If It’s Funny, It’s Funny

I’m having a rare bull session 
with some old buddies
and her name comes up—
“Dude! You too?”
Yep. Seems we all knew her.
Intimately. 

Of course Reno was 
a much smaller town, then.
If a girl got around enough
she could really make a name for herself.
God knows I tried to make one for myself.
It’s how we became semi-famous
before social media.

Maybe somewhere, a group of women
sits down over margaritas, and 
one mentions this dude she used to 
know….and another says, “I remember 
that guy! All he did was talk about 
his ex…then he got too drunk to fuck
me, and passed out on my couch!”

Then a third chimes in, and says
“I was seeing him for awhile, but 
he left me for some bar skank.
She was married, too. I wonder how
THAT worked out.” and they all 
laugh.  As they should. 

Perforated by Sirens is a poetic collaboration between two friends written during the height of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The book manages to fuse two distinct perspectives, with Mark being in Bristol, England and Danny being in Bergamo, Italy. Bergamo suffered one of the highest pandemic casualty rates in the world.

A5 saddle stitched chapbook. Lovingly handmade, hand stamped, and hand numbered. Limited to 25 copies. Printed on an old Canon laser printer we found abandoned at a dump site.

BUY A COPY HERE

Holiday Feast

Although alone
on Thanksgiving,
I still like 
to celebrate 
the holiday.

I have
some turkey,
preferably wild,
poured in a glass
over ice
with a splash
of coke.

And I keep
going back 
for another
helping.

Devotion

Here I kneel
in deference,
simple silence,
a wordless prayer,
an act of devotion. 
In gentle rhythm, 
head rocked forward,
eyelids closed, 
hands hold legs
to steady stance.

Touch is tantamount 
to taste in grace.
I asked you to stand,
tell me your fear,
read me words.
Stroke auditory buds,
as blood pounding,
in matching pulse,
I slide my thumb 
inside your ass.

Slang

“…a scurvy-looking cove sitting with a couple of doxies,”
I read in a detective novel set in 1719,
digging the eighteenth century patois, 
fiction my escape 
from the sledgehammer of horror
of the year in which I live, 301 later.

A sketchy-looking dude sitting with a couple of hoes.

I look up from the novel 
at the television screen,
where the current president sits
with his daughter and his wife,
a bloated, scowling man
with fake-blond hair,
candidate for a stroke,
his cosmetically-enhanced companions
all counterfeit curves and color.

I turn back to my novel,
to the eighteenth century,
not so different 
from today, I concede.

Lube Tube

Spain had this strange concept,
part exciting,
part frightening
he dragged me to a cage, a trap
me mouse, him cat.

Spain toyed me in the pub
a finger in my shorts
trying to snoop my hole
my hand grabbing his mole.

The lead drag screamed at us
s/he was supposed to be the queen
their slick make up leaked from their eyes
s/he scared us and we fled.

The aftermaths of this was weird
I had no place to go
he had no bed to share
both broke
a hotel room was nay.

The tube became shelter
we kissed and hugged and rubbed
on the seat of an empty train.

Then,
Spain stopped at Stockwell
I had to go further, alone,
down south,
soothing my frustration.

Soon I would leave London
to reach Southampton.

Old 45s

After she’s made dinner
after they drink and fight 
have sex and watch 
the television
after he goes to bed
she stays up and drinks
tequila and dances 
alone to old 45s
Dusty Springfield
Patsy Cline
The Shangri-las
and for a few hours
she forgets about
the debt
and the doubt
the things he said
the things she said
and where it’s all
surely headed
she gets lost 
in old songs
and for a while lives 
in the music that sings
of other times
when the world 
was different 
when she said 
pretty things
to pretty people 
and tomorrow wasn’t 
always something to dread
she has to be at work
in 5 hours and she 
says just one more 
shot and turns 
the record 
over.

Horror Sleaze Trash proudly presents the poems of John D Robinson.

“These are survivor poems, battle scarred verse that hits the soul and assaults the frontal lobe. Here is a poet who has lived several lives and emerged on the other side intact.”

—Joseph Ridgwell, author of Burrito Deluxe

“This book is not decorative art. This book is not the exercise of the commercial artisan. This book is stripped of 21st century consumer bullshit. This book is a way in to what matters. Get ready. It is going to hurt. And you will love it.”

—Henry Stanton, UnCollected Press

BUY A COPY OR DOWNLOAD HERE

suicide lovers

your lips tasted
like danger
 
like death was
just around the
next corner
 
your tongue 
danced in my 
mouth like i 
was the 
unexpecting
victim
 
it was a cigarette 
on the front porch
 
the sad reminder
that suicide lovers
will never get a
storybook ending
 
so many years ago
 
now we’re flirting
with death while
burning every damn
bridge along the way
 
sometimes sorrow
is all we can get 
by with
 
like any fucking 
fool
 
we’ll turn it into
something that 
someone will 
think of as 
art

Towhead 

I wasn’t drunk yet 
and I went between the trees 
where I always go 
to take a piss 
I was looking at nothing 
thinking nothing 
and letting the piss  
take care of itself 
when I heard, “Hey!” 

Beneath the canopy 
of low branches 
was a little boy, maybe 4, 
with a Tonka truck 
loaded with a pinecone 
and I knew  
I was fucked 
because he had piss 
on his towhead 

“Oh shit,” I said 
and I backed out of there 
The dad was behind me 
“Did you see..?” he asked
My hands were in the 
“Who? Me?” configuration 
and I was distraught 

The little boy came out 
of the woods 
and he said, 
“He peed on me.” 

“I didn’t mean to,”
I said, “but I did.” 
and I sat on a stump 
and waited for  
the police to come 
and sort it out 

What should I have done? 
Lied? What should I have said? 
There was nothing I could do 
to make it right 

It’s like so much these days 
the facts speak 
for themselves 
but they don’t always
tell the whole story.