Every book

Every one

But not that crap

Count me out

I'm better than that

Hah

That's crap!

My authors have to be dead or almost dead

Like my brain

La La La La

West LA Fadeaway

Watts 

La Brea

Compton

The fucking Getty

Why fucking 

I don't know

I'm just an old guy w no friends

except a loony in Pasadena

and a kid w problems in Vancouver

West LA Fadeaway

Watts towers

They tried to pull them down

Couldn't 

 The drop

Drop shadow booze

Blues

   weary like Oakland 

Let's go for a ride!

  Saddle up the palomino 

Bones bones

Bones

$8 a ton

 We keep going

reading Ivanhoe at night

   By moonlight

candlelight

   30 watt incandescent 

We're looking for low hanging fruit 

   Lights

Lights 

Lights 

  No outside lights

Sorry

Or not 

Hundred bucks ain't bad 

To let us write down what kind of lights

You use in each room

 Rainy rain morning

"Might be the last of the season"

My sister said

Lying in bed drinking coffee

Cold espresso 

Jack Kerouac

was an alcoholic

Richard Brautigan too

So what 

I'm not an alcoholic and I can't write for shit

Maybe I should drink myself to death

While reading Bukowski

and his wonder and disgust at the meat covered bones

of America 

But no

I take all my pills

My endocrinologist is hot and she keeps my

Numbers in range

"You need more potassium"

 My friend 

Visited me when I was staying in New York

I had my second cousins second or third apartments in the West Village right above where the Cafe San Remo used to be. 

Ghosts of literary types, NYU students and young business people didn't even bother to come around any more

There was a guy living on the sidewalk across the street

He was historic New York. He'd been around when New Yorkers fought with the British over the Spring Pole at the downtown corner park. Mostly he just wore pants. No shirt or shoes. His hair was kind of long but not too. I think his name was Washington Irving or something like that. He talked of bowling pins and tankards of Ale and what lousy Canadian beer they used to sell down the street. 

 I'm trapped

Trapped in my head

"Everywhere I go I'm fucked"

I've adapted that saying to my typical happenstance 

But I'm just a dream 

They say 

You're just a dream

A dream of an incubus

In a swamp

And I think yeah fuck you too

 I got nothing

But made up dreams

Everything is made up

But I didn't dream too good

Life in a rabbit hutch

Surrounded by treasures

Comics and violins

Nudies  

Empty beer bottles

Surprised it doesn't smell

Maybe it does 

Who knows?

The Poet don't know

He don't know Jack shit 

 Watch it 

Now the sun

Wiilnfry skinny

Head fucker

Screw you

And the mule 

You stole 

It a old mule  

Like no one

And now you say

I don't want it

 

 

 

 Too good

There's nothing I can do

I just lay here and play the cards

drink coffee

and listen to the wind 

Rattling the door 

  rattling my brain 

     rattling my fancy Mervyn's golf shirt

 I don't play golf

But I

Look like 

I could

I may look old but I really am

 

 It seems like you're done

There's nothing left 

It's out of reach 

You just can't

And the terrible sense of loss

No more drunken afternoons 

spent with other drunk guys

Laughing arguing listening to Girls Girls Girls

but no girls around 

How will life compare with none of that?

How?!

 

 My anger

Is a face

(See?)

My eyes shine

My voice is like NPR

It buys hours

And access 

It pays the bills

It tells stories

My shoes and my heart

aren't yours

Don't touch them

ever

My anger 

My anger

My anger

Is all of these

Is none of these

Is none of these

None of you 

might know 

None of you 

think

But me me me

Nothing like me

Like greed 

Like hoarded (?)

Captives

A great pungent hate

Bottled in factories

In penicillin factories

In the smell of lilacs

 Sleeping

the coyote sleep

In penury 

In Lost Oak

In twisted mojo

In Borax

Trona

Saline washes 

Bishop night

By death by plane crash

By Manzanar camp

Spirited snow covered mountains

Peyote rings 

Houses abandoned with a thousand toys

Plastic wheels

Plastic dolphins

Plastic miner Joes

Gone now

Lost in ambergris 

In whale sperm

In Cochise eyes

In Chiricahua 

Tortillas and huevos 

In bloodlines 

Of LaVars

And El Sobrante

 Another

beach walk morning 

My plastic camera rejected the color film

crumpled it and spit it out

It knows best

many shots of empty sand 

with a tiny figure 

way 

the fuck off 

in the distance

Sky 

clouds some 

ocean

Mostly

Just light

and black spots

Many black spots

Another

Beach walk

Morning

 The casualties of everyday life

Batten 

Beaten 

Battered 

Buttered

Chapped & Battered

Mis en scene

  Parlez vous 

Je voudrais aller 

S'il vous plait

C'est vrais

Come say 

Some say

Okay

Others are just overdue 

for a change

Steady 

as she 

           goes

Lightning listens

to upright golf clubs 

         and bitch trees

     shaddap already!

you're burning my skin

     like a 30 watt bulb 

illuminates

  tired old women

and dogs made of linoleum

Ruff!  Grrrr rowr 

  report to ACC

violent animal unleashed 

lightning in the living room

  Tore a hole in the radiator

     electrified the bathtub 

  poor old granny