The Passing

He wears
a pistol
low
on his hip.
Riding
tall
on a snorting
black beast.
Easily.
Wrinkled
vision sweeping
purple horizon,
gently waving
back to him.
The rhythm
of shod feet
rocking him
as a babe
cradled.
Only sand
and scorpions
note
his passing.

In Time

I am fettered
as Prometheus
to a mountain
of the past
My sobriety
or the chance of it
a spider web
gossamer
It cannot
hold me
Only surrender can
put up a fight
and at times
I haven't got it
in me
I pray for pain
for weakness
to live in his strength
To live
and cease to run
riot
to live and to die
a better man

recovered in time

My Soul Laughing

The Devil
rides in a
drop top Cadillac
looking
to and fro
for trouble.
She has
bare feet
and red painted toes.
The sun kisses
strawberry locks
curling,

crashing,

dripping,


down onto a faded
Grateful Dead T.
She smiles
at me,
cinder black heart.
I burst into flames.
I want to run
to her.
Fight for
her. Kill
for her.

And she eats my soul laughing.

Back from rehab

I was so anxious to get here this morning that I forgot my notes but I really enjoyed my experience and will write a little more about it in the next few days. If I never wanted to get clean it would have been worthwhile for the rich material that I gleaned from the lives of my peers! :)

today i go to rehab

today i go to rehab. likely that is not true. this is saturday and i probably wont get in for at least a couple of more days. but the process has begun. i am resigned to the fact. a wonderful dear friend has recommended that i stay with her for the next couple of days. she is an older women and kind in that way that seems to have escaped my generation. our mutual love of reading and writing poetry was the catalyst of our friendship. she happens to be the president of the river market poets, the first time i met her i knew that she was special ( indeed they all were so warm ), i was sober that day but did not like it and made no bones about who and what i was. i had been concerned that they might not like my stuff- and almost sure i wouldn't like theirs, probably all couplets about kittens and afghans. like so many other things,i was wrong about that too. so when i got out of jail their were hundreds of emails waiting for me, concerned about me, and hers among them. i will go spend some time with Marcia today, soon i will be in rehab

Tramps

whiskey hard men
square grey chins
shuck and jive and laugh

like peter pans band
like boys lost in time

pulpit pounding gestures
a revival of spirit
malt liquor communion

nicotine smiles
and sun washed faces
handsome and strong

standing on corners
drinking
from brown paper sacks

enjoying the moment
only the moment

shrugging off the past
and troubled tomorrows
like yesterdays shirt

headlights and halos

The tips of thumb and forefinger

Stained brown from smoking

Other peoples castoffs



Drizzling rain falls gently

Changing the days perception

To that of a dream


I stop and watch a girl

In mukluks and a miniskirt

Hurry into 501 Markham


Crossing Broadway looking

Ahead headlights and halos

Rush toward me


I pick up the pace

A little and wince at the

Painful blister on the


Heel of my

Soul

A Boones Farm song

serenades us

as we stand outside

a mom and pop store



in the same

neighborhood

that our parents

first kissed



its hard to dance

When your

drunk and there

is no music



but we would

be in love

so very

badly


lustful youth

lingering kisses

sidewalks

and spring

Play For Me

The trains
Play for me
At night as I
Lay in melancholy

Some predictably
Like Johnny Cash
Others with head swaying
From side to side

Urge me on Jack
And never come back
In the voice of
Ol blind Ray

chunka chunka
clackity
chaunka clackity
clack

I lay keeping time
With my pen tapping
To the trains
And the great songs

Gone by

I got up this morning feeling down. My bedroll faces the rising sun and the thin nylon walls of my relatively new home do little to soften the first lights assault on my whiskey pounding eyeballs. Charlie had left with everything he owned in the middle of the night after I spoke maybe a little to harshly, but he is a surly son of a bitch when he consumes large amounts of cheap Vodka and I already had a headache building from the T.W. that I had drank that day. Babs was gone , he leaves every day at about five A.M. to go and catch out at the day labor place. It was still pretty chilly but I decided not to wear long sleeves I had left a sweater on some church steps yesterday when I got warm so I figured today wouldn't be much different and I just don't have the clothes to keep that up long. I dug around and found some of those little doughnuts that have the waxy chocolate on the outside, but their was no water left so I didn't eat them. Stepping out of the tent into the day, I listened to the sounds of squirrels and birds and dry leaves blowing across the ground and started towards the River Market area. I passed through the train station parking lot with only a brief dirty look from the security guy so I figure things are looking up. After a couple of blocks I pass by the Sally where the last of the gang that comes to eat breakfast most days are standing around involved each of them in their own thoughts and conversations, save one, who shouts out to me asking if I would like a boiled egg. The Salvation Army serves them most days, so I say sure and think of the goodness that still surprises me sometimes in my fellow man. I see a couple of guys that I know on the opposite corner I will let them remain anonymous since one of them works in the Sally and the other sells crack cocaine out front and it would be at the least social faux pas I believe if I named them. Maybe even life threatening. They were smoking a joint and shared it with me. So by now I had no doubt about it, things were looking up. I walked a couple of more blocks and found a coffee cup from a joint at the Market that features free refills, in this case totally free. Enjoyed a cup of joe, walked into the library and kicked it with The Rolling Stones, had a couple of bowls of soup for lunch, grabbed some clean clothes at the clothes closet for my Poets Roundtable meeting on Saturday, then I hear that Charlie caught out today at the day labor place so there will be twice the money for dope and booze tonight. That is if he is not still mad at me. I don't imagine he will be though- things are looking up.

Typical mouthwash warning label: In case of accidental ingestion, seek professional assistance or contact a poison control center.

" I wish they had told me that it would kill me forty years ago"-Mouthwash Jimmy

Mouthwash Jimmy is a friend of mine. His camp is just a stones throw away from mine. Jimmy is among other things a drunk. He is maybe one of the nicest and smartest people I know. I have only seen him drunk on a couple of rare occasions, but there is no doubt that he does enjoy drinking when you see his weathered face in the mornings, and as we are friends he makes no bones about it. I do see him almost everyday at the public library pouring over books about science and history- in depth and obscure topics, things that are beyond me most times. He sits quietly at a table all day filling page after page with notes on a myriad of subjects and then at the end of the day he imbibes, at his space that he has made his own, as best a homeless person can. Many times we have shared conversations about classic literature, early Rock music, and the strange world of addiction. I have asked his opinion on poetry that I have written and took his critisisms to heart. This morning Jimmy sat next to me at breakfast at th salvation army and told me he had a book for me. Over the week-end he went to the book sale at the Central Library and came across a Nortons Anthology of Classic Literature and he thought of me. This is a man who has so little resources that he has forgone store bought alcohol in favor of cheaper mouthwash, but he saw a book for sale he knew I would enjoy and got me a gift. I will never get over the complexities of homelessness and th homeless. Thanks Jimmy!

Me and Charlie

Me and Charlie wade into briers stumbling
Occasionally
Rear foot rushing to find balance
We are heavily burdened
He has a cardboard load and I
A stolen tent

We hope its all there

Hiking along the railroad tracks
Searching
For a place to be home
The fix (angry or otherwise)
Must wait for this work
To be done

Last night we broke into a house
And lay down to sleep
A half pint
and a quart
Our only lullaby

We eased out this morning

The thorns and ivy open up
Inviting us to stay
And Charlie smiles as I drop
The bag that I carry
Landing with metallic clink
And stability

Later we'll meet Thomas and get high

Devils' Due

West 2nd Street was like a lot of other streets in the downtown area of big towns and small cities across the country. It was just past the "revitalized" section, it was old and run down and was a roach nest of people and buildings. Their were adult video stores and filthy taverns. Their were rent by the hour motels and bootleggers. It was the kind of place where you would not be surprised to find a man napping in a doorway just a little after noon, and the kind of place where police cruisers would roll right by a napping gentleman without stopping to check and see if he was dead. In the middle of the liquor stores and dope houses of West 2nd on the sixth block of this dismal place was a boarding house that looked like it might fall over sideways from exhaustion at any time, in front was a sign whose hand lettering had faded and weathered to the point of near invisibility. It read simply:


.

ROOMS

$100 wk.

666 W. Second.

Up creaking stairs, past crawling water bugs and skeletal remains of rodents was the room of Danny Weber. At present it was spinning in circles. Not really spinning but Danny had the distinct impression of a spinning room as he lay inebriated on the stained crumpled sheets of the roll away bed that he never rolled away. Danny was a drunk of the old school variety, spending each day of his miserable life coming up with drinking money, drinking, and feeling like shit. During these days of alcoholic stupor he would struggle to write page after page of bizarre testimony of his life and world- Danny was a writer. In his mind years before he had decided that along with his desire to emulate Hemingway, Kerouak, and Bukowski came an absolute need to be a two-fisted drinker and virtual chimney of stale cigarette smoke, and even if his writing had not been especially successful (at this point his only paychecks came from occasional day labor) the whole drinking and smoking thing had been something at which he excelled. The hangovers were the worst on days that he woke with no booze on his "bed side table", it was actually an upturned milk crate he had found in an alley and most mornings atop it, beside the ashtray that spilled over with so many butts you couldn't tell it was just an old tuna can, sat at least a half of a pint of the lowest quality vodka for sale in America. Unfortunately this day did not open with the usual hair of the dog and so Danny lay as still as he could with a cold sheen of sweat and a hundred dollar a week room doing an impression of a Tilt-a -Whirl from some sadistic carnival.. Recognizing the tell tale sign of salivary glands kicking in as a precursor to ralphing he sat up and rushed to the toilet, vomit leaping the last couple of feet and hitting the commode as surely as an NBA free throw, with only minimum splashing thanks to the poor water flow into the rusty brown toilet bowl. The first wave was always the easiest so Danny steeled himself for the next wave of nausea. He was tempted to gag himself with his finger and get it over with, just thinking about it proved to be sufficient and with a contraction of abdominal muscles that seemed like they would pinch him in half he continued to spew bile and yesterdays booze. Making a good deal of noise, Danny hunched and vomited and repeated.

"ARRRRRR EEEEYAK!"

"GRRRRRR ARRRR"!, splash

"GARRRrrrr", spit

"gerRRRAAAAAak" cough cough

"Yak",

and just when he thought that he might collapse and rest his head on the cool, cool white porcelain, the very air in the room split open with a crack and a brilliance of unnatural light and an avatar of Satan stepped through. Curls of black smoke peeled from his bat winged shoulders and ram like horns. His head was a horses skull and scales covered his sooty torso. The stench of scorched sulfur permeated the air, and with a booming voice that would make James Earl Jones jealous he howled,

"Who is it that summons me with incantations of the ancient tongue."

"Huh?", Danny said.

"Who is it that calls me in the voice of the oldest doomed?"

Danny had slid back against the wall sitting on his backside, his eyes were wide with fright,

"Who, who the hell are you?"

Then the beast answered back in a voice remarkably less dramatic, so much so the stature of the demon seemed smaller than a moment before,

"What is this some sort of inter dimensional wrong number?"

"Are you the Devil?"

"Sheesh, you think that I'm the Devil, Lucifer, the Prince of the Air and Ruler of Hell?"

Danny wondered if all demons were as big on the whole list of pedigree's but out loud he asked,

"Are you?"

"Dude hardly", then with a hint of pride in his once booming voice he added," but I can make certain deals under his authority, I mean I do work for him. He is my boss".

Dannys eye brow scrunched together and he turn his head a little to the side and down and asked,"What kind of deals?"

"You know like Crossroads"

"Like Ralph Macchio."

"Like Robert Freakin' Johnson."

"You could make me a great writer?"

"Well... do you mean like John Grisham great or William Faulkner great?"

"Faulkner."

"Wouldn't you rather be a rock star?"

"Why?"

"It would be a damn sight easier, I'd allow."

" No, I want to be a brilliant writer.'

"Brilliant no less, I could make you rich."

" I would sell my soul to be the greatest writer today."

" Listen I'll do what I can, I mean you seem like a good enough kind of fellow, but I am fairly low level you see, I mean I only work here- tell you what I'll run it past my manager see what he says."

"Okay" Danny said feeling a little like he was trying to buy a new car. And again the weird door between time and space opened and closed and the demon was gone. A brief time later he was back.

"Listen Danny I want you to know that I went to bat for you in there, I really did . The thing is you are a little upside down with the whole soul thing, I mean there has been a good deal of depreciation, you've got some damage there too. Bottom line is we are gonna have to take a pass."

"How about Grisham good?'

"Sorry..."

" Maybe just a popular blog...?"

" Listen sit down here with me", Danny sat with him on the side of the bathtub and they talked about what they could do.

When Danny woke up he had a shit taste in his mouth and the kind of strange sense of memory that you have after a night of disjointed dreams, this one had taken the cake though he wasn't sure he had ever had one that seemed so real. He sat up and saw a pint of bourbon on the milk crate along with a pack of generic cigarettes, neither had been opened. So, reaching he busted the seal on the Kentucky pain killer first and drank deep,

"What the hell it's not like I'll miss it", and tore the cellophane open on the smokes, shook one loose and lit it before crossing the room to the mess of papers scattered across his makeshift desk.

walk on

rain falling washes

hope from me

rinsing away all

but desperation




tall buildings

bully me

lean in on me

square shoulders

barring progress





cars roar by

slashing puddles

in half

headlights staring

mocking me

laughing

i walk on

with my

soaking boots

playing

shhkik kashaw

shhkik kashaw

marking

my progress

like brushes

on a snare drum

what the hell

sitting in a doorway
downtown drinking
smelling like the bottom
side of a saddle
i smile wondering
what the hell
happened

i was pony boy
i was james fucking dean
i was johnny cash and
spun out steve mcqueen
i frown wondering
what the hell
happened

SELF

Did you think
That my pride
That my ego
Would be any
Less
Because I have
Nothing
Because I am
Nothing
Did you think that
I became thirty
Units of
Dope drawn up
Ready to mix with
Blood
One more pint
Less
A man
Unable
To mix
With mankind with
Women
When self is
All
SELF
Becomes huge
An
Egomaniac
With an
Inferiority complex

To sleep

The smell of urine
Chokes me like a
500 pound
Gorilla
I am seasoned
And dry rubbed
Rolled
In Filth
Fuzz from give away
Blankets in the
Stubble of my
Shaved head
I fear sleep
In sleep the past
Creeps
Like mist
On water
Into my soul
In sleep
The past
Smothers me
Molasses thick
I will
Enter her
Only with
Assurance of
Kentucky grains
And
Whiskey rebellions
The day
Comes to fast
And I must
Move on

Love Me

A liquor bottle bounced off the wall beside Jason's head but didn't break, landing on the floor with a thud.





"You never stay with me, you only want to screw then run off to your crazy chicken fights."



"Baby, quit that. Calm down what's wrong."





"You don't really love me, you never did. Your crazy fucking roosters killing each other, your gambling, your dope- you love all of that more than you love me! You never did."





"Baby, no", he says holding his hands low, just above his waist, palms down trying to calm her. As drunk as JoEllen was right now she was nothing to mess with.





She picked up a steak knife from the counter and tears, first from one eye then a moment later the other, slid gently down her dimpled cheeks. She was wearing one of those T-shirts that people call wife beaters, a sort of tank top style undershirt, it was tight across her ample breasts, and panties that looked like a little girls', pink with some kind of Japanese cartoon image on them and knee high tube socks with stripes at the top like basketball players in the 70's wore. Her hair was in total disarray and her eyes as large as a doe deers' were ringed black with yesterdays mascara, one slightly drooping from the effects of the alcohol. As he eased towards her he could not help but be a little turned on by both her beauty and her danger.





"You bastard I should kill you, you never really loved me."





" Jo, baby- Jo you know I love you, you know I love you more than anything. I will love you forever."





Sobbing now she began to shake, she let the hand with the knife lower just a little and Jason walked on over and took it from her and wrapped his arms around her , and held her.





"Shhhh", he said gently , as if talking to a very small child and pulled back slightly to wipe tears from her face.



"Hush now", he whispered and delicately moved a strand of hair from her eyes.





She leaned forward and he kissed her softly on her forehead, and her neck, and her eyelids, kissing away the pain that lived inside of her always. The pain that told her that nobody loved her, and that everybody she cared about would leave her alone in the end. Just like they always had.

"Come on girl, let me get us a beer", and he walked with her holding her hand into the back room to the tiny little refrigerator that was beside their bed. She laid down and he pulled out two Pabst Blue Ribbons and laid beside her.

" You always..." she started to say something but even the beginning was nearly to quiet to hear,then slowly she turned up the ice cold beer , drinking deeply from it.

"Do you remember when we first met," Jason asked, "Do you remember the night in KOs' house?"

" We smoked crack."

"Yeah, and she was gone, and the house was full of crap because she was remodeling and we laid on a mattress in the front room and made love."

"... And there was plastic covering the windows and the wind kept blowing and making the plastic pop and I was so scared."

And the both of them lay there and drank more beers and remembered that night, after the sex was done and the drugs had run out and it was just the two of them so far away from the crazy lives they lived a few blocks over, so far from the hustlers, and the kooks, and the thieves and the whores and all of the others that made up the circle of their association.And honest with each other for the first time they had talked. She had told him about her father and his friends and her childhood, and her scars. How when she had finally gotten old enough to resist and say no to him, and how she wished her mother had not died, and how when he tired of her saying no again and again her father had poured lighter fluid on her and set her on fire, scarring her legs and most of her right side and all of her heart.

And he told her about his wife and kids and how the marriage had failed and how when he could no longer see his children he had given up on life and sunk slowly into the self imposed darkness that engulfed him now. And the drugs, and the crazy chances that he took to insure that he never went without them.

" I don't want you doing stick ups anymore. You'll go back to prison and I will be alone."

"Well, I don't want you turning tricks anymore..."

" It's the only hustle I have..."

"Well what are we gonna do- get straight jobs?"And they both smiled because he may as well have asked if they were going to sprout wings and fly to the moon. So he continued to steal and she to trick and the rest of the time they drank together and fed other hungers and tried to pretend that they could have normal lives.
They got a place together , small , only two rooms. The front a sort of living room and the back, a bedroom with a fridge and a hotplate, tiny bathroom off to the side. Somehow just having a place besides the seedy motels where they had always stayed gave them both a feeling of semi- stability, something that he had all but forgotten and she had never had. She prostituted herself less and less, only doing so when absolutely necessary and he no longer smoked crack which is not to say that he no longer used drugs and didn't drink now more than ever but that one demon at least was behind him. They had money for cigarettes, and rent, and even a weekly trip to Taco Bell- JoEllen liked that. Jason made friends with the neighbor, Segundo, who worked construction and sent money back to Mexico for his wife and children. Sometimes they would drink Modelo in the afternoons and Segundo would tell stories about his kids. Some nights the three of them would eat dinner together, but never at Taco Bell. Other times Jason and Segundo would go to the cockfights over in the part of town where the Mexicans mostly lived. And JoEllen
only tried to kill Jason when she got really, really drunk. Most days she would drink a half of a gallon of vodka, Ariticrat or Heaven Hill, but on other days she would get into Jason's beer, PBR that he would buy in thirty pack suitcases and on those days she might still get violent. She had been into the beer today.

" I'm not going anywhere baby, I'm gonna stay right here with you."

She finished her beer and threw the empty can across the room and he laughed. She nuzzled closer her head laying on his chest, and he wrapped strong arms around her.

" Do you love me, Jason"

" Of course I do."

" Why do you love me?", she asked,"Tell me why."

" I love you because you are the most beautiful women in the world, and because you are so very sad, I love you because of the smell of your hair and the song of your laughter- I love you because you understand..."

"Understand what?"

"You understand... me."

" I love you Jason," and she turned looking up into his face and kissed him. And passion rose up in them both and they fanned it's flames, until, exhausted they fell over spent. JoEllen was fast asleep and Jason smoked a Marlboro Red until the filter crushed between his fingers then sitting up reached for his chinos, and felt to make sure his wallet was there. Quietly he dressed and slipped out the front door and went to watch the roosters fight.

Brand New

A little boy
His father
Or maybe
Moms Dad
Splashing
With earnest
In puddles
The boy in a
Green slicker
Brand new rubbers
Laughing
Yesterday
When I was
Five years old
I sat watching
A Charlie Brown
Special on
Television
In a brand new
Yellow raincoat
And my Mom
Took a
Picture

The Most Beautiful Girl

The light pierced the peep holes that previous guests of the scumbag hotel had poked and torn to ease or feed their paranoia. Oddly enough the perfect line of light found the clinched, closed eye of Griffin Banks, dust particles shimmered and danced in it and Griffin cursed. He threw his arm across his face in a futile gesture but knew he'd have to do better than that to remain asleep, sleep was a commodity that Griffin bought and paid for- once he was awake, he was awake. So like Lazarus slipping free of his death clothes, he slid from beneath the cheap stained comforter and reached for his straight shooter. Taking a straightened piece of coat hanger, Griffin pushed the Chore Boy screen from one end of the straight glass crack pipe to the other, scrapping the insides of it, gleaning the brownish residue of cocaine left from earlier. The wake-up hit was not blinding in its potency but sufficient to allow him to stand and dress. Griffin was a hustler and small time thief, the clothes that he wore as important as socket wrenches to a mechanic. Black slacks and button downs and the nicest shoes he could shoplift, and when the outfit began to show ashes and other dirt he'd go to a mall and steal fresh ones. Today though he thought they would do for a little while longer. Walking past the television, he hit the on button and looked at his image in the mirror. Wetting his hands, then running them through his hair he made himself look, as much as he could , like the television gangsters he admired so. Then he walked into the tiny bathroom to take a leak. That is when it hit him. Without flushing the toilet he turned back into the main room and saw that he had company, in the bed where he had just got up from, lay a girl.




Holy Crap some days are weird, leaning over her, trying to remember. Holy Crap. She was beautiful. She was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, but fate deemed their time was done. She was quite dead.







It came flooding back. Last night walking the strip he had seen her. New to him, he knew most of the girls who worked the streets here, it was a small town. She had smiled like some kind of animal: hungry. He didn't have the time then, backpack full of goods, brain gone dry of the substances that drove him. He noticed her none the less. Predator sniffing predator. Kindred spirits. She walked under the streetlights smiling a vendors smile carrying a half of a gallon of cheap vodka for the world to see. She followed with her eyes as he passed by.







Then later, walking back to the hotel, arm full of nod, head full of booze, and a hand full of crack -he saw her again.



Wanna do an oxy? slurring, one eye half closed.



He didn't even answer, never said a word, just looked up the road a block to the hotel and his room and she went with him, rattling the pill bottle as she strolled, oozing sexuality and desire.





They had enjoyed a buffet of drugs and booze and sex acts not for the faint of heart. At some point, satisfied, Griffin had passed out. Their had been plenty of the Oxycontin left at that point. She must have overdosed after.


Shit.


Shit, shit, shit!





Griffin didn't know what he was going to do but he knew what he was going to do first. Scooping up his keys and money clip from the bedside table he turned and opened the front door.





Hello. How you durin' today?


Flo, the house keeper. She scared the crap out of him!





Jojo in his room still?





Yeah he there,not for long though.





Don't let anybody in here, Flo, Ill be right back.





Trying to look casual Griffin walked as fast as he could to Jojo's room to cope a small piece of dope. Just something to help him focus, to figure out what to do. When he stepped back out of the room Flo was nowhere to be seen. Walking even faster back to his room, fist clinched and sweating around the twenty dollar distraction, he dropped his key clattering across the concrete and bent to pick it up then straightening turned it in the door.



His heart missed a beat, again , then he realized that Flo had brought the whole cleaning cart into his room. She wanted a hit. He could tell from the look on her face that she had seen the girl. Then she put her finger to her lips, so selfish that she hadn't noticed that the sleep would never be interrupted.


Here take this and go. Griffin broke her a little hit off and sent her frowning from the room. Then sat in the obligatory chair next to the bed that every crappy hotel room in the country had. Stuffing the gangster white into the end of the pipe, his hands shook as he pulled a lighter from his pocket. Slowly and with a purpose he breathed the chemical smoke deep into his blood rich lungs. And surely the smoke calmed him and killed the jangling of his nerves. A little closer now, sitting on the edge of the bed Griffin studied her face, her form. She was beautiful. Really not the kind of beauty that you ever get used to, exotic somehow. Lying next to her he finished the dope and wondered.

Later after a call to a great aunt that still trusted him no matter what, Griffin pulled into the hotel lot in a car that looked like it had been borrowed from a trusting aunt. Dusk had begun to shroud him, wrapping dark mother arms about his twisted life. Griffin gathered his meager belongings then walked into the room one last time and picked up the girl gently like she might disappear if he jostled and carried her and put her in the car. Not in the trunk, but belted in the passengers seat like a traveler overcome with slumber. He loved her and could not bear to part with her so instead he leaned over and kissed her cold lips and drove away never thinking of his aunt, or Jojo, or how strange this day had been.