death
“nada mas”
dying final breath
first caught my attention
after hemorrhoid surgery
battle creek hospital
suddenly aware
not bullet proof
years later
marquette morning darkness
chilly loneliness
following mri scan
loving beautiful woman
relationship sadly ending
moving on to other things
immediately feeling
life’s black hole
hoping a little more time
poems yet to write
# # # #
“Only fascists
drink white wine!”
you say, but still,
there you both are,
opening a bottle
you’ve found
in the garage.
“Fuck,” your buddy says,
“there’s really nothing else?”
“Not even cooking sherry,”
you joke.
And so there it goes,
down the hatch,
and it’s god-awful,
worse than you
had already
imagined.
“Good christ, it’s awful,”
you say, passing the bottle
to your buddy.
He takes a hero-pull,
then growls out of it,
and slams the bottle
down on the table.
You both nip at it a while
your younger brother
stares at you,
smiling.
And when the bottle’s
half gone, you say, “I
can’t do it, man.
I’m not drinking
another drop of
that poison.”
And your buddy is pissed,
and he soldiers on
out of spite
for the bottle,
out of spite
for Fascism, and
out of spite
for white wine,
and the world,
and you both end up
passed out on the
front porch.
And months later
your brother asks,
“Do you remember
that time you guys
were drinking?”
“Um,” you say, “you’ll need to
be a little more specific.”
“It was the night,” he says,
“you guys were drinking
a bottle with
vegetables
in it.”
What the shit? you think,
and then there’s a flash, you
pulling mustard and dill seeds,
and maybe a long strand
of celery string
from your
mouth.
“Dear god man,” you say,
“why the hell
didn’t you
stop us?”
And you’re brother says
“You looked like you
knew what you were
doing.”
“Goddammit,” you say,
“just for future reference:
if I am drinking
Mom’s homemade
vinegar,
I clearly have
no fucking idea
what I amdoing!”
but your brother is
laughing too hard
to actually pay
attention.
————————————
Dear Nadine Pritchett
Don’t make promises
to our daughter
that you won’t keep.
Don’t tell her
that you’ll take her
shopping this weekend,
then interject
“provided I don’t have anything
else to do.”
You’re demeaning
your relationship
with your daughter,
giving yourself
an out,
putting her
on the back burner
of your priorities.
You’re making her feel
unworthy of your time when
you’re not worthy of her time.
You are self-absorbed,
Nadine Pritchett.
You live alone today
because you while away
hours
on Internet social groups.
You neglected
your child,
your husband,
your home.
We are happier
without you, Nadine Pritchett.
Our new home is clean.
There are no wine bottles
or cigarette butts
on the floor.
There are no lice
in our daughter’s bed.
There is a scent
of fresh baked bread
wafting through this home.
Our daughter
can have friends over
and not be ashamed
of her living conditions.
Thank you,
Nadine Pritchett
for dropping the surname
you acquired
during our wedding.
No longer
yours truly
and with as little love
as I can muster
Dewitt Smith
Continue reading
full nights moon
i take the trail, to a tailed
foxhole where scared
boys clench their teeth
and weapons
on a bed of dirt and forest
of barbwire fence,
holding the hot handle
in their sweaty hands,
almost like a few summers
back before enlisting,
having their first
sex encounter and
shooting their load
fast in the uncertainty
and awe of a woman’s
curve, body bending
over like a tree,
breasts as red delicious
apples hanging limp
to be licked, bitten, tasted
for death, as young men
wish mum is by side
while the ricochet
of other boys shooting
their bullets at them,
empting their guns
and minds, and ghosts
that cross the night fields
as smoke,
cigarettes are scarce here
and canteens are almost dry,
thoughts come in a
no-promise-home return,
as one is kissing the cross
of his necklace,
watching the words
become a blotch
of blue ink from the rain
spitting and running
on the letter,
his wife wrote him
chewing the fat
of lust,
saying she misses most
of all is their sex.
—————-
REFUGE VOWS WITH CHOGYAM TRUNGPA WEARING GINSBERG’S FLOWER TIE
During my 1978 visit at Naropa Institute, Allen showed me a “Refuge Tree” of the Karma Kagyu Tibetan Buddhist lineage. Allen explained how it was visualized and how one did prostrations in front of it, the preliminary practice Trungpa Rinpoche required before one embarked on the “deity” visualizations of the Tantric or Vajrayana path. One had to do 100,000 prostrations and Allen was working on his. I was intrigued and impressed. Little did I know such practices would be required by my own teachers years in the future. Ginsberg also explained that at this level of the path, it was like marrying the guru, and if you felt you had to leave the teacher, you didn’t want a “messy divorce.” It was a very straightforward explanation of the Tantric vow with the teacher known as “samaya.”
Refuge vows are a formal commitment to Buddhism, and here I was in Boulder, visiting poet Allen when suddenly it was possible to take refuge from Chogyam Trungpa (who resided there that summer), a totally unexpected situation and quite auspicious. Ginsberg encouraged us to take the refuge vows. Both Richard and I had to meet with a meditation instructor senior students who would determine if we were serious enough to take refuge (Allen arranged the appointment). Richard thinks it was Judith Zimmer-Brown. Anyway, she asked us how long we’d been meditating, who taught us, what did we understand about taking refuge. She asked us to sit on cushions and examined our posture. She thought my posture was too military (now that was a first) but still signed off on my aspiration for refuge. Richard was not criticized and also passed. Since our answers were satisfactory and our posture was correct enough she added us to the list and said we’d each get an individual audience with Trungpa who’d give us our refuge names. Although it may not sound like it, I had been relatively diligent with Buddhist sitting on and off since Allen taught me in ’74.
More than the Alley, by Doug Draime. Interior Noise Press, Austin, Texas, 2012. Available online at https://www.createspace.com/3936904. 
Paperback, 144 pages. $15.00.
Doug Draime’s bio in this book says that he has been a presence in the underground literary movement since the late 1960s. This book establishes both his continued vitality in underground poetry and his undeniable ability to turn out visceral, gritty and glaringly real verse.
The back-story of Doug’s book is almost as interesting as the book itself. In a Bukowski-esque hard-luck story, Draime submitted multiple book manuscripts over the years, had them accepted, and then had them fall through for various reasons. In his own words to this reviewer, “Since the early 80s I’ve had eleven full-length, selected poem collections that have gone belly up. That has to be a record, I would think. Actually, one publisher died, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. I don’t know whether to put a feather in my hat or rock out to this almost overwhelming, anti-climatic sensation I’m feeling (of having More than the Alley come to fruition.)”
So for all of you poets out there who are whining or just digging in and hoping, take heart. I know how I felt when, after a long fallow period in my career, one of my first submissions of twelve poems were all summarily dismissed. We’re talking not twelve poems here, but almost twelve books, folks! So More than the Alley must feel like a deep sigh of relief for Doug Draime. Was it worth it? Only Doug can answer that personally, but from a reviewer’s standpoint: A resounding yes.
Continue reading
here it is
the inside story
elvis is alive (he is very old)
i’ve seen him
on street corners
and velvet paintings
adorn bedroom walls
lennon’s passing
took the fab out of four
george is gone too
paul and ringo
still with us
half the beatles
willhave to do
jimi still has a band
somewhere out there
electrons dance
to his latest refrain
purple flashes in the haze
and my old eyes mist
with experience
when you think about it
there’s probably not a lot
of patience knocking about.
it didn’t take too long
for monkey to grow into
man
didn’t take long at all
for horse-carts to fashion
into cars
didn’t take too long for anti-
semitism to transform
into holocaust
didn’t take too long for black
and white to blossom
into colour
didn’t take long for the
twentieth century to
explode into the
twenty first
didn’t take long for christ
to be forgotten and the
next false deity to
be ushered
in
didn’t take too long for
humanitys’ shit to hit
the fan
as they sat around waiting
for the next putrid
talent show to
rear its ugly
head
and make them
millions.
Rusty Truck 