Grips
You seem to be falling out,
like fading away, playing
fool/goof/phantom/drunken joke
to grown up little boys and girls
across sad broken south Philly homes
that chug and churn like the machines
of the past regurgitating old
memories onto old faces and wrinkles
of the mourning night too
close to sunrise to remember—
too locked in twisted horns
with dead things, meaningless things
that need to be let go— a drowning
universal truth slugging its way
at your temple—a a a—
just to let you down and you brood about
these things that can’t change
next to open window and open veins,
when you’re supposed to be the one
that lives and blazes and burns—
Incoherently I’m incoherent
137 miles in hell and away
like fading rivers pulled under heavy roads
of gray dawns—I’m connecting these thoughts
drying out—
You seem to be losing your grip
on where your reality resides—
The Setting of their suns
Let’s drown the star-eyed
Colossus
in the vegetable sea
you & I
at the birth of our world
worlds away
Some Change for the Time Man
Anchor me down with the past…
I’m a floating helium-centric
goon of the heavens babbling
incoherent love songs to the sick—
oh well, it was a mighty cause
when I fought it, when I remembered
what it was, but now I’m ground
up in old groundhog day
senility starting 8 hours behind
the sun and escaping into the night
only to sleep never to live
never to live—I’m a lay about—
society bites me, keeps me moving,
I’ve fallen so far from my feet—
they’re dragging toward the gorge,
an endless plastic coffin filled
to the brim with only the faces
I’ve known, the ones with
concentric circles spinning round their
golden heads—that’d be us Joe—but
they stick the swords to our backs and the
planks vibrate to the frequency
of the queen’s machine—
there’s no footing, there’s no branch
only falling—
Kerouac said this once
Just realized
—I wrote a poem
at 28th & East River in NYC
2011, 60 years after
Kerouac in 1952 sketched
the scene, sitting at same
location temporal shift, tho for
me it was urban oasis new dog-park
walking under Robert Moses planned highway,
for Kerouac it was still pure shipyard,
maybe (I watch a tourist
river cruise leave at 1230
every tues. & thurs.) the river
was brown & gray, in the bend
of time we painted same image
a scene of shifting life, but the flow
remains, it’s New York after all,
it’s the East River for sure,
there was trash, there was graffiti,
there was beauty.
Bulldozer war homes
Her castle is a shadow
puppet’s lair built deep into
the gold damp mountains
under the crystal sidewalk
stairs—it’s down south,
ancient president—dead
society—fitted beards;
It’s a chin up kinda place
at the end of ended streets
a make believe cauldron
beneath wronged stars—mistaken
constellations—scattered maps—
it’s below the sea-level line
an anachronism 4.6 billion times—
it’s a home with bladed grass
and circus traps—
it ain’t far off the armada’s path—
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