A Shanty

grim grimmer 
grimmest
missed the boat now 
swim it

your meaty heart will 
mute sink
rocks in your head grind
in' think

the tide doesn't turn 
it rolls
under water dred
ging souls

pressure to go up 
and rise 
"Those were pearls that were 
his eyes"

drift down sink far 
be done
dry land was never 
any fun

Fever Tree (Jim and Janis)

Jim and Janis

He said he'd once been the Lizard King

but that was some years ago

He'd gone into obscurity or normal life depending 

on where you live or who you know

There wasn't any recognizing him except for a sullen growl

and without the awareness I'd hear it

No irony to note a beer gut which stretched his 

Iron Butterfly (original) to a Mothra girth tee-shirt

Jim had watery eyes and a smoker's smile that promised things

like Flicks candy at the movies "Let's go see The Who tonight!"

and his smelly weed smell filled the car before we went in to the show

and he laughed all during Keith Moon jumpsuited white

going through hotel walls and exploding drums

but slept through the rest

I had to wake him up to drive me home. Which wasn't even my home.

You'd have to believe me even if you've heard worse

He married Janis, The Pearl, and she had the jewelry 

to prove it. More ropes and dangles and beads than a treasure chest

and one precious bag of baby teeth from a groupie

She'd go do her county social work then come home in the old Saab

with the driver's side pushed in from some accident and the thick fix-it putty

on the door looked like Janis' cheeks 

and her hair mostly covered it but he 

would come in sweating from the deck stoned and horny

would brush it back and sing 'if they say I never loved you

you know they are a liar...'

And sometimes it would make her laugh see-through 

like a snapping flag whipped by warm Tamalpais lofts

or she would hard line him

"Fuck, Jim —Did you actually work on the deck today?" and out came a bottle of Comfort

Jim and Janis lived in an A minus frame on a Marin slope  

dusted grey eucalyptus no firebreak two cats a dog 

and her 14 year old daughter Lisa, Janis had had her secretly in Port Arthur

who baby-sat me when she stayed home (she never did) 

I was taken on as the neighborly obligation since my mom worked nights 

(Jim and Janis both came from middle-class manners) so long as I behaved Mom said

but after school special kid I was, I could go back into her tiny teenage room 

as if it were my personal vestal, chastised and excited 

thrilled at going through absent Lisa's drawers (rule-lined notes refolded, heavily penned instructions for sex, sewing needles scabbed brown, foil bon-bons and pipes, bent brass screens) and pretending I was her

3 years younger I felt inadequate for my debutantage, lying on her bed under the Alice Cooper poster

smelling the warmed over yeast dregs from empty Lowenbraü bottles stacked in her window

watching dust blaze in the light through the narrow window the dusking light of prayer and reflection

gilding piles of girl clothes and a left-over shoe

wishing wishing wishing my breasts existed

Maybe I was never there?

Lots of people claim now they were there when it happened in 1970

but Jim says it was just Janis and she says it was a goddamned good thing

'He was plain out of his mind in a Greyhound waiting room, writhing and trying to climb pillars -I could have been a bulldagger with pure murder in my heart, ready to send this princey prick to his maker."

'Ah naww sugar, you never would have.' Jim chuckled 'I could see your heart. Pure as maidenhead butter...'

Now Janis laughs as drinks and smokes scatter the table and I am witness audience to the show, which draws in the dog who scratches under the rocking chair Jim sits in, his belly cradling a brown liquid bottle

Jim still writes and self-publishes but not in his name. There are books of his poetry in the bathroom

The Golden God Mr Mojo Risin Wild Child is a deck-builder. Free-lance.

'Dadmiral approves' he smirks 'but he doesn't know why I don't build houses while I'm at it. Decks just seem too incidental...'

Janis pours herself another drink from Jim's bottle, and he plays with the colorful necklaces that drape her neck. 

'I love standing out on a cantilever, no railings, flying out there...'

They were stars in the sense of billboard charts and concert sell-outs 

They were stars in the sense of the night sky and I was seeing their light arrive after the fact

Janis wanted love full-tilt, hip-checked and can't even play the game 

more than a starving person dreams of a piece of buttered bread 

Her muses aligned and told her to cut her heart and bleed 

and from her blood she would distill desire into a perfume, a personal scent

From her voice she would    

She had sung herself raw and cashed checks for hundreds of thousands of dollars 

Drinking made her feel like a party it was only the money that kept the party going -all the boys she flirted with kept their eyes on the dealers and the sylphlike band girlfriends- a blowjob put her on her knees and she refused the gig (eventually) Sex was a strategem a studio track to be laid down a plane to catch a dozen phone calls and all of them eventually hung up

A gravemarker for Bessie felt like the only thing done right but it still felt cold

Her flask was just empty at midnight when she thought of scoring dope at the bus station

Jim had visions even without dilution and spoke them in type shared them

But no one had ears, seemingly blind too just wanting to feel his ass in tight leather 

men and women felt along his seams 'Forget it, man -let's screw'

He had been at a large screening party and been given a Visine bottle and told it was liquid acid

He took multiple drops on his tongue, sniffed some 

and finally dosed his eyes with the rest. 

Hours later, Jim had arrived alone at the LA bus station

waiting for a bus which had his mind like luggage stowed and tagged. 

With every arrival he awaited the porter while the shine on the blue plastic seats throbbed at him responded to his gaze enlarged inflated into organs and expelled shit and elongated and secreted a sheen as a godhead the celestial lingam burning long and orange quaking with jism and then he felt a wing brush his aura -his vision took in a enormous Sun God with fanned feathers and green and gold talons- It brought shade, even while it beamed with light and untouchable heat and he was its child its egg its treasure

'That was me,' Janis said, 'I stood over him. He was in a fetal position in the corner of the room next to the lockers and lookin' like a bad trip, so I thought I'd talk him through it...


(to be continued)

Bukowski's Daughter

God damned veins pumping 
all over the place 

I would have liked to see 
that veiny bastard one more time

Veiny vain vainglorious 
frog-kick legs and Blake hair and mustard gas breath

Here I imagine the last call as 
a death throw-swipe kick rausschmiss

Some rauschfrei lullaby 
sung in a thin blood   

Dad in the VW going to the Von's for Wolfschmidt

Driving on the sidewalk scattering people

A turtle shell with the tore-up turtle body coming out 
(oh that make me sick to think about)

He wrote me letters 
always in the third person
(in his fake writers name)

Always telling me to read some same old text 
by some monk or drug addict

No matter what he said 
(or what the character he wrote as said) 
he took it away at the end

"What do I know?"

The only thing a daughter ever wants from a father 
-ever- 

Is some reassurance 

So I never knew anything either

Like what was his favorite day ever? 

The card sorting and the memorization

Put the mail in the slot 
-discard 
-repeat for a million citizens 

Hands cut in pulp and bleach and glue and ink

When he quit something he thought 
That's that

So a uterus is just another hostile place 

A real dive

Women made him hard 
(with a bone to pick)

But it was hard for him

I am made from 
abandonment

Like some petrified old tree stump 
that no one remembers 

ever being a tree

the roots with knurls smooth and polished as cabriolets

I could imagine I had a father 
and he and I sat together

"No one remembers when this was just fields"

The German blue eyes are just 
filling with tears 
when I smooth his hand on my dirndl


(2010)

Fraught with Meaning

Bibulousness friable defenestrate

The Voice Male

You are an enigma. You remain as a scar. 

I know where you work. I could go there if I wanted to no one to stop me. I call the number on a weekend Hello. You've reached  _. I must be away from my desk so please leave a message and I will return your call. 

You are an enigma. You remain as a scar. 

I know your style. I have sifted through thousands of names and key words on the Internet, shaking the swirl of life's catch-all. Panning for fool's gold. 

You are an enigma. You remain as a scar. 

I know how you look. A brief out of character public display, complete with pictures and the suggestion of a girlfriend. Or is this your fiancee? Do you still hate your mother? These are questions I have.

You are an enigma. You remain as a scar.

X-Why Curse

I could never imagine the ways that curses would lay on me. Heavy blankets, piled higher and denser every year. In trying to turn, you'll probably strain your neck or dislocate your knee. 

—Drink? 

No and yes. Sweat the toxins out in the leaden bed, but then you'll never want to lay down again. Fresh yeast skins will tear, releasing the bright smell that makes your eyes burn. 

—You said, curses? 

Oh over and over since I turned 12. Something unhappy in all my remaining time, comes from the line of unhappier women -my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great. How was it these births kept happening? The dish ran away, the cow jumped over the moon. We all were aspirational -desirous of something bigger that we could never articulate.  

—And? 

And so -followed the curve of the cattle wall, down the chute, up the ladder to the stock-yard hammer: they all did this, my mothers before me. Which is how we kept poisoning the next, you see? 

—You lost me.

One young love of mine, very Tennessee Williams in his way; pale, effeminate, dreamy. But stuck up to his thin neck in Oedipal torpor. He was as romantic as a Polish prince, destined to die by some random bullet. At least, that's how I called it -maybe he still lives, but likely damaged by drugs. I left him for a dorm room. 

—He cursed you for having dreams.

Free-floating rancor surged from me, according to the philosopher, but he could make it sharper; more meaningful. I loved him for selecting me, chosen to share a cigarette, then a bed with and permission to listen to the deepest thoughts; to hide away with his genius; to turn away from others and their puerile attentions. I crossed a wire-wrapped boundary marker I thought was an embrace. 

—He cursed you for having trust.

Another lover, I put myself above. At first I adored his sad comic emotions. Then I felt contempt for his depressions and his anger. His poet's delicacy was easy to mock, but in turning to acid one burns away feeling. 

—He cursed you for having pride. 

There was a tender musician who couldn't speak, and his muteness attracted me. I loved his eyes. I kept him in a box and then couldn't stand the silence. 

—He cursed you for having focus.

My secret love was totally a sham. We ate and drank and fucked and plotted to live our lives as celebrities; as icons; as gods. He and I burned out, lacking oxygen and status. 

—He cursed you for having a good time.  

Now I ride a bus in my dreams all my ex something or others are in the bus too. It's not packed, 

but 28 people (give or take)...

—You might exaggerate.

Most of whom don't know each other, and most all of whom do not enjoy my company -- 

we must bump along trying not to catch each other's eyes or accidentally slide over onto another person (it's an old Blue Bird type school bus, with the green vinylized bench seats). 

—Where are you going? 

I feel like it's my fault but what can i do or say? -how else does a 15 year old junior high school kid with the beginning stages of cystic acne, who I obsessed about for 2 years, show up on the same bus as the 23 year old shuttle driver from Alabama who gave me warts? Riding with each other. Ridden until someone ends the curse.

—Our time is up.

Bedridden

In terrible jumps 

I can leap around my doomed ideas 
the regretful mind has the strength of a flea 
before you can catch it and crush it 

between thumbnails 

it launches from bare bitten patch to a new place 
to bite and make swollen