Friday, January 13, 2017

poems 12

golden cage

if you're insane and lonely
there's nothing to do
but write poetry
as the dead flies multiply
on the windowsill
cuz the sky is cracked
and humanity is cracked
and you can stare at the walls
till the end of time
or till you lose your mind
completely.



broken bottles

I remember walking home
from work—
streets littered with
the broken bottles of the past
and there was my fat queer boss
and the Polish girl
who always wore
a tight black miniskirt
showing off her fat white thighs
that I still can't stop
thinking of
and lonely parking lot nights
under a full moon
and I remember thinking
this is what you get
for $5.50 an hour in this
rotten, broken-down corner
of the universe.



city life

another cancer Monday
and you’ll see a light in the sky
pulled by an old man
wearing dumpster shoes
and the brick walls
will be innocent
and you’ll open your palm
and find a butterfly
resting there
and you'll forget about
all the slaughter
in the name of free markets
and you’ll say aloud
all wisdom is found
in the heartless gutters of the world
and it’ll mean more
than all the bullshit
you hear on the corporate news.



the ugly truth

war is blood
and cracked skulls
and the murder of innocents
beyond far horizons

—war is the zombies
of the military-industrial complex
devouring human brains

—war is the dream of every Wall Street bankster
every sham-elected President
who wants to go down
in bloody history
like Caesar and Hitler
amid the adulation of the Pentagon media

—war is what the poor do
when they can't pay the bills.



swan

doctors give me
pills
and some of them
make me feel
better
and some
make me feel
worse
and there's so much
blue sky
in these
April mornings
I often find myself
spinning
or floating
through the nothing
of the past
and the nowhere
that
surrounds
me
I see a speck
of cloud—
maybe it's just
a piece
of
someone's
broken wing.



the keeper of time

sun crashing in
like an afternoon whore
I lie in bed with my belly
and my luminous forehead
like an exiled prince
from the kingdom of rats
the phone rings on the hour
and it's always some woman
with a pretty voice
delivering some fresh new piece
of horrible news
the productive citizens
drive to work in the morning
and all they ever produce
drains into the economic gutter
or flushes down the great old
toilet bowl of time
the sun is always there
like a terrible lover
and the homeless
are always there too
sitting or sleeping on the benches
and the answer is always no
the boys in green
are always ready for war
and the world is a giant hairy ass
and when you get diabetes
you can't even eat ice cream
anymore
DAMMIT!!!



my third eye …

sees a cowboy dying
in the desert
even though he's wearing white
and bares the USDA
stamp of approval—
a blue damselfly
is one kind of goodbye
as a red neon sign flashes
DANCING GIRLS!!!
over a deathly street
and the crows know
and the mushrooms are
looking ominous
and defiant
as the rocks meditate
and the people in the supermarket
keep getting fatter and fatter
as a white picket fence
guts the white air
behind a lone headstone
beside a long, sad highway
in West Virginia.



the skull and the rose

when the face
of the clock
shatters;
while
the flies
crawl
the walls
dreaming
of libertarian
socialism;
while
America
goes broke
from
endless
unwinnable
wars
in faraway
lands—
there'll be
time enough
for
the skull
and the rose,
for
the raven
in the fire
of my endless
night.



another anarchist manifesto

in your democracy
of corporate jets
and homeless families living in shelters

in your republic
of killer cops
and nuclear bombs and drone strikes

there's still a handful
of noble Marxists
that you've locked up in your
prison-industrial complex

or you've buried them six feet under
to fertilize your fields of Monsanto GM crops
somewhere out in Kansas

so long as the sheeple
keep paying their taxes and keep on
keeping their mouths shut

and you can kiss my fucking anarchist ass

while the ghost of Howard Zinn chuckles
as the empire smolders away into the ether
just like he said it would.



modern times

you make a new “friend”
on Facebook

then one day they stop posting
don't reply to your emails
you don't know
if they're alive or dead.

I think one of my Internet friends
died recently.

I think she died
but I don't know for sure.

she's got a thousand FB
“friends” and
none of them seems to know
either.

what are these new
“friends”
who don't even find out
when one of them passes on
and don't seem to care?

you might as well be
some nameless drifter
out alone somewhere in the desert.

it's all so sad, so pathetic—

this is how low
we've sunk.



we need more books of the dead

what happens to the soul
when the body dies?

does sit atop a mountain
contemplating the Tao?

does it go to the Western Paradise
to sit at the foot of Amida?

or does it wander in some distant woods
where it's always sunny and breezy?

the only thing to offer the hungry
is food

and the only thing to offer the sick
is prayers

so I say Kwan Yin of the gentle hands
and throw it to the eight winds of heaven.



the long struggle

the leaves
are
turning
red
yellow
and orange
as
the kids
go
back
to school

the patriots
watch
Sunday
football
as
Wall Street
sends
their
jobs
overseas

pretty soon
even
the kids
and
their
parents
will
realize
what's
reall
going on …

as
Unlce Ho
once
said
We'll fight
one day
longer
than
you will.



little Eichmanns

for Ward Churchill

getting fired for telling the truth
is nothing to be ashamed of

maybe it's for the best

maybe the little Eichmanns
reflected on
the evils of their ways
while praying to their
blond, blue-eyed Jesus
on that fateful day

or maybe they didn't

at any rate

America's vengeance
for 3,000
translated into
1 million dead in Iraq and
a somewhat smaller total
in Afghanistan

it depends on how exactly
you figure the numbers,
I guess

whether you include
“collateral damage”
and deaths from starvation
in the final sums
of the Empire's reckoning

anyway,
who's counting?



what it is

a small rented apartment
one bedroom with water stains on the ceiling
from when it rained 5 days straight
a TV that fills my eyes with all the lies
that the powers-that-be want me to hear
and moronic bullshit
like Friends and Dancing with the Stars

my only escape is
100 books about the Mayans
and my rabid imagination

I imagine 10,000,000 Buddhas
falling from the sky
on clouds made of jasmine
I imagine North Korean troops
liberating Amerika
I imagine some topless beach in Denmark
all the girls playing volleyball
in the sun

I gave up on life getting better
a long time ago
so hand me another bottle,
friend.



you gotta write to keep from going insane

sitting on the steps of an art gallery in the hot sun
no one ever goes inside
(I once went in there …
you wouldn’t believe the garbage I saw)

sitting on the steps of an old white building in the hot sun
doing nothing
wondering why I’m here and
not somewhere else
as the sweat crawls down my hairy back

sitting on the steps of an art gallery in the hot sun
doing nothing
admiring the thighs and asses of young girls
as they walk by in their summer shorts
(did you know that the age of consent in Mexico
is 12?)

sitting on the steps of some old building in the hot sun
doing nothing
as the benches burn
the parking meters boil
and the world gets ready to explode.


she harvested

I once saw a photo of Anne Sexton

she had the face
of a real slut

many of her poems
say as much

her best poems
are about fucking and
a long one about her stay
in a mental hospital
(she had problems)

the rest are boring shit

some critic wrote
that many of her poems
are “unfinished”

those are the only ones
worth reading, you prick

well, she ended up
committing suicide at
age 33

another sad story

but those poems
and that photo
will outlive the Gods
all of them.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

poems 11

flags

if I could play guitar
I'd sing a sad, sad song
for all the fiery red anarchists
of yesteryear
who threw bombs at the police in alleys
assassinated kings and presidents
and drew funny little cartoons
about hanging the Pope
all those lost souls
raging with idealism
now forgotten as ferns
in this modern world of McDonald's
and Godzilla remakes
all those poor anarchists
each with a heart bigger than
all of Wall Street
each and every one
crushed under the boots
of the Bolsheviks
or hanged
after the police opened fire
on each other
at Haymarket Square
all of them murdered
shot
destroyed
gutted
while the Gods marched
in lock-step with the fascists
it's all so sad
too sad to remember
or write about
as the 1% finish the job
they started
under
Truman.



at the end

when the high noon of humanity
is forgotten

when all that's left of their shit-stupidness
is dim fading memories

when the sun turns red
before the endless summer night
of the Siddhas

at the end
there will only be left
the Buddha-soul:

beautiful,
perfect,
all-knowing;

like blossoms in the eyes of Gods.



the indispensable nation

if you ever find a human skull
just lying around
somewhere
bury it in the ground
and maybe it'll sprout
an olive tree
maybe it'll grow
a pair of black wings
and fly off with the crows
all the way to India
where 3000 years ago
some Goddess
laid her body down
to become a river
turning desert to forest
for the people
or maybe the skull
would feel more at home
in Cambodia
joining the mountains
of human skulls
erected by Pol Pot
and paid for by Uncle Sam.



lights out

typing away into the darkness
the window is open
the moon hides her face in shame
and the ghosts of Murder, Inc.
still haunt the streets of New York

millions of Bolsheviks died
fighting the Nazis

I watch Britney Spears
shaking her big white ass
on YouTube

the only monster under the bed
is my own memories

I tell Moloch to rise up
and smite the world

a siren screams into the night

I recall Mickey Rourke
slaughtering all those people
in Angel Heart
and the first lezzie video
I ever saw

I guess my only revenge
is murders on the local news
fatal car accidents
and flesh-eating bacteria
in swimming holes

the moon flashes a sly
white smile

I beg the Buddha's forgiveness
and ask him to teach me
about forgetting.



some might say …

that insanity is a kind of freedom
but I remember it as a prison
my mind was both inmate and jailer
and the windows let in only
a terrible sun
I wondered how it had come to this state
and realized that, yes
hell is other people
or, to put it another way
most people are shit

I remember a boy (not me)
who stuck needles into his arms
at school every day—
if you'd known his family
you'd understand—

perhaps the best thing,
as some suggest,
would be
to just start killing people
but that's still a kind of giving up
and I remember one of the few friends
I had
his name was Randy
and everybody was afraid of him
and I remember what he often said to me
and anyone else who was around:

fuck everybody.



newsfront

watching a report on Al-Jazeera
about all the massacres
that NATO troops are committing
in Afghanistan
wiping out whole families
and I realized
there is no justice in this world
no God to protect the weak
and the innocent—
there's only power
and bodies strewn across
so many bloody floors.



daisy

the winter sun going down
over the rooftops
like a dying warrior
a little blonde girl runs by
maybe 7 or 8 years old
I hear my neighbor talking
with someone on the phone
he's an old man
running for the grave
some day even
that little girl will be
kissing the roots of the daisies
or filling some urn with her ashes
and she'll be replaced
by new little girls
everything passes
like the sun going down
then coming back up
in the glorious eternal dawn.



Bob Dylan is dead

that was the rumor I heard
turned out it wasn't true
not yet anyway
Bob's one helluva true spirit
like Johnny Cash was
(he really is dead)
and John Lennon (him too)
I think we true spirits
(and there ain't many of us)
all end up in the same
starry psychedelic Buddha
dynamo where we'll crank out
the cotton candy poetry
of the Gods till the end of
time or we'll end up in Hell
(even more fun)
and we'll be the demons
tying bankers and other
war criminals
to barber shop poles
and we get to shoot at their
genitals with BB guns
O whatever it is
and where-ever it is
let it come, let it come
just don't make me
spend eternity
with the Mormons.



the snowflakes sutra

train galloping through the night
I had a dream
of sitting Shiva-style beside
an ocean of wisdom
—some Hawaiian resort
I heard people's voices from
somewhere
a sliver of white moon
was piercing the heart of the night
it was then I realized
that all of the Buddha's words
come down to three golden rules
light and perfect
as snowflakes in the air:

help others;

harm no one;

free your mind.

three lines
containing all the knowledge of the world
—when I woke up
the train had passed.



a fate worse than death 

when you're
workin
for
minimum
wage
you're workin
for food
and shelter
and when
you're workin
for food
and shelter
you're a slave

I used to slave
away
at factories
where
the lighting
was so poor
you could
barely
keep
your hands
outta the
machinery

they used to
make me
run‭ ‬40‭ ‬hrs.
a week
in places
where it
got so hot
I thought
I'd end up
drowning
in my own
sweat

every day
felt like
a slow death
but somehow
I survived

so take it
from me:
minimum
wage
is modern-
day
slavery
and if
you don't
believe me
then go
and try it
yourself
sometime.



dusk

night falling over the city
I see the red lights
of phantom cars
and the people inside
don't know me
I wonder who I am myself
why I'm here
what it's all for
and where do the homeless
go at night when the shelters
are full?
and maybe this is where
the spirit drifts
when the body dies
where it's always twilight
always warm
and no-one
ever has to sleep
on the streets.



the American dead in Afghanistan

the white trash let their dogs run around
in the street
I can't even go for a walk anymore
there's American flags everywhere
the other day
I was sitting at a picnic table
when two of them sat down
at the other end
after listening to their white trash conversation
for a while
I was forced to get up
and go sit somewhere else—
another indignity
I wondered what I ever did to the Gods
to deserve this
when I got home
I turned on my PC
read about the latest American dead in Afghanistan
that made me feel a bit better.



it's Christmas time, again

they say
that America
is
broke
no money
for
schools
hospitals
the poor
etc.
but somehow
there's always
money
for bombing
other nations
invading
other nations
supporting
right-wing terrorists
around the globe
oh, yes
there's always
money
for all those
goodies
on Uncle Sam's
wish list
so
the Pentagon media
is always
filling
the airwaves
with the latest paranoid
bullshit
about
“illegals”
suicide bombers
and the Russians are coming
and the rest of it:

but there's at least
one idiot
who ain't fallin for it:
I hope
all the troops
come home with
ebola.



poem for Fidel's birthday

Jack and Bobby
tried to assassinate Fidel Castro

instead
Jack and Bobby
got whacked
and today is August 13th, 2014
—Fidel's 88th birthday!

Fidel is one of those men
whose words and deeds
shake the world
bring down thunder and storm
from the sky

and maybe the man
with the long fuzzy beard
and the white dove on his shoulder
still has many years ahead of him

maybe someday he'll spread the revolution
al norte to all the lands
illegally occupied by the Anglos
so that freedom and socialism
may finally spread like flowers
over all the lands of the earth—

we can only hope.



cell phone videos

all you cops
who beat down
the Occupy
protesters
all over America
with yr billy-clubs
cuffed them and
pepper-spayed them
in the eyes:
I want to thank you
for reminding us all
what a bunch
of thugs and goons
most cops are
showing
the taxpayers
what their money
goes for:
the next time
I eat pork chops
or fried bacon strips
I'll be thinking
of all you pigs in blue.



probation

her office
was nice enough

I sat down
on the wooden chair
in front of her desk

she had short red hair
and big tits
in a white sweater

talked with
a Southern drawl

told me that I needed to
get a job

I looked out
the window at all
the sunlight
falling down
on the rooftops

she got up
to get some file
from her cabinet

she had a big round ass
in blue jeans

she had everything
I wanted
but I sure as hell
didn't want no goddam
job

I wondered
what she looked like
naked.

Wednesday, January 11, 2017

poems 10

the eyes have it 

sitting in the unemployment office
with a few drab-looking women
and their babies
some of the babies are crying
I close my eyes
the room turns orange
I see a procession of Buddhist monks
some of them are on fire
Nixon rises up from his grave
with his phony smile
and maggots in his eyes
I see a GI screaming in the jungle
both his legs blown off
I see a young man punching a cop
outside the DNC in Chicago ‘68
and Nancy Spungen lying on
the bathroom floor
with a knife in her belly
then I look up
and a fat woman with glasses
says to me
sir, do you have your paperwork?



fuck … 

America
John Wayne
the Army
the morning alarm
$6 an hour
pots and pans
time cards
shift managers
Ronald Reagan
Patti Reagan
all the teachers who told me
I’d never amount to shit
(they were right)
missionaries who ring my doorbell
at 9 in the morning
the people who put up
the skyscrapers
that fuck the sky over Manhattan
baseball
football
your wife
your niece
your teenage daughter
high school cheerleaders
little pink houses
small-town values
the military-industrial complex that
fucks America and the world
the butchers at My Lai
the butchers at Wounded Knee
the policewoman with the big ass
who arrested me
cops, judges, probation officers
and most of all
you.



angels of mercy, angels of light 

I remember
the dust of 9/11
in the blue Indian sky
over Manhattan
where hippies
and Yippies are still
putting flowers
in the guns of
American soldiers
where Diana Oughton
is still making bombs
in her top-floor
Greenwich flat and
suicide bombers
still wait in vain
for their 72 virgins
I used to live in
that place
full of the homeless
and the insane
a place that chews up
your soul
and spits it out
for the dogs to
crap on
so if you ask me
if I cried on 9/11
like
everyone else
the honest answer is
no.



therefore ... 

walking
down the street
with the sun
the wind
and the blue sky
God is waiting
for me to say
something
profound while
the white
butterflies dance
in my head
the cars speed by
and I remember
that day
in 2nd grade
when I got up
unzipped
and showed it
to the girl sitting
in front of me
I tell God
he doesn't exist
so I must be
talking to myself
therefore
I am God with
nothing but
these eyes in my
head staring at
my white hands—
I am alive.



dying state

there was a poet in South Dakota
who used to submit his poems to me
back when I was running my
Opium Poetry blog. they were long, honest
down-to-earth poems about real life
and all its crap, no word-play games
or light-hearted bullshit. he wrote me
long, rambling emails that went
something like don't let 'em fool ya
stick with the real shit
and not their bullshit and kick their asses
every chance ya get and so on.
he told me about the never-ending pain
in his leg and how whatever disease he had
nearly killed him the week before.
then he stopped submitting.
in fact, he stopped submitting anywhere.
I exchanged emails with him one more time
but that was it. he musta stopped writing
his fine boots-on-pavement poems
and who knows why?
sometimes the drive or need or desire
just goes away, I guess.
R.B., I don't know if you're still living
or dead. if dead, I guess all your
problems are over, including that pain in
your leg. but if you're still kickin
then hang in there, bud, the world needs ya
and remember to kick their shitty asses
every chance ya get.




spiral 

the Feds went after the hippies
cuz what good are young
Americans who
only want peace and love
instead of killing people
in Vietnam?

so they unleashed the FBI
pitbulls trained in state
terror, set them loose on
the flower children
and the pitbulls tore them
to shreds.

in the 70s the young people
were still getting stoned
but they didn’t care about
anything so it was OK.

in the 80s the citizens
were reduced to consumers
and if you were too stoned
to flip burgers at McDonald’s
they sent you off to prison
for 10 years, paroled
all the murderers and rapists
to make room for ya.

it’s been the same ever since
and the 60s will never happen
again. now we’re just
watching TV and wasting time
riding out this death spiral
of America’s broken wings.



hope and flowers

you don’t have to
search far to
find poverty in
this town.

you see it in
the people
poorly dressed
beat-up looking
tired looking

half the storefronts
on mainstreet
are empty.

poverty in this town
grows like
weeds in the yards
of condemned
homes.

and as for weed
you can find
plenty of that too

it seems to be
the one luxury
that even the poor
can afford.

but the days are
getting warmer

the first white flowers
are out

and they can never
take that away.




arse poetica 

I guess you're a poet
when you stop bullshitting
and start telling the truth.
anyone can bullshit.
just listen to the Americans in Iraq.
and the truth is always
more fun to listen to than lies.
like the truth about getting arrested:
they cuff your hands behind you
always a bit too tight
so that afterward you've got
a little pink welt on one or both wrists.
then they take your belt and shoes
in case you're thinking
of hanging yourself
(has anyone ever done it with
shoelaces?)
but sitting in the back of the squad car
is not unpleasant
and if you're lucky
you'll have your own private cell
with a metal sink and crapper
and yellow walls.
you can read whatever's been carved
in the wooden bench
or count the dried wads of toilet paper
stuck to the ceiling.
in all, not a bad way
to waste a Saturday night.



round and round it goes 

the British gone
they killed many
Loyalists and raped
their wives and
daughters and killed
many of the wives
and daughters too.

they killed 20 million
Indians and took
half of Mexico cuz
“the Mexicans weren’t
doing anything with

it” and killed several
million more in
Vietnam and bombed
Serbia and then came
9/11 and I live in
a small town in Ohio
and you don’t know
what a shithole
a small town can be
till you’ve lived in
a small town in Ohio.



you’re a loser ... 

if everywhere you go
you gotta walk through
alleys filled with
garbage cans and
cigarette butts
and broken glass

and every time you see
pink clouds at sunset
you think it’s the Gods
painting the sky in
flowers

and the lyrics to
Social Distortion songs
really are the story
of your life

and you think all the girls
have butterfly wings
but hide them from
everyone

and there’s nowhere
you gotta be cuz you’re
unemployed
and hoping to stay
that way for as long
as they'll let you.



haze 

looking up at the sky

white clouds
in a sea of blue

yellow flowers beside
the dirt trail

and small
white butterflies
(they only live
maybe 6 days).

there’s nowhere
I need to be

no one is waiting
for my word on
anything

the cars speeding
from one place
to another have
nothing to do
with me.

I’m a balloon
with hair

I’m a poem
with no grammar
and no syntax
and the words
don’t mean a thing.



the crickets get to work 

sitting on a green bench
there's nothing to do
but ogle teenage girls
while the parking meters
melt in the summer sun.
I tell one blonde wearing
a cheerleader's outfit
she's got nice legs.
she says thanks. got no
brothers or sisters. all
my relatives are back in
the old country.
don't speak the language
anymore and my parents
ain't much. sitting on
a green bench in the hot
sun, nothing to do but
wait for the summer night.



Tuesday, January 10, 2017

poems 9

nothing much to do

when I was 15
I put a rock through
the window of some
house just to hear
the sound of glass
shattering. the quiet
afterward was like
poking holes in the
clouds. then I ran
like hell for a while.
then I sat on a green
bench and stared
at the passing cars
which was better than
smashing windows
I guess.



learned a few things

sitting at
the kitchen table
a glass of water
reposes like a Buddha.
I look out the window
at the white winter sky
over the rooftops.
a smoking chimney.
the silence of the white air
after getting fired,
wondering what to do
now. so much white air
filling my head. I remember
wanting to be a cop
when I was 5. it was either
that or a fireman. everything
was simple then.
now I’m thinking
maybe I should sell drugs
on a streetcorner.



the right to remain silent

a million miles
of insanity
have brought me
here:

an open window;

sunlight;

a breeze flutters
the curtains.

I used to live in
New York―

what my parents
didn’t kill
that city did.

now I live in Ohio.

I remember sitting
in the back of
that squad car

the policewoman
reciting my
Miranda rights.

I told her to
to save her breath.

she recited them
anyway.

blonde
policewoman
with a big ass

you’ll always have
a place in my dreams.



long ago and not so far away

working as a temp
light assembly
$6 an hour
no rights, no benefits

hated the job
but couldn’t afford
to get fired

imagine
death by boredom
like drowning
in a bathtub
in the suburbs

if I had a soul
I’d say it was like
an opium poppy
turning to stone

there was one boss
I wanted to punch
in the face but never
did of course

I kept on working
doing the same shit
day after day

my soul scattering
like dust
to the universe.



the eagle has landed

death of the spirit as
a dove falls from the sky;
I think of death
as a killer clown like
John Wayne Gacy
or Ronald Reagan;
Ronnie, I jerked off to
your daughter Patti
when I saw her
on the cover of Playboy
with some black guy
grabbing her tits
from behind; it didn't
take away from all
the carnage of
your dirty wars in
Central America but
it was something;
Ronnie, you were
Maggie Thatcher minus
the mustache; and when
I think of death
I think of you and
your big phony grin
like a Nazi death-head
with moussed hair.



eggs 

ask anyone who was ever poor:
eggs are the cheapest food.
we used to eat eggs a lot
and no matter
how many different ways of cooking them
you might know
you get sick of 'em pretty fast.
one time in the supermarket
I saw an old woman—
her cart was filled to the top
with egg cartons
I guess she was fighting
inflation and
that might seem funny
but war on the poor
is standard business
in America
and if you’re not
on foodstamps
then at the very least
you’re cutting coupons
or maybe shoplifting
and so the “lazy and stupid”
as the rich call us
are multiplying like flies
and someday
we’re gonna take it all back.



family heirloom 

went for a walk
round midnight
the streets were empty
save for my insanity
the yellow streetlamps
and a few neon lights;
the starry night
sang an ode to
my cage of the mind
I wandered lonely
as a purple orchid
beside a rusting steel mill
lonely as the last cricket
on a cold night
I felt like tumbleweed
riding the wind
to escape the fire;
I was circling
the electric night
in a Ferris wheel of
schizophrenia
and yes,
I was happy.



tax cuts for millionaires

when I used to work
at supermarkets
and warehouses and the like
I always belonged to some union
or other
we never went on strike
cuz the rich only tolerate
the toothless unions that sold out
a long time ago
so I got treated like shit
along with all the rest
I think I was the only one
who ever complained
cuz the American working-class
are cattle
(it was like I never left Bulgaria)
so I worked and sweated
and bitched a lot
while the rest seemed content
playing cards on their lunch breaks
(I really hated those sheeple)
but sometimes I walked home
at night
when the rain had just stopped
and the streets seemed to glow
under the streetlamps
and there was the sound
of water dripping and trickling
everywhere
and the whole thing
was so pretty
and that was about
the only good times there were.



plague

lost in a nowhere little town
I was lost everywhere
always something wrong with my psyche
the rickets
the way the sun turned
I’d been losing it (mostly at home)
little by little for a while
then at 15
I think it was
I lost it all the way
the sky was always sick-looking
people like so many flies
circling round shit
insanity is a time when you forget
everything
then it comes back
like a trickle of acid on your palm
and you wonder
did it really happen
or is it just my imagination?
and to be honest, I’m still not sure.



workin for the man

my first day
clearing rocks
from a field.
we carried
them in metal
buckets that
got heavier as
the sun rose.
by noon the
heat weighed
a ton and the
world seemed
not worth
a pig’s balls.
I sat down
every chance
I got when
I thought
no one
was looking.
finally the
boss caught me
and that was
the end of it:
my first and
last day
on the job.



not much there at all

lying in bed at night
when I was 19
listening to the indie rock
station. the guy was singing
if I wear your hand-me-
downs … with grungy guitar-
work in the background.
I was half-seriously thinking
of going out some night
climbing the fire-escape of
the tallest building in town
and jumping. but of course
I never did. I was too
immobilized by depression
to even kill myself. maybe
that song was what saved me.
and there was another song
by a band called Helium.
the girl sang you are the MOST
beau-ti-ful THING
and sometimes 2 good songs
is all there is.



fuck the army

I’d never fight for any goddam
country, not even my own
and by that I mean Bulgaria.
I’d never fight for America either.
I mostly feel contempt for people
in the military. maybe
I should feel more sympathy
but my grandfather was an officer
in the Bulgarian army.
I remember him
getting drunk every night
terrorizing my mother and
granma. a real sonofabitch.
so the only soldiers
I feel any compassion for
are the ones who shoot
their officers, go home, open
a bottle of beer in front of the tv
and watch Casino. at least those
gangsters only kill each other.



a dime for heroism

working at a supermarket
stocking shelves with
merchandise.
I wondered
was I born for the sole purpose
of working minimum wage
in America?
I recalled the Viet Cong motto:
“born in the North to die in the South”
only my journey was far less
heroic. I wondered if I might be
doing this kind of work the rest of
my life. the idea filled me
with terror.
so I worked half-speed,
showered every other day
even during summer.
I was rude to the boss and
my loser co-workers
the customers too—
I didn’t give a shit.
one day my boss finally
got so sick of my mouth
he canned me.
so I went on benefits
and after a while
I said to myself
getting paid for NOT working—
now here’s an IDEA!
so I decided
maybe there was hope
after all.
I think getting fired
from that job
may have saved my life.



village idiot

I’m 33.
unemployed.
got fired so I moved
back in with my parents.
sick of working.
I sit up all night watching
Fellini movies.
I’d rather make art than money
but I can’t make either.
fuck the American dream.
I know left from right
and right from wrong.
I know who the bad guys are.
I’m a bum.
an idiot. a loser.
I’m a Sandinista.
I’m a goddam
good-for-nothing foreigner.
I’ve got a 3-day beard
cuz I’m too lazy to shave.
truth be told
I’m the village idiot.
this country is overrun
with village idiots
living off their parents
and contributing nothing.
so give us all a hand.

Sunday, January 8, 2017

poems 8

everything but the floppy shoes 

well, I’m unemployed
I don’t shower as often as I ought to
I don’t brush my teeth as often as I ought to
I’m a sad, sad case in the middle of
nowhere America
and I’ve got no one to blame but myself (and my parents)
but all the same, it’s nice lying here in bed
this morning:
white sheets, white walls
a white ceiling with brown water stains
and the sun coming in through the windows
like Nirvana
my friends think I’m crazy
and I suppose maybe I am
but I tell them this head is nothing more
than a half-empty box
(I like to think it’s purple on the inside)
and every once in a while
when some grunge falls out of it
I clean it up
email it to the editor of some magazine
it’s what I do best
all that I can do
so really,
it’s not such a bad life
after all.



paranoia—yeah! 

the latest terror plot
is a figment of my imagination
or a figment of
someone’s imagination
someone with an orange crush brain
that drips onto the pavement
on hot summer afternoons
my sweat is dripping onto the desk
as a fly buzzes from the wall
to the lampshade
oh, I know you were sent
by the devil with hair on his ass
to harass and torment me
you and my rotten family
and the rotten kids who scream
at the pool all day
yes, Travis, someday a great rain
is gonna fall and wash away
all this filth—I mean
the flies and the devils
and the kids and then maybe
I'll get a chance to sit quietly
on hot summer afternoons
and suffer in my room in peace.



disenchanted 

well, sometimes
the muse
comes with her tits
hanging out
and sometimes
she doesn’t cum
at all
my muse gets
around
on a pair of worn-out
angel wings
she’s grown
disenchanted
and disillusioned
with the world
and so have I
we make a nice
couple in our
common despair
and may the Gods
have pity
on us both.



20 years ago 

Communism fell
in Eastern Europe
and the fascists
and the criminals
took over and
they've cut down
all the trees
and sunflowers
and all the young
are leaving cuz
there ain't no jobs
and there ain't
no hope either
so long
as that 3-headed
monster called
America
stomps all over
the world
but there's Fidel
raising his fist
through the
Cuban sky with
the tropical sun
shining down
and Chavez
and Morales
and Ortega and
we'll see what
happens over in
Honduras so
America you may
have won that
other battle
but the war
ain't fucking over.




noise and fury

watching all the smoke and ashes
on TV on 9/11
I didn't feel much of anything
I watched all the noise and fury
like anyone else would watch a movie
I canceled my appointment
with the dentist
I checked out for the day
like I do most days
I felt cut off from all the people
crying on TV
and contempt for all the ones
demanding revenge
I wondered which country or
countries would get it this time
Sudan?
Iraq?
maybe Serbia again
and for some reason
I recalled a night when I was 16
we had each retired
to our separate rooms
all three of us trapped
in a lost place
in a small town
at the edge of nowhere
and I remembered
lying on my bed
wondering
where the fuck am I
and how the hell did we all get here?



when the fuck did I become Travis Bickle?

there's the small living room
the small kitchen
the small bathroom
the one small bedroom
I call “my room”
where I sit at my laptop
and type away
writing what some call poetry
where I hatch plots
to overthrow the government
with a beard and a pen
where I do sex chat with webcam girls
admiring their round tits
while they puff on their cigarettes
and where I sometimes just lie in bed
and think about how much
I hate everyone and everything
wondering which God or Gods
got drunk one night and set
this whole fucking mess in motion
while the dusk turns
a darker shade of purple.



free medical advice 

working the
graveyard shift
at the factory.

there was
a big blonde
maybe 19

cute, but
her face was all
covered in zits.

I wanted to tell
her there’s
a cure for that

but that got me
fired from one
job already

and I was out of
unemployment
benefits.

I admired her ass
for a while
then clocked in.

it’s people like me
who keep the
economy going.



slacker 

the mushrooms of lethargy
are dragging me down
to mind-numbing holocausts
of depression
where the lark muddies its dying soul
where the dead grow their flowers
where Sid and Nancy
pogo to ska
amid the great guru pot dealers
of Kingston
I’m unemployed
dreaming of psychedelic frogs
and great big
samsaras of butterflies
I’m the pot-bellied
Buddha of the robins
in the yard
the great all-knowing
know-nothing
who stares
at the sky
remembering the 90s
when it was OK
to be young
smart
lazy and
worthless
when they played
The Spinanes
every Tuesday
on the radio.



grassy knolls 

if you think the government is
putting thoughts
in your head you're
probably right
they put chemicals
in the food
and bullshit
on the evening news
they put a second
gunman on the grassy knoll
to split open
Jack Kennedy's head
like an Irish watermelon
I believe almost every
conspiracy theory I hear
cuz I've learned over the years
that most of them right
like war for oil
and COINTELPRO
we paranoids
are people with vague ideas
about what's really
going on.



shadow of grief 

nothing outside but
cold sunlight
blinding the snow
I must have the face
of a decent person
most people think I'm a decent person
until they get to know me
I've got photos that I carry around
in the back of my skull
sometimes they break free
storm my cerebrum
and that's when I get into trouble with the law
I don't apologize for anything
what life's done to me
is far worse than anything I ever did
sometimes I get my revenge on decent people
I used to be a decent person myself
well, that'll toughen them up
give them a taste of my world
in short:
fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody
life's a chain of sucker-punches to the balls
and then you die.



discursive

hitting the pavement
when there’s nowhere to go
the sky is dizzy
and aimless
when you’re crazy
your only friends
are the ones in your head
and maybe the DJ on the radio
the flowers are dying
they last only a week or so
and when I see my face
in the puddles on the sidewalk
I don’t like what I see;
all you normal people
out there—I’m not one of you.



pimps and other capitalists 

you'll see your face
in the half-light
grabbing mouthfuls
of blue sky
and you'll realize
this world
wasn't made for
someone like you
this world is for
the greedy
the power-hungry
and the sadists
to indulge in
to rejoice
in the suffering
they inflict
on others
not you
who gets dizzy
when the
flowers whisper
and the
mourning doves
flutter through
your brain.



unkind 

looking in the mirror
receding hairline
I splash some water
on my face.
I walk to the bedroom
I’ve got a belly
and one leg shorter
than the other.
night coming in
through the windows
I hear something
crash upstairs
something heavy
like a fridge or
some kid jumping
from a couch
or table. I say
what the hell?
hell is other people.
hell is poverty.
hell is my neighbor
and her retard son.
hell is sitting
at the window looking
out at the night,
too insane to go
anywhere
or do anything.



ghost 

learned today
of the death
of Scott Wannberg

I’d read a few of his chaps
a few years back

that a thing that once
lived and breathed
is now dead
is not strange

that a thing that once
wrote poetry
is now dead:
now that is strange

of course
only the body is dead
not the rider

we’re all immortal
as the Buddha said

but death is still
nothing to sing about.



ever do this when you were a kid? 

I remember those nights
when I’d put on
my shoes
and go for a walk
going nowhere at all
there was the black night
and the stars above me
and I felt at home
with the stray cats
and abandoned cars
I liked being alone
and I would do
random acts of
vandalism now and then
I’d look at my watch
and it'd say 3:04 AM
and one of those nights
I realized
that I would always be alone
it was the only time
that I could be myself
so I said to myself
fuck it all and so be it.



pick any spot on the map 

the souls of dead soldiers
come back as crows
I see them sitting in the naked branches
in the last moments of winter sunset
they come back with hollow eyes
seem confused
as though wondering what they really died for
if anything
(their country? religion? Dow Chemical?)
perhaps they remember
the bodies of the dead
men, women and children alike
splayed out in the grass
of so many foreign lands
far too many bodies for counting ...
dead soldiers
haunting this earth
forever.



bad poems

reading
some of my poems
that were been published
here and there
most of 'em are
pretty good but there's
some that are real
shit
the editors musta been
crackheads when they
published them
a bad poem
is a flea bite on my leg
nothing to
worry my balls over
certainly not nearly as bad
as poverty
and the endless wars.

Saturday, January 7, 2017

poems 7

chance of snow

between the silence
and the bullshit
the lies and
blackbirds lined up on a naked branch
you'll find time
for the light, the truth
words curving like the body of a woman
words raining down
from the wings of angels
and then you can say FUCK YOU
to money and careers and the rent
cuz the only food you need
flows out from yr fingertips
onto the black buttons of your insomniac keyboard.



why vandalism?

she had a bad case of acne

I gave her some friendly advice
on how to fix it

I guess she didn't think it was funny

she told the boss
and I got fired on the spot

I spent the next few hours
wandering the sidewalks
as the cars ran up and down the streets like dogs

it was sunny but getting cold

getting fired always felt both good and bad at the same time—

I told myself
you could stay like this and become a hobo

but I knew I'd have to start looking right away

and there wasn't even a rock to put through a window.



nude young girls

29 Buddhas lined up on the mantelpiece
and that's supposed to be a metaphor of something
but I forgot what it means
after a while a kind of lethargy sets in
you stare out the window at the crooked rain
the roses are dead and the clock is broken
I once walked in front of a moving car
the woman behind the wheel swerved to miss me
and I couldn't have cared less
no, this caterpillar won't be growing any wings
just blowing arsenic at the wasted stars
and waiting for whatever the fuck comes next.



class warfare

in dog-eat-dog America
there's winners and losers
and the beautiful ones
are the losers

the sweetest of all
are the insane
the poets

the ones who talk to sparrows
and the ghosts in their heads

who give a dollar
to every homeless beggar
they see

who open their windows at night
to howl at the moon

and the money
of the smirking winners
can't buy any of that

ever.



ode to a fascist clown

the first time I ever saw homeless people
was in New York
in the 1980s
they were mostly
men
leaning up
against walls
holding out styrofoam
cups
they looked sad
and tired
my mother and I
always
gave a dollar
to this one or
that one
but there were
always
more of them on
the streets
the next day
thanx for nothing
Ronald Reagan.



blue angels

watching my shoes pacing up the sidewalk
the red bricks were all looking at me
strangely
telling me forgotten things
then I found myself floating
up and away like a dove
into the blue air
the clouds told me to stop trying so hard
and the sun said nothing at all.



semper fi

American war criminals
going off to kill
the newest Indians
searching for imaginary
weapons of mass destruction
armed with real ones
like white phosphorus
depleted uranium
and enough lies
to fill a whole country
with mad killer clowns

I'd pelt you with
anarchist tomatoes
but you'd lock me up
without trial
in Gitmo, that once
beautiful place
that you stole
from the people of Cuba
who just want to be
left in peace

white Americans,
I spit on you
and your sheer animal
bloodlust
on the oligarchs who
profit from your wars
and the idiots
who fight them.



the scarecrow men with smiles

rotting in Ohio
in the bowels of the Empire
in the heart
of the Axis of Evil
crows descend from dead trees
and peck out my arsenic mind
I am not safe in the belly
of the beast
I am not safe
in their military-industrial
horror, I fear
the Pentagon media
and the scarecrow men
moving their wet lips
on the TV news
I am not safe from
their sordid lies
the eyes of the beast
are upon me.



I let the door hit my ass on my way out 

genteel poverty
is my own idea of paradise.
I work only
as much
as I want to
make only as much
money as I need
to survive. I'm
a kind of gentleman
when you think about it
old new gentry
in a moth-eaten
small apartment of
a mansion.
the type-A people
can hustle all they want:
if they inherit
the earth
they can have it.
the summer sun
is no match for my
air conditioner
(when it's working)
and in the evenings
when the Buddha stars
come pouring down
a bottle of
hard lemonade
is the sweet nectar
of the good-for-nothing
Gods.



lost my heart over there

ragged streets
under a white sky
if happiness was
something you could
buy from the ice cream
truck when it comes
jingling down the street
or balloons
red yellow and green
rising up into blue sky
under the lying sun …
back when days like
that mattered.
there’s no end to what
they can do to you
and they’ll do it to you
till you end up in
some alley
among the stray cats
hoping more for angels
than Gods, hoping
to catch a glimpse of
silken wings.



still (more dead than) alive in some rathole somewhere in America

I'm still alive
cuz when I wake up
in the morning
I feel this pain in my right leg
like one of those hairy
crippled smith-Gods that
never shave
dreaming of nymphs
Goddesses
and high school cheerleaders
I'm still alive
cuz I hate with the heart
of a true Bolshevik
I mean slitting throats
bayoneting the class enemies
setting fire to the churches
a real bloodbath orgy of
killing before sipping
my lemonade
this world is mostly insanity
like Maupassant going
mad from the syphilis he got
from some Parisian whore
and Henry Miller laughing
at Parisian whores
and Apollinaire dying
a thousand deaths
in Paris
living is slowly dying
like the surgeon removing
one piece this month
another the next
I'm sorry if this poem
didn't cheer you up.



end of the rope

north of here
is a place that
used to have
50,000 people
now it’s barely
half that
the factories
closed down
Walmart drove
all the small
shops outta
business
now everyone
hustles for
minimum wage
wondering how
they’re gonna
pay the bills
everyone but
the very poor
has moved out
it’s where the
American dream
hanged itself
and didn’t even
leave a note.



second-hand view

there’s days when
it’s difficult just getting
out of bed
nearly impossible
brushing one’s teeth
or taking a shower.
days like that
the only thing to do
is sit by the window
look up at the clouds in
the sky. what
you’re born into
is a matter of luck
most of it bad.
I let the blue sky
enter my head, let the
wind carry
my worn-out soul
you can see it among
the trees
rags and all.



no cure for what I’ve got

your unshakeable
American optimism
sickens me.
I never wanted to be one of you
mowing your phony lawns
like in 50s Leave It To Beaver land
getting all teary-eyed
saluting the flag
under fireworks on the 4th of July.
I hate John Wayne and
all fat cowboys.
my American dream is to live
on foodstamps while not supporting
the troops
and not watching football
or baseball
while the cat leaves
headless mice in the yard.
but it’s too late:
watching TV all day
I’m already
a fat lazy
unhappy American.
yes, I’m looking for sympathy.



the meaning of life ...

is white clouds and a lollipop.
the meaning of life
got lost somewhere in
dreams of Loni Anderson.
these pills that I'm taking
make the room lean
first to the left
and then to the right.
what I'm going through here
is some kind of
unraveling of the spirit
or maybe
a Los Alamos of the mind
so I'm writing to you
from the other side
of something
and I'm staring at a clock with
no hands.
these pills remind me
of the dead blackbird
I came across once
it was staring up at me
with its dead black eye
like lost soldiers
in long-forgotten wars
and the poor dead blackbird
never said a word.



fuck everybody

my grandfather was
an asshole
even when sober
but when he got
drunk every night
on rakia
that's when his
demons came out:
screaming at
everyone
his bald head with
a Hitler mustache
looking like
the Devil himself
till he finally
crawled into bed
round midnight
and slept. his inner
demons wouldn't
let him be and
I wasn't there when
he finally croaked
so I'm just guessing
what his dying words
were.



the old country

I remember
a pond
filled with red
and white fish
and a young
Orthodox priest
dressed all
in black with
a black beard
and my drunk
grandfather
keeling over
one night,
slamming his
bald head
into a metal
bed frame (I
still don’t know
how it didn’t
kill him.)
our relatives
say that since
the fall of
Communism
the country’s
really gone
to the dogs
everyone living
in poverty
and misery
all the young
people
moving abroad
in search of
a better life.

shit happens.



betrayed

Ho Chi Minh
kicked some
Yankee ass
reunited
the nation but
now Vietnam’s
“Communist”
government
has imposed
capitalism
on the country.
what American
bombs and
Agent Orange
couldn’t do
greed and the
Almighty Dollar
have. did all
those
Viet Cong
heroes
die for nothing?
Wall Street
is a cancer
devouring
the whole
goddam world.



dig?

worms devour the night
as the Tao drinks wine in a tree
he’s no help at all
just like the rest of you
humanity, you remind me of
the headless mice my cat
leaves in the yard
or the pigeon’s head
she once left by the door.
while Nazis bury Jewish gold
at the ends of rainbows
the angels
of our better nature
are tied to trees
and sodomized
the angels
of our better nature
have slashed their wrists
and hung themselves
with piano wire.

poems 6

the future is here

yes, Uncle Sam is spying on yr Internet
when you're surfing porn
or visiting the website of the Communist Party USA
they tell you it's to keep us safe
but the greatest threat to the American people
is their own Government
so the only safe thing to do
is visit cooking sites
email anything but porn
and post all yr shitty poems to Facebook
so yes, America is still #1
if you go by the size of the prison population
or the number of people killed abroad
but whatever you say
make sure it ain't something that Uncle Sam won't like
I'm not even sure about writing this poem.



generosity from strangers

one cell of the Weather Underground
was planning on bombing
an officers' ball
but it went off prematurely
so the townhouse got destroyed
and the only people who got killed
were the three of them

they freed Tim Leary
with a commando-style operation out in California
but Leonard Peltier is still in prison
and so is Mumia
and Abbie Hoffman is dead

the Vietnam War ended almost 40 years ago
and maybe the dead at Kent State have
attained Nirvana by now
so there's all the time in the world
for prayer beads
meditation
opening the doors of consciousness
but no one's interested anymore
cuz all the jobs went to China
and people are struggling nowadays
just trying to survive

but at least they're starting to legalize pot now
so if you're holding
don't be a selfish prick.



testament

when this body dies
I hope someone'll scatter the ashes
among the weeds
beside the dumpster

then I'll just be a spirit wandering the woods
which is the only place I ever truly loved

and yes, I'll remember all of you
and yes, I'll be cursing all of you

just like I did in this life.



all the king's horses ...

yes,
I was the freak
the weirdo
the retard with crooked legs
who stammered;
I stopped showering
or brushing my teeth
cuz I didn't give a shit anymore;
I'm a bum and a loser
who doesn't wanna work
who got fired from almost
every job I ever had
sometimes after a few days
sometimes a few hours;
all I wanna do now
is kiss the rising sun
and talk to the white clouds
while the bankers steal
the reporters lie
and the idiots go off
to fight for their rotten country
in Afghanistan.



metaphor of what?

the head rests on the forearm
the head is limp and mostly empty
awash in morbidity
contemplating the emptiness of the cosmos
or at least this corner of it
the head curses Bulgarians
and people
remembering the screaming
the insanity
the loneliness and despair
remembering marianne faithfull
and her sweet voice as
ophelia
the head is reborn each morning
only to die slowly over the course of the day
the head repeats to itself, silently
namu amida buddha
namu amida buddha
namu amida buddha
the Pure Land is the place full of sun
where the trees always sway in the breeze
and maybe it's
the only place that's real.



skulls

night crawls on its belly
and somewhere in Cleveland
a young man gets stabbed to death
in a parking lot—
the bottle is empty
the doors are locked

headless mice lie in the yard
I'm starting to understand leeches
and serial killers
I try to cheer myself up
thinking of lipstick lezzies
yellow warblers
and the foreign occupiers getting slaughtered
at Ong Thanh
but the light at the end of tunnel
ain't no on-coming train
just a neon bulb that's flickering out.



the ride

it's slow walking
when yr hands are cuffed behind yr back
and even yr ankles are cuffed together

the blonde policewoman was nice enough
making sure I didn't bang my head on the roof
of the squad car as I got in

I wanted to compliment her
on her big round beautiful ass
but I thought better of it

it was a hot summer night
hot in the back of the squad car too

I remembered the idea
that the whole world is only a dream

but the handcuffs and anklecuffs were real enough
as I watched the full moon rising
through the window of the squad car

I thought about what a million other people
might be doing at that moment
while I was waiting for my ride to begin

at the station
they took away my belt and shoelaces

I found out later that the guy in the next cell
was a co-worker I barely knew

it's a small world.



the orchid

reposing
in poverty
and
despair

sweet
as an orchid
in the summer
rain

as a girl
in the madman's
web

the angels
wander about
with
dopamine
eyes
feeding on air

and who
will save us
if not
the atom
bomb?

hope lies
bound and raped
in the corner

and something
crawls
into what's

left of my brain
with
the voice
of a small
child.



what to do besides hanging yrself

in the summer light of inbred little towns
the dead birds tell you secret things
you must navigate the minefields of white trash
walk in circles and talk to yrself
as the clock-towers look down in wonder
you must inject yrself with the sweet nectar of yr own mind
and then you're free as the spider or the wasp
you wave yr silken hand
leaving trails of ghosts in the sky
and then you can brag aloud that you alone know
and when the old hobo asks you what time it is
you can laugh at the sky like a madman.



grey

red and yellow leaves
falling through a grey wind

it's Veterans' Day
so the parade outside must be for the babykillers

they woke me from a strange dream
that I've already forgotten

I close my eyes
imagine a gold Buddha and the sound of waves

anything to get me away from where I am right now—

I know why caged animals scream.



you won't read this in the papers 

I shoulda been a 60s radical
throwing rocks and bombs
punching cops between acid trips
at the '68 Democratic Convention

my only weapon is my computer
the words I type are Molotov cocktails
that I hurl through the windows
of the empty rancid skulls
of the American Right
(I know it ain't much)

congenitally stupid nation
might-makes-right
kill-the-poor

social Darwinist fascism
iron-fisted police state
that woulda cracked even Lenin

this country needs a real revolution

not another Founding Fathers
bullshit revolution

a real revolution
led by someone named
Castro or Chavez
or maybe even Trotsky.



end of days 

we saw an old
homeless guy with
a slit in the back
of his pants
we laughed
we were kids
we thought it was
funny at the time
I don't think it was
so funny now.
it was a chill windy
night in New York
Reagan was President
already senile
the first lady was
blowing Frank Sinatra
and consulting
astrologers
on foreign policy.
we didn't know it
at the time but
the Soviet Union
was on its last legs
and America was
only 20 years behind
and soon nothing
would be funny at all.



Honduras, 2009 

drifting like the ghost
of Trotsky
in the nebulous white dawn
the white sky above me
is the same over
Tegucigalpa
where the U.S. just
overthrew democracy
again.
the generals were all trained
at The School of The Americas
in the state of Georgia
the school where
they instruct
pro-American terrorists
in the dirty work
of empire to protect
“our hemisphere”
as the Norte Americanos
call it. the coup took place
a week ago.
we'll see what happens
next.



turning on the light of learning 

well, there were the dyke gym teachers
the dyke English teachers
and the ex-Marine who became a teacher
cuz he couldn't find a real job
most of them were unambitious
content to rot their lives away

surrounded by the dumb teenage mob
the worst were the teachers
who tried to inspire the kids
but it's your parents and the kids
who'll crush you
the teachers don't count for shit
and to all my former teachers
all I have to say is:
you're less than the acne on my neck.



Thursday, January 5, 2017

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.

Wednesday, January 4, 2017

poems 4

the fury of sparrows

a guy pulls into
his garage then
sits in the car
smoking Camels
biting his lips
with yellow teeth.

a dog barks at
a ghost walking
down the street
in the pale light
of Ohio winter.

a tricycle lies
overturned
on a green lawn.

even the birds
are too mellow
to sing this
morning, sitting
all quiet in their
trees which is
a kind of poetry
too.



Eastern Europe

all that bullshit about
“freedom and democracy”
no jobs no money
no hope at all
gangs of stooges and
lackeys serving
Washington's interests
the young men going off
to be exploited
as farm laborers
in the West
the women and girls used
as sex slaves
in their brothels
you can tear down a village
overnight
pollute the water in a minute
but the new Lenin
will be a long time coming
the return of basic
decency and humanity
will be a long time coming
now the West and Islam
are at each other's throats
so maybe
there's a chance.



hole

walking the
cold streets
at dawn
feeling
like a ghost
there’s clouds
behind the
naked trees
the flowers are
smiling like
severed heads.
in New York
some kids
laughed at me
cuz I didn’t
speak Spanish.
the only Spanish
word I know is
puta.
there’s a hole
in the clouds
a hole in my head
Kurt Cobain
is stoned
and writing
a love song.



the experience

Jimi Hendrix warned
them that when the
Chinese commies
take Saigon they’ll
take Laos and
Cambodia too and
then the shit will
hit the fan

and he was right but
then the Vietnamese
wiped out the
Khmer Rouge over
the objections of
China and America

and other blacks
hated him for having
white people in his
band and for dating
a light brown
Puerto Rican girl

but then he took
another hit of LSD
the purple haze
came on and made
everything alright.



a God for teenage hoods

summer night and
the hum of
air conditioners

when I was a kid
I used to roam the
streets on nights
like this

you have no idea
how sweet the night
air seemed to me

and the sound of
18-wheelers from
the far-off highway

even the streetlights
seemed poetic

sometimes
I vandalized cars
while their owners
slept

I never got caught
and the stars looked
down, wondering.



dogma

I’m a slacker
and a loser
and I like to stare at the clouds for hours

I read a lot of books
and don’t know anything at all

I like ladybugs

someone told me
I should put myself
in the hands of
God

but I’d rather be in the hand
of some high school cheerleader

I’d rather be a white birch
in the Russian forest

or a Chinese monk on pilgrimage
to India

and God is
wind chimes when a breeze picks up.



halcyon days

world full of
powerless, penniless
revolutionaries
screaming their ideas
onto paper
while serial killers
and outlaw bikers
roam California highways

disillusioned Trotskyites
feeding their hunger
on the stale bread
of frustration
while junkies sit in alleys
brains shredded
by LSD

a tear for the lost
is a wet brown leaf
in Autumn

those who know
sit in hot empty rooms
in the cancerous summer
tubes in their arms
pumping them full of
insanity
and stark raving loneliness

they sweat the blood
of the Gods
so remember them
as the sky fills with sulfur.



no shit

I have dreams like
being in Russia
amid all the poverty that
Gorby and Yeltsin and
the rest of the asshole
traitorous Liberals created
it's often so realistic
I wake up feeling sick

or I dream that I'm
wandering in some strange
place and there's other
people there but they
ignore me and I ignore
them (dreams imitating life)

or this town is a raging
inferno and the flames are
kissing the night sky
and when all the white trash
have been burned alive
Satan puts out the flames
by pissing on them.

I guess I must be crazy.



the new napalm

you’d cut my head off
and feed it
to Saddam Hussein
use it to fertilize
the white phosphorous desert

the ashes
of my personal sorrow
will keep
the stock market up
and fill your barren hearts
with nuclear warheads

my head bursts out in flowers
that wither under the heat
of your military-industrial
death-plex
that the hangman laughs at
in a drunken stupor
in his depleted uranium
dreams.



upon realizing things will never get any better

dusk falling through the windows
I’m half asleep
thinking of Hitler and his dog
and the dead rats in my head.
a wasted life—
my screaming parents
the lousy jobs in warehouses and
supermarkets and restaurant kitchens
sitting in my room, the sunlight
dripping cancer from the walls.
I remember that time I had to walk home
in the rain down a broken discarded street
white litter everywhere
thinking maybe the Gods just gave up
and quit trying.



holding on

I went for a stroll with
my crooked legs

and people started laughing—

you ever felt like shit?

ever felt like pissing on
people’s faces?

ever felt like you were a dirty
rag in the gutter?

ever stared at passing cars
under a filthy afternoon sky?

ever felt like the graffiti on
the wall was right?

ever felt like you were no
better off than the homeless
and the addicts?

ever put a rock through
a window just for the hell of it?

ever worried the squad car’s
sirens were coming for you?

ever wished you owned an Uzi?

if the answer to all of the above is
yes

then you must be a poet too.



the Fellini poem

I found a hand
in the street

a giant white
hand made
of cardboard.

a giant nose
with a mustache
underneath

a foot the size
of a BMW.

there were
other people
in the street
but none of
them seemed
to notice

just me and
some woman
leaning out
a window

with her tits
hanging out

and then I
understood.



the demons are real 

red flower wilting
in a glass
sunlight
on the white walls
in my state of
confusion.
the demons
growl at me
in my sleep
so I turn them off
thinking of
Penelope Cruz
of hippie chicks
in 1969.
the demons
are quiet now
hiding somewhere
in the back of
my mind
like a tumor.



dog day afternoons

I fill out applications but they never call.
I guess they take one look at my work record
and throw it away.
so I lie in bed all day
staring at the butchered, crucified sun.
I listen to radio on the Internet –
mostly grunge, indie rock –
while the razors dance
in the black hole of my mind.
I fantasize about raping the young wife upstairs.
sometimes I think I'm in Hell with the souls
of America's war dead
but at least I can go to the fridge
and pour myself a glass of cold water.



open window

alone with the night
and the wind flowing through
the leaves

there was this song
in my head

one line of it goes
I will remember you ...

and I was trying to recall
who sang it

was it Tori Amos?

and then it hit me

of course!

Sarah McLachlan!

on a night like this
when the leaves are falling
through the stars
you realize that a beautiful song
from a beautiful voice
deserves to be remembered
perhaps more than anything else
in this universe

and maybe in the end
will be the only thing that
anyone remembers

even when all that's left in the end
is only the stars themselves.



no, I don't support the troops ...

if you mean the American troops in Afghanistan
cuz all they're doing is
killing women and children
if you wanna show me some troops I can support
gimme the Viet Cong fighting in the jungle
outnumbered 10 to 1
running from the enemy's choppers
and B-52's
gimme the Soviet soldier
dying by their millions in the mud of Belarus
or in the streets of Stalingrad
killing Nazis
Red Star shining from every cap
gimme Fidel and his band of brothers
ambushing the enemy with their machetes
in the heat of the Sierra Maestra
gimme any of them and all of them
but don't call what the G.I.'s are doing in Afghanistan
heroism
cuz it's a fucking debasement of the word.



Pure Land

I prayed to Buddha to fix my heart
and I'll be damned if he didn't
and they say Buddha ain't a God
but I prayed to him anyway and it worked
and when I look at my hands sitting on the table
with the sun falling on them
I think of Shakyamuni and the other Buddhas
and when I drive through some place at night
and the neon lights are all glowing
I think of the Buddhas
and when I remember all the crazy things I've done
(smashing windows, petty sex crimes and the rest)
I think of the Buddhas
so you can worship whoever the fuck you want
but the Buddhas were always there for me
when I needed them.



say what?

there'll be no white elephants
crossing my path

the “I” may be an illusion
but all poets seek fame and glory

the “I” may be an illusion
but the memories in my head seem real

and the rage and the fury
are all too real

I lay myself down in the nectar
of the black rose of night

and maybe the Gods will visit me
bearing a thousand gifts

or maybe just one gift
red as a plum

and when the world finally drowns
in the last great flood

maybe my salvation
will lie in the suffering of others.