Blue Skies From Now On

The best two dollar tie
that slips under the wing span collar


comes to a knot under
the lump in my throat,

some green and red
growth that was the result of a fashion nightmare.

I had dreams you
had nothing to wear

but the clothes you bought on sale
in the mall where everything

except the parking spaces
were discounted.

No, I don't get more apartment
when the rent is increased,

I need to live more intensely in it
to make the abode match the rising sea of outgoing green.


The boy's pants are too short to
be running a marathon
with the god of desire:
soon the world that used


to standby as he stumbled
through the malls looking

for a hem to cling to
will become rife with strife

and impacted with
lust, desire for things he

cannot logically use, women in
shorts only military secrets address in sane fashion:

the secrets of the Invisible Country
will be revealed and they still won't make any sense,

and growing older will be the
sigh escaping from the chair
you collapse into when fireworks are done

and sulfur
cuts a path
over the
picnic that celebrates
blue skies,
blue skies,
nothing but blue skies


from now on.

The voice that comes from the stream

for jls,lho and lol


It's not the voice that comes
from the steam
nor the tide that turns

at the drop of dime
into a newspaper machine.
not a name that fades in the ear

when you turn a corner
nor a name that comes through the
ear peace of your phone that

rings at the dinner hour.
not a lover who misses you
after all the years in jobs

on a far coast where time zones and
temperatures are closer and hotter
that the hotel sheets
are to the mattress where you stare

at the door to the hallway,
the shadows of feet passing in
the middle of the night,
you wonder what your lover
has too say,
not about this meal you're eating

or by what you're reading
but instead about how you're living
in this world when
nothing seems real enough to
count on as if life itself mattered,

i say all these things
come back to us
always in the moments when
we're required to be
the selves we've rehearsed in mirrors,
at home, imagining interviews
and interrogations,
the way your lips grew puffy
the first time i made you cry,

the way you traced the words of
the book you were reading
before setting it down
to dress for openings, dinner,
where ever we might be going,

the masks cracks and falls to the floor
when some meaningless phrase is said
and suddenly, powerfully
it’s clenched fists in public places,
the world is removed just then and too loud as well,

it's all those things after all,
every last cough and bottle of beer we balanced
on the fire place, there's nothing i ever had

that i don't miss, you were everything
in front of me, passing by and gone
like a road sign that couldn’t be read

What You Were Saying

The first sentence you speak
has you asking
why comets soar slow
as rudderless boats in dead leaks
which are gone when
there's finally a telescope,
let's consider the grass at night
when the sprinklers are on,
the salads and cakes
we made wilt and go stale
under these kitchen heat lamps.

The next sentence you speak
starts a new arrangement
with the things
that confound you in the morning,
all these combs, used condoms,
matinee ticket stubs
are going into the trash,
this is the day nothing changes yet
there's no going back,

But the sentence you'll say
after that considers a lofty cubism,
a stick in the eye,
the adjectives make you aware
how hungry you've been
and will make you search
for her phone number,
if it still exists in the handwriting
you wrote but couldn't read
that night when bar lights blurred
and her stubble grew coarser
each minute vanishing 'til 2 in the morning.

The last sentence is you
talking about talking too much
during movies you watch alone
in the kitchen amid the pie shells
you've made for the bowls of varied
sliced fruit , each speared with
serving spoons and long tined forks,
crusts that will go stale
and fruit that spoils
as you let the room get dark
until the star spangled banner is played
and you can suddenly hear
the humming of the refrigerator
with it's door left open.

Hurricane Rita

I will stand your ground
when the water comes
and our ship comes in to moor
where the porch used to be.

While I'm up here I'll inspect
the seams of the ceiling where
the roof pitches and folds down
like a book face down and open,
saving an empty seat, in another hour
I'll be crawling
along the shingles,
waving red rags
to helicopters,
wishing I had fixed those leaks
and thrown out all my long playing records.

Photos and furniture
catch the black water
to the intersection
where dead traffic lights vanish
under the brackish bubbling
of foul tides and trends,

Tonight there's a full moon over the Lone Star state
and clouds full of fury
remember nothing of the Alamo because
even our monuments are in the way and must go
to some other place we'll find
as we draw new maps
for an old , wet planet.

About this Book

There’s only a slight tear
at the corner of the page
where there’s the part
of the rhyme that says
everyone cries now,
everyone falls away
and everything
that used to seem part of plan and agenda
that would last so many years beyond
our petty days
of birth and death
now exists on
time stolen from some large
jar of sand
that is leaking
into a universe as vast and black
with the deadened light
that has fallen ever so much
while all we’ve seemed to do
is brush against each other in the streets?
glance through windows or in mirrors
to see if someone were looking at us,
sneaking extra shares of baked bread
out into the traffic where
all the crammed jostling is easily
mistaken for the tempo that
drives a dancer to distractions
that becomes legend
in the cities that might exists at the bottom
of the chasm
it feels as if our feet come to the edge of,
the edge of the page where the tear
down the side of the page rents
a word or two, divorcing
whole ideas and philosophies
without a shot being fired
nor a crowd stampeded with
troops with blades coming from the
the end of rifles that
smoke that comes clear and
vanishes like breathes in
winter, all the words that
get said and vanish with
each gasp of cigarette fume and large idea
that snap like firecrackers,
a warm room,
books that haven’t been sold
for drugs.

parking spaces you can't give up

it looks as if the cars are waiting to be stolen
yet no one looks sideways at them
and so they rust in weather
that takes one friend
and then another
until all that's left
is you and a
steering wheel
with no chasis or
suspension and of course
no friend's house to drive to
because friends and foes alike
have all become dust and rumors of
grave distinction, just the nuts and bolts
and the broken shoe laces of the whole damn mess .

Nothing for Breakfast

She picks up her brush
to place it where
stars would awake
amid the downstairs clatter
of spoons dredging the bottoms
of cereal bowls,


Though still asleep
in allegiance to grace under clouds
swimming over
the bedposts bearing
a rain of brass bands
and animal farms,
she rises from her covers
and goes to the windows,
wonders what it is the birds sing about
when there's no family
left in the nest
and a cold sun
blows their feathers
in the opposing direction.

Her father shaves with the door open
and he's only a half Santa Clause today
as she walks down the hall,
her brother has both his shoes untied
and he's taking a hammer to his favorite plastic airplane.

Mother sits at the kitchen table
holding a cigarette in her left hand,
raised as if though holding a tray full of drinks.
and the other one is flat,
smoothing the pages of a newspaper
and she frowns at a photograph
of old men in overcoats and wide brim hats
saluting missiles and soldiers
who've all found the same dance step.

She says she wants pancakes
but her mother says
there is no flour anywhere
except in the garden
and no pans except the ones that
movie cameras make from
the top of every hill overlooking
a Grecian city next
to an impossibly blue bay.
Her mother laughs ,
an ash falls from her cigarette.

She helps herself
to the corn flakes
and the milk carton,
wonders why the coffee smells
like odd, bitter medicine.

Speechless as Trains

In the drift of the words you are speaking,
wrapped in steam
that unfolds in vapors that vanish
in the cold snap of wind
that blows against
brick houses
that remain beautiful
despite neglect and graffiti,
a half-century of weather,
I am stunned,
speechless as trains.


I am drunk in love
with an idea of you
before we ever spoke words, that is,
committed biography
without being asked,
in a blur it seems
one of us was getting out of a car
in front of a marquee that advertised
a dead man's magic,
giving a panhandler a dollar
drawing up a collar on an oversized coat,
eyes locked into
the swirling twines of
train station steam
from an ideal century,
steel towers and smoke stacks are
rising to the nights' swallowed
promise of a glimpse from the roof of the
tallest building ,
feet moving under you,
but the steam dissipates, torn asunder by
wind and thunder,
I've memorized the lines of your hand,
these are lanes where eternity lives nameless
and absent in the Present Tense,



The same stores, the same houses,
the same neighbors coming and going .
pass me by,
cities are made
for finding dark places
as fingers trace the limits of seams,
the way the threads tear
at the stitches.


All this before
I heard you talk in that twang
and before I knew there was
an idea in your head, a buzz
of book learning that meets the world and negotiates
meanings with truths that have no resonance
except repetition and insanity.

I love those first moments
when it was all image,

The city’s posture bending
to compliment a style you forced even
canyons of tall buildings
and banners for gunboats bearing
dead sailors names
to give themselves away in a rapture of your eyes
lighting the streets and every room with grace
that would be uncanny,
for a minute I believe the city was built
on a hill nearest Gods' dispatching cloud.


But you spoke
instead, about the weather and movies,
my rapture was destroyed and shredded,
you became another pretty head full of brilliant thinking.


History is something you can wrestle with and win,
irony is a language you use with the ease of
turning the pages of a big dictionary,
the double click of the mouse,
subtlety is the Church you attend,
you make the streets that vanish
into perspectives to not disappear but
to continue somewhere over other hills,
in the middle of
a continent whose state capitals
you can name and spell on the Main roads.


You cannot transform my city
into the simple pleasure,
the world is just pure process, a
machinery that never stops,
your brain, my words,


Damn you, damn you,
it's gotten so a man cannot hide
even inside the lust he saves
when love won't follow the script
damn you,


Tonight there's only smart talk,
getting in touch
with my feelings,
framing statements
in generalities that leave room for the
world to resists even momentary certainty,


No escape for the wanna-be wicked,
no sleep without perspective,
the relevance of a sock drawer, pairs of socks,
speechless as trains in the yard
before the daily invention of light,
the day that comes again without knowing you...

The Hills Wash Away, The Hills Are Embered

The Hills Wash Away, The Hills Are Embered

All of us lucky sons of bitches
live on the hill tops
high over the fatal diseased
stew that the village has become,

And one of these days
it will stop raining,
the water will stop rising
and we'll be able to use
the roads down the hills again,

Followed with flames
racing up the sides of canyons
to embrace terraces and pools
after the fence is consumed,
fire balls and their embers carrying themselves
over satellite dishes and American flags,

But in the mean time
we will gather our pots and pans
and not mourn over our terraces
that have collapsed with the onslaught
of water and wind
that howls and whistles through
loose joints in the wood

culinary guitars

she frets and types
another letter about
culinary guitars and their apron strings
as her man wears a toolbelt
as he vacuums a shag carpet
dirty as a musician's hair.

something is always
wrong with how he
parts his hair,

the hat he tips
to pretty girls is gross and
gauche as greasy cake,

static fills his ears
when he rattles his change,
he types himself a sweater
that he'll wear into the ether.

there is no weather
except storm watches for bad breath
where in the state she lives in,
which is Anxiety, sharing a border with Panic.

she writes that no one
will kiss her
but it's not all bad
because there is only vapor
on their horizon,

bickering between declarations
of love that demands
a punch in the face,
a hand around the neck.

DOGS, DRUNKS , AND THE MOON

Dogs and drunks are barking tonight under my window, they share a vocabulary of bottled rage, sounds only the throat, free of language, can make. Silent train whistles and steel wheels humming droning along the rails sets them all off like bells in phone booths, no one will investigate. Tonight it's summer and there's only the moon that makes sense, there is only the moon to talk to. Anything said on the phone and letters will always lie, but the moon that hangs full over Pacific Beach controls the tide of mood, your defenses ebb and leak into the ravine of meaning, there's only grunts, deep sobs, fingers of pain that writes the script. There is only salt and hard water when thirst is a rough patch where the right words fight for passage. Some one is on that train going somewhere that has everything to do with searching, Dogs and drunks are leashed to the dumb facts of the matter, the material things that are cyclone fences and the bottled rage all the liquor pours from. I've made the bed a dozen times and half a Marlboro carton sits atop a box full of poems that are about beauty and irresolvable puzzles. Dogs and drunks are louder than warfare, the silence is white canvas my world spits on, I cry for my father who held my hand when he was dying, blind in both eyes and asking if I paid good money for the haircut, do I love you do you love me was I good enough to be your Father? Moon over PB and La Jolla, legendary stalking of streets, howling the grunts from bus stops and passenger windows, years of lawns and alleys where all the growing up was done, moon a search light in a sky the black and continuous like that's all there is when I close my eyes and everyone and thing is gone in a snap, only music and memory in the dark, moon of three decades lasting through all it's quarters my life a death by million cuts, the shadows of buildings, light from windows, lives going on, work being done, neither talking to god nor the devil but rather to the light, moon of all my years, pale cratered smirker, whose eyes are those of my father who loved me beyond the reach of his years and the light of his eyes that died on the day when breathing surrendered itself to the other side of the moon that never sets but instead rises to cloudless heights words suggests but leave nameless, anonymous as whispers in an ear from a ghost looking over my shoulder.

Call Me Fishmeal

Never along docks in dreams
did fish never not stink
and reek within a week of
being slapped twixt both ears
with a deceased crossed eyed mackerel,

Never did she say to he the other
that her mother wanted me rather
that than him, gather cans on a whim
he utters and gnaws on a toothpick
parsing spaces 'tween teeth lined
up like yellow picket fences, oh, have i
given offenses? how may i atone
as she he and fates clustered 'round
celestial kegs make sure yet
another bone is found in the
in the bottom of my soup,
throw me for a loop,

Let's start a group
i will mutter, lemme sing and
play harmonica
For Betty and Veronica and let's find
out in a shout what we don't know
as we all take a solo
where our singular parts
of the story are revealed
as snippets of the picture,
the big idea,
never no how a way i can fix her
when see says
as the train pulls away,
her head laced in steam,
see ya ,wouldn't want to be ya.

January AM

January AM


For every leaf that turns
three hues in breezes
that spins the vanes
three directions while the
lake and stream freezes,

there is an empty cup
of coffee,
a pot still warm
on the range,
there are dark rings
on the counter tops

and dark snow on the walk
two hours before
the sun emerges
to no comforting avail,
my arms are too short
to do anything

but flail against
the gloves attached to my sleeves
by elastic straps and alligator clips,
my seat is too short
to only the top of my
sisters head, here eyes wide
and blue as lost marbles
as she eats her cereal
and ignores her toast,

Dad starts to sing
about Paris
again,
'though he's never been,
mom rattles her keys,
talking into the phone,
slapping my wrist when
I reach for the sugar,

Each small flake
that falls is
an angles' house,
so perfectly crystalline,
and pure as snow
is rumored to be,

That's what mom said
during Catechism study
and what I saw was slush
where the driveway used to be,
dark, the color of rusts,
icy mounds of snow and
every tone of earth,

who lives there?
I asked mom
in the hallway
while dad warmed up the car,

I have no idea what you're asking me, sweetie,
let's get in the car
and get this day started and over with.

4th of July

My love knows no spending limits,
the matter was always academic,
the lots from which fireworks were seen
could be viewed as check marks against
a scorecard that is invisible, behind the clouds,
the wind blows toward the land
you'd never get for a birthday.

Even if we stood here all night
the wind would taste the same as
it did last year as we light our fuses
with old Zippo lights, there were sparks
in the dark and flinty remarks
as the sulfur caught fire and the
curvature of the caved-in moon
gave us white, chalky light
to search for our eyes in the dirt
under the leaves and the blanket
we brought from home, the
threshold we carry ourselves over
like weight that shifts in assignments
of motion , water displaced and rising
as the moon leans to the shoreline
for a kiss and a sip of what we're drinking.

She rose a leg as though to dance,
he played a song the same as always,
you sang those words with those strange notes
that rustle the highest limbs of California fronds,
I am writing a novel with every pause in the chatter,
in my mind I'm at my desk laughing again as
all the words fill the monitor and fall off the screen
and onto the floor.

It was clear, this dream
I had, we stood here with our
friends with our sparklers
and glasses of wine
cheering the American Night
as rockets screamed across the sky,
risking our homes or at least car keys
that might fall from our pockets,
but there is only empty night
in front of us, a moon shining light
that ripples over the water
that moves toward land in
serpentine movements,
as I was saying,
"…if we stood here all night,
if we made a big, tall wish,
if we're good with ourselves
and our words we put into the world
that goes to sleep trusting
the rime of light to creep over
the horizon come dawn,
we can see where we might
live in futures where we all have our keys
and we all get to drive home
from the fireworks at the beach…"

James Brown Takes it to the Bridge

In memory of James Brown
we will spread our capes

over tired shoulders
of the man with the dusty knees

who, having slid from the backstage
to the front, has saved the microphone

from a ballad worse than death
in a pop tune sung by white guys

in tuxedos that smell
like the ice in glasses of warm milk,

we will do the splits for
the rest of time,

we will spin and yowl
'til sirens fall from police cars

and phones give up
their rings with sharp reports

of the saxophone's grunt
and the insinuating nudge

of the bassist's thumb
at the door, feeling around

the cracks in the wood,
the grooves in the cement,

yes, suddenly there's
daylight and barbecue

and sex for the millions
as the waxed soles of

shoes help us glide in and out
of the spotlight

the many lights, the bursting drums,
every trumpet and triangle

making the funk stick
to the sheets

and form a trail
we take to the streets

on the offbeat, indiscreet,
shoehorned in tap and

leaps of hoarse cries of freedom,
sweet Jesus the band pumps it out hard

even as he said
he was leaving here tonight,

but James Brown has
no where else to be

but funky and pressed, tall shoe heels
and flared pants,

nostrils flare like mares in
night terrors in stately neighborhoods

where the trees are always
heavy with fruit

and where no one has to pee,

euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwheeeeeeeeee??eeeeeeeeEEEE!

let's hammer it down,
build ourselves a bridge

lets take it to the bridge,
lets throw off our cape
and take it to the bridge,

lets slick back our hair
high and black
and take it to the bridge,

lets drive at eighty miles an hour
'til they shoot our tires
as we take it to the bridge

let's say it loud
i'm black Irish and proud
at the foot of the bridge

that crosses a the fiery river Styx,
more sticks
than any full tilt angel of appetites should tote,
get out the vote,

get up
get on up
get up
get on up

where's that confounded bridge,
and tell us sheriff,
what's the tariff,
will the music
be as hip
when we get
to the
other
side?

Situation comedy

Situation Comedy

If I had a dog
he would be hiding
under the kitchen table

looking embarrassed
as I open and close
every door in the house
in a world where
I have no job
you can see me go to
where it's always
in the middle of the afternoon,

getting frantic
between bouts of
running to the upstairs
you never get to see

and saying hello
to neighbors dropping
in to talk stupid stuff
after walking through
front and back doors
that are never locked,

and my wife, if I had a wife
and not significant relations,
would be standing in
the kitchen doorway,
hands on hips,
thinner as either Hepburn,
head tilted,
aghast at my stupidity,

and I would ask
what did I do?
and she would make a noise
that was disgusted and glottal,
and I would say
what did I say?
and she'd drop the jello
to the white carpet
and run up to the second floor
(the one you never see)
crying tears that are
louder than they look,

the dog would take
his paws from his eyes
and drag his food bowl
out the back door,

the kids ,
if I had kids,
smart ass sixteen and fourteen year olds
addicted to headsets
and loud ring tones,
would high five one another,
and one would pay off
a mystery bet
before picking up
their skateboard and backpack
to go the video arcade,

and I would stand
in the living room
(if I had a living room to stand in)
staring off into space,
as if into the lens
of a big camera,
mouth open
as if too speak,
wondering,
if there was any wonder left in the world,
who was doing all that laughing,
all that clapping,
all that racket
as worlds scroll
in mid air
in front of my
dumbfounded face.

Lawn party

Her face lights up
the side of the house
we grew up in,

Pieces of toys
lost in the tall grass,
a plastic clowns
head crushed underfoot,

He coughs, shakes the walls
of the brick fireplace,
bats fly from attic windows,

Japanese lanterns line the backyard,
the pole is lowered another notch,
my brother drops aspirin in our cousin's coke,
marimba music fills the cloudless sky
as night birds claw the eyes
of the man in the moon,


I tell my mother there are strange coats
and animal skins on my bed,

The doorbell keeps ringing
and the rug is rolled up,

From the top of the stairs,
through the wood railing,
I watch wrestling matches
on the front lawn
that knock over the Japanese lantern,

Mother is crying
like my sister does
after I hit with a rolled up Time Magazine,

Dad is yelling at neighbors
the way baseball players
argue with umpires,

There were policeman
at the door with
notepads and busy pens
and that's all I remember
before I went back to bed.

Back seat

Lean miles gone by
in the backseats of cars
under grey, leafless skies
little else but tree limbs,smoke stacks.

Signs of first names
half read over the window pane
rushing past as blurred groans,
an alphabet exploded.

Each twist
of my tongue
is a taste of what I last said
about a page you read,
a red horse, a blue pony.

Their lips are moving quickly,
mouths open as if to sing
but again, groans blurred consonants,
the rolling hiss of tires on wet roads.

It seems things
happens in another room
where a door is ajar,
red pony, blue moon,

My voice recedes
as you stare
and my words
become thick and clumsy
like some unheard thing,
bled roon, mule poony

Half of each word
blockish, thick,
taste of blood.

Trees roll past,
church spires,
powerlines,
someone talking to someone
on phones of no color.

Fences

A fence runs between
the houses whose rooms

are stacked with boxes of things
collected from the decade,
the clutter of years when

love was love and duty
was a man in a tank watching
Aral mountain ranges on the

other side of a Cold War border,
hands ready for the pistol
and radio at his reach

lest any hoards tried
to dilute the United States of America
in storage, I slept
like a bone in an airless vault.

But everything
was turned inside out
by the time I woke up,

the fence remains but everything
I live next to is three stories high,
even TV antennas snatching images

from the sky are gone from my view,
chimneys are rare as honesty at retirement parties,

satellite dishes sneak the world to
my house of boxes.

And love became duty
to remain on the border
of the bed my limbs stayed in,
too late realizing that

the line of death was
my breath heavy with scotch and mouthwash
and pithy perfumes for the tongue
when all my speech became poetry
about duty and honor while she nodded
and brushed her daughters' hair,
she takes a loose strand
from her shoulder, she examines the end,

the hair is split,
voiceless, she speaks

This where it ends,
I cannot breath,

there are fences running l over the world
going somewhere but we do
is put the past away
in boxes until the corners of rooms
crowd me and speaks to me
n loops of your language
that's liquid and lost in attention to
details that are about why
you become invisible
even in bed,
a mining camp
than the place where
dreams slip across the darkness
when we've stopped talking,
when eyes are closed,
when breathing should be the set of dance step.,
not a race to the sunrise.

Everything is inside out
and I'm stupid enough
to believe that a man in the tank
loves the world even as bombs go off
around the limits of our fences,

But now I love a room
with high ceilings,
empty corners,
rooms big to swing
a cat by the tail,
where my voice rises high
and loud and rings against
the pipes and then dies
away like notes plunked
from a fine-tuned piano,

I love the discovery shoes,
sober talk, doors without locks,
windows left open

with every racket of car alarm
and leaf blower
and weekend carpenter

speaking to me in sounds
that bustle in phonics flashing bright words
that bluster like billboard lights ,


back yards yield to one another
like lovers wearing blindfolds in empty parks
horrified that they might
be passing each other as

both their reaches miss their
objects of desire
and both of them walk sightless
in the other direction,
around corners
and into office buildings
before one, and then the other

takes off the blindfolds
to discover that they are
in a different city
than where they started the day,
every one is in another part of
the map, fenced in with invisible armies
with flags we’ve never seen,
the world might learn to do something
with fences that run through the living rooms
so that the couches and beds have
politics in every position you assume
running from stress,

unwind the string
and kiss me, please,
you are a moon I want to have orbit me,
I am a gravity you cannot deny,
you make my fences sway in
your bluster and flower print dresses,
I regret fences I set up the day
you left town,

the last thing to be seen
were you on the other side of the fence
getting into your red Volvo
just before you drove away
with my heart in your trunk.

Who will rule the world?

Who will rule the world
just as far as the corner,
no cell phone blather
or fruitless lather
about who told who
to pick up Chinese Noodles
and Strohs for the game,
in my half block
they would all
just have to go hungry
and shut up
tight like drumheads
dumb as combs in a jar,


there will be no
air traffic
or curse words
or students deafened
with Ipods sulking
in the hoods appearing
like ghosts who won't
leave the planet
because there's still some
crack to be smoked,


no,


there is none of that
until you board the bus,
book under my arm,
boarding passed ready
and flashed semaphore style,
everyone in their seats

bright and shiny,
scrubbed with joy
with no sudsy film
dulling the glowing pink patina of ruthlessly
scoured flesh,
everyone speaks English,

everyone is a Democrat,
everyone loves Leslie West and Stravinsky
in the same precious sentence,
my ride, my bus, our world of similar things
all over again
supported by an army of you
who will seize any territory needed
to assure that there's
no sucky music
and no lack of white people
whose poems unravels
like coming attraction
you've seen
year after year
until the film stock
crumbles and the rhymes
becomes the dust
someone else’s footprints
land in, on their way
to take a hairy dump.