"Hope, love, create, or drink and die:
These shape the creature that is I."
—Theodore Roethke, Long Live the Weeds
Pour another drink, get
up out of your seat, the night
Begins to hit on that perfect smoky beat.
No calls coming in, disconnected,
But that’s OK.
Who needs phone love anyway?
I communicate with the dark.
She is my mistress, the black
Robed lady who haunts my desirous heart.
Through her I speak my words
In voiceless nervous utterance,
And so lift my spirit and heart, up and up and up.
November
Cool November is here,
A cold without despair.
It is the safe turning in
From a world grown gray.
It is the hiding away,
So why complain?
Make your own world
Out of the inner, where it’s at.
For who wants summer
All year? The green and blue
And yellow, ripe, immodest, grows dull.
In its own way it is false, unreal, why stay?
The colors of fall
Work on the senses a different
Way. Alive, they are nevermore to fade.
Perceptions grow out and fly off into a breeze,
The chill that carries
Along our silent dreams
To be frozen, sealed, locked,
In the coming winter months.
Living
It is nothing really.
The waste. I heard
My mother once say
That all days are sacred
But every morning
I rise in good faith
Knowing milk not sour
Cereal no expired play-doh smell
And I shower in hot water
As hot as I can get it
And play my music with feeling
And spread mustard on sandwich
And when I meet the world
I know that what waits for me
Is the same as before and
When I end it will still go on
Just as before.
What flut?!
Whizz chiff sneeze
The monkey calls to thee
Eek, creak, boheez stiffy
Sucking knocka cheese
Eep cheep the sunken drunken
Lunk nut thar breakin the whomp bat
Choking on hibernating bearskin
In shoop shop hastin case made lacin.
Drilling
Conservative dentist drilling
Tar-stained molar. This will
Hurt and you cry out MERCY!
Hits you quick a shotta gas
There it is, the GOOD stuff.
Start to go under…this aint
So bad. Crazy cast iron dragon
Shield, protector of Morheed
Mountains, where Princess Anapas
Awaits your return with shining eyes
And long golden hair. Fight against
Sprays of winged beast flames and climb
Scaly flesh to get at the heart flap
That proves Achilles heal even to
Such a mighty creature. Pull back, swing
Penetrate thru that thick skin, digging in
With hard thrusting side to side till he done in.
Triumphant, make your way back
To castle atop mountain where princess
Show the gentle touch to your ache and tender.
Jam and grind in that last tooth-capping
Snap and suddenly you come to,
The victory in vain and nowhere to go
But the car for joint with numb gum painless pain.
Fruit Tree
In dreams I eat from your fruit tree
And bite in, bite after succulent bite,
Sweet to savour, cupped in hand, to
Chew down to core and still want more.
Shining Music Gold
"Bright moments is like
Making love to a moonbeam."
Yeah, yeah, make it with that swirling beat.
Play that flute, toss off the weight.
Blow! Blow! Awake the heavens—
Magic comes alive like gold dust
In the energy of the stage light
That beams down on sweating
Brow. Work it. Swinging, hip,
All for the nighthawk crowds, appreciative, elate.
Fancy fingers, puffy cheeks, spitting lips
Whip smack and beat behind cool
Black eyes that see beyond the hall
Into the deep halls of eternity, yes right!
Mr. I Don’t Need Me No Label,
I got the soul to burst the sad
Swollen world of woe that cries
Tears of CO2 gases and black smog, pitiless.
Our love is pure and will carry
Us on this cascading wave to a
Place without shame and decay
That will reach out and touch the sun’s rays.
Hurray! Hurray! We all make love today!
This House
In this house I give myself.
In this house I give to you.
In this house I ask myself
What do I mean to you?
Please Don’t…
Please don’t say no, I know
Nowhere else to go.
Please don’t give me cold shoulder
I have no shoulder to cry on.
Please don’t put on coat and go
I have black roses to give as show.
Please don’t fight with the landlord
It is the Lord’s land that we share.
Please don’t hate what maybe, really
Was, could have been fate.
Please. No? Why not wait and stay.
Give it a chance, just one more day.
The Other Tenants
Why do they do that, every night?
Leaving on the hallway light only
After final load of laundry complete.
I used to go out there, walk the length,
And turn it off before bed or click it off
When coming in for the night. But now I
Cease caring, let it shine in thru crack
Between door bottom and floor and wonder
What bugaboo they so scared of that comes
Creeping in the dark night hallway and eats
The mothballs and hides in the furnace vents but
When push comes to shove is terrified of harmless florescent light.
I Got a Love for You Blues
I got a love for you yes I do yes I do
I got a love for you yes it’s true yes it’s true
I got a love for you that runs laps round the equator
I got a love for you that towers over the space needle
I got a love for you that shines brighter than starry nights
I got a love for you that cut left and right down diverging paths
I got a love for you that sings with the heavenly minstrel
I got a love for you that does handstands across the Atlantic
I got a love for you that turns snake’s poison to ointment
I got a love for you that tamed the snarling hounds of hell
I got a love for you that laughs at the secrets of the universe
I got a love for you that saw death coming and did not turn and shudder
I got a love for you that dug to the earth’s core and came out shivering
I got a love for you that made even Buddha jealous
I got a love for you that out-blew Miles Kirk Dizzy Trane Coleman Bird Dolphy Young
I got a love for you that out-blues’d Blind Howlin’ Muddy Son Elmore B.B. Bo Johnson
I got a love for you that ate the sun and came back for seconds
I got a love for you that drank up the oceans and was still thirsty
I got a love for you that kissed the angel’s virgin lips divine
I got a love for you that sealed shut the continental divide
I got a love for you that beat back the furious winds of the South
I got a love for you that fed the starving countries of Africa
I got a love for you that emancipated the Chinese people of China
I got a love for you that brought democracy to Mother Russia
I got a love for you that rewrote the holy scripture
I got a love for you that never thought twice
I got a love for you that danced and danced with the night
I got a love for you that is forever
I got a love for you that they all want
All of them, my love, except for you
She Don’t Know Me Blues
My baby says she knows me
But she hasn’t got a clue
Came to get me after work
And went home with the boss, it’s true
No she don’t know me
She never has
Said she would make it up to me
I’m still waitin’ for her come back
If my baby was an island
She’d be out in the middle of the sea
I’d swim all the way to be with her
And then she’d sink away from me
My baby says she know me
We go out about the town
But when the night’s over
She ain’t nowhere to be found
My baby she says she knows me
I ain’t got me no doubts
Except for the other guy she’s livin’ with
I’m the only game in town
No she don’t know me
She never has
Told her that I loved her
She said that’s a bunch of jazz
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