City of Angels, City of God
take me in and save me
From the Horrors of the East;
I know that things are different somewhere,
because they just have to be.
There’s a Man with a coffin chest
and Holocaust-oven Eyes who follows me
He’s walking through the Desert night
and He’s steadily closing in;
California please, I implore,
Has the Western Coast got room for one more?
I know Big Sur will save me
from the Jersey shore.
there is an exception to all the rules of the world,
And I call it the Gun Rule;
All rules are changed
when a gun is pressed against your forehead
Another day begins in the asphalt sprawl As the leaves turn brown, dry, die and fall
and urbanite saints sweat in old paint-stained overalls
covering cinder-block walls with honey-dew hues and cleaning out pissed-on bathroom stalls;
More Trailer park homes and Willowbrook Malls, Uncles ashamed to answer telephone calls.
Another dawn of teenage tragedies that go on behind closed doors,
More of the same rat-trap allure for the television-drunk media whores,
the advertisement junkies, who get high on polished J crew clothing,
and sales expanded from self-loathing, artificial desire to stay cool, stay Hip,
More of the same Lisa Fitz heartaches and Community College blues,
alcoholic mothers, fathers, brothers, lovers who abuse booze and lose
touch, without a care for the fistfuls of hair in the bathroom sink, torn out
in grief and rage because dad couldn’t think of somebody other than himself;
More long-distance calls That you make to Iraq, crying and waiting for him to call back
and low moans on the telephone, when he tells you he’ll be coming home soon
Another dream committed suicide today, jumped from the Verrazano-Narrows
Would rather slam it’s Head into the New York Bay than say Hey, May I take your order for one more fucking day,
East-side mind glide by find peace in the sprawl, make sense of it all,
Pick up the glove and play ball,
and if you don’t,
Then there’s the door;
just give our regards to whoevers out there
when I wake up in the morning and I’m all comfy in my bed,
I fell like a lil blanket-bug, and I burrow in my head!
My brain is tapioca,
Resting in a bowl of pudding skull,
And I’m ready to scoop it out and dump it
into the Kill Van Kull.
Things are changing, and the Wheel is turning,
and it just won’t be the same;
The Caliphate’s returning
to the East spreading and like a Flame,
and the Capitalist Octopus to the West,
That’s Rotting Marco’s brain.
This uneasy peace is falling to sleep
and the pieces have all been set;
the board is perilously laid,
Just waiting to make the Check.
And as the Powers that be stood quietly
with fingers meshed and held their breath,
the next Oppenheimer, Destroyer of Worlds was born,
And he’s ready to answer
the blast of the horn.
The joke’s on them,
because I knew all along that meter only accepts quarters;
I just wanted to get rid of all those pesky nickels!
put aside
the thoughts of suicide
so you can let another
dreadful day go by.
sit inside
and wallow in your
lost pride
and feeble attempts
to get past your bedside.
drag out the door.
can’t do this no more.
big bad max provides relief,
albeit it brief.
best bros make it better
but not for long.
you know where you belong.
the Ides of March are upon us
and the Caesar’s days are numbered;
though the conquest of Gall
brought wealth and fame
and All the world
Shall remember the name,
Ambition
will extinguish
the brightest flame
And as legions cross the Rubicon
the Senate are solemnly
sharpened blades.
For The Pharaohs of the Nile
and all the riches of military splendor…
Et tu, Brute? Then Fall, Caesar.
out of the North I gallop towards home,
rubber hooves of my Civic pounding the Palisades Parkway
Pump pump on the gas, to Switch lanes and pass,
Raggaeton on, November air pouring over the sleek bodied machine
trees and signs fly by, Hudson River Valley disappears behind,
swallowed up by the blackness my high beams couldn’t find,
ink-black waters of the river flow churn slow,
Garden State plates traveling in a bounding pack down the track
like hounds for the races, skyline light replaces stars turn to
street lights frantically spilling by night’s asphalt blood
Out of the North and away from the dreams,
reentry to reality urban chugging turning gangland mugging
gasoline igniting cigarette loving and exits for the Holland Tunnel,
Shout out to Elizabeth, Union and Brooklyn the radio Jamaician MC sings
While I’m barreling to Heaven on four-cylinder wings,
the Pulaski Skyway sets us free
Ripping our Skeletons Out of the North
and Smashing them gently
into the Sea.
sometimes in my mind,
I’m a prince or a knight,
standing up for what is Good and Right
in a world of evil-doers and warlocks.
but sometimes,
I think that I’m the monster,
and that knights
just can’t exist here.
Close your eyes to exit
This fucked up world.
Put on some music
To drown out the
Thoughts in your head.
Watch a movie
let the pixels dance
and forget about the world
for a little while
The Homeless people at the off ramp to Newark
who try to clean my car windshield
with dirty newspaper
probably have a lot to say,
About where it all went wrong
in Viet-nam,
How they left their humanity
in a burning Saigon
They’d say Ho-Chi Min was a son of a bitch
but even he’d
be better than this.
They’d say how afterwards drugs just felt right,
It was the 70’s,
and everyone was high.
Gerald Ford had plans to help,
everything would turn out fine.
The memories of private friends,
with murderous grins
And the screaming women
who wouldn’t give in
Hide from them
in every crack in the sidewalk,
Every face with slanted eyes
hides the taste
of Agent Orange.
Now I’m rolling up my windows
and locking all the doors
Saying boy What a dump
as I press the gas
and try to speed up
And get to Penn Station time.
the rain drums down on the window at 11:00 on Wednesday night, and I Stop in to the diner after a long day for a bite; I gloomily pick at french fries, and use them to scoop cole slaw And I can’t help but Overhearing the 30 year old busboy talk excitedly to the old sour-faced waitress- It’s just how Jay-Z got started! I just have to keep making beats, and sell a couple to get the money to get out of here, then I’m set! This shit is going to blow up, know sayin? No more wiping no fucking tables! My Dad told me I’m getting real good. Karen leans in with my check and smiles wryly and says with enough melancholy to break my heart- Some people are superstars in their own mind. I look at the check for 7.22. I leave her a 5 dollar tip for her wisdom. I walk out into the rain and shed a tear where it is quickly washed away and lost.
the world was in my grasp
and I turned my face away,
because I guess that’s who I am.
I guess i’d rather just watch railroad tracks,
Watch the trains rolling out
To California or El Paso,
Tacoma or Ontario,
or other places I’ll never go.
I let the door shut
on that perfect person
and for What?
Garbage and Broken families,
shadows of marshland memories,
Cold Tupperwares of tortellinis.
I guess i should have tried,
but it may be
that loving another
just isn’t for me.
it’s 2 am again, and Marco’s softly following a will-O’-the-wisp into the murky depths of the bog, stumbling over logs in the fog, trying to reach the light in the night before the glowing Red eyes of the Beast close in for the feast.
hey first people,
how is the reservation life treating you?
stop another freight train in Canada,
got a job serving drinks
at Red Wind casino?
more teen suicides
as you cry and watch your
culture die
But hey,
keep on giving it a try,
and maybe by 2045
you’ll get
those treaty rights restored!
Bob’s son is dead, his world ended a few days ago,
But he was at work today.
He looked at me and said How are you Marco,
and I didn’t really have a reply, Because
The unliving Eyes of striped bass
and rainbow trout
bore holes in the back of my head.
It stank like fish blood.
I wonder what is happening in Trinidad right now,
it’s a weird thing to wonder about
Because as far as my concern goes,
Everyone there
Doesn’t even exist.
To me, wage slaves in Thailand or China
are just a great bargain at K-Mart.
But what am I to those slaves,
who put the stitches in my clothing?
Do they think absently about Paterson,
and ponder How was Marco’s day?
Because their’s
was hen bu Hao!
The world is a psychopath,
so watch where you put those fingers and toes
And Don’t trust anyone
you wouldn’t piss in front of.
Don’t stare too long into the eyes of a dead fish.
they start staring back,
And you won’t like what you see
Meet the nomads of America,
the misfits of our race
the ones who ride on rails in boxcars
Carrying Lives
from place to place.
Meet the ones
Who stick out thumbs,
Gypsies of the high plains
and Roma tribes of Oregon.
The state fair circus folk
with peculiar tattooed faces,
Staring through the sunburnt haze
into the depths
of outer space.
The carny girls
who pass through town
and band van drifters
who just don’t
stick around…
it’s something that we
have never had,
but i guess that’s all it really is;
just a different type of being sad,
the hunted vagabond kid.
the loneliness of the road,
the freedom of the wanderer,
the empty absence of a home-
but at times i think,
Fuck it let’s go,
Pack my shit
and
Westward Ho.
Oh, She’s a Deli girl
Slicing up that ham so very thin..
Ooooo, she’s a Deli girl!
Giving out Free samples
To the kids
Oh, She’s a Deli girl..
Wears a new pair of gloves with
every
Handling!
Oooooooo, she’s a Deli Girl!
Cole-slaw and pickles with all the
Sandwiches,
Deli giiiiirl!
Grab the cold cut slicer
And you
do your thing,
Ohh, and she’s a Deli girl
The Deli’s not the place
to raise your kids.
Oooooooooooo,
and you better take a number,
cause I think it’s gonna be a long, long line,
Yes I think it’s gonna be a
Long, Long line…
It’s nights like these
when I sit in Applebees
and stare mindlessly
at 20 different television screens,
watch young girls humiliate themselves
and men punch each other in the face,
And I have advertisements
and meaningless messages
poured into my head,
over and over and over again…
on nights like this
I look around as I sit, and
I just get tired of all this shit,
the ceaseless glow and the white noise,
the pleasure activated by sugary foods
and bouncing images
of cheerleader boobs,
the iphone molesting douchebag
with the backwards flat-brimmed
Penn-State hat,
The waiter who could be so much more,
the teenaged girls who think they want
to act like whores,
The bittersweet New Jersey of our dreams.
It’s nights like these I think
I just want to quit
America is rotting my brain,
and throwing potential
down the drain
somehow i guess I just expect
that it’s going to happen,
that i don’t have to do anything at all
Just another year in the life,
thinking that if i want to walk
then first i’ve got to crawl
i want to believe that it’s true,
that it’s something anyone
at all can do,
but when i look in the mirror and sigh,
because i’m still the same me,
no matter how hard i try,
and i make the same dumb mistakes
and the same shitty calls,
same turnpike rest stop bathroom stalls,
i wonder if it’s possible
or if all those stories of change are hoaxes,
all those reformed men and women
are bogus,
and their act imposes
a false reality to the rest of us.
am i stubborn,
or am i simply because i am?
These are questions not for me,
that i’m sure can be solved
by Euclidean geometry,
but for now let’s try and see
if the adaptive imagination
of the human psyche,
with all it’s infinite potential,
can change
my apparently zodiac destiny,
and break me free from these
pleasantly self-destructive
tendencies.
O, Costco! God of Consumption
and Zenith of our American Empire of Greed;
The Expiration dates printed upon your Organic Milk cartons
Are testament to thousands of years of human design and efficiency.
How we marvel at your Unbeatable prices of fish and meat,
at Every fruit that grows under the Sun
Neatly packed and labeled;
Through us, your Disciples,
Ye have defeated cruel and cunning Nature
and whipped it to groveling submission.
The Immortal deities of our time
Walking the Earth in 6,000 dollar suits,
Their legacies recorded on the papyrus scrolls of tax records
and Forbes magazine archives,
Commanding their worshipers from Long Island palaces
or Mount Olympus penthouse temples uptown.
Here the Sun sets on the Age of Nations,
And Dawn begins
on the First Days of Creation
For the Eon of Corporations,
The new Superpowers of the Globe;
in Mankind’s short time, we’ve seen
Clans then Kings then Presidents,
Now the chief executive officers reign,
And we Bow down as low as we can sink
Before billboards of air-brushed tits.
O, Costco! Soon shall come a day
When Saint Peter welcomes me in
through your pearly automatically sliding Gates
With His name-tag on his shoulder,
He will Sing with the voices of Angels and Archangels,
Do you have your card?
Is it the wolf’s fault
That he kills and eats the flesh
Of the weaker being?
Of coarse not, very few would argue so;
Is it the Man’s fault
That he is driven by greed
to do monstrous things,
To Himself and to the World?
Pretty, quiet, civilized people
Are too Afraid to see
That We, Also,
Are natural
born
killers.
When Days of End come at last,
when the American hegemony falls,
and the last demagogue
of the West
Surrenders the urban sprawl,
The Sun will Set
at the end of an Age,
And Once again the World will wonder;
There was a Caesar-
When Shall come such Another?
It’s gettin late
in the Garden State
but I can’t sleep tonight.
Trains and planes over Newark skies,
Rhymes and words
just can’t describe
This concrete heartbeat
and this cold city street
Are sadly
sadly
Calling me
This is a poem for the brutality
and consequent misconstrued reality
(alarming congeniality)
of the misguided illusion of normality
and magazine mentality
of overt sexuality
And the Glamour Girl fetish of our gilded Age;
All the women who believe they are expected
to live their lives 20 pounds underweight,
all the men who want the perfect bod,
Big muscles and Hot dates;
The machoman and groupie skanks
who inadvertently shape our fates;
When the ingrained and institutionalized
American facade of freedom
Has you acting helpless and dependent
We’re just a little bit East of Eden…
And fourth grade girls
who want nice racks
and are conscious of their calories
And loathe the body they’ve been given;
Here’s one way to put it in words,
It’s sure a circus show we live in.
To the old men who play bocci
And remember in the park,
To the young girls who play records
and dance alone in the dark,
To the chess playing gentlemen
of South Carolina Ave,
To the waitresses with children,
whose tips are all they have
From the corners to the porches
and the bus-stop tragedies,
From the empty dinner tables
and the ruined Christmas eves,
From the Hamptons and the gutters
of Miami Beach
From the poor Latino mothers
and every broken dream,
There’s a billion different stories,
but we’re each the protagonist of one
and through griefs and through glories,
It’s always just begun.
It’s important to live a happy life
and love as often as you can,
but it’s a hardass world we live in
that Nobody understands.
Original Poetry 