we get to that time when we can be
friends, as if I didn’t already have
enough beautiful women friends in my
life who once were lovers until they
discovered I’m not the man of their
dreams, I’m just an old guy in jeans
who talks like a kid because he never
did get it that all everybody wants is
a man to decide what should be done
and then to go ahead and do it—
not sit around and write poems about
how empty the bed is without you—No shit.
I OVERWHELMED HER WITH MY NEED
I couldn’t help it.
This feeling in my chest
of more than emptiness,
like a vacuum sucking my spirit, my soul,
my personality, my character,
my life away . . . without her.
I placed my life and my will in her hands,
turned them over to her care.
The same mistake I always make,
because the rush is always so incredibly
satisfying when that first fluttery
female response at being dug so deeply
is expressed . . . but then, then,
it looks like pressure, like being
crowded, like maybe you ain’t mister
perfect mister right mister fairhaired boy
mister cool mister strong and handsome and
the answer to her prayers after all.
You might just be mister weak sometimes,
mister needy, mister let me love you
every heartbeat for the rest of your life.
And they choke on that, they lose their
breath for the first time in a scary way,
not that orgasmic exciting ecstasy way,
and they don’t want it,
they want to push it away
so they can breathe, because
they don’t need you that bad,
they can’t afford to: this is the new world
and they are the new girls
and they got some better things to do
real soon with maybe better people
and you’re less-than again,
you’re not-good-enough again,
you’re the sprinter who passes everybody else
for the first few days and then
can’t keep up, get weak and wobbly
and need somebody to lean on,
only love ain’t about leaning yet,
it’s got to be going on for awhile,
or maybe it just can’t be that way anymore,
it’s too much to ask in the modern world,
we’re talking financial insecurity
and career moves and confidence and
courses in ways to become the best you
you’ve ever been even if that means
leaving some people behind,
you’ve done it too, all your life,
maybe it’s karma, maybe it’s nostalgia,
maybe it’s what goes around comes around
as you watch the guys on top
pursue her too and all you can do
is float away on the flood
of your own self pity and lack of control
’cause those feelings in your heart
are part of what makes you honest,
only they don’t want honest
they want righteous they want better-than
they want stand up and be a man and
get your emotional insecurities under control
and out of sight for the duration,
’cause this is war boy
and we got a lot more battles to fight
and if you’re gonna lay down and whine
and ask for mercy and stroking and
semi-adoration like you got from those
lesser girls, you’re in the wrong outfit,
you belong behind the lines
not out front here where they make heroes
out of guys who don’t succumb
to the fear and fatigue and frustration
and false interpretations
of a reality nobody will ever really know
let alone understand anyway . . .
Know what I mean?
I’M AFRAID I’M GONNA START
crying & never stop—
I’m afraid I’ll never cry—
from FOOLS FOR LOVE
and light and music
fools for God and essences of lives
fools for
food and sex and highs inexplicable
fools for lavender and shades of gray and
billions of whatever can be counted that way
fools for missions improbable, ventures into
the unknown of each other’s wills
fools for gladiolas and roses and ferns that grow
like weeds and are weeds for all we know
that can be said to be
the fools we see when we begin to see
as only bargain hunters do
when on a spree in some far-off commercial market
for the wares we spared our hearts when what we wanted
was to be the fools of a love
so grandiose that most people would die before embracing—
but we aren’t most, we are the rest
that were left to be the fools I grew up loving
when I thought of Saint Francis and his love
of poverty and every living creature and was known
for such overtures to nature that
no one understood but were impressed with anyway
even me—even when I dropped away
from all things Catholic I had grown up with
he still figured as my mentor in some unarticulated way—
“God’s Fool” they called him, as I wouldn’t mind being called
today, because I see this God as the spirit of the universe,
and how much I’d rather be a fool for that force than
for the ones that force me to stoop to places not beneath me
but beneath the floor of discards that has been our undoing,
I mean the fool in the Tarot deck was who I always identified
with and the court fools and tribal fools who were always
granted the liberty to point out the foibles of emperors and
chiefs whose clothes were nonapparent like those at
the Oscars last night where I took so much delight in
Satyajit Ray’s acceptance from a hospital bed in Calcutta
and his getting back at Ginger Rogers for not answering his
fan letter when he was young and still impressed with
Hollywood the way we all are when we’re young and I
never don’t want to be, not with the schemes and cynicism of
the bankers and their pimps but with the dreams and humanism
of the fools for love who would use the magic of the tribal
screen to imagine for us who we might be or become
even those of us who have no time to be because we are
so lost in others, even us fools for love which is just
another way of saying poets to my mind and heart and
way of starting over in the poem that has always been my
safest haven where a home can always be found for the
fools for love we might all be if we were left alone to be
whoever we were before they got ahold of us—
[ . . . ]
LOST ANGELS 2
The angel of fear and the angel
of self-consciousness, the
angel of never enough and the
angel of too fucking much,
the angel of nicotine and the
angel of caffeine, the angel of
New Jersey and the angel of
Colorado, the angel of nakedness
and the angel of covering up,
&nbs
p; the angel of discontent and
the angel of serendipity, the
angel of loose and appropriately
sexy female energy and the angel
of overly flirtatious and
inappropriately seductive male
attention, the angel of too many
jokes and the angel of repressed
resentment, the angel of feeling
safe in the relationship enough
to make you think she might
leave it for you and the angel
of talent gone unrecognized,
the angel of no talent and
the angel of knowing how to
make money on that, the angel
of the unrelenting love jones
and the angel of music too
loud and acoustics too stupid
to hear someone sitting at
the same table, the angel of
being alone in the same old
crowd of other lonely people
and the angel of wanting to
be naked and turned on by
too many unavailable people,
the angel of not enough sleep
and the angel of too much
competitiveness, the angel
of unappreciation and the
angel of pride, the angel
of lost causes and the angel
of perfectionism, the angel
of communism and the angel of
children of ’60s communes,
the angel of deceptive quietness
and the angel of deceptive good
looks, the angel of you can’t
judge a book by its cover and
the angel of too many books,
the angel of rap and the angel
of funk, the angel of Aaron
Copeland and the angel of Elvis
Aaron Presley, the angel of
business enthusiasts and the
angel of Harley self-righteousness,
the angel of civilians and the
angel of the too hip, the angel
of geography and the angel of
pollution, the angel of lesbians
who like to be sexually dominated
now and then by politically
correct men and the angel of
gay male jocks, the angel of
unproduced scripts and the angel
of unknown history, the angel
of once where we all had been
and the angel of never getting
there, the angel of honoring
ones path and the angel of
divine dissatisfaction, the
angel of you and the angel
of me and the angel we run from
when the angel we become is
the unacknowledged star of
our universe and our universe
is changing too fast to grasp
with so little as the love we
forgot we had for all the
lost angels that watch over
us even when we don’t believe—
LAST NIGHT
I got into a lot of fights
when I was growing up—
a couple a week until I was 22—
then I got married
to a girl I hardly knew—
it seemed at the time
like the right thing to do—
but until then I was so afraid
that you all thought I was afraid
that it filled me with a rage
so deep and blue nobody ever knew
who I was going to throw through
the nearest window—me or you—
a lot of broken glass in my past—
a lot of broken past in my glass
back then too—some of it wasn’t
even true—like when I’d tell some
stranger all about you, and we hadn’t
even met—in fact, we haven’t
yet—even though last night I felt
my tongue slip through your lips again
until it found your tongue and the doors
of the universe shut behind them leaving
them all alone to do their tongue dance
and my brainwaves got lost in all that
sensuous darkness while somewhere outside
it I could smell your hair and feel your
solid softness filling my arms until we
were so close I could see out the back
of you and into the eyes of some buddies
I grabbed your behind to impress even
though I already knew there wasn’t anything
more than kissing that we were gonna do
because that’s all I wanted to—and it was
enough, like back in the ’50s when I tried
so hard to be tough, even in my dreams where
I was always the star of all the teams and
won all the games for you—now the games
don’t mean so much to me, but you still
do, only I always wake up wondering, who
the fuck are you?
ATTITUDE AND BEATITUDE
ah, it’s a melancholy,
melancholy, melancholy
race I come from—
with “Sacred Hearts” all
suffering hanging over
our childhood beds and
even the redheads in our
past—grandma Rose
McBride from Tyrone—
or the red blood streaming
from my finger today when
I cut the flowers sent for
my birthday from a man
I hardly know & not
the woman I—my kids
are grown—I’m home
alone on my 48th birth
day watching—what?—
not you—you’re dead
and all that’s left are
these pictures of the people
you knew who I never
cared about—and the
kids who I did—and
me and you—that
blonde keeps getting a
little loaded and telling
me I’m white as if
I didn’t know that—I
knew that long ago—
I’m so white the skin
on my stomach gives
off the glow of newly
fallen snow—as if I
might be cold or no
longer alive—but I
am—you aren’t—or
all these things from
some earlier version
of my life—or someone
else’s—oh tonight,
tonight, I wanted to
be alone—and I—
you can’t even phone—
remember how we did?
there was a home there
once—I called it you
& you were so in love
with the gentle side
of what I remember
as rage—huh—that
page has crumbled—
it fell apart in my
hands—little spots of
red from where I cut
off the tip of my
finger with the
scissors I use to trim
the rose bush in
front of this house
where I live like a
widow on a small
pension that’s running
out—and her?—I
haven’t seen her since
before you—but
she’s alive I’m sure—
back home in Costa
Rica with—I miss
her too—I miss you—
differently—and how can
they ever know what we
knew—or how many
dead there are inside my
heart & head to fill
this bed I still laugh
when I come in—and
the women sometimes
&
nbsp; find that strange—or
scary—thank God some
find it nice or sexy or—
no—who cares—I laugh
to find out once again
I’m still alive!—me—
of all of us—I made
it all this way—my
forty-fucking-eighth
birthday—the lady
I laughed with last is
half my age and likes
it—why?—because I
don’t demand too much—
because I have that
slow and gentle touch
I learned with you—oh
oh oh—sometimes
it’s too slow—with all
the memories crowding
in between breaths—
God, help me make it
through the days—
the nights are easy—
I can be whoever
I am then—when
the lights go out and
so do I—stay up
tonight and keep my
spirit company—
alone again on purpose
but without delight—
I want my due, God,
from this world of
people I have nurtured
and inspired—I want
them to understand
how tired I am and
forgive me if I sometimes
seem distracted or
forgetful or pissed off—
it’s only because I’m
thinking of you and
you and all the yous
I knew so intimately
who have passed—all
thinking they’d be
around long after me—
but see, I had to raise
my kids—and now I
want to watch them
go out into the world
and find out who they
are and maybe have
their own—so let me
stick around until my
kids’ kids are all grown—
if that’s possible to do—
and let me be the eyes
and ears and consciousness
of you, who went
before me & never knew
how life might have
turned out—this is how—
TURNING 50
It’s like turning 21
only in reverse
—a milestone
not a millstone,
it could be worse,
I remember my
21st—my friends
gave me a big party—
I was the only white
guy there—by
the time they got
the cake together we
were all so wasted
we couldn’t find the
candles, or light them,
or blow them out—
one of the guys
started to
cry & when our
hostess asked him why
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