The Darker Side Of Town (A Collection Of Poems)

Home Two More Titles By Stan Grimes Annie (Short Story) Tempest (A Short Story) The Pig Chronicles of Whacker The Darker Side Of Town The Sound

Introduction

When young I fell in love with the usual, Bronte, Byron, Browning, Frost, Whittier, and Sandburg. I found their words cryptic at times yet foaming with passion. When older, I discovered the likes of Plath and Sexton. They stirred something new in my soul. They stirred the awful truth of reality. Of course, I came to enjoy Ginsberg like everyone else. I considered his rebellious nature much like a chocolate fudge dessert in this life-long meal.
When I passed by so many milestones of my life I became attached to so many poets/lyricists. I realized that every song is a musical poem. It was so much like a news flash in my mind. You know like, "Headlines: Paul Simon is a poet." Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Stevie Nicks, Joan Baez, Roger Waters, James Gilmore, John Mayer, need I say the list could go on and on? Behind every song is a poet...good or bad. Behind every revolution in life stands a poet with his only weapons, insight, foresight, and a pencil.
Why did I write "The Darker Side Of Town?" I am a poet and would like to tell the world about my world. I want the reader to take a walk on the dark side of day. My world has not been filled with butterflies and red-cherry lips. To the contrary, my world for many years was filled with the crevices of depression, the valleys of fear and desperation.
This is not a book for someone wanting to read about merry-go-rounds, pink balloons, and momma's home cooking. This is a book about inner tension, broken love, and a little boy torn in two by death and war, and an unfeeling reality. If you must, read this book and cry, or look in a mirror. No matter. But, just in case you have at least once in your life felt the heartbreak of death, the sadness of broken love, or felt the rain of failure, feel free to read this book and nod with understanding. This book is for you and in honor of you. You are not alone. After all, you and I live on the "The Darker Side of Town:"

Across from the tracks
not far from the Corner Pub
you and I danced like mating snakes
wine and beer poured through our sweat
we weren't innocent, but who is?

Pawnshop right down the street
ten bucks for a wedding ring
and six more beers for me.
You a hopeless wino with large breasts
we were poor but never licked.

We found ourselves sweating
a sweet sweat of poverty,
breathing and fondling to an easy end.
We both have loved and lost
on the darker side of town.

Let's dance some more
lift our glasses for tomorrow
and tomorrow's child
let's tell the world how we've loved
on the darker side of town.

Your Empty House

A perplexing shadow drapes
your house at six in the morning.
A duality of life and death.
I see death in bits of scattered dust
on underclothes hooked like snakes
across the carcass of your brass bed.

Your dresser smiles
with a mouth of missing teeth.
I read your note and smile
at shallow pebbled words.
Strangely I think of you as sand;
the ocean pours itself another drink
and washes you away.

Can I Take You Home? (To An Old Friend Stranded In A Nursing Home)

Will I take you home?
I wish I could you know,
but age has mauled you.
Those lion bite years
have made your mind
mush, with biscuits please.
Time only heals broken hearts
not your heart,
the one that helps you gasp
and cough unceasingly
until your lungs burn
like Baghdad fires.

If I could only heal you
I wish I could you know
so death will turn its rosy cheek,
but death cheats all equally.
I'll visit next week.
Maybe bring a soda
to douse the undousable
fire
and death's unquenchable thirst

Listen

Looking for your greatness
is like looking for a storm
inside of yourself.
It is there
but too loud to hear.

Midnight In My Apartment

Silence broken
by car doors slamming
youthful laughter,
nameless faces
faceless faces
at the liquor store
buying booze
buying blood.

Raindrops tracking
in puddles
Friday night
a dismal truth
of loneliness
of emptiness
of reality.

The Split

Dull winter morning
the sky is flaking and I
lift this ponderous
creature from its resting
for it needs to write.
Write a confirmation
of yesterday,
today is much the same,
nothing's changed.
The dog bite scars
have not healed,
the hollow wonderings
about death
continue to echo
like voices
in a darkened tunnel.
This love is god-awful,
allegorically dead.
Dead, stone beautiful,
but dead, like a stillborn
whose placenta needs
only to follow
and make whole the death.

To My Brother

The parlor dark and still
nothing there just the quiet
of funeral curtains
and my older brother's corpse.

I was but a young lad
draped by grandma's patch quilt
listening to haunting cries
of February and my mother.

Friends and kin came
wearing comfort on faces
wraps white with snow
my brother's corpse cold.

A preacher spoke of God
as the dark hole received
his modest casket, and I
walked away forever.

1967 (A Young Soldier's Return From War)

In Nineteen and Sixty-Seven
the Golden Gate below
"seatbelts and no smoking."
We embryos landed
pristine in our beliefs
anxious to begin life
on this planet Earth.

You smiled with blank hope.
I was still in Tokyo.
Seems to me I left
my youthful world behind.
"Thanks for flying Braniff."
I had no other choice.
Good morning America.

When I Was Nine

Trains came and left
when I was young.
Fascination to me
nine years old and alone.
I watched faces
some smiling
others blank,
blank to me and my grin
sheepish and wanting
to know their genesis.
They wanting only
a taxi or family
to greet them.
Sometimes they received neither
and so they plodded
to the cafe nearby
never speaking
never seeing a dark
haired boy watching
and wanting to know
their genesis.
Still the trains
came and left
when I was young.

Collage

You've rang so many bells
I stopped salivating
a long, long time ago.
I'm ready now for a cage
and the rendering factory.
Maybe I could be glue
for someone's bright collage

Affair

Bird tracks of passion
crept into my mid life
dreams I share now
with you, love.

Horizontally I cry for us
three weeds growing
twixt one another
one or two may die.

Do we live forever
disharmony
like a worn piano
forgotten in an attic?

Give us peace love
so tomorrow's sun will shine
and bleach these withering weeds,
making our garden sweet.

Old Love Letters

All my words to you
are in a box
by your desk
like a coffin
on Sunday morning
waiting
to be viewed
in sweet repose.
What clever words they were
don't they look nice,
but so cold to touch,
so lost,
so dead.

Don't Worry

I am steel
blue honed and deadly.
I am taut calloused
like a warrior should be.

I have bent the standards
and gun riddled this heart
so many times Humpty Dumpty
would cry to see
this puddle beneath me.
You worry about me?
Don't worry about me.

Brush this fly away
watch it cling
like perilous blackberry jam
perched on a teflon knife.
Don't worry about me.
Rainy days don't bother me.
I can smell the cats
and dogs falling now.

Don't worry about me,
but please come home.

Thoughts Of Overdosing

I have watched the candle's flicker
and heard its dying whisper
as autumn breezes sweep by
to visit for a moment.

I watch through voyeur's eyes
your naked silouette,
softness I once touched so freely
now touched by someone else.

I watch now for movement
in time, seconds swiftly passing,
waiting for my eyes to quiet
so I might drift away.

Away to where my river friend
can quench its need in me
at last my poetry and I
will drift to the river's end.

Waiting For The Trash Man

I've raked the leaves
of your love
trying to make my yard
presentable,
taking rubbish
and tossing
memories to Glad bags,
putting them out on Tuesday
for the trash man.
He never shows
and so they sit
like mounds
of Indian death
for passers-by
and voyeurs,
those tourists of intimacy
to view this garbage
collection of my life.

Pregnant Again

Little girl wearing a twelve
maybe a fourteen
pour another cup of coffee
stare into the mud
of it all and wonder
at the ripples of passing
children chattering,
clamoring yellow teeth
slurping what the big boys drink.
Stare into the mud
drink it down and cup
your breasts swelling
with yet anothr birthing, slip
into another graceful nylon
fantasy yourself
and dream another day
perched and yielding,
clotted and waiting,
little girl wearing a twelve
maybe a fourteen
maybe more.

Bumps

Thought specks come and go
like a child's fever, they fall
like indigo dreams upon my paper.
They chill me sometimes,
winter rain beneath my skin
and I break gooseflesh memories
into pieces of poetry like bumps
to be read by gypsy eyes.

Nursing Home Death I
Excrement on worn sheets
an old woman stares
"No pampers today, thanks"
and the wilted daisy
blushes at sunset.

The Morning After

The morning after,
I cried for you.
The wind swept
old leaves away
I drank coffee
and read a poem,
a sad tale of love
only you could know.
I ate some chips
pushing you away.
The sun was hiding
so were you.
I caught a glimpse
of what I used to be,
took a shower
washing you away
making today
another day.

The Fat Man

The trencherman carries
his weight in folds
of baggage bending
trestles that hold
such ponderous existence.
He is the winter Blue Jay
giving chase to his enemies
wanting more than they,
for the sake of insatiability.
His needs are blankets
in place of love and recognition
driving him to Big Man Stores,
donut shops, and Dessert Houses.
Desertion,
abandonment,
the shibboleths
visit him in cold-sweat
dreams of thinness.

Caged

The rat is in his cage
opaque eyes staring
at freedom beyond the wire.
The rat, ominous friend,
a sign in Chinese circles.
a year of him is enough.
I crawl on all fours
looking through my cage
life opaque
indistinguishable from him.

Homeless Woman

Sad lady with a teddy bear
clutched tight against
your breasts,
where are you going
after midnight
on a night like this?

Glowing cigarettes fly by
in cars you ignore.
I wonder who you are,
and who you were.

Did someone break your heart
to cause this vacant stare,
lifeless eyes like stars
reflecting only headlights
and big city glow?

A big city
I have driven through
so many painful times
always picking up,
dropping off
people I have loved,
now gone.
Sad lady if only
I had a teddy bear.

Today's Depression

Today is a coma
breathing life, showing none.
Perhaps it is catatonia,
a memory lapse for the sun
forgetting to blink through trees.
Get out the wires and tubes
Doctor God and resuscitate
this earth. I fear its spinning
will slow to death
and all aboard will fall
into a black hole.

Dusty Desk Drawers

Albino eyes staring
from forgotten scrapbooks
longing to be seen again,
but never are.

Miles of voices, dead,
cry to be exhumed
from their wooden graves,
those crypts of silence.

Where do memories go,
the faces, the voices?
Are they enshrined
in plastic catacombs forever??

You, My Moon

I surrender, white flag up,
to all of your degrees,
three-sixty in all,
but who's counting?
A circle is a circle,
but your diameter
is growing and I worry
someday you'll be a moon
too far for me to touch.

On Aging

I swam from the bottom
of this ocean life,
This panther bite existence.
battling to reach its surface,
I find a shoreless reality.

Lungless and gasping
for what is left,
one year, maybe ten
or maybe nothing.
This ocean is endless.

How I yearn for
Olympic pools
of youth
and strength
oh blessed strength.

I find now the sharks
of human frailty
standing in line
charging admission
to my future.

Chalkboard

Sunday morning sits outside
like a gray monk
in meditation, quiet,
unassuming. I am here
squatted and listening
to Joe Cocker trying
to remember old emotions.
I come up palms empty
thinking only of erasures
on my mental chalkboard,
smearings of dust showing
part of "l" and "y"
in lonely.

My Heart Attack

Death pauses
in hyphens of silence
across the darkened
matrix of my mind
pauses again
then flees
in a night breeze
blowing once this way
but never again.

Puddles

I tapped upon your eyes
they opened
spilling all the truth
in splintered mirrors
across the floor.
They are naked now,
those puddles of honesty
we've always tried
to step across.

Your Scent

It's hard to bear those memories
aqua crystal moments
time lapsed
inside my mind.
Your suitcase packed
unpacked,
packed again.
You were never here
for more than a breath.
I guess the sheets
need washed, folded,
to forget you,
to forget the smell
you left behind.

My Holocaust

Word's out, I've lost.
No one needed to tell me
I just knew
you'd drop one last bomb.

I can't remember when
the festering began.
I only know the bloody
amputation is here.

For fear of bleeding to death
I place this tourniquet
across my eyes
and cry until I die.

Hitler turned the gas on
I marched stiff legged
to my chamber of sleep
broken hearted and anemic.

Your Funeral

I didn't know you
you there dressed to kill,
mortician's makeup
hiding mottling signs of death.

I didn't know you at all
I, dressed in suit and tie
trying to find some hidden reason
to cry, to miss you.

You with Rosary beads
draped across cold fingers
like pearls
on a jewelers black velvet neck.

Six grandsons
carried you away
to a gaping hearse
garnished flower wagon.

Graveside rites
with babies crying
ones you never knew
like me.

Old Age

Age like old rubber bands and rubber balls
weakens strength of breaths,
the bounce lasts longer and the ball
takes its time to return.

I have bounced against life's wall
too often, too quick in youth
with drink and dance. The monster
follows me through twilight.

My days are numbered
in pick-up-sticks
two left, black and white.
I fear the black.

Night Crowds

I have tried to disconnect myself
from this quiet Saturday,
memories of last night
and things that never happened.
Your promises tiptoe
across the soft sounds of my radio.
It's so hard to understand
your stabbing and twisting
of the knife.

Tonight I will dance
with the skeletons of promise
dipping and swaying to music
like tree limbs in love
until the music and the night is over.

I will stumble into the frosted air
and become a part
of those night crowds
dreading day.

We Never Danced

We never danced, you and I.
Once, when naked,
our bodies melted to the sound
of a crackling wood stove,
and once on a dimly lit floor
swaying in unison
with nameless skeletons,
we danced in fear of being seen.
But, we've never danced you and I.
we never danced with buttercups and daisies
nor have we danced in sunlit streets
of Paris, Rome, or even our hometown.
It seems our rhythm
has atrophied and died
along with all the hollow songs
we sang in motel rooms and hideaways.
The fear creeps upon me now
like spider weeds in spring
that we'll never dance again
you and I.

Shingles

In the cellar of my thoughts
you come creeping up the stairs
like nausea to surface
on my tongue, wagging farewells
behind you. Those goodbyes
hinged to my lips
swinging frantically
each time you walk away.

Suicidal Thoughts

Gray dawn octopus
looming ominous
in the horizon
telegraphs its tentacles
to greet the sun, and me
without you. I wonder
if the highway dogs
know death is only
conquered life beneath
tandems and trailers?
It is the road leading me
to a harder death indeed.

Alcoholic Stupor

I poured myself another drink
and watched the ice cubes cringe.
I watched the rain outside
come down to earth like misery
seeking someone's sponge.
Elephant memories diluting
my vodka, gray ploppings
warning me of another
night of isolation.
The trapeze swinging
towards me is now a knife,
double edged and hissing
with each drink I take.

Homeless Death

Brown syrup oozes
from the half-mouthed
old man crying
for a quarter
of his life
to be forgotten
in a brown paper sack.
He spits and buries
his iconic bottle
beneath layers of stench.
The old man arches
his back like a bow
ready for the arrow's flight.
Beneath his cardboard flat
lies the steaming urine
of his last indignity.

Depths

Depths
down and around
deep
below the roots.
Depths
way down where
dead
memories lie.
Depths
where skeletons
hide
and demons work.
Depth
is where you'll find
two
hearts like ours,
down
deep
in
depths.

Nursing Home Death

I wiped the urine from your crotch
and feces from your legless thighs,
all the while you stared
from sallow sockets with hazel
disbelief that I should cleanse you,
that cleanliness mattered as a prelude
to death. Dying is a canvas
to be brushed with tepid water
from a metal baptismal.
You questioned the insanity
With an ancient groan from somewhere
I'd never been before, I answered
with a spoon of blended food,
which never reached your stomach.

Running Away To Sacramento

I was not prepared to set sail,
the ocean's tongue poised to swallow.
But, I sailed because you were ready
autumn in your eyes and goodbye cocked
to fire in a volley of retreat.

Thus the sailings
and wanderings,
and blood suns
dropped me each night
into abandonment,
but I sailed, sailed indeed.

I sailed so far west
it became east
falling off the map
somewhere around
Sacramento
with not a phone booth in sight.

I asked a lady in a blue Porsche
which way to go?
She pointed to some condos.
I climbed back into my ship,
Found my compass
and headed home again.

Where Is Sadness?

There is sad in treetops
in the morning dove's cry
in roots beneath grass.
There is sad in summer breezes
in starched ocean waves,
but sadness lies in eyes
and where they look
in treetops and roots of living.
Sadness lies only
where we've laid it.

May And Me

It could have been the showers
gusting through this vacuum
called May, but then again
it could have been the death-like
cawings of the whippoorwill
leading me hand-in-hand
into this cradle of fear
ever gripping ever tightening
a turnbuckle of foreboding
tomorrows blowing brown-leafed
across this vacuumed stage
named life, named me.

Shall Death Pause

Shall death pause
in hyphens of silence
across a darkening
matrix of my mind,
pause then flee
in a night breeze
that will never blow
this way again?

Final Song

The two syllables
in goodbye,
mutual wind chimes,
await your trailing breeze
to sound
their final song.

To A Dead Child

Whisper to me
little girl
tell me please
of the wind
of the rain
of the ocean
hereafter
your home
hereafter
heaven.
Teach me please
of ashes
of dust and earth
where you've gone
where you've been
where I'll see you again
whisper to me
little girl.

You, At Home

The sun had bleached
the window blinds
white and I had yellowed
them again with smoke
streaming claw-like
from my cigarette,
climbing like a cat
to find a cobweb to befriend.
I thought about you there,
not caring to be there
but too immersed in fear
not to be. I crumple
the empty pack and think
how cellophane I've been.

A Fantasy

A young man
sat proudly
on his pony
looking down
at a city
stark in the night.
He paused briefly
and gently tugged
The mane of a myth
together they flew
through a pitched sky,
Pegasus and
a young man.

My Time Away From Me

Nowadays I spend hours
inside a wall
skipping all the nice days
and robin nests
nestled third limb high.
I'm much too busy trying
to be like you and much,
much too often
unlike you. I stay
in safely shaded rooms
where wanting castrates
my time alone with me.

To Agnes (My Cat)

Agnes lies fetal-like
on my bed listening
to some melancholy music
about "riding the highway
of despair. She purrs
softly against my chest,
which lumbers with each breath.
She loves me even in death,
the only death
I cannot avoid.

Was It Love?

Was it love
that cerebral lightening
drawing chills
and fever to the child,
hallucinations
of chain gangs
and naked mothers?
Was it love
or merely an apple core
being crudely sensed
for a first time
by the piss ants
of desire?

School's Out

See the children run
to catacombs everyone
moving tombs of dust
opening wombs of rust
godlings each and everyone

Change

When I finally walk in the sun
I will be more gentle than before.
Rain and wind can do that.
They can smooth the roughest
granite and spirit.
A hundred years standing
in elements
can change a person;
I have changed.

How Much More?

The wind is warm
yet it chills
as thoughts of you
race on autumn gusts.
I've yet to feel the knife
of winter as it edges
near the under-belly
of my courage to endure.
It is an ill-wind
you have wrought.

Thoughts Of Suicide In November

I sit cross-legged
somebody's Buddha
staring at my carpet
brown and swirling
it makes faces at me.
I cover my eyes,
but I'm still not blind.
November holds a party
outside my window,
snaps of lightening
shouting October
isn't finished yet.
I think about my pills
and wonder
would I look good
in navy blue.

The Pit Of My Depression

Yellowed curtains
hanging dead
tar and nicotine
wrapped around
my fingers
has killed everything
in slow motion.
Vision
panoramic view
of telephone,
slow motion sound,
reverse ringing.
Swelling breasts
of dead air
needing milked
by lungs
frozen
with deep deception
of life,
life
only death
revisited
by someone
already dead.

Dreams Lost

Depleted soul
where is your harvest
you longed for?
The pickings
and gleanings
have all but turned to dust.

You Didn't Hear

I guess we knew it would happen,
tentacles of pain
have wrapped themselves
once too often
once too tightly.
So here I sit
in dead of disappointment
in dead of not knowing
how to revive the death.

You listened but never heard
the finality, the summation
of counted agony
weakly creeping its way
across my tongue.
You never heard.

I Am Older Now

There was a time
When I could curl myself
Into a fetal ball
And roll myself into silence.

I am older now
standing stooped
I reach only high enough
To build my silence
into walls.

The Meaning Of Life

Some people wait to find
meaning in living.
I wait
for the first snowfall
to bury
the meaning of my life.

1950

When I was little
I watched my puppy die
beneath the spinning wheels.
I cried, the wheels kept spinning
never back to see
the paleness of my skin
or the rivers of salt
flowing from these brown eyes.
I somehow changed that day,
creeping into my feather tick bed
that night and watching
for my puppy's spirit to return,
it never did.

1952

I sat on the stairway steps
peering behind oak rails
with hands gripping posts
as if I were a prisoner afraid.
Mother told us all, my sister,
my brothers, and me
that you had passed away.
I sat confused. Where?
Why? When would you be back?

We cleaned our house, our bodies
and dressed in clean clothes.
I was excited.
We were going to see daddy.

But, the darkened room
raised hairs on my neck
and my eyes felt funny.
You were all dressed up and sleeping.
Could you hear the organ playing
or smell the flowers?
I thought about the spinning wheels.
I thought about my puppy.
You were gone.

1957

Fastest runner in the city
is what the coaches said,
"Gets off the blocks quick
Terrific reaction time."
The coaches didn't know
I was running from myself,
from patches on my knees,
from holes in my pride,
and from holes in my life.

Goodbye

"Good"
is not good
while sitting
in front
of "bye."

Haiku Moo

Breezes blow softly
The wind chimes
And roses are dying.

I Forgive You

I will forgive you for your smell
you know the one,
the one giving you away
and sets you apart.
It's the smell reincarnating man
turning him to an animal
smelling lusting allure of urine
and undulating his thighs
against a rubbing tree.
I forgive your God
For giving it to you.

Sleeping Alone

I have reached so many times
into nights of linen
feeling only moonlit cotton
covering my emptiness
like snow on a childless desert.
Where is death?
Where are the pallbearers?
Are they running
to another's nightmare?
Am I not alone?

Loveless

Spherical madness
this love
going around.
Orbital insanity
stifling logic.
No rhyme nor reason
for my mornings
with ringless suns
only there.
I never see them
I never care.
Parasite to dreamless
Nights, I've become
loveless.

Old Age

Age like old rubber bands and rubber balls
weakens strength of breaths,
the bounce lasts longer and the ball
takes its time to return.

I have bounced against life's wall
too often, too quick in youth
with drink and dance. The monster
follows me through twilight.

My days are numbered
in pick-up-sticks
two left, black and white.
I fear the black.

Shingles

Suicidal Thoughts

Moon

Acne covered moon
would a clean night
clear your face
or are the scars
indelible
like scars of rape
and loneliness?
I wonder
if you see the pebbles
in my soul?

Alcoholic Stupor

The Death Of A Cat

I brushed the snow away
from a maple tree
standing beside my house.
I pecked and scraped
at frozen dirt,
inch by inch for a grave.
I worked with a frenzy.
The sun was falling
and my tears were frozen
to the corpse.
She was a friend
two years old,
but too slow.
The car was five years old,
but too fast.
I peeled her off the highway
and whimpered
with each crunching
sound like scotch tape
on a birthday present.
So now I give her back
to the tree she liked to climb,
meowing for attention.
I cover her with milky snow
and pray someday
my tree will sprout
another friend for me.

Homeless Death

‘56'

The biggy marbles thump
red and green cat-eyes,
marbles I adored.
Charlie and me and Jerry Lee,
I sat too close to black and white
my mother said.
I sat too far in class.
My teacher said
no more than wind
was I, no more than air
the memories of ‘56'
and coloreds ate
where coloreds ate
and I sat too close to black and white,
my mother said.

Just For A Moment

What a nice surprise,
this gray sky pause
amid insanity
and questions
like blood-red bites
shadowing me.
Questions
I cannot answer,
but here at this moment
a womb of silence
blankets me
cuffs me and I think
for just a moment
I love you.

Was It Love?

Change

How Much More?

Dreams Lost

Depleted soul
where is your harvest
you longed for?
The pickings
and gleanings
have all but turned to dust.

You Didn't Hear

I guess we knew it would happen,
tentacles of pain
have wrapped themselves
once too often
once too tightly.
So here I sit
in dead of disappointment
in dead of not knowing
how to revive the death.

You listened but never heard
the finality, the summation
of counted agony
weakly creeping its way
across my tongue.
You never heard.

Trying To Remember Autumn

I will try to remember
autumn
when bittersweet and clove
are gathered to be sold
and leaves unite to die.
Autumn,
when so many things must perish
to paint beauty
for those confined to living.

To My Wife

You accepted me for so many years,
unabashed love and inseparable spirits
definitive proof
no one can deny.
You loved without conditions.
You dreamed without failure
laced in your stanzas of sleep.
I am your house slipper
protecting you from
boogie-men of uncertainty
trying to crawl inside
your glorious mind.

I Am Older Now

There was a time
When I could curl myself
Into a fetal ball
And roll myself into silence.

I am older now
standing stooped
I reach only high enough
To build my silence
into walls.

The Meaning Of Life

Some people wait to find
meaning in living.
I wait
for the first snowfall
to bury
the meaning of my life.

Goodbye

"Good"
is not good
while sitting
in front
of "bye."

Haiku Moo

Breezes blow softly
the wind chimes
and roses are dying.

I Forgive You

Graves In The Forest (An Ode To A Serial Killer)

With only pine needles
between their spirits
the children laughed
into the hollow of oak nights
love's coagulation
keeping them alive
until spring and rain
washes new paths
for them to follow into heaven.

Sleeping Alone

Two Verses About God

God formed the waters
and man keeps swimming.
God formed woman
and man keeps drowning.

God formed the heavens
man keeps looking up
only to discover
a pain in his neck.

Loveless

An Ode To Sylvia Plath

February nineteen sixty three
you dropped your life
like a screaming toddler
drops its rubber ball
down a darkened staircase.
you, the dead cat bloated
making runways for hungry flies.
What was the purpose
Of a blood-red sun coming,
giving only token warmth
to a heartless world?
You're the nameless star
falling above thirsty pines
leaving an empty space
where once there was a universe.

Oops

Johnny went to a vampire dance
looking for O positives
lut Johnny came marching home
with a sour taste on his fangs.
It was AB negatives'
night out.

You Never Call

I dream of you in flannel
moonstruck and beautiful
lying fetal in my arms
like the mother of my soul
fragile and shattering
into a million fragmented stars
drifting away from me like life
like a thought fleeting then forgotten.
I awake in the chill of my sweat
in the bone-chill of truth.
I awake to death,
to voiceless telephones,
snakes without hissings,
loveless doorbells and silent knockings
I am frozen in paranoia
with truth for a blanket,
thin and worn.

Bumps

Thought droppings come and go
like a child's fever. They fall
like indigo dreams upon my paper.
They chill me sometimes
Like winter rain beneath my skin
and I break gooseflesh memories
into pieces of poetry like bumps
to be read by gypsy eyes.

Death

Your ghost rides in the night
a black horse carries you
into a dark wind, death
the bitter soldier.
Lying on my couch.
I await the battle
with no weapons in hand
and no blood to share.

One Night Love

We are two streams
having met,
made love,
and became a river.
But just for a moment
we became an ocean.

Pickup

Love is a song sang in bar rooms
with neon lovers
twisting like copulating shadows
on black cherry dance floors.

Love, the word sang
with breath of beer,
cigarettes, and sadness,
is only a word between sheets
so unfamiliar in morning light.
Love is a condom
slipped between compartments
of a billfold
never used for love.

Fables

The sounds of solitude and silence
are familiar to me often
for they have been companions
my friends in desperate times.

There are no sounds in my kitchen
no fragrance of perfume
lingers in the hallway
of this lonely man's castle.

Footsteps fail to echo on my stairs
and laughter only mocks
my dreams in restless sleep
upon my single double bed.

You speak cynically of my demise
telling tales with sad demure
but you are so good with words
your arsenal of strength

I will lie and rest now
my friends and I will rest
while you weave more fables
Aesop would be proud of you.

Blackbirds

Our arms entwined cast shadows
like so many flowing trees
bending ominously in a pitch night.

Your pale nakedness within vision
walking away into thick haze
created by a once true love.

My smile could not keep you
next to me in the moonlight of us,
you had to go and nothing more.

I pine in the aftermath
soaking sheets with my rain
not knowing where the sun hides.

Fear grips my soul
tenaciously keeping me
in this tomb of sadness.

Our love now flies in the pit of night
on blackbirds' wings touching
softly tree limbs of our future.

Gray

This anger and these drugs
rapped me dear Jesus.
What lies up this soiled carpet?
A huddled mass of gray
tormented by what he's become
or what he hasn't.
There is no difference.
This life this death
has chipped my skin
into a monument of despair
huddled gray on this soiled carpet.

The Drunk

The old man slept
through the rattlings,
the unsettlings
of abandonment
gnawing at him
after the wine
had been pissed into the wind.
He sleeps and the barn
rattles its distaste
for his trespassing
for his rudeness
for the man himself.
He sleeps with the words
and a child's face
bouncing rubber balls
catcher's mitts,
and words
godawful words
like batwings whispering
in his liquored fuddle
but they are as black
as the vomit lying next to him.
The word goodbye
is forgotten
in the stench
of another drunken night.

Rings

Here you go again
in circles, rings
around my life,
but never on my phone.

You're Not Here

I am paralyzed
by the dumbness of dusk,
daring to reach its gray
tentacles into my room
felling with one swoop
all the gladness felt
when my eyes presented
themselves as brownstone
gifts to daylight
now trying to retreat
into fleshy veils flickering
with each sound of night
each slamming door
each realization
you're not here.

Climbing My Mind

I stand on top of my mind
peering through convolutions
of gray seeing only history.
It is a mountain, this mind
not so high as many,
but not as small as others.
Climbing it was easy,
the descent I fear.

The God Of History

We kiss the cross
killing Jesus
we kiss the gun
killing the czar
we kiss the pill
Hitler swallowed
we kiss the gas
in darkened chambers
but we never kiss the clock.

Prisoner

Cat in the window
marbled eyes staring
at dusk without
Hoping for escape
but knowing otherwise.
Cat in the window
preening and clinging
to domestication
surveys the world
through marbled eyes
watching and waiting.

A Winter Day In The Woods

The arbitrary mood of falling snow
touches a simplicity
in this moment standing in woods
untouched and decaying back
to where its mother cradled gently
a slow and methodical birth. This moment
in falling snow creates
for me a creator, a god to whom I bow
and return a microcosm of salted tears.

Yesterday

Is there more to yesterday
than pages to be thumbed
with dates highlighted
pictures black and white
statues bronzed frowns
looking for decades
into the wind for answers
bleached bones of yesterday.

Yesterday consists
of graveyards chiseled
into earth, backyards
to big city sounds.

Yesterday is a leaf decayed
and flying through
the farmer's field angry
towards today, tomorrow
is no different.

Live or Die

You have dared to cup
a sparrow in your palms
to help it live
or help it die
a choice for the god in you
a choice drizzling
in your eyes,
in your quivering voice
full of uncertainty
like the sparrow's heart
beating inside of you
innocent and trapped
waiting,
waiting for your lips
to speak of life
in syllables of your choice.

My Words

Detached and choppy these words
chirp and ch...ch...cheat
the liquid and the flow
in what I wish to say
s...s...so I'll just ink them
in syllables of ch...ch...chagrin
and let s...s...someone else
paint the rivers I dream
deep and s...s...smooth.

Ask Someone Who Knows

A caste system
or something
similar
seeps apart
the wild dog
of tonight
and the cat
creeping light
of tomorrow.

Waiting To Begat

Indian summer sweat
yellow, green, and orange
condoms line the gutters
waiting each its turn
to blow away

Maple wings spin
helicopters
in a war of reproduction,
no sperm involved,
just dried seeds,
soil,
and Indian summer sweat.

Waiting For The Snow

Some people wait to find
meaning in living.
I wait patiently
for a snowfall
to bury
the meaning of my life.

Indelible

Slashes across my bed
of you and I in love.
No matter how hard I try
no amount of scrubbing
or washing keeps
those memories away.
Stained forever
in my memory.

Again
Here I am again
on my knees again
wondering who
opened my door
letting butterflies
fly again
inside my heart.

Pennsylvania

When we lived up the hilltop
coal mining country, poor.
I'd occupy those sultry nights
with you an arm's length away,
you and the Whippoorwill.
I'd listen to its call
until my eyes were numb and lost
oblivious to your lack of need.
I'd try to count the wheels of steel
climbing the rails nearby
usually falling asleep by twenty-nine.
My son would ask me why
I could only say goodbye.
I had no other answer
no miracles.
The divinity was in leaving
in clearing my mind
of a woman who slept only
an arm's length away.

Dead Dogs On The Highway

Asphalt cemeteries
catacombs beneath wheels of trucks
eighteen wheelin' muthas
A curiosity of colored death,
the blacks, reds, greens, a rain
of shrapnel spread
across a concrete canvas.
Each one its own death,
for most
a silent surprise
like unsuspected snow
on a cold October night.
No pilgrimage of mourners
to help them into heaven.
Just to county trucks and shovels,
Two workers too drunk
Six bucks an hour
And stomachs like brass kettles
Let's keep our graveyards clean
For death is a dirty thing.

If I Could Have A Credit Card

Oh, if I could have a credit card
I'd charge myself a bed
and a breakfast fit for a king.

Oh, if I could have a credit card
I'd wear fine clothes tonight
and dance among finer folks

Oh, if I could have a credit card
I'd drive the finest car
and pay someone nice to drive.

Oh, if I could have a credit card
I'd charge a message to girl back home
and fly my love on the back of a Citi-Card.

Above Myself

Soaring high
above myself
I saw me sad
and by myself

I soared higher
above myself
and looked for wisdom
to help myself.

What I found
above myself
is that I've lived
beneath myself.

Now I've seen
above myself
I will always be
beside myself.

Searching always
above myself
for golden gifts
inside myself.

Jokester

Mask on today
with a built in joke
hanging on its cheek
everyone expects it
laugh a minute
and mile-long stories.

That's the one
you've seen it
deadpan humor
slapstick jokester
straight faced
straight laced

Mind like warblers
building nests
inside my head
bumblebee thoughts
no time for honeycombs
just the wax of age.

I'm sorry
for you
for who you thought
I thought I might have been
two men walk
into a bar...

The joke's on me
egg on my face
crow in my mouth
featherless
and bitter
and the bartender laughs.

The Robin

Red brick chimneys
belched black and orange
against a blue sky
with splotches of cotton
swiftly moving east.

An old young man laughed
into the eyes of a robin
and crushed her heart
quickly without feeling
throwing her into the wind.

The boulevard was busy
blank faces bustling
my city never noticed
the cry from a bird
and the smell of lost love.

The Empty Bowl

The sky gray
like my daddy's raincoat
with only spider legs of sun
trying in vain
to greet me with a day.
My mirror shows me old
bulging with beer
bulging with shame
of what you call love.
The cat stares intolerantly
at her empty bowl.
I have nothing to give her.
The same hollow pain
repeats itself
as I dress in faded clothes
looking for something of you
to wrap around me.
I stare patiently at my cat
and her empty bowl.

A California Feeling

You and I sat cold by our tent
you were stoned.
I didn't know
California could be so cold.
We watched as campers
moved in and out
like insects on a drop of honey.
It was a vinyl gypsy night
as campfire smoke curled
snaking its way beachward
now black and empty.
You needed friendship
I offered only silence,
silence and a beer
you wanted neither.
We smiled as laughter
echoed, loving laughter
from nearby tents.
There were no stars that night
just a gnawing vacancy
never leaving.
God,
I feel it again today.

My Requiem

A regimen of crucifixes
lined with stairway candles
casting sinning shadows
on my soul.

Empty benches in a park
newspaper blankets
and tears made with holy wine
a legacy of a broken man.

A vinyl casket sits
in a rescue mission
Hail Marys stammered
only God can hear.

The Holy Mass was cold
cold like celebrated death
milk and cookies for my wake
and the city breathes again.