Article Name

More Poetry

The following poems are from my three most recent chapbooks: The Wrong Side Of Town (Cross Cultural Communications); This Land Is Not My Land (Presa Press) and The World's Last Rodeo (BOS Press).

CITY POET

Once addiction sets in
There's no stopping it
You become a serial killer
Attacking the keyboard at will
Your mind working in shifts
Strange creatures live inside your head
Show no mercy give no ground
Forcing your fingers to do their bidding
Writing down their thoughts
In your loose-leaf notebook
The city is your slaughterhouse
Like a wife it accomodates your moods
Doesn't seem to mind
Your giving her a bad name
You walk her streets
Like a hungry vampire
Lapping up your own blood
On nights when blood transfusions
Are not enough

THE WRONG SIDE OF TOWN

cop's flashlight intruding
on my thoughts
loud rapping on car window
demanding to know what I'm doing
out on the other side of town
at this ungodly hour

ordered out of car
frisked and taken downtown
for questioning
police suspicious
why would a white boy
be listening to a tape
of a black musician
in a respectible part
of town

POEM FOR CHARLIE MINGUS

Hot lava erupting in my head
wet sex screams riding my veins
white hot lightning bleeding my heart
like an undertaker dressing the dead
your rainvow notes cutting into me
like a surgeon's scalpel
leaves me feeling like a drunk Jesus
walking on water

FOR WILLIAM BURROUGHS

You played the game out
Like a Mafia Don
Late for an appointment
With the Godfather
Living life with the tenacity
Of a gunslinger
Looking for another notch
On his gun

Your cinema midnight cowboy eyes
Cut-up poster-boy hero images
Walking the mind's third eye
Like an aging dinosaur
Trudging his way through
Drug-induced mythologies
Grinding away the days the
Months the years
Like a frenzied lap dancer
Seeking pleasure in forbidden
Pleasure zones

lines beginning to form
on the corner of my eyes
and I eat not from hunger
but out of force of habit
the fire in the loins is still there
and the hose still hard
but no one to man it

PANAMA ONE

In Panama City the
Day they killed the President
A group of us were issued rifles
And a loaded clip
And told to assist the
Panama National Guard
In whatever way we could
Like rousting civilians
Who might be possible assassins

We split off from the
Rest of them six of us
Four half-drunk
And one stoned on grass
And dumb ass me wanting
To be anywhere but there
When we came across this woman
Working in the fields

And what started off as questioning
Turned out to be a strip-search
Eager hands violating
Every part of her body
And when I protested
I was told to shut up
Or get with it

They laughed that
They were only looking
For concealed weapons
Wrestling her to the ground
As I walked away in shame
Not wanting to be part of what
I had no chance of stopping

PANAMA SIX

She lay there on the bed
Naked legs spread open
Labia lobster red
Her eyes those of a prisoner
Serving a life sentence

We never said a word
It was like a mechanic working
On a used car
Trying to put life back into it
And failing to get a response
Her eyes two headlights
Burned into the ceiling
As if she were taking inventory
Of all those there before me
A never ending long line
Of raw sausages moving down
An assembly line
In a butcher factory

PANAMA TEN

Two political prisoners were sitting
In their jeep with two
Panamanian National Guardsmen
Outside a bar in town

The two Panamanian Nationals
Went inside to check out the bar
Leaving the two men
Handcuffed outside alone

Once inside the guardsmen spoke
To the bartender in a language
I couldn't understand
When suddenly there was an explosion
Coming from outside the bar
And without looking the
Two guardsmen laughed
And downed their tequila and beers
While outside you could see the
Flames engulf the jeep
The two prisoners lit up
Like two scarecrows tossed
Into a bonfire

PANAMA MEMORIES

The young Panamanian girl
Sitting alongside her sisters
Dressed only in panties and bra
Reading a comic book
And chewing on bubble gum
At a brothel called the
Teenage Club
Waiting for the first
GI's to arrive

Six girls lined-up
Like bowling pins
Rooted to the long wooden
Bench with zombie like stares
Doing a woman's thing inside
A child's body

HAIKU

a microphone inside my head
static playing mad tunes on my tongue
a lonely grasshopper without wings

HAIKU 11

another day spent home alone
bag lady talks to cracks in the street
pope takes his last breath

HAIKU 111

Kaufman poems ratlle inside head
Hunter Thompson gunshot wound bleeds the dawn
Umpire in black sweeps off home plate

TO BE A POET IN AMERICA

To be a poet in America
is to be faceless
like the Indian on an old Buffalo
head nickel
To be a poet a prophet
a shaman is boxcar Willie without
his guitar
To be a poet in America
is to be invisible

A BIT OF ZEN

monks in

meditation

have no need for

explanation.

THE PERFECT COUPLE

He was a pica
She was elite
He was after a homerun
She liked to stop at third base
He liked lobster
She liked cracked crab
He played doubles
She played singles
He took showers
She took baths
He ate Chinese
She ate Italian
He saw sex as dessert
She saw it as an appetizer

WORDS THAT BLEED

She was the knife in the
Hands of Jack the Ripper
In a heavy fog in a back alley
In old London town slicing
Dicing her way through the
Canvas of my heart

She was the pearl-handled revolver
In the hands of Dillinger
That begged to be fired
But never had the chance the
Night he was gunned down
In a hail of bullets

She was a keg of gunpowder
Waiting to be ignited
Betrayed by a wet fuse the
Night I woke naked and vulnerable
Feeling like a voyuer walking
In on two strangers making love
My thoughts a mosaic tattoo
On public display
These wounded words that drip blood
Lying still as a beached shipwreck
In the bone yard of a stranger's dreams