Whass hannin unc ?

How you doin' unc?
You doin' alright unc ?
that's good unc
I'm glad you good unc
What's that unc?
What you say unc ?
You need money .. ?
Na unc I can't help ya
I see you everyday on this block
Beggin for help
Not once have u ask me if I need anything
I can't give you money unc
I'd rather date a Waffle House waitress
211 Steal reserve breath or gin
On a good day
The bottle controls you unc
I've watch you deteriorate
Year after year on this block
You know the dope boys at dollar general don't **** with you
They tease and throw lil dollas at you man
And I don't like you hanging with Marty unc
You know he's off the "hair-ron"
That's not a good look
And I gave you a purple sweater
Last week unc
Do you still have it ?
Don't tell me you traded it ...
See unc
This is why you here
I hope you alright
This time next year

synchronicities happen all the time
for those with eyes to see

I watch, and wait, and wonder
pray to Let it Be!

think I'll drive to Wilmington
walk the campus, see the sea

do you think she read my poems?
on purpose or coincidentally?

The slam poet in cords, in denim,
rambles from neon beer haven
to flybuzz brothel, cracking quiet
jokes about soup to shiny junebugs
in the relentless moonlight.
One hundred dollars in thirty-five bills
slowly retreat from wallet
toward water-cut whiskey.
He’s got a chapbook widely
available at frozen yogurt shops
across the metro; he’s got a
tour in the works, tri-county,
every middle school from
Shawnee to Seminole; he’s
got a collection of ex-girlfriends,
made up almost entirely of wizened lesbians;
he’s got an MFA from UNC Wilmington,
and he shouts this more than speaks this
from his treacherous barstool to the sleepy bartender.
One of the girls, she takes him upstairs,
and to her he says, Your freckles—islands
in the sea of your milk-white skin.

The night passes, warehouses are razed,
and he watches the loft apartments emerge.
The food trucks come. He parks beside them,
typing poems made to order out of his trunk. The
money flows in, crumpled and sweaty and
in one-dollar denominations. The Old Fashions
transfigure into Old English. And in his pocket
thesaurus he looks for a word. It’s not vagrant,
nor vagabond. It’s not homeless, nor wayward.
He lies in the long shadow of a Midwestern sunset,
starved and shaking. Up from the blackened
city shrubs comes an indifferent breeze and
just as he thinks the word Pauper, he dies one
on the corner of 23rd and Western.

The scarf caused confusion
To his ignorant thoughts
Consumed by hatred and violence
He rang out eight shots
The media danced
In a pathetic flurry
Talking of "parking spots"
And "those Muslim students"
First things first
It was a hate crime
The killer had been to their house
More than one time
He condescended
He threatened
He talked down
Like bigots do
Yet this is something
The media tends to ignore
Let's focus on something less tense
Like a nice little parking spot
Next it must be said
That these were Americans
Just because they're not white
Doesn't mean they weren't born here
Yet let the media dance continues
Label them simply as "Muslims"
It's easy to forget
When it's just an "other"
So the story obscures
While these three young people are dead
Will Obama come to their defense
Or start another war instead

I tell her in a sense
Gollum is the hero
Of the Lord of the Rings.
Only he can destroy the Ring.

She tells me
It has to be Sam.
She has Tolkien tattoos
She knows the book better than me.

Chapel Hill is quite nice
I like Franklin Street
Chapel of the Cross
Young bands do there sing.

The Planetarium is solid
Vegetarian hot dogs
Jay and I play basketball
Better watch that UNC.

               Tar. Heels!

The idea of the Jesuits
More than the actual Jesuits
Catholic atheist
UNC

Franklin Street
Celtic Cross
If I contend
With Thee

            See.

So I would walk by the Chapel of the Cross
Pray for her family
Meditate on loss

Saw a sleeping deer one night
Antlers
Holy holy holy

I'm definitely UNC now
Pettigrew Hall
Basketball

If I have hope
Long term view
Horton Hears a Who

                  Tar. Heels!

Franklin Street sweet
              wander walkin’ blues
                               Chapel Hill thrill ...

                     southern gentleman

wandering, wandering UNC
   Franklin Street definitely
           southern me?

mathematical, symbolical, animal, Brown
the spirits of the Gift indeed abound
I sit, I walk, I look all around
Earth is our home
Sky our neighborhood town

                      Medicine Wheel
               crescent moon shines down

like every single person
sharing one holy human face

people talking and walking
from place to place

architecture
and outer space

                               Franklin Street!

hopes crazed careening for connectivity
       reaffirming and resisting, restlessness and regrets
                                   tolling bell
                            (may they be well!)

Gary and Megan, I remember you
Now at Pettigrew Hall

Thank you for your help
God bless basketball!

the bell tolls
I compose my rhyme

the bell tolls
marking time

my friend Mark
the loyal kind

the share is there
and children find

in twenty years
strange designs.

so long, Karl Marx
still the future's collective

we just do not need
relentless invective

Russia has fallen
China will too

The Dao is eternal
though often hidden from view

the Catholics continue
to plead for the poor

Brother Bernie, Sister Elizabeth
but who's keeping score?

e pluribus Unum
revelations galore!

Soft light at UNC
I have grown quite fond

Oxford as well
Medieval across the Pond

I sit and walk and sit
Franklin Street for me

A few little poems
Als Ick Kan for free

And quotations copiously
Muchos, Muchos? Si.

basketball in twilight
      Hitch Hikin’ quite delight
                  here comes the dark night

I can't quite find it
Always out of reach
About to get my car
Might drive to the beach

Taipei 101
Restaurant in Cary
At times my father's voice
Deep and loud and scary

Ravenstory stamps
Carolina Inn
Get me through till Sunday
Monday begin again

I miss you, Dr. Thomas
Duke Divinity
Sweetly Southern charm
Help me Barthly see

           Mail my destiny

Nations still have borders
But the Internet does not
So you can read my fears
And hopes for my brother Scott

Thai spirit houses
Irish lucky clover
Mary in Uppsala
Tell her I'll be right over

Indian philosophy
Right at the razor's edge
Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters
Bill Withers, Percy Sledge

Death may well be rest
I hope you rest in peace
The future is exoplanets
The past is Ancient Greece

   For the prisoners: Release.

Pettigrew Hall
Center for Jewish Studies
White flowers, Pink roses


Grateful memories
Of Gary and Meegan

      Xie Xie, Taipei!

            (I pray)

Talking philosophy with Evan
      Camus and the Absurd
   Bob Dylan's wonder words
      Dostoyevsky's scaffold?
              Yes, he's heard.


             Sophia! Sophia!

Most of what I believe in
Many others don't think are real

God, First Love, my Muse, aliens
Racial commonweal

I write from Imagination
But also this world of place

Yes, I keep on thinking
Of discoveries in Space

Not sure where I'm going
The Road goes on ahead

Will I be remembered
After I am dead?

A gift? A freak? A failure?
What will she have said?

My sins no doubt scarlet
My blues poetry still read?

My letters quite confessional
Vulnerable I bled

                          Confessions
                         Like my meds

Rebel, Rebel and then the end of Born to Run
Jersey Mike's: where I like to eat my sub bun

Makes me smile; I walk awhile
And when my sub is done

Basketball (Hi, Wetheral!)
Your town was misty fun.

I don't rank high in society
I don't possess a PhD
I do like books, drink Thai tea
Wonder what will become of me?

A painful life, anxiety
Gratitude when I break free
Krop Kun Kop for my 3
Blue sky blue UNC

          Celtic Cross Toss?

                     Oui.

My 7th grade English teacher
Coach Brian Katz
Billionaire Bruce Wayne
He's the man who learns from Bats

I got banned from Duke
For posting in the Chapel against Trump
I am UNC
Bernie on the stump

Maybe Unus Mundus
Invisible threads connect
Maybe baby coincidence
In order to protect

I wanna be a point man
Aware of looming threats
Pass and play good D
Run the break at the Lake

                 Outlet!

It's unlikely that God is completely good
Unlikely that God is
I like the Unlikely
I like Hers and His

No Mass this Easter Sunday
A little Chinese food
Delicious won ton soup
I'm a won ton dude

Teenagers in the park
Smalltown, U.S.A.
I miss Sacramento, Mark
I still say xie xie

Don't like Harry Truman
Don't believe in Nukes
I'm more UNC
Gonna kick *** on Duke

I got banned from Duke
For posting against Donald Trump
She and I, Carolina shy
Thumpety thump thump thump

One night in the Carolina Inn
2 nights Boston Town
3 Nights Istanbul
4ever lost and found

         T. S. Eliot, not Ezra Pound


               Offensive Rebounds!

I like universities
But just to walk around
Everybody knows
I am the newsboy of this town

Basketball at UNC
Library Seattle U.
Mary Baldwin solo
UC Davis lunch for 2

Uppsala was quite charming
Oxford twight blue
Trinity College, Dublin
Tokyo Sophia flew

Would like to go to Heidelberg
Toronto gone medieval
The House of Wisdom in Baghdad
Deliver us from evil

                   Ameen.

I'm gonna need help from Dr. O'meara
And probably others as well

The confusion that I feel
Ain't no tongue can tell

When you're on a whaling ship
Say hi to Ishmael

When you're alone at UNC
Hear the tolling bell

                     Attention.

The Episcopal Church is the pretty one
But I do not step inside
Deer sleeps in the grass
I walk down Franklin Street

Vegetarian hot dogs
Pineapple pizza
Jay's teleportation
The free bus gives me greet

Amber in the post office
Tolkien tattoos
SauRon Desantis
Huey Lewis and the News

Duke kicked me out
I am UNC
Basketball at midnight
It's a tarheel life for me

                 3033

Max from Heidelberg and I
Are on the basketball court
Talkin' bout Kierkegaard
Talkin' bout Highway 61

I like UNC
Amber in the post office
The Gift right outside
Pettigrew Hall

Never gave a lecture
Never wrote a book
No Witherell Conjecture
Did not **** Vietnamese *****

Monterrey, California
My boys very young
Hats, tidal pools
Gratitude

                     Among

UNC MRC
not the first time film
not the second
maybe the third:

words, Roxanne, words!

Oxford and Chicago
Not Cambridge and Harvard
UNC not Duke

Grateful for the slowly
Lowly olly nuke

Italy and Egypt
Mind on ancient things
Sophia in her sleep
Friendship wedding rings

I thank God for basketball
Jokic is my Joker
Keep her company and close
Many colors cloak her

                  Grazie!

Psychosis is periodically required
For the integrity of shamanism
So the bizarro thoughts and fears
They fit, they fit right in

Lovely brown chapel at UNC
Newman Center
Yes, John Henry
We have to lose to win

Legends live on Franklin Street
The bus is free and easy
Coach Brian Katz is America Respect
The Trumpfucks are America ******

Alex and I played a lot of ping pong
He is better than me
Wonder and Exile, mystical-prophetic
A New World for to see

                     Let it be.

                    Eventually