My Sister's Values

My Sister's Values


My sister joined the protest
At the chicken restaurant
In Fresno.  Proudly and as one
They marched against the gays.


She told me all about it.
I protested.  And she swelled
Defiantly and told me
About other people's rights.


Every time we meet
She finds a moment at the end
To praise the tasty chicken
At that chicken restaurant.


We meet today (it's Sunday
And she always goes to church).
I'll suggest a trip together
To the chicken restaurant.
She can eat the chicken.
I'll just have a bowl of sh-t.


3-23-14

Early Morning Soliloquy


There are some like that, and he is one.
They hoist themselves above you
And spit down.
Psychiatry may understand them.
However, I do not.
And every shrink, a different explanation.
And she, the wolf who occupies a chair,
Insisting I should think of her as “doctor”.
My poesy is excellent or bad,
But she who worships Ginsberg wouldn't know.
I sit alone and write it.  I have sat
Alone in seats identical to Denny's,
And now I have accumulated songs,
Abandoned some, remembered some,
Kept others and recoiled
With horror at the messes I've created.
Tomorrow will this poem be the same?
And everything I just wrote yesterday?
Bach is playing on the stereo,
Talented and tame.  They wouldn't like it.
God and rap and violence -
The earth's triumvirate -
And I'm alone with Bach.  And he is dead.
And them!  They do the things that I'm forbidden.
Psychiatry won't set me on the road.
Too leery and too old to try again.  
They'll sneer at me because I am not “well”,
Express their love for other therapists.
And if I tell the truth, they'll laugh at me.
No!  Jesus Christ!  Keep all the shrinks away!
I never want to see another one.
Just the bitch who gives me medications,
To whom I say as little as I can.
The earth's my enemy, and it is winning
(Except a little clutch of friends at Denny's,
All of whom have families and lives).
The lab results were normal.  I'm not dying.
And I will make the best of my affairs.
No images, just metaphors -
No truths, but just ideas -
They took the tricks, but I shall win the game.
All of us shall die, we're all the same.
I am just a skull that has no name.
My sister hates to see me,
Despite her bought degrees.
Memento mori?  Thinking is the keys.
I can't afford to buy the books I write.
These and music are my two obsessions.
But I can write and publish.  That is free.
I'd sell a poem for a pair of boots.
But several books have sold.  They won't say which
At Amazon.  The vendor in Nevada
Tells me everything. The books he's sold
Are not the books that I would recommend.
But two are great that haven't sold a word.
Everybody doesn't think like me.
A cold and sterile concept.  I'm alone. 
I think it is the cover of the books.


3-23-14

In Other Words


Killing the intelligence
Of seven little kids
Is not same as bringing up
Your children.


Teaching them to steal and lie
Is giving them your values,
But not the same as socializing them.


And giving them a food stamp card
When they are 17
Is probably a modern rite of passage.


3-22-14

A Statement


I want to entertain, not make a statement.
Everybody makes a statement now.
Death's the last conclusion anyhow,
It seems to me.  It would appear it's so.
Ideas, rhymes and pictures in a flow
From my consciousness are all I know.
And after that, there is nowhere to go.
Mass opprobrium will make you good,
Call a deity out of the wood
And ratify a cold and mindless should.


3-22-14

A Scene


Autonomous fantasies
Flick through my brain
Whenever I shut my eyes.
Colorful butterflies
Slip through the rain
That fills the autumn skies.


Birds in trees beneath the drops
Spread their wings and shake the dew.
When precipitation stops,
And half an oval sun comes through 
The shadowy leafless branches and a cloud,
A place on earth with fragrance is endowed.


12-7-13

A Scene In A Movie


Sal Mineo in "Rebel" -
And the horror of the stars!
The Cosmos overwhelms
A little pebble on a planet,
Nothing could be tinier,
Smaller, more dispensable, -
Or nothing could be larger,
More gigantic or indifferent,
As Mineo crouched whimpering
In the planetarium.


7-14-11

A Scene


The water hasn't risen for a year.
The tide is out and nobody is here.
Sand crabs in the sand around the pier
Make little holes the waves will level out
And smooth away and wash the devil out
To sea where he will thrash and sink and drown.
The devil was the only game in town.
Now the beach is silent and the sea
Is peaceful, like a page of poetry.


3-22-14