my grandmother's mirror

i have a large, old wall mirror that belonged
to grandmother
but i can't bring myself to hang it
it has a fancy carved, dark wooden frame
she hung it over an old dresser in her apartment
in brooklyn
i remember on the last day of every december
she'd write 'happy new year' on it
in some kind of white foam
this old glass that my grandmother,
once a flapper in the 1920's,
used to stare into as her arms scissored
over her head & she let her fringed dress drop
over her shoulders & settle on her young frame
same glass she gazed into as smoke from the ashtray
resting on the dresser curled up past her newlywed
eyes
same glass she gazed into as she learned her husband
was married to two different women at once
same glass she gazed into as she got ready
to go to reno, nevada, only place that
granted divorces in the 1930's
same glass she stared into after returning from
her nervous breakdown
same glass she gazed into as she finally broke the news
to herself that she really had cancer
same glass she gazed into adjusting her fake breast
in her brassiere
same glass she gazed into as the cancer metastasized
same glass she gazed into at the large zigzag scars
across her belly
no i can't bring myself to hang this beautiful unbroken
mirror full of ugly luck

no myth

adam & his rib
is pure bullshit

but hubert selby jr.
w/his t.b. & his
collapsed lung
& the doctors
sawing out 10
of his ribs

& then selby
getting addicted
to morphine
& then heroin
for 27 years

& then vomiting out
'requiem for a dream'
in 6 weeks

his battered lung-bags
rattling
over the typewriter

giving away
his demons

now that's a man
for you

white striped

you can
tell by
my complexion
that i
understand
all 206
of my
bones

prison
within

my skeleton
colored
skin
moves
beneath
the sun

soulless

stripped
down

some
expose
their
hearts

me

i wear
my
ribcage
on
my
sleeve

sifting for stanzas

banging on the keyboard all day
now taking a break
eating straight out of the tuna can
w/a bent fork

i have neglected the litter box
seems like the cats don't shit some days
& then others seems like they shit
all day long

same for writing i guess
some days the words won't come out of the bowels
& others they come like a storm of turds

the cats sit on my desk now
while i am on the couch
two gargoyles staring at me
they want my tuna
& i want more stanzas
i have a feeling none of us will get
what we want tonight

fuck it
guess i'll go have a smoke
& they can lick the starkist can

you can't hang a horizontal man

i prefer
my skull
level
w/my feet

eyeballs
facing the
ceiling

no book
on my chest

blankets
tacked over
the windows

lights out

the cherry
of the cigarette
brightening
in between
no thoughts
at all

the ghostly
smoke lost
in the dark

the glass
empty

just

me

free
from
the
noose
of the
vertical
race

blood from tear ducts

i
think
of
drunk
jackson
pollock
w/dripping
brushes
& him
conducting
w/them
through
the
air
& the
paint
slanting
down
like
colored
rain
onto
the
canvas

i
think
of
van gogh
slapping
it on
thick
like
panicky
pastel
mortar

& i
wail
the
abc's
at
the
blank
page
&
watch
them
roll down
like
blood
from
tear
ducts

you don't need a .38 when you're turning 38

it's pouring today in january
that means the car won't start
good thing i have wine here
i'll stay home w/the cats, sip wine
& mess around w/the abc's
shit, man, two more weeks & i turn 38
yes, like the caliber of the gun
i can't stand the world but i wanna live
people are so fucking dumb tho
history wouldn't repeat itself
if we all just basked in the NOW
if we did that there wouldn't even
be a history or a future to worry over
but i don't foresee this happening in my lifetime
maybe after we bomb each other to kingdom shit
& some new kind of human evolves
a horizontal man, one that reclines all of his days
one that has the ambition of a common flower
there will be peace on earth but until then
i don't mind the engine not turning over
i don't mind the rain streaming down the windows
& the cats walking across my lap
& slowly pouring glasses of wine
i don't mind messing around w/the abc's
i don't mind not noticing how it turned
from morning to afternoon to dusk to dark

the anatomy of a poet

staples guns
or sutures
cannot stop
some people
from bleeding

a constant, internal
hemorrhaging

where even
the brain
& bones
get dyed red

an endless liquid fire
temporarily clotted
by the alphabet

six cigarettes

while my chafed hands
shook getting the key out
to enter the apartment
i noticed next to
the welcome mat
frozen beneath
water in a mop bucket
six cigarette butts
smoked a week ago
when we encountered
an evening of
mid-winter spring
& the wine flowed
& the smoke rose
beneath the thawing moon
but now they hang
suspended in ice
the glowing cherry embers
that moved through
the dark as we talked
& gesticulated
gone

jumper cables on the heart

i prefer the book of revelations
over genesis

i prefer the theory
of the extinction
of the dinosaurs
over the big bang

i prefer morgues
over maternity wards

i prefer midnight
over morning

yes, it's always been yin
all the fucking way

endings are like jumper cables
to my heart

thank god he broke the fucking mold when he made us

humans
aren't
treasures
in
clay

they
are
more
like
slime
in
clay

mud
pinatas
filled
w/phlegm

paper sacks of rustling tears for sale

i am a vertical roadkill poet
banging my bleeding yellowed fingers
upon a scratched up laptop

i draw a skull & crossbones
in the film of dust on the screen
& then jab at my keys
the dead alphabet forms black words
beneath the death's head

the sentences pour out & i catch
them below in old liquor store bags

i hustle my paper sacks of rustling tears
on the street to anyone who is crazy
enough to listen

punks with words

this is our time
to be the punks
with words

while big, fat death
sits on the hands
of all of
the deceased poets

this is our time
to graffiti the world
hiss our paint cans
while our fingers
are still free

3 a.m.

two goldfish in the bowl
gills working away
like tiny, underwater
bellows

the snail inching
across the glass
like a restless spiral Buddha

my cigar glowing
like a ripe cherry
in the dim light

smoke climbing
the walls like a mesh
of gray vines

the ashes, the ashes
we all dont dream

if i had to put it in human terms

if i had to put it in human terms
then my heart is an outhouse

my angel is a frozen block of minnows
from the bait shop

the thought of being born
is worse than suffering food poisoning

i adore the phrase "no-brainer"
all my life i feel like i've been
kidnapped from the beautiful country
of no-brains
chipped away out of
mother nothing's arms

& brought to another land
the land of earthlings

my body is a nuthouse

each of my
cells is
crazy

my body
is the largest
lunatic asylum
in the world

trillions of them
un-straightjacketed
loose within the walls
of my shape

you can see
the hairs on my
arms & back
of my neck
stand on edge
from their
mad membranes
pressing
just beneath
the surface of
my flesh

sometimes
i pour cups
of wine
on them
& they temporarily
fall calm

but then the next day
they're buzzing
madder than ever
like an angry swarm
of microscopic bees

smash yr mirrors like you smash yr idols

for four years i drove
this 1978 chevy nova
w/out a rearview mirror

i had knocked it off jumping across
the seat to the passenger side door
b/c the driver's door was broken
& i never bothered
to glue it back on

also the adhesive that held the
side mirrors on loosened
& they both dropped at different
times while sitting at a traffic light
& shattered on the pavement

don't listen to the masses:
intact mirrors are bad fucking luck

that's when i broke my habit
of looking backwards
i just kept punching the gas
& accelerating forward

my fender eating up the center
line as i zoomed towards the sun