waking in sunlight
i'm laughing myself awake
on the couch
for a few open-eye moments
laughing at bukowski again:
i make a grand statement
about poet & poem
& a young girl like his
agent is whispering in his bent ear
it's an upstairs flat,
rundown like old chicago,
even lead-paint blue wood
slats leading to a tar porch
maybe i live here.
bukowski is young,
50, famous,
on his way to money &
reading
across the country.
i actually see a letter
signed raindog.
we
get
along
like regular madmen
i mention
steve richmond
but the dream
changes on its own
& i'm up, prone,
in 2 o'clock afternoon
sunlight, on our green-
sheet'd couch, laughing
with
the genius
of charles
bukowski.
filipski's painting in our bedroom
i stand at our bedroom
doorway looking in at the very
sunny, brown-carpet, white wall
room, our king-size mattress
on the floor -- ann's array
of books. things. my amerikan
flag art on opposite wall i originally
hid away after 9/11 since it all felt
so wrong -- sometimes we have to slowly
come to our senses again. in the interim
it's reality too,
half-right,
pre-transparent. filipski's artwork
is an original on rice paper i think,
big, intense, colors like colors of
this world without named forms --
that's no tree,
that's a swatch of GREEN,
but on close inspection
it's a tree, & there are cocks
growing like branches & leaves
are the distorted alien faces of infants
sprouting from various branch cocks
well, that's what i see.
you might see something completely
different. there are thousands of
pictures & words within the thousands
of pictures & words & colors.
from afar, from the livingroom
looking into the bedroom
few cld guess it's a filipski,
but it is.
ann is home
ann is home
washing our dirty dishes
with large yellow gloves
on, & "the end of the world"
is on spinner radio
in a weird play of dayfulness
of less panic
as surreality soars & soars
in most natural translucent
skies over-sedated we
wish we slept less no no no
we don't
let sleep wash our minds
mental hashish, dreams
oh, she is also making us
supper. ann is a good wife.
it's her 2nd glass of wine,
i'm counting. i can't see
what she's fixing on the table
tho, but my stomach is now growling.
we all growl. we are growling
mammals.
yawg. she just put on a bootleg
patti smith cd in the livingroom.
hey cld ya turn that down?
i yell.
she
does.
meantime
the whole iraq thing.
this crazy earth of humans
spinning & spinning
& spinning,
"heroine" is playing
loud -- ann turns it up!
the microwave beeps.
"we're better off than three-
quarters of the human race on
the planet so don't you go bitching
about silly money shit," she
scolded me earlier,
before the wine,
before she read
the poems i've
been writing
today.
i'm hungry.
wednesday evening
as far as i know nothing
terroristic happened today.
i know about as much as a
drunk gnat.
we buzz,
aimless but for buzzness.
i have twelve dollars
in my wallet
& minus money in the
checking account.
ann & i both work
like sodomized dogs,
but we can't buy
much beyond paying
bills of
necessities:
electricity,
phones,
rent,
state farm insurance.
we have fallen
thru the huge cracks of amerika,
baby-boomers,
broke, pay-check to
pay-check
drunk.
but this isn't
iraq. this isn't
the middle
east,
& that's
a plus.
i'm writing
a rather calm poem
& will soon
brown the pork-chops.
ann will be home from
work in around half an hour.
instead of watching the news
as we eat,
we watch
THE SIMPSONS.
i am
homer.
ann is
marge.
earth
is a cartoon,
it really,
really is.
the bourbon bottle
there is certainly enough
remaining i'll be out by
early evening. ann has
a box of burgandy wine
so the jim beam
is all mine. i don't
mean to manipulate ann
like this,
but it's just knowing
she can be
tricked as long as the trick
is a little graceful &
it's wine & i don't drink
wine.
i wonder how the real poets write
pinsky isn't composing
lisp'd revelations
on a spontaneous internet
messageboard,
that's for sure.
well, none of the academic
poets write
exclusively in cyberspace,
saving nothing,
afloat in anonymous
zen universe
dope-smoke modulation madness,
no way. the art of poetry
is supremely finest of all
human art when word
is perfectly expressed --
& existence isn't
science, isn't biology,
isn't even
metaphor.
click to view movie/poem - eggs