Here are a few I've written recently, all in my (Kerouac's) spontaneous style, of course. These are also posted on my
blog.
Blackbirds cawing off
in the woods somewhere,
a solitary squirrel barking
up a tree, now just
sitting there vocalizing
over and over on one branch
(only wildlife around here's
squirrels and birds anyway)
I can see the tress beginning to blossom
soon we'll have some color again
and none of that dreary winter sameness
(though pretty in its own way)
and now squirrel guy runs off
over wood piles minding his own business
maybe to find a lovely squirrel gal
or maybe over to the highway
(incessant roar over there -
interstate 90 - though sound walls
put up)
where some bastard motorvehicle
will send him to his little mammal grae
of hot pavement -
what a shame.
-3/29/08, 4:19 P.M.
In prison for years here
and it's almost time to
to go home -
I've done my time
now I just wanta
get out out out -
This place brings no
happiness to me,
not anymore at least -
Let's just fill up this
notebook and pack up
and go the hell home,
huh?
-4/2/08
Down in Clague Park,
past the "no trespassing" sign,
(tresspassing - bah! - this is our
land, if anyone should be
staying off it it's the government)
is a little path through the woods -
ends at a steep hill of scree
or maybe turns around
meandering somewhere back into
the woods, I dont know -
bottom of the hill lies a big creek -
beautiful - (I talk about the park
because I've never seen
real wilderness anyway)
there's a long log - a fallen tree -
laying across the water to get to
a path on the other side -
Serenity Creek -
sunlight illuminating the wet little
stone tablets through vibrant
new leaves, trees growing on the
hill above, while we
frolic around the valley
turning over rocks
trying to find something interesting,
in fact looking for each other -
and I saw Hanshan smiling
from the top of a hill and yelled "Hoo!"
but he disappeared -
once we even followed the
stream all the way down,
hopping from rock to rock
and all it led to was the sewer -
typical city park -
maybe tomorrow I'll follow
in the other direction
(though in fact I haven't seen this place
in three years and maybe
the fallen tree is gone, rotted
and cracked in the middle
and fell in the water to be washed
away, cleansed in sewer piss)
and maybe it'll lead me
to the valley of life.
-4/2/08
I pick up a pair of socks,
sniffing them to make sure they're
fit to wear,
and slip them on, convinced that
all writers are the same -
(And Brett Olsen and I are really the same person,
perhaps he was Ginsberg and I Kerouac,
yeah, right) -
Like my beloved writer heroes,
sitting in a cluttered room
disheveled and disdainful lighting cigarettes
and sitting with a pen and paper
(no typewriter to sit at a desk with
and I hate technology of today so I type up
nothing on my personal computer) -
And there are books of poetry and prose
scattered about -
Kerouac Ginsberg Burroughs Whitman Snyder
Cummings Wilde Carroll and now
Bukowski -
Just like my heroes -
And I have a few notebooks to write in
when I feel like it but mostly I sit and
read my writer poet-ancestors
or watch movies in silence,
nobody sees this room but me
and the bed is uncomfortable
but that's okay because I'm the
only one that's ever in it,
and contemplating all of this
I slip into my relatively clean socks
because my feet are cold
and I light another cigarette.
-4/13/09, 9:46 P.M.
A homeless man doesn't weep
at his destitution,
bumming for a cigarette
in the misty downtown rain.
-4/14/08
Drunks and thieves sit around a
bar in desolation,
trying to hustle or sip beers.
The piano man is in the corner,
performing renditions of Tom Waits songs -
such a romanticized pathetic scene.
-4/14/08