I FEEL THE CRUSH OF FOOLS

I feel the crush of fools –

Claptrap jingo-man at the door

Wrapped up, canned and packaged

I know the cheap sugar high

The flame-tipped donut dunk –

All iced and swirled and sappy

I know the fat-laden drag

Sizzle mound chunk munch,

Blocked and draped and lumbered

I see a mad world driven

By money-comfort reptile bloods

With coffers lush and brimming

I hear the bloat and blather

Info-communication-Techno show –

Those boring, bickered strains

I smell the smacking funk and stuff –

Ghouls that guard progressive ways,

Are fragranced, leached and stagnant

I taste dull fruits from strangers’ hands –

Spoilage/life preventative, additive

Homogenized dyed-out glop

I cry, and cry, for infants’ souls

For cold-stiff-nipple baby wants

Alone, apart; apart, insane

I feel the crush of fools

A knowing void, the black abyss

Odd doings on the silent hush.

May 6, 1992

Santa Fe, NM

I KILLED MYSELF WITH A PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICH

I killed myself with a peanut butter sandwich

Right between the eyes

Down below the nose

I crammed it in my mouth

I ground it in my head

Where it snagged in my throat

But hit its mark – the belly-belly

Which was warmed by the downrushing

Lead-weight blood

“The suicide resulted from a heavy ingestion of Haagen Daaz,”

Said the attending guru

With the white flowing coat

“I can see by the smile

On his double-chinned face;

He was very out-of-balance

And a little insane.”

Perhaps it might have been a small piece of undigested beef

Clogging me up down there, you fool

Making me see ghosts of myself

In a naked mirror of doom,

And what of those psychic suck-down needs?

Like a stuffed potato –

Maybe I drown myself by the refrigerator door

And slit my throat with a sweaty chug.

No, I killed myself with a peanut butter sandwich

To stop the pounding energy

Of whirring, buzzing, heightened awe

To slow me down and calm my nerves

I lost my soul to another round

Returning as I've always done

To this lower life form I've become

"Resuscitate me, please! oh heavy one."

November 15, 1995

Nonsan, ROK

BALLAD OF A DISGRUNTLED GRAD STUDENT or HOW ST. JOHN'S WENT ABOUT GIVING ME THE BOOT

I am the first to admit
That my work may be stilted
My knowledge limited
And prose a bit wilted.

My purpose in coming
To the halls of St. John's
Was to flesh out such failings --
To unshackle my bonds!

I started my task
By doing the reading
By talking and listening
And writing and meeting.

At the mid-term conference
Remarks were made
That favorably showed
I had made the grade.

But lo and behold!
The first day of Spring term,
A call from the office and a
"Please don't return!"

I suspected what happened --
I thought I'd been bushwhacked
By a tutor with tenure
And a hot randy member.

This tutor was "gay" --
He was quite proud of the fact.
Innuendos in class
Showed clearly his tact.

The tutor grew fonder
Of a classmate buddy
And he approached him to see
If he might fondle his ruddy.

After being rebuffed
In no uncertain terms,
This tutor turned as spiteful
As deadly ass germs.

In class and in papers
His remarks made to me
Were demeaning and crass --
A sort of fiddle-dee-dee!

I formerly approached him
With honest intent
For help with my studies
To avoid time misspent.

But instead, I found,
I got stabbed in the back --
I got only dejection
From this sodomite hack.

Meanwhile, a second tutor
Took offense -- got all uptight
During an open discussion
Of Jacob's jewiness one night.

The political incorrectness
Of the statement I uttered
Horrified the tutor
While classmates shuddered.

I heard an unfounded rumor
Right after that, about
Me, the "anti-Semite bigot"
Spread by some unknown cat.

Alas! It made sense
When I looked at my grades --
They'd been grinding their axes
All during the classes.

So I went to the Director
Of Graduate Studies
To say I'd been wronged by these
Two butt-head "buddies."

I had no reason to think
She would not intervene.
(Instead she did something
"In-between.")

She talked to these tutors
(At least that's what she tells me)
And agreed that they acted
Perfectly wonderfully.

The remedy offered was
To let me stay, if I would
Rewrite the precept and
Retake the class -- but in the "St. John's way."

I struggled to get her to
Reflect on the effect,
But instead she applied
A benign neglect.

My letters to her
Asked for students to check
The findings, and her reply
To me was a stonewalling silence.

Then lo and behold!
I went to President Agresto
Who admitted, like her,
The gay tutor was pesto.

I presented my findings
And asked for relief
He promised to check it
(He seemed to agree with my beef).

The next day he called me
And in a tone not-so-mellow
He chastised my work
And called me a "Jesuitical fellow."

I then got a letter
Which had long been awaited
From the director, who
Now must have felt vindicated.

She twisted the knife
And repeated her offer
To let my poor soul remain
(As their court jester pauper).

I've been thinking it over
And over and over
And I've made up my mind
To let them all know --

If I could learn by aping words
Of the Great Western Way
Be not controversial
But be petty and gay,

I would not only go there
To learn but to teach
For it seems that rewards
Come to those who can leach

The great truths of time from
Those grand, noble works, while
Thinking you a "cretin" or "ninny"
And all students jerks.

Those whose vocation in life
Is to wrestle with words
To wrangle and wallow
Like well-cared-for birds,

Who delight when another
Gets lost in the battle
Of learning detail
That's so important to rattle.

When in my mind's eye
The search for the truth
Is not gained from nitpicking
Or from being uncouth,

But attempting to master
The great books of time
By trying and trying
To make of them mine.

Something within them
Deserves our attention
And something outside them
Is more than pretension.

It's the hard-won fighting
In life's muddy trenches that
Allows the mind to discover
A learning that quenches.

It's praised highly in books,
Learning's virtue and grandeur
And it's not off the mark
Whatever your stature.

But I'd rather go it alone
Through the bloat and the blather
Than try again to swim in this rank
Cesspool of soulless prattle.


May 25, 1993
Santa Fe, NM

MEMOIRS FROM THE DOGHOUSE

(NOTE: Penned after a gig, just after breaking up with the fiancé from hell.)

Pulled my last trick.

It was late

And I had to make up

A standby shuffle.

A cool blue menthol haze

And I was gone.

Dogs were barking.

I asked the bartender to

Shut the hell up.

What can be the matter?

And what is the point of it all?

It was over.

Beads of sweat reflected off the mug.

My forehead was a mile high –

Lips were dragging down to the ground.

The sky was swallowed in the sight.

A big orange bit of nothing

Came forward like a lump in my throat.

Soon the place was not to be

What I remembered.

The flat, ordinary people I knew,

Knew me no more –

  but I didn’t care.

The cigarette, limp and smoking,

Dangled there.

I tried to stop

The ringing in my eardrums.

While I couldn’t be there

I at once imagined a collision.

Crazy scenes danced before me.

My mind kaleidoscoped into a deep funk.

Tomorrow, doors and corners of his room

Laughed out rhythms

And he sighed.

            “What use, this place, oh Lord.  If you only knew.

              The saints and gilligan mews can help.”

World far from me –

Speak and my little life

Will spring

Like twigs, insatiable,

Craving frost.

Branches.

Salad things.

I keep my quiet vigil in the night,

A southern breeze does not stir.

My soul waits.

Buzzers in the moonlight,

Obtained at the trick shop,

Really made a hit.

Can the feel of this

Momentary tragedy

Fill up space while

Nothing I do makes sense?

No, thought I.

For the world to be

Against the wind

  (five preachers might wail under the moon)

But I will not try tonight.

Next in the liner

Was a man named Izzy.

Hell became

A divan

In a sunken living room.

How long pieces of flesh

Got here,

Unseen,

Creeping and then forgotten

Bothered him.

No matter.

One man tried once.

He failed.

He was not sad.

He tried on big coats.

People boarded.

A whistle blew and blew.

Someday

A young press correspondent will

Know you.

The print was

His kind of font.

All the day long

Ministrations were applied

But we lost him.

Does maniacal fun

Bring back memories?

Yes, yes.

Don’t make me think right now.

The filler pump back break

Simply makes me nervous.

On went the flotsam monogram –

Mindful of junk I never wanted

But needed to hear.

I was gone.

Slip and bra

Might have turned our family senses,

Yet inward went the mug.

He wowed them.

His magnificent thrasher

That took ordinary potatoes

Down the way

            “Stop, yengling banchees,” I screamed, “drop it now!”

Lemon drops stared out the bowl.

He took one in deep man-mouth.

Such antics are a no-no.

Scold me if you must.

My jar was filled with worms.

You know,

They were snug there.

Fishbones replaced our

Lost hopes

And ashes left me

Winsome

And blue.

Pencils outlined

Over the stained-glass.

Until and unless

Things start making right-angle

Sense

I won’t be partaking.

Deep beyond her wildest forays

Was a place we could go.

I stopped for a second –

Fan me a while, will you?

Consider this:

Two sartorial bigamists

Cannot sleep

While outrunning

Wallpapered and tinseled

Gremlins.

Hark, fiends!

Smacks of deceit.

Are you him?

Our audience sinks in

Fluid dreams.

Beyond ourselves,

Images take light.

Market’s closed.

Pom-pom boxes stacked.

This day’s garage sale was

Postponed.

Yesterday

Came on like a dream.

I was tired anyway.

February 28, 1988

Baltimore, MD

THE HOUSE OF CONSTIPATION

The fridge sat fat and stuffed and dirty

In the kitchen where its door swung wide

Where food excesses often started

With a swinging, revolving, revolting

Door of bad eating habits

In a house of dust and grime

That clings to window blinds

Or pools in places barely traipsed

Like pooling oceans,

Dustball oceans

In that house bereft of ventilation

Known as the House of Constipation

Where tables are for piles of things

And things take up the walking space

Where clutter abounds from wall to corner

Impeding movement of mind and matter

Where cabinets are filled with things not used

To displace the space left for those things used

In a kitchen waiting room for dying foods –

Yet where foods don’t die, but mummify

In a graveyard filled with left-behinds

Of left-overs put in fridge, or on countertops

Where heels of bread forever sit

Imprisoned in their plastic bags

Or end in a fridge of small plastic coffins

Filled with rotting bits and morsels

Dried or slimy, and growing putrid

All food just molds and wastes away

For the hang-up of a silly rule

Known as “waste not, want not.”

Yet stay it does on the morgue-like shelf

In this self-deluded monstrous way

A “sin avoiding sin”

While awash in fat-laden sugar goodies

Which tower over all food groups

In cellulite-producing, artery-clog

Shaming wholesome food

It shames these eaters too

Who live in this house

Who don’t eat right

Who snuff out life in this constipated house

Just as they would to the body temple.

January 3, 1995

Chevy Chase, MD

HALF A MAN

His steel encased

Plush cockpit

Meant to cut space/tame time

Is pawing at the curbside lane.

For what is a man without a car

But half a man?

His worsted wool

Exec-body armor

Fashioned by haberdasher’s hands

Sets him as a sharp-dressed gent.

For what is a man without a suit

But half a man?

His eel-skin

Brass appointed carry-all

Envied by the polished elite

Completes his authority aura.

For what is a man without a brief case

But half a man?

His position of power

As a money-influenced desk merchant

Will shelter him from the glad-hands.

For what is a man without a job

But half a man?

His Sunday-style prayer

At his once-a-week hour-long

Reassures for now his deeper self.

For what is a man with half a whole

But eternity’s wandering-wanting soul?

January 26, 1994

New York City

SURREAL DOMUS FAMILIAE

A ton of muscle

Crammed into

Makeshift levers

Made out of

Bobbing saints

Who eat

Chocolate mints,

Was grooved into

Etched glass

As daddy died

And svelte cotton

Pickers mourned

Like jerked chickens.

Cracked riding helmet

Stuffed with

Spent cartridges

Ruining mantled

Pierced porpoises

That smile,

Was interred along

Dirt-laden shelves

While brahma cried

And sleek muddy

Bottles laid up

Like mottled hake.

Rusted slater’s hammer

Peeling up

Hide handle grips

Stuck onto

Bagged celery

That flopped,

Was selected for

Transparent battle

As sissy shrieked

And tarnished nimbus

Crowns came alive

Like baking prawns.

Sept. 8, 1993

Queenstown, MD

KNOTHEAD

Pan Dried crust meat

Enlargement of brain

Stomach, heat on,

Whirring time, bleak

Place of endings

God forlorn, empty

Hopings and liquid

Takings by beings

Infrared, blue

Gold-buzzing zonk.

Monks brought us

Mud.  Our crunchy

Path mashed,

Lost

Demon blank and

Large looming figs

Dripping sap,

I silenced the

Melting. the molding

Breadcrumbs, the

Gone night – the

Wasted day.

March 28, 1992

Santa Fe, NM