I sleep with the pigeons,
I sleep under bridges,
a deteriorating photograph
is all I have.
She left with that winner,
the one that looks like an athlete
but he's actually an artist
you know, the one that gets noticed.
I can't blame her, I've lost it all.
These are the types of injuries that occur
when the ethics are below your pay grade.
So now I sleep under bridges,
the grass is my bed,
and I
bathe with the pigeons.
I keep a hat on my head
while I read the paper with my shoulders
hunched over, although I don't
get cold anymore.

Agitated at how this guy has me figured
out, I just want to throw him on the ground.
I look up at the board in front of me
now and see
that Bukowski has me cornered again
and I want to scream expletives
as loudly as I can, but I catch myself
just before I begin to vent because
the three and four year old children
all around are the only people that
don't yet hold me in complete
contempt and I'd like to keep it
that way.

The dedication
was ingrained
in his fingertips,
(like Bowie,
like Bob), yet
there was no
boldness,
no brilliance
in the decay,
(like David,
like Dylan,
lord willin').

And so
I asked him:

Shall I
dare

to play
Baudelaire
over six flights
of stairs?

No?

Is it really worth
that much to you?
Is it worth anything at all?
Is just getting away always good enough?

And then I said to him,

kid,
sometimes
you gotta bury
'em.
And this is coming
from me with my chest
resting on the ground.

Snicker snicker, giggle giggle,
it's funny,
the way your pen wiggles.

Finding
my identity
as I fumble
through your
laundry,
I'm finding
my identity
as I stumble
through some
palm trees.

Sitting on the sand
where I watch the tide,
I'm sitting on the sand
where I syllogise;
sunshine and sugar pills,
of which I am comprised.

Honey,
if I'm a ***,
it's because you made me one.

There are more interesting things than your phone.
Look up, look up and you'll see.

There are more colors and tones
Surrounding you than you will ever find in that glossy screen.
Look up, look up and you'll see.

There are more interesting things than your phone.
Look up, look up *******, and you'll see.

Notes in ink
jump between
the black, they
jump between
the white, and

there are lines being repeated here.

Sit in libraries,
pretend to read,
grid out fantasies
on a globe,
there are lines being repeated here.

Never did
have **** to say,
I admit it,
and so

there are lines being repeated here.

Luna is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are dust and waterless;
Rainfall? Zero, absolutely!

In this place where birds don’t sing
and nothing green can grow.
We built the Armstrong Geodome,
in secret, years ago.

Here, on the “dark” side of the moon,
in a Mare without a name.,
a climate controlled paradise
was built, and workers came.

Some were miners, strong and buff
who search for this world’s gold.
Some are research scientists
one hundred fifty men, all told.

In Twenty Forty Seven
all hell broke loose on Earth
There were nuclear exchanges
and what followed next was worse.

A winter like none other;
we listened, helpless, as they died.
Starvation is the cruelest fate
for any mother’s child.

One by one they all fell silent,
the great cities of that Orb.
Deaths occurred in magnitudes
the human mind can not absorb.

We struggled, yes, but we survived
without the ships from home.
One Hundred fifty adult males,
like the mariners of old.

We mourned the Loves we’d left behind,
We shuddered at their fate.
Our Refuge was our prison;
We lived deprived of child or mate.

The streets of Armstrong are always clean
as cleaning bots are on patrol.
but here no children laugh or play,
it’s a town without a soul.

Two decades we spent in that place
then came the words for which we yearned:
Atmospheric radioactivity
to safe levels had returned.

I was on the first ship home
to San Francisco Bay.
The landmarks all were flattened
The Golden Gate in ruins lay.

We mortals wept, I will not lie
Our cradle had become our grave;
The streets of home were silent,
there was no one left to save.

Terra is a silent world,
a wasteland of sere beauty.
It’s “seas” are toxic, lifeless now;
Children? Zero, absolutely!

tell me
what the planet looks like
floating up there on the clouds
are the oceans bluer with a cottonmouth &
can you count the countries as you cut them out?
is the forest greener from the ground or
are the branches blinding looking down?
i guess you're reassured somehow
that i'm just a face amongst the crowd or
just an ant atop the mound
transporting ten tons of regret in
an attempt to make my queen content

complex moveable pulley systems
consisting of rope
had hardened his heart:
that moveable block
a native of rocks
a kernel of nourishing corn
pumping starch to starving veins.
his naïve nerves reborn,
new to nature
where nothing is known
but the trumpets of judgement.
a society of contemporaries
with a common condition:
speak your latent conviction
while avoiding exhaustion by speech
(know the limit of the lungs),
so we accept the same transcendent destiny
of intense despair while it lasts
but not for nothing.
when we end up in the ground
do we still dream of the sky?

sun and moon stand side-by-side in the great starless sky of this Monday Sunday Tuesday workweek
with ambulance stoplight caution I leap from crevice to crack of the ***** cement walkways that tear across snowy fields
staring at the world around me - faces as solemn unreserved apathetic mirrors of nothing in their corresponding souls
pair them off in dialogues of the triumphs of the fabled GPA - its deep-throat growling dripping fangs embedded in their minds since sloppy second-hand birth
and I cry out and I cry alone for these are the summers winters springs falls etc and so on of my discontent
for I am a man among gods
gods of capitalism and communism  and social disorder and bureaucracy
gods of music and poetry and written spoken words and fashionability
and the only false evidence of such godly aspirations remain on my body as fading bitemarks on my wrists from when once I tried so valiantly to tear my technicolor blood from these incontinent arms
but even in such times as those there was no salvation but for yellow-staining death sticks clutched between shaking fingers and melting shots fired down raw fleshy throat in rapid secession
the gods I hold so dear have left me for whatever come what may in these places of my mind filled with words and thoughts and images of your everything thrashing against nothing

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the black bird.

II

I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV

A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI

Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII

I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X

At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI

He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII

The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.