Diss Haiku

.
.
.
.
.
.
get some
new dreams
dude

Why Do I Keep Writing Poems, Anyway?

I was at a party the other day
full of really nice Jewish people.
I thought it was going to be a
Christmas party. But when I
got there with my ten dollar
bottle of wine I couldn't help
but notice the menorah and the
kid in the corner playing with
the dradle. This guy brought

a guitar, though, and ruined
everything by making us listen
to a few of his songs. He seemed
like a nice guy. But it's never
a good sign when someone prefaces
his stuff by asking, "Does anyone
want to hear a song about Jesus?"

I made a crack about Jesus and songwriting
that made Ginger fly across the room.

Kind of a sin now that I
think about it--
that I had a chair while Ginger had
nothing but the floor.

What was Jim doing sitting there in the E-Z chair, anyway?
That's how you can tell
a couple has left their
honeymoon period:
the guy has no qualms taking the chair.

Jesus never had to deal with these kinds of nuances.
All he had to do was die on a cross.
Not sit at the foot of it
listening to all that mess and groaning.

M
E
R
Ry

C
H
R
I
St
M
A
S

HUNTER

CHLOE

AMY

&

my dad just said
"it's going to
take us a while
to get ready

because mom looks like
phyllis diller"

H. Contemplates the Old Masters

Picasso: Belly laugh from a boy with no belly.

Kandinski: "That's a pretty nice pirate ship, but I don't see any pirates."

Michelangelo's "Last Judgment": "Look! Look!"

And then we came to Dali, the melting clocks in the desert, a strange sky blooming:

Him: "What's wrong with the clocks?"

Me: "They are melting."

Him: wordless, unsmiling,

Me: "Which means time is melting, too."

Him: Seems to be bracing himself as a small weight climbs up on his shoulders. It is

a piece of me, I wouldn't know
what to call it--the beginning of
a long commerce? failure?--I am not
an Old Master.

Him: White legs disappearing into the green
room.

New Collection

Title: GOLDEN TRASH
Poems: 31
Repeated heads: love, people, sex, loneliness
Guest appearances: Serge Gainsbourg, Nicholas Sarkozy
Texture: abrasive tenderness, tender abrasiveness
Personal grade: somewhere between a C minus and B minus
Page length: 51
Written: mid-September to mid-November
Closing lines: "...on both eyes, kiss them./ Relieve the world of proof."
What's new: psychadelic explosions; simple love gestures
Will: not send out, put in drawer.
And so: on to the next one...

And Yes That's a Strong Recommendation

Heaters that clank and moan like a junkyard drum set,

thick pea soup,

smashed garlic (use the back end of a heavy knife),

parking tickets,

the daily twelve or thirteen
clouds in suits
hustling to the train,

a child's art, a photograph of Derek Jeter, the walls gaining
clarity and shape,

an old coach, old Irishman, bounding out of the past
for a conversation, a real drink, we go back a long way
to when my consciousness was just
a drowsy frequency, a yawning Idaho
radio,

keeping two cars on the road,

arguments with my old man about
is it gravy or sauce? and
my mom's opinion, my sister's,

the classical music station, but only when the violins are playing
mostly alone or totally alone

a light out in the hall, an argument with a landlord,
a relationship and its variables,

loving one's wife as a form of church or prayer
or just plain fun. Today I am calling all this

Trout Fishing in America.