Prayer

 

I love you in the mountains

I love you in the city

on the sidewalk

on the grass

I love you at the ocean

I love you in the clouds

I hear you sleeping

I see you dreaming

I love you in the country

I love you downtown

In the park

In the traffic

It's all the same

It's all the time 

So true

So open

 it barely needs

  any words.

The Eight Gratitudes

 

The milk is expired

You hit a mattress on the highway

you pissed your pants at some point

there's an ugly rash

your dick barely works

you keep getting medical bills

you keep forgetting things

you forgot what you came in here for

you can see clearly all the mess that surrounds you

you talk to everybody about everything

your hands still move like tiny birds

last night, you drove out of your way to keep listening to jazz on the radio...in the rain.

you got to pet some dogs that aren't even yours

your friends still remember you

you made a stranger laugh in the record store

you still remember why you are here.

haiku on paper napkin

  If you want to be 

happy, stop wanting happy

it's the only way

hidden flowers know

what it's like to grow unpicked

they are the best ones

I hold you between

the palms of my chafing hands

I plant you in hope.

used shoes

When you called

you told me a little too much

about how life is scraping

your bones down

to a no man's land

of trenches  and craters

but there's "still too many trees

for you to burn it all down

and leave it to the jackals"

  is what I would say

if i was decent

  

  Still, I let you have my

monumental insight that it gets 

   better and we are not

put here to be happy, but

      to do the will of the gods

which means making things

          and bringing things

       making houses

           bringing lights

and at the best, most blessed

   doing a little bit of 

         smiting  the ones who 

             deserve it the most

                        

The New Style

 

Have you seen it?

  Where once we had the complex nautilus spiral

of intention making love to words

reflecting the light of experience,

and beckoning us forward from one line

to the next and next

We now have

We now have the source 

as the poem

that makes it a poem

by a Korean or Native or African American or

insert the colonized here

let it be gay or crippled or both

a pretty good poem by a  quadriplegic, lesbian

negress married to a Choctaw woman with

irritable bowel syndrome is 

way better than a great poem

by a European American 

cis gendered 

working class 

oppressor

All we need to ask ourselves,

is it good

does it make our heart sing

will we remember it at breakfast

do we smile

do we cry

God save us from

the new 

style 

 

#3

  Turtle was a piece of shit, more precisely, he was a piece of shit criminal who always seemed a day late and two dollars short.  He was a petty thief who always seemed to not quite get the angle. When people were stealing from warehouses, he was trying to steal from corner stores.  When guys were selling dope, he was selling rocked up pieces of soap.  He also lacked vision when it came to pulling a fast one.  He stole from your grandma, stole from her neighbors, shit he even stole from his own granny.  When we were younger, he always had some girl to stay with.  He had a gold chain and got them high.  One time, he wanted me to help him smash and grab a store and I told him to fuck off.  He called me a queer ass pussy.  In my own mind, I thought, " Yeah, I might be a queer, but I don't steal from grannies". I told him, he was a bitch.

  Well, his master plan was to get a cinder block and throw it as hard as his little chicken ass could make it go into the window of the liquor store and grab cases and cash and "get paid".  Several things went wrong. First, the window was made out of some real burly shit and the cinder block bounced right off and hit him in the face, knocking him on his ass and giving him a busted hare lip and a shiner. Second, the alarm went of loud as shit and summoned the police.  Third, am I on three yet? there was a camera, a brand new well lit camera on his stupid, bloody face. It captured the action.  Dumbass was staring into the camera and turns and stumbles off with his pants sagging down and runs off. 

 The Crime Stoppers video made it onto the news.  Not because of the seriousness of the crime, but because of the hurricane force stupidity and the slapstick failure.

  Heedless of his new found fame, he and his girlfriend got high and hungry so they went to JimBob's diner.  This is where cops go because it's greasy and delicious and the staff is super friendly.  Sometimes it looks like a roll call in there.  Well, in he walks with his girl looking all banged up and strung out and the cops and everybody are just staring at him.  The news comes on and there's silence and just a little bit of laughter, and then it builds as it shows him getting hit in the face over and over again and then his slow witted escape.  

  He gets arrested, but it gets worse because the girl he's fuckin' is a  thirteen year old runaway from Houston and they stole her Mom's car and they had an eightball of coke in the console.

  I saw him downtown years later and he looked like he had been dragged out of a dogs ass. 

Story hole

 #1

Chet was a skinny boy then,  He was also funny looking.  I swear to God there was always something off with this one.  Tape on his glasses, dirt on his pants, always had his shirt mis buttoned.  He lived across the alley from us.  He and his sister were in the house alone a lot when we were younger.  She used to leave him there when she went over to her friends house.  She seemed normal, she was skinny too.  One day, Dwayne Stihl came over to me at the bus stop and pointed at Chet and whispered to me this story.

        "Hey, man, look at Chet.. You know what?  I saw him last night in our trash.  My Dad heard a noise out back and said "Your Goddamn dog is at it again"  so I went out to bring him in and turned on the light and there was Chet eating watermelon out of our trash."

     Shit man, damn. 

I felt a sense of pity and revulsion and a kind of mystical hate for him.  Not long after, the state came and took them away.  Later, I guess he ran away and lived in the junkyard where we used to hang out at after high school.  He was pretty big and he was the first person I knew personally that had a tattoo.  I don't know for sure, but I don't think things turned out okay for him.

#2

 Denise always wanted to be loved. Both her parents were librarians.  They loved books and watching Star Trek.  Sometimes, they would sit at the dinner table reading books, not saying much to her.  There was a feeling she had that they each lived in their own bubble and barely acknowledged her. One semester, while her mother was in grad school, she had to spend almost the whole night every Thursday in their station wagon reading with a flashlight.  She didn't have many friends because her folks were the kind of people who hid from doorbells and never talked to neighbors.  It didn't help that both her parents were grossly obese and quite comical.  They would take her to renaissance festivals and science fiction conventions, and she would hustle along in some ridiculous getup and she would have to stoop down and pick up things that they would drop from time to time. 

  Unlike her parents, Denise liked to do things.  She started running cross country  when she was in seventh grade.  She loved being part of a team and her coach could see that this was her outlet, her way of being alive.  She encouraged her when she could, but she could see that Denise was always the last kid to get picked up after practice and events.  Still, she must have thought, this kid will do alright.  There she would be, every practice, with her glasses and her awkward headband, ready to do her best.  Even though she didn't have the most talent.  Actually, she was about the middle, but dependable.

One day, she was with her friends in the food court and some high school boys came up to them and started talking about a circle party that weekend.  One of the boys was her friend Tammy's big brother. A circle party was just that.  They would find an out of the way field near a neighborhood and hang out around their cars and drink whatever garbage booze and shitty ditch weed they could scrounge.  They would listen to music and make out.  The key part is that it was in a part of the development that was right by Tammy and Denise's houses.  They could walk right there. It would be awesome.  

  She showed up and Tammy wasn't there.  Neither was her brother. It was mostly guys and older high school girls that had boyfriends.  That was when she met Tom.  He was tall and handsome.  He was all like "I am so happy you're here." He asked her about herself and she felt herself blushing and burning with all that attention.  She felt loved. Not wanting to look like a dumb little girl, she took drinks from his flask and cuddled into him.  He kissed her neck.  The noise of the party faded away. 

  She remembered him pushing her down on the ground, using her. Her pants down around one ankle.

She felt gross and hurt, in every possible way. 

Denise walked home. Tom left her crying and naked.  She stopped twice to vomit.  She was numb.  Denise walked into her house with dirt and grass on her clothes, crying, with bruises on her.

Her parents were watching Star Trek on the couch. Their corpulent faces focused on the giant screen.

Maybe it was a trick of the flickering lights, but she always felt that they turned and looked at her at some point and almost mutually, silently, agreed not to deal with it.

She carried this pain with her and it felt like it was some burden that would attack her whenever she felt happy or competent, or loved.

Recently, there was a news story about Tom.  He had been caught molesting children in a church youth basketball league. She felt all kind of ways about it. She started watching youtube videos about what happens to kiddie fuckers in jail.

  I don't know how people get over that