st. valentine's day love poem
picture me driving
in our red jeep
around perry square three times,
pulling into the courthouse
parkinglot twice. 10:30 on a
very very sunny st. valentine's day
morning: air keeping just under
freezing, a bite, which i especially
notice after giving up &
parking in a no-parking
spot & i stride courthouse steps
in my leather-jacket that's such a
bitch to zipper, i leave it open.
cell-phone, keys, coins, glasses
all go into little tupperware bowl
& i walk thru a detector.
cop calls me sir.
i have my thin, mostly gray hair
in a tiny pony-tail, gray'd
goatee'd, jean'd,
i'd consider me pretty strange-looking,
arab genes to fucking boot,
but it's a simple, brusque
thank you sir
from a cop probably all of 25 years old
who checks every human entering
erie county courthouse.
this is to let you know after
walking north,
then west down halls,
i see the lawyer we know
busted for sexual assault
on a 17-year old boy. he's smiling,
dressed fine, talking to a
young crew-cut cop.
the sick fuck.
we know the story
better than most people,
but i won't go into reasons how,
not here, in public.
i don't know if he sees
or recognizes me.
i walk south to the end
of the hall & pick up
our license.
i have to first wait at the counter
because the lady is with ANOTHER
young cop, uniformed,
asking questions to him & his
girlfriend. they stipulate
they don't want an announcement
in the paper, & the secretary
sings sure sure just let me check-mark
this. why didn't we know about that?
after the cop & his girl
leave i try to make a joke,
i forget what i say,
but the lady looks blankly at me,
not one crack of a smile, so
i solemnly say my name.
she looks at me like i am
absolutely nuts -- you know when
people do that? like what can you
say to convince them otherwise? there isn't
time or reason. maybe i am absolutely
insane, gone into ozone subconsciousness,
i don't know. i step out of there
& pass the smiling, joshing lawyer
again. i simply glance. he sees me.
whether he remembers who i am
i don't know. i head on out of the
courthouse past the kid cop,
& it's so so sunny,
slip my sunglasses on,
head down the sidewalk
passing people who look
nothing like me whatsoever,
& then i see her,
a ticket-cop lady,
she drives away as i step
to the front-window of the
jeep: a fifteen dollar fine!
fuck. fifteen dollars
not to walk a couple blocks
in downtown erie
on a sunny st. valentine's day
morning.
early morning beer
huge burping poet
guzzling 2nd newcastle
brown ale at the keyboard
on a saturday morning.
we made it until like 7
last evening,
then went prone on a king-size
mattress on the floor,
wild sex tho we think
we passed out having
sex, neither recall
orgasm of either,
then we wake & nurse hangovers
then we watch
richard thomas (john-boy!)
in an hilarious space-flick
roger corman executive producer
BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS
i think is title
tho i slip back into sleep
before it ends.
then i wake,
make coffee,
talk to my mom over my
cell-phone at our usual
6 a.m. time,
we gab a good 45 minutes.
she ends up saying of course
she's going to tell her sisters
(my aunts) we got married.
i say mom...
she says honey this is FAMILY.
ann will now be ann androla.
our reception in new orleans
nimmo & elaine fly
in from new mexico,
ann & i pick them up
in our rented avis cadillac
at the new orleans
airport. we hug, man to
woman, man to man,
woman to woman,
an encircling
4-person hug like a
football huddle
with happy tears in our eyes.
we have a dozen
rolled joints, bottles of
50 dollar gin.
baggie of the best ecstasy...
each guest must
eat a pill,
smoke a whole joint,
& get naked.
an inkling of the future
ann is also drinking
newcastle brown ale
this morning. she's
in the livingroom
watching the end of
GHOST WORLD.
the main girl character
reminds her of her own daughter, addison.
we talk about my niece
jill, addison's great pal,
how she was the only girl
at school who got a REAL rose
for st. valentine's day
at school, jill is 14.
we agree she's going to be the
wildest teen -- wilder than rachel
was, wilder than julie.
we groan like uncle & aunt.
& addison is a year younger.
can't we close our eyes for about
6 years, then open them?
"dear nicholas,
we are NOT introducing you to our mohawk-hair'd daughters, sorry.
love,
ron & ann"
foe
people are generally ugly
pods of malcontent & conspiracy
for other than common good.
left to our own impulses
most of us poets wld already be
well dead & gone &
currently silent. we need
this society that hates our
miming, our clownish faces,
our most serious blatant poems.
talk about symbiosis!
the poet is always a spy,
a voyeur, an
enemy.
somebody tell us
somebody tell us
where our double-chins
are coming from, our
pot-bellies.
one hundred & ninety
pounds,
one hundred & ninety pounds,
i have NEVER weighed
one hundred & ninety pounds,
but i do. somebody tell us
what to do to get bodies of
teenagers again.
i remember the soft blond hairs
of ann's melon breasts. i remember
her honeydew-flavored nipples.
she must recall my
cock sticking straight up skyward!
we're 30 years from then.
somebody tell us
where to secure
ecstacy.
somebody tell us
we are always beautiful.
writing for the ellwood city ledger
journalism classes
lincoln high-school.
stealing NAKED POETRY
anthology from bookshelf
of hot red-hair'd english
teacher 10th grade.
w.s. merwin poems.
plath. allen.
gary snyder. me
& the mimic of my mind
writing copy for
THE LINCOLN LION
writing it the way
mr. ionesco demands.
also my body is a spewing
cum fountain, all glandular,
instant hard-ons, hard-ons
that hurt to have. i'm writing
love poems in ink with one hand,
jacking off with the other.
somewhere within high-school years
it's decided by my strange guidance
counselor, miss somebody, very pursed lips,
rigid older lady, unmarried, left-handed;
it's decided by her i'm going to college
as an industrial marketing major
point park college. she asks
what i like to do
i say write
she says journalism courses at
point park college.
journalism mixed with business.
i'm gonna be rich one day.
write for the ellwood city
ledger like my mother
wants, & my girlfriend is
in ellwood city too,
my relatives,
friends. i can write
for the ellwood city
ledger & hide my
poetry.
that was going
to be my life,
& that was before
multitudes of
whirlpools
& deaths
& sarcastic surreality
spun me
here,
now,
spinning in my head.
i don't regret a goddamn thing.
calling off work because
i'm trying to fry breaded cod
filets it's 5 in the afternoon
& ann will be unlocking the door any
minute. i flip the two foot-long
filets of seasoned breaded fish in a
pan but they filet apart in like v's of
white flesh darkly skinned by burnt
bread-crumbs. i think my job is a
piece of shit & what i do is beyond
what a man ought to do
to earn a living wage. absurdity
mutates into hatred:
you wanta know what i think about
the international association of
machinsts & aerospace workers
union i pay $8.25 a week?
don't goddamn ask. ann brings home
a 12-pack of beer, & i rush out to get us
a second 12-pack, & fuck you,
factory of fools, i call off work,
fuck you, smell of fish fills this apartment &
i'm drunk saying fuck you.
kimberly's party at 7 in florida
we have not showered
& we had sex today,
sweat of sex films
our skin. i have chicken
between my teeth
& need an alka-seltzer.
ann's arm-pit
smells like a ripe cantaloupe,
& she's too
drunk to meet people.
the x has got us
way way hot,
we are
panting at kimberly's
ivy-vined
window watching
guests arrive,
served drinks.
look,
chivas by the wooden barrel!
truffles &
caviar!
nudity?
you want nudity?
you think factory poets
have a problem with nudity
high on
x & scotch
in the florida
evening?
reasons we wiggle
into oblivion, tied together.
if you stop, i stop & die with you
wherever we are, desert oxen skulls,
our final bones. & that's just fine,
that philosophy, this
sufism. consciousness
is duality, not that duality
exists without us,
not at all, no.
mental prison
of man, crimes
of self. none of it matters
to us.
we're the only ones
who get the picture,
& they have us in
strait-jackets &
gagged by words.
click to view movie/poem - eggs