exhaustion

as if any of this was
planned
ordained

as if this was 
what she wanted all along

every day is tired
in a way she understands
hundred year old trees
can be tired

like the salt in the ocean
is tired

like how the last kiss
before the coffin closes
is tired

she walks when she must
which is far more 
than she’d like
because she’s tired

the streets seem perfunctory
there’s a bustle in the sky
in the passersby’s 
collective obnoxious breath

she can’t imagine what
could possibly be so important
as to deny the darkness
that they all must see

they must see
because it’s so obvious
it’s all around

it’s in everything
it’s of everything
and even it’s tired

tired in the way the sun
grows wary with each moon

keys fitting in locks
like warm deception
tumblers tumbling
granting admittance
like a benevolent hooded figure
before the gallows

she sacrifices herself
upon the altar of life
every day
and everything’s getting tired

Rapture

O Hannah 
you spell your name with two of everything. 
It’s the summer of the comet. 
I want to vibrate like an angel 
and you’re reading a book 
that isn’t a gift 
for anyone over thirty.  
Everything tends towards a conclusion that doesn’t occur. 
I have no defense for poesy. 
Does anyone know how to get to the Bop House? 
The whole shit is breaking down 
and my refrigerator isn’t ready for riot season.
John Maus has a new single called I Hate Antichrist. 
What do we talk about when we talk about luxury? 
You’re reading A Poem for Vipers when lifeguards
pull a dead swimmer 
from the water off Hampton Beach. 
The weather is beautiful.
I eat aspirin for dinner and drink Rolling Rock.
Karen Reed is framed like a Nantucket sunset. 
O Hannah 
we lost two of everything. 
On the rooftop 
of an apartment on Ashworth Ave 
we watch a cumshot 
dance on the tip 
of a 
telescope. 

Divine Substance

Gumersinda and me, Sisebuto
Loved hiding in stables and corrals
To kiss and touch each other
When we played with other boys and girls
To “Three ships at sea, and three more are searching.”
Gumersinda, I dare say
Was already, at the age of seven, very clever.
She told me she sucked her little brother’s cock 
And that she saw, from time to time
Her parents having great, wonderful sex
Although her father would come out exhausted
And her mother would be overjoyed
For she would exclaim:
“Thank goodness I got rid of your father Aldovrando’s 
Excited panting like a giant animal against my ass.”
She would ask her mother Ambrosia:
-But, Mother, how do you do that? 
The mother would respond:
-My daughter, if I don’t let the male penetrate me
He’ll go whoring and he can fuck and beat me
I’ll get any kind of ass disease.
Besides, men, like males
They go to the mob with the females
Like donkeys with the she donkeys
Turned into demons who only seek
The food of our cunts.
Sometimes, Gumersinda and me, on this or that day
We would separate from the group of friends
And we would go to the shepherd’s hut
Which is located in the furthest part of the Eras de la Carraleja
And, there, she would lift up her dress and show me
Her honey-colored colt with a few hairs like a mussel
Instantly opening my fly
Taking out the little bird along with the eggs
Putting this one in the heaven of her palate.
I would lean on her and say:
-No, not Gumersinda.
Let’s play the same old game.
She answered me like she was sucking on a candy:
-Wait until I swallow the divine substance
That inspired so many women with beautiful love poems.
Then we played the same game we both played:
You put little pearls of love in my pussy
From those fishing beads you took from your father
And I’ll light a match, placed
In the little hole of your glans, without fear
So that it may illuminate my love and open for you
Like that flower of Eve that Adam fell in love with
In the Garden of Love
Which, without a doubt, so displeased our God
Just as we displease, now, Bacchus’s donkey, the shepherd
Who sends us to flight caused by the braying 
Of the two of them.
What sons of bitches!

From the Enemy with Love

Wherever there’s been conflict,
warriors have directed humorous 
barbs at their foes by scrawling
‘dedications’ on ammunition
aimed at those being attacked
even though the dedicatees
would never be able to read them.

Bombs and shells that rain
down on Russia and Ukraine
will have “up yours Putin”
or “swallow that Zelenskyy”
or similar phrases on them.
Second World War Photos 
in museums show sailors
chalking “take that Tirpitz” 
on torpedoes, and airmen scribbling 
“Happy Easter Adolph” on bombs.

Archaeology has confirmed
humans really haven’t evolved 
at all in this respect in the last
three thousand years. About
eighty sling stones were found
at the site of the 41-40 BCE siege
of Perugia where Octavian’s army
had opposed the forces of Mark 
Antony’s brother, Lucius Antonius.
Each sling stone, termed a glans,
was made of lead or clay and inscribed
with a pointed, often salacious, message
by the brutal and licentious soldiery:
“I’m searching for Octavian’s arse”
“Bald Lucius Antonius and Fulvia
prepare your arses”, as well as
“I’m aiming for Fulvia’s clitoris”,
each suggestively playing 
with the double meaning of glans 
and so, its intended targets.
Some are simply inscribed
“Take this, Octavian”; others:
“Greetings Octavian, cocksucker”,
deriding his sexual proclivities.

Fuck Haikus V

Mechanics tune me
Oily fingers probe my cunt
Rainfall slicks the roads

The cop’s cock is long
I suck it through the window
A deer leaps ahead.

Cum glows on my face
Dew glistens in the tall grass
My tongue licks my lips

I suck to climax
Dawn is breaking the dark clouds
My throat sings with joy

My neighbor is rough
His weedy lawn needs mowing
His cock rams my ass

My boss promotes me
Sunlight kisses his bellly
He straddles my face

I love big truckers
Hauling goods in sun and rain
My cunt craves their loads

Their spunk’s hot and thick 
Lifeguards in the summer pool
They surround their bitch

A Pike in Flanders

Naked, and with an erect prick
As Nature brought me into the world
Before the mirror of the bedroom closet
Where I sleep alone
And I lick my cock like a donkey
I soon learned that I was a legendary hero
One of those who founded towns, villages, and cities
Monasteries and convents
And that I was worthy of a peculiar adventure
Like that of “putting a pike in Flanders”
Or like that of fucking and raping indigenous people or slaves
Indians or mestizos
Like those discoverers of America
Who didn’t disappoint the donkeys
Doing everything possible
To surpass the quadrupeds.
A moth landed on my glans, saying:
-You’re going to earn the greatest appreciation of men
With your shearwater-hunting crossbow.
March to Europe and the Channel Islands
Not to America, Africa, Asia, or Oceania
To catechize indigenous people with the prick
For it is useful, fitting, and just
That you be part of the praise of men, and their Nobel Prize.
Then, I marched to Europe
Taking, at Atocha Station, Madrid
A train called Puerta del Sol
Which dropped me off in Irún to transfer
On an Express train to Paris.
But I made a mistake, taking a freight train
Which was packed, in its carriages, with Moorish emigrants
And Spanish emigrants.
In Paris, I took a train that took me to Amsterdam, Holland
Where I was to place my pick in Flanders
Touching the sublime matter of the braying orgasm
Snatching from the great lips
Of the whores’ cunts in the Red Light District
Passages and historical news
Of great fuckers who had passed through here. 
What was my displeasure that
When I found myself forced
To ask my current whore, in French:
-Que penses-tu de ma bite ?
-What do you think of my prick?
She, without hesitation, answered me:
-Comme eux tous.
-Like all of them.
How upsetting, my goodness¡
The glorious ideas of the hero of the Discovery of America
Of the Ass Crusades, in Jerusalem
Of Spanish Independence against Napoleon
Of the Silk Road
Fell to the ground.
And worst of all
What made me most unhappy
Is that she showed no interest
In me making anal love to her
Which is better and more effective in making known
True Love that enters through the ass
A subject only known theoretically
To our misfortune
Although she falsely told me, as she opened her legs
Totally naked:
-Here you have a vast field to spread out
From the ears to the tailbone.
Everything is at your disposal.
Now you can put that pike in Flanders!
Upon arriving at the Rembrandt Hotel
Where I was staying
I went to the bathroom mirror
Contemplating my prick
Which, at that moment
Was brimming with erudition
Protesting its beautiful qualities
Its honor and its glory
Which, in a couple of days
It would show in the Channel Islands:
In Guernsey, where Victor Hugo
Revealed the value of a Bray of Love
And in Jersey, where, in its banks, kings and rich people
Stash the money earned from slavery
Prostitution and drugs.

wish fulfillment

she stopped for a
moment to look up
and say

all i could think
about this
afternoon was
sucking your balls.

***

Originally published in Ash #10, 1992

A Poem to Fuck To

Walk up to lot lizards
to ask for lipstick
and the one who says 
she’s from Fresno
just got back with her 
old man, left him in a Coupe
and returned for the fire,
and the tall one keeps checking her purse,
like she knows that things are changing –
the endangered leopard print, those roach killers
that keep her working all the angles…
This may not seem like a poem to fuck to,
but it is: retreating into your pillows,
joyous arching back, those greedy deadpan fuck me eyes
burning a hole through the bloody ceiling
to some of the greatest music you have ever heard.

post-punk

you’ve got to
remember, sometimes
that badass hungry young man
still lives 
inside you
he has fought 
and lost 
many a battle over the years
but it’s the many he won 
that caused 
his retreat 

cities in dust glow alive at night in unrest
it only takes 
the slightest provocation 
for the eye to turn
deep again as the well
shining  
in defiance 

we may have lost 
so many
we may lose
again
and again

see me smile with the grimace

it is I who dances alone
altered mind at the worst of times

with or without my conquests
I move in the dark
like a much younger man 
for this
I have only ever needed 
the mirror and my music

GOD CREATED US THIS WAY

Our spiritual father
Pedophile and whoremonger
Was from a town in the Tiétar Valley
I don’t remember if it was Arenas de San Pedro
Candelada, Piedralaves
La Adrada, Fresnedilla
Casavieja, Casillas
Or Santa María del Tiétar, Avila.
In his talks about religion
And about spiritual love for the Beloved Jesus
Always told us
That the Church mandates celibacy
But that this can be ignored God’s disciples
That is, we priests
Because God is magnanimous and accepts
Bisexual priests
Pimps, pedophiles, and faggots
Just as he accepted his Son’s love
With Mary Magdalene
And his love with his twelve disciples
With the exception of Judas Iscariot
Who turned out to be a sadist
With the mind of a serial killer like Cain
Who sold Jesus to the Sanhedrin
For thirty pieces of silver
Because as Pope Francis said
“The Devil entered his asshole.”
He also told us that
When they went on missions throughout the country
 Preaching the Gospel, prayer, and sacrifice
Through villages, towns, and cities
Stables, and corral
Many of his brothers in the faith 
Fulfilled Jesus’ command when he said:
-Let the children come to me.
Others had sex with the chickens
With the donkeys and mules
And others with the mournful widows 
Who had just buried their husband
And vice versa.
He also told us with great effort: 
-The entire celestial court of gods
Goddesses, demigods, whores
Angels, archangels, cherubs
Celebrate Priapus and the lust of the donkey. 
That God created us thus: 
Woman, love and spittoon
And man, a combat member, terrible and fierce.
To the man to spit
Spit, phlegm, phlegm
Spit, spit, cocks
Through the throat and penis
Into the woman’s cunt and asshole
And the passive man.
Who, then, when he rested
After completing these two rare works
That we have in plain sight
He began to suck
The big toe of his right foot
Without warning anyone, exclaiming:
-Thank the flower
But I shit in the flowerpots.