You Know
What matters most
is what the heart wants
and the heart wants what it
can never have
I walk by the hungry
drop coins in their cups
my pain so small
when someone is bleeding
for my kindness
Through the streets
men and women
holding hands
passing me by
I admire them
for not seeing me
or the hungry
I’d Give It All Up
And live alone like the old days
when I was poor and full of poems
pushing my old Mustang up the hill
both of us dying like a minor Sisyphus
No worries but the next paycheck
No drinks but the blood of grapes
I’d give it all up for your nod
or if you let me read your palms
Your lips quivering with shyness
I know you’ve been alone for too long
But the lines in your palm
tell me your heart is a wandering gypsy
I’d give it all up for you
and start anew with what’s left of me
I’d give it all to you
I’ll bleed words for you
Like a traveling salesman I’ll knock on
all the doors until I reach your home
Dave Donovan
A Toast
to lift
and tip back
at an angle
most welcome
the cold wash
of day's end mercy
curved glass and
beaded wonder
singing under the fingertips
to a song
our hearts
learned long ago
open the evening now
and let it breathe
we have skies to admire.
In Memory Of Ray Augustine
gentlemen
reach under the flag
grab the handle
and lift
he told the six of us
three by three
on either side of you
and we walked forward
walked as you did
into our lives
sometime in the past
into the Abbey
or the Gallery
open stages/open mics
gigs and backyard BBQ's
any place with music and friends
and you had plenty of both
we walked forward
walked as you did
under the shade of folk tunes
cowboy songs and country blues
in the footsteps of Woody and Jimmy
and Hank Sr. too
who we know you could have drunk
right under the table
(or the dashboard as it were
and who can prove you didn't?)
we walked forward
walked as you did
over the grass of history
green and rising
a sea of memory
you saved a man's life once
in the Navy - not in battle
but heroic nonetheless
swimming through violent waters
to retrieve a life nearly lost
(i asked if you earned a medal
you said no and shrugged it off
because it turns out
a letter of commendation
from the Secretary of the Navy
a meritorious service ribbon
a newspaper write-up
and the eternal thanks
of your fellow sailor
just don't quite equal a medal
do they ?)
we walked forward
walked as you did
into old age gracefully
your red suspenders and
hair white as ash
your box of harmonicas
a treasure of train whistles
wailing and weaving
the notes of the past
into songs of the present
as we arrive
at that last railyard
a circle of tramps
fierce and enlightened
gentlemen
reach under the flag
grab the handle
and lift
he told us
but he never explained
how to let go.
Driving Lesson
i was riding
along with my cousin
to a party
and we were talking about
when we were kids
how our family cookouts
were so much fun
and our mothers and aunts made the best food
serving fresh lemonade and sandwiches
how our fathers and uncles told the best jokes
and drank cold Hamms beer from
aluminum pop-top cans
with a baseball game
crackling out of a transistor radio
on the picnic table
and I laughed about Uncle so-and-so
and his chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes
when she said
No - they were Salems and
the reason I remember that
she said
is because one time
he asked me to run to his car and
grab another pack for him
and so I did
but I couldn't find those cigarettes
and I searched and searched
and checked the glove compartment
and under the seat
but didn't see them anywhere and
when I gave up looking
I turned around and there he was
he tried to kiss me
but i slipped away
and ran off as he was trying to say
he was sorry and please don't tell
about 30 seconds passed
as we drove along
before I could think of anything to say
so i said
are you SURE they weren't Marlboros ?
Doug Draime
The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept
where he fought
and fornicated
where he turned
his heart to blowing sand
blood lust
running through
his aristocratic veins
his blue eyes full of
the murderous
future
Ivy
Eventually when the
dark green ivy dies out,
the sun shrouded
by the dense smog
of doom, they will find us
beneath the dead plants
living vigorously, our eyes
full of mysterious light
Old Homeless Man In St. Francis Hotel Lobby
I could see
it was all
he could do
to keep
from crying
and I
kept expecting
his lower lip
to begin trembling
and sobs
to shake
his bent body.
But he was dignified,
holding himself erect
as he talked to the
nightly news,
cursing raving
at the television
over the
war.
If I Could Paint I Would Paint This
The sun coming down like iron, while shining
through huge puffy-white clouds.
All the buildings glowing like mercury
The
ocean at Long Beach, several miles
away, is bopping up accepting the sun, in what
can only be painted as worship
Nathan Graziano
A Vampire In The Mall
I sat on a bench in the mall,
while my wife shopped for jeans.
A man in a black trench coat
sat down beside me.
He had black mascara
Caked around both eyes
and his face painted white
to look corpse-like or undead.
When he noticed me staring,
he turned and hissed.
Two long fangs hung down
from his top row of teeth.
I shook my head, stood up
and joined my wife in the store.
"Honey," I said, "there’s a man
on the bench outside with fangs
like a goddamn vampire."
"That’s a look these days," she said.
"People go to dentists and have
their teeth capped to look like fangs."
She then turned and left
for the changing room.
I stood by a rack of women’s blouses
trying to imagine this dentist
of the dark shadow
who in a single night turns
human beings into douche bags.
A Frat Guy On A Motorcycle
Regardless of what I thought
of his baseball hat turned backwards
and the eighty-dollar Ray Ban sunglasses,
or the sleeves of his shirt severed
and a tribal tattoo on his Mega-man bicep,
or the girl, Good Lord the beautiful girl,
tail-up behind him on the Kawasaki
in cut-off denim shorts, two gulps
of golden leg straddling a hot engine.
Regardless of my opinions,
my simple and stubborn stereotyping,
I have to admit I envied the look
on this young man’s tanned face
when he stopped at a red light beside me.
It was a look that said, in no uncertain terms,
"My life is good right now."
Two Girls In A Tub Together
Maybe you’re hoping for a supermodel
to slip out of a slinky red dress,
kick off a pair of stiletto pumps
and step lightly onto a cold tiled floor.
A few feet away another woman
waits with parted lips in a Roman tub,
steam rising from the still water.
The two beauties then embrace,
their breasts lathered with bubbles
and smooth shaved legs entangle
as their pink tongues flicker like moths.
So it might come as a disappointment to know
the two girls in the tub I’m talking about
are my wife and eighteen-month old daughter.
They’re splashing and laughing,
fun as clean as a yellow rubber duck.
I’m in the other room listening to them,
a bit choked up by my love for both.
I fold my hands over my stomach and smile,
as astounded as you by my own caprices.
My Wife Has The Memory Of An Elephant
My wife and I lay on the couch
watching the evening news
and sipping coffee
after a dinner of leftover chicken.
We both groaned
as the weatherman
followed a storm up the coast
with a stiff right arm
then shook his head
as if apologizing for the snow.
I reached around and placed my palm
on my wife’s round belly
to feel our baby punch and kick.
As beautiful as a butterfly waltz.
Out of nowhere, my wife
asked me if I remembered
a night before we were married,
when she caught me flirting
with a young blonde at a bar.
Although I honestly didn’t
remember the night in question
and blamed it on the beer,
she proceeded to describe
the whole evening in intimate detail
before the weatherman
could finish his five-day forecast.
S.A. Griffin
Everything Is All Right In Time Even Death
100 miles per hour to nowhere
point blank verse
pain heaped upon pain
thru addiction
or just simply being
available
to the process
the march & mulch of war
burgers & fries
obsessive sex
the opiates of
religion
whatever it is
it will get us all
in the end
pick your poison well
live for it
blossom & burn
inside the sacred unfolding of the
laughing rose
even the sun will lose
its hair & go blind
This Place of Love You Make
built on poems of tempered lyric
& music boxed in moonlight
ecstatic moment sent to
school the insensible flesh
vibrating upon sudden arrows
to prompt the heart’s unfolding flower
tuned to the slightest
glance & tempest gesture
love, small like time
incurable
Lady
we are here
for the sweet stigmata
of the poem
One Night In San Francisco
I crawled out of bed
still drunk
& proceeded to piss
all over the cold hardwood floors
of our bedroom
“What are you doing?”
my boozed bladder bursting forth its contents,
getting excited she noted,
“It’s getting all over the floor!”
“Don’t worry, it’ll all run out under the door.”
I finished pissing & went back to sleep
the Haight was a beautiful place then
she really loved me
Christopher Harter
Poem For D.A. Levy
In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was run off on a
celestial mimeograph machine,
and God looked at it and said
"It's a bit crude, but it'll do.
Here, Adam, go run off about
500 of these and pass them out
to the people."
Poem
—after Ted Berrigan
The only time my father
flew on an airplane, he
exited the jet way
white as a sheet &
visibly shaking.
My father had never
& would never again
appear to me in this
manner, even in the
last days of his illness.
Myself, I have been
on planes many times—
travels both near &
far.
I am not bothered
in the least by these
big mechanical birds,
but I always think of
my wife and son
& smile during take-off,
just in case.
Farmer’s Market (6.16.07)
Today at the market
we bought:
5 onions
6 tomatoes
1 head of broccoli
2 lbs. of green beans
1 lb. of sugar snap peas
1 bunch of kale
I’ll enjoy the taste of
each immensely
When my son asked if
the old man in the blue overalls
grew those vegetables
for us, I said
yes
To The Quiet Voice Of Tom Kryss
My son plays under the maple tree
with the metal tractors of my childhood
and the childhoods of my brothers and father
I sit here reading a thinking man’s poem
as a nearby sparrow works to crack
a speck of seed or the shell of a
struggling insect
Each vaguely aware of the others,
content to keep to ourselves
Richard Krech
Mindfulness To Changed Circumstances
Out of thin air
an opportunity
may arise so quickly
that you must
take advantage of it
right away
or not at all.
After The Storm
Our warm bed
central in the dim lit room
corners in darkness,
rolling & honking noises
from Outside scrape across windows.
Our room flying thru space
commerce bustling around us,
we lying still
holding each other after the storm.
Gentle purr of yr breathing
later lets me know
I am alone
w/ my
self.
After The Intermission
A small skiff (at night)
quickly navigating a body of water,
the time frozen
like a fine oil
framed and in its place.
Using objects
to transcend them,
to see the core
we wind ourselves around.
Winding down
we find ourselves
after the intermission
still glued to our seats,
wondering how it all
will turn out
and pondering
our next move.
That Place Is Always Attainable
Sunlight
filtering in thru curtains
after millions of miles
in the cold vacuum of space,
Here it looks warm and yellow
the blue of the sky
green trees beyond.
Industrial hum
occasional sounds of humans
or cars.
The ability
to find that place of calm
is essential,