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Art Gish died today
This beautiful man
of peace and thoughtfulness
of unending patience and bravery.
He practiced his beliefs boldly
and intensely
without ever shouting or belittling.
Coaching young stoners on non-violent protest
Defying Israeli tanks, a canon barrel at his face
he taught to find the good, the humanity in every situation
And that there can be no peace without a conversation.

Art Gish died today
This beautiful man
A man of Love and Peace
When his tractor rolled on him
and caught fire, pinned in the blaze

God is a mean-spirited fucker.

the cigarette that tastes best
is the one that you will never have again

at 1 am
by the quarry lake’s edge
naked and laughing and still slightly buzzed
she says “I would have drowned if it weren’t for you”
I tell her I was just happy to her body against mine
whatever the reason

the moonlight
my friends
finding their clothes
the black warm water
calling out
instead I run up to a car
since I cant find my lighter
and startle a couple whose tongues
are down each others throat
“you’re naked”
“I’m jonesing really bad- you have a light?”
I take a deep drag, thank them and snake into my jeans
exhale deeply as I climb into my westfalia
and drive into the night

the entire universe and everything that ever could be possible
in the dark
ahead of me.

when I grow up
I’d like to be president
or lao tsu
or aristophanes

actually all three
would fucking rock

I am so much less than
I had hoped to be

and I can watch every minute wasted
detracting from greatness
from changing minds
and creating a belief
that will carry humanity forward
into the light
away from the dark
and depravity and violence
thats makes me want to spit

I look at the white page
blank and desolate
it mocks me
I let it mock me
I let it make me fail
I am paralyzed
I am not as smart as I know I am
would it to be so
it’s not

I succumb to knowing
that within a generation
two if I’m lucky
my words
these words too
will be dust
and pollution in a landfill;
what is the half-life of hard drives?

I’ve done good things for people
and really shitty things to others
I have friends
who make me laugh and be rude
my children love me
and are turning into fabulous grown human beings
more than I could have ever hoped

some days
some nights
some mornings

it’s just enough

Wonderful

i couldn’t find my way to you
I didnt know what else to do
and once again
none of that is true

I dont know what is wrong with me
I keep thinking I want to be free
but I am trapped
by myself

Why can’t it just be wonderful?
Why isn’t it already wonderful
Haven’t we done everything
we’re supposed to do?

Why can’t it just be wonderful?
Why isn’t it already wonderful?
After all
It’s only me and you

You look at me with such contempt
I’ve been so crazy I’ve hardly slept
I wasn’t trying to do
anything at all

A thousand possibilities
A million different realities
I can’t explain
I just need to connect

And I bring it down
I always bring it down
It’s never enough
It’s never right
It doesn’t have to be
It doesn’t have to be
It’s okay
It’s okay
It doesn’t have to be
Please tell me it doesn’t have to be

There’s so much more out there
there’s so much we have right here
what is it
that makes that so wrong

I dont know what else to say
I wish we could find a way
to a place
A place that works

Why can’t it just be wonderful?
Why isn’t it already wonderful?
why does it have to be
so fucking hard

Why can’t it just be wonderful?
Why isn’t it already wonderful?
why is it always
so fucking hard

Why can’t it just be wonderful?
Why isn’t it already wonderful?

Tonight I sat out back
between the mini garden and the petri dish hot tub
and watched the dusken sky turn to an orange mottled gray
and the rare Portland thunderstorm breathe to life above me
You could tell the trees were happy
I am unsure about the banana peppers and the marigolds
but they are transient as I- The trees win out

The lightning arced and slammed into clouds above my head
and just like my mother taught me
I counted the seconds
and just as always
it never really made a difference
because it’d explode regardless of how many miles
and I realized
I didnt really know what the ratio was
anyway-

the explosions
had a continuity
and I was instantly
In Las Vegas
as the most vicious sheets of icepick rain
slammed into the ground and veins of electric feathered across the valley
In Atlanta
at Donna’s watching the rains pull down a hillside
and dumpsters bobbing along on a hillside parking lot (thats a LOT of fucking water)
In Athens
watching the greatest storm of my life well up over the West Virgina hills
and crash across my porch for nearly two hours; it was like fucking
In the woods in Monsey
Cutting from the strip mall past the Yeshiva
and to my development, the smell of earth, inhaling and drinking
In Spring Valley
watching the from the huge picture window in the living room
that framed the foothills of Harriman State Park and imagining I could grab and hold
the lightning in my hand and make it act upon my command.

The trees were enthralled
my bare chested roommate agreed
as she giggled and hiccuped twirling in the drops

Breathing deep
Breathing deep

The storms mirror the heavens
the primordial essence of anything
that is ever to be
or was

and we
get to enjoy it
naked.

I have so much to write about- so much squirming around up there. Yet when I go to write, I can barely squeeze out a word or two and it just stops. I don’t understand it. If it’s a masochistic self-loathing causing it, wouldn’t that like just be an award-winning novel right there? 11 years now… the 20 years prior I couldn’t stop writing. The past 11 in small fits and spasms some words come out.

I hate it.

I’m broken.

I am digging through old boxes of mine in Ohio- Things from elementary school on- and I came across a box circa 1995. Inside- lots of magazines (Eulenspigel!!!) and things- but a stack of printed papers with about 200 poems I had written- so far at least 50 or so that I had totally forgotten about- some aren’t very good. Some are really bad.

Some… I like. Some… well you decide…

——————————-

sax and violet ins

i long to hear the alto sax
of your voice trill in my ears
the waterfall of your mouth
spilling across my breast
the ballet of your fingers…

“get to the point…”

okay, okay… i wanna fuck.

——————————-

I feel
the load of words
and thoughts
building and pressing
grouping and compressing

a few slip silently
from deep within me

looking around
to see
if anyone noticed.

————————–

as he goes
she knows
how

—————————-

lizard gizzards, one dollar.

lizards inner gizzards
“mister, are you okay?”
“No, here have a dollar.
Tell your mother that it’s from
a lizard gizzard”
“I’ll take the dollar
but I have no mother”
“Then we are even,
for I have no son”

blizzard
Tizzy
less
lish.

This wall
against my back,
feels good.

——————————–
for the love of…

hide thing forcible tracts. oh snickened harblaster.
for only the truly ignorant and ranted may step forth to claim the destiny of truth impaled!
for whence the trodden-over may rise and bite the flesh of realm,
only then should he-beasts forward by nexihaunt.
the truth within lies barren as fodder for carri0on picking vermin
and the remaining only writhe in justified horror.
buxomed beasts of ne’er well overbreed, locks of false gold higher yet
ever.

for sooth does the apocalypse still weigh heavy or is it a blessed gift?
when shall thine soul be delivered of Deaver?
Oh heavy heart.
Oh heavy soul.
Oh heavy.

————————

oi.

couple pics of stuff found…

I am blocked at the moment- I have several posts in draft form.

So…

A too much good air retrospective!!!!

the office; 1985

Volume 1

Volume 2

more to come…

noted in my stats as a search string that brought a visitor to my site…

men shaving all body hair…

recently read in the men’s room at Powell’s

Like to see some additional suggestions as to what i might add (covertly). So far all I can think of is:

Grout Expectations
Anna of Grout Gables
Hitchhiker’s Grout to the Galaxy
Grout Throat (I know it fails the test- but come on- that’s funny…)