SHAMAN

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

HEX

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

METEOR

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

LOKI

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

HARRY

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

Onion Eater

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

Beat Poems

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

Beat Poems

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.

Beat Poems

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

Beat Poems

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.