The taste of happiness
still remains
in the streetcorner
the colored days
turning into a good song
time and distance
can never break
the gate valve
of friendship.

Look, I just want to move you.
Woo you.
Shake you loose but never lose you.
I want to
Savor the glazed reverent silence
Of your gasping, ungrasped breath.
Sip it down till there's nothing left
Yet still explain all the rest.
See, it's time I unearth some gold.
Nothing here sold.
Just given freely to slurp up,
served up cold.
But I dare not go it alone.
Not when there's so many heplping hands
Beyond my own.
So I first court Eloquence.
She's an easy mark to find,
volubly masticating volumes
while leisurely lathering her tanned,
Leather skin.
Dolloping her monocle-bodied features
In librarian sin.
She says...
"My dear boy.
Berate them NOT
with your false start,
lethargic oddities.
Your penchant,
Melancholic falsities.
You must but grunt through the trudgery
Of your muddy misgivings,
And birth only accessible
Pertinent notions.
Neither precarious nor
Incongruous to the truth!
Robby.
You must simply relinquish your
Intrepid, frenzied paucities!
So I dismiss the diss.
Since
her big scary words are kinda lost to me.
Evidently, though,
I must need a Joe Blow.
An Everyman.
A Streetcorner Clairvoyant.
I turn to
(drum roll)
Raunchiness.
His beer belly **** and **** jokes
And dollar store aftershave suggest
A pleasing 'pull-my-finger' charm
that just might turn the trick.
He licks his lips,
And chides through a buck-tooth,
Spit shine smile.
Sheeeooot, boy,
That there one's easy.
All you gotsta do is
Go down deep
And speak from your gut.
Tell em how you feel..
How you REALLY feel.
Tell em..
shoot, tell em they rub you just right,
You might well feel as ***** as
Your gas gauge after a good pump.
As ***** as a McD's wrapper
Corner-pinch-discarded like
A used diaper hammock.
Yeah! You tell em your as ******
As a receptacle
For used diaper hammocks!
Hells yeah.
Girls will eat that **** up!
And say you're as gay as rainbow gold
As straight as an arrow-head.
As misled as finding your folks are still *** fiends
or as contradictory as ***** like me!
Boy, you are as con-fused as the
Lumpy, stumpy, pimply dimpled teen who finds out
Santa Claus IS real!
And he's hanging out loose
In every single Hustler Magazine!
Now hear me boy.
If they still don't care,
Or they see that you're scared,
Just say you feel as guilty as midnight dials
From parents of Girls-Gone-Wild,
sneering,
"Well shoot, sugar plum.
You sure ain't been feeling
Real secure in awhile."
And as he loosely labels me
As awkward as **** thermometers,
As misunderstood as **** plugs,
I give Raunchiness a dismissive shrug,
And return to the mystery
Of what I've missed from me,
Whatever still may be
My own poetic style.

an assembly or
better named
a clump
of multifarious flotsam
presenting its untidy self
on a recent passing
streetcorner..

a hesitating photo records
a drifting pinecone
centering a stained
and shredding newspaper
a broken sharp stick
red rocks of scales and shadings
flecking dried green leaves..

order imposed by
framing and shaping of
the sidewalk corner..
might other forms emerge
with a focused patience?

a partial headline reads
...sound without the wires..
news of expanding connections
outside a material realm?
headline seemed embedded
in thick advertising bulk
announcing a continuing
culture of material weight..
much else of red and green..

the centering pinecone
occasional pineal symbol of
higher dimension entry..
somehow rightly here
in the dark center
of this mess

this a brief experiment
not yet for most an answer
a question now of mining
finding patterned varieties
in large nature's trove..
patient visions residing in
gathered fragments
if gathered they be..
expectations of more
in what persists
of this and that in
time...  :)

The coca-cola breath!
Flashing lights, tweetie birds, the rough narcotic stench

The sky is devoid, it is scared of the streets etched in starlight, everything shining-- tangerine and Coit and ohhhh boy
don't'cha know what you're in for?

Twilight and she is a figment on my mind
the bark of cigar is fiery opal on my slender frame
I can hear something along the lanes of love
Echoing behind me, the rising sun

Funny dudes in new suits, pressed, steamed, machine-rolled
pills in the pockets
shipped locomotive
Every etching has its china
every etching is porcelain skin
The fog is a silken balloon, unconcerned, wayward
The men longingly abide in its cool, the breath of an over-excited lover, singing in the showerhead an embarrassing microphone
over the west coast

It's all over! it's the end
the roads are devoid of the things that called you
They are a clarion horn on the Claremont, facades etched with windowpanes
here the americans eat tofu and pretend it's bacon

I am in the rapidly rotating spoke, enjoying the taste of woodchuck, upchucking my guts every Sunday, white knuckle-- praying to god
release
release

what a steal that's a fantastic car for the price!
it is only 10 years of payment
only 10!
House worth 40, kids worth 60, medicinal payments
corn flakes
Fortified iron gates and god says,
naw let them all out until they drown,
I'll never flood the earth but I'll make it puddles
and if they want they can lay face down

I am eating Korean stew and wondering what will happen
when unification builds a railroad from Moscow to Busan
I will travel it and write a novel or two
it will be
"On the Railroad"
and start in San Francisco or a little while outside
on an October evening with not a fog in the sky
Just sky, blue, blue sky
A child on the hillside
blowing bubbles in the apartment complex or the gravel mound
next to new homes, now cookiebread gingerbed frames
Doing tricks on BMX bikes, getting our elbows smashed, a designated paramedic
It's all built up now, concrete streets and lonely streetcorner lamps saying
Hey we're gonna light up this little space
Hope you don't mind
Please don't play too loud

And given that these spheroids are monumentally moving
hurling like a pitched water glass
everything staying put under the motion of it
Such a lovely rooting of mass

I will call alongside it, crawling towards answers etching on murals and on the stamping of curbs
E-5 West main
4451 Lowell Street
554 Happy Valley Road
It's all the fun little tributaries of surface waters
heading with precognition towards seas
roped into it by specific gravity

On the phone i spoke to Mr. Victorious
I asked him about his particular drone
down south there in the more direct limelight of the night
he told me about his uncle, in prose
of course
we just hung our heads over the speakerphone
Not sleeping the way we should
shouldering burdens as ***** in deserted zones
laughing and preaching to cottonfields

Then there was the girl
the one we forgot, truth be told
The one unrequited impetus for all art, all physicality and feeling
loved by god in the corporeal
She is the saffron reed in my eye, the one i forgot to preach Victory to
She that one oblong pebble, rolled by the stream
passing our campgrounds and continuing her journey to sands
small little microscopic tetrahedral perfection
I could get stuck in between my teeth
or perhaps left on the sweat of the skin
the lost moments of beachside living, love for the expansiveness, left in the diner seat of the car, gotta keep moving
Carrying her away and if not careful,
nestling her back atop the summits from whence she came.

it is a cola in the glass on the shores of the bay,
it is a divine moment of contact in the oceans
two sailors acknowledging their vessels
with light shows and the play of eye
off the horizon, a green light o' sprite.

To be awake,
to be blind,
I’ve never understood the difference.

On a parkbench,
on a streetcorner,
silent, idle, waiting

for sadness, or the lack of it,
waiting
for the excess of it;

to be awake, to not know
is there a difference?
In the water,
submerged
floating, sinking, drowning

in sadness, or the lack of it,
smothered
by the excess of it;

When I awake, I am blind,
When I awake, I do not know,
When I wait for the bus,
on the street corner,
I am blind.
When I am sinking, baptized, or drowning,
I am dumb.

I am always
drowning in sadness, or the absence of it.
I am always
drowning in sadness, or the excess of it.
I am always floating
in the not knowing,
always smothered
by the dumbness of it all.

Do you feel the same? Choked to death
by melancholy?
Does some thick smoke cloud up
your lungs?
Is it the melancholy? Is it the
sadness?

There was a squandering ember that climbed her spinal chord
and lit the deteriorating birchwood on the peach-fuzzed tea lamps.

When those stairwells cramped and swelled with staggered liquid terraces
in the foundational pin-cushion that cradled family after family.

Woe begone chants that railed support beams moaning under elemental abuse.

A litter of ghost kittens coiling underfoot where the rug
used to yawn before the grandfather clock,
now senile and rotting with absent-minded tick-tocks.

Inside her streetcorner, the music was that
monkey hopping to street ***** blue notes on somber ropes.

The air thick with the regal, chunky vibe
of batting eyes, flirty sighs, and bourbon.

Between the buildings again...
embraced with the same warm feeling that
entrances your fingertips, lips, and ears when within a man's arms.

In this city, Love is those two birds on that same powerline
that bowed and ebbed with summer's sweet sigh.

I’ve been roped and doped
Also been ***** and taped.
I’ve been slugged and drugged
I was bugged, then I shrugged.

It is all just another day’s work
For a silly streetwalking ****.
It’s life without a single perk,
Pays less than a checkout clerk.

I keep changes of tight clothes,
Show off the body, anything goes.
Use a languid suggestive pose
No one questions, everyone knows.

Stand by a light pole and grin
Someone will quickly pull in
And ask if you’ll go for a spin
In half a hour, I’m back again.

If they seem to want to pass
Turn around and show some ***
I make sure I show some sass
And am sure to be smoking grass.

Sure I get picked up by the cops
But, this old story never stops.
It’s a tale as old as these shops.
It’s bad when the temperature drops.

Rain, sleet and snow, I’m around
Staking out my piece of ground
To see what trade can be found
Hunting for the everyday hound.

So drop by and see me any day.
I’m not like the sun, I won’t go away.
I’ll be here as you drive by to say:
“Hello, baby, want some fun today?

i sit on the streetcorner of your mind
and every once in awhile
you drive by
throw money at me
say
hey baby
how about a
smile
and i smile for you
because im in the red
naturally

you do not mind
paying for my ******* smiles
and playing with the curvature of my lips
you do not mind
buying me for an hour
to smile at you

i am glad
that my crinkled eyes
are enough to make you feel better
i am glad
that you feel you are good enough to me
to demand a smile for free
sometimes

and only because
i want you to feel better
do i give them to you
even when the bank is looming
shaking all the outstanding debts
at me
that i really
owe myself

you do not mind
ravaging the smile
you paid for
you figure that you are allowed to ****
that which is yours
and i let you
because you
paid for it

I'm sure an abstract painter adores
the confusion of their
lovers.
Glass reflections on materials in a bedroom
E M P H A S I Z E
the EGOIST in every
sofa
and
actress
in a television set while it rains out
(creating pockets of water on the balcony)
Where is my foundation for times like these when
feet become LOUD ER in the daytime
and obstacles have grown their teeth?

Perhaps a dump truck full of nicely dressed mannequins
will finally be
ticketed
and my eyes
will see
as soft
as your
hair.

Quarry of bones in an office space
and the FORMAL TIE HAS DESTROYED ITSELF WITH
SOCIETAL EXPECTATIONS AGAIN
(LUCIDITY KEEPS INSANITY DISTRACTED)

Caffeinated Canadian Bohemian
daydream of firs showering adjacent
Manhattan batteries.
Tomorrow's rejections watch
bright and beautiful waves smile with false
inspiration
a n d a n o t h e r
concrete victim is created.

!MADNESS!
(the solar flare of the Neutral)
the ammunition in my coffee
and conversations blinking
LAUGHS          OUT
                           TO
                           THE
                           ABYSS
(gorgeous and hollow lineups in front of
a Vancouver bar 11:30pm)

Pale October energies and the
Dharma Radio
feathering my fantasies as this year reaches it's last quarter
CREATIVITY MEANDERING
NEAR NOTHING
anxiously I roll around on the mattress,
open window, listening in on the intricately staged
oblivion of trees
who've become infatuated
with coffins.

Gastown (as it appeared in my dreams)
has found it's dusk anthem!
Adriano Celantano's
"BUONA SERA SIGNORINA"
what a strange dream that was
the music was vivid to the point of
impossible recognition
and I'm awake and dizzy not from all that
but from love
(it's tilting my axis!)
Always has......

An untraceable eye
lingers in
malevolence to ALL city banks
where the late bop players
stand united and "free"
(Outside, by art on a wall with animals dancing in a hot air balloon, jealous of their own permanent state of painted euphoria)
Restaurants are consumed by silence
upon closing down,
but NOT the Fisgard streetcorner cafe
I frequent!
It's LOUD TRUTH and San Francisco weeps in
the decorated walls.....some far off dream of North Beach
Trieste evening with people who were once ALIVE!!
People that bleached
THE AMERICAN VISION
with sharpened language sleeker than
the polished jaw of Apollo.

Here I am again,
accepting the same sweeping misery
as those before me
(settled tombstones barely seen beneath a wild oak
while cars cry exhaust to beach-view apartments
and Winter's harsh wind drums against the window pane)
sure they were good people, but living plays no favorites.

I'm awake and dizzy!
forlorn with the morning.
Stars surrender to a sun
which often wonders
how we adapt to this asylum.
(Vanity makes me sleepy)

Warm in the delicate crimson light,
I lie in a temporary peace.
I am setting
as all else rises.

TWO ENGLISH POEMS For A Woman

I.
The useless dawn finds me in a deserted streetcorner; I have outlived the night.
Nights are proud waves: darkblue topheavy waves laden with all hues of deep spoil, laden with things unlikely and desirable.
Nights have a habit of mysterious gifts and refusals, of things half given away, half withheld, of joys with a dark hemisphere. Nights act that way, I tell you.
The surge, that night, left me the customary shreds and odd ends: some hated friends to chat with, music for dreams, and the smoking of bitter ashes. The things my hungry heart has no use for.
The big wave brought you.
Words, any words, your laughter; and you so lazily and incessantly beautiful. We talked and you have forgotten the words.
The shattering dawn finds me in a deserted street of my city.
Your profile turned away, the sounds that go to make your name, the lilt of your laughter: these are the illustrious toys you have left me.
I turn them over in the dawn, I lose them; I tell them to the few stray dogs and to the few stray stars of the dawn.
Your dark rich life…
I must get at you, somehow: I put away those illustrious toys you have left me, I want your hidden look, your real smile –that lonely, mocking smile your mirror knows.

II.
What can I hold you with?
I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.
I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.
I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghost that living men have honoured in marble: my father’s father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother’s grandfather –just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.
I offer you whatever insight my books may hold, whatever manliness humour my life.
I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.
I offer her that kernel of myself that I have saved, somehow – the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.
I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.
I offer you explanations of yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.

windowsill views: this smile has gotten
      the best of me..
peculiarities particularly interest me
during these (almost) spring days
           because I know I’m free

hometown nights not so silent anymore
streetcorner w/ a reputation:
        but it’s always the people I see..

You will come back to me,

But I won’t be around.

You’ll look for where I’ve been,

And they’ll tell you

“She’s nowhere to be found.”

You’ll look on my old streetcorner,

But blackness is all you will find.

You had me, you lost me, I am an imagination of your mind.

The KNIFE Feels right IN MY  Hand dear friend! I am a king IN a long forgotten land
Her hands left burns upon my arm
Collapsing veins
Like Blue Flower Petals
Nails digging Into flesh
Infest
I gaze a way
Under my breath
HER FINGERS FEEL LIKE RAZORS
HER WORDS BROKEN
POINTS SPLITTING THE
SUNLIGHT
HERE ON THE STREETCORNER
AS IF SHE DOES THIS
EVERY DAY
her pail skin
Cunning
In day light
as I fight
For a breath
Her jawline
soft geometric
Are you lost?
Doped on hash she
Tears into me
With sideways glances
Laughing knives in my back

Snow white cat on streetcorner sits
reflecting blinking bike light
into the road with no streetlamps
on a night full of stars.

Every song that feels
like it's written just for you is another
reminder that your feelings are
more commonly experienced
than you might think.

Breezy autumn evening rides
for time travel and other such activities
make music from wind in leaves
and weave from side to side.

I am off to build a house
and lay down bricks one
at a time, one at a time,
to live in for a short while
and then to leave sitting, alone,
until long abandoned, we
return for exploration.

jesse only smiles when he means it.

nowadays, it takes a needle
to get the boys and girl
around the streetcorner high,
but all jesse needs
is an average girl with a pretty mind.

his timid mouth and crooked teeth
is the prettiest treasure a person could find.

eyes are bursting
(insert adjective here) feeling has found me again          
this time I was careful to hide far enough away                    beyond fields                    beyond highways                    beyond everything I once was

..but it found me anyway
deep footprints in snow that hasn’t even arrived yet          
streetcorner calls my name (straight up after Tunney’s)          
bright lights of a (not even on a) corner store          

I remember staring so long, sitting in that cold apartment

6am sitting on that cold kitchen floor by the heater
because that was the only place that was warm

& writing poetries until I knew I was done
those moments are buried so deep - (or at least I thought they were..)
six feet of memories pushing metaphorical nails out of their coffins

my mind has to intervene & immerse questions,
coax them to retrace fumbling steps
bribing my own brain w/ promises
best kept under                                     locks & keys..

Blooming seeds you had on
your tongue when I kissed you
on the streetcorner in blaring
sunlight

I wanted to taste them,

and later recalled how thin you felt
your ******* against my chest
subtle enough

but I pulled back

The lightpond where I sat
that's the place where
shimmerish fish float the
smoky air

You caught one and
got drunk on its blood

That ***** look I'd never
seen you wear as you took
my lips in yours

and when your bloodrough
tongue touched mine the
seeds were grown

"Sommersprossen,"

I whispered into your mouth
as you bit off my lip

Thereafter in your starry
room you took your knife
and I mine

"Ich bin allein
Bereust du?
Wirst du?"

Our hearts in our hands
spat their deathred mess
and soaked the sheets

Drunk on each other
with lips cherryred
to you I whispered
and to me you,

*"Dû bist mîn
Ih bin dîn"

Entering Summer's sweet solstice where
daytime has won the war,
children born beneath the raspberry moon, to be reborn and reborn again midst stillness.

Here I see
old arms stained with
glass and vermilion
sticky alcohol and memories of
parades illuminated in New York.

whole city sulking in it's own gentrified poverty
looking at itself in a faded mirror,
silver wrinkles
kissed by June's many modern gentleman
(in quotations)                                                    Th­e lonely towers howl
                                                            ­                  benevolently

transit thru factory neighborhoods and catching up on O'hara,
fatigued by staying up to watch dry mornings repeated.

looking for meaning in various signs
adverts
columns
shop names
and streetcorner dramas

the same strange song plays!
picking up where you left off at the clothing store or the laundromat
it's a soft tune I'm not complaining but variety would be nice
this anonymous song/here it is/again/
the one that plays in the background of our sleep

a child is wrapped in red silk sprawled out on the pattern seats of the bus, he pretends to be unconscious
but I know better
gasoline keeps our eyes alert

Few days later I'm embraced by rooftop wine,
a sleepless night watching American Graffiti beside a
red stone on a mantle plugged into the wall,
The Mamas and Papas
"Spanish Harlem" in the living room
with a bought wrap from the cafe up the block
and the morning is mysterious and uplifting

"awoo
lalala
lalala
lalala la               there is a rose in Spanish Harlem"

we're tired people that see enough in the world to stay awake
there's a story here
and briefly written or explained pasts  
that will soon be replaced with whatever humid
accompaniment lurks loudly beyond the doorway.

A distant man with a knack for the harmonica searches for his cigarettes
by empty diners
and psychic shops of Christmas colors
vibrating lucidly 'cross the sky,
and he can apparently hear
the feedback to an amp used by a man
that changed his life
H E N D R I X
I snapped a few pictures of him
I wish him all the best

he told us of a past-Jamaica
and the dreams he brought there,
a girl he fell in love with
and her incredible ***
and I mean just incredible
you wouldn't believe this ***
and he never got with her
or the girl who used to frequent the church here
but he's staying optimistic, and
so am I man.

So am I.

One thin linen layer
separates my spicy palms
from the vast unscoopable harvest
of the crystal-scattered light.

Sunbeams brace the icy sky.
Early bursts of starlight score the dappled shade
whilst snowcrush of silence
interrips our invitation-emptied poem page.

So strange how soft it is.
The insulation stationed
on the streetcorner of the universe
intersection: stars sky & stone below.

I'm stepping in and leaving shocks of shade
just above the blades of grass
with tangled roots that sink into the icy loam
and stone-stacked-stone,

the earthy bone that plumbs deeply
to the heart & hearth of Earth -
a hidden molten core, the nethers
of a depthless tunnel filled from core to feet,

my feet, and then my torso-mind-and-eyes
that see. How strange it is, how softly sets my gaze
upon this world, a fleshy inglenook in space
that sees itself and steps into the snow.

From streetcorner pulpits near and far.
We’re watering wisdom’s seed with fear.
If your melanin’s under par,
Slave-trader heathen, listen here:
God’s own holy unpronounceable name
Now translated for you: Whites Are To Blame.

King JAMES was black. You heard it first
From me—before those Israelites
Began to preach to the accursed
Of Edom (meaning heathen whites).
So, his authorized text is meant
Only for those of true Hebrew descent.

No flaming redhead Scottish king
Was he who bore Azania’s crown
Upon his brow. It’s time to bring
The truth. James Stuart? Dusky brown.
No bagpipes here, nor usquebaugh, nor oats.
Just afro-polyrhythm’s gladsome notes.

Mansa Musa filled his coffers;
Sub-Saharan James grew wealthy;
More than Solomonic offers
Kept King James both wise and healthy.
No puppet monarch for Britannic schemes
But African sage, of vision and dreams.

ELIZABETH, of Albion’s fame,
Was also misperceived for hue.
A white rose, yes. But only in name.
Pure African was she—it’s true!
You’ve been lied to about these royal folks;
High time we rewrite such ethnic jokes.

Don’t believe the Edomite hype.
They want to keep our tribes suppressed--
And Moses is our prototype;
His law we follow, and we’re blessed.
REAL understanding: it’s something you earn.
Once gained, ain’t no trick you cannot discern.

No context needed. History
Is mainly Edomite propaganda.
King JAMES was black. No mystery.
And Edinburgh’s in Uganda.
The first king of Scotland will not be last…
Our exegesis is unsurpassed.