NO MIND

whatever feverish delusions
you dress up as reality
have little
hold over
me, lover.

i don't believe in anything
except believing less
and being kind,
having more faith
in behavior and paying
no mind
to what anyone is
saying.

IMMEDIATELY

think of one thing
more urgent than finding

the center of your soul or your reason

for being right now and go
do that; otherwise:

sit down
shut up

and do some
poetry.

HEARD (for Morgan Worth)

what the pompous
poet said:

i want my words
to make you feel worse
in your head; i'm no masseuse,
i chose verse
to kick your ass. take a number
before you get any
dumber. followers!

you want happiness?
try wanting less.

and don't invite me
to read. i don't
need validation from your poetry
nation. i'm a one-man
occupation force, and
these slams distort
word art. hyperbole
and beer farts? i'd rather not
take part.

but goddamn
would this one work
shouted before a crowd
of poetry jerks.

THE TRYING

i am halfway through
every great book
on spirituality.

to summarize:

be kind.
and breathe.

take refuge.
now release.

have faith.
and endure.

you will never
be sure.

say prayers and
don't lie.

find peace be-
fore you die.

these platitudes drown
out the persistence
of this dying; i may

never finish these books,
but i'll settle
down to the trying.

WHY WRITE?

writers wring hands and throats
over how very little
the market dotes on

what is literary.
but there's no money

in revealing
the truth behind
death and decline --

it's distraction
that's preferred --

and so reality remains
obscured and the writer
soldiers on. but why?

to be seen and heard
is to feel less
blurred: to be focused on
être d'raison!

THE OBVIOUS

resolved: we are all
born dying but that demise
intensifies when

we try to become
artists. we fall
faster when we chase

after what

money can never buy.
we fly too
close to the sun, thinking,

"i'm finally seeing
clearly," but we are not. our eyes
are on fire, and we are not

enlightened but blind.

beloved: there is nothing
to find, nowhere
more true than here,
and no one any more
illuminated than you.

NO GOOD (for Kathy Blake Aabram)

her husband had me
over for drinks, said don't leave
these glasses in the
sink my wife
won't know what
to think.

his wife, she taught dale carnegie,
and she knew just
what we were
up to.

R.I.P. GOATEE (for Han Delin)

"wiss zee beard,"
she said,
"you look like rock star!
but wissout you are
just regular."

she cuts
my hair. what
do i care?

"you hide,"
he said,
"behind the beard."

you are looking,
i fear,
in the mirror.

"the beard,"
she said,
"makes you look
older."

thanks, mother.

"i like,"
he said,
"the beard. but then
i'm weird."

don't speak,
freak.

"daddy," he said,
"you did
look like a rocker,
but now you are
more like a man model."

my son, i thought,
what you are selling
i just bought.

ELEGY FOR RICH RODRIGUEZ (for Brian Grieve)

the only thing worse than caring
too much about imaginary
priorities like football teams
and stock markets --

"much ado
about nothing"
rings true --

is caring too
little. magnficent
dust, each of us seems,
but caught by the sun,
just so, we sometimes glow
and hang there
in the air before
falling like dancing and ending
up somewhere
below.

UNLOCKED (for Loreen Strasser)

admit it:
when as a vagrant

wayward
unshowered
neighbor

i climbed through
your window, i broke
your heart.

(it was unlocked.)

later i loaned you
my wife for a while --
let's leave
out that part.

i met cold confident
you but found
the way through
to something more human --
the broken parts heal
and the girl becomes
a real woman.

oh the moods and places
we have been dear,
sweet loreen.

BLESSED (for Roma Hess)

“you get
what you get and you don’t
get upset.”

it’s kindergarten
wisdom, a lie
disguised in rhyme.

true happiness rests
in the difference between
accept and except

and never thinking
you are exempt.


(image borrowed from here.)

TO EXCESS (for Sherry Brewer Homrich)

it was poverty
drove us to drink
piss-poor beer
for hours before
going anywhere.

it was desperation
(camouflaged as variety)
compelled us to pick
whatever chick we could
to do anything she would.

back then i thought i was
a poet, and i drank far
more than i wrote. these days
i write quite a lot
more than i drink. i'm a poet

although i wonder
if anybody knows it.

BROTHERS IN ARMS (for Pete Karr)

guys don't say
"i love you" to
other guys. (unless,
of course, they're gays.)

we straights find it
hard to say. we try
to joke and punch it away.
as if a tackle could take
the place of saying hey,
"i feel this way."

there's irony
in our policy
towards intimacy:

don't ask,
don't tell.

I THINK SHE KNEW (for Tom Hess)

girls raced first then
boys; same swimmers, different
summers, each May
just a little bit

older. i waited
behind her --

we were the best
breaststrokers.

seriously
how did we keep
a straight face?

before every race
she would lock
her fingers reaching
for some perfect
nothing and then
tug her suit loose
in the back --

a nervous tic
or a canny gift?

every redhead since
gives me a lift.

WASN'T ME

as each untimely
death marinates

we become attuned
to doom

and its callow misdirection,
the old masked shoulder-tap
and then the look
away, as in "who me?"

when friends fall
ill or die too
soon we might try
to deny how

close we were,
as if to achieve
immortality we need
only to demur.