Month: October 2017

Bluebird is Dead (July 2002)

What if it’s all just simple? I say there’s no poetry here. In my heart I think I feel no poetry here. I say I don’t like it here yet (here) I remain.

I wait for the bus. I watch the cars pass. I wait for one half-hour. I stare into headlights. I wonder why everyone drives when they could take the bus.

A helicopter circles above. A searchlight hits the pavement. There have been no gunshots. Why are they here?

(the choppers”: why don’t they leave us alone?)

What if everything in life was simple? What if I stayed in bed all day? For one day. Not every day but just one day. Would that be called depression? Or would that be called freedom?

What if for one day everyone stayed at home and did not go to work? What if everyone stayed home from work and made love? With themselves or others no matter. Would the world shut down? (I don’t think so)

What if people were more polite to each other? What if people took the time to love each other? Wouldn’t that mean that there would be more love and humanity in the world? Would that mean there could be an end to all things evil?

What if love was simple? What if love was “I respect you for who you are even though you are different than I? (I love you for who you are and you are love.)

What if there was no other? What if we are all each other’s other? Then perhaps we are all just one and the same.

I feel no poetry here in this city. I look for poetry here in this city. I feel the poetry in my heart. On the streets there is only sadness. On the streets there is only joy.

I feed the birds. I watch them eat their seeds. What if I never left my house again?

I walk down Sunset Boulevard looking for clues in the dirt. I ask why am I here and when will I die for good.

I never knew that I was looking for love until I remembered. You know I say I hate my life but if I really hated my life I would not love living it.

My death is a slow suicide. There’s a bullet in my chest. I feel it growing. I watch the birds play in leafless tree branches and wish that I could be a bird with them.

I see a man jump a fence and wonder if he is a killer. I wear the sweater of my lover and I get my life back. My little blue bird dies and I bury him in the garden.

We live each day as if our daily tasks have meaning. What if the meaning of the day is merely to get through it? When I get through the day with no memory then it is a good day.

If my computer crashes and I lose the past three years of my life, would my life me over? If I sell every painting I’ve ever made and lost all of my slides and jpegs would my life be over? If I lost my life but not my computer files and paintings and videotapes would my life be over?

I own a lot of pornography but I no longer watch it.

The birds pick at seeds scattered on the ground. The birds sing and play in the dirt. My dog Hans would like to kill them. My dog Hans shakes because I will not let him kill the birds. My dog Hans sits on my lover’s sweater because we miss him.

I am very shy and private in my own mind. I would like to stay at home all day and watch the birds play.

When Bluebird died I was sad but did not cry. When Bluebird was on the bottom of his cage I saw his little eye open. Bluebird was resting on his side with his little eye open. I saw my father’s gray hair in Bluebird’s gray feathers atop his head. I saw my father’s little eye open when he was on the kitchen floor dead.

(My father’s eyes were plucked out of his head hours later because he gave them to the blind. My father has no eyes now because he gave them to the blind)

(I buried Bluebird with his eyes)

Bluebird has no eyes now because the insects gave eaten them.

I never saw my father dead because he didn’t want me there when he died. I was in a nightclub at the time.

I saw my father dead on the floor of the cage I could not touch him.

——————

I take this day to mourn my life. My old life is over and a new life begins today. I often think I will die with a bullet in my head on the streets of Los Angeles. The poetry I feel here is the poetry of violence. I left my combat boots in New York when I left there.

I look at the past ten years of my life and my lungs bleed. I look at the past ten years of my life and think about getting pounded in my ass. I think about getting pounded in my ass and smile a secret memory. Why was Bluebird in my dream last night?

I take the day off and pretend that I am sick. I take the day off and sit on my front porch, which is covered in lacy green vines. The sunlight is mottled on my notebook and the peach tree is in early bloom. I take the day off because the birds are singing and I need to hear them.

The birds sing and I wonder what they are thinking. I suppose they are happy because their brains are the size of a pea.

 

Naughty Secretary (1996)

 

Today is a Happy (1996)

 

Oops (1996)

This morning I dreamt I was helping an old professor of mine prepare for a party in her house. My father was there, but he is dead. There were two bodies of my father actually and both standing around looking withdrawn and out of place. My father was younger than I ever remember him being. He also had a day or two or beard growth, something my father would never have, He shaved every day at least once and sometimes more if he were going to a social occasion in the evening. His skin was reddish brown as if he’d been burnt from long regular periods of exposure to too much sun. His skin was more tanned that I remembered it ever being. There was a brown or burnt mark on his cheek as if he’d been further burned in one smallish spot, like from leaning against a light bulb.

I kept a distance from him. I could feel him ask me: Why are you afraid of me? I don’t recall if he had an audible voice or not. We may have been communicating telepathically. He thought that I possessed some prejudice about him. I didn’t understand what he was talking about because I’d always believed that he was the prejudice one not me. Was I afraid to talk to him because I was and prejudice about his being dead? Or was I prejudice because he was blue-collar and sun burnt from working outside? He did not look happy being dead. There were two exact images of him as if he was split in two, but two complete bodies. One spoke to me, and the other stood was off to the side, maybe looking away at the people in the other room or outside. He looked like he was forty years old, not eighty-something, the age he would be if he were alive today. Although he looked lost and kind of sad, he told me not to be afraid.

I looked around and saw other party guests off in the distance- people close in age to him who are still alive. I saw my partner’s parents and my old professor. My mother was not there. She was not invited to the party.