March 2014 K Poems
A closed door means nothing
to these cats. They push their
way in at night; you have to
keep the door closed tight
if you want you and your partner
to get some sleep at night.
Don’t preach do
Long hair is where it’s at
and not being fat; being
kind to those around you,
a smile on your face and
in your heart is the place
you ought to be if you are me.
Did you see Jennifer Lawrence's dress
that she wore on the red carpet? There
is a war in Syria, there is a war in the
Ukrain, there are hungry, hungover, tired
and cold people standing right in front
of us, but all we care about is Jen's dress.
(Thanks to my buddy Maggot for inspiring this one).
You know what I mean?
We need space. More space. Is there
enough space in outer space for all
our stuff? I'm talking about stuff like
George Carlin used to talk about stuff.
Do you know what I'm saying? Do you
catch my drift?
Will Mother Mary Come To Me?
Bless me father, for I have sinned
it has been 38 years since my last confession.
I have lied. I have stolen. I have not followed
the rules and regulations of The Roman Catholic Church.
Is there a Hell, father; am I headed there,
or is there really a purgatory where my soul
will dwell until you are ready for me?
Guide me, father, in thought word and action.
Thy will be done, not mine.
I had a good idea
but I lost it. That
poem will never
be seen, it will never be heard,
it will never be written.
Tears will never be shed
over it. A smile will not
occur. A laugh will not
happen. I will not cause
anyone to think, to blink
to say why this is a great
poem or this poem is awful.
An opportunity has been missed.
I almost kissed the blarney stone
but I didn’t.
Rattle/Envy
Morisson and Pretti Penni don't know
that Dylan is being treated for
a possible urinary tract infection.
It may be what causes him to pee
on the hallway carpet
and piss the lady of the house off.
Morisson and Pretti Penni think that
Dylan is getting extra food.
They don''t see the little white pill
that is tucked within the bite of
cheesecake or peanut butter or potato
and they probably wouldn't care if they did.
Rattle/Lord, I thank you for
the birds chirping and the blossoms
bursting out on the trees. I thank you
for this warm day at hand. I thank you
for the land that I live on, the bed on
which I sleep. I thank you for these dogs,
whom I'm about to feed, the cats who
have already eaten and have gone back
outside. I thank you for my turtles and for
our bird. I thank you for my family and my
friends and for the love of my life who still
sleeps. Lord, I thank you for all that you
have given me and for all that you have let
me not want. Guide me, Lord, in thought,
word and action. Amen.
Rattle/By the sea, by the sea
oh how I wish that I were
by the sea; but I'm not.
I am sitting at my desk
reading and writing, not
at the same time of course
but like I do in the mornings:
I read until a poem, or two,
comes to me. No sand, just
a dog and cat hair infested
carpet at my feet.
Rattle/I am wrong in both situations
She doesn’t eat canned goods.
pushes her food onto her fork
with her finger. My father used to
backhand me across the face
when I did something wrong
at the table and she gives me
an eat shit look when I tell her
that she shouldn’t put her hands on
her food. I am wrong in both situations
caught in purgatory, I guess,
that strange place between Heaven
and Hell.
Rattle/Letting my freak flag fly
I avoid scrums. I don’t like the feeling
that I might be poleaxed at any time.
I hope this is not abstruse to you; perhaps
you are a minion to the herd. I don’t feel
sorry for you. You are the norm. I don’t
wear ties, or punch a time clock. I used
to try to punch out people in bars. I used
to want to be a superstar. Now I am normal.
Not like you, but like you. I like you.
I avoid standing in
line. I avoid traffic.
I avoid shopping for bananas on Sunday
after church has been let out. Almost cut
my hair. But I didn’t.
The cats were at the door at five thirty am
wanting inside. It was lightly raining out.
The grey cat was a bit wet. The black cat
was dry. I toweled off the wet cat, and fed
them both their morning snack of wet cat food.
The grey cat is now in the opened window
in my office, staring through the screen. He
wants out, again, I am sure.
Rattle/Dogs
They trust me to clean their eyes.
They love for me to pet them.
They get excited when I am about to feed them.
They sleep a lot.
They love to walk.
They love my cats.
They jump up to the stove to see if there is any
food they can steal when I am not in the kitchen.
They bark when strangers are about our home.
They pee on the grass.
One of them has peed on the hallway carpet.
They poop on the grass.
I love them so.
Rising from the dead
In the seven years that I have had her
I have never seen this turtle sleep,
but I was wide awake at 2 a.m. and
here at three a.m. I glance over at her
and she is either dead or asleep and I
know that she is supposed to out live
me so I figure that she is sleeping and
not dead. There she is moving now. She
heard me writing about her and awoke.
The centrifugal eye/TV dinners
By allowing our cats to go outside
for the first time in six years
we have gained our kitchen table back
which greatly pleases my love and I.
Before they could go outside
to roam the property, climb trees,
and explore the woods behind the house
the cats would sit on the table
staring out the windows that are adjacent
to the space where we used to eat.
Our first meal, with the cats gone, was
a celebration: yeah, no cats to compete
with us for our breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
My love hates eating on the couch
in the living room with the tv on.
The Centrifugal Eye/Bless Me Father
I don’t know why I mostly only remember the bad things about
my father: him telling me that I would never add up to much, him telling me
that I would never make it as a writer, him telling me, “I told your mother how
old I’d be when I had ya,” implying that he had not wanted me to be born, that
he didn’t want children, that only my mother did. “Don’t look at me like that,”
was another one my father used to throw at me. How the fuck was I supposed to
look at him when he was yelling at me at the top of his lungs in his thick
Irish brogue? You were abused as a child, a therapist once said to me. When I
saw the movie, “The Boxer,” which is in large part about the Irish, I
understood where my father was coming from. He was a product of his
environment. Dad, I have added up to much. I am, and have always been, a great
father. I am “making” it as a writer, though it doesn’t, yet, pay the bills.
Writing is my passion in life. It is what I live for along with the kids, the
grand kids, the love of my life, and my pets. I’ll see you in heaven, my
father.
Diana May-Waldman MY two cents--You are a GREAT father. You
are an awesome friend. You are loved by the wonderful Joan as your partner. You
are an incredible writer---you are aware, alive, brilliant and true to yourself...and
because you are true to yourself you are able to be true to everyone around
you. Your success as a writer, father, lover and friend is not measured by
money....your wealth comes from you being a better man That my friend is your truth and your wisdom.
Centrifugal Eye?/Open Book
Various intellectuals and homeless folk
gathered at the bookstore coffee shop,
until it closed, not to say that there were
not intellectuals among the homeless.
I worked behind the counter at the coffee
shop and some among the intellectuals
and homeless got their coffee for free
from me. I did not discriminate against
either group. I did discriminate against
the mean corporation that owned the
bookstore and caused management
to be mean as rats fighting for little bits
of cheese. My manager was obviously
under a lot of pressure, often threatening
to fire me if I did not step up in performance
of a specific function. You know how every
store in America wants you to sign up for
their card and have it swiped so they can
keep an eye on you? Well, we had one of
those cards, too. And, mostly I forgot to
ask for it.
Centrifugal Eye/Prostitution
I don’t know what pubic hairs were doing in the jar
with the three dollars’ worth of pennies that I counted
into penny rolls, this morning; but they were there.
Is there some connection between sex and money
that I don’t know about, outside of hookers and johns?
I think I saw a ghost
Something white just ran off into the woods behind the
property.
Was it a skunk, the tail of a deer(is a deer’s tail white?);
a ghost
that Pretti Penni and I scared off as she foraged for a
place to make her morning deposit. Usually she drops in the edge of the
woods and not on the lawn where I would have to pick it up,
and
for this I am thankful.
Anyone like you
I have tasted green bologna sandwiches
in jail cells and mental institutions. I
have tasted the love of beautiful women.
I have nearly been straight A in my studies
and I have flunked miserably at them, too.
I have ridden in hot cars, walked, and rode
the buses and trains. I have been depressed.
I have been ecstatic, but I have never met
anyone like you.
A pulpit to read from
I was a bit of a day dreamer in class
and church as a child, and I have trouble
paying attention to people on a pulpit
these days. My mind tends to wander
imagining myself up on that pulpit reading
my poems to a wide audience that never
appears when I do have a pulpit to read from.
The love of my life is makin' bacon
and potatoes with onions, which is
her morning specialty. Usually, I fix
my own breakfast, a couple of eggs
rolled in tortilla with some mayonnaise
or a bowl of cheerios topped with a
banana. I have been out of milk,
recently, so I have taken to using
the half and half that I pour in my
coffee in my cheerios and I find it
pleasant. I hear plates rattling in the
kitchen, now, which means that my
love will momentarily be calling for
me to come eat. When a man finds
a woman who loves to cook and who
loves to cook for him, it is among many
other great reasons to not let her go.
In Rwanda in 1994, the Hutus were not
very nice to the Tutsis, slaughtering over
a million of them mainly with machetes.
How The Lord above can allow such things
to happen is beyond me, though I know
that we have been told that, among other
things, that man has been given free will.
Free will should not mean "conflict" in Vietnam.
It should not mean "peacekeeping" in Afghanistan,
or Iraq. Boy George once sang, "War, war
is stupid," and I agree with him.
I wonder where my cats go
when it rains and they are
not on the carport, like they
were this morning when I
woke. They stay close to the
back door in the morning
when they have spent the
night out so that they can
come in and receive their
morning snack of wet cat food.
Why, there is Jaggar, my black cat
at my feet rubbing on my leg.
He is smart enough to not be
near the rain at all.
Of the rain and mice and rats
I’m not going to stand at the door
and look stupid while Kobain refuses
to come in from the rain. He is wet
but I will not dry him off until I am
sure that he is not going to wander
out into the rain again. Kobain is
the more adventurous of my cats.
Jaggar, my other cat, is inside and
has been inside since the rain started.
Jaggar, obviously, doesn’t like to get wet.
My love says that she has seen Kobain
climb trees and sit in them watching
birds. I have never seen such. At one
house we lived in, one where I would
set traps to catch large mice, maybe
they were rats, Kobain and Jaggar
would both bring me gifts of mice, or
rats, that they had captured and killed.
I know that their intention was good,
but it was a rather gross experience
for me. I am glad that there are no mice,
or rats, around the home we currently
are living in.
Raise your beer glasses tall
tis the day to celebrate The Irish
I'll join you with a cup of milk
or cola, for don't you know
I inherited the gene. Me uncle
was a drunk and my grandfather
before him; the sickness skipped
my mother and father but landed
straight on me.
Wake up from sleep
go to my website;
it's alright: bunch of
hits, bunch of books
sold.
And they arrive on the scene with
their blue lights flashing. The criminals
are gone, and so nearly is a little old
Vietnamese man, who had survived
The Vietnam War, but might not survive
the beating he just got from two young kids
who just robbed five dollars and seventeen
candy bars from his store.
Not quite right
We were celebrities for the night
tasting the limousines and the bright lights
and then I woke up and realized
that I had not gotten that right.
Do you want Mary to appear to you?
Everything is hers.
And everything is mine.
And everything is yours
just let me tell you how:
be good to your family,
your friends, your neighbors
and strangers on the street.
Everbody Works at Wal-mart
Everybody
works at Wal-mart
and they drink
Coca Colas
while watching
American Idol.
Mikel K
You can only do what you can do
I love shooting ranges and guns.
Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Given that they have killed the elephant
for his tusks, left him bleeding and dying;
they killed the Indians for their land, and
they’re probably still killing us but we don’t
know who what where when how or why?
The Fucks
The fucks were a family of corporations.
The only thing that they had in common
was fucking folks. You know who they are.
I know who they are. And yet we let them
function, support them, no less. What is
wrong with me? What is wrong with you?
Chicks and beer
Chicks and whiskey.
Man, theeeeere ain’t
nothing like chicks
and beer. I like bowling.
I like bowling while
drinking beer. Hell,
I’d play Bingo if I could
drink me some beer. I
don’t drink and drive like
I used to. I don’t sleep
with women in black outs
no more. I’m a civilized
gentleman, and I care about you.
Dead flea, or was it an ant
between my fingers, the
reincarnation of Gandhi
and I just squished him to death.
Lonely rooms
and empty spaces.
See the faces stare.
submitted/Sometimes, I don't feel like searching
for something, like my keys, or my cell phone.
You can call the phone, but you can't call the keys
so no doors will get open, or locked, until you
locate them. Sometimes, I don't feel like searching
for something, like the meaning to life. There is
no meaning and there is complete meaning
all at once, just like there is Heaven and Hell
and you can live whichever one of them that you choose.
Cuz I’ve Found It
It’s a weird world and I’ve been weird
every once in a while myself while wandering
about the planet looking for love. I used to
get drunk and look for it. I went to meetings
and I looked for it. I’m 53 years old and I
ain’t looking no more.
From mammy to pappy with love
Can you call things up? And then make them do
special things like you do? Can you, dear?
Because she was lightening
and I was thunder; all these
great things were supposed
to come out. And many of them
did. But, in the end, turned out
we were just ordinary people
and not The Queen and The King
of The Hill.
Son,
When you're ride is over
you got to get on off the bus.
You got your whole life in front of you
don't squander time being a bum;
and that writer thing, I don't think
you have it in you.
Dad
Did you eat that last slice of pizza?
Should I do the dishes before you
get home?
I love you. What's for dinner? Oh yeah,
those spring rolls you left out. That will
be a tasty dinner. You are so amazing.
We're going to The Margaret Mitchell
house tonight. It is the 40th anniversary
of something. What an amazing day!
What an amazing life!!
Impecunious having little or no money
Subterranean avuncular; impecunious
when they were above ground, trod upon
by catatonic kittens, when down under.
I don’t know why. I wish that I was more
waifish as I attend to them. The boss could
never catch me sleeping near the graves.
His riding lawnmower would always wake
me and I’d grab a rake or shovel and act like
I had been working all the time. I’m going to
catch him, I heard him say to another guy.
When school got closer, and the hangovers
got worse I just wandered away from the job.
That poor bastard probably died working there.
I dont feel like looking
in the mirror, right now.
I don’t want to be reminded
that I am not what I am
supposed to be.
