Poem at 58

seen enough

tired still

smoking drinking

heard enough

beauty’s interesting

everything else’s

not

 

Jeannie was there years

before I got there gone

years after I left

 

In Copenhagen I drank and smoked a lot

nobody blamed anyone for anything

we were young and wouldn’t die for years

fucked and ate had friends that weren’t friends

no money everything was new and we didn’t give a shit 

now almost every minute there’s a problem

the phone rings the car bleeps and no one

ever stops talking I wish they would

I know a painter

who’s traveling

for seven years

keeping a journal

taking pictures

Instagraming

then going back

to give lectures

I haven’t been

home for 20 years

I haven’t kept a journal

since I was a teenager

taken a photograph

since I was thirty

and I’ve never painted

thirty years

I'm at the wall

nothing's fun

any more

the last 

thing I 

wanted to 

be in 

Cascais

was awake

just got back from Portugal hopefully

for the last time the dogs bark people

walk around yesterday

there's more places to eat in Cascais

lived there 12 years drowned laptops

in the tub everything costs a million euros

gave away almost everything I had

you can accept fight go away

all the people have the same name

except their parents who had different same names

there was an accident on the bridge

Christ looms over Lisbon 

antenna attached to his skull endless prayers

I went to the beach this weekend

pain is Catholic had a ten gram piece

of Nepalese hash in the safe I sent down from Amsterdam

in the post dogs unhappy

in their dog world humans walking on the line behind

drunk on sleep disease money dogs like money they shit in the park

free bowls of dog water dogs don't know Europe ends at the sea and the Pyrenees

I was happy in Amsterdam people walked dogs drank and smoked 

on terraces now I'm really because slowly

and with suffering disappearing nobody dies and no one

is born in Portugal you are old or young you live with dogs

and you eat what they eat

 I

don't

know

 

We know

we can’t know

we know

we can guess

we know

right or wrong

is too late

My mother’s birthday was two days ago

it crossed my mind she’s been dead

two years I think condolences were posted

no one celebrated her life remembers

why she was even here in the first place

why she should show up in Portugal

and talk to strangers looking for a Protestant

church in Lisbon because Jesus always

seems to be dying in the Catholic ones

I remember sitting in Cascais

when Gene was alive out there

in Pinhal Novo Jeff and I would

drive across the river to see him

one time he showed us around

We ate but we didn’t buy anything

Sitting in Cascais I forgot to know

anybody unless I needed to

everywhere a plane away 

Gene was still alive Jeff 

still out there

 

it’s summer we

come and go

Christian’s in Norway

Rico’s in Sete

it’s hot in Amsterdam

we’re staying in France

until September

Fête de la Musique

28 years later drinking beer

in the Place Couverte Anduze

Duet playing cover tunes

French meet the Dutch

in the Euro cup tonight

I’m going home after dinner

 

Expert in nothing

or as Cappy would say

jack of all trades

there is no one

I can write for

never has been

I burned my passport

no one is good

we think beyond

our bodies and

we are wrong

the best 

we 

can do

Now

When someone

I know dies

I think man

I’m stuck here

The owl’s back

calling at night

again again again

 

no melody no

tempo no reply

thirty years ago I left New York

since then wandered Europe

learning just enough of the language

to know very little needs to be said

waking up's

bad habit

thinking

It looks 

like no 

one lives 

here