I Did It

I did it. And
I did it without you.
Hobbled around,
(as is my custom
these days) until
I found the Rothkos
in the National Gallery.
Then I sat down,
and I took it all in.
At one point
I nearly cried --
the murals were so
sublime, like the way
church ought to be.
Then I felt something
as I sat there,
that was all my own.

Then I caught myself
trying to call you
so I could tell you
all about it.

No Martyrs Here

There are no martyrs here – only a drunk without a bar

in a city where one should either be drunk

or between a woman's warm thighs

(or both) in order to stave off

the soul cold wind blowing down

from Capitol Hill. 1 St NE

is a ghost town on Sundays;

the arctic chill whistles through

empty church pews, and underneath

the caged locked doors of the liquor store.

The National Gallery is overrun today

by cynical skirt chasers posing as romantics

and women looking either for that movie moment –

or maybe just better jewelry.

And if I sound cynical, ignore me. The onslaught

of Hallmark cards have slaughtered my sensibilities,

render me incapable of appreciating the emotive nuance

of proposing to someone in front of a Van Gogh,

who lost his ear for love, they say. Nowadays,

he'd have to sign over his 401K

or proclaim his love on television.

And then, the hooker would still charge

her hourly rate.

There are no martyrs here – only broken old men

looking for God or some rough equivalent,

sleeping in bus stations and under overpasses

everywhere across America. God I tell them,

is a bum that gives away loose change

and menthol cigarettes,wanders half crazed

on civilized and unforgiving streets.

The wine is cheap, they say but

the grace is grand, and the path

to a warm safe bed is a sacred calling.

Winter Beach

It's a rainy day by the sea. Overcast skies are supplemented

by the sounds of traffic on Ocean View Avenue;

but it's Saturday morning, so there's no great hurry.

Even here, the world sleeps in a little on weekends.

The caw of low flying seagulls outside the window

and the chirping of other winter birds

are the only proofs of life

and the only evidence

of daylight.

               Yesterday sun was shining.

Sounds of waves were drowned out by traffic,

by noise of F-18 and unmarked black helicopter

fly bys. Rhythms thrown off

by the cheap motel television

that won't shut off, by the heater that rattles

like a B-52 engine.

                              These are the sounds of life:

surrounded by four dirty brown walls,

protected by a broken lock. Occupants of other rooms

rummage around,  pack up, noisily make plans

to visit the aquarium, other points of interest.

Then there are other rooms – they come and go

in cyclical patterns. Families with small children

grocery shopping in vending machines.

And we are the lucky ones.

Eavesdropping in Spanish

Fragments instructing the children to behave;
Family gossip about Tio Louis;
Presidential Politics. Reactions to Jack Kennedy's new girlfriend.
La Historias. Admonish the boy: Quit fidgeting! Silencio!
No candy! No pop! You wanna be a fat gringo?
The children speak perfect English, look like
They're struggling with Abuela's words.
New world Hispanics. Old world Abuela.
Waiting on a train headed for Miami.
Where there are more people for Abuela to talk to.
More candy and pop, too.

Fade Into

Imagined it all

somewhat different.

Rather, bold.

Magnificent.

Brightly lighted

mini marquees.

Macabre parades.

Acquiescing smiles.

Limp handshakes

from spineless autocrats.

Divine Prognostications.

Deferential treatment

by those conspiring

to have me killed

in a grizzly manner

meant to look like

a pointless suicide.

It would be raining.

And the cats

would be cranky.

Weather pushing me

southbound.

Tomorrow Today Forever

I think I'll wander down to New Orleans

and sit in the Saint Louis Basilica

to pray. All the mad prophets say

to know god, you must know him

by his silence.

                       But that is for another day.

Today, it is my only brother's birthday.

And I must remember to call him –

or at the very least, to write him a note.

I must remember to make the words

something meaningful, the way

brother's words are supposed to be.

I must remember, it might be a model

for future notes when there is no time

but all the good intention in the world.

When I go to the cathedral, I will sit

at the end of a pew, near the middle

on the left hand side, and I will bow

my head and close my eyes the way

they taught us in Sunday School

(Protestants don't genuflect; but maybe
I'll try.)

            I will ignore the tourists

and the picture snapping,

and the casual whispers.

With any luck, I will fade into the pew

rubbed in like the dirt the bible says

I am made of. And when I am gone

there will be no more wondering

and no more questions

about the existence of god

and no more tourists.

All that will remain is a dirt spot

and an anonymous poem.

An Expert Destruction

Main Street is crooked, runs right past

City Hall, the police station, empties

right in front of the University

Administration building.

All things tend southward here... the slopes,

the hollers, the crosses. Life has moved

out to the by-pass: movies, libraries,

community.

The school is a warehouse

of long dead ideas, stored up

for future kindling.

Boxes of unread books provide warmth

and nourishment the nests of rats

and legions of insects pouring over

our mistakes.

Outside, the street signs are picture perfect,

and the old buildings are either

scrubbed down or destroyed;

an expert destruction

of all evidence to the contrary

that once upon a time

there was something else here.

Bars converted to youth centers;

cigarette stores to ice cream stands.

The future is piling down upon us

barreling 80 miles an hour down

the new wider highway

past the mega store where

all hope is lost and sold

at discount rates.

But the banks,

at least, are solid

and are open for business. New restaurants,

same old food.

The movie theatre converted

into a mausoleum for ancient idealism.

Everything is fine. Everything is dandy.

Self help books sell well. No one reads

the classics anymore. Too many big words.

Too many big ideas.

Poetry is for little girls and for fags.

Rumi was a terrorist. Poe liked little girls.

Whitman needed a shave

and real job.

No one remembers the year the mountain burned.

No one remembers the year the north end of town flooded.

The people who carry the memories

have fled east, into the mountains

or west, into the desert –

searching for moonshine or for messiahs

that will give them answers

to nagging questions that have not

formed the words to articulate properly.

Another Coffee Shop Poem

[Dedicated to Lou Schau. Also to John Briscoe, Tim, Steve, Ed, and Vaughn (aka The Graybeard Round Table). Also to Heather Houzenga.

I am not pretty enough for this place.

The cut of my clothes or my weeks old beard

gives me away. If I didn't have money for coffee

they would shoo me away in spite of the rain.

It doesn't take long for those urbane airs

to rub off; only two and half years

in corn and god country where they do not tolerate

too much polish (except for Sundays,

and even that must be the right kind and cut)

and they do not trust urban attitudes

and they do not forgive when you are not smart enough

to notice the difference.

Two people in line ahead of me.

Most of the tables are occupied

and I spy one empty seat:

one of the coffee leather chairs

in the corner. A business man

with next generation's iphone

and designer eye wear takes it first...

laying claim to it by laying his

expensive looking brief case

(also leather) before he

takes a place behind me in line.

If I am very lucky,

the barista will get his order wrong.

But I am not lucky, since she is too perky

to be incompetent.

The first one, a large woman in stretch pants,

pays in cash

• exact change –

The skinny bitch in designer shoes behind her

taps her foot impatiently. When it's her turn, she steps up

quickly orders coffees with too many qualifiers

(half caf decaf slim skin super latte with a mother fuckin' twist)

pays with plastic, then moves forward. We have learned, have we not,

the way the conveyor belt works...

I step up, order a medium coffee

with an espresso shot, pay, step to the right. Skinny Designer Bitch

is waiting on a multiple order and his hogging the small round counter

with the cardboard coffee cup cozies.

My coffee is done before her order.

So that I do not burn my fingers,

I am forced to growl “Excuse me”

before I reach in front of her

to grab a cozy. (She looks up horrified,

briefly grabs her expensive purse

for fear I might steal it, use her

husband's credit cards

to order a breakfast sandwich.

She storms out not long after.

By the time I turn around,

a table has opened up,

and I sit down, trying to avoid eye contact.

There's only so much I can put up with

before the coffee kicks in.

A Meditation on Nature and Experience

After so many days,

the ring cuts

into the skin. Or,

the finger grows

around it. Like saplings

grow round twine,

twisting naturally

unnatural. Let it grow

long enough, the two

are indistinguishable.

No one wonders

whether it

hurts the tree.

No one asks

whether the finger

will recover.

Last Full Day

The taste of last night's beer lingered this morning.

Three in the morning, I can't sleep. That voice

in my head, the one that's been telling me

This is not your home woke me

thumping like a timpani drum. The cats

are calm. The walls are thin

and, even with the plastic on the windows

lets the arctic weather in. Ice glazed

like thousand year old donuts

covering everything. Small tectonic glaciers

in the shape of tire tread and work boots

gray from the grating of the plow

and car exhaust line the streets. The voice,

it tells me, Wild birds know when to fly.

It's the caged ones that die. It's too early

for riddled wisdom, and I'm out of coffee.

Cold feet, bad TV, the memory of another

December fresh like the snow was

two days ago casts long shadows in fast dreams

in which the faces belong to strangers

and they all have something to tell me,

something I must remember,

something that is the piece to a puzzle

with the picture worn off. All that remains

is a sense memory and the voice in my head

No feeling lasts, it says. So it's better to feel it all.

Two Days Past (Winter 2012)

The streets have been cleared

and the previous night's freeze

packed the last snow fall,

eliminating the drifts covering

Illinois 64 that are impossible

to plan for and more dangerous

even, than the ice that may

or may be underneath.

The wind is blowing,

but the sun is shining

and people are out

and about because no one

expects it to last. Shopkeepers

keep the windows clear,

spruce up last month's goods,

because they know

another sunny day

may not come again

and it's the early bird

who gets the worm –

so said the preacher on Sunday.

Or was it that self help book on the bed side table?

The sidewalks are cleared –

except for in front of the houses

where the grandchildren

are too preoccupied to endure

10 minutes of the tundra.

Piles of the white stuff

around the bottom of street signs

and at cross walk corners

are there to remind us –

as if the arctic chill

and frozen snot weren't enough –

more winter is coming.

Day After Snow, 2012

Snow covers all our petty arguments

silences our numerous indiscretions

and turns our thoughts, once again,

towards warmth. Overcast morning

the color of gray slush on the streets,

and the rumble of the village trucks

scraping what remains off the street outside

shakes the entire house.

[I am the only one awake to notice this.

Even the cats have learned to ignore

the intrusion. And I have learned

to pay it little mind.]

The ground shakes all the time, now.

Trucks or now trucks.

News channel talking heads dismiss

the phenomenon, focus instead

on election year gaffs and movie start cleavage.

(They learned their lesson in Vietnam. Had they sent

strippers with the reporters, we could've won the war.)

[I don't watch the news, anymore

before three cups of coffee, a smoke

and a good healthy shit.]

Forecast calls for partly sunny skies

bone cracking arthritic cold. Those bits

of remaining pristine snow will glisten

and the slush will shine gray

and the footprints will stick

until Spring erases all immediate traces;

there will be no path to follow

and there will be no proof

that anyone was ever here.

Rosetta Stone Autopsy

Two days ago it was warm enough to wake the flies. Now

it's snowing, light dusting like powdered sugar

over the gray and brown post-harvest landscape.

A spoonful of sugar, or so they say, though

as the barometer drops there's not enough sweetness

to go around. The blood slows, thickens, settles

into the veins …

                              geologic sediment

that will, in the later years after my death,

be excavated when the explanations

(eventually) become important. There will be rings

in the bones – evidence of warmth and cold that,

over the years spread to the vital organs:

the heart,

                     the liver,

                                              the spleen.

The story spun by inexperienced necrophiliac historians

will be one in which they are heroes

and in which the corpse on the slab

is nothing more than an anonymous preamble

to an inevitable greatness they will copiously describe

using strip mine style explanations,

and retrofitted possibilities limited by statistical models

that are inadequate to the taxonomic task

of reconstructing a memory...

because they lack the hieroglyphic key

they themselves destroyed when, 

upon finding flies the belly,

they slaughtered them without a second thought.

Winter Fruit

The tangerines are surprisingly good

and the apples will stew up nicely.

Christmas was mild this year

and though the local children

were sad there was no white Christmas,

the parents who handle the snow shovel

breathed in a sigh of relief.

They know it will not last for long.

Subdued, we sit -- waiting out the day

waiting for the store bought satisfaction

to wear off everyone's face and

get back to normal. The mask is thin,

but effective and I am sick to my stomach

of all the fake piety. Throw some pennies on the drum.

Santa is a drunken bum wielding a bell

and a hangover.

We have enough channels on television

to avoid the Christmas shows

and the pre-emptive strike

of the day after sale commercials.

I drink cold beer.

You drink wine.

The sun is shining.

The lawn is still dying.

Must be global warming. Maybe

the ice caps are melted

and Santa's out of on the streets

with the rest of those red suited

pick pockets.

Too much to hope for, I know.

At least the stewed apples

are good and warm.  

It Breaks the Heart

I talk local politics

over beer at the bar.

Issues so important.

Issues not so important.

Issues that never change.

You, at home.

Living your life

in my absence.

Issues so important.

Issues that never change.

I come home.

You are on the phone,

laughing the way you did –

(do you remember?)

– that way you laughed

once upon a time

                              with me:

spring days by the river,

summers at the spillway.

Kites flying around us

bits of laughter

caught in the wind.

It breaks the heart.

So much silence.

So much lost.

So much.

                Not enough.

You hang up the phone,

and the laughter stops.

I mention my conversation.

You nod out of habit

and ask, nonchalantly,

if I'm drunk.

I can not answer

because all the air

has left my lungs.

I can not breathe

without your air,

filling me.

One Man's Hyde / Another Man's Savior

The monster awoke this morning:

broke loose from the cage

and is wandering the streets

of some anonymous small town

in Northwest Illinois.

And I will not chase him down again.

He and I and the world are all better

when he is not knocked out, stowed away,

forgotten in some dark corner of my Id

left to languish in some gray dream.

You cannot starve / what does not survive / on bread alone.

He greeted me in the mirror, wild haired

monstrously bushy eyebrows, deep set unrelenting eyes,

the face of someone who might appear familiar

if anyone has been paying any attention

at all. Have you been paying attention? At all?

You've all gone and done it, he says. / Waited one day too many / and now, and now

and now...

It's the anticipation that makes him pause

because he knows, lumbering the street,

looking oddly like a baboon on the hunt,

he will attract stares, and gasps,

and he will, undoubtedly, offend some

old farmer's wife or another

who does not understand there is more

to man than the collected hours he works

and whittles and the little bit he dies

each and every day. And some farmer

or another will be offended, too – because

they will never know the freedom

of walking through the world

without carrying the fear

that someone, somewhere

has found the secret to happiness

without waiting on god, on grace,

or on some nicely written obituary

outlining the predetermined brevity

of his long laborious days.

It's the anticipation that draws him out

and into the street – coming soon

to a store front, coffee shop, bar, or street corner near you.

He carries doom in one pocket / salvation in another

and you will not know

which he might be inclined to share

until you look him in the eye

and show him the the glimmering seat

of your soul, share the warmth of your heart

and accept without question –

even though you might find his grin

just a tad disconcerting.

One Man's Hyde / Another Man's Savior by Mick Parsons

Straight Off The Wire

1^stcup of java (early in the A.M):

the city budget's busted

the streets are full of pot holes,

the water tastes like rust and

and insecticide. Everyone blames the mayor.

The state is behind on its bills. But no one

will turn their water off

if they don't pay. Oh yeah, and fuck the poor.

They don't need water anyway.

2^ndcup of java / first smoke of the day:

the county's controlled by a dictator

with a bigger Napoleon complex

than Kim Jong Il. God Save the Chairman.

Long Live the Chairman. There's no money

for veterans. Plenty for lowering tax rates

on rich lake side property. Oh yeah, and

fuck the renters. They're just white trash.

3^rd cup of java / first shot of bourbon

It's too cold to go fishing. Too hot

to build a snow man. No money

to pay city workers overtime
 if we get a white Christmas.

Fuck Santa Claus. He was laid off

and is now wanted for a string of burglaries.

He should've had the stamina

to make it on his own at the North Pole

rather than illegally crossing the border. And

for all we know, he's a terrorist, since

he never files a flight plan.

Ain't It Grand, These Culture Wars?

There's no subtlety to any of it.

Grand circle jerk symmetry

internet artists (not) extraordinaire.

It's all too easy.

Buy into the myth wholesale.

Pretend, for moment, maybe two,

maybe thirty, that you're running

a pirate radio, pushing out

incendiary prose the way they used to

“back in the day” when

all our giants were still alive.

There are no more 3 AM saints,

standing over mimeograph machines,

living in the basement with

an abandoned AB Dick printing press

typesetting and publishing words

sacred enough to offend your grandmother.

But please. buy into the myth.

It helps pass the days. Days spent

whiling away in some institution

or another... proprietary pretense

awkward hipster princesses

read a few lines of Kerouac

and learn to drink like

(you think) Bukowski did

and a few young girls

will think you're a true original

because they've never seen

anything like you on Jersey Shore.

It's all too easy. / Scratch that.

It's all too hard. And you make it harder.

And not in that good way

you think Bukowski meant

when he wrote about whores.

It's too damn hard.

And you make it harder.

Because you think

drinking the right cheap beer

and wearing the right retro clothes

have anything to do

with anything. Schtick will

get you laid. But it won't

make you into the giant

you tell yourself you are

in your day job

where the boss

never seems to call you

by your real name.

Tuesday / Truck Day / Spreading The News

The sun is dead fish's eye buried under a cloudy sky

the color of poisoned water. On a road twisting through

several of several hundred thousand forgettable towns,

I am in awe of the optimism of children waiting for snow

and believing in Santa Claus; they are roaming in groups

along broken up pieces of sidewalk and gravel side streets.

In another life, I imagine I am a lip reader and as I drive by,

I try to find out what they are saying –

it may make a difference later.

The farmers say this winter will be worse than the last two;

but farmers are cynics and have grown used to complaining

about things they have no control over. They will prepare

and they will pray, and they will watch the price of corn

and soy. I have nothing to offer them –

not even the secrets their children discuss

while they're cutting school and imagining for a moment

that they're really getting away with something.

When I step down from the cab of the truck

I can feel the ground freezing through the soles

of my shoes; the next snow will stick,

I think. Walk into a gas station, trying to ignore

the soreness of my feet that give me

preternatural age. There's a line

and the woman behind the counter is busy flirting

with the boy in front her who is clearly trying

to buy cigarettes without identification –

in spite of all the commercials that echo in my head

I hope he succeeds. In the back of the line,

there is a young woman crying. No one is paying attention.

All women look like little girls when they cry

and they all remind me of my daughter.

I can only allow myself to cry when I'm drunk;

at least then, no one will think it's genuine. Leaving town

a black cat crosses my path. And I am a little surprised

that I find it comforting.

[Singularity]

Law of Entropy dictates

in order for something

to be born, some 

other thing, first,

must die.

Process as natural as grass grows.

Process as natural as dying.

Scientists theorize time stops

at the event horizon; that we will hover

at the edge of the super nova suspended

(paradox)

time space but still, in reality

(paradox),

moving.

The universe is not silent

but resonates a song

the effect of gravity

and of time

and of space.

(Paradox)

All things, I am told, end up one thing –

ashes, dust, vacuum, song.

At the center of the galaxy, there is a black hole

and we are dancing on the edge

of the event horizon.

We will never know

if we ever really arrive.