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.

Solution

What if you didn’t
grow up with TV,
radio, or anything 
electrical except 
lightning (and firefly)?
You’d read if you could,
train physically, play, write (if able),
speak, perform at the theater and home.
You’d ponder, drink wine, feast plenty, consult oracles, 
engage in blood-thirsty politics, civil war,
cult religion, human sacrifice, 
you’d avoid proscription,
attend circuses and gladiatorial games,
puke in a vomitorium, be real stoic
and long for Jesus.

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.

Moses Interprets the Ten Commandments

The Summons

Mount Sinai was Yahweh’s second home
where he always liked to roam
while keeping an eye on those below
so they knew that He was in the know.
He’d rescued the chosen from heathen Egypt,
and had to ensure that they stayed on script.
He’d always had Moses on speed dial, 
since he’d floated down the Nile.
Yahweh decided to give him a call
to get him up Sinai before nightfall.

Moses arrives on Sinai

When Moses arrived, he was utterly buggered
Yet Yahweh still chided him for being a sluggard.

“Christ! Where’s the fire?” asked Moses, knees creaking,
“I was having a beer. Why all the shrieking?”
“Take the name of my unborn in vain
and your future will go down the drain!
Remember ‘God the Father’, and the rest?
Well, it’s the Godfather bit that I like best!
You’re here to take down my new rules
to prevent the chosen ones acting like fools.”

Moses receives the commandments

He handed poor Moses two very large stones.
“You’re joking!” cried Moses amid moans and groans.
“Never heard of pen, paper and ink?
The Egyptians have got them. It makes you think
you’re behind the times, not up to snuff.
So come on, Yahweh, it’s not good enough!”
“Less of the lip and get down the mountain.
Cut the crap. It’s late and I’m counting
on you to spread the word and straighten them out.
Run along Moses, you’re meant to be devout.”

Moses breaks the tablets

The prophet fell on the way down and the tablets shattered.
“Shit!” he exploded, wondering if it mattered.
Yahweh did hear the oath and the stones break.
“You clumsy oaf! You make my balls ache!
Can’t you deliver what amounts to a letter?
Perhaps Aaron or Amazon would’ve done better.” 
A chastened Moses gathered up the bits,
muttering about Yahweh getting on his tits,
scrambled down the mountain and sat on the ground
where hundreds of the chosen were milling around.

Moses glosses commandments 1, 2 and 3

Moses got to his feet, as grumpy as hell,
and glared at the mob, while ringing his bell.
“Listen to me you lot. I bring rules from on high.”
The chosen ones heaved a collective sigh.
“Yahweh calls them the Ten Commandments, 
though I think they need a few enhancements.”
A voice in the crowd shouted, “What a damned cheek!
Come off it, Yahweh! You’re a control freak.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” muttered Moses,
wanting to come out of this smelling of roses.
“Take the first commandment: ‘no other gods but me’.
It doesn’t take a genius to immediately see 
that, followed by two, he’s just a Mafia boss
running a protection racket and doesn’t give a toss
about the rest of us. He’s invented the vendetta
until the fourth generation! And it gets better:
if you take his name in vain, like I’m doing here,
he threatens rather more than a word in your ear.”

Moses glosses commandments 5 and 6

“As a Mafia don, he’s all kith and kin.
If you step out of line, it’s a mortal sin.
So, look after your mother and father
and Yahweh won’t get in a lather.
Now six is a bummer, mostly for the Yankee
(and his armory of M16s) who’s liable to get cranky
when a shopping mall’s nearby—in fact, it sucks—
if he can’t slaughter women and kids like sitting ducks.
That would take the laughter out of the slaughter.
Yanks have to shoot people, come hell or high water! 
In a sinful world there are no innocent bystanders.
It’s no fun if you can’t fire your gun like military commanders.”

Moses glosses commandments 7, 8 and 9

“No killing? Then, how about killjoy number seven?
I say, ‘Have some adult fun rather than go to heaven!’
‘Being at sixes and sevens’, to reach the obvious conclusion,
was once about murdering and adultery, not confusion.
Eight says no stealing, so hands off the neighbor’s wife,
or Yahweh might just decide to take your life…
Nine bans false witness against your neighbor,
even if his wife’s pole-dancing with you as a favor.”

Moses glosses commandment 10

“Finally, no coveting the neighbor’s wife or his ass!
The wife’s ass, fair enough, but the neighbour’s? Seems crass
to me, unless He knows you’re someone inclined
to approach the people you fancy from behind.
After all, he’s a deity who made Adam out of clay.
Didn’t he know it’s more fun the other way?
Yahweh gives us a sex drive and then trusts to luck
we don’t covet the neighbor’s wife, for a sinful fuck!
Having sects is preferred to having sex in the US of A,
‘cos it brings in more money and is less risqué.”

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Slow

His house
smelled like
old piss and
oven chips

one year
he invited a few of us 
round for a birthday party
when his mother
put the tray 
of frozen nuggets
on the table
siblings of all sizes 
eagerly grabbed
at tiny brown pucks

they were dirt poor
he seemed half 
a step behind
in his head
always 
looking off
somewhere

he was kind
they all were

his house sat
at the end 
of a terrace
right on
a sharp corner
a sign outside read
‘SLOW!
Accident Hotspot’

after a small cake
& song 
we all went outside 
to look 
at the blood stains
on the pavement
where a woman 
had been clipped
by a lorry
earlier that week

White Noise

In homage
to post-modernism,
part two of my act is
fucking with Foucault.
Acrobatic sex on stage
with the deformed, see
some big bang blew the
madhouse inside out,
distortion is the slippery
default state
of every thing–one
I fuck over, and under
the circumstances

I repeat my denial of
everything to date,
and propose next,
to passionately lick the
fragrant ass-hole
of chaos,
teach my students
to flagellate,

And hysterically
suck my dialectical
marxist dick.

Want to watch?