time has come and gone like sailing upon a vast ocean.
adventures take us from one place to another.
their are dreams of always something much better in the end.
some lighthouse, some beacon of truth that will make our lives as
easy and floating as a mote in the wind.

But I do not know where I am going, I only know where I am;
exiled,
on some island.. no shoes, November beard.
but the sail has to continue,

rachel

we went to santa barbara and we were together
for a while, but I never did appreciate her until I began to know her for her mind
and for who she was.
It's not that I didn't listen or lost interest,
but that I was running astray, being intimidated by other girls who so easily showed interest.
and then one day inside a coffee shop the love was gone.
she traced my tattoo with her finger and held onto my arm and
on the radio Frank Sinatra's New York, New York began to play.
I stood up to leave, not wanting,
not needing any of it and I was gone. .

two years went by. I still thought of her, called her, and one day, we went out. we carried two separate poetry books. one from Charles Bukowski and another by Patti Smith. we climbed and stood atop some green electric box in North Park and began to read poetry. she would read a page from her book and I would read a page from mine.

the love was gone and me, not being able to accept it, left as I did before.

I still see her in my thoughts, she' smiles and sometimes, I hear the cure or the smiths or patti smith playing. sometimes I hear Stellar by Incubus. but it's all ok now. truly beautiful things almost never happen twice. wherever she may be now, I will finally lay it to rest, in my thoughts and at the
end of this poem.

sometimes,

it can be a terrifying thing to be here and be

the creator - 

but then, what is one trying to prove?

I am here to say I AM ALIVE...dying but not dead yet.

there is a force that moves time and I do not yet understand it. 

there are great many people I know nothing of, there is still great music, undiscovered.

the bowl is stuck in the piece.
suck through a small hole of nothing as we float on
through the dreams we cannot have, the woman that will not leave; our thoughts.
all love is through the eye of a bottle and there is only
a reflection of yourself inside.

I want to make sense of it all -
but it is easier to float away. easier to be gone,
easier to hope for the dream;
for worm that doesn't come, not in winter,
but in any season. winter is the inferno for the lost
and the damned, it is their hell and like day for fools.

here

no love,
would do it.
no grass
no science
no God.
some beer might do it.
biting the blade at the razor's edge,
might help you through it.
but at the end of the day when
the blues come home,
there's no escape and there's only a simple
way to endure.

from somewhere

luck from the lions mouth.
pieces of me ,
emotions in that pink and blue sherbert sky.
I look in the reflecting glass windows
of office buildings in the crawl of traffic and see my hollowed eyes,
my hair. I have soft brown eyes, thank god for my dark brown eyes,
I will never let them see the light in me.
It's hidden inside like a dark glowing ember.
my shoelaces become undone,
they are long and sad and dirty. once white, now blue an gray.
I step over the laces, the edges have become frayed.

she comes from nowhere, the synapse fires and then she's inside.
lets not start thinking about this, I think; she's gone now and she thinks of you
as much as she thinks about moving to Antartica. It's over, done, a small memory
tucked away in an envelope. but I can't forget, and tomorrow I'll remember again; replaying
small meaningless memories of something as simple as a conversation during a walk.
I'll remember her pink shoes, faded to gray. I'll remember her dark brown eyes,
and the way she looked into mine as I held her and she smiled.
she was love like luck from the lions mouth,
she came and went and the sun swallowed her and left
me for dead; burning, glowing,
alive but not dead yet.

no love it all is not so blue.
when you're alone you remember old loves like whirling shadows
caught behind the moon.
they might come out of there if you look close enough.

notes

the first time I heard "stellar" by incubus I didn't like it.
it after she was gone
I remembered it.
now,
it's not so bad after all.
it reminds me of her and that's ok.
she was once a beautiful creature with the best mind
I can remember. she made me happy,
and she makes me happy when I think of her.
sometimes when I think too much I miss her
and that makes me sad.
but that's ok,
it's better to have her scarred into my memory
then not to of had her at all.

welcome back!

said God,
crossing his legs drinking a whiskey sour.

everything must be a misunderstanding, he says,

this earth, this sun,
this death that arrives on time to the slightest hand-movement of a clock.

bear with me the witness of death,
have you seen it?

a cold dead body
in a coffin, the eyelids closed looking up at you into the eyes of the living.

our hero's dead bones under gravestones,
our fathers, mothers, grandfathers,
brothers, sisters, victims of murder or suicide,
from violent crime or simply,
from bad luck or disease.

they come alive in our dreams
and in our thoughts,

in their passing they are alive for the living,
a french revolution,
revulsion, pain, laughter,
maybe an ease of pain for the murderer,
a high,
a new-found sense of glory and identity.

God creates, kills, and takes.
the greatest serial killer of them all.

the heads of decapitated blondes roll
from the guillotine.

God laughs drinking his whiskey sour.

God watches, creates, controls, or doesn't exist.

we're all a pile of bones,
dying,
dying

until the sun engulfs the earth
swallows us whole

or until the galaxy collides

or until nuclear war

or until we all just die,
remembering none of it,
knowing none of it-

as our offspring live on

suffering

creating

living

appreciating the art of the past,
creating new art of their own

then dying
to continue the cycle again;
of Death.

rolling heads from the guillotine.
an endless rolling of blonde heads with
the dick-sucking mouths of whores.

my first friend

in elementary school, my first teacher's name was ms. Jimenez.

I remember waiting in line as a child, being counted and numbered before going into class.

inside the classroom we learned how to write our names, numbers, and cursive.

during lunch time we would go out and learn songs.

I only had one friend at the time, her name was Diana.

later I learned when she was 16, her mother started seeing another man and

her father couldn't handle it so he bought a gun, killed the mother and the lover

then turned the gun and did it to himself.

I carried a purple lunch pail to school, it had a picture of chameleon on the front.

I don't remember the food I was eating,

but I remembered the first time I saw a kid eating a sandwich.

It was plain white bread without any crust, 

it had a slice of yellow cheese and a thin layer of ham and was cut

into even triangles.

later on I would come to know Diana's parents after school

and was once invited to her birthday party.

I arrived at her house too early before her father was home.

when he finally arrived he was upset that I was there early.

I waited in the living room while he grabbed her hand,

took her into the bedroom and started hitting her with his belt.

I could hear her crying and the noise was drowning out.

their were aluminum cans on the dining table, on top of the tv,

and on the coffee table. everything smelled sour.

I left that house.

I saw her again at school, but she never talked to me again.

I never talked to her again either.

12

12 people are dead.

abraham lincoln was only trying to watch a play,
but the dark knight came and took his life.

the bee hive of america is humming for answers,
but they will find none.
the news networks will dissect the killers past
and the killer will be then a monster.
the monster will be caged and
put to death.

america will continue.

indifference of tragedy,
desensitized.

nothing is absolute,
everything must be questioned to be fully understood.

more violence will come, more death, more sex politicians, more magnates;
and the next great torture killer is yet to come.

it all keeps coming.

small tragedies.
small deaths.

the terror of a person
alone
is dismissed.

nothing made him do it.
it just happened and it will happen
again.

friend

I find it very disagreeable, being a dashing romantic as I am,
that you would do such a thing as cheat on her.
a man with class would cheat behind closed doors,
keep his mouth shut and keep her legs wide open. 
but you made me a part of your game when I met her,
I couldn't say anything to unfoil the plot, or lack there-of.
a year went by and I didn't say anything.
she wouldn't give it up enough, you said.
the lights had to be off and her dressed hiked up. 
she would cup her tits and her pussy
and when you tried to maneuver your cock
around her fingers she said "no".
but you did it anyway and maybe she liked it in the end
but that's not how it usually goes, pal.
defender of right and just romantic love and
advert of the cupid's arrow. haha, what a crock of shit.

there is a time when pain becomes
so incapacitating it becomes difficult to think,

it becomes difficult to make the decisions like tying shoelaces or shaving.

the retardation of the mind is the end of all
moderate thinking.
a wounded god creating "art"
then becomes a hero.

--

this is my line to walk along with the gods.

gods among men are remembered while 
the rest are forgotten.


some hold onto the edge not wanting to get up.
just holding.

goodnight

two drinks down and I feel much better. 

a slow recipe towards death,

a little bit of grass, 

a hazy way to endure. 

not like tough-boy poets who once had horse races, boxing matches, 

bull fights, bar fights, whore houses, planes at war,

winston churchill and all of the presidential assassinations. 

I would like a way out of here, but I'm trapped inside pages.

sometimes I don't want to come here, or I don't "think" of coming here,

but then I'm here anyway.

I'm here to say the little I have to say,

maybe nothing inspiring or spiritual,

bu fragmented pieces of me.

I bleed, ideas like dreams that don't often make sense,

but must find a way to exist.

your pictures can not break me,
the thoughts of you like searing pain that bring me to my knees, can not break me. 
mercy with your heart for my soul, is not enough, the light of day, is not enough, the marching band
playing is not enough. teen years gone. innocence gone. yearbooks signed and dismissed,
letter-men jackets hanging in the closet, scrap books, friendships, gone.
the light of day came only once for me and when it did,
you were with me and it was autumn and the leaves were falling
as we promised each other a love of immortality.

notes

It's the 4th of the july and there are gunshots in the streets and sirens

and people yelling in the streets, hardly american or not american at all. 

tomorrow is my birthday and for my birthday I want a time machine to 1984

for a smiths concert or to 1954 for Miles Davis. 

I want to see Tommy Dorsey with Frank Sinatra in the 30's when he was young,

I want see the big bands, white musicians, black musicians, and tito puente. 

purple

I thank the lord for this small bit of herb,
for the land it grew upon, and for the sun it brings.

mary jane has come to rescue me from the madness that lives inside.

if there's ever a time in the future that I will not remember,
now I will, because I wrote this,
and I will remember.

it's soul music coming through my ears like marvin gaye,
when they used to have those big brass sounds, horn sections, back-up singers.
big people with sounds that were so talented.

at war with the night

something wants to come shake me down,

but I do not yet know it.

it is ok to feel,

I tell myself.

It is ok to feel because I have the courage

and bravery to endure.

tonight I wish there was a cricket

to keep me company,

but instead I hear a helicopter overhead. 

looking out the window I see warm amber lights.

always the same warm amber glow in apartment buildings, street lamps,

park benches, bus stops,

churches.

it's in the parking lot walking to your car after work,

it's in your car's glove box after shutting off the engine,

and then in the walkway to your apartment.

I'm awake watching

infinitely spinning electrons. 

alone with something that is killing me

that I do not yet understand.

I'm a peasent peon poet

swimming in quicksand.

absolved of my sins by the blood of christ,

all eternal entity,

entropy.

I remember moon glow,

all romantic moon glow in the arms of another.

it feels good at night on the beach,

or when you're curling smoke in front of a machine

writing this, to come shake down the blues

before they shake you down first.

it's a god-damned war with the light.
the devil can't win and a black hole
could swallow God whole.

it's a good night

listening to Michael Jackson.
I deserve these good times,
this good night with this little sunshine.
gray rain cloud from above
wants to swallow me whole.
stereo mouth spits out electronic parts of me,
transistors, electrodes, spaghetti time-bomb wires;
one red, blue, yellow, green.
my brain pulsates with the madness,
I'm going to wire my way into a new way, a new form.
but don't blame it on the boogie.

green skirt

a girl in a green skirt sits next to me on the train in Union Station.
I'm on the passenger seat next to the window,
I see the reflection of her legs and suddenly want
to pull her towards me for a hot kiss.
she is reading a book about ghandi.

I'm reading nothing,
I write my own stories.
she has short black hair like uma thurman and
I think of saying hello, but instead look out the window.

I see graffiti on the walls of apartment buildings.
there is a bible verse on a wall and a
brown christmas tree sitting quietly
nearby in the month of June.

in van nuys we pass a hobo camp,
wooden sticks and makeshift tents for shelter.
a ladder holds up one of the tents,
some rusted metal bars, aluminum everywhere.

the conductor says there will be a baggage check by
homeland security, but the baggage check never comes.
the hippie girls then flips the page in the ghandi book, closes it
and brings out her ipod.

she is listening to Joy Division now,
I can hear "love will tear us apart"
from her headphones.

I close my eyes and see white firemen and the city of angels on fire.
a thousand police officers are being shot at by the blacks,
no officer survives. police cars explode, there are sirens but no ambulances anywhere.

I see the hippie girl smiling at me,
lets dance on the streets she says,
and lets burn this whole city down so we can all live like the hobos.

I open my eyes,
but when the song ends there is nothing else playing.
she opens her book again,
I continue to look out the window.

she never looked at me once,
and I never looked at her again until she stood up,
grabbed her bags and disappeared forever.

dark alley

many evil days days have come along the wire.
walking down the empty dark streets
alone with a hoody.
you've decided that you're the dark shadow
someone fears in an alley and
not the other way around.
a thrill from the chill,
or the made-up paranoia
in one's mind.
what if their was a killer here tonight,
would he try to get me first?

getting through the night

not mad enough to walk into a bar
and have a drink,
but I remember the faces
of all the liquor store owners on Adams
and in El Cajon.
they all looked tired and never
asked me for an I.D.

was never an alcoholic but I'm
not sure what an alcoholic is.
everyone needs a way to get to sleep at the end of the night and
I'm all for whatever gets you through it;
for tomorrow will be another hell-day and
sometimes an easy day to bring shorter days
is a better then all of the bad days
put together.
are you still with me?
inside are the ugly people making
the ugly buys like liquor,
cheap potato chips, arizona iced tea or
almond chocolate bars.
cigarettes or menthol,
27's or those long virginia slims.

It'd bring home my solution for the night,
maybe a 40 of Mickey's or a couple 32's of Heineken
and the occasional bottle of wine.

at home I would arrive and then I would be here,
fighting the ongoing war with what few writers
would dare call, "Depression".
(I call it, "The Beast")

but I said it and now that the word is out
maybe you'll forget me for being too weak
or we can cry together and drink together
and at least
"here"
we'll find some joy
in slaying the demon
together.

missing the thought of you

blonde hair,

lockes of god

bringing the miracle.

the blue hills rolling along like that,

looking back and thinking of it all.

you see the world through a fractured windshield,

thinking of jazz music and the san francisco bay bridge.

I want my thoughts to be clear but I can't shake

the sense of existence long enough to do so.

I would like to tell you about flowers but flowers

are black and blue in my garden. 

I tend to my roses and hold them like a

sentimental gift. 

I would like to cry, 

but crying is dumb and irrational. 

little brown eyes and a black-laced glove,

I miss you but to admit it brings

a deeper hurt then I can bare

to remember.

until tomorrow.

close your eyes christ child

it is a quiet night.

everything is ok.

but not in the mind,
like two uneven bricks in the wall
waiting to bring the house down.

this too will pass and someday
there will be flowers and green grass and
a warm glowing sun

the sun will stay up and the nights
will become easier.

the hope is there and believe me,
I'm working on it but sometimes the nights engulf
and eclipse and swallow me until
I can not move or think,
or think to care.

not caring is easiest.
it's the greatest truth and universal surrender
when
nothing moves you.

there's no more to cry for when
acceptance is truth.
what comes to pass often leaves scars
but scars
are seldom beautiful.
they are the reminders of bad verse,
bad love. experience.

and though I would like to
end this poem,
I would rather lay down,
close my eyes and try to think of nothing more
but endless space.

jump

jumping from the golden gate
is the best way to go.
you only feel pain
for a moment
and you're gone.

climbing over the railing
as you sit down
next to the ledge,
next to the lamp posts.

lamp post #69,
closest to the center.

I used to think,
the only thing to save me from
myself would be to love
or to be loved.

but maybe there is a light of chance
somewhere,
a running light through the fog.

but no. there isn't.

we have walked along the train-tracks of
hope but never held the dream,
or we had the dream but
had it taken away.

and what has come and gone,
is often irreplaceable.

riding the same trolley
becomes tiresome
like the faces of old liquor store
owners.

it becomes chipped yellow paint inside clinics
or driving with a broken tail-light.

it turns into climbing
over the railing of the golden gate bridge
and watching the
grey water swishing
like some big laundry machine.

from the womb to lamp post #69
what a lovely way to go

notes on going

everything has edges.

we've been cut open across

the gut.

the pieces of shattered glass

like dandelions

fluttering in the green wind.

this is what it is like to be

turning into the big 

TWO FIVE

somewhere out there

It'd like to say something tonight ,

but tonight-

their is a wrench inside

my gut

(as always)

and in the machinery of it all,

the universe; everything.

a curse that not even Bob Dylan could cure,

I still remember her brown eyes

like a sad day.

blue window

you see the blue sky outside your window
as the sun goes down and you think,
maybe that's why they call it the blues.
it's this shade of blue like dirty rainwater.

you light the herb into smoke
and up you go
into the brass tubes of a blue trombone.

a thousand expressionless
olive
faces looking out of a wooden window.

bright colored jackets with wide-rimmed hats,
they picked up their horns and played Blue sounds
onto every side of the Mississippi river,
then north into Harlem.

through the palpating thoughts of an inferior mind
do I bring these words to you.
my scars like the ghosts of graves.

we are the people

store-front churches, pawn shops, bars, the police, and the homeless sleeping on the streets. The artists who know everything but nobody cares. Concrete jungle smells like shit, piss behind buildings and garbage bins. record stores where assholes buy records with an iphone in their back-pocket. the lost, the found, the hip, and the just. we are the people. and we are everywhere like some god-damned disease.

strange caller

I've never had a lot of readers,
but I do remember when someone read
one of my poems and called the police department
for being too obscene.

I received a phone call from a police officer
who was following an investigation
on some of my poems.

he left me a voice mail and told me to call him back,
but when I did he never responded and
I never heard from him again.

to this day I haven't heard from him.

in plumes of fire they went

It's a pale blue earth

as we suck on

the thickness

of the white air,

our lungs heaving in despair.

woman fall in and out of love

as men

burn down houses

with their children inside.

it's true,

I read it in a newspaper today,

it happened in washington.

we are often ignored

until it's too late.

foggy

you were in all black,
your figure taking hold of me
in front of dark shadows.

you're going to San Francisco you say,
you're going to see
Kerouac.
you're going to see everything.

I remember the lightness in your skin
and in your hair,
your face and it's
anxieties.
the art on your walls with
the cleverly drawn mustaches
looking back at me.

you were wearing all black
and you were walking
around the room looking
like heaven.

the Smiths still play on
my radio
but Kerouac is dead.
I haven't written them all off yet.

they sound too good.