Poetrywar

she said ‘you’ve a sign
on your back — did you know
says “kick — me”‘
i didn’t know
but i know now
the dances are all fine
the dancers finer
but in the end i stay up late
past everyone
and write about things other
than real or true
every last bit buried in code
an endless stream of non
what comes out — look
over there — fascinating
certain films to tears
certain songs to heart thrums
my beautiful lucky when
when i was
not really
not chosen
stopped the gap
useful
can not complain
certain films to turn away
wishes and fishes and over they go
can not be sad
certain songs to grip and squeeze
look at all the lonelies
here in the lonely box
things are as and not over yet
tattooine turns on its two suns — did you hear?
mars in spring — i’ll go
it’s time
i don’t mind
damn the sign

silence and time
white dust to blue water
deep down we know nothing
hot that sun the one the only one
cool the cave
sweet the water
to float
early running mid roaring late release
spring away from the shelter
take trees and bring all us that are this
and that true lovers true servants
to equi and pach leaf and moss
because nothing is so perfect
nothing was so perfect
the sky needs nectarines
the outstretched arms need cool water poems
the hot giants need stone shapes
singers of their souls
benches beneath summer night breezes
passionate hands.

stelar goeth to the spinning
and dance like a freak
tail out and mowin’ ‘em down
shared reality
take the hot road to the veral
green grass white water
silk tents under stars and wine
oh the wine! the grape has made
us now and then write this
tempered and sweet purple joy
the lone violin
the oboe
that four one five style, bass bouncy
big huge low hood shaker holy man
the freak’s ride to paradise and star
throw it up high get ‘em up
wild high whirling women
candlelight red night and i am of the body
hold to the all and one net landru
shooping forth with a sweeping cloak
thin steel close by
hiddn from the eye
tomorrow will see itself in the message
and wake up

universe smiles and waves
i leap up in the sunshine over the beds
clean blue sky and fresh air
over the trench i go the dugouts are deep
and cool with fragrant mother
happy horses trot along snort at me
i have to hug them excuse me
beautiful wooden wheels on the steel
look at that shine!
twirl up and take a sky spin with Wilfred
he takes a line: so many of me still live
but i’m off! for tea and scones with Hinden the Burglar
woah the Keezer! actual and not sad
having done his best to read the words
hey i’m carting with kemal and an armeniac
too fast! too fast! so they slow and old Allenby
drunk asleep across T of E
weird but sweet, the edges neat and tucked in hospital corners
flip to ypres and here is where
shicklgruber got hit with the light
spent the rest of his life
working with jewish cats
oh could they swing! oh could they wail!
they say rock and roll cures everything
but i know it’s the hard bop
so we take it to the top and spy
doug’s small beady penguin-eyes
and i stop
flutter down
and whisper words of wisdom to his pressure vessel:
not you not you
this was never you
now dance!
and he does.

wrecking ball
with wings
way too much
open sky
bound to
hit the ground
in a hard way
he had a gift
for soaring high
maybe with enough
adrenaline he
could forget
that he was
mortal like the
rest of us
i always wanted
to follow him
thru the clouds
but even as i
tilted upward
my feet got
tangled in the
web of words
he was a dark angel
a desperate raven
cruising thru
the night of
the human condition
he was a character
in his own book
and leapt off the page
until his pen
ran out of ink and
he came crashing down
with the rest of us
nothing left to say
let’s have a moment
of silence for he
who would have us
shake the rust
from our own wings
and leave the
wrecking ball
behind

there is a fire within
that burns always
but is mostly
kept in shadows
i feel that fire now as i write
it provides the energy for my writing
without it i would have nothing to say
nor would i even try
i will write now
of a wish
of a will
of a way
or maybe wait till saturday
look beyond the green hills
to where memory
intercepts the moment
there are children at play
i suddenly understand
brilliant and beaming
is it really what i wanted to say?
did i tell you about
how i swept the floor today
and hung up bird feeders
and washed some dog blankets?
tomorrow i stretch
like a long bow
from the earth
to the sky
the arrow of my awareness
goes whizzing by
it lodges in
the old oak tree
which has watched me live
and will watch me die

in the deep black freeze little hot dots
hot burning souls
human is a radiator soul
nothing out here but burnies
wicking up and spinning photons into fire
coming together right now
hot toes dance the nuclear floor
too bright to look just like the star
sweet simmer star makes the summer
super deep freeze burning women
twine on flame men
make fiery littles to sizzle up the nothing
everything seen now in the hot lights
ninety nine and detailed from a light year out
all remembered every small blue white moment
when the fuel goes dark and the jets sputter
the cold cold reach bows down and takes
the last embers to dust
grateful for the rare last light
the three times move back forward and beneath
roaring furnace faces
hot souls
return

he’s there again.
those piercing eyes
the crooked smile
what does he want from me?
i get in my car
he’s still with me
furious evasion
i can’t shake him
relentless pursuit
in my office
familiar presence
he’s been here
abundant evidence
he’s here still
returning home
find activity
find a release
walking, running
he’s still with me
intoxication
hide in deeper layers
he breaks in
lurching
in the arms of my lover
perhaps a veil
he’ll lose me
she holds me close
and him with me
kinky
to my solitude
the door is closed
the light is darkened
into the stillness
where is he?
i cannot find him
he is erased
as am i



read the morning’s violet skies
in it there are no lies

The cool cats have turned cold and hard
But they find the missing bricks
and into the chimney creep
where shelter
allows wild untamed sleep
the squirrels steal kindling sticks
while hawks trade passion calls of winged bard

Elsewhere in a fiction world
these words are unfurled

Icy hearts and slippery streets
huddle together for some heat
bipartisanship
just turn the thermostat a little higher
global warming folly fools utter liar liar

Aussies hammered in the red queen’s south
bags of sand the desert’s menu
to spit in the wind
Yasi
it’s the not the end
normal will need a change of venue
nature speaks from the horse’s mouth

bylines for your headlines
tally up the crimes
war
what’s the latest count
of corpses in the fount

just the morning news
reflecting narrowed views

Beautiful life,
we’ve found our home,
never again will we worry or want or need

A respite is now,
but disquiet lingers,
questions arising disturbing the tremulous peace

First we were favored,
now it grows colder,
we do what we must to exist in a changing world

There are no limits,
no reason for doubting,
our world is our destiny brought to us now we are free

Haven’t you noticed,
a change in the weather?
The warm days come rarely the nights make us shiver and moan

Deeper is warmer,
always an answer,
I see a rock with some speckles, nice colors and shapes

Cycles come often,
await the fine summers,
the chill makes us stronger we build and with joy will we live

Not this time my friend,
it worsens by season,
our world is in crisis our days in fair glory behind

Time slows and crawls,
each second a journey,
the moments extended and rich with the essence of time

(think Travelers 2)

overactive bees for sale
a quisling of sense for the monkeys in the tree
who howl and they howl and they throw their scat
and they bare all their teeth to the birds in the back
and jumping! and leaping! be they ever so high
they cry and they cry and they cry and they cry
and they pee on their heads and expect sympathy
’cause everyone knows they are better than thee
now the tree lost its leaves to the quaffing sims
and they’re bare in the breeze with their knees on their shins
a peek from the meek brings the culture police
you’ve thought naughty thoughts and we know what you think
and they try and they try but the words are too high
‘happiness’, they say, is all just a lie
happy for them is a misery all
a fruish shit ball
may they gag and then fall
shortly

we ded not die
just flew high
on a guitar made right
pentastar
modern hearts
summer cotton candy
every breeze an island
each touch tells
when the car sways in the tunnel
other lives
waiting quiet
until we see them
very soon
they’ll tell us where
the wheel turns to
cello sings
carbon rings
the print pressed in the sand
olivane
twelve of them
settle down
rocks fly
we can hold one
let it spin us out
to past

went looking for lost keys,
tried to soak in a little magic from the four sets of the sluggie kind
to pay tribute to the craft, a proper
had a chat with the music man
and learned it can be a matter of perspective
which
depends on where you place the bars
whether one is the lion
or the tamer

Aand show s me th punisher
and i cry
max shows me the Friend
its so fgood
sky the sky
and i know why
cat the cat
it’ true i lovbe uou
slug give s me live
and all is wle;;\
aw fuc king senrab
oReilly the once
and futrue
oh greg
sad sweet and all fu ked up
the river horese
the barlon]
in the end
i see you all
i joy i sing so igh for you
my beasts they protect me
athena sprnllkel izx ab an d liu;lly
ah the lifge
qah the ligre
pfg byoen

magenta barrel over beer falls
would a way to come and go with it
sap the trip to pay the day for it
i’m a tree dwell
surfle intuition bang sorts of thing
trill a lute for comedy a fish for dramedy
a fin for couth
sight sweller
wait bring it two way

back the down stairs at Tellers
in the sweeping basement a thousand years down here
crackling under a bare minim of time’s blank verse
i trouble myself to find Cooney, flicking in the shadows
and i hunt.
‘Cooooooneyyyy!’ I call as i chase down alleys
we have always played our parts like this
he is the frightening figure i always beat
i catch and kill again and again
really i’m the frightening one aren’t i
Cooney’s just a symbol, a mask, an extension of me
i use him to stay sharp
to feel the blood pulse in the back of my tongue
as i lope down side streets looking for him
he wears an exasperated look when i catch him
‘why?’
because i need him
to stay sharp
and he once bit me bad
so he’s the ghost
he’s the antagonist
he’s the me i overcome in this world
my world
play planet

The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move, we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.

-Winston Churchill, Rochester, New York, 1941

ruby keeler hot cha
dick powell you lucky ducky
swinging to warren and dubin
all the way to paradise
these times will never come again
these nights are so of the sweet and true
not a spaceship in the sky
waterfalls of women
champagne in the limo before
bowie ever sang it
blondell the smart cracker
una merkel smirks and swells
but the gods of all time
love ginger

busby dreamed in a bathtub
the actual fucking warner brothers paid the bills
’cause they made two point five mills
off two fifty K
two hundred beauties
willing and able
a critical cable from dream
six hundred inner thighs
and bouncing bottoms down stairs
no one will ever be the same
especially me

but wait
midway down the parade of footlights
and past HER omg
the sweep down the bar skips a drunken sailor
that frame-by-frame reveals himself someone
and stops everything:
take them all every one of busby’s faces
and draw their lives out in terrible detail
black and white bathrooms and stuttering deaths
malicious and vicious and lonely and loving
baby rose marie sings like she knows it toooooooo well
because in nineteen hundred and thirty three
it hasn’t happened yet
but it will
and still
all the gods
love ginger.

phoenix is a hellhole now
full of red monsters
but once upon a time
there were blue flowers
jeff and burton loved
what oss and oeric wrote
on psilocybin spaceships
and conscious helpful fungi
the compost pile at marty’s house
under pharaoh’s golden eye
tended to by mister orange
and pressed into the boxes
grew knowledge groves at sixty-five
and bags and bags of music bound
released a day upon the rim
in pounding stony leaping grins
i was there.

phoenix hotter than the sun
and irving tries to play like one
with catshat hulking next to him
the frightened artist turns it out
the boxes push out rows and rows
but now the state is nearing closed
the merry pranksters grin and run
and pack the caps in irving’s van
now in the trees and brilliant streams
all boulder’s loves and boulder’s dreams
with ax and hux and scores of lux
they plant the beauties once again
and while the flowers bloom at night
the leaping and the dancing’s right
the singing and the playing roars
for years were only open doors
they walked through.

sitting outside the cathedral
skinny gray boy hears the weird
some sky crying about some planet
what? no cats?
skinny as they come
with the stretchy paws
they don’t fit the keys
but he sings along in a low voice
these people they don’t quite see it
but the gray boy nose the score
hep cat all tuned to the store
gonna buy a diamond ring if it don’t sing
so he sings all low and sweet
the reels are running but the mike ain’t pointed
and the gray boy’s song goes into the world
alone and without a chorus
until that key queen with the true voice
picks him up and gives him the once over
it’ll all work out
’cause everyone loves the gray boy.