rest slips from
me not today she
said there is still work to be
done internally dive deep and see
sweet surrender colored weak continues to elude you the piece of eternity sliced for you is not yet served
my mom liked country music
i wasn’t sure what to make of it
born in a mecca of diversity as far as the blind eye could see
race segregation economics roach versus beetle infestations
but country was white blues i felt
Johnny Cash praised God like Rev. Gary Davis would
Dolly and Kenny brought joy to my mom and her kibbutzi sisterhood
Willie and Kenny transported a 7 year old pig tailed little girl to another America while on various road trips with the acquaintance to those angels
there has never been any doubt my drum is not only different but off as well
i can’t say that life made me this way but here i am
my thoughts have never been linear and yes i like it hard
music people music
not necessarily in volume but in soul Patsy i’m still in love
with our heartache our diverging dreams
you fell to pieces and i preferred to cut
piano bars mosh pit stops jazz hangouts agape screams i love them all the same
and every now and again when it all gets insane i remind myself that all diversified complications still carry the same twang
RIP Gambler 🃏
Buk it’s 2020
my hero Hanky baby
and i’m still alive
these last few days
i’ve surveyed her face
our whore saint city
don’t fret she loves us still
these last few days
i’ve driven by
the schools i’ve been in
i don’t remember a damned thing
my first day of pre school
i was late
on account my dad had to wait
in the Mobil lines for five hours
hey Buk
do you remember
these last few days
every grade year the same old shit
the Pilgrims the marches the maths the farces
the Nina the Pinta the Santa Maria
Sesame Street Hee Haw Fat Albert and Lawrence Welk
and by the time Ronnie Raygun came around
i was branded diagnosed exposed and pigeonholed
the patina of fine psychobullshitary
casted on my soul
these last few days
intuitively speaking Buk
i don’t feel its right to blame
after all i have a conscience
id ego and a touch of naughtiness too
i don’t want to go down that way
remember the time over on Las Palmas Ave
when i called the principal
the devil’s panty liner
i had more class
than to just call her a knit wit
verbal theatrics have been
my little blue bird
these last few days
my bones hurt more
i linger by the antioxidants
and pay some attention
to the collagen talks
my hair line fractures
from the days of Face
are bald and angry
so i take turmeric supplements
during the day
these last few days
the stains of my sins
are rinsing away
leaving a fall hued patina
glazed on my spirit
these last few days Buk
the beer bottles on the streets
cigarette butts and paper sheets
blowing in the wind
make me feel sentimental
where has most of my life gone
is this what happiness is
to feel the bumps upon my skin
the knuckles of my hands
being cupped by my finger tips
as i walk under the bridge
where the many roads
to numbness took me
these days i swear Buk
i have felt
an orgasmic magnificence
flow through my veins
but there are still
some challenges
his fedora was camel tan felt with a gray ribbon around the crown he missed a tooth or two skin dolphin blue ashy like the flick of a Cuban cigar he belonged at that piano bar he had always been there an entity but every end of a lifetime he’d take on another body and the fedora man would return to the same old black stool sagging with confessions of past souls bemoaning life and living being a junkie i was on the look out to see if he could be trusted the old man spoke English but our real conversation was on another level we understood each other with our eyes we were all intuition instinct pulse gut feeling we were cons used to the streets i wasn’t stable material i thunk too much he wasn’t to be trusted he assumed too little one day we both happened to be there i told the owner who wore fake diamonds and bee stung eyes i’m just a grad student from Harvard can i stay and scope things out what do you study she asked hoping i might be a doctor her jowls exploded with pride that someone with class and money could be among her crowd yes psychologist i lied i lied oh how i lied old fedora was there wearing a black as night striped suit with shiny shoes the kind they wore in Paris long ago as they ran to catch the frantic trains heading for Lisbon when my mother was a little girl i must have had a wild imagination too many old Hollywood flicks i suppose he was just a dirty old man and i a junkie student just wanting waiting
dear Reina Señora de Los Ángeles
thank you for the myriad places
that sprang forth from your womb
beautiful whore open to all
from east north west south
thank you for your alleys overgrown with trash
and dirty smoky bars that only take cold cash
thank you for the pruned faced
multinational hookers
who tuck until they’re blue
and thanks for Hillel’s guitar
and X and punk rock hungry bands
i love to look at my reflection
in the puddles of the damned
and thank you for letting me slip away
from La Chata and La Sad Girl at Lil Chuy’s wake
thank you for the tacos sushi and McRib
colonics pilates and knock off designer shoes
and the beggar at every freeway exit
who cleans my windshields with his shame
thank you for the Salvadoran Iranian and Korean
who managed to call the fire men
to save the homeless Viet Nam veteran
while the GOP and DNC
squabble over shit
my Queen misguided angels by your feet
thank you for my complexity
for surviving my last fix
i appreciate you looking over me
thank you for the high end malls
fake nails lip fillers fat cell freezers
and my beloved 99 cent stores
the beaches and the valleys
the mountains and the roads
and for all the hardened gutters
you softened for me to sleep in
the soul we are your people
good bad papered or unwrapped
we are all your seeking children
but i’m your only brat
an emergency room is not an ideal place to sleep while you might not get beat up you might catch the flu or get arrested but sometimes you get to see the city in its an entirety a representative from all walks of life and we all stew in our vulnerability suddenly everyone hurts farts groans wails yells angers saddens and feels life in their gut like a cheese grater or wrecking ball if you’re on the gurney gunshot wound to the back easily a kid or a pregnant woman bleeding bad God’s credibility comes to question why did He allow this but my logic doesn’t go down that pussy route going nowhere i know that God is God with no need for anyone especially not someone the likes of me instead i wonder why that kid wasn’t at home at three in the morning was his mom turning tricks did he have a fight with his father or the bleeding woman with half a baby coming out her Oscar De La Renta ball gown while her husband’s wearing a Rolex what the hell is going on i wonder could i have prevented this how am i connected to these souls did i vote the right way did i pick the correct door my eyes dry out as i weep inside the x-ray room while they rearrange my arm loss is loss i feel inside my own insanity and so with dawn i’m finally gone and greet the sun upon the bridge while the train whistles blow as i turn to my left hoping that nothing else goes wrong for the ones left on the emergency room floor
supple eddies of wind
caress and tickle the yellow
little matted heads
and their thin arm stems
shooshes it away
they stand firm rooted in packs
patchy green grass
sprinkled with crinkly caramel leaves
some dandelion families
those of five and six
adopt a stray apple tootsie roll candy wrapper
that found its way from Halloween
a few rebellious dandies flourish
in one and two and they grow up pretty hardy
before being crushed under a running boy’s tennis shoe
i like those that grow up nice and tall
with shiny pea green fuzzy stems
that little Mexican girls harvest on a Sunday
to place on the altar of the Virgin mother
when they end their day in church
then there’s the really rugged ones
with sparsely yellow tufts
they are angry little spiky things
surrounded by the trash cans
punctured by the littering
wrapped in sheets of rust
those end up having to bear the brunt
of needy cats and dogs
looking for a litter box
