until you get there is no because you’ll always focus on the was

(but who grants absolution for sins that never were committed? – natalie merchant)

 

i am reading steve richmond’s “santa monica poems”

inspired i google “the generation of poets after the beatniks”

but every suggestion was about the beat generation

 

the generation after:

bukowski

richmond (who was called the american rimbaud)

thought the niks were arrogant

 

you know the saying,

“the more you eat the more you shit”

 

bukowski and richmond were underground

and academia forced on us the poets after the niks

who dealt with cultural injustices

racism, poverty

this made them relevant

 

i’m still trying to find

other poets since the niks

confessing my ignorance

 

but the two aforementioned names

have been all i can find

and i only discovered both

in the past few years

 

well after i started walking

the dark streets of decay

 

where

 

the only way to eke out existence

in an existential environment

is to erase existentialism from your mind

 

because existentialist still think

there is something to find

unable to define in-congruency

in their dance of denial

 

there’s no such thing as anything

other than what others need you to be

to make their thing a possibility

 

don’t confine within any line

eat where you want to dine

even if it makes your shit unrefined

because art doesn’t ache for absolution

 

***

 

 

upside down but still standing on the ground

writing without any reason

mostly though it was your treason

that tethered me to talking rhymes

investigating all your crimes

 

a broken heart’s a work of art

never completed once it starts

just when we think we’re on the mend

the suturing comes to an end

 

not only does the thread unravel

but used to drag you through gravel

and every truth becomes a lie

but still we try to satisfy

 

and please a world that’s sick and wrong

to find somewhere that we belong

becoming brunts of all their jokes

as new found friends become a hoax

 

cutting you off cause they don’t care

about the you you want to share

your shattered heart become a mess

on floors tiled with loneliness

 

***

 

apocalyptic aftershave

in the midst of making merry

fruity drinks and skewered cherries

i walk in, order a gin

and suddenly become the trend

 

as you engage me with a word

so we can gather into verbs

i didn’t think more than a drink

would be my night amid the blinks

 

but there you were touching my arm

and cooing with your cultured charms

i wasn’t tasked or even asked

to linger there without a mask

 

but something sitting in my skull

found everything about you dull

without construct and quite abrupt

i paid my tab to interrupt

 

i didn’t nod or even smile

treated your words as a turnstile

jumped over bereft of tokens

i get bored when words are spoken

 

***

 

 

 

in the summer of 83

a very, very long time ago

i would get off work

where i was tending bar

and go over to a friend’s house

 

he made his living dealing cocaine

although he freebased

most of his product

 

i would give him money from my tips

and he would lay out a couple of lines for me

then i would drink beer

while he smoked his cocaine

slayer blasting on his stereo

 

he had a parakeet

he would let roam free

 

eventually he would have

consumed his whole stash

so he would get down on the carpet

looking for cola rocks

picking up balls of bird poop

as he crawled around

 

he never found what he was looking for

although there was always

plenty of bird crap to sift through

 

one night

while i was in the midst of mixing drinks

the cops forced their way into his place

 

took him away

 

i never saw him again

 

***

 

the oracle of the orgasm

oh, you think you don’t matter

let me flatter

meaningless, manipulative chatter

 

i’ll listen, i’m listening

slithering through your weakest components

waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike

 

will you trust my kiss is meant

as more than a prelude to your nakedness

or should i wait

until you believe my deceive

that the nakedness of your soul

you have bared

is why a kiss i want to share

 

you are not everything everyone

makes you think you are

my touch will remove your scars

 

i promise

 

if i could, i would pass my hand through

the flesh of your breasts

so i could touch your heart

you tear me apart and put me

back together again

something only you can do

 

you are so unique

all other women are oblique

 

there is no one as complete as you

in all that you do

you are so misunderstood

but i see how special you are

 

now

 

come complete me

 

***

mortuaries never go out of business until the mortician dies

         (how i wish, how i wish you were here, we’re just two lost souls

          swimming in a fish bowl year after year, running over the same

          old ground what have we found, the same old fears – roger waters)

 

all words are waiting in the wings of existential flight

i’m walking while the city sings come dance with our delight

but i don’t dance with their romance although i’m liquefied

i just found out that yesterday another friend has died

 

younger than me, by god’s decrees is how she spent her days

but even in her abstinence she saw an early grave

i’m not confused, i’m not amused nor am i justified

i just believe this world is less when anybody dies

 

the gods of yore are at the store to purchase parting gifts

although we know they can afford their always a spendthrift

and she has died among the lie labor garners favor

even though the bible sighs the work was by the savior

 

but all these musings that we make don’t make no never mind

she is on her way to dust all from the daily grind

and some will miss the way she kissed tasting just like coffee

i always would whisper her name while eating mocha toffee

 

tonight is just like any night that languishes l.a.

the cars all say you’re in my way, night races to the day

i buy a candle on a whim with impermanent wick

the searing wax drips on my skin, my hand a candle stick

 

***

 

 

los angeles will always be an unfinished poem

          (i have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth – umberto eco)

 

the sidewalks and the store fronts and the flashing neon lights

are where i roam alone but not on almost every night

the past is cast yet fading fast, poetry still lingers

i pay the cost for being lost, liquefied dead ringer

every cliché that you can say, self-destructive artist

there’s no denying what we sow we will one day harvest

 

i can’t make sense of recompense, order in the chaos

formulas and dogmas have never soothed when there is loss

i’m told that all the fault is mine, ignoring solutions

all i see in the define is unpaid prostitution

for every point has counter-points there are no absolutes

which leaves you vain in your refrain of needing to refute

 

the beach is there so why not share the sunshine and the breeze

there’s nothing wrong in sing-alongs that slide you into ease

l.a. has its taco trucks and tasty tidbit trailers

my poetry is just for me not success or failure

so let me walk these streets at night without intervention

reality is five senses and of your invention

 

***

 

at which point do we turn the page or close the cover

sitting very silently in saturated lies

colloquial and quietly i show up and surmise

the bitter end: begin again? perpetuate the stale?

it’s only a perception in succeeding or to fail

 

circumstantial happiness is harbored in the gray

but how long is the must endure tomorrow is today?

take me there i don’t care where just take me somewhere else

i’m tired of the breathing in this atmospheric CELSS

 

a wisdom sage upon the page is just so full of shit

we compromise just to be wise when really we should quit

the aftermath of anything indigenously ingrained

they only call you crazy cause their paid if you’re insane

 

fuck the rest there is no best only your desire

the tree that falls without a sound is still burned in a fire

i won’t address specifics as i know they don’t exist

if in your list no choice exists you’re a recidivist

 

all change is strange but every range is fenced in by a lie

and every debt is just a bet sold as a satisfy

don’t sing the words unless the tune is in your harmony

definitions don’t define, see this and you will see

 

***

 

 

 

cemetery dances are the best kind of romances

          (and i feel so much depends on the weather – stp)

 

holding on to all that’s gone i’m walking late at night

its 3 a.m. i’m drinking gin descending to new heights

i’m down and out but mostly down dancing with depression

don’t want to talk cause you’ll just chalk, school me on life’s lessons

companionship would sure be nice but who would hang with me

west coast walker, midnight’s stalker, bathed in poetry

 

a pen and notepad in my hands i write what i just spoke

‘take a toke and choke on smoke until you’re broke you laugh less joke’

i think i wrote that years ago when i was twenty-five

or maybe i was twenty-four and fuck i’m still alive

depressed back then and now again, one cannot recover

hit repeat on ‘wish you were here’ audrey assad’s cover

and walk and drink, cigarette stink with heavy hurting sighs

at six a.m. the bars open and you can resupply

 

***

 

satisfaction guaranteed

       (Science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without. Owing to the similarity of our construction and the sameness of our environment, we respond in like manner to similar stimuli, and from the concordance of our reactions, understanding is born. In the course of ages, mechanisms of infinite complexity are developed, but what we call ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’, is nothing more than the sum of the functioning’s of the body. When this function ceases, the ‘soul’ or the ‘spirit’ ceases likewise.” – Nikola Tesla)

 

 

in-between the final scene and all that comes before

survival instincts make us think that we’re in need of more

a sunny day may come our way without a single thought

for we define our sustenance as something that is bought

and chase the breezes from our minds just trying to get through

the work day and the daily grind we think we must pursue

and justify this juggernaut enduring all the strife

by buying what we want to buy as the meaning of life

we dive in deeper every day by running up our debt

enslaved to how we earn our pay, a life lived with regret

i don’t care if you think i’m wrong cause thoughts are compromised

we think we know cause we’ve been told and truth we now surmise

we’re living for what’s in the store complaining life is hard

within this jail we furnish cells ignoring all the bars

 

***  

do you ever wish your asshole had taste buds

i know that i’ve never been wise

it’s just that i’m not innocent

the length of language i despise

is when you think you’re making sense

 

preening with presuppositions

is why i cannot talk to you

pouncing with your suppositions

you think without thinking it through

 

no such thing as answered questions

questions and answers don’t exist

irrigating indigestion

you think that you’re an oculist

 

i’ll answer questions just to show

there is no place where truth can live

you answer and then i disclose

that truth is always relative

 

***

 

lingering in the loneliness of your lies

walking on wilshire

i turn north on western ave

pass beverly blvd

melrose ave

santa monica blvd

pass under the 101

pass sunset blvd

 

at hollywood blvd

i’m getting tired

turn west

and go to the frolic room

order a drink

find a seat

and forage through the

fabrication found

in the fiber optics

of everyone’s findings

regarding the finite

and the finality

 

by my second drink

i’m wondering

why i’m still wondering

about this cesspool

simmering on the surface

of the singularity

in the similarity

 

after all

i don’t believe in anything

but this moment

and making the most of it

everything is bullshit

 

i step outside for a cigarette

after leaving my tab open

 

it’s just

that i’m bombarded

by baked goods

bartered like a leverage

for loneliness with a

montage of meaning

sprinkled on top

 

but the sweet

and the succulent

never satisfies

and this cheaper

by the dozen salvation

is a deprivation

that only isolates me

in my belief of no relief

in the reasons released

regarding rectification

 

extinguishing my cigarette

is meaningless

as it’s already down

to the butt

 

on the final hole

you’re searching for

the right club with which

to putt while i’ve gone back

inside to add to the amount

on my tab

 

***