Sunday, November 26, 2017

Rainy Afternoon

Dustbin lakeside gabardine jacket
It's lovely raining
Drip drip drop drop
Water water wet wet
Nacho plebiscite aluminum siding
It's chilly in the house
Without the heater on
Sweatshirt is on cool air
Care
Flower pot Mennonite wooden bench
Clouds are thick and heavy
With precipitation
As the duck quacks
Quack quack quack
Candle wick broken kite purple mittens
Rain keep a coming
Soothing me relaxing me
Me me me meing me
Raincoat rawhide watchman's cap
This is the poem I wrote before my suicide
(Not really)

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Depressed

Oh my god this is awful the unrelenting pain the misery the living breathing thinking hell the never stop of pain an anguish it is the dark side of death’s empty abyss it is being left waiting in a dark parking lot with no one around with your stomach growling and you don’t know how it will end but it seems impossible that it will ever be this way in the eternity that stretches ahead and there is no weeping or wailing just silent suffering and nothing nothing at all gets done it is the ceaseless repetition of the trivial and inane and banal and there is no access to anywhere else so how did I write this god if I know but here it is and the pain persists

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Like the Decatur Wind

This is my masterpiece
A tour de force
I’m giving it a thumbs up
It’s brilliant
Sublime like the Decatur Wind
An awesome love of apple cheeked ghosts
More angelic in scope and dimension than
All the hope of your Aunt’s oatmeal cookies
I rise above the rest with this powerful
Statement
An instant classic
Evocative of rainy March Monday mornings
On a late August sunny April afternoon
(Because it’s time to dance)
An appeal so broad that no one will dare
Open the pickle jar
I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me
Like the forlorn football player taking a knee
Like the angry rebel throwing the tear gas back
Understated and overblown the nexus of triumph
It is like nothing I’ve ever done before
Right up there with Wolfe, Hemingway and Bugs Bunny
There is no I in team but there’s a t in it
I accept your applause and let it wash over me
I’m taking a bow

Thursday, September 7, 2017

I Am So Many and All of You Are But One

I am so many and all of you are but one
You are all surrounded
There is nothing to fear from me
I glide through the angelic forests
Pursuing the radiant love of eternity
(How nicely the moons sing to us)
You’re trapped and I don’t care
I can conquer the last and the first
There are no concerns among the vivid
Your dullness must ache as stars devour you
What chance did you have being so numerous
My solitariness was impregnable
(How gladly does the audacious mountain dream)
My virtue is swimming home
I live the triumph of a thousand dances
No pity or shame or floundering cares
All of you dejected and defeated in your multitude
(How weary the meadow springs cry out)
Watch me now watch me
I am everywhere while only here
This is my destiny
Do you understand now?

Monday, May 29, 2017

Poetry Bop Hop Don't Stop Just Tango

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
but that’s not the worst of it
add
uuuuuuuuuuu
or listen to the rhythm
and hope for the rhyme
we all go out there sometimes
ezra a pound
william a carlos william
plath the sylvia or sexton the anne
and ginsberggggg the world
I love you, myrna loy
cocktails with william powell
shed the fortune and live in the raw
but nooooooooooo crying unless
never cave in to expectations
fear the holy
but never drop the ball gown
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
there is the wonder asunder of blunder
blood and thunder
so everybody let’s dance
do the lindy hop the twist the watusi
the samba the rumba the can can
the flamingo the waltz the texas two step
the foxtrot the lambeth walk the tango
go go go go go go go go go go go go go
going going gone
dusk till dawn
but me I keep it realllllllllllllllll
that is reeeeeeal
feel?

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Life Story

I had an idea once
It was laced in pain
I had a vision once
It drove me insane

I’ve been to places
Where I left traces
Of the sorrow I brought
And the destruction I wrought

I’ve met people here and there
Some were boring some had flair
People have met me this is a fact
Some liked me some questioned my act

Words I’ve written have been read
Things that came out of my crazy head
I’ve written poems articles and fiction
They come of my imagination and internal friction

All I’ve ever written said and done
Has been for a reason or just for fun
But nothing has mattered as much as you
For you — Kathryn — my love is eternal and true

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Land of the Free -- Amerika's First 100

Plaid!

Turn that plaid off it's too damn loud

The chewing monster in the wall
will bloody well get his
and you shall hear of it

Revolution and new country
Set up as the land of the free
Constitution was writ large
Washington was first in charge
Then
Adams Jefferson
Madison Monroe
Off we go

Meanwhile there was slavery
(in the land of the free)
AND
Genocide of Native Americans
Andrew Jackson said let's have a
Trail of Tears
The slaughter of tribes went on for years

Cotton gins and cotton pickers and
overseers and auctions and whippings
The bitter blood was freedom's drippings

Glory glory abolitionists
your truth was marching on
end the peculiar institution
(but never give restitution)
Go Harriet Tubman go
Some fought for justice, you know

Lincoln elected
Succession selected
Battle Hymn of the Republic
Bull Run Antietam Vicksburg Gettysburg
Appomattox Court House

John Wilkes Booth
So uncouth
AJohnson now the boss
For the country a big loss

Reconstruction after the destruction
Compromise of 1876 was the sacrifice of the
African Americans
Meet Jim Crow everybody
Lynchings strange fruit
Talk of freedom for blacks was moot

Manifest Destiny that rich white male conceit
Resulted in colored races being beat beat beat
Land was taken
Cultures shaken

America's first 100 years
Cry when you hear
the Star Spangled Banner yet wave
Where cruelty is credited as brave

A rollicking start for the new land
Most of its leaders thought all was grand
Different opinions for people of color and the poor
But who would listen
Glisten America glisten

Turn off the noises we can't watch them reach
Stop it stop it stop 
Make it plaid and lose the buttons
Distract the chewing monster

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Topsy Turvy Even Curvy

The sun shone brightly on the adverb
Whispers danced in the primordial ooze
Absent an excuse I pardoned myself
And the taillight said hello
My day was a ragtag of limos and
Obstinate photo blogs

The concert was sold out
No aardvarks need apply
The Irish ditty was first on the schedule
Next up were the purple platitudes
Obtuse recollection followed

The seismic shift of pickles
The swarming mob of memoranda
Tasted like honey wrapped sorrows
Canning the detergent proved futile
Oblivious writing cats

Then I wrote part four
Parchment paper delight on the express train
The sky was all akimbo after prayer
Dinner with the forlorn paper jam
Obscene stapling muses

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

Digression Session

Spontaneous prose is what Kerouac called it
by whom I mean Jack the writer and the scribe
and the prose master and the poet and the novelist
and say can you see by the fawn’s bushy tail
what so proudly it hailed when the temperature dropped
Cropped the picture to leave out Steve out and
weave out of the way of the burning and boiling
and upsettingly roiling and say did I ever tell you
about the time that Finnegan’s Wake woke
and we spoke and spokes of the wheel, the wheel of cheese

So I got out of bed and it was pretty clear that
the black dog of depression was all over the frontal lobe
and the back lobe and the middle lobes
and I was saddity sad sad sad
Dad bad
Not glad
I could feel the depression swirling around
Plus I still itched
The damn rash from the damn meds
it's supposed to be damn fading
but damn if it ain’t still bugging me
and should I call the doctor?
I ate breakfast though it was a struggle to get that much out of me
But I did it
And I sighed and nearly cried for the longest time
but managed to walk to the gym and on my way
called the doctor’s office
and all the time I’m thinking there’s no point to my life
I’m worthless and meaningless and only for the family
do I not just end it all so I keep going
and get to the gym and run eight miles on the treadmill
and after a shower I walked home feeling like aces

Yes

Been feeling fine turpentine all the rest of the day
How long will this last well I’m

not

taking any bets — least of all making any
Bets, gamble shamble ramble
A rambler
Pink Rambler that’s what the wife was driving on our first date
Yup a Pink motherfucking Rambler
How bout that, kitty cat
She had a pathetic white cat back then been declawed
Useless as yesterday's pus
Shortly after we moved in together
we got an abandoned formerly abused cat
Big black monster that had been living in the building
where wife worked
We called it Stretch because it was so long
and would stretch out so
and in honor of Willie McCovey
That cat didn’t like anyone touching it except me
I could pick Stretch up and hold him for a little while
Anyone else would get bit

Yet

When oldest daughter was a wee one
Stretch would sit around with us
and sometimes daughter would go over
and bang on the cat and he took it
evidently understanding about small children
Amazing animal

Did I just digress?

Did I ever....................

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Elegy Melody

In the lonely dusk of yesterday
The lint fell from the heavens
I dropped to a knee
Supplication was my thing then
Writ large on the forever horizon
Were the vignettes of Claudius
So we shuffled into a bar
Where the drinks were purplish
We listened to Nixon talk of peace
While he ordered bombing babies and hospitals
(The tender cords of amnesia wrestled with us)
The bombs in Southeast Asia sent limbs flying
We heard the laughter emanating from the television
Silly were the situations and people on the tube
And they were interrupted by eternal detergent commercials
(Goya Garbo and Godard looked on as we waited for Godot)
This was the Kerouac of our Spring’s Discontent
And little did the peals of pain surmise
That Sherlock was lurking under the Redwoods
(Gone off the rails now)
Warmth enveloped our snow bound brains
LSD got us back to normal
We read the encryption software of Sundance
Lo the poseur we were on a tortilla high
More beans please and pass the peace and love
Understanding 2001 and 1984 and Catch 22 and 8 1/2
Misunderstanding Math and English and Science and History
The Beatles always The Beatles and more The Beatles
But crusty burgers in palatial cars did not satisfy
For we were the generation of cosmic understanding
Our super laconic waffles stolen by midgets
(Platitudes, platypus, plexiglass, posterior)
Left us under the spell of the news
A break in at the DNC in Washington
Our marijuana roaches of next week were thus foretold
So we had mad sex in millions of positions in millions of places
But with just thousands of people
Crooked angles of jet stream love sent us rapturous
We thirsted for more poetry and baseball and wine
While bombs and love exploded all over the elastic world
Earth — the planet in seven dimensions
Time to cry

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Question Time for the Despondent

How many ways can I die today?

Are any of them nice, are any okay?
How could I end this sad little life?
Would a gun work or how 'bout a knife?
Is there reason for me to live longer?
Is there a chance that I’ll get stronger?
What is the point of another day?
Can there still be fun, can there be play?
Why continue enduring this sorrow?
Isn’t likely to be worse tomorrow?
Do I go on in such terrible pain?
Is there any purpose, anything to gain?
Is it possible to avoid despair?
Why should I try why should I care?
Could I still be happy again?
If that happens, what then?
How long would it last, how long would it stay?
Wouldn't I be sad again the very next day?
This pain makes it hard to see the good and the glad.
All I experience is the painful and sad.
Still I get up and go through my day,
I guess because I know no other way.



Tuesday, March 7, 2017

My Thoughts Exactly

The dull knife of sad perceptions
The filament dancing in moonbeams
All the troubles of the weighty norms
The raunchy song of sea-faring men
The little that grows and the big that shrinks
All the tangles and knots and pinafores
The favored daughters of conscientious kings
The mannered ways of an aloof miner
All the perceptions of yesterday’s musings
The determined glare of an icy locksmith
The gladdening memories of alchemists well met
All the darning socks twisting in the hurricane
These are all and not enough just like a long life