THE NATURE OF COMPASSION

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

I.

Let me put it to you this way
(or maybe put it to you that other way)
if you send a donation
I will send you back
a picture of a
dirty looking child
I cut out of a magazine
to give you a
warm and fuzzy feeling
while my hand is groping around
inside your pocket

(And she's slipping
and sliding
lend her a hand
cuz she's slipping back 
into burger land)

II.

I don't swat flies
I give them names
I'll admit it's sometimes
difficult to tell them
apart, but you look
for little distinguishing
things, birthmarks and such.
Oh, and in turn for sharing
my cozy pad with them
they reciprocate by
eating the dead skin off
my face and body.
That's why my skin is
baby bottom smooth
that and the dish washing liquid
I use, of course.
I regret that I could never
have the same kind of
symbiotic relationship
with another person.
I tried. I offered piggyback
rides, but my passengers
usually balked when they
found out that time and time again
the destination was my bedroom.

(Somebody lend her a hand
someone lend her a helping hand
cuz she's slipping back
yeah she's sliding back
into burger land)

III.

Such a wasted effort
you ringing my doorbell
and I don't feel guilty when
I don't answer cuz sometimes I do
and I am polite 
and I even accept your literature
and look at it some just to see
if you might have changed your tune....

nope

and I don't feel sorry for ignoring you this time
cuz I know you have a quota
of houses you must visit
with documentation and all
to maintain your good standing
so it's not like it's necessarily
coming from the heart
like the cops at the end of the month
working to fulfill their quota
so I see them chasing down cars
who went two miles over the speed limit
like frogs waiting in ambush for flies
you'll be a little lighter in the wallet
cuz that's the game
buckle up and buckle under
or pay thru the nose

(And she's headed down
that slippery slope
again
sliding back
into burger land
back into the kingdom of 
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod
and in the morning
I'll awaken her
with a cattle prod)

INVISIBLE MAN

With Real Toads

It was getting harder 
to detect my image in the mirror 

as anything recognizably human.
I wasn't disappearing, exactly. 
It had been years 
since the last attack.
Making matters worse 
I came back here to write this
and forced him to drive 
to parts unknown.

Do you remember the wreck scene?
I went kind of nuts
and took a baseball bat
to every mailbox on that road.


I still do not have a clue as to what my mission is.
But it was a good thing I wore what I did.

He thinks I'm the bad guy 
but I am merely part of the process.


To wit: 
we were sitting around 
one evening after tea
cutting the air with farts 
and exotic bird calls
when suddenly it hit me
that each of us is going to 
get his nut in his own way
no matter should 
aunt Gertie disapprove
(right, my little droogies?)  


The next day I waylaid myself 
over the head with a hammer.
How do you think it happened?
I spend a lot of time 
on social media...
do the math, dipshit.


One of the nurses banged
on the door. 
They ran about a million tests. 
You don't want to know. 
And then, people started falling,
And then...nothing.


You're fine. 
Drink some water.
I transported myself 
back to that summer.
I'd stood against the back, 
right by the exit.
I'm putting an end to this, I said.
I smelled the smoke. 
I thought it was romantic
in a demented sort of way.


You know how the game is played. 
Catch me if you can... 
but be advised
I've still got that hammer, man. 

POETRY LIVES !

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads





They said that poetry was dead
because most of its superstars
were similarly indisposed.
But they never figured on you
and they never figured on me
to breathe some life back
into that exquisite corpse.
So fix me a salad, Caesar,
for I come to praise poetry--
not to bury it.

Poetry works for the way we live today.
It's bite-sized and makes for
a handy snack, when even the
Cliff Notes version of War and Peace
is bound to give us indigestion.

Prose stands on the corner
and waits for the bus.
Poetry glides by in a pink Cadillac convertible.
Prose beats around the bush
for chapter upon endless chapter.
Poetry says get to the point, SUCKAH,
I haven't got all day!
(If you hold your breath waiting
for the epiphany in prose,
you WILL turn purple.)

A poem has weight--
either heavy or light--
and a poem has depth,
having welled up from somewhere
deep inside you.
You can tell by the way
a poem sits upon the page
whether it's something you
want to sit with.

Poetry is highly individualistic--
no two snowflakes, and no two poems
about snowflakes are exactly alike.
Failed poetry, at the very least,
assists in perfecting one's
trash basket set shot.

Here is a sure-fire formula
for making a poem...
On a sheet of white paper
place several black dots
at random and varying
lengths from one another.

The dots are now your periods.

Connect the dots with words
and you have a poem.

Many of the world's most treasured
works were created in just this manner!

It is incumbent upon the poet
to tell the truth--even when
his truth never really happened--
and even bad poetry is good
when compared with a political speech.

As Gregory Corso said,
"Poetry is the opposite of hypocrisy."

And that's the truth.

NOTHING TO SNEEZE AT

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

a book
flew up my nose

I inhaled it deeply

now I can quote
all day long
from those nasal passages

HOW DID REAL DANCING EVER DEVOLVE INTO TWERKING?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9nlA22iEiQ

TO THE TEXAS GUNMEN

By now you have discovered
much to your chagrin
that there are no virgins--
only Joan Rivers 
(far from what you had imagined)
and you are trapped with her
inside this little room
where she is telling you
every rude and biting one-liner
she ever came up with
on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on 
throughout eternity
if need be 
until one day
a light will switch on
inside your head
and you will grin from ear to ear
at long long long long long long long long long long long long 
last
as you are finally beginning to grasp
The Cosmic Joke

WAVING AT THE WIND

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Now you may think me daffy
and ripe for the loony bin
but I see women
walking through walls
and waving at the wind

On the other side
I asked her
if she might be inclined
to show me how she does it
before I lose my mind

She said uh uh
you can't do it
I hate to spoil your fun
but my head is harder than yours
and that's just how it's done

sometimes I sit up late at night
and o'er her words I mull
'bout the vagaries of the sexes
and the thickness of one's skull

my life's the same
I'd have to say
'cept for downing a spot of gin
when I see those women
walking through walls
and waving at the wind 

THE PLOT THICKENS

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

It has come to my attention
as it does from time to time
that I'm much fonder of plot driven
narrative than characterization that goes
on and on and on and on and on and on
and in the end what are you left with
but the same pathetic slob you met in the beginning
in the same place in his life
only he's had some slight epiphany
or not
like all of the postmodern gunk
I used to wade through
hoping against hope
that SOMETHING would happen
anything
but in the end it just ends
and you're left feeling cheated
the way you feel
at the end of a love affair
cuz in the end that's just how it ends

up in the air

so why do we always want more than
what's possible
riding off into the sunset
everything neat and tidy
just give me something messy
The Big Bang will do fine
and I'll keep myself busy
picking up the pieces

Anyway here's what I made away with from my most
recent excursion to the public library's used book sale:

THE PARIS REVIEW BOOK OF HEARTBREAK,
MADNESS, SEX, LOVE, BETRAYAL, OUTSIDERS,
INTOXICATION, WAR, WHIMSY, HORRORS, 
GOD, DEATH, DINNER, BASEBALL, TRAVELS
THE ART OF WRITING, AND EVERYTHING ELSE
IN THE WORLD SINCE 1953 (and that is the title)

750 pages for a damn buck
cheap thrills
goddamn cheap
and there's Updike
Nabokov
Capote
William Burroughs
Ezra Pound
Ginsberg
Mailer
Hemingway
Henry Miller
and Stanley Elkin
whom I've always liked
just to name a few
and did you know that John Updike has a poem called
"Two Cunts In Paris"
oh
and I also picked up Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac Of The Dead
Stephen King's The Long Walk (lotta dead folks in there too)
and Ian McEwan's Saturday (which I finished on a Monday)
and God I swear that plot is so incidental to McEwan
(HE SPENT SEVENTEEN PAGES DESCRIBING A GAME OF SQUASH!)
but I waded through it anyway
I stuck with it cuz that's one of my flaws
giving the benefit of the doubt to
most anyone
till they prove me stupid

which most eventually do...

And I know I'm relinquishing
all claim to literary snobbishness
by telling you this
but I'll guarantee ya Scheherazade
kept things lively and moving
and just like that Persian king
I'm still here
after all this time
starry-eyed and hanging
on every word
with childlike wonder
(or naivete)
waiting to find out what comes next

• 

WILDLIFE

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Free from the distractions of shame, your body moves
like undulating waves on an oscilloscope.

Time stops in mid sentence like seagulls obliterated on the horizon.

Your perfume is like a soft breeze wafting down from the toxic waste dump.

Do you think the bees sit around all day 
ruminating on to bees or not to bees?

Your breath is like that of a bulldog in heat trying to
scramble over the neighbor's backyard fence.

It's dank down here in the dungeon, waiting for the dragon
to be draggin' his ass back home.

You slink round the barrio like a Siamese cat,
and you listen to Dylan in your leopard skin pillbox hat

I never drink pale ale with a paleface, for fear of reprisals from the Indians.

You drift among the wildlife with their tattoos and their scabs...
 then you come back from the beach full of sand and the crabs.

She had a cleft palate, but it worked just fine for mixing colors.

You roll your eyes like Dionysius  taking in the graffiti on the crapper stall wall while stopping at the gas station to ask for directions to Syracuse.

Old Mayan Proverb: To be successful, 
you've got to make some sacrifices along the way.

I once saw Napoleon's shriveled penis on display at a museum.
It should be noted that they kept it pretty cold in there.

Come and sit, my pet, and I will adjust your flea collar.

Put two and two together and you may have more than you bargained four.

Chimpanzees are almost human. And so are you.

Sometimes I think I'm just too nice to you.

Oh lookit...there goes a person I will never know. And another. 
And another. Disappearing 'round the corner. I wonder if it's too late.

Why do some cats eat plastic...why do some dogs eat shit?
Why do we try to put a square peg in a round hole when it really doesn't fit?

If you lived in Denmark, you'd surely be rotten...
and when I'm senile, you'll be the first to be forgotten.

Some days I really do think I'm too nice to you.