The ocean looked like
a television screen, all silver
and flat, while I saw out
the window of the airplane
our shadow, dark and anxiety-
producing,

and the shores of Long Island
looked tropical like maybe
the Bahamas with the sun setting
giving us orange and pink
everything, everything the light
touches is the Pridelands.

This was last night. Today,
though, today is Day One in what
used to be called New Amsterdam,
overwhelmed and lost in the streets
like a Cretan to the Minotaur, but
the hope burns and my heart
breathes fire,

your heart breathes fire too. Let's
hope
I don't
lose
my
wallet.

Sufi sundries care not
for your twirls, your
whirligigs, thunderstorms
you whip out of that
axe will empower, not
enlighten.

Yogi Berra

How
can
you
think
and
hit
at
the
same
time?

SW to NE

We meet again, gravity.
Let us mingle with brevity
for a time, and when the game
is over, this chess game for
my soul, we can laugh over
darts and the movie Office Space.
(Excuse me, I believe
you have my stapler...)

Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas!
It chants, this THING in a box
of junk, this Santa-face monstrosity,
from childhood but works on
the same acid-batter battery, it jingles on motion
sensor. And sometimes, light sensor.
The fucking thing.

But seriously, life pushes me northeast
where the lights twinkle from the ground up,
a ten mile dick inbetween Jersey and Brook-
lyn. And I don't know
what will
happen.

Ha.
The stillness now however, it is because
of a rowboat on this lake, tied to the dock.
Me and her are in it,
my fellow alpha brain wave sistuh,
my world class so class is class goes to class sistuh,
my home sistuh and my mother earth sistuh,
my root chakra knows where home is,
though my naive moronic head says there
is home where I lay my head, and only
for a while.
She's a sistuh but also my lovuh and
you betta believe in Jah that I'mma write to her,
elephants never forget, not while tied
to this dock together, let's untie
and cross to the other
shore.

So Ho Ho Ho mothers and sisters, friends
and fuckbuddies, lovers and teachers and drinkers
and piss ant noBODIES, Ho fucking ho.
John Lennon shoulda said
"NEW YORK IS WHAT HAPPENS
WHEN YOU'RE BUSY MAKING
OTHER PLANS."

We were sitting
on her family's back porch,
sunk into the comfiest
couch this side of the
Mississippi, while her
mother sat in a chair adjacent.
She was smoking Newports
and telling me a story
about her godson.

Her godson lived in Anchorage,
worked on the Naval base there,
and his friend needed $4,000.
His friend killed her godson.

This is not something that
happens in real life, Lori explained.
This happens on the news,
or on cable TV, but you'd never
expect your kids, your godson,
you don't worry about things
like this happening, because they
don't. Not to us, anyway. Not
to us.

He did it with a hammer, and when he
was done, he cleaned the hammer
and put it back in the truck.

The afternoon sun was sinking,
the crisp golden light touching their
untouched lawn, grass growing five
feet high, an untended rose bush in the corner,
a tree in the other.

Did you know the rape and murder rate
for women is highest in the nation in Anch-
orage? Lori told me.

Oh but the comments on the news story
webpage were seeping, and Lori found the
killer's mom in adamant defense--

Lori pointed out the killer's involvement with
a dog fighting rink when he was 15,
charged with felony. And they let the dude
into the armed services.

Hey, life happens. But death, it doesn't. Not
to us.

The Tragicomedy of Jimmy Johnskis

Peanut butter Thanks-
giving pie, a slice for you
along with ham on rye, so
the obvious problem with
ordering this from your local
Jimmy Johns does follow:

Mr. Bukowski, the
"associate,"  has to consult
Mr. Sandusky, the manager,
employed by
Mr. Lebowski, who drinks
alot and listens to Stravinski.
But it's funny, Lebowski's wife,
maiden name Lindski, listens
to Stranvinski too, ever since
she was hospitalized in that
"ski" accident with "instructor"
Bukowski, and stayed with
the homeski for two weekski
(it was really a new Bukowski
inside of Lebowski's Lindski),
and everyone's a Stravinski
fan sans Sandusky, who prefers
watching a "bootleg" copy of Monica
Lewinsky sucking Clinton's joystickski.

It surprised Lebowski one morning
over a cocktail, Lindski's Stravinski
choice gave Lebowski a smile, but then...
the pointski came to his headski.
Let's be sureski that Lebowski didn't
let that shitski go. He buried Lindski
one night, tried to catch Bukowski

but that mothafucka fled to Cincinnati.
Sandusky was sworn to secrecy over lunchski,
Lebowski found an attorney
and when they finally tried him for first degree murderksi,
his attorney won the jury away from pleading guilty.

Meanwhile Sandusky broke down over
a glass of iced tea raspberry and told the copskis.
He acted as witness against Bukowski.

Bukowski was put away for 2 years,
Sandusky killed by hitmenski.

But really, I'm thinking, Jimmy John's
don't have what I need, doesn't
peanut butter sound delicious
today?

The Reed Flute and The Library (in @ parts)

Uno
CHORUS: The words said
live in their own
worlds, voices
swirl like honey, while
I'm all lost in the library, and
they are real. Eggs
laid, seeds planted,
let them grow!

RUMI SAYS!
Body flowing
out of spirit,
spirit up
from the
body, but it's
not given
to us
to see
love
the sea
that
is
our soul. The
reed flute, friends,
the reed
flute
is fire.

Not wind.

Be that

empty.

I SAY!

The reed flute is fire, I'm fire, destroy

destroy empty lawn chair Bob Dylan go to hell

empty I need to be empty the tar in

my lungs need to leave, the lungs need

to leave, the heart must leave the body 

must leave, there should be nothing

so then I can be filled with everything

everything.

Everything

that might

HENRY CHINASKI SAYS!

be me

or God or you

or people

or the devil

or christ but then, all
I'm
really actually
gonna do
is sit here
while
the ants
crawl on
me writing
poems like
a stupid
sonofabitch
and get drunk
and maybe
she'll fuck me
tomorrow.

Dos.
The alchemist sat in his brass chair
and took the ivory figure of a horse
and set it on the table top.
Alchemist you are, if your name
is Daniel Abdal Moore.

ALCHEMIST SAYS!
I drank rainwater collected in a trumpet
flower and saw a youth dressed in leaves
gazing with love on everything around Him
extolling God in a voice the hibiscus flowers
could adequately hear!

I SAY!

The Alchemist's dark laboratory off Moulton Street

can by no means win over yours,

your heart brews pneumatic

songs, if you read Tolkien

you'd know the universe

was made

by music, I say

the

reed flute's

music

is the universe

in song.

LORD OF THE FLIES SAYS!

Boron Born and hermetically fed up,

burned everything but manuscripts,

especially subversive politics and pigs with lipstick

It isn't like Bloods and the Crips,
no, it's me muthafucka, hanging on a stick!
Oink oink I'm a pig on a stick
grinning like Stalin to his kids,
flies in the mouth just for kicks!
RAW! Does it scare ya, you little bitch!
Voices be messing up your head all up in this shit!
Luck brings you up and then puts you in a fit,
Come here, baby, kiss my lips,
or burn in hellfire, dead in a ditch.

CHORUS:

The voices cry out dying

foxes, cunning malicious stoic

haunting voices make us all

shiver in the library.

The library isn't covered in
ants but maybe, just mabye,
it talks to you too. It should
haunt you too.