alice neel's "self-portrait (1980)"

she is nude
& old
& looks like
a perverse
grandmother sitting
on a zebra-color'd divan.

i like it.

---

the saddest poem in the world

we sit talking
& i plop on the
couch.

behind you a window,
white morning & snow,
glows gray light. i dream of

whiskey, slamming whiskey
like the old old
days -- absolutely drunk

& on fire.
on a snowy erie
morning we sit talking

& my sadness
has nothing to do
with you -- when i think

of you i smile -- & maybe
you don't even realize
the particular sadness

clouding
hours,
weeks,

is not a sadness
connected to yr
face. au confuckingtraire.

i think i mean
what we say
is below the clouds of

sadness,
maybe our words
are snow, & it's

the
goddamn
weather

why
i might
burst.

what
do we
decide?

silly,
i love
you, you love me,

& sadness
can eat
shit.

---

not a poet getting drunk

half a tuna sandwich & chips
& 3rd big mug of whiskey
& water (no ice this time).
the pipe has been smoking.
nobody seems to be up
this morning.
i'm thinking digital cable
movies -- yes,
kicked back on the
old recliner
on a friday
after thanksgiving
alone.
i can't believe
i've been a
poet all these
long
years.
what the
holy fuck
was i
thinking?

---

here now

ann is at the downtown art-house
tutoring kids after school.

she volunteers
her existence, still not believing

she's collecting
unemployment checks getting money

for nothing.
she never collected

ever in
her past. it's been 3 weeks

she hasn't
worked at the millcreek mall.

she's getting
restless. the volunteering

is a good
activity -- 2 hours

2 days a
week.

fall into my arms,
darling, let life be

my catching
you.

---

losing poems all the time

is somebody keeping
track of the things

i've written in cyberspace
the past 3 years?

no?
fuck.

all those earliest love
poems to ann,

gone, never copied
to paper.

poems
are like breath,

we breathe
& that breathing

is proof
we exist

albeit shivering
on a cold snowy morning.

& then
what does it mean

we live
or write at all.

let
me zombie beauty,

the beauty
of amerikan beauty;

electrified
stunned

what words come
go

---

fuck you

fuck you.
now don't go taking that personally.
this poem isn't addressing a particular
person, not even a human actually.
nor animal nor plant
tho the liana of spiritual grace
is fluttering across yr face like alien
fingers.
you, stun-gunned, just stare
& it's the stare of homo sapien in
21st century schizoid man head
holy shit
halo'd by unknownedness
every fucking one of us

---

we slept

pressing side of my face
between ann's warm angel-wings
holding her low in bed, spooned
like the spoons we are
silver mirrors
long lean droplet of
silver mirror
frozen into spoon shape
that's
my hallucination
after sleeping for a little over
2 hours
still smelling last
night's sex of squid-like us

lick along the ridges of the spine

---

few people

understand what or why in all holy fuck i
write, or have written -- long-term readers

jack me
here i shoot liquid whips of milk

mucky on yr
smile -- sigh, oh there he

goes
again, hiding from sensitive sanity.

hiding from the world of real
poets.

few people
realize i am god buddha allah poe

whitman
kerouac

some fucks think bukowski but that's wrong

you
fucks!

flavorings are fine.
i feel like taco bell

which ann is bringing
home for supper.

ann is my most conscious
reader, my sole soul lover,

& as far as any kind of
massive readership goes

i hope fucking
not i'd just

get mean
like this.

---

zen-jelly

a man is a flash
of mostly visual
experience. a very thin
slice of human existence,
ball of mind
cupped by bone skull
mind stuck to the
inside top of
bone cup
ideas
leak
down the hot spout of throat
maybe a man
ingests
the meat of
alcohol
he gets
hard
he inserts
his hardness into softness
where his
heart
funnels
love into dark air
spiders
splotches of
sperm web
spiders
spider
seed inside
white juice
of insect soul
buzz
buzz'd
whoa
howdy
let us
be thankful
for every
glimpse
of carbon-
based
life-
form sensation.
let
the
city
rot around you,
hiberate
pack-
rat
it,
write
breathe
write
breathe