I think of how Allen Ginsberg
could see society when gizmos glistened
salvation, freeways traced our future,
freeon cooled our passions,
primeval blackooze birthed plastic,
the prophylactic of progress,
east yeasted west,
and Moloch masheened the spirit.
I try to …{read more}
He Forgot Again: (Sunday, November 11, 1962)
If i could dance around the light like a bug -
I would see all that I was through the sparkling beauty of wings.
The fluttering movements wandering around like a blind bird
Cut up by it, imagination
Strangled by stripes of shame
Painted poorly but purposefully by the kind of artist
whose arrows are shot before they are aimed
It burnt the blood from our dreams
Smoke rings in the distant scatter …{read more}
Patience
i’m waiting for the president to ditch
his suit and tie and give his speech
in his underwear, looking down
at his crotch instead of teleprompters
i’m waiting for star’d generals to
dismiss their soldiers and abandon
the armies …{read more}
THINGS HAPPEN
Thank God these days I sleep and dream!
Things happen
…it is inevitable!, this angry wrangling
of the nerves
in a place that feels like Hell
or a paranoid respite
full of anxious passion
which can die down …{read more}
YOU’LL SEE THE SIGN PAST THE RED MAILBOX.
Time rusts away at anticipation and so few things stay the same when red dust covers your boots and you don’t know the face at the milkbar or the hands at the …{read more}
My generation, troubled mutating hysterical hipsters
Poetic heavy hitters, recreating beat Burroughs beat Corso beat Ginsberg
“I’ve read Howl and I understand what he was saying.”
21st century poets, thick worded bastards
No pen and ink, only copy and paste
breathing
calm mind,
smooth tranquility
glass surface quiet pond
dare I disturb it with a stone?
gentle thoughts ripple
flow outward inward
leap frog kamikaze
francis, the suicidal toad,
had had enough.
he’d timed it out
planned it perfectly.
he …{read more}
1
For Eileen Myles (New Generation Beat)
He licked his lips but not at me. I watched his eyes walk by, glazedly, hanging their thumbs on their belt loops oh so casual. We had only just arrived and he …{read more}
(Spill-O’s Cold Afternoon)
Unshaven in his apartment.
Babbling about the infinite
because his woman left him.
Downstairs from the stars,
Spill-O opened the window,
and the voices poured in, saying
“It’s not the feelings.
A feeling could last forever.
It’s …{read more}
Here are 3 poems which were inspired in some way by Easter.
Oscar Wilde – “On Easter Day”
Bernadette Mayer – “Eve of Easter”
Bob Geldof reads “Easter 1916″ by William Butler Yeats
(About the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland)
…{read more}
Nin’s making ham-hock soup, feeding her
hypomania: A.M. radio talking-heads
rail for holiness on and on for keeping
“Christ” in Christmas, the needles, I’m sure
screaming eagles in the VU-Meters at consoles
saluting Limbaugh − Rush, Rush, Rush! It’s a …{read more}
remember when you have a son nothing is erased
words get stamped upon the letters that will fall from his full grown mouth
that the window he sits before is curtained by the canvas colored humming of your stare or …{read more}
POEM FOR RUTH WEISS
she grooves with time
day time, night time
be bop jazz time
dances with timeless time
all rhythm no rhyme
birds in flight flap their wings
copulate with the wind
a magician’s illusion where
time and …{read more}
There are poets who like
To dance with words
Dance for favors and illusionary
Poetry careers
But dancing for an audience
Isn’t like feeling the rhythm
That rubs up against the soul
Odetta, Buffy Saint-Marie
Phil Ochs, Woody Guthrie,
Pete …{read more}
When there is nothing, there’s the cup of coffee
Early morning,
i step out;
in a heap, in the rubbish pile,
my paintings.
They look ‘belonged’.
Few more displaced to the storage-room.
New companions for the dust,
old tricycle; bicycle, …{read more}
30 Years Between Letters
Words from an old flame
Sunrise the past
The time of immortality
When the future
Was not reduced
But expansive as ocean
At sunset
Where you embraced
In a green flash
You would never see again …{read more}
scenes
1 this poem is a movie man walking Dale Street in Liverpool three girls pass and turn their heads like they recognise him walk away giggling looking back one with hand over mouth laughing (close up) see man walking ...{read more}
Ode to Trailer Trash
Trailer trash:
who didn’t understand
the endearment,
the mock insult
Trailer trash:
who walks
with no shoes
through glass
and beer
and blood
never cutting
her feet
perfect feet
dark
dark, pale
but darkened
by the …{read more}
Though not in the sense
we were born in Lowell Mass
or beat it out of there to
get famous, though we
gassed up and burned rubber
in Lowell Mass and in
other states and cities
we hitched rides and …{read more}
Self Portrait
To Ginsberg
Don’t read into this, Allen. I just want to talk.
I’m listening to Vietnam protest songs,
meditating through my anxiety and my need for approval
from executives and peers.
I’m conflicted.
No one drinks beer on …{read more}
Frida Khalo told Carrie Weems
that while she painted
from her bed Diego scaled the scaffolding
and reached the heights of the world.
So much more her life emerged
a woman of her times,
I would have wished to be …{read more}
Outstretched Arms
pumice the bone smoothberry juice illusion of bloodto cover loss
belly of the moonwe penetratewhat Venus
do we carve?herbs and drugs do not restoreterritories of resurrection
Earth poised in somatelevision chroniclesmissile finger fascination
sea-scorpionsand horseshoe crabswill survive us …{read more}
When I was 18
I was on a troop train heading
for basic training when
we stopped to take on water
or whatever it is trains stop for
and after relieving myself
I came out of the men’s room when
…{read more}
NORTH BEACH YUPPIE BAR
Hard to believe Richard Brautigan
Jack Spicer and other Beats drank here
As I sit and watch two business men
Playing liar’s dice at Gino and Carlo’s Bar
In the heart of North Beach
Their faces …{read more}
I wrote this for America where I wept
In America where I could not sleep
I wrote this in my homeland where I keep counsel
with the founding fathers and the founding mothers
and the dreams Chief Joseph wrought
when …{read more}
“The Pentagon has acknowledged that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did not sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq but instead used a signature machine.”
The Washington Post, December 19, 2004
D-o-n-a-l-d R-u-m-s-f-e-l-d
that’s 14 letters,
a …{read more}
Drummed out of the infantry of death
I came back to you carrying the
Poems of my soul
Opened the door of life
And found only death inside
America
I have read the state of the union
And listened to …{read more}
Poets unite
Forget about a career
In poetry
And concentrate on the
Poem
Quit turning out
Factory assembly
Line poems
Quit trying to imitate
Bukowski.
Poets unite
Listen to your brothers
And sisters
Quit being the first poet
To read …{read more}
TIDE AND TIME AGAIN…
…the length and width of the attention spanis being tested, strained, and manipulatedfrom the highest denominations of power,
preemptively initiating an undeniable falloutfrom Homeland Weapons of Mass Distractionself imploding under the seals of their office,
as …{read more}
THE ARTIST
for Bruce Conner
THE ARTIST has faces that are nude ladies and feathers.
Women pose in the visage of the whirlpool
raising bare arms and arching bare thighs.
Tentacles of squid sway down among pinions
of African eagles ...{read more}
