water in the basement
where it should not be
water in the knee
watered down screed
water for the unthirsty
water on the summer orchard
there is one time and place for hydration:
nature's time.
our time is a wet towel
and 6 sets of nostrils, 4 nostrils dry
it's a board decision
chess, candyland, parchesi
parched easy.
oh, swell.
2009
The Dalles, Or
"Within low doors the boozy boors
Cat-naps take in pipe-bowl light."-----herman melville
___________
the k street limo, there stripped to the rims
afire with treason and glorious hymns
sloshing with rubles, tipping in shit-coin,
gropes the flagpole, salutes his own groin
dragging the nation behind republic balls
every sensible human recoils, appalled
lobbyist borscht in caviar vases
coors lite gals to handle the cases
panty hose bandits their paws on the triggers
fraud festive faces gloat on their sniggers
sabot their high heeled, indiscriminate ways
hooking in cowboots, branding the strays
demoniac bubbles arise their champagne
gleeful that greed has an American name
Ghosts playing croquet drift over wickets
gently knocking the colored balls
which roll as if on glass
a breeze lifts the flow of the ghosts
as they play thru the night
humming nameless tunes,
calculating their shots until the dawn
1986
Lawrence, Kansas
the contures of billy club
as wielded by dour s. paisley
follow conjecture's pepper-dismay
dispersal on the attorney salt-slacks.
repudiated overmuch,
blank stares load up with vision,
fees propogate, sidewalk observant,
or not. perceived travails,
billowing sales on downtown frowns.
booted most rudely,
stuck in luncheons with frenemies,
such is the lot of satanic clerks in riot zoots
distinguishing, by power twice removed,
every pain and rendered slight
in accordance with their...mores& norms.
guard bless ya!
storied, but based in base deed,
flies make most of penultimate creed.
zealot harlot miscreant& me
do unto others the opposite of ms. paisley
2014
Pupneer Courthouse Chase
---wind unseen takes form in snarling havoc
on a dormant volcano monadnock,
rousing rabble to a fevered pitch
jostling trash bins, putting ice on every hitch,
testing hinges and humpday's saddle
frostbitten reins in canoe sans paddle,
pushing what into where, whistling creaks
draw chaos---------& order speaks,
ice motes drive or dally floating haphazard
crow high, my perch perfect for such blizzard
yesterday pulled pavers, made patterns
undone thoughts, austere as a lecturn,
and so unlike the fir, unfurling wildly thrashing air
yet losing no limb nor cone, debonair
as a stunt cosmos doing its own unravelings
under silver laced mist, given body in sculpted hobblings,
slowed to a point of stasis
upon which reality has basis
wind everseen, how clean a forest floor at night,
ages-tested branches, embodying might.
Mt Tabor Oregon 12-8-16
When you're houseless, everywhere is home. When you're heartless, every touch revives. I'm neither less nor more than a sum of my losses, without you. Gold sinks, water dances still. There are no strangers in our open morning, no friends bearing a true compass other than the baby sun and harbor moon. Silence can't be broken like a horse. Rope and saddle and wishes stay selfish in the pecking orders of mountains. My glacier thirsts for the ocean floor, shaggy with salt. When we're helpless, we help ourselves to suffer. When the polis eats us, we're political. A routine checkup checks all the Pandora boxes, unpostmarked by design. Everything done comes undun, washing the tomorrow clean of whence. Worn out thread becomes a nest, with effort feathers. I bark another tree, spin a yarn, and tumble in my bagworm skin. When rebooted, our toes map the cavernous naps and spatial tuck. When pulling oneself out of the tarpit, the tar comes along to the dino museum. It's free.
SE Pdx 5-17-22
trapped in italy where the coughs shake bricks loose
where the marital thump of bedposts
against wall pillars has been known to
deliver pools of oil
trapped in the virus laden furs of milan
surrounded by st peter's pox hued gates
in a venice canal stewed in bloated
ships of luxury vaccines
that nobody wants or needs trapped
in italy the sardines sigh
close your eyes, it is night
the dreams are long sweet drinks.
rest resolves unsound gravity.
some tines earth furrow no brow
close your heart, it is blight
toil wracks throat in censored parch.
hallucinations sound reality,
shallow minds reap yes, yes it do
2019
lights bedroom softened
under sheets bird patterned sweet seine-wisher
a tree root bloomed bee storm hardened
busy the loom cracking ocean floor sullen twine hell afixed
ocean working wodan dockside tallies in cuts on oak
masts mind fastened with an oar stiff as night lost
in the veins of the flower in ice
the snow of once there a bit yellow under the
weep of shimmering
shimmering
narwhale murmuring night
folding next all craft ignores
all thrust, brow dull, a keel
making mystery cleave to be known
passed, past taken heart plunder
(2017)
SE Portland
NY in the late 60's
"I just moved to NY in the late 60's
but then $60 a month bought you two rooms
& a bathroom in the kitchen
& two $5 grocery bags"
-----Andrei Codrescu
.jpeg)
____
I met Codrescu in Lawrence, KS, at the Bottleneck, where Robert Creely was doing a poetry reading as part of the River City Reunion, 1987. Codrescu needed a table/chair so he and his lady friend joined me. This occasion was also one of the few times I saw William Burroughs in public there in Lawrence. Butthole Surfers played the Bottleneck a few times I was there in Lawrence, Flaming Lips as well. There were lots of pool tables, the capacity of the Bottleneck was maybe 200, 250. First time on stage there with a mandolin, a friend and I played Friend of the Devil and Mountain Dew. I visited Codrescu in New Orleans, my mom taught undergraduate English in Baton Rouge for a year. We had a beer somewhere. I sent him some poems from Portland and he printed one in Exquisite Corpse. That was the last publishing for me, about 33 years ago.
I have however written several hundred poems since then, and played with some Other beatnik musicians or of their NYC ilk: the Holy Modal Rounders, Steve Weber, Peter Stampfel, Robin Remailly, Roger North, Teddy Deane. And while not a Rounder or NYC, an Unholy Rounder (Have Moicy) Jeffery Fredericks. Jim Boyer invited me onto that gig with Jeffery at the Belmont Inn, when they still had live music there.....like the Bad Livers. Jeffery died a couple years after I met him. Boyer didn't drive, so I drove to get Fredericks (NE Portland?) before the gig and drop him home. He barely fit in the back of my Toyota pickup with its low canopy. He was pretty big. Have Moicy is one of my favorites, and the first Rounders records too.
"NY in the late 60's
but then $60 a month bought you two rooms
& a bathroom in the kitchen
& two $5 grocery bags"
***
It's amusing to think of the Romanian poet perhaps tripping at a Fugs or Rounders hootenanny. Who'd remember.
FLB
SE Portland, Or
Ya get an E fer effort, that fort atop the twig
A for atoned, a tone notto
B for being besides a C
D cider halfwit blended what the F for.
On a mandolin
there are shadow strings
Corresponding mates
of the same note
In tune in tune
with one another
All they require
Is breath of nimble fingers
All they need is space
to fill with innate harmonies
Sweet ingredients! Battle not under The damp sheet
but rise with each yeast’s
Muscle flex, bust the bowl
Be it condo, cave dwelling, or
Californian.
Stroke resonance
Internal& merge,
a bird’s summer hum
(1988, Lawrence Ks.
FLB
Visit St George's by the light of the moon,
if you dare, there in olde Flushing
now surrounded by banks, the Chamber of
Insolence, and varied trees
with the fingerprints of Vikings and feudal serfs.
bring a metal detector
for the silver coffin in which
the blot
god sleeps, a blanket of seeds
up to the eyelids that never close,
watching how slavery on the streets above
has merely molted, shed one outer skin,
and feasts on all makes and models
without the trappings of prejudice
in this dense hamlet of millions,
most diverse melting pot since
the dragon's breath turned all the Old World
to a cauldron of refugees,
pilgrims, migrants, swimming a stew
of gold, wrapped in beaver skinned leggings,
better bowling alleys, more
gruesome ghosts in hollow cold chain,
the burghers good on unleavened bread.
Visit St George's by the dark of the Sun,
there in New Vlissingen, if
you care, and wear the royal blue
once verboten, or the purple and green
of plants bearing our names,
once Latin, once guttural or gestured,
to show how time blooms,
covering the trails past wampum bay
over to the corner of a lot not
desecrated under a cement lid,
pry up the moss and dust off the tardigrade
guards dancing their 8 legged jig
on the silver box,
locked from within with his Captain's
fingernails grown through the inner
hardware, moisture free from 360 years
of held ancient breath, and the
speech Olde Bloetgoet took within his boob,
down to rummage the thousand years
prior, eyes open and a peck of
squash seeds ticking the inner ear,
as the Steeple of St George
heaved to the street, with the usual
superstitions acquainted with phenomena,
there on the corner of Main and 39th,
the top hats all now gone
the tall sails sallied off
the hoop skirts and whalebone dentures done,
seeds still saw
their way out of the garret as
forms of sacrifice, the blot
hanging from the trees riddled with ravens,
the bay fog warm
as it washes inland over stone joke hi-rises
mini-marts and cultural outposts,
championed by the unknown as religious
tolerance, doing unto others
as one would like done to ourselves,
in their tidy life boxes and worthless plots,
the headstones long crumbled
the peg and awl termite known
the keel under repair in a barn half built,
clocks half maintained for the public good
and hourglasses filled
half, in open sesame seeds
1659, Flushing, New Bloggod
"Feudal"
"The most widely held theory was proposed by Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern in 1870, being supported by, amongst others, William Stubbs and Marc Bloch.
Kern derived the word from a putative Frankish term
*fehu-ôd, in which *fehu means "cattle"
and -ôd means "goods", implying
"a moveable object of value."
Bloch explains that by the beginning of the 10th century it was common to value land in monetary terms but to pay for it with moveable objects of equivalent value, such as arms, clothing, horses or food.
This was known as feos, a term that took on the general meaning of paying for something in lieu of money."
was harvey and marvel to the north
not like it mattered to my feet or mind if i wanted thru
their field of cows ever since they shot our dog
when i was a baby or later dad brought home
the squab for mom to bbq i took care of
the anthills with gasoline and firecrackers and cleaned the highway
of empty cans that their weenie dog could get
stuck in they had steep stairs with carpet
across just a ways was the split rail
which had cockfighting in the basement i was told it was
no nonsense on union and 51
where dad put his plants in the pines it was
a marvel no one saw those nocturnal angels
peppered on barn beams
noodled way different not like it mattered
*********
north down union on the gravel road
years of xmas trees, blackberry buckets, barefoot jogs,
magazine subscription cold calls,
learning to drive the datsun wagon,
walks. a backway home, later.
south on union were a few amigos, for a few years.
and the intersection a mile out
where busboys drank, leaning toward insurrection.
late show burdundy,
the scorpions or rush or van halen nothing in a stew of stars
and more oil underfoot than anywhere on planet earth
with our firebird, 280z, porsche, or vega
haunting midnight after work in the country
where headlights say hello a mile before
************
the stansfields had the brick yawn at the foot of the drive
to our three acre hippy haven and owned the
steak lobster coke and shrimp place a hundred yards away
with no windows a cinderblock shelter themed
in spats and formal attire playing joe jackson or count basie
2017
SE PDX
Prep work on the facade of
The guts of the Constitution
In order to farm more perfect
Onions peeled self cries
Under battered halos
The five in one removes loose
Cock a doodle dandy
Greasy handy Donny
Prep the crimson Kremlin carpet
Use a leaf blowhard
Use a rake made of law and steel
Yank the traitor
no mean reward for labours,
i will have no other
as injury to one is an injury to all,
and work its own reward,
writing being a chore
that employs common language
aimed for streams to catch their flaked
golden worthless grains
of solstice sunlight
in okie silos, pipelined vestibules,
into our bodies and cars
on dates
we dine, and on our scars we brag,
missions never accomplished
until our head
drops in the royal bucket
understanding consultations of war
as a drama with consequence,
subjects being citizens,
otherwise known as bleeding heart
livingpoems
whose comprehension escapes me,
as winter sun flies
toward a slack dismissal of fracking
leaving denton
in a future with no water but bottled antipathy
laid off
2014
i feel like a sack of shit slung to plug a levee
(emotions ain't real but they sure are heavy)
boil us down to zinc iron copper
world market dollar eighty scooped from a hopper
in a warehouse built of fractals by god
illusions determine our form of sod
unplowed due to steep rocky terrain
fortify with obstacles the living brain
make thyself indigestible, monkey wrench
the stench associated with the bench
marks proving where turds skidded logs to float
mill jobs to japan in island sized boats
count yer blessings by the ounce and the gram
mineral vegetable mre spam
The dalles, spring 2006
new land of towering tree and bike
hobohippoid redundancies
gentile flawscapes
germymandered boundaries
(regarding decent ineptitude,
old flotsam in sterile barrels
wharves buried on flat quests
slack understanding tall'er not
depending the incoming bullshit
zeno's froze up arrow
false dichotomy in a salad roll
every plebe a grebe on reprieve
heel yes i wear the USA jewelry of poverty
under your alcoved grassy knoll
archie bunker ashtray
2019
Not so long ago yellow meant chicken shit, now
It’s a power color for china toothed execs, canary colored
Ties for banana republic tyrants driving bmws thru
Shuddering morning traffic to get to the golf course where chrome
Bumpered carts await while their children lap-up
Computer generated wet dreams while mom looks like
A million but only pays taxes on 60 thou
While looking like the cat who ate the fiscal coalmine canary
While toting the republic’s banner, their march
Is a synchronized goosestepping thru the flowers of people’s
Park as they once stuffed daisies in soldier’s
Rifles they now feed billions into defense industry trifles,
There’s a chilling draft to these diamond dimpled types
As they draft more efficient ways to avoid taxes
While drafting more efficient ways to imprison while
Drawing-n-quartering the heathen, they have
In fact trashed the mythic american dream by
Enforcing the urine test, spewing out neon radioactive
Clouds, forcing school children to kneel and salute
The cloth, promoting the red scare
And warning the tykes not to take their eyes off the pie
Soon the official color will be apple rot puce
And all will dress officially
While attending state-sanctioned executions and
Abortion clinic blockades, the new order has shed the
Pinstriped gangster suit and invoked the
Fashions of miami vice to cloak
Their savagery in pastels
Lawrence KS 1986
Templin hall, KU
the bars of the fire escape, the glo
of candlestick, other lights as well
mapping, if not betraying the isolation
felt by each who flip the switch
gathering masses and their clumps of autumnal
matter forming green parks
in between what's possibly bothered
now that earth's gone sour
a chest of drawers
thrown from a testament universe that was infantile
in perception and as redundant as what's
been done in
history''s familiar subject kneeling before kings
of money that common enemy
we'd sleep to love with
but perpetually tease with elongated morals
the vision of the plain people
a highway or plug
no fog in the abdomen of san francisco
tho slamming report of night sounds
wrench on the possibility of
daylight's revolution going around the
fred douglas plaza block
to view the project windows we'd dream
the thiebaud perspective of what we all owe
never affording the metaphors of junebugs
fire-retardant in withdrawal
as the game in candlestick
melts our wax
back home in dripping exhaust station wagon Green
rolling down tree-lined eyes
wide as avenues strewn with stars,
their plastic cups of blood
1990 san francisco
FLB
grasshopper on the warm autumn wall, sun
rounding the rough plank
getting painted, perfect leaves
welcome the veneer of human effort,
well until
i come across a squished squirrel in the residential
street, i pull and fling
it by its death costume
to some grassy crevasse
by a fence, that's better.
SE Portland
2019
I woke up in a stupor and my knees weren't even bent
I broke up in a giggle, my jello so content
I'd wore down all my morals till soul was soundly spent
But I couldn't no I wouldn't say please
I hushed up and said grace, gravy on my face
I bashed the party growers, a hardon for a mace
I did my part and meant it when I laid the jail to waste
But fer the photo I did not say cheese
I yessired all the officers and pleaded my case
I drew upon old charm pool, Gibraltar, and my base
I told you when we handcuffed I was hardly chaste
But for the show you were good to go
I splintered up my hangnails, made a picture frame
Glued back my eyelashes, sheltered all the blame
I spoke a long lost fabric and feigned a rabid shame
But I vote not to let my leaves all blow
I felt a lowly vermin and justified the trap
Chewed off my best credit, tourniqueted my SAP
I jettisoned the headache and did a victory lap
But I couldn't purge the file
I dwelled in abject entropy, sponsor keeping dibs
Counted out my morsels as they took my tidbits in
I brung my story to the cave and hollered Drinker's Lib
Then took notice of a big hairy trial
I downplayed all the romance, good times gone as god
I ronnyraygunned memories, said listen to da flood
I swore they were my floatie, my duckie, and my blood
But I didn't mean to mean what they need
They shot me to a forum, put me on a chair
They voted all the dunces inferior at our fair
They falsified my vapidness, called me on the dare
And i spread out all my plummage likes bird
They voted me a heathen a king and a fake
I abstained all over the tally, a consumate rake
All all agreed on one thing and that's thou auto forsake.
But the object of our scorn was divided
I plead the cuss O justice, O freedom and the dunce
Cuss if yer not all of them, Just one you will be once
The game so tidy neat, my football needs no punts
But ya love the drama runback that's provided
2003
The Dalles, Oregon
FLB
the point. there, i've gotten to it. but this is silly...i am embarking
on this poem with the cleanest of objectives, one that squeaks because it must under
the fridge with a broken back and paralyzed mouth slobbering on the fragrant
cheese of dream cartoons, a brie that shimmers in perfection in the army
surplus jacket of bearded mystery, a lindberger stench from under the botox where his
son is wrinklefree in bondage to a television console sans cable, a cheezetwig that
sprouts over the page like a funeral cloak mysteriously unwinding as the zero,
mr. fuckass to you, comes washing in on the beach naked& quoting hisself,
reciting the junkfood of sirens: whoa, that started taking too mush shape,
i need to rewire this beast with goofballs, ride its noxious fuckbluster breath
like a bronco, bottle of exlax in hand, trying to coax out the skittish image
hunched under the fern in the corner---and out one comes as i rattle
its lair, a tornado on fire exploding with purple question marks that all ask
why the edited lady is barbequed on the beach with a baby strugglin
out of the repulsion striding over the hypodermic missles with a
dull black fist branding an x across the scene making us
feel guilty of awareness of bums caught peeing on squawmart making them
pop up like mormons
james brown kisses his self thru the bars aiding in the instruction of
america in some barely knowable way we enjoy, precluding
the faces of children imagined as clouds escaping
unpublishable gusts, no cosmic insight, no nutritional value, no hint of the nature
of hinting no peep into the innards(see them strewn loosely
no nothing save general silliness feigning nothingness just to plead more contest
which is just the point of illumination i accomplished long ago, many
crappy guts ago
Lo, John Brown 1989 Lawrence ks
"and the cut on the brow shall heal no more"
Recalcitrant, a fossil hardened
Out of life's stew
It wore jeans to work they were stiff
Got called contumacious
Had to look it up after heel-kicking
A bust of nero into skeet crumbles
Looking for calcium in the mix
Pigheaded to the end
Which'd not begun depending on
Who gets asked, deep in the dig
2018
I need to bleach my laces
My combat boots all grim
Economy however faces
Budgetary shims
At level ground they appear sound
To parade upon the mall
Upon close inspection repulsion follow
Courtroom charcoals draw
Up near ankle all is tidy
The only rankled are the mighty
What soles real walk
It's corporate sidewalk chalk
Sooner later stitch unwind
I'll barefoot by the beach
Boss will give me gaza
After preaching out a speech
I need to glue my morals
For that I'll need a horse
Our kingdom is over barrels
Oil that powers hearse
My Sunday best for easter brunch
A parasol to thwart the rain
Cherry blossoms confetti visions
Leaving less I need explain
2024
Cody kicked his bucket
But I know knonothow, heard the idle chatter on the last bus home
A gas station guy on the counters other side
He was ringing up beers just yesterday
*
Bussing from the pool over in cheery blossom
Feeling not too bad for Thursday
There at the mall got on the grimnews, out of the mouth of Rene
*
He just die
Just like that
Another hard fact
Just like that
____
Probably the Covid I'd think, he was heavy, 40 in a wide orange vest
Smiling Colorado, a blond ole hick, said he knew
Nostradamus from his history class
Lived at the corn, the unicorn inn, said his nayburr near burnt it up,
He smiled and moved his big ballcap, rubbed his belly
tweren't a flu, twas mounting spew
*
He just die
Just a fact
No more alive
That's where he at
___
Sweating in the field there pump #9
Idaho family gotta make good time,
school starts up and dad's three jobs
Cody wipes his brow, sounds lots like mine
That's why I'm here on the worst damn road,
filling tanks
with petroleum
*
Back inside turn the slushy machine, 20 little cameras record the scene
A maskless montage of death on the go,
poor Cody poor Colorado, we all know
Life in a motel
so far from home, friends to all but close to none
Standing and breathing just hours close passed,
Cody lie still and none soon asked
____
Why we go
Just like that
Leaving no mark
Just an empty ball cap.
SE PDX
Saved two bees
Doing laps in the birdbath
That's my karma
.
Got on hand and knee
To clean our site
That's my karma
Dizzy circles
Around the locks
No tape, karma
Pro pacifist
Pro realist
That's my dharma
2018
born on boughs covering stone harmony hearths
wodan again grins
shakes silver reindeer rattle
cattle mill about stout doors
baby has no use for
as per powerful wont godan giveth thrice
willful in measure to cub size
weaned on mead and teethed on henbane spoons oak
strangling wyrm oz was easy pleased
throwing new scales to sky
his placenta ygdrasill three roots
world tree limbs four stags forage
no den no zen woe then zeus when
eagle-tested one
won another heart riven where thunder fears
unborn strewn for raven mockery assimilation
wolf swallowed good son goddown
born deep browed
chisled soul stone seer
cutting time for hearth food
Aeon dust swirling
in grey gazes bent
6-4-17 Portland Oregon
the old seed bread thrown under the laurels
turns to soil frosting as
onepartoxygentwopartshydrogen
resembles rain in isolation extreme,
from what is read
about that once prolific phenomena,
before droplets in general
were criminalized
and cattle with tubes attached
carry milk straight to the sewer,
as wilbur has a buttermilk bath
and spiders write ads for dirty epitaphs
in the rafters
at the processing plant tossed
out of view from the interstate nearby
5-20-2020
SE Portland
___
"The dart is set up for virginitee;
Cacche whoso may, who renneth best lat see."
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. Virginity is seen a challenge. The prize is set up for virginity, the Wife of Bath says. Catch it whoever can and let’s see who wins it.
___
"Her conscious joy her tail declared"
four hart in a stream owned by tomorrow
whose factory-sluice death runs cold their marrow
three eagles gnaw salmon killed off by tycoons,
ten aeons hence, one mushroom-cloud june,
storm clouds are canned, come popping from nodes
on digital whims and oligarch codes
nine wolves deep cave resting, prowling nocturnal
five winds sub-arctic, hell cats primordial
cubicle glacier, our snowshoe of speed
runs factory precision on table spread greed
a billion tonnes calving but who really counts
our personal souls droppings: a whopping one ounce
floating past gods, their form in the doe
our human waste frozen and nowhere to go
2017
Portland
