poems 5

carpe diem

I’m often left alone
staring at my white hands
wondering what
they’re trying to say
there’s so much
sitting around
staring at the clouds
while dogs bark
down the street—
staring at the blue sky
while the wind blows
through the cold sunlight
and naked branches—
the digital clock
on my desk has no hands
just red neon numbers
that stare back at me
stupidly
and whoever said
carpe diem
was really full of shit
didn’t know
a damn thing about
anything
cuz it’s mostly just
sitting around
waiting for nuclear war
for the sun to fall
for the guardians of
national security
to come and take me
away—



HELP!

the hippies
who dreamt
of a starry
new
consciousness
of LSD
Shankar
and prayer beads
now lie
trampled in
the gutters
steamrolled
by the military-
industrial
zombieplex
run over by
the armored limo
of reality
in the
rabid-dog alleys
of America
where
the only truth
is the Greenback
the only virtue
is war
and the only sin
is compassion—
the hippies
of yesteryear
walk round
in a daze
wondering
what the fuck
happened
to the dream,
man?
where the fuck
did it go?



the uninvited 

1,000,000 people
froze or starved to death in
the siege of Leningrad
so sitting here typing at my computer
is no act of bravery
but Death is always hovering
somewhere in the background
whether it’s congestive heart failure
or merely a bullet to the temple.

I think I’ve been dead one way
or another since I was a kid growing up
in New York:
there was my insane family;
the insane homeless in the streets outside;
as the snow turned to brown sludge
under the feet of a million
nameless strangers
I knew I was dead somehow
only I didn’t know the words to say it.

now I’m lying in bed staring up
at the white ceiling.
I can feel my old friend creeping in
a breath at a time
the way he does. I tell him
the more I see him
the less afraid of him
I am. he stares back at me
with empty eyes
saying all there is to say.



sanctuary

don’t rage
at the pigs
when
you see them
pepper-
spraying
the young people
in the streets
the pigs
are only doing
their jobs
it’s better
to raise
your mind up
to the sky
where the
ghost of
J. Edgar Hoover
floats by
in high heels
and a red dress
where the
dreams
of manifest-
destinied
cowboys
burn up like
so much
manure
in proverbial
flames.



cheap labor 

I remember getting up in the morning
taking a quick shower if there was time
going to work
slaving and sweating all day
going home, watching a bit of TV
then going back to bed till
the next morning
when I had to do the whole routine
again.
I thought to myself
this kind of life is worse than death
so I started thinking
of possible ways out:
selling drugs
mail scams
stealing old ladies’ purses.
then I finally ran into a bit of luck
so now all that is behind me
(for the moment, at least)
but goddam if the memories
aren’t a fucking nightmare.



red stars and clarion-calls

Trotsky and Lenin must be rolling in their graves
tearing out their goatees
the revolution betrayed
stabbed in the back by people made of shit
who worship the god of greed
stabbed in the back
and left to die
while the soft grey sky wasn’t looking
and the plumber was
driving home from work—
the flowers don’t know any of this
and you can call it St. Petersburg
if you want to
but a million people didn’t give their lives
in the Great Patriotic War
for a city by that name—
and you can drive round the city
in your big Western cars
while old women beg in the street ....



luck

I was always
the knock-kneed kid
who stammered

I was the oddball
the outcast
the last one picked
when they were choosing
teams for
the playground

maybe it was just
rotten luck
how the daisies fell

maybe it’s why
my head is always filled
with rage
and full moons

and why my only ambition
was always
just to be alright.



to-do list

street littered with bottle caps
maybe they fell from the soft grey clouds
you can roam the streets of small towns
all yr life and not get anywhere
the parking meters never go anywhere
they seem happy enough
the clouds are going somewhere and nowhere
at the same time
so what difference does it make?
might as well sit on a green bench
and drink the nectar of yr own nothingness.



Jesus loves you

you were
never
no son of god

you were
a long-haired
hippie
Buddha
who gave it all away
for free

then they made you
a god of war

but you still got
true followers
occupying Wall Street
marching
in Palestine

sacrificing their
blood
for the cause
just like you did
so long ago.



September morning

it's cool and mellow
the sun like a teenage girl bending over
mornings like this
I can forget about all of you
and let the wind rattle the trees
the wind tells me how butterflies die
I let the sunshine fall on me
like the hands of blonde angels
I realize now
whatever you do
you oughta do it with a pure heart
a heart so red
it won't burn in the ashes at the end
you oughta do it like acid sent from the Gods
whether it's feeding the hungry
sniffing glue
or making obscene remarks
to your neighbors' young daughter
when you're insane
the sky crumbles like chalk
when you're insane you're free
as the mind crashes through
Autumn leaves
so they can never put the cuffs
on your wandering schizophrenic soul.



can't go home again

when they tore down
the statues of
Lenin
everyone
lost their job
and the pimps
drove up and
down
the streets
hunting for girls
I've seen photos
on the Net
of homeless
people
in Bulgaria
rummaging for food
in garbage cans
sometimes
when the sky
is a dreamy shade
of grey
I feel like
I'm back home
and even
the leaves
seem
a bit greener
but
I've forgotten
the language
and I don't want to
see how it is
now
I just want to
remember
the old country
the way it
used to be
back then.



bastard

wandering lost and lonely
as a Manson girl
I was looking
for some bearded guru
but all I found
were these empty parking lots
I wandered streets filled
with dead birds
and clouds muttering to themselves
I was looking for a pot of gold
but all I found was poetry
I wandered over by the tracks
and thought about suicide
but I knew even then
that I'm too much of a coward
I wandered lost and lonely
like a severed hand
crawling up the burning walls of Hell
and I'm still looking for something
to rid me of all this bullshit.



why madmen should never edit poetry zines

sitting
alone
in a small
room
reading
the poem-
submissions
while
the oranges
rot
and a crack
opens
in the window
of my mind.



what does a guitar sound like if the guitarist hangs himself with one of the strings?

exchanging whispers
with the spider and the rose
and there's some things
you can only learn
from the dead sparrows
outside yr window.



the sunflowers are feeling pretty damn low

there's the little white pills
the big white pills
the oblong pills
and the square green pills
all these pills are making me dizzy
sometimes I stagger and fall
once I banged my head off the fridge door
another time I banged it off a wall
but I can't get any dumber
so no worry
there's young women walking by my window
with their pink toenails and summer thighs
there's hungry stray dogs
I've spent 10 years in this small room
prisoner of my family's insanity
and my own
while the American Empire tore up the world
like a vengeful whore
and I can say that all I regret
is that I never met Jack Micheline
or Bukowski
and that I was ever born into this idiot asshole universe
in the first place.



there ain’t many people I don’t hate

people ask me, why do you hate veterans so much?

for the record
I got friends who are veterans

but I do hate veterans generally

I got personal reasons
and I also know right from wrong

fact is, there ain’t many people I don’t hate

I hate bankers
pimps
and all the other capitalists

I hate the slumlord who collects the rent

I hate my neighbors and their dogs
and their rotten kids

I hate children

I hate happy families

I hate teachers cuz they’re mostly losers

I hate doctors cuz they’re mostly
crooks

I hate cops too

except for the blonde
blue-eyed
angelic
lady cop
who arrested me that one night

she can cuff me again
anytime
she
wants.