Like a red light on the dashboard 

My mother told me I was nothing and hopeless 

every day for years, before I could even drive,

every time I walked through one of our run of rooms. 

In that slum I felt like nothing and nobody,  

being in those little rooms proved it to me

and I believed her, about me, all the way down.

But when I got out there in the fresh air

all those other people smiled at me, 

so I felt a lot of hope, and I smiled back, triple! 

But, when I got back home into the TV dinner air, 

she wiped it off me when she told me they 

didn’t know me like she did, no one else ever would. 

She did that intentionally,

did her best, like a plan

to keep me close, friendless. 

That woman fucked me over. 

Because, now …

sometimes, years and rooms later

I see a red light on my dashboard

and sometimes, I still believe her. 

So, now … 

rather than turn up the radio, so 

I can’t hear the grinding of my engine 

or brain

I get out of the car

and walk out of there. 

2025: A Space Odyssey 

Back in grade school, ’round about the second grade,

when the Parents Come to School Day came 

and the kids asked me why my dad who wasn’t there, wasn’t

I told them my dead dad was out of town on business

because I didn’t want to bring anybody down. 

They didn’t ask me why my blown-out candle of a mother 

was there, but that’s another poem. 

This year, from now on, I’m going to take up much more space,

like a gregarious grizzly bear, walking in from out of the cold

sitting down in the creakiest chair the establishment shows me,

crossing my furry legs, and ordering a Budweiser in the wine bar!

Now, none of this is means I want to be a mean man, 

turn into a man-spreader, we’ve seen that forever, and still.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to order a drink because I won’t, 

doesn’t even mean I’ll turn into a bear, although it may be too late. 

It means hang out the brain-washing to die. 

It means speaking up, coming alive. 

Means not asterisking every thought I have to a footnote 

in the back of all the books, means not waiting 

for the scholarly introduction, to introduce me. 

I tried this out last night at some kind of a reading, 

I don’t even know what kind, but I wanted to go to one. 

At the question and answer session after, 

I said something 

then they asked me, 

what on earth are you talking about? 

But I didn’t care, and it didn’t hurt.

I have room now, open space. And I’ll tip 30% in the wine bar. 

I wanted to say something!

Roses on the run!  

A fascist rapist man just got to be president 

all his macho men puckered up 

lined up behind him like a box of hammers—

but! I just saw two skinny teenage boys 

running like the wind down Guadalupe Street 

toward the art gallery district 

loaded down with dozens of red roses flying— 

red hair on one of them, penny glinting in the sun, 

dirty blonde flying off the head of the other boy

none of it even remotely combed nor coiffed, 

( they haven’t that kind of time! )

laughing like they have 

like they are 

all kinds of new tomorrows. 

Not all men are jerks, these boys prove it, 

both flying, so much hair and crazy roses on fire 

maybe not a working car or a plan between them, 

but in love with somebody or something else. 

Slip on the banana peel of kindness 

Lighten, loosen, laugh it into little bits, don't be late. 

Downtown Santa Fe fifteen minutes ago, almost 8,000 feet high 

up, clear and cool but everybody was frowning, walking stiff and slow

like they're riding the automatic airport walkway through the shops and gates. 

And these ones were on vacation. But they're on the way to ok. 

Kindness is coming, it's on the way, it's already here. 

This is not as sappy as that smirk might think it is,

because this kind of kindness is fuckin' strong 

and you know that if you know how weak life was

when there wasn't any and none on the way, only fuckin' fear. 

It's so good up here, a hummingbird just smacked into my window 

and dropped to the dirt, but he or she not only lived through it, now 

he or she has that look in those tiny eyes and that accelerated wing flap

like maybe there was psilocybin in the feeder, in the glass, or in maybe me!

So go on, you, slip. This won't hurt, take it from me. 

A bed, a turntable, and The White Album 

I felt brand new, ready to go, the day of the dare. 

Fall all over the air, all over me, I walked all the way 

rather than get on those three midwestern slow buses,

lugging my turntable, speaker, and The White Album. 

It took all day, escaping across the state line, escaping 

everything that had happened from day one to this one, 

so I savored it; in love with red leaves, fireplace air, and me. 

I really saw the landlord and she really saw me. 

I loved her red autumn sunset eye shadow, 

she said she loved my yellow Van Gogh haystack 

... wide wale ... corduroy pants. 

She looked astonished, but prouder of me than anybody   

I’d ever met, asked if I’d swum with those wales on 

all the way over the state line, had I really walked all the way? 

I said yes, she threw me the room key, I caught it, 

she knew I could, and I carried the turntable, 

the lone speaker, and The White Album all the way upstairs. 

I didn’t slit open my still in cellophane Beatles record 

before I opened my room—and I opened the door smiling, 

smelling multiple decades of sex and cigarettes 

which made me feel young, ready to go, life starting!

Night fell, rippling like a blue blanket of sparks snap

electric through the old room and the new (here from the start) me,

so I plugged in the turntable too, and got a new shock 

of recognition: I’m a handsome new guy, on the loose!

No one had ever come close to saying that to me, 

but they’d never been nor be in this room, the Eiffel Tower 

(local country radio station tower) twinkling in the window

meaning Paris, 

The White Album about to play

meaning London, 

and me, only a couple of days thoroughly deflowered 

by a flowery Irish bartender, her flowers still on me. 

(Still no bath, me. I rolled our flowers on my used bed.)

Meaning I was alive. Next to no money but I could see 

everything coming at me out that window, and it came!

But first, I put on The White Album.  

 

Corduroy, but a little Novocaine, too 

I have new pants and I look real good in them.

Wide wale corduroy, the raw material from Portugal, 

yellow and warm as Van Gogh’s haystacks, imported, 

then expertly tailored all night by someone in New York City 

… but allow me to get back to the point.  

I’m at the dentist. Half the dental staff is crammed in here

by my chair at this moment watching my examination,

my mouth wide open, all their dental equipment down my throat

and Tesuque Novaro, my hygienist for the evening, 

calls for an x-ray which scatters the staff. 

Moments later, the staff and my jaw back in place,

one look at the x-rays on the computer and they all gasp; 

one of them, safe behind a mask, asks—“My man, how old are you? 

What happened, where you been? You have many holes in your head!”

They have me strapped down but I stretch my legs out way long. 

Oh but … says Tesuque. 

Oh what?  … I ask. But I know.

“You look so good in your pants,” she says.

“Your warm, Van Gogh haystack-yellow, 

wide wale corduroy pants. Oh, mi corazón!”  

The staff observes my legs, agrees, and so do I.

The chief dentist, Dr. Arturo Ipanema, walks in 

and doesn’t even have to look at the x-rays to say: 

There are no holes in his pants or his confidence. 

He only has to look at me.