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  You Know

 

  What matters most

  is what the heart wants

  and the heart wants what it

  can never have

 

  I walk by the hungry

  drop coins in their cups

  my pain so small

  when someone is bleeding

  for my kindness

 

  Through the streets

  men and women

  holding hands

  passing me by

  I admire them

  for not seeing me

  or the hungry

 

  I’d Give It All Up

 

  And live alone like the old days

  when I was poor and full of poems

  pushing my old Mustang up the hill

  both of us dying like a minor Sisyphus

  No worries but the next paycheck

  No drinks but the blood of grapes

 

  I’d give it all up for your nod

  or if you let me read your palms

  Your lips quivering with shyness

  I know you’ve been alone for too long

  But the lines in your palm

  tell me your heart is a wandering gypsy

 

  I’d give it all up for you

  and start anew with what’s left of me

  I’d give it all to you

  I’ll bleed words for you

  Like a traveling salesman I’ll knock on

  all the doors until I reach your home

  Dave Donovan

  A Toast

  to lift

  and tip back

  at an angle

  most welcome

  the cold wash

  of day's end mercy

  curved glass and

  beaded wonder

  singing under the fingertips

  to a song

  our hearts

  learned long ago

  open the evening now

  and let it breathe

  we have skies to admire.

 

  In Memory Of Ray Augustine

  gentlemen

  reach under the flag

  grab the handle

  and lift

  he told the six of us

  three by three

  on either side of you

  and we walked forward

  walked as you did

  into our lives

  sometime in the past

  into the Abbey

  or the Gallery

  open stages/open mics

  gigs and backyard BBQ's

  any place with music and friends

  and you had plenty of both

  we walked forward

  walked as you did

  under the shade of folk tunes

  cowboy songs and country blues

  in the footsteps of Woody and Jimmy

  and Hank Sr. too

  who we know you could have drunk

  right under the table

  (or the dashboard as it were

  and who can prove you didn't?)

  we walked forward

  walked as you did

  over the grass of history

  green and rising

  a sea of memory

  you saved a man's life once

  in the Navy - not in battle

  but heroic nonetheless

  swimming through violent waters

  to retrieve a life nearly lost

  (i asked if you earned a medal

  you said no and shrugged it off

  because it turns out

  a letter of commendation

  from the Secretary of the Navy

  a meritorious service ribbon

  a newspaper write-up

  and the eternal thanks

  of your fellow sailor

  just don't quite equal a medal

  do they ?)

  we walked forward

  walked as you did

  into old age gracefully

  your red suspenders and

  hair white as ash

  your box of harmonicas

  a treasure of train whistles

  wailing and weaving

  the notes of the past

  into songs of the present

  as we arrive

  at that last railyard

  a circle of tramps

  fierce and enlightened

  gentlemen

  reach under the flag

  grab the handle

  and lift

  he told us

  but he never explained

  how to let go.

 

  Driving Lesson

  i was riding

  along with my cousin

  to a party

  and we were talking about

  when we were kids

  how our family cookouts

  were so much fun

  and our mothers and aunts made the best food

  serving fresh lemonade and sandwiches

  how our fathers and uncles told the best jokes

  and drank cold Hamms beer from

  aluminum pop-top cans

  with a baseball game

  crackling out of a transistor radio

  on the picnic table

  and I laughed about Uncle so-and-so

  and his chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes

  when she said

  No - they were Salems and

  the reason I remember that

  she said

  is because one time

  he asked me to run to his car and

  grab another pack for him

  and so I did

  but I couldn't find those cigarettes

  and I searched and searched

  and checked the glove compartment

  and under the seat

  but didn't see them anywhere and

  when I gave up looking

  I turned around and there he was

  he tried to kiss me

  but i slipped away

  and ran off as he was trying to say

  he was sorry and please don't tell

  about 30 seconds passed

  as we drove along

  before I could think of anything to say

  so i said

  are you SURE they weren't Marlboros ?

  Doug Draime

  The Earth Is Exploding Where Lawrence Of Arabia Once Slept

  where he fought

  and fornicated

  where he turned

  his heart to blowing sand

  blood lust

  running through

  his aristocratic veins

  his blue eyes full of

  the murderous

  future

 

  Ivy

  Eventually when the

  dark green ivy dies out,

  the sun shrouded

  by the dense smog

  of doom, they will find us

  beneath the dead plants

  living vigorously, our eyes

  full of mysterious light

  Old Homeless Man In St. Francis Hotel Lobby

  I could see

  it was all

  he could do

  to keep

  from crying

  and I

  kept expecting

  his lower lip

  to begin trembling

  and sobs

  to shake

  his bent body.

  But he was dignified,

  holding himself erect

  as he talked to the

  nightly news,

  cursing raving

  at the television

  over the

  war.

  If I Could Paint I Would Paint This

  The sun coming down like iron, while shining

  through huge puffy-white clouds.

  All the buildings glowing like mercury

  The
ocean at Long Beach, several miles

  away, is bopping up accepting the sun, in what

  can only be painted as worship

  Nathan Graziano

  A Vampire In The Mall

 

  I sat on a bench in the mall,

  while my wife shopped for jeans.

  A man in a black trench coat

  sat down beside me.

  He had black mascara

  Caked around both eyes

  and his face painted white

  to look corpse-like or undead.

  When he noticed me staring,

  he turned and hissed.

  Two long fangs hung down

  from his top row of teeth.

 

  I shook my head, stood up

  and joined my wife in the store.

 

  "Honey," I said, "there’s a man

  on the bench outside with fangs

  like a goddamn vampire."

 

  "That’s a look these days," she said.

  "People go to dentists and have

  their teeth capped to look like fangs."

  She then turned and left

  for the changing room.

 

  I stood by a rack of women’s blouses

  trying to imagine this dentist

  of the dark shadow

  who in a single night turns

  human beings into douche bags.

 

  A Frat Guy On A Motorcycle

 

  Regardless of what I thought

  of his baseball hat turned backwards

  and the eighty-dollar Ray Ban sunglasses,

  or the sleeves of his shirt severed

  and a tribal tattoo on his Mega-man bicep,

  or the girl, Good Lord the beautiful girl,

  tail-up behind him on the Kawasaki

  in cut-off denim shorts, two gulps

  of golden leg straddling a hot engine.

 

  Regardless of my opinions,

  my simple and stubborn stereotyping,

  I have to admit I envied the look

  on this young man’s tanned face

  when he stopped at a red light beside me.

 

  It was a look that said, in no uncertain terms,

 

  "My life is good right now."

 

  Two Girls In A Tub Together

 

  Maybe you’re hoping for a supermodel

  to slip out of a slinky red dress,

  kick off a pair of stiletto pumps

  and step lightly onto a cold tiled floor.

  A few feet away another woman

  waits with parted lips in a Roman tub,

  steam rising from the still water.

  The two beauties then embrace,

  their breasts lathered with bubbles

  and smooth shaved legs entangle

  as their pink tongues flicker like moths.

  So it might come as a disappointment to know

  the two girls in the tub I’m talking about

  are my wife and eighteen-month old daughter.

  They’re splashing and laughing,

  fun as clean as a yellow rubber duck.

  I’m in the other room listening to them,

  a bit choked up by my love for both.

  I fold my hands over my stomach and smile,

  as astounded as you by my own caprices.

  My Wife Has The Memory Of An Elephant

  My wife and I lay on the couch

  watching the evening news

  and sipping coffee

  after a dinner of leftover chicken.

  We both groaned

  as the weatherman

  followed a storm up the coast

  with a stiff right arm

  then shook his head

  as if apologizing for the snow.

  I reached around and placed my palm

  on my wife’s round belly

  to feel our baby punch and kick.

 

  As beautiful as a butterfly waltz.

 

  Out of nowhere, my wife

  asked me if I remembered

  a night before we were married,

  when she caught me flirting

  with a young blonde at a bar.

  Although I honestly didn’t

  remember the night in question

  and blamed it on the beer,

  she proceeded to describe

  the whole evening in intimate detail

  before the weatherman

  could finish his five-day forecast.

  S.A. Griffin

  Everything Is All Right In Time Even Death

  100 miles per hour to nowhere

  point blank verse

  pain heaped upon pain

  thru addiction

  or just simply being

  available

  to the process

  the march & mulch of war

  burgers & fries

  obsessive sex

  the opiates of

  religion

  whatever it is

  it will get us all

  in the end

  pick your poison well

  live for it

  blossom & burn

  inside the sacred unfolding of the

  laughing rose

  even the sun will lose

  its hair & go blind

  This Place of Love You Make

  built on poems of tempered lyric

  & music boxed in moonlight

  ecstatic moment sent to

  school the insensible flesh

  vibrating upon sudden arrows

  to prompt the heart’s unfolding flower

  tuned to the slightest

  glance & tempest gesture

  love, small like time

  incurable

  Lady

  we are here

  for the sweet stigmata

  of the poem

  One Night In San Francisco

  I crawled out of bed

  still drunk

  & proceeded to piss

  all over the cold hardwood floors

  of our bedroom

  “What are you doing?”

  my boozed bladder bursting forth its contents,

  “Taking a piss.”

  getting excited she noted,

  “It’s getting all over the floor!”

  “Don’t worry, it’ll all run out under the door.”

  I finished pissing & went back to sleep

  the Haight was a beautiful place then

  she really loved me

  Christopher Harter

  Poem For D.A. Levy

  In the beginning was the Word

  and the Word was run off on a

  celestial mimeograph machine,

  and God looked at it and said

  "It's a bit crude, but it'll do.

  Here, Adam, go run off about

  500 of these and pass them out

  to the people."

 

  Poem

  —after Ted Berrigan

  The only time my father

  flew on an airplane, he

  exited the jet way

  white as a sheet &

  visibly shaking.

  My father had never

  & would never again

  appear to me in this

  manner, even in the

  last days of his illness.

  Myself, I have been

  on planes many times—

  travels both near &

  far.

  I am not bothered

  in the least by these

  big mechanical birds,

  but I always think of

  my wife and son

  & smile during take-off,

  just in case.

 

  Farmer’s Market (6.16.07)

  Today at the market

>   we bought:

  5 onions

  6 tomatoes

  1 head of broccoli

  2 lbs. of green beans

  1 lb. of sugar snap peas

  1 bunch of kale

  I’ll enjoy the taste of

  each immensely

  When my son asked if

  the old man in the blue overalls

  grew those vegetables

  for us, I said

  yes

  To The Quiet Voice Of Tom Kryss

  My son plays under the maple tree

  with the metal tractors of my childhood

  and the childhoods of my brothers and father

  I sit here reading a thinking man’s poem

  as a nearby sparrow works to crack

  a speck of seed or the shell of a

  struggling insect

  Each vaguely aware of the others,

  content to keep to ourselves

  Richard Krech

  Mindfulness To Changed Circumstances

  Out of thin air

  an opportunity

  may arise so quickly

  that you must

  take advantage of it

  right away

  or not at all.

  After The Storm

  Our warm bed

  central in the dim lit room

  corners in darkness,

  rolling & honking noises

  from Outside scrape across windows.

  Our room flying thru space

  commerce bustling around us,

  we lying still

  holding each other after the storm.

  Gentle purr of yr breathing

  later lets me know

  I am alone

  w/ my

  self.

  After The Intermission

  A small skiff (at night)

  quickly navigating a body of water,

  the time frozen

  like a fine oil

  framed and in its place.

  Using objects

  to transcend them,

  to see the core

  we wind ourselves around.

  Winding down

  we find ourselves

  after the intermission

  still glued to our seats,

  wondering how it all

  will turn out

  and pondering

  our next move.

 

  That Place Is Always Attainable

  Sunlight

  filtering in thru curtains

  after millions of miles

  in the cold vacuum of space,

  Here it looks warm and yellow

  the blue of the sky

  green trees beyond.

  Industrial hum

  occasional sounds of humans

  or cars.

  The ability

  to find that place of calm

  is essential,