Happy Belated April Fool's Day

2005-05-11T18:56:00.000-07:00

9/16/04
however the get to going is laid out
a butter day is always on the other side
some behind shoulder ghost smirks
as you tumble into scented hallways
and then someone takes your hand
for the first time in forever
and suddenly, you are on the other side.
1/15/05
you can take the side street ice way
down into warm jungles of freeway sweet talk,
you can melt the zero day
into a boiling pulling ocean,
the scrappy face of what time has taken
might drag bottoms
like sandy abandon
til sunlight seems like your last dream
a begging hungry child,
but you will never swim
alone again.

we’re down riding the city
taking cold breathes of curb side junk
waking all the regulars
and screwing up the night.

there’s the tiny boat out far
watching with a blind little face
and with a cold water bed he waves
autistic bobbing in one place.

2004-12-19T19:12:00.000-08:00

for got ten
there’s a part of my shoe that you will never know
and while a tomato paste stain lingers
hard on kitchen door cabinet
nearly belching with canned food
i hope to eat someday
i will remain the last step of counter leans
on an empty walking day.
before there was the eating noise of sunlight
i was dripping into an everything
that allowed for such bad behavior
and lost
i would hit back.

ask your darts
to a truthful aim
unwatering eyes
in the pouring rain
when riding through storms
legs under tables
arms air guitaring
Cruel To Be Kind
my corn hair ideas
drip off your hands
like bay ducks
and sweet and sour pink sauce
i am not getting all of this
or maybe the bulls eye
has already been dotted
smack dab
wham bam
i am all in the cake frosting
without an oven mitt
for protection
is it time?

the back street is slipping
toward black ice brakers
and everytime we swerve, i gasp.
we arrive
shaking in our shirts

there’s a wide grin
hiding under an eye watering stream
going through changes
and everytime the tide shifts
the moon blinks.
something holds the seasons.
something always breaks away.
it‘s when we’re dealing with the dust,
swirling after the kill,
that we stumble around
dealing with the fog.

I got up this morning
and drove into garlands of rain
there was a road
that ate it’s own tail
and at one point
i talked to peter jennings.
my dodge was a rare beast
and sang old christmas songs
from the backseat.
we tooled beside the lake
and took that sad old grey
all the way home.

2004-11-26T13:38:00.000-08:00

digging for someone else's post it note
in a foggy birdless parking lot
like there was no crazy
on the other side...

there was a time
when the rain used to give me clues
and the day never carried gloves
it used to be very warm
you could never see anything
we were all running around
busting into eachother
then gradually everything slowed up
and dried away.

2004-06-19T19:44:00.001-07:00

Here are some people's thoughts on Charles Bukowski's Love Is A Dog From Hell:

Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 > Customer Review #3:
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Ordinary and Obvious

I heard Bukowski on a late night community radio show complaining about "a whore who took my poems". Thats how I was introduced to him. Bukowski was overly ordinary, in my opinion, and extremely obivous. From what I heard about him from an ex-hippy co-worker, he deprived himself of typical white suburbia lifestyle -either circumstancially or just because he was most lazy person on this earth to achieve any material goals. In this collection, he goes on and on about the women he had sex with, women he would like to have sex with and his fetishes with utmost honesty. That is admirable. He himself wasnt. He wrote sometimes because his publisher pushed him to do so. In some poems, he admits to it. He was a dirty old man, starred at "upskirts...legs and strawberry lipsticks" of 13 year old school girls waiting at bus-stop. He wrote a poem about it neverthless. He wanted to commit suicide. We read about it too.
And, almost 9 out of 10 times, it never fails -he is sipping some kind of brew, his gastrointestinal problems followed by the heavy drinking, bitching about some random woman, listening to classical music and pondering why he is writing...bunch of drivel. But, its great! Bukowski enunciates the lonesome,decapitated and boring side of humanity. Its worth a read. I only wish there were more "poetry" such as this.

Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 > Customer Review #1:
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Buks soul on paper

So many writers have mired themselves in a cloud of smoke, sex and booze to try and find some oasis of writing clarity or purety of the human experience. Some have been succesful - many have not. The image of the weathered writer smoking, hunched over his typewriter is as old as anything. It is hard to not be cliche when you attack writing-and life-from this angle. "Love is A Dog..." has a refreshing clarity through the haze of smoke and self-loathing that surrounds a good deal of Bukowskis work. He has such a gift for creating and conveying images that at times, the quality of his prose may wane - but his poetry soars. Using less words for more impact, as well as the brevity and abruptness of some poems only serve to make them hit home harder. Notable mentions: "One for the Shoeshine Man," "How to Be A Great Writer" and "Cold Plums." This is a certain brand of poetry which Im sure wont be liked by all - but damned worth giving a chance.

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Love Is a Dog from Hell: Poems, 1974-1977 > Customer Review #2:
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BUKOWSKI--A BRILLIANT BARFLY

As the author of current mystery novel that features a Southern California private eye who is also a small-press poet, I am a great admirer of Charles Bukowski and his work. LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL is my favorite Bukowski collection, and it provides the reader with a comprehensive selection of this great contemporary poets work. Bukowskis work has had a strong influence on my own poetry as well as on the poetry of my fictional private cop. Upon his death, I wrote tribute poem honoring this admirable writer, and it quickly found publication. I would recommend LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL to any reader who wants to become familiar with Charles Bukowskis lifes work.

2004-05-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

you gotta keep your eyes on the grapple locks

tangle doubt with open space
the trigger bouts of juniper
climb morning glories
with warm melting wings
keep out your turning masses
but wave in the free.

you glass up the worrying tree
and free split into thin air
the old topple back is back
and your front yard
is a freakin’ mess.

from the swanky depths
of what used to be a very feathery drown
hands reach skyward
and together manage with twisting branches
to pull off the night

going by knuckle scraping accuracy this time
like taking out the dog
you’ll see me in the alley next time
saying shit about no god.

4/11/04
gave away the jump key
for a quick ride by the river

wavin’ at the trees on the other side
the whole damn time

and somehow i’ve lost my voice
cold rickety as it was

and as you drive much faster
the wider the water gets

i sit in the back seat window
staring at the water

2004-04-02T19:47:00.000-08:00

Fuck, beer me you devil

Books try
to tell the story
about what happens
here on earth
but none come close
to the actual chaos
they can
never exactly draw
the everything shift
and we read
to escape it
trade you this
for that.

3/6/04
tackle me away

tough
into the dirt
we go sailing
someone’s gonna get hurt.
oh shit
let’s admit
that everyone is gonna get hurt
and in between
the bewilderment
and beside
the gunny sack of guilt
will be our magic trick
turning the key in the lock

4/2/04
brittle frozen finger bites

hanging so close to the tiny pieces of gravel
laying still as mimes
on the scummy rug
your feet kick in their sleep
just like they kick at the table
i could have blood
dripping from my mouth
pouring from my eyes
and you’d still kick my legs
and i’d still look the same.

you gotta keep your eyes on the grapple locks

tangle doubt with open space
the trigger bouts of juniper
climb morning glories
with warm melting wings
keep out your turning masses
but wave in the free.

2004-02-13T20:31:00.000-08:00

forget that stars blink
forget the way some people lower the tip
of their right eyebrow
when you say a little too long
and look away
everyone is tied to a burning sky
just like you.

2004-02-03T17:51:00.000-08:00

ginger mints
with five finger prints
carry evidence
of a candy pinch

star-nosed moles
complete their goals
in star-shaped holes
just to save their souls

~ ~ ~

I’m not adverse to submission
though I feel I am being forced to be.

~ ~ ~

Take all zeros pulling together and add water, as nothing and as needed as space, drop smokey bubbles and away you float...
Back in the fathom time of belief, we were all nearly there, you saw an antivision and attempted the spread. Some rolled some turned, ran, one coughed but then as the night approached again and your dreams taught you began to feel blank. Away the necessity, away the wetness of change you changed as you swallowed. And yes, you remember, some followed.

2003-12-26T19:13:00.000-08:00

you’re sitting like a bowl of cold soup in the sink
the story
your pajamas would tell
if their mouths
were not stuffed with the hip corny fat
of your last
sink-standing meal,
seeps red dreams
all over your aura
and there‘s only so much
to go around
so you rip a few seams
and pull at your P.J.’s
and soon enough
there’s more room
and the cool ketchup redness
finally begins to chill.

rapid coal-breaking foot chops

The Space
under a wobbley kitchen table
begins a salty glow
not unlike that time
when the water in the ocean
began talking about fish
and just as soon as you began to decipher
went all into sandy gibberish again...
this buttered flame was not to be mistaken
for green nonsense
no, this was a rare growth
teething and pounding under a table
like filling
an otherwise tepid room
with the surprised fist of invention.

all that’s really needed sometimes
Stepping into completely different waters
walking about, that sacred godness
of finding a new voice.

napping in dusty shafts of sunlight

the heat is always coming on
in this old room
it lasts as long
as grass blades
in the spring
under a sweating man’s mower
it seeps out of the attic’s head
the attic
the king of all rooms
that keeps a dead starling
at the helm of it‘s peak
to capture the bird songs
as they serenade the empire
the attic lays with a yellow and brown blanket
made by someone’s aunt mary
out of plastic yarn
the attic
custodian of all the morning dreams
of everything you never knew
you wanted to never know
il bastardo
who lords himself over you breezily,
letting all the heat out.

2003-12-15T18:29:00.000-08:00

who is on my side tonight?

could it be the tripping yellow flying feeling
when the last of a loved one falls asleep
could it mash your fingers into a better tap tap trapping?
someday the backyard will bleed with madness
and all the time you’ve spent dying
will bring you the tasty swallowings of time
spent outside alone and cold
but at the least together
with a sky-lined tree
and the end
of a day-filled spell

the dry curtain of an empty window

was hoping for confetti holidays
but turned green and cheap instead
like someone on their last heated drag
but still bent on going home
always bent on the going home
a soft lily in the snow
too tired to realize the freeze
too blind for the empty window.

there’s that vibrating crash

where every song you ever loved
goes straight into a trapped ocean car
with gasping panic of all of a split second

you sing like you’ll never
sing again
but you will
we all do.

not going down the accident road again
no you can’t fool me
those bogus signs

this bloody pattern
of sinking and swan singing
will surely drown me
for good.

waiting for you outside

for ever the begging flies
and the side yard of cautious love
streaming down iced garbage cans
sliding out into hallways coughing
tearing down mean dog beaters
and bringing you
to a tear on my cheek.

until they are satisfied

take all the flaming heroes
with dry leaves for hands
and closed burning eyes
to the end of my street

join their beds of autumn
with old twist ties
and drag them through the snow covered gravel
where they can suffer with the worms

and they will suffocate
on the stupidity and arrogance
of the all the rest of us
until they are satisfied.

2003-11-18T19:29:00.000-08:00

it all boils down

it all boils down
to a slimy bottomed out parking lot
eventually
where grease stained eyes
look into the escaping trees
of a sky that never goes mad
and dead dancing leaves
kiss each other’s boredom
as if touching
would bring them back to green.

2003-11-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

my hands like to fall across faces fast
and wave away meanness
and dirty smudges
that the neighborhood leaves
my hand faces my burnt head sometimes
and bird wings its quantum judgement day
all over my little blind spots.

Shake Away
It’s ok if there are rips in the curtain
and that if when the cat stares
you are never the same thing
that he thinks he sees.
It’s ok when ears ring red
with bad memories of burns
of sad screaming songs
all lit on fire.
There’s someone - somewhere -
who will close their eyes
and open your windows,
and cats that rip curtains
can be swayed away
with a quick shake of the food box
so shake away.

leaving tiny leaves alone
like passing by a hanging doll
and you are looking at me
like I am the scarecrow
of your long lost picnic game
deep hiding in november’s screamy wind
we curry to a wet grass place
where the dark scary night
is left to call
and i swear if i am still alive
I have never been here
before

2003-10-22T17:29:00.000-07:00

the first question

if having salt headed creepers
out way past one
and giving out mean orders
makes for a fun clown-filled evening
then where on earth
are the salt headed creepers?

the next three

in a cold stoned work room
of daft television and dirty rugs
is there the hot tea feeling of pulsing purpose?
do you stack photos?
does the night refuse to sleep?

Friends

There once was a little girl
who laughed behind her hands
and sat alone
on the floor in the attic
like there was a real mystery there
like the moon actually slept there
or something
the girl went to the drug store
and bought a large amount of candy
mary janes and laffy taffy
charleston chews and milk duds
too much
for one little girl
and when she returned to her attic
and sat on the floor
she was struck by the sound the wind made
on the roof so close by
and forgot all about her bag of candy
until the wind ceased to blow
and then she ate all her milk duds
and later threw them up in the slanted corner.
There is nothing like distraction.

2003-09-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

below a shadow king’s infinity box

where sneaking black and white photos
of anonymous dead relatives
boister slowly past fences
and very light pink rose bushes
there some cracking break
of a morning’s cup
swallows yesterday’s blame
and today
in sweet surrending fashion
today
takes the cake.

2003-07-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

5/23/02
Today I was driving through the plaza parking lot and a guy dressed in a bee costume was coming out of a restaurant, no lie, and as soon as he saw me he waved like we knew eachother. I waved back with an enormous smile on my face.

Say Never
breaking into what once could have been
a nice little side porch cot nap
and messin the whole trip up
with one mistaken laugh
you might go outside to take pictures
or just lay in the white stone weed driveway
pissed
listening to the neighbors’ radio
you might make eggs
in the morning.

7/11/03
Cottage
stuffed questions of sitting stillness
in quiet white hankys of blowing ocean curtains

you ask how to stay in the crooks of the historic bed sheets
how to remain a fat mouse forever.

1/26/03
Fence with little purpose
Bigger than crawling under rugs with fat bells...

The world walks silent on ocean sneakers,
reaches with grey cloud hands

In the absence of things that matter
Together like sharp sticks

She speaks easy and cool, eyes finding meaning
dying treetops

Write your name in the book boldly for no man but yourself.

-Steve, Herman, Sara

7/22/03
Just Stay
Forget that one battered coat is like giving in.
Whatever knifing-knuckled winter drives you’ve been through
you’ll be through at least one more
and it really does dance better
over smoke.

2003-07-21T19:46:00.000-07:00

Time Wounds
Jim Trappel sat quietly in his white plastic chair on his well-worn porch drinking his McGuthy’s Blended Scotch. McGuthy’s was good because it didn’t cost too much and it didn’t taste so bad. He savored maybe three variations of McGuthy’s drinks. Sometimes he mixed them with milk, sometimes they went hot with sugar, and tonight they were straight up. He had spent the day dogging the neighborhood side streets looking savagedly intent upon hot broken sidewalks and crazy mean tires going by and by now he felt the summery fog of a day spent kicking. He sat in his wet plastic chair on the porch that only had room for him and the wet chair: they stacked up well, one on top of the other. He on top.

It was the black and white hour to him but in France it was known as the Blue Hour, when the day drifts off and starts dreaming about the night. He felt alright sitting there even though his pants were damp from the chair at least he wasn’t cold. Evening felt like it might have a soul for once and that coupled with the McGuthy’s gave him a quiet, satisfying hum. Some kids started to fight a couple houses down and he listened to them as they fired each other up. Everything smelled like cat piss. It was early winter or what most people preferred to called Fall, but he liked “Early Winter.” To him there was Summer and there was Winter. Fall was the Summer turning to Winter and the opposite was Spring. It made him mad how flowered up things had to be.

His radio was on but was on it‘s own sucking binge tonight. It kept playing his favorite songs but none gave him his usual magic feeling and it pissed him off. It was starting to become some kinda pattern. He’d feel flat and then fear, flat then fear: flat fear. There was an article in the newspaper about a week ago that he’d read. Talked about how a lot of Americans were feeling...flat...after the terrorism and the stock scandals and the Conspiracy, and the Big Bad Feeling. It interviewed a couple of mid-range people and they said basically they couldn’t get into anything. (That would be fear then flat, he thought). Basically they were depressed, and now he was depressed. Fucking media. He bet himself that Jimmy Carter felt pretty bad too, probably worse. He could just picture those paper-bag eyes and big Southern smile and then he pictured Jimmy lifting a sweaty beer to his funny lips and mirrored the vision with his McGuthy’s. In his mind for just a second he was overlooking a sunlit field of knobby peanuts growing clear as the eye could see. A cruising breeze lifted his hair a bit and then his eyes shifted and the image of Jimmy Carter’s farm became the passing reality of the cracking side street in front of him.

The back of his neck was waiting to be itched and the evening gave a hot baton on to the impatient night.

2003-06-09T07:34:00.000-07:00

1/26/03
Pick trees to burnt wickedness
while picking up bits of worm food...
crack terrible oblivion

1/28/03
And wonder in a wandering way
which winds war
into wicked wicked wintery wrecks

Battering careful necks
with the holding floor
of a troubling flying rug
heavy with skinned shoes
and falling down the stairs

3/23/03
Like there aren't stars
over EVERYONE'S head.

Roman ideals
hold heads bubbling
under silver waters of oil.

as you get older
you might start to think
the wrinkles betray
every evil
you've committed.

It's incredible
the way your eyes shine
through the backrest
of a thousand chair dreams.

6/9/03
Plugging cooperating bugs
into flickering wormholes
like licking an errant drip
of melted ice cream
off the side
of the wrong kind of cone
and having the whole thing
fall asleep in your hand.

2003-05-31T19:56:00.000-07:00

1/23/03
Impossibly smashed for a salty dance
in arm-waving, careening waves of self-serving liberty.

Walking out into a frozen world of stopped songs
dance-tripping in your head.
I've been in the cracked store of hardened gum again
carefully taking my batch of old lemonheads
on up to the wood counter that’s so old it looks like leather
and feels like a heaven full of possibilities.
man at the register says , that it?

2/14/03
With great gasping waves of a churning past
we carry our brilliant heavy trudges
across stretching riverlettes
of one simple awakening
that gleams above all other mornings
for the simple reason that it has yet to break.

4/7/03
Slapping into a closed cobwebbed door
hands open for what other hands may be inside
it’s so dark I have to close my eyes to see
and the whole time
i’m thinking of all the people behind me
in the room now where apple-eyed pirates and dirty pink princesses danced
sight comes through dusty tops of hard won wooden tables
and feet that ground the dirt once again in dance moves
of a hungry worm hardship
and hard won thirst bound lust.
There’s a well-used straw bed in the corner.

Every day that seems to slip on an icy driveway of what’s next
slightly bruises the skin over fattened hips
to mark the beginning of a ride bent on some kind of sick adventure.

4/8/03
A blown apart yard of sick grass lawn scratchings
creeps at night with a bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other
to hide away hope under the last of a hard cold dream of snow
and just to steal away the next sweet smells of spring.

4/22/03
Everytime a white dog whelps
the earth beneath his paws dries
til one day
he gets swallowed
into the cracks with sleepy dives
and the neighbors notice the quiet
but the so-called owners
don’t notice a thing.

5/31/03

helping wet soil find grace
is like quick bantering with huge clouds.

Seems so funny to be driving.
I can feel the clumsy speed of this country
smashing past my bleeding rust,
but I can’t always figure out: why me,
in this time zone?

sand markers raise interesting little snails of questions
and you cry here
when the sun dances off of a rain-colored water
and you dance here
in a tear-filled drenge.
this is not about answers.

2002-12-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

hipster chilly old hands
and tension to the extreme...

There’s nothing to do.
And nowhere to go.
The music does flower -
blossoming now and again
like fragrant bombs
of unregisterable exuberance -
the song dances along drunkenly
building lovely paths of bitter ginger-flavored clouds.
Long term solitude
among silent, fragile giants of wrath
has bitten my legs like fleas
and left me scarred
like an old mirror losing it’s silver.

better to stick like peanut butter to the cobwebbed ceiling
of the inside of yesterday’s pants pockets
like no tomorrow you’ve ever fallen asleep on the porch cot and dreamt of
no not yet
but I suppose you could get lucky.

12/4/02
Like a feather covered in the black oil
of self appointed degradation
I am sinking.
It is not my birthday
and I thought about voodoo
but it seems too fake.
Faith is all that’s ever left. Shit I’ll try voodoo.

12/5/02
Is there a golden time to drive
into pinky fields of mousy hiding?
Where does the night go when you fall into sleep?
When does the past come back to scare you?
I’ll go all night tonight
and forget tomorrow what it was all for.
I am seething in my skin
and berating morning skies filled with sun.
There was a place for this crossed legged moment before I got here
didn’t I sign up for this?
Where’s my fucking contract?!
Everyone’s got it easy til they get here.
Then it’s all This sucks and I’m not gonna make it and all.
You might, Rabbitt, you might.

Leaving the bitter hairless thoughts of a life without magic
for the oh so sweet first seconds of who might you be?
It’s all that’s possible left.

Cough medicine dragging through dreams
like swallowing tomorrow whole
and spitting out today
in great gasps of take me away.
Last sips tell me goodnight
and I wonder if it’s true.

12/06./02
Ocean’s that break their hands on rocky shores
are like me during dead season,
the bloody holidays.

What’s supposed to be that unwavering rug-covered petrified floor
when just outside the grass has frozen to dangerous ice?

I like it when people stick together from high school to cemetary.
They get through all the bullshit
and then they who once were two
are one.
You gotta wonder
if they ever decide to come back here
will they return as one?

You sit on the curb at the edge of the McDonald’s drive-thru parking lot
and wonder what the next triumph will be.

2002-11-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

stirring up cold feet
vacationing ...

There’s a shoe
And here's the snow.
The rustic power-
orange and strange
like fragrant bombs
of a very tall order-
there's a sort of blind marching game
that pulls one along sometimes.
Huge bags of what used to be feathers
among silent, fragile knapsacks of straw
tend to seem much lighter
than the most temptuous of woes.

2002-11-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

Time Wounds

He sat in his chair, where he usually sat when weather allowed, drinking his cheap scotch, McGuthy’s. He had different variations on his drink., sometimes he mixed it with skim milk, sometimes he had it hot, with tea. Tonight he needed it straight up. It was early, that was why. There were many messages on the answering machine, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen to them, because then he would feel obliged to call them back. Hell, if he wanted to talk to someone he would have answered the phone in the first place. There was no one he wanted to talk to. He’d spent half the day under the covers watching movies and now he felt like thinking. He sat in his brown and orange chair on the porch that only had room for him and the chair. It was the blue hour, when the day drifts off and first starts dreaming of the night. He felt really good sitting there, sipping his scotch. The impending evening felt like it might have a soul, which gave him a quiet, satisfying hum.

It was early winter, what most people called Fall, but he preferred Early Winter. Summer and Winter is all that there is. Everything else is just flirting. Still, he did love the transitional seasons. They made him feel alive, and at the same time, thinking about the past a lot. Tonight he didn’t want to think about the past. He wanted to think about other things, but he couldn’t think of what to think of to not think of the past. More scotch. It was easy, the scotch was right there by his chair and he poured it in his plastic cup.

His radio was failing him tonight. He kept getting his favorite songs, but none of them gave him his usual feeling, whatever the feeling was. Often extreme, but hard to nail down. Exuberant melancholy? Heartbreaking wonder? He felt flat. There was an article in the newspaper about a week ago that he’d read. Talked about how a lot of Americans were feeling...flat...after the terrorism and the stock scandals and the big bad feeling. (Subliminal Note to Self: Must Blot Out Every Feeling) . The article interviewed a couple of mid-range people and they said they basically just couldn’t get into anything anymore. Basically they were just depressed, and now he was depressed. Fucking media.

2002-09-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

My Dragon House
10/14/01

Standing in the back of a gas station at four in the morning. I had to find a place to build my dragon house, so that when my dragon finally appeared, he’d have a warm place to sleep and take his meals.

I’d been to a number of perfectly good fields out in the country. They all seemed too pure and full of life. My dragon would quickly tire of this kind of obvious beauty. I took a trip to a book store, a used book store, and thought I might make a little space between Bukowski and Burroughs, surely he’d like that, but the store owner was a dry and smug man with curly gray haired knuckles and a black spot floating on the pale blue of his left iris. THAT certainly wouldn’t do, my dragon might fall for him and eat him up before he’d even laid eyes on me. Plus, dragons like to come and go. A shop that opened and closed at certain times would be much too confining.

I considered giving up my own bed for his prickly iridescent head and sleep on the couch, but chose the back of the gas station instead.

This was a perfect place for a dragon hut. Beauty was well hidden here, and there were stars at night. The homey odor of petrol reminded me of an airport and thus traveling. That was good: settle in and think of travel.

A wide array of life had ensconced itself all around the gas station yard. Strange plants from other planets forced themselves through the pavement cracks, and some kind of poisonous berry bush was reaching through a rusty chain link fence, trying to get to the gas station bathroom, I supposed, those berry’s looked FULL.

A large flaking tank holding some kind of sludge, I imagined, kept guard. We spied each other suspiciously for all of ten minutes before I garnered the courage to tap its metal painted side in polite inquiry. Listening for the answer within, what returned was more of a nod than a yes and with the sleep filled moon over my left shoulder, I knew I’d found my dragon house.

Location and body down, next step was to mark the area and “house” so my spiked baby would know where to go. First and most importantly I scratched my symbol in the paint with my fingernail:
Next, I gathered rough gravel and soon to be sacred tiny stones, and made a pile at the base of the leg of the barrel, closest to the fence corner. This was to be the door through which my dragons dreams would pass and, from there, would travel the world and then the universe and then beyond, to the All. The dirt and oil drippings were perfect fodder to smooth the way of such heavy dreams and ensured the power would remain strong by way of tininess. Tininess was key.

I was in a trance -like state when I put my 35-year-old forehead to the belly of the new dragon house. It was then I attempted communication with my dragon, but there was nothing but an empty feather answer. I was too anxious, acting foolish. From trance I nearly passed to sleep, but an enormous 18 wheeling truck monster broke the spell without seeing me. I thanked the truck’s candor and hid, stretched under the barrel while the driver fed his rig and pissed on the wall of the station. As I lay, I counted to 147 and then asked the starling guide to take some of my hair into its nest. This was to ensure my message of invitation and readiness was on it‘s way. Then I fell asleep.

From under the oil barrel, I dreamt of a pool of lemon juice sunning itself under sage-colored, paper-leaved trees filled with angry blue jays. The lemon juice was filled to the very edge of the green tile lined pool and quite oblivious to the electric sounds of the birds. They were fit to be tied about a cat who lived in a dirty white bucket nearby and who fancied himself to be the king of the pool.

Now, the blue jays knew the juice had no ruler, having tried for centuries to control and use it’s tart essence. The lunatic cat laughed at them as he paraded around and around the pool. He wore a crude crown of Christmas lights, unlit, and carried an umbrella made of a branch from a birch tree and an old garbage can lid. The plug of the Christmas tree lights hung down from his head and he twirled them tauntingly.

All of a sudden, a blanket of snow floated down and covered the lemon juice pool, freezing it solid. The lunatic cat froze, as well, in fear. As the crickets clicked away the minutes, the blue jays fought amongst themselves. Could the snow blanket be a sign that a new king was needed? Was the pool of juice trying to tell them something (like, chill out)? NO! said an elder jay, the sign is that the juice cannot be ruled, just as we have come to understand after years of struggle. We must fluff our feathers and stay close together for warmth. One blue jay thought maybe the cat was a witch and had conjured the snow blanket as a ruse, to force them out. After much deliberation, it was decided that the crazy cat should be killed as he stood frozen in his tracks, lights in mid twirl. An enormous cloud of blue feathers swallowed the cat, as well as some crickets. The snow blanket melted into the pool thus diluting the juice to a messy, overflowing lemonade. Lunatic cat screamed this before he was murdered:

“The road is a bracelet. Brave and blessed is the diamond door. Travel on!!!”

I awoke to a normal city workday morning. People were buying cigarettes and newspapers and gas. I crawled out from under the belly of my dragon house and shook the dust off of my back and out of my hair. The message was clear. Dragon was on his way and had work for me. It was not to be easy and I was destined to be confused for as long as I would be his servant.

I prayed to the morning for a quick demise and walked home.

2002-09-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

8/3/02
somewhere in a car
you might see me
on the side of the road.

grey smoke
waiting for weeds to pull you over
and camp fire 10 PM’s
taking all driving scary away

Had the snake oil cure-all.
been down the train tracks at midnight with a madman,
and I’m still peering down that red hallway
of crack circus jammie walks...
it’s a hard falling giraffe of a path
and there’s got to be some dance to blue kiss beat
this candy strewn aisle.

"But," said the five-footed blurry fairy,
"You’ve got to have something in front of you
at all times,
you’ve got to have something."

8/30/02
Wait for the time when everything is on the head
of a needle again
wait to enjoy toast that someone makes and brings you
Wait for wondering what you might say next
and what you SHOULD say over and over...
Wait for standing in the rain by the sea.

Dribbling into some kind of tomorrow blockbuster drive home
the cars behind you look like they’re really after you this time
you get home feed the cats and take your book outside
looking up you see the trees staring
then they start clamoring like they’re pissed they’re stuck to the ground
you go inside and close the curtains tell the cats to lay low.

OKOKOK I’ll do the carnival green berry dance of a cloud going by in my sleep
I will take my arms out to dry in white cotton back yards
and feel better for the soft bunny of an evening breeze at the end of a lonely summer...
I can mask the dried dusty fruit of something that wants to be bruised
and learn to side smile with the grace of a waking child.

8/31/ 02
In planets of airy wonder
where grasses matted down
cry
on black sheets of dry ice chips...
when do summer blue voices
crack into bitten fingernails
for the porch lounge now?
When does the soiled stare
of a crap shoot sunday
back way off on sunday night?

Never.

2002-07-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

7/2/02
between the white sheet of night after night
and the pithy feeling of kicking off
where are you supposed to go
never?

fault and faulty ways
fruit bats, plastic masks and hands holding hands
a very cold beer on a very hot day
burning blistering breaking
open wounds and salty days
flying down the beach with your eyes closed
dying on the way there
instead of the way back.

7/7/02
Tracking the water fall of the smallest bean
in a lush rain forest...
begging yesterday to cry.
I’ve varnished this carpal tunnel
with the movements of a dancer
the shallow breath of a sleeping baby...
far be it from me to talk about forever.
Given the beaten path of a tired and sun dying road
I’ve decided to fake out onto cots of cheap old tapestry
and shift my bare feet towards the back of a sunset.

6/19/02
The deadless are together
in one fake flower arrangement
dusty with blank joy.
This broken swing
of cracked ivy vines
on a sunless cool fence
beats the tune of times to pass seconds to minutes
and tell what is next.

6/27/02
Camping from bad radio stories
and leaning towards terrible silence.

The beginning science
of life without a god.

7/26/02
Wrapping silver scissors
terry cloth blanket wednesdays
damp and soaking wet
writing in code with a viper
snapping to the tune
tapping out the end.

Combing back the jelly tears
bouncing for a cry
in torn sunday papers
waiting to drive by
Toast & coffee morning smell
you think of when you last lived with someone.
Animal crackers by the bed
trying to be like Europe.

The dreams are all different
and I can’t catch my feet anymore...
we’ve stumbled
into something completely different this
Different as snail berries
stuck to the back
of your knees
and screaming oh the screaming
yet it feels the same.
What’s the difference?
Certainly not the screaming.

Who is strong enough
to hold these arms down
long enough to blow my hair
out of my face?

Tangling bright lights
and asking for
asking for
whatever you got next.
I don’t know if I want to change.

Wind blows up like it’s mad at me again
Sorry out there.

Just keep your little sockys
and carry your fistful of grasses
straight to the dark kitchen
put ‘em in the sink
and go to bed.

I woke up
and without getting tired enough to roll over
I got up.
In a warm milk of wooded floors
I stir towards the porch
where sandy grass waves
telling me what to do.
There’s the bay
now go stand by it and drink.

There’s something about the way
blue sits
on a wind touched beach.
What slows you enough
to capture such cool softness?
Sun seems to break down doors
dragging beds to their knees.

Sample battles of laughing
and lughing in the backyard
late at night
standing around cars
or fire
or the dog.
Fight til the tears come
and hold your bellies tight
we live at night
like some bugs do
but we don’t fly into light.

There’s got to be some sure way
to juggle madness and brilliance
to slap down the beetly bed
carry petals to the edge of bath.
Be my avatar
take all doubt
to a fruited paradise
of harmless choices
I need someone to tell me
it’s all good
over and over and over.

Crazy pictures
of every freezing day
in the underground of grass.
Rubbernecking hard
into what could only be
a sick joke
of a bad idea.

Yeah, back There.

Wanting only the

tripping crazy into bathrooms
so poorly lit
that you laugh at the pictures
on the walls
til you realize
they are all mirrors.

7/27/02
There’s waiting
and then there’s
just sitting around.

2002-07-07T20:45:00.000-07:00

6/29/02
travelling backwards running
sorry for the tripping

Are you supposed to care more about people or more about yourself?

7/2/02
between the white sheet of night after night
and the pithy feeling of kicking off
where are you supposed to go
never?

fault and faulty ways
fruit bats, plastic masks and hands holding hands
a very cold beer on a very hot day
burning blistering breaking
open wounds and salty days
flying down the beach with your eyes closed
dying on the way there
instead of the way back.

7/7/02
Tracking the water fall of the smallest bean
in a lush rain forest...
begging yesterday to cry.
I’ve varnished this carpal tunnel
with the movements of a dancer
the shallow breath of a sleeping baby...
far be it from me to talk about forever.
Given the beaten path of a tired and sun dying road
I’ve decided to fake out onto cots of cheap old tapestry
and shift my bare feet to towards the back of a sunset.

2002-06-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

2002-06-25T20:56:00.000-07:00

There was never a big yellow bird
that could talk in a baby voice
and see prehistoric elephants
when no one else could.

There's no way to cough pretty
but you can still tickle pain
and that tight balloon of never again
can float your stickiest carnival dreams...
could lose you forever to the clouds too,
it's a toss up.

And fear what fear?!
Oh the fear of whatever there is you fear
and we almost ALL fear my friend.
The fear is a terrible friend
a dark lighthouse fourty seven miles frome shoreline
a backyard with no windows
I tell ya fear is your last resort
there's only a few places to go
after the non-soul of a just can't do it bites your ass.
There's still the what the hell
the i can always do this morning coffee kitchen window dream.

2002-06-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

Just giving away the rainy streets
by walking through the sun
how will you ever learn to mend
if you never get to burn?

Yeas, I've gotten off the footed path of what used to be a dream
what's the use of wondering
whatever else will be?

Some people show you the cushions
they've wrapped themselves all up in
and others scrape off every layer of skin
and ask you for your hands.
I forget what it's like to be alone
and sometimes hide to heal myself
and then the pillows fall
as does the wall
and again i find my friend.

2002-06-02T20:49:00.000-07:00

you face off the giraffe spotted midnight
to end that soft day
no tulip drenched see ya tomorrow will stave off the night to forget the ride home.

5/7/02
Hanging onto sleeping hands
while happy insects freely fly
outside the night takes the morning
with complete vacation star surprise

once you’ve exhausted your family
and your friends have all paired off
you sit still without dreaming
without giving a shit
and then maybe a lucky charm
finds you in the street
and then perhaps youre on your way
to another drummers beat.

we have beaten this careening back yard into quiet obedience
shaken all the trees
and now’s the time to start all over
from kitchen basement sage
to screen door dining room baby.

You have to wonder what older people are thinking
as they watch us little idiots floundering about.
I scream “Just tell me!”
and they try to put their past mistakes
into constructive words.
I know that, I say,
I wouldn’t do THAT
I say
as I speed across my middle years.

Traffic doesnt think about road kill
raccoons don’t think about garbage
I think about you
and wonder what to do.

effectively, i have obliterated my past
and at two in the morning, it awakens

jesterly the man dances with a wrinkle-eyed smile
and as he faces off the rain
his dirty clothes begin to shine.

I wish I was a writer
would write all night long
and dream in beds of lavendar
bout fingernail love songs.

But I’m not a writer
and perhaps never shall be
i’ll drink to take up the space
that writing wants to be.

do you want to tell me now
what you think will be
you’d be a fool
because i know
how wrong such thoughts
can be.

please don’t let me break these plates
don’t let the glasses fall

how can some nights be so tireless
so full of milk rum tea
sleepiness is hiding on the other side of the road
why doesnt it like me?

Hattened towards a forgettful time of clowny old men and happy blue hours filled with french dreams, how far have we travelled tonight and where shall we go tomorrow? Every cream puff cloud filled with silvery smoke linings of disasters that leave you crippled and begging on the floor of polyester nightmared zebra skinned fashion magazines say the past can be cruel.

The past can be your friend in the dead of a cold spring two fifteen AM with work in the morning but no sleep in sight. Hang on St. Christopher. Hang on Captain Kangaroo. I’m comin home.

5/8/02
Everything changes
and you knew the tree had to fall
how can a flowering bee fly
into the brained golden green honey
of a hard edged you-should-have-never neighborhood?
When does experience wake up and take you home?

picking the rottenest apple
and dare yourself to eat.
then find it’s not so sour
but still impossible to eat.

faking reality for now
you sit still enough to snore softly through your nose
i get up and walk out
your heroin dreams play buttery death
to my restless leg syndrome

5/11/02
cramming visions past hands together
spiny fences of old painted iron sticks
walking past a rainy madman’s yard on a sunday night.

keeping out of the streamy lined road for cars in the rain
it’s still raining
and the lake is holding our ears down for the wind to tackle...

we push eachother back and forth
as the shiny leaves on the wet flowering trees
wave and shake and smile.

what isn’t in the foggy morning grass
that isn’t in your eyes?
where does my favorite song go
when i can’t hear?

Corn Tigers crying with venom
messed up hair all the time
fake clock stopped days ago
died at two.

going from one one to one two
and never back again...

5/18/02
Forgot to take happy hour daisy breaks
soaked to the skin and borrowing slickers
for what cloudy lining do we stand on this corner?

It’s crazy when you look like a spare bedroom
and smell like Bob Dylan must have
at twenty.

Blisters like tiny atomic era martini bubbles
creep like the mid-1960’s
capturing ideas like scratchy hands

giraffy june can see yesterday
like it wasnt may’s today.

the zoo keeps the animals well fed
but still trapped
no matter how humane they try to make cages seem
everyone can hear the crying
not everyone wants to see it though
and someday the animals will all go to sleep
an dream of an unfiltered sun
and the people will lie awake at night
and watch the moon through dark curtains
as the black mark of selfishness
scrapes a scar of regret like a torture
across the glow
of fat meat-fed cheeks.

fruit lies rotten on linoleum floors
with dirty mongrel chewn cabinets
standing watching nearby, some from overhead
I am in the corner
and there’s some kind of bug flying up high
by the twinkling ceiling light bulb
doesnt even know i’m there
I can tell!
through my mind, I inform him that I could capture him
any time i wanted to
and pull his little wings
til his little eyes would bulge in pain
but that i would never do that
because I’m not sick
and if he’d just come down and sit by me
i’d be nice as rotting apple pie.

Painting hats on with glue
never remembering
that you already have a hat
glued in place
now the sun will never know your bare head
again.

carefully sifting the frozen glass shards
of what was yesterday?
Secretly watching someone elses life
and feeling like you’ve never lived before
just smiling all the time

how do you hold onto a light bulb
when it’s been on for so long?

How does the grass lie
without ever fibbing jealously?

What does God think
of Infinity?

Does Happy Hour
ever start at twelve?

i guess i don’t want anyone to
to appreciate me
for what i appreciate in myself.
but that still claws at my hands at night
when i wake up at four
or five
or three.
this heavy lid
is not a gate
it’s a doorway
with a lock.

I fell into the lake
as I drove off to work on a saturday
mid morn like a sunday blown off
fell into the lake’s sky reflection
like falling into a diner
on an early night of nothing to do but talk

felt crazy awake again
for once
couldn’t dream away work though
and that saturday died it’s natural death
but not without securing the fact
that at least in part
it would never be forgotten.

Once crazy starts
and willingly
becomes beautiful
the day before’s sacred butterfly of careful
flies down your throat and sticks and dies
you cough once and then twice
hard
jeez what the hell was that?!
that’s it
crazy’s beautiful.

You know
once you’ve been lit on fire
you fall smoking
til you’re dust.

i tap my fingers til they look old
til i look at them
they always look old

I was gonna die early
earlier
but i didn’t.

when the next ideas about what is behind death
begin to surface
call me.
I’ll be watching Bloopers

I want it to sound like everyone is on old wooden chairs that don’t match
and there’s a coupla lamps on with torn shades
and the floor is stained everywhere you look,
but nobody’s looking
someone’s singin and someone’s drummin on the wooden table
someone’s keepin time with his feet
and I think it sounds like it’s raining outside.

5/20/05
tricking the evening
into thinking its the green morning,
even the birds forget the day is over
as every careening possibility sings for the sun.

a clammy winters fruit is walking down May Berry Drive
and all the tulip’s jaws are dropping.

5/25/02
See saw backyard winter to spring
all in a hell of a rainy week
and you forget about tomorrow
for awhile
as yellow flowering weeds
sing your new favorite song
out loud.

sand under a dirt day waits for a clay burial
i wait for a better day

5/31/2002
For the evening light’s sake
every leaf still on a branch waves
under unimaginable oceans of happiness and grief
and it’s only a pin prick
of what was and what will ever be .

Sang about today yesterday
and that face just kept smiling at me
til I almost had to sing again.

It’s sick when you wake up and the green is just outside your window
drowning clowns with dirt moss filth,
it’s a trip down some forget-me-not lane
it’ like choking on newness.

spelling a disappearing act with cherrios
happy houring the love of a passing walk in the woods
in tuesdays with madness
just like ordering rain for a dog barking day.

I took to the plastic morning upon it‘s light arrival
without thinking of the brothers yesteday and tomorrow
and somehow we were all at a family picnic
at a splintery wooden table
that someone once tried to paint red
we were looking at eachother across this red wooden table
and things got real quiet
cuz tomorrow was pissed at yesterday
for eating all the chips
and then someone said let’s take a walk.

so we did.

God is just beginning to get tired
he has to sit and rest alot
and someday
he won’t be there anymore
and just we’ll have to take care of ourselves.

and if we can’t do it
we won’t.

5/31/02
Backing out of stone swallowing ocean caves of what was once a smooth porch ride to midnight front yard games and when it rained we’d run around like crazies knowing all the normal nice people would stay inside watching Jay Leno snoring. Step step step in reverse talking speech carmelized to pebbles...you just passed your last ride and Mr. Doctor isn’t waving anymore he’s wiping his brow with a gin soaked hanky and getting ready for his ten o’clock...

Like talking to dead bird wing leaves while walking in the porcelain midnight of a long forgotten diamond,
Giant ocean filled ashtrays sleep in every back yard
or every other back yard
it’s difficult to tell
but one thing is for sure
“no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.” (Morrison)

Open door behind my back slides vitamin breezes through the screen and slipping on newspapers from 3 days ago like eating the same thing for three days is not the same as cracking open a friday moon with the back of your hand and scraping all the lame tuesdays off your shoes. No, it’s quite different but could be mistaken for the same.

Kicking heart hates to hear
beyond the hot shower and the 4th beer
I can tune him right out
all that bumping in my chest
hurts my future
and scabs my ready hands.
Can’t I do whatever I want?
No, because you hurt everyone.

God may well live
but he lives only
in the wrinkle
between my brows
and when I laugh
he disappears.

2002-05-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

5/20/05
tricking the evening
into thinking its the green morning,
even the birds forget the day is over
as every careening possibility sings for the sun.

a clammy winters fruit is walking down May Berry Drive
and all the tulip’s jaws are dropping.

2002-05-20T20:30:00.000-07:00

You know
once you’ve been lit on fire
you fall smoking
til you’re dust.

i tap my fingers til they look old
til i look at them
they always look old

I was gonna die early
earlier
but i didn’t.

when the next ideas about what is behind death
begin to surface
call me.
I’ll be watching Bloopers

I want it to sound like everyone is on old wooden chairs that don’t match
and there’s a coupla lamps on with torn shades
and the floor is stained everywhere you look,
but nobody’s looking
someone’s singin and someone’s drummin on the wooden table
someone’s keepin time with his feet
and I think it sounds like it’s raining outside.

2002-05-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

you face off the giraffe spotted midnight
to end that soft day
no tulip drenched see ya tomorrow will stave off the night to forget the ride home.

5/7/02
Hanging onto sleeping hands
while happy insects freely fly
outside the night takes the morning
with complete vacation star surprise

once you’ve exhausted your family
and your friends have all paired off
you sit still without dreaming
without giving a shit
and then maybe a lucky charm
finds you in the street
and then perhaps youre on your way
to another drummers beat.

we have beaten this careening back yard into quiet obedience
shaken all the trees
and now’s the time to start all over
from kitchen basement sage
to screen door dining room baby.

You have to wonder what older people are thinking
as they watch us little idiots floundering about.
I scream “Just tell me!”
and they try to put their past mistakes
into constructive words.
I know that, I say,
I wouldn’t do THAT
I say
as I speed across my middle years.

Traffic doesnt think about road kill
raccoons don’t think about garbage
I think about you
and wonder what to do.

effectively, i have obliterated my past
and at two in the morning, it awakens

jesterly the man dances with a wrinkle-eyed smile
and as he faces off the rain
his dirty clothes begin to shine.

I wish I was a writer
would write all night long
and dream in beds of lavendar
bout fingernail love songs.

But I’m not a writer
and perhaps never shall be
i’ll drink to take up the space
that writing wants to be.

do you want to tell me now
what you think will be
you’d be a fool
because i know
how wrong such thoughts
can be.

please don’t let me break these plates
don’t let the glasses fall

how can some nights be so tireless
so full of milk rum tea
sleepiness is hiding on the other side of the road
why doesnt it like me?

Hattened towards a forgettful time of clowny old men and happy blue hours filled with french dreams, how far have we travelled tonight and where shall we go tomorrow? Every cream puff cloud filled with silvery smoke linings of disasters that leave you crippled and begging on the floor of polyester nightmared zebra skinned fashion magazines say the past can be cruel.

The past can be your friend in the dead of a cold spring two fifteen AM with work in the morning but no sleep in sight. Hang on St. Christopher. Hang on Captain Kangaroo. I’m comin home.

5/8/02
Everything changes
and you knew the tree had to fall
how can a flowering bee fly
into the brained golden green honey
of a hard edged you-should-have-never neighborhood?
When does experience wake up and take you home?

picking the rottenest apple
and dare yourself to eat.
then find it’s not so sour
but still impossible to eat.

faking reality for now
you sit still enough to snore softly through your nose
i get up and walk out
your heroin dreams play buttery death
to my restless leg syndrome

5/11/02
cramming visions past hands together
spiny fences of old painted iron sticks
walking past a rainy madman’s yard on a sunday night.

keeping out of the streamy lined road for cars in the rain
it’s still raining
and the lake is holding our ears down for the wind to tackle...

we push eachother back and forth
as the shiny leaves on the wet flowering trees
wave and shake and smile.

what isn’t in the foggy morning grass
that isn’t in your eyes?
where does my favorite song go
when i can’t hear?

Corn Tigers crying with venom
messed up hair all the time
fake clock stopped days ago
died at two.

going from one one to one two
and never back again...

5/18/02
Forgot to take happy hour daisy breaks
soaked to the skin and borrowing slickers
for what cloudy lining do we stand on this corner?

It’s crazy when you look like a spare bedroom
and smell like Bob Dylan must have
at twenty.

Blisters like tiny atomic era martini bubbles
creep like the mid-1960’s
capturing ideas like scratchy hands

giraffy june can see yesterday
like it wasnt may’s today.

the zoo keeps the animals well fed
but still trapped
no matter how humane they try to make cages seem
everyone can hear the crying
not everyone wants to see it though
and someday the animals will all go to sleep
an dream of an unfiltered sun
and the people will lie awake at night
and watch the moon through dark curtains
as the black mark of selfishness
scrapes a scar of regret like a torture
across the glow
of fat meat-fed cheeks.

fruit lies rotten on linoleum floors
with dirty mongrel chewn cabinets
standing watching nearby, some from overhead
I am in the corner
and there’s some kind of bug flying up high
by the twinkling ceiling light bulb
doesnt even know i’m there
I can tell!
through my mind, I inform him that I could capture him
any time i wanted to
and pull his little wings
til his little eyes would bulge in pain
but that i would never do that
because I’m not sick
and if he’d just come down and sit by me
i’d be nice as rotting apple pie.

Painting hats on with glue
never remembering
that you already have a hat
glued in place
now the sun will never know your bare head
again.

carefully sifting the frozen glass shards
of what was yesterday?
Secretly watching someone elses life
and feeling like you’ve never lived before
just smiling all the time
>you face off the giraffe spotted midnight
to end that soft day
no tulip drenched see ya tomorrow will stave off the night to forget the ride home.

5/7/02
Hanging onto sleeping hands
while happy insects freely fly
outside the night takes the morning
with complete vacation star surprise

once you’ve exhausted your family
and your friends have all paired off
you sit still without dreaming
without giving a shit
and then maybe a lucky charm
finds you in the street
and then perhaps youre on your way
to another drummers beat.

we have beaten this careening back yard into quiet obedience
shaken all the trees
and now’s the time to start all over
from kitchen basement sage
to screen door dining room baby.

You have to wonder what older people are thinking
as they watch us little idiots floundering about.
I scream “Just tell me!”
and they try to put their past mistakes
into constructive words.
I know that, I say,
I wouldn’t do THAT
I say
as I speed across my middle years.

Traffic doesnt think about road kill
raccoons don’t think about garbage
I think about you
and wonder what to do.

effectively, i have obliterated my past
and at two in the morning, it awakens

jesterly the man dances with a wrinkle-eyed smile
and as he faces off the rain
his dirty clothes begin to shine.

I wish I was a writer
would write all night long
and dream in beds of lavendar
bout fingernail love songs.

But I’m not a writer
and perhaps never shall be
i’ll drink to take up the space
that writing wants to be.

do you want to tell me now
what you think will be
you’d be a fool
because i know
how wrong such thoughts
can be.

please don’t let me break these plates
don’t let the glasses fall

how can some nights be so tireless
so full of milk rum tea
sleepiness is hiding on the other side of the road
why doesnt it like me?

Hattened towards a forgettful time of clowny old men and happy blue hours filled with french dreams, how far have we travelled tonight and where shall we go tomorrow? Every cream puff cloud filled with silvery smoke linings of disasters that leave you crippled and begging on the floor of polyester nightmared zebra skinned fashion magazines say the past can be cruel.

The past can be your friend in the dead of a cold spring two fifteen AM with work in the morning but no sleep in sight. Hang on St. Christopher. Hang on Captain Kangaroo. I’m comin home.

5/8/02
Everything changes
and you knew the tree had to fall
how can a flowering bee fly
into the brained golden green honey
of a hard edged you-should-have-never neighborhood?
When does experience wake up and take you home?

picking the rottenest apple
and dare yourself to eat.
then find it’s not so sour
but still impossible to eat.

faking reality for now
you sit still enough to snore softly through your nose
i get up and walk out
your heroin dreams play buttery death
to my restless leg syndrome

5/11/02
cramming visions past hands together
spiny fences of old painted iron sticks
walking past a rainy madman’s yard on a sunday night.

keeping out of the streamy lined road for cars in the rain
it’s still raining
and the lake is holding our ears down for the wind to tackle...

we push eachother back and forth
as the shiny leaves on the wet flowering trees
wave and shake and smile.

what isn’t in the foggy morning grass
that isn’t in your eyes?
where does my favorite song go
when i can’t hear?

Corn Tigers crying with venom
messed up hair all the time
fake clock stopped days ago
died at two.

going from one one to one two
and never back again...

5/18/02
Forgot to take happy hour daisy breaks
soaked to the skin and borrowing slickers
for what cloudy lining do we stand on this corner?

It’s crazy when you look like a spare bedroom
and smell like Bob Dylan must have
at twenty.

Blisters like tiny atomic era martini bubbles
creep like the mid-1960’s
capturing ideas like scratchy hands

giraffy june can see yesterday
like it wasnt may’s today.

the zoo keeps the animals well fed
but still trapped
no matter how humane they try to make cages seem
everyone can hear the crying
not everyone wants to see it though
and someday the animals will all go to sleep
an dream of an unfiltered sun
and the people will lie awake at night
and watch the moon through dark curtains
as the black mark of selfishness
scrapes a scar of regret like a torture
across the glow
of fat meat-fed cheeks.

fruit lies rotten on linoleum floors
with dirty mongrel chewn cabinets
standing watching nearby, some from overhead
I am in the corner
and there’s some kind of bug flying up high
by the twinkling ceiling light bulb
doesnt even know i’m there
I can tell!
through my mind, I inform him that I could capture him
any time i wanted to
and pull his little wings
til his little eyes would bulge in pain
but that i would never do that
because I’m not sick
and if he’d just come down and sit by me
i’d be nice as rotting apple pie.

Painting hats on with glue
never remembering
that you already have a hat
glued in place
now the sun will never know your bare head
again.

carefully sifting the frozen glass shards
of what was yesterday?
Secretly watching someone elses life
and feeling like you’ve never lived before
just smiling all the time

how do you hold onto a light bulb
when it’s been on for so long?

How does the grass lie
without ever fibbing jealously?

What does God think
of Infinity?

Does Happy Hour
ever start at twelve?

i guess i don’t want anyone to
to appreciate me
for what i appreciate in myself.
but that still claws at my hands at night
when i wake up at four
or five
or three.
this heavy lid
is not a gate
it’s a doorway
with a lock.

I fell into the lake
as I drove off to work on a saturday
mid morn like a sunday blown off
fell into the lake’s sky reflection
like falling into a diner
on an early night of nothing to do but talk

felt crazy awake again
for once
couldn’t dream away work though
and that saturday died it’s natural death
but not without securing the fact
that at least in part
it would never be forgotten.

Once crazy starts
and willingly
becomes beautiful
the day before’s sacred butterfly of careful
flies down your throat and sticks and dies
you cough once and then twice
hard
jeez what the hell was that?!
that’s it
crazy’s beautiful.

how do you hold onto a light bulb
when it’s been on for so long?

How does the grass lie
without ever fibbing jealously?

What does God think
of Infinity?

Does Happy Hour
ever start at twelve?

i guess i don’t want anyone to
to appreciate me
for what i appreciate in myself.
but that still claws at my hands at night
when i wake up at four
or five
or three.
this heavy lid
is not a gate
it’s a doorway
with a lock.

I fell into the lake
as I drove off to work on a saturday
mid morn like a sunday blown off
fell into the lake’s sky reflection
like falling into a diner
on an early night of nothing to do but talk

felt crazy awake again
for once
couldn’t dream away work though
and that saturday died it’s natural death
but not without securing the fact
that at least in part
it would never be forgotten.

Once crazy starts
and willingly
becomes beautiful
the day before’s sacred butterfly of careful
flies down your throat and sticks and dies
you cough once and then twice
hard
jeez what the hell was that?!
that’s it
crazy’s beautiful.

2002-05-05T20:36:00.000-07:00

11/15/01
Ghost Town
Once there was a master plan
but we all fell down
and in the cobwebbed smog
of something gone wrong
lost our caper to a ghost town.

Traveling In Fake Mouse-Grey Shoes
I’ll walk the shoes
and talk the phone...
There is enough beauty to sustain
even the biggest of liars.

Sit down in the corner even if it’s cold there.
Just think about it mister.

Beg The Sidewalk To Rise
I’ve just been to the infinity candy store
and came home empty handed.
Man, it used to cost pennies
to eat an entire summer day on into the night.
Course there’s always next spring
and then too there’s the pre-holiday season
where you can still find hope for a shiny red globe of a lovely life.
I’ve had creamsicle saturdays in May even.

If Yesterday Were Really Dead, It’d Be Buried By Now
Tonight the better fiend of a friend is lost
and tomorrow is a skating ghost
in yellow and palm tree pajamas.

say the last thing on your mind
let the talk of aliens replace your ears
and laugh in this starched face of a diamond arm wrestle.
tackle the head cheese
to find your basement art.
get that falling start.
and begin again.

There’s no way to beat
the boy of tomorrow
into certain infinity
and where have all the twirling frogs
from all those walks
down all those streets go?
I swear I’ve been walking forever.

What is the one question?
The one that when answered will answer all other questions? :

Loud Hands
blander my slather
I am at it again.
Maybe you should all sing
all the time
loudly.

Time has told a different tale
every time.

More Than One Use
Someone has to be able to take a piece of tattery yellow towel
from a 15 year ago family
from the side of the garbage bin
and do something with it...
maybe make a doll
or mop up the water
that the cats spill...

Sauterene
I’ll be in the green
and suddenly
you’ll see
the green in me
and I’ll be
your favorite green.

you just fought off ten million meanies
now’s the time to rest.

11/20/01
Does the dead ever stand aside and let us pass?
Where is the straight and narrow?
How did one so lost become the blue sky sun?

Utica
There was a time when I thought I had everything. I had an entire family of bright shiny running around. I used to pour beer on strangers feet while tripping. Back then the only way we could win a pool game was to say JINX at the final hour, and somehow, in our supreme naivety, it worked. Every time.

Just wake the moon
tell all the stars that I have gone off to bed
As for the morning
well, I’ll be there too.

For once, something sounded good.

Grinding Teeth Is For Sleepers
Getting glow worm nightmares
and glued to alarm clock beds.
Jugglers, skinny ex-junky cashiers named Larry, and centipedes
all wait for the next day.
I get up to see them.

And then there’s Jorge.

They think you can only be yourself with them.
Why do they think that?

Thanksgiving
I am ever thankful for the music that crosses my ears,
for the fact that I can go outside right now
and yell “HEY!!!” at the top of my lungs,
and for the fact that I probably won’t.

I am thankful for the people I get to know well,
for the people that I’ll never know well,
and who treat me as if I already do,
and for the people i have yet to meet.

I am grateful for my uniqueness
and the freedom to express it,
for the bare feeling of rawness I get
when I skid on an icy road.

Hey? Keep me from pissing everyone off.
Take away my inability to know myself,
hold me to my words like water holds sand together,
and please, remind me.

And thanks.

Grabbing a hairful of kindergarten days
while swinging in a dry grass tuesday
and running around wondering,
what the hell IS this!?

Down With A Cellar Full Of Junkies
Forget this ticklish bone.
I have gone into the hallway
and there is no more dirty light.
The only way to break a funny bone
is by fake laughing...

Have a juicy evening lay down
holding pillows filled with voodoo
and graveyard fogs.
Yes, and enjoy your jukebox drive.
Have fun with bottles and smoke,
hold your head in the milky brown puddle
and tell me where you live.
I’ll take you home, baby.

When you are in the feathered drown turn
of dreadful headful YET,
pull off to your left
and then take a little nap,
wake to dance a crazy dance
and then get in the back.

There may not be a driver
but there is a road.

Nothing Feels Like Sleeping
Hitting me upside the head
yelling YEP! in the middle of the night
and waking up exhausted for a day...
What is UP with that?

11/25/01
Hitting on now and then
Hard like rain in September
Kicking over the street corners
and finding a lucky charm underneath
Everything begins to shine.

Asking me to think about the bottom of the ocean
and wondering why I don’t wear orange like you.

ask

(That last word there (ask) was actually me playing the keys like a piano for a second, trying to think of what to write next and when I looked that word was there, so I went and asked the words what they wanted and they laughed at me.)

12/24/01
It Ain’t a Holiday If It’s A Holiday Day
I’ve been killing the heart of yesterday all day
is there anyone to tell me to capture Mars?
Gone is the bright star of a few summers past
and gone are the forever friends
that used to break my tears into head shaking laughs...
gone is the feeling of tomorrow
and the hope for one last miracle.
It’s not even Christmas yet.

I’ve had sweet tangerine Sundays before
laying in bed til one
when every move is like a new morning
some crazy dream you can’t get out of...

The Fresh Hell
What is the fresh hell that keeps you going?
It’s you,
silly.

And who will be alone tomorrow
and who should be alone tomorrow
and who wants to be alone?

Forgetting drags into yellow buckets of your ears
take this yawn and swear by the light of five in the morning,
where you are most at odds with the day,
that there will never be the milk dance of going going gone
again.

I’ll take that
what the hell
I’ll take that right straight to the end of the last day of my sorry life.

Unwrapping Paper
I thought I’d see you somewhere
amongst all the shit
a little christmas miracle
made for me
by the hands of a god i don’t see
the heart of a thousand silver strings
weaved into my greatest cloud of a dream
ready waiting.
Still sleeping?
Hope is a beautiful angry cat with very sharp nails.

What is destiny in the face of a choice?

I’m grassing through your clocky kitchen rules
sidewalkin backwards to see the eggless look
on your seamy backwards face...

The Eggshell Hardness of Grocery Store Meanies
I was driving in for a few beers
and maybe some fake crab meat
and oh yeah, I probably needed toilet paper...
some shoe faced girl in dirty hair and sweats
is about to bruise her unlucky baby boy
for being excited
and the lady behind me
is complaining bitterly about the store
as she waits to buy 3 liters of cola
a canister of iced tea
and lets not forget about the oreos
I’d complain too.
Everyone seems to have more of a life than me
but I cringe at their scars and itchy anger
I try not to think.

Getting Just Enough To Smile Once In Awhile
There’s some quiet liquid indian in there
and somewhere there’s a happy devil...
stream of white paper plates.
I am talking however tonight of forever.
so many fruitful gaps
some much time to burn out...
Some people know how to hold their hands
to your veins for just so long
until you can’t stand it anymore
and you throw them away.
It’s like there is no rice pattern of reason
no maggot way to travel playing car games
giddy on the way to someplace...
Me, I’m into the movies
I like living through other people
I don’t need all that shit.A Fresh Hell
Buried On My Lips In The Casket

11/15/01

Once there is a master
we all fall down.

Now, when is the caper a mystery?

Traveling In Fake Mouse-Grey Shoes
I’ll walk the shoes
and talk the phone...
There is enough beauty to sustain
even the biggest of liars.

Sit down in the corner even if it’s cold there.
Just think about it mister.

Beg The Sidewalk To Rise
I’ve been to the infinity candy store
and come home empty handed.
It used to cost pennies
to eat an entire summer day on into the night.
Where’d THAT go?
Oh I get it
here and there and yeah, I guess it’s quantity over quality
whoops I mean the other way around...
but then the things that suck
seem to suck so much more
the more you suck.

course there has always been the following spring.
and then there’s always the pre-holiday season
where you can still find hope for a shiny red globe of a lovely life.
I’ve had creamsicle saturdays in May even.

If Yesterday Were Really Dead, It’d Be Buried By Now
Tonight the better fiend of a friend is lost
and tomorrow is a skating ghost
in yellow and palm tree pajamas.

say the last thing on your mind
let the talk of aliens replace your ears
and laugh in this starched face of a diamond arm wrestle.
tackle the head cheese
to find your basement art.
get that falling start.
and begin again.

There’s no way to beat the boy of tomorrow into certain infinity and where have all the twirling frogs from all those walks down all those streets go? I swear I’ve been walking forever, don’t you feel like that?

What is the one question?
The one that when answered will answer all other questions? :

Questions
Where are we going, where are we all going?
What can love do?
Why does life exist?
Why is there evil?
IS there evil?

Loud Hands
blander my slather
I am at it again.
Maybe you should all sing
all the time
loudly.

Time has told a different tale
every time.

why do i pretend that i can get out of this?

More Than One Use
Someone has to be able to take a piece of tattery yellow towel
from a 15 year ago family
from the side of the garbage bin
and do something with it...
maybe make a doll
or mop up the water
that the cats spill...
there’s got to be something else that can be done with it.

Sauterene
I’ll be in the green
and suddenly
you’ll see
the green in me
and I’ll be
your favorite green.

you just fought off ten million meanies
now’s the time to rest.

11/20/01
Does the dead ever stand aside and let us pass?
Where is the straight and narrow?
How did one so lost become the blue sky sun?

Utica
There was a time when I thought I had everything. I had an entire family of bright shiny running around. I used to pour beer on strangers feet while tripping. Back then the only way we could win a pool game was to say JINX at the final hour, and somehow, in our supreme naivety, it worked. Every time.

Just wake the moon
tell all the stars that I have gone off to bed
As for the morning
well, I’ll be there too.

For once, something sounded good.

Grinding Teeth Is For Sleepers
Getting glow worm nightmares
and glued to alarm clock beds.
Jugglers, skinny ex-junky cashiers named Larry, and centipedes
all wait for the next day.
I get up to see them.

And then there’s Jorge.

They think you can only be yourself with them.
Why do they think that?

Thanksgiving
I am ever thankful for the music that crosses my ears,
for the fact that I can go outside right now
and yell “HEY!!!” at the top of my lungs,
and for the fact that I probably won’t.

I am thankful for the people I get to know well,
for the people that I’ll never know well,
and who treat me as if I already do,
and for the people i have yet to meet.

I am grateful for my uniqueness
and the freedom to express it,
for the bare feeling of rawness I get
when I skid on an icy road.

Hey? Keep me from pissing everyone off.
Take away my inability to know myself,
hold me to my words like water holds sand together,
and please, remind me.

And thanks.

Grabbing a hairful of kindergarten days
while swinging in a dry grass tuesday
and running around wondering,
what the hell IS this!?

Down With A Cellar Full Of Junkies
Forget this ticklish bone.
I have gone into the hallway
and there is no more dirty light.
The only way to break a funny bone
is by fake laughing...

Have a juicy evening lay down
holding pillows filled with voodoo
and graveyard fogs.
Yes, and enjoy your jukebox drive.
Have fun with bottles and smoke,
hold your head in the milky brown puddle
and tell me where you live.
I’ll take you home, baby.

When you are in the feathered drown turn
of dreadful headful YET,
pull off to your left
and then take a little nap,
wake to dance a crazy dance
and then get in the back.

There may not be a driver
but there is a road.

Nothing Feels Like Sleeping
Hitting me upside the head
yelling YEP! in the middle of the night
and waking up exhausted for a day...
What is UP with that?

11/25/01
Hitting on now and then
Hard like rain in September
Kicking over the street corners
and finding a lucky charm underneath
Everything begins to shine.

Asking me to think about the bottom of the ocean
and wondering why I don’t wear orange like you.

ask

(That last word there (ask) was actually me playing the keys like a piano for a second, trying to think of what to write next and when I looked that word was there, so I went and asked the words what they wanted and they laughed at me.)

12/24/01
It Ain’t a Holiday If It’s A Holiday Day
I’ve been killing the heart of yesterday all day
is there anyone to tell me to capture Mars?
Gone is the bright star of a few summers past
and gone are the forever friends
that used to break my tears into head shaking laughs...
gone is the feeling of tomorrow
and the hope for one last miracle.
It’s not even Christmas yet.

I’ve had sweet tangerine Sundays before
laying in bed til one
when every move is like a new morning
some crazy dream you can’t get out of...

The Fresh Hell
What is the fresh hell that keeps you going?
It’s you,
silly.

And who will be alone tomorrow
and who should be alone tomorrow
and who wants to be alone?

Forgetting drags into yellow buckets of your ears
take this yawn and swear by the light of five in the morning,
where you are most at odds with the day,
that there will never be the milk dance of going going gone
again.

I’ll take that
what the hell
I’ll take that right straight to the end of the last day of my sorry life.

Unwrapping Paper
I thought I’d see you somewhere
amongst all the shit
a little christmas miracle
made for me
by the hands of a god i don’t see
the heart of a thousand silver strings
weaved into my greatest cloud of a dream
ready waiting.
Still sleeping?
Hope is a beautiful angry cat with very sharp nails.

What is destiny in the face of a choice?

I’m grassing through your clocky kitchen rules
sidewalkin backwards to see the eggless look
on your seamy backwards face...

The Eggshell Hardness of Grocery Store Meanies
I was driving in for a few beers
and maybe some fake crab meat
and oh yeah, I probably needed toilet paper...
some shoe faced girl in dirty hair and sweats
is about to bruise her unlucky baby boy
for being excited
and the lady behind me
is complaining bitterly about the store
as she waits to buy 3 liters of cola
a canister of iced tea
and lets not forget about the oreos
I’d complain too.
Everyone seems to have more of a life than me
but I cringe at their scars and itchy anger
I try not to think.

Getting Just Enough To Smile Once In Awhile
There’s some quiet liquid indian in there
and somewhere there’s a happy devil...
stream of white paper plates.
I am talking however tonight of forever.
so many fruitful gaps
some much time to burn out...
Some people know how to hold their hands
to your veins for just so long
until you can’t stand it anymore
and you throw them away.
It’s like there is no rice pattern of reason
no maggot way to travel playing car games
giddy on the way to someplace...
Me, I’m into the movies
I like living through other people
I don’t need all that shit.

iye there’s the lemon tickle of a rock
just grapple with it’s supple bubble glow
and tonight
youre gonna wake up at 4 in the morning
444 to be exact
and then you’ll hit yourself
like we all do
and it’ll hurt
and then you think of other people
and breathe right again
and thank your sorry ass
for your sorry lot.

12.31.01
New York New Year

Smiling water muddy in the hallway
As mountains grow into friendly squeaky toys
and tomorrow is a fan-filled night away

Smallish throw rugs wander here and there
egg-like hope smashing closed cupboards
holding these kitchen doors tightly closed

Tight
I am hearing what used to be my jazz
and walking to a stranger barn winter
with all my clothes on
and there’s your car again, wtf?

Over the carnival path
to sweet corn party festival
and onward to the bitch black
dipping darkly...

Shellfish are last to innocence
and the ocean a mean season
with claws of christmas lights
and the raw bite of new holiday love.

1/25/02
grinning like a giraffed neck-tie
traffiking towards the bitter brown sugar last night memories
of a bedridden whiskey veteran...
yeah, we’re so bad
that some people seem to think we are good.
And vice versa.
But that’s just them.
Some people get it right.
Hit them with music.

Going from the dandy to the ocean.
Cold. Clear. Empty.

Holing up in the hollow cloud of winter
and ignoring jesterly the yes and no’s
the maybe you should, maybe you shouldnt’s...

the hello of this mirror
is blind to any hand waves,
to the giant black curtain
that clothes any greeting’s doubt.

Having thought
about having thoughts
about fighting off thoughts
about having fights,
is like thinking about having a fight.

Rather you should fight off
having to think
about a fight you think you have to have.

parallel vices end in crystal spirals
while dragon squared shacks
with their christmas tree lit windows
hollow out pagan ritualistic dancing
with finger shaking No’s

(and Jeremiah used to be a bullfrog)

bringing hotly the sky-filled night
breaking like a sweat on january’s thigh
like honing in on the moon
for once.

Just to take this outside to the fever push of growing pain

and make a castle out of garbage.

Junk.

Bewildering the forgotten past
forgetting to pass the wilderness.

Rendezvous of a cast of nobodys
dirt dancing idiot grins
of arm flailing june evenings

2/6/2002
I wonder why midwinter is mad at me now
fist to my chin
and broke the sidewalks stride
some back alley smirks
forget last summer
fall’s in the trash
and here’s cold revenge.

you are the early mack truck
at the back road linoleum diner
and you act as though you know someone
down the road
but there’s no one waiting for you
because you’ve pissed them all off
by blasting your horn too loud
so you make your last piece of toast last
because it’s cold outside
and the cook nodded at you
through the little window
when you came in
Yer good to go

there was this old guy who had half his mouth removed
due to cancer
and he could barely talk
but you made almost every word out
as fast as you could
and the ones you couldn’t
you pretended you did
and he said thankyou
4 times before he left.
sometimes you take care of yourself this way.

the biggest part of any day is taking out the garbage
and standing out there with a little boy,
playing in the snow,
lost in whatever world
you just want to tell him about everything
but you can’t because he barely says hello.

Grubs like to be inside dirt
the sun seems to like watching us
but it could all be an act
and morning sometimes bites ...
glasses break when we wash them
it’s as if they just don’t want to be
anymore

and someone just fell
on the pavement
in love
out of a window

I’ve got a lot of mad fruit
you’ve got a little nose
she’s got a bag full of bullshit
and we’ve got a whole lot of capital T.

Your driving sound ears
and boogie night special evening drinks
my hat, my hands, my heart
your good intentions
my paralysis
you spinning tales of dreams
me jumping to remember mine
nothing and everything collide
and I am lost again
what’s new...

down down into this griffin of what yesterdays haven
i cry to conjure the wooden floored snake tangle
i know I’ve gone so far

2/22/02
all of a sudden i am 101
my hands have crawled out of sick amber green
and the toes are still purple

Knowing hat trick mondays
taking out the heavy garbage
we don’t need to carry THAt around
lounging out til the last brittle minute
twitching to sleep from 3 til 7
just getting into it right before you have to wake up.

iced twiggy fingers
are falling and grabbing eachother
I need hot jello for fingers...

Questions

where do the yellowed papers of hard candy laughs go?

is there ever a place and time for standing on the edges of furniture?

have you ever spent a day saying yes to everything?

do you know anything about puppets?

is color as sure of itself as smell is?

what is dry skin for?

did i chose this and why?

does bliss ever get old?

would we be here if it didn’t?

is one setting oneself up by living within a lake-bay-amusement park peninsula?

no shit.

grab your dirt floor birthday cake dreamcicyle bike ride to the tomorrow of jimmy-topped days
everyday should be topped....

four dark days biting my foot

guarantees to drag tire tracks
to the forefront of calendar midnights in fall,...
any thursday night

.arrows drown this forgettful sfrick

You can live for a long time
or you can be yourself.

Or if you are really good
you can be both.

giving hatty songs of baby bonnets the time of our lives.
one day I will understand
green walls with red floors and everything
war

3/1/02
For once, something gave way
and every happy necked giraffe letter
noted high ceilings
and ate the highest holiday desserts

when your heart beats harder for no reason
and you realize that you’ve fucked it up for good
and now you’ll probably die young for real
shortly after realizing your dreams
do you get pissed?

There is a circle of dried coffee
around the “X” on this keyboard
and I sense it’s meaning
because it really does mark the spot
and youre asking to quit smoking but I can’t while i’m drinking
so youre asking to quit drinking but i can’t when i’m alone
and I can’t when i’m on the phone
and you know i’m on this path now
i’ve watched tony and john do it
and maybe that’s why...
you get a choice but is it really a choice
or just a glimpse into the way it’s going to be for you too?

I feel truly fucked for the first time ever
and only in the morning do i really give a shit
and when i think what it’s going to do
what it did to me
this barbed chain of events
where will it end
does it mean pain for everyone from this day on?
from that day forward?

I think about being alive and then i think that i could be dead too in a minute and so i look at my hands and i think about walking to the sink and washing my hands and whatever else i do when i’m alive...talking to people, music, the pain in my back, I can’t breathe anymore...is it my turn? i can handle it but i don’t want anyone else to have to. how do some people live for 90 years??? i don’t get this but it’s relative because who is living? money is not living.

I can’t imagine myself with anyone else ever again. can you? how crazy would that be? how crazy would it be not to try again if i get the chance? i have given myself instant karma for turning off the love light to my friends and now it’s turned off for me..i suppose i deserve it, right? force me to realize the error of my fucked up ways. you pay then you pay again. get down on your hands and kness and paypaypay... what’s in store in my new seabreeze life? constant reminder of John? another no man’s land waste field of hiding away from life loving soldiers who take orders from a general who has no orders...they should let me stay a little longer, i can still make a difference. kiss my eyes, hold my arms down, take me to lunch and talk on your phone...love ya still and always. forgetting to forget and i’ll forget it again tonight when i wake up at 5 in the morning and realize i’ve gone too far so just take me out if thats the best way. you watch me through the moon in the window but it hasn’t been full for days now so you don’t see everything, not every little thing. you can’t see my eyes.

3/2/02
haggling colors to make kitchen peace
yellow green wins again...

The Ides Of March/2002

To have a head full of color
and be denied canvas

You wait for the end of the night
and wait
and wait
and
wait.

My hands are a battle
in themselves
always striped
with recent scars...
cold long spindles ,
like icycles ready to pierce
would rather strike
rather than be struck.

Hop singing to the blue green nightlife
cool around offwhite edges

dining on hot summer
tuesdays
just til tomorrow and
if you need the real time then
you can just go find it
cuz all thats here
is the forget me not past.

3/16/02
I've been thinking about the evolution of spiritual thought...how the majority belief system has changed and how now we're in a monotheolistic society, where all major religions are based on the one god idea...greeks and romans believed in many gods....I don't believe in a SEPARATE god, yet you never hear this even being discussed, ANYWHERE! When I explain that I believe god is inside everything, not a separate entity holding puppet strings, alot of people agree with me...this is the wave of the next religious paradigm shift...and it puts all the responsibility in the little guys hands, that's why the people in control don't like it because they wouldnt be able to use their scare tactics anymore, it wouldnt work!

In The Deep End
My thoughts on death are that it's like you're swimming underwater, maybe from one side of the pool to the other and you finally reach the other end and you think your lungs are going to burst but instead you burst out of the water and take great gulps of air. Then you get out of the pool, sun yourself for awhile, grab a beer, hang out, gab with the other sunbathers, watch the people playing in the pool and think, I know it's cold, but they look like they are having so much fun...and just like that, you get up and dive right back in...

This too shall fade away.

Carrying green balloon umbrellas
past the good widow with her hankys
it’s like going under a ladder
bad luck.
Certain things switch your path
and you may have already chosen it
but once you pass

you know it’s set.

But things have a way of straightening themselves out
doesnt mean everything is going to be alright
but you get just enough to hang on
whether you’re making it up
or not.

Might as well stay
you’ll be gone before you know it anyhow.

I took this bus ride and there was this guy who talked non stop to anyone and everyone. No one else was talking, so everyone, whether they were pretending or not, were listening to the jibberish talking guy. He was talking about how the streets were so uneven because there was never any time to fix them. The cars just kept coming.

3/19/02
Slowly reaching fast forward.

for the carpet that will be thrown out tomorrow
for every scrape and bruise
for the dance in every summer shirt beer song

there is a place where one will never walk on you again
and the scars will heal
and
the song always ends.

been down in the basement again
walking down side bars
tripping all over your day
forgetting about mine
grabbing a full evening into night tonight
loud music, dancing, cigarettes beer...
alone again in the basement.

Happy just left by the back door
and see ya later left long ago,
Don’t bother finally got up off her ass and drove home to bed
while taking it in stride is offering you a beer.

I like take it in stride.

Gathering bow ties made of sugar twigs
and taking them downtown to the “cool” store
right next door to some dirty diner where i’d much rather be
hanging on a foot to get the door open to snotty looks
of what do we have here?!
I could open the box
but instead I carry it around the store with me
and look at all the stuff they are selling
that someone else made
and then I leave and go to the diner
and have a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich
which is probably what I had for breakfast
but what the hey
I’m on a roll.

4/11/02
So you learn to pay attention when things happen for a reason
and hopefully you learn to be a certain way
better for it
and at the end of the day
when you can’t hold it together another more
you go to bed.
Which is what i should do
but you know me
one last one is always one more
but not forever.
So what do I care
If the dogs outside stop barking in unison
with the last seagull of the night?
And all my chances at another love
are wasted?
Who is to say
that I was less happy than you?

4/18/02
Ah, she lives again to write a little more
I looked up and the moon was centered right in the middle of the opening between the mostly closed curtains, another miracle. Ever since I’ve asked for help, i’ve been having these little THINGS happening. They’re not saying everything... I’m not saying anything.

I don’t know if it‘s getting better or worse ...

She was riding her bike when the phone rang
it was Andy talking about cruelty
to beagles and ferrets
and he’s getting a bunch of people together
to do something about it
and they need a graphic artist to make signs for the protest
it’s the first thing they need
they already have a lawyer who’s going to film the whole thing.
he thought maybe they’d just protest outside of the television station
instead of going an hour and a half to the site of this animal experiment farm
all they really want is exposure
and the camera crews will much more likely show up outside of their own building.
I thought it was an interesting idea.
apparently the lawyer did too.
He doesn’t know what he’s getting into.
Andy, I mean.

4/19/02
I just watched the most bizarre movie/documentary, "Grey Gardens", it's
about these aliens that come to earth and plant their seed in this open
field. After awhile these grub like bugs start growing and wiggling and
these ufo's hover over them and suck them up with a blue light. Then they
dress them up like little grey poodles and parade them down this movie aisle
while people were trying to watch Men In Black...the popcorn was flyin'
baby!

Alright, belated April's Fools...The title is correct but it was about
Jackie Kennedy's aunt and first cousin who lived in what once was a mansion
but that they let fall to pieces around them. The whole movie is just
filming them and they are OUT there man, eccentric with a capital E. It's like what Marty and I would have turned out to be like if we'd
continued to live together.
Just in time for cotton tea and the cheapest cookies I could find. Filled with cocanut, but they arent cocamnut flavored. I can just tell they are filled with cocanut and it’s very bad for you. But they are addictive. Notice how all the bad things have addiction buried in them? It’s so they will survive, cause how else would they?

I have a very wide variety of likes.
My music lists are schizophrenic.
This means I appeal to a wide variety of people.
All it takes is one song.

4/28/02
Cruel To Be Kind
I saw a pigeon on the expressway the other day, it had just gotten hit and was flopping around, very close to the road, ready to be ran over anytime soon, but when, I wondered? How long did it have to suffer after the initial shock of a terrible blow? In a way I wished that I had seen it early enough to swerve to finish it off, but instead I drove past quick pang in my stomach as I noted the similarity between him and me. Am I flopping around ready to be finished off? What kind brave soul will go out of his way to do me in? Is that what I’ve been?

That was a week ago and today I rode by the same spot and there he was finally, dead.

Counting the seconds that arms hold arms
from behind and you were just about to leave

thinking that maybe it’s all a circus peanut with ants on it
like maybe there’s some plastic covered castle with poison inside
you eat it and take it back to the other ants
so eventually
you all die of the same thing.

what’s better
the peanut
or the castle?

secret life before me
beg me to call the police
tell them where we’ll be
heal my hands
touch my back

giving way to the just around the corner
like picking rusted metal off the parking lot floor
right outside your car door
and some little kid just said hi.

you can’t find the courage if you think about it
you have to step off the plank
just walk keep walking
don’t say just anything
because you never know what it will mean to someone
and they’ll take you out like that
just like that
you have to think sometimes
about what you say

where does the next happy hour begin?
am I home yet?
is there more?
why can’t i breathe?
is this all my fault?
did I do all of this?
am i helping at all?
when will i stop?
when does it start again?
is this a all a big mistake?
is there such a thing as big mistakes?
why did you send that person to me?
why was i sent to him?
what’s next?
can i really control this?
why do i feel so good?
why does it feel so sad?
when will i see you again?
why can’t i just relax?
is it ever going to get warm again?
what can i do?
what should i do?
what the fuck should i do?
is this the right path?
are all paths right?
does anything matter?
should i just give in again and love?
will i hurt someone again?
will he die because of it?
will i die because of it?
i am confused, can you help me?
are you trying to help me?
will i ever forgive myself?
will you stop making this more and more complicated ?

you can change anything.

for every tell-tale grassy knolled sunday couch dream
barely touching your head to the hot sidewalk
of childhood’s better half
a blue jay swim
a ding dong ditch it
kiss me in the middle of the street at 3 in the morning
it’s still hot outside

gathering all my stuff and putting it pile behind a wall
in the basement
they’re all empty boxes

i can remember riding by fields with ruins of houses
foundations of yesterday talking to today
in Spain
and I was a little girl then, married
and I wanted to stop and get out
of the car
and lift my knees high til I got there
and feel what it must have been like
what it’s really like in my life
but we drove by and i took pictures and he made fun of me
and i just really wanted to walk over there
and see.

DON’T let them fool you
into believing that it’s quantity
over quality.
It’s not.
You can deprive yourself enough to stay alive til the appointed 70-80 range
squeeze your ass tight enough and you might live til youre 94!
but open your hands til they turn red
til anyone that walks by can see how red they are
and stops to ask why?...why are they red?
and then takes them into their own to warm.
“when I bring home the sun,
the rosy fingered dawn,
don’t cry.”

-Royal Fingerbowl
(playing as I wrote that)

nutty life
go back home
crazy signs
read my palm

12:30 AM
stay up all night long alone
smoking and drinking and writing
stuff that no one ever sees
foolish????

bag faces like picking apples
driving the opposite way
you have to give in
you have to give up
dry tears
cry hard
lay on the floor
dance with the lights on and the curtains open
recognize the end
and marry it
under a full sun someday.

he sat waiting for his banana
everyday the nurse brought him a banana
and he used to ride the trolly to the amusement park
and he used to kiss girls and dance
she brought him bananas
and he waited everyday
he was quite the catch back in the good old days
he used to hate bananas.

if you take me out
take care of the people I love
and hold my hands to their lips
and let me come back in little ways
to let them know
i’m still around

lucky tomorrow
has it all
and in ways
we can’t imagine
wouldn’t you like to be tomorrow?

I’d hate to be yesterday
blamed for everything
scorned for what it never was.
tomorrow is everything
tomorrow is a new favorite song.

I can turn around and see the dark room behind me
but i can’t see your past
and i don’t know what to do about your face
(or your hands for that matter)
but i will take grace
and she will take us
and eventually everything will be
and that’s all we can ask for really
because because because
it’s going to be raining outside tomorrow.

5/5/02
I can look behind your face and see last summer
You refuse to take me home and then you leave me in the rain with no shoes on
what the fuck did i ever do to you?
I know what i did.
i never realize how you’ll pay the price for the bastard walks of selfish stupidity
it’s like i almost know which is the road and which is the ditch
but not enough to hate one and love the other
enough to lose my blanket for my suitcase
Hardly hardly matters now
it’s like i just got here no it’s not
it’s like i’ve been sleeping here forever
but when you wake up you should feel the sun on your face
or hear a snowstorm raging outside, white grey freezing wind silence
you should be able to stretch into station wagons with slippers of sweet dreams