Sometimes,
Afterward,
When we would lie in bed
And talk in the dark as we recovered
She would tell me about
What an absolute prick
Her husband was.
How he lied and how he cheated on her
And how he turned the kids against her.
The conversation often turned to dear old Jason.
She went back to him eventually
And I imagine now,
Afterward,
When they are lying in bed together
She never brings me up
At all
And I don’t know whether
To be offended
Or flattered.
In a war torn
Luanda
Where water
Was scarce
A projectionist
And custodian
Of a battered
Old cinema
Would screen
Repeatedly
The same film
Sylvia Kristel
And her amorous
And saucy
Adventures
In Bangkok
As Emmanuelle
Free entry always
And the soldiers
And the old ones
And the children
Would cheer excitedly
Whenever nudity
Was on view
Frequently paused
Frozen to be viewed
Like Titian’s painting
Of Diana and Actaeon
Fast forward to
The here and now
And I haven’t seen
A film in weeks
With a lack
Of enthusiasm
For flesh
In person
Or in celluloid
Christ!
I wouldn’t even
Be able to find
Luanda on a map!
it was the dead of night,
it was the death of a lot of things
and I was walking to the kitchen
for water or wine, whatever that christ cunt had left us,
when I passed her son’s bedroom:
I heard a slap and a moan.
then the creaking and panting started …
there was a crack in the door.
you know damn well I had a peek:
there he was
fucking his girlfriend doggy on the bed.
and damn if he didn’t look like his mum:
same full lips and big grey eyes
framed around a dirty blonde bob.
it was like a flat-chested version of her
going at some chick’s rump with a strap-on.
no, you dirty bastards
I didn’t invite myself in.
I didn’t even stay to watch.
I simply went back to bed
and slipped it in his mum:
oof, she woke up. what’s got into you?
happy families, I told her.
and I hear she has a daughter somewhere, too.
Shot my big fat mouth off.
Shot myself in the foot.
Hobbled into the kitchen.
Fixed a shot; broke out
the saltines; gobbled a few.
Took a potshot at the cracker
squatting in the backyard.
Shot up the toaster, the micro,
the blender, the food processor.
Limped down the hall,
removing clothing till nude.
Entered the bedroom.
Eyeballed the mirror;
shot both balls off, shattering
my image wholly to shit.
Picked my way over shards
back out up to the den,
where sci-fi insects crawled from the computer;
displayed pooters; promptly had sex; died. But
not before the ladies shot their eggs through a port
into the central processor. I kicked aside a cicada
the size of a vacuum.
Made it out to the livingroom.
Picked off the cocktail table the phone.
Shot my big fat mouth off to the cops.
Invited the pigs for barbecue, plus a friendly shootout.
Tossed the cell like a skeet. Shot
the peripheral midair dead center;
hoped the cops heard; segued, outta ammo, into a syncope –
failed to know where I was, am, or would be. Found myself
up on Whidbey shooting a Western,
about to wrap it up. When they found me, I was pee-
ing on the rug, blood flooding the throat, foot half gone.
But no pain. Because, from babyhood,
I’ve boasted a bullet-head. So,
when zero to shoot happens, I go zen
as a Win Dixie turkey leg deep frozen.
fresh out of high school
work for a band going nowhere
girl named Candy
tells me about a job
however
certain inadequacies preclude
me from front of the camera work
but a lie about being tech savvy
and literate gets me in
an editing room
hours are my own
no one asks or cares or
wonders if i really know
what i am doing
and i don’t but i meet
deadlines
features, shorts, loops,
it’s all the same
any clown can edit
video on a fast computer
write blurbs, promotional
one pagers, fake reviews
on tedious blog pages
no one reads
meet the girls, the guys,
spend time on set
find myself dreaming
of the days working
with the band on
Sunset Blvd
or reading Dostoevsky
or loading trucks
12 hours a day
Dangerous women with their
cold as death eyes, their skip
a beat hearts, their Camel straight
speech. All of them awash with
off-the-rack whiskies neat, with
their sailors-on-leave spiels,
their rages and their foam at
the mouth fits, their attitudes and
their habits and their evil ways, and
their never crossed twice bottom lines,
their bodies-on-fire pacts with
harder than stone men. All of them
self-directed even with nowhere to go
and how they went there twice
without compunction or regret,
never once looking back.
All of their razor slit dresses,
naked to the thigh and their V
necks revealing more than they
hide. All of their men so desperate
to have them, their weeping is
manifest like exiles without countries,
tribes without names, struggling in
deserts not to become just another
pillar of salt, just another road marker
along the rutted highway into proverbial
valley of death, in that place where
all the bodies are buried, the ones
they put there and the ones they wished
they had.
These never scorned women,
beyond critiques of pure reason,
their followers irrational as escapees
from houses of detention, places of idol
worship, all of them demented,
all of them loyal as three-headed
guard dogs, mastiffs and mongrels.
These women who were the stuff
of legend, the stuff goddesses are
made of, their likenesses cast in stone
and thrust into hell where only the truly
regal reign supreme.
says that fucker camus
says the idea of ideas, and i
see what he means but i
still believe in both words and the
silences between them
i still believe in love as something
more than some cynical
top 40 hit
and sid, who killed nancy,
or sid, who didn’t, but she’s dead either
way while the ghost of god endures
and were you drunk on the
night you pulled the trigger?
jesus
just give me a straight answer, okay?
spare me all of that
patti smith bullshit
spare me rimbaud & burroughs &
horses and all of
that vacuous 1975 hipster crap
all of that self-righteous sanctity
what’s left at the end of each day
is a false king waiting to
rape your children
a ship filled with fire moving
slowly towards some new world
the death days, which we
always mistake for
the best times of our lives
The old widow in black mantilla
knelt from the black bench
near the altar and prayed the rosary.
Rumor has it she mourns
not her late husband
but the lover she had
before she married.
(Perhaps it was Rudolph Valentino.)
Her arthritic fingers, bead after bead.
Her melancholic eyes, teardrop after teardrop.
Her muttering mouth, drop after drop of blood.
When she finished her prayer,
she stood up and dropped the rosary,
shed a final fountain of tears,
drooled a gush of blood.
(The spot she left, you’d think
Jackson Pollock dropped by
and dripped his art.)
Now I don’t know her true story,
but I swear there was blood
on the church floor.
(And I heard Michael Jackson
sing his song.)
My eyes are stuck open.
My eyes were blue.
My eyes are marbles now.
I look like a taxidermy,
This expression frozen on my face
Almost life-like.
My stuffed body behind the glass,
Hunched over the typer,
A glass half-filled with amber
At the side,
My hair a little wet and down into
My face.
My eyes are stuck open.
My ears rest beneath my hair.
This museum is made of paper
And there is graffiti all along her walls.
Sometimes I am alone
But I always feel like someone is watching,
Even when the lights are dimmed,
The doors locked.
I see the people who come to gawk
In the silty air of day.
I hear what they say
But I cannot reply, argue,
Confess, agree
Or refute.
None of them know who I am
But many pretend
That they do
Because it is embarrassing to be ignorant
In a place of learning
Even though to learn
Is why they came.
My eyes are stuck open.
At least where my eyes
Used to be.
she was a heavy set
blonde with curves
in all the right places
piercing eyes and a
tattoo on her left foot
as she told my mother
about her recent cardiac
event, i was undressing
her with my eyes and
wondering if her panties
were edible
i’m sure she noticed me
as our eyes met once
or twice
she was the kind of doctor
that probably has fucked
a patient or two
or maybe that’s just one
too many porn movies
i have been watching
lately
when we got back to
the car my mother told
me she didn’t like her
i chuckled and
said i understand
mom said she looked
like a floozy
i laughed
that was exactly
why i liked her
