THOUGHTS ON THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

THOUGHTS ON THE CALIFORNIA DROUGHT

sitting here feeling like a used car

one part after the other failing me
the aroma of  fresh brewing coffee
wakes my brain cells

the drought laughs at the masses

teases them with a light drizzle

picture of an old lover stares at me

from its place on the mantle
her smile warm as the campfire

I sat around as a child
my room a dust garden

my hamstring pull refuses to address

the promised golden years drown

in quicksand

Israel and Palestine engaged in endless war
Putin playing death games in Moscow

proof the cave man still lives inside us

fields toiled by immigrants
now treated like criminals

the elderly a liability

the young puppets in a political game

poets once warriors on skateboards
now prisoners of pride and envy

I take refuge in the soft raindrops
the peace of solitude rides my veins
like a steamship treading calm waters

the garden of my mind is still green

poems wait to be planted in fertile soil

no drought can kill

At Eighty

At 80

You realize

You’re not immortal

Parents long buried

Friends fallen by the wayside

Like spring leaves from an aging tree

Arthritic Bones that creak and moan

Mile walks turned to blocks

The year’s race by like
A track sprinter

Bring me to my mother’s grave

Her tombstone chipped

The words fading

No such fate for me

I’ll go the way of the Indian
My flesh given to flames
No dirt No worms
No suffocating box

Ashes and bone my fate
Monterey or San Francisco Bay

The sunset my head stone

My poems my marker

POEM FOR BUKOWSKI

He was the original

Jack the Ripper

He was the tormentor

Of John Bryan

He was the villain

Of women’s lib

He was the last hope

Of the down and out

He was a Third Reich monster

He was a Hindu Guru

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

He tormented his enemies

He frustrated his friends

He wrote poems in the shit houses

Of America

He wrote poems in the ballet

Of his sleep

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

All he was folks was

The best show in town

Holy Priest Circus clown

The best act around

He was a Roman sonnet

He was an Irish ballad

He was the best Cesar salad

In a gourmet restaurant

He had the face of a moon crater

The stomach of a wheelbarrow

The heart of a whore

Which is more than you can say

For 90% of the poet’s around

He dug Brahms

He dug Beethoven

He was the heavyweight champion

Of Los Angeles

He was the Chaplin of San Pedro

He was stalked by the minor poet’s

Of San Francisco and Los Angeles

And the soft-boiled egg eaters

Of the Café Trieste

He was a rainbow of watercolors

Mixed in with one too many

Sunday morning hangovers

He loved boxing

He loved his beer

He loved his daughter

He loved his women

He was an antique book

In a broken down hotel

He was a bottle of aspirin

In an empty water glass

He wrote Harold Norse

Get well cards

All he was folks was
The best damn show
In town

BROKEN PROMISES

BROKEN PROMISES

at eighty years two months
the sun beats down on me
like the gleam in the eye
of a butcher lowering a hammer
on the head of an unsuspecting cow
being led to the slaughterhouse

the memories circle me like
old time Indians circling
a wagon train

I walk backwards into my birth
each new year like
a sharpened knife in the hands
of a trembling surgeon

lost in insomnia like a blind man
walking a dark road in
the dead of night

waking like a shotgun blast
in a killing field
lost in a language
I can not translate

the priest passes
the collection plate
rejects my confession
my sins laid out like
a sea of stars in
a far away constellation

all my poet friends take sides
purity versus the hucksters
God's choir plays bagpipes
refuse to play referee

the creaking coasters
of my grandfather's rocking chair
sing in my one good ear

the Holy Ghost devours
me like a python
my childhood like a bat
in a dark cave waits for God
to come out of the closet
and deliver the long
promised resurrection