girls hissed
I dreamt
the old couple next door
men without women
the “Beats”
hurry slowly
hello and goodbye
I will never have
a house in the valley
with little stone men
on the lawn.
don’t call me, I’ll call you
taking the 8 count
going going gone
this is where they come for what’s left of your soul
hot night
the x-bum
something cares
my cats
6:30 a.m.
what I need
gender benders
after many nights
good morning, how are you?
a reader of my work
Sumatra Cum Laude
the disease of existence
another comeback
two nights before my 72nd birthday
have we come to this?
old poem
older
closing time
no leaders, please
everything hurts
husk
my song
cancer
blue
twilight musings
mind and heart
welcome to my wormy hell.
the music grinds off-key.
fish eyes watch from the wall.
this is where the last happy shot was
fired.
the mind snaps closed
like a mind snapping
closed.
we need to discover a new will and a new
way.
we’re stuck here now
listening to the laughter of the
gods.
my temples ache with the fact of
the facts.
I get up, move about, scratch
myself.
I’m a pawn.
I am a hungry prayer.
my wormy hell welcomes you.
hello. hello there. come in, come on in!
plenty of room here for us all,
sucker.
we can only blame ourselves so
come sit with me in the dark.
it’s half-past
nowhere
everywhere.
long ago, oh so long ago, when
I was trying to write short stories
and there was one little magazine which printed
decent stuff
and the lady editor there usually sent me
encouraging rejection slips
so I made a point to
read her monthly magazine in the public
library.
I noticed that she began to feature
the same writer
for the lead story each
month and
it pissed me off because I thought that I could
write better than that
fellow.
his work was facile and bright but it had no
edge.
you could tell that he had never had his nose rubbed into
life, he had just
glided over it.
next thing I knew, this ice-skater-of-a-writer was
famous.
he had begun as a copy boy
on one of the big New York
magazines
(how the hell do you get one of those
jobs?)
then he began appearing in some of the best
ladies’ magazines
and
