figure
i've been writing
since a young boy
falling in love with
gail. notebooks of
blue ink love poems
about as poetically
relevant as rod
mckuen, still,
i've never stopped
writing poems.
i was never ashamed
of my poetry
or of becoming a
poet, & i gave
people my stuff
to read whether
they wanted
or not. most not,
what the fuck did
i know. what the
fuck do i know now.
in the past
in my early 20's
dumb
i remember
i talked about
poetry
to friends
to work-mates
to girls.
my whole
life has
been the push
for the assertion
i'm a poet.
i'm a weaver of words.
i'm a mystic
monster of serendipity.
a flake.
a fool.
a dying man.
an over-the-hill
fuck.
retarded.
brain-damaged.
not sane.
not reasonable.
quiet
but loud.
idiotic
but wise.
coherent
but absolutely
making no sense
whatsoever
about anything
anywhere.
in the 1980's
& early 1990's
i envision me
as this big
flapping
bird with
feathers of
paper
of papers
bursting
in the air
papers
winging around
the world
poems
hundreds of
poems
thousands of
poems
lost poems
poems about people
who are now
dead.
all these people
i've known thru
48 years
inevitably
do a yahoo search
a google search
an aol search
of my name.
they come
here.
they see
things.
it angers
them.
oh
well.
i've composed
hundreds of thousands
of poems
but this one
is the only one
that matters.
orange alert
i watch
an old black & white "outer
limits" on the sci-fi channel.
a strange ball of dust
in the corner of a lab
is sucked up into a vacuum
cleaner that looks
like the robot's upper
body on "lost in space"
& the strange dust
grows, transfigures
into another sort of
dimensional energy
which sparks with
clouds & darkness,
flashes &
shifts between
distance.
all it wants to do
is kill,
devour any other
form of
energy.
ed asner is the cop
when ed is about
25 years
old.
severe shadows,
that orchestration
of sudden violin,
& i'm a
boy
& amerika is great.
i'll go to college.
i'll succeed
beyond my father.
on the 9th
fifteen years ago
my dad stopped
breathing.
the melanoma
was too far gone,
tumors grew
by hours --
one of the doctors
pointing it out to us
as my father, asleep,
sweats cold morphine
sweat-beads.
"look at his neck
here. this morning
there wasn't anything,
there isn't anything
we can
do," he says.
"& don't worry
about yr father
hearing us talking.
the morphine
cuts his memory-span
to maybe 2 seconds."
it was snowing,
cold, icy outside
of kent general hospital.
kent ohio.
me & my sister
on the long, dangerous
drive back to erie
remembering
the good times
in the middle
of a white-
out.
the 9th is sunday
i realize,
but i want to get
this poem
out of the
way by then.
war
i don't know
what or who to believe
it is my own
lack of neural leapings
i'm
sure
i'm
a dummy
i'm
more numb than alert
i envision
human slaughter, body-parts,
look at the link
of images of the unseen
gulf war:
the dead with breathless
scorched faces
half-laced in tan sand;
blood is
black
oil
circling
like satan
pisses
on
us.
oh there
is most
certainly
satan.
there is
no god.
puke
thought i might puke
last night. that stomach
virus coagulates & multiplies
everywhere around the apartment,
everything ann touches
is infected;
every molecule bubbling
from her mouth pops
bacteria, viral legumes,
on the surface of the thing.
i'm helpless.
fridge door i
open,
fucked.
toothpaste
tube,
god fucking damn.
i drank 2 beers last night
& left the 3rd one just
sipped of the suds.
i knew the microscopic
bug was inside
me, i cld feel it sqirm
like a giant worm
wrapped within my
liver.
eventually
i wake at 4 in the
morning. i crack
a beer.
this is beer
number 4 or
5
& now
heartburn.
almost 7
a.m. saturday
dawn & i'm
drunk,
very,
very unshaven.
i'm a complete
fuck-up.
i'll down my
lipitor
& remeron
pills now
like
every
morning, to stay
alive,
to be
happy.
well,
alive,
& not sucking a gun.
i have
things
to write.
beer
to drink &
other things
to do
it's like the
subject
of puke
to say
out loud in public.
3 days unshaven
figure italian genes
syrian genes
& i've been shaving
since age 12.
i never really
had peach-fuzz,
just black bristle.
i've grown a lot of
beards & goutees &
moustaches & sideburns
& once was completely
clean-shaven in 1986.
i've sd fuck it.
fuck the razor.
for 3 whole days
fuck the razor.
so i'm all old & gray
& stupid. so what.
what are you.
god?
wealthy?
if you were either
you wldn't be here.
this is
the dregs
of the
internet.
this is
a strange,
snowy
place.
an alien
crow caws out the glass
of the
window.
a cold,
frozen caw
like a
cough.
the world
is sick.
we are
all ill.
click to view movie/poem - eggs