From: Three Crow Suite

2.

Three fat crows were sitting in my neighbor's driveway

when I walked out the door this morning to go

to the coffee shop. “Christ,” I thought

“not three. Not again.” Then they hopped,

syncopated, up on a low lying branch,

paying no attention to me

and (just my luck!)

didn't even turn my direction.

It's cold this morning – feels like winter

one week before Thanksgiving.

Even the stalwart gray haired men

who huddle under stoops outside of the coffee shop

to smoke cigarettes and curse the young

rush back inside,

rather than settle in to solve

the problems of the world

between cups of coffee,

and stories of girls they may have known

once, years ago,

before they achieved the wisdom require

to come in from the cold

and seek good company.

Three crows perched

on an dead November tree branch

have as much a chance

as old men sipping coffee

and telling tales, dreaming

of a summer

when the skirts will be shorter

and the lies will be more interesting.

The only difference between their stories

is the point of view.

Essay on Religion and Profanity (A Poem)

The room was crowded and most of the chairs

in front of the make shift stage were full.

You'd think after spending so much time

in front of people that I'd be more comfortable;

but I still need my two shots and two beers

(minimum) just to think about reading

in front of any crowd. The musicians, at least

have a guitar to hide behind. I get up there

                                                               I'm naked

and all my inadequacies are hanging out

for the old women and their knitting

to take note of, measure, and judge me on

accordingly.

The old men are worse. Propriety

seems to mean more to them... they'll have

no dangerous dangling in front of their women folk –

though I haven't met a an old farmer's wife yet

who would blush. (Animal husbandry

and male inadequacy have taken

more of their years than they want

to worry about.)

Try to put it all in context, mention

the French root of the word “essay”

hoping they will then forgive

the profanity that is sure to come.

I can't help but cuss in prose;

it's as natural as breathing

and comes twice as fast.

My only hope lies

in tone; will they pick up

the humor, the dry sarcasm

the self-deprecating way

I am always apologizing

for myself?

I stand and read. It's worse

than that naked dream. Remember

not to read too fast but try

not to read too slow. Sometimes I hear

what sounds like light laughter

which makes me feel better

and I push forward

building steam –

until the last three sentences

in which I unveil “... where

there is nothing to do

but drink, get fucked up, and fuck.”

The post coital silence is staggering.

Two old men in the third row glare

shake their heads. Later, they get up

sing five gospel tunes, hoping to erase

the poor sinner

for whom their christ

was supposed to have died

in the first place.

Revisions of a Not Very Fairy Tale

1.

The story might go a little something like this:

Once there was man who lived in a little town.

As a young man, he had left that very town,

the town of his birth, because there were

no stories to tell, no songs to sing, and

everyone had fallen into a kind of

forgetful fog. This bothered him –

he saw the lives they weren't living

and the only thing that bothered him more

was the the thought that if he stayed,

the forgetful fog would overtake him, too.

But that had been many, many years ago,

and eventually he felt like he had done

what he had set out to do, traveled and seen

all he wanted to see, learned stories and songs

that he had wanted to learn from places

no one had ever heard of, and he decided

to go home.

                     But by the time he returned,

the stories he had gone off to collect

were no longer needed and he had no one

who would sit and listen.

No one except for one small childe,

a little girl named Matilde

who was very precocious

and who could be seen

talking and laughing to herself

in her mother's flower garden. She

was seven years old. Her favorite color

was purple.

Two More From ArtWërks

1.

The streets have been full for centuries.

Even if the buildings were to disappear

tomorrow, these streets would remain

filled end to end and side to side

with memories and with ghosts

and with the specters of memories.

In the dirt between the bricks

there is a memory

locked in stone and pebble

rubble and rabble

memory that filters down

and into the water

and from the water

into the dirt

and from the dirt,

it is rubbed into the soles of our shoes

and we remember again

all the things we didn't know

that we didn't know – comes to us

in dreams and in visions

and in visitations that,

if we're paying attention

will tell us the way

we are to go.

2.

So sit down here

and tell me a story

and make it a good 'un

like the one you told me

yesterday. Tell me

about one of the places

you frequented when you were

young, and fresh the fruit was

and how the women were sweet and ripe 

and how clear and how cool

the water was and what it

felt like to really sleep,

to sleep out in the open

under the stars and what it felt like

to feel safe and to feel free

to feel something different

before all the fences and wires

and wireless was all built up

back before there were gate keepers

and invisible gates

back when you were my age

and the world was something more

beautiful than it seems today.

Random Unlabeled Photos (From Artwërks)

1.

Paint the body electric

hip hop bee bop –

O, let us sing the songs of ourselves

electric slide

run and hide

safe and sound

sunbathing beneath a blue sun

illuminated for the body

and the electric funk

born out of a need to dance

and a desire to stay

a little while longer.

2.

Let us go then, you and I

and wander silent empty streets

like drunkards, lovers, and reprobates.

Let us imagine ourselves ghosts

material immaterial

substance transubstantiated

wandering the bric-a-brac

counting the minutes of the witching hour

when even the cops have the sense

to go home and leave this place

to the rest of us that neither

need their rules nor

care to understand them.

3.

Counting down the hours til dawn

all the midnight shadows are drawn

in, tied up, and stowed away

in anticipation of an approaching day

that most people will not notice

because they're too busy

being respectable, worrying

about what shoes to wear

on Sunday morning and whether

the sermon will go long

making kick off

one more missed opportunity.

4.

The lines are drawing

themselves on my face –

deep lines around

the corners of my eyes

drawn around

the edges of my mouth.

They each tell a tale

geologic in proportion,

private in scale. The old men,

they like to remind me

I am still young. And while

I cannot argue

I cannot acquiesce

to their insistence

that it's all downhill

from here.

5.

This is the other side of night

that place Céline dreamed of

but never found; that steady peace

that comes with the meditation

of one painted line and the poetry

of coffee at 3 AM. Counting down

the hours til dawn and the cats are yowling

or maybe

just another bunch of bums

the cops will later blame 

for various and unrelated petty thefts.

RE: Procrastinating the Night Before Deadline

Burned pipe tobacco and spent tea leaves

look amazing similar when combined

in the ash tray. I'm trying to chase a story

and chasing my apathy with scotch

and Earl Grey tea. Maybe if

that voodoo queen was correct, one of them

will tell me the future and the other

will describe the manner of my death.

I'm far less interested in the former

than I am the latter; but I have found

I have no say in the message –

merely the form in which

the message is transmitted.

And either, really would be a welcome

excuse, since writing about politicians

doesn't change the fact that they're just

politicians; small town boys and girls

who grew up and into old men and old women

who fear the future that does not include them

and who want everything to be

exactly as it was the last time they remember being

truly happy. And if I could I'd write one long article,

laying out all of their sins, and all of my sins, as if to say,

in some imperfect but decidedly specific way,

that I am tired of their games, their petty insults,

their petty behavior, and then I would just

turn my back on them let them rot on the vine

and die as the world moves on into a future that will not

include them and into a future that will someday

not include me.

But the tea leaves will not have it;

the pipe tobacco needs replenishing, the scotch bottle is handy

the music makes my mind drift, and I know that even

if I were to quit, if I were to go downstairs

the scribbled notes and the paranoia of news paper

without my byline in it would induce me back

because it is here, and only here,

that I am sure I exist.

The Shady Side of The Street

In the winter, the ice builds up

on the north side of the street

and snow trucks, somehow,

manage to miss it... every

single time. Shop owners

armed to the denture with

cheap plastic snow shovels,

rock salt, and hot coffee

push the snow away from the door

as best they can, scrape and chip

away at the ice underneath –

all the result of several hundred

silent prayers by school age children

trying to avoid another math test

and the sour mood of a teacher

who is too underpaid

to afford four wheel drive.

In the Spring, the flower boxes do well

because even flowers need shade,

and the rain runs off and down to Carroll Street

unabated. Sometimes the rain comes so fast

both sides of the street look like

dueling tributaries fighting for the same river,

a sad amusement park ride

for the dirt and weeds and cigarette butts

stuck in the sidewalk cracks,

for critters so small our eyes don't see them,

eventually uncovering the unmarked graves

of stray cats left out to die the previous winter.

They wash away, too: the dead cats, the dirt,

the weeds, the cigarette butts, little chunks

of the sidewalk that avoided repair

because henpecked city work crews

couldn't get to them.

(This is not an age

where neighbors help

neighbors. This is an age

of paperwork – left behind

as the digital age takes

everywhere else. More

paperwork means more

industry, more to justify

some small town middle

manager's futile existence,

something to merit

that small plaque

placed in some ignored corner

of the old city hall building.)

The sunny side boils in the summer

and event he gadflies have sense enough

to stay away and loaf

on the shady side of the street. People

walk slow, clutch their purses and wallets

These times are tough, and the only

businesses that boom are the bars

at the bottom of the hill... the only

hiding places left. The talk on the bar stools

is the same on either side:

too much rain / too little rain

the price of corn /soy

machinery repairs / foreclosures

cynical whispers about

new businesses / new faces

lax school teachers / lazy parents

the President / the cost of milk.

In the Fall we all breathe a sigh of relief

at the break in the humidity

and the prospect of not having to mow the yard.

Night air cools. Days are warm.

And even storm cloud don't bother anyone.

This is the time of year

that makes people want to move back

to the Midwest, to the place of their birth,

to see the leaves and to loaf for no particular purpose

on the cozy stoop in front of the old barber shop

on the shady side of the street –

the one the old men used for that purpose

in that Once Upon A Time

time our grandparents used to

reminisce about and that we only

pretended to listen to

before we discovered the glory found

on a simple stoop, a cool spot on the sidewalk

in a town getting in its final stretch

before another long and buried winter.

Renunciation / Present Tense

There is nothing to be done.

The Earth is dying – again.

We scurry, wait to die

and the clock watchers think

they're doing us a favor 

keeping us distracted

with reality television,

sappy sci-fi creationism

and nostalgic throw backs

to 1970's television shows

to a time outside and before

people took seriously the idea

that we may not survive

the next quarter decade

no matter what we do. The

worst part of the Mayan

calender is that if the world

does end, all those annoying

religious freaks will still

feel justified... event though

we will all be just as dead

and if there is a Heaven

it will be nothing like

any of us might hope for.

Lilliputian Defense

He is a giant in a world that no longer believes

In giants. There is nothing here that he has not seen

Before, and nothing that he has not heard before;

But he has learned the fine art of listening

And of faking interest because he knows

This is what the world needs from him –

Cynicism will simply not do in these

Wilted salad days. Children run amok,

Pulling the heads off abandoned Barbie dolls

While their parents drink skunk beer

Out of fine crystal glasses, reminiscing

About a past they neither remember

Nor understand. They find his house,

Catch him in the kitchen brewing tea, and

Ask him to give them a reading

From yesterday's tired leaves.

The women gaze longingly at his large feet.

The men are jealous of his luscious beard,

And ask what kind of conditioner he uses.

They leave the children outside to ravage the garden

And ask about the absence of his wife –

Not because they care, but because they know

The subject makes him weepy and prone to drink

And they want a taste of the sacred wine

He keeps stored in the cellar

With her ashes.

Poem - A Statement on Spirits and Spirituality

I am more likely

to trust a drunk

who tells me

There is a God

than I am someone

who has never

suffered the indignity

of being looked

down upon by

people who are

too blind

to notice

they are just

one pink slip away

from asking me

to buy them

a beer.

Tongues

One morning we woke up,

rolled over to greet each other

and the day, and the words

that left your mouth

were nothing more

than a series of syllables

I could neither interpret

nor understand. At first

I thought it was

one of my fucked up dreams

and I tried to talk back

thinking, maybe,

once I opened my mouth

those same sounds

would fall from my lips

and I would be granted --

the way fire falls on an apostle--

the ability to understand.

But you looked at me

first confused, then annoyed

like the way you do

when you think

I'm being an ass

or playing some joke

no one but me will

ever get. We roll out of bed,

go through the ablutions

and rituals of our morning:

coffee brewing, finding clothes

feeding the cats. You

are stressed and I am

waiting on caffeine

that (I hope) will lend clarity.

You walked out the door,

muttering in your muted dialect

after blowing a kiss at me

and lighting your second cigarette

of the day. The scent of them

still gets me; and I am reminded

of late nights when we would

sit up and talk because
each moment meant something sacred,

because our tongues were
something sacred, and we somehow felt
like it would never come again

and how the scent of you

and the taste of you
would linger when I would have to
sneak out of your dorm room

early in the morning

to escape detection.

Summer Kings

Turned on the television – no news. Not now.

No where to put it it, all the pain and misery

from the past 6 hours

while I was dreaming.

(Sleeping is a form of meditation

and I know when I wake

whether I ought to go back

and finish.

Sometimes I can't, though.

Damned Adulthood.)

Turn on the television. No Coffee. Not yet.

Will buy it on Main Street. Caught the last part

of a movie about Allen Ginsberg

and I remembered where I was

when I heard he died.

                                  It was Spring.

I was the ghost of a former self,

wandering the streets of Cincinnati:

divorced, college drop out, drunk,

and broke – which is to say

broken – broken like

the lines of a poem

writ on narrow onion paper.

Slept on couches

curled up in doorways

aged my mother

disappointed the ghost of my father.

He died in the Fall.

(Druids used to call them Summer Kings –

when a man in his prime

died, was sacrificed in the Fall

so the crops would be fertile

the following year.)

Sitwells, the coffee shop I used to hide in

when I could afford coffee

was going to have a memorial reading.

Legions of Ginsberg lovers

reading lines inspired by the man

William F. Buckley called “naive

when it comes to politics.”

I signed up but did not read. I did not attend

because I couldn't find the words

in the doorway where I shared cheap wine

with an old man named Clancy

who would not go to the shelter

even when it was cold.

Turn on the television. Bad reality shows

and even worse news. At least Ginsberg

left poems behind. Fathers

leave sons and daughters behind.

Turn off the television

wishing for a bottle of wine

a comfortable tree,

and the final resting

of all the old ghosts

who haunt me

when I first wake

from dreaming.

Quatrain #1

Life is an sojourn best experienced

in the absence of planning – all

action deliberate and liberated

free from fear and fully whimsical.

Monday Morning

You only know

who you are

early in the morning –

first thing, before

the daily news

distracts you

from facing

the reflection you see

when you close your eyes

and see yourself

etched on the insides

of your eyelids

as nature made you

not necessarily

as you and the world

would intend you to be.  

It's Not Easy

Looking for a place,

a place to hide

a place to revive

where strong words

are not reviled,

where open eyes

are not swollen shut,

where we really are

the image of ourselves

we sell to our children

like desperate used car

salesmen.

Looking for a place

a place to hide

a place that is more

than escape,

more than existing

than just out of spite,

more than the afterbirth

of a world politicians

and preachers and

blind optimists say

was simply

never meant to be.

Looking for a place,

but sometimes

it's just not easy.

There's no Home

for me to go to

though I dream of one.

Every place my feet

have carried me disappears

the moment my foot moves forward

and I am in the world

looking back,

seeing nothing,

remembering everything,

filled to the gills

with the memories of things

most people think

isn't worth the space.

Looking for a place

knowing it's ahead of me

knowing the map etched

in the memories

of things behind me

knowing I may not know

when I find it

because all the signs

have been worn away

destroyed by cement mixers,

buried under rusted machines,

erased by digitalized visions

of megalomaniacs

and mad men

with their finger on the button

and their boot heals

on each of our throats.

Daguerreotypes II

Small town laundromat Saturday morning:

me and the one sober resident

of a depopulated 300 resident town

who, undoubtedly, just got off work

an hour or so ago and is completing

one more unpleasant chore

so he can fall asleep

unencumbered by Protestant Guilt.

He looks as tired as I have felt.

He will feel the same way

tomorrow.

He carries in the bachelor's load--

two pairs of jeans (he's wearing his third pair)

four shirts, four stained once-white t-shirts,

socks, underwear. I caught him

looking amused

as I hung my wife's dress clothes

(she hates wrinkles) and I wonder

if he wonders

why she isn't doing laundry. Maybe

he wonders what's it's like

to have to figure out

who has more time to kill

sitting in an unair-conditioned laundromat

on a Saturday morning

as the humid summer weather

is settling in.

By and By

I wish I believed.

I know the songs

the ones that sound

so so wrong

when I sing them.

How great thou love lifted

me in the garden by

and by. Drinking

another cup of coffee

staring into the blackness –

communion with a bean –

which is as close to god

as I feel most days,

not being a farmer

or a builder of mighty things

The book it says

Jesus was a carpenter

and Peter was a fisherman,

and I find myself wondering

whether the apostles drank

import or domestic beer

while they threw out their nets

the way I did

when I first believed.

I wish the stories spoke

the same way silence does

first thing in the morning

or late into the night

when insomnia or bad dreams

strike. God, I suppose, exists

between the tick tocks

of a grandfather clock.

The ghost of the old man

who shuffles on the porch

smoking his restless pipe

knows this and together

we commune between

the sweeping of the second hand

pacing the same creaky floorboards

and scratching pen to paper

lines and endless groans

and poems no one will hear

and no one will read.

Daguerreotypes

I.

Neighborhood kids shooting off fireworks

illuminating the tired smiling faces of distracted elders

casting long shadows that pop, sparkle and fizzle.

Dull fire. Vast dreams. The colors fade like

old flag fabric – the flag of our fathers' forefathers,

buried a top their sons and daughters.

In the humid, moonless, starless night,

blood shines black

like obsessively polished dress shoes.

Huddling 'round the campfire,

drinking beer as warm as tears,

old men and women recount stories of their America:

the one fed to us in digestible textbook morsels

long amputated from the The Long Memory. Stories

cast off like moldy bread on forgotten trails that have

long since been widened, flattened and paved over

in the name of progress.

                                      These narratives

are not told in video games

or on standardized tests; not mentioned

in hyper-real 3D movies

meant to titillate and to tax and to strangle

the imagination, to erase the collective unconscious.

They are not found in the long shadows

and short light of sparklers,

nor in the ghosts living the cellars

and sleeping porches of houses

older than the dirt under a

gravedigger's fingernails.

When the beer is gone and the stories 

are finished and the sparklers

are spent abandoned sticks in the neighbor's lawn

we will not remember them and will not be aware

that something sacred, something soul-tied

has been stolen and forever lost.

Where We Left Off

This conversation has strung itself out

over months, over years, over centuries.

Echoes of eons in every word,

the cadence of memory buried

in each and every syllable. In spite of myself

you make my words vibrate and sing;

in spite of yourself, you still find

the soft heart that has driven this world

from it's primordial birthing to date;

it beats within your chest, heaves

like oceans under a quixotic moon,

reverberates in your bones and exits

with just the faintest smile. We speak

like old soldiers. We dream like lovers.

We live and we talk, and it is in talking

that we will live on. You and I,

we will duel on like this.

Forever.

Daily Reappraisal

This morning, I made the coffee strong

and I checked off my mental list

of obligations. Three days of rain made

the grass grow something awful

and thought I know the neighbors

and the old biddies on the town council

object, I do not care if the grass grows.

The grass has done nothing to me.

You cannot call me Ishmael;

call me House Hubby instead.

My endless ocean is a carpet

that never looks clean; my dark grimy abyss

the dishes piled in the sink.

And hidden in the thick weeds

that choked out the orange poppies,

there be monsters. Upstairs,

there are stories and poems to be written;

there are newspaper articles to write that someone

somewhere will not like and will

cause others to wonder whether I'm worried

that my address is in the phone book.
There be monsters out there, too,

not so hidden, lurking in front of city hall

like wounded wild boars

that would eat their young

rather than wander off to die. They huff

and they puff like some children's story villain;

but it's all for naught; because they cannot stop

the turning of the world. And that turning

is the only obligation I carry with me

into the rest of the day.