For Gil Scott-Heron (I'm New Here Too)

I'm twenty-one years old
and you seem older than the hills
yet you're new here
and I feel ancient.
We're hard to get to know,
I agree, but I'm easy to forget,
it seems. I'm waiting
to write poems like you, Gil,
I'm waiting with the mist
on my mind, floating
up through my nostils
on the midnight wind
in the magic hour. I breathe
deep and clean until
my vision is shaky
and I can hardly stand.

Then it comes to me:
a thought floating out
of the night (which,
in the city, never darkens)
and I catch it
- my perception is acute,
even if my will faulters.
I draw the enigma
out of the orange sky
of smokestacks and gazometres,
overpasses and bus shelters.
I pick it from the corners
of billboards and from
under litter bins, between
a sleeping vagrant's teeth,
pull it through the blades
of a local green
and into the road
with the pigeons
and drunken stories
gathered up from
newspaper clippings.
- Her with her tits out,
with all the opinions
on me and you, everything,
better she tells it;
I wouldn't be taken
seriously, no second glance,
they may as well have
seen straight through me,
I do, anyway.

That thought I had,
pure as the gum
on my shoe: I picked
that up somewhere too.

I've gone pretty far
now; I have to make
it look intentional.
I did it on purpose,
I heard a poem
on a street corner
and made a turn,
blind as a farmboy
in the age of bluesman
who played slide guitar
and women like cards.

I'm here thinking this
in an old place -
it's a good thought
and I'm new to it.
I'm having fun
so I'll make
the rules up after
I've summed up
the scores, let's
see: one to me,
a handfull of revolutions,
a record deal and
fisherman's hat for you.
Let's start over;
I've got troubles
like everyone else,
no eagles on me,
no broken homes allowed,
we'll keep our voices
of reason, we can
always turn around.

Untitled, September 3rd - I Tell You

I tell you I’ll never enlist
to cook up poppy seeds;
I see the high water rising,
threatening foreign policy.
Who’s going to lobby a million
farmers and their children?
Be damn sure the only dotted
line I’ll sign is a pay-slip.

Don’t get hung up
on your counterfeit ideals
– You don’t need faith
with nothing to believe in.
You’d be hard-pressed
to find the soul of an altruist
it’s spread so thin.
Virtue only exists in
the absolute morality
of the individual
– identity is retained
in logic and reason alone.

Confiscate all the bows
and arrows, teach peace
to the conquered?
– With a gun to their heads,
they can’t help
but love one-another.
I’ve met every casting call
with a grim expression;
to each admissions board,
I’ve read my poem
and, second verse,
they said, “Shut up talkin’,
you ain’t W.H. Auden.”

I’m not waiting around
to be a great man after the fact;
those iconic pen-smith
memories have grown cataract.
I want my face on the cover;
I’ll keep my sponsors fat.
If, like a rebel of the past,
I can steal a couple column inches,
I fear being branded a plagiarist
at best, with impeccable taste,
or a martyr, at the very least,
with much time wasted.

Black Coffee and Magazines

I have seen marble-eyed lyricists hide in cups of black coffee, chewing spent filters, coughing,
not a poet among them the scoundrels spit and wail on forgotten love and curse the memory of this tribe and that casting call, hollow in the chest, laughing
at the thought one could spend a lifetime counting spoons and who’d give a shit about your novel? – fingers shaking at a loaded hip-flask: elixir rye to the shaman roll-bones poking guts telling yesterday like tomorrow’s news,
appears you can’t tell the future unless you’re blind otherwise you’d catch hell with the clues, standing firing line with near-prophetic ad-men, flat cap in hand used to play Ronnie’s Swing Club balking hexes on a trumpet.

Too many buddies sewing patches on old cords; I contribute to The New Yorker every day sharing the kerb with any vagabond with a screenplay.
My kid sisters don’t know George Sempé but I’m obsessed with him, I’m positive I can do better. Young writers quit the mail-order quotations mahogany satin polish Edwardian silk finish with a happy ending I’m sick of it; the is only one god and Howard Roake is his prophet.

I pray with a guitar and a young heart into a tin speaker every night; no trains, my den crux cobwebbed ‘neath the elevated tracks – they closed the pink line so I can record my album spring loaded civic action no cash flow anyway...
Ain’t any time for you boxcar balladeers! Free ride but no train to take,
can’t lay dozing ‘neath the freight.

Picket Song

All cards wild at the press junket,
Pigs in kitsch suit aesthetic,
Signing up as clockwork volunteers,
Ink-lip their names to a list,
Form ranks armed
To the teeth with Mint Juleps,
Calmly advance on my salient,
Feathered by a fist,
Tarred with a kiss
- I hope to never know why that is.

I’ll walk myself back
To the stocks above my bed,
My boots leak - I don’t care.
My eyes deep in my pockets,
On the midnight street,
I’ll shuffle and stare
At the news-print on my fingers:
Life without a future tense.
Go for coffee and cigarettes.
Writers’ bar-room circle
Follow their own scripts.


“Punch your time-card, boy,
You’ve got work to do.”
I sweep the salt from the ground,
Pretend I’m D.B. Cooper.

Sharp Noir (Part I)

As the cold takes its first length

of claw to the back of my neck,

I steal a last look at my reflection,

cast through dark sunglasses;

the extremity, phone-booth

cigarette glow castrates

interminably the light

behind these Modigliani eyes.

I slip out, receiver down, between

shards of rain, into the ceilidh

of the street instigated by

the auspicious deal-making of sirens

with the rapid beating of the strip.

With a face in barbarian tribute,

I walk a film epic gait, without

any weakening of the spirit

- my stance is preposterous

as I slip in prevalence around

silver, gleaming death machines.

They turn wheels into their slides,

laces spry about my ankles,

at once mock at and traduce whilst

free from muteness and retreat;

steerers go foetal in their seats,

framed in primetime terror.

Alligators: their meat is considered

a delicacy. The collective envisage

a body in the road,

strewn in grisly attitudes,

for the power of the dead is

they see you all the time,

as a voyeur inflicts introspection

amongst complacent hosts.

Emitting phrases of interest

at the back of my stride

that neither blocks nor coarsens,

they signal onward in an

empty, corporate way, wonder

why they were all so afraid.

As the length of my line

is somewhat determined by

the width of my page, I come

to rest, as a religious zealot

who kills for the closed logic

of belief, I yell finally,

“Late Edition, Herald Tribune!”