OTHER PEOPLE'S POETRY, YO!: Take a poem you like. Delete every other line. Write an original line to replace what you've erased. Now erase all that remains of the original poem. Re-write what's left. That's a dope prompt. I tried it yesterday and kinda liked what came out. I almost printed it here, but I …
The Last Haul
my grandfather was my first employer. he worked as a landscaper and yard man for home owners along the Oakland Hills Piedmont, Berkeley. I was with him every summer between late grade school and Jr high. his drove a muscular Ford truck carpeted with spilled malts and holes candy wrappers, Styrofoam bowls for Big Macs. …
Friday the 13th Part 18: Jason Goes To Home Depot
Friday the 13th Part 18 Jason Goes To Home Depot Jason fingers the new gas-powered chainsaws & the Chinese steel hacksaws like new pornography. He recalls how easy petals of flesh would open, pollenating the air with blood. A young man timidly approaches him, asks May i help you and Jason turns, and quietly notices …
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Giving A Poetry Reading
He called and asked months ago, and I mean months, for me to read at his venue-- a bookstore in Fort Mason, San Francisco. I put it in my calendar and forgot until last Monday he called to remind me, then immediately apolgized for not being able to make it. I got tickets to the …
The Only Way Out Is Through
Here is how we whistle for hammer head sharks --steely torpedoes awaiting to be soft served in bowls of sweet meat we won't finish before dark-- let them swim to a shoreline of 1000 suns curved like so many jaws, abutments of bone between now & minutes shook hence in tremors before this island volcanos …
Touch (Abstraction)
There are hospitals where hands are a type of medicine I smooth the tremulous lines along your temples with my palm In these cellular rooms, bodies are worshipped in religions of disrepair We burden our mouths to carry more than language I align your tremulous temples in the rooms of my palm There are hospitals …
Memorial Lighthouse — Trinidad, Ca.
Memorial Lighthouse, Trinidad Civic Club, Trinidad, Ca. -- JCagney Bone spur of the lighthouse Excavated from the hillside By diligent shovels of weather Stands purified under the administration Of the sun; overseer to an ocean Of scales flashing white and green. An old man sits at a bench shepherding the wet painting of …
The After Life… with God
After Life with God - Jcagney The other side of the white light is a stage light. God’s monologue subsides as the last breath eases from my chest. Relatives gone on before now sit in audience cheering my entrance. God’s hair is a tsunami shadowing a beach, cresting over remarkable brown eyes. He’s in …
Alaska Stories: Cathedral
Cathedral Keeping monks hours, I arise at midnight to a false dawn where the sun pauses at the horizon and creeps sideways like a crab. Our crew chief materializes at the door salmon roe dripping from his palms. Midair, he draws the sign of the dollar. Then, I am Lazarus summoned and …
What About Bob?
Who was it said Poems are never finished, they're just abandoned? I begin writing a poem after I assume some understanding about or appreciation over what I've just seen, experienced or remembered. Sometimes the poem comes out in one chunk and I let it rest for a while, then go back and tidy it up: Remove, add, clarify. Sometimes …
The Dirty Rat 