Sunday, 18 October 2009

  • As expected, the Dylan show last night was beyond recovery.  Amazing performance.  Lots of center stage stuff with Dylan on guitar and then just singing into a stand alone microphone.  When he blew on the harp, the sound was so strong, he had to bend over.

    Thrilling to see Charlie Sexton back!  Sold out crowd at the coliseum.  It was a sea of faces and arms.


Friday, 25 September 2009


  • ***

    Joy

    How little it pretends
    to know me.

    One flick of the wrist
    and it's gone.

    Why speak of joy?
    When from one margin

    to the next is only language,
    each letter clinging to the one

    beside or behind.  I'd like
    to see someone transverse

    this problem called joy.
    Perhaps in color or when

    the light is still warm enough
    to ripple like a reflex

    across the blinds.
    Joy is dead.

    Take me back
    to the basement.

    ***

Wednesday, 23 September 2009



  • ***

    1.
    The day begins white with sun.
    Dogs are howling.  The couch

    feels warm.  A hair-cut to die for
    on the cover of Glamour magazine.

    And I am just waking up?  Childless.
    Fatherless.  Alone, the world has

    swallowed all I know.  I clutch at
    straws and cigarette butts.

    2.
    The telephone ring eats the silence.
    Apprehension builds as my mind

    begins to suggest a plot for why
    I'm late, again.  Before looking

    at the clock, my physical brain
    elaborates a sure-fire plan.

    3.
    Pretty.  Dress pretty.  Wear something
    flow-y with flowers and ties and a necklace.

    Pull your hair haphazardly up on your head.
    Smile from the small item of love for the life

    you have left.  Smile.  Act assured.
    Stumble upon yourself later, in a public

    bathroom mirror.  There you can unburden
    the butterflies in your chest.  Send each

    delicate wing smashing into a mirror.

    4.
    Powder your nose in the face of clerical
    duty.  Cleanse the public out en masse.

    Screw responsibility until it comes like
    a hose end on your stomach.

    Write more.  Find death.  Eat less.
    Weigh more in the crimson and etched

    glass of your sight.  Needle.  Sew.  Crack
    a jawbone.  Read skin like braille. 

    It's a wonder you turned out like you did.

    5.
    The day ends with rain.
    Superstitions and fingertips

    swirling the rim of a wine glass.
    One catastrophically ill star shines

    in the east. 

    ***

Tuesday, 15 September 2009

  • Candidates

    Melody obligates itself to pain.
    July 1937, your father is born.
    Let's sing.  Let's hum something
    even if we don't know the song!

    It happens every day, the same
    crossing of birth, souls reunited
    or perhaps it's just the availability
    of med's, we should feel so inspired!

    Tomorrow we shall throw wisdom
    to the dogs.  Dogs without names
    of course, for once we name them,
    they're ours.

    I can not pretend to know anymore
    than this.  I can not proclaim to have
    answers to the questions not so much
    surrendered but spit into the air.

    My mother has a nervous laugh.
    My father is an artifact.
    My sisters' slaughtered thoughts multiply
    like flies inside my heart.
    My children will be my epilogue.
    Pounds and pounds of myself shall be flung
    like dried flower petals to the wind, my soul
    will be that fish you see flopping about
    on the sand.  Poor fish. 

    I shall not be a candidate
    for any one thing more than any other.
    Perhaps I should be recycled, like a piece
    of garbage tossed about the street
    in a city that never sleeps.  Yes, here is my calling.
    My peace of mind.  My constant replication

    of self, brought to term and delivered.
    Poor fish.

Saturday, 12 September 2009

  • What More To Give

    Money, once it all runs out
    so does the love.
    Perhaps the quest to find
    another mother, one whom
    isn't so broke, depends on
    her attitude, her willingness
    to provide.

    Time, what does time
    detail but the passing of it,
    minute by minute, the salvage
    of memories and then what?
    Death.  Suppose the dead
    could infuse our minds, crown
    our mouths with words we'd never
    thought ourselves to speak otherwise?

    Feeling, but do mine invoke yours?
    If I say I love you does it mean
    a dog will never bite or a scorpion
    will never appear above your bathroom
    mirror in the middle of the night?
    How can I look back or forward
    in this purity of space, yours and mine.

    Dear child, what you sense is not always
    what is right or what is right in front of you.
    Only clocks tell time.  Only feeling erupts
    inside of you as it does inside of me.
    Death is imminent.  I say, if the money runs
    out and we've nothing left for each other
    than time and feeling, we should try to fill it.