Haven’t been posting lately. Lost interest.
Here are the rest of February’s poem-a-day… did 50 poems in 28 days., plus my 4 March poems so far.
Turned 72 last week. Feel as if I don’t have to pretend as much since I can say, “I’m 72, that stuff doesn’t matter to me anyore.”
~
Sects Plex
You got your in sects
you got your out sects
you got your God sects
and your sect sex
consecrated cunts
and privileged pricks
sectioning life
to select vex
and unelect ex
it ain’t complex
so relax
put back on your slacks
and watch your backs
for penis imperfection
and vaginal compression
in the factual crime
of physical penetration
Wife sez I’m disgusting
but I’m not sure
what she’s discussing
Don’t trust the flesh
it leads to mess
and children yes
Worship the form
if you want to keep warm
but use condom
if you get wanton
or it leads to swarm
– 2.21.2018
~ ~ ~
Mushrooms to Rent
I’m not insane so much as outsane,
but inside my head it’s banana bonkers.
Hi whore hi whore it’s off to work we gore.
Want to repair the earth?
Buy an Eartha Kitt.
One needs very small hands to milk a cowbird.
Do you know what a worm’s life is like?
Boring, pure dirt boring.
All fathers are motherfuckers
except for the remote inseminators.
Does polyester want a cracker?
Gonna write a new song for Xmas —
I’m Dreaming of White Christians.
Einstein sez time & space are in-laws.
When they drop their bottle of Viagra,
Viagra falls.
Add mature to old, you get mold.
What do you call the first cell firing?
Original synapse, of course.
May those without sin smoke the first stone.
Why do people get harder of hearing
the louder I drink?
– 2.21.2018
~
Black Cat Scat
Black cat ignored my lap
for couch rub next to Lady
When I got up
black cat took my ass warmed place
When I sat down and put her in my lap
she left me for a fly
When fly got away
she went back to Lady couch
Where’s my I in this food chain?
– 2.21.2018
~
Dystopia
I’m zero, not one
off, not on
I live in dis topia
I live in dat topia
hoping for a topiary
or a top hat
to top this
top that
while you go round the block
reverse your path
forget the underground
cuz you’re above that
stick right foot in
speak with forked tongue
and whatever you do
dumb down the young
because they’re seeing truth
you don’t want known
your money tricks
hating skin not your own
and barefoot women
are starting to wear shoes
staying out of the bedroom
with empty wombs
so I gotta find a way
to live happy in sad
gotta go good
as the rich run bad
mean little pricks
with hands roaming wrong
hiding accounting tricks
far too long
time for the tar
and feathers too
pitchforks and torches
under full moon
ride em on rails
to the edge of town
tie em to ant hills
and never look back
better the gene pool
by removing the scum
for the core of conservative
is con damn dumb
– 2,22,2018
~
NRA
Bullet in chamber
finger on trigger
child in ground
– Smith, 2.23.2018
~
Me & Elvis
1975
when Elvis was alive
he saw a black woman
in Memphis staring longingly
through the display window
at a new Cadillac.
He went in, bought it,
and handed her the keys.
In 1968
on an out-of-town torture trip
trying to sell bulk paper to printers
I stopped in the heat
at an outdoor pop machine
and bought a bottle of cold Coke.
As I turned to leave
a boy on a bike
stared lhungrily at the bottle
so I gave it to him
because I’d always wanted
someone to do that for me.
He grinned big
thanked me and left.
I turned back to buy a second bottle
and found I had no more money
and laughed in delight
at Reality’s joke.
But I felt good for doing good
even though as always
I had made no sales.
What a politician is to honesty
was me to salesman.
Two years later
I was jailed a year for armed robbery.
Two years after Elvis bought the Cadillac
for Minnie Pearson
he died from drugs.
Elvis started 9 years before me
now he’s 30 behind.
– 2.24.2018
~
Shadow Shallow
I fight rhyme
in climb for stars
so far as I am able
in this unstable mime
of time and space
in place of other
under nights gone
to long day’s decay
in way and why
why lie?
I rise from sleep refreshed
and unmesh shadow
of shallow new to study old
in mold of morrow
sorrow the price we pay
to stray upon its
summit
sticky wicket
I bubble broil as troubled toil
roils rest
to best this earthly route
with shout of mirth to make rebirth
worth the walk about
in and out
– 2.25.2018
~
Unweave Wove
Dada Longlegs rises wall
banana perks on stove
orange crush circles love
while wail wobbles woe
please sir the sire exclaims
bubbles bouncing forth
sick the health to heal the lame
else farce will reckon force
for I accept my blame in this
my aim way off course
as always missing is
I reuse remorse
– 2.26.2018
~
Waiting Room
Overheard Doctor walking by
cell phone to ear,
“I’m not supposed to tell you…”
pause
“I’m not supposed to tell you…”
pause
“I’m not supposed to tell you…”
pause
“You’ve got to swear not to tell anyone else.”
– 2.26.2018
~
The Poetry Thieves of Barcelona
In Bezier train station waiting for Barcelona
an Arab showed me a xerox
of his 2 children who were hungry.
Not believing
I gave him a couple Francs anyway
because it was cheap
and better to be taken
than too hard of heart.
Hour later I watched him
hand the xerox to another man
who eventually showed me his starving kids.
It was their job.
Punch in
show folk fake hunger for a shift
punch out.
Professional liars.
Just like the young men
walking the Moroccan beach
with trays of cookies
all handmade by their mother named Fatimah.
Half dozen young men
same time same tray same cookies
handmade made by same Fatima
who must have had one big rumpled bed
and a heck of a kitchen.
I wrote their act in a small notebook
I carried in my back pocket for poetry.
Down the line
boarding Barcelona subway
man bumped me sideways
as door tried to close
between my back and pack
hitting and retracting
with each bump
he pushing me back into the door
in counter bounce
while he looked up to read the route
which must have been wrong
because he left.
Watching him and his friend walk away
I flashed “Pickpocket”
felt my empty back pocket
and laughed.
My money was in my front pocket
so he’d taken my poetry notebook instead.
Perhaps not a total loss for them
since my notes on the Bezier station scam
might give them some new wrongs.
I wonder what they thought of my poems.
– 2.27.2018
~ ~ ~
The Last Rites for Past Wrongs
Who do you blame
Eve, Adam, or the snake?
I know the snake had a grudge with God
and fomented unrest
in the land of ease and plenty
But Eve was certainly complicit
taking that bite
then smoozing Adam to eat
Yet Adam was dumb, weak,
or pussy-whipped to follow,
allowing good and evil
But the villain was God.
He/She/It made Lucifer
and when Lucifer protested being #2
(and why would anyone accept second?)
God cast him to belly hell
He/She/It made the tree
of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
He/She/It
created man and woman with dirt
and stolen body parts
He/She/It
made Eve and Adam defective,
too weak to follow orders
Or else He/She/It
made them too well
so they thought for themselves
What true God is so insecure
He/She/It would fear their knowing
right from wrong?
If You can’t stand the heat
get out of the kitchen
We should hire Snake Lucifer
to sue He/She/It for malfeasance,
bad design,
and lack of faith in It’s own creation
Got to break this God cycle
of guilt from above
sin from below
– 2.28.2018
~
Book Ban Burn
Recent studies state
the more intelligent you are
the more you swear.
I must be fucking brilliant.
I was born when you could be jailed
for saying fuck in a story, or a poem,
on a wall, in the street, on the tongue,
even though it was heard and seen
everywhere.
I was 11 when they prosecuted
Ferlinghetti for publishing Howl in spite
of the 1933 Supreme Court ruling on Ulysses
saying you could not censor literature for obsenity
if the obsenity did not promote lust.
The government assholes lost.
The authoritarian fuckers tried again
prosecuting Tropic of Cancer in 1934
and on anon for 30 years
until a 1964 Supreme Court ruling
told them to fuck off,
leave Henry Miller alone.
The Government pricks started early
and never stopped.
In 1629 the Massachusett’s governor
sent a military expedition to stop
Thomas Merton from writing sexy verse.
Boston had to stop sales of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass in 1881 because
the District Attorney threatened prosecution
yet when Philadelphia published 1,000 copies
the next year they sold out in a day.
1st officially banned book in America?
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain, 1885.
In 1915 William Sanger and his wife Margaret
were both indicted for publishing
information on contraception.
1859 saw Charles Darwin raise a ruckus
with On the Origin of Species
but it took until the 1920s to censor it,
remaining banned until 1967.
Some cities banned Ernest Hemingway’s
A Farewell to Arms in 1929.
In the 1920s the famous “Banned in Boston”
caught Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
An American Tragedy, Elmer Gantry,
American Mercury, and Strange Interlude
and more.
Some cities and school boards banned
Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto,
George Orwell’s 1984,
John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
Way too recently they’ve censored
The Catcher in the Rye and
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
likely because they undermine authority.
The most challenged book in the 21st century
is the kids’ book And Tango Makes Three
about homosexual penguins.
As late as 2003 Texas school boards
tried to ban Brave New World.
More bans on Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
which is rated as our 12th best novel
and of course To Kill a Mockingbird
and the Harry Potter books.
Wikipedia lists Black Boy, Candide, Catch-22,
The Canterbury Tales, Captain Underpants,
Carrie (way to go Stephen King!!!), Fanny Hill,
The Decameron, The Federal Mafia, Homo Sapiens,
The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption,
Moll Flanders, My Life and Loves, Naked Lunch,
Operation Dark Heart, Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
United States – Vietnam Relations 1945-1967,
Women in Love, Drama, Absolutely True Diary,
and Looking for Alaska.
Won’t even go into the book burnings.
Who knew so many were so scared of thinking?
And of course Donald ‘Chubby Cheese’ Trump
would probably ban books if he ever read one.
This is but a taste of their wrongs,
there are many many many much more.
Appears the uninformed fear the educated,
the religious fear fact,
and the racists fear everything.
The sin here is the arrogance of the ignorant
believing they can tell the rest of us
what we can or cannot read.
So fuck the Puritans
and the perversion they rode in on.
– 3.1.2018
~
Once More Round the Bend
Sucked into the spiral
going forward faster than leaving behind.
I walk beneath the shaded leaves
knowing neither name nor number
my life a mercy
of luck’s good fortune and sense of humor
no way I’ve gotten this far and long on my own
gotta be a Joker in the deck
(who may be me0
with many a marked shard to spend.
Does the shoe worship the shoe-maker?
Does the foot fit the shoe?
Does the toe rule the foot?
The lace the tongue?
Or are they all appendages of each other’s lie?
Dismal day grey
Cleveland rain fog and warm cold
beauty in the mist
Driving down shadow lane
in shallow frame of thought
stuff once carried on tip of tongue
now stored in dusty boxes back behind my brain.
Big Sycamore winter bare reaching pre-sun light
trunk slow thinning
limbs branching smaller and smaller
till they fractualize sky
too small for our whys to see.
The sun comes up, the knives come out.
Wife looks at me with her cancer eye,
“I’m like a cat
I see the empty bowl
I want it full.”
We go on.
– 3.9.2018
~
The Garden of Eaten
Everything eats something
and is in turn by something eaten.
Fish eats snail,
bird eats fish.
So where’s fair?
What makes this death okay,
that death not?
Seems mostly the Rule-Makers exclaiming
eating is fine, being eaten ain’t.
As long as they’re the eaters.
History written by winners
while the vanquished dead rot.
The do as I play say
from eater to eaten.
So, what’s for dinner?
– 3.12.2018
~
Sand Cleans Water
This dirt road but dust on way to death,
neither sand nor water abide.
Been before, be again
in my unwisdom wander.
Words be slippery slope to sloppy charter
unless is meets oughter.
What we need now we learn later
at cost of blood, bone, time, loss.
One gets wily as one grows weaker
since less force needs more resource.
Each day strange road minus map,
detours not yet determined.
Most of us ain’t rich, too many hungry,
who hordes food from belly?
This is zero sum game
in which I stay until I can’t pay.
Promised wife I’d reach 101
regardless of crimps and creases.
Might have to apply
for some right-of-way eases.
Just a question of time,
whether I’m worthy.
Until then I sand words from tongue
to hold enigma.
Virgin spurt
& molten
– 3.14.2018
