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HOW TO LIVE WITH TEENS

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James Wright, that famous poet
nobody reads anymore, wrote
“When I was a boy
I loved my country. . . .
Hell, I ain’t got nothing.
Ah, you bastards,
How I hate you.”  He also said 
“Mad means something.”
Tell me about it!
Cowboy karaoke enrages my son.
Those punk rockers last night?
He says they’re shit 
musicians.  I say they’re not 
like James Wright.  They’d be pissed off
in Paradise.  Parents, listen!
If we didn’t talk about music,
we wouldn’t talk at all.





WHAT I DID IN HEAVEN


Flapped around.  Practiced
safe sex.  Egg white
instead of semen.

Yoga was the best,
the clouds breathing us,
every pose perfected,

I even did Vanquished Warrior,
that asana most women
on earth can do.

Can I come back now?




                                                                                                        
BUKOWSKI


One woman threw up after she slept
with him.  Another accused him of rape.
The widow of a poet he’d betrayed
crashed in his motel room, who knows why.
A year later he described her
in a poem as boring & fat.

A snapshot of him at fourteen, scowling
on the beach, wearing a suit & tie.
His nose pitted, his skin like oatmeal,
he looks like a formal monster.
Who could love a face like that?
Nobody.  He begins writing his first poem.