You banished all

not for what they did

But for what you couldn't be

A lover

A friend

You holed up 

And made a thousand collages

a testament to your inability

To your ineffectualness 

Cut and glue the eyes

On the moon

On the stars

All night long

 Bottles were

laid out 

In long precarious rows

empty all of them

saved like some trophies

Of concupisense (?)

your eyes too 

We're laid out in rows

Black cloth

Shaded them 

Rows and rows 

Like trophies

 I measure 

your wide open stare

with a broomstick 

You laugh

And I sweep

 Scream!

or let it out slowly 

Tie it up

Lock it in

deep 

In your stomach

Never let it out

Spread it out 

Tomorrow 

Or 

The next day

 

 Grievances

are a future

   Not

Just a presence of 

worry

   Believe!

That's the spirit!

Go team!

A dog bit me in my dream

and the back porch was removed on the top floor

(Where we live)

I slept ten hours

And freeze dried coffee

ain't cutting it

 I'm checking out

Fuck it

I tried

Let's play checkers 

(I hate checkers)

Oh well

 Cacaphonia 

    Welcome!

    Steer your beer to 

swerve left and Eddie's motorcycle 

  in Livermore highway signs

that don't exist

  Praise your tribe

    In stonewashed supremacy

       Technology rules!

     Be the future

  You are the future 

You ate the future 

   And now you're feeling a little queasy 

Pepto-Dismal!

    But that's no matter

  let's get on with it 

Shall we?

 Vyl left his barren homestand 

In the hills-

Badlands of Alameda County-

Morgan Hill Road

To Corral Hollow

Old low grade coal mines

K-OLA

tiny seashells dug up and spread 

on the grasslands

"There used to be a town over there, even had a school for the kids"

Gone. 

Pottery.

Carnegie. 

Made bricks and artifices for buildings in Oakland where Jack London lived after his step dad crapped out farming in the Livermore valley.

Too hot and dry.

Now they run motorcycles over the hills and leave black tracks everwhere. 

Like scars on the hills. 

Vyl drove on 

"Maybe I'll see what's going on in Turlock today"

 Trophy wives

on parade 

Selling cocaine

To school kids

  How do they get away with that?

Don't ask

  Their grades have improved!

What

Your bonkers

At least I don't sit in a dark bar all day

   Wait yeah you do

Oh

   Never mind

 Cleft

Brain pan

   HDS

   days

Rustling 

   acorns

  and Paiutes

Blackfoot

  Algonquin

Therapists

   Crème de la crème 

Mozambique 

In Paris

   Sidewinder

Shills 

  Playing cups

With your brain

  It's under that one!

Wrong 

Pay up

 Profound mental issues

through a combination of behaviors

have yielded nothing worth talking about

but here we are 

Poke the fire Ralph

it's dying out

And get me a beer bitch 

 

 I contrived to

destroy all thoughts

but I'm stupid

  So fuck it

Where's the remote 

   Oh the tv is busted

Too bad

 33 33

What's to say 

Who cares?

No one but the flowers

and the sky

And the electric outlets

And the grin on that old lady

Living in her garbage dwelling

Laughing  

Laughing at you

 

 The Lama's monk

In Kingstown

Where?! Yeah exactly 

He likes the clothes

He said

That's why he became a monk

Beautiful yellows oranges reds

In shimmery fabric

Nice watch

No thank you

I don't need it

 Forever Mondays

just now 

don't think too much

have a coffee

Forget the Fireball!

in East coast mansion in NJ

SLEEPING ON RENE'S SOFA

taking the PATH train to 34th st

you can be there in 10 minutes

break loose

count yer stars captain

It's all happening 

 What's the

dealio Bob

the cryin mistakes

Your hand is bloodied 

No shakes 

It's just a passing of time

Say what you will

There's some mistakes

But you're trying

building your tower of stone

on sand

Throw me a biscuit 

Once in a while

It's all good

 

 Bob Frost was visiting in NH

"Two poems diverged by a yellow fuckface

and I, I chose the latter of the two

   and it didn't matter, not one fucking whit!"

I think he was mad because we were out of maple syrup.

Who knows?

His complexion was ghastly. 

 Bukowski walked in and said

Your poems are shit

I'd use them to wipe my ass

But he kept reading

and I didn't have any malt liquor

 I can't be responsible for 

what you feel

Did I ever even care?

Probably not 

Just trying to get laid 

and have someone to watch tv with

Ya know?

 I have the right

to not put up with this shit

Yeah but the cure is worse than the disease!

Yeah yeah yeah

"You're so mixed up you should just GIVE IT UP!"

and other short stories

 Eject your life!

Leave Naomi and her charcoal paintings of horses

Smoke crack in the tenderloin 

Go!

 Green DADA leaf 

on your tiny sex starved brain pan

You are the Franco Youth

of the past

Now you're writing poems 

about your grandparents 

and thinking about Seville

like it was a loved one

The knife slides down your forearm

the locomotive is barreling along

a snowy mountain pass

 Stop yer complaining

All is illusion

We're shadows of thoughts

by long dead Sante-Yzaqui

Burrowed in the hillside

Torturing an old Packard plant

"How's yer mom?"

 Broken wings

of an angel 

supposedly an angel

But no one really knows 

 Capo blues

In a thousand dollar fine wool overcoat

The limo was supposedly brand new 

The leather seats 

Thought they knew your blood

But werent talking

(they knew what was good for them)

So you got out at Nathan's 

and ran for it

With a Tommy gun and a footlong 

Tomorrow's another day

 Gyrate

your insides

your kidneys

your ass

time is running out 

But it was fun

While it lasted 

Said no one

 The echoplex 3 

Was left behind an abandoned big rig

Peterbilt or Mack we couldn't say

The stars were warning us

With their eyes

We laughed 

And said What if the cops come?

 I died

With all my crimes

Some ignored

Some recalled

Some convicted

I did hard time

And now it's your turn

 Capo

  sanct 

Mind play

   Where are you?

Scenes of privilege 

played out 

In playgrounds 

Knives

    and time

What's 

The 

Reason 

Descartes 

   Oh the best of worlds

in best of times

Leaf peepin

    In 93 Toyota 

with a broken window

Won't roll up 

Or down

Let's get hotdogs

I want two

 

 Kreep

like 

Fuckface

Orange globule

Stinking

Like 

Oh dear

Fuckface

Fuckface 

Fuckface

 

 Glieber 

    glamping

on the 

  Riff

   Like 

  Shaved 

Head

     Blues

Sinking 

Like a short

   French

Dictator

   Glieb 

And 

  glime 

Stillborn

   effusions 

and rough routines

Taming 

   the Catskills

To watch

   Toyotas

And bottles 

   Stashed 

And drunk

In

  Backwards 

Hotel rooms

 There was a giant pinhead 

That walked East Avenue

from his shack on Greenville

Scared us kids

riding to the pool at

the Rad Lab

Radiation Laboratory 

They said his shack on Greenville was

Infested with rats

So they burned him out

It was 104 that day

dry heat

We saw it in the 63 Ford Fairlane

Then we went to Dairy Queen

for bacon burgers and fries and milkshakes

 Kvetch me

On your rebound

Moses Malone

    Or not

Ggggrrrrr

   Small wall

   Station

Procrastination 

    Kerral 

Me like 

  Livermore Site 300

bomb shelter

cattle 

beef

Beeves 

   Ford pickups

Racer blue 

George Fumaris

   Shed covered in bones

Mean dog

   He will tear you up

What are you doing

  We want to camp on your land

 

 Lord 

Have mercy

    Please 

  Im

Mm or something 

   Lord 

Lawd 

  I'm something 

True

Fine

   Find

I'm something

Lawdy 

    Gawd please

Let me 

    Just a minute

Goodbye

 I was taking care of my dad

Out on the ranch

So I built a dad

Out of wood

Thin and rangy

With an empty pot for a head

 My readership 

Is drooping 

I used to have a surprising number-

Shocking

But no more 

Now it's back to

The old days 

But it doesn't matter

To all my readers out there

Here's to you!

 I don't have nothing

to say

But that doesn't stop me

Sometimes I should 

Probably just shut up

Maybe tomorrow 

Or the next day

 I caught a frog

Oh no it was a cold

damn fall weather 

hot and then cold 

Guys drinking at the bar 

are protected from such

things

 Can of wine

$10.99

Red red wine

Stay close to me

 Crafted like

A Chirikauha cigar Indio 

Stumped 

     Leperlike

suicide son of 

a schizophrenic 

  drawing cartoons

On the old computer

Like Pokémon 

 

 Greeve 

like a Japan Hokkaido

Ichiban

Bubbles

    In the reeds

Watch your step?

 You are

The deity 

  What deity is it

Miercoles?

  Mercedes

  Maserati

Let's get hot dogs!

  I tried

But there was no halfway 

It just wasn't there

Cest le vie!

La dee da!

And so on and like that 

 Berate me

All you want

I've outlived 

My college housemates 

One cancer

The other suicide

(After his wife got back from India)

Sshh 

 Andre Deutsch

Brit publishers

Smells like mold

Such is life

 She went

To Sri Lanka

What for?

I don't know 

That's a long ways!

 Creature

Found a pinhole 

Photo 4x5 transparency

In a book

Bukowski

So what

 Tell it

On the mountain

Wrath of Tetons

Sawtooth days 

With Chaka

And too hot stove

 Saturday

Post no coke

Why does it matter

Nothing to do

  Ho hum

 You moped

   Like jethro or was it Jed?

Jeff?

  Any hoo 

You moped

 Pensive

Penile Pensacola 

   Something Grove

That's where they're buried

Billy too

 Calamities 

In suede

Go shopping

Not Mervyns 

   What size are you?

 Drive 

Mercury into

Your dentists eyes

See??

   No but that's the way it goes

 Jesus

    Kee- Rist!

Take a photo

  It'll last longer

     Bon Ami 

 Nuthin

   on the horizon

Boohoo

   Black crows

      Wander the streets

 

 Salesman 

In a dentists office

Talking shop

About family

"They never talk"

The phone just kept ringing and ringing

What year is this?

 Alleviate

  your prurient compassion

Slow the 

   Times 

Sad 

Tales

  Of yourself  be 

A 

Little 

   Bug

 In the dirt

Feast on grubs  

     And dead business types

 Stalwarts

    and oats

No sugar

  Cest la vie

try as you might

it ain't gonna matter 

   Turn on

 Tune out 

drop out 

 buy a 63 rambler

  Turn into an airplane 

Fly away

Say SEE YA

  To another shithole

or paradise as we know it

BYE!

 Who cares

fly the bird 

Amerigo 

   Pay no attention

    Breathe

    Get on a plane

   GTFO

   People!

 

 

 

 de murrer

and no response

but a bitter letter don't 

you know

what intention

means?

Mm okay

Fuckface

Suck it

 Palookaville Rats

 

 

 Heady

Broken back

Tragedy 

Sure

Spurned 

And reluctant 

Death means nothing 

Like a turtle 

Beavers build dams 

So what

Diane Keaton is dead

 

 

 I tried a million ways

To see 

But no

Not today

Oh shut up

You dumbass

 Ghosts

Of reason

Perturbed

By Billy Joel song

Same old shit

What's it fucking about

"The holy, the beat and the crazy next thing"

No not that 

Something else

 Eating

 Chinese food

Beef w broccoli 

Say what

It's 11 am

 Yeah 

So how

  Well 

Time flies 

When you're having a good time

 

 

 Ghosts

Of Saline route

and Borax muleteams 

In a caldera 

With a chiclacxoob

leader

They were divided

and lost their way

Two made it back to La Cista

And dined with Rachel

The others never showed

 Glory bee

to summer dresses

Pollyanna McCargille 

Was an Irish penured washing girl

Broke her back

On an Egyptian mare

But recovered 

and sang

For the Queen

 Etruscan Peruvians

swaying on the aft deck

Breathing Time

Like swallows on Mars

  They're playing the stock markets

  but the Etruscan bulls

  are stamping

  Kerfloofing 

The bridge is out 

and the conductor is drunk

 Life 

Ain't hard 

It's easy peasy

No cares 

No worries 

Wrapped up with a purple ribbon

 

 

 

 Scurried

down bandangke st

Past the drilling in the wall bar

Moved across

But he turned their heads

Face down

By the stairs 

Until Arrow said that's not it 

But who knows?

We all have our own path-

Some questions you just can't answer

and some you can