Poetry
I was more of a poet in my twenties and thirties than I am now, and I'm not sure why that is. Poetry is how I got my start writing, probably because I emulated my mother. I offer a few poems anyway, just in case some who discover this site are poets at heart, like me.
A warning, though, that I'm generally a free verse kind of guy and love to challenge conventions (as in the first poem, "why not"). Lovers of rhyme and form won't find much here, though I recommend, "Beef Sestina," for a modern interpretation of that traditional poetry form.
why not
why not live in the woods and forget everything he said
because it’s not realistic she replied
yeah I guess youre right he said but Thoreau did it
so did the Unibomber she replied and you’re not committed to that way of life anyway
you just hate your job
yeah I guess you’re right he said but how do you know that’s not why Thoreau did it too
all right she replied hand over your cell phone
he must have had porn or something he said
who she replied
Thoreau
you mean like women in bloomers on playing cards
its interesting to me that you know about 19th century porn he said
im pretty knowledgeable she replied
i guess it’s a pretty dumb idea he said but I think I could do it if I had porn
probably she replied
Chicken Shit at the Laundry Mat
Screaming at your children
on the telephone
I try to act like I can't hear, but
I'm disgusted.
I want to turn to you and tell you what a bitch you are,
like Bukowski would.
I see some kids with you
by the pay phone.
You yell at them, as well.
You seem so mean, so angry.
I'm not too conflicted about despising you.
When you're done,
you turn to me for validation.
You want some of my kids, you ask
while laughing.
This is your way of excusing your behavior,
but I know you only do this because
you've been caught.
I should just glare at you, deny you
a way out of this.
But I don't.
I make polite conversation, gift wrap
your escape.
Now I don't know who I despise more -
you or me.
Big City Luster
So you know what I mean,
even if I can’t find the right words. People cross the street
like it means something,
only to discover construction scaffolds
menace the sidewalk
& their life’s goals simultaneously.
The cabbies in their mobile yellow prisons
turn up the radio to drown out their sins, but soon
taste bitter fruit
upon realizing their minds’ eye can’t see beyond
Broadway And 81st Street.
Verticality beckons.
But you are single minded &
fight the urge
of your chin to turn skyward, because
you are, after all, no tourist.
The 7 Line is down again – something is always down – so the city planners have won &
you’ll get home too late to fix dinner.
Might as well go Chinese, because that impossibly narrow space
with the neon green sign &
the mournful calligraphy
is close by, the food is tolerable, &
there’s this lanky girl with the smart chapeau (a Greek fishing hat?) who dines there quite often.
Hat girl didn’t do her part, but why should she when even the bodega owner
won’t make eye contact with you?
Homeward bound at 19:00 hours, where you’ll soon be
licking your wounds
along with your fingers.
Spicy beef wafts through the air of your studio,
an olfactory taunt
that ridicules your lack of discipline.
You’re eating just to eat, watching Jeopardy so
you wont’ be alone,
passing gas like it was self-respect.
You hear the street noise, an urban concerto you found enticing upon arrival, giddy at every
car horn &
engine backfire.
Now it’s a mere encumbrance, the novelty
gone. Gone.
Beep. Beep.
Maybe you should call a few friends, even though they’re really just
people you work with.
Acquaintances.
Cohorts.
Fellow inmates
at the asylum, you all signed up for this tour of duty voluntarily - &
that
everyone meanders from regret
is also commonplace. Brothers and sisters in arms - &
legs and lips occasionally.
Still, most have gained insight &
can turn aphorisms inside out:
Misery loves company: the company loves misery.
Why not look out the window?
Maybe you’ll find the goals you misplaced
sometime between when you first stepped out of Penn Station and
this moment.
There’s a black guy and a Mexican lady walking past each other in front of the Buddhist
temple – you can’t see that in Iowa.
But diversity sounds better
in the brochure than it does in your list of reasons
to persevere.
Snap out of it!
Would you really be happier back home, a zombie
stumbling between
the Wal-Mart and the Quickie Lube?
And you’d be so close to family, reason enough to
Glue your ass
To a bench in Central Park & suffer the wrath of
Mutha Natcha’s East Coast Posse.
Just when confusion has your back to the mat &
your internal referee counts two, you see
the black guy helping the Mexican lady
pick up her disobedient groceries &
Inspiration hits you like pungent cheese: We are the world, New York, &
it’s your city now, too.
Stay here –
At least through the summer.
Late Winter Storm
Tiny white diamonds flow like
schools of fish in
angled currents.
With shoulders curved
in a defensive gesture, the
dour faces
scatter about in
random paths
that mimic the
frozen schrapnel.
Rorschach puddles
gather on the grainy,
tip-toed asphalt like
splintered mirrors on an
unkempt warehouse floor -
while grimy vehicles,
half covered with snow
that melts in
puzzle piece clusters,
prove an unworthy distraction.
And gray - omniscient gray - is
everywhere,
everywhere.
Like the suffocating atmosphere of
an ancient sarcophagus.
In early March on such a desperate
winter day, the
promise of spring
is sabotaged so completely, that
even the children's laughter
fails to pierce my
gloomy fortress.
What can you tell about a family from their toilet?
I’m looking down at
their toilet
and I see it is stained.
Not with shit stains or whatever
but, you know, the toilet
bowl stains that come from
well water
or a lack of cleaning.
And while I urinate
I’m wondering,
are these people slobs?
What kind of people have other people
over to their homes and don’t
clean the toilet?
Should they be admired or
scorned?
Am I shallow to try to draw
conclusions about them from their
toilet bowl,
or is this a legitimate
exercise in
character description?
It’s a long pee
and my mind is busy focusing
on, not the task at hand, for
that has been relegated to
the subconscious, but
their toilet bowl and thinking
about this family,
about what kind of people they are,
about what kind of people have a dirty toilet
bowl.
Like me.
I do.
All the time, practically.
And I’m an okay guy.
Would I want people drawing
unseemly conclusions about me
just because my
toilet bowl is dirty?
And what if they had a butler
or a cleaning lady
who kept their toilet
clean for them?
Would that make them better,
or worse
in some ways?
Because then they might be
Snotty-ass
rich people
instead of
nouveau riche
trailer park trash,
which they probably aren’t.
So maybe I’m
the asshole.
Maybe I can tell more about
myself
than I can about them
from their toilet bowl.
I decide this is
a satisfactory conclusion
to my little thought journey, and
at just about the same time
I stop peeing.
So life seems pretty orderly
in these rare moments
and I turn to other matters -
like whether or
not to look in
their medicine cabinet.
what to think
duplicitous mass media in the information age
(see the war on Iraq) therefore the truth is
unknowable when what we see and hear is malleable
(see Bush tax cuts) and yes information is power
(see the Patriot Act) but it is
first a tool then a weapon
(see McCarthyism) thus we draw false conclusions
based upon misleading premises
(see the nuclear arms race) and being so-called
informed only makes one more vulnerable and likely mistaken
(see capital punishment) so maybe the right-wingers are right
and you should look out for Number One
(see Bush tax cuts again) and blame the victims
(see welfare reform)
Beef Sestina
I went to the big yellow arches, that sin house of conformity, to get a mass produced burger.
It looked like they put ketchup on it, but I knew it might as well be blood.
And though I could not see them moving about, I recognized it was also covered with germs.
Who would have thought that such an All-American meal could imply so much death?
If I eat this, I wondered, how much of it will show up in my feces?
Nothing could save me from the horrors of such a corrupted food chain, least of all money.
Not too many Happy Carnivores realize how cattle are drowned in their own blood
before they’re served to us, all snug and comfy in a commercial sleeping bag of fat and germs.
Even soldiers are not forced to suffer such indignities before they also suffer death.
But cattle are packed together in pens and made to eat chicken shit and even their own feces.
They’re marched up a plank that twists and turns so they can’t see what’s coming, all for money.
Since the 1950s, Wall Street approves of making money this way – burgers, burgers, burgers.
But these Wall Street jackals don’t care about health risks like your meat being full of germs.
The bottom line is king to the profit mongers who don’t see themselves as purveyors of death,
willing to poison your child via meat mixed with rat feces, chicken feces, all manner of feces.
Caveat emptor! They’ll take your life as easily as they’ll take your grease stained money.
You are not forced to buy, but they do target seven-year-olds with ads selling toys and burgers.
And just whose fault is it that thousands have died eating meat that contains contaminated blood?
Yet the consumers of this slaughterhouse sludge refuse to believe it can lead to death,
or that if it doesn’t kill you, and the odds are in your favor it won’t, this meat still contains feces
and other things like cattle hides and bones, insects, or human fingers, but never blood money.
No, that’s owned by the cattle honchos and executives who relentlessly push their burgers
and uncompromisingly oppose any government regulation, for independence is in their blood.
Jesse James was “independent” too, but he and the cattle execs are both slimy, low-life germs.
It’s not that I don’t eat meat, because I do, but I don’t want it laced with any type of feces.
I would gladly pay 2 pennies more per pound for proper government supervision, or more money
if that’s what it took to insure my girls don’t get Listeria or Hepatitis from their Happy Burgers.
This has happened more than you know because the cattle execs have used their dirty blood money,
not just to buy big homes and cars, but to buy politicians who are also low life germs.
Together they suppress inspections of their disgusting slaughterhouses in a conspiracy of death.
The key to all this skullduggery, to all skullduggery, is of course selfishness and money.
Automakers lie about how SUVs are killers, so why can’t others lie about what’s in your burger?
I’m not an animal rights activist, either, but would it influence your opinion to heed the blood
-curdling screams emanating from the cows and pigs being tortured, forced to eat shit and germs
and otherwise suffer before paying the ultimate price at the homespun alter of dinner and death?
In a just world, cows will take over the world some day and make you eat your brother’s feces.
Maybe you’re a vegan and any burger, in your mind, is laced with inhumane acts and blood.
Maybe you think carnivores deserve the germs we eat with meat, but not that we deserve death.
Then you worry more about us than those who run the feces factories, who care only for money.
A warning, though, that I'm generally a free verse kind of guy and love to challenge conventions (as in the first poem, "why not"). Lovers of rhyme and form won't find much here, though I recommend, "Beef Sestina," for a modern interpretation of that traditional poetry form.
why not
why not live in the woods and forget everything he said
because it’s not realistic she replied
yeah I guess youre right he said but Thoreau did it
so did the Unibomber she replied and you’re not committed to that way of life anyway
you just hate your job
yeah I guess you’re right he said but how do you know that’s not why Thoreau did it too
all right she replied hand over your cell phone
he must have had porn or something he said
who she replied
Thoreau
you mean like women in bloomers on playing cards
its interesting to me that you know about 19th century porn he said
im pretty knowledgeable she replied
i guess it’s a pretty dumb idea he said but I think I could do it if I had porn
probably she replied
Chicken Shit at the Laundry Mat
Screaming at your children
on the telephone
I try to act like I can't hear, but
I'm disgusted.
I want to turn to you and tell you what a bitch you are,
like Bukowski would.
I see some kids with you
by the pay phone.
You yell at them, as well.
You seem so mean, so angry.
I'm not too conflicted about despising you.
When you're done,
you turn to me for validation.
You want some of my kids, you ask
while laughing.
This is your way of excusing your behavior,
but I know you only do this because
you've been caught.
I should just glare at you, deny you
a way out of this.
But I don't.
I make polite conversation, gift wrap
your escape.
Now I don't know who I despise more -
you or me.
Big City Luster
So you know what I mean,
even if I can’t find the right words. People cross the street
like it means something,
only to discover construction scaffolds
menace the sidewalk
& their life’s goals simultaneously.
The cabbies in their mobile yellow prisons
turn up the radio to drown out their sins, but soon
taste bitter fruit
upon realizing their minds’ eye can’t see beyond
Broadway And 81st Street.
Verticality beckons.
But you are single minded &
fight the urge
of your chin to turn skyward, because
you are, after all, no tourist.
The 7 Line is down again – something is always down – so the city planners have won &
you’ll get home too late to fix dinner.
Might as well go Chinese, because that impossibly narrow space
with the neon green sign &
the mournful calligraphy
is close by, the food is tolerable, &
there’s this lanky girl with the smart chapeau (a Greek fishing hat?) who dines there quite often.
Hat girl didn’t do her part, but why should she when even the bodega owner
won’t make eye contact with you?
Homeward bound at 19:00 hours, where you’ll soon be
licking your wounds
along with your fingers.
Spicy beef wafts through the air of your studio,
an olfactory taunt
that ridicules your lack of discipline.
You’re eating just to eat, watching Jeopardy so
you wont’ be alone,
passing gas like it was self-respect.
You hear the street noise, an urban concerto you found enticing upon arrival, giddy at every
car horn &
engine backfire.
Now it’s a mere encumbrance, the novelty
gone. Gone.
Beep. Beep.
Maybe you should call a few friends, even though they’re really just
people you work with.
Acquaintances.
Cohorts.
Fellow inmates
at the asylum, you all signed up for this tour of duty voluntarily - &
that
everyone meanders from regret
is also commonplace. Brothers and sisters in arms - &
legs and lips occasionally.
Still, most have gained insight &
can turn aphorisms inside out:
Misery loves company: the company loves misery.
Why not look out the window?
Maybe you’ll find the goals you misplaced
sometime between when you first stepped out of Penn Station and
this moment.
There’s a black guy and a Mexican lady walking past each other in front of the Buddhist
temple – you can’t see that in Iowa.
But diversity sounds better
in the brochure than it does in your list of reasons
to persevere.
Snap out of it!
Would you really be happier back home, a zombie
stumbling between
the Wal-Mart and the Quickie Lube?
And you’d be so close to family, reason enough to
Glue your ass
To a bench in Central Park & suffer the wrath of
Mutha Natcha’s East Coast Posse.
Just when confusion has your back to the mat &
your internal referee counts two, you see
the black guy helping the Mexican lady
pick up her disobedient groceries &
Inspiration hits you like pungent cheese: We are the world, New York, &
it’s your city now, too.
Stay here –
At least through the summer.
Late Winter Storm
Tiny white diamonds flow like
schools of fish in
angled currents.
With shoulders curved
in a defensive gesture, the
dour faces
scatter about in
random paths
that mimic the
frozen schrapnel.
Rorschach puddles
gather on the grainy,
tip-toed asphalt like
splintered mirrors on an
unkempt warehouse floor -
while grimy vehicles,
half covered with snow
that melts in
puzzle piece clusters,
prove an unworthy distraction.
And gray - omniscient gray - is
everywhere,
everywhere.
Like the suffocating atmosphere of
an ancient sarcophagus.
In early March on such a desperate
winter day, the
promise of spring
is sabotaged so completely, that
even the children's laughter
fails to pierce my
gloomy fortress.
What can you tell about a family from their toilet?
I’m looking down at
their toilet
and I see it is stained.
Not with shit stains or whatever
but, you know, the toilet
bowl stains that come from
well water
or a lack of cleaning.
And while I urinate
I’m wondering,
are these people slobs?
What kind of people have other people
over to their homes and don’t
clean the toilet?
Should they be admired or
scorned?
Am I shallow to try to draw
conclusions about them from their
toilet bowl,
or is this a legitimate
exercise in
character description?
It’s a long pee
and my mind is busy focusing
on, not the task at hand, for
that has been relegated to
the subconscious, but
their toilet bowl and thinking
about this family,
about what kind of people they are,
about what kind of people have a dirty toilet
bowl.
Like me.
I do.
All the time, practically.
And I’m an okay guy.
Would I want people drawing
unseemly conclusions about me
just because my
toilet bowl is dirty?
And what if they had a butler
or a cleaning lady
who kept their toilet
clean for them?
Would that make them better,
or worse
in some ways?
Because then they might be
Snotty-ass
rich people
instead of
nouveau riche
trailer park trash,
which they probably aren’t.
So maybe I’m
the asshole.
Maybe I can tell more about
myself
than I can about them
from their toilet bowl.
I decide this is
a satisfactory conclusion
to my little thought journey, and
at just about the same time
I stop peeing.
So life seems pretty orderly
in these rare moments
and I turn to other matters -
like whether or
not to look in
their medicine cabinet.
what to think
duplicitous mass media in the information age
(see the war on Iraq) therefore the truth is
unknowable when what we see and hear is malleable
(see Bush tax cuts) and yes information is power
(see the Patriot Act) but it is
first a tool then a weapon
(see McCarthyism) thus we draw false conclusions
based upon misleading premises
(see the nuclear arms race) and being so-called
informed only makes one more vulnerable and likely mistaken
(see capital punishment) so maybe the right-wingers are right
and you should look out for Number One
(see Bush tax cuts again) and blame the victims
(see welfare reform)
Beef Sestina
I went to the big yellow arches, that sin house of conformity, to get a mass produced burger.
It looked like they put ketchup on it, but I knew it might as well be blood.
And though I could not see them moving about, I recognized it was also covered with germs.
Who would have thought that such an All-American meal could imply so much death?
If I eat this, I wondered, how much of it will show up in my feces?
Nothing could save me from the horrors of such a corrupted food chain, least of all money.
Not too many Happy Carnivores realize how cattle are drowned in their own blood
before they’re served to us, all snug and comfy in a commercial sleeping bag of fat and germs.
Even soldiers are not forced to suffer such indignities before they also suffer death.
But cattle are packed together in pens and made to eat chicken shit and even their own feces.
They’re marched up a plank that twists and turns so they can’t see what’s coming, all for money.
Since the 1950s, Wall Street approves of making money this way – burgers, burgers, burgers.
But these Wall Street jackals don’t care about health risks like your meat being full of germs.
The bottom line is king to the profit mongers who don’t see themselves as purveyors of death,
willing to poison your child via meat mixed with rat feces, chicken feces, all manner of feces.
Caveat emptor! They’ll take your life as easily as they’ll take your grease stained money.
You are not forced to buy, but they do target seven-year-olds with ads selling toys and burgers.
And just whose fault is it that thousands have died eating meat that contains contaminated blood?
Yet the consumers of this slaughterhouse sludge refuse to believe it can lead to death,
or that if it doesn’t kill you, and the odds are in your favor it won’t, this meat still contains feces
and other things like cattle hides and bones, insects, or human fingers, but never blood money.
No, that’s owned by the cattle honchos and executives who relentlessly push their burgers
and uncompromisingly oppose any government regulation, for independence is in their blood.
Jesse James was “independent” too, but he and the cattle execs are both slimy, low-life germs.
It’s not that I don’t eat meat, because I do, but I don’t want it laced with any type of feces.
I would gladly pay 2 pennies more per pound for proper government supervision, or more money
if that’s what it took to insure my girls don’t get Listeria or Hepatitis from their Happy Burgers.
This has happened more than you know because the cattle execs have used their dirty blood money,
not just to buy big homes and cars, but to buy politicians who are also low life germs.
Together they suppress inspections of their disgusting slaughterhouses in a conspiracy of death.
The key to all this skullduggery, to all skullduggery, is of course selfishness and money.
Automakers lie about how SUVs are killers, so why can’t others lie about what’s in your burger?
I’m not an animal rights activist, either, but would it influence your opinion to heed the blood
-curdling screams emanating from the cows and pigs being tortured, forced to eat shit and germs
and otherwise suffer before paying the ultimate price at the homespun alter of dinner and death?
In a just world, cows will take over the world some day and make you eat your brother’s feces.
Maybe you’re a vegan and any burger, in your mind, is laced with inhumane acts and blood.
Maybe you think carnivores deserve the germs we eat with meat, but not that we deserve death.
Then you worry more about us than those who run the feces factories, who care only for money.