This is the first of many poems I wrote from 1996 to 2011.  Most of my work, as you might be able to tell, is heavily influenced by the Beat school of poetry.


thunderbeat vignette

I’m fresh from an interview with you and I’m filled with more than I can bear to hold inside.  I hope you don’t mind my saying so but you were beautiful today, an elegant goddess glinting in the bohemian daylight.  I’m seeing right now that golden star dangling between your black turtlenecked ******* and I recall that tiny dark stone high on your necklace and when I held it in my fingers I had this  mad short vision of my hand repelling down the necklace letting my knuckles gently caress the curve of your ******* as they fell and kissing you and I recall how that kiss was what I really wanted even more than feeling you up.

I hope this doesn’t scare you off it’s only like what I said about spontaneous prose the idea is to get everything out get it all on the page and then go back and work on it fix it up make it pretty for history and isn’t that what’s just happened with us?  I believe it has though as is typical with human encounters things worked out just a little bit backward didn’t they moonling?  because all that talking I did all that talking and writing and explaining I practically drew you a blueprint of my beatup heart and as far as I could tell you were more bored than anything else but then I tossed all that chickenshit stuff out the window and I came back and dumped all my cards on your lovely table with just one short sentence and I was amazed to see that it was just that one short sentence that impressed you and maybe touched your heart.

I walked away from you a little shaky but proud of myself because I rediscovered my daring and I’m happy because you want to be my friend even though its probably still scary for you and things haven’t really changed.  I still have grief in my heart I’ll never escape that but maybe now my grief will be a little more bearable.  I don’t expect you to rescue me I know no one can do that and funny but I didn’t really believe it until today.  listen to me I’m making it sound like we’ll be lovebirds any minute now when really we haven’t even had coffee yet but the door is cracked now and who knows?  maybe this will lead to my secret vision of you and me as modern day beats, kerouac and ginsberg, true bohemians linked in history by our great minds and poetic spirits people will point us out and say “there they go those two” and we’ll be to all the world like brother and sister or maybe this will lead to warmth and tenderness (those fables) I really don’t know and I feel uneasy speculating it takes so much away from the moment.

but you know I am completely insane sometimes a real blank and life is such a dark sorrow but I think of you and I hear thunderbeats and drumfire and I think of how all that selfimposed frustration and exasperation can be justified so easily if this could lead to just one sweet kiss from you.

paralysis        stroke
faculties          limb
christ           ­    apology
*******            running
banjo               absense
century           accuracy
beatup            fish
kept                 frozen
folks                talk
flesh                society
bat­tery            volunteer
sprinkle          match
managed        ­overall
tooth               age               duty

We got in the car and
looked out at the road ahead.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I'd been desperately poor
and so hungry I couldn't
bare to eat.
I'd been on buildings
so tall I thought I might
touch the sky
and valleys so low
one worried the levy
wouldn't hold
but I was 17 just that once.

I recall throwing back
my head and screaming,
full throated, into an
empty night sky.
I once called the rain
in a mall parking lot
just outside of Baltimore.
I got so sick I thought
I'd die on an NYC subway.
I traveled with you
across this country
for just shy of 3 months.
I was 17 just that once.

I was three years in exile
in Dover, Delaware.
I felt cold Chicago rain
and New England sea breeze.
I've labored in Floridian humidy
and dressed against the
chill fog rolling in off
San Francisco bay.
I shoveled snow in Alaska
and got chased by fire ants
into an above ground pool
in Austin, Texas.
But I was only 17 that once.

We got into my beatup
old car, loaded with
the Spartan bag of clothes
we'd learned to have ready
to go over a lifetime of
sudden and drastic moves.
We'd stop for beef jerky
and drinks.
We'd stop to see the sights
we wanted to see.
We'd stop to get off the road
and stretch our legs.
"Pick a direction." I said.
I was only 17 that once.