Johnny Cash Sang

In the old song,
Johnny Cash sang that
He took a shot of cocaine
And shot his woman down.
Now, that just ain’t right.  
He musta been doin’
Something wrong.
If you do a proper shot of coke
You ain’t doin’ mucha nothin’ 
For a while.  Just kickin’ back 
Goin’ with the feelin’ and
Not even givin’ a shit that
Your woman’s no good.
Hell, you ain’t even gonna
Make it to work if you got a job.
You don’t even give a shit
‘Bout the curtains fluttering
By the ashtray catching fire.
It’s a free light show and 
When you come down enough,
You might manage to escape.
Best you can do is float out 
Onto the front lawn enjoyin’
The lay in the cool grass.
The ambulance guys come and
Give you oxygen and that
Makes you laugh just before
You up chuck all last night’s
Pizza and beer.

with a tear in my eye

woke up on the edge
of the world watching 
the sunrise with a tear 
in my eye
 
every magical moment
of my adult life has been 
spent alone
 
unless i’m going to count
all these bottles as the 
friends that would never 
leave me
 
it’s the quiet nights
 
the nights where the pain
cuts a little deeper
 
where i wonder how long
it is going to take to find 
my body
 
when you slip through
the cracks there are no 
calls to the police for 
them to check on you
 
i’d love to move to
someplace where 
i could die alone
 
just the casual sound
of water as i drift away
 
ashes spread along
some coast i never
got to enjoy
 
i’m sure the poems will
be good enough to help 
start a fire

Somalia

Not even 10 minutes ago
I signed for my neighbor’s package,
a rather suspicious-looking package 
shipped all the way from some distant land.  

Somalia?  

Beats me;
the writing on the label 
is far too poor to decipher. 

In retrospect
this wasn’t a wise move on my part.

I shouldn’t have heeded the knocking 
on his door across the landing,
shouldn’t have emerged from my lair
to play Mr. Helpful Fellow Tenant…

“I’ll see that he gets this,”
I said to the mail carrier. 

And I will—

The sooner I part with this thing, 
the better.  

For all I know 
I’m currently in possession of cocaine,
ecstasy, anthrax, explosives, child pornography
or even a snuff film. 

Don’t get me wrong.

He seems like a nice enough guy.  

Quiet, keeps to himself. 

But that’s pretty much what
the neighbors said about Dahmer, 
after the cops found a head
in his refrigerator.

Proof I’m a Great Artist 

My parents were folk dancing 
you may wonder what type 
Balkan folk dancing 
it was always Balkan or Greek 
until mother weakened 
then it was just father 
doing Scottish reel dancing 
Anyhow, they were doing Balkan 
folk dancing 
in a community center somewhere 
Off to the side  
I had my G.I. Joe doll 
and was putting him through his paces 
He ran along the weird 
institutional wainscoting 
across the backs of folded metal chairs 
he did flips, G.I. Joe did, 
occasionally flew, spun 
Yes, I really put him through his paces 
A woman was watching me 
I was cute, 6 or 7,  
and she came up and said, 
“You’re going to be an artist.” 
I remember little of my childhood 
but this proclamation stands out 
it’s an ego thing 
So now I sit here 
with my feathered quill pen, 
my brushes, paints, the kiln, 
the marble blocks and chisels 
and my voluminous  
silken ascots 
still seeking validation 
it’s like a soul-sized hangnail 
following me through life 
So I’m vicious, laying waste  
to my competitors 
with my razor sharp tongue 
I was good with that G.I. Joe 
but maybe the woman was wrong 
maybe what it meant was 
I’d make a good 
soldier. 

the sweet nectar of death

they never warn you as a 
young poet about the nights 
alone
 
digging through the garbage
for a meal
 
that all the good poems will 
come to you while taking 
a shit
 
that no one wants to read
anything other than what
they have written themselves
 
there is no money in it for you 
until you taste the sweet nectar 
of death
 
yet here we all are
 
scribbling down random thoughts 
and swearing someone is going to 
nourish the genius trapped between 
each phrase
 
there are no rich women to take 
care of us
 
no fans mailing you dirty underwear 
from another country
 
hell, even the stalkers have given up
 
it’s an old barn in the middle of nowhere
 
the trusty shotgun from the corner
 
the last bottle of scotch you’ll ever 
get to enjoy

Spirits

Spirits come to me in the night.
My fault: bad booze, cheap dope.
Or rather, cheap booze, bad dope.
That compounded with insomnia.
My visitors always want to talk.
I could care less, but they stay.
A volley of mangled refrains in
Bygone dirges of hopelessness
Spoken by headless chickens.
A good host, I compliment them
On their flawless French, though
I don’t understand a word of it.

Tina James Raises Her Voice

Joy and Iyana started it,
sent out a flier to organize
the protest at Baltimore City Hall,
about forty of us exotic dancers
there to demand our jobs back.

Other live entertainment had re-opened
after the mayor’d shut everything
because of the coronavirus,
why not adult entertainment, too?

I’ve been dancing ten years now,
but since Fantasies closed a few months ago,
I’ve had to go back to my FedEx job
just to make ends meet.
I used to make enough dancing
just two nights a week,
then be home with my kids.
Now? The schedule’s just too much
to juggle work and virtual learning.

Some of my friends’ve turned to websites
where they post nudie sex videos,
interact online with subscribers,
but that’s just not me. 

So yeah, I drove down from Pennsylvania
to protest outside City Hall,
and when Iyana called out 
through that pink megaphone,
“WHO ARE WE?”
I yelled back, 
full-throated as MLK’s Dream speech,
“STRIPPERS!”

“WHAT DO WE WANT?”

“OUR JOBS BACK!”

Beached

When the Penthouse strip club sent invitations
to its end-of-summer luau
to the people on its mailing list,
one of the unmarked envelopes,
addressed to Dewey McKay,
a regular after-work patron,
sent to his office in the big downtown tower,
spilled a suspicious white powder
down in the basement mailroom.

Panicked, the mail clerk called 911,
the building ordered evacuated;
a fire department hazmat team 
charged downtown, bells clanging, lights whirling.
Tests confirmed the powder benign –
a pinch of sand for the luau.

Authorities complained they’d had to
“spend a lot of resources”
to respond to the situation,
hinting Penthouse should foot the bill.

“We were only trying to generate 
some excitement for the luau,” 
Penthouse owner Wade Cousins apologized.
In the end, though,
the cops got free drinks and lap dances
at the luau, leis draped around their necks.

No More Room for Monsters

I once had monsters living under my bed,
deranged creations used to pay rent there.
Vampires once came through my 
childhood balcony window where I later
crucified a demon corpse one Halloween. 
It had a goat’s head and arrows through its eye
and was stuffed with my sister’s clothes to 
fill out the body. I was shooting for adolescent
realism, dripping blood and all. 

To avoid the monsters, I replicated death by
taping a knife handle to my chest and dousing 
it with ketchup, careful not to stain the sheets. 
My bedroom was rigged with traps and alarms,
understood all too well by my dog. 

I invented a protector, and elf king named Lyfear.
Resting head to pillow, I heard him patrolling
my unconscious, every heartbeat a footstep, vigilant 
against the giant ants, the headless corpses. 

Then, the monsters went away. No more Goonie gadgets. 
No more ketchup on the bed. No more Elf king. 
No more guard dog.

Instead, I have others do the work for me. Jackson 
has given me dragons. Romero has resurrected the dead.
Argento has provided the black glove murderer. Fulci, 
the rabid dogs and Rollen the Succubi. I suppose it’s easier
this way. There’s too much clutter under the bed these days
for monsters.