Sleep with your feet toward the road --poems by Ted Burke

Karma

2011-10-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

There is a gun
in the kitchen drawer and

ants in the pantry,

your is husband ,

drunk on the couch, as always,

'though sunshine
expected in the after life

unless it's canceled
and replaced with reruns.

In fishing stories I read

2011-09-27T20:12:00.000-07:00

In fishing stories I read
a slither of histories that peal

drying on the gray wooden deck
and get pried loose by a youngster
who has no idea that

there's anything more important

than finding a dollar
in the street and putting it
in his back pocket, for keeps.

As is, flies buzz around
the lights in bow-tie formations,

poised at a minute in history
when I couldn't do anything else

except watch as they dive bomb
they seem to worship.

Detroit cars and sand dunes

in towns forgotten by interstates
pull down my eyelids

like the whispered fringe of Andrew Wyeth drapery,
wheat fields surrounded by large sky and spectral maps,
someone tonight is in the highest building

on the water front playing cards
as the cow jumps over the moon

and the spoon finds a drawer
to sleep in until a meal appears
as if by a magic that makes
the heart sink.

An Idea of Fantastic Moonlight

2011-09-20T20:49:00.000-07:00

An idea of fantastic moonlight
on the water's wavering surface,
we are concentric in our desires
for the rest of the meal,
it's only during full moons
when the dogs feel like singing
and the trains and trolleys,
running along parallel tracks,
to screech and whistle and yowl
into the black slants of downtown
in the iron grey sheen of lunar gleaning
that makes the arid
and thirsty with desire as all the cars
rattle in line and the steel wheels
grind around the bends of the tracks that
move between buildings of cracked brick
and scarred, grey cement,
cutting through old neighborhoods
where trains are go to and come from
places distant as the face of the moon
rippling and quivering in snaking white lines
from the horizon, over the water,
to the beach and the mirrored hardness
of the sand,
I want to you scratch my back
and rub my neck,
you are saying, turning around in your seat,
your computer screen on a web page decorated with
floral print and drawings of naked men,
there is so much left to write about before deadline,
there's a mountain of data that needs indexing and
some other line of scrutiny, you place a finger
over my lips, you say Listen and there are barking dogs,
car horns and train whistles sounding
in cryptic orchestrations, shrill,
and thirsty among the ashen hues
the full moon brings us,
it's time to let data just pile up
so we can pile on each other
and books fall to the floor
as they would in perfect love stories,

The camera pulls away and floats to the window
to settle on an image of the full moon,
the full moon would be smiling, yes
but no, not that, clouds drift over the orb
and the world loses some of
the grey glow,
yet the sound don't change,
whether trains, dogs, cars stalled on an over pass,
both of us stuck on each other,
noises stuck on the black tarp of evening.
You turn your head,
you cough and recover,
hand at your throat,
the mike buzzes but not before,

You shuffle your poems
and read yet again,
you go on in a room
where everyone has a first line,
I would read about your eyes,
Wide as they are as saucers,
cups that are deep as pans of bread
that come from the oven
and into my heart,
and that's a start, I think,
You fold your hands
on the podium as you read;
you've got this memorized,
yet it all seems extemporized
from the bottom of your heart
which hasn't a bottom at all,
Now some one else reads,
a guy with tattoo of his tongue
across his left cheek, he screeches
to hip- hop clicks of a clock,
but he's young and
not far from done as long as
His homies throw their signs
with fingers that cross a language
of quieting the flutters of the untested heart,
I will read you later, on the phone,
with every court and hand gesture,
you wave goodnight, I know the line,

You'll see me in the funny papers.

NEVER THE SAME

2011-07-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

All this time standing here
waiting for a man
to step through his door
to catch the air he couldn't breathe
from his windowless room,
half hours and then hours
of vapor trail and jagged cups of coffee,
my fingers cannot feel

the edge of my papers
through the calluses and gloves,
we'd been experimenting
with pronouns,
the way "I" comes after a catastrophe,
and how "they" are invisible and ubiquitous,
how "we" are strong through the week

of the ugliest possibilities,
the man was late
and so were the buses,
things were never the same.

The old drawers are pulled open

2011-02-23T12:22:00.000-08:00

You worship the ground
that took me in full shovel embrace,

you wished me well
as I trekked past
skulls on post
lined up like
road signs
advertising a place
to sleep for the night,

I dreamed of you
while in hotel rooms
in cold cities,
steaming breath
twined with steam from the coffee,

I wrote your name
a hundred times
on stationary paper
in a hand I couldn't read,

We remain
in present tenses
with senses confused
by what where we've been until now,

in photos
drinking cocktails
waving to ourselves
when the old drawers are pulled open.

An easy path to follow, a hard path to get off of

2010-12-22T12:49:00.000-08:00

Who could walk in your shoes
when your laces are barbed wire
and your soles leave tank tracks
which respect neither
street nor flower bed
to get to
where you
think you are needed?

No one wearing baggy clothes
dares
stand next to you
because you smoke
and wave your arms as you speak
your burning desires
for more fire escapes
in buildings
who's wood floors
have cigarette scars.

"I'd like to take
a wrecking ball
and a flame thrower
to this place"
is what you said
the last time
we sat at the same table in a public place,
"all these snoots
with their toy dogs
and ransom note sobriety,
they can fall
where the stand
and attract vultures.
I'm a nice guy.
Fuck everyone else."

A week later
Merle asked me
where she could find you.
I said
look for a destroyed
piece of public property
and then follow the trail.

if bullets could talk

2010-12-03T06:59:00.000-08:00

if bullets could talk
there would be more speeches
and no applause

for tipping your hat
to the customer
who gave
your first bottom dollar.

There are no more clouds

2010-12-02T21:25:00.000-08:00

There are no more clouds
on the other side of the pillow,
but it did rain
minor cures for big feet
in the shower stall
and there are Navy boats
shaped like shoes
scraping the sheets the river bed,
gunned up and baffled by drought
and cracked earth
and all that science bullshit
that says
you'll not have a happy day
until the grass
dies around your neck
and squeezes you until
your eyes
light up the street

At these prices

2010-08-12T07:04:00.000-07:00

at these prices
you would expect
the bread to be
sliced by Jesus himself,
offering himself
with a can of grape juice,
on special .

under these ceilings
a heart might stop
in awe as the neck
cranes back for
a view of arches
detailed with angels
and their bosses
with not a cobweb to
disturb their conference,

with names like these
on plates this ornate,
you aren't sure if your
about to eat a meal
or commit some crime
against decorum,

in a city whose ills
slip under the
short circuiting radar,
it's easy to dream
with eyes wide upon,
sitting straight up
in your chair
in amazing taverns
overlooking a Pacific Ocean
that is black
as secret ink when
there's no sun to shine
on the coast
that's been carved up
and built upon
and otherwise carted away
in trucks to landfills
where nothing grows
but resentments and
gun registration,

every newspaper sold
from corner machines
tells you what day this is,
each email asks you
to get thinner, richer,
bigger than jackhammers,

at these prices
who could afford
not to spend
a little more, scrape
some more shavings from
the credit card
and dampen the
scream under the lamp
by the pier on a night
when clouds and sunsets
riot in swirls that make this city
tremble and quake under the boots
you wore to work?

Get Somewhere

2010-08-10T22:53:00.000-07:00

The taste of fruits
and the tang of juices

make this morning
slog as slow as the milk

that drips from the cracked cereal bowl,
rivulets of white beading toward the edge

of the table,

I dream while waking of airplanes
in clouds with glimmers from the window
of parched rural roads
etched between mountain tops,

nothing tastes as good as
the meals I wished I ordered
when someone else was paying,

it's clicks and small motors starting up
in air conditioning units
that wake me up the last desperate inches,

the headlines make too much noise
when there is so much thinking to be done
before desert,

Lake Milk meets the Brawny storm front,
citizen corn flakes rejoice!

The shoes are on the right feet,
the wrist watch and glasses remain where I left them,
I have one hour to get somewhere.

See ya.

Long Enough

2010-04-24T01:52:00.000-07:00

You've feasted on the daily bread
long enough to see a trail of ants
coming over the mountain cushions
toward the gulch between cereal bowl and serving plant.

I have sat behind the wheel
of a car I cannot drive
long enough to know the drive way
is a place of static electricity
coursing under the asphalt
just as the sun reaches the center
of the noon time air
and turns the radiance into spearing prisms
and cause the car to seem
to meld with the side of the house,
indistinguishable from milk box, garden hose,
or engine parts from a lost freezer box.

All of us have stood
long enough
in line to remember
the tide of birthdays
that come at you
from a crowded calendar,
who is around and who
cannot return a phone call,
the window we await
remains a point
at the end of a long stick,
none of this furniture
puts us at ease,
the noises are as familiar
as a chorus of breakfast table coughs and sighs,
the slow trickle of light
crawling in from under the door.

I am made of money

2010-01-29T13:23:00.000-08:00

At the edge of things
that come in threes,
death,
taxes,
rent,

tongue to envelope glue,
twitchy finger on
mouse
to submit
the rent of the atmosphere
we've chosen to live in,

Paradise isn't for everyone
and there's only
a handful of
empty rooms to go around,
only so much
floor space
to stretch your feet,
these rights
must be protected
and paid for,

which is another way of saying
who needs to eat
or get across town
on bus routes
that are getting scarcer
than crumbs
on an orphan's plate,

let's get beyond our worries,
let's live in the present tense,

I am made of money
until the last
stitch goes
and all I was worth
falls to the floor,
is swept up
and sold as story
someone can scare their grand children with.

san francisco

2009-11-20T21:23:00.000-08:00

lost again in alley scrubs
seeking a straight path
among inclining bricks

buildings odd and sharp
as needles loom over
us all braving a short walk home,
canyons of cracked asphalt
and singular puddles

alive with oil cans
and rainbows that
spread out in decaying circles
concentric and amorphous at once,

greased and glistening
from stuttering lights
hanging over a servants entrance
of a restaurant kitchen
where we seen strange men
in white aprons and t-shirts
wield their professional knives
and hoist more trays of
filthy dishes to a crowded
aluminum counter,

long cars and short cabs
drive by on the main street we walk to,
past dumpsters and cardboard condominiums
exposing an arm or leg only half concealed
during a dream of rain,

the slurred hissing
of tires on the street,
someone shaking a bell,
store fronts lit bright in righteously
fake light of heaven,

something is about to erupt
over the spires that prod the clouds
full of northern rain,

there's not a taxi anywhere
as we stand there
full of food
and shivering in the wind.

Home

2009-11-11T11:28:00.000-08:00

I am lesser than the sum of
the parts |
you found for me
after the trains arrived
and the ships rolled in
with waves brown
with old dreams
and dead fish,

medals for my chest
and steel for my knees
that never buckled
nor knelt before
strange aromas
of cash reward.
I kept my nerve
and protected
the shelves
that held each and every pot
our futures were contained in,

spiders and houseflies
come and go
as their nature pleases them to do,
the mail comes
and rests out of reach
until knees and will power
match their reserves
to match the staircase
if only to find out
the name of the
newest debt
that was invisible
until the uniform is exchanged
for an average man's clothes,
used and slightly too large,
threads from the pant leg
dragging along the floor,

coming undone
each image that flashes bearing flag and brand name,
undone and peeling
to expose not green fields
but only brick
and generations of
calcified glue
that replaced the smiling faces
with hysterical smiles
we've worn
as we enter into the night
alone and without reward.

Three women

2009-11-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

So these are the faces
of your summers and falls
that have gone by
like billboards
zooming by in passenger car windows,

your daughters
bought funny hats
and baggy jeans,

you walked
where trees and canyons
met with canyon walls,

three women framed
by sunsets
and early dew or frost
conditioned with respective decades
of reading, of being read to,

reading the lines
of faces that seem
the roads between
the cities you called home,

these are
spaces I've felt
in the space between
my bones,
the sense of place
and purpose
nameless and untouchable
'though I've yearned
for years
for what I thought I knew,

but it's wonderful
to be between all the chatter
and each smile
and grimace you could manage,

it's goes unsaid
and we'll leave there, as is.

JIM CARROLL IS DEAD

2009-09-15T16:04:00.000-07:00

eventually you roll up your sleeves
after you arise from the nod
to notice
the back of your shirt is covered
in grass stains and
small twigs
the shape of crucifixes.

there's another song
these fingers will manage
as nicotine tips strike
keys that click
and snap another
name that
occurs to you
when the morning sun
is right where you like it,
in your eyes,white and intense.

the name rhymes with
the things
you've done
and the things
that became broken
as you past through
court yards and gymnasiums
trying to keep your balance.

the name
sinks like a rock
to the center
of your dreams
where you are leaning
against a rock
nodding to the lines
the poet grunts
as he comes clean
with nick names
and a drum stick or two.

you look down
and see yourself
on the floor
not moving nor breathing
and look
to the page
you were trying to fill,

it is empty
as the air
between the words "I love you".

you return to the floor
to the floor,
reach for your heart
leave your hand flat over your shirt pocket

and then die.

A philosophy you can open bottles with

2009-09-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

Clearing house, really, posting this poem here. I wrote it in 1980 after I'd gotten back from San Francisco , where I did a poetry reading with Leslie Scalapino at Intersection for the Arts, cheerfully arranged by poet and college buddy Steve Farmer. The Bay Area struck me as a location where anything that could happen already has, and this sense of things being slightly crazed at their core inspired to write another of my open-ended whimsies. -tb

For the glory of Candlestick Park
these matches defy
your vagrant bluster,
they light their intended ends
and. then fade to black
half—way across the pitching mound,
either curling up or bowing down
to the press box rafters.

Second of all, I would think
that you’d wish more than
a fine—how-do—you-do
in a borrowed car.
In later years,
they- who -know- such —and — such
and you—know—who
might say and even believe
that sex—wax is a very malleable thing.
One solution: practice your sailors’ knots
and keep the evidence in your back pocket,
in case you're asked about
what really went down.

Try this on for size:
hold a flame thrower
at arms length
and try to blow it out.
if you’re not able
to extinguish the flame,
you should check yourself
into the nearest
stop—smoking clinic.

Finally,soft drinks consumed
through a straw
tastes their best
when you're not laughing
or watching the horse you bet on
drop dead at the starting gate.

Cloud cover

2009-09-03T21:45:00.000-07:00

It’s a morning of clouds
when it’s either the sun
or songs about the sun
that we miss,

Neptune rises with a
scepter full of
unlikely fish,
he’s covered in a net
of promises every song
and lyric of praise
weaved together
to contain his churning ire
in rhymed lines that
limit small talk, ideas,
brings every threat
to happy endings on the upbeat,

Zeus yawns and tosses a
random bit of lightning
to the earth, where it lands
in the center of football game
that fare badly for
all home towns,
both teams are suited up,
seated at card tables in the center of
the arena, helmeted and
stumped and perfectly stymied
over a chess board,
line backers and full battle gear
slapping each other
on the side of the helmet
as fans drool, throw bricks and
paper cups,
take the name of Zeus in vain,
Zeus calling Christ
on a cordless phone
to raise the bet,
Jesus just laughs,
says
“I’m letting that letting
this meter ride to the
hundred dollar mark…”

Gabriel walks across a horizon
on the notes
of Hayden
and Gillespie
whose darting tongues
are triple threats
on the lying lips of lawyers,
mouthpieces all.
Gabriel reaches for
handful of mist,
a fistful of rain,
a knuckle sandwich of
crowded choruses
that horn in on
what clear playing
field his imagination plays on,
there isn’t a score nor
a trace of a lyric law
which can furnish the
vastness of skies at
the edge of the atmosphere,
where music continues
on radio waves though
words and breathless concern
with precision, noted detail,
less nunanced positions
all fall silent, quiet as graves
full of buried language,
where sunshine turns orange
and icy before all becomes
black and it takes years for
our eyes to adjust
before we see something
like stars
or footprints across
what is no longer sky
or air
but only a vastness of nothing at all
where planets sit
appearing not just a little
like balls on an ebony
billiard table,
waiting for collision, some
kind of action,

“I’ll take that shot” says Zeus,
“Sounds fishy to me”
moans Neptune,
“You got my marker”,
says Jesus,
“things are slow in Calgary,
and my c-note is only half spent…”

Someone used to live here

2009-09-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

The fish smell never
came out of the rugs
even after the rooms
on each floor
where covered in talcum
and faint
powders and then vacuumed
as deeply
as the screams of ghosts hidden in carpet bristles,
who crooning around the
edge of the whining pitch
the motor gives
as the machine roots
around the corners of tables
and sniffs what’s behind the drapes,
cries that come through the mahogany
and carpet layers,
every scent of every meal
is evident in every bit of food remembered as
it lingered, impaled
on the tines of the many forks
that found their way to
my mouth, full of talk
and red wine.

Slate -> The Fray -> Poems#62915

2009-08-02T06:41:00.000-07:00

Slate -> The Fray -> Poems#62915: "Wild Card
Dirt under cuticles and
motorcycles coughing
to a start
and the way I start
thinking
hours ahead in the week
is all I need
to add pounds to my load
and the gravity
of all worry.
She loves me and I love her not
But
I get knots
in my stomach when lunch
is discussed
and this leads me to think
of prayer and meditation
that the bombing
will stop,
my jokes , that is,
the hammering stammer
of banter
that desires utopia
and the role of a saint,
the fastest disguise
down the fire escape.
On some days the bravest thing I do
is climb out of bed
and breath
before
the brain is aware that
there is light in the world again, the planet has finished a rotation,
to breath deep
in a room with out signature aroma
and become Hemingway
for mere seconds
for the love of attempted haiku
he breathed the air into
his lungs and it was cold and crisp
and good ...'‘
and then shower ,shave
and plot
all the victories that will be mine
like pink slips to expensive cars,
mine like bankrolls of stiff,paper cut twenties,
mine like a solo at the peak of the day,
mine like this laundry
and dishes
that say have anyway you want,
but have it done before sundown ,
or get outta town."

GOOD FOR YOU

2009-07-31T22:21:00.001-07:00

The nature of things
in the cold they cannot hear

the near human groan of the pipes,
tap water courses through

the veins of the house,
and nothing comes clean and

nothing makes sense and only
the dirt gathers interests

‘though there’s nothing engaging
about it, it’s a revolution on kitchen floors
with scuffed, slippery tile when trips

to the coffee maker
are spasms of what won’t

get done in a hurry or at all
lest the world conclude its business

and the crisp spring air cascades
through the house in swirls

like lithe, perfumed lace,through the screen door
that slides no more

and is always ajar
when a door is not room you can’t

walk into (say “mush) ,
getting sentimental over dishes and knives, forks and orts
as they are beheld months before

you’ll seen them again
as the layer of grime

that is gelled and congealed
on the tile floor

that contains generations of
dirt and dust, smashed ants,

notes to the milk man, indentations

from the heels of leather shoes
and sneakers, that bald remainder
that things get-dirty again
no matter how hard you

press your knees to the floor,
amazing, isn’t,
how utterly strange
that scrubbing pad feels in your hand,

trails of dull, lute warn water
running up your wrist
to your elbow,

where the water
gathers in
a pool that defies gravity
until the weight is too much

and it must let go
one drip at a time?

I See the Moon

2009-07-09T13:16:00.001-07:00

Kate, a young girl edging up on two years old, said her first complete sentence the other week, "I see the moon". I thought, "Wonderful".
I see the moon
has a face
covered in ashes,
he reads under the covers
with a flashlight
made of dawn.
The moon is what I see
when my eyes are closed
and the stars
swirl in circles
around the edge
where the ocean
teases the shore,
the moon clears his eyes,
his smile lights up the water to the sand.
I awake to the sun
pouring daylight
in my heavy, swollen eyes,
every beam of light
a baton that taps
the window sill
to strike up the band.
Birds, bicycle bells,
low voices from boxes serious as salt,
the moon has vanished over the horizon,
the moon has gone to sleep,
the moon has pulled
a hill side over his face
and dreams of clear, dark skies
and the night song of small things
and all things in between.

SWOLLEN LIP TO DRUM WITH FORE FINGER

2009-06-20T07:09:00.000-07:00

More gifts than speech fail me,
more lies than flies cling
to the static embrace of
the couch I sit on,
attempting drum solos along the
faded arm to the
rhythm of chattering teeth.

All movement suggests turns
of phrase that is exactly what 1'm thinking.

Only smoke comes from
my mouth and stammering
punctuates the coughing.

It's as if you've been
with me since the
start of time,
and that may be true:
my heart stops when your hand reaches into
your pocket book
to withdraw a pencil,
my watch stops and the hands on the
dial match the hands on my face
feeling for weaknesses in
the mask of cool, and, yeah,
a swollen lip
to drum
with forefinger
and blistered thumb.

There's more than my throat
I wish I could clear,
you're looking at
me in feline squints
that left claw marks
in the gap between our call and response.

My understanding of
what's happening is so complete and
subtle that it’s as meaningless
as bricked windows
and it makes
you looking confused while I confess
that I smoke when you're not around,
that professional wrestling is my passion,
that your legs make the history books
every time you get out
of car seat.

What I'm babbling about is
the poets' disease
of turning experience into stanzas
and arranging ironies in an order that
produces sighs like leaks in which
each emotion finds expression
in every bump in the road that
the flat tire drives over,
life gets lumpy like a
a plate of rocks a the breakfast table

--but oh, but shit, here's what I really see,
what dithering keeps me from, your lips, soft?
full bloom crimson crescent
under the exact pertness of your nose
pointing up whispering yes
along a frayed sting of desire
to the unknown land
of your eyes
clear as prayers in storybook churches
as they gaze back along the stretches and coastlines
of love that exists only
in the permanent promise of empty fields,

My eyes are soothed
by the cascades of twirled hair,
a bonfire mane that pours over your face
like curtains obscuring
a beautiful room I suddenly want to enter, your lips,
that is, I want to kiss, your neck I want to stroke,
hands tracing the lines of my back with fingertips and palms while my hands are likewise exploring the depth of your breathing against
my skin as they smooth down the lines of your back to your waist, I want to smell your hair and have my stubble get
caught in it like a stamp on a letter, refusing
to let me go, I guess this is my letter to tell you what the stammering is trying to disguise.

That is, would you like to start something neither of us has to finish?

Apartment

2009-05-05T23:18:00.000-07:00

As knives rest in their
block of sieved wood
and spoons lay along side
cups full of hot, simmering tea

cops are busy at the curb with
a driver whose haste and fast turns
against lights, around pedestrians
gets him stopped cold by the demand of

swirling read lights, a voice on a microphone
goes deep for grit and growls, somewhere boogie- woogie piano
music drifts in from an open window, car horns and church bells
sing together in off cadences,

the shelves are stuffed with legal papers
and plastic glasses.

Knives rust as they rest in the wood,
the tea takes on the taste of the metal chain
that the strainer dangles in the cup from,
an insane dictator makes a speech to countrymen

wielding a shot gun that he’ll fire into the air,
maybe shooting at a passing flock of doves,
this is what the newspapers say, what the
talk shows prove, middle aged men with grey hair

waving their fingers at one another, clearing their throats,
the cops hand the driver a ticket, the swirling red light
careens off the front porches of the neighborhood,
there is no home to drink the tea,

no one left to take the knives to make a sandwich
with loafs of bread all partially eaten,
a refrigerators’ worth of bachelor eating,
mailmen have only the addresses given them
until the numbers change, or the building is destroyed,

it’s Pearl Harbor everyday.

flu

2009-03-26T06:49:00.001-07:00

not years after tears
fallen over ash

nor days of malaise
after counting the cash

keeps this head buried
under arms
flat on the desk

as if in grade school
during a drill of some kid,

eyes peeking through
fingers attempting a glimpse

of enemy wing tip
seeding the sky with parachutes

that would blossom and foretell
bad fortune,

the trees were bare
and the sky looked grey, cold,

I cough and go through tissues
and wrestle with issues
in a greased, electric fever,
there is no lever
at the base of the bed
to open the trap door,

there is no trap door,
there is no switch
to lower the heat,

nothing is so neat
as simple things
adding up to
a theory of history
and forecast of
events no one imagines
in their waking life,

the land of sleep
is humid
with rumors
that another morning comes
all the same

if were all the same to me,

one strand of light
and then another
through the slatted blinds,

the limbs have all their leaves,
the rooftops are soaked in sunlight,

another box of tissue
and a bad taste
on the tongue tell me
this morning

"here I am again".

A Map of the World

2009-03-24T21:46:00.001-07:00

Each unused piece of the puzzle
falls to the floor
as we make room for fruit drinks
and places to rest our elbows,

This map of the world has
holes in the cardboard ozone,
lakes where there should be
mountain ranges across the
severest edges of Asia,
gaping oceans of nothing
where neither land nor sea
define the tides or the shape of
the wind blowing over flatlands
and highest peaks,

Quite a world, you would think,
coming into being without
all its parts present in the roll call,
and even the curved and islet shaved
bits finding peace as they are pressed
into place, forced to make nice
with border cuttings that make no sense
nor which force the wrong populations
into the same small area,

And even now things get worse
with desert, which comes on a tray
that’s set on the table, we make remove
our cups and saucers,
take away our magazines and ashtrays,
the tray is moved onto the table top,
and the puzzle moves forward, to the edge,
and by the time the first slice of pie is
served on a dish with small forks
wrapped daintily in thin napkins
half the puzzle goes over the table’s edge,
into the brief outer space between
surface and floor,
half the map of the world
has ceased to be,

Irregular bits of the former world
resting in dissociated shards
on the heel marked floor boards,
and it’s not over yet,

Dear brother drops his
dessert dish and now
what used to be the
half of the planet
dreamed about in
a romance of travel
is completely, thoroughly
devastated and covered in cake
and runny icing.

What you cannot see

2009-03-21T06:08:00.001-07:00

We would all believe in God
if he were handing out candy bars
from a bag that even His long hand
could touch the bottom of,

We might all smoke the same cigarettes
if our lungs would last

a thousand years of deep woodsy drags
and long harmonica renditions
of Bird's serpentine serenades,

Guns would be allowed in churches
if Jesus were a wanted man in Rio,

Maybe the sound
of traffic would
be flute music
and dialogues starting with
"Please" and "Thank you"
if we could buy more time
like it were bandwidth
or an empty store next door
we could lease,

But I go on instead
with the meanest of expectations
about what the neighborhood
has planned for me,
my foot hardly hits the first step
from the porch
when a cell phone
makes noises like
water flushing down deep pipes
and the woman answers it,
brings it to her ear and
begins to speak at a volume that
would make Satan bang on the
ceiling with every witch's broom
he could find,

Every other son and daughter
of an imperfect marriage
between heaven and hell
yakking it up with all their hand gestures
even though there is no
in front of them,
speaking loudly short of yelling
with every move they could bust
because what they can't see
cannot be disproved
and who or which might
beat them up or steal
their seats at the cafes,
grim thoughts that make
the five dollar coffee drink
in front of them
taste flat as cans
that have just met
a the back tire of a
a really big truck.

Oakland is all trees in the fog

2009-01-24T11:04:00.000-08:00

Oakland is all trees in the fog
based on sight lines coated with
balcony cocktails.

Great towns with names
that belonged to generals
who are not around
to see the pretty lights
along the harbor drives.

Every unmarked grave
is where the promise of
literacy fails another child
left in the backseat of a car
who is just waiting to be picked
like a cherry.

I say cell phone
you say call me
I say I’m in jail
you say call me
I say this is my one phone call
you say I’m losing you
I say nothing at all.

An ugly tie around the neck
will keep the dogs away,
but they will do anything
about bad drivers
who have no sense of territory,
they leave their car parts
all over the city.

Steve greets me at the
airport when the rain begins to
blast the cities on both sides of the bay.

We are on a tour
of dive bars
that snake up the sides of the Freeway
all through Hotel Circle.

The pants are lacquered stiff
over the bottom half
of a manikin,
and we go from off ramp to off ramp
photographing with cheap cameras,
stiff, crusted pants
set against the power lines
and Burger King signs
that configure the sky over
the permanent streams of cars
coursing north and south below.

Hours go by
at the news stand
when you realize
that your date
is not showing up,
and it’s a shame
you say, to be so full
of news with no one
to argue with
until the hands of your watch
creep ‘til twelve
and your wound so tight
with verbs and adjectives.

Tonight is such
a rattled pane of glass.
that even a pale moon
seen from a foggy window
such as happens in
best selling novels
and anthologized poems
cannot deliver you from evil
or the inevitability of a slap
with a flat palm, hard like
knuckles playing piano,
solid like prayers
cemented into church walls.

Half of what
you buy is always
left on loading dock
when it's five after twelve noon,
pleated pants and imported Cd's
waiting on a tuna sandwich
and an over- carbonated coke.

Smoking on the corner

2008-12-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

You strike a match
and cup it against the breeze,

flame to cigarette tip,
a deep inhale,

your knees ache in the chill
when nothing else fills the bill,

the choking burn slides
up and down the throat,

the lungs are harsh words
said in in flaming briar patch,

soon enough your cup
will filled with enough

nickles , dimes and
half torn dollars

for both a bottle and a bed,
indoors before the rain,

out again before
they empty the dumpsters,

you take another drag
and notice the moon

appearing white and round
like the police flashlight

as the clouds clear
in the wind and

the burn in your throat
makes you think

of rooms you moved out of
and back into over and over again

over the years
that now reside in each

ravine you find
every time you wash your face,

"Too night I drink to you"
say with a nod,

vapor and smoke disguise themselves,

"tonight I sleep with the moon
until morning lights up the streets

or things remain very dark
and quiet".

You are what you think you're eating

2008-12-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

A knife , fork and
a cracked plate
don’t constitute a meal ,
though all three items
are handy for show,

as are empty frames
on the wall when
there is any kind
of company visiting ,
who demand our attention,
taxes, documents of your legal rights,

you just say
it’s the wall you
wanted to highlight,
the frame is only a, well, a, well, uhhhh,
a framing device!

to bring a viewer’s attention
to the rub of the paint,
the embedded fingerprints,
the light switch in the center,

Likewise, it’s knowledge
we’re hungry for, isn’t it?
Knife , fork, cracked plate
are about the idea of eating
as others go without
forks, knives, or cracked plates…

Dead ethics professors
choke in non-intrusive urns
and French deconstructionists
blow kisses from
balconies and any perch
they can secure,

Appearances are misleading,
explanations are fiction
worth listening to for the
way the words wrap around
each other until it’s no longer
an announcer ‘s baritone
intoning the world in whole
but rather melodies flitting about
like nervous birds
trapped in a small cage,
a messy page of tuneless songs,

all this for a description
of my house that now seems
to rest on top of a giant hill,
bracing clouds and tree tops,

a form I’m filling
out asking me
to describe myself
and all the desires
I would bring into
the world if finances would allow,

I would allow everything is
what gets written,
and everything not forbidden
would be described
in the rhetoric of future tense,
when software rules the body electric.

A whisper in a dotted cloud

2008-11-27T13:26:00.000-08:00

A whisper in a dotted cloud
that is over your head
as your hat flies off
and starts to sail the
way of all your wishes
to be at the sea near the waves
that is damp with salt water air,

Cold air on the river front facing Toronto
in our California skins
though Michigan is the
state of our birth, our claim
that rings for all the time
our friends remember our names
when it comes to saying that we just got in
off the road on a long trek through the valleys and mountains
of a country
defined each mile by the brand names on
bulletin boards, cars and bran flakes,
Detroit remains
tall buildings and
the widest streets anyone could die on ,

It seemed that all clouds formed over the river
and came from the north
and stayed with us State side,
where the heart of the neighborhoods
were filled with coughs
and stutter from basements
where jazz blared into the cushions of white supremacy,

I throw flower petals
into the river,
and the garlands drift on the wakes of
freighters a hundred years fueled by
colder examples of life
burned into the tanks of
our station wagon couldn't trace
with all our maps and
anthology of hazy directions from
farmers in one-silo towns
who think anyone passing through is hungry,
in need of a old truck to buy,

I think so much for dotted clouds,
so much thinking, there will be casinos
in a writing that makes sense of its words,
make them march, yes , march,
and I shall smoke in my dreams
after the dreaming is done of coming home
and there is only
the dreaming of dreaming itself,

there is no sleep in these early pages of the novel
that is nothing but a skyline
amid the details of a river and
a glass city that faces a wind that
whistles up the nylons
and down the high collar necks ,
wondering about
who might have been here first dreaming
of these terrible orders of cars and train tracks
full of wagons of TV dinners, palettes of magazines, toys,
counterfeit money coming back
to California because
California is always hungry and
land gives itself over to
families that remember less
than insanity allows and takes away,
all the habits that stop feeling good,

all the silence only a knock on the door
and the landlord's eye
give you as you wipe your feet again

in panic at the little things when it seems
that you're in between two worlds, fingering
the membrane
that allows you to hover over
great industrial mistakes,

you are the dotted cloud
whispering instructions
on the breeze of a stale vibe,

you are the god of this world that saddens you,
every last gust of air on the last floor of the first
building you rode an elevator in
is a trace of tears cried in blackouts that is the rain
that washes away the sins and stains
of this earth,

dotted clouds
on the rail staring at Windsor
on a street where there's a giant iron fist
aimed right at the heart of the water front,
sing with praise,
sing,
oh yes, sing…

Lessons from the Seventies

2008-11-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

It’s love that breaks
against the rocks

and not foam nor water of any kind,
it’s a baptism of irrigated contempt

that makes the horizon
burn in black static p1umes.

Stained cotton from
every beach front window.

We smoked joints
in the guts of the canyons,

the mired trails
to the sea kissed shale.

All the blues from
Chicago knife fights
and gunshot histories
are folklore all the kids destroy
with their breathing.

Even at dinner time,
forks are next to plates whose owners
wonder what’s eating their neighbors
with all the strange phone calls
about what’s going on the beach.

The armies of the night
couldn’t scare up a quarter
of something to decent for all
the beaches America has landed on
in search of someone to talk down to..

This goes without saying

2008-11-15T13:17:00.000-08:00

Settle your accounts
with dimes and nickels
gripped with fingers fickle
to what they'll touch
as this life is one long vacation,
Too much grinning
station to station at the drainage rivers
famous for graffiti forests
and villages made from
refrigerator boxes,
there's little to laugh at
when it rains and the water
finds the incline of least resistance,
men in wool caps and fingerless gloves
stare from under the newspapers
and regret the distance
between we on a seat,
on a rail
going out of town
and the calloused knuckles
that becomes the fist
that challenges the skyline
for the right of way,

I shed my clothes
on the side of the tracks
to walk with the ties
until I collect a discarded
suit of random pants, jacket,
shoes that don't match,
crusted with motor oil
and pressed with convoy tires,

I take my money
and burn until there's
only a felonious ash,
the match tip takes to the credit cards
that burn black as they melt,
Lay me down
on gravel fonts
with a belt around
my waist
and have my head tilted to the right,
just slightly,
As if there was something
you'd just said
I might want you to repeat.

Father comes home from Chicago

2008-11-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

Father stands in the front door
Where he greets you with the sound of
Rustling plastic, candy or a toy from Chicago, you think,

Your mother whistles at him
Between puffs of a cigarette
As he stands still, hands behind his back,
She smiles as he looks down at you
On the floor with toy trucks and
Plastic soldiers with teeth marks
The size of the scars
On the face of the moon,

"Guess what I have" he says , and presents the package,
A box wrapped red and blue, a yellow ribbon,
The vestibule is noisy with color,
You stare at the package
And wonder what it was he said,
Who is this package for,
Why are mom and dad dancing at 7pm
To music you don’t like, singer full of gin.

A ribbon around the heart of the world

2008-11-01T07:03:00.000-07:00

The white people
have gone crazy
in the back seats
of All American cars
looking for the sex life
that fell between the cracks,
meanwhile screaming the rudeness
of Romantic love
that finds them
hung-over in court
too early in the morning
of a business day
where they'll tell the Judge
that it's only rock and roll
and that there was something in the way
the singer dropped his "g's
and a manner
worth noting when the guitarist
grabbed his whammy bar
and that all they did was taking
Creeley freely and pile into
the four-wheeled remains of a rumored prosperity
and drove into
the running gag reflex of the night, down a blvd.
filled brand names and bored cops,
cruising to get "some", to find "it"
and where "it" lived,
a slobbering example
of failed bonding
locked into habits
where even as their language of outrage
is bought
and shredded
in magazines
whose pages stick together
just as they did
in the parking lot after last call,
harassing the cocktail staff
that's going home,
they'll stick to principals
familiar and vague,
like that song whose words you never memorized
but tried to sing anyway, with a hushed secret at the core of the chorus
Saying that love is somewhere
just around one of these thousands
of and that it'll shake your hand
if you drive long and far and often enough,
if you've the gas
to complete the journey, the journey
Celine dreamed of while lying in bed,
staring at ceilings, concluding
that his language of outrage could only
describe the surface details of wrong turns,
that it had been bought and sold in a tradition
of literature that speculates about how wonderful
our lives might have been
if only the dream hadn't ended
when we opened our eyes,

Our eyes are constantly
getting used to the dark
absorbs every inch of brick
in parking lots
behind buildings and under bedrooms
of others who've made
their peace with
the sameness of the night,
the radio blares
more guitar solos
emerging from the
static of stadium
drums and strumming,
crazed cadenzas
whose neurotic notes scurry
and cleave to a neuron receptor
and keys a change
in the brains chemical balance that changes
the language of what the nights' really been about,

But we remain where we are,
white heterosexual males bond
by nothing more than
the chain sawing motion
of jaws lifting and falling
on the pillows and
sofa cushions in
desert motels
in time to the pans of a camera
on the silent television
where it's nothing but a wall full
of clocks telling
the time in
three separate
time zones while
temperatures are mentioned where
anger and rain mix in the fields
and valleys of economies
based on pride,
some abstract grip on selflessness that
needs no sleep
as do the bodies in this room,
dead to the world when the
engine blew, when the gas ran out, when
the last drop in whatever bottle of
cartoon labeled beer vanished on the
buds of a tongue
whose thirst could not be slaked by?
promise of fortune or even
water, pure and free of lies,

We sleep in shifts until
our time here runs
out on us,
until the phone that rings
everyday for twenty minutes on end
stops finally and leaves
the house quiet
from stairway to attic to porch,
with only the whir of the
refrigerator engine
starting up
and filling the stale,
stale air that
used to carry
mean jazz, drum boogie,
scratched riffs of declarative guitars,
the frets of God announcing
a life worth inventing in the notes
that passed through the room,
the boredom,
we realize in frozen moments
that any excuse for getting
out of the house
is a magic trick
that's performed after
they've shown you
where they've hidden the mirror,
"language is the house
where man lives",
let us say
that this life is
like being a fish
that cannot describe the water it swims in,
endlessly at 3AM
when only the coffee at
the 7-11 has the
aroma of anything
real enough to make
us think of getting
out of town
with one suitcase
and a bus fare,
next to a god-damned big car,
five shoulders
to the wheel
and no one able to drive
between towns , from carnival to still spot
where ever we could
pitch tents and trailers
and set up Ferris wheels that
would rattle against a
large scowling moon
hovering over
Modesto and Turlock
on dry August nights
when dollars are
grimy with mung from
many a farmer's and mechanic's hand,
power chords slice through
the speakers, destroy the cracked dashboard,
your face is slapped
with a power
not your own,
it comes down to something
that's a secret
that even The Judge won't cop to it
before he lowers his voice,

"The beat goes on,
the beat goes on,
the beat goes on,
the beat goes on…"

We can do better
this far away
from our past,
we have something
we've turned toward,
a light in eyes, a sun
that shines a light
those blades of
grass and long
stemmed flowers lean toward
even when clouds
and the stammer of fire eating transistors
sizzling from car windows distort the
image in the minds' eye,
I see a city where we come
and plant our feet on lawns
where we can sit
and plant in turn
new seeds, ideas
of a future worth having,

let's lean into the sun,
into the sun,
ride bicycles into the sun
on the road that becomes
a ribbon around the
heart of the world.

Cactus Shadow

2008-10-04T22:52:00.000-07:00

(for Edward Dorn 1929-1999)

The gun, never fired,
smokeless in its silver plated life,
is under glass,
under the dust,

rust and oxygen
severing the trigger from the firing pins,
and there’s someone laughing

in the other room, and old man with a broom and a bucket,

Something is just live long enough to rust and fade
and become part of the forgiving earth again—

I wish I were that man on the phone, laughing,
because then, maybe
there’d be something funny enough to laugh about
in this life that is fine as far as it goes but sometimes ,

sometimes

Just has me staring at another set of things, , running down in their assemblages, their soldered being,

All moving parts become stuck , and break off,

Ed Dorn won’t be
twirling the gun or turning the phrase
anymore from the side of a dirt road,
draped in a cactus shadow
where La Jolla greets with open palms,
the sky is closed for repairs,

There are smoke signals
from hills where the big houses are ,
after the images fall off the edge of the earth,
what ever it is we were driving at,

It means that all the love stops
when we’re no longer here
to arrange the furniture,
it's no longer about us ,
but about the room we died in,
what ever gets discovered on a desk, a shelf,
old cups or rusty guns
hanging from nails in the pantry.

A City Was Magic in Black and White Magazines

2008-10-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

In a hurry
and half dumb
with love,
he walks through an alley,
scratching his scalp,

and whistles another country’s anthem in an age when TV headlines have it
that the sky never stops falling,

he stops, sings a stanza in French, “My Cherie Amour”,
and skips mightily passed all the rear entrances and trash bins Simon and Garfunkle would have waxed and waned about in a language that made the obvious things in the city oppressive with meaning secreted among the rheumy lines of grime and gunk, he laughs, thinks bunk, I need her arms

and a good meal with amazing bread, bottled water, baskets full of cheese, and then
someone screams in the city, a woman on a corner screams for life and more money from whatever car passed on a wet street, the night was filled with screams and the hiss of tires slithering up back streets and alleys that used to be short cuts in another decade when a city was magic in black and white magazines, there are many hours until the sun comes rises over the river, light rays poking between the suspension cables of sleeping bridges,
days to go before something falls from the sky again with all the heaviness assembled weight can bring on the length of the streets, minutes away one of our own leaving the coil that binds us as another joins the chorus, too young in the first moments to hold sheet music or know what we’re attached to in these blurs that come alive from their darkness and approach him in the dark, he sings on, too late,

he’s asked
“Where you from,”
and he sings
too cloud to hear
a metallic click
and a bark of large dogs,
he was expecting everyone to join in the chorus
because love is all that matters
when everyone knows the words,

but instead the night
blackens all at once,
a curtain drops,
every line is unhinged
as doors would be
in a fast, devastating
heat coming across
a flat Nevada desert,
a city of jewels
burns high on a
mountain top,
there is only
light to follow,
chord less , unstrung music
at the end of corridor filled with
white light and cigarette smoke.

500 channels

2008-09-27T06:33:00.000-07:00

I've been staring at the ceiling
all night, counting knot holes

in the pine wood and the
way streetlight glares

in the shadeless window pane,
making each slight strand of

spider webbing shiver
just so on silver breeze

and then collapse
it's span between old Cornish detail

and the cable wire
spooled in the corner

where the installer left it
years ago

before there was
such a thing

as having
500 hundred channels
and nothing to watch.

So Now What?

2008-09-19T06:58:00.000-07:00

So the laughter takes us all
to another worse- day ever
that now graces diary pages
where ink runs to the margins
under tears and moisture
that rises from the grass
and falls from the trees.

So spins another day laughing
at the runs in the stockings of
pretty women for whom legs
are a religion of length and shape.

So laughter is not the cure for all that
ails the center of night,
but it is song that is barked like the glee
of seals in a circus act performing
Bach on so many tricycle horns.

So the shoe horn one brings to the jam session
can only play sole music is enough to
make us laugh again by the rise of the sun
when it comes over the hills and the mansions that
ruin the view of the coast line,

So the leather that was wasted on the sidewalk
is gone but the feet survive all the blisters
sweet potato blues could provide in a stretch of
Giving someone a hand for merely showing up
in not just a nick of time, but the whole block of wood as well.

So there is no peace under the stars
when we laugh at the sins of the fathers
who visit us in any hometown that can be hidden in.

So there’s a sign up ahead.

So who’s laughing now?

Bad Smell on the Bus

2008-09-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

It's a smell of socks
too long on the feet,

cooked onions
wrapped in
skins that don't get mentioned,

an aroma that
knocks flies from the air
and makes buzzards
tear and weep,

fumes so awful
that appetites
go on strike
as sanitation workers
faint dead away
from the aromatic raunch,

yet we don't
move an inch
nor flair our nostrils
save for a small
move of a finger
to scratch a non existent itch,

the books we're reading
seem to have our
attention as if we
were outdoors
on a bench
or a blanket
getting wise in
the clear, fresh air,

we look straight ahead,
we look down,
we stare out the window
and don't flinch one bit,

something
is rotten
in the back of the bus
and we don't
say a thing
because we’re getting off
at the next stop,
and this foulness will be gone
up the road
until tomorrow
when we’ll meet it again
going the other way.

I think I shall never see...

2008-08-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

I think I shall never see
a poem as lovely as
a cat wrapped around
the leg of a chair
finessed in Grand Rapids,

Grecian columns
scarred with
claws and
the slashing dents
a gnawing provides,

A calico's hair
that makes me sneeze
napping
in the puddle of sunlight

until
a sudden noise
makes the animal
straighten and go rigid,

claws splayed,
insanity in its eye,

writhing on its back
as if break dancing,
tearing at the air
until it winds up on all fours

ready to tussle, rumble,
a hiss the sound of
fast, panicked air
streaming from a hot pipe,

until
it sits
and grooms its electric
tongue
with a tongue
that has tasted
the oddest things.

motor way: driving to Ontario

2008-08-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

as far North
as my neck would turn
and see so muddy, crusted roads
winding through woods
that could be future pencil boxes
or a half used reams
of wheat hued paper.

lights dance
on the rim
and underscore the rime
collected at the
edges of things
made with a torch
and an assortment of hammers.

these tall buildings
ring the public square
as we play chess
on hard cement tables
sitting on chairs
with backs made of
grey, weathered slats.

somewhere on this road
lies a guitar that fell from a truck
driving through Ontario
toward the Ambassador Bridge.

a half used notebook
full of poems in
the slang of two warring languages
lies face up in a drainage ditch
outside a factory
specializing in cyclone fenced
ringed with barbed wire,
big pipes feeding brown fluids
to the river.

4th

2008-07-04T22:27:00.001-07:00

It's love that breaks against the rocks
and not foam nor water of any kind,
It's a baptism of ire that makes the horizon burn
in coalish, motionless plumes.

Stained cotton from beach front windows.

We were smoking joints
in the guts of the canyons,
the mired trai1s to the sea kissed shale.

All the blues from Chicago knife
and gunshot histories
is folk lore all the kids
destroy with their breathing.

Even at dinner time,
forks are next to plates
whose owners wonder
what's eating their neighbors
with all the strange phone calls
about what's going on the shoreline.

The armies of the night
couldn't scare up a quarter of the beaches
America has landed on
searching for something to talk about on
deserted talk show acres
where anyone in a tight suit
and big glasses can explain away
the bombs bursting in air
with sarcasm and ad -libs.

Didja, huh?

2008-07-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

Did you know
that the madder
you get,
the more you resemble
a four letter verb
I saw painted
on the side of
driving into Orange County?
It too was an ugly expression
I met in passing,
and for once
I was glad
I was moving
further into the seared,
metallic sunset,
senses splayed
by radial tires
and American steel,

glad the way I am now
to let you
make your days
even grimmer
than lounging shadows
of the smoke stacks
that fall over your
apartment building
as you listen
to radio and
watch cable TV
at the same time.
Did you ever notice
something moving
outside,something making
noise
in the center of the afternoon,
voices in conversation
from people
who are actually
facing each other
over drinks or smokes they bummed?

Did ja, huh?

EDWARD NAVIN BURKE

2008-06-15T13:39:00.000-07:00

(1923 -1995)
for Father's Day

Never blind to their light
but always reaching
for it,
the way garden flowers
lean to the sun to issue forth
progenies of design,
distinct chips of an
ironwood block shaping themselves
in the rooms you imagined.

Shaving in the bathroom
with the door open,
and singing
that you love Paris
in the winter
when it's snowing
although we lived
along Detroit freeways
thinking Westward and onward
until California was the place
where The Motor City drove us.

The lives you gave us
with the breaths you took,
our faces having divided
the b est of your features
in the children
that follows the best we've
been doing.

Somewhere in history
someone will always look like you.

Light comes into all the rooms
from all the sunshine
that covers the green mountains
like glowing shawls of rapture
that are the beaded notes
of the Paris you loved
and imagined,

you eyes blue as burnt ash
arranging the forms of the world
in new configurations
always, surprising as trick knees
and the lurch of love
that is bottomless
and full of a world.

I have your hair
but none of your combs,
I have your eyes
but none of your vision,
I am myself all of you in the making,
grey hair and trick knees.

We stand here where you brought us
in rooms that
are signed with your name,
you've done all the work
you had to.

Our shoulders are broad and we stand erect,
somewhere in history,
someone will
always look like you.

snap to it

2008-06-04T14:22:00.000-07:00

the art on the wall
is not you at all
because the arms
on the canvas are too large
in proportion to your

waist and it’s a wonder
such a drawing and
charcoal rendering

would have eyes
on the same side of the
head viewing the world

like it were city scenes
spied while sitting sideways
on a seat on a train

that crawls through many
stops between here and Solana.

lend me your comb
and i’ll staple it to
a canvas and then

draw a line with
a sad blue chalk
a great many lopsided

hearts around its teeth
and the small black strands
dangling unmodified,

and then watch
as i glue your sunglasses
in the center of

the space and then
walk away, making like
i ‘m washing my hands.

“i like the first one better”
you say,
“i see myself
as one with two receded eyes
on the same side of the head

under a large ear,
reaching to the world
with this huge truck driver hands…”

it’s dinner time
and the movie
is in an hour
is all i can say?

we are too old
to lose our watches
after the hour
has been paid,

dinner and a show, madam?
you nod, you reach out a hand

and there i am
on the corner
staring into the

pedestrian walk sign
as it blinks whitely
against the encroaching gloom,

thinking of you again
while returning movies,
buying light bulbs,
crossing streets in dream town.

Stopped watch

2008-05-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

Stopped watch
A noise you can undress
is revealed by clock hands
moving not a fraction
toward the top of the hour,

During the break,
presidents of lost countries
walk down planks
from ships onto Hudson River docks,
confetti blocks the sun,

There are times when
it would be nice to land
on an air carrier dressed
up for Halloween,
a President with a plan that won’t fly,
A nation keeps looking at its watch
and wonders
why this show isn’t canceled,
why do we keep waiting
for the good guys to arrive,
is there a way to get
to the news faster,

To find what happened
while we collected
every image on
digital memory
to be viewed when
there are neither sheep
to be counted nor
rough water to tread?

Philosophy you open bottles with

2008-05-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

For the glory of Candlestick Park
these matches defy
your vagrant bluster,
they light their intended ends
and. then fade to black
half—way across the pitching mound,
either curling up or bowing down
to the press box rafters.

Second of all, I would think
that you’d wish more than
a fine—how-do—you-do
in a borrowed car.
In later years,
they- who -know- such —and — such
and you—know—who
might say and even believe
that sex—wax is a very malleable thing.
One solution: practice your sailors’ knots
and keep the evidence in your back pocket,
in case you're asked about
what really went down.

Try this on for size:
hold a flame thrower
at arms length
and try to blow it out.
if you’re not able
to extinguish the flame,
you should check yourself
into the nearest
stop—smoking clinic.

Finally,soft drinks consumed
through a straw
tastes their best
when you're not laughing
or watching the horse you bet on
drop dead at the starting gate.

House

2008-05-12T07:17:00.001-07:00

The lust of italics is obvious,
the wake of roses
taken seriously,
off-kilter are the fingers making
a path through your hair,
a new part where a comb finds
the soul under the brain
that keeps you
wondering about the world,

Those nights, half asleep,
a small fist raps your back,
floorboards groaning
the way they do in old houses
sagging, tired lumber ,
all that's left for spring is laughter
and fear when everyone
goes out doors again after dark,
testing door knobs
with a twist of the wrist,
it wasn't you ,
you say, only the house
or some such thing,

Shared chills or beads of sweat,
the double “s” molding pervailed,
every position and posture
on the mattress a buried language,
nothing weighs less than an unwanted ton,
we change positions
as if speaking too fast for court reporters,

"I hope I don't dream" you say,
" or if I do,
let it be of a big black wall
with nothing on it,
just blackness, blackness..."

The apartment is so quiet
that the refridgerator
that sings us to sleep,
a high and ghostly whistle coming
from it's deep frozen stillness,

We drift off
as headlights flash
across the ceiling
and car radios play music pulled
from the air from other states,

we drift off while the house
sinks deeper
into an earth
that wants it all back.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some views of Rose Canyon

2008-04-27T07:14:00.000-07:00

I've been watching you from the other side of the drapes,
trucks from all over the county mark their progress with forks,
the elements conspire surprises on any birthday they desire,
you would be a frequent flyer if only Madrid were in Ohio,

The drapes I mentioned are early '70s' Akron, a gift of love,
all the money from GMAC couldn't limit the cyclone fences,
Surprise that it's sleet on the day of your coming out,
wouldn't you rather have permission than excuses?,

Tender love and double breasted jackets, a milk dish, some muffins,
If only words were worth the page that was never a forest to start with,
The climate of the times is birthday cakes and asphalt on lawn chairs,
Or was I just interested in drapes at that, or the window, and not you?,

We go on drinking in the sights through amber lenses,
She doesn’t think and she doesn’t care, and her opinions are firm like tits
A love of money and words turns into magazines and all night fist fights,
Relative spunk of the last promise is a dark stain on those beloved drape

Today, even the cigarette hand is rubbing me the wrong way,
Trucks from over the county line leave limits of warranties in barrels,
He was thinking she was breathing the air all wrong too much heaving,
Objects fly across the room like they do on re-runs, please scratch your nose,

Birthdays turn cold like lovers and faucets but weather happens
every shred of the remaining days, Patio decks suspended in air by planks of a platform from a party
full of surprises that demands that hills not roll but resemble
steps for terraces and patios that jut out like jaws of a boss
who dares you to hit him,

She has all these opinions that are based on what she thinks she's

thinking,

I've been watching you: through a spyglass from a patio across

the canyon that sees your outline and the tag of the towel through

the Akron drapes that are yellow with sun and spade,
All the forks that milk can buy,
He loves to dance, can't dance, loves to chat, he's dead,
If we try hard, we can see a convoy of trucks snake through the shrubs of Rose Canyon,

LAPD is recruiting in San Diego because we don't leave witnesses,
Remember when I regaled you with a discourse on getting even with
the chef who memorized The Anarchist Cookbook?,
It's my birthday in spite of the clime, I'm glad you're using

towels, I wish for abundance in trucks and the next 24 hours,
On days when all the windows and lenses fog,
Think what she will,
He's thinking of meaning and meaning it this time,

Patio decks defy nature and jut from the hillsides as though
the houses themselves want to sail forth and go to some place
where the evidence of sight wasn't taxable and indexed by class,

I've been watching all of you from the other side of the drapes,
one left shoe lies in the center of the free way while the engines
of leisure race and vanish into the irony of perspective,
the point that's never made 'though it's promises taxes our eyes

and wastes our time and makes the purchase of guns desirable and wholesome.

lest i

2008-04-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

i left the gun on the counter
lest i shoot off my mouth

kept the cellphone off
in case i call myself names

yes, that was me,
looking over the alley fence

killroy style,

seeing a parade pass by
between 2 brick walls
obstructed with banged, leaky dumpsters,

so many folks waving flags,
shaking hands,

my fingertips are numb
from squeezing the splinters
from the guitar callouses
i built up practicing
"michael row the boat ashore",

the confetti and empty soda cups
obscure the cracks in the sidewalk,

my hands are folded
lest i run this boat aground.

Swans in the park lake

2008-04-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

He was in the front seat
Of every car he took to
The other side of the city
Where there were swans
In the park lake, graceful as
Show horses bowing to a crowd .

Half of what you buy
Is who you buy it from.
There you are
With a bag of coffee grounds
In the back seat of the
Car you took back to suburbs
Crowded with the unpaid bills
The city couldn’t set on fire.

There were school girls whistling
Past the graveyard , skirts askew
In uptakes of wind.
Men with shovels loved their work
Because it was deep and grounded.

At dusk, the lake water darkens
And there is only a large, black surface.
The world thinks it is we are out here

In a boat playing harmonicas and guitars
To odd felines and bovines themselves playing
Along the ashen corona that rings the stars.

these trees cannot

2008-04-07T07:15:00.001-07:00

these trees cannot
and will not give themselves

to my whims as they
wind around the roots

of our concerns
as shovels dig the earth,

striking bedrock
and giving us sparks

instead of oil or gold.

mineral rights are
no right of way

when no one
sees the path

from the attic window.

these trees would rather burn
with each other , in the forests

where they grew
rather than be uprooted,

split , planed and hammered
into the shapes of furniture and

old toys that will burn
in homes

when sparks hit the shingle roofs
and dry summer limbs.

you give all your money
as you ask for water

and we squeeze stones
that were buried in what little

mud remained along the
side of the road

that's clogged with
cars full of families

saying prayers under
an orange, smoky corona.

no one can see
where it was they lived,

there are no birds
in the sky.

these trees cannot

2008-04-06T13:30:00.000-07:00

Your stock broker is dead

2008-03-26T23:08:00.001-07:00

One cannot see over the hedge
that funds the future of raw silk

and precocious metals,
Oy, this oyster moans load

before he hits the silk,
where all our futures

are shown as cliffhangers
but no coming episodes are writ,

there is plenty of money
to go around as long as

there is only half of me
that gets hungry,

there will no flashlights
in the days to follow,

meet us at the jumping off place
where it rained stock brokers

holding mortgages
to homes that look awful
even on paper,

there will be no flashlights
allowed in the future
no matter what kinds of futures you trade
in good faith, soy bean or pork barrels,

there is no light at the end of the tunnel
and nothing on the shelf to look at either.

Who wears the white hat?

2008-03-24T23:21:00.001-07:00

We never met a bomb
that didn't make
a righteous noise
in the distance,
over the horizon,
bringing a love of God
and goodwill
to an unhurried, aimless,
mass of folks
who have nothing left
to choose from
since their deserts have
turned to glass.

We'll drop white hats
after the bombing runs,
along with subscriptions
to magazines containing the secrets
of what the world wants
America to reveal
against all the protests
of both Houses of Congress
and a Pentagon
that's tied itself in knots
counting heads, helmets
and every bean
it can find,

Buildings collapse,
shuttles stray and
break up
over flat Texas sands,
the sons and daughters
of parents
who never had the slightest idea
that love is more
than a hunger
for a speck of food,

Under the right conditions,
the perfect light,
that not every dusk
is lit with screaming rockets against
the black night, meaning
people they know will
be gone in wisps of smoke and dust,
under the house they were born in,
for no reason
that makes sense
of the larger picture
that remains
fuzzy, grainy,

The only thing we see
are blurred images
of drunk cowboys
coming around the bend again,
firing every gun they can get their hands on
until even the Devil leaves town
because things are bad and ugly as
a hush that follows a stinging
slap in the face

Or the tearing sound
of opening a letter
that precedes the longest
cry you'll ever have.

Arisen

2008-03-23T07:08:00.001-07:00

Today we roll away the stone
and find there's not a bone
we can pick with the stems and
blooms of seeds that have
breached the soil
after the long nights
of cold, dreamless slumber.

Tonight we bless ourselves
and dust our shelves
and curse under our breath
that wasn't more on the table
nor more praise
for the callouses our hands took on
hammering each nail
into the joists
for the roof over our heads
that keeps the food dry
on the table
that's set bread and wine,
our own flesh and blood.

Tomorrow we rise and
make noise
that’ll upset our poise
as we stare out the window
and curse the sun the rising again,
cursing the moon
for sleeping until dark,
scratching behind our ears
as we struggle to remember
over toothpaste smears
each and every step we took
to get where are,
arisen and angry,
a rough patch of unshaved chin.

We are talking about the price of gas

2008-03-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

We are talking about
the price of gas
and a sleeve rolled up
to the elbow
as we do the math
of the hours we work
to support a car
to bring us here from different directions,
holding our hats
as the wind comes up the
canyon walls
and through the
planks of the patio,
talking about gasoline
and a weak dollar
and we still haven’t
looked up from our drinks
embarrassed by an abundance
of sunshine and blue ocean
and not one word
about how a pretty girl
will make the world slow down
like it does in movies
when woman gets out of car
and man sees her from his balcony
and waves a wild hand
before he comes running down the stairs
in his baggiest pants,
pleats and neat folds undulating
casually with each strain of his flex thighs
until you break the ice
and confess
that you don’t care much for ice
and crusts on wheat bread sandwiches,
to which I’m shocked
‘though I admit
that I find the world boring too,
and that there’s nothing as fine
as the movies,
and little else more drear than
the lights coming up
in the large room
full of empty seats
except mine
and maybe yours,
assuming,
of course,
that it was you in the balcony
giving the razz berry during the kissing scenes,
laughing like a fool
who’s in love with a new toy.

An ammo belt around your waist

2008-03-16T07:30:00.000-07:00

I remain yours truly,
a bright grenade in the garden
or still as a lawn jockey
offering assistance for horses
that never come,

Either way you'll have me
is fine with me
so long as there
are tales of bad luck
crawling under the
televised reports of what
famous men say
in undisclosed locations,

There's nothing
we hear that is
is whole or complete
like a collection of
Poets who write in Latin,
here's one side of the story
and now here's
something else completely,

When I see you
I become cross eyed
and every one in America
gets to vote on what I should do
when you mention that Red States
make you think of roses
and the thousand wounds
of the heart that bleeds
odd colors,

You wear something slinky,
arms are bare,
there's an ammo belt
around your waist,
every bullet in your gun
is fair and balanced,

Television cameras
and flood lights
break down our door,
shatter the windows,
we stop with our
dance of daggers and daisies
and answer endless
questions about
missing white women
in North California towns,

I mean to say I love you
sometimes in the morning
like Paris when it's raining
and that I hate the way
you won't leave me
when the chips are down,

Statistics insist that
men need their heart ache
and angst
about salary and
being dumped
for lack of war worth fighting in,

The world is full of pinheads
yet many of them
go on to lead productive lives
provided they are
given the right distractions

and phony maps
of the world they live in,
I have you driving off the road
when I'm not in the car,
you make me put celery sticks
in pencil sharpeners,

Ever feel like your
always being watched?
Sometimes
I wake up before
you do and notice
the television is on
only to find
a panel of middle aged men
and skinny, gaunt faced blonds
waving their fingers
at me, moving their lips,
telling me things I cannot hear
for all the static
that seeps under
the bed room door,
tires, air horns,
crying children,
radio stations laying it all down
for us like a ratty blanket
on a concrete floor,

Yes, this is my bed,
this is where I sleep
and awake
again, divided.

Pledge Night

2008-03-10T07:38:00.000-07:00

Let’s remember that
we’re strangers here ourselves
as we consider the years
we’ve had the same phone number,
the answering machine
is full of salesmen
stumbling over their scripts
and toll free exchanges,

get an extra room cleaned
for free and God, do I want a smoke.

None of us
who still have hair
believed our music
would age as badly
as an ice cream flavor
involving spinach and Brussels sprouts,
all the guitar licks
leave an after taste
of hashish, a stench of love beads
doused in petuli oil,
what was sleek and smooth
is now grey and creased
like paper that’s been
folded and unfolded over many years,

yes, I tell my barber,
roll down my ears;
give me a buzz
the equal of a shot and a beer.

Those of Us in Pajamas Whistling Marches

2008-03-08T07:20:00.001-08:00

Those of us
whistling marches
in pajamas
are so sated with
soda and sour grapes
that we let the phones
in our pockets ring and buzz,
we allow those knocking
on the door to blister their knuckles,
the newspapers taped over
the windows let in only
the slightest slivers of sun
through the tears and cracks,
it’s natural that we drum our lips
and admire the dead garden in the back,
the bony limbs of leafless twigs
splayed like fingers reaching for a glass of water,
two seasons of unraked leaves,
this is our glory, our monument of
where we’ve come to remain
and settled in like a skin irritation
that won’t go away when you scratch,
radios and TVs blare and stare back at us all day,
our internet is highway of sex educated hitch hikers,
those of us in pajamas
wonder when one of us
will break ranks
from the couch
and do something about what’s
in the card board boxes stacked behind the garage,
full of pencil sharpeners, dead batteries
and legal papers we haven’t read,
but there’s nothing we can do
until we finish what we’re doing,
which is nothing
which is fine
because
it means
we don’t miss a thing.

Arise and write!

2008-03-03T16:09:00.001-08:00

Every which way but
into the sleeve of the jacket
now too long
and longing as the arm
drops toward the dressing room floor,
one leg longer than the other
and pants a size too small,
it seems you were invaded
and raided and all the faded
jeans and things that are
what you require for work, lunch,

all the points between appointments of
blue pencil marks, remarks in red pen
displaced, at sea in unknown pockets
in a pile of pants and shirts
unwashed like mythical masses
arriving at the docks
after passing under
the grey lady’s armpit
and the light she carries,
home fires for everyone,

Nothing makes sense
but that doesn’t matter
when work is the word of the day
and the word is first
when you thirst for a drink
and think you have no dimes
nor quarters for the soda in a can
or water in a plastic bottle,
you just hit the throttle and
plunge ahead into the brand new day
full of traps and fortunes
and the terror
an angry typist can bring you
or an empty page
taunts you with,
you rise, you shave, you
put on your cleanest dirty shirt,
you move onward into
the rising light ,
the streetlights are still on,
the bus is late
and deadlines are all
you have to live on.

Before we start

2008-02-09T07:29:00.000-08:00

Before we start
lets place a dime next to our plates
to tell us where the chatter stops
when the words get hard as the water
in the streaked water glass.
I could stop on a dime
back in the day
when I drove a station wagon
to the store,a trail of tread
behind me showing me
every light I skirted.
It was your skirt that turned my head
when I stopped for a paper,
fingering the dashboard ashtray
for a dime.
All those screaming headlines
never stopped coming,
the news didn't change
when we married
after months of talking about
current events as we ate
Asian take out.
Today I drive
nothing but trivial paths,
you are the keeper of the dimes
and the traction in the tread of my shoes,

I sing your name
when I buy a paper,
you are the music
the headlines never had.

Gravy Boat

2008-01-19T07:09:00.000-08:00

Timeless in airports
in non-smoking lines, every one deserves
where they're going to
I could say what I mean in congeries of intent,
but meaning is only a streak of luck
when the words like each other
and decide to try something new,
like a marriage that works
because husband and wife
are never home
on the same nights
and the sentence they've started
promises paroles and pardons
from the contract
of a kiss.

Under ether and the knife,
we might tell
the truth as we've felt
it for years
only after what's been killing us
is one with a snip and stitch.

After words, extraordinary language
becomes the way we walk
from the recovery room
in another light
of what's there, always the light
of fixtures that don't hide
the creep of gray hair
that is part of your response
to questions
posed like actors in costumes
for dramas about powdered wigs
from dead cultures
who tap at the library door
to know why and how come
all the lines are said in quirks
of style so fat with what
what you really mean
that the patient
yearns for the burn of ether.

Still, there is the issue of the magazines to read, the post
cards to write, schedules to memorize when coming into one's own
is an adventure traveled in the back seats of cars that are
rented with other people's money,
when the scenery passes
and the billboards of brief, smiling women
are more interesting than
the mountains or the forests or the
local histories ventured over ,
through or ducked all together,
when what you find yourself looking for
is anything with legs
that really speaks to you
in formations of language that tells you all about
a life too terrible
to survive the perfections
that binds a life to marriage
or occupation
that has a hint of escape
written illegibly in a liberty
that is mustache cups to drink from,
and advertisements on T-shirts,
work days one forgets
when you're having fun
testing markets
with a metaphor
for the phases of The Moon,
ebb and flow
that is a trickle of chump change
to pockets rich in lint
and holes that are all about
the money they can't
keep for the pants
they don't wear
while customer sales
tells everyone
to fuck themselves
with all the credit
they can get their hands on.

Witless in movie marathons hoping the hero
finds beauty tied to a tree
where there are
three bottles at her feet,
at the roots of her bondage.
Under the hot spaghetti sun,
our hero must decide which,
one trunk tethered woman
or three sealed bottles he
will have his way with.

This causes the Gods of competing absolutes
to laugh high -five each other
and cash in their markers
because the tangle of words
composed
has become the record
that spontaneously combusted
in the heat of trying to ferret
a kernel of wit
from the incongruity of the example.
I go on reading bill boards, hear news reports
on car radios,
the voices reading the copy in
place-less accents
that sound like America,airless voices reading words

flattening ideas of pain
and renders
stories of lives and places
into neutered melodramas
whose endings I predict
like that geek
everyone knows
who can pick
the ponies in all
kinds of weather
but who
never places
neither a bet nor goes to the track,
but who reads
all about it, and that's all he needs.

Drifting into insomnia
and other satellite hours,
every light burns,
we are tired
at this end
of the century,
rhetoric falters
and has become
the real way we shed tears,
speaking falters
and faults are naught but
gaps that are filled
when we stop
clearing our throat
in search of speech,
too exhausted for miracles.

There is now a fade from
cue cards
and a desire for Neapolitan ice cream
with a slice
of pie to go with,
a fade
into the language of arms
that are not the
fingers I speak with,
stranger things
in a room
where every light
have coronas against walls
painted for years
the color of surrender,
we talk too much
about things.

Blue Skies From Now On

2007-12-16T20:31:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

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

2007-12-07T06:40:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-22T11:59:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-21T20:13:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-21T09:37:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-16T07:28:00.000-08:00

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

2007-11-05T16:19:00.001-08:00

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

2007-11-05T16:16:00.000-08:00

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

There he goes

2007-10-31T13:19:00.001-07:00

for Hollis Burke

My brother was born dead
and walked before me
into the desert as stars fell
over a flat, black land
occupied with cactus and
polished animal skulls.

He looked more like me
than I ever resembled
our father or mother,
his eyes were solid marble
spheres blessed with
mineral waves of green
that saw through the mountains
and over the wide lakes,
which were dry and cracked
like boots made of old skin.

I followed him under the stars
that fell before the jeweled city
in the desert, followed him through
a door that closed after him,
I pushed it open, and pushed some
more , and he was gone
as dust , the generations of old cells,
covered his tracks,
laughter ringing through canyons,

Bird calls and then the crash of waves
as my eyes sagged toward
the sleeping ground,
a boat followed the
white path the moon
cast on the black water,
my brother had climbed
the other side of the mountain
he saw through, sailed on the lake
that was dry, walked from
the desert that called him
for years when there was no life
in cities or the tools of his drugs,

"I will see you" , he says
and leaves me again,
a sheet over his face,

"I will see you
on feather beds
when you lay down your harp
and unpack your bag
and take the rocks
from your shoes."

culinary guitars

2007-10-31T13:18:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:16:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:14:00.001-07:00

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.

Rapture

2007-10-31T13:12:00.000-07:00

The mailman drops his parcels and
falls to his knees in the middle of the street

as a light comes through the clouds and
makes the commotions of the city radiate

gold tones like the frozen poses
of ancient photographs

found under the stairs of every parent’s house
that aging children have to close.

You see the mailman on his knees and wonder
why he’s praying, hardly aware of the increase in light

or the music that blares all the big band music of
trumpets and saxophones that disguise the grind of

passing cars, it’s such a shame that religious fanatics
are hired to deliver the mail, you think, so much depends

on what comes through the System, envelopes full of
what’s owed and what’s not covered by any plan

that can be written down; you run the water in the sink,
you wonder where did the clouds go?

There is no rain anywhere,
says the radio announcer,
and the light is tremendous all over the globe,

there is not a dark corner
in any corner or nook on the earth,

And then the radio gives out to static, and the TV
releases itself to snow, the music in the street is very loud

and swinging hard to the left and the right and then right down the
middle as all the notes scurry brilliantly through the hedges

and up the driveways, into the homes with each reed instrument
improvising disembodied melodies that form their own sheet music,

That is a very loud set of speakers in that passing car, you think.
and the radio announcer cuts through the music and says something you

hear as that millions of people all over the world have just vanished in
plain site under bright light and big bang music, gone in a wisp and puff of smoke,

You look at your watch and note that it’s time for lunch,
the clouds have fallen over the city again, the sky darkens,

the shapes of the neighborhood take on their deep hues again, saddened
with history, dense in dumb witness to what never ends,

You stop, look out the window; you turn off the water you ran,
in the middle of the street, by itself, flat on the cement,

The mailman’s bag and his clothes,
topped by his hat, kissed by a cool breeze.

January AM

2007-10-31T13:10:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:07:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:06:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:03:00.001-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-31T13:00:00.001-07:00

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?

2007-10-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

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.