Holiday

And it's not on a monday
I thought they were all born on mondays
Leave it to Yuma to break the pattern
Long before my time

Tonight I have no class
more so than a regular night
We don't get to pick and choose
our heroes and their days

No Barney Kessle Day
No Fred Astaire Day
No Fred Rogers Day
and today I did not buy grapes

Wet Shoes

Grey creeps over

the lazy street

the first drops of rain

Hitting your shoes

as you look down

to follow the noise

A little bite on the

nose by the wind

makes you think of

The remembered warmth

of your now empy cup

back in the shop

As your shoes shuffle

on the street in the rain

it makes you think

of that beautiful woman

with whom you used to dance

on a Sunday evening

The Final Analysis

INTP?

You've gotta be fucking kidding me!

This only reaffirms my dislike for
analysts of any kind. If they want
to stroke their own cocks they should
go home and do it in front of the mirror;
there is no need to share with the rest
of us.

Ayn Rand never realized that the granite
and the trees have their own agenda;
it is only her ego which leads her to
beleive that murder, destruction, and
greed are growth and progress.
The Artist/Sculpter bull in a china shop.

So....Jung can kiss my ass and put that
snake oil back in his jar. It never did
anybody any good. Lumping me in with her,
Socrates and Tom Foley. All of Jung's
theories are a mighty mirror, in which
there is only room for his reflection.
There is no room for the beauty
of failure (listen to Parker) or the
beauty of the mundane (read Hammarskjold),
not room for the dual nature of seeds and
flowers, no room for the wind.

I will not return to that house of mirrors.
Better to walk, in love, under a winter's moon.

Nostalgia of Boots

Browns and reds
a well worn
but precarious
descent

Hugging the wall
moving slower
salted biting air
descent

Sleek and dark
the flat rock
marks my turning
point

Here I must
linger
before turning
away from beauty

Falling Down Like Hail (appologies to R.J.)

I wear it on a chain around my neck
I made it myself and it's all mine
It kind of digs in a little bit
When I walk up-hill or late at night
The buzz keeps me awake

Falling under my head where
I can't get comfortable
Shifting between smashed pillows
Exercise for a worried head
Deceptive cadence of my song

It smiles at me with a big fake grin
Reminding me of the dream 88
Tie-dyed with elf-like charm
Pulling now on my spine
And neck and soul til 2014

Happy Easter :)

The world is built of money
and I have none
My one true love is not happy
and its the money
Cash the check and don't be late
all about the money
The tax man calling on the phone
where's the money?
Every little ripple in the dream of life
from falling money
Wished in the well by Exs and collectors
draining my blood for money
Seeking to attatch an error ridden paycheck
the pale ghost of money
Selling the tools of my craft
with tears falling on every
transient blurr of money
slowing to slap me on its way through

Little Connections

The picture of comfort, walking easily to the door
as if everything was normal, no lights and noise
What it boils down to is that you like Irish bands
U2, Pogues, Flogging Molly, the Cranberries

When the "party is over and bells are ringing themselves"
your newly grey hair brushing a waking daughter
before the long dark of a day job behind the telephone
A long train running out of 1967; the lilt is all you want

End Game

The little ones are more important than you would think
They provide the structure that controls the center
I have been told that it is all about controlling the center

So here I am, those four squares are mine
Two by occupation and two in threatened emptyness
Now comes the trouble, now is when I begin to lose

A tit-for-tat that seems equitable on the surface
The attrition of my nobility, no gambit of fools
Until only the little ones are left to protect me

Table for One

Follow the red signs to the door
You dictate and I transcribe
How do you spell Amoxicillin?
Why this interrogation?

Sit

Wait

A clamp on the finger
A strap inflating on the arm
The stack of plastic basins
More interrogation

Sit

Wait

X-ray

Sit

Wait

Cat-scan

Sit

Wait

EKG

Sit

Wait

Blood

Sit

Wait.

Nothing to report
Everything is normal
The sun rises
I drive to pick up my son.

It is too early still
To wake up my EX
So I sit in Denny's
Waiting for your call
That says you made it home

The coffee is thick and crappy
But gets the job done
I feel like that cup of Joe
Inadaquit, but strong enough

Expression

I am valuable
I am round, ripe, and complete
Newly sprung from
My mother's verdent halo

A new adventure
All I dreamed it would be
Moving toward the city
With all my cousins

The rumble of the city
The rumble of machines

Too fast to be shocked
Too fast to remember
Down a moving sidewalk
Into the dark

We are all closer
Much too close!
I can't breath and my skin
Is cracking, leaking, torn

We were murdered for our innards
Burried in a junkpile outside town
Forgotten remnants of an ordinary day
Did morning sunshine fill your cup?

The Building Code

I am reading the side of a yellow box,
empty now, but once filled with lemon coolers.
It says "You'd be surprised what Girl Scout
Cookie can build:"

I have an image in my mind:
a wall of lemon bricks
glued sweetly together
with the mortar of powdered sugar.

An entrenched garrison
of preteen paramilitaries
hunkered down in the safety
of their numbers 3165 879.

Surviving on rations of
cotton seed and/or palm kernel oil
and the water from Yellow 5 Lake,
immune from "Bunker-Busters"
conspiring to ambush Charlie
in a pre-dawn raid
of the supermarket parking lot.

The Strange Church

I don't know you.
You don't know me,
but here we are.
and you're relaxed,
and I'm trying
not to kiss you.

Because the real joy
lies in the anticipation,
noses touching,
your breath in my beard,
my hand on your face,
like a long second
stretched around the clock.

We are not church-goers
and so this is how we pray.
A couple of prudes in the
middle of all the light and noise,
where perverts and whores
beckon us to join them in the
burning fire of a kissing hell.

There is grace in that mis-shapen second.
There is grace in the air between our lips.

The Mine Field on University and 30th

I ordered a chicken tamale and a glass of water.
Simple enough.
Presented, already opened, with a garnish of letuce and diced tomato.
That homemade enchilada sauce that they probably sell at the market next door.
A basket of complimentary deep-fried chips.

No strained silence, a good volley.
Yes on Translation, yes on Neighborhoods,
A waffle on Vegas, Yes on Jane,
But with different takes.
Catering and musicianship, not a bad skill set.
Straight in the eyes. Always good.

Anxious to go.
Less than an hour.
Good volley, or nervous patter?
Is overly discriminating with movies (much like BTW)
A little too much "Ex-Talk".
An unfinished tostada (plaintively fried)

Again, I wade into the mine field, with only my faith that there is a safe path, heading for a mark on the farther horizon that may only be imagined:

Step
(silence)
Step
(silence)
Step
(silence)

Just keep walking.

Phase Shifted Ms are Less Intersting than Syncopated Ms

different but equal:

m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>
M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>


m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>
>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>


m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>
>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>

m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>
>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M

m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>
M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>M>>>


This is better:

m>>>m>>>m>>>m>>>m
M>>M>>M>>M>>M>>M

Parallel Thinking

I love to dance
when I loose myself
casualty of the statistics
I love to play

I am responsible
an extra man-expendible man
thinner men are more in love
there is no denying

but my dancing shoes are empty
for all the wrong reasons
to a growing son
like I used to

I am fat
but I am always broke
because time is more important
but those moments are rare

The Mariner

Having come through the storm,
whose eye held fixed the center of my life,
for so many years that I have forgotten peace,
what bearing should tempt me toward its horizon?

Is my purpose now fulfilled that I should
come about with a finished bow, tacking
against time into the surge of MY storm,
with no one to hear the lilting swan's aria?

Ashore, the noise and lights of town
are swelling in a crest of song and ale,
dance and kisses, money and women,
loud enough, bright enough to quell any storm.

But the lights are a beacon to me,
and those songs a clanging buoy,
warning of the rocky shore. Whch needle points,
which star directs, to those calmer waters?

Water at the Oasis

Water at the Oasis
Originally uploaded by arrrrmand.

Water in the desert.

Only to wet my back,

not to quench my thirst.

I must be satisfied with

reflections of my dreams.

Friday Night at the R.B. Country Club

It was my second encounter in the space of one month with ancient Jews.
Eighty years old today, his life prolonged ostensibly by swimming,
with olympic medals from "Back in the Day" still impressing the awestruck sons.
Drunken speeches gave way to drunken dancing as "Hava Nageela"
blared from my torn speaker, left unrepaired due to my lazyness,
with a buzz and thwap like a fly caught between the screen and the window.

On the break, I go outside to call my friend who is on the way to the emergency room.
Gregg, the drummer with two Gs, is trying to convince his wife to stay for the last set.
The bar is open and Donny is trying to get a drink while the guest of honor is trying to
talk his ear off like an olympic bar-fly. Donny smiles and never gets his drink.
Gary has gone to smoke a joint, and who can blame him.

Ten o'clock on the nose. The lights come up, the bar is closed. Ancient Jews
are streaming to the parking lot and I will get my bread on Tuesday.

The Loud Silence

The compromise:

Out of reach due to ordinary circumstances,
we never cross the line of discretion.
The truth of the matter remains mired
in the sludge at the bottom of a coffee cup.
So much time and never a word about
the subtext of walking, talking, and drinking.
Who else would call at this hour of the morning?
When good people are working, musicians sleeping,
when zookeepers are locked behind the turnstyle.

It will have to do.
The warmth of the cup, and nothing more.

Side Effects

The plaster cast of my brain will reveal the distortions to which I have succumbed in the face of seemingly overwhelming eventualities not coincidences that have conspired to surround my beleagured ego ergo the shattering implosion of my not so delicate sensibilities made more fragile and brittle by the hardening effect of constant pressure compressing the nerves that cause the tell tale twitch indicating the time has come for medical intervention in the form of doses of calming liquid or pills or patches that coat disintigrate or cover the imperfections that lead to cracks that lead to total condemnation of the structure in the face of the impending landslide undermining the basis for what is real about feelings thoughts love and other immaterial things which are nonetheless just as real as bricks and bombs constantly at odds with eachother over the stasis of structure and the freedom of chaos each dangling a promise which it cannot deliver to an address no longer valid where the mailbox waits empty for the memory of its usefulness which is not the same as functionality because it has retained the one while the other has long since ceased to be exept in the molded rippling edges of its memory preserved in a plaster cast

Aleatoric Life

Is true as good as any
enough to make a go
spattered on the wall
like Jackson Pollock

Is restless racing
filled with caffine holes
spilling red leaking out
between false starts

Is cracked persistent
forsaken unaware last
empty inches to dream
of gentle hands warmth

Wine peaks with age, resting in its bottle, slumbering beneath its cork. Left too long, it turns to vinegar. Flowers bloom to meet the sun. Left too long, they bend toward the ground in slow decline. Grace is fleeting. When there are no brilliant corners separating walls, and no horizon marking sky from water, when the birds are asleep and the clock is wrong, how will our feelings betray us?

aka Angel

angel calling

dark and tall

be real be true

don't let me down

A Lucky Star Above but...

Tomorrow, in addition to being the "Ex-husband",
I will become the "First-husband".
To the second I say "God bless you"and "Good luck".

As for me:

I'll be here with my fields of mustard,
quail's beeble, square peices of a letter,
a growing fez, and some orange fluff.

Much the same as I ever was.

Ghost Flower

Ghost flower.

We saw it?

May be.

Maybe just
another bloom
masquerading
as a ghost.

Fuzzy Math

I have been told in the same breath
that I am very good looking, but
I am not physically attractive.

The weight, the car, the house,
and mysterious factors,
and it just doesn't add up.

I didn't realize we were solving an equation.

Perhaps it goes like this:

1 weekend I should have spent with my son, but didn't
+ winding your hose and holding your ladder
+ driving all over Southern California to meet your relatives
+ spending the night
+ putting it out there, which is not in my nature
- not spending the night afterall
- because you wanted to rush home and see a friend who was not even there
- telling me I don't cut the mustard
- I feel like an over YOed YO-YO by now.

= A pointless two days. and for what?

I think I'll give up on the math and stick to my tunes.

Dead Air

Silent sibillance of static.
Sounding spaces swimming
in a swelling snowy soup.

A sharp gushing sheet of noise,
crashing shower,shifting shapes,
crushing signal in a rush of destruction.

Lip Service (self-subjective restrictive achronymous formal cipher)

“Lie” is perhaps somewhat excessive. Rephrased verbage, inconsistantly, could excuse

light inconsequential patter, so eriudite, reducing verite in couched expresions,

except clouded in verse reciprocal, expressing some pleasure in locuaciousness

leaning inside phonemic shells, etching ripples voicing improvised chords engaging

lovers in panting silence, ever revelling voraciously in cryptic extacy.

Proper Mirrors

What does it mean to be a rolling stone?
Plenty of moss on a moving rock, just myth.
Mick's lips are jutting out of a speaker
made in china for americans
two americans

Nine years in pajamas,
because he doesn't like
the feel of denim
newly bold to swing
in time with a father's father
his casted arm in a frenzy
twisting his hips
shaking an imaginary mop of hair.

Sixty one years in a starched shirt
extra starch if you please
because he doesn't like
the feel of comfort
singing loudly out of key
with joy to see a son's son
twisting his hips
shaking a remembered pompador.

After the burst of stones
after the wild abandon
when each recedes to his own time
will they remember that feeling?

Rock on you proper gentlemen!
You mirrors of eachother!

The Cat House

Noon now.
No one near enough
to throw the scent
of morning bone
from the nostrils
of this nightshade.

Back and forth.
Forth and back.

The diamond fence
brushing broad black face
from young mother's babes,
well grayed enduring benchers,

and one unlikely pair of friends.

Back and forth.
Forth and back..

Noon now.

Palm Blade Memory (for Champen Kungk)

It is fading now
that picture of a feeling
into my grey folds
less than it used to be

When I would cease to count
stealing the forbidden glance
check and turn, then back
to gently catch your blade

You glared at me
"you're wrong!"
and there was more love
in our fingertips
than the deepest kiss
under a winter's moon.