(for my fellow dharma bums)

why is this backpack so heavy?
chicken & country cole slaw
forks & knives & spoons
a bicycle helmet hanging off
a sketch pad
books
          the next 100 years
          how the beatles destroyed rock’n’roll
a walkman & cds
          the soundtrack to the darjeeling limited
          faust’s first two albums
          tom waits & alan holdsworth
          compilations of local prog rock
          modern blues & albert king
old newsweeks
a black t shirt & blue scrubs
a folder with poems & instructional material
          the brain death protocol
a stethoscope
but why is it so heavy?
must be the hot sauce

playing my harpsichord in pittsburgh’s market square
an audience of homeless, druggies, children of druggies
scurrying working stiffs and three tourists
a black man at the far corner of the square
scampers straight for me, screeching "white devil!"
"white devil! white devil! white devil!"
he’s in front of me, leaning on the harpsichord
"WHITE DEVIL!"
then he drops $2 in my upsidedown bongo
turns around, screams "white devil!"
and runs out to the street

the u.n. laid sanctions against me
presidents planted propaganda
missile defense shields were erected
all in vain, daddio

you think a rich twit
when he eats the banquet he calls supper
cares whether the peons are republican or democrat?
he just cares that the soup is served hot

i look in the mirror and wonder
how do i do it?
the **** i have to deal with!
then i think about other folks
and the torture they endure
i throw my hands up
surrender to god
and turn on the TV

this week thurston moore liked one of my videos
robert hunter liked one of my poems
and some japanese kid liked my latest soundcloud tune
that’s sonic youth, the grateful dead and the asian empire
if you’re keeping score
like i am

"**** right i got the blues"
a buddy guy signature tune
it’s tattooed on the patient’s shoulder
the words embedded in buddy guy’s polkadot strat
i can’t get him to wake up from sedation
which is necessary for me to pull the breathing tube
he’s almost there but not
after an hour i drag a computer into the room
and play the song
thinking what a cool way to wake him up
it doesn’t work
but he comes around eventually and i pull the tube
"you play guitar, right?" i ask once he’s with us
"he tries," says his wife
we all laugh

had a ****** french meal
dull, heavy and not cheap
but like opera
french cuisine is out of my ken
maybe it was marvelous
all i can say is opera’s not for me

my father died when i was 14
presenting me with an unsolvable calculation
and a bleak though accurate view of reality
my wife and i didn’t die when the kids were kids
and that was a gift to the children
which we took back a bit by living
and the drinking, a mixed bag
but no divorce and no funerals
you’re welcome, kids

how did it come to this?

scurrying to "work," participating in this "economy"
plugged into abstract patterns of baroque behavior

well, complaining is easy -- it's just one of those days
when the larger perspective seems alien

you can put quotation marks around any concept
to yank it out of context for examination

bad?  good?  pathetic?
“bad?”  “good?”   “pathetic?”

people lie constantly
mostly to themselves
cause they're the only ones
who give a ****
we lie about who we are
and that's ok
sometimes it helps us
become who we want to be
a dream is a lie is a dream

consistency is defeat
going to work every day?
coming home?  every night?
TEQUILA!
***** BONGWATER!
look
my totality changes
every day and a half
i’m one slippery *******
so if and when i tumble out your window
it’ll be a nuclear event
molecules exploding
lasciviously recombining
promiscuously bonding with whatever
carnal stray matter catches my eye
by tomorrow morning
i’ll be snowing
all over the universe

alcohol and *******
and ******* at his wife
he chose to jump out of a sled
and land on his head
his christmas present to himself
now he’s tethered to a ventilator
with a bolt in his brain
his intracranial pressure
is scaling mt. everest
that there santa’s elf
is the textbook definition
of ******* up

you gotta do what you gotta do
and even if you DON'T gotta do it
you gotta do it anyway
it’s necessary

i’ve pinpointed the source of my corruption
when i was a kid my favorite cartoon was woody woodpecker
all the little ****** did was wreck the room, cackle inanely
and drill suckers in the head—
and the show was called WOODY WOOD PECKER
it’s astounding i’m still on the street

i’m tired of my imaginary friend
he’s been loyal
always there for me
but can’t we be done?
i need my liberty
and i know he’s sick of me

imagination is my best drinking buddy
i’ll always pick up the check
on this prison planet, fantasy is the liberator
it pulls down every cloud
undresses the ladies
expunges adultery
pulverizes the patriarchy
obliterates mommy
flattens fatty tissue
bulldozes boredom
annihilates procrastination
decimates iron-poor literature
gobbles up poverty
overthrows the workplace
abolishes taxation
liquidates profit
exterminates capitalism
confuses the cops
torpedoes certainty
trashes common sense
wrecks mortality
exterminates the divine
fantasy, the one-stop shopping mall
of freedom

the popstar has his moment of success
and when it’s over, he doesn’t get it
he’s still the same musician
his latest tunes are as good as ever, maybe better
but for the audience, music is but one element
and not the most important
there’s the ambience of the era, the youth of the listener
the poignance, commotion and perfection of those years
that’s why the audience has a lifelong fondness for the performer
but little interest

one of the mellower insults of the aging process
is that things that were cool in your prime are utterly forgotten
if they’re pulled out of the attic everyone chuckles
and giggles at you for thinking you were cool to like them
even if they WERE cool and you WERE cool to like them

don’t worry about choosing a tattoo
don’t sweat that you’re gonna have to live with it for life
yeah but no
it’s about who you are when you get that tattoo
not about all the people you’re going to become
that’s irrelevant
of course you’re gonna change
there may come a day when you can’t stand sadie
and groan every time you see her name on your arm
but there was a you who was nuts about her
and that man will always stand guard
over the tricep of your love

in the 21st century
playing a guitar instead of a computer
is like driving a harley instead of a lexus
the lexus is better for every kind of weather
smoother, sleeker
more versatile
more intelligent
the guitar?
IT'S A ******* HARLEY

there are no stupid questions
only stupid answers
simple answers to complex questions
immigration?
torpedo the invaders
school shootings?
arm the gym the teacher
very satisfying ***** solutions
they'll get you elected

look at this:
"adobe meat-free beef jerky"
subtract the beef from beef jerky
what remains is an edible toxic dump
and that’s not a bad idea
drop the masquerade
erase the window dressing
from now on the only commodities in my kitchen
will be vegetables and a bowl of sugar
a plate of salt, a platter of caffeine
a dish of alcohol

i'm a curator of all that dissipates and evaporates
not only memories of my grandparents, my dad
now my mom
but the flesh tonsillectomy i performed on the rocks
in maine when i was 17
my wife's heartbreaking smile
and "come on down to my boat, baby"
a happy 60s tune no one remembers

gotta love the scientists
with the weak attention spans
who get the job done

looks like it’s time for new scrubs
i ripped out my last crotch
picking up a 400 pounder
(off the floor, not in a bar)

as i was playing my ***** at a sidewalk cafe
three bums who’d monopolized a table for an hour
exchanged belligerence with a guy boarding a harley

i don’t know how it started
i was busy with my unfinished symphonies
but i felt the violence in the air

"get off the bike," said one of the mooks at the table
the biker jumped out of his seat and took off his helmet
a hollywood handsome moviestar stud

"come over here," said the seated blowhard

"oh, i’d love it if you took a swing at me"
the biker announced to the whole street

staredown; poseoff
the fools at the table didn’t rise
no thanks
the biker was winning just by standing there
bragging about how he’d love a punch in the nose
he didn’t have to approach
only wave his arms in bring-it-on jerry springer motion

then he overplayed
"my lawyer would love it if you hit me"

a roar went up from the table
"the guy rides a harley and when it’s time for a fight
he hides behind his lawyer"

it was a complicated macho standoff
an intricate defensive moment
the bums had backed down
but the biker had blown it

he climbed back on his bike
"yeah you’re real tough guys"
while the table which had stiffened in NO
taunted him with his lawyer

moral:

***** music incites violence

if i can’t give a lunatic poem
to a lunatic lady
what’s the point of writing one?
well, maybe there is no point

night after night in all those arenas
we hippies understood
only three songs where it happened
RED HOUSE, VOODOO CHILD
and HEAR MY TRAIN A'COMING

you see, THE STAR SPANGLED BANNER
was pop sculpture
1983 (a MERMAN) multi-track symphony
FOXY LADY and PURPLE HAZE *** and drugs
HEY JOE and ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
nifty covers

but it was only in those three fluid blues jams
launched by deep bass and lurching drums
standing on albert king's shoulders
that acid and sonics unlocked the rigid gates of reality
the landscape melting in a psychedelic instant
the trip coming on inexorably
then at warp speed
fillmores became colosseums
roofs shrugged off, slicing treetops
delivering us to a battlefield no one had known existed
a war without violence but with neural flashing conflict
and fantastic consequences

twirling his guitar like a magic lasso out out out
making contact with patrols buzzing through the galaxy
he grabbed the slurping wah and whammy,
wrestling them
into enormous axes, chained maces and
networked nuclear swords
jimi riding elephants and african curtains past the clouds
rushing through different dimensions, pinballing
across the stars
carrying us longhairs with him, jimi
the grooviest warrior
castles disintegrating as he stepped through them

the lyrics were peripheral
singing about longing in HEAR MY TRAIN
****** swagger in RED HOUSE
confronting the issues more directly
in VOODOO CHILD
laughing about his colossal strength
his ridiculous psychic power blasting open
every wretched door
jimi so brave and bold and debonair
charging past speed limits, not with scales and chords
but with lightning bolts, blue notes and a carpet
of feedback
which he captured and twisted into climaxes
galloping across a cosmos of souls, way past calculation
spilling emotion, blues and riffs over the earth
in a scramble
to overcome the forces against us
we could even SEE the armies as jimi confronted them
all alone but with our ears as eyes upon him

and all the seas that jimi hendrix swam through
here on earth
the hydraulic groupies, carnivorous managers
drugs and rock star glamour
NOTHNG next to those cosmic dogfights

and when he was finished, when the battle was over
and the song ended in victory for everyone
and the tendrils returned to the soil
and we all had our final ******
and he tuned up for the next number
the entire firmament revolved once
and applauded itself

being a poet is like being a king
but ******, it takes all my time
seducing the ladies
and corrupting the youth
it’s a full time job

exile is our fate
looking for a way home
even if we’ve never been home

exiled from my pulitzer
from my place at the algonquin roundtable
barred from the scotch of st. james 1966
john lennon’s holding my throne for me
but i can’t get in the club

exiled from our world conquests
our lives of leisure
exiled from the parents of our past
our children and ourselves as children
from the summertime of youth
and in the end
exiled from this ****** earth

an arrogant conductor hires me for a show
it’s a cultural exchange, as we’re from different tribes
he gives me guitar music, a D chord with 4 staves
i ask him how he wants it played
"as it’s written!"
but the 4 bare slashes tell me nothing
it’s like working in a restaurant
and getting an order for chicken
"how you want this chicken?"
"follow the recipe!"
and the recipe is a picture of a chicken
so i cook it the way i like it
basted with latin flavor
oh, he’s ****** after the show
but the audience eats it up

as the house of cards comes down…
if you can’t see that all the money in this country
is stored in the stingers of a small hive of queen bees
you’re not paying attention
quote me all the smug hard-hearted factoids
you can scrape off the radio
brand me tax-for-the-greater-good criminally naive
you might have a point, maybe there is no greater good
if it involves you and me together
i don’t know what i’d do to spread the gravy
resurrect leon trotsky?
but if you don’t think the rich have too much money
you’re a sucker

maybe you've been running hard
and you still have more in the tank
but no destination
so you floor it
and that's your destination

if you juggle your scrumptious **** in my face
to sell your sound
i’m talking to you, beyonce
then you better open up when i come knocking
or i’ll take you to the better business bureau
you work for me,  i don’t work for you
however
the endgame of religion is transcendence
and since the holy books are bedtime stories
i’m talking to you, deuteronomy
if we get a lift to light from a **** superstar
as we aim for the great beyond – BEYONCE
if she’s our prayer, so be it
different compound, same chemical reaction
i’m talking to you, oxygen
you all work for me
or you don’t work at all

depends how many drinks you’re down
how much is in your wallet
what you’ve spent, what remains
who owns the world?
i could make a huge, expansive list
but it would be defective
the best answer
is you
you own the world
there’s room in your pocket
you can keep what you can carry

there's a moment in every flight
when the plane is banking away from the airport
you get a dizzy view of the landscape
and realize this is nuts

i bought a chevy impala station wagon
off the fire chief of hackensack
it was safety yellow and glowed in the dark
had a ball on top but the chief took it with him
still a switch for it on the dashboard
way cool
until the master cylinder snapped
on my way down a steep viaduct
with my two kids in back
no brakes all the way down
splashing into a busy intersection
at the bottom of the hill
sure wish i’d had that siren

cooler still was the car before
bought for one dollar from my uncle
who’d inherited it from his oddball best bud
a scientist/author of a popular cosmology of the universe
it was a 1973 gold dodge coronet
the name conjures ancient cop shows
a huge sporty firebreathing beast
eight mighty pistons and an oil leak
i drove it for two years
until the vital fluids gushing out like the mississippi
forced me to abandon ship

the greasy kid across the street found a buyer
we waited for him one saturday morning
around the corner sailed the identical car
same color gold, same year 1973
couldn’t have shocked me more if two statues of liberty
came crashing into each other in hudson bay
the four cuban dudes driving up were thrilled
cannibalism in their eyes
my car was stripped for parts as they disappeared

now i have a new minivan and ball-busting car payments
nobody gets cooler as they get older

that macking wasn’t easy
the poor kid had it all
and had nothing

some visions are pedestrian
workaday
bring them home for night time consumption
then out with the fishbones
but you
you're a memory i'll stick under the tree
unwrap at christmas

alienation isn’t profound
it’s the nation we live in
but my alienation is epic
i’m alienated from the hepcats in this dive
the ladies who ignore me
the god who hides from me
the cops on the street
the politicians who “represent” me
the managers who “manage” me
the hicks i work with
the patients i work for
myself for eating meat
the motivation that abandoned me
the technology that sidetracks me
the music i’m commanded to enjoy
certainly the dart players
the capitalists, the communists
the smokers, the foodies
the carpenters, plumbers, electricians
rats, tigers, lions
the trolls who hate anyone who does anything
i do love cats and dogs
alcohol agrees with me
i’m popular with bartenders
i dig commercials
and the people who read these poems
thanks for listening
sorry

you gotta win once in a while
it’s nice to get what you want
but going further
if a train never reaches its destination
the oil dries up, the engine slips, gears grind
fellow trains break down in despair
the destination turns a cold eye
you are stuck

first a blizzard of embarrassment

i went to a party in my guitar student’s apartment
she planned to debut her new guitar-picking
which was cool, friends make a sympathetic audience
what i didn’t know and she didn’t know
was that these were not her friends
it wasn’t her party, it was her roommates’ party
and when she turned down the hip-hop and started singing peter paul & mary
the guests were WHAT THE ****?

normally i could roll with this but i’d just smoked a blizzard of ****
and was stupefied through the cornball song and hostile reaction
she wouldn’t stop leaving on a jet plane
and her stiff strumming was like a bucket of glue poured on me
who’d been introduced to the party as her brilliant guitar teacher
so much for recruiting new students at $20 a lesson

i was further stupefied by a coven of new arrivals
outside it was snowing, a blizzard, but these four girls were in halter tops
i was lost in a broad panorama, ******* all around
stunning ***-smoking showcase ****, taking huge breaths
i toked just to hang out, which painted me especially purple
after a happy half hour i realized, being a married man
it wasn’t time to make friends, it was time to go
so i exited the party and dug out my car
the snow was smooth, untrammeled
i turned on the radio, the grateful dead—
PERFECT

i ignited my sled and slid out, streets clear thanks to the blizzard
but half a block from the house i picked up a police car
following 15 feet behind me all the way across town
i was drunk, ****** & stupefied
and we were alone in the city, no distractions
the blizzard was wicked, the snow as intense as a plague
that’s how we rolled, and it felt like the cops tailed me
all the way down from the arctic circle

boring, useless and impossible
i understand why these are not the first listings
in the job description
but they should be somewhere on the page

my god, the love for billy joel here
it’s touching
"is it billy joel night?"
"yes!"
"is every night billy joel night?"
"yes!"

our better natures have much to contend with

we want the chinese to be slaves in factories
so we can buy our crap for cheap
we want fracking to poison neighborhoods
so we can heat our homes on a budget
we want to torture cows and poultry
for a chicken *** pie and a roast beef sandwich
we want the suckers in the middle east
to knock each other off with their bonkers belief systems
(*** slaves are kosher) so they leave us the **** alone
we want the old to be sick and the young to be broke
so we feel like we’re sitting pretty

this is what we want
this is why we’re so happy

man it’s twee heaven
i’m in a coffee shop reading malcolm gladwell
trying to ignore the hippie barista
and a sensitive young patron
as they compare their hard life and times
a dude comes in, a famous mess
barefoot, pajama bottoms and drunker than a tavern
"can i have a free french cappuccino?"
the barista says yes and while she makes it
he leans into my space making comments
he’s way too smashed to deliver with any trace of pinache
"here’s…  this guy…"
she gives him his coffee
"oh man… it’s not french…"
he staggers out of the place, cup in hand
the kid customer asks if he comes in a lot
"he’s been in here a few times," says the barista
"the guy ever wear shoes?" i ask
"i don’t judge," she says, lip ring quivering
no judging from her, except for me--
constructing a gallows and sentencing me to hang
for being old, male and normal
well she’s got me there

rich folks can do whatever they want
and it’s illegal to be poor
that’s connotation, not denotation
but slap me if i’m wrong
all men are created equal
and women are free to jump off the boat
and find a dolphin to ride

i see the flyer at starbucks

"are you caucasian?
without mental health
and drug problems?"

wow
i don’t know the answer to any of these questions
is a jew a caucasian?
is the occasional naked, ****-slamming drunken rampage
a drug problem?
as for mental health
i’m a deadbeat poet and unpopular pop musician
i’ve got a job fighting death and boredom
and i just changed my facebook password to "eat ****"
my frustrations have driven weaker souls to homicide
but are these PROBLEMS?

yeah we’re going camping in february
makes you a man
and if your **** freezes off—  SNAP!!
makes you MORE of a man
well, it’s a trade off