New Poems...old attitudes...exotic recipes...weird fables... whatever...

Well at long last the interweb psy-ops project against MY SKULL has successfully concluded and that's as good an excuse as any for a run-on sentence and a couple of new poems....

(In other words, my internet connection has finally been restored)

1995

i remember
more carnicerias
than grocery stores

more banda in the carnicerias
than lite-fm

more graffiti
than chamber of commerce banners

more pick-up trucks
than SUV's

more juanitas
than ashleys

more punk rock flyers
than Reader boxes

and the more i think about it
the less i want to remember.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS

i saw her yesterday
down the sidewalk in
a faded green sweater

laughing with a boy
holding coffee-to-go

the traffic
back-lit the evening at 5:45

and i remembered that
this was exactly how it was
supposed to happen

to say it all
as the city passes by
and people fold papers
and send texts
and adjust earbuds

...she waved with her hands
and he nodded yes yes yes and
she leaned in and he threw back
a ferocious laugh...

without effort
or pity or even
having to cross the street.

TWO-WAY STOP

i love to kiss her

my lesbian friend
when saying hello
or goodbye

i never go for the lips
or even the cheek
i dive

for the base of the neck
where that collarbone
scoops out
a lovely depression

where the heart lung and nerve
trade pulses
like the smoothest freeway
exchange you ever saw
and my mouth
searches

for that cellular dividing line
that changes traffic forever

turning her one way and me another

and i wonder where it is
where that answer is buried

in science
in childhood
or under my kiss
beneath her lovely depression

but that doesn't matter

doesn't matter at all
and neither do I.

NIGHT PASSAGE

riding the highway
at night
on a bus

half-a-dozen
of us travellers
scattered
in the forty-two seats

dozing
or chatting
maybe reading
or just staring
at the inside
of our own skulls

i like the distance
between the towns
stretches of field
and pasture
without light

only
the distant treeline
against
the faint sky

and once in a while
a tiny dot
or two
of warm yellow

from
the farmhouse windows

who have night passengers
of their own
to comfort.

A Perfect Day For Love And Squalor

Heading west on US 150 through my hometown/Thursday night/after a trip to the movies by myself/Up In The Air /which was how I had left her 7300 weeknights ago/and realizing that going west on US 150 is absolutely the wrong thing to do

and that's when you have to reverse everything/into a new painful extraordinary heartbreaking course with no co-pilot/or anything like perfectly reasonable thoughts about nights like Thursday nights

and turning around to drive back home
the radio shot me in the heart
he was dead at the age of 91
and I realized a night at the movies without her
even 20 years later hurts like hell
and the only cure is more pain

like hearing that the hero who quit publishing

had finally stopped writing.

[God rest you, Jerome David Salinger - you gave me the older brother I never had (Seymour) and even the goddam Catholic schools will be teaching you 100 years from now]

Iced Lemon Archways

iced lemon archways
could be the first three words

in a poem about aquariums or
the grand avenues of europe
but this is not that poem

instead these words lead
to childhood and the memory of
mom at the very edge

when dad would need a neighbor
or an uncle or a paramedic
to calm her down and prove
there was no plot

to
take away
her kids or
steal imaginary fortunes or
follow orders from the CIA

but just calm her down and
go see a doctor at the hospital
on the eighth floor where
the voices go to die

iced lemon archways
never graced aquariums or
led to europe or
any other escape route

they were a type of cookie and
grandma brought them to
my little brother and me

to settle things down
and say i'm sorry
but 40 years from now

you'll be in line at
the grocery store and see
someone buying cookies
and you'll think of this

and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.