these unlikely stories

click the pic

 

 

 

 

 

because pollock is always with us

 

 

 

 

 

lost painting, 1949

 

like small pieces of paper left in

the pouring rain, like words i love you
written on each one

the flood and then

the flood receding

destruction and the

thick stench of decay

the dull grey weight of hopelessness

all of your life dragged out to the curb

to be picked through by the
dirtbags, the looters, the men w/ their
heads of carrion birds
 

money in the pockets of

every politician
 

teenage sons and daughters

lining up to be fucked or
tied down to be raped

it’s a war, of course, and to pray for

one soldier’s survival is to
pray for the death of another

it’s a house on the eastern edge of

town where you live with your
ghosts and your fear of the future

no one meets you at the door after

work, no one kisses you goodnight,
no one offers to die for your sins

no one rushes into the room just as

you prepare to slash your wrists

no one calls you a coward when

you sit there doing nothing

too late, and w/out hope

later, then, in some other desperate

season, after i’d told you i loved you,
after it became a lie

clouds, probably,

or shades of grey
 

an absence of shadows

an abundance of light,

but all of it dimmed and all
memories shaped by fear and loss

i knew you were gone,

but didn’t care

waited five years to remember your

heat & your touch

had the same dream over & over,

a woman with someone else’s face,
someone else’s body,
but i knew it was you
and i burned all of those poems

i destroyed all of those paintings

saw the man sitting there,

going blind

saw the soldiers tearing out his tongue

cutting off his children’s hands

a million bright red birds

flying from their wrists and
back into the past

click to buy, or maybe just to gaze upon w/ reverence & awe

 

 

 

 

new piece at concrete meat

any war

miro

 

 

 

 

 

 

december poem, in february

no shallow end,

no lifeline

this is not an explanation,

you see,
this is my grandfather’s suicide

this is a letter to the fucker who

tried to get me fired twenty
years ago because i was sleeping
                           with his girlfriend

we grow up

and then we grow old

the wars don’t matter as long as

we can still afford to get drunk

this is a truth i

never see printed in the papers

this is blood in the

bathroom sink at 2:00 a.m.

i think about who i might

call, then end up just
going back to bed

in the morning,

the basement has flooded

a joan mitchell sunday afternoon

 

 

 

 

the pure light of lost afternoons

not black & white but

shades of grey,
smudges of dull green

amnesia

solitude

use the poems as bricks

and build yr own prison

stand in the empty field  out

past the railroad tracks
and wait to cast a shadow

wait for winter to end

refuse to die in yr

own small way

holiday favorites

 

 

my lulu collection of traditional and electronic books,

all marked to move.......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

always almost somewhere

click below

 

 

 

dorothea, max

 

 

 

dominion

sunlight like the fist of god
and then all of the days
i've wasted with my eyes closed

this quiet house on this
dead-end street in this
dying town

will you stand beside it
while it burns?

will you stand outside the
room of hanged men
and count backwards from twenty?

and what if it's here that i
finally tell you i love you?

i believe in words
no matter how often they fail me

i believe in july and in august
and that all of my promises
will be broken

look at my hands

both of them open and
both of them empty and
waiting for the moment to pass

waiting for their mistakes
to be forgiven

whatever you say in the silence
that surrounds us
never the poem that i
wanted to hear