No Free Rides (Maybe sometimes)

The Jersey town of New
Brunswick, collegetown,
much like the region of Taco-
ma where I spent some months,
great place for rain and fire,
not for friends spread out along
the country like not
enough butter spread over
too much bread, and I realize
there that I have no idea
what

I'm doing on this planet, here,
alone, no mamacita no girl
no paper no pen, traveling
on a free ride.

Union Square. Three o'clock. There's
a gypsy in front of a fountain, a
mountain of bones and muscles walking,
this way that way ANTS! A city
of ANTS! in different clothes, sporting
different colored skin, bird shit on
the pavement, over there the Buddhists
perform magic that is music with their
throats, tongues unexposed, commuters
exit the train station underground, sparrows
back 'n forth, there has to be a hundred or
more ANTS in my line of vision, some
desperately needing circumcision, trying
to get this out with precision, when every-
thing around us is bonafide illusion.

The sun spotlights a brick building, a hospital,
twenty-six stories high, two towers on a tri-
angular base, trees lining the roof, the way
a city bus shrieks on every corner, that's how
I think of you.

Aspirin Nation

Fear--
fear for myself, approaching twenty
Years--
on this planet full of switching
Careers--
superhighways and churning
Gears--
left to us The Cancer, Hello,
How are you, Nice to meet you,
Kill you later but put you to Work
now, alone, maybe, maybe alone
in the universe but the earth's conscious-
ness lives in mountains while ours
say it's lonely at the top,
but you know the road's lonelier on
a reservation in Arizona, one in the morn-
ing, must remember fame and success
suckled imprinted on my aspirin-nations,
my aspirations, my antagonist yet to show
Himself 'cos it's still the first act, or maybe
the beginning of the second,
but nonetheless must remember
fame and aspiration isn't the best way nor
the only way, 'cos the Butcher gobbles it
all eventually.

The Conqueror
just lost his
thirty year mortgage,
found a foreclosure
notice on the front door,
aged with hard weather,
The Conqueror Lord of
the Spoken Word moves
slow motion toward dreams
melting in the Eastern Sun,
Union Square bats no
eyelashes, instead bats a .335
on the road to nuclear nectar

ego 

death moving always
moving, treasures sinking to
the ocean floor.

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.

Ferryman

The stars point my soul
toward the ground and I
got bug bites on my fingers.
The ferryman wants his
two cents and I only
got one sense and it
sure as hell ain't common.

The ferryman calls himself
Oblivion, don't call him
Death, and the journey's
taking forever, nineteen
years so far and many
more to go. The river's
bending and I have no
flexibility when it comes
to my joints, my joints
quake.

The trees around us are dead
and whisper lines in meter,
but the river isn't in meter,
it's full of mosquiteers.

The ferryman tells me to hold
my breath as we go under-
ground.

It was seven-fifteen
and I'm busy dreaming,
sitting in this diner thinking
with a cup of joe
(I'm a fiend for the bean, dig?)
And I know that once life picks up it's breezy,
this shit will pass, done phasing me,
accepting the back-forth reality
of super ego duking it out with the id,
my amigo, the placebo effect
has the mind swimming in oblivion,

and I gotta girl with eyes like a doe's,
full of calm and admiration,
I gotta tell you I'd be lost without her in this equation,
her character and natural fascination
for sensation, she's close like fabric to the skin
and for once life lessons might be sinking in
and she gets me, oooh she gets me.

I gotta tell ya, I need better kicks,
though my head's screwed into the meaning of wit,
tired of this shit, neurons rewiring I feel it
when the ganje kicks in, when her love kicks in,
when my soul kicks in to the experience,
I'm delirious with passion flying out my fingertips,
though life don't stop when you're out of dope
or out of hope, rewind the tapes and play it backward
just to show that it can't unhappen, me and my
mismatching socks, your mismatched hearts,
I know where my heart stands and that's on the ground
in the clouds kicking so much ass, and
oooh she gets me, oooh she gets me.

Cementland Reality (Just Breathe)

Our eyes lock,
time stops,
heart's poundin' raindrops
clock used to go tick-tock
but now it's gone like our soldiers in Iraq,
the wind's pulsing and picking up rocks
thrown against the window the force shocks
us laying in her bed,
our future we don't want to have so far ahead,
talkin' about all the books we haven't read--
her father telling her our own paths we tend to tread
shit, she laughed, he's been doing that since I was eleven,
it's our education we're smoking away.

She secretly wants life to be some surreal animation,
just sweet sensations, no church or state or federation
or health problems like lacerations
or TV's "Face the Nation",
no more infestations or incarcerations,
no more medications or the need to take them,
no more vaccinations or the need to get them,
no more transportation or the need to use it,
no more insanity or the need to plead it,
no more court rooms or the need for recess,
no more diabetes or the need for dialysis,
no more guns nor the lead that's in them,
no more me if I refuse to listen
to my heart that's pounding in her ear as she's talking
her eyes and mine expanding,
her eyes tell me love is now everlasting
like it wasn't before,
the sunrays peaking on the shore
of this long night finally,
the morning star brightly seen,
the green and blue serenity
but you know you're soon gonna visit
the cementland reality,
the cementland reality.

Bus lets me off, feet blistering in the cold--
This time no money to hold.
She says to me, "just breathe" when she picks me up
from the station and hands me the pipe, God standing over me,
over us, he's painting on a canvas an action shot
of soccer kids grinning
while an old woman's winning
all up in the bingo room,
she's filling her box pine tomb up
with casino chips while I'm
filling mine with potato chips, while a
little girl is buying a bag of pita chips, while a
dog dies because he found the bag of chocolate chips
left out on the counter--
the culprit now haunted much more than he wanted,
dead dogs suck, you know.

Vesuvius erupts, your heart's a plastic cup,
here's the crutch, I'm a little drunk
but I do gotta heart the size of a construct-
ion site while others still living off of Lady Luck
and those others still don't give a fuck
about anything but their pick-up truck
that was just towed from the Wal-Mart plaza,
'member the old days when shit was hot lava? (Yeah, I do.)
That shit sucked worse than Drone Wars by Obama, Clone Wars, and Big Pharma--
I might be a rhymer but this life ain't no soap opera drama,
'member my two second coma
on the porch of your condominium
while we were watching that movie Requiem
for a Dream?

I gotta question.
Yeah, I gotta question.

Why give wages a minimum
if the minimum is less than two millennium
a month, fuck askin' "can you loan me some?"
"Sell me some?" "Buy me some?" "Lemmie work some,"
But they repo'd the chromium
appliances or your kitchen linoleum to mine loads of uranium,
sitting in their lawn chairs having coke with rum,
later need some Tum Tums and can't seem to cum
inside their wives and girlfriends, sucking the fun out of everything.

The price of livin' comfortably
gets so dangerous when you're a commodity--
when that's the price of livin' comfortably,
and everything's a commodity
but not our souls in the rivers or trees,
not in our hearts our bowels or are teeth,
it's all not bound up in grief or greed or
weed, when everything's a commodity,
one day we'll all be free but until then
we're all fish swimming like
the fish keep swimming, like
Dori telling Marlin to 'just keep swimming',
my time is swimming and your head
is swimming and my time is swimming away.
Our time's slipping away.
This life is slipping away.
This Cementland Reality? Yeah it's slipping away.

Words off the paper
jump into your skin and

eat away at blindness.

Late Observation

The bugs get to me, a big

One with wings two inches

Long roosts on my front door,

Have you ever noticed how
life sometimes seems worse
than death?

A fishing boat leagues away from the San Diego docks and it’s about 2 in the morning, the lights from the night club scene shine onto the bay, and the fishermen drink their rum and try to sleep on top of agoraphobia, the humongous aquarium ocean and the loneliness of looking on that dark horizon to the storm clouds passing you to the north and to the east is the sounds distant and faraway, like where God is to our souls when we fish for food in our day to day, and San Diego is nothing more than the imprint of that fisherman’s eyelids, beneath his hat, next to his bed, where his unused toothbrush lay lying next to the toilet, the imprint of San Diego is nothing more than you and me and Sea World.

Fat Man Fred

Fat man Fred stands in the corner
with a boy of 30 in a baseball cap,
sideburns on both, and boy has
a doobie in his mouth and is cutting
a little bit of cocaine, Fat man Fred
stutters and takes a swig of whisky
through a straw from a plastic cup,
boy of 30 sells him a painting and
it's just another Saturday night so
the crowd's drinking cocktails and
wearing high heels and laughing
lipstick colored lifestyles, Fat man
Fred talks to you about

Charles Bukowski, Los Angeles,
the "Sity of Angles", but your girl
is enjoying the laid-back views
in the corner, little girl rapping on
stage and your girl is gettin' into it,
you're gettin into her, your fingers
in her hair as you and her dance
into the night, into the ever
expanding ever falling well of
falling in love.