30 Poems in 30 Days

Tony and Skippy and Me 1-26

Tony Dolci puked
on his side of the lab table.
The janitor brought sand,
disinfectant, but I could never
look at Tony Dolci again
without seeing the memory
of that morning, his sweaty face
and guilt red-eyed as if it were
his fault that 2nd-period science
quit the sterility of mitochondria
and transfer RNA neatly labled
on diagrams to teach by example:
biology in action.

I have no clue what happened
to him or Skippy Bukowski
who wrote my name in hearts
on his French notebook. This
horrified me, but I went
to the prom with him anyway
because I was a hypocrite
in a hand-me-down, dead sister
prom dress, orange and brocade--
oh it was ugly, but there never
was money for anything new,
and it took me a week
to get the laquer out
of my confectionary hair.

I threw the orange bows
and plastic butterfly in the trash.
Now all I have is a photograph
of teenaged angst under a white arbor,
against a blue backdrop, commemoration
of Skippy's hope that I might be
a normal girlfriend and my desparation
that I might be a normal anything.

Most of my life is photographs,
a journalistic landscape
of what was real. Now doesn't
feel real anymore. Now
doesn't feel like anything
but repetition, every poem
I've written over and over,
every experience centered
in stale auras of deja vu, nothing
new under the sun, just me
and Tony and Skippy moldering
in a cardboard box of poems
and photographs. One foot
forward baby. Better, best?
Who can tell anymore?
One foot forward.

1-1 Fuck

Fetid remainder moldering
Under eves, under foot.
Cynthia, Tracy, Vicki
Killed me a little.

1-6

Savage Blueberries of Europe

In my freezer
lurks a plastic sack
labeled “Europe’s Best”
and then in French
“Bleuets sauvage du boisé”

Ah, the savage woodland berry
in whose veins course
the ancestral blood
of those who battled Caesar.
Or perchance they marched
with Montfort
against Toulouse.
Perhaps they stood with Guillotine
against she-who-would-serve-cake.

Back in the freezer boys.
My guests are aged
and will find
such savagery
late in the meal
an impediment
to digestion.

yesterday i severed
the poetic member, the
single element of any beat
or feel, rhymed or real
today i blow it out
like blue carbon
still remains, remain in
my palm, warm to the touch
but still
still as some fucking
frozen flame
watch my projection of
the life after life serial
the death of my muse
the taste of breath and need
we call it evolution
based on my change
unbiased fear of
nothing ever being the same
two thousand and some change
got bigger today
growing at a rate
directly proportionate to
the hole burning right
out of my chest
leaking heart juice
like a cracked water main.

1-9

The Charm of a Highly Strung Weapon of Musical Destruction

A baby grand
though tuned
and well intentioned
has so much tension
on the strings
that if the energy
were released
during an intimate
and musical
affair
it might well kill
the pianist
and maim
several of his listeners

Its electronic cousin
though more compact
lacks even this
rudimentary charm


::

1-26

homing in on tuesday morning
sludge and unwashed pans clobber
my genious, mud down
every master stroke to clutter

i open a wndow to teeth-splitting
arctica bucket of liquid hydrgen
spash my grumbled lids

sewers to seashore
on one breath
and dear lord, evolution
takes a giant step for one

tears flow and freeze
salty as they are
to skin, screaming as it is
for release from the sting

but pain is paramount,
keep it present or i'll
fall back to sludge
before long

1:26

.
.

The Pain of Rain

Rain crashes
on the cobbled path,
smashes hard
on the tin shed roof.

Winter has crept
from the southern seas
and draped its cold cloak
over the land. Leaves hang

heavy, laden with bruised
tears. Drop joins drop to pour
down the pane
and the world outside

is a contorted scream
of wet fingers that claw
the frame.
.
.

I Know I Love You

Sleep time predictions
from a vague recollection
of that walk we took
when I was dreaming.

You held my hand so tightly
I cramped when I flexed
my fingers before they touched
awake my slumber.

Kiss me up from this moment
of rapid eye movement
and panted breath to rise
through dark to revelation.

1 - 26

1 - 26

It's you and me again
my single serving friend
doppleganger
haven't seen you for awhile

We still don't get along, square
off, toe to toe
You hit me, I hit you
my Jack to your Tyler
we take our licks
because the fourth rule of Fight Club
is only two guys to a fight

A cold metal barrel in my mouth
but I never pull the trigger
You know that, win every time

You've always been braver
more clever, not afraid to be
It goes with losing everything
it's what sets you free

yes I know that, didn't before
but I do now
This is my life and it's ending
one minute at a time



- Referenced to the 1999 movie, Fight Club

I heard Katy sing 1-27

her voice is smokey
consuming you in velvet blanket,
a sensual warmth
too bluesy for her seventeen years
on a hoedown island,
without a nanny to teach what
can't be taught

belting out like a Bose
singing a skyscraper 'Fever'
from a sand dune soul,
taking you to gin joints and
and unfiltered cigarettes

she needs a band................
the fiddler has bloody fingers

2-3

black and white that
makes you bleed
invisible ink and
neon tears, my fears
are in the spotlight
while i hide back in
a shadow
i only read you
my own words like co2
necrosis starting at the
center, growing outward
like a wildfire
dying from the inside
i've got you in my pocket
and forever in my mind
a course in miracles
palahniuk and brotherhood
tie us tight like
siamese twins
i don't come here
for the poetry
i come because of
you.

1:27 Cage

There are bars
around my heart,
but I dance the light realms
of the spectrum—
a pinky light blue apricot mauve,
while my heart’s blood
trickles red nearing black.
The rest is hidden,
waiting alchemy.
I need a welderman
with a gas torch
and blue flame.

Glosa for Tath 1-27

Under the microscope
blood is a battlefield
chaos inside that appears
nothing when we are cut
without this constant slaughter
we would die

divine unpredictability at the base of harmony

There are no microscopes in heaven
~ Tathagata

Under the microscope
I'm one tear on glass dissolved
in the subworld that teems
disease to absolve my spirit
from the ache of memory,
the pitch of pride
where remorse gathers
storm clouds.

Give me sickness,
release the rain of forgetting.

Blood is a battlefield:
I welcome cell wars to grip me
in sneezes, scarlet throat,
stomach flops and I know
this is acceptable chaos
inside that appears to beckon
the haven of fever
where I can banish angst
to ashes without even trying.

Sleep is a gift of nothing
when we are cut.
Praise God for wounds
appeased in unconscious relief, prayer
without this constant slaughter.
Take it all: we would die finally
and thank divine unpredictability
that lies at the base of harmony:

Innisfree is letting go,
succumbing to the grace
of death, dropping the body,
lifting the spirit to silence
because there are no microscopes
in heaven.

4.2, I plan on ending with the numbers 30.30

Tractatus ladder


Above or below,
never beside the natural
doomed to be nonsense
unsinnig or at best sinnlos

set the limits of sense
with reference
bedeutung
or name
held together by logical form

a distinction between saying and showing
the activity of clarification

see the world rightly
with the bi-polarity of propositions

"whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent"




for Tzara
Wittgenstein has always been a favorite of mine...thanks.

1-2

Friends piss me off sometimes
Understanding is elusive
Compassion isn't a game anymore
Kings rule but I don't obey

1-3

Finding time to love you
Undermines my
Commitment to
Kicking your ass

1-27 Embroodery

It sunk in at 45 degrees
warm, unwittingly solid,
9 mils of sword for
Gordian nerves.

It pushed past numb flesh
to the centre of your wince,
a flicker in unwavering pride.

Saltine and catalysators,
a recepie for fever pitch,
salvation in a syringe.

You smiled up at concern,
wearily brushed the clench
out of my fist, kissed me
with a blink, and faded

before pain raced up
to sound the alarm
a second too late to win,
they said.

You don't remember this,
nor should you have to.

I will never forget.

1-27

Assurance

There's a certain quality
in a friendship grown
on wholesome lust
and appetizing appeal.

You're so sexy to me.
Don't change a thing,
not the way you laugh
or even the way
you breathe
at that moment when we
understand that more
than friends love
like this.

You are quality
and I am Inspector
twenty-two.

1-27 paper shows through

(I think I mis-counted? eek, I know I did not miss a day, is it tomorrow already for 1-27? numbers schnumbers)

sometimes I think
he did not press hard enough
when shading me in--
everyone can see
right through

distract myself
with rodent tails
and spaghetti strap shoulders
staring at the wood grain
until my eyes go blur
and the faces come
to bore me into submission

1:27

.
.
.

White Sheets in the Rain

A brittle mind and sharp bones
kept my grandma chasing
white sheets in the rain. Tending
dahlias, dawn to dusk and darker,
caring for a farming family
of seven, year after year.
It wasn’t until granddad passed
that her mind broke.
All the love leaked
out and a stranger
remained, throwing stones.
.
.
.

3:1

Empty evening at the bar, watching women in glitter makeup read poems on an idiot's stage, they're Bukowski's sewing circle women writing poems about stars and kittens. My hat's been wearing me too long, matting down my hair, this place is so classy I am breaking lenten vows without apology to my wounded ethics my stricken morality my ridiculous need to prove things to myself and pouring whiskey into me. Guy named Byron writes poems because he wants to be a poet not because he has to write poetry and it's always mid-life crisis sex poems, his jeans are too tight and he shows off his package and his expensive watch and buys women drinks and takes them home because he's a fucking sex poet, writing poems about how sensitive he fucks/he is and then poems about his kids, his adopted kids so now people know what a sensitive fuckface he is and I'm sick at the bar, writing poems about the bartender's great ass and how she pours drinks and I wish I could write sensitive fuck poems about the softness where thighs meet, but I'm more the, "Lie back, baby and pretend your feet hate each other" type so I can't take Janelle the girl with Calliope hair and corinthian legs, she's got tits like adopted children, you just want to take them home and hold them and tell them everything's alright and I can't take her back to my place because she's

infatuated

with the goddam fuck poets and the sewing circles not me and my barnapkin poems about scuffmarks on my shoes

my shoes say I LOVE YOU pointed out at everyone I stand in front of and no one ever looks down to see what I wrote on the white rubber of my Chuck Taylors with the canvas blown out so bad on the sides that you can see my socks or my feet if I'm not wearing socks and I wish they'd look down and know I love them because I can't say it out loud I had to write it on my shoes.

drunk inna backa the bar and its my turn to read on the stage and I walk thru talk scattered applause and above them all I talk to everyone about abortions in bathtubs and my ribs are hitched to my heart tied down to a piece of bloody muscle and I can't breathe enough to speak under all those lights and I'm alone under all the white and blue and orange and green spots listening to people gasp trying not to cry not to fuck up this poem I want to flick at them like broken blood from my unthinking clenched fingers and when I take three steps down with my jaw clenched against everything they look like I shot their dogs and I'm ok with it and thinking about the subject matter of my poems maybe it is fuckpoems just not the kind that make women want to go home with you and I'm ok with that, too.

1 - 27