I was always captivated by the stranger beside me,
More so than the blue skies I ached for
Because no matter how much sangria I swallowed, sitting across the table from you
The blue of love felt like butterflies doing the breast stroke inside of me
You turned me into an animal, excited and hungry, you turned me into The Wounded Deer by Frida Kahlo
You were my world and I was shot through the heart, but my heart is so big, like Texas
Maybe I should turn on the moon and you could help me see through this darkness...
You said there is only one way in and one way out and the road is blocked
Brick by brick by brick,
Your walls have come into fruition
And despite every effort to erase the anguish painted inside of my bones,
Alas I could not but try each day
To be a vision of strength,
A strength illuminated only by the dim light of the moon, a blue moon,
Resting in a sky so big
That even the brightest stars are strangers

To Allen Ginsberg and Frank O’Hara


Come out, ye boys of my literary dream
Frank, stop discussing this Rembrandt painting
Take a good drag like I never did, and come out
Down the street, down the ***** ***** days of madness
Allen, talk some sense into these selfied statuses
Come out, ye boys and talk into the microphone
Loosen your tie, Frank, show us some real art
Lose it on the sidewalk ye boys and let’s break
The rules, the locks, the prisons of the soul
Addictions, fears, anxieties, inanities.

Come out, ye boys and throw some rhymes to us
So we can think about ourselves while worshipping you
So that some people out there can stop *****-shipping
Sending our lukewarm bodies and fluids against the wall
What would you say Frank, of all the Rivers who
Try to reproduce the beauty of the human body on screen
Without the aesthetics, without the knowledge
Of what love means. Garter belts and welts, is that all?

Come out, ye boys and let’s be graphic, let’s be artistic
Teach us how to spread your love your legs and your legacy
Pass on this fearless gait, this adamant will to keep on
Despite the junk of our cities down the ***** ***** streets
Come out ye boys, admirers of poetry and people
Come out under a rainbow or a ring, SM fans or prudes
Let’s march on an on an on down our ***** ***** streets
With ye, boys.

June 21, 2017
Lyon. 10:36 pm.

People only mesh well with kerosene, each and every human so flammable,

It's a wonder we don't all set ourselves on fire...

But yours truly did it last night

Swallowed two liters of lighter fluid and chased it with jet fuel,

Ate the box of matches you keep in your purse

And burnt away the last good parts of my stomach.
///
I slept like a baby for two hours,

Not enough for lectures on the carbon cycle or dada mathematical deconstruction,

So I drifted off to more sleep, and slept to dream of the Six Gallery.

Wishing one or two poets would gain fame in an age of pineapple vodkas that no one is drinking for the taste,

But for gravity to pull through their very thin blood stream and feel at one with the party.

It's monotony—

I'll die and everyone will love me then, so where are they while I'm alive?

That's the joke of mourning,

It's the reason I resort to self-immolation,
It's the reason I dream everyday for fame and do nothing about it.

It's why Frank O'Hara got out while he could, dying with the true images of New York City

And not living to see it destroyed as I now have.

Emperors and Legionaries alike, take up your arms and help me overthrow anyone who dictates verse and meter.

I aspire to **** a fascist with my bare hands.

The Day Lady Died**

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton  
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun  
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets  
in Ghana are doing these days
                                                        I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)  
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life  
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine  
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do  
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or  
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and  
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue  
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and  
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

She followed him out the front door
After his failure to give "a ****,"
Her lonely wail above him soared,
And he turned while she took her stand,
She tried begging him urgently,
"Rhett Butler, please don't go!
Old Ashley's gone as you can see,
And I've done what I didn't know...
Oh, Rhett, won't you come back, please?"

But he kept his word, let not even a moan
Gave no second thought to the dame,
Rode off to a life of wealth on his own...
And drove poor old Scarlet insane.
And O'Hara lived her life half crazed,
Yes, she lived but not very well...
Once you've lost at love, it's the end of your days,
And you cannot unring a cracked Southern Belle.

Fredrich Kunath is running out of
World, but I’m resting from work
For a while, so I find my way to
St. James’ Square and ravel up a
Pinch of tobacco, hands trembling.
Behind me, work goes on, and builders
Grapple with drills: the sounds fall
Down from rooftops on all fours.

The sun is in mid-morning, and I
Leave the London Library (of which
I am a benign member) to walk
Around. I pass the Ritz, and the
Underground, and a tourist stops
Me and asks in broken English
Where the Palace is. His family stands
Behind him, bleary eyed and puzzled;
I point him away, and he walks away,
Brown hand pushing his cap out of
His eyes. The crowds are cold-blooded
Today, walking in the sunlight keeping
Pathways congested for a while.

At 11:55, I give up searching for
Nothing, and settle down at a little bench
In Green Park.  It’s a quiet space, where
London keeps its cars away, keeps the
Shadows of its buildings at bay.

It’s misty in the park today, and
Around me, people clutch their cameras
Taking pictures. I’m in one of those
Moods again; the ones where I get
In my car and drive around, wasting
Petrol on late night drop-ins to the
Mark Eaton Crematorium, to visit
Slate plaques. Will I run out of
World, like him? I stub my cigarette
And leave, swilling out of the park
And walking back to the Library.
They have some famous dead members:
George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, amongst
Others.

Running out of world seems fantastical
To me: I rather think he ran out of
Time.