For my daughter

It was eventually bound to happen as do all inevitable things. She was not so much as ten seconds old, right after her first cries and just before they handed me a pair of shears to snip the umbilical cord that I knew this would happen and when it did, my heart turn to dust and fall into a deep abyss, wherein merciless flames would carbonize and solidify with an influx of oxygen infusing thus and raising this hapless conglomeration towards the sun, in a burnt offering to the eight million God/desses of man in an enflamed plea to gain one scintilla of wisdom, a scosche clearer perception as to how to proceed with this inevitable juncture of passage so that I may not fade or withdraw but instead act with courage in this hour of trial. 

But here I stand before God and all, one man alone, trying like bloody hell to be the best father one imperfect human can be, fingers upon my sword, gaze unblinking upon the boy who asked my daughter to go with him to the homecoming dance.  

If you don't understand the profundity of this moment, then you are obviously not the father of a daughter in this modern world or you're not paying the least bit of attention or your alcohol poisoning induced coma hasn't worn off yet or you're a childless idiot who died sixty bazillion years ago and doesn't understand the priorities of the particular humanoids in possession of something called a 'dick' (which almost always gets them into trouble) and who tango around and through the psychological booby traps of a  'Carmen Electra will fuck you silly if you buy this after shave lotion' kind of world and yes I know I'm writing in hideously long run on sentences but this is my kid we're talking about!

It's such a battle and I'm only at the fringes. She is one of the best people I've ever known and I'm her dad. I wrote the following poem for her years ago when she was a wee little blondie toe headed princess who would take my hand and lead me to wherever she thought I needed to go. Be it to push her on the swings or play with her dolls, she was the best playmate I ever had and now, thankfully, in spite of my worst wishes, she is growing up and becoming a lovely young woman. I only hope I can do as much for her on the father side of the equation.

For my daughter, in the future

In this forever

nothing lasted

Perhaps in the next

we will find 

some permanence

Emancipation from change

that prevented your stay

in my life

but not in my heart

The hair of your head

shines radiant gold

shimmering halos

reveal your mischief

as the trials and dreams

of a young girl

Looking back

from this now

at a future unpassed

do I relish your dance

and your voice

Angel wings

create breeze

and kiss my cheek

as you pass

like the days

too soon gone

Thank you for reading.

Hug those little ones for as long as they'll let you.

All my love always,

Max

'swimming nekkid' (never never never)

There can be dredged up in me such levels of anger and compassionless rage. But there are some crimes that we as humans cannot adequately punish. Therefore that task is best left to God, whatever you perceive that to be. 

That said, there are some acts and perpetrations, to my perception, especially when inflicted upon children that when I hear about it, I have to fight like hell the urge to cast a seriously venomous hoodoo upon those who use children as chess pawns in their poisoned and diseased sexual conquests.

Being a Libra, the idea of injustices heaped upon those unable to defend themselves raises up in my cauldron a response to the audacity of the perverse and the cruelty of the ignorant to pull the lynchpin from the precarious bridge they tread while I laugh like Satan when their wickedness falls upon the sharp rocks and slathers upon the copal, abbreviating their corrupted and demonic song. 

When the innocent are victimized, the oppressors, in me, have gained an enemy. 

We were both seven years old. He would come to my house after school to play. One day we went into the forest behind my childhood home. Here he forced me to take off my clothes, lay face down in the red wagon we had pulled together and then to say quiet and never tell anyone while he sodomized me with a broken tree branch. I cried softly while he raged. When we got back home, I exploded and told him to go home and never come back. My mother told me to 'be nice to him, he is your friend'. She never knew what had happened that day. I never told her.

Later that week, in school, during show and tell, after the rest of us had finished showing and telling about our model airplanes, sewing projects and pinch pots, he stood up and said he and his father would 'go camping together' and sometimes they would 'go swimming nekkid' and then go back to the tent where his father would 'fuck' him 'up the ass'.

The entire universe came to a screeching halt.

Not a sound was made until our teacher said to him, '*****, that's a family secret. We don't tell our family secrets in show and tell. Now children, let's not tell anyone about *****'s family secret that he told us today. That's not what show and tell is for. 

As long as I live, I will never forget that.

This poem was initially sparked by the 2008 case of Josef Fritzl. A monster in human form, who kept his daughter Elisabeth prisoner for 24 years in a makeshift dungeon beneath his home in Austria. During this time, she was continually raped while children were born, miscarried, lived and died all while wrapped in his evil. When I heard of the case, I turned off the news, sat at the kitchen table and titled a page with the words 'An Open Letter to Joseph Fritzl from the Soul of Your Daughter'. The piece that follows in a profusely edited and mercifully abridged version of the 20 plus pages of rage, tears, curses and prayers and that purged out of me that night while pounding my fist on the table, screaming and sobbing for his daughter as well as any and all that bear the scars from the scourges of this realm of hell. 

never never never

Claws prepared

for bloodletting

lying in wait 

for my rapist to arrive

in whatever guise

the bastard may assume

You who cannot succumb

to the altar of equilibrium

I will suck you in

with my subservience

that has you lost

among the weeds

of your thoughts

I place further voodoo

upon you

my sweet nemesis

hear my voice

as you rape me

your life is mine

I drain you 

like the vampire

you have made of me

If I spit in your mouth

I know you will return

to bow unto me

as you beat me

in the dungeon 

of your own creation

of which you cannot escape

I leave you to sleep

in your own feces

until our next bout

when I die

you come

I convulse

you forsake

I beget

you retract

I lay silent

on this pillow

dreaming of God

you lie shivering

upon granite

fretting about the hell

where I will haunt you

Your greatest conquest

and defeat

a child 

such as me

the sex of your rage

the violence of your semen

leaving me impregnated

in  a sweat and bloody acceptance

of who I must be

and how I must live

beyond and above

your thoughts

wrath, charm, venom and scandal

You will behold me

as an apparition

a scolding spirit

a long and sustained scream

you will wish

you had never invoked

but was, is and will be

beyond the creation

of your perverse reality

where you found  me

to slash and choke

until now

I will haunt you

and you shall

never

never

never

exorcise me.

Thank you for reading,

Many blessings and all my love always,

Max

Poetry, my love...

"Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead."

Charles Bukowski

I don't know why I care so much about poetry as I do. It's not like I'll ever make any money writing avant garde verses and deconstructed stanzas, thumbing my nose at conventional pentameter, attempting to make relevant a form of writing usually predisposed as masturbatory fodder for dickless academics, pissed upon romantics, cerebrally engorged ganja huffing losers, weepy eyed bisexually curious terminally angry art school dropouts and your seriously uncool grandma.

Still, I can't turn away or leave the damn stuff alone. It's like swiss chocolate dipped in cocaine and surreptitiously drizzled over Angelina Jolie's breasts. I just can't help myself but to seek out, uncover, become immersed, feast and devour with reckless abandon.

I suppose it's because I have no choice. Like Son House wailing the blues across the Mississippi Delta between beatings, like Anais Nin screaming while miscarrying before her heartless midwife or like the time I felt my small family on the verge of fracture and I heard 'The Desiderata' for the first time and it saved my 8 year old life. Or when I read the writings of Harry Crews and Arthur Rimbaud and I learned how to properly stand up and say 'Fuck You' with the eloquence of Shakespeare and the resolve of iron. Or when I first gazed upon the Mona Lisa and Guernica and my eyes beheld poetry distilled into visual ambrosia. Or the first time I smoked a huge spliff on a long road trip and heard Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. I slowly came to realize that it's all poetry that surrounds us. From the laughter of children to the sighs and moans following orgasm. 

We sing because we suffer, because we revel, because we are alive and we can, because we must, because without this...

"the whole shithouse goes up in flames."

Jim Morrison

When Leonardo sat on the hill

dreaming of flight

filling his sketch books

with wing movements

aerodynamic assumptions

probability theories

devoid of disaster

is when Picasso

crash landed his pigments

into my retina

blinding me to stoic grid works

filling with deconstructed kaleidoscopes

thrown hell all to the wind

is when Mozart exploded

into my aorta

seizing from me breath

absconding with wings

I had earmarked

to traverse mediocrity

They poised me on a precarious ledge

and sneezed

orchestrating my disintegration

abstracting my skull

on the sidewalk below

preventing all else

that dared encroach

upon the unpoisioned realm

of my infant perception

I became Galarina

and made love

to Salvador Dali

upon a soft timeless canvas

I kissed Michelangelo good night

After caressing his tortured spine

blessing him with olive oil

and the 91^st psalm

easing his painful writhing

derived from exhausting sessions

depicting ascensions of cherubim

leaving him spent

to dream of his next revelation

to be rendered

across fresco skies

of the Sistine chapel

Painting our fingertips

so close to the divine

across the divide

the mural disintegrating

into dust of the stars

perfuming the heavens

with song

A labyrinth of freedom unfolded

as Jackson Pollack danced

spilling his whiskey

in the most exquisite splattering

ever commissioned by God

Let’s all drink blessed wine

until sunrise

painting refractions

of purple, gold and pink

across the ink washed indigo horizon

staring wide eyed

into the rising orb

as our Nirvanas collide 

we satyrs and angels

applauding the coming of new dawn

and celebrating death

of the old decrepit  sciences

meditating with reverence

in anticipation

of the impending 

explosion

I take great joy in writing.

Thank you for reading.

All my love always,

Max

I had popped some amphetamines with my morning coffee, smoked a joint to take the edge off and snorted several lines of cocaine so that I wouldn’t get stupid. After all, this was going to be a busy morning and I needed all my wits about me. There was meat to be portioned, dough to be kneaded, veg to be chopped, mushrooms to be simmered, tomato sauce to concoct and garlic bread, Jesus fucking Christ, garlic bread to be sliced, buttered, stuffed with cheese, wrapped in foil and placed in bins of 36 and the fucking garlic wasn’t even chopped yet when the back doorbell rang. I didn’t have time for whatever the fuck this shit was commanding my attention at the ass end of the restaurant. There was prep to be done, lunch customers to be fed, irresponsible pot headed waitresses to contend with, a jagoff night manager who was desperately begging to be chewed a new asshole and don’t get me started on that son of a bitch head line cook on the night shift. That useless bastard can still to this day kiss the hell out of my fucking ass. Not that I was bitter or anything…..

But I digress….

I opened the delivery door and see standing silhouetted in early morning rays, this….. dude, this big, taller than me, goofy, smiling and happy as shit, skinny as a pipe cleaner (weren’t we all back then?) dude and he opens his way too cheerful pie hole in my general direction and says ‘Hi, I’m Jeff. I’m supposed to come in and help you today. Tomorrow too.’ Come the fuck on in and grab your damn self an apron, I thought. It’s not like I’m overwhelmed or anything.

At this moment, my illicit drug intake was at an all-time high. My father lay in the hospital, suffering from a series of massive strokes, vacillated in and out of ICU for what was now going on four months. My mother, every day upon my return home, was an emotional wreck. Her former mindless unintentional cruelties had since turned to tearful pleas for me to not move out and leave her alone. I was 17. I remember those days like it was last week and I still sometimes fall to pieces recalling it all in spite of the fact that it was over thirty years ago, I sit at the keyboard misting up as I type.

Much metaphorical water has passed beneath the proverbial bridge since then. Births of the innocents, passings of the ancestors, weddings of much promise, unjustified damnable illnesses, much regretted divorce, decreasing of hairlines, increasing of waistlines and other unavoidable fluctuations of fortune. Amidst the pereniality of change that befalls us all, some things remain constant. The increasing gratitude I nurture for his priceless friendship and the invincibility of his sense of humor seem to be at the forefront.

The poem that follows is self-explanatory. What does however seem to continue to befuddle, at least for me, is what I have done to deserve such a blessing as to continue to receive his friendship and presence in my life.

I was in the process

of answering emails

when he called

the doctor said

it’s cancer again

radical treatments

he would undergo

in order to prevail

and my heart broke

silently

tones of reassurance

passed my lips

until I hung

the thousand pound phone

the hell up

then I collapsed

at the injustice

poor timing

of the powers that be

the unreality

of his next battle

warrior of him

that set forth

a spirit

of invincible humor

when I thought

I would drown

in my depression, anxiety

and self loathing

he threw me a rope

a laugh

at a charmed moment

and saved me from suicide

that I will never forget

or be able to repay

I have found such solace

in his friendship

this son of a bitch

who saved me

from my own hand

more times

than he will know

I said my prayers

worked my voodoo

and filled my wineglass

with tears

of joy, sorrow and gratitude

for my friend

that the old me

would say

I don’t deserve

Thank you for reading,

It means more than you know.

I wish for you all a friend as great as he has been for me and continues to be.

All my love always,

Max