t'was not so long ago
in simple human years,
but eons, in poetic ones, that...

visions of fruited plains,
dimpled mountains,
candied wall-nutty natives,
easy lifted from his
eye's casual glances,
reformed to scribbled essays,
while daily walking on the
concrete steppes of his city,
gems of glass shard sidewalk sparkles
and bluest mailboxes were
raptured word tableaus,
rupturing easy with
volcanic force,
his body's planet,
mantle breaking,
crust-conquering poems,
breakout pimples waves,
molten and easy flowing...

he knew not then
what well now he knows,
the exhausted trembling
of asking,
the slowing wearing pace of
heartbeats of constant query,
the wonder of
wondering incessant,

Are You My Poem?

awoken by the body clock
in the wee, streaming,
rem sleeping hours,
asking the no longer
faithful friend,
his bathroom mirror,
is the accuracy of this
stubbled mess,
the white crusted lips and eyes,
is that my, my nowadays,
answer to

Are You My Poem?

he waits,
he, a red taillight speckle
among many, wait watching,
on a Brooklyn minor bridge
over a minor inlet
one of many, on a longer isle,
as the bridge lifts its arms,
opens its middle belly,
waving bye to a
passing-through freighter,
perhaps
destined for
happy springtime Morocco,
perhaps,
the Malay's divided isles,
wandering wondering
one more time,
if that's his etching,
line drawing poem,
passing by, bye, bye,
so each breathe forcing,
escape-asking,

Are You My Poem?

sometime ago,
a grown man,
his voice changed,
like a teenager,
writing now in but the
simplest terms,
plain jane poems,
in the cadence
of spoken words

for all the fancy phrases,
exhausted,
the sewing box of
precious alphabets,
emptied, leaving only
the tyranny of
hello, have a nice day, how are you feeling,
that's nice, goodnight sleep tight...

there were fewer poems
therein contained,
ceasing to fear,
no need for constancy of asking,
but failing in crafting to craft
even then,
trying but no one answering to

Are You My Poem?

one or two true,
asked,
are you busted,
the nib nub rusted,
your silence, long pauses,
worry us, your poem lovers,
if spent,
how deep is thy rent,
let our concern heal,
patch n' fill,
the cuttings,
the empty grooves that pockmark,
hope wishing asking,
sir sire man,
are you still hopeful,
interrogating,
asking the world,

Are You My Poem?

weeping from the
believed warmth
of their caring,
they too, knowing,
that life has its ways
of choking your voice off,
compelled to advise,
still and then and now,
the constant in my equation,
extant yet,
extant yes,
a voice that still rises
at the end of the
periodic element interrogatory of

Are You My Poem?

the poem answers,
muddled, muddied,
everyday life eats you up,
instead of you feasting upon it,
the tempo, the style,
all now humbug static interference,
but every know and every then,
a long winded answer dances
it's way from the core,
answering well
the question less asked,

Are You My Poem?

spent,
the poet
lol's,
for his truest friends here,
answer the pondering,
in deed, indeed,
you, near and dear
poet brothers and sisters,
you are the answer,
to words looking now,
a tod-toad-tad silly,

**You Are My Poem!

I have never heard grey more grey
then the words which you say to me so
condescendingly.
Never endingly.
Black and white means naught
in a world of (k)nots and (flattened) cans.
And dressed up in blue, you’re always beautiful.
But crude and **** we stand in the sun;
every pockmark illuminated, tungsten bright.
The light of night to never shine again against
the delicate steel door that closes like your hand
around the flitting, panicked moth.
Magnesium smiles and pain pill duplicity,
the simplicity of a (remote) controlled world.
I am trapped between the clean street signs
and the signs of a dead language.
Where is the line of your back and what
is the time?
Have I lost the only things that
made me sigh with relief?
(Who is the real thief?)

Behind a speakeasy
in a ***** moonlit alley
silhouettes climb up a tired
and worn out stairway
vacancy signboard beneath
an incandescent light bulb
marks the nondescript entrance
for the nights commerce

Outside the window ledge
a billboard hums an electric tune
between the blinds neon light
sneaks into the room
casting shadows on a naked
landscape across the mattress
spread totally disinterested
pockmark flesh limply waiting

Clumsy hands fumble
to unzip stained denims
hobbling with unsteady steps
to the edge of the bed
a drunk smelling of cheap whiskey
and ***** smiles at me with
two rows of rotted stumps
my first customer of the night

The Show


I awake circa two AM to observe an Earth under siege.
Fearsome blasts of lighting lightening unceasing,
illuminate a sky that is divided into two; a grey white
boundary-less blob of cloud, bolt pricked in a steady
but random pattern for at the least the hour since I was
awakened and a blackened horizon lining defining the land of men.

I debate my choice of word; at some point I slip from the bed to
relieve myself for such is the age of burden I currently occupy;
but my fingers disobey wanting to write relive myself,
to assure myself, that I am, will be, a surviving witness to an awesome and terrifying spectacle, noting the appropriate dueling nature of “awesomeness” for it brings a joyous awe and a paralyzing fear with equal measure, but without any trace of forcible distributive equity.

The lightening is fulsome; sometimes well hid above in a
single whiteness that is the very definition of singularity,
without cue, but within, Z shape bolts of comic book proportionality.

Here’s the rub! All this demonstration is done in a complete,
comforter (!) of silence. The house periodically rumbles its
machinery, whether in fear, or because it must mechanically
do so in the same manner we breathe, or simply to alert me
that I frail human, am at the mercy of the skymaster above,
and the manmade array of pipes, compressors, big apparatuses pinstalled in the earth below to serve until they don’t, and then
we must service them.

The silence is amazing for it is total and domineering and absent thunder. The Show occurs in the largest venue available, the Bay,
but the well behaved audience makes no sound, not a whit,
no coughing, sneezing puncturing or punctuating (reader’s choice) the eerie quiet of a speechless world that cannot speak, as if its larynx was removed, but it’s eye were restored to the age of 20/20.

Well over an hour, closer to two, the demonstration is concluded
and we return to the supine, neutrally, even emotionless, for the gamut and gauntlet we have survived dry and in safety has
concluded and the thick picture window did its job admirably.

Wait Now, a pockmark of bursts in the absence of all light, the now blackness has replaced everything, except for a momentary pinprick of of cloud framed orange hue, a shell exploding far across the bay.

S. sleeps relatively unperturbed, until she does not; for a long minute she rattles the ship, kicking tantrum violently both legs, until the covers are disarrayed, only to fall back into a deep blue colored stage of sleep, and pulling the covers onto the custom fitted aperture neath the chin.

This secondary, receding lightening demonstration that has been taking place; as if a heavenly Lincoln~Stephens oratorical battle occurs over the nearby Atlantic of  nonstop proportion, leaving my my mind to dwell on this topic:

Resolved: This man, that pens this missive about sky missiles is a good writer, or even reasonably ok.

I am representing both sides (duh). and skip to the judges decision without further ado, for brevity is a skill I am profoundly lacking and appreciate, and the eloquence of the debaters is acutely not bad, as prideful acumen is the standard.

Sorry. Split decision, 3 -2, he is merely an ok writer.

Now past 4 AM, glance outside but once more, and there a slow slewing of dawn light emerging like springtime buds, the trees on the lawn are faintly distinguishable, outlined against a normalized, post-storm night sky full of debris EXCEPT in the not-faraway-enough-distance, a few straggler lighting bolts are yet appearing to remind me the night is indeed always awesome and full of terror, just like a good poem.

4:22 AM Jul 5 2023

Landscape silhouettes
pirouetted off
pockmark lights in the dark;
the city shivers
in its myths and windy whispers,

Just a subtle rumble 'neath his humble feet,
heart aflutter, stuttering
palpitation structure sputtering; the lightless rain
glanced across the window brackets
of the moving train.

Silence yawned across his vapid eyes
like labored lullaby sans interlacing rhyme device -
Home, the beckoning, fulfillment's underlying premise
calling off at every stop
'til seats bowed under weight of emptiness.

Friendless in the long stretch
between conductor's breath,
fresh with mints and benevolence,
punching tickets
with a lonely sickness...

Ah, fitful sleep awaits us
past the sliding doors
and walk to familiar shores,
horizons bleak,
and nothing more.

Locomotive groans
pervade the embers of the gloam
and glitter bright,
against the clutching fingers
of this woeful night.

each nun my mother sees is shorter than the one after it.  this too shall pass?  she remains nonverbal.  I try to include my son.  my depression is a tractor beam that attracts newborns.  my thoughts are a thought below the whimsical race.  I take photos of escalators paralyzed by three dimensions.  I give them as gifts to my father lost at land and sitting on steps to hear the silence in his head.  a toy pup expires with a yip in a ransacked store.  you are made melancholy not by the pup but by its fallen battery pack belly.  I say to a pockmark what I say to immortality.

We Are So Lightly Here

“So come, my friends, be not afraid, we are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made, in love we disappear
Though all the maps of blood and flesh are posted on the door
There’s no one who has told us yet what Boogie Street is for”
Leonard Cohen “Boogie Street”


                                                     <~>

my body, my eyes, my entirety, tattooed, with a city map,
here, at this exact place, our eyes glanced, our eyes closed,
who among us does not possess such a living guide,
memories presented in a 3-D versions, constantly edited.

placed your hand on my privacy, bid you enter, not a dare,
more an invitation to risk, become a true love of mine,
share exhilaration, desert valleys that pockmark unexpectedly,
changes us to we, regresses, you and me, post-survivalists cut.

2 gather, modify highs/lows, meet & peaking@peculiar tunes,
ever embraces residuals a sour film upon our lips, a puzzling,
what excites, pacifies, returns us street corner, X’d our map,
glances exchanged across an empty street, seeing each, not.

I’m wrenched awake with a swaying hangover, the kind that rumbles in the back of your throat until mid-afternoon. I know that I’m late without turning my head but the only movement is the whir of the box fan in the window and the sinewy muscle of my calves twitching near the end of the bed.

It’s hard to wake up when the world outside the door has been in this way, insistent in it’s painfulness, and part of me wants to succumb to the quiet hum of this bedroom, disappear into the sheets and pretend for a moment that I never met Jordan Whitaker.

A scalding shower and a thermos of lukewarm coffee later, the sun seems way too cheery for the way my insides feel and I want to scowl at it. I swallow the bile for a moment to toss a ‘good morning’ to the old woman dragging her walking cane to the end of the driveway.

She used to drop by with cookies from time to time, but it’s been a while. I can see the toll of age and defeat on her cheeks like a fragment of my future and I have to turn away from it, towards the blinding sun mocking me quietly.

“You done yet?”

I hear his voice before I see him, taunting me in the way only a man in a position of superiority can. Archie is filthy with the kind of grease that doesn’t wash off, and all of my tricks to keep unwanted hands away, even a stubborn and unyielding androgyny, has not deterred him yet. I spit at the sidewalk before his foot lands in stride next to me, and he jerks a bit but keeps pace.

“You know, I’ve got someone on the inside of the courtroom today. Maybe you scratch my back, I scratch yours, that kind of thing?”

These words are accompanied by a haphazard set of teeth leering in some semblance of a smile. The smell alone is enough to make me want to start sprinting, but I keep my tone and pace level.

“I’m not telling you again, Archie. My leads are my own. I’ll get in there just fine.”

“Oh, the *****’s feeling feisty today, I see!”

I watch a bead of sweat collect between his eyes as he watches me, like a pockmark. “You’re kidding yourself if you think they’ll let you anywhere near the trial with the stunt you pulled last week.

You should stop taking me for granted, you know!”

let me be prophetic
let me romanticize bones,
pearls embedded where teeth should be…

i am smoke and blood and poison
diamond chips for eyes, hard,
colourless & cracked facets
she is unstained
my skin every possible colour
every pockmark visible and ugly; every sacrifice
          carved in lines below my chin
ticking down the breaths
counting them, holding them lovingly
in the hollow of the throat
that they may blur together and strike a sickly rainbow
that she may find her salvation at the end of mine.

You have no tears
Volcanos pockmark your skin
Scars left behind the turmoil that was your soul
Every once in a while
The universe still throws something your way
An asteroid
Anguish
Your skin craters
But your core unmoves

The volcanos no more erupt their fury
The veins no more bleed
Can something wrung dry still freeze?

I was branded Holy by a bottle of prescription meds.
I woke up, untethered from the multichromatic threads.
And reaffirmed my worth with a display of spontenaeity.
Thinking, maybe the facade had cracked beneath a crack-head courting gaiety.

I don't know.

Daily, I shuffle through the dust on the moon.
I am one with the cosmic and logic-immune
And plagued by the shuttles that pockmark the earth.
I don't WANT a crash landing. I don't WANT that rebirth.

Seraphim candles and Sapphos live here.
The machining of my mind made that final frontier
Just a little bit clearer. And the horizon is real
As the heaviness of a bottle and shelf-life of a pill.

Years ago, this would have been fine --
coming face to face with the dark, damp places
my own messes embedded in between tiles
the little dirt lines and pockmark-shaped stains
stark against the cool white floor.
But here I am now, with one too many thoughts
and not enough time. All I have is an hour,
a brush, some cleaner,
to scrub this grimy self-portrait away.

after the fire. She hangs
in the air like her mother’s bloomers
on the clothesline, blowing in the dusty
greed of yesterday’s deceased. Not a thing

stands. The bark is stripped from
the trees. Life with tied hands is hard. She
loosens her hips to let in a rolled
cigar. When the sky is blazing red, you can

water it, put it out like the trash. But
the fog lurks as the Boston strangler. And every
corner smells like pantyhose wrapped around
her elongated nose. The stub of a smoked cigarette

thrown on an ivory bar that is lit burns as
the tomb of the unknown soldier. She's that soldier carrying
her canteen. She lost her green at the age
of thirteen. The doctors said "PTSD" You can't wash

the stench off. It's a pockmark she lives
with. Covers it in make-up and garters, smiles
and lace, *****, and poetry -
that no one reads.

Nsync with variations on a theme:
of drool worthy Reuben Sandwich
(consisting of corned beef,
Swiss cheese, sauerkraut,
Russian dressing between slices
of rye bread that is grilled
until the bread is crispy
and the cheese melts)
various and sundry
pseudo lurid fictitious escapades
mostly I did merrily wet
an appetite for consummation
whet madness aye ever did dream.

The missus personal trappings
strewn helter skelter
after a hard day's night
every perilous step fraught
with danger field analogous
riding as passenger
with death cab for cutie
'course thy quasi
bohemian rhapsodic Queen
of denial feigns ignorance

attributes hazardous condition
linkedin with accident prone
little lord Fauntleroy's
double doppelganger, me
trumpeting pet husband,
her unrequited germane Liebchen
willing to risk life and limb
doting hand and foot
as proper husbandly duties.

He (ahem... me) exhibits drama
whimsically visiting slapstick pantomime,
especially pretending to remove sneakers
pulling with all my feeble strength
off little feet of wife
half-heartedly struggling,
(stringent rule of shoe game)
lamely denouncing marriage
nevertheless conveying jollity
regarding marital entrapment
er... rather unbridled wedded bliss
constituting fits and starts enduring
about two and a half dozen years.

I reciprocated amorousness,
whether toward MaryAnne,
(his long ago coldly dismissed
sagacious enchanting first paramour,
(half a dozen years my senior),
sported webbed wide whirled toes,
whose astrological forecast
accurately predicted promising
acquaintanceship/relationship – tanked

potential sage rubber soul mates
(two plus score years ago -
gone to naught),
which latter aforementioned
delightfully humble lass
decried he fomented
incessant emotional grief,
he cruelly (albeit unwittingly)
doled out nothing

but lackluster lovelessness
attributed to identical
astrological zodiac signs (Capricorn)
(matter of fact shared same birth date
January 13th - six years age difference)
and similar flat wide thumb
stubborn misconstrued perception,
whereby fancy free and footloose
selfish nasty short brute nevertheless
deemed himself undeserving of love - humph!

Addeneum: Approximately
four plus decades
re: one quarter century after
aforementioned baptismal initiation
love stricken paroxysm
forty fifth president of United States
took (i.e. plagiarized) many pages courtesy,
cruel playbook authored
by Matthew Scott Harris,

who left trail of heartbroken sage woman
commander in chief deliberately stoked,
née sparked long
simmering, smoldering, and stewing
long fostering white supremacist altercation
fiendishly igniting racial conflagration
exploding during late spring 2020.

No matter no child left behind kibitzing
(yours truly as boy plucked petals
off daisy reciting "she loves me,"
"she loves me not"...
cupid loosed an arrow
into boyhood neighborhood sweetheart

she innocently bespoke
"I wanna marry you,"
when uttered courtesy Sherry Jones,
a little girl who lived
approximately three doors down
along cul-de-sac within Apple Valley
perpendicular to Lantern Lane,
or more age apropos,

when young gallivanting
purported vestal ****** ladies
nonverbally signalled
libidinal proclamations of emancipation,
as demurely expressed
lest unlucky (chaste into)
precocious ******* proclivity
suffered the punishment
of being buried alive.

Now back to present day,
when our old geezer,
the prototype garden variety
male of present poem -
any resemblance between general referenced
funny good fella and
living persons purely coincidental.

He (yours truly) easily qualified as
overly cocky whippersnapper,
i.e. young feisty buck
and/or Casanova wannabe
experienced bit torrent
hormonal secretions gushed
particularly in close proximity
wherein wafted pheromones -
think a waif faring ingénue.

As evident and quite obvious,
I fabricate (prevaricating
my signature trademark)
rather than stating bland reality stark,
yet will plainly explain issue
in summary essential rhyme
without reason constitutes
nothing more spectacular than
garden variety generic pockmark
excised pustule ofttimes hallmark
of teenage/ pubescent pimply benchmark.