number 11

coffee taste on the

inside of a mouth along with hunger,

and perspiring underarms beneath a silky

blouse. maybe.

tiny hairs on knuckles.

crossed legs.

a morroccan kitchen and

mexican cooks.

filmy, hungry coffee mouth.

hunger like a hallowed out

agitation and love.

maybe men's haircuts and magazines,

nicoise salads at cafe de flore and

finger pointing i said "that's because

i'm always aiming for paris."

at the conservatoire or the opera,

place de la concorde, tiny cold

feet with sores and a blue french

countryside in the dark from a train.

missing a place like a hallowed out

agitation and love.

gloom that hits the top of your cheeks and

the insides of your wrists.

backwards goldleaf letters on a window

that remind you of -

puckered lips for your filmy coffee mouth

and hunger.

and i can feel my impatience on the

inside of my nose and the bottoms

of my ears, the innermost ridge of

my left palm, the fingertips of my

right hand, where i touch things.

and also where your heart beats.

finding that i love cement floors and

tea with honey. big bowls of food and

sitting low on the floor.

and like sylvia i wish i could try on

different lives like dresses. i'd put on a

yellow one and walk down a dirty

brazilian alleyway.

the kind of fantasies i have when i sit

low on the floor listening to stan getz

getting all swirly and dreamy and heavy

eyed, waiting for something to finish baking

or someone to come over.

and sometimes i think it's time to get

out of america anyway.

paying rent to corporations but how

would i leave LA anyway?

cursive letters and koreatown gangs

and my treehouse, no.

cooking with neighbors and popping off

beer caps. full tummies and a hard day's work,

sweeping on eyeliner and heading out after dark

up and down dirty steps, finding a spot in

the parking lot.

whispers and remember.

capping things off and yelling in the street.

looking at twelve months

like a timeline with a beginning and end,

like a distance we've traveled and always

how far we've come and always how fast it went.

wondering who'll get up to flip the

record and whispers and remember.

stocking the fridge, doing the dishes,

good morning and good bye.

treehouse leaves and memorizing lines.

sitting up late with hunger, my friend,

hunger like pain like a hallowed out agitation

and love. missing the space you take up

on the tops of my cheeks and insides of

my wrists.

hunger and -

aiming for -

cooking together, the weather,

and whispers and remember.

i am a love

i am a love.

you are a lovely.

i am a bug.

you are bugging me.

i am a leaf.

you are the stem.

if i break off in the wind,

i promise to find you again.

graveyards, or today

this perpetual smell of burnt rubber

on my way home and walking down the

street to latino market on the corner

near my house. my LA of burnt stars and

burnt street signs, weathered tail lights

and gaze eyes; weathered sighs.

in the backseat i looked back at her

in my rear view mirror responded to her

question "why?"

"why" she said and i said "i don't know i don't

think hollywood is for me, man."

and julia too, with her face toward the open window

of an alvarado/sunset breeze says it's all so diluted,

so far away from the point.

sailing down the boulevard, catching all the greens,

getting in bed late after spin the

bottle, after skirting up the alleyway to my

friend's tiny house where i left my

wine bottle in the kitchen, my portrait

on the kitchen wall and we await nick who'll

be arriving by bus on thursday afternoon and

not a day too soon and it's alright - it's ok, it's all just

for a season anyway and we write letters everyday.

and it's been a time warp of backwards

and forwards but who cares anyway

because you can't take it with you and each time

i compare myself to someone else i lose

a little bit of my soul so i made a deal i

wouldn't do that anymore. i'd rather sell

the shit i don't need to make ends meet than

be stuck in your cubicle six days a week.

and aren't we all just waitin' for things to turn

around? occupy LA is hollerin' just

ten minutes away,

but it's also right here - right where i'm standing

and don't you ever want to walk up to some

people and say "it must be nice to be you"

but we are all fighting great battles

and if it's not this one it's that one,

if it's not here it's there,

and soon the first will be last,

and you can't run away from it jamie i keep

saying and "i'm hangin' by a thread" she keeps

saying and me too.

drivin' across the 10 freeway with those

looming blue black clouds over pasadena

mountains - hollywood sign, griffith

observatory shining under heavenly golden

sun, green hills where i hear my old souls

of past days that sing through the night,

through the graveyards, through the

chainlinked fences, the parking lots

and the small groups waiting for buses in

the dark. and i'm saying fuck this nostalgia

and embrace the morning.

new eyes and new jaw

and a new way to feel your tongue in

your mouth and a new way to smile and

a new reason to smile,

and is it ok to feel ok?

and i've been thinking what is this place

about anyway, these streets, these homes,

everyone tryin' to make it out on top,

or to come out even. to be discovered.

yes and maybe i'll be discovered in the

food 4 less on western, maybe the liquor

store by robbie's house. maybe. maybe.

but maybe the point is we live and die here.

we eat and love here. get married and

baptized here. smoke and drink here.

everyday wake here.

grieve here.

and getting discovered

in the in between.

i'm discovering me. and the best thing i

can do in this season is keep revealing

my self to myself.

i gave a different kind of kiss today

and sold my guitar today.

i don't need them.

i saw a bird fly away today and the sea

calm it's waves today.

my feet hurt today.

i was an open field today.

i buried my friend today.

i closed my eyes and the cement

became one in my veins,

rushing like fast mad traffic,

like intersections about to

explode, like blurring streetlights

of red, yellow, green and every

color in between and the whish,

breeze of the color in me and

slow down, breathe

and

walk with your arms sideways and

play a new game and see the winds

change and be a new brave.

and oh my city, be still my heart.

protect me under the lamplight

by my parked car.

remind me that each moment is truth,

that love can find you.

that definitions are sometimes needless,

that your books hold seeds,

that you need less.

remind me of the boldness that i have

or that sweet is sometimes sad.

oh, remind me that i still have more

to say, that he will find a way.

be still my heart and protect me under

the lamplight by my parked car in

my city while i wait for a change

gon' come.

el centro

driving up western at 6 o'clock in

october the sun is sideways to my

left and up el centro i see the purple

moon large and harvest with

orange salt and sky rings,

fingernail wishes

and coke dreams.

the twenty-somethings head

to acting class in 99 seat theaters,

santa monica boulevard and tiny

caves of black boxes and hollywood

agents.

palm tree sunsets and notecards,

aspect ratios with numbers of

birthdays.

late nights getting darker

and say hello to the wet gutters,

the skip to the beat, the boys in the

street.

poor choices but holding hands, head

falling on ever gracious pillow,

hardwood floors to bare feet and

spinning records on an unemployed

tuesday. same routine.

meditating on timothy leary, feng

shui furniture, cross legged yoga pose,

and sketches in the morning.

dark wood on four walls,

cave-like statues and tableau's

spread out length-wise on the bed.

goodbye.

goodbye bed.

goodbye in the mornin' with sketches

and dark wood floor and rolling over

on stiff joints.

goodbye you'll drive away in your

car and i in mine.

to santa monica blvd.

to el centro.

where my dark cave waits for me.

dance

throughout my miserable existence

i haplessly stumbled over

my own big feet.

the demanding daily

issues of life crippled my psyche

and dragged me to the floor.

with cautious optimism

out the door,

this insane wave of focus

and questionable synapse

narrowly escaped

this bleek moment of time.

what, for god's sake, is next?

as i sat waiting for the next

napalm bomb to drop,

i found shelter....assurant shelter,

refuge from the storm.

i sat unscathed,

with his loving arms

around me all along,

as he taught me

to dance in the rain.

-roger criss

tightrope

lately, it's been things like endless record

playing and taking turns.

muted vhs tapes and hallowed

out words.

boys smoking cigarettes in the

living room, yelling at each other

through the telephone.

summer is typified in late treehouse

nights with taylor and shawn.

seeing bob dylan and quitting

my job.

mondays in echo park with the

view of city lights, sleepovers

and hot mornings

and a kiss before goodbye.

and lately, it's been learning how

to manifest good.

believing things will happen,

knowing that they should.

choosing not to worry,

letting go,

being happy.

talking about things like

tattoos and balloons and how

to write without nostalgia.

cookie sheets and long dinner

tables, chapstick and plums

and again - the record player.

hoping that summer will

leave soon and my water

will boil fast.

rocks stuck in cement cracks.

phone calls with nick from

el paso, texas and i'm trying to

figure out how to write and that

i can never say it right.

but then it's dusk again and there

are texts about plans but i'm

tightrope walking on the planks

of my floor and i never saw you

before and i'm busy,

i'm learning how to tightrope walk

on the floor.

westmoreland

not to be too shamelessly self-promoting but...

LOOK! here is a vid of me reading one of my poems at the Synchronicity Salon earlier this month, created by my friend and neighbor ryan maxey of maxey fish & sea reel.

check out his other work at ryanisyourfriend.com

diamond minds

diamond minds,

simply exquisite,

simply complex,

shining like the stars

of a thousand smiles,

beaming an elegance

transformed into a

delightful existence

of ever present

day to day humdrum.

to reach such heights

whether alone or

among the longing for

such memorable fair,

can often bewilder

the faint of heart.

a lofty goal? or

a determined failure

of being?

who’s to say?

we wander aimlessly

through our past, longing

for desperate explanations

and simple truths,

only to discover

life as we know it.

-roger criss

this sky

this

sky

where we live

is no place to lose your wings

so love, love,

love.

-hafiz of persia

sensation

i've been trying to read rimbaud out loud in french. but it's hard because there are so many big, fancy words i don't know. at least it sounds nice. french always does. here is a poem called sensation. in english:

in the blue summer evenings, i will go along the paths,

and walk over the short grass, as i am pricked by the wheat:

daydreaming i will feel the coolness on my feet.

i will let the wind bathe my bare head.

i will not speak, i will have no thoughts:

but infinite love will mount my soul;

and i will go far, far off, like a gypsy,

through the countryside - joyous as if with a woman.

-arthur rimbaud, 1870

ocean hymn

riding on a ghost wave

of the sea, i saw a mermaid

perched on galant, jagged rock.

she would not sing to me,

she would not sing.

she put her ear to a conch shell

and laughed quietly,

whispering her deep ocean

secrets, then winked at me.

in one dark moment, she was gone,

with only the tip of her fin breaking

the water at the very end.

and then, nothing.

and i had a vision,

of poseidon raising souls to waves

and of a thousand whirlpools

sucking me in.

of lightning and thunder

striking down like arms with

fists crashing on rocks and homes

and dreams.

and a thick black blanket of cloud

rolling in low and heavy and

grumbling its eager, slow opinion.

of a shipwreck with silent screams

and dozens of heroes lost.

and of the water receding until

atlantis came up from the bottom

and the mermaids moon bathed in the night

and all is now quiet.

and i, i am just riding

ghostward on the waves.

i, i am just a ghost.

i am a drop of rain.

i am your missing coat.

i am a thought.

on the sea, i saw a mermaid

perched on a galant, jagged rock.

she would not sing to me,

she would not sing.

sunflower sutra

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes
Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black
treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the
poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel
knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck
and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the
past--
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset,
crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog
and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye--
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like
a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face,
soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays
obliterated on its hairy head like a dried
wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures
from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster
fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O
my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man's grime but death and human
locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad
skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black
mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance
of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial--
modern--all that civilization spotting your
crazy golden crown--
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless
eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the
home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar
bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards
of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely
tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what
more could I name, the smoked ashes of some
cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the
milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs
& sphincters of dynamos--all these
entangled in your mummied roots--and you there
standing before me in the sunset, all your glory
in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent
lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye
to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited
grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden
monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your
grime, while you cursed the heavens of the
railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a
flower? when did you look at your skin and
decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive?
the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and
shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a
sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me
not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck
it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul
too, and anyone who'll listen,
--We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread
bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all
beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're blessed
by our own seed & golden hairy naked
accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black
formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our
eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive
riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening
sitdown vision.

-allen ginsberg

wizened magic-man

via ellymarie

sweetness

just when it has seemed i couldn’t bear

one more friend

waking with a tumor, one more maniac

with a perfect reason, often a sweetness

has come

and changed nothing in the world

except the way i stumbled through it,

for a while lost

in the ignorance of loving

someone or something, the world shrunk

to mouth-size,

hand-size, and never seeming small.

i acknowledge there is no sweetness

that doesn’t leave a stain,

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet ....

tonight a friend called to say his lover

was killed in a car

he was driving. his voice was low

and guttural, he repeated what he needed

to repeat, and i repeated

the one or two words we have for such grief

until we were speaking only in tones.

often a sweetness comes

as if on loan, stays just long enough

to make sense of what it means to be alive,

then returns to its dark

source. as for me, i don’t care

where it’s been, or what bitter road

it’s traveled

to come so far, to taste so good.

-stephen dunn

barely a smirk

walkin' down swiftly alone in the street

alleyways with pools of water and gravel

towards a house with a porchlight

sitting on the kitchen floor

coming home late in the night

crowded street corners

psychedelic images on the side of a

city building

sleeping in late, avoiding the light

with cool arms that graze

upon the midnight blue of the

soft mountain that is you

long hair

and putting on sweatpants to

roam about the house

reading sonnets

picking albums

drinking lemonade

lounging like a medieval

woman on a sofa with round

body shapes, drooping

eyes, long eyelashes,

barely a smile,

barely a smirk,

ready to be painted.

black ode

your beauty is a thunder

and i am set a wandering - a wandering

deafened

down twilight tin-can alleys

and moist sounds

"ooo wee, baby, look what you could get if your name

was willie"

oh, to dip your words like snuff.

a laughter, black and streaming

and i am come a being - a being

rounded

up baptist aisles, so moaning

and moist sounds

"bless her heart. take your bed and walk.

you been heavy burdened"

oh, to lick your love like tears.

-maya angelou

faithful lover

the moon came to me last night

with a sweet question.

she said,

"the sun has been my faithful lover

for millions of years.

whenever i offer my body to him

brilliant light pours from his heart.

thousands then notice my happiness

and delight in pointing

toward my beauty.

hafiz,

is it true that our destiny

is to turn into light

itself?"

and i replied,

dear moon,

now that your love is maturing,

we need to sit together

close like this more often

so i might instruct you

how to become

who you

are.

-hafiz of persia

vade mecum

i want the scissors to be sharp

and the table to be perfectly level

when you cut me out of my life

and paste me in that book you always carry.

billy collins, sailing alone around the room

the happy virus

i caught the happy virus last night

when i was out singing beneath the stars.

it is remarkably contagious-

so kiss me.

-hafiz of persia

russian rouletting

and what could be said?

or what could be heard?

through thin as paper walls,

icy sheets of snow, dark

distances, blanketed

telephone receivers with

no end. staring blankly

at computer screens,

empty; or quite filled

with people staring. dirty

bedsheets, open books,

cold foggy early morn

air and the air. stolen

bracelets, colored fingertips,

the writing on my arm,

my hand cursing my mouth

and the circled students

saying first impressions

with hats and glasses;

campuses. green jacketed

livres of love poems with

cute phrases and "oh i miss

thee." come with me.

internet chats and stifled

speaking, breathing heavily,

anticipation, waiting,

balancing, concentration,

meditation, mindfully

praying. legs bent, hands to

heart and sweating.

russian orthodox wedding and

russian rouletting.

cold and hot fever; february

receiver. betty friedan sits on

the bedside table saying,

solitude.

tiny moving pictures, projections

on a wall. blonde headed children

and memories flashing; blinking,

in super eight millimeter.

packing up portraits, moving

out of the house on camden road.

the moon coming in my window,

like a good luck charm.

laying and swaying; the void.

i saw the music, like layers of

lace on top of each other.

kneeling by tree stumps,

with bundles of white alysum,

scuffing my feet, wishing not

to be seen. oh, holy empires,

oh, holy wonders. dark eyes,

configures, confinement

and ultimately freedom.

doing things slowly, opening

lockets, reaching hands out

of pockets. lemonade stand

pictures, unfocused,

remembering home; thyself.

and ultimately freedom.

kool-aid and kisses, sparkles,

scuffed knees and hold me.

collecting small paychecks and

watching time come coolly for

ultimately freedom.

via the basement city review