My Stone Shoes

I was wearing my stone shoes
to walk across the broken glass.
You bought me sugar socks; you’re so sweet.

I took my knife and carved
a tree’s name into its bark.
You translated Italian into Italian. Huh?

I took a kite’s colorful tail
and wrapped it around Benjamin’s neck.
You gave him CPR with your vagina.

I took my stone shoes
and mashed the beans for supper.
You took the red rind from the tortillas.

You’ve been my muse for over forty years,
I hope it never stops.
No one can stick toothpicks in my eyes like you.

The Effects Of Chicano Anti-Matter On HOWL

I have seen Allen Ginsberg destroy his generation,
I have seen Creeley crawl along,
I have seen Patchen patch his pants.

I have seen the worst minds of my generation
put up on a pedestal,
raised high on shoulders.

I have seen people slaughtered
in their name,
a hero’s name written in blood.

I have seen Allen Ginsberg destroy
a generation of poets.
I have seen him give Beatniks a bad name.

I have seen him try to be a poet and fail.
I have seen him destroy his generation.
Don’t object! You’re one of them.

The Goldfish

The family considered the goldfish their pet,
the goldfish considered the family
a bunch of terrorists.

They starved him everyday,
they fed him what appeared to be
cardboard bits,

they forced him to live and sleep
in his own excrement,
they terrorized him

with the pounding of rock and roll music,
their TV screen was magnified
in the torture chamber of his tank

and he had to watch police dramas,
soap operas, the feeding frenzy
of the cable news channels.

Then one morning he woke up and was thrilled
to hear the roaring of the sea.
But the sea was upside-down.

from Cats Me If You Can




Cat Scratch Fever

The cat went berserk and started
shooting up the family,
dad, mom, Little Jimmy,

Kimberly, the sexy teenage daughter.
Who the hell gave the cat an Uzi,
he’s shooting up the furniture,

the huge TV, the sofa, the Apple computer?
He works his way into the garage,
shoots up the family car,

shoots up the family’s useless junk
which is always stored in a corner.
Taking up room for what?

He shoots up the neighborhood. Heads downtown,
kills the mayor, the city council members,
who needs the imbeciles anyway?

He kills every dog in town,
even the caged ones in the dog pound.
You’d think the freaking cat was human!

4. Imagine

The world is winding down
and crushing New York City with its suburbs,
goddamn Brooklyn's in Central Park.

The turtles in the lake
retreat inside their shells.
As we're getting John's body out of the trunk,

New York's finest cruise by
and wave at us while we break the law,
the towers tumble in the jungle.

Yoko doesn't even thank us.
We drive off to the nastiness of New Jersey,
run over Hoffa's body

and keep on driving,
listening to Imagine,
convinced John got it all wrong.


cuatro de cuatro

3. The Smell Of Shaved Fish

“I love where Twiggy’s legs culminate.” I said
and you hit me on the shoulder
with your fist.

We were driving to Strawberry Fields,
we were driving to the Dakota,
we were driving the helpless Yoko back home,

fucking Sean had been calling and calling
and getting on our nerves.
You grabbed the cell phone from Yoko

and started yelling, “ Shut the fuck up, Sean,
we’re driving the bitch home right now!”
You threw the phone out the window,

Yoko lunged wildly after it
and almost fell out.
It’s not as if the bitch

doesn’t have enough of John’s money
to buy another one.
Yoko sat back and whined one of her songs.

part 3 of 4

2. There’s No “S” In Paul

When you fed the fish today
you said there was blood
even on the outside of the fish tank,

apparently our pet shark must have taken
a bite out of Paul.
Later we heard on the BBC

that a shark had bitten off
a big chunk of Paul’s ass.
They did not mention our tank,

certainly the authorities
would have confiscated
our two blue whales.

They probably would have let us keep
the sailfish and shark, but so far
no Bobbies on boats have paddled our door.

And you whisper: If you play Yesterday backward
you can hear Ringo in the background singing,
“Paul has no ass…Paul has no ass…Paul has no ass…”


part 2 of four

Got tagged by Sheryl

1. One book that has changed your life:
Siddhartha by Hermann H. what Sixties Child
would not say that?

2. One book you have read more than once:
On The Road by Jack Kerouac and
Confederacy of Dunces by J.K. Toole

3. One book you would want on a desert island:
The Whole Earth Catalog

4. One book that made you laugh:
Trout Fishing In America

5. One book that made you cry: My first book. ha ha.

6. One book you wish had never been written:
Every religious book!Oops,I'm Catholic

7. One book you hope will be written:
A book that really explains it all, by Douglas Adams.

8. One book you are currently reading:
The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees

9. One book you have been meaning to read:
Any new book of Chicano/a poetry.

I tag.
Chris Murray
Brian Boutwell
luc simonic
david raphael israel


Love Among The Rock And Roll Ruins

for chris murray
in far off bahrain

We were making love on the waterbed
with the two dead Beatles
on either side of us,

Beatle boots digging into my back
and you were yelling,
“Yoko, bitch, get the hell out.

John’s fucking dead,
go back to your kamikaze land!”
I was kissing your nipples,

I was kissing your thighs,
I Wanna Hold Your Hand
was playing on the computer.

Sailfish and blue whales
were swimming in the fish tank.
Our pet shark was attacking Paul.

I don’t know what happened afterwards
but I think John’s body fell off the bed.
Don’t know about George.

Next morning we found
John’s body in the living room
and laughed our asses off over the irony.

part one of four

Are You Ready For Some Football?

The Dallas Cowboys

You were changing your tampon in the stands
as the Wave was going by us.
Dallas Cowboys kicking Redskin asses.

The Goodyear Blimp flew overhead
like the rail-splitter,
a bullet in his stove pipe hat.

Walt was trying to live up to his reputation.
Leaf after leaf after leaf,
ad nauseam.

The running back broke away,
the cheerleaders opened wide,
binoculars focused on the cracks.

Cheering and yelling
I looked over at you,
you had blood on your hands.

Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey?

Dan Abrams murdered JonBenet.
No, Rita Cosby murdered the little princess.
No, CourtTV murdered JonBenet.

Bill O’Reilly sexually assaulted her
and then strangled her.
Ann Coulter sexually assaulted her

and then blamed the liberals.
Nancy Grace sexually assaulted JonBenet
and then strangled her.

Anderson Cooper and Sheppard Smith
both of them took turns sexually assaulting her
and slowly strangling her.

All these bastards and bitches
are going to jail.
Who’s going to deliver the bad news now?

An Accusatory Poem First Scratched On The Side
Of A Rich Man’s Car (Don’t Worry, Of Course,
He Had Insurance, He Was Rich Wasn’t He!)

You see this all the time,
a pretty girl walking down the street
unaware she’s tucked her skirt into her panties.

You see this all the time,
a child blown up by Israeli bombs,
the child did not know it was the enemy.

You see this all the time,
a fourteen-year-old Chicano punk
killed by another Chicano punk, why?

Apparently there’s never a why
and the sun sets on the senseless killing
and the moon rises on the senseless killing.

All I can tell you is that I never
tuck my skirt in my panties.
I never drop Israeli bombs on children,

I never kill fourteen-year-old Chicano punks.
You see this all the time
and you never do anything about it.

Confessions Of A White House Dishwasher

I was having sex with the Bush daughters
when Mrs. Bush walked in,
I stopped rinsing Jenna

and Barbara stopped drying me
and Mrs. Bush stood there
with a look on her face

as if she’d caught the President
actually being a real President.
I pulled up my pants

as the girls slipped into their edible panties and bras.
I said, “ Girls, I gotta go.”
I left the White House

before the Female Body Investigators investigated.
I was yelling (in broken English), “Beware, America,
of short, brown illegal Presidents in your future!”

Profane Box Of Colors

It was ages ago I wanted you one night
when the moon was on fire
and we lost all visibility.

Body against body,
before the dust
fell off, of course.

Now notice my skin against
your softest skin,
only a pencilmark separating us.

Now move on to the present:
A song trapped between two bricks,
I can’t read the words anymore.

It was ages ago I wanted you
and you wanted me,
crayons still standing in the Texas heatwave.

Henry and Mr.Bones
I Was Holding You

I was holding you in my arms
when something felt strange
and the other side of the planet

became mine, too.
Nothing bad about the sweater
you were wearing that day,

but the wooden afternoon
you kept in a bowl
finally ate its way through.

A penny I was jealous of
went out and spent itself,
the hell with it, the hell with it, I said.

I was holding you in my arms
when the pyramids arrived from Mexico,
“Innocent!” they claimed.

I threw the sea over my shoulder
like a sack of words
and hauled it away.

The Crash

"Si lloviera esta noche, retirariame
de aqui a mil anos.
Mejor a cien no mas."
Cesar Vallejo

The plane crash that took the lives
of Ronnie and Cassie,
plane out of fuel,

night sky trying to organize the stars,
full moon working like a bone,
its thick chalk bars, a jail.

The motors in a creek,
frogs tried to read the writing
but man was way ahead of them.

Cracked trees heard their own noise,
the white trash farmer
shot the survivors with his Polaroid.

The plane that took the lives
of Ronnie and Cassie
was a Convair 240, dirt music,

night verdict, the sound of a last breath,
oxygen swirling around, useless,
nothing ridicules about a ridicules night.

The night Ronnie and Cassie died,
stardust was stirred up in the forest
and settled back down in the wrong place.

Crooner

Frank Sinatra was singing
The Shadow Of Your Smile
somewhere in an upstairs apartment,

ice made the fire escape slick,
the wind bit like a dog,
dark coats of night held tight,

a few cars crackled
on the otherwise lonely street
which stretched up to a traffic light,

green, yellow, red
and Frank as he looked like in 1940
kisses a girl on the thighs.

Modern Silhouette

There you are in a yellow dress
and white, high heels
walking past the television,

the cathode rays make the dress invisible,
flowers blooming aloud
from top to bottom,

yellow roses, sweet petals.
And then the dress is back and
the anchors on Fox News become Nazi lizards.

This poem appears in Ocho #4,
the print companion to MiPO Magazine,
together with work by Kent Johnson,
Brian Boutwell,John Korn,Laurel K. Dodge,
and others.Buy it here.

And Now A Message From
One Of Our Sponsors

Cesar Vallejo was pulling Sylvia Plath
out of the oven by her hips,
words widespread,

the Eiffel Tower making a land-bridge
between France and England.
He helped her to the sofa,

she was still in a daze
as you can well imagine.
Her eyes a distant star, maybe Antares,

her frock (which we are not
about to mock) gave her the air
of so many housewives up and down the street.

Cesar got her a cup of coffee
and they talked late into the night
except for interruptions by her children

who still had a mother
and us, who still had a poet,
but we, of course, dared not intrude.

We stood against a wall
and marveled at their art,
our eyes stuck to theirs with Elmer’s Glue.

The Scream

In Qana where once Jesus
turned the water to wine,
he now turns it into blood

with the help of his modern disciples.
A rescuer hands half a child
to another rescuer

as a photographer snaps a picture,
the shoulders and head of the child
blown to heaven, perhaps.

Maybe God didn’t need
the whole child yet---
he works in mysterious ways, you know.

from thegreatillusion
The Battlefield

They dropped like flies,
they dropped like stones,
like petals from a red, red rose.

A wind blows across the desert,
a wind which erases all the signs
that you ever lived.

They perished here, and here, and here.
And tomorrow they might write their names
on some stupid stone;

and the irony of it is
that in a few weeks
maybe not even God will remember their faces.

Qana

It was but moments ago I died.
I heard the planes overhead
and now silence crushes my bleeding ears.

Just this morning I played games
in the rubble of the bombed-out buildings,
hungry and thirsty,

but being a child, one has to play
even in time of war.
I dreamt of a day

with empty skies
or harmless clouds, playmates,
like the one lying next to me.

I know it’s her
but I don’t recognize her face
and I know she doesn’t recognize mine.

In the pressurized cabin
the triumphant pilot can almost reach out
and touch the face … of evil.