Blog Entries reposted from the my blog

Down in the DIrt Poems

Down In the Dirt has published some more of my poetry.

Just published

Writers from Scars Publications
Association of the Living Dead
Madmen with Guns Madness
The Secret Fly Drone

Previously published

3 5 7 love poem
An Old Man Visits His Wife’s Grave
April 30 In Search of America 1975 – Hitch hiking Tales
Charles Bukowski Road Not Chosen
Fallen Dreams Litter the Ground
If you’ve been around
Lone Foreigner Hiking the Seoul City Walls
My Name Is Nobody
Snarling Cup of Coffee
Strangeness in the Air
Unhinged Lunatic Howling at the Full Moon


Madmen with Guns

After every incident
Of mass gun violence
In the U.S.

Pictures emerge
Of the killers
Almost always white men.

Who stares out at you
With soulless dead eyes
Filled with hate, fear
And shear madness.

With the thousand-year stare
Of the madman
Who only hears

The voices in his head
Screaming kill them all
Kill them all.

And as always
They usually legally bought
The guns.

This case was a bit different
The gunman briefly had his guns
Taken away from him

And his 60 knives as well
Judged temporarily too crazy
To have a gun.

But the red flag law
Is not a permanent ban
As it should be.

And so he was able
To re-arm himself
With the best weapons

In the world
At a very affordable price.
Thanks to the NRA.

And so he was soon lost
Down the rabbit hole
Of insanity and probably drugs,

The lone sniper
A disgruntled young white man
In his 20’s
Sets up shop on top of a building.

He has a high-powered weapon
No doubt bought legally
An AR-15 is the choice
Of the serious gunmen everywhere.

And begins shooting
Into the July 4th parade
Killing six people
Injuring 30.

Before putting the gun down
And fleeing
Before the cops can find him.

The right-wing media
Goes to works
The pundit's pontificate
24/7

It is not about the gun
It is about everything else
That is wrong with our society.

Guns don’t kill people
They proclaim
Guns are the price we pay
For our freedom.

Their demented answer
are more guns
More guns for everyone.

And sadly, nothing will be done
As the politicians offer
Useless thoughts and prayers

The gun ghosts don’t care
They are dead after all.

The madness will not stop
Until we figure out
How to stop
The killers in our midst.

There will be another shooting
No doubt before the day is done
Over 300 so far this year.

And that is just the way
It is in this day and age
Of America.

The land of the free
Home of the brave
And 400 million guns.

The Secret Fly Drone


The fly on the wallpaper
In the CIA director’s office
Was not a real fly
He was an enemy spy drone
Secretly controlled remotely
Listening to all the secret conversations
Until the director smashed him
With a flyswatter
Then realized that it was a spy fly
He had dispatched to bug hell.

Association of the Living Dead India


In India, several years ago
A man falsely claimed his brother
Was dead so he could inherit the family assets,

The dead brother had to fight
To be declared legally not dead
And contest the will.

“The Association of the Living Dead”
Became a movement
Of thousands of people.
For in India apparently,
It was a thing to declare
Your relative is dead.

I never thought
That the US would have
To form their own
“The Association of the Living Dead”
Until this week.

The cyber ninjas
In their infamous non-forensic audit
In the 2016 Arizona election
Claimed that hundreds of dead people
Had voted.

They gave their list of the alleged dead voters
To the attorney general
Who contacts all 300 dead people
Found that 299 of the 300 were in fact
Not dead and none of them knew
That unnamed political operative
Were claiming that they were dead.

The one dead voter was alive
when he voted early.
But died before election day
Thus making his vote not valid
But there was no fraud involved
As he was alive when he voted.

Perhaps they need to form
The “association of the living dead”
To fight for the right of the non-dead people
To continue to vote and receive other government benefits?

What a sad commentary
On the farcical nature
Of contemporary life
In these disunited States of America.


3 5 7 love poem



Missing you missing me
Dreaming about you, do you dream the same
I will love you until the end of time; will you remember me then?




An Old Man Visits His Wife’s Grave


An Old man
Goes to the grave
Of his beloved wife

Carrying her favorite flowers
And a guitar
Playing her love songs
As he remembers her life

Blaming it all
On the damn coronavirus Pandemic
Killing thousands every day
As politicians play games

The dead remain dead
he hears his wife’s voice
from beyond the grave

she is a corona ghost
he wishes he were there with her
as he plays his mournful love songs

he lays down for a moment
and becomes another Corona ghost
just another death that lonely day




April 30 In Search of America 1975 – Hitch hiking Tales


When I was young and foolish
Broke and stubborn
I hitchhiked across the USA

Started in Salt Lake City
Where my greyhound bus pass
Was stolen

The station manager
Could have helped me
But refused to do so

Threaten to call the cops
When I grabbed my bags Without the stolen tags

I said
Go ahead
But I am so out of here

Wondered about Salt Lake City
Went to a bar
Found I had to buy my booze
Next door
And they would mix it for me

Had to order food too
After a bloody Mary
And a burger

I walked about town
Saw the Mormon Temple

Finally about 3 pm
It was time to hit the road
Did not look back

Ended up in Cody Wyoming
Got a room shower
Steak beer
Using my rapidly depleted cash Spent 25 dollars
Money really went far
Back in those days

A band of professional
Communist agitators
Gave me a ride
To Des Moines

Lots of weed, booze
And politics later
Got off the road
Slept outside

Next day
A beautiful woman
Drove me to near Chicago
In a red mustang

Might have been
The girl in the song
Took it easy
Digging her vibe

She invited home
But was not sure
If her estranged husband
Would welcome me

So, I am being foolish
And inexperienced with women
Did not go to her place

And always regretted
That I had lost
My chance that day

Then on to Chicago
Several rides later
Visited friends

Hit the road again
A series of uneventful rides
With truckers
And others

And a week later
I ended in New York City

Slept along the way
In cars
In truck stops
In high way, rest stops

Always moving
Always going
Nonstop talking
And lots of free weed
And beer
And conversation

One more memorable ride
Occurred outside Albany
On my return to Chicago

A middle-age creepy looking man
Picked me up
In a brand-new Cadillac

He was he said a dynamite deliverer
For the Mafia
Went to various places
To blow up shit

He hated a lot of people
Particularly hippies from California
And Jewish people

Looking at me to confirm
That I was both

I told him that I lived in New York
And had never been to California
And although I might have looked Jewish
As I what was called back in the day
A “Jewfro”

I was not Jewish
Many years later I discovered
That I am indeed part Jewish
But then I did not know
And I felt a bit of strategic information
Might keep me alive

Then I realized that he was just jiving with me
And we relaxed
And he pulled out some weed
And beer
And we mellowed out

But I believe that he was with the mob
Perhaps not a dynamite dealer
A real made Italian made mafia member

By Chicago
I had enough
I called my Dad
Told him what had happened

Wanted a ticket home
And he sent me a ticket
And 500 dollars
And I went home

I told him I would tell him
My tales someday
But never did

I learned so much
About my fellow Americans
And the strange vibe
That was 1975

And now it is too late
But I wanted to finally
Tell the world

Charles Bukowski Road Not Chosen

While reading Charles Bukowski's poetry
On the metro ride home
Listening to Buddha bar music
On my oh-too-hip iPod

I begin to see myself as I was
Over 30 years ago when I was merely a bit player
A minor character in a Charles Bukowski poem


A wild young underemployed intellectual
Hanging out in dismal bars and dives all over Asia and California
Hanging with disreputable women and drunks and drinkers
And characters out of his kinds of haunts


A mad poet bard of the underground
A drunken poet in a drunken bum show
That nightly played in his head


Then one day I met the woman of my dreams
And went down a different path
A long slow path to respectability


And now 30 years later
I am no longer a wild man
I am still a poet at heart
But I am now also a bureaucrat
In a button-down suite


Doing the people’s business
Working for the Government
I’ve become the Man