HawkPunk . Poems by Henry Kanabus

I stole an Autumn fly from a spider web in my front yard to feed my treefrog on the 18th of October in the year of 2016 Yes, Al I am still alive I was high on synthetic opioid... Put your warrants away, officer Joe the dope is legal (prescribed meds) and the land is mine Two yapping dogs from the perjurer's fenced pigsty confronted me like dying rats I drew my sheathed dog-whistle and blew them away with an inaudible {to man} insect sound                        a pissed wasp, lets say The day was overcast with low nimbus clouds "It looks like rain" a farmer would say I heard that only one time this year "we could use the rain" a woman had said "Are you a farmer?"  I said "No, but we could use the moisture." "You mean the humidity." I remembered a day when it had rained in the morning for less than an hour The rest of the day was hot and sunny with the liquid stench like a...

My mother had loved the War. The Nazis invading swarms of planes destroying and she, newly married The panic, the immediacy the passion making love as bombs exploded like permission from god to feel everything and deeply as if you were abut to die. So in later life they argued violence, madness screaming Fuck,  they bought their own home just so a landlord couldn't complain and to hell with the neighbors oblivious to three daughters and a young son witnessing They fought relentlessly for days Then they would makeup and make passionate love Having returned to Europe under the heartsome War again.

(On Shooting Heroin with Jim Carroll and Ted Berrigan) Jim was my age though I thought him younger Ted Berrigan was teaching at a Writing Workshop and wanted to bring him to Chicago to read in his class Jim Carroll’s ‘The Basketball Diaries’ were still in Composition Book form I remember him waking from a Nod and opening the well-worn leopard patterned 100 sheet lined notebook to read... But there had been a problem Jim was then a Heroin addict ten years before the Catholic Boy Album and he was firing a lot of Junk a heavy habit I was on Dr. McCabe’s Methadone Program on Irving Park Road and Western Avenue I was getting three 40mg Lilly wafers a day 120mgs a day plus a repeat dose twice a week It worked this way: On Monday he would give you 12 wafers for Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday 480mgs of pharmaceutical synthetic morphine Then when you came on Thursday he gave you 3 wafers for the day and the same on Monday ...

Am I an instigator a provocateur Do I stir the shit Am I the Hero of my own Life or am I the villain What do I Remember I remember going to confession as a 11 year old boy I confessed to taking the Lord’s name in vain having impure thoughts impure actions and stealing The Priest (we called him Tarzan) asked me what I had stolen . At every Catholic grammar school this one being Saint Hyacinth word goes around which priest is easy at Confession We all hoped for the familiar “Three Our Fathers and 3 Hail Mary’s” and we’d be pure again (Baptism having absolved Original Sin) The sin of our progenitor Adam . And this Fuck asks me what I had stolen “A shot, Father” “A shot?” What the hell was this... My friends and I had shoplifted often Usually Science-Fiction paperbacks or Zim’s Field Guides to the Natural Sciences I had them all Twelve as I recall “A shot,” I repeated “A shot?...