Waking Up

Poetry is hunger and protest.
Not pretty sounds
but a howl, a scowl
a wake up call for a drunk
in a hotel with
pretty lies and lights
and a roulette table
that never pays out but
keeps going round and round and round .
 
Poetry is a cry, a picture
that hopes to make the world
ashamed
that hopes to make the world
– even one man
come out of that hotel
and into the sunlight
of acceptance
and each moment thereafter
be good
and each day thereafter
have a thought of the good.
 
Poetry is one hand slapping
the feckless face of man unkind.

Everything Hurts

Everything hurts.
 
You awake and time
pushes down on your chest
and the light outside blinds.
There is no way out and
you have no choice but to get up
and go through it
– the hurt.
 
Everything hurts.
 
The walk down the stairs.
The thought of the afternoon.
The weight of gravity.
The emptiness of the sky.
Each spoonful of cereal.
Each sup of coffee.
Every breath, every heartbeat.
 
Everything hurts.
 
You can’t tell anyone about it.
That hurts more.
Besides,
you don’t know exactly what it is
that hurts.
You only know it hurts.
 
Everything hurts.
 
The news
not getting any news.
The slow gnaw of microbes
enjoying your skin.
The sun, oh definitely the sun
that thought of always
not being
but also being too.
 
Everything hurts.
 
Getting dressed, getting ahead
getting head, getting a dress
having lunch – the necessity of it all.
Having stuff – the chance you swim in
the wind on your skin
the sound of distant laughter ……
 
Everything hurts.
 
There is no respite.
No water breaks.
Alcohol, sex, pills, rock n’ roll
They only make it hurt more.
 
Everything hurts.
 
You roll on, on, on,
up that hill
but the top never comes.
And it keeps hurting, hurting.
It will keep hurting, hurting.
There is no end to it.
Nothing, not even drugs,
religion, sex or
the thought of death
can dial it down.
There is no kill switch.
There is no way out or off.
 
Everything hurts.

Simple Poetry

There is more plastic in our
oceans than fish.

More guns are fired each day
than knives spreading butter.

We kill over 250,000 living
organisms each time we exhale.

100% of us will die.

Despite appearances
there is no tomorrow.

The day is sufficient
unto itself.

Nobody owes you anything

Nobody owes you anything

not the bank

that won’t extend your line of credit,

not the snot nosed kid

you used to be,

not the tooth fairy or Santa Claus

not the girl you gave your heart to

not the President or your dad’s estate

not the bars you so well indulged

and which now won’t allow you in

anymore,

not even the poker dealer

who always tosses you

7 deuce with a smile.

Nobody owes you anything.

Not your folks who didn’t push you enough

into this too soft world,

certainly not this

pale blue dot that

gives you a roof over your head

and the right to be here,

certainly not time

the gatekeeper and

most democratic of sliding doors,

certainly not bare bones life

to which you aren’t even

an after thought.

Nobody owes you anything.

Get over it.

Close your ledgers.

Melt your tin trophies.

Get off your ass and

grow some balls.

Realize

the finish line is also

a starting line.

Ways To Eat

Some men eat everything

on their plate.

Some men come late

don’t even bother to phone.

Some men eat alone.

 

Some men eat everything

then ask for more.

Some men just ignore

tongue tied the need.

Some men for money’s sake

eat little, eat greed.

 

Some men eat greens first

the meat fast.

Some men don’t eat

meat at all.

Some men just fast

fishermen who last

and catch nothing at all.

 

Some men leave a little

on the plate.

Some men can’t wait

eat in the car three bars.

Some men metaphorically eat stars.

 

Some men take dessert.

Some men take two.

Some men just desert the table

the moment the main course is through.

 

Some men sup

from the bowl.

Some men slurp

or even burp cuz

the eatin’s the goal.

Some men sit quiet

waiting for the dinner bell’s toll.

 

Some men eat for

the taste of it.

Some men just out of habit.

Some men would never eat rabbit.

Some men don’t give a damn

about it.

 

Some men eat to soak up

the alcohol.

Some men just to be tall.

Some men eat to entertain

themselves.

Some men while waiting for wives

at the mall.

 

Some men eat to pass

the time of day.

Some men want but can’t

find another way.

Some men say prayers.

 

Some men eat their fill.

Some men test their will.

Some men smoke after their meal.

Some men eat only monkey and eel.

 

But every man eats

every man completes

himself

in a million myriad ways

food, the fulcrum of our days.

Poetry by the numbers

There is more plastic in our oceans

than fish.

More guns are fired each day

than kisses given.

We kill over 250,000 living organisms

each time we exhale.

 

100% of us will die.

Despite appearances

there is no tomorrow.

The day is sufficient

unto itself.

There was no index

It’s been 3 days

mostly on the shitter

and I’ve still not found

that Bukowki poem

I read from his latest

unpublished stuff

titled – “Competition”.

 

Just not lucky I guess.

 

It’s like life.

There are no signs.

You think you got everything

lined up in a row, organized

until you try to do

the same thing twice

‘nd realize you kant

‘cuz there are no directions

for the recipe

you’ve been baking

‘nd thank god for that.

 

We all have to stumble.

That’s how we learn how to fall.

 

Giving Up

 

There is a moment in a man’s life

when he realizes deep down in his gut

his groin, his gait

he realizes

he’ll never experience much

that life has to offer.

 

TV, news, radio, magazines, books, atlases, photos

airplanes, buses, the brain, our imagination

can’t take us there or anywhere

near the sum of experience.

 

There’s a time in your life

when sadness soaks all and

awareness becomes a chore given

there’s so much you’ll never have or know

in this big candy story.

And the only recourse once you do feel

once you do know this,

the only action, the only response

is to give up

sit down in your garden, enjoy the day’s sun

’cause you ain’t going anywhere important

in this short time you’ve got.

 

Enjoy your slice and

give up the guilt of not owning

the whole damn chair of stores.

Hard Boiled Words (just the facts mam)

 

Good people kill   –  other good people.

Ugly people have babies   –   beautiful babies.

Prostitutes have mothers   –  mothers have prostitutes.

 

Presidents are made, not elected and

some day have to stand naked.

 

Blood isn’t bloody easy to remove.

Running water moves mountains.

 

Dogs piss to mark territory.

Men get pissed and then mark territory.

 

Elephants never forget what they don’t know.

Small microbes can topple the largest of men.

 

The eye can’t see itself.

Fire can’t burn fire.

 

Everything is an accident or nothing is.

God doesn’t play with dice, he plays with men

(because men play with themselves).

 

Dice don’t believe in chance –

their number always comes up.

 

A horse is a horse.

A man isn’t a horse.

Man’s task is to find out why he isn’t a horse.

 

Honor is what we will do some somebody else

but never for ourselves.

 

The first laws were created by criminals as justice, a justice – fictation.

 

Nothing ends, it only changes

like a newton became a fig newton.

 

War was created so man could be at peace.

 

ART is not art.

 

So many countries but only one sky.

 

Man is more what he thinks and less what he lives.

 

Crows are also black birds.

 

A wink is as good as a nod to a blind man

but a nudge works every time.

 

A forest is a good place for rest.

 

There are only two kinds of people.

Collectors and garbage collectors.

 

Why is potato salad like a holy sock?

 

Dirty underwear is made to be washed.

 

A cup in only a cup because it has nothing inside it.

 

Church pews aren’t built for comfort.

 

We reap what we owe.  We weep what we sow.

 

Quantity affects quality.

 

Beauty is a blemish and a blemish is beauty.

 

Rome wasn’t built in a day but a person is created in an instant.

 

Too much good is much worse than a little bad.

 

A spoiled bottle of wine gives all the others their taste.

 

Music is man’s indifference to time.

Time conquered through mimicked time.

 

We only obey the cop because of their uniform.

 

We live only so we can sleep (but we don’t know this).

 

Prison’s are built with the bricks of righteousness.

 

Drunks never get hurt when they fall because

they cannot envision what might happen to them.

 

A guitar with a broken string can still play a song.

 

Infidelity is a means of confirming our infidelity.

Every marriage is a giving up. In effect we say, “defeated I win.”

 

Cease fires are agreements to re-load.

 

Cemetaries always have the greenest lawns.

 

The poet dies on the page.

The only good poet is a dying poet.

 

Sometimes even the president of the IMF

has to wipe his own ass.

 

Nothing ever ends, it’s only bandaged……

 

To Be Nowhere

 

to be no where

abandoning what you were

not embracing

what you are going to be.

 

To just be

but no where

in a kind of

other life –

all that isn’t,

is to see

the nature of which

pretends to make

us free.

 

It is to be

outside the looking glass

looking in

a place where

in the middle of no where

we are aware

that nothing stays

that a broken record still plays

the wind will wind again,

it is to be

both the fruit falling

and the tree,

this no where

where G-d is the eye

I see.