The night gives you magic

The night gives you magic
you can see between the leaves
that cling to dead limbs,
the city is a profile
that leads with its chin,
night birds sing the songs of chimney ash

and cinder fireflies spiraling  in hot red-yellow streaks
before vanishing into the black tarp,
 
the blues harp
moans from the window
in a house set against a mountain side
that is getting ready to rain,
but it is always raining in my heart
when your lights go out,
 
a small notes tells me
that you've gone for the night
 
and maybe the week
and that leaves me
staring out the window
through the screen
at  clouds and madness
that is a rime of light
cresting over all our business
 
when the city pulls up the
covers and reads
the word by flashlight.

Where to walk and where to sit

the grave yard

would be

an obvious place for me

to drop by

for some hours of the week,

more friends

than ever have their names

engraved in the

last place they’ll every park,

the history of every kiss

betrayal

and hours of

speechless joy

is going increasing

underground and

soon to be forgotten

as witnesses to where

you and I have have

tread fall over like

bribed boxers,

fall like ships

off the edge of

a 13th century map of the earth,

take on a sleep

so deep in dreams

of black ink

that even the word

“calm”

is an over statement.

THE LOVE LOST BETWEEN THEM

Woe be gone in song

of the wandering violinist

as he moves among

the tables, annoyed

as bows the neck

at the haircuts

that bob and shake fists

to his melody

of two Black Forest Lovers

beset by a pack of wolves.

Bristles are the cuts

on the head of this throng,

he bristles himself

and often longs

for a seat

nearest the podium, starting off the evening off right,

on the mark, on time,

a tempo  to  signify the

romance of his moods.

Yet his songs are too sad for

his present crowd,

they like it in chords

that blast and clash the anger of gods they

can't name,

Their rhythm is violent,

not suited

for violins

and the sentiment they exclaim.

The kids want to see Industrial Cities

slip into

boiling Great Lakes

as a backdrop for a riff   on

the E Major scale.

Yet they're all stuck,

they by blizzard and

the need to eat,

and he by hunger and

the need to pay rent

every thirty days,

and together they make

the best of

the love lost between them.

They sit, listen, and gnash their teeth,

while he plays frantic cadenzas,

dreaming of applause and kisses from

the balcony from men in tuxedos

and ladies

in long white gloves,

Together they
 make music t
hat's

jagged

and
     dirty...

Another Side of Long Distance Calls

"...religions are beautiful because of the strong possibility that they are founded on nothing. We would all believe in God if we knew he He existed, but would this be much fun?..."

-- John Ashbery

Somewhere along the line

something was said

that made

an awful lot of sense.

an utterance so

stable in verb and stance

that my head jerked up

as if on a string

moved about

by a cruel master.

The guy who said

was smiles

for miles his white

teeth could blind.

William had his glass at the tip

of his lip

as though a toast

were to emerge from

his studied gestures,

he repeated

his wisdom,

"Jesus lives in a house on

the moon

and he can't go outside

because there is no air..."

The table spun just then,

three fast fandangos,

and in the swirl

three thousand or so years of

thinking came undone like

badly sewn stitches across

the seams of thin, historical clothing,

every fig leaf has fallen

from our shoulders and

waistline,

Philosophy and faith

are seen finally

for what they are

through the bottom of

William's bar glass,

a little man in a corner

holding a wet paint brush.

Poetry will ruin your life

some of us many of you
love poetry as blackboard
and no chalk, toe nails and back flips
through a bent H
and screaming rocket calculus
as numbers pounding at the door
when dinner arrives,
saying
"fuck you and your attempts to
define poetry, you are squares
TOO EASILY DEFINED
and remember
JAMES BROWN IS DEAD."

too many of not enough of the rest of the city
believes parades are for them
if it's the third tuesday in a leap year
on a day named after a Norse god, goddamnit,
but some of the majority of the slim pickings
have opined
that newspapers are dead to everything
except the bottom of a
bird cage so therefore
poetry is the attempt to make language
an even crustier clump of cliches and dead mackerals,
line breaks
needed plaster casts,
similes that cannot find a soul mate,
genders and pronouns
unpronounced by married
inspite of the loneliness
that finds you like
that helicopter spotlight
that very night when
you slam your poem
across the side of the head
of a famous coot
who rhymed
like a trained seal
does
when the fish smells like
The Star Spangled Banner.

Every single every other of us still standing if not sitting or what have you
sigh and don't regard poetry at all
because
"PEOPLE ARE DYING. GODDAMNIT, CRAZY FUCKERS
THINK THEY CAN JUST UP AND LEAVE WITHOUT
A PARTING GIFT OR A LAST SLAP AGAINST THE FACE"
but poetry absorbs all this
what ever hoarse voice and harsh verbs that choose us,
guitars ,harmonicas and bicycle bells
are the sound track makes that big racket
against the black night air,\
the big black board scratched by stars
and smeared with
ashen tears as spirits rise and voices cry
and finally something like a song
of loss emerges and our hands come from our pockets and from behind our backs and we raise to the
nowhere that is our idea of heaven
and mourn the loss
and remember the joy
and write a poem in
between a toss of the dice
and a the release of breath
that it's always closing time
somewhere
on the planet that rumbles on , spits out gears, shivers and quakes with it's organic mechanics festering
the ground with spores and seed,
gas tanks go dry
and there isn't a dry eye
with so many miles still untrod
and sleep coming over us all the same,
cooing, eschewing the rules and agendas,
crooning a lyric, a word of every  song
you knew only half the stanzas to,
it all says
that it's time to rest,
it's time to come home
it's time to become the poetry
that was your pulse
and is now your name
when someone
new decides to get good and pissed
and full of themselves
in the life they find themself in.

partly snarly

when i sneer
all the leaves

i've raked up
and pressed

between the pages
where they deserve to rest

just scatter in a rank breeze
and scatter again

along the path and lawns
where i first saw them.

so i rake them again
and i snort some more

and do so until
no one sees the sky.


today's weather is
leafy, partly snarly,

with a 20 percent chance of grief
and night and morning black clouds

that will make the neighborhood
a sight worth seeing


if you were a gnome
under a bridge

loading a gun.

Paragraph Poem

Smoke alarms in the center of the night shift gravity with the shovels full  of noise as the cat knocks its plate of dried meat off the balcony, to the driveway  below,  where helicopters  scour the ground with beams and  pools of light  that scurry up alleys and over parked cars,  there are cans rolling into the streets,  shopping carts  slamming into mail boxes, this is where everyone wants to be,  tight and napping at the beach in a corner room,  over a dumpster,  next to chain smoking neighbors. Nothing to but grumble, shake my head, seek your hand, mumble, light a candle and curse the darkness. 

And just as the night seemed to blink it's last straining Thoughts of fun and give in too its darkness, its warm, heartless interior. 

Parties across the bay, patios that hug shore line, planks that Stick out like chins needing to be slugged with a hand that closes and hardens into the instant weapon that comes in handy as it reaches and unstrings the Japanese paper Lanterns that light up the hard, wet, sand with frantic, dancing light, fireworks, boats on the water, enjoying the music, no one takes tickets in the middle of the bay, there are other things we still aren't done talking about, snore as we might, dream where we may . 

Your news of your mom dying two years ago after the phone was shut off and mail gathered at the front door, in a pile, under the slot, addresses of advertisers selling shares in futures no can see anymore, You hold me and kiss my hand and wonder aloud when the next set of fire works goes off  following the next thing the cat knocks over Complimenting a contrapuntal groan of guitar from stereo on the patio someone was just pushed from to the hard, packed, cold sand below why it seems to be still in the apartment, the air not moving, the dark of the room disturbed only by a Television screen that throbs with images of abstracted passions, sleek icons wet with desire that seems a burden in a time when there is always knowledge, a good guess, of how much time there's left to play with the toys you already have, 

I wonder too, and whistle something that starts off as Charlie Parker and winds up a Sousa March, There are only so many days left that really have nothing to do with Shopping, I say, the cat grunts, spits something up, the fire works stream cross the bay, flames burst from the explosion and engulf the patio deck the rocket it, screams from the balcony, smoke alarms in the middle of the night, screams, electronic bass and rap assuming a burnt tinge that colors the holiday, I kiss you, I wish I was kissing you, wherever you are, there are lives that haven't touched me yet, nothing breaks the calm waters, and no oar violates the lake surface. There is only noise, commotion, a city consuming itself, lurching into the next decade, empty as a can.