Daniel S. Irwin

Self-Improvement

Well, we all look for a betterment in life,
Mainly an increase of income.
No doubt about it, ya need bucks to survive.
Workin’ for the man ain’t gonna make you rich.
Workin’ for yourself is where the money’s at.
Took some accounting classes,
Studied up on personnel management,
Looked into the lives of the rich and famous.
Gotta get the knowledge, it ain’t all from college.
Researched the market and I’m ready to go.
Sure wasn’t makin’ nothin’ as the preacher man.
That’s why I gave up the pulpit, packed away the collar,
And set out on my latest career endeavor.
I just need a wire coat hanger, a good bottom bitch,
And to keep my reference manual handy,
Yup, never know when I might need to refer back
To my Iceberg Slim’s: Pimp, The Story of My Life.

Noel Negele

Mango Woman

Last time I heard
beach bar waiters
and bartenders
were pulling her out of the waters
naked, in a manic state
her gorgeous pale skin
bare against the blue light of the full moon
and, against her will,
were dressing her with their own clothes
because her lips had turned blue
and because, as they said:
“We have sisters ourselves…daughters…”

Manic-depressive, mad-crazy, gorgeous Anna
thick black hair, straight and down to her waist,
a snake-ish body,
gift of her pill addicted diet–
her Animus perfectly engulfed by my Anima,
her Masochism hand in hand with my Sadism,
and it was so lovely for a while,
so lovely indeed, before the trouble came
before the downslide steepened.

Gorgeous, faded, mad-pussy Anna
stealing pills and all sorts of injection caps
I’m too uneducated to know about,
from the hailing ambulance taking us to the hospital
because of my lumped up skull
and my fractured ribs
because I’m the kind of stupid
to pick a fight with a wall, let alone
six to seven scumbags hitting on my beautiful Anna.

Psychotic, angry, dangerous Anna
chasing people with a knife she’s used before
because the sight of seven scumbags stomping
on her man is too much a sight to take–
and when the punks disappear like roachers
in pavement cracks
she turns her fists to street lamps until they explode
and the glass shatters into her knuckles
dousing her sexy clothes with her own blood.

Sweet, compassionate, flowery Anna
tying my shoelaces for me while I sit stiff
and nauseous in the wheeling chair in the hospital,
waiting for the results of my X-rays and angry
because I was promised mad fucking that night,
and as she kisses my shin in adoration
I tell her:

“Did you see how I dropped that first motherfucker
with a single swing? What type of man gets laid
flat on their ass like that, with a single punch? Did
you see Anna? Did you see?
Even the second one couldn’t handle me at my feet, Anna.
That’s why they wrestled me to the ground, Anna.
I wish I had another pair of hands, I’d fuck’em all up
if I just had another pair of hands, I know it, Anna.
If I just had another pair of hands.”

Clever, emotional, pharmaceutically educated Anna
arguing with the doctor
about the type of prescription I need for my rib pains.
Trying to get good drugs out of a bad situation.

“Ibuprofen and Algofren my ass.
He needs codeine and you know it.”

Soft finally, tamed, relaxed and beautiful Anna
lying next to me in a king size bed
after a long day at the police station,
feeding me codeine pills and beers
until I can barely remember who I am
let alone feel any pain in my body.

Pill junky Anna,
gobbling five to six codeine pills at the same time
after already having taken as much or more with me,
after getting fucked by me for what seemed like hours
while her heart still throbs in her chest–
finding her after my shower
with a yellow color on her face, laying there with her
tits barely moving.

Slapping her to keep her awake
because she didn’t want to go to the hospital
because she only needed me to keep her
awake for about three hours, until the danger was gone
but I kept  her up until dawn, just to be safe,
completely dozed out of my mind myself,
slapping her hard, bringing water, bringing fruits
which she sometimes took a bite out of
and half chewed for a second
before her eyes would turn sides
inside her sockets
and I’d lift her straight up, standing her on her two feet
threatening her with an ambulance phone call
to bring her back from the shadow realm for a while.

And when we finally decided it was safe to fall asleep
I put her head on my chest
and with one hand held her wrist,
feeling her slow pulse against the tip of my fingers
and with another hand around her gorgeous tits
I told her to finally sleep, that I’d watch over
her life as she rested,
and I hearkened to her breathing
and I prayed that she remained alive
because she is magnificent
and I prayed that I, myself, don’t fall asleep.

It was time to go
in the morning.
I had to go.

“I have to go” I told her
“I’m too heavy myself
to be able to lift another person.”

I hugged her and gave her half my money
because she didn’t have any homes left
to turn to–
such a beautiful woman with no friends–
imagine the bridges burned–
imagine the ways they were lit on fire.

When I limped out of the hotel
the sun was unforgiving, the heat
unbearable, and my foot
was bruised like a balloon that
barely fit in my shoe
and I walked without knowing
were to go
and the passerby’s stared at my bloated face
and at a foreign intersection I stood still
for a while, not knowing where each road would
take me.

But I knew I had to get out of there
and so I did.

I will remember the sensation
of your tiny trembling body
while I spooned you and
felt you with my hands to see
if the flame was still burning,
while I lied to you and tried to
convince you
you are strong enough to be on your own
just so I could convince my own self
that I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.

Johnny Scarlotti

Japan, 3/11/11

i go to a mansion party
oo lookielookie, there’s a pool in the backyard!
3 doofs challenge me to a 4 lap race
but 1 stipulation: they get a 2 lap head start… 
i still beat the fucking shit out of them (E Z) 
and win 15 dollars
ssthuckerthss 
that’s 15 mcchickens!!!
~DON’T MESS WITH POSEIDON, MOTHERFUCKERS!~
i pound my chest and spit a mist of water into the air 
one of them gets angry n calls me a cream faced loon
i riposte: three inch fool! 
we get broken up 
and the party rages on 
at about 4 AM i sneak off with the baddest bitch here 
take her to the masterbedroom (soO alpha)
15 minutes later 
the host is pounding on the locked door
yellin like a kook  
who in there!? get out my room! i call cops! 
i yell back just give us 10 minutes, kumquat!
the bitch laughs
AsHLeY?!?! he bellows, OpEn DoOr! 
n the bitch yells, NO
he roars COME OUT 
OR I KNOCK DOOR DOWN,
BANG BANG GUY DEAD!
just 10 more seconds, homunculus! i yell
he screams NOW!
but i call his bluff
working up to a climax… 
building… builDiNNng…
then stuff a huuge nut inside her 
ooouaaaww
could hear the man crying behind the door 
fucking loser
then i scramble out of bed 
tell her i’ll call her
slap her ass
good luck  
put my clothes back on, grab my bong,
jump out the window,
walk down the street to a motel for some sleep
————
then a bigass earthquake wakes me up
i immediately head to the ocean
the safest place 
I walk the beach
hit the bong (hhhwuhhbuhbubuhhbub)
WaKe aNd BaKe! 
most everyone else is running from the water
hmm— 
ahhhh, what is that? 
holy shizz,
is that what i think it is? 
tsunami?!
must be a few hundred feet
wwooaah
it’s b e a u t i f u l 
that’s going to fuck a lot of people up 
but not me…
I strip down
revealing a USA speedo 
I charge fearlessly 
as the wave is rolling in
I dive into it
like a hot knife through butter
sucks for everyone else hahaha
treading water, I look back and see the city
get obliterated, I beat on my chest,
best swimmer alive
michael phelps!  
I hit the bong again  
the best eva 
I’m michael phelps!
I made it!
I’m alive!

then I realize I’m in my mom’s bathtub in Califnora
it’s 2018 my name is Johonny Scalarti, i’m 30 years old
I haven’t had sex in 4, haven’t been to a party in 5—
no wait, that is untrue! untrue!!
I’m michael fucking phelps!!!! 

***

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Donna Dallas

Self-Proclaimed Lunacy

Watch me
run — really run on the
wheel the
hamster wheel my legs are cut up bruised and
I’m gaunt maybe I’m dead – a running corpse — I
cannot see anymore I just hear the wheel
I complete the motions naturally since
there is nothing to see – blank
a big – nothing – me
and nothing go together hand in hand
we go together like the wheel under my bloody feet
my head oozes from the rotary vibrations
blood drips from my fingertips into my
water bowl I try to
stop but
it’s an addiction how can I not yearn for
the wheel the nights slip
from me as I run and run and years
and tears and babies are boys are men and I’m still
on the wheel but now I am the wheel and the wheel
is me my bones have
replaced the metal when I crack
into pieces and finally disintegrate I pray there
will still be an electric current left from
my original dynamic
core and you’ll continue to hear it – the wheel……..
the mother fuckin wheel

Robert Cooperman

Thomas Bickerstaff Buys Girl Scout Cookies Outside the Wild Weed Dispensary: Denver

“The Girl Scouts of Colorado have decided it’s now cool to peddle their baked goods outside marijuana dispensaries.”—The Denver Post

It’s about time, 
but they’re thinking too small,
like, well, like little girls,
and not a man with big ideas.

If it were me, and it will be,
they’d be selling all kinds 
of munchies, not just cookies, 
but brownies, marinara sauce,
and all of it laced with pot,
plus T-shirts, posters 
of pop stars in Scout uniforms, 
a button or two undone, 
to show some creamy ta-ta’s 
to appeal to stoners, 
who get so crazy on a few tokes 
they need instant gratification.

I almost feel like tossing away
the lid I just bought—or wait, 
selling it to one of these parents 
too tightly wrapped to sneak 
into the Wild Weed 
while their kids flog cookies—
to concentrate, instead, 
on creating a company name, 
logo, a marketing strategy,
and to find suppliers, designers, 
seamstresses, to make tchotchkes 
to my specifications. 

Free enterprise! Capitalism!
Selling everything to everybody!
What makes this country great!

Casey Renee Kiser

Dead Weight

When I see cuts on their wrists,
I know that we could be tight
Otherwise–
I’m hard to know, full of fight
And I doubt I wanna know you,
Stop pulling on my dress!
If I’m breathing, then
I’m always down to confess
Blooming underwater–
wise enough to drown daily
Surface once a year to prove
I got the guts to hang on, barely

I can’t fix you
That’s something I must address
The blame game–
don’t come at me with that mess
I said
Stop pulling on my dress!

Scott Halperin

Oogling

She’s always wearing
some kind of mini dress.

Today it’s leopard print
and she wears it well.

She walks with more direction
than I’ve ever known.

Each step a precise
thing of beauty.

She caresses the universe
with her axial sway.

All eyes are pulled in
her direction.

Gravitational fields pull
to the sway of her hips.

Her curvers are silent,
but when her heels click past…

I’m glancing out the back
of my cubicle, dragged
by some kind of force
greater than me.

Mark J. Mitchell

Late Surrealist

First, his fish wouldn’t start.
It coughed out tiny diamonds
the precise color of her eyes.

He ran for a public balloon
but it floated off as he reached
the only cracked pyramid nearby.

Walking along Pudding Street.
shoes covered in lovely butterscotch,
he couldn’t make time behave.

When two snakes hissed open
he tangoed—solo—to his desk
to find a lunch of lunar paperwork.

Until the moon swallowed its last cat,
he melted fossilized vegetables
and prayed for a plaid taxi home.

Leah Mueller

X-Lover

X, as in X-rated. That’s how it starts.
X, as in stupefied, tongues hanging from our mouths.
X, as in two rivers, meeting head-on and fighting over who needs to yield.
X, as in the spot where we allowed the accident to happen.
X, as in a pair of intersecting lines, warning you are no longer welcome.
X, as in our eyes are shut, since we bonked ourselves over the head with our own hammers.
X, as in the photos that show where our bones were broken.
X, as in the squall of distress that guts my belly to the studs.
X, as in former, but sure as hell not now.
X, as in examination of why you still reside in my head, though you have no right to be here.
X, as in stitches over the wound.
X, as in the additional time it takes for scar tissue to form.
X, as in closed permanently. Watch for new location.

Charles Rammelkamp

Modernday Researchers

Jenny and Adam (not their real names),
both in their thirties,
consented to document their experience
with sex on acid
for an online tripping journal
called On the Road Again.

“We took a low-ish dose of a hundred mics,”
Jenny started, the two sitting side by side
on a living-room couch, talking to a video camera.
“Kissing was wonderful, sensual.
We did that for about forty-five minutes,
two hours after we dropped.
Everything oral was terrific.
Adam went down on me,
his tongue like a strobelight –
that’s how it seemed in my closed-eye visuals,
colorful, rapid, stuttering,
and I came sooner than usual.”

“I had no trouble staying hard,”
Adam chimed in. “I was aroused.
I loved licking Jenny’s body.”

“But when we tried fucking
a few hours later,”
Jenny smiled at the memory,
“we just giggled, laughed.
Impossible to be serious.”

“But once I had my dick in her,
it was like heaven,” Adam interjected.
“The sunlight coming through
the streaky window was psychedelic,
the visuals so intense,
like I was on a cloud or something.”

“I just couldn’t concentrate,” Jenny confessed,
“but I was so wet, Adam kept sliding in and out
when he entered me from behind.”

Adam smiled. “In missionary position,
we stared deep into each other’s eyes.
It was like I was fucking her soul.”