I think about wearing a T-shirt from the Peloponnesian Wars But decide it’s out of date It’d look too highbrow in Miami People might whisper Oh, he’s a dick from the Parthenon Trying to be better than the average moron Then I think about Moby Dick and Mother Night The movies, not the books The […]
Maybe I should pray more Get a better perspective on lying Place a cross over my heart Then I think Blood smells like iron Blood smells like red rust heating in the sun Bodies are putrid for animals and mud Why do I need to pray The bottle of mescal on the sill My hat […]
To understand, we must know To understand war, we must know To understand genocide, we must know Otherwise, they are only words upon the page like raindrops against the window pane, beading downward to the sill, dripping into the earth soon to disappear beneath the sun To understand ourselves, we must know and in that […]
How many grains of sand, on all the beaches and deserts of the world, actually have zip codes How many needles can one stick into an angel before flight capabilities are impaired Why does a spouse smell like eternity, particularly after a few years of marriage Is there an infinite number of porn pages on […]
Your heart beats across the sea, the mountains, the desert Softly You’re in a shitty African hospital, with wet, moldy walls or is it bombed out Bosnia … no, it’s somewhere on a bad road, and you are hurt and have lost track of time You make it out of bed and throw up on […]
I was in Seattle faking people out for $210 a day, but the rusty-gear people were a pain … men who walked around like flour sacks spilling whiteness everywhere and frowning women who’d grind their teeth because I liked a black transgender female who did her job better than they did That, of course, was […]
Jan asked me about opium and I only hit the main points, the 21st century American points, the kind where dry trees explode and sons and daughters move into closets I didn’t get into the bad stuff, it wasn’t appropriate for her needs, she only wanted encouragement like a map But then I woke up […]
We spend most of our lives doing nothing Looking over there, touching the air The clapping audience of silence, as if important things were playing out in empty ways Let us pray to glass bottles, hollow straw, cats like tombstones Catch the river flowing from each one Over the waterfall’s edge Backward we drop The […]
I started writing for myself about ten years too late. I had other things to do. Now I’m writing to justify my life, maybe make it relevant. There is a need to dig up old events and people. Were those days worth it? Writing is a way to judge. The more I write the more […]
Jan and I are like broken toys in rusty trunks and blowing dust, a ghost town of dust sometimes we can barely cope, and then we focus and see that all the old wood comes from the Argos and the knots and holes look like unknown victims from the town’s wild days the gospel church […]
tin hats 