+ Trenton + car + car

+ Eclectic Factory +
minus some letters
+ Yumegiwa Last Boy +
a memory of Juliette +
her at her laptop
clacking + a cigarette
in her hand --does she
smoke even? Likely no,
likely not in the
house, her sister's?
+ all the deadlines
I've missed + the
promises + Ryan Eckes (
what is he doing?)
+ beb + mall santa dance,
that she never does
anymore + everything I do
is ten times cuter
+ car + car + car

plus the snarling look
of disgust on Chloe's face
+ I Love Ugly clothing +
lack of eye contact on
12th st + flea market
+ status pattern +
prada + prada + gucci +
his dark ass lips +
a match + a cigarette
+ a ride to work
w/ whatever business
casual I could muster,
the manuscript?
for Otis? For Rae?
"manic insouciance"
that was what was said,
didn't much care for it
all after that + night
email from Matt Kremer,
telling me to make my
mind my redeemer +
he could've been drunk
+ you never know can
you? the last
twenty centuries +
Flirting Scholars +
Rogue Scholars +
Father's Day +
car + car + car

Bourbon Station
here I come!
+ new pen + Florsheim
+ obscure Norwegian
polo + british khaki
+ green vintage
blazer from upstate
NY, not Newburgh +
everyone in upstate
NY shits on Newburgh,
says beb during car ride
through to Cornwall +
it is low income they
all say + I looked at
it when I drove through --
it looked like
5th St in North Philly
a bit, cept no
viet businesses +
it was a quick drive thru
+ we had somewhere
to be. like outlaws.
+ car +
car +
car

+ drum machine +
no matter how hard
one tries

+ James Gandolfini died.
At least he died in
Italy, Nicky says,
but I just think, one
night in bed, that
his family would just
have to pay extra to
move his body back to
Jersey. That is, if
they wanted him
buried there. And
why not?
+ it seems right,
right?

in quiet mode
in my under wear
in front of the
mini fan

wingyi forgets deadline, dreads not graduating

you missed a deadline
everyone has
pat pat
glad everything's okay

what was the reason
you missed it?
just plum
forgot?

we can remind ourselves
by different means
but you can't fix forgetting
by that I mean the act of forgetting

of course you will
keep on chuggin' youse
in the meantime
will write poem about this

otis 1

my unemployment benefits cease(d)
i used to claim them online, like, every sunday
that was life, more or less,
i dragged my computer around like an ape.

then someone came
out of the light they stood.
as to what brought 'em there i did not know
naturally, i asked, what brought you here?

I came for your sake, which is enough.
and now I am leaving,
with or without.

Juror 17

feet
where are my feet
squaw squaw
a flutter in the street
leaving me aching,
undelivered and all,

Juror 17 was a real treat
I puff away at one
in the bathroom of
city hall.
"Well, I can be
very empathetic."

and all the
attorneys simultaneously
jot,
     black waves
then back to yr smile
        energetic

"17!"
I cried
out.

A Neil Poem

by Neil Schaaf

Don't overcome
don't find peace
don't find paradise
not on the mountain
but in the city
live with the derelict
at home with the filth
you are here to suffer
don't escape your suffering
Eat the shit, taste the shittiness

whole thread

was I like an office
that and meds
I'll take it from there
my then position

the pond frog cannot contemplate the oceans
how can I understand the universe?
or Juliette's poems?
or a vat of vinegar?

can we mirror heaven
only through strict ritual
I bethought
"do not foll."

I'ma go have a smoke and think it over.

"fwd-operating-base:  this striving for tone of "manic insouciance" -- I can see/hear the striving. Certain lack of discipline in terms of stringent writing that is somewhat interesting, but then not.  I wanted to like these poems, but in the end couldn't."

shut

no head
for theory      ing
just poetry

up

no, baby

ideas fell down beside you
major flowers not knowing
what they are

invading me with their perfumes
I am blue from inside out
drawn til dawn

all things organic accumulate
in strange breaking skies
grumbling my name

Wednesday in those arms myself
Spring tiger germinates
open straying abandon

the wood-road resembles you
long local women drag boulders
and weep and still cannot compare

how!
all that shit in the world
gathered together w/o (r/l/d)
respite (heehee)

I was love swung
at breakfast zapped
waiting at the water
for company

it sd nothing about
flipping thru stouts
which bittered my tongue throughout

in the middle of it all
my uncle calls
to interrupt

father time

"Henri aeon volcanic sleep

when he shot he

swept the stratosphere"

that being so dozing

I almost interrupted myself

w/ a snort

after seven, the blanket 

remains time 

to turn on my father's light

and resume, lovingly and appreciatively,

my "studies"

come home and shuffle R
van over curb and swing

screen door to 

hear mother, 

sing

double fan

chorus exhaust,

pouring cooking over yard

and jar of preserved lemons

that fast spawn bacterial colonies

I pour that orange-green Eden

disc down the alley drain

hums my father the night

provides cover but isn't good,

says sister

moon faces us always, this 

I attribute to him

154

in brief moment, I
have wrote, before thsi now
eh, leaving errors to their
errors, and having my calloused
middle first knuckle shining
impressive and impressing
many a lackey around the cubes
though th is, howeverit may play
raises cheek edges, go without
lasting praise, and by the next day
all has been lifted unto a new page
O and I would give that god-given
skill to a passing mutt
if not for the sheer size I am
a full man less of Maximus
and without the shins to proof
I do my walking now daily
to space 154, sometimes none of it
and round the crystal buildings
every day I notice how much of adulthood
is dressing in black and brown
and cracking appropriate smiles
I move, instanter, to a new mouth
and stew in my musicks deep
underground, shuffle to a waltz
behind fifty old ladies
and settle for the least fat
man or woman to accompany
saddle saddle
they give the new trains to
those in the main line
usually, otherwise one must spend
a whopping hour or so
to enjoy automated doors
and televised Temple and Villanova ads
blechk

Address

after a winter's hiatus, the fingers run light
and soft touches crackle out like teal
and seagreen buds
I bring myself back to my de luxe
and tap away, O where writing much
carries a smell of the oil
on the carriage
I leave Schenectady playing

finding myself employed gainfully
(p) and full and smokefilled,
leaves me languid and bedridden
'cept the times I claw up the mountain
with purplish horizonal hair
and look out across a barn's beam

I step heavily across a swampy
shortcut laden with infant spiders
and though the infants are indistinguishable
from the adults we got the hell out of there
all the same

being a self-identified poet I must write a new
The K to celebrate such a decision,
though whether that is career-wise, I am unable
to confidently say one or another way
somewhere will exist such a timeline
and hopefully it won




                                        5132 el rio ave
                                        los angeles, ca
                                        90041

The OK

will try once more a time
and again I will try again once more and a time
holy yolks this giving him the energy-food
which wrests from the ground a slithering word
and chomps and grinds and cuts with incisors
the great jaw of

the massacred worm, this one Spring
I find all of them, w & w alike, dry out of grass
and soil! choke up every inch of the living scape
and find themselves into the fire
that is oxygenated asphalt and truckings here &
there

solves a matter so simply a girl young and dark
outside the steps of the grand school, where I was once
a filly kid, she stoops, grabs one and throws the word
back onto the kempt green   others found it
repulsive
but a life!

but which comes this way another word,
and the logic that forces syntax open
aw haw, how gullible I have been
all these two days perhaps more
that I may suffice to write

five lines at the end of the day have
I the energy left?
if breath wasn't so scarce
it happens and happens to
the line, where I trace my heart
resists the temptation to peer up

and act as a metronome to my very being,
that which is a man and a scholar and a boy and a weasel
and a worker and standing, N there,
A the edge of the cliffs
back when no two pennyloafers, or three, or more
would do, this

would do, this is P, huddled against the mass
of an oak nearby girls floundered
and like words, gasps

haven't written!
in this flea-bitten place
my mind, baugh
flooded with

truly is there a man in a tide,
jung heart, jung sum,
keeps me engaged in otherwise
fleeting endeavors
smiles me

she's not talking heart
she's talking gold
and taking

just spilled tea on my
keyboard fuggg

seaweed hair

can't stop eating
my seaweed hair
comes in wasabi
and sesame too
coo coo coo
let it melt betwee-
-n the roof of
my mouf and ton-
        gue

trenton poems [cont. 2]

home being
anterior picks
up the numbness
the imagination
guesses
at the heat
which
makes up moving
the skin
which is felt
which is higher
a complete light
and lock
of standing
imagination
time, money,
love even,
a feast of goodnights
to swallow
engulfs home

home, the
artist has
his sympathies

she is my every
eye
from which I
find the origin of
this love,
where we are

where we sing,
a gifted catalogue
of people of
all kinds.

a vacation from
the love of
animals --
til death
til it is more
than the mass of
blank release

we go hey!

in the night

when at home

thrusts of feet

dark socks weep

fastens the soul
of waves
of electricity

---

where is this
eternity coming
from and thru
1, 2, 3,
on a spool of stars
a swirling digital
vibration
that finds us
living in another
transparent
car

a beautiful
lover, where
you find days

lets days go
by, into the
overtopping coral
where is my cutting
this is the
moral of growing
underground,
sounds like blue
and sounds like
the same
untamed

across a lot
elsewhere, maybe,
or even,
some fair to
touch, to brush
back,
dissolves at the bottom
with sleep and
lamplight

into the soundscape
it

---

under the stare
the peace is
unnerving, at
the same life-
-time --
a beautiful
house

a long dark road,
a paycheck at
the end of
it -- where the
water goes --
goes green
bald dreams
culminating
into rocks and
ferns, like
dinosaurs of
ancient --

---

to what is the same,
man, keep
moving on,
it is the same
here as
is there
every moment we sit
and die
death! isn't after
us --
I used to drown
and still haven't
learned to tread
water --
I am supple
this way
skin and joints
and flowery
head
it crashes!!

---

house, darkness, house
light, trail, rail,
comes in a spade
is efflorescent

here we go w/ the
smallest sacrifice,
it doesn't
worry much
about control --

volcanic feelings
take us for a ride,
and is
untranslatable
for the most

closeness through
my heart
no men is like
or right--

w/ nothing better
and it will --
oh yes --
the machines come
full circle
w/ senses that
"frees" over --

I cannot hear the
startling looks,
why? what do
I need?
what do I take?
that isn't the
stuff of
life?
because I try
I try to be
"like" life
as WCW

---

he hoards, almost,
the soil,
the girlfriends,
as we
grow waiting old
and
"stop making
sense"

nothing is better
than trying
upon exp.

a work of art
which I draw from
I draw from a do-zen
times and cannot
die--

cannot be crazy
and loose,
man, gimme
the hook

succumbing to the
products of
America--
That's when
Tacony
arrives.

---

I was so young I
distinctly
remember
the effect of
a nude woman
dressed in ink.

I was so pure effect
and for reason I
succumbed to poetry,
it was not a
difficult condition,
nor choice,

nor a mass of
lecture data,
a shape of a
casual animal

I was so distinctly
young I came
back to
write my experience

I was so upset, then,
the imagination
was the pure force
in fact, lost,
and

grow, itself a comet.

There is a [undecipherable]
in life that
is so sharp,

a knife, almost!
that outs as
tragedy, a hole
in us,
mind it,
a pleasant
stance

trenton poems [cont.]

Temple --
where opportunities
are made. I
saw the photo,
somewhat opaque,
of him in some
study

---

Boy or girl they
couldn't say
michael or mikayla
but thought that's okay,

and named her so
now she sits
w/ a gaggle of ladies
talking daughters and snow.

there are no new jobs,
so where does he go?
a sitter, he needs
school, structure, and glow.

My in-laws got off by the
little one.
She's used to sleeping in,
spent two weeks being
    sick
throwing up into the bin.

They did such a sloppy
job, she started
w/ a coff.
Cleared sky, no
bruising -- she chops,
she chances, soft.

---

old man snaps back
on his Navy hat
walks w/ cane
down lit up lane.

---

Trenton train quacks
twice where the
step is at.

---

Winter weather tip
Please don't slip.

--

Fucking cold
but I've got a cig
and work is pushed
off.--
"Q!" shouted out.
        I go
"Hay girls! Hay!
Howya doin'?!"
and laugh

---

new page!
aw I write in
you. Be it like
some brief
romance, then
I'm off to #2

---

Blue boots!
aw how I
walk in youse.
Be it like
a commitment
one step into two.

---

did I see
four birds on the wire
or three?

---

Spikes clustered
on iron beams
yellow with buttons
and rust it seems

---

Lately the phones
on the hook, there
being no physical arm
after each smoking
break
I am back to hear
harm
done--to the five kids
this woman went on
and her mate (who
had time for working)
is somewhere of
little use.

---

w/ freshly written poems,
my left palm does
double that--
a carbon copy
w/ no trouble I sat
again on the exp.
toward Trenton
some vague shape
of a man sits
at the edge -- and if
he looks ugly enough
we'll both keep
our luxurious seats.

---

clicka-clicka-clicka
is the hole puncher's
only sound in the car
and --shh!--
none of that in the
front of the train.
"tickets please!"
says conductor --
can I call him
that?
I've got my own and
other's systems down
pat. Some
like to place their
pass in the slit of
the chair
and some like to
leave it tucked
somewhere
like the gap between
the rubber siding
and the window or
hold it up in one
hand -- head down
reading or being
on their smart devices.
Me? I have my own
vices,
I do my crosswords
and sometimes, I
read poems.
I've got Creeley
and recently,
Niedecker in my
bag.
There's fun
there's fun to be had!

---

Seldom I look out
over grey philadelphia
and smile
the overgrowth,
rowhouses, graffiti
stretches
            miles and miles.

---

I'm wearing a lot of
tan today, yes.
When I go to work,
I try and look my
    best.

---

At one point
(exp) Trenton
runs under the El
and thankfully
I'm not on
that hell.

---

The railway is speckled
grey and scarred.
Outside
Bridesburg sits
only half a car.

---

Slim chance to none
for a meet and greet,
as the line of black coats
march out toward
Tacony St.

---

after a few stops
have been called
I thought "hey!" this
ain't an express at all!

---

Holmesburg Junction
looks like shit.

trenton poems

--Kidding - the train
waits for no one,
yet stops for everyone.

---

There stood old
Pyramid Electric
in the snow
grounded.

---

Some branches hold
on, some hold much,
some wiggle, some
stop just,
some jut and
some joust

---

Every time -- I
think the train is
alive, because it
blinks
with me inside.

It cries too!

---

Most women
look incredible
in the reflection
of a black
window.

---

I sit with the
excuse, waiting
for my gut
to arrive.

---

When the train
turns, I want
to bite its
tail. now
visible

---

When it arrives
(not at my stop)
they scramble
like ants to
the donut station.

---

it kan be dizzying
to figure out how all these
rails connect.
a purple system massive
of heart ways
and cells

---

even though I had
my bag at my feet
now I'm pretty
sure no one
will sit next to me.

---

o! arrival! suburban!
city hall! comcast!
work! to
coffee to coff
to stifle yrself
to walk out on
a train a poem

native is

his head is human masculine power
concerning that this bowl of a man be a door
to something else back of,
war as main subject,
Spring as subterranean,
titan as character,

When I read Inri, I gasped
and picked a date in my head
to relieve her of it

being over there at Ryan Eckes's that night
made me forget about breaks
really though, take a look at the fat books
and see that they are simply a limitation
of the haphazardness of my hand
and the size of the so-called fat book

Philadelphia is far from unspoiled
and so cannot become my center and circumference
it is, however, my place and so I work that place

"I hate those who take away
and do not have as good to
offer. I hate them. I hate the carelessness."

good luck

click clack click clack
ping pong ping pong
ka-chak-ka-chack
dup dup dupdupdupdupdup
                 (good short serves)
as one deserves another
right in the path of
the monstrous gas heater
now never really
having to show up here
again.

I've been looking for a
new job ever since
my hours were cut.
Ah, yes, well,
what to expect
from a human being
who has to eat
--dust. 14k still in the
holy mole.

Now the grind comes
halting, in early
morning which is it
clouds filtered through
buses and electric
dust that builds
city clouds.

I pick this route --
and load up on musicks
and steady myself
for what comes

that monsoon where a
courier for timecycle
sat out in the blackened
granite alcove to
work on his
crossword.

"samurai soft art"
seven letters.
chuckling and making
sure I wasn't imposing
I squat next to
him and attempt
some of the clues.

Didn't get a word.
checked the time  --
asked for it, actually,
slanted my tie,
accepted his parting
gift of luck
and drove it back
w/ me to the NE

the entire time an
18-wheeler white
washing me.

Charles Olson reads 'Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27 [withheld]' (Mar 1966)

"I was so stung my
first memory is of a
spent casing to fill
mobsters."

3/9/13

fire the sine qua non
of coming out here.
now in dry morning
having to go to the can
observing and picking
up the charred pieces
of wood from last
night

dressed down
trees dress
splayed mesh of wood
and carbon
Skyla, the sheepdog,
sits and ponders
I watch her
be a dog.