Doing it Right

Everything, and I mean everything, is burning.
The night of her 31st birthday: the smell
of the car tires squealing, pinning me in the garage,
the rush of blood from her slap across the face,
pussy juices on the couch, the lingering of fucking
in the air like the house was haunted,
streaks of dust across the glass, small grains
spilling down onto the rug. A tiny white landscapes
where generations of ideas will die and be reborn
only to be forgotten in the moment of insertion.

She will split the difference across the arms
of the chair, every orifice, every pore – wide open
and yearning – a flock for the shepherd. Some
bearded wet Jesus in a dirty bathrobe, screwdriver
and blackberry stained, Guccione’s corpse
on a bender, grave-stained and dick hungry.
What burns harder the fire or the skin under
the flame. Flesh peeling off into its own dance,
Yanvalou summoning until the entire room
is a gnawing mouth shape, a vulval vestibule
that swallows and swallows and swallows.

The end of the night shits open the cracked curtains,
the neighbors, the cats, the birds rattle the walls
like a concert, no one bought tickets for,
and the mountain erupts because it is always
about the mountain, the eruption of bleach
and pineapples, hands sticky and wiped on thighs.
Thick bubblegum. Ripped panties don’t
always spell passion, sometimes just desperation.
Spitting into opens mouths, a long stream down
the face, the sheets ripped up into a skull
and crossbones flag of attack.

Passion is crucified and dirty speak sounds
like Annunaki shit talking. Heaven is not
on the end of a penis or three fingers deep.
It is not pupils as black as dead moons
spinning in a dead orbit in a dead circle,
because what matters is the lava flowing under the bed,
the raw animal machines, pegged time in a ball gag,
the right here and right now of the in there and down there,
the spitting blood and the flowered grotesqueries of fluid.
Because if you are not doing it right, then don’t do it at all.

Thumbing It

Do you remember being young, that time when you were so well hung
that your favourite part would stand, almost on command?
With the aid of gentle foreplay, you could cope five times a day.
Now that you are very old, your shrunken member has grown cold.
Arteries harden, not your dick, every joint makes a loud click,
beta-blockers do their worst, but don’t worry, you’re not the first.
Old age makes you quite sclerotic, which is not at all erotic;
and as you swallow your diuretic, you realize it was not poetic
that your lover scoffed when you were thumbing it in soft

And the Beat Goes On

Dropping from the air 
upon ears like paper blotters on willing tongues,
raging at the bloodlessness of cardboard cutouts
against a shrinking sky,
through psychedelic lenses
let me seeeee, let me beeeee the pulse of silent rage
that rails against the vulgar machine with words
that organize, legitimize, minimize, super-size, tranquilize,
proselytize, tantalize, infantilize, sexualize, stigmatize
the suckled teats of long-conditioned truths.

Poking the bear, disturbing the seas of featureless beige,
stirring the comatose anima with battle-cries of sight and sound
that pierce dusty eardrums like sterling icepicks,
repressed wants teeeeem, solemn faces beeeeeam,
liberated in the warmth of a sun that breaks just beyond
the horizon on coffee-house stages, rousing thoughts
to gestate, ruminate, conjugate, propriate, sublimate, fornicate,
obliterate, determinate, propagate, exfoliate dangerous visions,
birthed from the unfetteredness of a purple haze. 

Fueling the scribblings of furious hands upon white sheets
with whisky and cigarettes,
Making, naked, ugly underbellies of the angst-ridden and inflamed
with the glorious promises of their ecstatic treasure-trails,
let’s revel in the coolness of poetry’s heeeeeat,
indulged in pollen-dusted skin so sweeeeet
within the honeyed tangles of poets’ asymmetries
to detoxify, dulcify, intensify, demystify, purify, glorify, magnify,
beautify, electrify, sanctify our bodily streams of light
that sugar lips and candy fingertips.

Tearing away at the fabric, unraveling,
woven from Gloopstick youth and plasticine smiles,
repulsing at the hordes in their mindless quests
for extra-flavor and double-coupon days,
looking for a steeeeeal, wanting to feeeeel,
as hollow dollars crumble to coins when plopped upon
unsated palms and countertops.

Think! Think! Think! Think! Think! 
We are on the brink 
of the Fall of the American Empire. 
Dig.

*

Originally published at littledeathlit

there’s something funny about people nowadays

oh how I long for a renaissance 

do you remember the days when art was beautiful?
and we never heard of butterflies devouring flesh

we worshiped fickle gods with funny names
and courted beautiful women 

we knew the sound of death at a young age
(but I suppose that part hasn’t really changed)

men sang of young maids 
surrounded by flowers

never mentioning those soft
but sharp butterfly kisses

sweet roses around each neck
to mask the stench of death 

oh how I long for a renaissance

of men?
of art?
of love?
of suffering?
of life?
ah-
fuck it

for now I guess I’ll just finish my whiskey

and dream of the days of warm mead
and maidens with flowers in their hair
(butterflies in tow)

Lay Me Down

Yeah, well, fuck this shit!
I’ve had my fill of this crap.
Lost the job, money gone,
Can’t get no damn credit.
Title Loan was happy to
End up with my car.
Makes life hard on the feet.
The bar’s full of losers, but
They’re doin’ better than me.
Bitch kicked me out the house.
Sometimes the magic shaft
Ain’t enough to please her.
She found some new peter
With a steady income.
Got a damn future as bright
As that of a back yard dog
On a ten-foot chain in a
Nine-foot flood.  Jesus!
Jesus, baby, show me the way.
Gi’me a plan outta this mess.
Take that last long drink,
Empty the bottle, toss it away.
Lay me down on wood and iron.
In the night, the distant blast 
Of the horn hails the approach
Of the ‘midnight special’ and
End-game salvation.

In America, the good ol’ U.S. of A.,
Over two hundred people a year
Commit suicide by train.
I will not be one of them.

A Lion in the Reading Room

Nobody bothers to look when I crack open a beer.
They should. It is, after all,
a student library. 
I’m here to gain some knowledge,
a celebratory feeling
better than fretting because
I’ve already flunked out 
and tasted walking in straight lines.
Beer though, that’s a source
of inspiration abused
outside of academia;
the DNA to the pillars of libraries.

It takes courage to do what you love.
And so I do.