Last Bender

This is one of the very few ‘9-11′ poems I wrote that survived the garbage can. Since the recession of those years never ended but just became more general, this poem’s occasion still exists, for what it’s worth (maybe a turnip?).
Jug Wine
 
Hot sun on the stoop
no shade given or needed.
We talked in our bare feet
felt for […]

Track 28
 
the eroded faces of men
sinking into smoke and martinis,
replenished lips kissing the dented
pillow and the ink of their mouths
wasted in streams
the water that feeds
dead rivers, the wind
that whittles rocks
and the rough shadow
of whiskered faces
on the five twenty
out of grand central
boarded up buildings of
childhood flashing like
billboards in the Bronx
now I am suddenly […]

I’ve been writing poetry again. it’s difficult to overcome my disgust with poetry, but really, my disgust is for the business, not the art; for the theory, not the practice. every time I pick up a book of new poetry, I read three lines and feel a deadness overcome me, a numb depression and boredom […]

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
 
          At 9:15 Stronghole kicked the door in. That made it 100%, cause everything else was fucked up too. His shoulders were so big, he had to turn sideways to get in through the door. For two seconds we stared each other down, eye to eye, until he smiled. I didn’t move. I put […]

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
 
 
            Bunuel may have been gone, but the giant hole he left behind was slow to close. Laraby would be pissed all right that he couldn’t be bought. I could hear it in my head. Standing up behind that desk turning purple. Asking, “Name me the cop who can’t be bought.”   What am I […]

bad times
an email
from a dying friend
sydney bechet
‘summertime’
and a fried transaxle
two thousand bucks
but it beats the 10%
the doctor gives to Tim
not just the toilet paper poet
no but the man who sold
pine trees, dogs and kept
a herd of horses in the catskills
who once tried to sell me a crystal
that would clean my wash
without detergent
and […]

CHAPTER TWELVE
At first my eyes felt like smashed oysters. The soft inside all mixed up with the shell. Slivers of light noisily never aligned. My mouth full of blood and tooth chips. A gluey crust between my lips.
            I was afraid to move. Afraid to feel the damage. I didn’t want to reach down […]

Manerly Margery Mylk and Ale
Ay, beshrewe yow! Be my fay
This wanton clarkis be nyse allway.
Avent, avent, my popagay!
“What, will ye do nothing but play”
Tully, valy, strawe, let be I say!
Gup, Cristian Clowte, gup, Jak of the Vale,
With manerly Margery Mylk and Ale.
“Be Gadm nye be a praty pode
And I love you an hole cart lode.”
Strawe, […]

CHAPTER ELEVEN
            On the way home I drank a half gallon of warm tonic water and twisted through the dial in search of something besides cooking shows. It took that and two aspirin dissolved beneath the torrents of bubbly drink to go over Clara Turback. She made some sort of a twisted sense. What seemed […]

Lang Po and its descendents are the poetic equivalent of the Progressive, Jazz/Rock fusion music of the 1970’s. They are the Emerson Lake and Palmer of the poetry world. The Mahuvishnu Orchestra of the poetry world. The Yes, Genesis and Gentle Giant of the poetry world. The Strawbs of the poetry world. The Chick Correa […]