Simple world covered over
with glitz and grit and greed;
pushers of plastic paradise
succeed in subduing intellect,
creating craze,
and driving us up the Walls.
New buildings have to bring
in trees that fit the
look of industry
digital decorum
blocks bay views & creativity
What good to metal façades
do for boxed in blinded
transplants,
and for dishonored neighbors?
Small businesses bustled out the
back door, making room for
money-making modern market
serving up slices of privileged
bread
no help for the hopeless
no mind for the searching eyes
hidden (now) behind plastered
high rise override
cutting off everything but the
shadowed tips of the distant
mountain tops
But what can we do to stop it?
corporate cops prevent
criminal pursuits
phone calls can't get through
customer service to the real
suits
who obviously could care less
for taste or class
or the World of brass on
which their gold-plated piles
rest,
backs & heart broken
and the new patrons will
be smoking off their
milk mother macchiato madness
capuccino cups piled in the
trash
just another heap to have to
look past
And just think – not everyone
gets to sit on such green grass as
ours,
so we're lucky of sorts, by far,
but it still doesn't sit us above the bar
from which the led-handed
gold watches govern & hover
handing out standard in
gift certificate covers
holiday printed for seasonal
sales
keeping up appearances for their
other shallowed males
and the pre-paid graves
from which they hail
waving their graphic flags
in our faces
without any good graces
just ugly carpet bag intentions
to enrich themselves
while ignoring the masses
- V.I. 2006
No operatic good-bye
the morning you died
of AIDS; only a sigh
of grief. I then cried
taxiing home,
a long autumnal ride
past the hidden dome
of the cathedral. My
brain began its comb
for a tidy reply
to white-lie amend
& demystify
death. Couldn't pretend
with an Elektra-mind—
but did violently rend
all excuses designed
to disguise. Your cold
dead corpse—reclined
in a morgue of mold
alone & battered—
your Queens' mother I told,
was shattered.
Each no brings you closer to yes
you just have to keep at it.
Sometimes it's the ugliest of moments that bring you closer
to the money shot. Beauty is ethereal, you just might be
the most beautiful girl to one and a leper to another.
In the audience you will find flat-eyed faces
looking at you like you're deformed
and then you'll find
the lovers of the deformed
and they'll make you god for a few minutes
and that's all any one needs.
I learned that it all adds up.
Words on a napkin become poems, poems on a page
become books. It's something
you can hold in your hand.
And the dollar that the idiot gave you to sit on his lap
disappears into a stack of bills
and it's something
you can hold in your hand.
It all adds up.
Some days are good and you are gold
and other days you're wading through mud
like a starving pig, looking for scraps
and you can't figure out what you're doing
in the cesspool of dead words and men
who come to the club to jack off at 11am but don't
have any money to tip. When you approach
the altar you're hoping for a masterpiece, a hundred dollar bill
you might get excited for the twenties
but you'll take the fives. You'll take what you can get.
Somewhere along the line you'll become addicted
to the heat that comes from writing a good poem,
or earning your rent in one night. There aren't many
rules, just remember not to fall in love
with the customers, or your words and if you feel exposed
you're doing something right.
up the fancy stairs to the balcony of the third floor lounge
out to the edge of the planet
in space the shape of a rainbow full of invisible strength
within reach: the furry sky and I get the impression
there aren't enough inches between this world and the next
As if civilization clings
to the tail of something
dying or we're a word
on the tip of a tongue
about to be spoken
in virgin time
just beyond the difficult ingredients: jewels
smushed into the night
one to the East is Frances my dead sister alive
like an old mask
I reach up, pluck
she jumps down, ripe
whispering warm milk
we move as twins
swiveling a kind of romance on the carpet and I'm
not even sad she stayed behind with her other family of glass
all spread into stories
