I met a Michelle Pfeiffer

her eyes smiled like plumes and
turned my stomach like roadways

soul slipped like a banana.... yes a fucking banana

heart fluttering like a feather
like a bird
like a vulture

like a flying species
from above the earth
she flew away
blonde hair
tattoos
green dress
and everything
till I had nothing
left but her loss and a
rotting banana peel.

what's on my mind you say?

well...
by now,
I've probably killed all my exes and
buried them
somewhere. (I'm kidding)

let go off the edge because
that is as good as you are going to
feel until you
hit
the bottom of the
canyon.

some truth we can both
rely on.

finishing up the drag

listening to Frank Sinatra recordings from
1939 to 1942
at end of my endurance
I near my 100th poem

what a fucking miracle, I tell you

it's been a great journey through the night baby, so
thanks for sticking by

but before this song is over I want
to tell you that
not much has changed

the nights are still lonely and
the love has been
coming around
since February of 2006
(same reason I started in the first place)

and the voices haven't changed either,
Frank Sinatra with
Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie
have been playing from their
grave for years now

the bone trombone and
skinny trumpet have shaken this
soul to the edge of vibrato

Dean Martin has the crowds fickle
as I dream of a time
when he would ascend the grave
and say: "hey baby-o, don't worry bout' the dumb broad!"

Yea Dino, but can you believe it though?
I'm almost there, poem 100 and
all I have to do is find a way to finish and be
done with it.

"the ultimate mystery is one's own self" says Sammy Davis

yeh tellmeaboudit!

but listen,
you think I can make it?
the hell you can!

cat

HELLO again.
I am here! yes, come on in...

would you like a drink?
of course you would...
mind my manners!

the radio is playing on high and
it fills this chamber in full baroque.

today a cat came inside,
little beads curious
as the shifting skull

I offered him a drink but
he didn't understand.

he listened to
Shubert, Brahms, and Tchaivovksy
tonight

I turn around.

I see you there, watching me.
come on little buddy
we both know you're full
of it.

what do you mean I'm full of it?
how about you shove it pal.

noose

when the eyes meet
in that small divided second they
smile, cry, and love:
history written in pools
of liquid

they've laid together and
fought the great fights and
sailed through
the romantic moments
moments often
needed as
chores after the
love has gone dry like
rose pedals in their final moments

crushed
rose pedals, loveless, dry
captured in the diaries of the past

agony bears existence for the willing
and this noose only
grows tighter
with time

waiting line

the night has
opened it's burning
chasm and I am here again
standing furiously on
the edge of its fiery inferno
cutting through
flesh
I am
here:
deadlier than all of the
demons of hell
as I am chosen for
them
I am
here:
braving through
the rivers and flames
and battling all the
great battles of the soul
I am here:
tearing at the chains
of my foundation
being the chosen
unchosen
in line
with poets
from babylon
to portland

driving in the middle lane

I'm driving 63 in the middle lane
in this lazy hot sun and you
should pass me;
I'm uninterested in your
mundane urgency and
ordinary thoughts

crushed feathery
creature on the road
how did you die so?
tire-tracks in oil, cut deep through
the bone and skull,
beautiful.

the sun beams its image on
this hot earth
and life above

two cars pass the
divider

a bmw and a honda

life is urgent and death is nearer

I don't think they quite understand

I'm just a Mexican driver

the radio

one night I couldn't
stand the silence
so I drove to the
grossmont wal mart

drove out with
gas at 4.57$ a gallon

walked inside

brought a radio to the
counter

how are you?

God Damn...

it's like being asked
if I've found Christ.

good, good, I lie

I guess she didn't hear me

I walk back to the car
key in keyhole
engine

drive home

unpack the radio
turn on the radio
will not pick up
Jazz 88.3

got pissed
almost through it
out the door

then turned it to
the next best thing,
classical,
something about Haydn
playing his orchestra for a king
for 9 hours straight
(this was before radios and unions)

an 8 piece

late at night when the sun has come down
and the moon rules
above I am often
left with
my dreams and
this insatiable fantasism that
runs through the pores of the
skin
and the brain
and the heart
and the soul and
then finally to through the
wrists
for its final form.
and when the night has come down
and the woman love others
often
I turn to this
radio and listen
to it machine
away a beautiful melody
written in 1825 by a 16 year-old
named Mendelson.
a boy with grit,
soul, and
guts.

you know what baby,
I thought about writing this poem
once, twice,
even three times.

it was bad, real bad
because I've been drinking
drinking
drinking
that's the funniest part of all.
as I'm listening to Monk. Thelonious Monk.
Blues-influenced Jazz musician. how I love the pressing of the keys.
how I wish I was there, on 52nd street in New York.
with my people.
often I think even then,
even in the mecca of my being,
I would be sad. eternally sad.
after love has run dry, I'll be in the flower of my blooming
decaying.
dead.

that's how it is.

Louis Armstrong plays now,
"A Kiss to Build a Dream On"
you know, this might not be fantastic.
but it's the mecca of my being.
my soul.
a memoir.
a memoir of my being.
this crazed soul statically running through
the walls of this eternal imagination
run dry.
run dry.

dreaming of it

we'll be in the car and
she'll smile and pin up her hair.
"yeah baby! lets go!"
and we'll go.
we'll drive somewhere.
somewhere wild.
lightning in her eyes
with a road map on her lap.
"lets go here!" she says
pointing into the wild.
"yea, sure baby, sure"
and I'll drive, one hand on the
wheel, as if the Gods had spared me.
I'll watch her, giddy on the leather seats.
almost too beautiful to describe, she is.
but I deserve her, I think.
she'll watch me drive and I'll be tough, I think, Real Tough.
"what's on your mind baby?" she'll say
"nothing baby, nothing"

Sharon Olds

I couldn't do this anymore...

looking at this book of poetry
brought
some great fatigue.

I put it book down and decided
to wing it myself.

not that she was
a bad poet, but she re-affirmed all
the reasons why I never liked
female poets in the first place:
couldn't relate.

it's neither her fault or mine. it's
one of those strange
cheats of fate.

that and I don't have a vagina.