life is an oncoming train

life is an oncoming train
and that cowcatcher means business
even though it's going slow now
it's picking up speed
you might even jump aboard
if your timing is neat
but the problem is - this train
is headed back that way
and you've been walking forward
for so long
along these tracks
well it's not as if you're going
some particular place
but you can't be going back
no
you ain't going back

raunchy blues tune #2

"Got It Out Of Me"

sometimes it helps to talk
she says
but it helps her to hear
more than it helps you to tell

I don't think it helps me at all
I already know all about it
from when I got it out of me
from when I got it out of me

and she still wants to hear
says you can't bottle up
well pop the cork then darling
and bottoms up!

There's nothing I need to figure out
I already know all about it
from when I got it out of me
from when I got it out of me

There's nothing I need to figure out, and
there's nothing I need to figure it out
but I'll tell you all about it, darlin'
'cause it helps you to hear
so bring your ear

and tip your glass,
all empty, then?
and I will fill you up again

nothing here that needs figuring out
and you know that, you know that now
from when you got it out of me
from when you got it out
of me

hurricane yes

they say there were witches
in eldritch times
whose words packed power
to blast and bind
but those words are now lost
so they say, long ago
they have not heard

your hurricane "yes"
and earthquake "no"

carbon slip

the carbon slip
of years past due
in triplicate
press hard, you're
through

she's changing her story

she's changing her story
one word at a time
not so's you notice
but quite by design
each time you check up
it's a little bit strange
and a little bit better
a little bit changed

but you can't quite
you can't quite
you can't
put your finger on it,
man
put your finger on it, though
she ties loose ends: a perfect bow

each day some false hope proves more true

the mystery of a hot july afternoon
in the middle of august

I'm a little tired of worries
so much greater than cares

and gaining sudden wisdom in
sudden, painful shares

I want incremental wisdom
in measures, in grains

that come in piling up from living,
day to day gains

knowing right, feeling right
in our bones, in our eyes

perhaps, come the autumn
we'll have grown more wise

The Misery of Getting What You Want

the misery of what you really want
the thing you know
will make your life complete
the thing you know
will make your problems
small
and when you get it:
permanent defeat
when you were holding on
to win it all
when you were holding on
so grim and sure
and when you get the thing
- just what you want!
and nothing's changed,
you're what you were before.
The misery of getting what you want
I never had to go through that
whew

thank God

imagine

how horrible.

don't misunderstand

darling, please
you must agree
to never misunderstand me

now don't misunderstand me now
cause I don't mean you have
to learn
to read my mind
no I don't mean that
I don't mean

Now, there you go again
you misunderstood me
and didn't I just tell you, "never
do that!"

Well, hell.

How clear did I have to make myself

on this

the master crafstsman

your cabinet needs work
my big hard tool
is just right for the job
it fits into
and snick! sticks snug
I work it 'round
pull loose
push tight
slip bang
whoops!
ow

the phantom lands

we're passing into phantom lands
your hand in mine, can't touch
our palms pass through, each holds
the other's shape
so faithfully
so much
in love
will fade?
as light streams through
your soul to mine
I'm tinted blue
you smile a tear
your face to me
you turn and see
and see and see
right through
my skin and hair
stained glass
fades into clear
and melts to past

the last of the breakfast

for dinner I'm having the rest of the breakfast
it's just as delicious as everyone said it was
- couldn't remember; Memory was bleared -
they said I put three plates away while they cheered,
said I puked
between each of them, then dug back in, to slaps
on the back, I collapsed in the kitchen, to nap
for an hour or ten,
then awoke
to a ravenous hunger
and many a poke in the ribs, as they steered me
quite kindly to table: a large juice and gin
and a big café bueno,
a plate piled high
with the last of the breakfast.

it's just as delicious
as everyone said it was

the weather's never where you want it to be

the thin rain falls thick,
and turns the clouds above to air
but that will take
forever, dear
by that time they'll be
over there
and dried of rain
way over you
where once-green plains
lie sun-poached, bleached and yellowed out
why does the rain you need soak me?
why do I get your shower clouds?
I'm starving for my sun again
while your poor grasses, flowers wilt
there's no one ordering this march
of soft gray clowns, on lightning stilts
who scatter thick confetti rain
their greasepaint frowns turned down,
their pained and slow and gray procession,
sure and solemn,
- but with the sun on its back!
Way, way up where I can't see it.
Obscured by a vertical mile of gray.

I'd pay to see any inch of sky
to glimpse forbidden blue between forbidding gray
to open up a crack, and catch a ray
I'd catch it on my finger
hold it fast and light,
then pull it taught and use it as a wedge
a lever, an inclined plane,
a simple machine to pry apart
the widening crack,
and dry my skin

I'd be drenched in
the sun I've missed

and you
on the other side of that huge mountain's roll
the bleached side, brown
the dry county
you would love a cleansing soak
to wipe the streaks of dust from your sky
your air, your lungs
and look around
and breathe and see
the world refreshed
boy, does the world ever need it

But,
I get your rain.
While you hog my sun.

The weather's never where you want it to be.

i'd like to get

i'd like to get
your frosting
in my beard,
cupcake.

the enunciatrix

she says how you shape your mouth
and what your lips do
and where you put your tongue
and how the air moves through
is what makes how you sound
make what you mean ring true
so put some thought
into your mouth
and roll it round
and spit it out

Queen Evil Sara and Dave Who Got Weird

Queen evil Sara demanded my chair,
and her poor boyfriend seemed like a nice enough guy
and Dave who got weird kept the blinds shuttered tight
as his potting soil sat in its closeted light,
not growing.

and our gay little group
sat there awkwardly
dumb
making suggestions
that would not be panned out

I stood up with a bow

and the dumb monster truck pulled up over the curb

and all I could do was

get in

and say "wow"

walking home from pool

Nobody's ever seen me drunk. It's
not how I want to be seen, even once
I walk home from pool. I don't fool around.
I just had my first cigarette in six months.
I stagger and sway, I'm alone walking home -
it's a couple of blocks, I play into it. So?
But the guys at the hall, they know I'm on
the case, on the ball, they don't fret,
(though we all play guitar)
But I look at the wall, as I walk past the wall,
and it's solid and firm so I give it a punch.
And it feels good to me. As the stop sign comes up,
I stop just for kicks. I'm sober as fuck. Nobody's ever
seen me drunk, and I've asked. I said,
"yeah, you have," but so what - it's a joke.
And it's all in good fun, and I'm all in good fun.
And I get home and she's like "do you smell like smoke?"

she puts it all together

There's nothing I've said
to support what she knows
it's between, in the lines
where she's planted her rows
and I've flatly denied
said a hundred times, no
there's no crop there to grow
but she reaps what she sows.

She interprets rebuke
to mean time isn't right
interprets contempt
to mean playing along
interprets a shout
to mean feeling is strong
but it isn't the time
that's been wrong.

What can I do or say?
when her facts are all made
of what I never did,
never said, no display
no attempt on my part
can gainsay what she's built
of what she says I meant.

She's got cases of guilt
she's made up every fact
to fit snap to her case
and there isn't a crack
to let light on the face
of the sad picture puzzle
she's made of her mind
and my heart - she accuses
- but that wasn't mine.

I suppose she'll wake up
someday years from now, bolt
upright, suddenly: light goes on
"oh my God, oh - I sure treated
that guy like a real psycho bitch!
To invent all these feelings for
him, and then pitch righteous fits
of revenge, when he only said: 'No!'"
I suppose she'll wake up someday
years from now, though

- no.
Actually,
I don't suppose so.

it's the object

the love that I have for you is like
the love that other people have for other people
except it's better
'cause it's for you

Reading A New Love's Old Poems

And years ago, you wrote a poem

on solitude

I wish that I knew you then, just then in that moment!

To intrude

well shot

Well shoot. From a gun,
from a barrel into the sun
my body is a lead slug twisting,
trying to screw into the sky -
but momentum is spent.
I want to go where it went,
but instead I fall and fail
and tumble, dented and scored
by the tunnel I passed through
only once, never more
and the distance grows so close
and clear
and speed takes on
new meaning, dear
as grounds rush up
and I rush down,
I blink

you'll never find me now

Don't believe in me

Believe me.
Don't believe in me.
What I say when you ask me is true.
I believe in the truth,
I believe in what I say.
And what I say is the truth,
but I am not the truth.
I am not greater than what you see.
I am not truer than what I say
- that is all in which you need
to believe.
Believe me.

Don't believe in me.

in sweet-smelling wax

I'm deep in the throes of a sugar idea
and a concrete ideal made soft
and smooth and sealed
like a deal
in sweet-smelling wax
as your lips melt soft
bringing memory back

Rumble at the Metaphysical Dennys

You'll have to turn left right after
you go through the third red light,
and the parking lot is always never
quite full

Once you get inside they'll ask you:
"counter or booth?"
and you will choose the booth
even though there's only one of you

There's always only one of you. Not
because you're unpopular, but
Because.
You're so unique.
People can't stand it.
That's not a slam.

But if it was, would you want it
with pancakes or toast? with bacon or ham?
with hot fresh coffee or cold, stale sarcasm?

or maybe with both. That sounds great, Mmmm!

She's Quiescently

jingle jingle ice cream man
I'll chase after, catch as can
plank down change and raise my voice:
"one Blue Pop, please!"
that's my choice!

Blue Pop stains my tongue so dark
suck away so sweet and tart
so cool cold when hot heat hits
leaves me licking bluish lips

You made me cry

You made me cry
I fell downstairs
my heel slipped out
my tailbone hit
so hard I slid
as each step struck
my poor behind,
held my glass up
and not a drop
was spilt.

And when I came to rest,
at halfway point, my eye
caught yours and with as
much aplomb, as anyone
I took a sip

we about died
and you made me cry
from laughing.

after all

maybe after the world dies
maybe after the world ends
the ghosts who are left will linger on
and walk in the fields where they had friends
and say to each other - unseen to unseen,
"this is where so and so met, and were wed"
and "this is where everyone gathered to dance,"
and "this was my life,"
- even with the world dead.

InfraBlueUltra

I see you in ways
that others cannot
my eyes have attuned
to the spectrum you shed
past far out ultraviolet
or deep infrared
in the regular world,
the colors have bled

What love looks like to me

these lips I've kissed
that hand I've held
those eyes I've gazed
once, twice, always

in you I live,
the future moves
the present sings
my darling Blue

fizzyology

i want to finger the nubbled nodules of your undulating soul
and lick between the synapses of your mind
feel the battery-zap on my tongue
and get between the cells of all your systems
of muscles skin and tissues, like some fluid
of salt and light and osmosis, I seep into you
and you radiate through

Which There's Not

I like it when people beat me to the punch
I like it when people insist, and are right
I like it when people get the best of me
but you are the only one who does

I think my soul is short one rib
it got plucked, in the night before I was born,
and then slept in the ether a bit,
until it became fashioned
into what I knew
I had missed

- when I kissed you, I knew.
But I'd already known, in a way
seen as self - as deluding myself
but it's not self, it's you
who deludes me so sweet

with the thought that there's anything left
incomplete

The Unadulterated Version

no more precious pledge exists
than when two lovers stand and kiss
before the world they've gathered in
to witness as their lives begin.

for no more precious thing than love
exists within the world of man
or woman - two worlds once,
now only one. Two lives, one life

Amen.

___________________

this is an earlier version of "no more precious pledge"

This Poem Is Running Out

This poem Is running out
out the door -
after itself,
its future self
who's supposed to be
twenty minutes from here
in ten minutes time

I don't think it can catch up to
rhyme

you can look

you can look on the bright side
until you go blind
'til you can't see truth
but you can't see mine

lazy fuck

your ass is like clockwork
bouncing up and down
on my lap
there's a point within which
you surround me
that rapidly recedes and then
rushing back
like the tide on fast-forward
on time-lapse
on stop-motion
no
don't stop
continue
I am almost

Sick of you

So must I go
through every phase
of grief or loss or
whatever it is they say

if I already know
that I am sick of you
do I still have to

assurance

my death will be very assured
and I'll light from this slender branch
with all the poise of a long, silver bird that slips
from rest to the air to the sky to dive, an
underwater arc and back out again with the fish
still alive, jumping in its mouth.
un
-splash

she lost her

she lost her virginity, she
can't remember when
but ever since, she's been
trying to find it again

many ways to put it

I want to insert my circumstance
into your situation

I can't express how much I want to dock my
barge
in your boat slip

I want to slide my hot slippery clause
between your parentheses,

I want to put an exclamatory "!"
at the end of your previously interrogative
sentence

I want to make a particular point
deep
in the center of your meaning

I want to part your gray misty cloudbank
with one beaming keen lance of sun,
or lightning, perhaps
yes, lightning
I think

no. Sun

I want to put my
put my
my

and you

know exactly where it's going

reverse earthquake

you function in my life like a
reverse earthquake
that shakes everything up from the ground
and turns it into buildings
and things that work

Death Hat

I'm wearing my death
hat. The hat I wear only
to funerals. I'm
wearing it now to see
you, to see
if you will see
the significance.
I would not take
my hat off to death, so
you take it off for me,
from my head,
through your hand to the air - sail
the open window, land
in a prepared
furnace

where
it seasons the smoke
of your burning leaves.