"A Lover Not Lover"

Lover, I am lost
I lay ragged alone
I have couped myself up
in a room, I search
for you and your song
I search and I search and
I long.

Lover, like you, I belong
Like you I belong to me
As though poisoned were not me
As though pure as can be
Like a fool's dream

But Lover, a fool I am
Or a fool I have become
With broken spirit
and wilted heart numb
You are gone, you are gone
I am lost and still
I long.

SHORT POEMS

89-A
Southwestern turquiose handmade jewelry case
sad proud humiliation on the roadside.

A BROWSE.
Thank you
Nod head quickly
look her in the eyes
keep walking.

OF PHOENIX.
Hot air
baffoon lives
we lead,
miscellaneous
drab.

TALK RADIO.
The sound of a drill
rotating on high speed
through my ear drums
grinding the brain
Free FM
Free FM
Free FM.

KS PORK EATING 2006
Kansas city's pork contestants
chew like vicious rabbits
with something to lose

The other night I was talking with my bandmates about the will or the want to get up in the morning. Furthermore intense, we pondered what makes people have the will to live, or the will to move about through life. While some people get up in an hurry, or travel from place to place with an idea or an expectation, others never ponder the fact that they have the power to change their own life by doing it themselves. It's easy to get caught up in the "standard" way of living, we as americans know. It's easy to be in that world of suburbs, strip malls, fast food eating, large corporate shopping, driving the car everywhere, working 9-5, watching too much television, getting lazy, losing the vision to your heart and soul, your passion, your spirit. Maybe it's easier for these things to cloud your life if you have an unhealthy relationship with your mate or your family or your social scene; if you excess on drugs or alcohol; if you've never had drive or goals for your life. Maybe it's just that all of the "standard" things I described above turn you into this drooling, lethargic american that is so sadly everywhere. Lets consider an alternate way of living; one that employs your creativity, one that keeps you in touch with your soul and your spirit, one that supplies you with warmth to your heart, blank.

Ladies and gentlemen, there's something behind your neck that smells oddly like mustard gas. Or is that sulphur? I worked at mid-level market research firm in Seattle washington in 2003. I talked on the phone to different people continusly for hours. I asked them about their health. I asked them about their employment, about their ethnicity; their income; their insurance; their martial status; their mental stability; their diseases; their sexual preferences; their sexual behavior, but never their credit card. Up on the 3rd floor we were all generally fucked up. I met some oddball folks working there.

Len was a giagantous, curly-orange long-haired, bearded, intensely freckled, 43 year old, lunch box carrying ex-convict; recently released. He wore shorts that were affendingly small and tight that skinny, young bicyclists would wear in the seventies. Usually they were aqua-blue and he would wear an aqua-blue, red, black, and white stripped t-shirt. He rode his bike to work and wore those damn shorts even in the dead of a rainy, washington winter. His skin was harmfully tan in the summer. His fuzzy, matted beard was a mixture of brown, gray, red, and white wires that had no equaling length. He talked with a moaning drag at the end of every thing he said; which was likely to regard sci-fi B movies, particularily the ones directed by Fritz Lang. Het ate the same thing every day; sardines with Tabasco sauce on bread. Every day. At the same time listening to something on his pocket radio and looking out the third story breakroom window. If he spoke during his lunch, his words were usually followed by sporatic flying bits of food.

My cubicle was aside a very large, warm, carismatic black buddist women's named Simrajah. My working space was always very stark and cold because I never wanted to mentally invest myself in my job and the time I spent there because it would quickly turn me into a depressed monster. I had to separate my life outside of work from my life at work so much though that I wouldn't decorate my cubicle with personal flair. I enjoyed the feeling that I was always on the move and could have another job, or live in another town without notice. I believed that if I put up a bunch of pictures and brought stuff from home, then I would turn into the same zombie dead-end man as the people around me who had been working there for twenty years.

it's 2;11 where are you, my love?

"genova night prayer"

Blessed are the days and moments of reflection and harmony with life
The seconds of clarity and contentment
To put it all in prospective
The answer is there and purer then ever
Times of frozen photographs in my mind
The tree grows taller and counts it's years in circles
The same for my own hurtles and revolutions
Talk to me when I thought I had it all figured out
You'll know the change has come about
A hundred foreign stamps, pound notes, and pence
You'll know where to go when you're gone
Forlorn grasps to history and ending lines,
reveal repeating past signs of the time
In one nights sleep, I could wake up all my harboring beasts,
and swiftly order them all to retreat
You showed me sands of many colors and faces of many brothers
Even a love that was thought to be freedom,

you slaved me to the truth again
And forever you will, amen

I CANNOT WAIT ANOTHER DAY
TO FIND TRUTH
BURIED
BENEATH THE SANDS
OF A DEEP LAGOON
HIDDEN
FROM THE SUN AND MOON
SHINING
FOR MY EYES
FROM A SHADOWY ROOM

I HAVE ENOUGH WEIGHT
TO SURVIVE MORE THAN A DAY
WITHOUT THE NEED FOR FOOD
WITH THE PAIN
I CAN SUSTAIN
I CAN ENDURE
I WOULD NOT COMPLAIN
I WILL REMAIN
STEADFAST IN FASTING

Hammers and nails, windows and doors; carriage makers swindle; pigeons for breakfast; stones overhang like nervousness; caught light in the sun morning; leopards of health; spotted medallion on the legs of blind martyrs; orphanage blanket holding for comfort; hair in the drain; the noise of bricks thrown in a wheelbarrow; the hiss of steam from a gas main; walking past old houses looking.

Poem of two years past inducted to the American Poets Society June 2003

Riflessione Di Voi In Italia.

Karmacropolis make up your mind.
East bound until swimming
Wash upon shores weightless
Fishing with food and no hooks.
Day bows into moonfilled night
Life walks and huddles with scarves,
Alley kisses cobblestone marbles
Saints smile from doorway arches,
While love leans against the wall.
Forgetting never the moment
Nor the full moon's mysterious caress,
Vowing returnal for the first time.
Gleaming beautifully without words
Breaking fog of dawn
Tunnels through the broken hillside
Lush of life's rooted churches
Feel God close to the ground.
Mama Maria in the Piazza
Look upon gazes of pity for some.
Neptune statue of lime green skin,
Fishes prophet, though not a man's.
Captivity for the sharks.
Unmistakable eyes reappear
Mistaking the distance between memory and touch.
Heart is to hot as the hands are too cold
Shivering inside wools of comfortable warmth
Moonlight shapes a path once again
Casting hazy gloss to the painting
Breathing the closest breath willing.
Wanting the closest, and waiting.

there's another pond
where fish don't belong
only bones of first year trees
they grow within
at the base of my legs to my knees

You wear those kind of hats that tilt ever slightly with the perfect brim listing to one side of your head. Your neck is so skinny that your collar chokes off thought.

red ball in the front of the mirror in the ray of my last night sad in the time of forborn , so longing the middle it's backwards anyway I do say.

we've spoke of circles before/in the back of barns over coffee and rolled arms/cannibal miners have turned vegetarian/where's the beef on your palate now?/mrs. carterwig is stuffed with children up to her britches/I saw her tongue-in-cheeking me talking to single ms. apple/who said you weren't the one and only?/ten thousand repeated sentences for bad behavior two years before/and I'm only sorry for what was not/you've all gone and got scared and bought houses/"the past is still here, we're just choking on our own blood now"

The Will can never be leashed
It has to be lived
Whether it's a caged bird
You would bring it down
Since you already tried
Forget it

A prophet comes in disguises
The black boy cigarettes me in surprise
He smoked out my thougts of wise
She brings her cat and spices
I wait with caffine eyes

Knowing I will only prolong looking
When sitting at the edge of seats
Why should you lie if you feel sweet
To me it's all the same as the next week
Still locked and seeking a key

And if that wasn't enough
maybe your watching now and still can't decipher all the questions in your wander head
it was clear in the colorful sigh of discontent
You shoulders protruded larger than your voice
angry clammy lads jumping ship and calling lifeboats
rings of coal ready for igniting
Subside the truth for momentary pleasure
your light shines blindly
my eyes storm shadows
widow's peak under hats
there is web to life and here it is
tangled and torn your forlorn life is mine
like a cliche

I thought maybe you must know
All of the seconds just then and remembering
Here I am
notwithstanding

Still
Hands in pockets
Still
Calling the shotless
Barely on the ledge anymore

You can change your fortune
I can change your mind
Knock me back into somewhere

Just begin to want
money will kill me

I followed a habit down a hole
He took me to a deeper earth

sand dollars on your lips
sandals on your foot tips
send across the message
soon you will deliver

paper cuts with sharp words
praying through your eulogy

"gathering dust in thornton, colorado."

It's all endless like the black snake in the fire of bitterness. You can't have what you'll die for so why do you even try for it? Isn't it like a miraging harbor in the middle of a typhoon unable to reach the shore for safety? Why have I come to the question again it's all up to me. or is it? The boredom of sitting around all the live long day brings nothing accomplished. Except shuffling shuffling back and fro across the burbur, and smelling the ass wafting from every direction released by those of us who partake in the vegematarian or mexican cuisine, tofu and burritos, cheese and milk, lactose intolerant. Feeling the floor rumble with every bass line thump. The studio in the basement, the jangle jangle of the guitars,vraaa vra vra vraahh!!! boom boom crash of the drums, oh yes it's all very soothing to say the most. not really. I think I'd like to be in that little apartment on 14th St. downtown Phoenix making dinner for myself, and getting that solidarity high. You know the one, right? The feeling like you can do any fuckin thing you want. In fact you do. You stand on the back balcony very naked and refreshing, the birds can see, and the neighbors that might be around during the work day. Ahhh, it feels fine the cat comes down from the rooftop, sliding that tree like a swirling fireman down the pole for his meow mix. I'd sweep the outside floor, but writing on the walls sounds more fun. "Making Life My Art" in magnum huge black permanent marker. It means everything to me, about me and what I believe about life. Enjoy the wall and the sink and the soft carpet and the dried up flower box on the porch, and the couple across the way with their lonely puppy who cries for their attention while they have little suspicious parties inside, and the pool that the girls come down to on the hot days and lay beside giving me a pleasant view. Dig the cat again, Fugazi, as he gets high and walks around with squinted eyes and catnip breath. He's the coolest cat on the block, no doubt. His girlfriend shows up every now and then, more frequent lately, they lick each other up and smell their butts and go back up to the rooftop to stick. There's an endless poster wall of the music we love and the colors we like. Candles...I dig the candles, light all of them on fire, the new the old the ugly ones from my mother, the gift candles from girlfriends and the sensual scented ones, down to the, down to the-wick, melting into the television and the coffee tables, hardening, we'll get that later...OH my G..the boiling water has burned!!!!! Forgotten all about the boiling water!! High am I, I dug too deep. I'm still very naked and now the kitchen smells like burned water. Ever smelled burned water, or is it the burnt air? Yuck! I have to scrape the brownness out of the pan, and start over. A watched pot never boils, I'll have to sneak in on the bastard. Take a peek when he can't see me. Then immerse my noodles in the boil...three minutes, thats all it takes for tonight's delight.ramen. what the hell else would it be on this weeks wage. I'm a laborer for construction contractor. Frame houses, or try. Fall off roofs and nail my fingers together. Once I was working next to Rick Speedeater, one of the veterans, pretty senior to the rest of us, but that don't exclude him from his share of injuries as his badass leather tan skin, red headwrap, dirty long hair shoots a nail from his nailgun right through the center of his hand and wails in dramatic agony. I couldn't help but have one moment of concern then try to help myself from laughing, in turn shooting my own damn nailgun right into my left shoe...Luckily it only nipped my big toe and no one saw me do it. Nailguns can be a real fun toy if there's no one around and your on top of the unfinished roof squatting on the plywood shooting the knife-life bullets into the neighbors fences...but I'm getting way off track, this work pays alright, but not enough for me to afford the most healthy food around, and plus I spend my money elsewhere, like the thriftstores to gather all the big gaudy velvet paintings of Elvis or Jesus I can find. The first Elvis has a home over the piano mantel board in Larry's shack house off 7th Street and Dunlap. It just gathers dust. Sort of like myself as I sit here day after day on the couch, at the desk, walking around, sleeping on my mattress in the basement in the peaceful darkness, waking to think there's something important to do, but instead eating a bowl of cereal... That's pretty fun. Some days I'll take the wagon downtown and find a meter still running and park the car for a bit so I can walk around and feel a part of something that I'm not. All the yups during the day, down the 16th St Mall, passing the punks and the chumps for change that I'll give to the one who's most sincere. On my fortunate days I can get a free burrito or a fish taco and a beer at Legal Peters from Trish the Dish, and feeling full and thoughtful I'll head to the bookstore and hang on the third floor with my own book to read for an hour or so, then suddenly remember the meter!! A bit like the boiling water, on my feet burning as I run in my worn down, flat footed converse back to the parking spot, passing the meterman in his blue hat, and comfortable walking shoes, and jump into the wagon that's been sitting at an expired meter for almost an hour now, barely escaping his wiper blade note. Only for a lack of knowing Denver's geography do I end up right back in Thorton, Colorado amongst the neighborhood of all day Spanish fiestas and lawn couches,inside the two story home, on the burbur, at the desk, sitting, gathering dust

mother of the blowin' wind.

Mother of the blowin' wind
don't let whispers get away from you
don't forget they'll come around again
and then whisp into conversation

Hide away your heart's past
it wasn't a wish come true
for your sake
there's no such thing as a mistake
if it's one you never knew

A chord struck through the ear
your secrets came out of nowhere
you're void of an innocent future now
it split right open
now you're faced with face
you can save yours with a lie
or see the truth in your burden's eye

Fate changes love
it steals back a heart, or purifies the dove
it can't behold histories
it casts out all theories
it answers questions never asked
it completes the final task

Oh mother of the blowin' wind
hear your daughter's new song
as easy as it isn't
accept what may come
and let go of what's gone