THE POET 

 

The worst thing about this slick-as-snot podcast poet

with his slim physique and 80-dollar 

hairdo

is not that his poetry is bland and self-content 

with the soul of a Disneyland seal 

or that he is lauded and rewarded 

for not being offensive 

or bleak

or that he rides so gracefully the tides of the current norms

and still calls himself “a daring explorer”

or that he speaks of Mahler and Hayden

and of being encouraging.

 

The worst thing is thinking 

that if my wife met him 

she would fall in love with him

with his rich voice and no circles under his eyes

he who has made poetry pay

who seems wise  

has admirers and invitations and loads of likes

dines at restaurants

does not drink much

has an apartment in New York and a lucrative blog

wears name-brand shirts 

talks about suffering 

as one talks about the evening news. 

 

He looks like a movie star

agreeable as a morning warbler

this man who holds the world in his hands

with a heart that isn’t black and weary

a man who feels pride instead 

of having had his pride obliterated 

a man who knows how to answer questions

who speaks of lavender and horses  

instead of lonely chairs and worms and dust and dirt

a man who has not grown old 

before his time

 

a man she hoped I’d be

before she got to know me.

​

 

THE FORGOTTEN STAR

 

Reading an old book of poems

I come to a dog-eared page,

a poem about suicide 

with a hand-drawn

five-pointed star

above it.

 

I think of the four-leaf clovers 

and crushed flowers 

I would find sometimes

between the pages of used books 

in the bookstore where I worked

when I was 25

and the woman I was with at the time,

how I hated her parents

and how they hated me.

 

Two souls touching in a tryst across 

the years, 

wondering what they thought 

of these words,

who the crushed flower was from 

or for

and this short, heart-stopping human 

life.

 

But it was me,

I put the star there above that poem

30 years ago,

a star that by the time you see it

is dead, without a name, without a counterpart, a star

 

like a welder’s tear, 

some lonely sun of some unknown

planet of some unknown beings

who wondered why they were alive, what

the point of it was and why 

death always sits there with that 

look on his face 

like he knows everything,

when he really only knows one thing. 

​

​

LORENA

 

My mother-in-law Lorena 

lies her ass off.  

 

She hates the truth 

like an unwanted child.

 

She hung a photo of a hunter 

with a dead buck

 

on her living room wall, 

says it is her son 

 

she never had

and named him

 

Jesus. After a while 

we shake our heads

 

at her stories. She’s an artist 

in her way. 

 

We have 

to laugh

 

and doubt 

damn near everything.  

​

 

DON’T OVERTHINK IT 

 

For some reason they hire me at the co-op 

and I know this is wrong. They have me peeling eggs

 

for the first few hours. I peel hundreds of eggs

standing at a conveyer belt with another guy. I hold up an egg

 

with an electrical plug coming out of it like a tail. What’s this

plug into? I ask the guy. Don’t overthink it, he says. 

 

I go outside to smoke on my break. On the ground are rocks

with names on them of all the employees. Each employee

 

has their own rock, like a graveyard. I don’t know what to do

next and ask my boss. Just take it easy, he says, this isn’t

 

prison. Still, I can’t go home. I keep thinking about a poem

I’ve written that is very long and I think very good, perhaps

 

even revolutionary. It’s out in the mail and when it gets

recognized I will quit the co-op and never have to work again.

 

I hear a gunshot out the window, then sirens, then the employees

fluttering and squawking like chickens. I wake up

 

to a sore back, sleeping on my wrong side again, wondering

where the Zen went. I’m too old to have pride, too old

 

not to. I get up to make coffee. It’s my Friday. What will I do

after work? Drink, probably, until it’s all an illusion.  

 

Another day ahead of me, hiding behind my tongue,

hunting scorpions, spreading poison, thinking of all the dead

 

masters in the books I’ve read. 

​

​

OPINIONS 

 

Do not try to see with another man’s eyes.

Do not try to think from another man’s head.

 

Do not take another man’s word for it.

Do not try to fuck with another man’s dick

 

or another man’s wife. Do not dream

another man’s dream. Do not take his meaning

 

or his interpretation. Do not use his metaphor,

his razor, his shoes or his legs. 

 

Do not worship. Do not follow.

Do not lead, even accidentally. 

 

Take the world as one thing: 

an eye seeing itself blindfolded.

 

Do not pretend. Do not believe or disbelieve.

Do not lie. Do not call it the truth that can’t be told. 

 

Do not fancy yourself. Do not

turn away. Sleep like a child. Wake up and remember

 

all you have been taught, all you have felt,

all you have seen. Then forget. If you think you understand

 

that will pass. Don’t worry. Stay as whole

as possible and when you break 

 

break with gusto. Ask yourself who you are

and who’s asking who. The task done

 

the mind rests, but the tasks are endless. 

There are no imperfect clouds on a cloudless day.