"stockton" poems
parched tongue
please
mister
cola
carmex
these cracked lips
it's time
to hydrate
this carbo
bi-
sickling
through vacant streets
for a cure
my tummy
is like this town
a desiccant cactus
it's 12 a.m.
in stockton
12 amens
spew
from dry desert gums
i sea
liquor store
icee
soda
this is
no mirage
i found
atlantis
at the bottom
of a coke bottle
peddling back home
peddling
peddling
stop
I dropped
My holy grail
He stops
Is he thirsty?
He pulls knife
Like a sleeved playing card
“give me your ****
Poor minus poor
0-0
=0
Or X0
After he cheapshots me
Fist meet face
Face meet fist
obliged
Profit
10 cents
Gym membership
Fuzzy lint *****
But not my soda
Or my sweat
Or my tears
Or my blood
It’s time
To hydrate
Mar 29, 2013
Mar 29, 2013 at 4:43 PM UTC
Selina grew up in an orphanage
she was a *******
her father disappeared
after the Great War
her mother
dead from poverty
She was a Catholic
of the highest devotion
she loved Jesus
and Saint Joseph
and after she was
past schooling age (14)
she went off
to serve as a maid
for a good Catholic family
she wanted to be a nurse
but circumstance dictated
that she never could be
not enough school,
then, when she was 17
the 2nd Great War came
and women were needed
to work the steel mills
and shipyards
of Stockton England
she got a job
painting bombs
she signed little things on them
like,
take that ******
but the job
caused her asthma to flare
so she was reassigned
as what was then known as
a postman
clopping around the streets
happily delivering mail
She met a man
named John Hartley
and she intended to marry him
her friends warned her
he's a bachelor,
a woman hater,
but he was also
quite the handsome soldier
they married
after the war
and had five children
three of whom
became nurses
proud tears falling
like rain drops
a life of hardships
which she batted away
with Christ as her shield
summed up
by her
giving her children
what she never had
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 1:36 AM UTC
Heard sirens
Saw lights
Another body for California St.
Another day in Stockton.
Wait
I know him.
Them too
Hey, who died?
Tagging in the street
R.I.P T.M.F.B
Wait
...That's me...
No, it can't be
I just came from down the street
from the burrito truck
I had to get something to eat.
No onions . mild sauce, carne asada
Don't forget the limes, $4.25? sweet
I turned around and hit the beat
Just grey sweaters, blue jeans
and vans, not sneaks.
Occasionally tye-dye
if I'm feeling unique.
greeting this day I say
this is pretty neat
The train went by and bird are going
tweet tweet
This sauce is still hot but my sweater
keeps off the 84 degree heat
cause i'm sweating and cooling
These shoes look cool against the concrete
Hearing music slapping
I think it's E-40
Smoke rolling from the windows
An arm reaches out the backseat
BANG
Apr 30, 2013
Apr 30, 2013 at 5:42 AM UTC
the Bus – Travels Through America’s Underbelly
I am a bus rider
That makes me unusual
For a white male
From an upper middle-class family
Our people are not bus riders
Though some are subway riders
Bus riders are other people
The poor, minorities, immigrants
People who don’t drive
Because they are blind
Or have a DUI
And in my case
I don’t drive
Because I have bad vision
And bad coordination
Just never got the hang
Of the whole driving thing
Fortunately for me
My wife does the driving
But I still take the bus
From time to time
I rode the AC buses in Berkeley
As a child
Line 67, line 51, line 43 F bus
Rode them long before BART came along
And afterwards as well
As an adult seldom rode the bus
But when I did so
I was always impressed
By the sheer diversity
Of the bus riding population
Hundreds of languages
All sorts of ****** orientation
Some were white
Most were not
Most of my fellow passengers
Were nice enough
Some were friendly
And some were lost
In their own thoughts
And a few
Were scary looking dudes
With the look
Of someone who had done time
And were capable of more violence
I also rode the bus
In Seattle as a graduate student
A lot of fellow UW students
And the usual immigrants
Minorities etc
And some white people
Commuting
And in DC
Over the years
I rode a lot of buses
Mostly to and from the metro
But I got to know
And love the DC buses as well
I also took the greyhound bus
Across the country
Several times over the years
All over the U.S.
From Bay Area to Stockton
From Bay Area to Clear Lake
From Bay area to NYC
NYC to DC
All over the USA
Taking the Greyhound
Was always an adventure
Met a lot of interesting people
As people on long distant bus rides
Tend to open up and talk
To pass the time away
Overseas I took the bus
All over
In India, in Barbados
In Spain and in Korea
The Korean buses
For many years
Were difficult for foreign visitors
As the signs were all in Korean
Most have signs
Now in English, Chinese and Korean
And are much more foreigner friendly
Riding the bus
In America
Allows one access
To the underbelly of American society
The poor, the marginalized
The immigrant communities
That many middle class white people
Just never see
And for that reason
I am glad
That I am a bus rider
Nov 25, 2018
Nov 25, 2018 at 1:37 AM UTC
He's five years older than me.
He stepped up and became a man
when our father didn't want to be.
When mom was too high and drunk to see
and I was too young to make money
realistically, he
was in the street
making sure we all could eat.
It's a bad place to be at 14.
A brother too young to chase his dreams.
A mother so focused on pleasure,
she doesn't understand the effects of her schemes.
He just wants to escape the Stockton scene
where gunshots ring out like wet towels.
People shouting out sets like wolf howls.
Where the sword is mightier than the pen
and defending yourself just puts you in the pen.
Somehow this boy became three men.
One for me, a man to this day I mirror to be.
One for my father, showing him how to be a daddy.
One for himself because a real man lets nobody determine his wealth.
I have the utmost respect for my brother.
We're not friends on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr.
We know, without saying, what we mean to each other.
Any day I could call him and ask for a favor.
We can have a whole conversation without the need to speak.
He's even the reason why I'm such a geek.
Nobody can be more of a man than my brother, Dominique.
Jul 5, 2013
Jul 5, 2013 at 4:00 PM UTC
Let us confirm,
It's been a rough winter for us all.
We live in the valley,
And What was once (I'm assuming)
Beautiful grassland,
Is now a concrete jungle,
With a few scattered suberbs,
a plethora of crooks,
And a growing amount of graffiti.
But it's okay.
Today, the sun is rising.
Today, I am breathing.
Today, I look out on all the wrong,
And somehow, we are all right.
We're just trying to live.
Trying to survive.
I don't belong here.
But I don't belong anywhere else, either.
This is the place of origin.
Of pain.
Or lessons learned.
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
The magentine and orange yellow garrote of the twilight has yet to strangle the youth of Princeton, but it soon will. Sun sets over stockton and delphinus sits on the shelf of the sky next to the half moon ready to maurade over Marquand. Most of the store fronts, they shutter, a year closes in like a train in a tunnel and most do not know anything yet. Cannon and Tower boys do not go to Town anymore they go home to their Bay and Gables, their saltboxes ready for suburban consumption, for the dirt world of finance and brokerage, ready to pray their scandals are quickly smothered and they will be- meanwhile here sits youth, which drools in a corner, never to be invited by a bickeree again, watching the low shrubs and mafia graveyards of Linden parade through the train window, a melded scene like a watercolor. The limestone walls of Princeton sit up straight in vigilance, the heavy doors shut along with the adolescene and the stores. The sun sets over Stockton and rises over Beekman.
Jun 17, 2016
Jun 17, 2016 at 8:40 AM UTC
3/27/2016
teeter tottering on my penny loafers
down Nassau street,
I smelled a Newport and remembered
why it reminded me of the days full
of princetonian guile, that were no more
two years ago to the date,
I was meeting so many new people
finding out what it was like making a habit out of going downtown.
two years later I take the train
downtown
that is, in a different town.
My paltry self, forgettable as the days went on, fading quietly in my own personal, dark mess, crawled through alleyways and down stair cases and up them to rooftops.
Now my sense of self sits slobbering on a desk, the town feels surreal to me
I prefer New York of course.
I went to visit him, sat on that conjugal bed and traced ribcage,
Looked out the window
saw all of New York
the empire shining like a
big sparkly monster,
the staid windows that each held,
You know,
a different story,
or something.
The smell of hot trash- you know,
I miss that
I tell her
"Id spend a day in a landfill just to live
there."
As opposed to an hour on
the train tracks. well, at least it is
an hour.
I grab a hot chocolate just like the old days,
on Witherspoon,
and trace the route I took a year ago
down Stockton
when I went to pick you up
from the arriving section
of the station.
Now I'm hoping
I'll hobble over to depart
and you'll walk a certain way
just in a different city
To penn station
two years or so from now, I suppose
"If I'm not dead by then," I laugh with her
I'll stay in New York for good- with you.
But I went from the permenant staid fixture on the Nassau sidewalk
to a typhoidic city rat in a year so who knows
I hope it does not happen again
for I didn't care much for Princeton
As opposed to sharing a pantry with
you
those tall grey monsters in the backdrop painting, in the Greek tragedy of life, our lives.
Mar 27, 2016
Mar 27, 2016 at 6:10 PM UTC
click clacks that's the sound of my gat
rollin on ya like the Pats
check the stats
fifty and Zero so ya know
**** aint never been rented
everythang paid for
from ceiling to floor to the shores hataz galore i adore
scents of **** indeed
hands tryna feed off greed
but my money in jealousy
cheatin' cuz i got foreign currency and *****
comes to me
like cats to milks
smooth em out like silk
real slick **** once my rifle hit
the ***** holes
my inches below make ya fold
though O
slowin role O no
this aint a love ballad
we coming at it
raw and rugged
and if you dont love it
you shove it
up yours with ya shaft
im makin' blood baths as my muzzle laughs
im talkin my guns that make ya
Body dry
Like when clothes pen hungs
on the flat lines no rewind
death is permanent
should have known
********* i cant stand it
when they try to kriss kross me
but i live and die for hip hop g
no jermaine dupri
but i break em off properly
like an assist from John Stockton see
my flows is critical like Leviticus in biblical subliminal
smooth stocky criminals
Turning all federals
Into funerals
Apr 22, 2017
Apr 22, 2017 at 2:35 AM UTC