Nineline Stanzas

Listening to Irish shanties while drinking American whiskeysours
I can’t handle cheap Scotch on-the-rocks
but I can think fantastic Irish brogue thoughts
of a well researched past I wish I could embrace as my own
all I can attribute to my heritage is cheap tobacco and fruitless wars
so I look to my future
an inspiring thing, unpaved and unpioneered
because to each his own, and for me and my house,
I will choose the one less traveled by

I’m killing myself on whiskey and cigarettes
Slowly, the pace I take to everything
The vices that inspire and protect me
I sit to write with a mere pint
and a pack of 20 aesthetic pre-rolled posthumous butts
(only when the pace changes in my desires)
I curse the millions of attention-grabbing attempts
when I think of my grandfather’s suicide
that robbed me of a childhood under his stern reich

(Brief intermission, boredom, then cough.)

You forget the last things first
with visions of fissions and fusions of childhood and present
clearer than your lover’s words ten minutes past
but in a world of rapid-eye-movements, the two blend together
married into one reoccurring dream
I’m drunk but thinking intricate thoughts
Camel and Marlboro detestities when London exports delicious hand-rolleds
if only I wasn’t so indolent, as America makes everything so easy
with its escalators and AMEX debtmakers

I often speak in accents when talking to myself,—
perhaps I’ve found myself banal
—my vocabulary hackneyed like some dried-up mountain spring
but I repeat shanty lines under futile moonlit skies
that, speaking in terms of sex, will never be brought to fruition
because I’m afraid of the depth her shoulderlenth hair will bring
to a life lacking necessary Hollywood feelings
and the gradual progression of sweater to skin, of Christian to sin
in the pre-ordained, posthumous world in which I unfortunately live.

I don’t have to be awake for eight more hours
so I’ll finish this whiskeysour,
as I think of all the nights falling asleep without gold satin sheets
and without a sober hand to hold through my drunken ramblings
my cigarette is lit with two embers still burning strong
a matchbook struck, burning nineteen would-be unlit matches at once
I’ll turn to mollify the concerns of my loved ones with one strong candle
a relationship glowing guiding lighthouse into the night
I’ll nap, dreaming of cigarettes and sleeping off tomorrow’s shaky hangover

Heading East of the Garden of Eden

A poem about loving, leaving, religion and the inconsiderate movements of a certain lovely lady.


Humankind! You give me the highest highs
in low mountain valleys, in creek-bed sleepyhollows
where I’ll light a campfire and cigarettes
and watch all the embers dissolve at once into the night
(and the Gitche Manitou knows, “there’s no shame in that.”)

I’m heading east of the beguiling garden
east of the promises I’ve promised not to make
to myself or anyone else
east of the potential to mistake sorry for please
because holy heaven’s gatekeeper knows I’m a fuck-up
but everyone is fucked up when the fat boils down, saying collectively,
“There’s no shame in that.”

It’s the springtime river-run glimmering of her lips
that makes this trip seem difficult
this trip I’ve begged from celestial flesh-colored Christs
God, to be torn so evenly
I’m cropped halfway between intimacy with celestial her
and intimacy with the road (and the splintering pickguard of my guitar)
The endless highway speaks to me,
“There’s no shame in that.”

Humankind! Far away from you, and in the hinterlands,
I can sit against rotted oak and appreciate your
idiosyncratic smiles and movements—
speaking specifically now of her
—but when the moments comes, and god! in this segue of sweater to skin
I find myself scraping bare, surrounded by a nicotine cloud,
and found wanting
Allah above! I’ve been weighed on the scales and found wanting
and the Tao Te Ching tells me
“There’s no shame in that.”

I’ll be heading east soon
wandering the lonely cobbled alleys of cities still clinging
to their colonial roots
the roots that shot through the ground and through hearts of men
the sacrifices now seemingly in vain
but when the tires leave rotted rubber against Spring’s morning pavement
nothing is in vain, as your epiphanic glimmering mind clings closely to mine
(I pray through thick clouds of incense to the misunderstood Buddha)
and Ganesha tells me personally

“There’s no shame in that.”

Barista (Working Title)

The sun is setting on 8th & Bannock, the trees all surrounded by
redheaded hippyskirt women embellished with giant necklaces
their faces reflecting the deafening neon of too many choices
simply to find a place for drinking coffee

Although I’ve come to my own conclusions, I can’t help but wonder
how Kerouac or Steinbeck would see this street,
these men and women, winding autumnal spectrums, all in stripe-painted scarves—
What value is the human body when juxtaposed with the air it displaces?
Some, perhaps, more than others?

If I choose one café over another, I can justify my decision
by the smile shining from its charismatic barista;—
watching her rearrange bottles of
organic indigenous one-hundred-percent juices;
the fluid movement of her fingertips
the serpentine shimmering of her lips—
coffee is coffee for a dollar & cents
and I bring my own tea
but I settle for a smile of unfeigned rapture
and the various vases of tropical plants

Bridge.
And then I’m struck, holy goddamn!
with visions of fishermen pulled overboard
by the collaborations of hungry waves
and on point ballerinas lifting their skirts for
alabaster-mouthed four chord melodymakers
who never drink alone but bitch and moan over
collapsed record deals from burnt out basement studios—
marksmen on every rooftop taking shots
at all the passers-by, and from their flasks,
but much to high for their
sultry quips and come-ons to lay rest
in the ears of naïve women seeking
one decent man, unbeknownst to them
that decency was lost in half-assed translation
Bridge end.

You on your bicycle heading away from this prosodic café
your apron dry and hanging in the back room with broken chairs
and jars of arabica beans flown in from the Old World
I’ll be on that return trip to try my luck at serpent-charming
as it seems my charms here fall only on deaf human ears

In this thespian café, people’s actions are marked
by stage directions italicized in surtexts floating about their heads
all colloquies are lip-read by crookneck window-watchers
and everyone is suffering from infectious inner monologues
except this smiling barista whose value is inestimable
when juxtaposed with the air she displaces