these are but sagas for lovers and haters in love
who love to hate but are in hate with love

these poems

of couples who exist to exist
and to redefine Is

these are but stories for the sons of bleary eyed fathers
who tread the same threads across dilated garters

and heroic stoics be proud!
these are but fables of folly
and of transparent whim

of hunters’ beguilement
of huntresses’ ****

of mechanical males who practise old tricks

these are but tales of maidens and heads
of neverending aims nevertheless transfixed

these are but poems
of Envy and Trust

poems that unbe the unfair
for the sake of unlove

and while mechanical feelers probe seas of flesh dealers
and reels of film cast doubts of Enough

these are still
but poems of Trust

I remember when
I first read Bukowski
I thought he was a
joke

his poems weren’t even
poems
they were just a bunch
of lines
and sentences
strung about like flimsy
washing telling
mundane stories
about insipid things

who was he to venerate Cummings

(as if he had any of Edward’s
profundity)

and who was he to write
poems about poets not
writing poems

or his simple lines propping
up grossly defective and out of
date words

like jeroboams

or how he’d drink
(four-fifths a gallon of wine)
then write more derivative
lines

who was he to live so long
and write so much

drivel
and
claptrap

to other poets’ literary
athleticism
our darling Chuck was a
pedestrian

he was born a pensioner
but never received a
pension

his poems flow
like a river
to
no
where

and after reading them
the first time
I withdrew
my poetic concern

but then I read them again
and then
again

and I
realised

I was in his poem’s
stories

and that foolish girl I knew
that dense and brainless
denizen of triteville
was the heroine of
his ‘splashing’

and his love for classical
his love for wine
and even his love
for Edward
matched even mine

but most of all
and here
my rhetoric ends

the moment I sighed oh yes
when I read his poem
yes
you guessed it
‘oh, yes’

if not for his whimsical
words
or his misaligned wit
love him for his
grasp of regret
and the sheer sentiment
he can emit

I

meteor showers are not
very cleansing nor are
shooting stars much of
a threat

they pass over arms
raised and waving with
a hundred cries of
‘not yet’

by the time they
have passed the universe
might expand enough to
engulf Regret

and our arms will touch
our sides as we realise
the chances we may
have missed

and by then stars may
not exist and Never may
have already paid
its debt

and we’re left wondering
why we were left behind
and not chosen as hunks of
rock flew by

and though Ever After
has been stitched on
our minds dimensional
thread by thread

(and has with it what the
past cannot forget without
a vast sense of swoon)

Ever After will never
become Forever if it
speaks too late
or arrives too soon

II

if you were to ask Where when it would be
he would most definitely reply with ‘not now’

and if you were to ask Why exactly how
he would probably reply: ‘without me’

but if you were to question What with how it was
he would redirect you straight back to Why

so the last one to ask is the ever glum Was
(for he knows many things, most of all regret)

and Was also knows all you’ve done
and all you’ve done wrong he won’t let you forget

III

I’m about to begin work
on Forever but I don’t
know how long it will take

by the time I’m done
with Now who knows When
it will be

maybe by then North will
be South but true North
will be down somewhere
else

and clocks won’t have
numbers they’ll just
have words like ‘never’
and ‘too late’

it might take
a very long time

so it would be nice
to have someone here
just for having someone
here’s sake

it wouldn’t make Time
any less steady nor
pass it any quicker
or slower

but when the little hand
gets to ‘too late’ or
where ‘too late’ should
have been

I hope to have felt
and seen
everything

I am neither poet
Nor writer
Nor artist

And I will protest
With broken breath
Until the day I die

Because the words on the pages
Of the masters - all ink and tea
They were the ones who taught me

I am not alone
That I am all skin and organs
Holding in a thousand-million stories

But, I am not a poet
I am not sublime or dark
Or different

I park my car like everyone
I pick at scabs
and I sleep in late

I am not a poet
And, really, that's okay.

I read
Le Mythe de Sisyphe
yesterday
and stared at the wall
for 10 minutes
afterwards
the only thing
i could think
was how
my dreams felt so real
when I drank coffee
before sleep
how I spend my time
trying to find
what God could be
and how a writer’s diary
could destroy the world

Well I wrote in my diary later
that there was no point
in writing anymore
there was no rational reason
to create
But today I wrote again
that I may as well be
Sisyphus himself;
but instead of a rock
it was pen and paper

I scrawled at the bottom
in cursive
‘One must imagine Sisyphus happy’
and closed my notebook
for a short while

a coffee shop
a normal saturday morning
i wait at the speckled counter
and count the deformed donuts with sickened reassignment
a little girl is sitting at a diner table to my left
she stares at me with awe and darts up
handing me a picture she looks right at me with glee
“oh wow did you make this?” i ask
in the way an adult talks to a child
she nods and i say “this is great
do you draw a lot?”
she shakes her head no
“well you should” i say
and she, laughs and says
“no, i don’t need to do it more.
it doesn’t matter
i do it when i want to
i just like to”

i think of the way the little inflections upon her talk
mirror in my mind the voice of camus
you are not just what you do
you are more than the opportunities in your environment
absurdity arises in the aperture between you and the world
the world is real but the choices it allows
how can you exist when they close around you
from all sides, like a test from hell—i mean school
we have to choose a b c d
it doesn’t give a human space to breath—i mean, be

what i’m saying is
i’ve been washed up into the land
you go to when the fairies die
i’ve learned to lie with a very straight face
i’ve been had by the dollar bill
and in some twisted way
i only work for the prize these days
and still i’m willing to admit
a child outwitted me
and i’d rather it be that way
because sometimes i need to be put in my place
while rational and logical and adult
i have been living without being
and she
has tripped the strings
attached to the knots in my fingers
and my throat
this poem, i owe it to her