All the Poems by Pete Lee

Acknowledgments

2007-07-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Abbey, Above Water, The Acorn, The Advocate, Alba, anabasis, Angelflesh, Anthology, AntiMuse, Antithesis Common, Apollo's Lyre, apt, Aries, Armada, Arnazella, ArtWord Quarterly, Ascent Aspirations, Atticus Review, The Aurorean, Baby Clam Press, Balance, Ball, Barbaric Yawp, Barnwood, Bathtub Gin, Bear Creek Haiku, The Beat, Bellowing Ark, Best of Branches 2004, The Best of Poetic Space 1987-1991, Bewildering Stories, Big Pond Rumours, Big Toe Review, black bough, Black Buzzard Review, Black River Review, Blank Gun Silencer, The Blind Horse Review, The Blind Man's Rainbow, The Blue Mouse, Blue Unicorn, Bold Print, Bolts of Silk, Branches, Brussels Sprout, Cage, California Quarterly, The California State Poetry Society Poetry Letter, Cannedphlegm, The Cathartic, cement squeeze, The Cerebral Catalyst, Chaminade Literary Review, Chance, Chiron Review, Clutch, Coal City Review, Coffeehouse Poets' Quarterly, Compass Rose, Comprepoetica, Concelebratory Shoehorn Review, Contemporary Rhyme, Copious Magazine, Cotyledon, The Country Mouse, Creosote, Cups, Curbside Review, Curriculum Vitae Lit. Sup., Dancing Shadow Review, decomP, Defenestration, Dispatch, Dog River Review, Dogmatika, Double-Entendre, Dream International Quarterly, Dream Scene, Dreams and Nightmares, Drexel Online Journal, Drive-Through, Driver's Side Airbag, Duckabush Journal, Dusty Dog Reviews, Edgz, Ekskalibir Publications, Elegant Thorn Review, elimae, ending the begin, English Journal, eratio, Etcetera, Exit 13, The Externalist, Extra Cheese, Facets, Fauquier Poetry Journal, Feh!, Fell Swoop, Fish Drum, Flipside, Flutter, Foliate Oak, Foolscap, Four Volts, Fourth International Anthology On Paradoxism, freefall, frisson, Frogpond, Full Circle, Future Tense Press, Giants Play Well In The Drizzle, The Glass Cherry, Gortday Review, Grasslands Review, Green Fuse, Green's Magazine, The Greensilk Journal, Groundswell, Hammers, Hard Row to Hoe, Hawaii Review, HazMat Review, HELLP!, The Hiss Quarterly, House Organ, The Houston Literary Review, Ichor, Illuminations, Implosion, In Your Face!, The Indite Circle, Juice, The Kaleidoscope Review, ken*again, Language and Culture.net, The Lantern Review, Leapings, Life-Size Human Skull, Lilliput Review, Lily, Literary Chaos, The Lithic Review, Little Brown Poetry, A Little Poetry, The Long Islander, Los, LSR, Lummox Journal, Lunarosity, Lunch, The Lutheran Digest, MA!, MA:zine, Maelstrom, Main Channel Voices, Manna, Marginalia, Marymark Press, Mastodon Dentist, Mayfly, Medicinal Purposes, Melting Trees Review, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, MetroMania Magazine, Minotaur, Misnomer, Mixed Bag, Mobius, Modern Haiku, mojo risin', Morning Star Literary Journal, Muse of Fire, Muse Portfolio, Mushroom Dreams, Mysterious Wysteria, Nanny Fanny, Nedge, Nerve, Nerve Cowboy, The New Crucible, New Hope International, Northeast, Northwest Literary Forum, NOW HERE NOWHERE, Nuthouse, O.D., Old City Cool, The Old Red Kimono, Onionhead, Opium, The Orange Room Review, Orphic Lute, Other Voices, OutOfOrder, Oyster Boy Review, PandaLoon, Parting Gifts, pawpars, The Penny Dreadful Review, Perigee, Perimeter, The Pinehurst Journal, Pink Cadillac, Pitchfork, Plainsongs, The Plastic Tower, Poems-For-All, Poesy, Poetalk, poeticdiversity, Poetic Space, Poetpourri, Poetry Bone, Poetry Depth Quarterly, Poetry Flash, Poetry Repair Shop, Poetry Super Highway, The Poet's Attic, The Poet's Page, poetz.com, Poked With Sticks, Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Prairie Dog, Prism Quarterly, Prose Toad, Psychopoetica, Puckerbrush Review, Quill & Ink, The Ragged Edge, Rambunctious Review, The Raspberry Reader, Raw Nervz Haiku, Reflections, Reptiles of the Mind, reuben's kincaid, Rhapsoidia, Right Hand Pointing, Riverrun, The Rockford Review, Romantic Outsider, The Rose & Thorn, Rusty Scupper, Sage of Consciousness, Sakana, The Same, San Fernando Poetry Journal, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Score, Secrets From The Orange Couch, Seems, Shadows, Shampoo, Ship of Fools, Short Fuse, The Sidewalk's End, Silent Treatment, The Silhouette, Simply Haiku, 63 Channels, Skylark, Slate & Style, Slow Trains, Slugfest Ltd., Small Brushes, Small Pond, The Smoking Poet, Snakeskin, Snow Monkey, SomeKinda Publications, South Ash Press, Southern Bumblebee, SPAM: Sacramento Poetry Art & Music, Spunk, Static Movement, Strange Road, Studio One, Suffusion, Sulphur & Sawdust, Syncopated City, Tacenda, Talking Raven, Talus and Scree, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, Tampa Bay Review, TAPJoE, THEMA, Thick with Conviction, Thieves Jargon, The 13th Warrior Review, Thorny Locust, Thrust, Tight, Tightrope, Timber Creek Review, tinywords, Tomorrow Magazine, Tower, Tsunami, Turk Magazine, 24-7, Twisted Savage, Two-Ton Santa, Two Twenty-four Poetry Quarterly, Umbrella, Umbriate, Under The Volcano, The Underwood Review, Unfettered Verse, The Unknown Writer, Unlikely Stories, The Unrorean, Veins, Verandah, Verse Libre Quarterly, The Verse Marauder, Viet Nam Generation, Voices in Wartime, Voicings from the High Country, Void Magazine, Voiding the Void, Vol. No., Voodoo Beat, Vowel Movement, Wanderings, Wavelength, White Crow, Wild Violet, Willow Lake Press, Winamop, Wind, The Windless Orchard, Wooden Head Review, Word Riot, Words Words Words, WordWrights!, Writers' Journal, Xenophilia, xib, Ya'Sou!, Zillah, Zygote In My Coffee.

All the Poems

2007-07-09T04:54:00.000-07:00

after the long hike
boots lying on the floor
with their tongues hanging out

air show: a baby
carriage parked on the tarmac,
next to the bomber

Among his effects,
an unfinished manuscript:
the story of his life.

the anorexic
walking slightly bent-over:
her skull leads the way

behind a veil of fog
only the sun can lift:
the faithful moon

blood bank wastebasket
overflowing with empty
tomato juice cans

cabin builders break
for lunch . . . nearby woodpecker
keeps hammering away

the cat person
and the dog person:
feuding again

chatty Cathy
on her deathbed:
boring the priest

cold front
I turn around
cold back

cute mom nursing --
I stare for a second
too long

desert funeral --
mourners choke on dust
in the wind

Dignity intact
above all these Christmas lights,
the unblinking moon.

dozens of egrets
patrol in ragged columns
in the tractor's wake

Dream of summer . . . wake
to scritch of leafless branches
mocking cricket's song.

drunken poet
admires his printed works:
shelf-esteem

during a quake update
an aftershock
knocks over the TV

even a mile away
the chainsaw's whine bites
into this haiku

family album
the living and the dead
frolic together

first cup of coffee
at the beach house --
fog starting to lift

first of April
the cat wants out
no he doesn't

flying fish
baptized again
and again

foghorn...
gulls

friend or foe?
the garter snake confronts
my walking stick

from van to courthouse
the prisoner walks
in the April sun

gentle breeze
not quite ringing
the bluebells

grazing in the hills
a scattered herd
of cloud shadows

heavy gusts --
the dog-shaped weather vane
chases its tail

her back to me
she undresses in the light
of the harvest moon

high desert sunset:
schizoid masterwork
in day room pastels

hiking trail crowded
with fugitives from L.A.
wearing their freeway faces

I apologize
for kissing you that way --
a slip of the tongue

in the welfare line
counting twenty torn earlobes
on eighteen women

insomnia:
fridge hum.
cat wheeze.

late October
leaves whispering
it's time to let go

leaving Tom and Sue's
I head into the forest
to learn the trees' names

like obscure poets,
winter elms: their bony hands
clawing at the sky

listen . . . feel the sky
as leaves dance open
in the murmuring light

little flashes --
reading haiku by candlelight
during the thunderstorm

long victory speech --
ice in a champagne bucket
melts in the hot air

mockingbird mimics
starlings mimicking mocking-
bird mimicking them

Monet
in his private garden
and vice versa

my father dusts
my mother's ashes

neuromom
neurodad
neurosis

new mirror --
I carefully
hang myself

one lousy haiku --
the whole of my output since
you darkened my door

our wedding portrait:
getting younger
and younger

passing between them --
two deaf people conversing
with their hands -- I duck

passing cargo train --
traveling exhibition
of graffiti art

passing the revival tent
the brook speaks in tongues

Prozacquiescent,
almost smiling: let those bi-
polar ice caps slide.

s h a d o w s f i l l i n t h e l e t t e r s

l e f t b y t h r e e s e t s o f t r a c k s

c r o s s i n g a s t r e t c h o f s n o w

a sign posted
on Cemetery Way:
ROAD ENDS AHEAD

smoking on the porch
how perfect everything is
except that we die

spooning
after we fork

still a knockout --
the gray hairs not quite at home
on her pretty head

swoosh
one less mouse
owls don't leave ransom notes

symmetry:
military
cemetery

there:
here
to a "t"

This moon in daytime
and my chances with you:
faint, but there.

A throng of mourners
leaves the cemetery . . . One
by one, they'll be back.

tropical storm
boats bumping and grinding
in their slips

the twister leaves
the weather vane
pointing to itself

uh-oh
we'll talk later
here come the extroverts

under a full moon
wavelets lapping the shore
( g ) l i s t e n

Up since 2 a.m. --
does the world need a bath
or do my eyeballs?

vegans coming over --
my wife takes down and hides
my trophy bass

We walk silently
through the clear-cut,
stumped for words.

winter
no birds
flu

sugar high 'ku

do i want candy?
i ask my pez dispenser...
head up, then down: yes.

microwave popcorn haiku

pop. pop. pop, pop, pop,
poppoppoppoppoppoppop
pop, pop, pop. pop. pop.

admiring the enemy

plowing through the
American Poetry Review
I see a poem titled
"Admiring the Enemy"

and very briefly
my mind reads
"Enduring the Academy"

After

She steps into her bra,
removes her panties

from his head.
After,

alone in the shower,
he feels oddly naked.

Alcoholic

Is the glass half-full
or half-empty? Either way,
it's time to fill it again.

alone in the break room

he furtively unzips
and recycles 8 ounces
of the boss's decaf

no raise again
but he's discovered
a solution

as it were

...and don't feed the rocks

the guide book to the place
I've picked to go for my
yearly vacation advises
photographers to "bring
along some lens filters
to make the sky show up"

now I'm concerned...
I mean the sky's so big,
what does one do with it
after it's been coaxed from
its hideout with offerings
of camera accessories?

And He's The Articulate One

On the radio talk show,
a CHP spokesman offers
the following advice
to host and listeners on
the topic of road rage:
"Remember that when
you're behind the wheel,
especially at high speed,
your safest response
is to just walk away."

And Nothing

And nothing is straight or flat,
and nothing is in rows,
and the creek is babbling,
and everything is decaying
and shooting up green from itself,
and nothing has perfect corners,
and everything's lying askew
as I am lying on this rock,
and the creek is lying
about everything,
babbling on and on,
and nothing about this creek
is on the level...
and nothing is wasted,
nothing is clean.

Andy Kaufman

The silent drum
he listened to
eventually
deafened them --

their own irate
voices left them
too hoarse
to continue --

until at last
only he heard,
and only
the drum spoke.

animal religion

the wading blue heron
bows its head repeatedly
to the fish-god

whereas the osprey
from its far greater height
proves even more reverent

in both cases
the fishes themselves
hardly have time to pray

another one bites the dust

the sun isn't glorified enough
it glares at me through the window
until I write a poem about it
lest I end up like that (anonymous)
fellow whose job application passed
across my desk earlier today --
reason for leaving: "I was fried"

Anthropomorphic

In the merry-
go-round chase
of dog-eat-dog,
the dog's tail
wins by a nose:
It's a very
human race.

arts and sciences

700,000,000,000
x186,000
x60x60x24x365
=how many
miles away
the farthest
thing we've
ever found
is from us,
it's said -- but
do they go
by miles on
that end?
maybe it's half
a squark or
two scrunches
to them -- like the
drive between
hollywood and
west hollywood --
or as far as the
nearest cine-
plex, where
math can't
move the pop-
corn, only the
stars can.

as opposed to nothing

I've got my legal addictive stimulant
and my other legal addictive stimulant
I've got my robe and slippers and cat
and my Living Desert cap with the cougar
on it and the bill turned towards the back
I've got my notebook and pen and some inspiration
in the form of a shelf and a half of the greats
I've got my backup cap and my current
Poet's Market I've got my stamps and my
envelopes and plenty of evidence that
I can do this in the form of another shelf
and a half of not-so-greats every one
of them with my work somewhere in it
I've got my postcards and my return address labels
I've got a new English version of the Tao Te Ching
for focus and insight and a new orange highlighter
I've got my lighter and ashtray and typewriter
and chair and desk and lamp and $5
reading glasses from Wal-Mart in a $20 case
from Levenger that I received Christmas last
I had a computer and I'll get another one soon
I've got my typing paper and my trusty wastebasket
and a job with regular hours and an outside
interest or two so as not to implode and
end up writing poems about nothing
but poems and poets and poetry and how I
can't seem to write today but they aren't
helping at the moment and I know a near-great
poet said "write anything as opposed to nothing"
but the one thing I don't have today is a poem
that my wastebasket will quit gaping at

Assimilation

You don't need to
lay siege to castles,

the tide will tell you:
just water them down.

At Totem Bight State Park

near Ketchikan, Alaska,
the "interpretive guide" got
no more than 30 seconds
into what we later heard

turned out to be a nonstop
two-hour explanation of what
each totem pole means,
before Kelly and I wandered

off together along the trail and
away from the crowd
to consider untouched trees,
snowcapped ranges, moraines.

We hadn't come all the way
to Alaska to see what people made --
we'd come to see that which was
crafted by greater hands.

attendance record

Alex and I used to get stoned
every day after class
he had a perfect attendance
record going at school
stretching back to junior high

one day Alex killed a teacher
with a diver's knife
promptly following biology lab
then he went home and dug out
a shotgun from his father's closet
and lay in wait for his parents
to get home from work
they arrived one at a time

I think of Alex up in the pen
and wonder if maybe he had
taken a day off now and then...

but there's no denying the fact
that between school and the penal system,
Alex's record is intact.

August 27, 1992

"You can work on the life,
or you can work on the work."
Charles Olson

After I'd given her
my latest chapbook
manuscript to read,

she called, said
she had a writerly
question for me,

wanted to meet me
at the coffeehouse.
I told her I'd be there

well before I should've
known I'd actually
be able to,

wrestling in the mud
as I was with some
stubborn stanza.

I finally walked in
an hour late, no
more, spotted her,

sat down, and she
uttered the last
six words

she ever said to me:
Why don't you
date your poems?"

auto-drip hell

at
five o'
clock

on Monday
morning

the Chinese
water
torture's
got nothing

on a
slow

coffee

maker

autumn leaves

what spring, then
summer, too, left

apt to fall
for winter.

Bearing the Slogan

The pale,
tired-looking,
unsmiling woman
with the three
little kids is
wearing a
T-shirt bearing
the slogan:
"Tanned,
Rested, and
Ready!"

the beauty that drives us mad

the beauty that drives us mad
is found not only in the eyes
and hair of a magnificent girl
but in two ants pulling an apple seed
in opposing directions it is found

in the wheel of a common pigeon
above a strip mall and in the smoke
from a freight truck clearing its head
beauty is found in death and therefore
old men invite young men to war

beauty is what we refuse to see
as we struggle for safer lives
after all the suburban tracts
are crowded with blind seers
sharing walls in cul-de-sacs

beauty leaves us unsheltered unprepared
we climb onto the rooftops to shout it
to the world and are there struck dumb
for the rest of our lives by the beauty
that worlds cannot describe

so it is that we return to ground
to stare silently at our feet
until it becomes unbearable
than we stare up at the sky
until that becomes unbearable too

and that's when we go mad
or we go blind.

big-city cops

drive over potholes
and their 'cuffs jiggle
breathe smog through
iron-pumped lungs
cradle their children
like shotguns
and when they unwind
inside their clubs
rubbing each other's
crew cuts for luck
before the night's ugly
woman contest begins
they're drunk enough
to tell you in detail
just what they'd do
to save the planet --
if only they could
get their hands
on enough ammo

Binary Division

An idle Zero stares
open-mouthed

at the swiftly
passing troop

of tight-lipped,
single-minded Ones.

a bitter-seeming man

if you come upon
a bitter-seeming man
just remember
he could be nursing
a half-dozen cold sores
along his inner lip
that'll erupt only
if he smiles

after all
as William James said
"the bird doesn't sing
because it's happy
the bird is happy
because it sings"

but remember also
that the chances
are every bit as good
that the bitter-seeming
man is simply
"one of those
insufferable pricks"

Blake's Symmetry

Whether it's a sparrow
landing on a rock

or vice versa,
an impression's made.

Blue

It's what: a sky, an ocean
punctuated by azure whales,
all the language that's left you,

a part of the blues, past tense
of blow, wordplay, what you
just now did with your nose,

what you woke up to
find she did to this town,
and you to your chance.

bonsai

to own a whole forest of them
little souls with lips parted
slightly in readiness
to sing

to move from one
to another clutching shears
and tiny wires

to have a silent hobby

born to pun

refrigerators
run in my family.

the boss is forever

telling us we're prose,
and that we should behave
like prose.

the brown-noser

so little hinges
on

a total brown
noser

filled with self
loathing

beside the black
limo.

Bud

(from Time magazine, 8/10/92)

few men have a more intimate
understanding of the doomsday scenario
than Bernard T. Gallagher
known to his friends as Bud
he was a Strategic Ar Command pilot
a robust 70 years old
he wears a white cowboy hat
drives a hot-pink '65 Mustang convertible
and is an unabashed patriot
as an "atomic cloud sampler"
he flew through the billowing mushrooms
of 13 U.S. nuclear blasts
in 1952 and 1953
to measure the radiation passing through him
he swallowed an X-ray plate
coated with Vaseline and suspended
by a string that hung out of his mouth
during the flight

and is an unabashed patriot.

bulimic

a Lee Press-On nail
afloat on a pink
pile of chewed shrimp
and bile --
Daddy's little girl

the bureaucrat

swats a mosquito
as if it were nothing more
than a human being

calm people

their eyes are old ponds
in and out
of which turtles drift
the surfaces are flecked
with the backs of frogs
small islands in the sun

their voices
roll away like hills
to reach the Great Plains
of their silences

they pilot
they waitress
they say hi
they wear clothes
they lecture
they own property
they are sad
they are not very sad

their ears are shaped like harps

I want to be like them
I want to die
sort of

Carcinogens

There being so many,
and more all the time,

at some point we must
become saturated...

Let the world be advised
against consuming us.

Channeling

Last night it was the plague:
the spiky fevers, body aches,

black swollen tongue, slow
horrific death that took up

to half of Europe's population
in the 1300s and lives on, in,

among other places, the U.S.,
the pneumonic kind that eats

away the tissues of the lungs...
This morning I woke up rough,

joints creaking, definite chill
with the fire long burned out,

mouth the cat might've sprayed
directly into, middle-aged early

riser's hack, dreams of mayhem
and delirium a body memory

away...in other words, a normal
Monday? And, as I caught my-

self, thought: no more late-night
History Channeling for me.

Claws

The light's gone weird
at midday, in midsummer:

those green pomegranates
might have been painted

on the branch that bends
to set down the wine-

red ones, concerned mother
captured in stop-action;

a single leaf scuttles
across the grass, yellow

crab on a green beach;
an elm has shot straight up

from the ground and burst
into a display of leaves...

Autumn must be calling:
long-distance to be sure

but as sure as gravity,
will brown and bring down

to a gone-brown beach
a murder of crabs fleeing

the wind, seeking safety
in each other's claws.

cleaning out the fridge

furry green and
orange melon balls
met and melded

like star-crossed
orgy-lovers or a
still life of op-

posing armies
after the game...
Matthew Brady's

prints in a
lemon pie
nearby.

Closet

Summer clothes
toward the left,
winter clothes
toward the right:
the hanger heads
are tick marks
on a graph.
Autumn appears
uneventful.
We shall sweat
or freeze.

Coffee, I Love You.

I love waking up
to your fragrance
pouring from my 12-cup
timer-activated auto-drip,
like a woman who has
rolled naked down a dirt hill
soaking wet. You vie with
cigarettes for my affections,
occasionally pulling ahead.
You are so hot, strong,
and black, like the girl
who came to my apartment
when I was 20 and gave me
a massage when I was in bed
with the flu and had
already missed three days
of work at the
coffee distributing company
on 7th St. in L.A. where
she and I worked at the time.
You're my girl
now, though, coffee,
that brief fling not amounting
to a hill of beans. I love you
even when you make me angry,
finding myself shouting
into the telephone about
the timely processing of deposits
received by my credit union via
the U.S. mail... Even
when you keep me up
half the night before the
first day at my new job --
cursing you, cursing my need
for your mind-changing effects
since I quit the sauce --
coffee, I love you still.

coffeehouse metaphysics

I speak to her in paragraphs
no words pass between us

she slaps my face hard
without lifting a finger

I think oh yes
send me another gift

like this mental strawberry
in the shape of a perfect hand

collateral damage

the rescue worker
shines his flashlight
into the "command bunker"

where 500 children and
women and old men
were sleeping when...

their eyeholes pull and suck
at the light: a thousand
points of darkness

Coma

Don't touch that dial,
those tubes. Do not
resuscitate and do
not unsuscitate. Let
me float in the calm
ocean in my boat,

on my back, my face
undarkened by any sail,
untouched by any wind,
kissed only by the un-
shrouded sun. Let me
be, let me read this

wordless poem again
and again, aloud. Listen
closely to my silence,
watch my unmoving lips:
Drop that syringe, Doctor,
and set those paddles down.

Communion

I am a creature of habit
The TV Guide is my Bible
I wear my robe like a cleric's
In my slippers I shuffle around
Like Jesus Christ in leg irons
I take communion: chips 'n' beer

The girl next door's in a rut
I drilled a hole in the wall we share
I look in on her like I'm God
Sometimes when her boyfriend sins w/ her
I imagine she's facing Mecca
I take communion: chips 'n' beer

Pontius Pilate may become a series
The girl next door bears her boyfriend's
Weight on her back like a wooden cross
Turning up the volume on the Ten Advertisements
I slouch toward the refrigerator where
I take communion: chips 'n' beer

Cool World

I want to be the air
in your central
air conditioning
I want to drift up
and down along you
as you sleep

I want to be the sun
spilling in between
the slats of your shutters
I want to land
silent and weightless
on your naked breasts

I want to be the dust
motes spiraling
in those bars of sunlight
falling lazily one
by one
making very sure
you're covered

I want to be the
open front door
of the house
you cool the world with.

coyote

rock shade steps
from rock shade
rock flowing sound-
less as a thought that

cricket up my pajama sleeve

triggers the squish reflex
and hark,

all night my armpit sings
in its sleep.

Darwin's Last Stand

I.
There's a TV commercial
that shows people driving
blindfolded; along the
bottom of the screen is the
caveat, "THIS IS NOT REAL.
DON'T TRY IT."

II.
Sign in a campground
restroom: "PLEASE DO NOT
CLEAN FISH IN TOILET"

Dead Street Poet

No more glowing
ashes cascading
from hand-rolled
cigarettes past
your mask-like
beard only to
burn more holes
in the thrift-shop
T-shirt stretched
skin-tight across
your anomalously
protruding belly as
you work your all-
night, crystal
meth-inspired jaw.
No more brilliance.
No more locus of light.

Dear John

Like the ozone layer,
Gone: You can't see her
But you know she's not there.

Death II

Not necessarily the Grim Reaper...
Definitely the International Harvester.

deaths of the famous: a work-in-progress

Pliny the Elder suffocated in the gas from Vesuvius
Nelson Rockefeller died doing the (wild) thing he loved most

Charlie Parker's death at 34 was caused by three diseases
Freud passed away at 83 with half a face

Princess Diana (scrambled) end is a car spin
and we all know how Elvis left the building (or didn't)

Hoffa & Dean & Fixx were all named Jim or Jimmy or James
Holly & Valens & the Big Bopper shared a ride on a plane

Jack Kerouac was discovered hugging the porcelain
some still say Mama Cass was trying to shove one more morsel in

Joplin & Hendrix & Morrison were hauled off for druggenness
Amelia Earhart got caught spying on the Japanese

Hermann Goering crushed a vial between his teeth
Hemingway went hunting for the man behind the myth

Van Gogh's last words were "there is no end to sorrow"
he suffered from epilepsy & lead poisoning & schizophrenia

Christopher Marlowe was daggered through the eye into the brain
Anonymous was just eighteen lines into a very long poem when

a deer mouse hanging

still alive by its
mouth from the
treble hook left
baited with
cheese at the end
of the line dangling
from a pole propped
outside the cabin
after a long day's
fruitless angling becomes
the bait of a new dawn.

Denial

The dust bunny
of a minor worry
grows unmolested

behind the yellow
clothes dryer
of a cheerful mind.

Desert Sky

The moon races
across the stage --
nerves racked
by the presence
of heckling coyotes --
while the stars fidget
as restlessly as angels
in their first school play,
awaiting the entrance
of the swaggering sun.

The Diesel Mechanic

First came the tremors,
which lasted for ten years,

then the fumes finally killed him
and he shuddered to a halt.

They put him in a meat wagon.
Later, they installed him in a hearse

and drove him to Eternal Park,
overlooking the freeway.

And there he idles,
ignition off.

dilemma

bad vodka
is better
than a bad
girlfriend

but it's
also better
with one

direction

she loves me
she loves me not

one way or
the other

i still have a
poem to finish

Discovery Channel Shark Marathon

Three Sharks and a Baby
The Great White's Hope
Scent of a Human
The Man Without a Face
Shark Treatment
The Hammerheadmistress
Das Boot In Der Stomach
Ray Sharkey: A Retrospective
Sand Sharks of Iwo Jima
Mako's Greatest Roles
The Blood Also Rises
Legless In Seattle
Gunga Fin

Doctor to the Poets

Wraps my elbow,
prescribes a smaller
coffee mug.

"Next!"

Dr. Vodka

I pour your clarity
from bottle to glass,
glass to throat,

and after a long session
all my new friends say
they can see through me.

This is called transference.

driving through the mountains

Sunday evening
Mercedes on my ass
visible in the rearview
of my elderly pickup
guy in a necktie behind
the wheel of the Mercedes
sixty dollar haircut
aviator sunglasses
in a big serious hurry
to get to the next town north --

someplace with a bank
a Holiday Inn
some people to cheat --

he can see I got nothin'
but this old truck, and plenty
of lane in front of me
on this two-lane secondary
driving against bumper-to-bumper
weekend warriors shortcutting
back south to their cities

I slow down to forty-five
to make sure he don't miss nothin'
as we parallel a rich sunset
in a land of prosperous ospreys
fat bobcats, self-made crows
coyotes wearing fur coats

ear to ear station

to station one
man (radio)
band he has
no idea whether
the stereo in his
car works since he re-
quires
no music outside
of the veritable
symphony in his head

Edges

They say to see wildlife,
watch the edges -- the

margins, the boundaries
between meadow and

forest, farm field
and hedgerow, between

scrub and rock,
hill and horizon,

river and river-
bank. And so all

my life I've watched
the edges: and the odd

thing is, I can't recall
ever being rewarded

with a sighting. Not
that I haven't seen

plenty of wildlife, but
that none has been

where one kind of place
meets another kind

of place. It's always
been more surprising

than that, always some-
place I didn't expect.

So I think when I
finally see my death,

that once-in-a-lifetime
glimpse, I'll be searching

elsewhere and will spot it
in the corner of my eye --

in the middle of a wide river
or a boundless field.

elegy for my earning power

looking down
the business

end of the arts,
I shot myself

in the (variable)
foot.

my aim was poor:
bull's-eye.

Energy Drinks

Red Bull, Rock Star, Double Shot, Amp
(I saw a man killed by a flying body part):

how I wish they had made them
when I was in the army (a leg

smoldering in its boot) and stood watch
over a sleeping platoon...except that I sat,

my back against a banyan tree,
observing nothing (his eyes lightly shut,

hair on fire) but the backs of my eyelids --
not that there was anything much

I could have done but (had he dreamed
the one-time dream of dying?) scream

"Incoming!" and at least seen him
come awake before... I would have

gladly accepted the extra burden
of an Alice pack full of them,

not to be lying here tonight: an addict
with eyes that refuse to close.

The Essential Shakespeare

All the world's a stage
And then it's curtains.

Europe bores me

Europe bores me and people
save their whole lives to go
last night the stars bored me
that was a first

I remember Carl Rogers
or Abraham Maslow or one
of those Great Bores saying
that to be a real grownup you
have to get this oceanic feeling

when you look at the ocean
or the stars and realize how
small you are in comparison
to the universe blah blah blah

but somehow the universe moved
inside me and now I'm nowhere
near the grownup I used to be
bored by the stars and retaining
water like a sonofabitch

as if I'd scrimped for decades
for the privilege
of flying across myself

evaluate this

my boss says I
don't respond well
to criticism

and that at
times I can be
a little childish

but I say
I'm rubber
and he's glue

exurban sprawl

everyone's
moving
out

where
nobody
lives

eyes alight with visions of (illegal) wildflowers

"you think they lionize me now
just wait till I'm dead"
Bukowski (near death) said
and sure enough soon after he died
I heard him described on the TV
news(!) as one of "the nine great
poets of the 20th century" --
not even "the nine great American
poets" because there was Neruda, et al.

what a hoot Buk would've had at this
he whose work appeared alongside ours
in some of the trashiest corner-stapled
mimeo rags under the sun for years
and years while the critics didn't so much
savage his (torrential) output as utterly
fail to see its potential for the usual
codifying in universities filled with dark
tyrannies of language after all didn't
he have not the slightest use
for schools yet those mimeo rags like
cracks in the quadrangle kept the brightest
eyes alight with visions of (illegal) wildflowers

Fashion

The leader's
who-

ever's the
least un-

like every-
one else

first.

$57,000 a foot

to dig the first six
miles of the planned
23-mile subway

system under L.A.
invites a poem...
but you know it

will be one of those
dirty underground
poems.

Finders Keepers

The packrats are as thick as thieves
up here in the desert hills
and as furtive, quick,

slim shadows in broad daylight,
but their hideouts give them away --
especially those strong or lucky enough

to horn in on or inherit
turf near a forsaken mine claim: Their digs over-
flow, not with the usual "camouflage" of twigs and pebbles,

but with bits of real tin (albeit
long rusted); bent bottle caps; and the occasional
belt buckle or gem in the rough... Just three words

have these ones for the aspiring
real estate magnate, prospector, and packrat --
and they're all location.

First Date

I belch my heart up onto the table.
Oh, excuse me! I say, all embarrassed.
Then -- like coping with spaghetti -- some quick
work with the silver, and I suck back up
the noodle-like veins that hang past my chin.
Has something come between us? The waiter
arrives. "Which wine is it that's good with red
meat?" my date asks, trying to save the day.
I knew she liked me...now I know how much.

The Fish Itself

So here I am, one of those
whose snapshot of himself

at 12 seems tragic, 35
years later. If only because

that massive grin can
still be duplicated

after a similarly
successful day

on some pond, or lake,
or creek, or river,

or ocean I've conquered --
whereas the eyes --

no, actually the eyes
look much the same, too,

at least in contrast
to those of the fish

I hoist. No, the tragedy
is in the much more

subtle, yet unmistakable,
grin of the fish itself.

Fish/Poem

This poem
is a fish:

no trophy,
but the line

of my talent
is thin --

making for
a good fight.

5 a.m.

the bulb in my downcast
reading lamp (just switched
on), reflected in the first cup
of morning coffee, indicates
that the wattage is 09

I sip at it, and it is as if I am
being electrocuted: but very slowly

Flight of the Bumblebee

Since watching -- when I should have been
listening to, I suppose -- the great pianist

in action, I now see how my own hands
are butterflies, how the keyboard is a field

of wildflowers...or how my hands are lazing
moths, roused to a kind of Kitty Hawk-

like flight-spasm in auto-reaction
to some sort of dust-up in their midst --

only to land an inch from takeoff, tensed
as spiders in a pair of just-brushed webs.

Certain, meanwhile, that each such encounter
is placed before me for that bit of perspective

to be gained from it later, that unheard
music can become a silent backdrop

for tomorrow’s shadow play or fast dance
performed on all ten nervous legs,

I can see the shade drawn between my days
as a rainbow furled to the sound of Taps.

for a lightweight

with your stony gaze
and your gravelly voice
and your mind like a steel trap
and your iron will
and your big brass cojones
and your concrete logic
and your weighty pronouncements

it's a wonder
you're able nevertheless
to walk on water

For Deora Bodley

(20 years old, forever)

In honor of one
of the passengers
on United Flight 93

that went down
in Pennsylvania
on its way to --

well, we may never
know where, probably
to be flown in-

to the Capitol Dome
and those bickering
on our behalf inside,

I rent and
watch what I've read
was her favorite

video. And though
it's only Mallrats --
nothing much

to nourish the spirit,
it does somehow
nourish mine.

For Kelly

I never knew
my place in this
wilderness of mirrors

until I found
one window.

found: dictionary page headings

A-bomb * abracadabra
affirmative action * Afrikaner
afterglow * Agent Orange
amorous * ampicillin
anchorperson * android
animal husbandry * anniversary
anthropologist * Antichrist
Arkansas * armpit
assault rifle * assisted suicide
baby-sit * backhand
backwoods * bad hair day
ballistic missile * banana republic
Bible Belt * Big Bang
bimbo * bioavailability
boat hook * body piercing
boss * bottom feeder
buffet * bulimia
buxom * BYOB
captive audience * car bomb
C-clamp * celibacy
celibate * cementation
cloud nine * cluster bomb
come-hither * command-driven
commuter tax * compassion fatigue
confusion * Congress
creationist * credulous
crowd control * cruise missile
dagger * damage control
darling * date rape
defecate * defense mechanism
demolition derby * Denali National Park
denazify * dental hygienist
devil's-food cake * diabetic coma
dime bag * dinner
double entendre * douchebag
drive-by * drop-dead
enthusiastic * entry-level
executive privilege * exhibitionism
fair sex * fallacy
family values * fantasyland
fart * fast food
fat cat * Faustian
Federal Bureau of Investigation * feel-good
fidelity * Fifth Amendment
fire sale * first strike
flag rank * flapdoodle
flying saucer * FOIA
forward thinking * Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
fulminate * fundamentalism
gab * gag
gangsta rap * gargle
gene pool * Generation X
giantism * gigolo
glib * glossolalia
gobbledygook * Gog and Magog
Gulf War * gun-shy
guru * gynecologist
half-drunk * halo effect
hand puppet * hanky-panky
hard science * Harmonic Convergence
he/she * heterosexual
high-minded * Hillary, Sir Edmund
hole-in-one * Holy Grail
hooker * hopsack
human nature * Humpty Dumpty
individualist * industrial arts
jiggery-pokery * jock itch
justice * kangaroo
kazoo * keester
kiloton * kingdom come
Klansman * knight-errant
lap dance * Lassen Volcanic National Park
lavatory * lawyering
lay * lazy Susan
leer * legal age
legionnaire * lemming
lieutenant colonel * life sentence
lingerie * liposuction
logic bomb * Lolita
loose cannon * Los Alamos
Los Angeleno * lotus eater
lush * lyric poet
makeshift * male
melatonin * memoirist
natural gas * navy bean
no-frills * non-Aryan
safe sex * salami
same-sex * San Francisco
saran * sashay
Saturday-night special * savings and loan association
scar tissue * Schick
scofflaw * scot-free
seat-of-the-pants * secondary sex characteristic
secretary * seduce
see * segregate
shitkicker * shoeshine
stink * St. Lawrence Seaway
strong-arm * stub
succotash * suffering
swimwear * swivel chair
tart * tattoo
taxpayer * teardrop
untruth * update
utterance * Uzi
vagrant * value-added tax
vibrator * victimless crime
World Bank * worry beads
zero population growth * zipper

Four A.M.

I think I like this hour
because it's like a womb,

or maybe a tomb...no, a cocoon
on the underside of a leaf,

in silk surroundings, is where
I dwell until the morning blooms

and the sun shoves its way in,
offering wings -- not taking

no for an answer, either --
and a sky full of butterflies

full of yes, of blather and cloy
over fields of blinding green: under

here, where no wing-beat changes
the weather of my world.

fourteen love projects

1. the ball cap of the world keeps sliding over my eyes
2. Victoria has a very proper name
3. my fingers listen to her in ten different tongues
4. I shall now predict project #5 in a prayer to aliens
5. the prayer comes false. c'est la vie, Homo sapiens!
6. ready neither to play ball nor to quench my eyes' thirst
7. her smile is like a simile
8. next to her, my toes are clenched and breathless
9. the proper name for my tongue's place is Victoria
10. the wet concrete of love flows towards the abstract...
11. now tell me why you killed Victoria
12. because she reversed her usual associative qualities?
13. she could be as abrupt as the buzzer on a game show
14. I sought victory...and I am Victoria's

Frequent Flyers

Business travel
being what it is

today, no wonder
birds are prone

to the occasional
migrate headache.

From the Dictionary of Occupational Titles

back washer
baller
beater (boot & shoe)
bed operator
belly roller
blade boner
blind hooker
boner
bosom presser
bottom-pounder
butt polisher
dukey rider
fur blower
hardener (oils & grease)
hardness tester
head boner
impregnator
layboy tender
mounter I
mounter II
mounter (furniture)
necker
reamer
ripper (garment)
rubbing-bed operator
shaft sinker
stiffener
stringer-up
stripper, latex
tearer (garment)
tip inserter
tip-length checker
top screw
vibrator-equipment tester

frozen in time

the stone age hunter
awakens from a mad dream
of computer and jet plane

he shakes his head violently
then grunts as he voids his bowel
against a glacier

10,000 years later
the well-preserved fecal specimen
is flown across the world

to be carbon-dated
and digitally analyzed
by orphans sniffing for home

the funeral bells

tolling
dozens
of miles
away

coincide
with
a slight
blanching

and
barely
perceptible
bloom-

puckering
collective
cringe
among

the flowers
at the
flower
farm....

Genealogy

It's snowing at the zoo,
and every tropical creature
gazing skyward has your eyes.

A Gift of Modern Art

Like a book to a blind man,
it looks just fine upside down.

It looks even better sideways.
And right side up? Well,

I don't know art, but...
I don't know art, but...

And right side up? Well,
it looks even better sideways.

It looks just fine upside down,
like a book to a blind man.

Girlfriend

You are a range of mountains.
I am at your feet, looking up,
my back to a hundred miles of desert.
Beyond you may be a hundred more, or a thousand.
I will take my sweet time ascending you.
Near your summit I will turn
and look, once, at where I have been.
Then I will find shelter in your near face,
blind myself, and chop off my feet.

Given

"Because the earth is spinning, the wind curves."
When I die of complications from having been

alive, if I must go slowly, I want my slow going to
signify something. I want there to be a given

I can fit all suffering and sorrow into: I, who
spent myself seeking one. And if I simply roll

over and disappear, I want the truth to bend
around the shadow of an object at rest.

Giving Plasma

A crucifix hanging
on the wall of the cell
separator unit
says it all.

A car running over
a fire hydrant
with predictable
results, on the TV
that hangs from the
wall of the cell
separator unit
says it all.

My signature
on the form proclaiming
medicine to be
"an inexact science,"
which hangs from the
clipboard now hanging
on the wall of the cell
separator unit
says it all.

I myself hang
from the fourth wall.
Leaning over
the kidney-shaped pan, I
feel a sudden urge
to reiterate....

good news and bad news

the good news about hell:
wet spots don't last
junk mail arrives in ashes

the bad news about hell:
too many religious fanatics
and militant non-smokers

great-uncle

first his stories disappeared
in my great-aunt's Baptist rage --
how she looked forward (when
he was alive) to sending them
the way of the wicked
Old West they were set in --

then, much later, his obituary
yellowed to (unreadable)
and was peeled from the album --
leaving only the hieroglyphics
of a travel piece
from the other side.

Groom 'n' Clean

Running my hands through my hair,
one hand slips and enters my thoughts.

My thoughts feel like fish guts. Steam
rises from them as in a freeze --

but aren't fish cold-blooded? I pull
an answer up from the muck: so

there's no steam rising like an answer
from my fish-gut thoughts. Just a man

running a hand through his head,
dragging a skeleton comb.

Grunt

Lose the hair
Lose the girl
Lose the clothes
Lose the pounds
Lose the walk
Lose the talk
Lose the grin
Lose the identity
Lose the innocence
Lose the friends
Lose the humanity
Lose the heart
Lose the mind
Lose the arm
Lose the leg
Lose the country
Lose the war.

habeus corpus

all the poets and jesters
are long gone from the courts

being the unacknowledged
defendants of the world

all our lawyers had to present
was a writ in water

so most of us will die before we're due
worded and sentenced to death

the penalty for innocence
stubbornly maintained.

Half-Bad

Those in the basement
of Heaven would rest
in somewhat more peace,

but for the half-hearted
screams that drift up
from the penthouse of Hell.

hawk

the wind skimming
off the edges
of the hawk's wing
makes a dull hum

as if the hawk
were a sailor
alone at sea

the hawk dives and
the hum sharpens
to a high scream

then the heavy
beating of wings
as the hawk drags
the rabbit off

and the hawk hears
the rabbit's heart
beating of wings
the mind's low hum

he was no longer

a walking time bomb
having sat down to rest

beside the accident
waiting to happen

she kept glancing at
the hands on his face

and rocking one shoe
to the tick...tick...tick...

Heart Failure

Ed pulls in
at the self-service
car wash (just
where he told his
wife he was
headed), slumps
over the wheel,
and dies.

The other husbands,
wiping down
their minivans,
pause (dripping
cloths in hand) --
hesitant as
zebras on the veldt
after a kill.

Helping Me Garden

My daughter,
suddenly

recalling her
recent lesson

from peewee
biology,

wants to know:
the male part, is it

the semen
or the pistol?

her hair

crouches there
on her head
like some half
tamed jungle
animal loyal
only to her
snarling and
clinging who
can blame it
she affects me
that way too

her sunglasses

are mirrored on both sides:
all the young men see is beach
and sky, their own turned heads,

that body...while she's blind
to the novel she's brought
along as a prop

and to them, intent as she is
on observing the dance of her soul
through tinted windows.

Her Wish

She says her
mom would pray
for a quick death

to come be-
fore her mind
went, and got

her wish. Now
(she goes
on),

with teenage
daughters of
her own,

she's seeing
Mom and God
both

in a
whole
new light.

He's one of the on-call

chaplains for the local hospital
after his day of driving our
company's bus ends. Copying
the next day's pickup schedules
just before his quitting time, he
looks up at me with half-closed
eyes and says man, I'm tired!
I've got beeper duty tonight,
and I just pray nobody dies!

The Hidden Life of Typists

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog --
but he's a sheepdog, and he's dog-tired
of counting sheep (plus he never could
count past one anyway), so he reckons
this one-trick fox will suffice.

High and Dry

Here I am, iced coffee
in hand, on my back

porch chair, 107
degrees in the shade,

in a place where
rain is like wonder

falling from the sky,
envying the nameless

man who talks and
dresses like me,

walks and looks like
me, thinks like me,

but lives in a leafy
suburb of Seattle,

where the Weather
Channel reports

it's 64 degrees and
raining common pets,

where they sacrifice
goats to the unseen

sun, and though I
can't see this guy,

never met him, I
imagine that

at this very moment
he's sitting inside,

steaming mug
in hand, silently

envious
of me.

High Desert Visitor

The wind comes
not on little cat feet
but by bullet train,

performs all night
with a lampshade
on its head,

and passes out
in the backyard
at dawn.

a high-rise hotel window

on a waikiki vacation
is a voyeur's haven,
but do be

careful not to cave in
to the temptation
to be the voyee.

Hiking Boots

Tongues out in
begging mode,

leashes of laces
loosely in mouths,

side by side, straining in
place toward the open hills.

hiking with Kelly

at 10,000' and
climbing, giddy

on thin air,
not knowing

which will burst
first: my lungs

or my heart.

Holy Week

This woman I work with
once studied to be a nun
but got married instead
of taking her vows

Now she has six kids
and one cheating husband
but she still puts on this
virgin act during Holy Week

She goes so far
as to clap her hand over
her mouth whenever she's
afraid she'll laugh

"Holy Week's not supposed
to be fun" she tells me and I
flash back to high school
when I tried out

for the JV football team
Hell Week they still call it
and one day after practice
I was so dry when I got home

I drank a whole gallon
of apple juice with dinner
then spent all night
on the toilet

That was no fun either

hot on the moon

it was hot on the moon
hotter still when you showed up
wearing that moondress I like
an undeniable spring in your small step
those legs more uplifting than ever

I was your flag for the planting
dark side or no dark side
on that day like any other
when you held my whole blue world
in the palm of your hand

Human Services

I who wake
and go to bed
alone am

known within
the Dept. for
my flair

at the window.
The luckless
queue

up like Elvis
worshippers
at Graceland

for hours
until, foot-
sore, they

approach one
at a time --
and for a little

while
I love them
tender.

Humiliation

A cold autumn wind
strips the aspen,
leaves it naked,

trembling, its bright
clothes scattered
across the grass.

Hushed Voices

I dreamed I put together a poetry anthology entitled Hushed Voices. Each of the pages was blank; all of them had been submitted by established poets.

One reviewer praised my "keen editor's eye." Another raved, "If you're fed up with bad poetry, you'll love this collection!" "The poems are similarly haiku-like in their enlistment of silence, yet each stands on its own," mused a third.

Some people bought the book just to have it on their shelves. Others were attracted by the "name" contributors listed on the dust jacket, and actually read the entire compilation. A few -- the quiet ones -- were able to recite from it without once moving their lips.

Hybrid

The minimalists and
the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E

poets crossed --
and out sprang

M-E-A-N-I-N-G-
lessness.

I am the two Charlton Hestons

During the week I work
in the local unemployment office
and Monday to Friday it's mob scenes
right out of Soylent Green

But on Saturday and Sunday
I explore the ghost town desert
saguaro stand there like mannequins
on the old Main Street
temptresses to the Omega Man

I leave my headlights on

for three and a half hours after returning
home from work on the first workday
since the end of Daylight Savings Time:
not used to using them, happy as I am

with my routine of staying in weeknights
except when I go out with my wife, who
helps me remember these things.
They catch my face through the window

I forgot to close the blinds on since it got
cold, as I pass through the living room on
my TV-to-fridge habit trail: a face lined
from one too many bright ideas, followed

mostly by worry...but I was younger then,
though the lines remain and these days the
worries stem from the ideas I don't have.
Oh, right, the headlights! Fading, but still

brighter than I am, their desperate twin
beams pierce the thick glaze of darkness
between serendipitously open blinds with one
last, bottom-of-the-battery appeal: Hey, stupid!

I lost you twice

once when I lost you

and once when having
lost you lost its sting

I Love Me, Vol. I

Frustrate Lee? Let art surf:
Regard a mad rager,
dessert-stressed
flesh self,
radar,
drab bard
(anal was I ere I saw Lana),

flee to me, remote elf!
Raft far!
O, desire, rise, do!
Dog sit in a lap, pal, an' it is God!
(Dog doo! Good God!)
Bosses sob,
nudists I dun,
sex at noon taxes --

risen or prone, sir?
Egad! No bondage!
Cigar? Toss it in a can, it is so tragic...
But sad Eva saved a stub.
God, to have Eva. Hot dog!
Madam, I'm Adam!

I subscribe to Backpacker

magazine and not long there-
after the mailers begin trick-
ling in: the latest has
a picture of a lodgepole
pine on the envelope, re-
minding me of that issue
of the National Lampoon
that had the puppy on the
cover with a gun
to its head and the caption,
"buy this magazine or we
shoot the dog"...inside
the mailer there's a petition
addressed to the Secretary of
Agriculture that I'm supposed
to sign, but not detach from
the portion with the box they want
me to check to say "YES!
I'm concerned about the future
of our precious forests; here's
my $20 for a 1-year membership
in The Wilderness Society"
included is a free sticker
for the bumper of my car
"made of 100% recycled paper"
I toss everything in the trash
and consult the back pages
of my latest Backpacker for the
number you can call to stop
junk mail from coming to your house
"saving a hundred trees a year"

I want my own...

I want my own electric chair
I want it old and creaky
I want it big and wooden
I want it square and clunky

I want a shaved head
I want a last meal
I want a priest there
I want to walk the last mile

I want leather restraints
I want official spectators
I want one reluctant reporter
I want it to happen at 12:01 a.m.

I want to smile weakly
I want to hyperventilate
I want lawyers running about unseen
I want their actions to be in vain

I want a candlelight vigil
I want to give a shaky thumbs-up
I want to take one last look around
I want the sight burned into my pupils

I want someone to dim the lights

I was going to

win the Pulitzer,
play Carnegie Hall,
go where no man
has ever gone...

now, here I am:
just happy that
the boss wears
squeaky shoes.

if looks could cook...

as your side
of the discussion
grows more heated
I notice your hands
trace popcorn arcs
through the air
your chin goes buttery
and melts down your neck
while your tongue
flitters about
frightened parakeet
in the burning
cage of your mouth
and your eyes
spit like hot dogs

If Not For You

I wonder what
sort of poem

I'd be --
what words

I'd have for the
fading mist,

the wind-
tossed leaf.

in memoriam

i picked a wildflower
from the vacant lot
across the street &
placed it in the half-
empty beer can
you left
on my coffee table

& those ashes
in the kitchen sink...
i'll never wash
dishes again

nor touch the
bar of ivory
w/your pubic hairs
imbedded in it

& the toilet
seat shall remain
forever

down.

In Memory of My Face

I haunt myself
I'm a forgotten name
I'm a popular tune

It's like obsessive
Love, or a dead rat
The cat hid somewhere

I appear in my dreams
Flying off butt-naked
I worry since I left

My image stranded
When I gave up shaving
(It used to take all day)

I hope I'm all right
I just can't get me
Off my mind

in silent pre

dawn youth hair
uncombed breath
visible under street
light leaning out
open side
door of van drops
bundle of news
papers: whump

In the Widow's Yard

The precise location
of her husband's fatal
stroke is detectable
only as the weathered,
half-hidden handle
of a mower that daily
relinquishes a little
more of itself to
the patient grass.

Incognito

God grabs a six-pack
from the 7-11, broods
all the way back to the motel.
Eve, now there was a woman...
Even the sunset looks watered-down
through the windshield. I'm old,
He thinks, that's My problem. He parks,
walks through the wall of the Days Inn
into His room. Older than a catfish
or a parrot... Older
than a desert tortoise...
He orders a wake-up call
for 4:00 a.m., lights a cigarette,
thinks about the perfect TV show...
Flipping through
the Esquire He picked up
at the airport this morning,
His eyes lock on a passage
in an article about the Cold War:
"I was the thinking, functioning
organ of the minister..."

Indian Summer

We thought
it would --

should -
be aut-

umn, but
it's not --

it's
hot!

instead

instead of painting
my apartment or
even doing laundry
I go birdwatching

when I return the walls
smell of brambles
I open the clothes hamper
to a rush of wings

jack's

the guys all like
it here all they

do is wish for
coffee and here

it comes pulling
two nice full cups

of freshly perked
waitress sporting

a cream uniform
and a sugar smile.

Jesus Presley

wears a beard and sunglasses
keeps his collar turned up
returned to sender
but came back again

he lectureth us beside the waters
don't be cruel saith he
love me tender
let me be thy teddy bear

we are a small band
with rings around our necks

John Wayne Gacy

his first victim
was an accident of sorts
the only one he stabbed
(he strangled the other thirty-two)
walked into John's bedroom with a knife
after an S&M all-nighter
just wanting to wake John up
offer him some fresh-cut meat
he'd been preparing in the kitchen
how could he know about the dark flower
the dark seed planted in Vegas
when John was twenty
and worked in a mortuary
and found himself alone one night
with a well-muscled teenage boy
the meat wagon had brought in that day
dead of autoerotic asphyxiation
his erection frozen in death...
John woke up saw the knife and leapt
knocked the kid down and straddled him
the kid thought it was another game
turned the knife over to John
who plunged it over and over
into the kid's heaving chest
it was like that Goodbar movie
the ultimate sex act and John came
involuntarily, like a sneeze
the dark flower in full bloom at last

just one question

ever try
to pick up
your teeth with
broken fingers?
he says and
as they say
I'm smart but
I'm not quick
so there I
am, thinking:
what movie did
I hear that
line in? and
why would I
want to
pick them up
in the first
place? surgical
reattachment?
and moreover,
when his fist
lands

Kansas: predawn

(as seen by Grey
hound) the long
est word i
n the world high
lighted & under
lined (that con
tains no let
ters)

Keeping Busy

It's a rainy day. The apartment stays
inside. The coffee is absolutely steaming
over the ruination of minutely-
laid plans. The wig in the closet can't do a thing
with itself. Rows of shoes just stand there.
On the bureau, a book reads itself:
"I am writing myself," it reads, as in a dream
of a painting of a hand painting
a hand. Hand reaches for coffee
cup, picks up book... In this wholly true
story, only the wig is false.

Wrong, asserts #1 Detective. The bed lies
also! The clock can't keep a straight face! All
the towels are full of dry humor!
You can't hear this place cracking up? I thank
#1 Detective, who is whisked away,
and look again: A woman walks in
and asks me if the liar's at home. He's
busy, I tell her. Put down the pen. Shut
the book. What I reach for always be-
comes something else. I stand there wondering what
to do with myself. Hand reaches for wig....

The Kid II

There was a kid whose favorite food
was gasoline. Not that he ate any,
but when other kids would ask him
that standard kid-to-kid question,
he'd say, "Gasoline." His parents
overheard one day, and asked him to explain.
"Well, once I was playing
on the way to the bus stop, and I looked up
and the school bus had picked up all the kids
but me, and I ran and ran after it
and got so close I could smell the fumes,
but I just couldn't catch it. Ever since
I wish there was a food made of gasoline."
His parents laughed. It was like the time
he hid three dollars in his sleeping bag
when they were camping, and forgot
where he'd put it until the next summer
rolled around. He'd popped out
of that bag, clutching those bills and said, "Hey,
this is the best way to save!" I'm through
chasing after you. I'm going
to forget you were ever mine.

king penguins fall over

ass-first watching
research planes cut
the Antarctic sky,
so go ahead --

swoon as she passes
in all her heavenly
glory, but don't
expect any sign

from above as to
whether or not she'll
look down on you
and laugh.

last night she slipped

from around
his little finger

into the
palm of his hand

"leave it as you found it"

three guys on a picnic
table sitting not six
inches apart like birds
on a wire sharing a
huge joint beer cans all
over the table rusty
pickup truck and scruffy
joy-barking dog
nearby I park near
the trailhead get out
put my walking stick
together they're shouting
obscenities and laughing
holding their breath and
coughing whooping and
screaming until finally
they notice me passing
by behind them on my
way to the trail and fall
absolutely silent. even
the dog. I nod and they
nod back. even the
dog. a minute later I'm
on the trail and out of
their view and like a
mounting breeze at my
back comes the rising
sound tentative at
first then growing
into an echoing
cacophony of obscene
laughter whooping
coughing giggling
screaming shouting and
barking!

the letter "o"

it takes two to
make a hoop

or a loop --
which both

remind one
of zero.

library termites

are bookish

the workers
devour Marx
and Steinbeck
swarm over
Upton Sinclair

the soldiers
eat breathe and
defecate Sun Tzu

meanwhile the queen
plows through romance
novel after
romance novel

all her suitors
bore

Life Imitates Art/A Natural Talent/A Star Is Bored/Will The Real Campbell's Soup Can Please Stand Up? (poem with four titles)

John Giorno, star
of Andy Warhol's
six-(eight-?)hour
film of a man
sleeping (entitled
Sleep) arranged to
meet Andy at the
only cinema in all
of NYC that
was still showing
the film after
the opening day
of its box office
run. Andy swept
into the theater
with his entourage
a few minutes
after the film
started, and found
John fast asleep
in his seat -- the
theater otherwise
empty.

like sunflowers

bending to feed
on you/r dreams at
one end Vienna
sausage toes
at the other

night of the
upright fans

like that scene

from The God-
father where
all the guy wants
is to get his
piece from behind
the bar to kill
the assassins
with but one
of them brings
a knife down on
the guy's hand
pinning it like
a butterfly
to the bar top
this is exactly
how I felt when
I was about
to say goodbye
and you started
taking off
your clothes

Litany

My car has 193,000 miles on her odometer.
In the aftermath of my most recent divorce,
I stuffed her with all my worldly possessions and with no force
she was still a sleepable two-seater.

I have four debts totaling 17,436 dollars.
I'm lucky I still draw a decent salary.
While the coffee and cigarettes cost me not one calorie,
after the beer I've got to tighten my belt till the buffalo hollers.

I don't know how many operations I've conducted
for the government, yet for not one of them
was I suited. At age 33, with "nervous troubles" that stem
from God knows where, I bang on with my drug-bucked head.

Lights keep going out in my apartment; four so far.
(I've had three prophetic dreams in this place,
plus one in which I was stabbed by a man who had no face.)
A weird gust knocked over one of them; the other three were on a linear

connection, and went out one by one. Why does this depress?
My star's falling. Things are manifesting
the dark side of the theory that when life moves from the testing
to the tallying, the final number is always yes.

a little poem

shorty's modest
goal's to go

from slight to
sleight

lost

not 200 feet over
our desert town
a good 20 miles
from their flyway
a V of Canada geese
honks and veers
this way and that

I'm pulling for them
but it doesn't matter
they become a broken
necklace of black dots
against the sun
rising out of Death
Valley...just as a

fellow desert rat
rattles past in
a decrepit Pontiac
with a message etched
in the dust coating
the dinged-up trunk lid:
honk if you're lost

love and bullets

it's fun watching
society crumble
on Channel 9

our only fear
is that the TV
stations'll go

before all the
rest of it does
forcing us

to open our doors
and watch it all
sans logos

Love Attack

I was blind
sided.

I was way
laid.

I was
am

bushed.

love is the headless

as yet unseen
half of a slug

just now
beginning to squirm

on the dark side
of a huge strawberry

you just bit in
two

lover my dyslexic

draws an upside-
wards and backdown
world of the map,

then us places
inwith, handing
holds and smiling --

she at her me
and vision, I
at she and her

perfect accuracy.

lullaby

give me a wooden
sleeping bag

a dirt sheet
six feet thick

a grass blanket
then spread

a comforter of
snow over me

and make a song
of the wind

lust

the office evangelist (there's always one)
hasn't approached me as he has the others
he can see I dis/connected long ago...

he merely glares at me and grinds his jaw
opens his mouth and then closes it as
if in the presence of a beautiful woman:

astraddle a motorcycle leaning forward
in a bikini smiling eyes half-closed
revving the engine.

Magdalena

Alcoholic, statuesque,
avid mental health consumer,
frenzied fan of the free clinic: Get in
her way and you'll know what "consume" means.

Man vs. Machine

Why is my coffee
maker always slow,

and my alarm clock
never so?

Manifesto

Snaggle-faced poets,
freckle-toothed poets,
poets leaping from bridges
and from ships, poets
eulogizing poets
who eulogized some poets who
once eulogized a couple of poets,
gay poets, straight-
jacketed poets,
greatcoated poets,
sugarcoated poets,
attic poets,
Attica poets,
addicted poets,
towering poets, poets
in towers, flowering
poets, poets
of the ages and of the hours,
forgotten poetasters
and immortal masters,
thinkers, drinkers
and immoral stinkers,
poets dark and pale,
poets who ail,
poets in the pink of health,
poets of wealth,
part-time thespians
and full-time lesbians,
inbred poets,
poets who teach,
student poets,
small-press poets
and slick poets,
poets who rhyme some
of the time,
political poets,
poet-politicians,
poet-car salesmen
and poet-morticians,
closet poets,
kitchen table poets,
poets of innocence
and of experience,
poets of the madhouse
and of the outhouse,
windblown poets
and mindblown poets,
poets who just plain blow,
poets so unlike one another
as to be spotted a mile away,
DON'T UNITE!!!

maps to the stars' genitalia

he made his fortune selling
maps to the stars' genitalia
to gullible corn-fed Midwesterners

maps in hand they'd cruise wide-eyed
through neighborhoods of hairy crotches
belonging to ordinary folks

who to a person delighted
in all the sudden attention and
started shaving piercing dyeing tattooing

to keep the admiring strangers coming back
and soon the tabloids picked up the scent
and before long there were guest appearances

and book contracts and photo spreads
and "A Night of Genitalia" at the Mark Taper Forum
and crotch workout videos and paparazzi

jumping in and out of bushes
and getting poked in the eye
by the genitalia of the stars.

maternal urge

she strips and runs
naked across acres
of brambles then
lies down panting
in the grass while
several dozen deer
ticks wander her
torn flesh like
restless freckles

as they begin
one by one to
settle down
to feed her
expression is one
of slight annoyance

and no small
satisfaction

a meeting

startled great egret
angular ascending cloud

its shadow upon me
for a passing instant

hello father death

Mercy

These people were going to get tortured:
if not by me, then by somebody else.
You may think it strange to call them lucky,
but they were, those who came under my knife.
While my co-workers dawdled with the flesh
of their subjects, I had a secret way
of doing things: I cut every nerve I could find
first, so the rest of what I did hurt less.
If I hadn't yet taken out the eyes,
I'd give a wink as I was killing him or her --
my way of saying it could've been worse.
I thought a lot about the human condition
in those days: imagined the enormity
of their crimes, these people the State brought me,
though for my own good I was never told...
I quit after they came up with the burning tire
suspended above the subject's head --
there being no point in my remaining
with my mission, my secret sympathy.

message machine

you can call my body
a darkened room if you like

you can call my soul
a telephone on a stand
in the corner

you can call my eyes
a pair of goldfish
turning as one toward
the sound of your call

as I quietly switch on

Migrations

Certain
birds that overshoot
their destinations
drown alone at sea,
exhausted
and famished,
their chance to breed
behind them,
the spring sun
beckoning still,
their will
to answer
gone,
the splishing
of their wings
on water
a wet,
muted knocking
at a door
that opens downward,
where untroubled
fishes flitter
like little suns.

millennium

flesh dummies
are spoken for
& one in the oven

litter the sacred
garden w/ more good
little consumers

more little sets
of eyes tuned
to shotgun slayings

advertised along-
side rich leather
& cheap beef.

Mirror Image

Crystal Crag
is reflected

on the glass-
smooth surface

of Lake George.
Pushing off

from shore
in deep shadow,

a kayaker begins
the climb.

Mockingbird

You're the better
poet by far, and
you know it --

how very near
and loud you are!
But it's a bit

warm for me to
shut my door,
and a bit cool

for the cooler's
drowning sound --
and moreover,

you are too
exquisite a singer
for me to either

stop my ears
or try to compete
with you, you, you!

Modern Bride

She wears a locket
that deflected a bullet
from an ancestor's heart
during the Civil War --

but this is no war
no matter how civil,
and love is a bullet
only in metaphor.

modern trailblazer

a man in pink shorts
and white tank top

strides resolutely
down the center

of the biggest indoor mall
in the entire state

twin plastic water bottles
flopping at his hips

fanny pack stuffed
with provisions

moral

after
walking a
mile in
everybody's
shoes I was
in great
shape

except
for my
feet

Moulage

Where did that book go? Elsewhere, out, away,
dragging you in. And I tell you I'm glad

you're a contraction. Only one chapter
of the mystery now remains for you

to leave at my door, the one about the...
Yesterday it was a corpse in a copse,

then it got dead quiet: blue leaves sparkling
like an MRI of the author's bliss.

my daughter informs me

that we're having
"Cornish gang hens"
for supper

and sure enough
when I peek
into the oven

there they are
shoulder to shoulder
brandishing tiny fists

My Deer

I never considered that
she might be the same
one I'd spotted dozing
in my binoculars as
first light crept into
that same tiny open
area on the aspen-
covered slope across
the lake only the day
before; just that there
was always one, that
in each new morning
I had seen deer again.
And so it went
the entire week of
our vacation: my
deer sighting count
rising daily, one by
one, I rising with the
sun every morning
to go see more deer,
you opting for more
sleep, and I nearly
forgetting more than
once what I'd gotten
up for as I sat on the
edge of the bed and
marveled at how
you never, ever,
appear quite the same
to me twice, dear --
not even in your sleep.

my demons play chase

around the living
room in the wee hours...

it's just one goddamned
thing after another.

my father had six

webbed toes on each foot
he was a good swimmer
in fact all the Lees are

no wonder the quiet
of a secluded mountain
pond or cut-bank I find

homey and familiar
no wonder I paddle
contentedly in circles

under a copper sun
and if the peace is broken
no wonder I give out

with a whack quack quack
echoing off the mountain-
sides and ravine walls

as I explode almost
vertically into the air
and wing off so blue-green

My Near-Death Experience

I came-to with a lampshade on my head.
The first thing I did was throw up on God.
After I made a pass at the Virgin Mary,
some angels wrestled me into the dead-drunk tank.
"Ask not for whom the bell tolls," someone had
scribbled on the wall, alongside "All things
considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia."
Comedians. My hair ached. I needed a drink....

my thoughts fly off

like hubcaps
as I round your curves,

bury themselves
in your weeds.

naked teenage poetry groupies

sometimes a title
can make the poem

itself an
afterthought

Naming the Beast

Who picked me up by the neck
and shook me like a puppy
in my sleep? Was it the genie
who comes embalmed
in every new bottle of scotch,
drying out as I get pickled?
Half a bottle and no more
per night, that's the rule, so
I move from pints to fifths;
to quarts; to liters; to the ones
housing genies as big as hams
swaddled in turbans. And that's
before I crack the seal... No:
This is not a creature one calls down,
any more than one gets blown
by a smoke ring; and I wouldn't
say I'm "over" anything, certainly
not the weather I'm about
to call my boss and blame.
So let's just say I'm hung under
a cloud; let's give the cloud
a pair of big ham hands;
let's give the beast a new name.

natural taoist

in middle age i've
become a natural taoist:

"what he desires is non-desire"
and i don't even desire that...

"what he learns is to unlearn"
or i think that's how it goes
(i have a little trouble remembering)...

"he is not led by the senses"
at least not without the aid
of bifocals and volume control...

"he lets events take their course"
sounds like a plan to me...

"he understands the value of non-action"
ditto...

when the pupil is ready,
the master will appear.

nature girl

you don't want to know
all the places she's got hair.

yes you do.

neck trouble

a light stilled in headphone silence
decreed the trouble well worth it
from a certain angle

granted your head was turned
which would be almost enough
to justify an extra pillow

in different circumstances
the way the light struck your face
through a broken windowpane

might have spun the distance on its heel
in a nuclear family winter
then would it have doubled or doubled back

as elusive as that blind spot that appears
when you close your eyes and look slightly away

Never Forget

With two steel prongs, three and
a half inches apart -- long, sharp,

like those of a fork you'd
use to feed a whole chicken

to a croc, or maybe roast
a pair of foot-long hot dogs --

it shone behind glass in the
"Museum of Applied Art"

in Belgrade in the early 1990s,
had been employed by the Croats

hundreds of years ago to gouge
out two Serb eyeballs at a time --

no different than the repeated
name of a gunned-down brother

when Crips are going for Blood
(or vice versa) -- an old instrument

with a new use: to justify
the rape, torture, starvation

and/or murder of more than one
million Muslims in Christ's name.

How far does our memory reach?
Does it stretch beyond tall towers,

or end at the points
of two steel prongs?

New Apartment

It starts to rain.
I close my window.
The rain doesn't get in.
It stops raining.
I open my window.
The sun starts to shine.
I close my window.
The sunshine still gets in.
I hang curtains.
I miss my friends.

The New Math

A crowd of
familiar faces

minus (her) one =
a faceless crowd.

new motorcycle

a new motorcycle
is like a new woman:
hell on the adrenals

something you wake up
knowing is all yours

sexy with big
thick springs in back
and a buddy seat

or, ladies,
a new motorcycle
is like a new man:

sleek and macho
a growler,

a really dumb thing
to bring home.

News Travels

On trash day
in the hight desert
a windstorm acts
as tardy paperboy
pushing headlines
as much as a week old
out past the edge of town
where jackrabbits and coyotes
hunch impatiently with reading glasses
dangling from their necks on golden chains
and coffee cups cooling between their paws.

the night of my death

will be like any other
night I imagine

except that other hands
will draw the sheet up

and they'll keep going
when they reach my neck

No Picnic

I'd be the three-legged sack race,
the hot dog eating contest and the
greased flagpole climbing event,
the tetherball competition and
a game of badminton... Oh, man,
the shrinks would have a field day!

No Quitter

God shakes galaxies from His hair
Showers in antimatter
Gazes down at the black hole
Thinks: it's a job

Not the Wind

I've compared you to the wind,
but today you are not the wind.

Today, as I rode home from work
on my motorcycle, the wind came

straight on. Butterflies hurled
themselves onto my windscreen.

It cost me a few more pennies
in fuel than I'd have spent

otherwise. Whereas
all day you'd come on from both sides,

buffeting me.

The Novel Wouldn't Fit On His Body

The novel wouldn't fit on his body
even after he shaved his head,

so he pared it down to a short story
for the time being, still didn't bathe,

ate like two horses, experimented
with different inks to find one

that wouldn't run when the sweat poured
midway through his powerlifting sessions,

gained a hundred pounds, tried again
to get the novel to fit on his body

but still it wouldn't, so he grew
his hair back, showered with a wire brush,

kept the extra hundred pounds of muscle,
went out looking for a wife,

found one, had a baby with her,
then another baby, and another,

is now watching and encouraging them
to grow, gently reassures his wife

that he loves her just as much as when
she could still get into her wedding dress,

frankly loves her even more than that,
loves his children more every day,

works continually on the novel he has by now
committed to memory, uses his bald spot

as an excuse to shave his head again,
records each child's growth spurts in pencil

on the kitchen wall, smiles as his wife eats,
thinks mainly of finishing that novel of his.

Obits.

Our daily uses
little bullets.

One of them has
my name on it.

Office Politics

I.
Did you
just punch my
ticket, or
was it a slap
in the face?

Is that a
promotion in
your pocket?

II.
Having slept your way
to the middle,

you'll retire
wishing you slept better.

office pot luck

the sign-up sheet's
going around

Sue will supply
"the desert"

Martha's bringing
"Chile"

smartass
that I am,

I can't resist:
"I'm getting Hungary"

the office thief

the cops caught him
just outside town

a chained ball point
wrapped in his fist

the admin building
dragging behind

co-workers staring
from the windows

silently urging
him on.

On Having a Poem Published in The Unknown Writer at Age 46

for Kelly

I'm letting go of my 15 minutes.
In exchange for this,

I want my 74.26873
years of complete obscurity

(just little ol' me
'n' little ol' thee).

Somebody shot, after all,
Mr. Andy Warhol (et al.) --

from which fame never
did completely recover.

once bitten

a drop of blood falls
from my tongue
into my drink

almost at once
tiny fins break
the surface

and begin circling
as the ice
clinks and swirls

Once It Was

Once it was
their hair

their hands
gravitated

toward: to
stay pretty

and/or preserve
the sight of

him. Now
it's the same

wind they walk
in, but their

hands are busy
holding

their skirts
down.

Once Upon a Time

He threw a shovel at her,
playfully. It hit her foot and broke
a bone. This was the day after
he'd beaten her until her thighs blackened.
After she'd tried to wash the wine
out of her dress, she'd told the hospital
their trailer porch had very steep steps.
Their little dog hides, shivering,
sometimes. The closet door still won't set right
since he put that mutt through it.
They have another dog, too, a bigger
one, barkless. It was abused (not by
him) as a puppy. He never hits or throws
this one, this pathetic creature he speaks
only kind words to. He remembers
being a puppy himself... They all live there
in that trailer, with their memories
of violence. Some of those memories are
recent, some not. They will always
live there. He will beat her forever,
howling like a dog that has found its voice.

One Man's Poison

"The short-lived fly
grazes on decay and death --

you are what you eat,"
a learned man once said,

obviously never having
understood a pile of feces

as all that truly remains
of human delicacies.

the only security

as long as I take care
of my teeth I'll never
be one of those friend

less home
less job
less penni

less hopelessly
drunken
broken

down tooth
less old
poets

The Other Day

The other day I spotted a philosopher on the roof of my apartment building. The philosopher was wrestling with a concept. After a while they stopped, toweled off, and sat down side by side. A few minutes later, they started wrestling again. I realized they must be practicing their moves for an upcoming match.

And I thought that stuff was real.

"other nations"

my face so close
to the spider's
as it gains the
summit of a pile
of books I can see
its eyes wide
n its jaw drop
literally leaping
back off spin
ning running on
all eight back down
halfway then wait
ing for the Big
Book of Death to
fall & as it does
a cringe & me
thinks the spider
behaved much as
I'd have in the
same spot

Outdone

The way the magazine --
a contributor's copy of

which I've just received
in the mail -- couples

its poems with the poets'
names, is confusing.

I show my wife my latest
publishing achievement,

hand her the magazine
open to the page

displaying my brilliant work.
She reads aloud the poem

directly above mine -- one
by somebody else nobody

ever heard of -- looks back
up at me, eyes shining,

and says, "Honey, you really
outdid yourself this time!"

palm springs

its name sounds
like a tree attacking

sleek jets divvy up
the expensive sky

the residents’ average
age is stone dead

stunted bighorns
graze on rocks

golfers are herded from
pasture to pasture

the local news doesn’t
bother with the weather

a man sits outside
starbucks and writes

p.s. i love you

paranoia

it's either sit and listen to your teeth
or go out under the sun's one-eyed stare
where every laugh you hear's a ripping wound
and everyone's on cell phones describing you
to the police so you duck into a cafe
where all eyes critique the face you wear
and the waitress mocks you with her smile
as she brings you a glass of colorless liquid
then walks back and speaks softly to the cook
while impaling your breakfast ticket
as if demonstrating how she wants you done
and the eggs she brings you gaze up knowingly
if wide-eyed in their concealment of your fate
you leave everything untouched and pay
the cashier with the facial tic and shaky hands
step back out into daylight's full disclosure
buy a paper and search it for your name
realizing when you don't find it only how
sophisticated your trackers have become
through long practice and up goes the collar
of your jacket and on go your dark glasses
and you dash from doorway to doorway
back to your hideout where your dog
awaits you with uncertain motives
the fact that he never hesitates to taste
your food for you possibly meaning only
that they intend to get you some other way
and you sit there listening to your teeth
finally picking up some news about yourself
and your plans for that length of rope

party of four

"they were like
two relationships
passing in the night"

which the flash
of distress signals
briefly lit up --

making both
ocean and darkness
seem only more vast.

Past Foresight

Looking back
on looking

ahead,
I knew it

would all
be different

now,
then --

if not
all what,

nor all
how.

Pay Phones Are Like Whores

Pay phones are like whores?

I only know I saw
one get beat half to death,
witnessed another being
gutted by bolt cutters.

They get cried on and
cursed at. They're ignored
by passing strangers when they
ring, and ring, and ring...

Bums finger their slots.

They share a man who
stops by to relieve them
of all their coin.
He takes care of them, calls them
his babies.

It's a living.

The bad ones, they
just take your money and don't
want to communicate.
The good ones are so
pleased with your conversation,
they give you one on the house.

Pay phones stand on street corners
in the hot parts of town,
drawing sweaty salesmen
and rat-faced bookies like flies.

Pencil and Cursor

Wr writes the word talk and crosses it out
could about the furniture if you like writes
talk between could and about
without wr adds bringing up the future
or the fact that you exist in light
and I in wood, scratching and cursing.

Deleted doesn't happen, like they say.
Changes in to out and hands to hand
the more they same, who never crosses
out over. Let's not bring up the future
changes to change. Crosses out us as is,
in out up downiture. Crosses

crosses, you I deletes not like!
Or the weather from my naked window,
adds one hand to the first hand and makes time.
After over, inserts again. You exist
the future is real, wr must discuss.
Crosses out future. The weather is real.

Deletes inserts, leaving naked untouched.

people with twelve flashing

repeatedly from one eye
zero zero flashing from the other
plead silently to be reset

The Perfect Couple

I.
Arranging their annual
Easter family photos
in reverse chrono-

logical order, they
see every reason
for hope.

II.
While she's
smothering
hers in
sugar and
cream to
camouflage
the bitterness,

he takes his
black with
something
in it to
bring it out.

III.
She makes
a snow angel.

He watches
the steam rise
from his name.

IV.
She pulled in the reins,
gentled him.

He taught her
the value of a buck.

V.
He wants to grow
old with her --

just to watch her
looks fade.

VI.
He hits her...but
she misses
him.

VII.
Harming him was
just about the last thing
she would ever think of doing.

And it's just about
the last thing she did,
two found dead.

A Perspective

As seen from below,
the moralist:
The higher he goes,
the smaller he gets.

the pessimist

dots his i's
with rain clouds

crosses his t's
with falling stars

The Pete Lee Watch

Practicing to be a star
on the face of a wristwatch
I allow my arms to go limp
and begin swinging them around
like twin elephant trunks
or twin windmills
tracing Ferris wheels in the air
trying to speed up time trying
to catch up to my stardom
creating a wind that sends
the papers on my desk flying
like pages from a movie calendar
in fact the current of air
I create begins pushing the sun
and moon and clouds
around the earth faster and faster
the sky lights up and then darkens
again every few seconds
it rains the snow falls there is a thaw
the sun shines and the flowers grow
only to wither moments later
and all at once it happens
I find myself stretched out in a glass case
at exactly 9:15 and boy, are my arms tired.

Pillow

Where our heads lay,
where we would lie:

a depression I
can't fluff away.

prescient tense

if only we
feared the past
more

we'd have less
reason to regret
the future

Pretty Jung Things

The gargoyle leers
at all the cherubim,

but he's just not
their archetype.

Processing the Mail

The joker from
Tecopa answers
the race question,
"Other: Human"

and I laugh
days later,
inputting his
application,

wondering who this
joker thinks he is
as I hit 6
for "Race Unknown."

Progress is the Work of Eternity

A rainbow in the desert
fills me with ancient awe,

and I'm a gibbering Moses
under the substanceless arch

that spans a dried-up sea.
Tell me the rainbow isn't a sign,

and I'll tell you I'm walking
to where it touches down.

Promise

What happened to all that
promise? a long-lost friend
blurted, in light of my current
circumstances. I thought; said
I came to see it as a threat,
and broke it like an arrow
in a treaty with myself.

promised land

I bought a gun
I've been practicing
on Campbell's soup cans
I want my fifteen minutes

putt-putting along

after my divorce,
in what the judge had
the gall to refer to
as a car,

I'm passed by
a new Jag with an ex-
pensively coiffed
woman at the wheel

and a sticker
on the bumper that
reads: IF ONLY CUCUMBERS
COULD TAKE OUT THE TRASH,
WE WOULDN'T NEED MEN AT ALL!

ravens are the smartest

birds in the world
so says somebody who
says so-and-so says so

I think of Heckle and Jeckle
when they plunge from great heights
like suddenly becalmed black kites

with a har-har-har toward their
pals on the ground then adjust
their wing flaps just in time

but when I see a lone raven pursued
by a squadron of stupid sparrows
with nests of offspring to protect,

I think of Socrates and Galileo

Ray

his last name gone from me
but never his last words
I learned not to talk about
Vietnam with him after
the 2nd or 3rd time he doubled
over clawing at his stomach
the ulcers finally got him
as they say it took 30
years for him to die in action
in the ICU I asked him
if he needed anything
all he said was
"what I could use right now
is an asbestos suit"

Reality TV

A classless
society?

I think we've
met our goal.

red roots of the gray-haired people

aglow like embers in the ashes
of a burned-out brushfire
best seen on those nights
when the wind blows
high and wild

Relatively

A day is like a thousand years
to the staph germs that grow
on the inside of my shower curtain.
Go forth and multiply,
some former tenant must have uttered:
Their dominion expands fitfully
but inexorably.

Staph germs: I imagine little
desks, each with a germ
in a green visor sitting at it,
each germ adding and subtracting
by day, multiplying by
night. They dream the world
is flat, with many hills and valleys

and a deluge every millennium --
and with each rain a Coming,
the nature of which is
open to interpretation. But
there is never a question
that Something cast a light upon the
world, cleansed it, then

plunged it as suddenly
back into the dark. Their science
has come to understand that darkness
can actually aid the
growth of the species, but not
without the moisture that lingers
for centuries after the rain.

Remains of the Day

I lit a candle,
knelt before it,

left it burning
like hope...

returned at the
end of the day

to the ashes
of my house.

Riddle

I am so empty,
I cannot even
fall to pieces.

A sheet of milk, paper-
thin, separates me
from the world.

I am not death
or snow. Eskimos
have no word for me.

Only hands can hear me.
I call them to feed
on a distant touch.

Light travels through me
on its way to murder
the dark. I have no need.

I am what I am.
I am a blue-black bag
under the moon's eye.

riverbank

the woodpecker taps out its Morse
on the dead tree whose limbs
cross and uncross in a strong wind
signaling in Chinese to incoming crows
which then land and begin tamping
an elaborate reply in the sand

the fog could be battlefield smoke
that dove could be carrying a message
the red glare of the leaping trout
could almost be immortalized in song

the wind blows sand over the crows' tracks
and sets the tree to signaling furiously

The Roadside Stand

The roadside stand is selling lives. It's a lovely day. We pull over and buy the lives of the couple running the stand. We watch ourselves drive away. Everyone is smiling.

Later, it starts to rain. We see ourselves returning in what used to be our car. This time we slow down, but keep going. The hiss of wet tires gradually fades....

Rolling Flock

The pinyon jays'
raucous calls

interrupt
the leaden

clouds' sermon --
shatter

the stained glass
of the air.

running around with its head

A chicken stranded in the desert
at some point becomes convinced

that the sky is falling --
yet who can it tell?

Only the coyotes,
and they've heard it all before.

Salad Lover

From out of the brown sacks
I produced my purchases,
spread them out on the rubber
sheet, and set to work:

First I chose a peach
for its just-spanked blush,
its subtle cleavage,
the tiny mud-colored plug;

set it just-so atop
two long celery stalks
stood A-frame style, lacking
only a welcome mat;

a small slit in the pale-
pink peach produced juice;
next, a cherry tomato
torso, taut but squeezable,

over which I hung a pair
of sloppy-ripe apples;
my Venus rejected
all arms, so that

left only the head --
voila, my Ms. Potato,
sporting a lettuce wig!
My mute! My vegetable!

the (same) old math

she's a knockout, but kind of
old-fashioned in the way
she uses an abacus
to calculate his net worth

as he's stretching his slide rule
to its limits, trying to get it
around the odds of her
impressing the boss

and when they finally do
make love, it sounds like
an antique cash register:
ch-ching, ch-ching

their eyes modestly closed
to hide the dollar signs

The Sandwich Shop

I am standing inside a sandwich shop, near a window,
eating at a narrow counter that runs along the wall.
I see a man walk by on the street outside the window.
In one hand he is holding a photograph of my face.
In his other hand he is gripping a large-caliber pistol.
He stops outside the window and studies the photograph,
then looks up and appears to search the faces on the street.
I become nothing but a sandwich and a pair of eyeballs...
In his distracted searching he careens into another man
who is carrying a pistol and a photograph of my face.
I see their lips move as they swear at each other;
then they go their separate ways, still looking down
at my photograph, then up at the passing faces.
Several good-looking women walk by in a group.
Each of them carries a pistol and a photograph of my face.
Soon there is no one left on the busy street
who is not carrying a pistol and my photograph.
I peer over my sandwich at the photographs
as they pass by in the hands of all the searching people.
All of the photographs depict the same image --
strange that I did not see it more clearly before:
I am shown peering over the top of a large sandwich,
eyes bulging. Now several men and women stop outside
and are looking into the window of the sandwich shop, searching...
A man is standing behind them with a camera.
He points the camera at me, and shoots. The image
on the photographs changes before my eyes, now depicting
my body lying face-down on the floor of a sandwich shop;
there is blood everywhere, my head indistinguishable
from the contents of a large half-eaten sandwich lying nearby.
I tear myself away from the horrible image,
my attention drawn to a sudden presence behind me....

seatmates

the bus takes a corner
he's hard-pressed
not to lean
against
her

blood all over
them both

you shouldn't wear your
heart on your sleeve
she says

Secretary Bird

Tall, white, gangly,
wild black headdress
bobbing, black
knickers showing,

wings clasped firmly
behind his back, he
paces like Beethoven,
head down, studying

the ground, intense
and hungry, his tracks
notes of music in the dust.

self-help

the nearer to death
my creator gets,

the harder i strive
to leave myself

behind. signed,
the little poem.

self-image

the fortune teller
peers into her
crystal ball and
sees only her
reflected face
the eyes like
jewels weeping
blood just then
the crystal shatters
and the shards fly

Send-up

Breeze-tickled
wildflowers,

quivering in waves
of laughter,

lose
their butterflies.

"Sex Prevents Colds"

he reads in the morning
paper as he mentally
prepares for the insult
of another week
at work (where he's
the reigning champ
of fewest sick days)...
looks over at his wife
(she's a healthy one)...
then calls the office
(on an impulse) to
tell them that he's
still not sick...and that
he's taking the day off
to keep it that way.

Shadow

Moon at night when you're driving,
eyes of a cheap painting,
gum on your shoe,
debt.

Anxious lover;
private
eye.

Death...

Who's faster in sign language,
parrot?

It's no use, I can't outrun
my shadow. I face the
sun, then: Get
behind me,
guilt!

she walks out

on her abusive
husband with only
a single suitcase
so heavy it
takes both her hands
to carry

gets as far
as the main road
before the one-handed
drivers start pulling
over to ask her
does she wanna ride

Sheer

from an Ansel Adams photograph

Wherever it is,
it looks unclimbable
in winter. Jagged
pieces of its face
pack its base
higher and broader
every year,
water
slipping in,
freezing and ex-
panding,
finally crack-
ing it into
mere aspects of it-
self. One day
the sky will show
everywhere,
a level
walk will suffice
to surmount it --
it having become
the destiny, strictly
horizontal, that awaits us all.

she's the unfinished

concerto a born
novelist wasted
all his productive
years working
on between long
sweat-soaked
shifts at the

skin

the reason we don't become each other when we embrace

skin II

every 36 days
we shed a layer
of skin that's why
it's important to dust
it's important to vacuum

this dirty little
house on the prairie

otherwise we inhale
ourselves like the sky
welcoming back the rain

we have met the
dust

and it is us

Skit

At the staff retreat, we split into groups.
Each group had to come up with a machine
whose functioning could be demonstrated
by the group members' body positions and
movements; sound effects were allowed, too.
Our group included a woman from Four Corners
(not that one), where the only saleable products are the
facts that two secondary highways cross there and
that the sun shines more days of the year
there than almost anywhere. The population
isn't listed. Even the name of the "town" itself
was invented by those of us who live within
a hundred miles of the place, so that we don't
have to say "where the two highways cross
in the middle of nowhere" every time we use it
as a reference point -- there being so few points
in this desert to which we can communicably refer.
Her parents run the Astro Burger, which occupies
one of the four so-named corners. It stands
across the long-abandoned railroad tracks from
the only gas station for sixty miles in any direction,
underscoring our need for a name to attach to
the place. The other two corners are currently
unoccupied by anything more commercial than
a passing tumbleweed or the shape-shifting sands,
although a mile or so away there's a sunlight farm.
She assumed the leadership position in our huddle
and we came out as solar panels, with her as the sun.
One of us moaned, simulating the wind, while the rest
of us creaked and turned to keep our faces facing hers
as she sidestepped in front of us with a beaming smile.

a snow fence in summer

it's gotten so skinny
since February
you can see its ribs

not that it mightn't
still topple
under its own weight

teeth going bad
here and there
it runs insanely

across the fields
like a man estranged
from work and woman

or from a pure ideal

"some shots rang out and everybody died"

the fan rattles
the rented room

Packards and Ramblers
lumber
past below

stripped to the waist
in my pleated chinos
and my wing tips

I light up
a Chesterfield
push my fedora
back on my head

unsnapping my shoulder
holster I slowly
slide out my .38

extend my arm fully
close my left eye

train my right
on my writing
table
Pepsi
church key
ashtray
dead
dead Underwood.

song

"the
bird
does
not
sing
because
it
is
happy,
the
bird
is
happy
because
it
sings!"
or
so
goes
my
song:
like
happiness
itself,
"making
up
in
height
what
it
lacks
in
length."

soularoid

after a thousand
candid shots

your good side
still eludes me

space

Kafka carried a
pocket mirror
(Dave at Job Club
today asking if
we knew of any
openings for astro-
nauts) around
with him and would
look into it (un-
employed now for
going on two years)
now and then just
to make sure ("I'm
taking up space
and I wanna get
paid for it") he
still existed

speaking of wildflowers

the Wildflower Preservation Society
runs a magazine ad describing how
tough wildflowers are
ending with the clever line
"wildflowers: they're not pansies"

which brings the proverbial
storm of protest from the gay
rights movement for using
one of the oldest pejoratives
for homosexuals

but I think well after all
wildflowers are not pansies
pansies are a type of flower
and are not tough
they do wilt if you look
at 'em cross-eyed --
ask any gardener --

and furthermore all those
tattooed "guests of the state"
whose very existence keeps
guys like me on the straight and
narrow are some of the
most infamous homosexuals
and are decidedly not pansies --

and I don't know a man
(gay or not) who'd
look at one cross-eyed.

spider in my rum

and Coke on the night-
stand in the morning
daddy-longlegs
what an ice cube
becomes as it melts
in a spindly dream
I knock it back
and emerge like
a sack of elbows
hugging the walls,
gut full of silk thread

Squirrel Call

What must surely
be an imperative --
insistent, repeated --

is, I see as the rest
of it follows its head
up onto the pine snag

and into view, a simple
question -- its brushy tail
curled in punctuation --

and I call back softly,
"Just passing through."

Stand

There are times when to stand in the sun
is to stand in the wind. There are times
when the whole sky is on fire and the earth
is frozen solid. Times there are when your
very hair is electric and your feet two
stones. When to run is out of the question.
When to remain is to combust. When
you are an idea whose time has come,
like a madman approaching in a dream.

Stifled

I knelt beside the little alpine lake
while the trout leapt from the sky's
reflection upon the water's surface --

largely pale-blue and inscrutable,
but for where it could be seen through
to the twisted hulk of a malt liquor can

here, an orgy of drowned worms there,
on the otherwise featureless bottom --
and stifled, like a sneeze, my prayer.

Still Life

Every fish on my bathroom wallpaper
is swimming in one of two directions.
I, also underwater, observe that
some go it alone, others have paired up
and the rest cling to various schools.
Each must traverse a same-looking network
of two-dimensional sea flora,
plus manage a series of four sharp turns
to arrive back whence it came. I wonder
if their recognition of this is
what has frozen them in mid-kick.
After I turn off the shower,
reentering my own web
of sameness and pointless hurdles,
I know they must steal odd glances
at the rainbow on the shower curtain.
They can see that the rainbow
has two ends, and that each of those ends
is a plastic cloud. But their eyes have walls:
I can almost hear them in there now,
muttering fishlike at their own flat wakes.

the stoic

his was an icy
religion he claimed
that all individual
suffering contributes
in a mysterious
way to a greater
good from the prom
pimple to the murdered
child from cancer
to heartburn that all
prayers are complaints
in disguise something
about tiny rocks
in a vast mosaic
something about a
lovely tapestry viewed
from the underside but
when his time came
you should've seen him
on his knees weeping
tears that fell like stones.

storm runners

a slash mark of brown pelicans --
four, five, six, seven... no. eight

lets its outside wing-tip down to
skim the peak of a gray-black swell

as if righting the entire flight: a trick,
to slip under sagging skies.

Stricken

Each rain cloud borne
from this desert valley

on the same omnipotent
wind that bore it in

takes the shape of a coffin,
the color of foreign soil,

as wires bemoan its passing on
and coyotes beseech the sky.

sugar

he tears open
the pink and
white bag the
confectionary
sugar cascades
out onto his
kitchen table
like a drug
resting his
stomach on
the tabletop
he lifts the
tablespoon up
past both his
chins hears
Papa saying
to Mama
gimme some
sugar his
lips parted
his breathing
shallow...
gulps and
remembers

Survivor

One flower outlives
the avalanche,

its stem and petals
breeze-blown

free of the vast cover
of lifeless cold...

Hello sweetheart,
I'm home.

Talent

I lay awake most of last night thinking about it.
When I finally did sleep, I awoke soon thereafter

with my hair, T-shirt, pillow soaked in it. I've got it
written all over me in wet ink. It needs revision --

a lot of work, a couple of hot showers to get it
all down the drain and into the common lane

where all waste liquids merge into one black river
flowing powerfully toward its moment in the sun.

Temporal Panhandler

Brother, have you
got a minute?

ten pwoermds

AsBeSlORBfED

dsmvwld

mnmlsm

NARCIISSSM

nvntfl

perfeption

povetry

SILEKNT NIGHF

twomb

UNENDIN

ten pwoermds

death:

the hat ate
the head

determinism:

mere mites in time,
sired in mist,

tied in mind nets,
mired in rites,

tired men in dire need
mine its dim site.

disentangle:

an innate island is a sea,
get it? gain a leg and set
sail: id, est, east,

lean and tanned, a neat
ensign in an eagle's nest,
digest inns and gates

'til 'tis late and ale
is nil. glide in,
sign in and design

an angel engine,
a sin dial,
a gnat slide at least,

sit and dine, stain
a tie, get sage gas,
net a tingle and die.

evangelize:

a zeal,
a glee,
an angel,

an anvil,
an angle,
a live eel,

a venal genie,
an even gaze,
a nag gene,

a vile gale,
a nail in,
a lien,

a veil,
a glaze,
an evil,

a lie.

fragmentary:

a merry gent; a mean man; a garment
rent; a rag; a rare gem; rage a gate
many ram; ten great men my age;
me 'n' my raft... fear my mate,
my meat, my gear.

industrialist:

stud, rat, liar,
struts and lists,

rails and starts
and is silt

in a suit,
air and dust,

us.

penetration:

a rotten patient,
torn 'n' eaten
in a rat pit,
no poet nor
pen to atone...

pan to an ape
in a pear tree --
a port in rain --
an entire nation --

ten, nine, one...
rape it.

post-abduction:

a tic, nods: not bad
in an action bit,
duct tape on and --
but can it cut bait?

superimposed:

resume poem/prop:
ruse, or imp's desire?
impressed? so pose me
or sue me, per pride --
i primp supreme! sure,

sod 'em, rid me o' 'em:
i suppose dim "peers"
surmise i ride mops?
i deem 'em poseurs,
drips -- prose mopes!

muses impede, seems,
so i drop 'em...doses
o' odes rise...o dome,
o spire...o soup i pour,
sop up...o mire, so pure.

valedictorian:

laid at a rave
nailed in a van
torn on a trail

trained and rated
led and driven
tired and ironed

one live act
a real dear

nice

Thank you

for Kelly

Thank you for inventing
the sport of pole vaulting

long after the last brick
had set in my Great Wall.

Thank you for breaking up
my ice caps, one Mississippi-

sized berg at a time.
Thank you for rushing

my sovereign shores
with your mild armada.

And thank you (merci
beaucoup) for orbiting me

more closely, then settling
on my very shade of blue.

These are the Things I Want

for Kelly

She says: a house made of flowers,
a kitten made of clouds,
a hand made of your voice
that I can hold with my other hand.

And these, he says, are the things
I want: a room made of books,
a bed made of dreams,
a sunrise made of your smile.

They

They're there again this morning.
The one who sits eating bananas
in the midnight blue, windowless van
is parked in the usual place
almost directly below my balcony.
The other one, the paperback reader
in the nondescript brown sedan,
is posted farther down the street.
They're always there now. At least they're
always there when I'm here.
(I've removed the telephone from my bedroom
to silence the barrage of wrong numbers
that come in the middle of the night.)
If today is anything like yesterday
or the day before, they'll be gone
by the time I get downstairs.
But in the meantime, there they are:
looking away when I look down...
looking up when I look away.

the thinker

he sat a long time
on that toilet

chin in hand
like a Rodin

pondering
the relationship

between "increment"
and "excrement"

This is not a poem about you sleeping

This is not a poem about you sleeping,
because whenever we're lying in the half-
light and I go to reach over you to gather
my pad and pencil from the nightstand,
your face awakens like a happy cloud
alive with angels.

The Thorn Tree

We've avoided it for the bees it brings,
dragged its heavy limbs off after the winds.
Mowing around it, we've earned our stripes.

Now its branches overhang the gate.
Denuded by the long, dry, extra-cold winter --
doing nothing to dispel April's reputation --

it scritches at strangers, tries its best to reach them
before they bring Hoover or Joe Smith to the door.
It's our best enemy...waves our friends around back.

tiny planets steer

for my left ear-hole,
soundlessly (to all

but me) enter, tra-
verse the tiny uni-

verse between
it and my right

ear-hole, ex-
it that, and hum

(if audibly only
to me) quickly

on out of ear-
shot. I've hosted

many in this man-
ner...once even

had a new one
form in the mid-

dle, when one
violated the left-to-

right rule and col-
lided with a non-

violator: these
two thus becoming

this.

To Love

His action verbs churn
the surfaces to a froth,

while she remains
as if underwater:

a single,
unshakable noun.

To the Editor

This poem does not rhyme
nor does it capitalize the word Time,
Spring, or Dust. There are no cats in this poem,
chasing metaphysical balls of string
when they're not hogging the sofa.
Kissy, kissy, I love no one
for the purposes of this poem.

This poem is not about a poem.
It does not obfuscate the issue
of drenched nuns fleeing naked from my door,
leaving me: alone, alone. No preaching
or self-pity in this Goddamned poem,
no wanton profanity or chopped
prose. I have studied your magazine.
Please send sample copy.

A cattle prod against the genitals
shocks in sing-song pentametric iambs,
whereas this poem would not stoop so

low.
To establish that I have no reputation,
please call my old friends at Harper & Row.

You won't find this poem on any greeting cards.

Best regards,

P.S. I think this is what you wanted to see.

To the Trout

Loitering just downstream
from the DFG stock point
where Independence
and Pinyon creeks meet
in the shadow of the aptly
named Rattlesnake Hill
to form a smallish pool and
an even smaller waterfall
one hard left and a hundred
yards from the pavement
halfway up Onion Valley Road,
before it starts to get curvy
or all that steep, less than
half a mile from the lower
campground that's filled early
and late every season with
unsuspecting outdoorsmen
who never think to venture
from their band of cool
green to seek you out, where
my informant has told me
you've been waiting
since before he first fished
there some thirty years ago,
his own proud snitch
long dead now, the local
secret spot of which every
Eastern Sierra town has one,
all you 8-to-12-ounce beauties
I can almost feel flopping
in my creel right now, before
you're caught, before I even
know if you're about to be
or not: I wish you luck, though
you'll need to know which kind.

Tracks of a Creature Unknown

Along a steep slope of dried ash and dust --
and by “dried” I mean fluffed for millennia

and by “steep” almost straight up and down --
above a road beside a bridge I’ve parked to gaze

at the flashing of the brook below --
and when I say “along” I don’t mean

up or down, of course, but parallel to
the ridge above the road and the stream

below -- in casual, wholly instinctive
stealth, with no concern for what’s left behind

on a surface that conceals both
direction and identity itself

trails

she's a walking
flashback: her

neat lines, the arc
of her direction,

linger in the air
after she's passed...

and you follow, boy,
like a bloodhound

stoned on the scent.

Tripping, You Call Your Girlfriend

Recounting the improbable
history of telephones
(not to mention the future
of the coins multiplying
in your pocket), you hold
the world's largest receiver
in your amazing hand. If
you can get past the cipher lock
barring passage into her mind,
the cops won't send out a squad
from the steel-and-glass world.
Somehow the complicated edges
of the beautiful quarter match
those of the slot, and now you're in
for a time, sorting out
her number from Planck's theorems.
You stand there for a hundred years
while the dial tone ululates
like an Italian siren...
Hello, you say.
Is this my voice?

Trout

A man walks down the street towing a trout on a leash.
The trout is much abraded from being bounced and dragged.
The man is teaching his pet trout not to resist him.

I did not know I would not love again like I loved you.
I loved you like that because I was taking night classes,
was famous for my Buick and successful at my work...

the man says, dangling the leash in the hundred-gallon tank.
The tank and its accessories take up half his living room.
On the end of the leash is a baited hook.

Trout By Trout

I decimate the tiny
pool, then break

for a few while
it replenishes

itself as if with
arcade ducks

springing back up
into place. Happy

to be here alone,
stringer half-full,

rush of water,
wind in the trees,

the bears still
sleeping...still,

I remain alert:
bears like this spot

just as much as
I and the trout

do, just forty
yards down-

stream from the
little stone bridge

where the fish
truck stops

once a week. If
there's a Heaven,

I'll settle for being
the one that got away.

trying to figure

out where you leave
off and we start's like
studying Latin:
the suffix "us" points
to a single unit,
and the plural's "i"

tule fog

every night someone
sneaks into my room
and steals the oil
painting of the neon-
lit night street

I never tire of
looking at as
I drift off to
sleep, and I wake

up every morning
to find the same
cheap watercolor
in its place

and every day while
I'm out, the art
thief grows remorseful....

Two Found Poems from Conquer Your Debt

I.
Chronic debtors can be treated professionally
through outpatient psychiatric or psychological care.
This type of treatment can be expensive.

II.
You should consider investigating Debtors Anonymous...
Attendance is free,
although a voluntary contribution is requested.

Two Introverts

One introvert enters
a vacant auditorium,
filling it to capacity.

The other one rides
a crowded elevator,
utterly alone.

Two Questions

You want to know
how I can stand
such solitude --

and I want to
know if you've
ever stood before

a mirror that shows
you how you look
on the inside.

The 2000 Census

The Dallas Police Dept., on a
desperate recruiting mission,
traveled as far as Puerto Rico
but didn't come back with
a single firm candidate.
So they ordered all their
monolingual patrol officers
to take 60 hours of Spanish.
Now the complaint is that
the cops know enough to
ask basic questions, but don't
understand the answers. And
all the blacks want to know
how anything has changed.

Umbrellas

A man is standing in a doorway during a squall. A sudden gust wrenches the umbrella from his hands as he tries to open it. The wind pins the umbrella against a wall, opens it the rest of the way, then drags it along the sidewalk and out into the street. The man gets soaked instantly as he bolts from the doorway into the wind-driven rain, madly chasing his umbrella. I wonder what he'll do with the umbrella if he catches it?

The bus I'm riding rolls on, its tires throwing huge sheets of water onto people holding umbrellas against the rain.

the unrealist

puts all his money
in a cloud bank, but
it falls through.

the veteran

maybe he can't
clap his hands or
stomp his feet
anymore but
he can do some
things

after all
it only takes one
finger to steady
the barrel
against the wheel-
chair

and one
toe to pull the
trigger

The View from Inyokern

Cloud shadows speckle the barren east slope
of the Sierras, as if a light gray cat,
his back to us, lies dreaming of dark gray mice
dancing upon him in mock attack.
We cannot see the great cat's tail flicking
cars from the freeways far to the south,
nor his giant cat-feet kicking
over buildings in Fresno to the west.
Up north, near Reno, a huge purring rises.

War

The enemy, the
top half of whose
skull we blasted
off a couple of
meters in front
of our machine
gun, kneels
where he died
in the mud,

facing us, eyes
open, rain
filling and slopping
over from his brain
pan and running
down his face like
tears...as we bet
on pebbles tossed,
boys that we are.

watching clouds

an alligator
that thins
into a
crocodile races
after a fat
white puffer

the croc's
jaws open
wider as
it draws
closer

then fly a-
part before
they can
bite down

this is heavenly
justice

watching you walk

is like eating peyote
waiting an hour
then waving a pool cue
slowly back and
forth in front
of my eyes:
c/c/c/c/c/cue
cue/ooh/ooh/ooh
the word for you
arrives when you do
and leaves when you go,
cuteypeye

we answer our dead

with thousands more
of theirs, more than

evening the score,
as they prepare

to answer theirs
with the same

primitive means
they used before.

will they never
learn we're techno-

logically superior? or
must we teach them

the lessons of uranium,
hydrogen, plutonium,

the entire table
of elements we are

able to chart, set,
then blow apart

in the name of freedom
and

civilization?

we come home to find

the neighbors' black
Lab hanging from her
thick steel chain
tongue out to one side
eyes half open and all
white where they rolled
up to meet a vision
of escape from suburbia
with a surprise ending
the contents of her
bladder and bowels
staining the grass below
the deep scratch marks
on our side of the wall
blood congealing
on her shredded paws

we condemn

/judge/criticize
those most like
us or their
most like
parts the most &
hope no one
notices & no
one for the
most part does

Weather or Not

All my maps crisscrossed, all
my tiny percentages adding
up to more than my share,
I stepped out into the yard

to stare, and stared: There
was a gale blowing in calm
silence; a storm in the sun.
No one to hamper my ways

thronged outside the fence,
full of hot air. Jabberwockies --
what are jabberwockies? They
make you talk and not care,

blind you in your search for rain.
And if there isn't a drop to spare?
Dry rot can steal into the beams
that uphold the weather vane....

Wednesday

Wednesday's the day
I wake up not knowing
which day of the week it is.

It's not Thursday yet,
or I'd wake up knowing it
because I'd be looking forward

to Friday...and if it was Friday,
brother, you know I'd know it.
And I know it isn't Saturday,

because the alarm clock woke me up;
and I'm not looking back at half
of a perfectly good weekend

with the dread that hangs
like a poised blade over
my plans for the other half,

so I know it's not Sunday.
And whenever Monday comes,
the only thing I know in this world

when I wake up is that it's
Monday. Tuesday? Could be
Tuesday...except Tuesday

isn't the day I wake up not knowing
which day of the week it is. Then again,
there's a first time for everything....

What Follows

After the brief,
intense storm,

the snow melts
as the sky clears,

revealing sun,
horizon, and

the path you
have been on

all along,
after all.

What It's Like

It's like pulling the night shift in a dingy group home for twenty-eight Supplemental Security Income recipients who hand over their monthly checks in exchange for room, board and sedation. It's like the professional care during hours of darkness consists of a nineteen-year-old junior college dropout with a baseball bat slung over his shoulder and a taped-up roll of pennies in his pocket, whose training in crisis intervention began and ended with "Just get right in his face and say real loud, 'Johnny! Johnny! Chill out!' if you find Johnny picking on his roommates, and don't go anywhere without the bat," and here Johnny starts picking like clockwork and you're suddenly not tired anymore, and are duly applying your training as your hand closes lightly around the penny roll in case you have to jettison the school solution. But it works. Damn. How 'bout that. Sigmund freaking Freud. And Johnny's scuffing the floor with the toes of his shoes and wringing his hands, and around the corner and down the hallway toward you comes another "guest," he's walking toward you stiff-legged as Frankenstein and has an ordinary four-pronged dinner fork stuck clean through his throat just behind his Adam's apple like a joke arrow. Only there's lots of blood. And you're in charge. And he's freaking grinning at you. And his name isn't Johnny.

What the Moon Hears

The sound trees make in a forest devoid
of human life is a sort of sniggering,
like a clan of contentious hyenas
feasting on the rumor of a lost child.
The blinking moon is an owl's question
of clouds pushing across its one good eye.
"The wind will tell you who," whispers the brook,
its white ribbon the moon's only clue
to the little girl's passage through the wood.
"Run your light along my length, and listen to the trees...
The one the wind felled silenced her for good."

Wheels

I am watching a movie about the humans
The story revolves around a nun raised by coyotes
All the rabbits have died and yet she remains innocent
She lifts her voice like a sack of letters written by illiterates
I am having a religious experience
It is the religion of the wolves

I am studying God and insect life at the same time
I am a skeleton in an anthropomorphology lab
I wear a white coat and pore over microscopes
I have no brain and therefore must rely on instinct
Nothing more than a feeling in my bones
The feeling you get when two or more wolves gather to make a wish

I am all wolves and the pretty people
On the screen encircle me with spears of conversation
Now I'm a dog lying in the kitchen, there that's better
You can see the wheels turning behind my eyes
I will stare at you until you know my hunger
My thirst, the fact that I have been reinvented

when

when I want to
camp out I open
my bedroom window
pull the covers up
over my head
break out the snacks
the flashlight
and the comic books

when my ship calls
for a captain you'll
find me standing
tall at the prow
of the roof of my
house

when mortal danger
beckons I flip on
the Discovery Channel

and when it's time
for lovemaking
there you are

when l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e poets die

their souls
wander the
earth forever
like rats in a
maze: dazed
to find that
all the signs
pointing to
heaven have
(after long
debate) been
"rescued from
the tyranny
of meaning"

when the 105mm landed

not 5m from Hanson who was
sitting on the edge of our
foxhole his jungle-booted
feet dangling in front
of my eyes telling jokes
I'd heard before and eating
an MRE his top half
took off skyward trailing
an umbilical cord
of shiny pink intestine
unreeling between the mid-
bite top-half Hanson
and the still-seated
jungle-booted Hanson
and then it was over
and his top half hit the
ground like a heavy
kite on a mostly calm
but occasionally gusty day.

when they finally

found him his
bones were half-
buried in sand
and tumbleweeds

a kangaroo rat was
raising its young
in his skull

tiny wildflowers
had sprung up
between his ribs

nearby lay an
empty canteen
and an unfinished
note to his wife

"honey" the note said
"the desert's growing on me"

Who put...

Who put the imp in simple?
Who put the rue in true?
Who put the if in life?
Who put the lie in believe?
Who put the deal in idealism?
Who put the liar in familiar?
Who put the them in anthem?
Who put the my in enemy?
Who put the warm in warmonger?
Who put the sold in soldier?
Who put the anger in danger?
Who put the rage in courage?
Who put the sap in Homo sapiens?

Who's Hungry?

Dawn,
Lake George:

The trout are
thinking

about food.
Sadly

for them,
so am I.

why i won't be at zen class today

i fell in the forest
and heard myself

The Widow's Advice

If you're in the bathtub, don't be drunk;
if you're drunk in the bathtub, don't stand up;
if you're standing up drunk in the bathtub, don't
play music from a plug-in radio;
if you're playing music from a plug-in radio
while standing up drunk in the bathtub, don't dance;
if you stand up drunk in the bathtub and dance
to music from a plug-in radio, don't drop
the soap; if you drop the soap
while standing up drunk in the bathtub dancing
to music from a plug-in radio, remember
not to rely on a plug-in radio for support
if you slip and fall; and above all,
remember how deadly the emotions can be.

The wind's in a hurry...

The wind's in a hurry today:
it whistles to be let in but
when I open the window to
oblige, it chases the smoke from
the cigarettes I've been smoking
out of the room and slams the door
behind it. Then there's no more wind

in the room. But maybe the wind's
in no rush after all: for as soon
as I've opened the door and closed
the window, it's back pressing its
cheek against the glass (this time it's
eyeing the papers on my desk) --
whistling to be let in again.

windshield bug

one second fly
ing/the next no
thing/let me
die like that

windstorm

the juniper waves
as frantically
as a drowning sailor
outside my window

the rows of irises
in the flower bed
have become a team
of synchronized
dirt-swimmers

a purple finch
flies backwards
in a flock of hands
stripped from maples

as the grass bows down
and the dust wants in.

Winter People

She opens
the drapes
on every window,

turns on
all the lamps
in the house.

She thinks it
brightens the
place up,

which of course
it does.
He thinks

also,
though,
of next month's

gas and electric
bills: Ah, well.
That's the price

winter exacts
for a bit of warmth,
a bit of light.

A Winter Scene

The accountant's driveway,
as he's fetching today's WSJ,

is all frozen snow over gravel under his
shoes: crunch, crunch, go the numbers.

the woman tree

my lovers
ripen
drop

and roll away
to the sweaty
mangrove

while the moss
continues to
thicken

along my
nurturing
side

would someone please send

me a list of names and
contact information of any
or all of those people,
whoever they are, who are
actually motivated to buy
a new SUV or luxury car
by a celebrity's voice,
or a paraphrased pop song,
or an imaginary image of
themselves behind the wheel
amidst mountains or
ahead of slower and/or
smaller cars containing
their social inferiors,
or by a silicone-
breasted, collagen-
lipped college girl? or
at least of those who
confuse cigarettes with
penises? I know they're
out there somewhere,
because I, too, listen
to the radio and read
entertainment magazines
and watch TV, and I
just want to offer them
a deal on some really sexy,
high-octane,
extremely fashionable,
status-enhancing,
shiny-new
poems.

thank you!

You As Elephant Island

You're a tiny shelf of beach,
your high water mark 30 feet up

the 2,000-foot sheer cliffs
backstopping you on all sides.

You're the ice I break my teeth on
in my thirst, and a distant necklace

of jewels signaling a tide rip.
You're pieces of an open boat

decorating the sand. You're a sea
leopard bobbing in mottled surf

on the year's one starry night,
languidly eyeing your next meal.

you enter the room

to a general sucking-
in of male guts

breaths are drawn as
sharply as razors

across throats
grins turn virgin-

white for that one split
second before the sigh:

a deep red

your smile sounds like

a first draft of a poem
being balled up
or a photograph burning

when the teeth dance
the eyes go crinkle

zzyzx

it's the last poem
on the map

a sinkhole
in the great basin

the final word as you read
from left to nowhere

meth lab haven
a sleepy little place...

and you were nodding
several lines ago.