– a tribute to an old poet from one getting old

 

I have drunk in

the beauty

that was in

your fridge

 

and which

you were probably

keeping

for yourself.

 

Forgive me.

It was divine.

So pure

and so cold.

Forgive me.

I am getting old.

She said
forcefully, unliquor led
“I wouldn’t be caught dead in your bed!”
to which
I can attest
she never was
though my bed’s eternal springs
are now a little spread
by the life, she lives, as she does.

A Writer’s Place

“The swan sings on the lake of the mind”
– the , Silver Swan, Kenneth Rexroth

Seeing a man
in the distance
I knew
it must be you, only you
that Whitmanesque
everyman
so rarely seen on these
senseless streets.

You walked with a rhythm,
a side to side waddle of
a man smoothed – no soothed
by years of mindful contemplation,
waves rubbing, rolling, refinding rock.

You, with the blue jeans –
the scream of the common
and safari hat
cocked on one side
so you the hunter
melding meaning and moments
could hear the hammering
hearts of your everyday prey
so often seen
on these sacredless streets.

So many buzzed around you
in busyness
lost in thoughts of
hot dogs, hard ons, haftos
unaware of you
someone who has achieved
the unwritten writer’s aim –
absorption into the word
heard but healthily unheralded.

What if
you were Hulk Hogan
I thought?
How the street would hum for days
after your handsomeness
had passed, this way (away?)
Yet, I see you
Josef
caught in that
circuitous virtuouso
that only we know about
yet, unable to shout –
we walk the streets
with our masks metted on.

Seeing you
walking so sure
among us,
who suffer surely
yet so sillily (and willingly),
I saw you
measuring our merriment
in song
meters of mediocrity
pulling you along
into our midst
so obscurely (and surely).

I thought to ask you
about this or that,
let your smooth finish
shine upon me –
but thought better
as I watched you
assuredly deposit a letter
into the mouth of a mailbox.

You have other things in mind.

A cold pivo perhaps
(or an old love lapsed)?
To run home and
like a person who
having seen a U.F.O.
tries to live with it
the knowledge of another world
maybe
more important than our own
while the bread and circuses
keep things going around
keep lifting up the frowns
as some as yet unknown gladiator
eats crumbling, unleavened bread
and awaits his death
in the dark caverns
below the merry meant.

(P.S.) Didn’t Kurtz say (or sing)
“Exterminate the brutes”?
I think of all this
upon seeing you.

 

I resolve

to wear more purple

and not to pull up my socks

should they fall

to eat more strawberries

in the sun, one after one.

 

I resolve

to look more closely,

at the smaller things

buttons, spiders, dandelion dust, wedding rings

to sit more on swings.

 

I resolve

to stay longer in bed awake

and think and dream

about a boat I want but

will never make.

 

I resolve

to kiss my gal a little longer

to make love stronger

more often pull her in

to always, in all things, in spirit

begin, being …..

 

I resolve

to play with children,

like one of them

and collect fire trucks

and climb trees

and get my knees green again.

 

I resolve

to tell my mother I love her

a thousand times, all at once

and tell her she did well

thought all can so very well tell.

 

I resolve

to think of the good every day

and in suffering

know what I may

not be otherwise

each of us a crooked surprise.

 

I resolve

to look in that little fishes eye

the next time she’s hooked

to ask for more soup

and look where others haven’t looked.

 

I resolve

to look up more skirts

to sword fight with willow sticks

to spread my peanut butter just a little more thick

to burn, forget, the length of my wet wick.

 

I resolve

to lick my dog back

and to take a crack

at what I’ve never dreamed

to believe and pass by

all things that I’ve only seemed.

 

I resolve

to have my cake and eat it too

but if others need

bread ‘ll have to do

to do what needs be done

even if they don’t see the good.

 

I resolve

to buy myself more flowers

and to pick more wild ones

– the scraggly beauty of my love’s

luscious hair

to sit by streams

waiting for the gull on the rock

fishing

to be there.

 

I resolve

to listen to more of life’s honest

on and off, up and down

to lose myself in rhythm

and in that strange way

be found.

 

I resolve

to suck longer on fresh peaches

to not see the ugliness in leeches

to go wherever my will reaches

and getting there

eat my bread in joy,

drink my wine in peace

for this day will never

come again

just like this new year

will never ask when.

 

Scraggly and scowling

like a tree

caught on the rock,

this natural

biblical

self-certain

newfie of a man,

deserves at least a few

words in confirmation

of his swaggering work of art

of his staggering new found “ness”, torn apart,

as he screams out his speech,

spitting and screech laced,

 

“Get ya selves out of me fuckin’ face!!!!”

 

Oh he’s had a few

but still

he watches

like a cat

the bird

out of reach,

her farm girl beauty

bouncing behind the bar,

beyond belief.

 

“You gotta admit she’s got it”

he purrs

to anyone on the next stool

then, putting his dry lips together

he puckers a quiet,

“God damn it!”,

and orders another beer.

 

She brings the beer

then returns to

chat and chirp

with the other wonder lost

women at the other end

of the bar.

 

He shakes his head

and wonders how

to catch her gaze,

bring her down to earth

his grave.

 

“Tomorrow, tomorrow”,

he mutters,

then orders another beer.

 

Ted Gacy across the street

has dug up his backyard

and is holding a coming out party

as soon as the smell lessens.

He’s exhibiting downtown next week.

 

John Done, the alcoholic

on the cardboard, on the corner

sold his bottle collection

just before the crash

and now sells juicers

on the info-channel.

 

J.C. Pennyless has

moved to Europe and become

a money changer

after having a miraculous conception

while converting

funds for the church

of some later day saint.

 

Molly, the prostitute

finally got an agent

and sits at home

knitting, doing needle work

waiting for the call to come.

 

Mr. Johnston, the phys. ed. teacher

at the school on High street

is sitting outside, right arm raised

prepping for his next lesson

on condom etiquette and control

as a means of keeping the kids

physically active.

 

Mum and Pop have

franchised

and now walk their lap dog

around and around the park in their

customized, motorized, all weatherized

wheelchairs.

 

My mother has just won

the Publisher’s Weekly Sweepstakes

and is busy telling me about

her plans to option the house

and make a run on the orange juice market.

 

Teresa my teenaged daughter

counts the days to business school

convicted, she stumbles through the streets

on 8 inch platforms hoping

her beeper will ring in public.

 

Mr. Rogers?

He has opened a modelling agency

and is giving speech therapy to

inner city kids on the side.

His new line of clothes comes out next week.

 

And me?

Like any poet not worth his salt

I’m schleping off all my friends

spending my days picking

between my crusty toes.

I’m buying up all my friend’s

tattered paperbacks and waiting for

all the computers to crash.

Then I’ll have a word or truth to write.

 

The heart can beat only so fast …………

 

“May I, emerging at last from this terrible insight
Burst into jubilant praise to assenting angels”

– Rilke

 

It is strange
but
I am happy.

Millions are dying of hunger.
Children with chopped off limbs
walk towards candy stores
in their dreams.

Fast cars roar off to nowhere.
Burn patients sit softly on white sheets.
People are jumping off buildings.
Buildings are falling down.

A millionaire counts his pennies
pulled from a cookie jar.
The sun is burning and mice
are getting caught everyday
in better built mousetraps.

Lungs fill up with the waste of man’s ingenuity.
Whales cough blood in
the black of a cesspool sea.
Guns grow like geraniums
picked up and given in the name
of freedom rather than death.

My parents, your parents.
My son, your daughter.
The bright eyed boy across the street.
We are all going to die.

 

Funny.
I am happy.
Perhaps it is because

I am here.

 

I am poor as a light wind.
My teeth are falling out
like the unseen leaves do
each fall in valleys undiscovered.

I have no home.
Even the rats
no longer come with
their day glow eyes
to wait for my last crumbs.

I know nothing.
The whole world
shifts under me when I
walk in search of work
a way out
of the misery that isn’t
my making.

Hospitals refuse to admit me
so diseased I am.

My last love left with
the man I used to be.
I don’t even remember anymore
what I am doing here.

But in all that
because of all that
I am happy holding
the emptiness
of my wine bottle.