dmseay

amongst shopping malls…car dealers…billboards…fast-food joints…tupperware parties…Mary Kay bumper stickers…discarded condems…and empty whiskey bottles…there lies america…

in strip clubs…porno shops…Times Square…Disney World…ski resorts…evangelical churches…voting booths…convention centers…the Liberty Bell…there lies america…

where poets dream…hiphop schemes…NRA lobbyists…Procter and Gamble..Viagra on nightstands…selfies selfies selfies…headphones on…world tuned-out…$10 haircuts…football on a Sunday…empty libraries in small towns…vagabond filled halls…there lies america…

and cable television for all…the internet will save us…Facebook…over a billion served…Hollywood…a southside neighborhood in Chicago where guns go-a-blazin’…the boy who cried wolf…the girl that got away…Bellevue on 1st Avenue…a Coney Island Saturday…there lies america…

staged protests…political correctness…language police…outraged liberals…angry conservatives…there’s money to be made…there’s money to be made…

there lies america…
there lies america…

thinking of Ahab…
where is my leviathan…
great creature lay before me…
a life-long challenge…

facing the page…
looking to the bottle…
how do thoughts pour upon thee…
why does wine go down so easily…

headaches and heartaches…
suffering for a sentence…
dying for a drink…
or…maybe just dying…

a year was made easy…
booze…woman…comfort…
now its back to the streets…
now its back to writing…

thinking of Ahab…
where is my leviathan…
great creature lay before me…
a life-long challenge…

my harpoon is ready…
sharpened…
i seek the blank slate…
and this i know to be true…

do not runaway from fear…
it will catch you every time…
you fat page…
words will kill you…

thinking of Ahab…
where is my leviathan…
great creature lay before me…
a life-long challenge…

unfinished novels…
first drafts…
Ulysses…
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man…
half cans of coffee…
no cream in the place…
old bifocals an ex-girlfriend hated…
Jean Baudrillard’s, AMERICA…
hanging sweatshirts…
jazz on WBGO…
she hated jazz…
never met a broad that liked jazz…
blinds closed…birds singing…
a biography on Mailer…what a show-off…
red leather-bound Holy Bible…
porn in a drawer…
Brothers Karamazov runs through my head…

and she is asleep now…
a half a world away…she slumbers…a day time catnap…
while here it is midnight and shut-eye escapes me…this nocturnal night…this nocturnal night…
the lady complains of her husband never making love to her…an unfulfilled life…lusting for more…
as i sit making lists…sit making lists…

Don Quixote…i’ve chased windmills…
piggy-banks and cold medicine…
QTips…
Welbutrin…
a can of Murray’s…
paths of poetry scribbled on notebooks…
flattened bristles on a toothbrush…
an 89 cent roll of garbage bags…
bottle of Tylenol…

what do you want my lady…for it was never my love…only imaginary traits of passion…nothing was ever real…
go back to India…
fall into your falsehoods of grandeur…of comfort…money…you were always scared…so scared to take the risk…
the risk of love…

book of poems by Bukowski…
keychains…
quarter roll of toilet paper…
dimes and pennies…dimes and pennies…
a dusty coffee-pot…
copper mugs she gave me…
3/4’s of a bottle of vodka gone…gone…
an empty wallet…

i will no longer search for you…can no-longer seek you out…our love was a dream…

how terrible to be awake…

i sit quietly…looking out at a church…shabby wooden balconies…rickety staircases waiting to collapse…a light shines…

and the children of the night pass a 40 ’round the circle…this unholy communion…talk of crack smack women…song…their voices carry into darkness…

here am i…watching from above…not heaven…nor a cloud in the sky…just a second floor room filled with nothing…just space…only space…

it is past midnight…

time for bed…

new home…a room…bed…some metal rod to hang clothes on…small fridge for beer an’ coffee…radio plays Miles…all that is needed…

bathroom down the hall is untidy…hasn’t been cleaned for sometime…toothpaste build-up in a sink…hair clogged drain…

at 50 this is what it comes to…a life of poverty…life of an artist…to sit in this chair and write of life’s lows woes riches bitches snitches…loves that got away…fleeting moments…fleeting moments…

an’ Dostoyevsky sits in the corner…so does Miller…what is suffering…just another lifestyle…another lifestyle…

sirens go-off outside…gunshots down back alleys…windowshades cast shadows in the evening’s heat…while dreams of you dance before me to borrowed time…123…123…123…

what did the first half of life’s pageant bring…drunken nights…barroom fights…two ex-wives…and lovers by the score…

now i sit alone and write…now i sit alone and write…

i sit alone and write….

an’ one day he wasn’t there anymore…
gone…put away to pasture perhaps…
his wild years behind ’em…
tellin’ broads he was an astronaut…
been on the Moon…what he told…

said he’d traveled out into the final frontier…
macho talk of bein’ a space cowboy…
that’s all it was…
just talk…
his whole life was talk…

always wantin’ to be somethin’…
somethin’ important…
said america wasn’t big ‘nough for ’em…
world was just an obstacle…
well…maybe it was…

but now ya’ got the chance…
fly pop…
fly…
go out into the starry beyond…
fly…

he was always sleepy…tired from his mind workin’ all those hours…thinkin’ all the time…’bout the past…’bout when things mattered…

nothin’ was real anymore…imaginary…days on end he just sat there…talkin’ to himself…full-on conversations leading to arguments with no-one ’round…just him…yellin’…

talkin’ to a boy who’d runaway…a teenage girl with hurt feelings…this wife…that woman on the side…son with a pierced ear…

had no control anymore…maybe he never did…funny how it all catches up with you…this life…thinkin’ bout mistakes…pride…missed opportunities…he had all that goin’ through his mind…

he was always sleepy…tired from his mind workin’ all those hours…thinkin’ all the time…’bout when things mattered…

do you remember the time I went to Mars…was it Mars…or did I go to the Moon…

neither pop…

whatdya mean neither…

you didn’t go to either one of those places…

I’m tellin’ ya…I went up in a rocket…it was the Moon…slept there over night…flew back the next day…

oh yeah…

slept in the cabin…we landed that sucker on the Moon…an’ there was all this dust…Moon dust…I scraped up a handful an’ brought it home…

where is it…

I lost it…just like I lose everything…from movin’ ’round so much…but I have been to the Moon…or was it Mars…

I don’t know dad…

yeah…it might’ve been Mars…

she left him…didn’t want nothin’ to do with his antics any longer…out all night…comin’ home drunk…bills unpaid…rent was always due…

said somethin’ happened to ’em over the years…got lazy…became one of those types of men that just didn’t care anymore…looks faded too…

was a good lookin’ son of a bitch when she first laid eyes on him…jet black hair…tall…had a good build…but it was his attitude that most attracted her…the way he carried himself…like some kind of proud wrestler before a match…should’ve realized he was all talk…

no kids thank god…just a couple of dogs who slept outside…don’t know who I felt sorrier for…her or the dogs…both were kept on a chain…

so now she’s done…left in the middle of the night like a thief who just stole somethin’ valuable…

like her soul…

they still make T-Birds…

don’t know pop…

knew a guy long time ago…he had himself a white T-Bird…thought he was hot shit…

that so…

he was a golfer…tried to be a golfer…had to give it up and get a real job like the rest of us…his dad made him…

huh…

momma gave him everything…divorced couple…still lived together…damndest thing…dad tried to make ’em a man an’ every step forward was two steps back with his mom holding the reigns…

really…

but he thought he was really somethin’ with that T-Bird…came from money…never had it like the rest of us…

how’s that…

you know…hard times…

I see…

really thought he was somethin’…