A Hot Day in Berkeley

A hot day in Berkeley
Is a bad day in Berkeley
City not made for heat
All the scruffy looking people
Who dwell in this city
Look all the scruffier
The streets are dirtier
And more desolate
AM radios blasting
Cars, cars, cars
Everywhere there are cars
With people in them
Being hot
And they blast more noise
More heat
Hairy men in shorts and sandals
Looking hairier then ever
Bad smells are worse
All the trash bins seem overflowing
No one is happy
People in wheelchairs whir by
Joggers sweat past you on busy sidewalks
Sweating bicyclists crowd onto sidewalks too
The assholes
No central air in the house
Just a weak little fan
Praying for the fog

Except For The Simpsons

Soft like a dream or kisses from an angel. 

Gentle breezes and complex whispers buttoning my caresses so that I could face the day. 

Then the walk was over and I faced the snarling reality of 

What should have been home and hearth.

Only my fantasies could protect me now. 

Feed them the pulsating rock music, or tickle them with a novel. 

Or sedate them with television. 

You accursed box, dulling my mind since early childhood. 

Telling me your feeble stories, refusing to challenge me or ask me even the simplest questions. You great pacifier. 

You ugly menace to society. 

You purveyor of indelicate lies and trodden hopes. 

Death of the mind your spawn. 

I shouldn’t have had you as a lover. 

But we all risk it.

Kick It

Junky
You funky
On your back you got a monkey

Backwards
Twirling and swirling
Destination asswards

Leave it on the line
Suck on your turpentine
Methods like yours don't rhyme

Have to
Must be there
Must create your own flow

Don't
If you haven't
Likes you never will

So kick the junk
Punk
Your pattern in bunk

I say so
See me so
So do it, bro

Who Cares?

Is anyone out there
?
And if so, where

Is anyone listening
?
Are you shiny and glistening

Does anyone care
?
Are there those of you who dare

Do these words matter
To anyone but me
Do you see

Where I can go from here
If there's no one near
No one dear

Where does
Why does
When does

Who
Oh my God
I don't

Have
Any
Idea

Worst of all I don't bloody care

no capitals

am helpless without the written word

reading, writing

watching it unfold on the screen

the screen

where my heart unfolds to rapturous strains

of

there is no little conceit wrought in words of

our own choosing

musing

the delicacy of our past perfection

those flawless memories

like cats sneaking on our bed

the rest is mere folly

so long as we subscribe to no false notions

nor pander to our own lies

about ourself

done

yesterday is here

tomorrow has been pushed back

so cry

if 

you want

What?

What do I do with all this pain?
There's nothing and so much to write about all at once
Pain go with the writing I do and don't do

What do I do with all this love?
Never enough but always too much
Hello balance, where have you been

All my life

And there goes another sad dream
About wasted evenings
Spent looking out windows at nothing

Yesterday
Tomorrow
Just never, ever, ever today

Perish the thought and the pain is still
Here
The love too

Where does the love end
And the pain
Begin?

Where does the mystery stop
And the hysteria hop?
At night when you're alone

And why do the great surging commas of my life
Create more confusion
And banish the answers of my life to --

But that's so easy
You see
What?

Bad Bargain and Needing Rain

"Indecision and reveries are the anesthetics of constructive action." - Sylvia Plath

I ponder as I wander across the never land of the internet

Caught in the web of the world wide

Contemplating this while diverted by that and never settling down with any of it

Distract me 

Go ahead.

It's easy

I trip over my ego as I fumble away life's sweeter moments

and rage at the noise from the gardner next door

The light goes out again in my head

And I'm left in the darkness of my daily tasks

Perplexed by everyone being obvlivious of my cries for help

Deaf and dumb to the reality of....

And not ever

Not at any point -- letting go 

Because it is all too much to lose for someone who can't abide fortune's smile

I laugh too loud

Copious

Moments drift away and catch instead the hours and long days

of Earth's descent into whatever lies beneath

Finding cliches and ripping the headlines from them

Dastardly

Bastardly

I am what I said

I am what I thought

I am what I always meant myself to be

And there is little this tragedy will have to say about it in the end

Confused? Not much

Determined? 

Sometimes

But other times lounging about waiting for tomorrow 

to become yesterday and the next month to come

Where do the words come from and why do they plague me? 

Flying out of me like so much sunlight 

and drying the morning dew while I sip tea

Me

Some words drop off never bargained for 

never borrowed never needed never mine never caressed 

and loved like that beautiful woman who is my wife

She is there now

Happiness is this very thought

We illuminate our lives with the triumphs and tragedies of others

For them we are lucky

For ourselves we are nothing 

but that which we were given by loving arms and dancing feet and a heart

Heart

Start,

So it goes and so it shall always

Provided we keep alive the quest for fulfillment and are driven by 

softer, gentler natures and not the bitter weeds of hate's conquests

We must go on

Leaves rustle

Or so --