Poetry

Theme and Variations

How do you get to scream the world is good and we have only to lose ourselves in its goodness? Ask me in return and together we’ll question every man, woman and child we meet, and won’t it be the Lord’s Prayer if we all get up on our legs and shout out the question…

an abrupt change in nothing

     ”i have            the hunger” in 20 years all the tea will be dead communication will stand still and decent folk will fly back to the moon      where they belong – we don’t care louder than they don’t care even the alphabet must die sooner or later, it’s got wings anyway and can make it…

& So On

For Darrell Gray Someone once told me it’s a non-verbal medium, expressing yourself to another. Someone else said, Please accept my apologies for not expressing myself better. I know what I mean, but the words, the WORDS will not contain it. They are like girls one meets & goes to bed with, & who afterward…

Soft, Soft

Soft, soft is my life and America is grand wherein I take off two whole days from work. The difficulty is in how to adjust to returning so that this hurting myself is to be included in my pleasure and the face of America, nose of a Mack truck, eye of a windshield, is not…

When You Die

it doesn’t turn black from pink and you won’t be able to rest your eye while you think. You won’t think. The silence won’t be soothing as velvet to let you concentrate when the radio peters out. It won’t give you a float. And nothing like fresh cold water. It ain’t like going to sleep…

Out of Work

It is unmanly to be gorging a hot fudge sundae, nuts and whipped cream in the afternoon. There are only women here with their shopping. Worse than sleeping late getting up after your wife has left for work. Yesterday I recognized myself coming out of a double feature into the sunlight.

My Uncle

My uncle had a birthmark a liver colored flame on his face. Who knows where that came from. I remember one photograph from 40’s Hollywood, my uncle Leo Carillo and a woman who was not my aunt for long and who was not the English Duchess my uncle could have married during the war. The…

The Flight

(for Jane) “I fly to my dreams from my bed at night” sauntered Jane/ through a conversation.      I the wind,      the scarf of a trailing sky      swoop on the figure appearing      as a calander wearing its months      back to front, while the weeks dropped out      with the days listening to the song      that the birds…