love

anxiety
mad heart pound
flutter
dovelike,
climaxing
steady downhill
electricity in your hands
reality check
odd solid in your
sternum,
swallowed words up the
back of your throat
into sinuses
out through the eye




shes beautiful.

barber shop

there is a man outside
of the
barber shop,
smoking.
the billboard on
santa monica boulevard
says
two million
seven hundred sixty three thousand
nine hundred and forty
two
people died this year
because of
smoking.
so the man will die,
the barber will die,
the scissors will die,
the swirling sign will die,
the red and blue will die,
the street will die.
the tobacco companies and
their employees are not to blame
working is not a crime
but deliberately wasting your life
amongst so many deliberately
wasted lives
is.

to cheat at poker

say, say,
say, say,
say, say.

fails, again

aesthetic is
a odd word
qbb look at.
harmonic is
a odd word
to listen at.
experiment
fails, badly

two

there are two types
of women
in this world.
the ones that won't
sleep with you
(who you never need
to call back)
and
the ones that will
sleep with you
(who you never need
to call back)

if you can accomplish this,
you are a better man than I.

the one

there you are
stolen from me
again
just out of my reach
again
I would have loved you anytime
better than those dicks
I'm a bad loser
I don't lose
ever.
if you could have been
the girl I told
"I'm sorry for breaking your heart"
who ran out into the street
sobbing
or the one I saw
behind her boyfriend's back
then dumped her
for you
you never knew that
he didn't either
that I don't lose
but you beat me
the one girl in the
world
that didn't know
I cared.

thief

you rob me blind
never knew
I cared
exqusitely
I gave you the world
would have
at least
he's better
well you think he is
tersely cogent
of my heart
still friendly
that's good enough
I guess

Deep
Hollow
Mad
Cosmic
Rattling


Black.

pothole view

I look out onto my world
the crooked heroes
the con men straight as
an arrow
the dickensian urchins
with their tattoos
and their posh boy
style and
odd hairstyles
ah
c'est la vie.

thank you

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you.

when I was a young boy
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.

I trusted no man
and especially no woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
bothered, prodded,
in and out of fights,
in and out of my mind.
girls were something
to screw and rail
at, I had no male
friends,
I changed cliques and
cities, I hated holidays,
babies, history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbage men,
english accents, spain,
france, italy ,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angered me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace and happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak,
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
girls-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't different
from the others,
I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
grievances,
the boys I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage, the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
empty,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in foreign rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less I needed
the better I
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
I could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenuous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re-formulated
I don't remember when,
date, time, all
that
but the change
occurred.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
I no longer had to
prove that I was a
man,
I didn’t have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffee cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on the dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses.
he says, "I am going
to have to let you go"

"it's all right" I tell
him.
he must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children,
expenses, most probably
a girlfriend.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporarily, anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
disillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels, breasts,
singing, the works.

(there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems just for
the sake of itself-
this is a
shield and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat
again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
I didn’t fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
I luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
only average,
I now liked what
I saw, almost
handsome, yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
but not too bad,
not the face
of a rockstar
butthe face of
a boy
with a heart,
a boy you
showed could
have a heart.

and finally I discovered
real feelings of
others,
unheralded,
like lately,
like this evening,
as we were leaving
for the movie,
I saw you sitting,
just the
shape of
your head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the
dead and the dying,
the pyramids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there on the
street, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the tote board waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of your head,
so still,
I ached for your life,
just being there
sitting with your friend
at dinner.

I wanted to kiss you
on the
forehead,
take your hand,
go out of that booth,
go outside,
go into my marvelous
car,
fix the seatbelt,
back out of the
lot,
feeling warm from
my fingertips
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I’d enter the world
once more,
drive down the
road
past the restaurants
full and empty
of
people,
I’d see a policeman,
honk,
and watch him wave
back at
me.

the mountain

about five years ago
you started down a path
up a dark, gloomy mountain
searching, struggling to reach your destination.
you stopped along the way
and each time
your desire abandoned you,
you shook it off as
merely a characteristic bump in the road.

recently, the road has become different,
more complex
more problematic
more elusive.
you can see the end
almost taste it
but it is further than you estimated;
you take more stops
blinded by what is right in front of you.

looking for any shortcut,
you are concerned you will never complete the
dream.
unlike before, you cast off all inhibitions
and charge forward towards
the paramount
roaring,
roaring,
roaring.

once you finally reach the summit
of the mountain
scaling rocky peak after
rocky peak
rolling hills of grass are on the other side
and you see me,
arms outstretched
as a carpet of flowers
unfolds at your feet.

a day at the beach

one day you yelled loudly at your mother
we wanted to collect those shells on the beach
with your puppy
she wanted you to
come home, it was getting dark
“no!” you screamed, “I’d rather die!”
and threw yourself into the water, face down
floating.
your father fished you out of the foamy
darkness, all wet and sandy
and loud and threw you into the car
and your mother smiled
the saddest smile I have ever seen.

today, I went to see you for the final time
a week after your brother discovered you with a
heart attack.
your grandfather is crying in the second row
wearing a three piece black suit with
a red flower in his pocket
while your mother smiles.