30 Poems in 30 Days

1-7

fading boil in bag thoughts
of something overcooked
overdone and past due
a borrowed book
on borrowed time
sailing down a buffed tile aisle
at 25 miles an hour
my outstretched arms
raking the products of my
enviroment away from their
comfort zone, i'm in a zone
thinking of fucking and
supply and demand
and the 12 item or less
quick check dutiful lender
leaving my fly open, gaping
in a lewd zippered grin
remembering that i'm
here once again.
it never ends.

I Miss Bob Ross 1-6?

I miss Bob Ross the painter
my Norman Rockwell of television.
I would watch on Sunday mornings
nursing Saturday night.

If the hangover was a killer
with all the flu like symptoms.
I'd want to stick his Afro in a can,
write my last will and testament.
Usually I watched in awe
restored to normalcy
but his manner and talent.
Never a masterpiece
but then again....
I don't drink champagne.

I know he still shows up
in reruns. I know them all
by heart and color and tree.
How I loved the little trees
placed here and there and
with each one......
another brain cell saved.

I've see a lady who paints
mailboxes, and vases, and cans.
So far she hasn't painted my soul.

1.3

Five Day Opener



three salted sleep edged
diesel fumed hours
out between trough and crest

30 fathoms above black brined bottom
where the white bellied monsters rest

rocking ebb and flow
with the jig
pull with strength sapping might

from the mercury mud
up through the atmospheres
heavy bodied beasts

like sheets of plywood
no fight
just dead weight on the line

brightness burns
it's mirrored memory in eye
behind sodium skinned lids

120 hours to a full hull
turn east &
pound the way home
from Compass Rose

1-7

Sometimes I feel
like a

in a world of
and
and maybe I am,
every frame a comic reel
to frame a clown
for light consumption.

It's always better just to pen
yourself disarmed, and wear
your squeeziness and square
for everyone to see.

It's all just ink anyway.

1:7

Fragments

Every week they throw
it away, like the dead

heads of roses in compost. Pieces
of lives pushed into sacks

that lie like green corpses
on the roadside, waiting

for the undertaker, discarded
for more collectable delights,

transitory delights
that will end their day

under landfill.

1-7 Thinner

Damn it's freezing, breath-stealing-cold
The sun shines, but it's too faraway
no warmth reaches here

Teeth ch-chatter
even though I wear layers
two of everything to feel the heat
but it's not that

I pull my belt tighter
one more notch closer
not sucking it in, no
I'm too lean

Soon I'll cut new holes
tomorrow maybe or might look
for one that fits. Maybe

1-7

I see you linger
from cheekbone
to hem, flush of heat
leading eyes
from pinking face to
side-split lace—

feel it, scratching
light against your jaw,
then swept up, careless
against a sugar-stained shelf.

press forward, lose
your breath in lust,
craving this public
madness,

before you catch yourself.
and remember not
to leave your coffee
on the counter.


Edited for the punctuation Nazi.

Assimilated 1-8

Pomp and propriety
if not awe attend
under dropped ceiling panels.

God is not
in the sky that I can see,
but the acoustics aren't bad,
the piano player too dogmatic
for my taste: she plods
through chords, nods
at a compact man bent to a 6-string.
He seems aloof, detached
from his music maybe
even his hands.

All rise, all sing. I don't
recognize the hymn,
but why would I?

We're stuffed in pews.
I don't want to lean
too hard on you, trapped
between me and a large, smelly man--
the one you said carries
homemade signs (Abortion
is Murder) outside the ob-gyn's office,
but the woman on my right
has serious coffee breath
and I'm sinking in the miasma
of her off-key zeal.

Father Joe at least was interesting,
served history-laced sermons
and there was light in his eyes
like candleglow that had nothing
to do with tricks the sun plays
as it pushes brittle morning
past stained glass.

This guy, Father I Forgot
His Name, is a bureaucrat
who rushes toward collection
plates, passes them twice
to parishioners, coeds
in low-slung jeans, polished couples
with bowed heads and thin envelopes.
He spreads his robe to batwings
before he folds to genuflect and rises
toward the old ones in the back.

They open their faces like baby birds
and He says Body of Christ, Body of Christ.
I flinch when he talks about Jews.

This is your comfort, not mine
and I love you, adore you more
even than my grandfather's sad eyes.
I'd do anything for you, even this
to give you the safety
that comes with memories
of mama and altar-boy days. Anything

for you and sometimes I hear
an echo of my own
in the violin's cry.

1 - 7

1-8

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
Dan Quayle, 11/30/88

Click to expand...

Gunnin' for Quayle

Is it because your name's wrong for the bird
that we get this absurd
view of life, Mr. Quayle?

It astounds to no end how you mix metaphor
then confuse us by telling us more
gibberish, Mr. Quayle.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.
Dan Quayle, 9/22/90

Click to expand...

Enter the dick. Richard by name, he's found there,
far to the right. Not trying to scare
you but the man has a gun, Mr. Quayle.

Be glad you've never been invited to hunt birds
with the Cheney cronies, I've heard
that they shoot, Mr. Quayle.

1:8 Let's Go Thelma and Louise

Let’s go off
like two cheap prom dresses,
paint each other purple like
goth girls at the club, or
climb into that convertible,
top down, panties off,
feet up on the dashboard,
speeding down some coastal highway
and flashing passing trucks.
Let it all out—
all that dark, fuckable energy,
the thickness of it,
full moon and shadow.
Let’s live crazy,
outrageous, brazen,
dangerously open,
right on the edge
of wildness.

If It's 1-8 This Must Be Friday

Yesterday two poets wrote
about a long gone painter,
one was light and bright.
I stumbled and fell with my tale
leaving mistakes in the lines,
trying to EDIT after I published.
Neonurotic gun to my head,
reading my mind instead
of the the words.

Maybe this weekend.
long necks digested,
beach music blues on the radio.
I'll find my place on dreams beach,
let the good stuff flow.

or....I'll lock the door to outside
interests, drinking memories
and brilliant sunsets. Going
to bed before both of us are
tired.

Fly 1:6

Her hair flows like honey and I am arrested
in mid stride; the light, the caress
of her brush. A jeweler’s forge spilling gold.
There is electricity
in every bristled stroke that makes me
stand on end. Her stare wends its way
through a prism of bottles and glances
off the mirror, holding me in sly regard.
Her head sighs back
into my palm and she trickles
through my splayed fingers. With each pull
the worries fall
like a towel from a waist, and then there is nothing
but the soft swish of her hair on my belly.

1-8 Tastes Like Death

I felt you like sun on skin
slow at first, warming permafrost
damage within

Radiated hotter, made blood trickle-flow
thumped ice crystals off a stone
but it was too much, too fast

Heat penetrated one layer
two layers, three
charred to the breast bone

Freezer burned scorched meat
still tastes like death
warmed over

1-8 Postal

white eagle on blue background
pulls away
another day Mike has nothing in his bag for me
no news of your return
no cures no answers
the light on my machine blinks
I don't bother to press it

~

twigs in beak
I struggle to rebuild our nest
feather thin
their mouths open
empty
god bless my deafness
from their cries
I have forgotten to eat

~

1-8

the flavor of distinct decay
make believe its
killing me and get
the fuck outta the way,
my self rightous wounds
self inflicted by the best of the best
a test of who's the worthy
who's the worst,
and the lucky one who
falls somewhere in the middle
a battle ground of mental
subsequential suicides
one by one, right down the line
killing every single one
of me.

1-8 Tickling A Poet To Death Or Embarrassment

I'm the poet that your mother
warned you about, or really, I'm not
but I sure woulda wanna to be,
the poet that stood up for words
once in a while, who stored them in
his titanium susp of invincibility.

And shot them from the hip
or the tip of a twelve inch proverbial
you-know-what straight up the
you-know-where of you-know-who.

Or, if you don't know, I'm talking
about you, yes, you.

I'm the poet that bogged down
and logged out dreams of Olympic
achivements in sematic fertilization,
to pump hardcore, in elite tempo,
every morrphem into being,
from an emtry void.

To create and coplulate,
not recycle and vegetate
on prospects of penmanship.

I'm the poet that tries to write himself
to a glotious death, but ends up
lost for a letter, drained for days,
a bozo on booze and sympathy,
wating for the lightning bolt.

Because it is my time to own up,
isn't it?

1.4

All I want's a slow fuck in the afternoon
I'm not the first to say it
but I will say it just the same

you want poetry?
hold on, let me scrap it off the bottom of my shoe
'cause that's what it feels like today
like I want some honey drizzled you
instead of this fucking pen.

I can't write today.

1:8

The End of The End

He watched the sun drop
behind the sea and toasted
the end with whiskey. Ice

clinked in glass -
a rhythm of twilight
the gulls grasp, before flight

through a tallow sky
blistered with thoughts
of beautiful eyes
that devoured his soul
and hands that seared

his skin. A toast to the end
of the end

where the perfect
and the poisoned
stroll hand in hand

into red fires of hell -
ashes swept on a breeze
to float and soak up
a sea in sadness.

1 - 8

fluid, moving, jostling
full, bouncing, competing
thats how they feel

want to touch?
feel them, cup them,
weigh them, kiss them?

growing, rising, lengthening
thickening, stiffening, hardening
thats how he feels

want to touch?
hold him, feel him,
stroke him, kiss him?

Saturday Heat 1-9

5 am. Woke up
at 1, 2 and 3
to check on you.

The other side burns,
you sweat and mutter
in half-delerium
and the thermometer is broken,
but I'm guessing 101, 102,
I don't know, but you look
like an accident victim,
my big man crashed
into the bed, surrounded
by flotsom: empty juice glasses,
the wet cloth I used at 3
to wipe you down.
Your hands lift, fingers
flutter and drop.

I suggest toast. You groan.

I feel my own exhaustion
pulling me. I shake it down, say
Shut up! I have to work!
and it's -10 out there
with the windchill soon
I better claw through my torpor,
maybe coffee and makeup
will help. Children are
expecting me I have to

go,

but I could fall back down
right now, hit those tangled sheets,
press close so I can gauge your fever
and dare your fluey microbes
to try, just try to fuck with mama

at least until I'm there
with you in lala land. Instead

I shower and brew, curse
the next hours I'll spend
hiding how worried I am
that your light may dim
even more before I return
with gatorade, crossed fingers,
a new thermometer.

1:9 Secret Garden

A woman’s heart
is a secret garden
where she would do
anything
for love
to shine for one moment
as pure, radiant light
wider than the ocean
and as deep.

1-9

Empty Life

At what cost ends friendship? Tired
traveller find a place to rest sore
feet upon the table and eat breakfast
without a shirt over shoulders bowed
beneath the sorrow of the world.

Set down your burden, here with me.
I'll sooth those blistered hands
in mine, smooth the ruts of worry
from your face with a touch

meant to share this scabrous
scrape, inflicted by the leper.
Forgive the ignorance borne
of vanity and selfish need

as filth spreads through dark
corners, fetid and sunless
secrets never meant to share
will surface in disease.

Malicious hurt never intended
to wound, still scars the heart
though healing love can fade
the mark and wholesome flesh
will fill the hollows left
by illness' passage.

Come and Get It Toby Keith 1-9

shes kinda lean and kinda tall
chest up to here and waistline small
shes been gone for three highballs
she ain't coming back at all

I first saw her at the mall
got her number gave her a call
shes been gone for four highballs
she ain't coming back at all

I think back try to recall
just where the hell is Paul
hes been gone for five highballs
he ain't coming back at all

don't look down headed for a fall
this here date done hit a squall
they've been gone for six highballs
they ain't coming back at all


thanks Miss Kitty

Fly 1:7

Henry Morgan’s house burned. Bums did it.
Sent flames licking up the walls like tongues
on the lips of men too long without drink. His anger burned
at his forgetfulness. It must have been cold
that night, to push men off benches. Outside
my window songbirds huddle
together under bushes. It’s cold as a funeral
without family, today. I watch the thermometer descend
and wonder if my exterior cellar door is locked,
and what makes a man stay inside a house of flame.