I’m allowed
2 books for the display shelf.
I choose
Firestarter
and Jaws—
A little girl
with an awesome power.
An enormous shark
with a voracious appetite.
As co-workers
and patrons approach
I want them to sense danger.
I want them to turn around
and walk away, far away.
Lest they get burned.
Lest they get bit.
Late early
morning, smudged
charcoal sky.
You dip us in and out
murky sidewalk pools
like spender bristled
brushes, plunged
in tins of street oils.
All haze,
the air we sip, the strangers we fuck,
the steam, cumulus over the Bowery.
I straddle the arc of your back, my whore-heeled sandals
dangle unbuckled, nascent blisters
16th century pickpack
on my Ferdinand Magellan.
I wrap
my arms around your strong shoulders,
squeeze hard through slim alleyways,
curdled milk, vomit and spent diapers,
trash collection is tomorrow
heaps of black plastic
line the silken Manhattan sidewalk, sea-
polished stones on a Sussex beach.
I start
to slip, but you hold on
the raindrops are plump,
bitter against my bare neck.
An awning,
you come to rest, I slide down your trunk
soft lips dry my face, I nuzzle
the nape of your bristly throat,
sweep my nose through your peppery mop
and leap again.
I’m at sail in a blue boat
in a red sea
in a strange land.
The hold is filled with dark snakes.
They cannot escape
Although the hold is full.
Black, writhing, poisonous snakes
Ruby orb-eyes
filled with fire.
The sea is calm as I lie on the boat.
Why do I lie?
Why am I still?
“Peace!” cries the vampire.
“At long last, I have found peace!”
His snakes are free.
Slowly, I open the hold.
The snakes emerge
And begin to fly.
The snakes devour me alive.
Peace!
At long last, I have found peace!
When you told me that you were posh
I thought you were being ironic,
but I really couldn’t care either way –
nor does anyone care for your opinion
when you butt into conversations,
or your passive aggressive comments
and here’s some advice
for your storytelling –
have a point with the stories,
or at least give them some feeling –
maybe it’s just attention
that you’ve been after,
so here it is and
let me spell it out for you –
I couldn’t care less if you were shot off
the edge of a sixty storey building
and fell
all
the
way
down
before you landed on a canopy
and were catapulted
into a contaminated hot tub
of Peruvian piranhas
and if I visited you in hospital,
it’d only be to unplug
your life support
so that I could charge
up my phone –
so fuck you
and the horse
you rode
in on.
“Why do you do that?
Why do you constantly
push me away?” she asked.
“I don’t know, I don’t mean to,
maybe there’s something wrong
with me,” I said.
“No, I think you do. I think you
know exactly what you’re doing
and it needs to stop.”
“Okay. I’ll try my best.”
A few weeks later she was gone
just like the one before her
and the one before that.
I guess I didn’t try my best
or maybe my best
just wasn’t good enough.
I decided I’d have to find
a new woman and give it
another try.
I smoke rock
I drink scotch
I like hookers that don’t talk a lot
And I smile from the pain
When the needle plunges through my vein
I don’t need Jesus
to forgive me
My salvation would cost more than I can pray
Absolution can’t be purchased
No matter how many
Hail Marys you say
A bottle becomes a victim
Another soldier I bled to death
Tiny plastic bags lay full of empty
While the drug swims in the blood
Under my flesh
It would take more than an army
of Christian soldiers
On a crusade to save my soul
A futile quest to rescue an empty spirit
That’s been ravaged, robbed, bought and sold
In twisted darkness
Or straightened light
Seeking the venom
Piercing fangs
The healing cure in a snake’s bite
There’s no trust
In a junkie’s smile
No grief in his tear
Rusted words from an acid tongue
Spit out and insincere
Fate left no clue
Just a bruise
My apocalyptic tattoo
Was I the one
That made this choice
Or was it the addiction
Imitating my voice
If there were humor in violence,
he’d chuckle at the set-up,
crazed fingers roped around
that marble blade festooned
with the goatish grins
of fat-tongued Babylonian gods,
and the telling would have
him in spittle-splashed stitches,
the hand jerked back.
like pulling on an invisible bow,
blade rising above his head
in tittering expectation,
mouth pulling hard against
a stiletto-toothed grin,
and the punch-line would
shatter his violent calm
to such an explosive degree
he’d be rolling on the floor
in a zephyr of flesh and bone,
writhing beside her,
move for move, note for gargled note,
swimming in the laughter
of her blood.
River House Blues,
By Mendes Biondo
49 pages
A carousel of surreal characters flowing along a river of souls. Lovers, hunters, gamblers, and even lady death herself all make an appearance in this powerful new book of poems from Mendes Biondo.
Mendes is the Mount Vesuvius of poetry, the lava burning every page, smouldering with honesty and sex and dreams and characters from the Wild West. The smoke of humour and insight permeate throughout this chapbook. Mendes Biondo is a poet of flames and every stroke of his pen scorches, delights and sometimes shocks the imagination but always snares the reader’s attention. A poet whose reputation continues to grow.
—John D Robinson, Holy&intoxicated Publications
Martin Appleby of Paper and Ink Literary Zine has started his very own podcast! Featuring punk rock, poetry, and interviews with friends of HST such as Marc Bruseke and John D Robinson, you’ll definitely wanna check them out! Latest episodes below:
Dad was fat all his life
Obese
He couldn’t do a lot of things.
Walk without special help
Bathe
Climb stairs
Sit in a normal chair
Drive a normal car
Sleep in a normal bed
And say “I love you, son.”
To draw those words out
of his dad he became a cartoonist,
but that also failed.
And now that his father
was dead,
collapsed face down
on the kitchen floor,
blood seeping out of a head wound,
he struggled to turn him over
on his back
and dipped his finger in the blood
and drew a speech bubble
next to his father’s head
and wrote in it the famous words.
Finally.
“I love you too, dad.”
Horror Sleaze Trash 