the nobody inn 

it claimed it was a non-smoking unit 
but it reeked of stale smoke and there were 
cigarette burns in the bedding and the refrigerator 
was about a meter from the bed 

and there was a towel in the freezer 
and a toaster and coffee pot were on top 
of the water boiler and there was a hat 
wedged behind the tv and the toilet seat 

was cracked and someone had left infection 
ointment in the vanity and given the number 

of bugs and other hungry organisms 
in the room you got the impression 
the owner of the hotel was a believer 
in the sanctity of life 

he was a little old indian man 
a kind old man with the most elegant hands you’ve
ever seen but when I called him to complain 
the phone just kept ringing 
and ringing so eventually I gave up 

and had a little whisky
and watched bonanza
then lay down 
on top of the mattress and slept
with all my clothes on.

The Horror We LoVe, The Movie We LiVe

It all starts when we let it in;
plants a flag under our skin

The Thing must be You
The Thing must be Me
The Thing must be Us
in each other’s company

How the distance takes our shape
when we don’t choose a form to
just fucking communicate

Lights out; crawl around within
No surrender for the win

You’re suspecting Me
I’m suspecting You
They’re suspecting Us;
Seeing red when we are blue

Last swig of that J & B;
Let’s end this here with the flames
The real thing, we’ll never see

Fifteen Minutes

A porn star I’ve never heard of
made the news on one of those niche internet sites
I’d likewise never heard of,
though it probably has legions of subscribers.
Her wife of less than a year divorced her
over Instagram because the porn star
had gone on a drinking binge.

“I told her I had pictures of her,
that I knew she was drinking.
I didn’t really, but she believed me.
She admitted it but had no remorse.
‘I’m not sorry,’ she told me.
Can you believe that?”

The ex sniffed back tears.
“I filed for an annulment.
It shouldn’t take long to finalize.”

The two had splashed their romance over Instagram
a year before, a twenty-first century social media love affair,
and now the public break-up. 

In fact, the ex broke the news to the porn star
in the same Instagram post to her followers:

“I’m sure you’ll see this, Baby,”
she wrote. “I love you with all my heart,
and I really, really hope
that the best works out for you.”

I wiped away a tear from my cheek.
Or had I spilled my coffee?

Dildo-Infested Waters

The beach has been closed again.
Dildo-infested waters according to the sign.
An uncanny likeness bobbing just above the waterline.
Boaters warned to kill their engines before the thrusting wake.
Giant seafaring phalluses that could split you right in two.
A panicked message from the tourism board:
Don’t go in the water!  No lifeguard on duty!
No one has creamed themselves yet,
but it is only a matter a time.

Vampire Hours

I was sitting in Lulu’s bedroom, drinking a hot cup of coffee.
My hands were shaking, and she was nowhere to be found.
Lulu told me that she was going out to buy food for her pet cat.
But it had been an hour since I last heard from her or saw her.
I slowly walked into the closet.
It was a huge closet filled with colorful clothes.
She had all these black vampire dresses.
And she kept cups of red blood next to her shoes.
She drank blood to help her go to sleep.
Her brother, Augustus, told me she bought blood off the internet
from a woman living in a chicken coop.

The bathroom door of Lulu’s house was locked.
Her dad was in the shower humming a tune.
His voice sounded like a bird flying through an alleyway.
I knocked on the door and he sang even louder.
I had to take a shit, my stomach growled and growled.

Lulu’s white cat crawled through the bathroom door.
I placed my cup of hot coffee on the ground and scratched my legs.
“Come here.” I said to the white cat.
“Fuck you.” The cat said to me.
The teeth of this cat were black and dirty.
Smelling like an old mans ears.
I pushed my red lips out and the cat aggressively scratched my cheek.
There was thick blood dripping down my face.
And Lulu was still nowhere to be found.
I sat in front of the bathroom door with a bloody face.
And watched the cat twirl around

The Orgy

Struthonian, from the Latin
struthio (ostrich), to bury one’s head in the ground 
or in our case that Valencian girl’s pussy; 
Jim the Painter was there, and the girls we called the Old Roses 
The Poet, The Banker, the girl from Liège 
obsessed with the architecture in Rohmer films,
Sebastian and Violet, that girl who looked 
like Eva Green, the Lorca scholar whose father 
owned a vineyard in Portugal, that guy who looked like Eva Green,
the guy we nicknamed Gregor —after Samsa 
social climbing like a surrealist, leg over leg over limb 
over labia, Paul with the continental philosophy degree 
parading unabated and half-shirted 
reading Tennessee Williams’ “Sweet Bird of Youth,”
The German, The Confectioner, Gretchen
who peeled off her bikini on playa de Las Arenas 
and said, “How do you know when cantaloupes are ripe?”
Lupé and the hash dealer, the Wild One who made tiger nut
drinks at the cafe in Alboraya —Elaina, Jen, Erin, Joel, Lisa
Kristin opening like an 18th century floral journal,
the red-haired girl we called the fainting countess, 
that guy with the cock as big as the Ritz, peacocks, doves
swans, skylarks, all of us burying in the fullness of delight—
youth, now, a simple foreignness
like a pay phone or cigarette machine 
selling oranges.

Adoring Decay

She would like to believe in alchemy
In progress from putrefaction

The city is a composite of wounds, she thinks
Scar-tissue the chrysalis of rebirth
Accounting for the misery she sees 
Extracting hope from hopelessness

She sees a man praying in McDonald’s
Lips forming silent incantations
For a meal of ersatz offerings

In the queue
Faces like stagnant clay
Pinned beneath the strip lighting

From this Non-place of super-modernity
The obscure mysteries of shadow, dispelled utter
In their place, a moribund permanence
The anomie of abandon 

She flees
Tries to leave behind the sublunary
In search of the promise of decay
Beautiful, natural decay
The withering adoration of time

Instead

She finds only the detritus of the never-ending now
Out beyond the centre and the suburbs
Derelict buildings, faded, retaining
An anonymous integrity
Underpasses, office blocks, factories and bridges
Met with rust-dementia
Dissembling the disassembling 

Yet 

People still live here
Those we’d prefer to believe
Dissembled themselves
Masking their failures as sickness

In their dementia-rusted faces
Living beyond purpose 
She sees only truth
The dead-end destiny of us all

In extracting the hope from hopelessness
There remains only the dissembled lessness
of a disassembled world

DUI

tomorrow the newspaper
will report
what the rest of tonight will entail 
for the guy on the barstool
beside me. 

after plowing through some
mangroves on A1A,
he will blow into the sears
parking lot
with a flat tire.
another driver will then
yank him out of his car
and pin him down on the pavement 
till the police arrive. 

when they ask for his license, 
he will struggle to stand
and offer his credit card instead.
he will then fail all 
roadside sobriety tests
and refuse the breathalyzer.

and when they ask if he understands
his miranda rights
he will tell the officers
his only health problem is bunions
on his feet.

but for now, he is gulping 
carbombs
at the tiki bar and playing the role
of the key west folk hero,
his fat fist wagging, 
his sunburnt face a roasted ham hock 
in the sun.

he turns to me. ‘last time 
I was at this bar I got a blowjob
in the lady’s crapper. I’m tellin
you, I didn’t even know 
the girl. she just pulled me right in.
but it was good.
real
good.”