Poem for D.A. Levy

It's all a lie
Nothing changes
The trees shed their leaves
Like a summer tv special
The undertaker quietly
Goes about his business
The walls hide messages
Like greedy beggars
The doorbell rings
The telephone rings
Nothing changes
It's all the same
The old man is thinking
Of death
The young man is thinking
Of riches
Poets have become exotic
Merchants of death
Butterflies are beautiful
They have no desire
To fly to the moon
Like Bob Kaufman said
"Poets don't sneak
Into zoos and talk
To tigers anymore."
It's perfectly alright
To cast the first stone
If you have more than
The other person
The Avon lady walks
On water
The blind man sniffing
His way up her leg
Nothing changes
The boxing matches
The bullfights
The football games
Go on
And we go on too
Like a tired tongue
Resting between the legs
Of a bored woman
The truth is that
D.A. Levy was right
"some people just cannot
Beat the system
And poets can't even
Pretend they're beating
The system

40th Birthday Poem

I remember William Wantling
Saying he'd carry a lunch box
Just like the rest of them
If only the strange muttering
Would leave him alone
Now at seventy two I feel pretty much the same
Standing naked as a deadman's shadow
Wishing I had been blessed with
The skills of a union carpenter
Instead of these heavy words
Locked inside these aging brain cells
72 years old
Feeling like the worn impression
On a buffalo head nickel
Holding on to these fading visions
Like an immigrant unable to escape
The old country
The moods coming and going
Like cloud banks
Sinking slowly like the Titanic
The ghosts dancing on the deck
Dressed in fire
And as each day brings
Yet another illusion
Harsh as a hobo's dream
I sing the song of my chosen grave
The lines dancing like a ballerina
On a high tension wire
While a friend of mine
A success in the business world
Tells me that like him
I should make a list of priorities
And stick by them no matter what
But the hooks are too far in
Too high up into the gut
To do anything about
A poet is like a train
A romantic trip
Back into another time
He is good for a laugh or two
Someone to converse with
Occasionally sleep with
And always someone to stay away from
When he is down and out
America is no place
For a poet to grow old in
A poet is not a thing
I would want my child
To be

City Cowboys

They look like rejects
From an old western
Wanted poster
With faces no respectable
Bounty Hunter would
Be interested in
They feed the slots
In Reno and Vegas
Like lost Zen masters
Carrying one-way tickets
To Waco, Texas
Thinking of all the women
They have dug
Their spurs into
They wear their grins
Like a sombrero
Two sizes too big
Their minds hitchhiking
A ride to the past
Surrounding you with looks
Sours as lemon drops
Their dog day breath
Smelling like yesterday's
Vomit on a sawdust
Bar room floor

Going Back in Time

I was looking at my scrapbook
The other night
While listening to an old
Woody Gutherie record
Scratchy as a smoker's cough
After twenty years
Of lung destruction
And there I was in my youth
Hitchhiking from California
To Arizona and places
Further West
Heading in so many directions
That it was like getting lost
In the trick mirrors
At the fun house
And there were the women
Then young girls
Free flowing spirits
Who gave their minds and bodies
At the slightest invitation
And nights too laying alone
In tangled sleep
Feeling like a deer caught
In barbed wire
Or sitting bunched-up
Cold and disheveled
At the local Greyhound station
Fighting off the eyes of leering
Men who preferred boys to women
Now in my twilight years
I realize I was there and back
So fast
Like a derailed train
Running out of track
Returning home
Carrying my life in a knapsack
The days the months the years
Hung out to dry
Like your mother's washing
On an old clothesline