Erika

Erika was 29 years old,

I mention her age because

I'm only 22.

I met her at a bar in North Park.

our first date was dancing at a Salsa place in Carlsbad.

I arrived early and walked around a nearby mall

only to find a Blue's band playing at a pub nearby.

I stayed a while and listened until she arrived.

I watched the band playing

yet somehow felt

awfully alone.

not because she wasn't there,

but because of the many vapid

white faces all around me.

Jazz and Blues was dead and

I knew it.

It is a difficult thing to see an audience

you're a part of

that's nothing like you.

suddenly you're the loneliest man in the world.

anyways,

she arrived and we

danced and

I kissed her goodnight.

she was only going to be in San Diego

for two more weeks and we both knew it.

She was scared of starting something and being

unable to finish it.

She was scared of her tumultuous future

as a vet specialist.

yet we went out again and she spent the night,

but she had to be at the vet's office in the morning.

she brought her scrubs, stethoscope, and even lunch for the next day.

she listened to my heart with her stethoscope,

I listened to hers.

that was the last time I saw her.

She flew back to Minnesota two days later

and I never talked to her again.

I knew it was going to end this way.

It is a difficult thing to love

with a predictable end.

the gamble of chance absent.

knowing is worst than not knowing.

toothpick

was thinking of why I could not light the lighter. there was lint inside, I used a toothpick to remove it. Don't know where the toothpick came from... I mix a dirty martini: vermouth, vodka, and olive juice. I always run out of the olive juice. they never sell it by itself... I pierce two olives with the toothpick like a miracle. tomorrow the green olives will be dry but the lighter once again sparks with fire.

cold cold december night

sitting here on the coldest night of winter I

smoke a cigarette and shiver.

as I muse on four years gone of my first love, come february.

It is 48 degrees.

the only heat is

perpendicular

between my index and middle.

I have lost my lighter,

I light anew with the

dying embers of the old.

there is always one you can't let go.

you remember in silence,

as the hurt has faded through the years.

there are things you can't let go,

others you embrace in the cold

as your heart beats and your

body shivers.

lives

we all live different.

ever wonder

why nobody ever has ever
grown a mustache like Hitler?
he's fucked it up for everybody else.
what an asshole...

musings of a big world

I can't smile.
I can't move.
anything I do is
without interest.
I can't love.
I can't miss love
when it has not come along.
I can't finish
this poem.
and I certainly can't
give you a clever end
or a beautiful line of
colorful words like the
other writers have.
I guess what must come
in the end is not to
care about those readers
after all.
there aren't any.
just the essence of yourself
and your pride.
choked up on small thoughts
to an ever widening world.
watch as the world moves without you,
turning and turning on the wheel.
one would be selfish to think
he deserves more when in
the end, he is just a piece
of the turning wheel.
there are more better and more beautiful things.
if only one could so easily grasp it,
but not like this,
not like some cancer baby poet.

the wrong type of bars

playing jazz like
breathing
fire.
love tied
down in
the wrong
cage.
it's always
the wrong
cage.
lost
on the
wrong side
of the
one-way
street.
always
a white knight
running on
empty.
driving
downtown
from a bar.
then finding
yourself
in a cold
dark room.
they have all
the wrong
type of
bars in there.
there's a couple
there with you,
with eyes, and
ears, and yellow skin.
I decide to
name one John Coltrane.
hello,
John Coltrane.
there's another one.
he's a crazy,
somewhere from
Nevada.
he thought he could
avoid them in
California.
I named him
Sonny Rollins.
it's always
the wrong
cage.
the wrong
woman
the wrong
job
the wrong
car
and then theirs
the cage,
the cage of yourself,
smiling stupid at
empty faces,
saying,
"hello"
"goodbye"
"i'm good, how are you?"
and worst,
"i love you".
I look at Sonny Rollins
and say hello,
he blinks
twice.

gemini II

you know,
the thing that bothered me the most
about her is how she
thought she was some
great
god-damned writer.
not a poet
(that's even worst...)
but some talented
lyrical genius.

my gut was off
when I was with her.
I should of known
better than to mix
with another fucking gemini.

they fuck with your mind,
man.
I tell myself,
that game-playing bitch
that whore
that cunt
that bitch.

yes,
rejection
is the bitch.

and being on the receiving end is
certainly
no fun at all.
not one single bit
at all.

magen

lets face it,
my favorite poet
was
DRUNK
off
Classical music
or
WINE
(or anything alcoholic for that matter)
courage,
of course,
is alcohol
in its liquid form.
there was
also
heartbreak, woman,
bad work,
in-grown toe nails,
hotels, and
bad diet.

it all
came so
easily like
karma on the
sharpened edge.

this,
of course,
continued
upon the weary
keyboard,
for the eternal
fire,
line after line,
until
finally the
woman, fame,
and
fortune,
came along.

by then it was too late to
grapple the cock
for a good one
on her
face.

now he drives a
porche,
listens to classical music
in a beautiful neighborhood,
but has all forgotten the
sexless
poets.
the
wild-eyed
pieces of shit
lying in their dark rooms
listening to Jazz
Coltrane, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins,
Cannonball Adderly
and Davis and Sonny Rollins, and Parker and Bill Evans
and Thelonious monk, and Gilbert Castellanos.
waiting for hard luck.
waiting for hard luck.
like trying to understand
jazz.

these poets will surely have
their head upon the guillotine for
final show.

I will write like,
one line like,
green leaves of autumn resemble her,
summer smile can take you far,
but not in a world of
madness.
a world of poetry and
Jazz
confined.

Magen,
after all these years
and hiatius of bad poetry...

you're still on my mind,
every single
day.

for this,
I am sorry,

But I know better then
to ever get involved, and I wont.

The greatest love is to love and let go
and see the one you love be happy.

I do not even watch from a distance,
I just assume what I briefly see or hear.

I wish you happiness, romance, and self-respect. for each other,
I know, I've learned a lot sine you've been gone! lol

see ya magen

magen

she's changed her hair color
three times.
been through 3(4?) guys.
has tried modeling and
community college.
she's now in fashion school.
she's embraced romantic love
and found her soul mate quite
possibly more than once.
she's dated military, domestic,
foreign, local, and long-distance.
she's had a new car, an old car.
she even took the trolley at one time.
I believe she has 2(3?) tattoo's now.
one of a heart.
one of her key words is:
"love"

she's called on me twice but I've
never responded.

too much
too much
too much

If I knew more about her
then I would
know a lot less.

september night

not here for the
inspired word
or for any
reason at all

just smoking a quiet cigarette on this
hot September night.

I take a draw
and exhale death

the woman of the past
somehow seem to appear
by accident, out of mutual friends or
seemingly simple facebook connections.

love in sandals
love in high heels
love in shoes worn and walked in
over and over
again across
our heavy
hearts.

they've got us caged like this,
pacing back and forth
against seemingly
vertical
walls.

the good times were the hard times.

it was the learning
and the final act
of letting it
all go with great pride.

there is now a siren outside,
that ends suddenly and
so does my second cigratte.

chet baker

he misses by so little,
fires
fires
deep
into your
gut
then down
into your
soul.
that
west coast jazz
that-
cool jazz
that
nobody
seems
to understand.
the
heroin will
catch up to you
chet
but I'll still
listen.
you see,
our worlds are
similarly alike,
abstract
and out of their time.
like the inside
of a painting.
those silent
1950's nights with
mulligan...
it was passed down
to you
from mulligan
who had it from
ellington
then
59 years later
for that
fire
that misses
by so little.

blossom

love dangling delicately at the
end of a string
cut short.

tonight I think of a beautiful woman as
she smiles and thinks of other less
wordly things.

if you've ever tried to tame a woman,
don't think of it
don't even try

the delicate flower of freedom is best
left alone and then
picked

let her bloom
but please,
do not try to change her-
you would only be hurting yourself.

we are as two
in search of one.

lost

sitting here like a confused rat.

my mind is pacing back and forth.
I've run out of luck,
I've been challenged and I can't
maneuver myself out of this one.
not anymore, I say.

the chess pieces are against me,
I've played a bad hand,
I've messed up a solo.

what to do what to do.

my pain is out to get me and
now I'm being threatened with my job.
what more to lose?

I can't get out of this trapped cage.
the bars sink into my skin and come out of the other side.
they've grown to be a part of me.

this is where I am about to lose, where it has all begun to catch up to me.
what bad karma, what I have done.
does bad karma reward with good karma?

I am confused. I can not scuttle. I can not feel. I can not write.
I write senseless and plain thoughts.
no meaning
nothing.
no sense to be made.
my confidence is drained,
it's been very low anyway.

oh sweet love, why wont you find me
wealth
beauty
and luck.

"down in the dumps" by bessie smith

trying to survive, not sure which way is
up, down
left or right.

I've written like this before so lets get down to it:
my boss is catching up to me, I've lost my car,
I'm fighting a battle with love(again), grown acne like the
face of the moon, arm-wrestled with death(he's winning) and their
is one big roach riding somewhere between the cracks.

My cancer-baby emotions have been ringing
around the clock.
love, hate, sadness, anger, and lust.

I'm running on empty.
not sure which way to go,
north west
south or east.

I've decided to go to the moon.

I wish to be in a cold dead space like
an astronaut. except not like an astronaut.
more like dust.
more like a devoid rock
from humanly existence.

I want to look at a blue-green planet and
then turn away.

trying to survive is a miserable task that I
somehow
believe will end.

costa verde blvd

you have no poetry books,
I told her.
why don't you have any poetry books?
why do you need poetry when you can write your own? she said.
I didn't reply.

we walked upstairs to her loft and I watched her change into a
band shirt.

she showed me her two fish.

we laid on her loft and she played her electric guitar.

I blinked and listened.
It was the sound of grated steel.

It's not tuned, she said.

she set it down, stood up, and seductively
walked down the stairs.

I watched.

we stepped on her balcony and listened to the
opera singer.

she mentioned they have a flute player too,
he plays in the morning, she says.
she wakes up to the sound of a flute.

would you like a cigarette? she says.
sure.
she pulls one out of the ash tray.

she lights a match and we
watch the fire burn.

I don't like the way this E is making me feel, she says.
I could run a marathon right now,
I'm restless.

yea, I don't like these pills either, I say.
they're really bad pills. I hope the comedown isn't too hard.

I have PTSD she says,
what's that? I say.

It's post-traumatic stress disorder.
oh my god, why am I telling you this?
I don't want to tell you about my shit, I think it's rude.
I have anxiety.

yea, I know how that is, I reply.

my mom is an addict. she's all sorts of shit,
she says.

why are you so quiet? it's creepy.

are you saying I'm a creep?
no no I didn't say that.

I look into her eyes,
I think I'll go now, I say.
ok, she replies.

give me a hug.
oh, you want a hug?

see ya.
bye.

pain

welcome back,
I knew you would be back.
you think you could escape ME?
I am your pain, and I will always be there with you.
no drug can alter my existence,
no woman can can save you from me.
I am there with you,
always.
there is no escape.

of course,
there is suicide.
yes, the simplicity of non-existence
is your only escape.
but you can't do it... you're a coward,
instead I'll carry myself amongst your back.
I am the police behind you,
the truth behind your lies,
the loves that have left you far behind,
I am writing this poem for you
not the other way around.

I am your pain and I am here to stay.
I am that beautiful smile in a woman who is not
supposed to be yours. yes,
I tell them not to come by
infecting your confidence and your brain
with rot.
I grow on you,
I am a disease
I am a silent song
I am an empty cigarette box.
yes, we are out of cigarettes.
wont you get some more?
It'll bring you closer to the end like
nothing else.

why am I with you,
you ask?
because altered reality is
happiness.
it is an unworthy emotion,
and you know this.
it is life and love through
rose-tinted eyes.
too disgusting to accept.

why am I with you?
someone or something placed me inside of you.
I've been with you since you were born,
I am your best friend
I am your worst enemy.
I am all that you've ever known.

there is nobody else but you and me.

don't ask any more questions,
just know
we'll be at it again
tomorrow.

rollercoaster

this girl is a rollercoaster.
will fate allow me the challenge
to survive her?

dead love

I don't remember a day when I didn't think about her for
longer than a moment.
it's sad holding onto such frail memories,
this I know.
it is a hopeless love memory gone
wrong
long after it's been bad to remember.
supposed to of forgotten by now.
not supposed to love
what does not love back.
it is like looking into the withering death of a flower.

one thing I remember
most is her style of love,
obsessive.

ah, the smooth heartbreaker.

to go back,

I would touch her soft face and
look into the amber glow of her eyes.
the ghost I love.

her I can never touch again.

love is hopeless this way,
particularly the former lovers that left.
you wish to forget them,
and you do, for a while.
but at one point or another you remember.

it was an original romance like
this original poem.

and though these feelings aren't anything special,
it is better than no feelings at all.

at least in the end,
we still have something to hold onto,
if not just a ghost.

the ghost of my dead love.

she finds her soul mate about once a year. how she manages to wash out her soul like dirty laundery I'll never know. but I do feel for sorry for the ones she's frittered away, because at one point, I was one of them, and now shine brighter than all of the stars in the city.

true happiness

is love.

it's an 8 minute jam session.

it's a myspace mood change.

it's two hundred poems huddled up
together in a small quiet
room.

it's faking it.

it's in the form of a pill.

it's hiding inside the attic
waiting.

it's born into
the souls of pretty delicate
blonde girls.

it's finding God.

it's not finding God at all.

it's needed like water.

it's been lost.

young and confused

little courage
and a string of disappointments:
this is what it is like to be
before the age of
22

it is a time for sexual conquest and
exploration

to play the game well
but often
flawed

courage in a glass of red wine
filled to the bottom

I strum heart-strings
wishing for a song to play

I would want to fire
but to do so
has become dull

so instead I wait to become
old (only then will it be
exciting once more)

it has become a game of
waiting
with that bache-colored word again
that manila envelope
that fly on the wall
that dry
pasty word

I would focus on waiting
but would
find myself
nowhere

gemini

how
can a beautiful
woman
with two long legs and
brunette hair
enchant you so

how can the
moon
be moved to make her
yours

long-legged gemini
i'm
on both of my knees

selfish kind of
love-
my sensitive
cancer
need

I wish to love you;
but to tell you
is
foolish

so I
wait
wait
wait

my masculine
soul
in hiding

hoping
wishing
waiting

like a sad quiet poem
on a summer
night

a lost place in between, no love

sitting alone to
brahms after visiting the
former girlfriend.
I would tell you there were emotions,
but they've all run dry.
or rather, I've searched for them
but found nothing there

sad feelings are better than no feelings

sitting alone
looking for the words and
the confidence to look forward.

this is like stretching to the end of the world.

all those rotten cliches...
forget about them.

he'll make it big some day

drove to the grocery store for
heineken.

some guy kept
harrassing me to buy his custom CD
for a "donation"

listen, man,
I'm not a huge fan of rap
but I don't particularly like
alternative rock or hippie
shit or anything that rhymes.

opening my car door I thought:
what if it was a skinny black guy
singing opera or playing a saxophone
or harmonica or a trumpet
or what if it was the best damned
thing... nah.

I turned that idea off
started the car
and the headlights
and backed out listening
to the sweet twang of a blues guitar

I need a drink. and you probably do too.

sad hours 2

still talking to her.
she tells me she does not really care
for poetry.
fuck the poets.
they're nothing. they're unemployed.
they're the artists I highly dislike and
they're worst than acoustic guitar players on some
college compound.
they grow their hair too long (their facial hair too)
and listen to their ipods and talk about all things political
like stem cell research and organic foods.
fuck the poets.
nobody cares for poetry.
nobody cares for acoustic guitar players with
long hair but
dumb blondes.
and the poets and the poets and the
poets...

sore loser

she asked me:
are you seeing anyone?
I said:
seeing is as far as it goes.
oh yea? why is that?
because she wont let me see any further.
up her skirt or
into her soul
or below the breast,
it's a losing game.
then it's all a game, she says.
shit, you're right,
I should get out of there, I told her.
then why don't you?
I don't know...
I just don't know how to quit.

silence

this whole silence thing has gotten
a hold of me lately.

It is easier not to listen to anything
at all.

I am sitting on the futon listening to
the soft white noise.

this is easy.

I've turned off the television
and set down the remote

the mind is empty.

ideas

I have learned that good words come
by going into the white page
with our without ideas.
this gives them time flourish and
give rise to more
creative thought.
though sitting here
on the illuminated screen I
feel for a moment that the idea is no more
empty than this poem.
maybe I have tried too hard.

so I sit, stupid with the heater humming as the clock
turns to another second, minute, hour
days wasted like this.
a brain like a red in the wall.

ok cupid

I'll have a condo in the big city, high up on the balcony I'll be playing Frank Sinatra while sipping on a martini, dreaming of better times as the city below sparkles like diamonds.

there is no better life than this,
playing Jazz and Blue's music and being
peaceful. not wanting, but waiting patiently
like the spider as the impatient
fly spudders about.

we are all so very selfish, wanting our
perfections in somebody else. choosing like
packed meat in a super market.
it's come down to this.
we don't think of a person
alone in a cold room having
never been touched.
people aren't good to each other.

as the woman love others as the men
seek more and more and more validation
whether online
or anywhere
else.

desperate like the spuddering fly.

the jazz player

I used to like the guy who played the piano
with his drink always full in dizzy's or the onyx or
somewhere.

outside
he'd stand solo
cigarette dangling
dreaming clouds in the smoky heat as
killers and pot dealers walk by
in heavy clothes.
inside
the piano player tickles out a tune
while a honey-eyed blonde in a banana-colored
dress
v-neck to bellybutton
eyebrows plucked away
leans against the piano like a limp cooz.
half a dozen eyes turn.
elbows like clothespins.
she sings as
a stranger comes in:
the tough handsome one
the marine military suit
after some heroic battle with evil dumb
terrorists.
the stranger nods squinted eyes
at the piano player
who nods back as
the stranger and the singer walk off
to a back room
together.

briefly,
there is a knife inside like
heartbreak symbolism.

the piano player then moves slowly into another
tune and I used to think, jesus, he should have
her, but he's certainly not in a hurry
about anything, seems to have more sense than most, he
doesn't worry about the terrorists or a better world
or how to act tough enough to deserve a woman
in a banana-colored dress;
he has that satisfied smile,
he has jazz and
wears a nice respectable suit and
you realize all he finally wants
is that drink on the piano and
then to play another tune, he knows the price of every-
thing else:
too much.

the piano player seems content enough
and then somebody asks for a blues song
and he runs it off, first sipping his drink, and then
his fingers run up and down the keys, up and down, it's
good and easy, it asks for nothing, asks for so little
that it gives hope to all those who also ask
for no chance, who ask for nothing at all,
who just ask for someplace to sit quietly and wait
for the slanting sun moving on the wall
and for the peace of soft rain
spread out all over the place.


-buk

I'm living in a nothing world.

in a nothing world cars, buildings, and the skies
are black and white.
faces are grained and gray.
emotions are gray.
In a nothing world I am drained of
energy, love, and the general goodness
of life.
a withering flower is drained of all its
color.
In a nothing world
nobody will notice.
they cannot-will not
give love
in a
basket or
in a box with a golden ribbon.
I do not blame them for this.

in a nothing world. in a nothing world. in a nothing world.

the sky flashes with sunlight but the colors will not change.
the ocean pulls towards you but it does not reach far enough.
the gallows seem closer and with less effort.
you imagine the fall,
the red ring around the neck and
the neck snapping.

just a gray ragdoll swaying in the
living wind.

I read

I smile at bukowski and think,
yes! I'm a creator too!
I look at hemingway and think,
yes! I can follow your way,
like Bukowski did.
I can look at shakespeare and think
no! you're fucking terrible.
eat shit.
no, it's not the fact that I don't
understand you but the idea that
you are greater of them them all.
that bothers me.
arrogance bothers me.
loss of modesty that
breaks through the bone
reaches the heart
and then becomes an
unalienable idea followed by the
elite.
it's not simple,
but too complicated for the rest of us.
eat shit.

love

love,
it's an easy word,
it's a difficult word,
it's used too often
too soon,
every time,
all the time.
can you feel it?
it's all around you,
it's wrapped around all
the people
you see.
if I had it,
I would wrap it up in a red ribbon
and give it to you.
I don't need it.
I've had better things.
like this beautiful classical music
pouring through the grill of my radio
can you hear it?
no?
that's ok too.

I think the true art in understanding is
knowing of
not knowing- and only then
will you understand, and finally know.

the truth of understanding is accepting
its altered existence in its most
current form.

to do this all ego and emotion must be
set aside for re-evaluation. a logical separation of
mind and emotion.

to write a mechanical poem
without emotion is a crime.

to try to create art is to fail.
to try to create love is to fail.

to try in anything else is to succeed.

how the fuck does any of that make any sense?

spider on the ceiling

you can't smile
and laugh or tell me it's a
good time for poetry when you've
run out of all the good things to say.
you can't forget being sprawled on a bed with
half a dozen eyes and all shades of blonde and
pretend it never happened seemingly a
century ago.
you stare at the ceiling and think,
you've run out of it, man.
even the coincidence of a wine-spotted page on a poetry book
is no longer romantic. all the art, all that shit, man,
it's for the birds. it's been given away to the others by god
closing his legs and saying
enough

bobby

it's like how they do it in movies bobby,
some asshole says some real down to earth fucking line
that really hits you man
it hits you so hard and it makes you
question you're own fucking reality.

I can't live in a world like that man,
I'm not like them. I am my own entertainer.
I am the audience.