little Jack Horner and Molly

Three Musicians and Two Nudes
all of them Castro Street dudes
dealt with life on their San Francisco street
near a corner where little Jack Horner sat watching his thumb
as he pulled in a trick
and pulled out a plum
everyone in the crowd thought he was dumb
eating his Christmas pie and listening to jazz
he took a ferry to Alcatraz
he made his way back home
and gave five guys a happy wave;
they thought they were saved
but he gave them the bone!
on the subject of Chinatown
he juggled balls inside his pants like a circus clown
near the popular Anchor Oyster Bar
one shot would soon become twenty-nine
he said he felt very fine
he made his way slowly over to Pioneer Park
and fell asleep in the dark
everyone in the crowd thought he was a cheat
when he reappeared like a Jesus on Lombard Street
and he wore his pants baggy like a dwarf
panhandling tourists down on Fisherman's wharf
in the heat of the day or up really late
he often camped out near the Golden Gate
with his California date
a sweet thing named Molly
who came in on the F trolley.

Tinsel Town

We're going down to Tinsel Town
'cause seriously we're sucking blue
but I've got the fix
standing right in front of you
a brown coat with shoulders slumped
young ass happily humped and humped
over the park bench at two am
asking you repeatedly to get it up again
but your appetite was getting old
what once was hot now turning cold
bottled booze still much too weak
we haven't been this fucked up
for nearly half a week
and man, the railroad stars coming out tonight
each one of them looking to get a bite
with you sitting on a cushioned chair
feeling cool, almost debonair
a silent rider with tickets to the show
you wanted to attend,
but couldn't go
i found the carpet stained with cigarette butts
and little drops of sweet honey
i tried to laugh but it wasn't funny
we're going down to Tinsel Town
and man, we'll be spending all our money
'cause seriously we're sucking blue
but I've got the fix
standing right in front of you

eating my cake

in the absence of a belligerent dadaist,
i drove to the gravel lot with Pink Floyd
playing Time rather than keeping it under
the mattress where i normally sleep,
under wraps which i frequently toss when
i jump up, shouting Vive Dada! each morning,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
when i parked over loose stones, a storm was brewing nearby.
i was able to hear the claps of thunder much like an
agitated audience waiting for the music or some words
to have a certain predictability, when,
with the house lights low, they shamelessly caused a scandal by yelling,
stomping their feet, holding obscene signs,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
and it soon began to rain in an unsophisticated fashion,
like a fuse of an iconoclastic stick of dynamite having been lit,
then finding packed gunpowder in a fizz of explosive spite.
i stayed inside my car and missed the wetness of it,
eating my cake,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
when my lunch was finished i somehow or other made a fuss
with a persuasive lady who offered me an explanation, and i would
have stood up had i been able, but i was worn to a pulp by
worries and sirens and traffic carried here from another city.
so i sat undeterred as the bourgeoisie became the intelligentsia,
leaving my car only when the rain stopped,
mostly just to piss off some people i know.
and when i did, i saw more of myself than before.

The Old Lady and her Shoe

today she weeps in such a way
there are no tears ever found upon her dress,
on the cheeks below her eyes,
or on the hardwood floor.
according to accounts, she once drove a car
far into the night, into the early morning hours
they even said.
at her side was a favored pocketbook she could use
for shopping, if a store's lights might appear at 3 am
on any lonely rural road.
they never did, even as she neared the gulf coast
out of gas, drifting to a standstill.
according to accounts, on another trip she veered off the asphalt
and hit a fence, taking out a telephone pole, smashing
her Honda Accord so that it was deemed a total wreck.
she suffered a slight knee injury which, according to accounts,
required a few small stitches and anti-biotic.
contrary to her widespread belief, she could no longer play the
card game Bridge, or even Blitz.
her family decided to confiscate her license.
soon it was said she lived in a place without color, but her fingernails
remained powerfully red.
inside her new room were placed many family photographs, but she struggled to
identify the faces, naming only a few.
imagine her satisfaction when an idea came to her!
she looked comfortable in her wheelchair, in the new
room which was decorated to resemble an old room from her former life.
these days, according to accounts, she remembers her own name
and not much else.
although she has plenty of shoes, her left foot is swollen, sensitive,
and usually wrapped in a thick blue sock.
her right foot wears the shoe, usually a sneaker.
and she is finally living a modest existence, one she never dreamed of
as a young girl.

dog bones and the river

the cat was in the fat!
i can tell you that
but not much else
the dogs were into bones!
i still hear their groans
and contented sighs
the damn radio lies
so i try my best to ignore it
shit!
the river was more beautiful today
than i remember
weren't we floating happily just last November
when the wind grew intense
since then, we've been building a fence
which is newly grown
i offer you my moan
sitting with you at the outside table
our busy waitress was efficiently Mabel
i saw the name tag over her small left breast
the vegetable wrap sandwich was the best
you've ever eaten, you said
you saw the scab on my head
i watched the water flow, it's always downstream
where i followed my dream
like a galloping pig
i offered you my fig
but you said you prefer to wrestle
we ended up at an English bar
where sailors drank from a whisky jar
couples were dancing everywhere
tossing feathers into the air
masses of whores and bad champagne
we left before it began to rain.

the smile

your ebony hair,
like a shadow without the moon,
fell fashionably across the sky
and landed loosely on my head.
i watched your rosy cheeks
and nowhere have i found
a more gratifying smile.
your coral lips and pearly teeth
always came knowing when to talk
and where to eat,
and when we were alone,
i showed you a ripe strawberry:
its' juice ran down your throat.
you were smart enough to know
where you were going,
and in the end,
followed in my footsteps,
even if i was mad.

Doors

i thought i must be deranged
when the good doctor said it was basal-cell
carcinoma, but don't panic, it's small,
something like a centimeter in both directions.
sure, nature fascinated me, yet my interest
did not extend to admiring any form of cancer,
much less an ugly welt growing on my own sun-stained neck,
refusing to heal by tossing that unwanted small scab to
grow new, healthy skin over an existing resistant red hole.
i could reach it with my fingers and have my
way with it, touching and picking in some delightful
effort to convince myself it was simply a game, but
since the medical man stood by his opinion, i would
soon need to visit an experienced dermatologist to
have my unwanted friend removed before i fell in love with him
or her?  wait; does a cancerous growth have a sex?
within seconds of leaving the doctor's office, i saw my
reflection in a swinging glass door (the one next to two
fat men studying a painting of trees which seemed
to my eye to be unfinished) and my hair was combed perfectly
and wonderfully blond.  a young boys' suit fitted around my
shoulders, pants perfectly creased down to the ankles, and with
a smile which would turn out to be genuine, the image,
in our brief moment together, privately told me
"This will be the year of doors."

Apples and Gypsy earrings

"How about them apples,"
the girl with the Gypsy earrings
was heard to say in a common language
all too familiar to men of a certain charm.
being the apple of her eye, i claimed to be familiar with
all the varieties she kept hidden underneath her piano.
in fact, i loved her apples and often thought of decorating them
with shiny cloth and sequins to suggest the sparkle of
wet lips about to take a hasty bite, or maybe, possibly,
the stems should be adorned with fringes, and the skins
with Spanish tassels, for a more progressive
mark on taste than that left by dull orchard growers.
once, bobbing for apples toward the end of a Halloween party,
i kept tactfully quiet when asked if i wanted the red one.
almost from the start, the color never was important.
and thinking about an apple a day has kept me healthy,
especially when i look onto my tree-shaded garden and,
nearby, see the Gypsy girl dancing against the sunlit sky.

Something silly in Philly

i sent her a photograph
before the war
but that's in the past
where i can't go anymore
one day i got a big surprise
when my unbelieving eyes
saw her in an appliance store
near the boardwalk on the Atlantic shore.
her hair cut short,
she was pushing a nice intelligent man
into a plastic garbage can.
i didn't just avoid her, i ran.
i heard she married him
and like charcoal and ink on paper
spent two years working
his head into a fine black taper.
he went no farther than St. John's Wood
before he became a former lover,
like modern art toiling mostly undercover.
her next affair lasted only so long:
she played the viola and wrote a song
for a lively Russian officer
who was an admirer of Andy Warhol's
screen printing of Marilyn Monroe.
he perfected an alcoholic drink with some potato
and called it Vodka before he became hooked on drugs
and threw himself under a train in Spain.
her bereavement was essentially without pain.
she's now rumored to live in Philly
or in a suburb nearby
and for the life of me i have no idea why
i'd even think of her again.
it's silly.