Irish German blood
boils volatile magic
burning
blasting
firing
mystical dreams
conjuring Celtic tribes’ witchcraft
born of pagan belief
as
fierce Druid priests
also curse
fools who step on crickets
Irish German blood
boils volatile magic
burning
blasting
firing
mystical dreams
conjuring Celtic tribes’ witchcraft
born of pagan belief
as
fierce Druid priests
also curse
fools who step on crickets
the Red Witch teaches
never kill a cricket
expect trouble
if you do
get ready
for
pure German
pow-wow
power
coming
to curse
you
your son
your daughters
years beyond
your
cricket murder
payback
for your
human evil
manifested
in pain
so
know
well
my
Pennsylvania Dutch
spell
we
protect crickets
at all cost
if you saw
fire
blaze
east to west
across
black and blue
southern night sky
you might understand
nature’s blazing tip
blasting white hot tailpipe exhaust
shooting
star
inferno
into nighttime
pagan nature
that
one day
will
snuff the world
with
ease
blowing out life’s candle
to
say creation’s
final
good night
to
man-made
gods
getting older
day
by
day
tight
stiff
hesitant
to
step into fire
still
burning
dark shadow
scars
on life’s charred walls
so warm yourself
in reflection
welcome fears
as
sweet gifts
prepare to face the fire god
who remains our barbaric friend
wielding a burning sword
to stand fierce
with us
until the end
in the jungle
he exchanged
his green beret
for a loin cloth
rode his own elephant
fighting
beside
Montagnard tribesmen
with
Phoenix Program
Project Delta
Pleiku Mike Force
then home to work as a security guard
patrolling JC Penny’s in the mall
Harry never killed a shoplifter
for his country
not a single one
decades later he returned
to visit America’s loss
drink cobra blood
wear a Che Guevara T-shirt
laugh with a North Vietnamese colonel
he met in the street
in Ho Chi Minh City
Harry made peace with himself
and
the enemy
cradled a baby tiger in his arms
fed the cub milk
from a plastic bottle
I still have the picture he sent me
before he died
in Hawaii
happy
at last
finally safe
in the arms of the volcano god
when bars were bars
thick
with
smoke
one rough man stood with scuffed work shoes
resting on the brass rail
picking whole raw onions
from a soup bowl on the bar
white
beneath peeled
thin skin
eating onions like apples
with salt and pepper
smeared with thick yellow butter
fat with flavor
biting into his second onion
before taking another bite
grinning before swallowing
he says
gimme a kiss
JUNKIE
only slumping occasionally
hugging Quaaludes
on the Brewery barroom floor
short and sweet
skin dark as a florida winter suntan
pretty
shy
nobody should have called her
Debbie the Junkie
but we did
telling her she was driving everybody nuts
showing off
her dead boyfriend’s black onyx ring
she wore on a middle finger
promising to meet him soon
after killing herself like he did
on purpose with drugs
give it rest, Debbie, we said
so she did what she promised
and rest she did
eternal rest
buried by a stunned family
in an anthracite cradled grave
where I couldn’t visit
even if I wanted to
because I never knew her last name
doubtful her mother inscribed
Debbie the junkie
on the gray headstone
I couldn’t visit if I wanted
after more than 50 years
I wonder
if
that black onyx ring remains
buried in her coffin
like licorice Nibs left outside to stiffen
in countless hard coal country winters
where a sad young woman’s
cold bones
and that black onyx ring
lay forever silent
and alone
FIRE
devil flames awakened me
dancing on my bedroom window
in the rented red brick ranch house
where we lived
parallel to Routes 11 and 15
parallel to railroad tracks polished silver
parallel to the wide Susquehanna River
where Sonny and I fished for pregnant carp
and redneck catfish
we hammered with a nail
through the head
to a wooden board
to skin with needle-nose plyers
but
by the time I got to the trailer
in bare feet and pajama bottoms
to stare at
the inferno
red and orange fire
incinerating the man inside
to a blackened barbecued crisp
nothing I could do
at 14
but watch the trailer tomb burn
in billowing smoke plumes
near river water
unable to save him
in the trailer where he fried
nothing I could do
but learn
life and death lessons
that teach
me
how a man I couldn’t see
a man I didn’t know
could disappear
and
just go up in smoke.
BROTHERS
Helo’s quick to tell you
the road recognizes its own
riding his heavy metal Harley
fierce Viking beard in the wind
tattooed fists clutching black grips
retired Marine instincts firing on all cylinders
on a solo run through the country
when Helo spots a 400-pound bruiser bear on all fours
on the same stretch of open road
Appalachian American cousins
Perry County flesh and blood
animals against the world
Helo says the bear was one
of the most
righteous wild beasts
he ever saw
if only he could fit
Brother bear
into a cut-off denim vest
with one-percenter
club colors
patched
across the back
like a ferocious fire god
guarding the gates of paradise
When you see the photograph of me toasting life with a cold can of Tecate Mexican beer you know you came to the right place. Like a favorite bar where you can turn over a table without the owner calling the cops, my “Beat Poems” welcomes vagabonds, drifters and the unhinged.
This new website feature drives us down a rare road on my writing journey.
For the most part I don’t like poetry.
I don’t like most poets, either.
Smug, safe and non-controversial, they pose like soft pets congratulating themselves and patting each other on the backside of timid experience. Give me the call of the wild over domestic spa animals any day, even in my golden years.
The best poetry threatens to start a riot. The best poetry isn’t about walking through fog or frosty fallen snow on little pussycats’ feet. The best poetry twists the system and the mind. The best poetry turns over the table.
Few people know I started writing by writing poems. When I was 15 a high school English teacher, Mr. Maguire, loaned me his 1960 Grove Press copy of The New American Poetry. Just beginning to teach myself how to fight the Establishment, I plagued Mr. Maguire in and out of class. Many years later we spoke on the phone when he found himself fighting the educational system and it dawned on me we were on the same side. The late Mr. Maguire deserves credit and blame for helping awaken this Frankenstein word monster that walks among us.
I still have that yellowed paperback poetry anthology on a sacred shelf in my office library. I wonder if it’s the same copy Mr. Maguire loaned me. If so, he never asked me to return the book. Passing the torch might be cliché but like most clichés holds the essence of truth. Beat poet ghosts run amok in the collection, showing deserving readers that rhyme and reason don’t have to go hand in hand.
Beat poetry lives. America even boasts its own “lifetime” Beat Poet Laureate. Kentucky Gonzo holy man Ron Whitehead once asked me if I wrote poetry, a puzzling question that left me feeling a little empty. Tempting and taunting, Whitehead stealthily recruited me the way a shaman poet must.
So I filled my tank and continue the ride, entering the molten center of a white-hot sunset where beat poets make rain, hurl lightning bolts at polite society and thunder our message through the ages.
Watch out for the Tecate can. Read my raw, unedited, free beer party poems. Learn the lessons of the sages as we drink in the mountains. Do not, though, I repeat, do not walk through fog or frosty fallen snow on little pussycats’ feet.
You might get lost and freeze to death.