30)

let me quote a fellow poet monk
the house was quiet and the world was calm
at 10:07 pm the urge to shake myself awake
i greet language as a friend
stranger and lover as i rise for a piss
from too much beer
i gaze at my reflection as my reflection
returns my look taking a good look
thru the prism of words possessed
and dispossessed
i bow deeply to that man who stares
right back without blinking an eye
and his language
i say the word *gratitude* aloud
i say the word because
i am so damn happy for this life

29)

you are a king what’s a king when you are a king you can get anything you want like something to eat a buffet fit for a king but when it is time to get the check let us talk about it all being free let us take a our place at the table wearing our pauper’s robes eyeballing the throne situated on top of the heap

28)

god if i could only remember my dreams
instead of smudged half-assed images
i awake and remember only feelings
like the other night dreaming of hanging with
jh in sf
i don’t know what we did or how we did it
upon waking images faded like sun-bleached polaroids
but the after-feeling was utter pleasure
maybe that’s all that matters
what do i know anyway for i am an adept only
in the art of sitting on my butt and doing nothing
i do it real good
i write it like disaster
it really isn’t hard to master

27)

the eye follows the cord hanging from the upper right hand corner of the frame to the floor of the frame where a light bulb lies freshly cut when the eye hangs a left to the figure of a mop top boy/girl [who knows] wearing red doc martins rolled up jeans beige windbreaker holding a stiletto in the left hand while the face is pitched in a shit-eating grin and on the back of the windbreaker the symbol for peace

[Hyper Enough (to the City)] by yoshitomo nara

26)

car radio tuned to an old western circa 1944 starring jimmy stewart

malaise sounds like mayonnaise and is also spread too think

an ad? open your heart, no first your wallet, then your heart

wonder turns to superstition and just as ignored

waiting -- for wait? who knows but waiting anyway

another ad, again? this one for a 45 year-old male in perfect health for life insurance -- gads, how did they find me?!

driving west into the sun -- no sunglasses -- scorching my rods and cones

midday leads to a sandwich

sometimes that is the best hope we have

25)

red blues for a blue boy

i would grow a soul patch if i could find a patch of soul

24)

cat scratches outside the window
whose cat i don’t know
the weather is fine and mild
this time of year it’s usually brutal

9:18 pm on a Sunday
work thoughts
writing thoughts
sometimes both meet

not like a collision
but overlap and stitch
together because life is like that
we try to divide and find we can’t

by pulling apart we make it whole
word fragments incomplete imagery
inchoate dreams and chaos for display
made whole in one heart and brain

bastard cat is gone and good
for outside too is a mourning dove
nestled in a potted plant with two small eggs
i look with a fresh eye

23)

given by appointment
or so it seemed

though one might be convinced
that fate intervened

i say no
give me a fucking break

what happened happens
no matter the score

like taking a stroll
at the edge of town

a bit of flanerie
when asked how

long for a poem
say it is as long

as the length of your days
plus 5 minutes more

22)

according to theoretical physics in the beginning there was nothing that exploded

thus a lot of very small hot dots manifested into matter

but when you look for them they are not there

there is such vast empty spaces between very small hot dots a physicist took to wearing big fuzzy slippers in case he slipped in between

to cushion the fall

21)

philip k. dick claimed VALIS
manifested itself in pink light
and that the roman empire exists today

going across the bay bridge
he saw god rip open the sky
and reveal his awful face

that because this world is so fucked up
truth and beauty must be in the trash
holyfuckingshit imagine that the seeking intelligence

if one were to believe in a pink light of pure information
that metaphysics starts at the discovery of
our ordinary yet ever present trash

20)

today’s poem goes like this: little boy finds at camp little frog little boy finds an old ice cream bucket little boy calls ice cream bucket find serendipity little boy falls in love with little frog and takes little frog in an old ice cream bucket home little boy wants to help a little soul little boy gnashes and writhes and cries like crazy when told by his father that little frog needs to return home to little pond because little frog is a wild animal and needs to be with little frog’s own family to grow to be a big frog and live a long large frog life little boy agrees finally to let little frog back into the wild so his father drives both little boy and little frog back to little pond so little boy can say goodbye to little frog and return little frog back to where little boy found little frog and tonight little boy will dream the dreams of little frog

19)

in the garden watering the potted plants
standing in a small puddle
o holy shit -- a garden spider on my left foot
stops his perambulation for a better view

18)

dear _______

i find myself reading classical Chinese poetry again

i looked thru my dvd collection for a documentary on CA hardcore

i bought a couple books and mags and when i brought them to the cashier he said, zen, punk rock and exploitation movies?

i spent the day going to and fro and lost my way

i don’t know the origin of the expression, red tape, but, man, can i elucidate on its precision

i’ve been studying two pictures by yoshitomo nara, both with texts written in English, I am a son of a gun, the other picture, dead or peace

i put my son to bed then return to face the blank screen again and make a few notes toward an anti-style in my notebook of the damned


love,

rl

17)

as another poet -- who listed his kids’ ages --
said, when you become a father
they don’t give out manuals
can’t be a parent and say, that went
well, no mistakes there

there are more moments than i can count
when i hear my old man’s voice
in my own
no use getting neurotic about it
we all age into the persons we feared

we’d become
and find it’s not so bad
even the child inside the man
learns to accept this fact
the punk rocker with reading glasses

[composed while watching the documentary the other f word (2011) on father’s day]

16)

start looking for something to do
thoughts are kindling for
a VHS tape of a Christmas hearth
soundtrack looped in the brainpan
is a mixed-tape
of cover bands doing songs by THE RAMONES
oh you got it good
remember that time you leaned in for your
first kiss and were met with
a mute prayer
a pitiless shrug
it’s all math you say
you don’t know english
but you can fuck it up real good

15)

i would converse with old Li Po and throw down a jar of wine with the guy as we sat on the levee of the American River and he would write poems on the leaves from the box elder trees and set them down river and i would write poems on the soles of my shoes so when we would later take a long walk thru midtown the words would scuff into the streets of my beloved berg

14)

abandon yourself to poetry & wine
and beer
particularly Summer Brew by Anchor Steam

if not wine and beer
than abandon yourself to poetry and movies

remember that scene in
a night at the opera
where groucho invites

everyone inside a cramped train cabin
finesse and chaos

finely tuned and irregular
24 frames per second of word and action

etudes in the art of
letting loose by gathering in

for jh & ag

13)

reading the poems of Lu Yu
with a broken power cord
only 3 minutes before
               crap! out of juice!

12)

poem for a birthday
     another day
          another step
               ½ way to 90

11)

spent my lunch hour watching zbigniew herbert’s bees pile on flower upon flower totally covered in pollen

i was lost in translation

10)

o you afraid of the blank page
afraid of the kind
of change that transmogrifies

possession and horror
passion and realism
made grittier by the telling

still the sea remains the sea
the air is still the air
as the poet said, ah, the familiar tautologies

that define and comfort
that dumb-ass you push
in front of you called the self

wake up, you call, as if the dreaming
is one more payload of dirt and shit
wondering if the answers are in the questions

don’t collect more tears for the text
do as cronenberg’s brundlefly
who dreams he is a man, and loves it

9)

the subject blows off shaving

the subject finds new grey hairs that are not on his head

the subject cannot spend a moment of his waking hours not thinking of poetry, movies, sex and death

the subject enters the china shop and lives the cliché

the subject drinks two cups of coffee and then has to pee like a horse

the subject finds humor in the stupidest things forcing his wife to think he might be slightly retarded

the subject is pissed about the usual subjects found in the news and politics

the subject sometimes wants to perceive the world in a fuzzy way so he takes off his glasses

the subject drinks a birthday greetings bottle of wine

the subject wishes every day was halloween

8)

are we as a state regressing
i mean we can’t seem to get
our shit together
every newscast is another reason
i need to renew my prescription
for PROZAC

break me a fucking give
please

this is a poem for jonathan hayes
and all the shit he’s dealing with

praise to the poets
praise to you who find
the strength to rise every morning
and greet the day with open eyes

7)

i fall asleep in the middle of the poem
i wake in the middle of the poem
i walk into the middle of the poem
i eat into the middle of the poem
i read in the middle of the poem
i watch a movie in the middle of the poem
i want to escape in the middle of the poem

6)

today i exile the self to plunge the martian chronicles ferment dandelion wine heed something wicked this way comes measure the heat of fahrenheit 451 and seek the company of the illustrated man

tell me something good

one thing good:  google celebrates the 79th birthday of the drive-in theater today with the above doodle.  on june 6, 1933 richard hollingshead jr. opened the first drive-in in camden, new jersery.  soon drive-ins were all over the country.  the peak of their popularity -- in my estimation - was in the 1960s and 1970s.  there were thousands of screens in the u.s.  my own little berg possessed about a dozen in the mid-1970s.  i fell in love with all things drive-in related.  they are now dead in our culture.  cultures change.  i am still in love.

it is summer.  anna asked me what thing or event gives me a summer feeling.  drive-ins are summer thru and thru.  below is one of my favorite intermission shorts. 

   

5)

‘welcome, my children,’ said the dark figure, ‘to the communion of your race’
nathaniel hawthorne

trace your belief in science / is it married to a belief in god / is it like that girl in argento’s great film / SUSPIRIA / who interrogates a coven of witches and escapes / to the hard world of brute fact / looking thru a bedroom window / rain-plashed / her face refracted in the reflected light of water and glass / waiting / for a death / where is her faith / is it in the interstices of waiting / a hunt for eternity / the camel passing thru the eye of a needle

4)

a frog takes a long plop into the shallow pool of fm radio classic rock

3)

we’re not serious when we are seventeen
arthur rimbaud

nor are we serious at 45
even if we make a go of it
we should serious it up

shouldn’t we

to quote another poet
‘to tell the truth, uh oh, that’ll start the revolution’

are we as t-rex said
children of the revolution

i’m gonna start right here
i’m gonna occupy

my jeans

gonna make a stand
by sitting down

declaring the right to the siesta
poets with day jobs

the right to fair housing
and family
good food and loving company

uh oh, that’ll start the revolution

2)

so like daffy duck
fghting the little man from the draft board
make unto sound
even if image is your medium

preferences must be discarded
do what needs to be done
behind the green door
fuck art / let’s kill

1)

entering the middle of
my life i wanna skate
grinding my trucks
against the whole lot
fuck all of it
practice the art of
the fall down and
if that ain’t a kick
in the pegged 501s
within an inch of my
balls who knows
and anyway i
am growing old
and must give
up bananas
yes bananas
to save my life
so i must grab my stick
and go