"The Scrovegni damnation"

The Scrovegni damnation

suspended, the chapel

I will not see this morning;

crisp, fall, Padovan

foschia and revolution.

A kneeling dog

Before the museum.

Religion of the elite

who keep churches

as churches

once kept relics.

“Boys keep swingin’,

boys always work it out.”

Kidnapped that girl

because her father

,a Vatican official,

who, no doubt,

don’t give a shit

about this Roman amphitheater,

but did something nasty

to somebody...

                        Despite

power we do things

and consequences

fall on women

                        we conceive

of as other, as ours, as

a social commodity.

The Scrovegni loaned

                        money

and we paid interest

at the Vatican bank

in blood.

                                    10/1/2016

                                    Padova

Once a month we host an Open Mic here in Florence at the Hostel Tasso. Last night I got Nadia Koski and Marcello from Sushi Rain to help me with out with an old love poem of a sort.

Another cool, gray San Francisco day

,July, toward the end of the world.

I will never see clearly again

except through glass. I’ll

walk ‘til my legs give out, I suppose,

looking hard at the outside of things.

Love will be my mantra

‘gainst all this American suspicion, hate,

and self-repression. By tomorrow

you’ll have forgotten you ever read this

but I’ll remember that you did.

I’m the archivist of nothing in particular.

July, 5^th, 2016

San Francisco

San Francisco II

Although it’s all visually familiar

the city only

                        feels like home

In the Tenderloin.

                                    Leavenworth St.’s “got

that home beat,” that

Je ne sais quoi

                        on the edge

of desperation. Transsexual

with a laptop on the sidewalk

purse open: smokes, blankets,

and that smell bathrooms

                                                were built

to neutralize.

                        Sometimes places

are hard to get to because

they’re even harder to get out of.

This lowlife

                        misses

                                    the camaraderie

                                    of abject survival. After all,

smiles are brighter

                                    against

                                    your suburban misery,

                                    Mr. Jones—

where it all happens without you

and my head is the only

                                                incongruity,

since all the places it carries around

only bring me home 

to the cool, gray city

                                                of love.

June, 2016

San Francisco

God Is a Bullet

The bubble of your fear buys you a gun. Your new automatic fingers embody fear, load up, and get itchy. The bubble swells inside the barrel to bursting. The automatic metallic mind in your hand makes your prissy wet and your colic hard.

The neighbor’s dogs bark. They growl and cower. “Kill! Kill!” they bark, for they hate the people on the other side of the fence. The fence is their bubble, their defenestrating defense, the wall between their cowardice and false courage. “Kill! Kill!” they bark on the internet. “We love Jesus!”

Jesus loads his gun. He is afraid too. afraid of Christmas. of not being believed in. of the bad thief—he might be black. of the other side of town. of Muslims who hate his “way of life” crowned by death on every corner. There’s no other way out.

Mostly Jesus shoots his wife. or his wife shoots him (they are not always sober). Occasionally Jesus shoots up a school—but that is his own personal responsibility. Jesus, after all, will live forever. unless he decides to shoot himself—which is the most common use of a handgun in the United States of Jesus.

There is no greater hatred than the hatred of he who would take his own life for the fear of his fellow man.

All hail the gun, lord of lords and king of kings. To call for mercy is to know that the gun knows no such thing.

12/27/2014

Florence

With Apologies to Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage,
Old age should burn and rage at close of workday;
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

Though wise ones know a proper wage is sage,
Because Democrat words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.

Good workers, the last wave by, crying how to gauge
Their frail deeds of labor danced in a green workway,
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

Wild ones who taught GOP speech to asuage,
learned, too late, and grieved legislation on its way,
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.

Grave workers, near 6 PM, who see with blind outrage
their interests blaze like meteors and be tossed away,
Rage, rage against the insufficiency of the wage.

And you, my father, there on the sad payday,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce Republican tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that old minimum wage.
Rage, rage against insufficiency of the wage.

Childhood, writers, dilemmas

Ela Vasilescu asked me to write about "Childhood, writers, dilemmas" for her blog Writer in Florence and I did. Click on this text to read it.

Newly uploaded to Bandcamp, Sputnik, the aural companion to my anthology of stories and poems about the mystery of place, Sojourner. Here for your streaming and downloading pleasure are 17 pieces from the book and two others that didn't quite make the cut, performed a Capella, with drums, with music, and sometimes other, more interesting sounds. If you already own the book, help yourself to this free download, otherwise consider donating a bit o' cash towards all the artist's hard work here, or sending me a whopping 15 Euro through Bandcamp/Paypall, for which I will mail you a signed paperback copy of Sojourner anywhere in Europe, the US, or Canada.

Cheers!

 

San Francisco

It’s a sad

truth, how appreciation

springs from lack.

Black night’s agonies

trickle from my fingers

in stoic philosophies—

I die a thousand deaths

in my mind.

I am I, saddest

motherfucking truth

there is. The fog

lifts and I sit

on wooden steps

—Espresso and an Export

‘A’—and live again.

Do we all throw

away lives so easily,

so thoroughly? Lee

And Debra, Lee and Debra.

Debra and Lee. Eurydice,

Eurydice, Eurydice.

7/29/2015

San Francisco

A Valentine

“Her body is the shape of my hands.”

–Paul Eluard

My Galatea, smooth and warm

as sandstone against her palms

,firm fingers caressing,

sculpts me each and every

day with her curved and slender

presence. Venus has no auguries

,neither pearl nor rose, to prove

if I were worthy of her chisel

against my stony heart

not yet come to the apex

of the wheel.

2/14/2011

Florence

House Hunting

The Prodigal's Chair has just published the opening tale of Poison and Antidote in their "House & Home" issue. It's called, oddly enough, "House Hunting" Check it and them out--a great publication straight outta Boston. 

In My Role as the Most Hated Poet on Facebook

(with apologies to Mark Eitzel)

In my role as the most hated
poet on facebook, I've met
a lot of well-web-presenced
discourse holders

whose feelings were far more
precious than mine, whose opinions
,right as rain, (when the fuck
was rain ever right?) illuminated
me with immensities

of the ego
of the solitary midnight
poster, nothing better to touch
than the keys,
opening up worlds of potential
space, expanding universes
of I, me, mine.

I prefer the kid
from South Carolina who posted
on my YouTube video simply this:
"Stupid. Gay."

Brevity, you know,
is the soul of wit.



1/12/2016
Florence