Errata, Verses and Rhymes from My Notebooks: October
You see sometimes in pictures,
The ministers to serial killers,
The appeals in innocence.
Under these most heinous crimes
Are we not all cowed and wide eyed
What future do you seek when you
Have only bombs for dreams
And children crying in the streets,
And entrails in the water
And shit where you eat
Would that my enemy
Obey even base treaty,
Lawless and godless,
And howling like a beast,
No laws and no priest
No justice no peace
********************************
When I was a child
A spider came in through my window
And stayed
You are so young, the spider said
Too late
I screamed
Inside?
As surely as if dying
And I was
Some instinct in you knows
From the very first time.
And so
Thrown from the ramparts of
The innocence owed to all
And me most of all
Still young, went out in search of its light
In other youth, like me
but not cast from its palace
Could give some hope to me
Could make me clean
And all my lovers and my friends
As my teen years entered bitterness,
I appreciated with the gravity of ages
I ate as an expiring fruit,
I sucked as much as I could
I was just laying there, had no sense of sex left
And yet I basked
Telling my lovers:
Touch me all over, make anything in the sky
But what I have seen,
Any star
Any planet
Any dawn
A beautiful wall,
Or any at all
To put between
Me
and the spider
*****************************
The things that circle for my soul
And can’t keep me in fine enough clothes,
They are alway waiting
And I
To ward them off
As they come in tender taunt
How vulnerable I am to kindness
Having known so cruel a touch
How I flinch like a dog
Where the shuddering of fleas
Feels like a hug
I realize how I have underestimated
The measure of my suffering
*****************************
Inside the dialectic, each as to itself
A sick twin
Then the competition begins
To expel the other,
A war in the mother.
It was a state I never claimed
Even so
it was hard to see her suffer
It was harder to let go
We never forget our mothers
Even those
That threw us
from the home
*****************************
Sometimes a traveler shows up at my house
Having seen its light from some miles around
Or having heard from some acquaintance
What lives there
Do you dream of my body
Sweet slender and thin
Do you know
We’re in
The roiling of the rocking hour.
The darkest hour?
Areolas like roses
Like stars exploded
Like flower beds opened
hold my stomach
Ask you
Why have you come to my door
The end of my illuminate
Corridor
*****************************
San Francisco was the apple of my eye .
And the winter of my youth
Waited for me
Like a noose
In hotel california
You only check in once
Down in Monterey,
I thought I would marry,
Or in napa,
To someone else
Outside kates the irish bar
Where we spent so much time,
We considered the youth we were wasting.
That overfilling chalice.
But oh how fun to spill it out
And the bar never closed,
and the tab never ran out.
I committed the memory of us,
As faithfully as I could,
Between some blunts and a lot of beer
At kate’s you looked like an angel dear
As you started to lose your fights
And the sickness was in your eyes
And reflected in mine
Ever my twin
My twin, my twin
The world is cleaved in two
Without you.
You, you, I would look at
the table and try to memorize it
And the cheap paper roll tablecloths
Where we never set out
And how it felt
to light each cigarette
I stored it up
The final drink
Of a last call
There’s nothing like a memory
Like a wreck in your mind
And you can’t help but turn,
And the traffic is slow from where
They closed off the road,
and so you get a good look
I think of you even now
The sun is on your body
And your face
So beloved are you by me, golden and beaming,
Health, youth and money,
Made it in the valley
you got some strippers and a car,
you lost it all to the entourage
And I loved you for your kindness.
We had many friends
But none of them were good
And with the confidence of youth,
You don’t comprehend
The dark shadow in a friend,
Is no minor matter,
But one of great emergency
becomes a snake
And can with one strike
More than a friendship break,
Or even a life to take
With the neglect of friends,
the shadows that friendship holds apart
Descend
****************************
An ode to people who work at hopeless causes,
Whose work will never amount to nothing,
Against a mountain,
I am a rock, a gravel, a crack
And people look at you like
You should stop hitting yourself
****************************
Nothing on offer today
Not even golden tales of youth
but rather infested memory,
something to haunt some new bed
Or show up unexpected
At some event
The past, a sun so blotted out,
only a tiny eyeless thing
Can see its bleak,
Not only consumes itself
but left without
Casts its shadow far into autumn months,
And so it is always in the room
And tries to crawl in
To remind me of what we were in youthful folly,
Once dragged here, and now does again,
And unable to ignore her plaintive wail,
Invite her in where she competes,
A creature of ruined hopes,
for my dreams.
Possessed still of her vigor,
takes over to handle some lover,
To beseech, and knowing no other language
Speaks in lovers tongue, and the body loses tone
And again I am
My ghost
****************************
Build me a city
A whole one just for me
And when I walk its corridors, its streets,
Make sure no one talks to me.
****************************
From deep
inside the pain comes
Madness
Begins to spread
As oil spill
And then
Euphoria,
Engulfs all darkness in a single gulp
Yet the single shadow waits,
and when the oil begins to burn
it’s time for the switch.
Just as soon as ecstasy
has gained
a handle on all the walls,
Comes the one dark patch.
Rely this message to
A version of me that suffers less .