Digging dirt

My hand

Still stained

From digging dirt

Moves inch by inch

Across the crisp

White surface

Of the sheet

My labored breath,

Rasping still

From my stumbled rush

Up the stairs,

I am like a bee

Drawn to an open flower

I feared might close

Before I could come

Softness leads to softness

My fingers have

 no right to feel

My stain glistening

on every space

I touch,

My fingers touching

Softness

I can’t believe exist,

I leave my flaws

In this flower

A silver dew

Dripping off

Each still

Opened petal

Wine (1992)

Her sip

Left a drip

In the dip

Of her lip

I could not

Resist

To lick

Tidal rush (undated notebook)

We sit in the back seat

And you let me touch it

My fingers coming up moist

As if dipped in Vaseline

But not petroleum gel

But something sweet,

Tasting a little salty

When I lick a little

From my finger

With the tip of my tongue,

I am sixteen again

And ever so hungry

Needing to dig deep

In that space where

My fingers dig

Needing taste it all

Lapping up every lick

Of honey from that dark place,

Needing to plunge in

As deep as I can get

Until everything erupts

Around me

A tidal wave spilling over

That rippled causeway

Until we both scream

From the heat of it.

Way too much

I press my lips

Against your neck

And ease my eye teeth in

Sucking at the salty juice

That explodes out of you

Taking each drip inside me

That taste of you

That makes my blood boil

And my mind to crave more

Needing no full moon

To howl or hunger

Needing no better excuse

To feed than to hunger

My ache making me

Suck that life essence out

Like a bear might honey

Each drip dribbling

From my trembling lips

As I know there is always

Way too much to take in

At one sitting

Needing to sip you up

Like fine wine

One precious sip

At a time

Candling

It spouts up brown

And pointed

Among stark sharp

Green needles

Of a pine tree

Near the end

Of the parking lot

Dripping neatly

With the last

Drops of

Morning dew

Gray skies

So fluffed up

With expectant rain

I can hardly breathe

New life

Grows out of

Old life

Rising high and sharp

But not without pain

So when the storms

Come and go

And explodes

With screams

And flashes,

The aftermath

Oozes with release,

This candling

Against the rise

Of dark skies

And dreary times

This passion of rebirth

I feel deep inside me.

Jersey boy

July 17, 1997

The grim cop stopped me

On the Pennsylvania side

Of the Delaware Water Gap

Where one highway bleeds

Into another and rolls along

The ridge of the Poconos,

Telling me this state has laws

Against people like me

Jersey boys joy riding

With headphones on,

This hot day filled with

The roar of thunder

And static on those few

Radio stations my dented

Black car’s radio can receive,

A cop with his ticket book

Poised to empty my pockets

And finally sighing when I

Tell him I can’t find my wallet

Driver’s license or insurance card

Just a business card from my old job

Which I hand him with regret,

He telling me to stay where I am

As he hobbled back to his patrol car

To call for the tow truck.

For Susan (an old college poem with video)

Heart of the sun (with video)

What is is (from Substitute Intelligence)

Pauly tells me half way to Boston to buckle up

And he doesn’t mean the seat belt,

Mumbling over the steering wheel

He grips too tight,

We both holding on to this world

As we drive straight through the night

Not thinking too much about

What we’ll do when we get there

Or what we’ll say

Or how either of us will feel

If she picks the other one of us,

“What is is,” Pauly mutters,

“If you love it enough,

It changes you.”

But that doesn’t tell either of us

What we’re supposed to do next,

I tell Pauly:

“Just shut the fuck up and drive.”

email to Al Sullivan

Four hours

I can hardly breathe even though the air gauge tells me I have four more hours of air.

It has said that for almost four hours so I know it lies.

For a while, I held out hope, strung along by the idea that if the gauge says four hours, it might mean there is more air than less.

Time clicks away and I think worse for it, and think perhaps I have less – maybe nothing.

Maybe death is already on me and the lack of air deludes me into believing I am still alive.

It is hard to breathe.

I stare out the portal again as I have often since the crash, looking for help I know will never come – and finally, as if in an acceptance of fate, I close the outer cover so I can see the stars or search among them for illusion of rescue.

Space scares me, but being closed in scares me more, as if I have just sealed my own coffin. Yet I make no move to reopen the portal, deluding myself into thinking closed means I might have more air from some imaginary leak I know does not exist.

I am a dying man.

My throat hurts. I feel pounding in my chest that is not just my heart, as if someone inside is pounding on the walls to get out, this flesh cell so much like the metal and plastic one that contains me.

And despite the closed portal I still see space after having stared out for so long in my desperate hope for rescue, the starlight has become burned upon my retinas so I see little else – that vast gap of blackness and stars that I always thought as wide open and free, but only a larger prison, one made more intimidating for its lack of walls, because men who tempt it build their own walls, not just the spaceship that contains me, but something more impenetrable without gauges to torture me with promises of air, but worse tortures, one claiming I am free when I am not.

I slap the wall in frustration, telling myself I didn’t ask for this, when I know I did, knowing that I ached for space when I looked up at it from more solid ground, telling those I loved down below that I needed to explore it a little before gravity’s death grip made it impossible for me to ever get off the ground, telling them that I would be back when I got my fill of it.

But how does one get filled up on a vacuum, and the higher I went into it, the less there was to fill me up, until I had filled myself up with the illusion that I was free, then I was much freer in the grip of gravity where I knew where I could place me feet. Here, I float in a limbo without boundaries, laws of the universe, a joke even Einstein disputed, nothing to tell me who I am or where I am or where I am going except for illusion of freedom. So the farther I took my spaceship, the more lost I became, taking comfort only in the fact that I was among others just like me, people who looked to the same stars with the same lusts, and who for some ungodly reason, looked to me as their companion in this unholy mission.

I always despaired that no one needed me; no one thought I had significance. But what did I know of insignificant until I came out to this place and saw how utterly insignificant I was? We do not conquer space; it conquers us, always finding a way to ruin our best laid plans.

So it was with me, and I still hear the scream of the alarm bells, shaking me from my weightless sleep, and the roar of ruin from some explosion somewhere else in the ship I did not then yet know meant doom.

I still thought that perhaps this was some new facet of space travel, our launch perhaps into hyper drive that brought me to some new level of understanding and accomplishment. I struggled to undo the straps that held me in the bunk so that I might indulge more fully in this new freedom, recalling the cabin manager telling me that we all had to spend some time in free fall before we attained the next stage.

Not until I saw the bodies floating outside my portal that I realized disaster had struck and I had been lucky to be in a part of the ship which had not yet been breeched. Luck held true until I reached and escape pod.

Luck?

No, this is not luck. For even as I cough now, I understand that no hope exists. I grow weak understanding that even if the gauges are wrong, and the tanks that provide air have an infinite supply, I have no hope.

All is too distant to arrive in time regardless of how much air the gauges say I have, all my staring showing life beyond my ability grasp, and that four hours stretching out into four hundred or four thousand would not be enough to save me, even if anyone has heard the mayday message or cares enough to leave their own orbits to seek out one poor fool so isolated in space as me.

I smell my own sweat, and eye the medical supply cabinet wondering if the wise masters of fortune had thought to include a cure for this, something that would not take four hours to accomplish, something that could snuff out this light in an instant rather than drag it on and on.

But that is not nature of mercy. Nor is the beep of the constant SOS I hear and the torture of knowing that nobody hears it but me.

I keep waiting for a response, tortured by the belief I might hear one, when I know I won’t.

It beeps as if counting off the time of the air clock that just doesn’t move, always telling me I have four more hours to live, telling me that there is still hope, and even as the pain increases in my chest, and the fog settles over my eyes, I see stars on my retinas and wait for help that will never come, only the gauge face telling me over and over and over, I have four more hours.

Spin

They talk to us one on one

You to him,

She to me

You pumping him up to say

Wouldn’t you be happier working

Down there,

She telling me how

Great some new and upcoming star is

When it’s all just the same game

Some puppet master pulling your strings

Her strings so you can pull his

And she can pull mine

And in the end it’s same game

Same puppet master

Only a different face

Being dumped on us

And we like sheep,

Shouldn’t look up

To see where the spin

Starts, and who is really

Being served

But to go blindly along

Ignoring the strings

You and she

Have on us

Or the strings

The spin doctor

Has on you two

Or rope around

All of our necks

That gets tightened

If we don’t

Go along

With the new

Agenda.

Gold digger

I watch the ground hog hobble from hole to hole

Digging furiously at something he cannot find

Frustrated, he moves on, doing exactly the same thing

In each place with exactly the same result,

Leaving only pockmarked landscape

Worse off for having traversed it,

Puck, my best friend’s little brother, growing up,

Used to talk about buried treasures in the mountain

Near the city in which we lived,

Going up there every weekend to dig holes he claimed

Would someday make him rich, leaving nothing

In his wake but holes for innocent hikes to stumble in,

He, years afterwards, found his calling as an armed robber

Leaving a lot more holes in a lot more innocent people

But never found the gold he was looking for

Because it was never there

Panic button

Somewhere in the middle

Of all this

Is a panic button

I haven’t worked out

Where it is

Or what it does

Or whether I’m

Supposed to push it

Or pull it

Or leave it alone

I don’t want to be sad any more

I don’t want to be sad any more

I don’t mind glad, bad or even mad,

As in crazy, not hazy and lazy crazy,

But a vivid psychosis I can make the most of,

A full head soak of delusion I can count on

When tough times come, if not real love

Then a fake love love would lust after

Like a lost dog, panting in the midst of the

Illusion, just not to be sad. I love truth

Until like a tooth ach it gets too deep

And makes me weep, or leap or lose face or

Faith, a bad god is better than no god

As I sacrifice my vices on its alter, bleeding

From every orifice. I just don’t want

To be sad any more – if not glad, then mad

Enough to lust after love, the way love does

Crazy enough to believe it’s real and I can heal

Even when I know it can’t be,

Please! 

I want it to not be so (with video)

I want it to not be so

For no cold wind to ever blow

To keep the world I think I know

And set the rest not to show

I want the things in spring to grow

And never wilt with the coming snow

And life lined up in long neat rows

Filled up with highs but never lows

But wishing I know won’t make it so

Or get dead things once more to grow

Or stop life’s woes that come and go

The best I can do when the wind blows

Is set my feet and let it flow

And let go of all I think I know.

No one

December 3, 1988

Once I was satisfied

Being no one,

A man in a place

A statue in a window,

My hands poised
motionless

Doing always

But never doing,

My mouth slightly open

For speech

But always empty of words

And in those times

I found most contentment

Questions with answers

Motives with reasonable acts

But these days

I drift in spaces

Where questions lack answers

And motives lack reason

And I am never satisfied

And yet,

Move and breathe and think

Freely.

Can't all be good guys

You can’t all be good guys, folks

They aren’t the same the kind of people these days

That I grew up with, you know,

I mean watching them through time’s yellow haze

They seem ragged and riotous and low

Not at all as intelligent as my old friend

Though looking back I see the same roles

The acts of courage and idiocy that in the end

Got us up some serious political poles

Not they aren’t the same they are younger

Like a whole new breed needing to learn

Filled with passion and pride and hunger

And over the same future they yearn

I wonder if I was on that shelf

I would even ever like myself.

Flight is easy (from Substitute Intelligence)

March 28, 1980

“Flight is easy,”

She said, leaning over

The bar to help me

Write a poem,

Staring straight at my

Crooked script

To make sure I got

Every word right,

“Just lift your wings

And fly.

It involves one

Ingredient

The will to fly.”

She laughed

At this

As if she didn’t

Believe it, but

Went on anyway.

“Just as independence

Involves

Freedom,” she said.

And I could almost hear

The flapping of wings

In my ears

And feel the sun

Warming something

In my heart.

“I am content,”

She said, and as I wrote

continuing on

Where the poem

Left off,
“I see you, as I’ve

Seen you for a while,

But you are not a deer

Fleeing before me

In the woods,

But a chain,

Linked to eternity,

Linked to a two car garage,

A job in the supermarket,

Sunday sermons

And the misery of

The day to day,
Love is simple

Just lift your heart and try

It involves one ingredient,”

She said, staring straight

Into my eyes,

“an equal partner,” she said

Softly, “but it’s not me.”

Survival of the fittest? (From Substitute Intelligence)

Survival of the fittest

Is not a team sport,

You don’t get a uniform

Or a position to play,

And can’t rely on anybody

To get your back,

A fact that

Even the wisest of us lack,

And why so many slapped

Back get stabbed,

“Great job, Delmore,”

They tell you

Even as you feel the blood

Trickle down

Into the crack of your ass,

Survival of the fittest is

Dog eat dog,

Sometimes you’re the dog

Most times you’re dog food

explaining the poetic notebooks (with video)

I've been writing in blank notebooks since the early 1970s (and prior to that in an assortment of other notebooks), I explain some of them in this video. It is something of a bad habit since it takes forever to transcribe these into text. I keep vowing to just just my computer notepad, but for some reason, i write better if the first draft is handwritten.

Regardless (with video)

Regardless of

Who does what or

How the world shifts,

I will feel the same

Planting what roots

I can in order to keep

What I can keep,

So as not to lose

It all, knowing that

Something valuable

Is planted here,

Even if I never

See the harvest.

I can watch

The slivers rise up

Out of the moist

Brown earth

And appreciate

That which will

Grow now

And know later

It will blossom,

I do not need to

See it all to know

How amazing it

Will all be,

I just need not

Stifle it with

My heavy tread

And to nourish it

If I can

Regardless of

How it all

Turns out

In the end

Boston (with video)

1

She spread the curtains wide

And the morning light thundered in,

Like brown bay waves rolling

Into a shore

It was a good morning

And she could feel its light

Seeping into the cracks of her

She never knew existed

The light was warm and welcome

As it washed away the dreams of the night

Until they were merely memories

It dusted old cobwebs from her mind

And made the day seem easier to begin.

2

Her eyes, they watered and teared

The slowly focused on a huge

White blanket unfolded beneath her

And although it was spotted here and there

With the needle sting of pine

It was still perfect,

The sun dancing on its top

Sparkling, shinning, hypnotic,

With few people about

To wrinkle that blanked

In a storm of muddy boots

And snow-caked tires

3

She turned away,

Thinking and dreaming dreams

That the sunlight could never dampen,

It was of one man

Her man and she,

Dancing, loving, playing

But stained with oil stains,

Her man, his car, and she,
he, driving his car,

And she watching,

Jealous, impatient, sorry,

Hearing the words of “Someday soon,”

And Judy Collins’ voice

Racing in her head,

As the cars ripped around the track

Dust winning and

The spectators’ eyes losing

4

She turned back to the window,

Staring out, but not seeing,

Hearing the birds sing,

And the snow drift,

but listening only to his voice,

a slow steady voice

with its Boston drawl

competing with the purr of his engines

then she heard the sound of his clutch

and he was gone,

gone to the blue skies of summer,

the cool autumn leaves

burning sweetly in their pastures

like grass learning to grow

in the spring,

but gone, really, physically gone

when the snows come,

for Boston cries louder in his ears

than the echoed wind of Colorado,

her man, Boston, his car, and she.

5

A lone tear trickled down her cheek,

She didn’t want to let it go,

But neither could she stop it,

So down it fell, crashing to the floor,

Searching for dust to drink,

She felt lonely, while knowing that people

Around her, were beginning to wake,

Breaking their morning fast, and

Meeting the pale frozen sludge

With shovels in their hands,

They seemed like toy soldiers,

Marching to battle, fighting the white,

Winning only until the next snowfall,

Those little people, swimming in the snow.

Do they know who they are?

Her man, the little people, the snow, Boston, his car, and she.

6

She heard a motor cough,

And her heart beat a little faster,

Knowing all the while

It can’t be him, Boston,

It can’t be him, his mother,

But still, she had hope,

Clinging to threads and dreams

Like a spider in her lair

Clings to the web,

She sees that these are the things

The ties holding her down,

But still she dreams,

Her man, his mother, the little people, the snow, Boston, his car, and she.

7

It was not him,.

As the car went by,

And she secretly and silently cursed

The lure of Boston,

Wishing she could steal its charms

Hold its beauty,

And keep its man,

Her man,

Maybe?

8

She drew the curtain again

Knowing in her mind

That when he comes back in the spring

This time

She wouldn’t be there

Somewhere it would be

Her man and she,

Her man and she

Her man, love, caring and she

Maybe forever,

Maybe not.

Holy Thursday; Rock & Roll (with video)

April 3, 1980

Holy Thursday and Rock & Roll

Yeah, I sit here now blasted by the blaze of guitar and drums.

The crowd is thin, silent.

No one knows how to clap. That’s the breaks.

I sit here thinking of Day, of sunshine, that shimmer from the lake like a million candles, lifting their lives up from the muddy, sulky depths to burn in a second.

I think of the ducks that wear their winding paths across these candles, weaving patterns of light and time.

Oh, and the seagulls that cry forlorn over the trees and their wings flicker in the sun.

They all beg for break. They all flock to the shores to the children with extended hands and open smiles. The children come on Sundays. They come to the water edge with humble offerings to these gods.

Yes, it’s Holy Thursday. The day has just begun.

An old man rolls upon his bench from sleep induced by Thunderbird. The dreams burn heavy in his eyes as he wakes, the sunlight a foul demon burning too, but at another level.

The sky screams of blue, the deep blue shaded in on post cards, the deep blue that washes up to the shore with the uneaten bread.

Yes, it is Holy Thursday, and I’m here now with music pounding in my ears and memories pounded in my head.

Do they mean me?

I never know

To whom they speak

Those spirits

From other worlds.

Do they mean me

When they whisper

Through the trees?

Is it their voice

That sings a siren’s song

Off the choppy

River waves,

Seducing me with

Favorable omen

I have no right

To expect, or do I

Wish for too much

And get only what

I deserve

As I stumble

Over unseen stone

Along this leaf-cluttered

Path to now where,

Wondering how I might

Ever get back?

Something to shout about

If I get to know you

From inside out

What more can I

Go on about?

The real feel

Under the seal of skin

Where there is no sin,

Where no lies lie

My truth and your truth

Rubbed raw

Scraping all that crap that

Clogs the pores

With all that superficial

Clap trap

We can all live without

I don’t want to go in and out

Shouting out like a water spout,

I want to get in and stick

Until I know the thick of it

What you are all about

Until in is out and flows

Out my mouth

Or eyes or pores

Until I’m soaked sore

And know all of you

And you, me

And that is something

To shout about.

See?

No other way

Everything

Should be different,

That ache for deep blue

When skies are gray

In a world

Where everything

Fights to survive,

Most folks

Look at this river

As a polluted mess,

Its sins spread across

Its shimmering face

As if it is to blame

When I know better

Feeding off something

Other than the fish

Or fowl that stir here

But the soul I find

Deep in the depths of it

That ever rising spirit

I used to imagine

As a kid,

Sailing these waters

Not quite immune

To its sirens

Yet not stopping up

My ears to avoid their song

Hating the darkness

The factories spew

Hating the stains left

By the evil hands

That dip into it,

I don’t pretend

This water is pure,

Only that without it,

Without some sense of it

Without the depth of it

I would diminish

No water is so pure

As we wish

Yet fish still swim here

Life still goes on,

And I come to this place

To find a piece of myself

And would have it

No other way.

Mutual distrust

Hank once told me that

“Sometimes

The only ones

You can trust

Are the ones

You can’t trust

Because

You always

Know where

They are

coming from,”

He saying this

In the front seat

Of a car

We drove

Up to Simon’s Rock

From New Jersey,

So he could make

up with the girl

He loved

And always thought

I was trying to steal

Only for us

To get so drunk

The most he could

Do was puke on

Her feet

When she yanked

Open the door

To ask,

“What the fuck

Are you two

Doing here?”

Hiding the two of us

From the college

Dictators

Until I could clean him up

And sober up enough

For that long

Lonely road

Home, he spouting

So many

Words of wisdom

We both forgot

By the time we got

Back to Jersey.

Me, remembering

Over the lip of

My hangover

The next day

That one piece of

Advice he’s spouted

Which hit me again

somewhere on the

New York Thruway,

When consciousness

Had left us both

In that dismal limbo

Of self pity

He thinking of his

Rich girl Cynthia

He knew he didn’t deserve

And me thinking

Of the distant

Girl who I thought

He’d tried to steal

And who I didn’t deserve

And neither one

Of us trustworthy

Enough except

To deserve each other,

In mutual distrust.

Great’s quake

I know great ain’t always what we see MoMa using for wall paper,

Nor speech, screeched at Bard’s balcony’s feet, the only measure of love

Or that love must always seem neat or easy or even complete,

Or that Romeo has to sip the drink or Juliet slip in the knife

Or that their fate is the only way souls like theirs can find peace,

Or that the embassy that connects must always be comic relief

To keep this fool’s tale from becoming tragic,

But I do know only a fool would ignore great when it shakes the world

A quake that makes the bones ache and the heart race,

And fills that space of mind so otherwise wasted

Nor should I be so proud as to not accept those small tokens

Cast out from the passing carriage with the great one inside,

Those small gifts given to humbled masses like me,

And I’m not so stupid (though I might appear that way at times)

As to believe I’m not a better person for all of it.

spy

He wouldn’t even give

His real name

That wraith that invaded

Me with claims of fame

Sticking camera in my face

While pretending to be

Someone he was not

Or would soon be,

Pumped up by the same force

That pumped up others
I knew, shaping him

And them into things

They could not be

But wanted to be,

The force who gave

Them bits of fame

For coins of silver

Always promising

But never as much

As the dark force took,

And seeing his face

Looking at me

Over the lip of his camera

I knew he believed

The big lie, too,

Just as we all did,

Some for longer

Than others.

Drift

I drift with the swift drift the river,

Even as I stand on the shore,

Coming and going,

Part of and apart,

Inside and out,

A confusing mix of rip tides

That draw me in

My fingers clinging

To the satin lace of fox tails

I know can’t secure me

Or keep me from falling in,

Nor can my feet be as firm as roots

Aching to dig deep into ground

I know won’t hold me

Needing something to hold onto

And something to hold on to me,
reading the reeds

As I did as a kid

Dreams filling the seams

With lacy faces of fancy ladies

Uprising out of the mists,

Whose songs draw me in and

Draw out of me

As I search out that face

In that space

With the ache

That face

Is looking back

And somehow,

Still connected,

Even as the river flows

Even as time goes,

Even as I know

I’ll hang on here

As long

As I have to,

Clinging to the reeds

And this river.

Blink

I blink and it’s gone

That will to exist

In a world so savage

My feet ache from

Walking over hot coals

Rituals of endurance

Tests of strength,

Of character,

Of will,

With me failing

As often as

I succeed

Why does all this

Have to be so

complicated?

Why can’t love

ever be enough?

Why do I always

blink when the world

seems brightest?

Why do I always want

What I least deserve,

Not just because I

Can’t get it

But how little I’ve done

To earn it,

Trust, unquestioning loyalty,

Me blinking when

I should nod,

More hot coals

To stumble over,

Not enough will

To carry on,

Not enough character

To paint me as

A proper villain

Let alone a hero,

Why do I always blink

When I don’t mean to?