Three Poems by Doug Draime

 Buck The Fuck Up:
Surf Reflection

There is a scene in Planet of The Apes,
where the Statue of Liberty’s
huge head is decapitated and
all fucked-up and half imbedded
in the sand,

as the surf of the Atlantic
is gently splashing against
the enormous rocks and steel girders
and concrete destruction of
New York City, that is
spewed willy-nilly all along the shore.

Charlton Heston, mis-casted, looking
bewildered without the NRA
and a rifle, comes wandering down the
beach looking for the blood
of those responsible. Heston’s agent,

if he was ever honest with the man,
could have told him, that he (Heston)
and those who think like him
were responsible, are responsible.

But everyone has a starring role in their own movie,
and we all gotta play our part with or, unfortunately,
without, honest agents, or other
greedy, back stabbing assholes.

____________

3:26 P.M.
for Johnny Cocktails
The sunlight
flashes in

when the
double doors

swing open
like a rotating

beacon into
a furrow tomb.

____________
Over At Facebook
The self-proclaimed
outlaw poets
are all over at
Facebook
snuggling up and
sharing photos
of their kids and pets,

exchanging recipes,
and juicy tidbits
of their
mock-renegade
and pseudo-non-
conformist lifestyles.

Which goes to
prove that even the
most superficial
among us, have not
lost the basic need
to communicate
with like-minded
others.

Poetry, Status Quo, & Baseball by Doug Draime

doing this for nothing,
like the rest of you
but i get
waylaid for not
writing like
the status quo …
fuck the status quo

i can’t buy a can
of beans
with this poem

as i listen to the
world series
on the radio
because it’s
no longer on non cable
TV

you got to be able
to afford to watch
america’s favorite
pastime

Three Poems by Doug Draime

Plant Some Sweet Peas There, Too

Bulldoze the green and lush ivy walls.
Tear down the sanctimonious Ivory Towers.
Plow up the campuses and classrooms.

Plant tulips and roses and lilacs and carnations there,

where blind conformity is sold,

where education is a complacent whore spreading
it’s legs to worship war,

where imperialism and corporate murderers are
justified

where the souls of your children are gutted like
beasts of prey,

where the lies about the American Dream
originated,

where tenure is a cover-up for increasing ethical
compromise,

where corruption is over looked for the sake of
Cronyism and the Empire.

Bulldoze the green and lush ivy walls.
Tear down the sanctimonious Ivory Towers.
Plow up the campuses and classrooms.

And plant redwoods and sycamores and spruce
and oaks.

Plant some tomatoes and onions and carrots
and a peach tree.

Plant some sweet peas there, too.
____________

Bullies

“With both cute little fists clenched,” she said,
I walked up to the bully of my friend,
who was several inches taller,
as well as 3 years older, and pushed
him backwards hard, telling him that
if he ever bothered my
friend again I would track him down
and kick his ass real bad.

She said, at 5 years old
I already had a reputation
as a scrapper on the streets of Pittsburgh,
and that the bully backed away quickly
and never messed with my friend again.

My aunt told this story often in my presence,
and I would get up and leave the room
when she got to the part about
“with both cute little fists clenched”, which was
always followed by her laughter
and the laughter of whoever she was
telling it to.

I recall she stopped telling the story,
at least when I was around, after I was
arrested and jailed for drunk and disorderly,
and hitting a cop when was 16. But I would like
to think that when I wasn’t around, she
told the story with the same motherly pride, knowing
the cop had hit me first and was just another bully
I stood up to, and I hope that her laughter was loud
and defiant.

____________

The Moment I Want

All concepts and ideas,
thoughts of past
and future, gone.

The bare-ass
conception of art,
that frees everyone
thus everything.

And then is all
undone and falling
from me:

all dreams of
judgment, all lies
of me, and all

lies of you:

a sudden sunrise
in a snoring

darkness.

Afternoon Bar Haiku by Doug Draime

 

 

The drunk dragonfly fucks

on whiskey wings

shading his eyes

from the sun.

Afternoon Bar Haiku by Doug Draime

 

 

The drunk dragonfly fucks

on whiskey wings

shading his eyes

from the sun.

Three Poems by Doug Draime

Papa

I read somewhere
many years ago
that Hemingway
wrote while standing up.
I also read, I think,
in the same article,
that he was always drunk
when he wrote.

How well did he hold
his booze? Well, those
reports vary greatly. Though,
having been a heavy drinker
at times, myself, I can easily
imagine Papa doing a fair amount
of staggering, abrupt
short lunges, and pitching
forward uncontrollably, against the
chest of drawers that he worked on.
It just stands to reason.

And I’m sure there were those
moments of pure terror and the
misty-blurred vision, as the chest of
drawers begins to topple, from his
weight – with a bottle of Bombay gin
and his shiny Royal typewriter –
as they all came crashing down on
him. And Papa too drunk
to give a tinker’s fuck
about any of it, laughing
hysterically as he rolled out
from under the mess.

____________

for Malala

A bullet cannot cease
the thought of freedom,
nor can barbarism
crush the indomitable
courage of a fourteen
year old girl, who’s
in-your-face defiance
rightly brings shame to
the Taliban,

and to all cowardly men
upon the face of the earth.
Whose spineless apathy, and
blind conformity sanction
vicious oppression and war.

Malala was shot twice, in the
head and neck.

And the bullet in her head ran
all around in her skull, but
did not stop her extraordinary
tenacity, the depth of
which few of us can even
imagine.

In her recovery standing
tall still, and speaking out
as before, declaring
her right of existence,
her right to education,
her right to speak the truth,

with her smile of fearlessness
and her pure heart
of justice, nailing the world
to its horrific wall of
brutal complacency.

____________

Winter Storm

Chapel bells on the SOU campus
a few blocks away
are striking four. Clouds cover
half the Cascade mountain range
through the dense falling snow,

the peaks sticking up
through them
like nipple less white breasts
yearning and expanding
for caress. Cars and trucks and school buses
climb the foothills like slow steamed chariots.

Molecules of exhaust and fog and snow
merging. Two teenagers in T-shirts and jeans
whip by down the snow-packed street
on snowboards like they were skateboards
and it was just another hot summer day.

Drinking Wine With A Beautiful, Raving Lunatic by Doug Draime

She said  my frame of
reference was obtuse,
though as I recall my
frame of reference was
Picasso and Matisse. And
after two bottles of wine
from her uncle’s vineyard,

I wasn’t sure who had read
more books about Paris
of the roaring 1920’s,
her or me.  I gave her
the benefit of the doubt about
that obtuse remark, when at
two in the morning she
got naked, took my hand,
giggling and babbling,

and lead me down to the
wine cellar for a third bottle.

____________

 

for Doug’s latest book–check this out

http://kendrasteinereditions.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/new-chapbook-from-acclaimed-west-coast-poet-doug-draime-his-9th-for-kse-dusk-with-carol-kse-250-now-available/

Bones by Doug Draime

Bones of constant regrets
Bones of dreams in nothingness
Bones of all the bodies in all the wars in universal time
Bones of rotting bones
Bones of fine white dust
Bones of John Wilkes Booth, decaying in Mary Lincoln’s nightmares
Bones of black bodies hanged & burned in Mississippi in the 1920’s to cheers
Bones of politics
Bones of rituals & ceremonies
Bones of Hannibal preserved in his own shit & blood
Bones of hipsters still hanging on every word of Nat Hentoff
Bones of Indian babies burned to death by the United States Calvary
Bones of rats jammed in walls in tenement apartments across the rodent world
Bones of all the horses who ever ran the second race at Hollywood Park
Bones of the dogs from hell & A Season In Hell
Bones of all the lies in all the mouths of all egos since The Ego
Bones of promises never kept
Bones of fragmented nonsense, which attempts to alter unalterable spirit
Bones of remorse & guilt
Bones of mountains & rivers & oceans
Bones of Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat
Bones of one solid brick shit house
Bones of whales on the butchered shores of slaughter
Bones of happenstance & bones of circumstance
Bones of desperation & hate & misery
Bones of angst & pathos
Bones of the stagnant & polluted air between you & me
Bones of Thelonious Monk’s dead cat
Bones of situations & occurrences that never were
Bones of a butterfly in the eye of beauty’s release
Bones of anger & fear & betrayal
Bones of Sigmund Freud’s dominating mother
Bones of eagles hidden behind a dark cloud of sorrow & mourning
Bones of Edgar Bergen’s talking wooden people
Bones of finite spiritual concepts
Bones of Dylan Thomas perpetually lamenting the coming of the night
Bones of the monks of Tibet under enslavement & Chinese torture
Bones of limits & bones of borders
Bones of all forms
Bones of you & bones of me

Bones by Doug Draime

Bones of constant regrets
Bones of dreams in nothingness
Bones of all the bodies in all the wars in universal time
Bones of rotting bones
Bones of fine white dust
Bones of John Wilkes Booth, decaying in Mary Lincoln’s nightmares
Bones of black bodies hanged & burned in Mississippi in the 1920’s to cheers
Bones of politics
Bones of rituals & ceremonies
Bones of Hannibal preserved in his own shit & blood
Bones of hipsters still hanging on every word of Nat Hentoff
Bones of Indian babies burned to death by the United States Calvary
Bones of rats jammed in walls in tenement apartments across the rodent world
Bones of all the horses who ever ran the second race at Hollywood Park
Bones of the dogs from hell & A Season In Hell
Bones of all the lies in all the mouths of all egos since The Ego
Bones of promises never kept
Bones of fragmented nonsense, which attempts to alter unalterable spirit
Bones of remorse & guilt
Bones of mountains & rivers & oceans
Bones of Rimbaud’s Drunken Boat
Bones of one solid brick shit house
Bones of whales on the butchered shores of slaughter
Bones of happenstance & bones of circumstance
Bones of desperation & hate & misery
Bones of angst & pathos
Bones of the stagnant & polluted air between you & me
Bones of Thelonious Monk’s dead cat
Bones of situations & occurrences that never were
Bones of a butterfly in the eye of beauty’s release
Bones of anger & fear & betrayal
Bones of Sigmund Freud’s dominating mother
Bones of eagles hidden behind a dark cloud of sorrow & mourning
Bones of Edgar Bergen’s talking wooden people
Bones of finite spiritual concepts
Bones of Dylan Thomas perpetually lamenting the coming of the night
Bones of the monks of Tibet under enslavement & Chinese torture
Bones of limits & bones of borders
Bones of all forms
Bones of you & bones of me

More than the Alley, by Doug Draime–Reviewed by Harry Calhoun

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.