Monday, July 20, 2009


The sky is slate tonight

And the buildings but mist before it -

Fiery mist

Burning with Industry.


This is Brooklyn then.

This is the what is coming and the now.


From bed it seems a remarkable thing

And in the mind’s eye it is a fearsome dream.


Remember childhood

The warning goes -

All things lead to moments like this

But to be prepared – impossible.


The sky is slate tonight

And by day is lapis streaked with promise.

See it – its dominion over the harbor

Its cloud the clear bell of consciousness -

Of conscience.


This is history now

This is home and this is the gong of motion

The turning of the world -

Industry and its conscience.


I have known no one who has harvested slate

But many have burned in dreams and promise

Many have warned against childhood -


It is too remarkable a thing, they say

But I am too afraid to know better.




Sunday, July 12, 2009


Ach,

I’m so worked up with all this relaxing,

Don’t lay all this unwinding on me just yet.

I barely unpacked my bags

My mind will have to wait.

No seriously, I need a minute - But the birdsong!

Now there’s a pushy bunch

Nattering, chattering, endless phatic “here I am”.


(Okay okay I get it

We’re ALL here, that’s the point, ahem, yes.)


Can’t I just sleep? I ask.

To be honest this Bambi shit makes me drowsy.


“No! Do! Be! Explode into being! Rush into dying!”


Fuck, it’s all over the place, I suppose.

Before you know it I’m done for

Swinging in the hammock, barefoot and totally stupid.



I have forgotten my body

Two maybe three months,

(Four but who’s counting?)

And now I find it lying all over the place.


Ah laziness

What is the cure for beautiful you?

I love you I hate you I love you

Write me a romance novel -

The shelves are filled of you

Ah laziness I,

I forget.


Pay attention now. Closely! Closer still.

There! Nothing at all.


I have forgotten my body.

What is the way back then?

Coffee, tea or me?
No smoking in the rear?

If I do say so myself!




The reassuring black shadow –

It moves faster than anything.


It is the end of things,

It is their end and their negation.


But it is nothing without the sun

Nothing but the sun’s little errand boy,

Its letter from the auditor

Reminding us of what is owed

And what is granted.


The reassuring black shadow –

The land means nothing to it.


All things bow to shade

Just as all things worship light.


Light, maker of loneliness

Light, revealer of the ugly-broken-hearted.


A brutal calculus with which to figure the world -

Minus/mine is in the red.




Hail Mary full of spaghetti sauce

Don’t think I have forgotten you

Don’t forget how I had gotten you

You came with a giftcard

And a coupon for a matching pen.


Out father whose aunt’s in heaven

It’s weird how different you look close up -

Like a bug with a moustache,

Quite dashing really,

And rather a good conversationalist.


Say, how’s your pal the whole wheat ghost?

The hi-fiber host?

Thiamin, niacin? Still on the liberal west coast?


You know I built a brick church on a crowded street for you.

Blow me you big bad sexy wolf,

No one gets off that easy!

Come on, draw your avenging sword

Cut archangel figure eights in my tofu loaf -

(Serves a family of four, more if you add water or wine)


Jesus H. Fucking Kike!

Who do you have to bleep to get borned around here?


Ah, miracles.

On the eighth day he created something to do between the commercials.




I have one of the best penises of my generation

Being as it is representative of all the optimism and fortitude

The age requires yet lacking none of the pragmatic rectitude

Necessary to create a new world -

A world of tolerance

A world receptive to brave new ideas

No matter how scary or unorthodox they might appear

At first glance.


Ah, the hopefulness -

Even this far along,

Even here in the long thick middle of my life.


Mind you I am not a young soldier,

The eager, loyal, idealistic infantryman

Marching among thousands (thousands thousands!) of others

Towards that common if violent dream.


Instead I, my penis and I,

Iconic, symbolic, avuncular,

Because I am a nice guy whom everyone knows and wants to meet.



I am the lion.


The roar rises in me

Mostly when I am alone

And let it happen-

No, let myself feel it

For when is it not happening?

When I am good? Quiet?

When I am the child?


Nope, neither, none.

For no one roars like the child,

And no one fears like the man.


Now, I know fear because I know death and the end of things


And now I know the lion

As the lion would finally know himself

In the mirror

And say that

You, too, Fearsome Thing, must die.