Son, you gotta.

  Harsh and rasping
         clothes
   is what they wore
        from the salt
in the fearsome sea
        not one moment's
 peace did they get inside the
         wet and dark
       coffin of their vessel.

Skin was chewed off
      the ropes they held and
         the blood never
    stopped coming.

       Bellies stopped and choked
               and then let forth
            roaring and screaming
        (seasick, filled with stale biscuit and cheese)

for nine weeks did they toil and
           pray,
  no respite
 the waves were higher than the tallest
              mast,

 why is there a knife on the floor?
    and no I will not bring you beer

         I was at the part where
 I was telling you
        about our ancestors from
             Holland or was it Germany,
  I don't know for sure, but there
   is an old book
         and a picture of a guy in a
 uniform that looks like a bellhop
      with a small hat,
brass buttons and a mustache
     
   So when they got to Boston, the
           Irish threw rocks at them
 Even though your Great Gran was from Limerick,
         i guess that was later
but fuck those micks, fuckin' shovel monkeys

           and they had manners and could play
                 piano and they would drink
       beer after church,
             your great uncle Willy married a
       Cherokee woman in Oklahoma, and
           they didn't let him join the Sons of Hermann
             and he said kiss my ass
                    and she died of TB only
             our side went to the funeral

        so marry who you want
               i dont give a damn
man or woman, just dont
        pick an asshole

fromunda

 The day was hot and bright and wild, too
was the way we walked together in the playful breeze.
I was full of pride, floating along next to you
on our way to the lake, through the dark islands of  the trees.
You turned and smiled and pushed that strand of hair behind your ear
  I leaned in close and kissed you on that precious golden face
A raw, giant cliff edge ringed with thorns was looming near
 No, silly,not for real, but imagine how that kind of jazz is outta place
for me, especially, with a girl so new, and I just learned your name that day
       but I just had to get next to you and I couldn't even think through it
     and thought I was gonna play cool like I was supposed to
          then I thought "oh hell, I just blew it"
  That's when I first kissed you
   
           all those years ago.

what i think of love sometimes.

All the whores in Frankfurt
made me sad, even
when it looked like they
were having a good time.
She said, "Don't get so drunk
     next time, baby."
and turned away
       her ass a monument
 to the spirit of
         human beauty
in an ugly world
        she turned and looked
              at her TV set, which
became at once
          unmuted
Dallas the show, not the
          city,
 was on and
 J.R. sounds so much
         more like a
strong, dark soul sumbitch
   dubbed in German.

  The spiral staircase
      was a mindfuck
MC Escher
      endless and convoluted
when i think of it
       it's
the story of my life
       a story that
ends up in vomit
      and a fistfight
         in the dark.

A man decides to change his career path

Driving back from her place
 he still smells her in his beard
feels her breath on the back
of his neck

it is a moment he holds on to
driving back from her place
to the wide sky
  purple black
over the flat land just as empty

There is a glass jar full of
coffee with cream and sugar
she poured out
   with weary kindness


her freckled breasts just under the red glow
of her nightgown.
She wanted to make sure
      in her own way
she would see him off

the highway had made him
who he was before
the road made him happy
the road was free
and kept mysteries great and small


driving back from her place,
the road feels like a jail
and all the stars in the sky
 and al the neon
in the dusty world
 could not budge his
      lonely heart
         one pebble's worth

overheard haiku

When I am awake

I like to eat steak and cake

They cut my feet off

she don't fuck no more

He got a Mexican chick

They got no problems

That gun ain't worth shit

Because HE sellin' it ,bro

just give him the dope.

you see that woman

I don't mean nothing to her

that's true goddam love

A man is not a bottle (he won't break if you hit him too many times.)

It used to be
crossing my fingers
during the fourth quarter
drawing the ball
down the field on
invisible chains
of joy

Then it leaked out
onto the feeling
you get
when you see the
horses on the paddock
and yours is the one acting
mean and crazy, ears back
saying "fuck you!"
 to the other nags.
 And she wins...

now, it;s
 riding my bicycle
 with grimy colored
pieces of paper,
       old typewriter tracks
cursive blown out junkie veins
  crawling across the page.
I stop.
 Thumb tacks, rusty staples,
        lost dogs and quack diets
keep my shitty poems
        company.

The team chokes and loses
 The horse finally has enough
        of the game to kill her,
but I keep chugging along,
not knowing
       that no one gives a shit
 and the knocked out palooka
       is lying on the canvas
 still thinking he's being carried
          on joyous shoulders
 while he's down there, pissing in his
        showtime diaper
 looking up, up, at the shiny
        lights.

Ridden

He is not
alone
someone else
has been here
already

Dust silence grey
wheels make
snake belly canyons

dunes within
watchful cicadas
  even though
even though she was dark
and small,
 a woman can burn right
through a man

now he will count
to himself her
faults
too many teeth for her mouth
her lazy eye
a need for noise
all the time,
noise

  then the
jagged sprockets
     dig in
her cool hand on his shoulder
the smell of her skin
how she fit
 back or belly
lying there
  a violin
         a case

only his habit
 for traction
   keeps him hanging on

   

asshole

Fuck you

fuck you and everyone

who acts like you,

your air

kills my air

your mind is

not there

just a set of responses

with an audience

i may not be

the one

who breaks you

but i have to try

to at least escape you

every second

of my time

i think about your lies

is a crime

of theft i helped you

commit

from myself.

like this right here

Heroes of the Sea

Baskets made of plastic

     ribbons that hold their shiny 

colors forever, 

      a doll's head goes 

 floating by blemished

        by barnacles or the insult 

 of oil.

    She is the first one, then

 a flotilla of other drifts along

        every type of doll faces 

     and bodies, all of them are

besmirched, scored,,burned,crazed,

       until they become the same 

 mottled color no matter how they all started.

Isn't it odd, how these 

     accidental objects are

clotted into groups like 

        this,

 fleets of flip flops, nations of toothbrushes,

     and continents of Styrofoam

          from candidate white,

 shining as to hurt the eyes

       to grey murky

 wanting to lose itself, but

      still holding its shape.

  

There is drifting,

          coming together

 floating apart

       sinking down to 

            some place that 

                   crushes or embraces

God the Father in heaven sits

           in his dory

next to you

            I'll give you,

he says,

     something to 

            cry about.

        

Legacy

In tales of old
 the young lady or lad
  gets wise advice from
         his mom or dad.

in a garden green or maybe
        in front of a throne
maybe it's a wizard...
      I don't fuckin know,
            whatever.
ok, maybe it's an ogre
       at a plastic kitchen table
               smoking Winstons,
drinking coffee black and oily
        listening to shortwave
 on a radio big as a suitcase.

         mysterious advice, dispensed
by this mysterious advisor
      cloaked in his underwear,
   white V neck so old and thin
          like chicken skin
    a forest of black rebellious hair
          poking out.

               "Junior don't....puff..
           carry a fucking knife clipped to ...slurp..
                       your pocket.
           a knife they can see is worse than
                       no knife at all
       because if you have to use it, they should never see it
                   that's why, goddamit, otherwise
          you're just fucking playing and that's going to
                  get you killed, got it?"
       Merle Haggard is stuck in the suitcase with
                   a whining steel guitar, getting
                 attacked by static.
                        shut the fuck up
                and eat your cereal and don't tell
                       your mom I let you have
                            coffee.
                                           -Duarte Gaivota

Dean Young is a bad MF

Crouching on a chair gone cold
 a ledge above the howling dark
these dreams he tries to make unfold
  and conjure them in struggling sparks..
Scratch away with your feeble pen,
 give up and begin again.

  Now the world is not so willing
to embrace the kindled flame.
  It has other ways to light its buildings
electric noise and light's to blame
 but still he scratches with his plastic pen
      his hand freezes, and moves, again.

He knows that there's no use, complaining.
So few have even seen his signal fire,
but still he taps away his time remaining,
   and uses it to make things brighter
He hammers at it with  heroic pen
 until he sees the sun again