There is
a part of
a teak
armchair,
left out
in the rain;
I sanded it
and buffed it
and waxed it;
this is a good thing
to do, taking
old wood
and making it
pretty;
I stripped some
electrical wire, and
hammered it
into expressions
of my longing;
I listened
to the silent birds
and the radio,
wandering around
wondering;
suddenly
never happened,
but eventually
I found my way
back into
the house.
There was still
the laundry,
and somehow
I had forgotten
to eat dinner.

I am working up
the courage to
face you all again
ever since I laid
myself bare with
my accounting of
how I thought to
survive; by hording
my words while trying
to stay alive, but
it didn’t work, I
almost choked on them,
and now I feel like
they are just going to
spew out of my mouth again,
and shame me as before

when an owl screeches,
when a child interrupts,
when you look again
and it isn't there,
when the poles shift
and the earth rumbles
and the voice of God says, 'quit',
when pundits prefer,
when a light bulb burns out,
when your computer reboots
because of a power outage.
when you have to hide it
because of a knock at the door,
when moist lips entice you
to forget what you are doing,
when a vagrant breeze
lifts the paper,
when you've achieved
the fourteenth line,
when the dentist
is through with you,
that's a good time
to end a poem

Hey, I need to talk to you.
Are you cognizant?
I have whisperings and shouts
needs and advice,
your response will suffice
to further your education,
of me and my clan,
and you and your plan
and I promise,
I will always play the poet
as long as I can

when we scroll
through this and that
looking for hearts
and minds similar
to our own, we are
full of hope, but the
reality is that there
is just too much stuff
out there, so we often
confine our search
to the first five words.

It really does feel good
to get all that dam-
ned laundry folded,
here is satisfaction;
nice, clean, almost fluffy
piles of things to wear.

These books of mine,
their titles bold,
which lie in wait
upon the shelves
just to be read
and never sold,
wait patiently
as I regard
their spine,
but never have
the urge to bring
them to my bed,
my eros dwindled
after years of
grand disapproval,
from them and others;
if they could speak
with pages unturned
they’d be a chorus
of reproving languor;
“you’ve done nothing
for us. Why don’t you
throw us on the burn pile?
you smile and spurn
our words and all the while
work at your poetry,
as if you have
at your command
the ages, but
cannot see the simple
things at hand;
you’ll never learn!”
So I, with dampened eyes
turn aside nocturnal
nonsense, and take one
down, and dust it off
and open up its pages
and realize its words
are eternally young,
while I’ve grown old
and spun my lifelong
web of lies, and missed
my opportunity,
languishing
in my impunity.

a person,
a chameleon,
an adaptee,
the inveterate migrant,
the person who alters himself
to adapt to the local color,
dress, speech, mode,
who invents himself
to be accepted,
to fit in,
to appear at home,
to blend, must
disguise his true self,
and because he can’t
completely, because
his false description
is insufficient
to cover up     
what he was before,   
what life has molded
him into,
the shape,
the flavor,
and smell,
of his combined
historical circumstances
and conceptions
and upbringings,
the slaps
and kisses
and praises
and criticisms of his years,
then he must invent other false
descriptions about his true self
to counter
the imagined
prejudices
of the ones
he is trying to become like,
and all in all
it is lies, lies,
and more lies
and his true self
goes deeper
and further inside
until it nearly
disappears
and can only
be heard crying softly
in the darkness
by the keenest
of friends.

methinks, the would-be poets
have all lost their sense of humor
and are engaged in a tragic struggle
to retain their personal identity,
to keep from falling off some edge,
to decry a most miserable love affair,
to keen coyote-like at a disappearing moon,
to obtain sympathies only available
from other well-meaning sycophants,
and have also lost a certain dignity
that goes with the creative urge, the
willingness to throw off convention, to
explore, to invent situations unreal,
where they are the victors, the
heroes and heroines of a dying literature,
and to laugh out loud at all the circumstances
that have brought them to expose themselves
in such an unseemly manner
I raise a New Year's glass to you all
may you find peace, dignity, purpose
and regard in the coming year, and
overcome the forces of doom

Knock, knock,
Whose there?
It's me, you ******* idiot,
who did you think it was?

The Second Coming by W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were waxed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come around at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Oh, ****
everything
I said before
is null and void
I have been
found out,
in the category
of preposterous.
the realm of bravado

government fraud,
it is there,
where the rabbit hole
turns into the worm hole.
do not let your fantasy linger;
when the guy in the restaurant
can't pay his bill,
the waitress does not decide

We are tiptoeing
on the edge
of the precipice,
our senses tell us
to draw back,
but there is a
certain element
of mystery
and surprise;
can we trust
the people
we are with?
Anyone could just
reach out and
give a gentle shove.
Maybe we can fly.
We've never been here before,
we've never really tried.

When I went to church
they often sang the
horrified beagle song,
and it made me chuckle
to myself, they sang,
"in my life, lord, be glorified,
beagle horrified, in my life, lord,
beagle horrified today."

I was riding on my
Cushman box,
I was trying
to get up the hill,
I only had one gear
but still. . .
I’ve been climbing ever since,
grabbing for heights,
(ah, the stretching
feels good) been reaching;
I grab up every day,
just after dawn,
pull myself out, get it on!
find the pace, get some slide,
gotta get to the other side,
and once in a while, I sputter
out like that old motor scooter
and cruise to a stop, and await
some cosmic refueling

when Stagger Lee
shot Billy
he had no idea,
he was just ******,
he could’a caught
the ride with Sadie,
headed west,
but no

go placidly,
speak your truth,
avoid loud people,
enjoy your achievements,
exercise caution,
be yourself,
take kindly,
nurture strength,
be gentle,
be at peace.

is my dislike for the exceptional
regional or conventional,
am I paranoid or schizophrenic,
am I a raging peripatetic
or a reasonably ignorant human,
these questions all remain
as I wipe my hands off
and digress from communication
and work my way back
down into my wormhole
until the holidays are over

I want to get so drunk
that I forget to eat,
even though I’ve been
working on my poor soup
all day, and try not
to remember the turkey
with all the stuffing
and the mashed potatoes
and gravy, the green bean
casserole, and the pies,
oh, my, those pies,
but I am the Christmas
outcast, the one who
denied the historic Jesus
his Saturnalia adoption,
and hurled Him and me
into this oblivion.

Do I need to escape
to realms of wonder?
I have been impregnated
with the banal existence
of assumed reality
for too long,
and my mind grows
restive

and you know me,
I am the squeaky
slipping sound
of the cork,
with the pop
at the end;
I think I lost
my cork,
how does
that happen?
I can guarantee
that wine will stay
in the glass until
it is poured
into the mouth,
and that the excesses
of breakfast
will not be blamed
on the midnight snack

I have unknown resources
that I have not used yet;
earlier in my life
I learned how to
overcome gravity and hover;
it serves me well in fleeing,
but I have not put it
to a positive usage:
just say the words,
"hey buddy, can you give me a lift?"