STRONG TENDENCY

A strong tendency to want
to have the pleasant, agreeable,
comfortable, secure feelings be all pervasive

And always going for that

And feeling if there is pain in any form
disagreeable, uncomfortable, insecure

to run away from that

to avoid that

Learning to be present
A dog licks a sidewalk

Herbert smells like pee
Give him food on Styrofoam

People gather outside The New York Times

I was an alcoholic, sure, he said
If not I would’ve killed myself
Booze saved my life

A professional alcoholic, Patrick said
He laughed
But there wasn’t anything funny
He fell flat, lay like that

A strong tendency to hiccup
Riding in an ambulance
The Bellevue ER
The placement sound IRT
Quality of Life
Broke wisdom desideratum

All pervasive about stamps
Do they know the number?
His middle name?
Going for pizza
A big slice
But $2.50 is a lot, she said


She only drank Jamba Juice
Failing superior
She hailed a taxicab
Got elected

A present dog sniffs
Feeling pain like French fries and a shake
The way a beer sits in the stomach
Disagreeable as the 72nd Street station

Leaving smells like people outside
Like evidence
Before tv

They didn’t call it NYPD, he insisted
He was wrong
Harvey as bad as his father
He was wrong
He insisted

Locked him up
So he wouldn’t freeze
Police just like people
The good ones just like people
The bad could be something you don’t see.

UNEMPLOYMENT #3

“DADA does not burden itself with goal oriented motives.”
Richard Huelsenbeck

Dada future
Dada welfare state
Dada digital television nation
Dada President
Nothing to say
Economy based on the newest idea dada
The newest idea dada sold in the supermarkets
The Future Store
There’s enough shopping space, according to the New York Dada Times
According to John Cage
According to Venerable Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche
Walt Whitman was a Dada nurse
He published many copies of his dada poems
Printed them himself
Just like William Dada Blake
William predicted a dada future
Unemployment
There are many realizations waiting to happen
They are merely flowers in a great dada field
Do not pick them!
Let them blossom and then lay in the grass
Count stars
Answer letters from the Department of Labor
Go to the butcher’s with kielbasa
William Blake predicted it all
He wrote it in a dada notebook
But the notebook was lost
On ebay for 15,000 bucks
William consulted with many dada oracles
Mostly in his head
Walt spent time in medical tents
Holding the hand of the wounded
He lived in dada Brooklyn
He lived in dada Camden
He was known to wear a floppy dada hat.

EMPTINESS AND THE DEPENDENT ARISING OF FORM

Pitch bliss
The radio playing sport
I am determined to get better
(REARRANGE)

Interval rhyme
Where a flame high
Communing with sheer song
Further
Saving green

Praying to
The Wish Machine
Holy appliance
(STOP STOP TALKING)
Misericordia
Caught slipstream

The long shadows
Clouds forming
I pester the sound
By listen
Moon born

Bury or pyre the dead
Found or departed
(WAKE WAKE MOTHER WAKE)
The State
Temporary

The civil, the pleasure
All of it
Drift
Holy flower
Fading

A blue figure
Hand extended
Speaking wordless
Bless me
As I practice (ELIMINATION)

STAY PUT (IN A FOREIGN LAND)

The dining room I’m in is very confusing
It’s a collection of coffee and spilled luck
That is, moon
The mystery of spoken words
The electrical outlets plus the holy appliances
I am standing on nothing at all
Variation of sweet bird
Con me mister, I’ll go south this winter
Until then, I promise to be a vessel
I will grow silent
In silence, we will reside
A churchy void with a cool draft
Place full of idols
Desperate symbols, redolent
Red wine carafes
Secret service representatives
The last Bulgarian Prince
His last Bulgarian ferret
Finalizers, people who live in a depot
“we might be homeless
but guys have a genius
we can’t do the regular world
we don’t want it”
That’s what Richard said
Then read a poem so good
It made me cry
I cry a lot
It’s a blessing
Gifts from orixas
Water, wave, and prayer
There’s also electricity
Colors, a resolution
Plaster over holes where mice came
Consider a large papier mache alligator
With an empty stomach
Worship
Then forget.

I DREAM SOFTLY

Cheese layered
Broad sweeps pastel
Sixty story pillow
Extravagant horizon
Mice blessing buildings alight with whipped cream
Wake me up before I fart again
I don't mean to be so graphic
Just I have a duty to warn
I look at my round head in the dream mirror
Balding head
Round as Charlie Brown
That's what these dreams are made
Cheese, farting, cartoons
Wait wait
Not the fat comedians!
Meanwhile there's a floating obstinance
An elephant with a saddle like in the circus
He knows where the graveyard lies
Atop is a gaudy clown
All orange makeup and red rubber nose
He's got the megaphone
The bubble gun
And a pocket full of firecrackers
Like always.

I REPEAT MYSELF

Looking back on old notebooks
There is so much that doesn't surprise me
In this grey almost mayonnaise
I think about Spring
My favorite time of the year
An ecstatic tremble like the way a train feels
But in my gut
I am Secaucus
Tunnels stretching from state to state
Endlessly
The resonance
Feel bad
Don't want to feel bad
Feel bad
Don't want to feel bad
Original as a clump of dirt

YICTOVE HUMANOID

A big man with a big mouth
From down South, New Orleans
Walking in a room, not afraid of guns
He was peaceful
But he’d give you some
Yictove Humanoid
Another alien from Pluto
Another disputer
He liked the herb
Have you heard him read?
He was a Humanoid, now deceased
He lived in East Urange
His heart was too big
So it had to stop
He had a large head and a squinty eye
His hands were slabs of a humanoid kind
The size of pillows and soft
His grace was a float
He could bring up the house, to attention
Let me warm up the mic with a poem
Traveled all around the world
Never settled down until now
Went wherever he could
Now he’s home
Pluto must be glad he’s back
Cooking up some crocodile stew with pepper
Outer space’ll make you hungry
He was a Humanoid
Always seemed on a cloud
He always stood up for feeling good
Happy Humanoid, now gone
I’m going to miss you biggie
You’re in me
I’m gonna miss your company.

MEMO RANDOM

There’s a difference between trains, rivers, and billboard signs
But I can’t say I know what the difference is
I drift
Trying to determine sameness and its opposite
But ill-prepared
I am not the boy scout leader
Instead I am the Dada parishioner
Looking for a new Pope
I have graduated the classroom
Now I can take off my dunce cap
Great and fearless
Revolutionary friends
(I almost said fiends)
We no longer can excuse ourselves by being drunk
Instead we wait
In the lockup of choice
Please great and fearless fiends
(I almost said friends)
Bring me cigarettes
No change that
I just forgot I don’t smoke
Not tobacco or anything else
Make that magazines
And more importantly
Devils and troublemakers
Bring money and clothes
But especially money
The bail this time is steep.

MY FATHER FIGHTS HIS SHADOW

Disturbed by vodka
He wishes there was medicine
Dizzy
He pokes years
Delivers strange ideas
Delivers cold sandwich
We squander errant dream
Grow fat in a wastrel
Father stretches
Hands shaking
Blunt instruments
Praying
Even victory isn’t victory
Climate means breathing
Status means termination due
Imminence
Like an almost king
Hope transfer in a punk environment
Zealous emergence in an emergency
My father in a doubling
Inheritance with blessing
There’s winds that feel like ghosts
There’s messages waiting for ink.

CHARMING

Some seldom sentence phrased
Symbiotic violin
Her desperate need
A turning point, a dream

Awareness walking the street together
The flights of Delphi
The delight
Prediction is rather common
The stance has a chance

Forbidden treatment
Deprive nothing else
Know there must be some purpose
Prelude to the sex act

A masochist-logical correlate
Structure demonstrates
A number of previously held views
Wolf symbolism

Before being left
The moon diagnosis
Dependency is over
Similarities and differences

Magical endowment of illusory omnipotence
The royal road argued position
Approximately aware
Dimly without true perversions

Displaced
The present and correct distortions
A midget day with a whore’s face
Please put me deep in the sleeping dread