Out of nowhere
a thought of you
will hit my mind,
like a poison dart.
I don't know what
triggers it.
Tonight, I think it's
the cold wind blowing
outside my window.
Or, it could be the
tangerine I just ate.
That sweet juice.
It doesn't last
though.
Gone in a flash.
Too small for a
lifetime together.
And I'm alone with
this bright orange pain,
vowing never to write
about you again.

Tonight, I lie in bed and
scribble in a black spiral
notebook.
Why is cruelty easy for
some? Like laying down
a card.

One of my three cats,
Mojo
sits sleepily on
my old maple desk.
She is all black.
The computer screen is
black.
So are the speakers,
microphone,
and a coffee cup that
sits on the desk.

Above my dresser is a
quote by Hemingway.

"There is nothing to writing.
All you have to do is sit down
at a typewriter and bleed."

It's on black paper.

I've had the room set up
this way for over a year.
I'm just noticing all the
blackness.
Midnight in Nod.
It could be because I miss
my daughter.  She's seven.
All the black fades away when
I think about her smile
and those eyes that laugh at the
rain.

I notice that my shirt
is emerald green, with a
few drops of red.

Plop
Plop

Plop.

The brilliance of the
ladybug landing on
my white coffee cup
as the wind blows through
the bedroom window
I think of ee cummings
and Buffalo Bill,
Mom, Dad, and the
rest of the dead.
The computer calls to me.
But I won't answer.
It's the Sabbath, and the
rest will do us all some
good.

I've never written a limerick.
Thinking of it makes me sick.
Better a sonnet
or a woman upon it.
Maybe, I'll just play with my ****.

Today, early on a
Saturday morning, I'm
trying a little trick I
learned from Bukowski.
I put on some classical
music and I am trying
to write.
Beethoven's 5th in C minor.

I sit in my favorite chair and
watch my black cat lie on the
back of the loveseat and
watch the snowfall.
She looks triumphant,
but it could just be the music.
The philodendrons that hang
around the house and the
bamboo plants seem happier, too.
There's no hope for the palm tree.

Well, the main thing is that I put the
pen to paper, and Beethoven,
my cat and you came along for the
ride.

Maybe the cellos, violins, and
trombones will fertilize my
creativity.
Now, my other two cats have joined
the fun.
They wrestle by the heater and laugh at
all the fat, rich *******.

I had been sober for
awhile and was getting that
itch to drink.
I couldn't recall the
degradation and misery of
the last drunk a few months
earlier.

It was spring, and I was standing
outside of the flophouse, I was
staying at.
Just then, a big sunflower of
a woman walked by.
"Hi Jenny," I said.
We had a past.
Not much of one though.
It resembled a Dali painting that
had been soaking in the rain.

We ended up in a motel with a
bottle of Absinthe.
Jenny wasn't much of a drinker,
No problem, more for me.
Jenny wasn't much of a
conversationalist, and half-lit on
robust *****, neither was I.
I walked around the room talking
about Hemingway and Van Gogh,
Fitzgerald and Picasso.
Jenny wasn't interested in them.
She wanted me to score her some dope.

She said, "If you want this *****, you
will buy me an eight ball."
I didn't.
I wanted to write, but I was too drunk.
We wanted different things and neither
of us
found them that night.
And later at about 3 am when I got
up to ****, I could have sworn I saw the
picture of Van Gogh on the box of Absinthe
laughing.

Rain splashes off the
screen door.
It's raining in
my heart
chubby little drops
splashing on my soul.
The sadness is deeper
than a lagoon,
bluer too.

There are days
it doesn't pay to
get out of bed.
Maybe,
in the next dream
I'll find my
prodigal cat.
We could listen to
Sketches of Spain,
Miles Davis knows
how to bring the lost home.

She's a black runt that
burrowed into my heart.