Category: Photo/Poem

Sometimes There’s Nothing

 
 Sometimes there’s nothing 
 you can do but scream.
 
 Rage against the losses:
    loss of eyesight and hearing
       and strength;
    loss of interests;
    loss of love,
      or  loss of
      love’s attention;
    loss of energy;
    loss of ideas;
    loss of dreams;
    loss of the erotic;
    loss of appetite;
    loss of those who care
       for you, and those
       you care for;
    loss of mind,
       especially
       loss of mind.
 
 Rage against the
    impersonal universe;
 rage against the 
    lack of justice,
    lack  of merit,
    lack of luck.
 
 Rage against regret
    as thick as molten tar,
 rage against the arctic freeze
    of heartbreak.
 
 Rage against the plutes,
    those hungry ghosts
    sucking the rest of us dry.
 Rage against the whores
    of commerce.
 Rage against the loss of ideals and
       that feeling of
       being bamboozled.
 
 Rage against a higher force, 
    if you believe in
    that diabolical jester
    who deals the cards
    and rigs the games.
 
 Sure,
    there’s wisdom that comes
    from getting old,
    deeper acceptance 
    and even a flash
    of it’s really OK;
 
 but sometimes there’s
 nothing,
 and all you can do
 is to goddamn scream.

Stardust

 
 
  Stardust dreams of immaculate perception
 holy hymns of sacred friendship,
 and reclaiming long lost love.
 
 Chrome-plated memories of pickles,
 endless cups of coffee,
 long conversations
 of  constructing identities
 and apprehensive realities.
 
 Booth recitations
 amid clatter and grease:
 intimacies shared,
 promises made,
 loyalties sworn,
 
 the unobstructed purity
 of infinite possibility.

So These Things


 So these things
 washed up or
 put away -
 patterns of solace
 within the lesser seasons.
 
 Dreams ascend the cold bones,
 rising with the virtue
 through ethereal channels,
 
 while physicality is
 avoided
 or denied.
 
 Repair
 of the broken
 is a charity
 unto itself.

Address Unknown

 Bag of festering grief,
 trapped in the never-ending night.
 
 Ceaseless concussions
 of suffocating loneliness,
 nose dive collision
 through terror and dread,
 tumbling into pits 
 of perpetual loss.
 
 Bare wire deprivation,
 stripped of insulation,
 discarded and raw, 
 The Nothing Draw - 
    no connection,
    no sleep,
    no dignity,
    no pleasure,
    no hope.
 
 Abandoned and forgotten,
 insatiable black hole remains,
 the catastrophic gyre of misfortune and terror,.
 
 Then:
 Nothing
 Nothing
 Nothing.
 
 Address unknown,
 state of damnation;
 not quite dead,
 just live enough
 
 to endure each day
 with a broken heart.

Nightmare Alley

 
 
 Nightmare Alley -
 desperate young lovers on the lam,
 a wounded veteran who has forgotten his name,
 an array of theoretical perspectives,
 ostensible acts of violence.
 
 Nocturne -
 kids with dreams, a little fractured,
 a man’s wife with nothing but larceny in her heart,
 half-hearted romance where
    “I” passes insensibly into “we,”
    “my” becomes “our,”
 and individual fate escapes commitment.
 

 Desire for - 
    mirror images,
    forlorn gazes
    dream girls with flash hawk faces
      the very sight gives new hope.
 
 Poverty Row, where
 everybody has an angle,
 social murder is legitimized by war;
 breakdown of suppressed agitation,
 codified amusement,
 and non-identity.
 
 Modernist Mortal Music - 
 all heavy swing rhythm and
 a loping low-key theme,
 pondering a watershed of dissonance; 
 The Zeitgeist Theory - 
    downbeat and overrated.
 
 Cutting Edge that unifies the technology
 of making a fast buck, with:
    psychopathic all-consuming conflagration,
    retrograde ideas,
    equally ominous
    mercenary humiliations.
 
 Having a big argument with myself,
 and losing.

6:15 PM Union Square


 6:15 PM 
 Union Square
 a black-hooded guy,
 exuding youthful  sincerity,
 approached a kinda pretty girl
 sitting next to me;
 aquiline nose, runway thin,
 wearing black leather boots
 with gold studs in circular patterns.
 
 with sweet-faced
 I'm-not-a-con man subtext,
 he talked of being an artist
 interested in drawing people's
 faces;
 
 may I draw your pretty face?
 
 yes, of course, she said.
 
 with a black marker he began to
 work, never taking his eyes off her,
 asking her personal questions of small
 consequence, the attention 
 being all.
 
 where are you from? 
 any brothers and sisters?
 where do you work?
 
 while sketching her eyes, hair, lips, nose.
 
 outline finished he sat down on the bench
 and filled in details,
 first with a yellow highlighter,
 then a red marker.
 
 the questions continued,
 bourbon smooth.
 she seemed intoxicated.
 
 the drawing wasn't very good,
 didn’t matter,
 his moves were.
 
 on the back of the portrait he wrote:
 Kara & Mookie 4/21/14
 Which he outlined with a red heart.
 
 she took the drawing, thanked him,
 folded it, put in her
 pocketbook, then got up.
 
 without any negotiation,
 she left with him,
 not arm-in-arm,
 but nudging him
 with her shoulder.
 
 the smoothest pickup
 I've ever witnessed.
 
 it seemed too easy,
 
 and I couldn't help
 but think that within
 the next hour
 someone's heart was
 going to get broken.