They are the bad time boys.
They are the men who broke the world,
Who come in many derivations,
Who created all boundaries,
And stacked odds against the others.

I sing a song of my self
and it is the dirge of my people.
One life’s mistake
fixed with a searing snip
and the smell of well-handled steak.
End of the line.

Buck stops here, Bucko!
I won’t be making all of my father’s mistakes -
just most of them.
I won’t die loveless
but I will die alone.
A ghost,
a memory,
a story,
an impression.

Oh, I will leave an impression.
Prep your RVs and tin foil satellite dishes!
Conspire in tattered lawn chairs
and anticipate my arrival.
For I am the meteor’s crater.
I will be a Roswell rumor
and a desert song,
told in the dunes of Barstow,
unchecked by the checkpoints
on roads traveled only by cargo -
human and otherwise.

Never go to Barstow.
It is filled with people like me.
A mecca for the dropouts
and the burnouts
and the sellouts
and the down-and-outs
lost in arroyos flooded
with unexpected doubts.

The pumps are as dead as the denizens -
the bleached bones of Morrison covers
and rusty rallies and journalist pilgrims,
gone gonzo on things worse than ether.
They are my people.

The people who sing the songs of themselves -
Sonnets of sadness,
long life lines
and tragic love lines,
Slanted rhymes and broken times.
The unkillable,
The unlovable,
The alone,
The free.

I am an interloper.
On this island
That’s one convenient flight away.

I am worse than the colonists.
For I am a post capitalist.
They conquered.
I vacationed.
They killed thousands
My life style kills millions.

My Luis and Clark
Are Apple Maps and Yelp
I am here because I bought a ticket
An all expense paid excursion
Born on a litter of injustices
And the paths by the same racist imperialists
Who figured out this is a pretty nice spot.

They decided to keep it.
I decided to rent it.

Yet, passing islander
With your smile and your compliment
Your direct approval me propelled me
Better than any trade wind

I am sorry I came
Sorry I intruded
Sorry I made things worse because I was bored
Because the pills had stopped working
Because my therapist quit
But, thank you
That smile was almost worth it.

Two forklift drivers and their families
Splashed in the turgid waters of a Puerto Rican jungle tour.
They bonded over an ass-busting slide
Down well-rock rocks and scraped coccyxes
Their interaction, verbatim,
For not even a poet can make it up.

“I’m from Brooklyn. Where you from?”
“I’m from the Bronx. I drive a forklift.”
“Get outta here! I’m a forklift driver too!”

From the tide pools, the wife smeared in zinc
Rotund in her stripe one piece, shouts
“Manny! Come get your kid!”

“Be right there, Cheryl, sweetie. I’m talking.”
Remember to swallow the G
And somehow stress the unstressed syllable.
In a lilt so iconic, imposters are easily spotted.

“Now where was I? Oh, yah, forklifts.”
Don’t go to Philadelphian with it.
It needs to rattle like a passing subway car
And sell bagels, newspapers and heads of cabbages
From the back of panel vans.

“Hey, you know Vito Badacunni?”
“Yah! He’s married to my sister’s third cousin!”

With a Marlboro dipping from sun-burned lips
Beneath a sun hat with broken reeds and frayed brim
That screams second hand Soho summer,
She snaps her fingers
“Manny, come get your fucking kid.
I need a cigarette.”

Like a prima donna orca,
Called by the ring master’s click,
Manny exits his wading pool
Increasing in volume
But never in anger
“Be right there, Cheryl!”

In response to Yeats

When you are stoned, faded and full of cracks
sprawl cross the floor and continue to puff -
Till your walls begin to deconstruct -
Smoke till Jericho falls and your face slacks.

How many have been bettered by you,
Improved the world by following your lead?
The drugs will show you your every deed
Your ego turned off and your vision true,

Cry out, laid humble, how your self is dead!
Confront your constructions high over head
It’s time; hide no more and face the real you.