Seaman’s Ruin

When mermaids moved his water’s tide
he rain-danced for a drought.
When sea breeze bore him succubi
he spat their nectar out.

‘Neath harpie-studded skies he yearned. 
In nymphen pools he swam.
By legs, and lips, and lies, he learned
the measure of a man.

Though edge to edge he crossed this Earth
lured by a siren sound,
the only fate he didn’t flirt
was six feet underground.

But now he knows of ebb and flow,
the strife of ice and fire,
a giant man slain by a stone,
the death-march of desire.

On solid land he finally rests.
His ship, a sunken shell.
A temptress for his tempest.
A heaven for his hell.

So, show him, gorgon, to your eyes.
He’s been too long on the run.
Just navigate him through your thighs
and drown him when you’re done.

The Atmospheric Perspective

There’s this gig venue I frequent
Along from the central station
A sweat-box of a place, tiny
More like a changing room than a stage
Where a photographic tribute to a friend of mine
Adorns the wall behind the bar she used to work
A scrapbook montage where her face used to be
A dozen fractured facets of herself
Smiling her far-away smile

In the months and years since her suicide
The venue seems to have expanded
The stage stretching away like an illusion
Fading from sight
Becoming indistinct
My reflection as I wait for my overpriced drink 
Served by a faceless new bartender
A bleary shadow in the bar’s vanishing mirror 

The gigs go on
Bands come and go like the seasons
Some more perennial than others
I no longer recognise most of the people in attendance
And no-one seems to have noticed my friend’s tribute hanging askew

When the latest gig is over 
I try not to think about how much time will pass before the next one 
Or how, like her pictures, this one will have taken its place as memory
A toe tag, timestamped and wrapped around something dead and gone
A fixed point of light diminished by darkness

I leave the venue as I arrived, alone
Into a night whose sky seems grey and artificial
As the sound of the encore becomes an indistinguishable part
Of the cacophonous ringing in my ears
The downer rush of the post-gig comedown
Like falling off the edge of a universe expanding

My friend’s suicide was an act of absolute passion 
We were never all that close 
But things have gotten worse since she left
Grown thin and distant 
A big-bang from which everything since
Has been but an ever deadening echo

They say there are more cells in our bodies
Than there are stars in the night sky
If that’s true then I can only feel her absence
As larger than the entire universe

Wild Hunt

If you’d asked me five years ago 
I’d have said no way.  
I swear, Father. I’m not that kind of guy.
There was no precursor.
No seraph or tangle of thorns. 
No birds chirping Lo. Lee. Ta.

And yet here I am, at a country house
in Germany, fucking my niece.
I don’t know if it’s old Europe 
corrupting young America
or young America corrupting old Europe. 
What is the real land of opportunities—

Dear Father, I rode her 
like an eight-legged horse across the night sky;
my lance and reins slapped 
like the jowls of spectral hounds. 
How do you think I get ahead 
in the world— 

Martha’s Final Mass (A Ballad)

This morning Martha came alone
in floral dress and hat
and made her way to third-from-front,
the place she always sat.

She’d never missed a Sunday mass
though pushing sixty-eight
and never failed to put a ten
inside the tithing plate.

I don’t recall her being ill
or looking frail and old
and can’t believe she’s lying there
so rigid, still, and cold.

I’d watched her drink the holy wine
prepared by Father Brown.
A moment later, all I saw
was Martha falling down.

Some people ran. Some others screamed.
Her limbs began to twitch.
She wriggled like a drowning rat
expiring in a ditch.

“At least she died inside a church.
That makes her sort of blessed,”
I thought until I later heard
that Father Brown confessed.

He’d long complained about the way
she fell asleep and snored
throughout the years he’d tried to teach
about the loving Lord.

Today he brought some cyanide
to slip in Martha’s wine,
and now the lady’s got no chance
of reaching sixty-nine.

Wake Up if You’re Asleep

-Wake up if you’re asleep
Because my erect cock awaits you
I tell my newlywed wife
Married by the Church
In Burgos Cathedral
In the Chapel of Christ of the Eggs.
Being king of heaven and earth
Your master and lord
As God commands
I’m going to give you shameful penetration
Through your asshole
Because I don’t want to penetrate you
Through your vagina
Since children disgust me
Because I can’t stand to see them cry
Seeing you nine months pregnant.
You’re still asleep
I’m not waiting for you anymore
I’ll cum and ejaculate on your head
I’ll clean up the colostrum
With that bush of hair
That runs from your head to your cunt.
Married, but without desire
I spend my honeymoon
Feeling the balls of a black man
Who is a bouncer at the hotel nightclub
In Torremolinos, Málaga
Who comes to fuck me in my dreams.
You’re still asleep
With your breasts exposed and no panties
With your slit half open
Your mouth almost wide open.
Now, I’m going to put my cock in you
Until the bell rings
In your beautiful throat.
You seem like this, asleep
A pious little whore
Who with your mouth, now
Suck the glans
Of this divine penis of mine.
-You wretched son of a bitch!
You shout at me when you wake up
Spitting in my face
Everything inside.
With your penis in my throat
You have hurt three things:
My larynx, my two tits
And my heart.
You could have wounded
With your erect thorn
That pimple I have on my back
That looks like a blackberry
A whim of my mother’s
When she was pregnant with me.
Full of passion
I grabbed her buttocks and lifted her up
And with my leafy nail
I pierced
Her four beautiful lips
Announcing to me afterward:
-With that immense penetration
You have made my vagina experience
The Passion of Christ
And the Sorrows of Mary.
So you’ll be screwed
In nine months
You’re going to have my child.
-Well, we’ll give it to my mother-in-law
And your father to take care of.

Conflict of Interest

she was very professional
she did my intake
at the mental hospital
she was a peer volunteer

I had dated her maybe 7 years before that
I met her in the nut job world
of group therapy
and being babysat

she filled out
endless forms
and asked me question after question

“Dan she said, who is your insurance provider?”
but all I kept hearing
as the doors slammed
and automatically locked
was the memory of her voice

screaming
“Fuck me baby, yeah!”

Download for free or

BUY A COPY HERE

Paint-By-Numbers

Sometimes when reading poetry
I feel like a grumpy old man
scoffing at abstract art, declaring
“a child could have done that”

Lines and stanzas
pass over my head like
encrypted codes 
I cannot crack

Somebody recently read my book
and described my writing as
“the antidote for pretentious,
indecipherable poetry”

I’ll take that

My poems may be more 
paint-by-numbers than Jackson Pollock
but at least you’re picking up
what I’m putting down

Right?

horror, adj. inspiring or creating loathing, aversion, etc.

sleaze, adj. contemptibly low, mean, or disreputable

trash, n. literary or artistic material of poor or inferior quality

Welcome to HSTQ: Spring 2026, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!

Featuring poetry by Gabriel Bates, Willie Smith, Eric Robert Nolan, Donna Dallas, Charles Rammelkamp, Salvatore Difalco, William Taylor Jr., Dmitriy Kogan, Damon Hubbs, Daniel de Culla, James Callan, Casey Renee Kiser, M.P. Powers, Andy Seven, John Yohe, Wolfgang Carstens, Ronan Barbour, Ben Newell, Taryn Allan, Arthur Graham, and Todd Cirillo.

FREE EBOOK HERE

A Sacred Space

There is something comforting
in the hum of people and the jukebox music
of a Friday night.
A liquor lullaby
that can soothe and strip away
the pain of the week 
and the disappointment of the world.
Like that soft return to the womb
people talk about after they have taken
a weekend yoga or regression therapy retreat—

but much drunker.