Dango

Please forgive me, I`m putting together and editing some of the poems to print as a volume. If interested, drop me a comment, and I`ll make extra.

Riding in Circles

There was a time when the highest form
of enjoyment I knew was riding in circles
in the elementary playground, yeah just
balancing and feeling the sense of movement
and relative speed was enough;
I could do it for hours

Riding a bike back from Roppongi I realized that
is no longer enough, 30 is a ripe old age
to discover that riding on earth
that has been asphaltized for the benefit
of wheels and other insentient devices,
is not enough

but the three girls dancing
more than dared me to do it, against the
restraints of my one true girlfriend
sleeping in the tatami room,
yes three honeys were the dessert
and one deep kiss had me
riding in circles.

Bunkasai

Not so much about culture, but class themes
that involve cross dressing, matchmaking,
haunted hauses, dice games, candy and the like,
students from other schools, mothers and little
brothers and sisters and little sisters` friends
sprawling around in a school sanctioned version
of original matsuri fun, the only thing lacking
kimonos, stalls of yakisoba and the like,
students milling, leaves falling
autumn gold and red.

A Golden Year

that year under a
spell, certainly the bud helped
green, Humboldt, kind

yet so alien to the computer it seems
impossible to grasp when sitting in front--

even nestled under blankets,
listening to perhaps the best vintage Dead,
even then the spell only comes in pulses,
memories of sun dappled Santa Cruz hillsides,
turning gold in the autumn evening light,
the Monterey Bay spread deep blue like a
sumptuous drink, the knobby peninsula
of Carmel afloat, some Treasure Island
to be reached at night, in rowboats,
silently, blades between the teeth--

yes, this id the place of daydreams, every
moment somehow a flicker of original
indolent Californian ways, lolling in the sun
or fishing trout, collecting berries and shellfish
in the salt marshes, shell mounds still exist twixt
the artichoke fields seconds from the coast,
and the mountain bikes pad over the black
rich soil of infinite, tiny Indian carvings and scrapings,
now artichoke mulch--

Women, how did I let them all slip through
I whose thoughts, perhaps more enlightened than now,
and certainly more relaxed, could not grasp
the thing I most wanted for fear, fear of shaking
and wanting, and losing

desire fairly burned a hole in my soul that year.

Here I Am

Here I am a zeitgeist bandit, not
Dylan mingling troubadour style
but something softer, of deeper impact
like the chicken warmth of a Roppongi
pita stand, here to say and
announce these things not to the
yawning multitudes of morning commute
news readers, not with the silent shriek
of a man with blogosphere agenda,
I am here to slip a word or two
to the twitchy-fingered chosen few--

Chicks

The eggs were lined up and he showed me,
at first I couldn`t believe it, the proper way
of pressing down with a large slab of uncut marble
cracking the shell gentle, then peeling off
a persimmon orange layer of gunk, revealing
a chick in all its glory, individual and patient,
ready for adoption, repeating this process
I lined them up, though soon I was confronted
with a chick-monster, oversized, no eyes or mouth,
I asked my friend for permission to bash it lifeless
with the marble in my hand, he shuddered, but I
said there was no other way... it was not the
chick exemplar the parents had ordered--
I flushed it down the toilet, considerately.

The Flip Side

The city life begins, and with it
all the intricacies and hesitancies
of the hemmed in world, tendrils
creeping across my mind, thin shadows
unexpected and almost unoticed,
pull ing my mind out gently like
flat-pan taffy, careful not to snap,
but enlarging and taking away the original
instinctive power, the straight-saddled
country leaning folded by repeated submergings
in people, subways, and crowds, home now
a desperate, secret spot of green and quiet
among things that have grown up, around
much too fast.

Tangle the Heart

The drizzle, this downpour, all my feelings
once so solid, even crusty, now the jelly
center of some doughnut, this city
that sends people scurrying here and there,
women, beautiful and not, on errands
to find, and tangle the heart.

Arisugawanomiya Park

they slither through the green, their arms
are warm and bending, talking low and
passing other garden toads unoffending,
we do not say their name

their name is money.

we do not name these trees, their limbs
are weary, coralled and coaxed in these
various ways, only mosquitoes penetrate
the heat.

In 1965

The apartment wooden, a little rickety
for earthquakes , but appealing in
the bright sea-fronted air, overshadowed by
the recent concrete apartment next door,
the street outside busy, bright flags of
a Chevy dealership across the street
and the whafes of a taqueria
around the corner

there were five of them or six at times,
it wasn`t clear who was living there
of course there were those who
watched the TV and those who didn`t,
those who washed dishes and those
who didn`t

The landlady at the apartments next door
recalls she offered a room to one of them
cause he was spanish, or part, she herself
from an old California-Mexican family,
she saw them all as boys, though some
well into their twenties, drinking beer or wine
on the deck, in the sun, she had little to do
but sit and watch from above like a peering bird,
their girlfriends, generally blonde, their conversations
well, a little odd

Nixon always making his funny speeches,
with which she half agreed, the Pinto one of them
bought, modified engine, rumbling to a start or stop
late at night, and the kind of joy she felt when she
watched them, a kind of family of children
in a playground, so different from
the salary-bound tenants before,
she recalls the guitars ragged and accoustic that
would fade in the wind and reach her in snatches
of improvised joy and sadness.

I wasn`t even thinking when
these thoughts came slipping in,
inking their way in murky depths
of purpose, task and line,
making themselves felt in dreams
that urged me to forget,
and take one small sip
at first, to swim in depths
beyond my line, fluttering
not quite sinking, without anchor,
safety, net.

Hanging Low Fruit

My gun fully in its holster
women are the holy oil, breasts
brushing up against, and making me suffer
and turn and sway, I wish I could repeat
this action until death,this whisper of flesh,
light brush, a softness not meant for me--
hanging low fruit, a dance.

The Lady Down the Hall, 30th Floor

The Emily Dickinson of the internet age,
she haunted gardening forums, trading tips on
back-hoe spading, mulch and dirt, she tended
her botanical acquaintances with care,
and wrote about them as if they were there,
obsessively, for years.

Insurgents

what does it mean 30 insurgents were killed,
were they killed in a house, with their family,
on a farm? were they killed man to man or
by bomb, like a dealer with the upper hand,
was anyone left to mourn?

Look

I`ll show you as I walk, we`ll pass
the old park and embassy walls,
there will be bicycles coming through,
watch out, the sidewalk guardrails
make it very narrow indeed,
but don`t stop, whenever you walk,
whatever you do, don`t stop

Cold Eyes

he saw himself as a thwarted artist
basically ammoral

bent to create a new race, profound on
a wing of fate to paradise

fed speed by his personal physician
in mammoth quantities

yeah, no wonder the world had not seen
his like, and still wonders--

he subjected the world to his own private
drug trip, basically ammoral

how could he? blood and blood
of innocents seeping out I saw him
in a dream

cold and aloof like any war-bred opa
yet something so cold and cutting,
the eyes of the suicidal maniac
clever enough to get what he wants,
mass graves.

Gaijinhouse

Tatami rooms, broken up
Unlikely cast of characters,
german engineer, half-sicilian
alcoholic air mechanic, british
voice-over actor, and teachers
something out of the Steinbeck
family of situational misfit comedies,
the garden outside a small forest
with hefty half-ton boulders planted
to prevent the encroaching arm
of use-each space tokyo developers
thank god! the police outside real,
guns holstered, standing straight at
all times, Korean and Chinese embassies
near by, a double whammy if ever the time
arises and we slip back into a time
of assassinations, firebombs, crises--

Not To Truck a Word

Like Kerouac not allowing them to truck a word
on his holy scrawled spool of written reason,
and rhyme with rhythm I am here to protect
my own vision and hard won lucid pome of the moment
method of nonforgetting for alcoholics, schizophrenics
and other forgetful sorts, trace a pulling of essence,
and pulling it to me with pins, to the heart of my heart
a book, collection of dead butterflies all neatly mounted,
the colors as bright and iradescent as the moment
they were all madly fluttering, their wings beating, beating
to escape some fate.

On Fire

Wise men say avoid Roppongi, it`s a place
where all manner of sin, venality mingle
under the hot night streetlights and neon hues,
where east and west meet and circumlate, expressing
desires in the only language desires take,
bite of neck and hand on thigh, it is drunken,
slurred, aloof, she is Japanese, she doesn`t
understand, nor do you, on fire--

Little B

Little B went out one day,
just a prince on his father`s land,
elephants dressed rich with brocade
in the sun`s swelter, a perfectly
spoiled little boy who contemplated death
because of his mothers` own which he imagined
all the more vividly because he was only 7 when
it happened, 7 days, crying for the tit he never
suckled and the round of the tummy never nuzzled
the riches and spices from new lands
just a way of allaying fears, hand to mouth, digestion
the sparrow speared the worm with its beak
then hopped away.

where his guitar led

They put it together by hand
then in the dim days of electronica
before they`d caught the country bug
it was a field of grass and daisies
it was a sunny California day
lorded over by a band a band that freaked
and denizens of apartments and suburbs
who came at once outlyers of some great
happening and explored together arms
finger painting the truth for a while,
adlibbed an extemporous response
to all the urges of hormone and synapse
exploding in seed clusters, like waves
that`s where his guitar and creaking voice led
they were pilgrims and buffetted on his notes
surfeited by a tide of pushing drums
surfed the waves of Balai` Hai until at last
finding an unravelling, the shore, wandered
picking up seashells, looking inside to the deep
smooth pink of the vulva, licking around the rim
and then in, to where his guitar led

then to the forest of orange wildflowers
cosmos and poppies in the Kasai seaside park
where we made a hollow with our bodies
and sank together in the late afternoon warmth.

Posture

Terrorists are the new Bogeymen, dealing in germs
and chemicals, blasts and scars, other hallmarks
of connectivity, cells are our only choice, small
regions within smaller countries, highways abandoned
and given to the meander of a private lane, Japanese
streets are well designed in that respect, a mixed up maze
a jumble, yet--

any enemy will pass a hundred
watchful houses on the way to wherever his aim,
there are so many walls here (hence the ninja)
if ever our wide-armed embrace of anything and anyone
could be questioned it is now,
arms folded, defensive--
in snaring others we also snare ourselves.

Two Moons

I begged and begged my mom and grandma
to take me to Star Wars, I was all of three
and they worried about, what? impressionable minds,
needn`t have worried, 15 minutes and I was out--
Darth Vader heavy-breath`d, squeezing
the life out of a soldier in a basket hat

We would go to the park every lunchtime
bring our lunchboxes with superheroes
emblazened in primary colors
and settle down for a good
two hours of action figure play in the
crisp San Francisco light

Darth Vader of course, and Luke in his desert
garb, much cooler than the X-wing pilot
bright prison-orange jumpsuit Luke,
Sand People, peeking out of peaked hoods
Han and Chewie, the gentle long haired wookie
Greedo`s alien glare that somehow matched
the punk of the time, we had quite a collection

Later, after I moved
I recall hanging upside down on the metal bar,
surveying the first-grade playground, feeling
I was Luke Skywalker, alone in the desert
on a planet with two moons

Try

there never will be posterity, things are heating up
we are splitting things which should not be split
creating reactions much larger than we imagined
from small, cold things

there will be no prize for the winners, only suffering,
success in replicating reactions on the sun
may turn our thin surface into a molten golden casket,
these things have been foretold

let us go then you and I and love until there is
no lie, and take each kiss from life`s firm grip
and place it on our lips, to try.

Tomatoes, the New Fruit

tomatoes are the new fruit, and will be
as long as I live within spitting distance of
vine rich dirt

what I call the `root beer effect` is achieved
through two parts summer exhaustion
and one part ice cubes cracking
in the glass, liquid foaming up
in pure amber bliss (in Japan we
settle for a pale imitation, diet coke)

these sudden pleasures, same as the deep
sugary ripeness of a Carolina watermelon,
the wet wet tang of a shelf ripe peach
(I can`t afford fruits here)

well, there are bananas, cheap as they go
and good in a monkey way

And the musk melon which my girlfriend brings
every year, a gift from her father`s colleagues
to her father, through to us-- perfectly wrapped,
no dirt on the skin... takes about a week to
make the effort to eat it, also sweet, short-lived.

Treeline Limits

the mountain skiier goes into the crags
and feels the pull and all the perfect white
because he can, I suppose

the poet who wanders the peaks above
meandering rivers and treeline limits,
any other way would feel like cheating

practicing scales and chords until they become rote,
switching tacks, yeah just for the hell of it,
so long as we don`t rely on words or notes
we can take life only at its peak and transmute it
as those below begin trudges towards
peaks and valleys of their own, tinged red

oh I`ll sail I hope and seeing the horizon line
let gravity do the work, take me back to the fold.

Crouching, Hidden

here where so much effort has
been put into industrialization,
stocking the shelves with age old memories
of privation and overlord intransigence

a neighbor is catching up, making up
for 50 years without western blessings,
itself a land of dragons and tyrants
with a serious bone to pick,
copying every move that once worked
to its rivals advantage

who will get in between these two?
they are circling eachother with locked eyes
flexing muscles, the slightest flicker.

Odyssey

All rise and greet the sun, humble destroyer
who doesn`t much intrude on our lives,
filaments we are of a great wave a surging,
let the coffee calm our nerves, let the red and green
LED blink on and off intermittently, lost in a sea
of neckties, rasping coughs, grey skirt glances
panty hose seams

innured against the charms of nature, and of the sky
that peeks through the rooftops, once a great God
to be appeased through festival and beating of drums,
now a peek through the curtains, not a ripple on the skin

I have lost that loving feeling yes, sperm count lower
droning about a queen bee, in this case I`m
faltering, addled, wired sprawling urban disaster

oh Ariel, goddess of dishwasher detergent and
Narcissus, perfume of young ladies of Ginza at dusk,
I offer these thoughts and prayers to somehow
see me through, my only connection to the sea
and Ionia the thin seaweed wrapping
of convenience store onigiri,
a blind oar in the deep.

let this one go out

Let this poem go out in a great slant
to Roppongi, to Bar Milwaukee still
the best felt path to wide pockets

to the chicken warmth of the Heineken
pita stand, the original and only that
doesn`t send stomachs into mad contortions

to Gas Panic, all crew cuts and fat german
necktie around the forehead slobs,
500 yen Fosters, sexy come hithers
and a fair few who look and dance easy
but would not, not ever

to the subway open at five and already smelling
of urine and vomit as you follow the dead
deep into the caverns of Tokyo

to the strip clubs, well we`ve all been to strip clubs

to the nigerian touts who Will harangue you
and Will Not let up until all gentlemanly decency
has been extingished and you are pushing them,
aware that only in theme-park night life Japan
could you get away pushing a guy this much bigger

to the trash bags that line the pavement nightly,
testament to yen and sex dissolved suddenly
in early morning repentance blurs.

Upper Window Vagrant

People have been talking about windows and windows
buildings and buildings for ages, since the 30`s at least,
guess I`m catching up, so this is progress and everything
from now will be buildings or permutations thereof,
escape from buildings, underground subway mazes,
Disneyland crowds (there`s no escaping from)
mainstreet recreations and cotton candy clouds,
van gogh sunflowers swaying in the listless upper story
apartment, anyway I`m out here on the fire escape,
smoking a joint.

Blinders

In the stream each morning,
in the train speeding towards Tokyo,
in the early workday crush, I follow
this path to a forested dead end,
a mix of new rectangular family granite, all polished
and indicative of new wealth, crowding the older
lychen-spotted buddhas and strange animal-headed
divinities, one statue with crocheted hat
dark and dank, mottled bright green with moss,
this nature, so close and unexpected
will disappear when I put on my blinders
and swim.

Windmills and Tills

the real gilt pavement big city world
shinjuku hosts inhabit, the money poured
and flowing like bottles of champagne,
how we talk and talk as if the earth is tilled
with manners and renumerative expectations,
we watch ourselves and the world around us
turn to tills and money lending schemes,
trees and forests marked, awaiting their fate,
little wonder Masako feels trapped,
I wonder if she can teach her child to resist?
no, her daughter already
looks on things with moneyed expectation,
surrounded by, dependent on the hunters
of men that set us up and cast us atumble
with not a twinge.

The Karaoke Hut Memorial Blast

We were driving through the country, to a hut
farmers use to sell vegetables, except
this one had a soundproof glass door,
inside a recording console and
two guitars that were japanese style
short brooms with the bristles feathery
and all fanned out.

One had two strings, rubber bands really
and the other a full set of four and when I played
something like a chord magically came out through
the rounded handle

the hut had expanded
into something of a roadside restaurant and we
lounged, I don`t recall we ate anything,
what really caught my eye was the collection of
Tin Tin comics, including one with a new cover,
on closer inspection an old story containing
a few pages of new panels, this has happened to me
twice in dreams

we were off scuttling across the country
the hills ablaze with I thought houses,
turned out to be scarlet flowers, whole hillsides
and a forested garden with arched wooden bridge,
memorial to lives lost in atom blast

We Live Your Dreams

We walk through mediterranean kitchens
surrounded by comfortable furniture
and comfort women, we take pleasure
in the dry heat of the coastline and
never hurry, we are the very rich and we will
take what is yours and spoil ouselves with it,
inevitably.

Napclub Annual Membership Drive

The pool balls are all cued up, you`ve learned all the angles but your hands are shaking, what to do? When the things beyond your control hover like black shrouds on the edge and cause an aching loss of vision, goal in sight

take a nap, yeah a genuine A-rated armchair snooze, don`t even think of getting up for anything more pressing than a canned beverage, cross all the wires and hide the remotes, bury all hatchets, man the decks, sweet isles of nectar laden dreams ahead

Guest Worker

For the past years past expression, excuse me
I`ll just be in the other room screaming my head out

it`s never stopped me before I know but I always thought
if I nudged things enough I could get this ball a rolling,
nothing budged

I know they value my skills in a superficial way
and I know that they wont cut my job or my pay, but

if life was all that, and if that nourished us fundamentally
we`d be creeper plants all green and trailing along
the edges, spilling out to be cut

I`ll Hide

there was a man who promised the world,
and another who said he couldn`t deliver

both were moved by the same idea
they had to be something much bigger

than a living walking, human being who lingers
over the funnies, may walk to the bathroom
in slippers, and doesn`t really give a flip about others

these things which I am, which you will see and judge
I will hide, and try to hold in until I`m out of sight
so that none may judge and none may call me
wrong or right

Graduation

Poems must break cleanly from prose,
the words each distinct must alter that
which passes near and indepently imply
the explicit in codes that exist as semantic
components for future scholars to sift through

ah hell, I`m just here to tell a story.

You`re the Money

If you want me to speak, then feed me
don`t stand around, I`m a commodity
and demand to be treated as such

if you want a feel, a touch, it`ll cost you but
it won`t cost you much

I`d be happy to do it for free, if you were my type
the kind in the magazines, tall, dark and vacant
you know, much better than this scene

I`ll get there and then... you say you want to buy me
one of those wee bottles of champagne?
that`s sweet, well cheers daddy,
bottoms up!

I mean really, you are one of the more interesting
guys whose come through this town

Who`m I fooling, you are the most handsome, dark
and vacant stranger I`ve seen in a good long while

and no, I certainly don`t mind your hand creeping up
my ass, thats what hands are for, you creep...
I mean you poor gentleman, `scuse me
my words are all coming out...

ummm ah yeah, i don`t mind it, umm yeah it is a little wet
just ah don`t get we started, I`m ummm ah

Just a little bit more, k, we`re almost there, yeah I mean the bottle
it`s down to the suds, we`re ready for another

or are you ready for the road? it`s either one or the other,
yes it feels good, yes I`m your honey

Tokyo Goho

Appraising the state of Japanese hairstyles,
deep immersed in the crush of an overpopular
attraction, imagining this art train pulling
from the station, commute hour, paintings
the only window, glimpses of a world
distant, canvas slaps and gashes, swirls

Now alone with a Lt. Milliet
who appears suspiciously like
a train conductor, his blue eyes
and swabs of green
as fresh and vibrant as the day
they were committed

Wending a way towards a goal
that receedes in the face
of this polite, insistently pushing crowd,
the quiet of the street and lit cafe
on a typical French night, how much
I would give for its tranquility
and wine

Being up near Gogh is like being
near peasant hands
devoted to portraying God in colors

the paint was not dry and he was up and on
to another, and then onto his ear and body,
Christ in wormwood, a wormwood Christ

The brush attacking and populating trees
with dense masses of crow-black scribble,
She says he was finally free to use up his paint
knowing he would die, no more
hitting up his brother for 15 francs
or pilfering Gaugin`s money box,
dabbing brush in deep wells of oil,
bleeding thick tears with a capacity
for suffering and compassion
to outlast his own

Though I am but one of many
who have trundled through as
humble visitors past a person of state,
I feel as if I`ve just bumped into
an old mad friend, in Tokyo
of all places.

the Scream

Now that my waking hours are populated
by the dead and strange skeletons in suits
hovering and pressing firm and steadying
themselves on the speeding rattling trains
I no longer wonder to see faces in trains,
at school, millions of faces at once innocent
and wraithlike, a deep jutting of souls.

Even Us

Life, once about achievement
turns to talk about children, or even
grandchildren, old people no matter
how self-important become bookends
for the next generation, supporting them
in their dreams of success and change,
knowing all will turn to dust before
the world changes, knowing their
specific molecules may be floating around
in streams, trees, factories and muck,
as much the victims as instruments
of their kind.

Running West

I was planning, then on a trip
but had forgotten basic things
like cell phone charger and keys,
lucky Darren was there to lend his

then I was in the dark city, it was quiet
I was walking with her, the unnamed lover
touching her breasts finally, her hips
feeling guilty

then drag racing down Roppongi-Dori,
more spectacle than driver, the Evil Knievel
easyrider burnt rubber feeling as I went down
a long hill of distinctively japanese buildings
that suddenly ended in long fields of green,
I did see a man in old garb of blue robes
holding his sword like a sythe, menacing and
finally a turquoise sea full of tropical
sea creatures, most of them from a can,
she explained this was a royal hideout
on the isolated peninsula Ise, not far
from some original Shinto shrine

where my uncle Roger had a beachfront house
worth cool millions, there was a dinner party
featuring some of my closest relatives, I forget
their names, we played a scavenger hunt type game,
I found myself imitating Neil Young in vain attempt
to gain points as all this pointless wealth
colored me with basic envy.

half completed, just begun

They don`t often know
how to read foreigners
the way we do, checking others
at a glance, catching subtle body
indicators of experiences past
and present, where we think
this member of our society
may be going

Those around, while reacting
to the mannerisms which
indicate you have lived
a time in their culture
and are conversant
with their signals, don`t catch
all the baggage you carried
to the land of the rising sun

This is a leavening then,
unburdening
and unlearning, to find
a journey half completed
just begun.

The Devil Grants a Rare Interview

Seems like war could have been averted
if we had only diverted resources in a
proper way (no it couldn`t have, we like war)

We like it in the armchair and at sufficient remove,
but in the flesh? I think we would have chosen
a third way if we had known they`d bring
war to our doorstep (no, we were bored and
overfed, waiting for someone to bring something,
the milk man, the mail man, the war monger, whoever)

Then at least you might admit the mothers of this nation,
given a chance to rule and decide the tack of our future
involvement might have chosen one more implicit
and subtle, less threatening for sure ( there is nothing
subtle about the american soccer mom)

So I guess we were doomed to go down this slippery
road to war and nary a branch in the road could have
prevented it (I could have, but was condemned
long ago to the hot bowels of the earth, where
only the wicked could hear me)

God is good and you are evil, at least that is a given
(no the binary thinking that still informs and motivates
a million holy rollers and their government minions
is the problem, God and I are just real good friends,
golfing buddies really)

And you are just an echo in my mind.

Off Guard

To enjoy a great work we must catch it off guard,
we wander in but do not allow ourselves to think of
the museum, or edition in which it is housed,
nor bear in mind the critical reception of the work,
nor scientific analyses, whether in the form of
radiograph, mimeograph, or astrology,
we drink in the richness of the color
and allow our eyes to swim in the original wonder
of life which Gough, Gaugin, Monet envisioned--
writing poems we also catch ourselves off guard
and swim as long as we are able.

Once Roamed

How relaxed they seem, hippies yes
but that was another word for
someone who was relaxed
at the time hence, hip and worthy of all
benefits the phrase freelove entailed

though a fair few not blonde and
sunny natured created alternative
visions in early incarnations
accoustic, with a taste of something
screaming and metallic

the picture from golden gate park
is idyllic, not too crowded,
a Sunday student`s picnic, a clique and
snubbing of parents, nothing
earthshattering at all, rolling of joints
and gathering of tribes and all, the Beats
had already warped reality and left a thousand
free thoughts and poses of free thinking
in their wake.

Kindling

Lone man dancing with all good ladies
in the club, drawing all tight-jeaned
honeys into his inner circle, subtly
bringing the center of gravity down,
creating heat and friction between
the legs, an expert in kindling
club room drama, slapping that ass
and pushing, guiding her hips in a slow
circular motion around, this is the beat
one two one two one one oneoneone
this time, it`s me.

they meet and sweat in shades

You should have been around last night, yeah I wish
I could speak English, man I was just... you know
I played you those tapes, cough cough I am pissed
and you are putting on like this mask, all this
latent agressiveness coming through in quips

hey Bobby, dont try that voice,
you hipster go-getter, can`t fool me,
have you heard, everyone is interested
in that woman, Big Mama, she`s so heavy
singing with the fluid lines that Bill lays on
the piano with a certain sadness, tell me
we haven`t missed all the good times.

Watching the Trains

I don`t like poems that come from headaches,
something blocked and not getting through
digging, and digging

I used to feel that way all the time, raging and raging
and knowing all this anger would well up and push those
around me further and further out, until there was
no one around

Echoes of this I sometimes feel
unseemly bossiness, the curse of all good Vikings,
counterpoised by thoughts of nature, zen, anything to
take the sting off the ego

If I was to drop off the edge
no one would care,
here, now on my bicycle
riding for example, a typical shopping bike
weaving a straight line through the crowd,
watching the trains.