outside
through the window
circling in blue

five vultures.

I sit here
and look at them
and think:

I am not dead yet.
something is dead or dying out there
but it is not me.

that’s not entirely true.
we are all dying in different stages
on varying timelines.

I might drop dead
on my way to the fridge
to get another beer.

heart attack
a stroke
a lurking aneurysm
a car accident
homicide or
suicide

anything might get me at any second.

sudden death
falling into the final dream
and then

nothing

that
is all one can hope for.

it sure beats
dying slowly
from

lung cancer
heart disease
diabetes
AIDS

or falling off a ladder
while pruning an apple tree
breaking your neck
and slowly

suffocating
to death

while
vultures gather

eager
and hungry

in the
last blue
of late
afternoon.

lived
the life

you have to hand it to him.

lost that
cottage on the
santa monica beach

to the sharks.

the sharks always win.
the sharks built this ******.

richmond
addicted to ****** and the poem.

sharks
don’t understand poems.

although
some sharks
are addicted to ******

they will
never get

the poem.

richmond
evicted and homeless
retired to a small room.

the
poem
had dried
up

like a
discarded
apple
core.

fruit
no more.

empty
toothless
abandoned

steve richmond died.

no pilgrimages
to his grave.

in the darkness of the sycamore tree

the sharks
count stacks of money.

this is
how they got

judas
too.

*** sells
and so does sadism

sold to bored housewives
and professional women
breaking through

glass ceilings.

almost mid-way through
the sixth decade of existence on terra firma
there is a lot that gnaws away like a locust
at the soft underside of consciousness.

***.
everywhere.
and the trap of biology.

women illustrated like circus sideshow attractions
ride naked on horses through the grimy marketplace
of stolen and bankrupt ideas.

*** minus monosodium glutamate.

you’ll like it better if you’re
tressed with plaits of golden silk
in a turquoise dungeon.

this morning
tortured by dreams. a ******* of the mind
teasing sunlight on a blasted dais. she’s a *****

worshipped by the masses.

madison avenue
hollywood
the sound of debit cards

in the wind.

the high art
of the american landscape
is kim kardashian

naked
her ***
blotting out
the sun.

while
poets drown
silently

down in
the shadow
of that wondrous

eclipse.

I don’t
want to **** you. I want
to be in the same room

with you.

there is
something about you
that reminds me of myself.

yellow mayonnaise
and a pickle. that’s all that was left

after you left.

you thought I’d **** you.
you didn’t leave a note.

you left
that dress

hanging like a blue skeleton
in the closet. a green pickle

and a blue dress. I hold it up
to the disinfectant of sunlight.

smell it as I close my eyes.

I want you here
trapped in honey or amber
but when I look

you are no longer
in this

room.

sitting in
a fast food place
on the highway access road

drinking coffee.
five days of tramadol

five years of pain.
arthritis. the ******* doctors

slam the credit card
and do nothing except

prescribe.

call it in to the pharmacy
where I can drive-thru

for my fix.
they say this **** is good
for depression. hell

the whole world’s depressed
more or less

so put it in the water.

my
therapy
is the
word.

it will save my soul

even
if it never
generates enough
coin to pay
for

pain killers.

the worst thing is the realization
you have nothing to say.

the worst thing is
a collision of words spinning
deaf into a vortex of irrelevance.

you finally understand.
you are like the rest of them.
you have nothing to contribute.

silence is cancer
deaf and dumb metastasis.

it happens to giants and dwarfs
locksmiths and astrophysicists
mathematicians and short order cooks.

it happens to saints and serial murderers.

silence so deafening
it barters with suicide.

maybe that’s
why they invented

television.

get
this cold
take it inside

feed it
to those
you are traveling

with
through this space.

tell them
love is a glacier

it endures
and is not remembered.

halve
the cold minute.

nurture it
and then set it free.

in
its absence

the warm
will return.

a tiding
a small child

who laughs
at the bitterness

of the
crime you hold.

a song
to be
rehearsed

a
misstep
to be

forgiven.

never
been in a
nuthouse.

might be time to go there.
most people are nice enough.
I’d sacrifice my life to save a

drowning child
or an old woman who has fallen
in the street as a garbage truck
rushes in
but

as a congealed whole
I consider humanity

to be a pathological disease.
individual components are worth mercy
while the masses are a global staph infection.

I don’t know
what the **** is wrong with me.
beer and xanax work temporarily

until sleep obliterates.

I have
never been
in the nuthouse.

no that’s not right.
I am in one right now

it’s called
civilization.

she wasn’t in the bedroom.
she wasn’t in the kitchen. she wasn’t
watching television.

I had this bad feeling.

I walked outside and crossed the lawn to
the neighbor guy’s place. He had this big picture window.
looking at it was like watching a cinemascope movie.
there they were on the big screen curled up together
on the sofa.

betrayal like a sucker punch.

so I went back to our place and threw
all her stuff on the front lawn. it was midnight
and the stuff was piled up out there
under a beautiful bright full moon.

suddenly I felt a better.
I felt like a man instead

of
a mark
a chump
dirt
wiped from
shoes onto
a doormat.

it was a miracle nobody stole the stuff
considering the neighborhood we lived in.

they were
married and have been for more than thirty years.
she found the right man.

it is said time heals but that wound
had a scab on it for decades. it is not offended manhood
or anything like that. rather a man should never
trust a woman with a knife

especially
in the middle of the night
when his

back is turned.

for Hans Ebner*

a battled
rifle

dismantled.

a naked
woman

trained
as a white
bird.

she coaxed madness
out of you

a slow milk
a certain science.

it was there
all along

that **** war.

twenty years
tight and untuned
since you

walked the earth.

and now
I bend back
thinking of

that **** war.

souls
easily stolen
as coins
spent.

gathered
like rain drops
on the screen
between

me and the world.

black and white
refracted back

there
but a short
moment

and
then falling

silent
without

appeal
or burnt
retribution

mute
in decline

like everything
that came

before.