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.