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each room

​

In each room there is a rose
that is
every room but yours
a single tulip blooms in place
and perched upon the sill 
is a whippoorwill
who sings low and cries high
it seems as though the day has found the night at last
they've met making allowance for your fowl's lament
and in your stillness
you are mother of the union 
of sun
and of eve

 

​

THE PAPER ROAD

I nodded for your hand
Because there were no maps
and there were no trains
And dreaming lucid has its restrictions
and it borders on insane

I said we came back
because i had messed up, real bad
At this point where you and I
crossed this plane
And then the birds they came out
And it was then it started to rain
And I began to explain
"It took a reoccuring dream for me to realize
That it was me that caused the whole world's pain"
So it was in a dream that we traveled back
To fix this tainted past
Without making a single change

So I wrote the directions on her hand
In words she could understand
"You were the only one that ever mattered
And the only one that would ever get it, anyway"

Where finding the pen is more important
then all the chemicals I could have horded
And the plasma in the veins
are as intoxicating as the day
we set out on the paper road
you know - the one that led us the right way
Because there were no maps
And there were no trains
Dreaming lucid has its restrictions
but has brought us back to today.

 

 

 

 

Shit from Shinola

every other day we'd ride downtown on the EL

back when you could still hop turn-styles

even in the winter; especially in the winter

we'd put on our coats and head out to shop the bakery dumpsters for dinner

there was this one deli where yuppies from different buildings met from seven to seven each day

on the edge of the loop and the gold coast neighborhood

they baked gourmet baguettes and scones and every kind of bread you could imagine

- a lot of these joints now compact their trash,

even back then some would lock their dumpsters

in a world that teaches greed, even their trash is somehow sacred...

however, this particular bakery would toss the extras out every night;

which usually consisted of hefty bags with pounds of good meal, untouched and separated from the store's trash bin bags full of perfectly good half eaten sandwiches

we'd bring home sometimes ten or more pounds of fresh gourmet baked breads, sweet confections, scones and pastries

and the house of 13 to 20 of us would live on that

the slum lord threw us out when he got sick of the health department on his ass

and the clueless jump out boys raiding us over and over

never finding a thing - for all the dope was in our arms by nightfall

nothing ever lasts for any of us,

I suppose

the young poor still manage to navigate across the great divide and gravitate towards each other

and the old poor get too old to move and die alone


we don't know our shit from shinola and neither do they

and I guess it’s for the best

the phone still rings and the old new replaces the new old

and flies – gnats - cipher nectar from our dreams

in a world of cages and emotionally parasitic lives

we still reach into our pockets hoping to find that laundered, crumpled 5 dollar bill with the magical face on it that will hold us on gasoline for just one more day

a crazy hope; penny side up

I miss the scones.

 

 

The romancing of the third

The gray is for those with a kink in their palette –

Or, rather those whose palette stretches wider,

Like a plank

For us you can place just about anything on it,

And for us it is like a buffet of life

But if you choose to indulge in the gray

It must be seasoned – and you must gain knowledge about each and every gray area you choose to traverse

you must know how both the gray that can, or does lean towards the darkness especially behaves

Its utility, if it has one.

And you must romance it... done with great care.

Others may dislike the romancing of the third – the other, the gray…

They see it as glamorizing what should not be glamorized

Or, understanding that often romancing the third also means stroking thy ego

To you I say puritan ideals are worse,

But most that do don’t view themselves as conservative or capable of harsh judgement
 

They find what they do normal, unquestionable,

Those of us who hang onto the third usually are troubled by haunting memories

It is painful to see the next generation go through what you did or do

Especially those that we share blood with

It’s rumored that Doc Holiday on his death bed admitted to his friend Wyatt Earp

the life he really wanted –

 

He was in love with his first cousin, and she was all he ever wanted

you never ever forget unrequited love or a love you couldn’t have for whatever reason

it guides your choices, a cruel fate

that forces the romancing of the third - your only choice left.

 

 

 

today’s shit wit...
WRITER’S BLOCK 14

 

Sleep KILLS the time

between sleeping and dreaming I didn’t sleep so much

thinking of cheap rhymes and cheap puns like that one

and existential bulimic attempts at regurgitation

and rarest of moments of actual inspiration

with alcohol and pills

to beckon the spirit to rattle something worthy

nodding at my desk looks twice my age

with bottle in hand and filled ashcan

and a blank screen still staring at me

is not what I planned tonight

it’s never what I planned

 

this box of a room on floor fourteen

of poorly managed housing

reminds me of cell blocks

screaming at myself “that’s all you’ve got?!”

 

the sky turns green on floor fourteen

go to bed i say,

or make breakfast anyway

​

2018

From Birds Nests

when the moon is full and lays low in the sky

and radio waves thus come cheap

picking them up is not such a task from galaxies away

we should give thanks on these nights

angels and demons both put on faces of sorrow and agree to disagree

and there is at least a margin of light and time open for the spirit to have a spree
with those who have been lucky or intuitive enough to stay alert and awake deep into the night
even foolish drunkards at late night packed saloons can feel a faint chill that something more,
and somebody like them, tickles the dew on grass of both broad prairies and cemeteries little drops of wax cry from the hungry homes of those that wait patiently and with little hope for more as they read songs and stories from bird's nests

these are the night's of days that suggest something more, something much more
when you can feel that the flowers are tired and weak from holding themselves up, but still do so without question,
even the tide whispers its fatigue; and, there is undoubtedly things left for each one of us to do,

down to the tree-trimmers and the diggers of ditches to the poets that offer very little but a hint of metaphorical champagne or,
in the rarest of cases, a bit of anesthesia by means of words

​

we are children

we are its children

​

so stay up late a few more days of the year or perhaps don't, just let luck and fate and what's will is free but less likely - as it must wait,

and hope you catch a snuff of what can never be taught, even here,

and hold onto it until you're behooved to release it to the little sky above,

then cast it free to circle the waves and dots we make out of night and day skies,

release it without regret or impedance,

because not only will this be the more that you become part of everything
but you will understand just a small bit more why the birds sing, and if you're chosen... what they say, particularly during those nights -
those eves when you wonder why they sing at such an hour
in such a strange but wondrous key.​

​

Soadie (poetry version)
Soadie was a boxer with a traveling circus
he was something like a third cousin through marriage to my grandmother
every time he would make his way back home to Chicago
he would stay at her grandmother's house
or “bubba” in Slovak
It was the day's when the circus would have strange and wonderful things like a “take-on-all” boxer
they tossed you a spare pair of gloves if you had the courage and threw you in the ring
if you knocked him out, you won some sort of prize
the crowds would cheer, regardless of the winner,
in the off-skirts of the circus lie dirty pits – muddy garbage strewn backways between tents where all manner of ugly, and disgustingly human things took place
but there were also little boys and girls on their father's shoulders like in the1950s musicals
a time when the upper middle class set more of a wholesome example, at least in public; on the surface (they’ve always been very transparent) – not that the working class needed a model, mind you

depending on the boxer the circus had --
and at the time, and I suppose still, the seedy, strange lifestyle of the circus drew all manners of characters --
including giant, freakishly strong men, hermaphrodites, crossdressers and transexuals (during a time when in the average household such a lifestyle was never spoke of), midgets, hobos and tramps and all brands of transients -- may of
the boxer, however, wasn’t always a giant muscle bound man
It was a time when a bantam weight, like Soadie, who was fast on his feet and cut well muscularly from working random, ever-changing jobs on farms and jobs done for greedy shop keeps or foreman that paid by the amount of stock you moved from the truck - 5 cents half a ton, and your pay was docked for 
tools you never got or needed, and part or all of your pay went right back 
to the company store 
the circus was a place people could be a lot more free
in the ring, most people got beat – never that badly, of course, and, occasionally the boxer would fall to a beast of a man
or a man would pay off the boxer to take a dive in order to impress his date or newlywed,
Or his son or daughter,
All the same.
and that was Soadie
The closest thing my family ever had to a championship boxer

The first thing he would do when he came home was take a picture off of the mantle
and replace it with a posed picture of himself in boxing gloves
holding up his dukes like Jack Dempsey 
despite the fact that this would enrage my great-great grandmother each and every time
“Take that ridiculous photograph off of my mantle, Soadie!” she would holler sternly in Slovak from the upstairs bedroom where she normally was due to her tuberculosis.
My grandmother would visit her Bubba's house 2 houses down when she wasn't taking care of her siblings or doing the wash
or walking miles to cross the creek to the grocer – for her family or for her mother or grandmother who were both ill
though she never spoke ill of him, in her youth, she had been sent by her father on that same errand, except for a half jug of beer and a bottle of whiskey
a task that she once told me would always shame her as she walked through the neighborhood on the return trip home -
you would of thought in that time Soadie would have ended up in some small town, somewhere across the country, like in a random, hardly populated midwestern state like Idaho or Nebraska,
or somewhere out west like along the high banks of Colorado somewhere outside of Denver along the Moffat tunnel – 
that’s it, something like that…
but Soadie had a strange kind of luck
like a cat – always landing on his feet…
instead of passing on away from any family or any place that had even resembled a home for him,
He made it back to the area he had spent the short amount of time when he was away from the transient circus – not that much of the family was ever close to Soadie; the black sheep. He wrote my grandmother’s grandmother before his train left, but she was long gone for many years by that time, having passed from tuberculosis. My uncle – great; uncle - now owned the home
The family knew nothing of his final return from the circus – the letter came the day he arrived, and it was the county that took Soadie in based on past residency
Any woman he had been with had long forgotten him, and any children he may have had he did not know and likely did not want to - although he wasn’t completely a derelict -
Your sociology lecture for the day starts like this…
Soadie was just a person that folks look down on because they’re poor, and don’t have work or a steady labor job all week long
Or a wife and kids
yet the same folks will praise as a good provider the man with the beat red nose from years of being a manageable drunkard who strikes his wife and kids,
because he is at the job site when the work whistle blows every morning Monday through Friday 
It would be a tragedy if not, as his bar tab every Friday and Saturday evening would be in jeopardy of payment
while so many spit in the face of veteran in the wheelchair in skid row with the brown bag holding a half pint of cheap gin, the addict who is absolutely the derelict of the worst kind, and the hobo whose story is not known but presumed or disregarded, 
a hobo who, perhaps, was once married and owned his home until the anti-union boss’s goons kicked in the door in the middle of the night and torched the place, leaving his wife and newborn to perish, and he without a job or home or belongings
Often it’s a combination of these characteristics that make up many of these men,
And women – as poverty doesn’t discriminate
Soadie lived all of his life poor, and lived the best he could in that world

​

​

 

North Stars
Fishermen
And men of the sea
know
that anyone who has ever star gazed
has used the light of Polaris
Mars, hah...
If I try everyday,
I can reach Alpha Centauri
maybe
harnessing tachyons
money and fear and even coexistent free will and fate
needn't motivate our travel as
an ambivalent future texture can... like language vagabonds that drove me to close to madness because I could never fully understand

Even North Stars get lonely
the echoes of the whispers of galaxies
chasing the relaxation of their orbits
to steal just enough time from the cosmos to believe
that the attributed constellations have been frank with them
we close in with our telescopes on clear nights
and though they do not exist for your and my sake, 
light hundreds of years old at last have justice, in our eyes, 
not merely in our eyes but in the perspective of quasars – headed another way, or past us, that is,
and the so-called edges of the universe 
one thing is certain, eventually
even north stars get lonely
stuck like the sparrow who does not migrate
quiet and alone, on a telephone wire beneath an overcast sky - blocking the stars beneath
meaningless words racing between his feet clasped on that wire
in a universe
that has yet to be so vast

​

​

 

 

90/10
She had been a skinny preemie
With short spiky hair when we first met
And I fell in love with her quite instantly – I missed the company.
And we shared our lives in apartments, then hotels.
For 17 years
We got fat and lived on short government money
Her inheritance came the day before she died
I couldn’t be separated from her, 
Not for too long, anyway –
When she left to live in the south for that year
I rescued her from an abusive cousin
Her every fiber of fickle being had to be protected
I hold her notebooks 
Her notes in pencil, her hand made those strokes, it made them,
Her paintings and recordings
She lives through them – never did I understand or agree with that sentiment
but now, I very much see it: especially for the people that knew her; those things left behind jogs their memory, and they begin to think of her

 but what of her when I am gone
And the others that knew her are gone,
And eventually everyone that knew me, knew my experience, they are also gone
What when no one knows me
Unless somehow I achieve a fame, or do something worthy of a footnote in the history books
We’ll remain – on the surface – mediocre 
Is it important to be remembered? Do I need to use fame as someone who desperately fears
my mortality…  and hers,
the question must be asked
Does it matter how many people knew you
Does it matter if your story disappears from “history”
And is she somewhere, or just a whisper, a howl
And, is to be well known simply for the sake of being known by many

You know,
You had no right? Right?
Despite my sensibilities but rather my gut, 
things like “rights” make absolute sense 
when it comes to
your neurosis and thoughtlessness 
Your anxious selfishness you make no attempt to change,
when I thought I couldn’t have more taken from me, You robbed more of her from me when, you washed her blanket
Your inadvertent cruelty caused you to rob me emotionally,
Her skin was in that blanket.
Her smell, traces of her very being.
You blackened my heart a little bit more.
And I will never forget that which you did as I clasp the drawstring of an old tattered robe that belonged to her close to me
Ice cream and tissues for two weeks
Then all should be normal
I’m not trying to complain;
But I can’t talk about the office without doing so
Ice cream 
I should have eaten ice cream with her more
She’d humbly ask me to take her to a popular ice cream shack named Walt’s
It looked like one of those small houses you see in the newspaper once every few years when they recycle special interest dreck
What’s important was that she was always happier when I got myself a small cup of ice cream
Regrets come from strange places 
The plan was – of course - always to go out together
Holding hands with enough score to kill an elephant
Of course that’s only a lie that is told amidst the lies that make the fictitious stories of Hollywood
I have to stick to reality in order to survive as long as I have
The movies and television have given me false hope since my first black and white 13” television 
Feeding me more than just empty materialism and Aristotelian curves
But angst. Lack of hope, and somehow a twisted faith in what are fixed baseball games
You usually can’t successfully plan a dual suicide – in real life something always goes wrong and you end up worse off than you were before- a baseball game, on the other hand, is a cinch to pull off, especially with TV –

Nationalism and pre-paid programming in a figure of speech
And,
Well,
I would have lived – it was a fantasy that would never go right
Waking to find her by my side; like I found her that morning
For as much a tolerance as her little body had
That’s the way it goes
I could nearly see her astral body when she was living
But in death she instead came to me in a dark room with midnight blues
A marriage of what made us 
Lined beds with dark linens
“I’m okay” she said
I don’t recall responding 
But I do recall that dream not being like NO other.
I clasp onto it tightly in my weakness like her clothing and note the difference between my recurrent nightmares and reality

I’ve been to hell; what’s with the shove?
I’ll gladly go back 
Not for you
Or illusions of grandeur 
But I’ve become accustomed to 90/10
I asked for 25
I get dealt around 10 or 11
Which for me is as good as it goes for this life.

 

 

The Safest Way of Dying

In the time it took to understand mortality
The prints would have been done
Plans been made and carried out
The women, men at his bed, all would know when it was time
the smallest of details had not been left out
Cadillac made of serpentine dreams to chauffer him, just this once in life
Of no more hangovers and no more tears
To drive the belts wear musketeer ashes
Imaginary reigns like hooks and sweet smelling pine -
A box no longer than oh, say 6 and a half
It would happen in the fall, not because it was at all a preferred season for him…
It is more because it is a time of death, and October is the month of death.
And babies do whatever the opposite of what they do in the dawn of each new spring
Measured by Technicolor bars to make certain
Just to be sure
That a leak of light wasn’t missed
Each and every corner attended to
An omen die cut into center and bolted on, 
Diving wildly into the stereos in our sleep
The people who truly loved us
As bad as any other mother can
Are all there in part for a fond farewell off to nowhere if in fact that’s where you could be headed
There is no blame in dying
Rather, in a way, there is a spectrum of bells
Lined up like trinkets at a five and dime
An octave carefully placed next to each other by note, neighbors in another time where you may be taken to some other form of night or day; 
Anywhere
Anywhere
I admire her for more reasons than she knows
I toss and turn
Waiting for it to come
Knowing
No, not knowing but believing
That I’ll never stumble upon that formula
For safety, I’ll never stop time
At least relative to me of course
That reoccurring dream will return and return and return
it haunts, as it seems in the moments that it visits me
Until it’s finally taken away and 
I can be alone
Or not
Fate despite the cards stacked against us is always comingled with our aspirations 
Like images, for instance - bumper cars at the fair
They collectively collide and it’s 
Tamed by other’s tracks; 
Badly written letters attempting to get across how sorrowful and glad I really am,

So since the black and white service
No cigarette butts burnt out on their own, and,
No lack of language, that, of course, being redundant, just
Juts of fireflies on Saturdays
Fine Saturday afternoons
With glasses of plum wine and the safety
Confidence in knowing that you’ll be spared, taking pleasure in knowing that you’ll have aide and salvation in
The safest way of dying
Whether it’s in sleep or false light
It will be swift and forgiving
Zen-like, to use the only word I have for it
And no one
No one
Needs to know it at that moment – not even you
But handle the turns like the anti-energy that gets collected along the way and makes time travel possible
The only words I have for it
In the midst of your fierce and painless spin down drains
And then dissipate 
Leaving a clear mist that few souls can smell
As it passes and allows the chance only for a brief moment
As it goes swiftly, fearlessly, and with no compromise
Into the ether and is plainly and mistakenly put
Covering galaxies in a warm womb
Cast off 
To another plane
Another time
Leaving all that clings far behind.

​

​

 

tac

start - tic
toe most cross
cat's eye moss
tac on old man's chair
tic
fracking 
I'll cook
you cool, 
Cool off
father's fool
I'll lose
make you feel better
nine times" the nine rule =
a majority of ties 
Grandpa
that's a cat's eye
Grandpa
FACING tracking
a TIME full of what will be remembered
or a tune
static
end tac

​

 

Sundays at Church

Milky Way buzzards – battalion of our galaxy
Ride naked in celestial bodies on outskirts
When the altitude rises authority is given
For those that dare be allowed
To really find loves of their lives
And instead of souls continuing to crash
Soon to be tax bills that follow occur simultaneously – not all is romantic at once -
At ten and a half percent 
And two hours off a year to drop ballots
Sundays at Church
Mondays alone
Ignoring the amputated neighbors
And drinks all around on payday, all drinks on me
Will never give you the insurance or the assurance
That you’re doing things right
Lingering in the attempts that we could astraly live, and come back or lose our stellar way
Within the linens and lingerie and stained handkerchiefs in the top dresser drawer not folded but tossed in a playful way that gives them a messy organization
This is just the kind of thing that keeps the speed in a glass jar
Leaking sound, fury, and impotence and pleas
To our ancestors to layout, perhaps, a pixilated course
So we can maneuver like goons seeking enlightenment
Sundays at church
Mondays alone
Shaking eating screaming
Denying violence and putting an end to our cap-gun nirvanas
Won’t change your empathy or capacity to kill
Or our domestic electric bills for that matter
But something else may just give you the time to ignore the community that waits for you 
Your water drips again and again and again, which takes skill to ignore
And thieves wear skull caps in your brain resembling dancers to a divine harmony that you can never remember when you wake
Milky Way buzzards take duty,
Sundays at church
Mondays alone.

​

Sundays at Church

Milky Way buzzards – battalion of our galaxy
Ride naked in celestial bodies on outskirts
When the altitude rises authority is given
For those that dare be allowed
To really find loves of their lives
And instead of souls continuing to crash
Soon to be tax bills that follow occur simultaneously – not all is romantic at once -
At ten and a half percent 
And two hours off a year to drop ballots
Sundays at Church
Mondays alone
Ignoring the amputated neighbors
And drinks all around on payday
Will never give you the insurance or the assurance
That you’re doing things right
Lingering in the attempts that we could astraly live, and come back or lose our stellar way
Within the linens and lingerie and stained handkerchiefs in the top dresser drawer not folded but tossed in a playful way that gives them a messy organization
This is just the kind of thing that keeps the speed in a glass jar
Leaking sound, fury, and impotence and pleas
To our ancestors to layout, perhaps, a pixilated course
So we can maneuver like goons seeking enlightenment
Sundays at church
Mondays alone
Shaking eating screaming
Denying violence and putting an end to our cap-gun nirvanas
Won’t change your empathy or capacity to kill
Or our domestic electric bills for that matter
But something else may just give you the time to ignore the community that waits for you 
Your water drips again and again and again, which takes skill to ignore
And thieves wear skull caps in your brain resembling dancers to a divine harmony that you can never remember when you wake
Milky Way buzzards take duty,
Sundays at church
Mondays alone.

 

 

 

aN Apology

this is a poem

of loss

and of heavy laden guilt

written on the side of the road in the early, drizzly twilight -

A poem that tells of how easily I fall in love

and wear my heart on my sleeve; as it's said

This is a poem that is meant to declare

My last breath shall be an Apology.

I have no barter - no currency or resource but love;

and the often-times fickle loyalty that lies beneath

And, much more;

My thin Apologies

A poem of loss and heavy laden guilt

written on the side of the road

In the early twilight

It's a desperate sort of poem

One stripped of any ego

Very naked in manner

With not so much of a begging

but definitely carries with it an air of honest pleading

To live is to hurt

and to heal

one another

over and over again

I feel like I’ve done more than my fair share of hurting

To live on this plane

is to shake

and it is to tremble

It is to recognize your fear

And the awful things it does,

or compels one another to do.

The truly courageous, is the person that can defy their fear in spite of their trembling,

and love without condition

Not in denial of but love in spite of fear

And though it may seem as an act of cowardice in the context of all that has been said and written, not in haste,

My final apologetic breeze is for those I've missed

whether or not they have recognized my unspoken; still largely unspoken

amends,

It is in the spirit of thankfulness

that I decide to use this -

last god given breath

to apologize

My last breath is not a Direct proclamation of love

For that which is already obvious and already known

But moreso, indignant

That is, to say, your forgiveness and peace is more important to me

Than my in part selfish love for you

It is more important to me than the selfishness of my own salvation

And now I shall cease, at the risk of sounding righteous or with lack of humility

And simply say

With this breath, and written on my last heartbeat

Forgive Me And,

perhaps as I ponder

More importantly

Thank you, despite all

 

 

the zero zero mark

I am standing
at the zero zero mark
in the middle of the intersection
Thousands of blocks to the north of me;
to the west,
to the east,
and to the south
people live, work, sweat, charm, suffer
right now,
i am at the zero zero mark
wondering why
searching for significance 
at a human made center of a metropolis
i am at the zero zero mark
an ambivalent ambiguous anomaly

neither east
nor west
nor north
nor south
but,
I must face one direction
even at the zero zero mark,
with my back to another

 

 

THE FIRST DAY I WAS BORN

An angel flew too low,

and she chased away my blues,

as Willie Nelson once said,

“I stitched up her broken wing,

and tried to keep her spirits up, and her fever down.”

She came in January. The very day of my birth,

on the first of the new year; my birthday.

the first day of my life.

18 seasons later, she left in October,

The month of rebirth and loss of everyone and all I've ever loved

Oh the guilt,

Oh the doubt in Faith,

But her visits soothed my shattered half spirit

And for one night we were one again

Most folks don't get that, child

no, no... most folks don't get that.

I've learned finally what I always believed

Altruism is real,

When I spoke loudly, I'd give my soul for you

My existence,

Without a second thought

Why you had to go I only partially know

And I'll speak simply,

directly,

except on rainy days

I'll write of you as I often write,

With anapestic hope

I'll speak of dreams and scapes

and siphoning color

moffet, and;

as the Spirit moves,

the charms on my sleeve.

 

24 frames (p/sec)
I still long for my childhood bedroom
Which I lived in until my late teens
I dream of it and I’m in it every nite 
From the stairs of plush carpet, that led
To the switch
With the black and white mickey mouse
Reminding you not to forget to turn off the lights
That was carefully installed by a young father
I dream that I’m in that bed 
Instead of where I am
Everyday.

When that house was sold
It was there that a fissure opened 
Between what was home
And the young conviction that I was going to be different than what I became

Everything I had I saved but couldn’t keep
Is in that house, mostly in that room
Where I could smell the coffee percolating and tobacco being smoked
In the safety of my warm bed above the kitchen

I have so many documents in all forms of that house and that room
From mementos to the very bed I slept in to the desk I wrote on to the notebooks and books that lined the shelves to the crafts my mother delicately painted for me to the clothes she tailored for me
I am the nostalgic type
Sentimentality and even deeper longings often get mistaken for hording or even worse materialism
My mind’s ghost of the one that got away also lives in that house
Though she only visited it once or twice -
The house ironically became not my home but the new home of some unknown buyer
The same year 
When the fissure opened and she left my life forever

I know what I am medicating now… 
but I haven’t a clue what drove me to medicate then
And drive myself away from her, from my films, and from my family
The truth lies in some of the poems, but, mostly,
The truth lies in a tin
With a 16mm film titled Franco
The only copy as it was shot b&w reversal with no existing negative
a film made long before the fissure opened the giant gap between who I was supposed to be and who I became
made before
as if I had some inside knowledge, insight or intuition as to what were to happen to me,
At the time,
What I wanted to happen – 
Unfortunately, my insight robbed me of foresight,
Something I have always discarded;
the only copy, spliced together…
I have no working 16mm projector to view it or show it… just an old antique that I have forgotten how to operate.
Moving pictures make longing and emptiness where something once shimmered
That room is more than just an unreachable retreat to my past
But represents everything before regret
Everything that was young
And the brightness of our eyes
Everything that came before all the things that I can no longer fix or even mend
When new daylight through windows was welcome each morning
I dream,
I romanticize my longing as the only way to cope with it
I try to repeat the past and quote Faulkner for my own convenience
that the past is never really over, it is not even passed
And so that becomes, of course, this author’s self-fulfilling prophecy
Reinvent home and when you love something

it is better to leave it undocumented, aside from within the fragile mind, and to hold onto it
Then to be self-aware that we each live in a poem
You’ll be left spinning in a projector’s take-up reel, its end flapping every 24 frames 
For each second that passes

 

Memories in soft focus and guided intuition
I bear, solely I think, the esoteric memory of that which embodies the climax of my youth
The memory itself is nothing that would be considered fantastic;
but this seemingly prosaic recall stands out as some kind of pinnacle
Long before too many jail cels, too many collapsed veins and too many friends taken away by prison, institutions, and death: playing with our delicate mortality
It takes place in a mildly but perfectly sunlit afternoon room with hardwood flooring on the third floor of a 4 flat apartment building on the west side of Chicago
Nestled between a 3 story greystone and a redbrick frank loyd wright styled home that stuck out like a sore thumb
Separated by gangways used as hideouts and stash spots for the heroin dealers below
smaller but much nicer than the storefront just east rented beforehand by one of the city’s many slumlords that prey on the young careless and poor

Lying on the floor with my back haunched against the southern wall of the rectangular “master” bedroom
Spacious but with random items like makeup, syringes, books and composition notebooks owning and disheveling the room
I had finished my schooling, and was among other orphans that were 1 to 10 years younger
And were desperately trying to do what they were ‘supposed to do’
Addiction makes room for virtually nothing else… A full time job that does not pay unless you
   consider theft payment
Payment that doesn’t get budgeted; not well, anyway

The warm comfort of forced dopamine that mimics the womb
And the implied sex from the soft dark skinned friend sitting in the room’s only comfortable armchair, orphaned from its counterparts - a plush, brown squat chair, whose wideness was just shy of a love seat, 
Who at the time was making me a bracelet from old leather and studded pins
It – the armchair, that is, is misplaced on the western wall, and, ah,
The sensory of the images coming from the small, 13” tube television
displaying young images of Jello Biafra and the dead Kennedys
As I nod into blissful, dreamless sleep next to my best friend Andy
A gentle and empathic type with homemade clothes and wild hair that was simultaneously unscrupulous and effortlessly genuine.
Kiki, whose bedroom we gathered in and inhabited, was the Madam George of the sad operation, the queen…
Filled with persona and a rudeness she exaggerated but that you had to respect, lacking in other charms. But she was a whip, her time ran up too soon but that is another story to tell.

Maybe it was the euphoria. Maybe there was more that forces such a memory to stand out from others occurring there than I realized. I think, however, its one of those memories that was extra-sensory even if you were tranquil and sedate, so you remember it hoping that it will somehow represent that time in your life, though you had a lot more misery, and that’s why the lie is more comfortable
I’m afraid I’m the only bearer of this random memory as it holds not the same if any significance to the other people there
memories, good and bad and they lace the songs and poems I write

Hopping from memory to memory as though they are housed randomly along the water like the wreckage of a ship, or errant lily pads
Even moreso, like some lonely seagull that decided he’d leave his flock for no good reason but an anxiousness it didn’t understand, and he hops from shrapnel to shrapnel in such a wreck
Representing all, but resembling very little
They are just close enough to barely jump between
many have broken glass
The leftover of a wreck that wasn’t even a part of the bird’s life
It just came along, shattered by a documentarian’s carelessness.
One can try and fool their consciousness by allowing my sub-conscious to take over for a moment of sleep, of nodding now –
The only times between nods that are -peaceful is when you know you’re going to nod right back off again,
any real relief is narrow; like a dusty crawl space 
and of course longings to keep our deep voids from haunting us keep us on this back and forth 
    path
zIt’s the only way I know how to ignore 
Another but this time final, next morning of dirty seasick green dishes and party fowls
Mourning
Funny how I can strip so effortlessly something that which, for most intents and purposes, 

I can document with words and voice notes, audio and writing
Even Films… their institutions, especially hollywood tainted that love for me
But without a lens glued to my eye, I cannot capture so perfectly the eyes of the child I saw today 
We’re indeed very lost…
Speak for yourself, chom,
But I can still smell faintly the flowers
Feel the water  
To this day living a form of a Dichotomy of addiction and life with a muse
Visiting food banks, churches, I was on the right side of the stained glass to get a ticket to the pantry’s line today,
The giant gothic building staring down at me.
The right side of the stained glass.

This is not a lament, but a wonder,
What’s it like to be judged like a piece of still art statically moving up and down in an elevator? 
I wouldn’t advise it as they are usually an awful peachy affair texturized painting of a vase and flowers
Looked past, meant to be looked past, but looked at just for a moment because they are a hideous reminder
Of the questions we should be asking –
Why am I here in this building, in this elevator, and why am I headed for a 13th floor apartment because I have no imagination…

Given just enough time to be considerate of such things
Sitting waiting for a correction from lowercase to capital that will never occur

I think, I’m living. My mother still calls me and most of the trees grow. I am graced to take each day with the disposition, even if it is sometimes feigned, that the possibility exists for joy.

 

the midwest 
land of the coyotes
an urban failure full of urban decay
we keep each other warm in our beautiful run down home
and listen to them howl at night
a contradiction to those who hear them for the first time
“What is that?!”
“hmmh?”

“That! What was that?!”
“Really? That’s a coyote, sweetie.”
In some ways, they are even wiser than the wolf
A working class counterpart
gentrified aside the poor stricken human
they exist as if the world were not going to end
and I admire them for that

 

Memory III (In fear of loss)

I want it to be remembered,
That my grandfather was a self-taught watchmaker
And a marksman and horseshoe champion
And a farmer from the city
And kind and strong
my other grandpa and grandma laid the bricks of their own house
and grandpa ice fished
I want it to be remembered
That on new year’s eve at midnight
We beat on pots and pans with wooden spoons
And played the kazoo,
Because those were our noise makers
Seeing Butch Cassidy on the silver screen with my mother and brother
seeing john prine at the rialto with my father
Making snow furniture with my best friend
All of the things I think of everyday
That I reminisce with my family
I want to pass this all down
To the children I do not have
All I have is paper
And no notoriety
A memoir simply won’t due
I stare at that Faulkner quote everyday
And I believe it
It inspires me, it holds me back, pushes me forward, and today I see the holes in it
What shall I do
But continue to write, hope and stack new memories, though most of my existence is now sheltered in a corner... cages...
These will exist forever in the river sediment that flows throughout history
Or the cosmos – not good enough for me?
I am afraid, my will is wounded,
And so I kneel
Self-medicate
And will continue to document
Regardless of this text
Because I was told to
A documenter with too much sentiment, more than I can take
and a map lover,
a swimmer,
a hiker
I love stickers
Miniatures
Snow globes
canes
Old things and old stories
art and logic
A poet
a card player
An activist…. 

I drew mazes when I was a kid when I made birthday cards
I try and I try to enjoy 
Memory
I write it to give it dignity,
To ease my fear of forgetting and of being forgotten
But even more so the fear of loss,
And know for now
The memories can rest on paper
Instead of my mind
Pictures, audio, video, Neptune,
I cannot let go.
Although,
I do live for the moment, that much I know, because I neglect my future each day,
The delicate relationship between memory and documentation
Hangs in the balance of time’s fog – that which obscures memory
What for
Its all existing somewhere,
Waiting.

 

The Ice Fisherman
The banks of the frozen river
A man is ice fishing alone
With no shanty
No tent
No tarp
 
A drilled hole
And a fishing pole
A dip of snuff
No fellow fisherman or land for hundreds of yards
 
The perch was good that year,
And so were the books
That was the last year he ice fished
 
Don’t worry, nothing is ever lost
It is etched, not written, not written,
In time,
Storytell for you and I
And the allergist
Will do his tests
Just the same
Home is sublime
 
The fisherman
Alone
Needs no satellite beam
 
No shanty
No tent
No tarp
But snuff
A drill
And a pole.

Just a longing, an anxiousness
to catch the unknown 
perhaps a rainbow trout that leads to the discovery of himself
or a magical bluegill
from Our Perspective
they are seemingly trapped under the ice
and mere prayer won't melt ice
or catch fish
if you include desire in that stew though
you have
That old man 
a character
pondering his being.

 

 

the el rancho raids
the latino families in the neighborhood, who had lived there for many years
deemed us "the orphans"
because they saw young kids - as young as 15 and as old as 21 - coming in and out of what they knew was a slum, run by a slum lord
an old storefront was our facade, it read "El Rancho Supermercado"
so we forever became known as the el rancho orphans, or, ERO for short
ERO became an infamous punk house next to the now renovated Congress Theatre
we drew too much attention
from roasting a pig in the basement 
to the traffic of anywhere between 13 and 20 of us at any given time
we became a target for the law dogs
there were some crack heads in the neighborhood that we would let in for a place to smoke,
provided they share with whoever wanted in, of course
this caught the detectives' eyes
and they started to watch the neighborhood crack heads come in and out of the 
     el rancho
in the cop mind, this indicates a dealer
they were wrong of course
the front door was always unlocked except sometimes late at night
the big boys didn't bother checking that of course
they kicked the door like real heroes
guns drawn, shouting expletives
they didn't have enough cuffs to even consider cuffing us all, so they had everyone lay on the floor
when they first came in, I was in my makeshift room,
which they kicked the door into, his glock at point blank range to my head
they found nothing that day
and the place was already a mess, so they left red faced - one of the best things for them is kicking shit over and making a mess
in fact, we kept the place such a mess, they'd never bother to look through anything
it should have become obvious to them that we were just a bunch of poor, junkie kids
but these boys didn't want to waddle back to their commander with their thumb up their ass
so the night I overdosed - before we kept nalaxone given to us by the needle exchange's any positive change program
and administered what the paramedics use ourselves
an ambulance was called
kiki and j2k came to pick me up - we were family anyway you looked at it
when i got back from the hospital
i discovered big boy and his goons had come back again right after the ambulance left
this time they got to kick something over - my shelf with my music recording equipment on it
it caused some dings, but no casualties
so i was glad they got to have their fun
not actually – I suppose I’d like to be that free spirited, but in reality
I don’t wish them 
it was business as usual after they left and i got back and they told me the story
the warriors was on one of the four tvs stacked on top of one another in a square
and kiki and me fell asleep in my bed
love is in many places
wherever people are, and whatever kind of people they may be.

 

Sediment

Time is exponentially dimensional, and functions like that of a river,
everything put in the river stays there.
And as we tread through, on our own journey -
We often pick up what persons left long ago, as it had utility for them, now it has utility for us, and we too carry it down the river until we no longer need it
And all the sediment in the river of time works this way…
Some attracts moss over time, a metaphor I suppose worthy of its own thought
Something in the river from long long ago can be jostled loose by the flow of the stream, and head upstream to someone’s present;
And the sediment has use once again

it always had use, actually, according to its own fate
We may even use something that a great great grandparent had once used; without ever knowing it:
Was it their words, or an idea, that we found resourceful and useful or even something tangible that had once touched their hands or had been “owned” by them

on the other hand;
harness the river against one another,
and,
one more cry is bound to dry up this forsaken riverbed.
the town will go thirsty,
and it will all come down on me -
no mercy will be shown...  I won't be crucified swiftly.
they will throw the sediment at my back when I am not looking and run away
and are too lazy, afraid, and too damned stubborn to walk the extra mile uphill to the flowing creek
so I load these stones instead over my already arched back
my will will dry up before this river, 
because
they have made me just as stubborn as they are.

When I pass and enter the astral part of my river – a branch of marvelous, endless proportions
I will tread as I am destined to.
And I will know this is the case, however,
The feeling of being in control – or rather, an even better, more righteous, virtuous feeling
That of being in the right place,
The right time,
And making all the correct decisions,
Shall fall over me
The sediment will act as nutrients, all which has been cleansed by the source water
Court, is expelled - there are no judgements, not even that of your own or that which flows from the Source.

An analogy for what you will best benefit from if you so choose

 

 

Robbin' in the Hood at 8
At the bus stop in 2nd grade there was a foreclosed house up for sale by the bank
no one ever came by there, especially early in the morning when we'd wait for our notoriously late bus driver
every day we'd work a little more at busting into that house
and sneak cigarettes back when the liquor store on route 30 would sell them to a new born
i hated banks at 8, i just didn't know it yet.
the day we got inside was the day they discovered we we're young criminals,
and they moved our bus stop
the look on the cop’s face was one that said “I wish these weren’t kids. I could do more than give them a stern talking to.”
(my straight A's throughout my academic life got me out of a lot of trouble, at least until college)

tony and i would run around the upper middle class neighborhood with the Victorian homes
with our air pistols packed with the hollowed out, pointed lead pellets, and new Co2 cartridges
and fire at beautiful ten foot picture windows
one less Christmas present for Johnny to fix the picture window

On Getting out of Precinct Jail

When you get out of a precinct jail in any major city...

For all of the damned paperwork that they scrutinize over for a petty drunk tank misdemeanor 
All the seemingly important Official mess
stamps and officer signatures and 7 carbon copy forms 
the last three are illegible, 
the one you get is on the bottom and therefore blank
and some cop that didn't even arrest you or at the scene for that matter is typing up the details  
on a typewriter
Upon finally getting out of precinct jail –
(that is, of course, if you don't get paddied into county jail)
It always feels so unbelievably and un-official despite all that typing
You are always dumped out
Of some back door
Never really sure exactly when you’re "officially" free to go, 
nothing officiated 
once you're outside
Wearing that obvious big fat sign that says 'I just got of jail' clear across your face
And carrying an equally large uncertainty
Of what and where the hell am I to go and to do
You roll a cigarette and light it on the rare occasions you are lucky enough to get your belongings back, to boot on the even 
    rarer occasion
that you had squares or a pouch of loose tobacco and roll ups with you when you got officially rough housed and picked up,
    and the included rare occasion that they didn't steal them ---
and you're treated like a loaded gun while incarcerated, but it's all for show. When they let you loose,

you're treated more like 

a rotten orange peel picked off of the floor and tossed into the garbage, and that's quite close to what you feel like
they've already stripped you of your dignity, you've nothing to lose
if I was the cop I'd instead be on my guard upon your release 
that's a helluva lot of UNOFFICIAL variables, you know, in case you've never been locked up...

And
cigarette or not
You're
Still wondering if the boys (and I do mean boys, much like the adult schoolyard bully) are going to jump out any minute
With their clubs and their guns and shout
“just where the hell do you think you're going?!”
and one of them sports a grin that tells all - a very official grin that says "just kidding, sucker!"
And if it's never actually happened to you, you know that they've played that racket on plenty - 
whether you're green to jail or an accomplished arrestee

And back in cement cell with a 6"x6" window you would go
With no idea of what’s next, Never an idea of anything in jail, well,

~ no matter what the crime or how much time has passed,
you have no right to knowledge of your future while in a cage
you spend a lot of your time just waiting in jail. and your own thoughts with no distractions,
they're enough to drive any man or woman wild, crazy wild,
unless you have money
You just sit with no shoelaces
no belt to hang yourself with, as if you had a hook
stripped of pride and de-accessorized
totally detoxified of most surface and beyond that which made you feel a sense of decency? dignity? humanity? 
unity? 
back in one filter
it's a supplement many cannot do without 
love your neighbor until he locks you up in a cage because that's what the so-called law says and that's the monkey man job he took from the straw men.
No good at 'tall

 

humble beginnings
every asshole comes from humble beginnings

instead of just being proud of the good things about their background – their roots -
jamokes can’t help but claim to have come from little money when that’s not the case...
some are ashamed... perhaps they should be.
Or, they are pleased to learn that their grandparents or grandparent’s grandparents were poor
It’s like a ping pong game of find the relative(s) you feel comfortable sharing about.

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Vultures

I’ve seen Babies held ransom for drug money
I’ve found myself in the middle of crossfire running

a woman dragged out of a moving car by her braids 
In the broad day light of an Easter Sunday

I’ve known women raped with brooms
In backdoor afternoons

Had Cops barged in with guns ready to blaze 
Into my home in pointless raids

Batons on my legs and cold steel loaded at my head
when just sitting in my bed

and Lost countless numbers of some of the best people I’ve known
to accidental intravenous overdose

I’ve seen last breaths taken
and I’ve restarted hearts that stopped beating
Even as a child I watched as my grandfather took his very last breath
At that age I prayed I would never again see death

I’ve bought tar in Mexico
without caution from a dark skinned man
who used a 9 year old’s training bra
to deliver dope on demand

Traveling the states by counterfeit bus passes
Freights and passenger trains
Gone to jail in nowhere because of hunger
And sick from a disease of compulsion, tolerance, stolen will, withdrawal and need

Can you see the burns in the floor?
While the crack man knocks on a nursing woman’s door

I’ve fought jail, I’ve fought rain,
I’ve swallowed nails to hop trains

I’ve used my one call to hear my grandmother’s voice
not speaking of where or how I was, trying to muffle the noise

I’ve seen men beat bloody, 
and those that freeze to death, 

I’ve proven myself with tracks
I’ve survived hard, stepped on smack

Vomit in cold 6x6 cement cells
Shooting galleries next to unused rails

I held my lover in my arms at her death
I gave her one last kiss while trying to give her lungs breath

Rotten Cotton fever filled my body with pain
on more than one occasion it has scarred my brain 
To hell and back, I was certain nothing was worse
until I seizured from the wonder of the dependency on CNS depressants curse

Kilos are ground with cheap coffee grinders
if you knew and liked to forget I’ll serve as your reminder

Later I was a lookout man in a rental car painted dark black
Kilos and bullets in a duffel sack in the back, 
one instance from gunfire we ran
One did not survive 
I’ve cursed that intersection as hardly as I can

The needle in the hay has murdered us
and for a very few another needle ebbed us back
Home grown CPR and that rig filled with synthesized narcon
Instead of the dope that catered those arm length tracks

The best thing a church ever gave me Was a place to sleep
Of course it was abandoned, set for demolition the next week 

The slums never told me that a recession had ended
Neither did the slum lords who rented

Now I beat the broom on the floor of housing
To the crack house upstairs on floor 14

I can’t forgive myself for the theft and lies
though there are snipers and dirty spies

Those who do not have a heart or brain
Are those who control and do not care

My mother once told me
That the vultures that circle round
Do not wait for death
But for the soul to leave the ground

That is the only way they all know when
That it is time to feast and descend

They could finish the deed and peck out the eyes
And feed themselves before the flies
But pause in their somber role and spherical ritual for the passing on
In a patient circle in the skies

I, too, have seen grace, I’ve seen love
Reverence soak up the blood
happiness, dualities gone right
Non-violence triumph over men who fight

the sound and the fury rest, neighbors, rejoice
for this has been my life –
the one that I know best

unity, humane acts gone wrong but some gone right
the butterfly effect through the earth’s spider web they do race,
unfathomable glorious numbers, even to the most “genius” mathematic scholars, 
they are impossible to trace
it took almost 4 decades to understand faith

blind faith is redundant
even bartering or sacrificing or buying one another’s salvation
is simpler when you have been granted a granule of revelation

and the vultures will still always circle their food
as it is something very different than prey
it is their daily bread that they show an intrinsic gratitude for
if I sound too holy or righteous find a mirror and pray

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​

Behind my ears

I washed behind my ears 
As I always do now, when I bathe, it's become natural
She always reminded me to wash behind my ears
She does not exist as a painting or memory in my mind or heart
I’m quite inclined to tear your heart out if you suggest that she lives on through memory
she exists in the very core of my being
And beyond
I used to tell you, as did you tell me,
“I love you more than life”
In truth,
I love you more than that.
As I’ve spoken to many poems I’ve written to you,
I would give my very existence to ensure yours
And your salvation
I live on for you.

Hey honey.
My angel that flew too close to the ground.
angel baby.
The night you passed seemed so God damned perfect
Is that all I get?
I’ll keep sticking around,
Until it is time for flesh to be buried in the ground or strewn about town
And love you with every stitch and seam and broken down stained cigarette burned dream,
I love you angel baby.

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 © jamie michael albert

 

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