Motives

I wouldn't have done it.
Like me he probably haunted
those drifter, bus terminal hotels where:
maniac drunks charge doors
their hunched shoulders used as battering rams,
or winos puke in the halls,
or the trash steeped in the alleyways decides to burn.
Then you really need the shoes on your feet,
no time to fidget with the laces.
Even if there isn't any crash, stench, or smoke,
there are always the cockroaches nesting everywhere.

But why he took them off in a barroom full of people
I'll never know; I wouldn't have.
Simply as everyone else did, I moved away.
But not fat man.
"Your feet stink, your feet stink."
He didn't answer fat man.
He didn't even raise his slumped head.
The rest of us pretended to study the bottom of our beer mugs.
"Your feet stink, your feet stink."
He didn't answer fat man.
A rouge of rage colored fat man's face.
Fat man whipped out a gun, pointed it, still
he didn't answer or even move except
to run his finger around the rim of a whiskey glass.
The gun cracked, the bullet whistled
and his bloody head plopped on the counter.

Fat man fled; we all exhaled,
then quickly followed one another out the door,
going our separate ways,
not wanting to explain anything to the law.
Alone, I picked my way
through a carpet of sleeping drunks,
walking, walking, walking, till I saw a park

and collapsed under a palm tree.
Nearby was a fancy L.A. hotel
and in front a fountain lit by colored lights that made
the gushing water seem so still
as if it were a snapshot or
a fluff of red cotton candy.
I took off my shoes to cool my feet.
"Christ, it was so lousy hot."

Nothingness

This is a non ode to nothingness.
Delete nothingness from the lexicon
and half of modern poetry vanishes.
Eliminate the words love, heart, soul, and tears
and most of the rest is gone,
to the relief of countless literature majors.
Nothingness is an ersatz nothing.

Nothingness is:
not a person unless you fulfilled your mother's prediction,
"You'll grow up to be a nothing,"
not a place, for the nearest locale is the middle of nowhere
which is Utica, New York,
not a thing, for when I see a sexy somebody near me
I write love sonnets,
but I'm only engaging in mental masturbation like most poets,
for nothing will come of it, or rather
nothing will indeed come, but I won't.

Nothing is the icon of iconoclasts.
Nothing is something nihilists will die for.
Ergo, nothingness reduces nihilism to a contradiction.
Nothingness is the color black among the spectrum of hues,
or the silence between notes.

Nothingness is my mantra.
Alone with nothing to distract me, I chant
nothingness, nothingness, nothingness, nothingness . . .
until I reach the bottom of everything.

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