Remember This in Time

I promise that someday
I will be faithful
To my journal again.
Another sacrifice
To the fires of my economy.
The poet-sap has dried,
Hardened to a cloudy yellow
But I guess beneath
This bark I’ve grown,
The blood still boils
And the words still run
Like antelopes or
Like a persistant brook.

Spare Tires and Empty Alleys

I used to roll spare tires
down alleys in Point Loma
to see how many streets they’d cross
before stopping:
against a trash can or a moving car,
a cinderblock wall or a pile of dirt.
Stupid things is what I thought.
Why’d they stop there; it could have kept going
after that.
Steering.
I’m rolling and I steer myself short all of the time
and [...]

The Cataclysm of the Mirror

I’m looking at myself
in the mirror and wondering
who the fuck I am -
wire-rim glasses, two day old growth of beard;
cigarette dangling from my lower lip.
FUCKING POETRY – I’ve been gone so long,
writing to myself, watching
my pen bleed from word to word
across the page,
tasting every letter,
thinking every penstroke: the speed of poetry.
And fuck it if it’s [...]

Hate It

they hate that I’m a poet,
worse than the letters:
the dates, the blood smears,
the honesty, the colored ink screams
never voiced by my throat,
clogged with enough pride to make you puke,
almost – that’s the gimmick -
never quite enough to make you vomit,
just enough carefully measured mental phlegm
to keep you doubled over with nausea
at your own behavior and [...]

Untitled Poem #171

wow Michael what a way to get back into
writing in your poetry journal:
a little scotch,
a little blood,
a little scotch in your blood,
[a little blood in your scotch]
and you’re back to begging
that it’s all over.

The Decay of a Cartoon

The poet sojourns
to the real world,
concerned with education and finances,
too busy with real matters
to watch his own walk
like a bluejay on a telephone line
assuming it is his,
too bust to enjoy
the glances at his jester clashed clothing
and his odd squatting posture,
recounting endless stories
of dubious origin.
The decay of a cartoon
into another weary act of flesh and blood
is [...]

On a Driveway at Midnight

I
this poetry, on this midnight
runs through my veins:
all this hurting, my purple pen
is my blood,
each word a corpuscle -
and to let it out to the world,
sometimes my poetry is simple:
blood,
cut from my flesh,
bleeding my emotions free.
Self destructive
so that I can leave the world
with impressions of fire and intensity,
of feeling.
This is how I feel.
And a poet [...]

Important Enough to Sit Still

heated with rose wine
from a big cheap bottle,
I immerse myself in beach sand.
full and sun-warm,
like the fat flavored wine,
like Mediterranean sea-air;
I remember through the hiss of the surf
how it was like blood down the back of my throat,
that wine,
and how I must have been meant to drink blood on the beach.

Dead Parking Lot

drums, call the drums,
beat the drums in a circle,
summon sound from your skin,
bone and muscled rhythms.
spin the spinners, earth born,
hearts beating taut, within,
throwing warm loops of blood
in long arcs through your bodies,
racing and rebelling into movement.

Nyarlathotep 1925

thy Bloody Tongue caresses
the forehead of the Chosen
for Hotep, Dark Lord.
the Crawling Chaos erupts
from blood for us:
those willing to see his vistas,
landscapes draped in flesh,
drenched in blood,
shattered like mirrors
so close like dreams
one bright tentacle to worship
one hypnotism
one belief of truth;
as you wish it!