I'm in a cool group.
To stay on top
of my writing, and to
promote and market
my poetry, I often
publish online.
If Lord Byron could
hear that.

In this place that
I belong,
I have deadlines.
I procrastinate until
the very last day, and then
scribble some ******
lines and get angry with
myself for putting the
writing off.

I have a couple of
weeks before I need
to write a sonnet or villanelle.
I'm getting anxiety.
It's not producing the
desired effect of
hard work or discipline.
No
Not that.
It is getting me thinking.
That is sometimes productive,
and usually comical.

I'm thinking about
the 15 months I've
been sober.
For many years,
I was miserable.
Drinking and writing.
Writing and drinking.
Holding the bottle of
***** to my shivering
lips to get the last
spider of liquid.
My clothes smelled of
decay and cowardice, and
everything tasted like
rotten meat.

Now, I have a beautiful
maple desk that my three
cats like to sleep
on while I write
poems about
procrastination and sobriety.
Such fuzzy black miracles.
They twitch as they
dream of fish and catnip,
and just maybe they
dream about writing a
sonnet for me.
We are all
addicted to something.

Living on the Scandinavian streets have
humbled her.
No Christmas cards with
a 20 spot anymore.
No trust fund from
Mom and Dad.
All the money vanished like
the last spider of *****,
like a dropped bottle of beer.
She could go to a
shelter by herself,
but she chooses
life on the
streets in the
brutal winter to be
with her Swedish boyfriend.
Love is lunacy--sometimes frozen.
Two dead friends last year on
a mad moonlit night.
Human icicles on
the Iowa City streets.

One time while drunk,
her and I stole
the neighbor's canoe.
We had her little
black dog with us.
I dubbed him,
Senator Ted Kennedy;
probably because we
were all drunks,
(not the dog) I don't think...
We wrestled the canoe into
the Iowa River, and
immediately proceeded to
tip it over.
The Canoe sank like
a bad bet by Hunter S. Thompson.
We could've easily drowned, but we
laughed our ***** off,
choking and splashing,
except for Teddy, who swam
for Boston.

See all those people
they're real, they
think, they
aren't mannequins.
I know this may come
as a surprise, but there
are other people in the world
with problems.
And by the way, the fact that
you can't find your tweezers
isn't a catastrophe.
Oh I know you need them to
perfect your eyebrows.
Just in case you forgot,
We are having a pandemic!
Oh, you want me to leave because
I make you uncomfortable.
Never mind, it is freezing out
and it's late at night, and I've nowhere to go.
Just a small reminder, we have a
two-year-old daughter, and I
have been helping you take care
of your son for eight years.
Oh, it's your house, and
it's not your job to put me up.
I wouldn't live with you if you paid me.
I had a place, but I gave it up when
you called me, crying and begging
for my help with the kids, because
you couldn't multi-task.
Ok, now I get why you got
rid of the mirrors in your house.
Even though you're a narcissist,
it's too painful for you to
see your vacant reptilian eyes
starring back at you.

I explored the
depths of hell, and
found it wanting,
wandering the streets,
looking for a utopia.
Not all that shines is
the sun.
Pictures can be
doctored, and when the
layers are peeled away
the purple horizon isn't
royal.
It's a ghastly negative,
with black and white
images that lack
love and depth.

All the potions are placebos.
It's temporary and tiring.
When I grew up,
I stopped playing with
toys, they break and
disappoint, and worse yet,
they leave me empty and hungry.

The sky-pilot found me
and I am full,
belly and soul.
Besides still waters,
green is my bed.

Ice melts on the Lake.
Fish will move into shore soon.
Please bring back the dock.

Anxiously waiting.
I just bought some more tackle.
March, please be a lamb.

Walleyes taste the best.
Get the hot Cajun batter.
I feel a slight tug.

In one of
my many
lifetimes, when
I was a child,
my dad had a
sprawling stretch
of land in
Missouri.
He had 200
head of cattle.
We used to run
the cows we
bought at auction
through this
shoot with wooden
beams that closed
on their necks.
My stepmom took
this gun-like object
and put an orange
tag in their ear.

My brother and I used
to play with this black and
white steer.
We called him old #56
because of the number on
his tag.
We chased him, and then he
chased us.
I felt bad for
him, the tag in
his ear.
I talked to my
dad about it.
He said if the steer
ever got lost,
we could find him.
I felt good about that.
I didn't want to lose him.

One night
the following summer,
we were sitting down for
dinner.
I hadn't seen
old #56 for a while.
I asked Dad where
he was.
He didn't say anything.
We were having
t-bone steaks.

As I write this,
my black and white
kitten, Bukowski,
bites at the pen and
tries to wrestle my
wrist as it moves across
the paper.
I'm glad that he
isn't a steer.

On days that
I have a
difficult time
writing, I let
my mind wander
to another
place and scene.

Today
I imagine a
musty attic.
It smells like
mothballs and
old perfume.

I stumble upon
an old trunk.
And when I look
inside
I find hundreds
of my poems that
I wrote and
forgot about.
I thumb through
the brittle pages,
and read.

"Hey, not bad.
This one is pretty
good.
Hey, here's one with
multiple layers.
Writing as a
metaphor for
******."

This silly exercise of
mine just netted me
this poem.
Wanderlust of the
mind promotes
creativity.
Now I can nap,
after I ***
of course.