Category Archives: Personal

Yesterday I read some poetry by Allen Ginsburg’s lover, and it had a lot of misspellings. I embrace that given the fact that I don’t spell well; actually, I spell just fine at a fourth grade level! I am not sure incorrect spelling takes anything away from the poem, so here it is:

I empty the garbage on the tabol.
I invite thousands of bottles into my room, June bugs I call them.
I use the typewritter as my pillow.
A spoon becomes a fork before my eyes.
Bums give all their money to me.
All I need is a mirror for the rest of my life.
My frist five years I lived in chicken coups with not enough
  bacon.
My mother showed her witch face in the night and told stories of
  blue beards.
My dreams lifted me right out of my bed.

Nathan

I picture him insolent, insurrectionist
chopping wood
riding an ATV
driving a tractor
sunburned by Midwestern sun.

They used him unstable, uniformed
shooting hot bullets
bobbling inside a helicopter
driving a Humvee
leathered by new desert heat.

Once he asked in jest to break
up the Church instruction:
Where do babies come from?

I should have answered
in seriousness: Nathan,
we should be asking where do they go?

I remember him tall, lanky
wearing tight, cowboy jeans
shoveling snow for old women
buying two-liters of soda
instructing others on monetary conservation.

They turned him thick, manly
ensconced in Marine blues
touting an agenda of hate
pushing a deadly rhetoric
teaching others to fear our bad decisions.

…the poems flying amid the jukebox
music, the olding Beats and the Baby Beats and the commies,
the surrealists, the anarchists, the socialists, the jazzmen, the ultra
screwballs, the walk-in weirdoes, the beautiful women begun and
developed here, and the tots, those fooblezeegs, always so welcome
and alive at this street level…

Pizza Prostitute

Shifting pizza from oven to cardboard circle:
slice chop: cutting counter to cardboard box:
snap crunch: box closed: ring up on cash
register: with some creative license plays
the intro to Pink Floyd’s Money.

Juke box johns slide coin after coin
into her slick slot: she sings Fancy
and Me and Bobby McGee. Lights swoon
to music humming out of her bowels:
discs click click change and spin a tune.

No commies, Beats, or surrealists here:
only want-to-be cowboys homophobes
blue collars lingering waiting listening:
Fucking faggots, Jews, pinkos: this from a man
in dirty jeans plaid flannel and trucker cap:
not worn for style.

Five years I tolerate it:
talking judging the world
outside these imperceptible walls: holding us
inside progress outside: slip change discs:
Good-Bye Earl.

Here no women grow beautiful: but haggard
they become. Two Taylor boys slide skin past skin
under the table: walk-in weirdoes still come condemn:
no socialists no anarchists: the fight well removed:
2+2=5. And she sings: Yes, I Am!

at the end of its breath, Here, in the last delta,
Desire lies on its side, is rolled, and rolled
over upon by its own government, and crushed.
-jack hirschman

For Jill.

Desire lies on its side
waiting to be eviscerated
by the lack of funding for an American
dream. You have distinguished yourself
as a student and a scholar, but there is
no money for you.
You are cutting edge
in the field you have chosen
to pursue. But there is
no money for you.

Your desire lies prone—
face down in muck up to ears
eyes wide open and mouth choked
by the weight pushing into the ground.
You are being fucked from behind
and no one cares that you can’t breathe.
Desire is rolled and rolled over upon
and crushed.

O tongue of oil between the violated
thighs of Iraq, whose open mouth
is Israel licking America’s gun-butt
while the pornophony
of Palestine gangbanged by all three
sounds through the wall the gyzym
and saliva cries in twisted lascivia…

“We don’t want you to make war
anymore anywhere on earth.
If you do we will stop you and your
weapons of mass destruction
without even a shot being fired.
We’re the majority. You’re an unruly child.
Go to the corner and learn your lesson”—

then, America, finally you’ll be free.

Getting out of the BART
up the long
steep staircase
nothing could have prepared me
for what I would see at the top

The market at the Civic Center.

For weeks
I learned the stats about San Fran
and the homeless.
I looked at pictures.
I read stories.
I contemplated.
I was unprepared for
what I would see at the top.

Take a picture of me.
Now take a picture of my other side.
That’s a dollar.
Two dollars.
One for each personality!

Prepared though I was
I was not.

I lost sanity plans
hope compassion.
I lost.
I was lost.
Lofty goals
Memorized statistics
lost on the stairs covered with gum piss
human excrement.

What can prepare us for
apocalypse?

I lost me
appetite
desire.

Get back in the tube and leave
it them myself.
Leave my thoughts hurts lack of
compassion and shame.