.
You could faintly hear them moan,
only in defeated tones
and their collective scowl danced
in the heavy air of summer
as though it were a part from
all that jazz.

In the stranger hours of morn
I was approached by a ghost
a few blocks off Bourbon.
He offered up nothing but his ***** palms
in hopes of some false salvation.
I wrestled a dollar from my pocket
and passed it on to him,
only to watch him fruitlessly grasp at it
before it slide through his ghostly hands
to the floor below.
He looked down at the dollar
all helpless-like and he said
"It’s been slipping through my fingers
like dat for years now
and ain't nobody help’n me."

I walked from him, realizing then
why I had needed this trip,
I needed to remember all the love in my life
because the only difference between
me and the ghosts of N'awlins
was someone cared about me,
and I cared enough about them
not to destroy myself.

Red plaid shirt
You wore it on the night of our second sober kiss
The end of last November was good to me
We planned out our winter breaks -
We said we lay on the kitchen floor and listen
To a song about sisters
(We know about sisters)
We stood with nervous hands gripping onto the counter
Your parents were home
Holiday breaks hold nostalgia in paper cups
Holiday breaks hold sad Summer magic under frozen high school football fields

Red plaid shirt
You wore it on the night that you forgot her mother was gone
August has always broken my heart
Wether I'm begging for forgiveness from the pine trees in my backyard, or smoking things to gather your attention -
I have never been at peace with the end of an era

We walked home in silence, party hat strings cut from our throats, and tears streaming from the birthday moon

You and your new friends gawked behind us -
forgetting every lap we ever took around your neighborhood
forgetting every song that ever made you cry
forgetting that the worst part about death is that we are expected to go on living

boy coils in the lawn
& early air.
grass touching him wet,
smoke crawls from his lips,

into the blue awoken,
or sky before his face.
there it dances like wild life lived
& falls away with breezy.

dearly herb to glossy reds,
he purses, thus to inhale.
sparked ember, spark clench, fist to fist.
life given to life encapsulated.

the sense of it goes steady,
goes patent cool.
he exhales, and looks to the south,
where his legs once were.

I remember you and me
Lying in her bed
In her bedroom in spring
She was playing that one track on that one record
That reminded us of that previous fall

When we were sitting in my car
The October air was frosted over
From the rear view mirror
We watched our two best friends fall in love on the sidewalk

You were in the seat beside me
You were in my dreams most nights

I remember you and me
Lying in her bed that spring
She was playing  records and proclaiming her love to you
We held hands under the covers and no one knew

The chorus was playing softly
you held my hand tighter with every note
Her tears were raging
We were all just kids

I remember you and me
Lying in her bed
The audience hung in the rafters
Drunk on your *****
Drunk on his beer

That night went on for as long as we needed it to

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January
        17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go **** yourself with your atom bomb.
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I
        need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not
        the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back
        it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical
        joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday
        somebody goes on trial for ******.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid
        I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses
        in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle
        Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let your emotional life be run by
        Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner
        candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Business-
        men are serious. Movie producers are serious.
        Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of
        marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable
        private literature that goes 1400 miles an hour
        and twenty-five-thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of
        underprivileged who live in my flowerpots
        under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers
        is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that
        I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly
        mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as
        individual as his automobiles more so they're
        all different sexes.
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500
        down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Com-
        munist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a
        handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
        speeches were free everybody was angelic and
        sentimental about the workers it was all so sin-
        cere you have no idea what a good thing the
        party was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand
        old man a real mensch Mother Bloor made me
        cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody
        must have been a spy.
America you don't really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen.
        And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power
        mad. She wants to take our cars from out our
        garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Readers'
        Digest. Her wants our auto plants in Siberia.
        Him big bureaucracy running our fillingsta-
        tions.
That no good. Ugh. Him make Indians learn read.
        Him need ******* *******. Hah. Her make us
        all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in
        the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes
        in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and
        psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

                                Berkeley, January 17, 1956

she lay next to him at night
dreaming of a ghostly icon, gold
little-headed monkey god on an island nigh the cape of bone marrow.
& now
she bounds into humble years, house cat, domesticated
little smiles, little daughters, little
flowers at the supermarket.
good morning.

pull her hair, as if to tree
& family. seed shoved down her throat
& diamonds.
she remembers the jewel runners, their chunks of wet rock.
& birds
slipstreaming away their days above africa.
slug to the chest &

she awakens in a hyundai
under the beaming heat of a vacant strip-mall sun.
gravity feels soft
in this lesser pungent life.
dreamt only, of choking temp and humid archipelago nights,
the gibbons & the thieves.
the treasure chest lairs of chieftains and tribal nobodies.
war profiteers.
men of fang island fantasy.

fake it.
p.t.a. and butter spread it, to toast and/or corn.
the sun is rising
& falling
& truly just travelling ‘round.

       marinated artichoke hearts.

[baby dreams] of waves
on shore and handshake, of altered mother moons, she
is hidden in reflection
& time.
happy with the furniture.
plentiful on extra lunch meat.

Music knots my stomach,
makes my heart ache. Every
lie the boy told reimagined
in the dull pain spilling through me.

I'm drinking away the pain,
but the pain is - there is no pain.
Everything's relatively reasonable,
and calm. I need someone
just to tell me they hate me.

Love is a disease and it sticks to me.
I want to scream in the street -
to feel so angry I could get sick.
Hit someone because I love them
so much it hurts in my bones
and my teeth.

But it's empty. The days are empty.