Ranch (for DHL)

Ranch (for DHL)

For a time we three slept up on
Wolf Mountain Bert Frieda and I
We took the trail past Susan the Cow
And the field of black-eyed susans
Waiting til the sun set over New Mexico
Til we could take off our clothes
Keep warm together with friction
Bert loved my alabaster buttocks
Or so I felt as his broad hand pressed
There when Frieda and I missionaried
On the hard bed til it was Bertie's turn
They swore me to secrecy hell it was
1923  the year my Mom was born
Menage wasn't even a word well
Not one to go in an English writer's bio
No way so we smoked weed and laughed
Instead until we drove to Lake Chapala
Which Bert said looked milky with sperm
All the way down in Mexico


A tribute to D. H. Lawrence
Jack, Xmas '12

Merry Xmas Dad

Merry Xmas Dad

You might have lived to be a century
Smiling at balloons sucking candy
Stroking your yellow cats
Filled with patriotism and not even
Missing the holidays of your past
Not even knowing Christmas Eve
From the Day of the Dead
You struggle up the stairs to your bed
Are you preparing for your eternity
Fetal position how many hours each
Day curled up in oblivion
Your wife hates you resents
Your long life and if you know
Anything through the haze that is it
She accuses you of making a Hell
Of her disappointing life
Do you recall in your dementia
That we are estranged that not since
We played chess half a century ago
Has there been anything but false pleasantry
Between us no understanding
No communication no rapport 
Instead silly jokes over fish
We sat in a swing on Tybee beach
And compared biceps whatever summer
You ambled over the sand as your wife
Let the sea breeze give her a shining
Moment in the sun
What has our life meant to you
The failed law practice
The failed first marriage of twenty years
What women still emerge in the mist 
Of your mind what joys recalling
My brother and me wrestling with you
On hardwood floors
Dad I remember your beard
Like sandpaper when you held me as a child
How proud I once was of you
Standing in your officer's uniform
Taking my mother out
Swiveling in your Colonial office chair
Under a gold clock ticking away
Your life of pretense
Why don't I love you old man
Was it your dishonesty your politics
Your doting on your second wife
Whose dreams never came to be
Who came to find emptiness and burden 
In your existence no matter your devotion
Who grew disillusioned as I did
With who you pretended to be
Your dying days bring me sadness
Though you jerk from childish joy
To belligerence over a simple word
You are alien to me though you
Conjure images from my youth
Confused like driving a car for the
First time unable to make the machine
Go where I want that is how my feelings
For you are off the path
For something of you must be mine
At best I forgive you for the alienation
Were you clear of mind I'd ask yours
For me for my inattention and lack
Of concern for you for you are now
A man without love from anyone
Unwashed unfed frail skeleton of a man
Loved only if at all by my kind brother
Ever friend to the downtrodden
Farewell Dad this Xmas Eve
We shall not meet again mind to mind
This Lifetime 

Almost Anger

Write about anger you said

You who are always 

Almost my lover

Almost aroused by an image

On your Laptop

Almost a singer in nightclubs

Of your dark moods

Almost a man almost

Almost wanting me

Almost wanting me to leave you

As my emotions overflow and ebb

Almost like the sea

Flowing unlike my desire

That night we bathed ourselves

Almost together in a baptism

Of holy Beat holiness

Almost Ginsberg and Cassady

Almost a monkey and a pig 

In a house that was almost yours

The best I can muster my love is 

Almost Anger because Anger is 

Only possible when it is possible

To give you unadulterated joy

Jack 12-17-12

Milkyway Haiku

Stars blaze winter sky
White Milky Way shimmering
Shines like holy jizz

Orion

Orion

Will you be old friend the last
Name I recall as I stare at the dark
Ascending night in the winter sky
You were with me when my child's
Eye first looked for constellations
You have seen me through all the
Constellations of my life my loves
My one night one year one decade
Lifetime loves a phantasmagoria
Of couplings and sexual surrender
Of hands held and legs spread 
Embraces with fingers through my hair
Mine through theirs your sword piercing 
Consciousness in a cluster of
Mindfulness
In the outback sky of Australia
Before the glaciers of Patagonia
In Copenhagen and the black sands
Of Hawaii in the little round park
Where I climbed trees and waited for
The Milky Way to appear glistening
Sperm of Heaven filling the sky
Flowing to be shared 
With all the dazzling planets of my
Arching firmament


--Jack,  on the eve of the 2012 Solstice