Measure your vices

versus your dreams

I wish my dreams had been more vices

sometimes it's good to be bad

walking the streets

Looking for a place w no sign

heaven closed years ago she said

And hid her cloven hooves

She had her hair in Byronic braids

attempted self surgery with a leaf blower

Carried a Hermes rototiller hairbrush

to beat her children

 Baffled 

by stodginess

crude and old white haired 

bitch

fallen trail side

wouldn't or couldn't get up

mean little white haired dog too

three emergency vehicles

showed 

she bad mouthed the guys 

who called them

"They didn't help me!"

 

 The rubbish

Piles up

Yesterday

Today 

Tomorrow 

Oh wait

No don't

It's not here 

It's in your head

So what

Who cares

Dogs bark at neighbors

Never turn your back to the sea

 Speak for the living

They have no voice

they trudge thru life

Eating their cream of wheat

or whatever it is they eat

They build cast iron bridges to nowhere 

Uh huh yeah they do

Then they lay out on the roofs and sing

Louis Armstrong tunes

Or listen to Showtunes

In dirty dive bars at one in the afternoon

and talk about how their gall bladder has to be removed

or how they're moving to Puerto Vallarta

After their colonoscopy 

Cheerful stuff like that

You drink a tall Grey Goose martini

 Grey August morning

In SF

so nothing unusual here

not cold 

not warm 

no sun

not yet

just grey morning

Blah blah blah

 

 Road 

into California

long ago

Ocean and dry 

Oak trees and I forget what they're called

thistles golden 

and dry

Fog rolling over hills 

and dry

California 

Say what you will 

Green Gulch

Kathy drove down the hill to the Zen Center Farm

Singing and honking her car horn

So happy to be there

Did the people meditating appreciate her joy

Zen koan like a slap

Laughing and honking wooHOO

 He said nothing 

showed nothing

It was a lao tse 

Kinda tse tse fly

You'll be very sleepy

Soon

 No trace of William Napoleon Norris, grandfathers dad. 

My uncle found his name in a listing at an orphanage in Georgia. There were two boys there with the same name.

My uncle said he was the Chief Engineer at the Jacksonville Traction Co. but I haven't found any verifying documents. Supposedly he was a boozer which fits the family pattern. He left his wife after she came down with rheumatoid arthritis. They said he got mad and walked out because there was no butter on the dinner table. Grandpa and his sister Gladys destroyed all memory of him and wouldn't talk about him. Gladys was a teetotaler and I don't remember Grandpa drinking that much. The old woman lived with Gladys and her husband Carl or Carlos in Florida. My uncle visited when he was in high school and said the old woman wheeled herself around the house on a little cart.

 I drove to Bolinas

on a foggy Monday morning

I hadn't been there in thirty years

They used to remove signs explaining how to get there

but now you just follow Google Maps 

It wasn't crowded 

An older shop lady at the coffee window said

They're all at Target! School starts next week!

An old man with a run down hippie shop was printing some tshirts behind the counter

How much for the sweatshirt?

With tax it's eighteen even

Thank god for people like him

I gave him a twenty

Keep the change!

 The casual exclamations

of Howard street

and barriers to the lost Fort

Washington came thru

But now mostly Koreans

They had to craft a law saying store signs

had to include English 

 

 TECATE

WAS A LOST CHILD 

IN CUERNEVACA

SHE HAD NO EYES 

NO EARS 

BUT SHE HAD A MOUTH

AND SHE DRANK

LIKE THE GODS DRINK

WITH SCORPION CHASERS

AND PLYMOUTH ROCK DREAMS

SHE HAD SEVERAL THREE CORNERED HATS

AND A GREEN SET OF OCTOPUS DRESSES

SHES SLEEPING NOW

SSSSH DONT DISTURB HER

 I rode the thirsty so thirsty stallion

Black as the night

Thru glaciers and brambles 

I rode the stallion

And here I was 

Not anymore here is gone

There is no here here

That makes no sense

Go buy a dictionary 

And look something up

Before I chop your head off

Or make bacon and eggs

And English muffins 

And bury you in the basement

 even dreams are a let down

bummer eh!

Ah well 

Whatcha gonna do?!

 I wonder why

everything has turned to shit

I blame myself

"If only..."

 

 I gave up

There's not much I was really after

just a few good paintings

and a lifetime of beautiful young women

the women all disappeared pretty much en masse

But the paintings continued 

in one form or another

they weren't all winners

but I had fun making them

That's all you can really ask for

 I stowed my soul below

the sickened body

I had no shoes 

or cares

Newspapers were my bed 

Laudanum was my god

we feasted on April opium

Gave thanks to Pinchewon 

Our forgotten brethren soldier

and took the 7:38 bus to work