Thursday, May 31, 2012

Fear of falling




It used to be suicide was a private affair
a lone moment
my mother had in a carroll street kitchen
a bottle of pills in one hand
a glass of water in the other,
she looking down at me
playing with my toy air plane
on the scratched tile floor
Or my uncle who used to 
take his weekly walk to
the Wall Street Bridge
where he deliberated his next move
to plunge into the deepest
part of the river
or even rock groupies seated 
in my car after too much cocaine
aching over the guitarist
or drummer who hadn't
taken them to the motel
having found pills to mix 
with booze they hoped
might let them forget
forever,
these days we stage the event
take a photo days ahead
then issue a press release 
that a dramatic moment
might be hand for the right person
at the right time
and don't forget to bring 
your popcorn
no one to blame
no one to take credit
just pure drama
the private moment locked
in the victim's own imagination
never actually experienced
always at the edge 
always living with the real
fear of falling

In high gear





She coughs in the dark
The door cracks open
Cringing,
The light leading through
Into the hall
Illuminating nothing,
Just the curved rails
And splintered stairs

Alone,
She says she is
A cigarette lit
Lancing the darkness
Like a witch’s
Wand

The music comes
Like bars to a cage
Almost creaks and groans
Chains rattling

There is music, too,
In her head
That nobody hears

The drip and slap
Of rain water
Melting snow
From a passing season
Already lost

She has dust and oil
For blood,
And bleeds it forever

The river laps
Distant motorcycles
Vibrate under her
Like old lovers

There are moods
Budding in her
Like sour flowers

And dripping oil
Like blood
Into a dented pan

She coughs in the dark
The baton waves
Like the arm of a speedometer
Frozen in high speed
She sitting
On the edge of her seat
Roaring through the dark
Without moving an inch.

Out in the desert again?




I didn’t always hate deserts
The outrage came to me over time
Getting stuck in Death Valley
On my way to Phoenix
At a corner where the light blinked
On and off for a highway
So empty I saw nothing for miles
Except that fenced in warehouse
That felt like a graveyard to me
Or the time between Phoenix
And Las Vega when
I learned deserts could be as cold
As they were hot
Blistering stare shine offering nothing
To keep out the chill
Then, I got this photo in an email
A face, a woman in a gown,
Looking as stark as desert polished steer bones
Her stare looking through me
Over the long years,
Making me ache to have been there then
Making me learn to love deserts again.

What you got to do




When my best friend freaked out
One day over something I did
And put a gun to my head
I didn’t hate him.
Sometimes you got to do
What you got to do
And had he done to me
What I did to him,
I’d have pulled a gun out, too.
I didn’t stop liking the guy.
I didn’t think any less of him
For what he did.
But I spent a long, long time
Convincing him why
Pulling the trigger
Was a bad idea
After that,
It was easy to be his friend again
We had an agreement
I didn’t shoot my mouth off
And he didn’t shoot me in the head

Back to square one




Sometimes,
You’re lucky just to get back
To where you started,
Not over thinking or
Looking for too much
Just a voice on the telephone
Laughing
Or a string of digits telling you
You’re no longer in exile
Someone or something
Yanking your back
From the edge of extinction
That dark abyss
From which
There can never
Be a return
Sometimes,
You have to try harder
To make certain,
Things never get
That dark again
No more petty jealousies
No more insane swings
Just the slow, steady, predictable
Comfort of standing
On square one


  2012 menu


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Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Fish food



The rope tugs on me
As if I’m hooked onto
Some fisherman’s line
When all I wanted to do
Was saving a friend
From drowning
Nearly getting sucked in
Weighed down
by the detritus
of my own life,
those flaws that always
make me vulnerable
to moments like this,
I’m always trying
To swim against the tides,
Always seeking people
To save
Who can’t be saved,
Leaving me to dangle
From the end of the line
Like food for fish.

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Thorn bush




Everywhere you turn
You get pricked
The pain jerking you
This way, then that
You know you need
To stop moving
To make the pain cease
But the pain jerks you
Into another thorn
After each jerk you say
“I won’t do that again,”
And yet you do,
Pricking yourself on
Imaginary thorns as well
As those that are real,
So that after a while
You can’t tell
Which is which.
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Suicide note




Sometimes,
The only thing I really want
Is a way out,
The fact that I wear
Doesn’t seem to suit me
It crinkles in the wrong places
It laughs at the wrong jokes
It tells stories it thinks
I need to survive

I wear to selves these days
One on the inside
Watching and waiting,
The second on the inside,
Hungry and impatient
Caught in a net of importance
And it is this self
This gross misinterpretation of me
That people see
I cringe in here
And listen to it speak

It says things about me
Which are never true
It preaches and bullshits
In the same bloated breath
Making me live my life
Inside out,
With my wishes and dreams
Exposed surrealistically
On my face
Contorting my image
And sometimes
I see you laugh
At its foolishness
And cringe from its
Egocentricities
I watch it offend you
At the same time
It hurts me

But I don’t always
Know my twin
I can’t always see
When it wavers
From the simple
Single self
Which I had
Always planned
I see you react.
I see the touch
Of disbelief in your eyes
Stinging me
Angering my twin
And then
I guess what my twin
Has done
But it’s hard
It is the sound and fury
On it’s not Christ

Sometimes
I read Durkheim
For the quick way out
A turn of the gas key and sleep
But public service has raised its rates
And I can’t make the payment
I can’t raise the courage
For that or the couch
So here I am,
The silent majority
And oh,
How small I feel in this
Large, large
Bloated house

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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I am the egg man




You breathe a lot easier
After you come that close
To inhalation and survive,
Knowing that for eight
Or more hours
You’ve walked around
Strapped to a backpack
Of nitro glyserin
And that any false move
Any odd word
Even a mistaken glance
Might set it off
And scattered
All your organs
So that all the king’s men
And all the king’s horses
Won’t get you back
Together again
After that,
A few cracks
In the old egg shell
Don’t seem
Too bad



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The Wall




As a boy
I found one time
In the corner of the room
Crayon slated heroes
Dressed in badly shaded shine
And water colored dragons
Spread on pealing plaster hide
And there I saw
With mired hands
And a guiltly face
Laughing cruely
alone

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Tight Rope




Some things are irresistible
A high wire act
You must engage in
Or life life
With regret
Of having passed it
Knowing how much
Is at stake
How in falling
All is lost
You don’t do these things
For love or money
But for the thrill
Of defying death
Knowing full well
You might not make
The other side

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Sailing




He wants to sail

An old man
Perched on the porch
As if made of stone

He once wore a ship
Rope burns on his hands

He rocks gently now
Embraced by the redwood arms
Of his chair,

His wife making
Lemonade and lunch

He hears the splash of ocean waves
The creaking planks,
The screeching gulls

His wife talks about
How good life is,
Home and safe
Living with houses and trees

He sees the flickering
Of the distant
Harbor lights
Stars winking at
The edge of sight

She weaves his hair
With her fingers
And talks,
Unaware that he
has already sailed away.


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Monday, May 28, 2012

Does anybody really know you?


Does anybody really know you,
The moods that wear you,
The hair you groom,
The smiles you hide behind,
Do they even know your real name?
Does anyone believe the words
That flow out of strangers’ lips
To strange ears like mine,
To describe why you laugh
Or why you cry?
Does anyone recognize the you
That you become when day
Breaks into dusk,
Sipping the wine of evening,
Getting drunk on the night,
The horizon stretching before
You window
As if you ruled it all,
Storm clouds floating
Unseen in the intense dark,
Bloated heroes
You can’t ever count on,
Rain splattering
On you’re the floor
From your open kitchen window?
Does anybody know you
Or care?


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Never enough





Cold streets slick with rain
Footsteps tapping along cobblestone
No gas light, no moon light
Only strangers sleeping alone

Can’t find the ticket for success
Never knew life could be so hard
Playing games with others lives
You never know where you are

In the dark a match snaps to life
A pockmarked face stained with dirt
It’s always hands to mouth these day
Hands clutching hard to mother earth

Someone somewhere recalls your name
And whispers to someone that you’re insane
You say it’s only a temporary condition
But in you know in your heart it’s a game

Looking back for home, you can’t see it
Strangers sit at the tables tonight
Hunger is home, but you can’t feed it
Just a crazy craving for a normal life

Ice forms on the windows of other houses
But inside you can’t see quite enough
Can’t see the caring or the tenderness
Can’t see that other people really do love


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Sunday, May 27, 2012

Do rocks talk back?




Insolent bastard children
Whose eyes have melted
Sit dreamily in the street
Staring at blank stone
As if in a mirror
They see empty stages
Weary fingers clutching broken strings
The street lights above them
Stark empty sockets
That no longer shine,
The music in all in their heads
Played by ghosts
A memory of what was once there
Creaking melodies
Whose echoes ring
But not of truth,
Filled with muddled reasoning
Repeating the same tired phrases
But never certain
When to come
To their end.

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No one owns their own life


No one owns their own life
Especially when they spread it around
So that it spills over onto other people’s,
I spend my life collecting
The pieces of people’s lives
They dump into my life
Often struggling to sort out
Which pieces belong to me
And which just jab me in the chest
Like shards of someone’s broken dreams.

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Temporary





If only you could see it
This speck of dust, Love
Eked out with pen and paper
Hardly the stuff
Shakespeare would ink
Running line after line
In eloquent rime
There are so few rimes in mine
And perhaps no reason
Only dust and desire
A heart drawn in the dust
Of a car windshield,
Or in the sand
For rain or sea
To wash away,
Always temporary
And sometimes invisible
Slipping under a door
Like smoke
To dissipate and vanish
With a slammed door
Or cough
Or breath breathed too hard
Sometimes, all that’s left
Is the dust,
Waiting for some
New poet
To eek out
Rime or reason
Or perhaps
Even love


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Tail Feathers




You never know who you’ll find
In the next career your choose
Someone to take you under a wing
Show you had to take flight
Before you spread your wings
And fly away

Someone is always there to catch you
When you land, a new wing
To cover over you
A new lesson to teach you
So that you can fly again

Each face flashing behind you
Each fading into memory
As if they never existed
Some clinging to your tail feathers
But not for long

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Saturday, May 26, 2012

Walking with God in Woodstock?




Ron, who sells jewelry next to the information booth in Woodstock
Told me I had God inside of me
He wasn’t one of the Jesus freaks I had to peal off me
In the days when I sold drugs on Hollywood Boulevard,
He meant if I came to Woodstock looking for answers
I should look inside myself,
“We’re standing on holy ground,” he said. “Native Americans
Buried their dead here.”
I never met Ron before and won’t likely meat him again
At least not soon, but I could feel the crack of bones
Each time I took a step near that space, and cringed,
Wondering why all the tourists that filled the shops
Along all sides of the square did not hear the bones
Cracking, too, and blame me for that as well,
I didn’t need more guilt heaped on me
Since I’d come with a back pack loaded with me own
Needing an answer to spring up at me,
Rather than off some dark roof some night
All I wanted was for someone to tell me
I’m not as bad as I think I am
And what I got was Ron, telling me
That I walked here with God,
While I could hear in my head was the cracking bones
And the falling body of an angel
From some roof top somewhere
An angel without wings
Who probably had God in her, too
And I just didn’t see it.


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Roof top




I stare down with you
As if I would fall, too,
No one can take credit
For this insane leap
Me, wanting to hold you back
Holding my breath
As I drive home
Scared I might run off the road
Never realizing the crisis
You are going through
Never able to make up for it
Later, when it’s already too late
Me staring over and over again
as the photograph with your face
and the fall behind you
uncertain, what it means,
and why you sent it,
and what I can do if you did,
hoping it is some kind of joke,
that the expression I see
is not of doom, but of
love-making's aftermath,
and that some other man
is holding the camera
and you,
so that you won't fall
after all

Friday, May 25, 2012

Stalker




I used to write stupid poems about friendship
Irritating diatribes about how loyal friends are
How I would always be there,
How undying my friendship would be,
Eternally walking side by side
Tonto and his Lone Ranger
Batman and his Robin
Poems dripping with such saccharine
You needed insulin to read them
And a lie detector to deal with their untruths.
Friendship isn’t sweet, isn’t a kiss on the cheek
Isn’t a midnight whisper of faith,
It is a kick in the teeth, a punch in the belly,
A rubbing of salt in a wound
It is hurting and being hurt without meaning, too,
It is a search for truths that might not exist,
Ripping open the other person’s chest to the core
To find an empty space where you thought was a heart,
Threads of something else clinging to your fingers
As you pull your hand back out,
Something perhaps more valuable than bits of bone and blood
Or even love
I keep wanting to write nice poems full of sugar and spice,
Closing my eyes to everything, never saying anything
That risks anything ore means anything either,
Life walking on egg shells that I fear might break
And send me into an exile of silence because my friend
Really doesn’t want to hear what I perceive as truth.
But I can’t write poems like that any more
 needing to feel real even when it hurts
Always trying to say what I feel even when I’m wrong
But in the end always stalking real friendship,
Even when that means exile,
Living my life as an unwanted friend, aching for the chance
To spring into action, Batman leaping to Robin’s aid
To defeat demons he can’t defeat on his own,
knowing the whole time that moment may never come

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Thursday, May 24, 2012

I hate being wrong




I hate being wrong
And I’m wrong so often
I sometimes believe I hate myself
But I don’t

I hate doing and saying stupid things
And I do and say stupid things
So often I sometimes think I’m stupid
But I’m not

I hate hurting people I like
Being a Jekyll and Hyde person
That acts out my fears at inappropriate times
Lashing out at people I love
Because they put up with it
And this makes me believe sometimes
I might be a mean person
But I’m not that either

I hate losing friend,
And I’ve lost so many over the years
You’d think I’d gotten accustomed to it
But I haven’t.

I mourn each loss
As if I’ve lost
A brother or a sister,
A lover or the dearest person
I ever knew
And all that’s true.

I hate losing you
Not because I’m any less wrong
Or any smarter
or any less afraid so to strike out
But because without you
I have a lot less than I was
And can never been what I might have been
And know I’ll never know you well enough
To get over being wrong, stupid or afraid
And I hate that most of all.



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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

No vampires, only me




This page bleeds poetry,
Drips of blood filling out
Each line as I write
Smeared because it
Won’t dry fast enough
Before a new line starts
Poetry is not supposed
To hurt this bad
Or cause so much pain
Ripping out my rib cage
To find the heart
I forgot I had
Ripping out your heart
When I can’t find my own
Drinking my own blood
Then blaming you
Desperate to keep filling out
These lines in order to
Keep on living
Hoping with the last line comes
I might find peace
Hoping that all this blood
Wasn’t spilled in vain


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Sunday, May 20, 2012

So far from home





So where in Germany are you from,
She asked, as if intending to make their
Trip to New York City
Worth their while for a night
Or was that wild?
They seemed lost in this world
Where everything seemed strange
Even to me,
And she seemed to want to comfort
Them in a way that would say
They had been somewhere with someone
And perhaps
The two of us might help them
Get over the jet lag
Where are you staying?
The German woman almost shy
Looking long the bar at us
Her gaze wondering about us
Almost as much as we wondered
Where was this going?
Why were we being so friendly
When most Americans were not?
How did you come to be in this bar
So far from home, she asked?
And I wondered how far we could go
To make them welcome
When in the dim of light,
In places such as that,
Where lonely people wandered
Their whole lives like wraiths,
Weren’t we all strangers looking
For comfort?

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Saturday, May 19, 2012

Nectar




A sip of wine
Spun gentle in crystal arms
The scent rising
From its wide lips

You sit there
Drinking me in
With wide eyes
Deflowering me
One petal at a time
Until I stand
And empty urn
Stained and naked

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Soft summer days





I never felt how hard this bench was
When I came here as a boy
Lingering over the softer places
My fingers found employed
The buttons of a too tight blouse
Hiding a wonderous joy
If only I could get them loose
But I was but a boy

Less hard is the bench these days
Now that age creeps up on me
And fingers have much less to find
When I can let them free
and all around the birds still sing
and stare down from the trees
and I struggle to bet loose
what once was easy for me

splinters dig deep into my bones
my soul aches for those days
when I could sing like bird
and let my hands find their way
into softness I have not felt in years
or let myself make hay
and now I live with wishes and dreams
from those half remembered days



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Friday, May 18, 2012

Mist




Nothing is every clear,
Even when the fog lifts
It leaves a haze
Over these meadows
And me,
More dream than real
Me always scared of the unknown
The shadowy shapes
That leap out of nowhere
A shoulder that rattles
The reeds in the mists
The footfall that splashes
In pools I can not see
My own feel struggling
To find solid ground
One step this way or that
For every two I take
Searching the haze
For a familiar face
Finding only wraiths
With heavy chains
Dickens once shaped
With me an everyday scrooge
Struggling not to give
Myself away,
Scared of all ghosts
Past, present and future,
And to what end
They might lead
My life inscribed
In the fog
Destined only
To fade away.

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Sorry won’t do it




You can’t always say you’re sorry
When you want to say you’re sorry
It’s like bailing out a boat
That’s always sunk
So you sulk in a corner
Maybe even suck your thumb
Kicking yourself for the way you’ve acted
Unable even to convince yourself
About it never happening again,
Aching over the details of it
Staggering more under the guilt
Than the load of booze
You used to get there
Bailing out this sinking tub
With a thimble
As the sea pours in to drown you
Going down, more than just
For the third time
And knowing no matter
How many times you say you’re sorry
You’re still sunk.



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