Category: POEMS

1.
I am a dandelion.
Damned weed!

My beauty is ordinary,
ubiquitous, undesired.

I thrive on busy roadsides,
around and between
vacant lot rubble, in
broken back sidewalk cracks.

I am squeezed into wine
where thin skinned grapes fail.

I am a child’s toy,
wishes cast on feathery seed
and sown on the wind.

I am playful sibling denial
and decapitation, Momma had a baby
and its head popped off.

I am bitter greens, butter,
vinegar, mustard on plates
of poverty and immigration.

I am an annoyance in proper places
attacked with spinning blades,
poison, spades and bare ripping fists.

2.
You are an orchid.

Your beauty is exotic,
rare and treasured.

You are seized from wild palaces, fens of isolation.

You are cultivated,
propagated by caring hands beneath
conservatory glass.

You incite mania, desperation,
moral transgressions, murder.

You intoxicate without yeast and sugar.

You will never join with common vinegar or worn fork.

You are a delicate, singular specie.

3.
The floral beauty and
the tenacious weedy beast.

O impossible cross pollination!
O the onerous, resilient, odd children!

Might not the world destroy them
with boot heels of marketing,
automatic silk and
plastic consumerism?

My vacant lots have already succumbed to
vinyl condominiums. The weekly
poison dose is taking hold.

While your palatial fens fall to saws
held, smoking, screaming
lumber, soy and beef.

Where is our exile?

Flowers do not find root in lunar craters.

We’ll have to resort to barricades. Board
the windows and doors with love and poetry.
We’ll die with melting, empty rifles and fists.
We’ll be despised and wildly admired.
We’ll be dead winter flowers unaffected
by the new Spring.
We’ll be dead, dragged to curbs
readied for rough, unknowing hands.
We’ll be dead.

4.
The dead man said,
“The day started out…
with normal showers,
and cobwebs of sleep.”

<

I met a lump of charcoal that was more intelligent than GW Bush.

Indeed I did while preparing my monthly Southern BBQ pork shoulder feast.

He spouted several obscure mathematical formulas, argued vehemently about
the current state of foreign relations, recited 40 of Shakespeare’s sonnets,
reviewed the exact procedure for the removal of ovarian cysts, predicted a
nasty turn for the new world economy and kicked my ass at a game of chess (I
moved his chess pieces for him.)

After some haggling, I sadly, tearfully put the match to him and his still
silent brethren.

He died among friends…a hero…for the sake of good BBQ…not probed, poked, prodded and
tossed into an anonymous blast furnace by cloaked masked CIA/FBI/Secret Service medical
fiends.

Besides, we can’t very well have a piece of charred hardwood with more
intelligence than our dear, dear President. I am a patriot above all!

1.
The past comes upon us like a runaway.
The past comes upon us like a train.
The past comes upon us like a runaway train.

Our transgressions are laid out
car after car after car after car
as the city suffers beneath sleet.

Every year from similar windows our sins
clank and clack
across the Charles River tattooed with graffiti.

Every year from similar windows our trespasses
are un-shoveled sidewalks of ice, lassitude
and carelessness.

Every year, one more window.

2.
Memories are necklaces.
Some beautiful and expensive,
some costume,
some hemp,
some a torn bedsheet
or
a leather belt.

3.
Buildings change.
Signs change.
Paths change.
People change,
reluctantly
if at all.

4.
City of bad dreams.
City of soiled sleep.
City of blood and vomit.
City of old anthems
Old anthems of insanity
played on new instruments.

5.
This is not another poem about suicide.

I could not have screamed
any louder without walking
through a high rise window.

This is not another suicide poem.

I could not have screamed
any louder without swallowing lye.

This is not another suicide poem.

I could not have screamed
any louder and yet no one
was listening.

No one was listening because
I was screaming at a
purposely deaf choir.

They still are not listening,
but that is not their failure.
It is my failure for screaming
in every direction. Every
direction excepting the
one direction where
someone was listening.

I lied. I lied three times.
This is a poem about suicide.

Statement

Help me
I don’t fit…
27 floors above
reality.

It is
red
green
orange
blue
black
white
beautiful
and
false.

Observations

1.
Blinking
red bricks,
rushing
pulsing
emergencies
and
I drunk
at a sad
table
as if
observing
bad
television.

2.
Seven red eyes
one blinking
cyclops
tower,
flashing
authority
lights of
arrest
and
resulting
new
sad
life
progressions.

The Final Plea

Poetry…
please
deliver me
from
this bitter
conservative
cigar
steak
cognac
Scotch whiskey
Republican
puddle of
a life
I
have
fallen in
among
these gentrified
winter streets

1. The early morning poem reference…

“It’s 1AM, 2AM, 3AM, 4AM and I am here,
exploring Life and emptiness
while the world sleeps.”

Look everyone poets are rebels!
They stay up late!
Great Gawd Amighty!
They’re heathenous rebels for sure!

Well, I don’t know about that, but I
for one am worried about poets that
write these early morning poems.
They may very well be suffering from
insomnia, a treatable affliction.
There is nothing rebellious about insomnia.
They should consult a physician.

Besides…the world is not sleeping.
Somewhere, it’s 9AM and these poets are late for work.

2. Copious references to drinking, taking drugs and/or
smoking…

reference Charles Bukowski, Jim Carroll

Well…two of these three things
are legal pursuits in this part
of the world. There is nothing
rebellious about abiding by the
law. There is nothing rebellious
about lining the pockets of
major, worldwide conglomerates
while your body implodes from
using their products. There is
nothing rebellious in being
Whitey’s bitch or paying
for the joy of getting fucked.

On the other hand, taking drugs is rebellious.
It is illegal. Breaking the law constitutes
rebellion.
Rebellion is cool!
Yes…it’s true. You are cool.

You are as cool as an orthodontist’s son
from Peoria, Illinois shooting up in Daddy’s
basement wood paneled rumpus room.

You are as cool as a lumber salesman
from Oshkosh, Wisconsin doing lines
off an end table at a Motel 6 by the
airport in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

You are as cool as a crack whore
wandering the traffic circle
in Riverhead, New York.
Come on, $2 man, I’ll take you to heaven.
You don’t have $2?
How about the change in your ashtray?

You…are cool. I want to be just like you.

3. Poems or lines of poetry about…*GASP*…sex

“Her pubic hair was like candy floss
and I…I was very hungry.”

Sex shocks and titillates. Poets
employ lyric, sometimes graphic
images about sex to shock and to
titillate thier readers. Shocking
and titillating things could possibly
construed as rebellious. I suppose.
I just wish poets would spend less time
writing about getting laid and more time
actually getting laid. If they did this,
then there might not be time for them to
write poetry about getting laid.
Because, frankly, reading
poetry about getting laid
is the sexual equivalent of
diet soda. It’s a pale, pale
imitation and all things
being equal, you’d
rather be fucking.

There’s absolutely nothing rebellious about drinking
diet soda.

4. Feminist poets who believe it is rebellious to write about
menstruation…

“My lotus seeps the crimson of the Earth womb Mother …”

In your face male domination and hegemony!
I am woman! RARRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
This was indeed rebellion back
in 1957 when there weren’t any gay people,
when the world lived in various and many
closets, when proper people just didn’t discuss
such things. But this is 2004…
This is not so much rebellion
anymore as, “Oh…you too?
Poor dear. But was a poem
about it really the answer?”

Besides…Kathleen Hanna
reached the pinnacle of
this mountain long ago
at a rock and roll show.

You can look it up.

5. Conclusion…
I should have a long stanza
here about what rebellion really
is. There should be a long
catalog with several examples
of what rebellion should be.
There should be a recipe
for everyone to follow so
they can make their own perfect
rebellion like a chocolate souffle.

This is what other poets and writers
do after pointing out life’s
fallacies, myths, half truths and lies.
In other words, “Here are the lies
according to me. These are the
truths according to me.
Don’t trust them. Trust me.”

I’m sorry, I have failed you.
I don’t have a catalog or a list
or a recipe for you to follow.
I thought I did once,
but I was very wrong.
I don’t know that you
should trust me any more
than these other poets
that pretend to know
about life
about rebellion
about shit.

I’m sorry, I have failed you.
I’m sorry, we have failed you.
I’m sorry, you’re on your own, kid.
I’m sorry, we are always on our own.
I’m sorry.

On a quiet Saturday morning,
we walk the music store aisles searching
for a used guitar within my novice,
probably never gonna be a rock star
price range. Dr. UberLucky picks up
his suggestion, a blue Fender Strat,
used but not abused as a classified ad
might say. He plugs in, tunes the axe
and noodles away, quietly test driving
the instrument.

“Strings are shot.
pickups are in good shape.
neck is serviceable.
Wow.This is a real good amp.
Anyway, it seems like a decent.”

My funnnnnnny Valentine.
the gay man sings.once.
testing out a new Peavey PA system.

I see the Doctor wince. This will not do.
He’s not well socialized this morning. He’s
already had a run in with two quasi literate
parking lot attendants and the store manager.

My funnnnnnny Valentine.
the gay man sings.twice.
Yes Stuart, I like the depth of this system.

This will not do. The Doctor methodically
rubs his forehead in the universal sign for,
“Please.make it STOP!”

My funnnnnnny Valentine.
the gay man sings.thrice.
Yes I think this will do nicely.

Even the half alive half otherwise
bad ether emitting Councilman knows by
now. This will not do.

My funnnnnnny SKKKRONNNNNNNNNNNNKKKKKKKKKKK
the gay man stares down Dr. UberLucky
who shrugs,
“O…sorry!”

Later the good Doctor says,
“My dear pupils, today you
witnessed the proper, well timed
application of guitar feedback.”

Why do we do anything on this earth if tomorrow we could be hit by a bus…

Why bother losing weight,
eating a healthy diet,
getting the exercise my body requires
or quitting smoking
or cutting down the beer intake
from an ocean into
a narrow inlet
or going to the doctor
or visiting the dentist
or having that heart palpitation
checked out for sure?

Why bother, when tomorrow a runaway bus
could squash you like a beetle in the middle
of Main Street and not even know it hit you and
all of that effort and hard work will have been for nothing
and you will be just as dead as I will be when I croak from
due to one or several of the factors we have already listed?

Why bother, remember that famous runner that dropped dead?
He was in better shape than I will ever be and he died anyway.
Or that professional volleyball player.
Or Merv Splineshaft the garage mechanic he quit booze, quit smoking, figured he
was getting his life together when that tow truck rolled over him while
he was trying to pick up his pack of nicotine gum from under the wheels but
he forgot to set the parking brake. Squashed his head like a coconut.

Why bother when there is no guarantee that the sun will rise?

I am a Renaissance man, steeped in the teachings of
the, “Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” school. So
why exactly are you bothering with this effort?

Well…if the bus hits, I want my mind to be clear, like a tolling bell or a
deep blue alpine lake. I want my every cell to fully experience
being hit by a bus. I want every sensation, fracture, dislocation and
scream to be imprinted, mapped, cross referenced and recorded. I want to
be the healthiest man to ever be hit by bus. I want to survive
being hit by a bus and write a poem entitled, “On being hit by bus.” I
want to travel the world reading my poem and give people an insider’s
view of what it is like to get hit by bus. I will wager that people are
mighty curious about it. And I want to liberate hit by a bus from
its negative root. I want to interview hit by a bus for German television,
“So…Herr Bus, what is your take on all of the negativity surrounding you?”
“Well, Steven I’m just a poor kid from the streets of New York. I never figured I would
make it out of Grade Three much less be sitting here with you
discussing philosophy. But…I must say I am pretty disappointed that people use me as justification for their lassitude,
complacency and indifferent neglect. Hey…I mean it’s
cool with me if you’re lazy and all, you make a better target if you can’t waddle out of the way fast
enough, but there is no need to blame me. And you are right of course. I am not all negative.
I work at being positive. I consider myself, a genuinely transformative event. I
change people’s lives. Some for the better, most…well the benefits are not
really in plain view for all to see. And of course, you may not appreciate the shape or timing
of your transformation, but you will not be the same person after you meet me.
I can promise that.”

“Thank you for your time Herr Bus. I know I speak for everyone when I say, I like
you, but I hope that we do not meet again. Being hit by a bus once was
good enough for me. Thank you for coming on the show tonight.”

Oh, if I die after being hit by the bus, I want my epitaph
to read, “No muss, no fuss, he was hit by a bus.”
People will come from miles around to visit my grave, roast hot
dogs, eat macaroni salad and take pictures.
It will be great. I will finally be cool.

Besides I think that getting hit bus would be a far better death experience than
say slipping in a pool of your own vomit and cracking your head wide like a jumbo
brown egg on the toilet after a night of Renaissance tequila and beer chasers or having
your heart seize on sunny Sunday afternoon because you ate forty years of
cheeseburgers and french fries or because having your body
slowly crap out due to neglect and indifference.

I want people when they read my obituary to go,
“Whoaaaa…hit by bus? Man that sucks,” and
not, “Heart attack at 45?”
or
“Vomit? Fractured skull? In the bathroom?
That is sad, he was a smart guy, he really should have taken better care of himself.”

I’ll take the swift lightening bolt of tragic fate over a slow sad dissipation any day
of this God’s week.

The nuclear, asteroid Armageddon
Apocalypse movies are so full of shit,
picturing Americans gathering
with family and friends waiting, weeping
and communing with one another, turning
their lives over to spirits great and small
or rampaging through angry streets
pillaging and gorging on the remnants
of commerce and culture. They’re full
of shit because I know what’s going to
happen on that final day:

There will be a woman in a donut shop
yelling at the clerk, “I don’t care if the
world is ending, I want the multi-colored
sprinkles not the orange ones!”

There will be a young child on the deck
of a beautiful final resort screaming at his
parents, “You brought me here and there
is nothing to do! Except look at trees!”

There will be a man reaming a salesman
a new asshole over a minor detail
in the new siding that is being
applied to his home, “I want
this fixed, immediately!”

There will be a man directing another
to fill the enormous gas tank
of an enormous SUV, “Hey Habib or
whatever the fuck your name is!
Fill it up pronto!”

There will be a woman in a movie theater
demanding, “I want two free tickets for
the movie I just watched because I was
ten minutes late. I missed the entire
dream sequence.”

There will be a man in a Mexican restaurant
pouring margaritas down his throat and
complaining about how horribly his family
treats him, “They jusht don’t appreshiate me!”

There will be a woman in a convenience store
interrogating the clerk about the freshness
of the coffee, “This coffee had better be
fresh or I will bring it back and you
will replace it!”

There will be a man informing a carpenter,
“I have to go to Manhattan to get my dog’s
ears pierced and I want this job
finished before I return.”

There will be manic and dangerous jockeying
for position on the highways and turnpikes
and expressways.

There will be a woman in a Thai restaurant
asking the waitress, “Are you Chinese?”

I know that this is what will happen,
because we were given the chance
to reflect, reconsider and effect change.

I know that this is what will happen,
because this is what has happened
since the world ended the last time.
You remember when the world ended the
last time, right? When the towers fell.
When everyone said how profoundly it
would effect life in these states. How
profoundly it would impact the people.

Shall we face the dark, horrific truth?

We have screwed the pooch and
there is nothing to suggest that
we would spend the next chance
any differently.

Hey Habib!
There’s nothing to do!
They don’t appreciate me!
I want this job finished!
I want fresh coffee!
I want orange sprinkles!
Are you Chinese?

Our television blew up, well not so
much blew up as well went sort of silently
screen blacked into that good night in the
middle of the afternoon. It raged not at
all, it just sort of stopped working in the
middle of an episode of Roseanne.

And what of this expression BLEW UP anyway?
I have heard it four thousand and thirty times over
the course of the last six and one half years, but
nothing here has ever actually BLOWN UP. There has
never been shrapnel or collateral damage caused by
any of these things that have allegedly BLOWN
UP. The hair dryer did not bring down thirteen
day laborers waiting on Main Street. The air conditioner
did not take out a family of five on their way to weekly
worship. The car did not destroy a falafel stand, deserted
cell phone store and a dry goods stall. Yet all of these
things have BLOWN UP this year. For the sake of the
innocents and the not so innocent, but not really deserving
to die in this way, I think we should retire the term BLOWN
UP and use another term to invoke and describe the failure of
our household appliances, perhaps shit the bed works acceptably or
even crapped out, croaked or even gave up the ghost.

So anyway, our television blew up yesterday. I mean it shit
the bed, crapped out, croaked and gave up the ghost. Since it
is August, things are bound to break around here. I hate this
god damned month. Come on September 1!

Anyway our television shit the bed and we decided after a
contentious debate to never replace it, to go forward in this
world like the Amish, to turn off the tubes and straws that are
silently removing our brains from our skulls while we sit
wide eyed eating junk food, to turn our backs on the media that wants
us to know about everything or at least know about all the things
that we should be scared of and what we should buy to counteract
the fears they have instilled, to raise a barn, to husband livestock, to
make really great pies, cheese baked goods and pickled produce in clear
hermetically sealed Mason jars. OK, wait a minute I went too far, forget
the pickles and the livestock and the pies and the barn, we’re just not
going to buy a new television and see what happens. Can man still live on
books and conversation and quiet music played on an old guitar alone? Or
are we so saturated with media, so addicted to fear, so worried that
we will miss something, that we absolutely must go out and buy
another television before boredom sets its fat ass in square our laps one
fine, sultry Friday night and the police are summoned because we are rolling
around on the front lawn in our underwear, screaming, scratching and
clawing at each other.

Besides, we have a long list of things that will be accomplished in the now
empty hours that once found us in front of the television sedated and pliant:
assemble, edit and publish a full length book of my poetry,
install the replacement basement windows that have been sitting in
said basement for seven one half years,
insulate the heating pipes that radiate money out the drafty
basement windows,
scrape and paint the house, patina is cool, my house is neglected,
eat oysters, a lot of oysters and then
make love thirteen times in one day,
finally make and try pesto sauce,
clean out our closets and dressers,
make an appointment for pickup of the fourteen piles of clothing
resulting from said cleaning,
use the new mandolin I bought to make french fries and gratin of
potatoes and cool ridged slices of cucumber for my next salad,
start an online used book business,
update my website which has not seen a new poem since May,
finally assemble my free poetry chapbook, Poetry Slut, in process
since 2005,
sit quietly in my back yard with a beer and not worry about the
score of the god damned New York Yankee game I am missing.

Well, we lasted two days. Our new television functions supremely and I
fell for the five year extended service agreement. On two counts
of being an idiot, how do you plead? Guilty and guilty your honor.

I always wanted to be a biker.
I wanted to explore the ultimate
sense of freedom these bikers
wax about, “Out here, it’s you, your
hog and the road. Nothing to clog your mind.”
I loved the myths:
Brando,
Easy Rider,
the Hell’s Angels in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
Hunter Thompson’s near death experience with the gang,
the endless string of reruns where
biker gangs invade towns,
terrorize the straights,
corrupt the youth
and ride off with a middle
class sweet young thing
in the bitch seat of
the gang leader’s hog.

I always wanted to be a biker,
until last weekend. A nearby town
held a Charles Dickens holiday
weekend replete with carolers in
period clothes. Scrooge prowled and
glowered along the cobble sidewalks
(He told my wife and I to,
“Get the hell out of my way.”)

I always wanted to be a biker, until
we walked past a large clot of bikers
gathered in one of the parking lots. It was
then that I realized I no longer wanted
to be a biker. It was then that I
realized that real bikers have enough
problems on their hands. They have this wannabe
rabble of proctologists, circuit court judges,
insurance company executives and attorneys
donning their leathers and bandanas every
weekend, parading on the interstates, stopping
for lunch at little country cafes,
eating aspargus and tofu wraps, drinking
microbrewed beer and sparkling mineral water.

I always wanted to be a biker, until I realized
that real bikers have enough on their hands,
they do not need a cowardly poet type
like me trying to be something I am not.

I always wanted to be a biker, until I realized
I have already found a different way,
a less deadly way, my own way
of terrorizing the straights,
corrupting the youth and
careening into the sunset
with my sweet young thing
riding in the passenger seat
of our rusted, failing Isuzu Trooper.

My hog is poetry.
Bolt the doors and hide the children,
I am coming to your town.