the wise old cop and god

WOC: 'the 2-quart-a-day men are all dead'

G: 'so are the pioneers - takeaway?'

WOC: 'i am so fucked, either way'

copyright © 2016 by patrick o'hayer

mingus

started
out
on
cello

should
never
have left
it

madness
anger
such
sadness

all
right
genius
ex post

copyright 2016 © by patrick o'hayer

occasional poem

"first thought, best thought"

~allen ginsberg

holidays approaching again

my first wife dumped me

xmas eve 1976

a bicentennial break-up

which i richly deserved

fill in the blanks

i rented a truck

retrieved my gear, my books,

with 3 now-estranged friends

but i left behind my record albums

now known as vinyl

a shy acknowledgement

of fault, maybe, or

maybe just a typical

p. o'hayer fuck-up

sorta half-rhymes with break-up

life went on

i won the lottery

so many times since then

i probably owe her a cut

presently headed to kansas

for the holidays

with KW, new beginning

horizons expanding

and i'm no cowboy

but i did love "wyatt earp" on TV

in the Fifties

dodge city

when westerns ruled the day

and gunplay settled every dispute

thank you, ex missus o'hayer,

where ever you may be

thank you so very very much

hope you're playing my

songs of leonard cohen

which i bought 

when it dropped

december 1967

on this sad sad sad day

november 2016

copywrite © 2016 by patrick o'hayer

SANTA SENDS HIS REGRETS

"Christmas is for kids."

                         THE WISE COP

sheer lunacy, 

sheer brilliance,

either way, wife

and daughter agreed

with papa

to forgo xmas

gifts as a sane

response to hyper-

consumption, result

of a family group rant

on the day however

it seems that i alone

recalled the anti-prezzie

resolve

               the girls

were very angry

and tearful because

THERE WERE NO PRESENTS

the world stopped spinning

then and there, dad

deep in the dog house

probably forever

but after issuing

a lengthy brutal reprimand

the girls adjourned 

to the early show

at the multiplex

meanwhile papa sought redemption 

at a 24/7 walgreens

purchasing several trifles

peace offerings hoping for

redemption, or forgiveness

a few functional do-dads

a note pad that affixes

to your windshield

some paper dolls, 

some deluxe crayolas

to make up for the error

as papa was checking out

the girls arrived

to do the same

BEST XMAS EVER!

poem in progress

my parents had been 

great readers

before TV

my mom

would discover 

an author

and read all 

his works

at the library

                        when i came

along there was

no reading 

only TV

but there were 

the stories

about the books

the library

a kind of

nostalgia

for books

then priesthood-

high school

no girls

bored me silly

started reading

for the first time

novels

jules verne

robert louis stevenson

magnificent escape

entertainment

was mocked

by an effete priest

for reading

kids’ books

ignored his rudeness

meanwhile

the world opened

July 2015

missing link?

broken link

[on seeing an online photo of an intern going through clancy sigal's papers at the ransom]

while googling myself a few years ago

i discovered that norman mailer

had sold his papers 

to the harry ransom center

at the university of texas at austin

and there was my name

as one of his correspondents

in an index to the boxes of letters

he saved, probably a dozen 

letters of mine over thirty years

i used to check the site occasionally

to remind myself of my brush with greatness

at the notorious 1968 democratic convention

i'd gotten an autograph and we'd

exchanged a few meaningless words before

he flew back to provincetown

i later sent him a letter to criticize his version

of existential philosophy and he sent

a fuck you reply, but it was a friendly fuck you

so i continued to send praise or blame

over the years

for his numerous works and he'd reply

as the mood struck him but he put my letters

into a file, evidently, quite the pack rat, aware

that someday the biographers would

come lurking

                       but yesterday

i discovered that the link is dead

and navigating the site is now restricted

the harry ransom center requires you

set up an account--life keeps getting

so much more complicated 

it was easier at the convention

when the humphrey people voted down

the peace plank, meaning we'd stay

in the war for good--as we have--

you knew then, finally,

where the establishment

was going, and it did

may 2013

stopping by weeds dive bar of an evening

weeds

cost me thirty bucks all in

two glasses of bombay-on-the-rocks

then another drink to pay off after losing at 8-ball

and a couple bucks to the barman

the entertainment lacked something rich

except for two performances

one, the crazed gorgeous senior declaiming violently

on middle-east politics, even

shrieking here and there

—a lota good that’ll do—

then chuck rolled out something from the past

about an aging rollicking r & b diva

shaking up a summer chicago political block party

on her way to a hoped-for comeback

then the one about the dying brother

hallucinating bravely before the nurses

put him back to bed—it said

something strong, moving even, about

endurance and imagination

even on the way out

i passed when i was offered the mike

too out of shape even for this

unsubtle venue, maybe in the next life

assuming the gods are generous

july 2013