October

Odysseus slaughters over
100 Penelope suitors
to defend her honor

I suffer a plastic broom handle to the eye
confronting Ed Hardy wearing douche
who tells you nice ass

Never again will we unbox
Goddess gowns at Spirit Halloween

Get On It, Comrades 02

in the hotel in Santa Cruz de Tenerife
she tells me I have the profile of Stalin
when I’m laying on my back sleeping
just a few hours after

I took my hardly elected dick
stuck it in the slot of democracy
in the dark in the middle of the night
with the curtains drawn
with my hand over the mouth
of justice and without a word said
as I flipped her over onto her stomach
pushed her head into the pillow
so she was only allowed to breath
with a struggle
with a good rationing of air

together we started to slowly build
a country with a giant dick
for the people of course

under her blindfolded eyes
I kissed her lips with a caterpillar
mustache
as she weighed pleasure and pain
on the scales
with the kinks of socialism

later in the afternoon we laugh
and drive north to Kuntsevo Dacha
where I crown her
comrade slut numero uno
official whore of the state

Rejection Slip By Death

“do you want to die, motherfucker?” he
asked as he pointed a handgun on my head.
“yes,” I said. “pull the fucking trigger, please.”
it was a drug deal gone bad, and I was
impressively enough an innocent bystander.
I was simply known as a drug user
and cooker of meth and crack, so
the poor bastard got confused.
“pull the fucking trigger,” I repeated, as he
hesitated, his hand shaking.
“do you want to die, motherfucker?” he
repeated in a quivering voice.
“yes, you goddamn faggot,” I said, trying to push him.
he didn’t have the balls to pull the trigger.
“I’m sorry,” he whimpered.
“you fucking sissy,” I spat in exasperation. I had almost
seen the light, I had almost been reunited with Emily,
and the motherfucker had refused me
my greatest wish.
“I can do it,” he tried to threaten me.
“don’t tell me, show me.”
“I can’t. I know who you are.”
“shit,” I groaned,
“you can have an 8ball for free. a gift, so
you won’t have people killing me.”
“fine,” I said. I was glad for
the free 8ball of junk.
I was upset about being known enough
not to be killed. I’d done something
wrong in my life.
took the 8ball home.
burned the whole thing on a spoon,
shot it.
it didn’t kill me.
the guy died a couple of months later.
got stabbed.
I’m still alive, ten years later.
life’s not fair. and I
raise a toast to life, the meanest bitch there is.

The Beginning of Eros

Translated from Lithuanian by Ada Valaitis

A young girl sees films
that the grown-ups are watching, they think,
that young girls understand
nothing – two people roll around,
his head between her
legs, what are they doing, asks
the girl, he’s biting her,
the grown-ups say, the following
evening she’s awake again,
the girl sees – one man
sits in a wheelchair,
another holds a gun to his
temple, two others
go to bed, again the same
noises that the young girl
sometimes hears at night
through the wall – those noises –
they frighten and lure.
On the third night, the girl
watches a film where a woman
in chains is beaten with a whip,
she whimpers, she says: harder,
as a warm stream of blood runs
down her lean thighs,  
a man twirls the whip –
with a small, sharp hook
at the end, her mother and father
pant nearby, a hot
breathing reeking of beer
and something else,
the girl sees a tangle of bodies,
can’t tell an arm from a leg,
the young girl can’t fall asleep,
she listens and listens to the rhythm of creaking,
she dreams and dreams –
there’s a hairy beast between her legs,
like in the film
Beauty and the Beast,
the young girl wakes up drenched in sweat,
she no longer knows
what she should feel when
her father beats her bare buttocks
with a belt, it hurts, but maybe she should
whimper – “harder” –
like that woman in the film.

Mommy, Give Me Rancid Peanuts

Your second-dinner date waits at home to share a bottle of wine and a bed. Your wife greets you with a hug, ignoring makeup crusted on your collar. You spit on your fingers, scrape the foundation loose, and rub it on your face.

Your first-dinner date feeds you stale pretzels. Not almonds or cranberries. You don’t deserve cranberries. You love discount nuts. You call her Mommy. She requires it. Her fake nails and salted fingers touch your lips.

Your Mommy is hungry. She begs you to feed her. You offer your wife’s candied walnuts with goji berries. Your Mommy spits it out. She knows the taste of your wife. But she wants peanuts tasting of petrol and plastic.

Your wife tries to sober you up. Your second-dinner date shoves peanuts in your mouth. She gags at the cloying perfume on your neck. You wash your neck and scrub your teeth. The rot doesn’t rinse. She still lets you stay.

Rendezvous

Someone felled a tree  
dragged the trunk across
the entrance to the
tunnel of paths and woods
to keep cars from driving

through and using the cover of
leaves and darkness as a
rendezvous point
for crimes
but you shadow through on foot

use it as a place to ditch
the cops when chased
or drink 40s
and smoke weed sometimes
fuck each other when the

weather is warm or dry  
but even in the snow no one
humps so long as to get
frostbite or you just do it
standing up against a tree

whatever barriers nature or
society construct
you crawl under or over
if you’re wet or hard enough
or too scared not to get high.

Men of Glass

You’ll find them in every town
Usually too late
Once they’ve consumed themselves
Chasing a hunger
Fed only by the lie
That the hunger was the best thing about themselves

Lacking interiority, their emptiness takes to the streets
Holding themselves together with masks worn like tourniquets
Strangling their fear
A fear further overcome with the call to arms
Of nationhood, victimhood and blood
Always it comes down to blood

The history of blood
The purity of blood
The spilling of blood

When finally you’ve got the better of them
You find their blood has grown so thick
It has congealed into a single mass
The only thing about them
That was still solid
In the end

Like men of glass
They gather
At the edges
Filling themselves with shadows
Only at their darkest
Are they ever really seen

Just as Dusk Falls

Just as dusk falls
And, weary from my toil
I return home
Having little appetite for sex with her
As she offers herself to me
Legs spread wide
Revealing that vertical smile
That gaping, slit-like wound
Crowned with a tuft of hair
Reminding me
Of the Devil’s own grin
Because it reeks of demons.
-I want only rest, my love
For I’ve earned the right
To that cunt of yours through my hard labor
I tell her, paying her no mind.
I crave rest so I can ponder
Or perhaps have a quick jerk-off when I wake
For I dream
Of the lark’s return
To a different home
Never realizing that its nest
Smells just as foul.
I wake up
And cannot breathe, oh, my God!
For she has planted her cunt
Right over my mouth
To make me revel
In her inner and outer lips
And grant me perfect peace
For she means to kill me
With love
Screaming in my face:
-My darling
I do this for your salvation.
Between my thighs, you bastard
Commend your spirit.

Give My Regards to the River Styx

Give my regards to the River Styx
get back to your boat and your bag of tricks
don’t cry to me
how you chose your destiny
playing in a tired Beatles cover band
365 nights of I Wanna Hold Your Hand

Give my regards to the River Styx
better think twice where you’re sticking your dicks
this ain’t no Walt Whitman
pond of tranquility
you can kiss your ass goodbye
to the death of civility

Give my regards to the River Styx
see your exes getting their kicks
rowing through the wallowing swill
gulping, swallowing their endless pills
Satan’s just another gondolier
same shit different year

Give my regards to the River Styx
home to angry mobs of humble snobs
they have a mouth but cannot speak
eyes have they but cannot see
they have ears but cannot hear
indeed, is there any breath in their mouth
those who make their gods will become like them

Score One for Me

I thought I had something goin’.
Talked stuff at the bar and she
Straight up invited me home.
Her house, kinda off the road.
With a big smile, she said she
Was gonna fuck my brains out.
Okay with me. Until I looked
In her bedroom closet and saw
The stack of empty head bones
And splattering of gray matter
And dried and fresh blood just
Seeping into the woodwork.
Maybe, I didn’t need fucked
All that bad after all.