1

Rotting purple fishes have been
deposited on my doorstep by
an unknown assailant,
or assailants.

If I had a nickel for every time
this has happened to me;
I'd have a nickel.
I think I'll ask for a dime.

Tomorrow I can start looking
for the rosebush of the dream
from last night,
a fine vine it was.

As for today, I have a rotting,
purple, bloody, mess of protein that is incapable of exerting life,
but continues in a straight line
towards Chaos.

I am a wiggly line,
like the advance of two strangers.
It goes this way and that,
trying to get somewhere,
then it stops.

Unconscious things have an undeniable
sense of direction, or purpose.
At this point, anything could raise my expectations.

2

Their eyes are glazed
with ignorance

rarely only alone,
I can feel their movements,
up and down the aisles
filling the needs
they have been told to need:

to want. . .
to have. . .
a small wish fulfilled.

The children are loud,
shameless in play.
Their protest is against
the lack of having.
Play is defiance.

At last,
when they come to me,
I will treat them worse than
they treat themselves.

I hold no sympathy
for the ones
like me.

3

I see Christ from my youth,
and I make him unholy.
Rounding off the edges of the Bible
His gospel runs to gibberish,
and small talk among believers.

I will picnic
at the foot of the cross.

I cannot kneel,
genuflect, or confess.
No omniscient spy
hovers over my bed;
no men in black cloth
and chastity guide my reason;
no forgiveness follows in the footsteps
of my indiscretions;
no Savior to take a soul
from this earth
to the righteous place.

And I am not alone.

4

The night comes as a
drug-induced dream
that disguises reality
in shades of violet.

Dream forces secretly seek
their targets in rhythmic
appreciation of their
cool, damp, lives.

Constellations lay awake,
only an arm's length away,
like a Jesuit's
doubt of faith.

The night is the voice
of the schizophrenic
in a place with no
hope for the dawn.

Listen. . .

6

Once,
in a thicket,
moments before dawn,
came a creature
from the stillness.

Quick,
for its girth,
a show of teeth,
a spray of claws
splashed in a mosaic
of black and white.

I,
could not move
to flee or fight
while my pulse raced,
face flushed,
breath failed

I was spared,
not slain, or devoured
I live still;
a good meal for the taking.

7

Hundreds of thousands of small
black children were mailed
the other day. I received mine,
an identical copy of the others
no doubt.

A swelled belly spoke not
of gluttony, but of kwashiorkor.
And I looked to my middle,
which spoke of Double-Doubles
with cheese, and six packs of
whatever, all to myself.

It costs so little to fill
such a small swollen stomach.

I was guilty as charged.

Suspended Sentence.

8

The winters do not grow cold enough,
and the ice will not stay.
Here, January does not take life
from those too weak to keep it.
Snow will never smother the landscape
while dark gray smothers the sky.
Fireplaces and furnaces stay clean;
clothing is not layered.
The nights do not extend themselves
into days and weeks.
Here, Schubert would have prospered,
and I would not have his Winterreise.

9

Fear is a terrible
emotion for a child
of the universe
to depend on.

You love with fear.
Joy, hate, sorrow,
and compassion are mixed
with the most abundant
color in your spectrum
until the only emotion
shown in true hue
is the red of fear.

Promise to look not
to me for your fate.
Your fortune lies within yourself,
the only person you have yet to fear.

10

Lately,

After giving much consideration to the subject,

I have begun to wonder

If the time will ever come.

And if it does,

How long

Can I make

It stay.

11

Winter comes so strange
to southern California
and so familiar to me.

I enjoy being wrapped
tight, warm, secure, while
wind factors chill my cheeks.

I've found a friend
in Winter, who casts
no shadows for me to chase.

I'd like to take a Fall
of my choice and
a Winter of my choosing.

I'd spread them like
a light blue oil
over what I see.

I'd sleep nights, then.

12

A gift of light,
a smile, a warm touch,
caresses,
secret green eyes,
and she was gone.

Not this time. . .

That which I have taken
for myself, I will keep,
and hold,
like a childhood longing:
Sincere,
Unchanging,
Persistent.

Still, I cannot hold
that time for myself.
Already it decays before
I had the vision to see it
clearly.
And I remember having something
to hold on to,
before the dawn, when I seek again.

13

"Look around you,
the miracles are everywhere,
as far as you can see. . .
Millions and Millions of them."

Catherine stood, face
to the sunset , smiling
with poetic certainty.

I watched her. . .
and tried to think of
something to think of
silly young girls,
when she turned to me.

"Don't you see them?"
Catherine asked.
"Yes. . . yes, I see them."
And I did not lie.

I saw them all.
Dancing in the translucent
green light that
shone from within.

14

Tired and worn
like an old baseball mitt,
his face showed the years
in its creases.

He had nicotine
on his fingers and teeth.
His beard would turn
grey now and then.

His voice was coarse
and talk was plain.
His hearing needed
to be shouted at.

Movements were slow
and inaccurate, stuttering.
His machinery was rusted
and not all the bolts were fastened.

His smile worked very well,
and as it spread across
his face and into his eyes,
I could see the boy behind the disguise.

15

A picture of your face

hangs in every corridor

of my mind.

It slows me down

to meet you

whenever I stop

to ponder.

It seems like

the only

time I get a chance

to think,

is when I think

about you.

16

"Sometimes," my Grandfather

once told me,

"the room will just begin

to sway.

And I'll begin to wonder

if I'm dreaming,

or about to die.

It goes away after a while.

It's a feeling of being all alone

in the world.

I used to get scared thinking

I was going to die.

Now I wonder if I'm going

to be all alone when I die.

And that scares me, too."

17

Susan has taken the knife
and hidden it away.
It can never be recovered;
for in this world,
things can be made to
lose themselves if one knows
where to place them.

I will wonder what could
have made her so different
from myself. She fixes her
emotions like a leaky faucet:
a few turns can make her
water-tight.

I will remember her knives.

18

Taking a walk,
I was,
into the large,
open, level field
that stretches from sunrise
to sunset,
as far as I can tell.

Set aside,
it was,
for eight lanes of
concrete progress in
the minds of those
minds concerning themselves
with matters of state.
A fine example of a roadway
it would be
but for the fiscal coma
which held it in dormancy.

I walk,
careful of the residences
of gophers in a
night as black as sin.

A large bird,
I guess to be and owl
and only a guess
I could make in this
moonless night,
swept the air
with long generous strokes
and did not advance.

A wind,
blowing in equal
proportion and opposite direction
could show no cause.

Still. . .
The bird strove in opposition
to the head wind.
It grew fatigued, retreated,
and took up the battle again
several times in succession
before finding a place
on the ground.

I was surprised to see
the bird rise again
from the tall grass.

I walked on
when I could not
find it within myself
to watch any more.

19

Take just a moment to look her over
And I assure you, you'll never see it.
It will be missed like a four leaf clover
Or the details in a face, only moonlit.

Look not to the figure tailored so thin.
Do not watch the eyes, dark and cool as coal.
If you need to know what goes on within,
Know that this surface does not reach the soul
See her kneel to a child who is weeping,
And in a second, first impressions fall.
Giving a while what she's used to keeping,
The mother that has rarely come to call.

20

It seems to me that I have had a dream
So stepped in beauty, my heart quit beating.
But when I saw you, running like a stream
In the meadow, my dream was as fleeting
For the sun shone in a mood quite mellow,
And the wind shifted to follow your flight.
The daisies lifted their heads of yellow
And no creature stirred, but beheld the sight.
The whole of nature will not stay the same,
And will change always in its timelessness.
Still, the standard you carry has no name,
Reflected only in your loveliness.
No longer what is dreamt of in the night
Compares to the sight of you in the light

21

My words are but matchstick men when the time comes to put them to use.

I can see myself talking

to you in the

one-dimensional space

of social insecurity.

Don't touch my soul;
stay at a safe distance
from those precious
things I've hidden there.
And when the time comes
for rejection, take the
sword I give to you,
cut clean and hard.

Out of the carnage

there will be a new

vocabulary for the inarticulate

speech of my heart.

22

Old woman came into the laundry
room, put her clothes in
a basket and started to leave.

"Would you mind opening the door?"
she said in a tone I couldn't help
but dislike so I told her thanks but
no thanks she could probably make it
by her ownself.

Lot of respect I got she says
in that tone again so I tell
her about earning it and she drops
her clothes and tells me about
respecting old people and how hard
she worked all her life so I could
get it so easy and about fighting the
war and raising ungrateful kids and
all that noise

Told her only Sears and Roebuck give
guarantees in this life and if she
don't like my attitude she can write
her congressman and I got something
for her war chest so I flip an official
laundromat drying machine quarter on her
clothes and say:

"We're even."

23

"You certainly do have a

lovely set of vertebrae,"

I said, she turned and

smiled, shook her head and laughed.

"How am I supposed to

take that?" she said, and

it was my turn to smile.

She turned full towards

me from the bar stool

on which she sat.

"You take it with a

gin and tonic,

that is what you're

having, isn't it?"

"No, that's not what I'm having."

"What are you having?"

"My period," she said.

24

"I was beginning to wonder
whether your were going
to come back at all,"
she said.

Well, I'm sorry
all the way home but not
too long ago my reading went
astray . . . couldn't see the
words for the letters when
they're all in lines like that
so neat and . . . I am as
already mentioned sorry but
when these problems come around
I'd love to know what to do if
you could tell me where to begin

to find me.

25
Autumn.
Here,
like waiting for the most
beautiful woman you'll ever know.
She's always late
and just as you think she
has forgotten you,
she's there.
You're twice as glad to see her
and you take the time,
the time necessary for appreciation.
And Winter,
still and smooth as flight.
Quiet and dominant.
Eyes for introspection
and short horizons.
Eyes for staring and
in staring, becoming sleep.
A winter's sleep.
Deeper than imagination.
And Spring
Always in the race,
and always in the lead.
Speed and light that defy convention.
Crashing into and exploding barriers.
Before the thunder fades, think:
Think how strange.
How very strange
for a thing as temporary as life.
And Summer
Disillusioned
A temperament that couldn't
be ignored
by a Tiger on the sand.
Rising early and staying late
and never a thirst or complaint.
Not in the nature,
Do you see?
Not in the nature of the season.

26

Elementary Crustaceans are seeking control
of my bladder. Fondling the instruments of destruction
in their fore claws, they wage
a war of attrition against the culmination of three billion years of evolution.
They rise and fall unceasingly into the
future, driven by the engines of physics.
Not smart enough to win,
but ignorant enough not to give up.
Shallow, eternal, insignificant
in time and unsettling in their meaning.

Hasn't anyone made a razor blade bomb.
Or is that what we call shrapnel.
Should I know ?, then.

My society stands like a messenger from
God. God the Almighty. The best
set of coordinates I can imagine.
I stand, the heretic against nothing,
the true believer of anything, all the time.
Beware of darkness.

Soon it will happen. Someone will dare
to give up. I really couldn't tell the difference,
but I'll know it when I see it.
After all this time it will only take a second,

That was close.

Real close.

27

In the suburbs of
of a realization.
Thoughts,
like pieces
to a stained
glass window
fit precariously
into place
until
enough pieces,

fitted,
disclose,
that the whole
cannot be
made
from these parts.

28

I stepped alone into a
summer evening that had
no right to be as it was.

The wind pushed the long
eucalyptus one way and
then the other. The eucalyptus
did not complain;
I will not complain,
for the wind does rise
in the upland.

And it was cool.
A coolness that laid its
hand upon me as I closed
my door, and jiggled the
keys before I could turn
the lock. A coolness not
strange to May, only
to this one, lately.

Crickets enough to form a
chorus, gnats and mosquitos
restless and on the wing.
Neighborhood cats on the watch
for something to alight, but
this is no reason,
they are in their season.

I know these climes
and this air and these
nights and I feel them
with a certainty better
than myself. This night
had no reason to hide the stars
.
Stars that would have
flickered in the breeze
and pushed the sky past imagination.
A shroud of unworthy cloud,
standing somewhere else with
the promise of rain, with no
promise here.
No hope for the rain.
No cause to hide a star.

29

My dear grand mother.

It appears that you have

soiled your favorite blouse,

again.

Food being what it is,

I don't think I could find a utensil

that would guarantee safe passage

from plate to mouth.

I wonder on this

occasion whether you are

still capable of embarrassment.

That would make two of us.

30

I remember all to well these things:
the summer shade of an orange tree,
the winter sky at night,
the feel of blue denim cotton.

Some are renewed on a regular basis,
others, I hold inside for safe keeping.
The rest have been lost like a child's mitten, or they have died slowly.

At night, so quiet, a promise that stands
in waiting to be kept, fulfilled,
and brought to light.
I pass and smile in courtesy.

Promises and dreams and hope
and aspirations crowd around me
when I have time to spare.
A book of poems will not allay their voices.

I think I will take or leave them
as I choose. Smiling, when I walk
with a careful step and wondering
if a memory is a wonderful thing to lose.

31

Creosote,

an invention of a mind

to save wood from rot.

Very well it saves

the wood that stands

in rain and snow

from rot
.

But when the temperature rises,

creosote melts and runs from the cracks

of telephone poles

and railroad ties.

I'd like to see a man

melt like that.

32

Sky, blues, soft

and fluid as the look

of your eyes when tears

began to well.

And I, transformed

into something else

unbelievable

in my own sight.

Giving that which

consideration

told time and again

of its folly.

Never laid this

head to the

stillness

of synthetic fibers.

33

I once held a box in my cellar
and filled it with regrets
formed from the stuff
of the things I have not done,
the loves I have not won.

I filled the box
and a dozen others like it.
They filled the rooms I gave
to myself, smothering my movements
until I found I could not live
with so many regrets.

Eventually, I mixed the regrets
with wisdom I had bought
and I have not seen them of late.
There are too many lessons
in the way.

34

A mild marsupial and a willowy
armadillo have come in the night
and ransacked my lifestyle.

"Why me?" I cried to them as
they scampered off down Route 66
in the early morning dew.
"I hope a '56 Buick makes you both
an integral part of the asphalt," I
shouted and I thought for a moment
that the willowy armadillo had turned
and given me the finger.

But it was slightly foggish
and the digits of the armadillo are
not so pronounced as to be readily
distinguished at such a distance.

It would be just like him, though.

I turned inside to view the labyrinth
they had made of my
"Things to do Today" calendar.

My phone number had been changed and listed. A note to call Doris at the old number.
Three overdue library books.
Free trial demonstrations in my home
An aquarium without fish.
A lifetime subscription to
True Detective Romance.
Cable Television.

"Curses", I moaned when the finality
of the situation took seed in my mind.
At first there is anger, then acceptance. .
I took a shower.

Doris wasn't at home but would be later on and the pet store was having a sale
on tetras and eels.
I took two.

Of each.
What can you do?

35

Archaeologists are an unholy
breed, and,
lately, I've been wondering,
if their practice might
one day extend to me.

I have seen them
in my mind,
raking and sifting,
thousands of years from now
through my scattered and
decomposing material wealth They will find a scrap,
a broken metallic object,
a significant find.

They will sterilize and analyze every particle with absolute certainty
only to abandon
scientific discipline
to speculate.

I think I'd rather
remain anonymous
than be misinterpreted
by yet another generation.

36

We stole from
civilization
into the thin air.
Hammocks in the breeze.
Prickly valley lights.
Drinking water that was snow.
Taking the time to treat each other honestly. Chocolate pudding that tasted best.
The silence.

A civilization
above the rest.

37

In the clearing,
by the stream,
a fair walk from
where the woods were
growing dark and sullen.
I stood and waited
impatiently
for anything at all.

A rogue storm passed
through without spilling a
drop of ice, or water.
In its wake came a
wounded cloud, rolling on the
stream banks, advancing
from the north.

Silent,
white,
cold,
surrounding me.

I saw her,
barely clothed for the season,
her fingers gripping her arms,
white with tension.
The hollow of her cheeks,
nearly blue.
Eyes recessed and unseeing.

"No,. . . please. . . don't "
she said carefully
upon offering my coat.
Too far downstream to hope,
she fell gently to her knees.
I heard her quietly wishing.
Through the night I made
dreams of the void,
of removal and absence.
In the morning I woke with
the frost and a giant sunrise,
still only half-way home.

38

Brown moles on the landscape
stretching to devour
the flower without a thought.
Clipping the stems and leaves,
pulling the young shoots loose,
removing the dirt, roots and all,
and moving on.

Moving on within a shelter,
giving no consideration to the
day or night, beauty or consequence.
No sensitive facilities adorn the
harsh countenance, no serene visions
are lifted from the reptilian brain.
The tortoise eats time as
unsympathetically as it grazes.
Its movements are planned by
bureaucrats, not so much travel
as plodding.

Taking a hundred years to die,
a long harsh time.
A cruel centennial.
A sincere waste.

39

A summer evening
slipped into October
under the guise
of an autumn day.
I would not have noticed
for I slept so well
and was busy with my dreams
and with trying not to be awake.

In the morning I stepped lightly
to avoid the frost,
finding none.

The grass felt softly,
telling me that
something warm had spent the night.

40

I was caught in a cross fire wind
with silver bells at my back.
Turning my head to an atmospheric pillow
I saw what a droplet once said to me
"Fear not to touch not this pillow
of coolness to lay your breath,
tether the whining and buzzing
in your ears to the lamppost ahead."

Some lights for guiding a Phillipic
to delusions crimson; fur lining
for pine needles that fall
from green to brown to black and blue.

Ladle me another bowl chromium acetate
that shimmers but does not swirl alone.
A Phalanx for divisions of visions,
something Watson and Crick never said.

Neural washings. No starch.

41

Oh, please,

not. . .

the looks of surprise
obese gesticulations
assorted innuendoes
whispered conversations
false sympathy
idle curiosity
muffled laughter at my approach

It is as if you thought none of us would change.

42

Did you ever stop
to think about the children,
and what we told them.

About politeness and manners
About hammers and nails
About good and evil
About ships and the sea About truth,

and love.

And love after what
we've done to each other.

Is it so strange now
that they don't believe us
when we say "I love you".

Didn't we tell them
about lies,

and liars.

43

I very nearly
summoned the courage
to ask you
to tell me

again

it was over.

I almost wanted a note,
unequivocally put,
explaining,
the reasons,
you
never want to see me again
.
I wanted to believe
that the evidence
I possessed,
was not in
control of the truth.

I came close
to taking a chance
on the thought,
that you would still
want me.

Hope kills.

44

There is a certain
quality to this life
that I will not understand.

A feeling, an appreciation,
that there is something
going on
I don't know about.
Some thing I wouldn't
have revealed.

It lingers through my ages.
Loves and visions come,
go, and return metamorphosed.
My diffused light of
reality remains true
in all times.

My fellow prisoners simply
ignore their confinement,
feign introspection and
travel through their lifetime
like making connections
to a flight,
now boarding.

One thing I'm looking for:
Did I choose the fog,
or did the fog
choose me.

45

Doctor. . .
please
take the pain
I'll show you where
it hurts
here
cut

The things she gave me
photographs
fragrances
lips
friends
lovemaking
music
mountain streams
Christmas dinners
Tears

That's better
the first treatment
is the worst
Time

46
In my youth,
I envied the power
of the gun.

In my hands
the transformation was
unique.
I became a weapon,
a force, above any other.
Void of fear.
Spoiling for trouble.

A wren,
I shot from the wire
had the nerve
to fall to my feet,
to twitch,
to squawk in pain,
held more power over me
than all my days
with a gun.

47
I was there
for you.

Picking up the pieces
when they were scattered.
Giving to you my time
when you had none.
Mending your fences
to hold your precious things.
Filling your lungs
when you couldn't breathe.
Telling the truth
when lies would have sufficed.
Granting you freedom
to move ahead
without me.
So What.

48

It's hard to criticize.
They're so nice.
Speaking so well to everyone
concerned, taking on the
issues; resolution to follow.

Nice suit, shirt, gesture.
I couldn't be that perfect
all the time, everyday at
the White House, under
the harsh, white, lights.
Never sweating.

There are tough problems,
out there over the horizon.
Things are looking brighter every
day, every sunrise.
Ask him. Ask him anything.
He'll tell you, tell you anything.

49

I took from the cupboard
an old jar and formed
a sticky substance,
pouring a quantity down
my arm.

Time fell to the
wastebasket, decomposing
with the peelings,
and tired fruits.
I lost the need in me.
The desire, the lust,
the hope, hatred, and
misgivings ran away
into the unborn darkness
outside my door.

I don't know,
I feel.
I don't live,
I create.
And kill.

I pour myself down the drain,
driven to the end of the spiral
for a piece of emptiness.

50

I know how the end
will come.
My guts will fail.

I will take sick in my
intestines because that
is where I put the evil.

Every day, I take internally
hardships and pain,
and digest lost love
like a toxic
waste dump
site.

When my days are done,
only the autopsy will reveal
the place I hid the anguish.

51

I want that one. . . there. . .
the blonde with the purple top,
white skirt, green eyes,
she's nice.

Go get her

Well built, pirate smile, elegant legs

What are you waiting for?

She doesn't want me

Is that important?

You're missing the point

Tell me

I don't get everything I want

Do you get anything you want?

No, no. . . that would be scary

I'd have nothing to wish for.

52
I'm tired
of the pain
that arrives like
a delinquent payment notice
every morning.

When my mind
is free, I use all
my energy, dreaming
the Big Dream:
the biggest, brightest,
cleanest, universally accepted
save the world,
feed the children,
stop the dying,
dream.

No one ever got well
on reality.

No one ever made a
payment with a dream.

53

We stood,
beers in hand,
praying for something
to happen.

I saw us,
in the mirrored wall
across from the dance floor,
standing like actors
without a script.

Wasn't this the place,
where it happened.

It could have been,
that a few more bodies,
packed tightly together,
could reach social critical mass.
Perhaps the loud speakers weren't
driven to capacity,
or the alcoholic content,
not high enough.

Or maybe,
I don't understand,
what it is
that is supposed
to happen.

54

I dreamt
of the sisters
married to Jesus Christ,
wearing a wedding band
as proof.

I saw again the
walnut crucifixes, with
Christ dying, hanging
from their necks.
Their black dress,
head to foot,
themselves, like a Gothic
Cathedral, casting shadows
on my eyes.

They ruled my destiny
for eight years.
In a contest of wills.

I lost at every turn.
Until, rising from adolescence
with my sword of retribution,
I was sent from the sisters;

gently weeping at my departure,

to the Fathers.

55

With October, the quiet, cool evenings,

shortened, gray days, sweet smells of rain, and dew. I miss Panzer.
She was a well
blended breed, with
the heartiness of the hybrid,
and a regal countenance.

She ran with the fluidity
of the big cats,
the enthusiasm of
small boys.
I miss the Joy. The Joy of running. The Joy of play.

56

He dies
slowly. . .
over years, and
years to come,
from the inside,
of cancer
in the abdomen.

I saw the morphine
lose its touch
slowly. . .

crawling on his skin,
stifling the air,
his insides started
to cook.
Minutes stretched to
the horizon to be
snapped back by the
two o'clock injection.

Life,
is all an atheist gets.

57

Where does love
go?
After marriage.

Is it as fuel
to a flame?
Exhausting itself in
proportion to the
intensity
of the pyre.

Does love wither
with familiarity?
Must love
be ever renewed
to be
revisited.

Or is it simply
exchanged?
For a certain
risklessness
we find
the more attractive.

58

My mountains were constructed under
pressure of an impending deadline.
Left raw, stark and underpopulated
by the softer fauna of better
implemented works of forestation.

Some one forgot the water
to smooth the jagged granites,
to support a lake and stream,
to fill the canyons with the gentle
play of water running over rock.

My mountains were given the
things of the desert:
the harsh, miserly life forms
defending themselves with thorns,
spikes, venom, and brutal adaptability.
I will return to this land
in a million years hence;
time enough to finish the job,
to find that every improvement
incurred an equal loss.

59

Skin. . .
is the perfect envelope
for a woman.

I like mine,
white as Irish linen,
slightly translucent,
and smooth as
chamois cloth.

It should not be
taunt,
rather,
malleable and warm,
like bread,
fresh from the oven.

Skin should have
the odor of wet roses
and lastly,
I should think,
edible.

60

Don't feel the need to entertain
me during my short stay.
A pencil and a blank piece of
paper will keep me well occupied.

Do not organize a search,
if I'm not found in my room,
I will be having a wonderful time
where ever I happen to be.
I will be all right, this is
way I spend my days normally,
and would have changed by
now, if it were within me.

I will take on depression,
but I will not harm myself,
for I would have done so previously
in far worse times than these.

Simply be my best witness
as I will witness for you,
the forging of our lives
and the days of our time.

61
Find a length of rope,
a twelve strand hemp
of unimpeachable integrity
fourteen foot of length, or better.

Make an elongated loop, with
one end, like the Egyptian ankh
the diameter along the short axis
being that of an old iron skillet.

Twist the shorter of the ends
around the base of the loop,
coiling like a strand of DNA
for a foot, and secure.

The loop should adjust
to accommodate greater
and lesser circumferences,
though, with no small effort.

Grandfather's old step ladder
stands behind the basin, by the
back door. With the ladder and rope
take yourself to the garage.

Throw the loop over the four
by four beam that runs
east to west across the
center of the open ceiling.

Leave about four foot
of drop from the beam,
throw it over again,
and once more.

You will need to fall
about two feet;
climb
the ladder to the step
to the point where
there is adequate distance between
yourself and the floor.

The rope goes around the
neck, not under the chin.
Tighten the knot until you
get a little wheeze in your breath.

I should think you could
manipulate a pair of handcuffs
behind your back.
Kick the ladder.

Thirty-two feet per second per second
a body accelerates to
the center of the earth.
The beam will hold.
The rope will hold.
Your vertebrae will not.

Do the right thing.

Save me the trouble.

62
Pray to the rain
for rain

Falling cold, restless
relentless
milk chocolate flows

subducting asphalt,
erasing the hillsides'
landscape architecture

frozen from life
into a Cimmerian night,
rolling lightning
remote thunder
travelers swept away
to icy ends.

dream of caves
comfort
mourning cellos living in white.

63

I rise with the desire
to save the children.
To line their life
with blankets of security.
To feel their breath,
new and unfiltered
turn to screams and
yelps of exuberance.
To sustain that state
of divine impatience,
to run them head long
down the rocky, desert
canyons of their infant souls,
emerging without scraping
a brow, just this side
of invincible, . . . very nearly.

And I take pause
of the elders, of myself.

Who can save?
Am I to save
what I have lost.
Like a practiced gesture;
the elders and I have foregone
true meaning.

Gross, misshapen, mutated
children of the past.
I smoke, swear, drink and lie,
standing with the scarecrow men
in the rye,
the children running by.

64
I am not a lender
of my things.
It is known I am
not a lender of my things.

I attach,
over times
meanings and symbols
emotions and remembrances
to the collection
that I see as a
reflection of my times.

I would fret
over the loan of a
book, well known to me,
whose pages have become
dog-eared, its sentences
underlined, its life assaulted.

I make things mine
only. . .
Their aging is mine.
Their loss is a loss
in me.
their presence is a warm
familiarity.

I am not a lender
of my things.
It is known I am
not a lender of my things.

65

Oh, aye. . .
there's a lovely a site
as is seen on gawd's earth.

The gray, black, blue, and
white sky churning
like a troubled sea.
The peaks draped in
a pure white, now changing
to pink in the failing sun.

Foothills are freckled with
patches of snow blown
from icy ebony clouds.

Fruit and leaves of
the grapevine, drenched
and glistening mysteriously.

I walk with nature
in the storm to be frozen.
thrown about, washed, and renewed.

66
A special breed of freedom
is allowed to the man
who never punches a clock
for his keep.

And those of us who have
that golden independence, feast
as gluttons, stretched and
swelled, finding meaning only
while consuming, torturing, and
smelting their withering souls.

And those of us, staring
wide-eyed at their inventions,
make the sign of the cross,
hope and pray for the day
our lives have been spent.
The price of freedom,
paid.
67
For Stacey ran
through me like
a freight train,
destination unknown.

We took turns
as prey and predator,
devouring and being
eaten, digesting and
retching.

In that short while.
our defenses held high.
Honesty impaled.
I blundered into duty,
the social conventions of
the lower class.

I could have known better
than to try to hide.
She's gone and she's here,
with the others,
pulling the rope,
drowning me.

68
Deaf and dumb,
liquid tarantulas scale
into the empty dungeons
of my heart with
the inventions of the
herdsman levering the
vestibule upon a grave
site, for the seekers and
the followers and the masses
treating themselves with the
masks of each other,
pulverizing craniums in a
discharge of the energy
of life.

Satan's own.
Our brothers of the
immediate family's incestral
relationship.

Bolting from the blue.

Killing.

69
The crow
Blackest of all birds
All claw and beak

Stolen, sunken eyes
Unkind hurried harried,
despotic petty loud
arrogant obtuse obscene

Screeching on the wing
like a wounded angel
from hell.

Heartless devouring sleepless
unforgiving demonic scavenger

The crow eats razor blades for breakfast and smiles.

70
I don't want to hear your voice.
I won't touch the letters you have written.
Show me,
in time and space,
What you have done.

I look for something that has happened.
Taken place.
Occurred in such a fashion that
a difference, having risen to the senses,
shows clearly,
willful progress has been attained.

Our problems reside not in the ether
or rhetoric,
but in wood and earth,
and therein: the solutions.


Save your breath for expiration.


71
I took the long road to Corpus Christi
along the smokey, black trails of Texas
a single white dash for every moment of my life
lying with its back against the melting tar.
Immovable, irreplaceable moments of the past
rolling past and suffering, significant and eroding.

I began to feel like a bandit of time on
the long road to Corpus Christi following the
pavement like a blind man in his dreams,
a sense of being locked in a box each time, when,
at the crest of the road, viewing the desert sameness
of immediate past and immediate future,
no east or west,
only a north-south arrow of time sliding toward sunset.

The Great Sameness rose to completeness
about the time I left the long road to Corpus Christi.
There I found the body, warmth, and sand,
alike any other, tiding and pooling against
the familiar logo resorts and fading neon signs
calling for me to take of the body,
that I may squish time.

72
Come walk with me,
my dear,
after the sun has lost,
and the clouds hang
as gray drapery from the sky.

Though I am short sleeved
the air is cool
the wind is biting
the smell of rain wanders
copiously through the foothills.

Roll your fingers between mine
my dear,
for these are the last days
of silence and deep rest,
of thunder, hot chocolate and snow.

Hold me from the ten o'clock
sunsets, the noise and confusion of
summer days. Hold me and stay
with me in the shadows of this
season while I pray for November.

73

Living in a world
of heroes and villains,
black and white,
depending of course,
on which eyes are being used.

As the oppressors become the
oppressed become the oppressors,
so the heroes and villains march
through perception and time exchanging
the colors of vanquished
and victor.

For those caught in the cross fire
of segregated beliefs,
the price of admission to dogma
is a pair of blinders
to the hues of truth.

74
Squeezed between the elements
of the diamond vise.

Brought to pressures exceeding those
commonly known on this planet.

My discontent was fused and formed
from the matter of my expectations.

Like life in the desert, it
clings harshly and relentlessly,
filling its requirements from the
barren sea of earth.
Like a parasite on the
carcass of a wildebeest
in the desert
persisting
on the dying
'til termination.

75

The moon called to me
from over the hills and extended an
invitation to be in its company
at the last hours
of this summer evening.
I met the moon in a place
with a view
to the west where it
hung as a sliver of light
and a sphere of ebony over
sunset peak.

In my own darkness
I studied the crescent disk
falling into the hills
and before they touched
I leaned back and howled
and barked at the moon.

I leaned back and howled and
barked at the moon and in a
voice long misplaced I drove
the moon behind the hills until
the blackened disk dissolved
into the night sea.

And I howled and barked
at the moon.
76
A Cadillac,
blue and steel
rolled securely over asphalt
as dark as pitch
with chrome siding and a
silver license plate holder engraved,
and I quote:


The American Dream.

Who's Dream?
What Dream?
Who is the shadow person
whose sleep is filled with
visions from Detroit,
born of smelters,
breathing gasoline and oxygen,
exhaling carbon and monoxide.

This American dreamer
is nature's nightmare

77
Studies of Carol
define my message of grief
and atonement.

Volumes of negatives, color
seperated by my divine
inventions and use of light.

Hanging in the halls and corridors
of unknown solicitors of my craft,
my weakness.

The endless parade of proofs
and exposures: bracketed,
unbracketed, and experimental, find
for the prosecution the evidence
of the obsession
of what I thought
Carol
could be.

78
On this,
the seventh day of
the seventh days before
and aft,
I join in the celebration
of the liquid people.

I join with the slow motion people,
well heeled, well dressed, ill mannered,
becoming liquid in their eyes
and their smiles, honestly
dividing us among the pretext
and the style.

Movements from the dream
sequence of a popular movie.
Splashes of light, gestures in the
darkness. Surrounded by the sound
repeating like the heartbeat
of a great machine.

I slid past a mirrored tile to see
myself,
an image of myself,
not yet liquid.
Never quite as liquid.

79
Say . . .
come ere
i see you got that thing
that thing i need
give it to me
right here
right now
chile
leave the light
i aint hidin
im slidin
to get that thing
you got
lend it ere
i aint been a fool in so long
i caint remember how it tastes

give me that thing
i see you got it
gimme that thing i need

80
I couldn't walk through this land
without a knife,
steel and ivory, wooden brass.

The fallen citizens,
statues in a courtyard,
concrete with wrought iron stays,
sharp edged from battle,
whittled and disfigured like
a heart attack, and a heart
dying.

I couldn't make it through this life
without a knife.
I understand softness,
but I don't know how you
stay that way with
the cement pavement under foot,
the asphalt under grass,
and the shattered sleeplessness.

Roses fail.
Daughters fail.
How do you stay so soft.

81
Last evening.
Late last evening.

tired, torn, intoxicated
misanthropic, excavated

I allowed myself to slip
through my fingers
like money at a carnival,
the joy of living,
or the sudden silence at twilight.

I let loose of myself to slide from
my grasp, drifting into unsecurity.
Falling
not hard, not far, not fast.
Just a little.
Just enough that waking
found me on my knees scrambling
to restore order from the fragments.

Over the edge
of the waterfall.
Chasing the reflection
of my likeness
for a time.
82

I had taken the long road
to Corpus Christi
and found the body . .
wanting.
Texas is stranger than
the undiscovered.
I found my destiny dissolving with the grains
of sand drawn
into the Gulf.

The losses I incurred were without
tragedy,
motions void of reference:
points on the grid to which I am attached.

I placed my arms outstretched
left foot over the right
head slightly bowed.
And no one with enough guts to pound the nails
And no one with the destiny to pound the nails.

I turned to the outskirts of Corpus Christi
past the halogens, tungstens, and sodium vapors
into the arboreal abstinence that follows
in the wake of a desert summer sunset.

I felt the calls and cries of the desert humans:
their machines, unknowingly, unconsciously,
torturing the wilderness as omniscient invaders from
a race of creatures unaligned with introspection.

I made a wish for a dream
whole and pure.
Solace for a sentient tribe standing on the lea
watching longer boats slipping into the bay.

83
Kill them

Kill the niggers
Kill the niggers

Lose them

Off the pigs
Off the pigs

Find the slayer

That's what the bullets are for
That's what the bullets are for

Rapture the sons of bitches

Holy, holy, holy slaughter
Holy, holy, holy slaughter

Fuck ‘em all to death

Kikes, pimps WASPS, wops, wetbacks
Sluts, thieves, gang-bangers, nerds
Faggots, camel jockeys, white patties
Oreo cookies, punks, gooks
Dikes, debutantes, priests, electric cowboys

Stop standing around waiting for a turn
into the mixer

Chop puree blend liquefy

melt this pot
mother Fucker

84
nothing is lost until a look

Behind in time

An organic machine lying in a
ditch on the side of the road oozing
essence into a flood control channel

I need to visit the horror
and get a taste without
paying the tab.
“ Better him than me”
(walking away)

When I turn around and look,
it is I.
the horror is mine.

The horror is,
is that I can only meet
you in that time behind.
I can only have with you
hold you, fly, succumb and dance
In that time behind.

The loss is now
in your heart, an undelivered promise.
I was your catalyst
black to your white.

I lost you in the behind time.
You stayed away in the now.

85

I would like to be a string
on a viola
in Tchaikovsky's Serenade.

To be the vibration
slowly rising from sound
to eloquence
in Borodin’s nocturne.

And I am
Within

Riding on discrete packets of air
my voice is jettisoned from silence
is heard
is felt
is resonant in love
is again silent.

The map is drawn
but it is my treasure
here, unfound,
but for a note
born from silence.

86
If you could fall upon
prey
as you fell upon my words
you would never want for food.

What sort of words are these
which fell languidly in conversation
unpaused, unfeeling, un regretted, until
you skewered them where they lay.

I can only be unrepentant, unforgiven,
under the guise of costume
adorned, unaware,
voices stolen from meeting.

You were the one, who,
told me to take no care of
what was spoken when speaking.
it is only the motion of air.

I recall:
by firelight, with frost in hand
the coals glowed and did not heat,
the flames leapt without light...

You have awoken?
Now?
Have you?
Have you.

87

In the light of the gray dawn
spread a visage of angularity: trodden, sodden.
in the light of age, and the light of first light
reddened shadows cast by holy consciousness.
in the coming light, framed in yellow, forgotten, written,
lost again, folding within itself, a science of patterns.

The new day is the same light struck moments ago
formed by new thought in the old ways lost, tossed.
give up the new day, the old, the waveform illumination
fermenting from a sad death fostered of a
mineral moment, stopped this way yesterday with
an unknown relation and no distinction crossing from me to you.

Take them all, scuttle into the shoals in wait for
moments rising with tidal regularity unsought, unfelt.
take the landscapes with the gray sullen sunlight.
There is nothing there, I could show you the no things
stealing to vanishing points of contention, shooting stars
witnessed by the blind, face down in the errors of their ways.

88

If I could but dream
without knowing of a waking state

I would long to kill
the sleep and hold dear the quiescent earth, air, and sky.

And yet I awake
dreaming what daylight reduces to a loss:
the visions of chromium blue and liquid greens dissolved.
T ears in rain

I dream, in dreams the colors
sights, smells, and sounds,
I feel, in genuine feelings, where
no lantern is ever lit.

Nothing dreamt is whole,
but fragments, parts, unfold the feeling
, the meaning, the dream in light.
Lost is neither.
Home is neither.

I can feel the need in me.

89

Perhaps a creature consummated
in the oceanic depths, brought forth
a legacy from ancient lines uncrossed
in modern times.

Formed of pressures unrelated,
emotions that crossed a dark desert sky.
seen, yet unfelt, unfolded,
examined by an unaided eye.

Perhaps a wish was consummated
in the black, ancient, cold, depths.
migrating with the strength of hope
to the light.

Uncold, exhibited, natured, revered,
stared upon, spat upon, confided, remorsed,
sullied, certained, dented, ingested
surmised, despoked, trodden, and defiled.

Perhaps one of us is strange,
a liar, thief, driven by destiny
to be a whore among men-whores,
loving the love of the black-eyed
heroines dancing macabre in red and blue
strobes, screaming against loneliness, despair.

Perhaps one of us is strange
Perhaps I thought we were strange together
Perhaps I wish it so.

90

In the darkness between you
and me
I reached out into a void
to me

with a certain quantity to you

Though I stood on the side of
the unknown where expectations I held
rose and fell like jazz themes
unattended, where my emotions roiled
and boiled: a modern child
in a toy store unattended.

I do well in the light of knowing.
I do look, I will see those things hidden
to me by the dark language of
societal convention. Unwritten yet inherent
ruler and regulator of feelings:
feelings of an absolutely human nature.

Upon withdrawal of my hand from
your black heart:
scarred, festering, purulent,
swollen, fractured, pummeled,
I am again without understanding,

yet...

burned

91

Sold by the bundle
Roses to the dependent
Candy canes to the diabetic
Love to the rapist
Guns for the children
Dogma for the mindless
History for the misanthropic
Deforestation for the masses
Christ for the underlings
Christ for the despots
Children to the poor
Sex to the enslaved
Pain for the unchosen
Hate to the unloved
Certainty for the moronic
Money for us all
Money for us all

a promise kept to ourselves
a candle crafted and unlit

92

Jimi’s dead.
the dawn on the farm
was not a new day
but a prelude to darkness.

it's true
the thing about things
arising from no things
its the way

Holding cannot return
return cannot stay

It still hurts
when it's gone
when he's gone
without return
without voice
spoken to us all
some who listened
and felt in communion
echoing for years.

Then faded

Then succumbed