A NOTE TO MY LOVE

It is not you
Mr. death
that I dread
but the next sunrise
with me watching.
My teeth
fall out
on schedule.
The gravestones
are still handmade.
The bones
pile up quickly.
The dead
are gathered
each morning
placed in rows
decorated with granite
and there is no more room.
Our children
build their cities
upon our flesh.
There is only one season
and it rains blood.
The rivers are choked
with bodies
lined with vultures
bloated with meat.
The miracle
is our endurance.

HUXLEY DIDN’T HAVE IT QUITE RIGHT

No bravery this time
This new age upon us
False heroes
No heroes
Men continue
to waste away
in factories
and the night
drapes us
with hopeless
shit covered
lies.

NUCLEAR DEATH

I see the end
is not far off
and the light
at the end
of the tunnel
is the loss
of what needs to be
done away with
This white
man made sun
will have a party
and the hangover
will not be
as bad
as you think
Single celled amoebas
will soon
begin the process
over
and maybe
with a little
luck
the human animal
will not come through
this time.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN

The price of love, friend
is hate.
If you don’t believe that
then you have not completed
the cycle.
This is to let you know
that this
is not a poem.
It is a warning.
Do not embrace
the “love”
of any woman
until you
have known
the perfectly cut stone
of her hatred
that over the years
has become
her heart.

Goude’s poems are cut-throat, matter of fact images about those who live trapped in the everyday horror of the human condition. Goude is an outlaw poet, and by that I mean he’s been places a lot of readers may rather not go. He also uses an economy of words, in the style of Moore. You may imagine through his poems that he has probably woken up next to the train tracks more than once in his life. Like Moore, he has lived hard and close to the bone.

Gary Goude is a machine shop worker in Los Angeles. He’s also a Vietnam vet. And he happens to write the most gut-wrenchingly real poetry you’ll have read since the death of the originator of blood and guts poetry Charles Bukowski, who interestingly enough, found an audience among the uppity poetry folks when he was first published in the NYQ back in the early ’70s. Well, folks, Gary Goude is the new Bukowski. His stuff is about the real everyday hell we all go through. He is an every man. Married. Divorced. On the outs with one son and now the other. He can’t maintain a a relationship with a woman. He has few friends. His trust in his fellow man all gone. And he self medicates with alcohol. He’s nearing 60 and his words should be read by everyone who can’t stand regular, dull, lifeless, having nothing to do with anything poetry, you know, the flowery bullcrap that makes no sense and means. —Robert W. Howington