:Poet Afterall

The sorrow one feels
When others miscomprehend
His eagerest attempts
To loving defend
Does bruise the heart
And makes one wonder
If fortune farge better
By rape and plunder;
Or perhaps it is
That writing well,
And knowing so,
Is the chute from hell.

In the Lecture Hall

American philosophers
Don't understand
The beneficiality
Of getting out of hand
Like their Greek ancestors did.

The line, the continuum,
These are the tools in so far
As a lover of thought
Can muse on a star.

How can a grown man speak with such gumption
On ethics caked over layers of assumption?

Little Piles

There's no such thing as sandrocks.
Sandrocks were just a childhood fantasy
Called to existence by curiosity,
But you must admit the sand collects
In little piles under the right circumstances underground.
I've never found a sandrock to last long
In a fist's forge
Or the open sea.
A surface bump of little piles
And then debris.

Apartif

I was in Paris,
Wandering from place to place
For the jewel of the Seine
Is too Metropolitain
For two short days.
Staring at a transit map
I didn't see he was
Coming but heard his heels
Knocking closer and closer
On the pavement sidewalk.
No notice from him.
He was fixed on what
I cannot say, but
Positively the cigarette
Whose butt he was suckling.
All too nasty to tell
How soon I saw the
Collected dirt on the
Stone and concrete around me,
Grey and black on grey.
There was room for two on the path,
And as he passed
He flicked the remainder straight out sideways
Onto an abandoned street.
I contend on the uncommonality
Of meeting a man alone
On a Paris avenue at midday.
Behind him flung a black coat in the wind,
Flapping to his rapid pace,
A certain deliberation in
Coming and going and flipping
Used butts along the way.
I couldn't say why I stayed
A little longer than convention allows,
But there was something about
The stale stillness of the city air and
The way he'd ditched that cigarette
That made me doubt my own direction.
"Here, by here, then here, this is
Where I'm going." I set out
For my own appointments,
However undecided they were.
The sky was enough and
The city enough to get me started,
While my mind replayed, replayed
The memories of departed.

I was a little bit high around four

I was a little bit high around four,
So, having some ganjé at my ready,
Pinched four fingerfuls from my store
Then sat there and held the bong steady.

Four months had it been, or how many more
Since this binge began? How many before
Had I taken upon since first I tried
The herb to which all I'd left beside?

By the work of thumb I had but four flicks
To ignite the blossoms, leaves, shake, and sticks
And leave the world too much with us behind,
But a nobler vision crossed my baked mind:

The life I lead could achieve more than thus,
Waiting to smoke a stranger bowl of grass.
I lit the piece and breathed in vapor dust,
Introspecting as the stony feeling passed.

The gift of work, the labor of a dream
Have all glory in knowing how to seem.
All glory, praise of men and printed wealth,
To seem is something I can do myself.

Skepticism

The lazy drops announced themselves in tocks
That stroked the midnight silence like the knocks
Of dearest returned home. Falling water
Broke light on steel gutters and polished rocks.

The smoke my cigarette was offering to
The rinsed-out air sought new residence through
Twisting itself between cracks where the rain
Had missed a spot. I watched it go in vain.

It cost some inward struggle to content
Myself to being a smeller of scents
That washed, and left fresh all they had befell.
The wish I kept to cleanse I cannot tell.

God on the cross, Buddha's enlightenment,
An ancestral sacrifice of yore went
Short of enticing a skeptic to dock
In the waters that keep the divine clock.

Sonnet

Outside the evening cloudy sky
is rolling toward the mountain glens.
The winter sun has said goodnight,
and lambent talk inside the Den.

Inside the Den where chewy lines
are cut and sniffed, and cali weed
Is bought and sold and rolled into a spliff
beneath a skirt of urban vines.

I miss the summer days when lightrays
devoted themselves to Earth and Men.
None was too dark to partake
in festivities at 4:20 and 10.

Roll under storm unto thyself.
Bring the ocean current to forest shelf.

Curls

The smoke broke in curls upon me
Like waves assailing shore,
Waves demanding some return
For burdens they had bore,
But I could only heave a sigh
For I was still as poor,
And wanting too some recompense
For sorrows of before.
So we two sat together there
And scratched our bleeding sores.

The Midnight Stone

It's the Midnight Stone,
The kind you get when you live alone.
Fancying darkness beyond a lamp,
You question your castle's foundation in camp
And breathe the oily midnight damp!

Three Thirty, Sunday

When I let it go off and out my mouth
In the weary sort of way the coal burns,
The smoke erects in space long monoliths
Bent with intent at angles, then turns,
Like a sodden mind that spurns.

Restlessness

I drink a drink of ale
And then of liquor:
To smoke does less
To move the timeless ticker.

I was going to write a poem beside the sea

I was going to write a poem beside the sea.
I was on my way, I was there.
My thoughts were collected, prepared to put on paper
Something slipping, some sly remark.

The Ocean lapped my tears into the broad pale expanse,
Upset my stance, and demolished me so far beyond the shore
It was all I could do to be consumed.

Cambodia