You faceless
In that sleek black car
Streak past
One of the so sadly few
Undeveloped plots of land
But you never notice
You’re on the phone
A critical call
Ignoring the doves
Exploding from the chapparal
In that desperate lonely
Remaining space
Between OCNissan
And Starbucks
And every day
You scream
And dream
Of faster cars
So you can
Go so fast
You'll never ever
Have to risk
Staring into the eyes
Of the rising doves.

poetry called back
said I knew
you couldn't stop
even for a few days -
but the real question is
are you unhinged enough
do you break rules
with enough fervor
to join the poetic tribe?

do words tumble
out of your lamp
and roll around the page
like dots of mercury
and then morph into
poignant crystals?

and do you walk
around the town
with bare feet
in a blatant shirt
asking spontaneous questions
about absurd things
of total strangers?

you should practice
living on these edges
because writing poems
means you break
the thermometer
of your soul
and your blood spills
into myriad rivulets
you cannot contain
with a million resevoirs
no, once you start
there's nothing
you can ever put back
the way it was

I asked poetry
if I could stop writing
for just a little while
because my life
had become too extremely twisted and oh, so complicated
and poetry said
you can stop
anytime you want
just quit
making love
with your wife
and forget about
putting sweet red honey
in the hummingbird feeder
next to the fat roses
and let that cute kid next door
walk your dog
to that huge green park
where everybody goes
in the cooling down afternoon
to laugh and watch
stupid pet tricks
and you won't need
to pray anymore
or meditate
in fact
why don't you
just
stop
breathing.

ALL THE IMPORTANT POETS

One day I found all the important poets -
Shakespeare, Bukowski, Dickinson and Rilke
partying in the park drinking Coronas,
feeding pigeons on the green.

Astonished I queried,
"You are all my thought heroes, and yet you laze about.
"Shouldn’t you be writing something famous?"
And they erupted in a literate cacophony of guffaws,
their eyes tearing,
their cheeks shining red with mirth.

Shakespeare turned to me and said,
"Forget it kid !
Meter, metaphor, rhythm and rhyme -
it’s all just groundlessness.
All the adjectives in the world divined just so
only lead to a place in your heart
you’ll never really understand anyway.
It’s simply a mystery, ineffable."

Bukowski tried to ask Rilke about the letters
he'd written to that frustrated young poet,
but he was so drunk on cooking sherry
he could only mumble, gesticulate and grin.

And then sweet Emily said,
"Yes. William is right.
Rainer Marie tried to explain it.
Charles tried to drink into it,
yet it remains the glass bead game -
ungraspable by dearest turn of phrase.
So we have decided to put down our pens
and take a breather."

She quietly handed me the bag of crumbs,
suggesting I toss a few here and there
for the pigeon's lollygagging by.......
"They're hungry, the simple little dears," she said.

Hildegard of Bingen
the most musical abbess
of the year 1097 a.d.
met with Jung the unconscious detective
and Ginsberg the howling poet
for lattes at some Starbucks
in a vibrating city
on a shimmering afternoon.

Angelic minuets keep flowing,
effervescing through my chakras
like tonal champagne . . .
the glowing femme declared.
Beams of ethereal light infuse me,
tsumanis of energy tempt me
to dance right out of my habit.

Ignoring the possibility
of seeing a naked nun drink coffee in public,
Alan mused behind his hornrims . . .
I get what you mean
like I have felt the same perfusion of joy
watching cans of peas and ayahuasca
dance with talking bananas
at the A&P; Market near my pad in Brooklyn,
can you dig it?

Still suffering from his Freudian hangover,
Carl reframed them both . . .
Any conclusions or convictions
drawn from such experiences
may not self-verify because
your introspective identifications
attempt in vain
to concretize the amorphicity
of decentralized psychic sensations
which reach conscious awareness
only at the expense of extension.

What did he just say?
Hildegard asked Alan.
I have absolutely no idea,
the portly poet answered
as he doodled an intricate mandala
on his hemp napkin.

We built our fragile house
high in the air floating precarious,
no anchor against winds of disillusion
tsunamis of projection and hurt
leaving us no other task
but to sweep
the uprooted flowers from our ruined garden.  

Broken hearts never completely heal  
but only ***** in desperation  
lost in frustrated desire losing momentum
trying not to shut the door.

So I lose you; you lose me.
And though this is not
what we intended
with the naive architecture  
of our tender early hope,
we pick up a piece of wood here
a shattered lamp there
and try
to light our fragile house again.

Every morning angels interrupt
my dreams of missing you
just to remind me
dawn is a reason to be hopeful
so I wonder..........
will this be the day
that I leave the grief behind
the day I finally capture light?

Reaching into the first sunbeams
marveling at their warmth
I slowly close my fingers
but cannot catch one.
They dance and shine around me
like something ineffable given.

Like those elusive sunbeams,
you shined on me
but I held too hard,
foolishly thinking that your light
could ever be captured
in my simple hands.