Marshmallow Parties

Most writers’ groups, workshops, Facebook pages
“critical” discussions
poetry blogs, etc.
are like potluck parties
where everybody brings
marshmallow pie.

Some use little marshmallows
some use larger marshmallows
some use the multi-colored variety
but it’s always marshmallow pie.

You’d think they’d get tired
of marshmallow pie
but they never seem to

it’s all they want
it’s all they need.

Bring a roasted javelina
on a brass platter
they chase you away with spoons and spatulas.

Jealous Rose

My wife is beautiful
but she sure is
jealous.

She’s jealous of every
terrestrial entity that is even remotely
female:

women on TV,
the mail-person,
the stray cat,
wrong numbers,
the voice on my GPS Garmin,
Carrie Underwood,
Dolly Parton,
every female that I have ever had
in my cab
(even the elderly and
terminally ill.)

She’s even jealous of her own
bed pillow.
When she gets up out of bed
and goes to the bathroom
sometimes I will draw her pillow
toward me
in my arms
and she’ll come back and say,

“Hey! You love that pillow
more than you love me!”

This is all usually okay
and funny
but sometimes we fight about it.
At the best of times the fights can seem natural
and kind of
cleansing.

Of course, I in my turn am
expected to be jealous too
and if I’m not then she thinks
I don’t care.
So, I make sure to pick a jealous
fight once every couple
of months
and she eats it up
and sometimes even gives me
a blowjob afterwards.

And when she’s doing that I try not to wonder
how she learned those tricks
and techniques.

It’s Cool to Cry

but only where people can
see you
nobody wants to waste precious tears

and in this ash bucket of self-love
we lick each other and roll around
and say things like

“You brilliant, muthafucka!”

or
“You bad-ass, man, you write so good
you make my eyes bleed!”

or we spend hours grafting scope-gargled paragraphs
spreading mucousy criticism like VD
about an artist’s rights
responsibilities or
intentions

and if we’re not doing this we’re taking photographs
of what we ate for breakfast
or our doggy in his bowtie
and expecting people to say wow, just
wow
and sigh in envy at the quality of our
existence.

People are intelligent
people are very intelligent
intelligent and beautiful and underappreciated
people are so doggone underappreciated
and intelligent too
and they eat such creative breakfasts
and they are such bad muthafuckas
and they say such brilliant things
continually.

Wine in a Tongue-Less Mouth

Like a painting in the dark
wine in a tongue-less mouth
my dreams are footsteps in water

we want to say great things
true things
but we don’t want to do anything
unseemly

we hear of strangers’ troubles as easily as we listen
to the rain

I want to knock a hole in this wall
but am too lazy to swing the hammer

we don’t really want answers
so we fashion
impossible questions

we don’t really want to know our lovers
so we close our eyes
when we kiss them.

Some People Travel the World

and come back
the same

shits they were
when they left.

Others stay
in their same hometown

for forever
and become wise.

Most people
simply turn

to dirt
and fade

forgotten
into the Earth.

We All Want to Be Loved

but some are just not
lucky,
they are ugly or
stupid
or they have some other undesirable quality
like they wipe their nose on their
sleeve
or they have a yellowish
complexion
or excess spittle
or they say “like”
or “Imma” all the
time.
People have to
choose:
you can’t love
everybody.
I don’t care what Buddha
or Jesus or
John Lennon said,
many people are not lovable
even to their own
mothers,
no matter
how well they
may lie.

Matter

I am afraid of this world
of knowers and talkers

where all is governed
and ruled.

Confusion and wanting
sail across the eyes of my soul

and my hair grays
and grays.

Somehow
we have to say yes

while no one has ever known
what a man is supposed to be.

Kicking Stones

Profundity is a big fucking
crock of shit.
History proves no one knew what
the hell was really going on.
Adam didn’t know.
Socrates didn’t know.
Hesse didn’t.
Rasputin,
the Chinese sages,
Nietzsche,
the Tibetans,
Einstein,
Karl Marx,
none of them knew.
They talked a mean game
but what really did it get them?
No one has yet lived
200 years
or learned to shoot light right
out of their eyes
or comprehended death, art, the emotions
or the opposite sex.
Look into the wise guys’ personal lives.
Who would want to switch places
with Jesus or Buddha?
Not one of them burped
up more than a temporary
seeming meaning to
the buzz of the hive, or the secret
of the solitary soul.
What does profundity
amount to?
A way to make a buck?
Peace?
One man’s peace is another
man’s living death.
Profundity seems to be
another word for the gullible
to awe over,
another concept to toss about and take
too seriously,
like religion, wisdom,
sometimes even love,
another way to rank one
human above the other.

When Your Brain is Mangled

like fishing rope
and your values smashed
like a thousand eyeballs on the deck

and the last thread
of guilt hangs on
like a one-winged moth

forty miles out to sea
you wonder what the moon would do
if it had self-awareness

a bellyful of napalm
and a mind of constant
question and wonder

pride and doubt
and you wonder what the ocean would do
if it wasn’t so busy

keeping time
against the billion billion shores
or what the sun would do

if it had a choice in its orbit
or a dream
to follow.