I need a new muse just like an alcoholic needs booze

and Hitler needed the Jews

I need a new muse just like B.B. King needed the blues

and a garbage man needs refuse

I need a new muse just like a detective

needs new clues and a church needs pews

and a club needs members who will pay their dues

and if I get the muse I will drink some booze

with some Jews and sing the blues

knock over a garbage can and spill refuse as the detective

will gather up all the clues

walk into a church and sit in the pews

throw a dollar in the offering plate and pay my dues

 

It was supposed to be about John Cage but right off the bat it was a mispronounced 

waitress call me Angie and mongoloidal sperm incontinence

appetizer sure

various and sundry photographs no dessert

coffee for me

the pleasure of pain

 --------------------------------------

You should never get married she said--just have a girlfriend

just fishing cause she took a course in Psychology.

Or don't get divorced.  Telling me of other dates and men

still texting her.  Connecting dots.  I wanted to leave the second

we met because people never look like their pictures especially 

when it's only their torsos, but I stayed knowing we never would see

each other but she thinks it's only her I'm sure who wants no more

of it 

                                              Waiting On The Deluge

 

The wind is tropical how odd for the 1st day of October

          And I'm waiting for the deluge just wishing it was over and

I may be leaving soon never coming back again and It'll be

when the leaves have fallen scattered in the wind

I'm waiting in the darkness and doubt is staying over oh I'm

waiting for the deluge in the wee hours of October and I

wish I were a young man but I know those days are over

and I'm sitting in the dark just waiting for the thunder and

I'm hoping that the deluge won't drag or pull me under and

I'm waiting for the deluge just knowing that it's over

        

           c.2010 

                                      ------------------------

                                   Leaving November

and the darkness like an endless tunnel

wishing for the light entering

approaching ennui

trying to stay awake

losing that battle

the trees have given up

defenses gone as I need a reason to

make sense of it all 

c.2010 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Muse

I don't see her much anymore

blue eyed inquisitive like a child

Just like she was before 

 I never got to leave you/I hung on to the bitter end

as the house I grew up in slowly broke down

eerily knowing we were both leaving town

I knew you thought you'd die there but

that was not to be

and when you up and left, all you left was me

Now you live alone in the midst of

many others

as I write this poem

in my bedroom safely under the covers

Waiting For The Hurricane

I'm just sitting waiting for the hurricane as my friend baby sat 2 greyhounds on the Greyhound bus mixed with desperate lives in 1976 manic garrulous everyone from California to defunct Bombay their own stories I have tomorrow off waiting for the hurricane oh I heard there won't be much rain but someone said we'll get it bad I did not believe her something about Long Island getting it and so we usually do last time I heard it was heading for Massachusetts where they found the Olds 98 right around the time they demoted St. Christopher I was never the same after I stepped off that bus marked for life and here I sit late night/early morning waiting for the hurricane

                                              --------------------------------------------------------

Coming down from the mania wondering why you said and did what you did it wasn't                          long enough not embarrassing enough only dark hearted stuff the stuff you hope other                      people don't dare think or do secretly they will say you're moody                                                              if this is a poem it absolutely sucks it was only hypomania/no running down the street naked , no Jonathan Winters Patty Duke I only had my bathrobe and PJs purloined and worn right in front of my eyes after I got stabbed with a plastic knife that was 35 years ago emaciated almost invisible             now I stare at the future     

 

 

 

Soon I'll be meandering as green turns into yellow, red and brown

the wind will strafe the trees as it whistles like a hound

I'll be leaving you forever so far behind as I watch the leafless

trees and the road ahead unwind

And I'll stand upon the shore like a scarecrow in the rain

never caring what I'd lost

never knowing what I'd gained 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                 An Early Morning in Late September

                                          It's an early morning in late September

                                          and autumn just arrived.

                                          The morning seems so soft and tender

                                          and the moon is trying to hide.

                                          It's an early morning in late September,

                                          the beginning of another day.

                                          A day I just might not remember and there's

                                          just a few more things I want to say.

                                          I can hear the wind through the trees

                                          and soon I'll watch the turning of the leaves.

                                          Summer is just a memory in this early morning

                                          in late September.

                                          1982

 

 Don't Remember Me

Some folks like to be remembered.  Don't remember me.

I am not a model for little children to be.

Watch out for loners and guys with two first names.

They tend to lose their identities.  They have nothing

to lose.  They have nothing to gain, although many have

movies made about them.

They'll never write a movie about me.  My life is lame.

1977

-------

Stephanie blue eyes and wavy hair

looked straight ahead

stiff from medication

Stephanie roused the deadened air

with a beautiful song she sang in French

Stephanie fat and swollen in her calves

a young girl with dreams

unspoken

Stephanie stared and stared

and stared in silence unbroken

Stephanie sat in group unfurled

spoke of her father and a secret

desire

Stephanie brilliant, warped

poor girl with a brain on fire

1982

I live alone now I guess maybe that's my fault

Heading into fall too damp for good color they said on TV

This morning except maybe in the Adirondacks

I'm glad I got fair warning

So much depends on chlorophyll really but it only lasts so long

So I don't get touchy feely

I get contemplative in autumn when solitude barges in

You can see it in the trees and hear it in the wind 

Kansas

Kansas

Dry and dusty as I remember.

Flat as a pancake you could look it up!

The car must have been a deuce and a quarter or an Olds

with nine or was it seven girls on high school lunch.

The driver was corpulent and they said that I "talked funny."

The pretty girl in the front turned around to give me pointers

on hitchhiking, although I had already gone 1500 miles.

The only car with all females that picked me up the whole trip.

Can't blame them.

Later I was hitching as the dark sky loomed behind me.

A tornado warning

But I already had that warning the day I left home.