TIM'S NEW BOOK IS OUT!

DOMINO DANCING

Imaginary Garden With Real Toads

Come dance with me
and we shall be
like dominoes
connecting the dots
to make a pretty picture

No ordinary gal
a femme fatale
raising eyebrows
across the west
(get here...we'll do the rest)
you'll be my Charlotte Gainsbourg
I'll be your Lars Von Trier
directing you to new heights
of abasement
and though you're not Victoria
you'll be my dirty little secret
and sign my binding resolution
with you hands behind your back

I know we can get it started
but can we keep it going
no matter which way
the wind is blowing
imagination is the key
you may have a better one than me
of this we shall see
and come that day
you dance with me
we'll do it vertically
and horizontally
scoring
when we connect
end to end
(hey, that's how the game is played)

So tumble for me
and I'll tumble for you
as dominoes
forever falling
toppling
into one another
merging
and
melting
black and white
dissolving 
into fifty shades of grey

LANA

With Real Toads--d'Verse Poets Pub


she showed up on my doorstep
one day with two suitcases--
looking like a lost waif.


my best compadre Dan knew her
and had sent her down from the states
because he thought--for some odd reason-- that I
could arrange an abortion for her
as it was still illegal.
i had lots of contacts,
but not in that arena
and i told her so.
she wasn't showing yet,
so we decided to make the best
of her time there anyway.


we had come from the beach
and were meandering along the Condado
when a local cop on a motorcycle
pulled up beside and told us we couldn't
be on the street looking like that.


she was wearing just her bikini
but it was tame by today's standards
and i had seen plenty of  tourists
navigating these streets in similar attire.


then I realized he wasn't referring to
the bikini, but the way she filled out the bikini
(it was June, and she was busting out all over.)
he even mentioned that drivers
could get into accidents
from gawking at her (swear to God).


i took off the shirt I wore over my trunks
and  gave it to her to put on and the
civic-minded embodiment of the law
allowed as how that would be acceptable
and we walked on back to my place.


we made it that night
haphazardly
and half-assedly
with her saying in the middle of it
"ya gotta understand
 this doesn't mean much to me
becuz i still love Clyde."
(right--just not enough to bear his spawn.)


in the early morning
Nan came by,
cooing at me through the slats
of my bedroom window.
then suddenly shouting you bastard
(waking up the pious Puerto Rican family next door
who had given me dirty looks before)
and stomping off
when Lana raised her strawberry-blonde mane.


that cost me dearly.


but what's a young buck
trying to live in the moment to do?


years hence, Dan informed me that Lana
had done a photo spread for a notorious
skin magazine.
not once, but twice..


i thought about trying to locate some back issues
to see if i could find her
and then i said
why bother.


been there.
done that.

NEVER

Poetry Potluck

One Shot Wednesday

I never thought it would come to this...

After happy days and high school plays

Willie Mays and back seat lays

Shadrack Horshak Abednego

and Zeke The Talking Raccoon

after the wheels in my head that wouldn't stop spinning

like a record going round

they wouldn't stop spinning

after getting starstruck

after getting struck by stardom

after I stepped up to the plate

after I stepped up to the mike

after the groupies that hung around

black white and brown

who thought I was something

that I was but wasn't

after all the times I was alone

when I thought that I wasn't

after the receptionist turned pale

and told me I looked like her deceased husband

after I rolled over

played dead

and fetched his bedroom slippers

and tried to fill them

after taking the boss's wife to Mexico on a lark

after gassing up at Texaco and peeing in the park

after the drunks and the skunks and the punks

after the first of the Mohicans

and last of the Puerto Ricans

after Woodstock and Plymouth Rock

after the monkeys and the junkies and the flunkies

after the freaks and the Greeks and the geeks

after golden showers and happy hours

I never thought it would come to this...

After my guru told me that life

is like trying to piss on your shadow

while doing the Macarena

(an Indian guru if you believed all the buzz

though an Indiana guru in fact he was)

after all the rejection in my search for perfection

finding Cinderella's glass slipper

and the hobnail boot she planted up my butt

After the good Samaritan veterinarian in Mexico City

yanked her Levis down to her ankles

and shot his wad in a shotgun blast that peppered us both

as we lay there in a stupor

AND THAT'S WHY I'LL NEVER DRINK TEQUILA AGAIN !!!

After casually tossing the condom that had served its purpose

out the hotel room window in Managua

hearing it splat onto the sidewalk

and someone shouting: AVE MARIA !

I never thought it would come to this...

After all the false starts and missed connections

and what ifs and what the fugs

after to give as good as you git

is to no longer give a shit

after all the days and nights

in the prison of my own desire

all the bittersweet days I remember

in an updated and romanticized version of life

the images colliding like sub-atomic particles

as a thousand million bursting stars

explode in a never ending climax

expanding ever farther into the reaches of space

I never thought it would come to this...

Face to face

at this moment

in this place...

and neither did you