Snowing

Outside, where I am, the snow is falling heavily,
reflecting the light of the mercury-vapor streetlamps
(casting more light than the city engineer could have dreamed of).

An inch of snow, maybe more, crunches loudly under my feet
in the still, dry, night air. There is a house with a light on, a
fireplace burning and pushing the smell of cedar into the night.

It would be easy to walk out here for an hour or more. It doesn't feel that
cold to me, bundled up in my goose-down parka and fur-lined gloves,
carrying my own house on my back, like an eskimo snail.

For a moment, my thoughts are propelled by that last absurd image -
I consider myself as a frontiersman - killing indians, cutting wood,
opening up the west for myself and my wife and two beautiful children.

Finally, I walk back to a familiar door, with a familiar car sitting
in the driveway. Shit, I'm going to have to brush the snow off tomorrow,
before I go to work.


View

When I moved in here
the guy who had moved out
looked me over when I asked
if he had enjoyed the view

'Sure. Best view of the godamn
smokestacks I ever saw.'

I guess he never noticed the sun
setting behind them
or the stoplights blinking
on and off, reassuring, like an alarm clock
or the steam coiling
high up
on the coldest night of the year
white against the nightime sky.

Some people need things handed to them.


Spring Haiku

On the first nice day
I walked a long quiet mile
in the old graveyard


Reader's Digest

Last night
there was a riot
in the Reader's Digest

It was awful

'Humor In Uniform' was under the table
trying to bite the ear off of 'It Pays To Enrich Your Vocabulary'
who screamed - o the distress, o the dolor

while 'Drama In Real Life' fought to save
'My Most Unforgettable Character'
from certain death by fire or drowning

and all of the feature articles maintained their innocence
and harumphed at the others
looking down the end of their noses
feeling proud - they were serious articles, after all
and a little hurt - no matter how you looked at it, after all,
they were still

          condensed

It went on all night,
and I'm just surprised the shouting didn't keep you up.


A Minimalist Short Story

Outside

the air was filled with angst
and then I knew


A Memo

to the birds who sing and chirp
so sweetly
in the freezing twilight winter morning
while I wait for the crowded bus
to take me to work

shut up

what in the hell do you have to be so
happy
about anyway?


For Best Results

(in any relationship)

squeeze tube from the bottom
and flatten it
as you go up


Travels

In Heidelberg,
the little boy from the photograph crept up on me.
Instead of clutching a hand grenade, he struck a match
in front of my face
and bounced off
laughing

At Auschwitz
the old woman stood silently between the barbed wire
fences holding a sign
which said something in German.
'Don't stop. Don't look at her.'
our chaperone hissed as we filed by.
Later on the bus,
I fended off phony queries
with sick jokes.

In Grantsburg Wisconsin
I walked into the coffee shop
long hair and torn jeans
the entire restaurant
turned - silent - and
looked.
Later, I discovered
my open fly.

In New York City
a man tried to sell
me shampoo. 'Look
I'm starving. I'm from Biafra!
Did I say that right?'
I kept walking as
I didn't want him to
see the hay in my hair
as if that would stop him
from asking for money.

In Lake Geneva
after an hour of driving
around quiet neighborhoods
filled with huge houses
that had no souls.
I stopped to get gas
and the attendant asked
where I was from.
'Beloit.'
'I lived there once. The
problem there is the niggers.'
I looked around.
'If you say so.'
In the car, I thought of
all million smart replies.

I stopped at a rest stop in Ohio
and a man crept up on me
while I examined the map for
your home.
I pulled inward
when he asked if
I needed any help.
After I was in the car,
I realized he was paid to do that
and almost went back to apologize.

In my room
you say your sorrowful
goodbye
and I decide to take a trip.


My Thoughts On Human Nature
One Sunday
While Working In A Record Store

Hungover again
gripping the counter
watching customers


How many of these people
are going to write
bad checks?


Train

clickety-clack
went the tracks
another train going by
that I'm not on
or under


Love

I think love is a failed institution
 like the electoral college
 like the welfare system
 like the public schools
Where the hell is my tax dollar going?

If you ask me
we need a strong man in office


Untitled

What I think

If you ask me

My opinion is



I would have just told him
you liked him
you still wanted to see him
you were waiting for him to finish
keeping house with someone else

I have better things to do
than keep you warm

and save his place


Goodbye Fuck

"thanks for coming...
...goodbye...
        ...and
              good luck."



1971

the same brick apt. bldgs.
come to me on
the same bright speckled-cloud days

when I was four years old,
it was 1971

and everything seemed alright.


My Faux Love

for you
knows no bounds.


My Life As A Movie Review

"...brilliant absurdist drama...
       ...four stars!"


Another Poem For Dave E. - 1/29/90

punk rock is the jazz
of our
beat generation,
comrade.


Love Poem

It is better
to
have loved
and lost
than to have
blown
your head off
with a thirty-ought-six.


c&w poem

tears, beers, fear


A weak man makes his move

"I can give you a love better than most."


Personals, Mine.

tired drunken jewish neurotic pseudointellectual
poet seeks existential black-wearing blonde
same


(journal entries - that winter)

on waking, 9/13/90
Technically proficient....without fire or passion....
     .....a eunuch

11/3
It's November third, a cold, grey rainy day, and I'm drinking coffee and listening to the Band...."It makes no difference." It dawns on me that the days of tea and roses, as they were, are now over. The days I woke up to a plaintive mew of a voice on the telephone, "can I come over", a walk down the chilly stairs in boxer shorts only to unlock the door and back to curl up underneath the quilt, searching for warmth, a morning not to regret and worry about what I might have said or done the previous evening.

11/20
It's November 20th, in the midst of the mildest November I can remember. Luck, since I have no adequate shoes for winter. Again, I'm drinking coffee, but listening to Moby Grape..."Come in the morning". I want to write a poem for you to put on your wall, satisfaction that I am appalled by my own behavior, for and against. This is it.

1/9
It's January 9th, winter at last. I stole a pair of shoes from my roommate, and now I'm drinking tea. We don't live near each other anymore, I moved away before Christmas and found a job. I go to bed early now, and wake up early. But I saw you, last week. Floundering and searching, like me. Maybe.


Another poem for my friends, expatriate and otherwise...

(Elvis is for Lynn and Lesley special, anything else is for everyone. Share.)


The Elvis impersonator
in the Holiday Inn lounge
sounded tired, interrupted
the halting conversation
I was having
at the pay phone outside.


("Hi.
  Um...
do you remember
how you said
I should...
    ....uh...
        stop by ?
if I was ever....
    ....uh....
 passing
   through?
    ....well...uh.....")

"Hey, buddy,
I'm just trying to
make a living--"

    --this, a reply to
    hecklers unseen
    from the faux king--

Make a living,
indeed.

As I leave the parking lot, I see his bus.
At first I think it is rooted there,
grass grows around it, ankle high,
around beaten in sides,
a Georgia plate hangs by one screw,
his name painted on the side in white script
with musical notes floating around in the
terminal gel of the metallic blue flake.

It looks like something I bought as bargain once
and never figured what to do with
-- a real white elephant, allright,

not a home, home
home
on the range or road.

Make a living,
indeed.



The drive to her house
(from the Holiday Inn)
takes a long time,
more than long enough
for me to play
with the words I
can. might, will! use,
the events of the year-and-some gone by
since we last spoke.


I am aglitter, I take the turns two at a time.
There's a falling star! in front of me,
and I watch it,
forget to make a wish
forget to watch the road
and jerk
    (Jerk! the pavement whispers to me,
          only to me)
the wheels away
from the side of the road
just in time.

I arrive
she lets me in
(what else can she do?)


She tells me more
about what she's quit
than
what she
is doing.

She's quit coffee,
    quit beer,
    quit smoking,

quit me, it seems.

She is my fallen angel.

(Make a living,
indeed.)


I promise to let her know where I end up
ask her to drop me a line
      (to keep me from sinkin'!)
and leave to drive the dark roads back
too fast in my mother's car

to listen to surf music under
all the stars in central WI
and scream like a banshee
in the empty car

the fields, they smell
of brussels sprouts,
fish
sewage
and sweet mint,

and I watch the stars and
not the road,
but no falling stars fall for me.

(Brighter Side fanatics!
Take note!
I also do not
lose sight
of the road
and become one
with a Detroit car and
a Wisconsin tree.
A queer kind of folk art,
a salute to always looking up,
without an ounce of
the common sense
God gives you.
This makes the glass half-full,
I think.)

(Brighter Side fanatics!
Also take note!
I did not
(by dint of not
really talking)
have to talk about
anything real painful.
That glass
might be
half-empty.)




It's the years, the years can change so much,I think to myself

Then I think again

    it's been a year, at least, almost more, a little less,

    since we held each other next to your truck and you said "no sad goodbyes - I believe I'll see you again"

    since we spoke, drunk, for the first good time in a long time and you touched my knee and said it was good to have me back

    since we hugged outside your car and I told you to take care of the best friend you'll ever have

    since we went to the races and my car turned over and we had a bleary(beer)-eyed breakfast the next morning

    since I spoke to you on the phone while you were at a loud crowded bar (or was I there? and you at home?)

        or on my back -- the sticky floor of my kitchen under me
        or Sunday in ritual weekly calls from a bungalow I lived in once
        or yesterday in my car


Now we're all
sort of like the Elvis
I saw
at the Holiday Inn,
we're all
trying to make a living (man)

(most of us aren't anything as chic as
a bus-livin', road-tourin'
Elvis impersonator, granted)
but,
there it is -
make a living,
indeed.

This stupid poem has kicked around
weeks, months,
since I first scribbled it out in the
bathroom, on the lidded toilet,
in the Holiday Inn in central WI
at midnight (the lounge, the coffee shop,
the lobby - these all seemed too
romantic a place for scribbling
the first lines, so I ended up in the bathroom,
door closed (not wanting to disturb Mom), TV
helplessly on in the background spouting
more lines) and there is a point here
somewhere,

I think.

The first draft said that
all of you could
quit whatever you
wanted to quit,
but don't quit me.

But you knew that, right?

Now, I think, the point(s) is this (are these):

Be good to yourself. Be good to each other.
And write when you find work.


Stevens Point - August 1991--Virginia - September 1991