It’s surprising the things you find
out about yourself at 3 o’clock
in the morning
lying on the living room floor
head spinning with drink
mind racing with regret,
wanting so desperately to send
that message, yet knowing it’s
inviting the devil back in
granting the succubus access
to my vital organs once more,
like the drag of the needle
tracing silhouettes of angels
wings down my arm, veins
clouding with the junk of us.
My head in the clouds
my feet taking me to places
unknown, unknowingly putting me
in dangerous or uncomfortable circumstances
desperately seeking comfort or some reprieve
from the monotony of my heartbeat
counting my breaths in multiples of four
until my face goes numb and my eyes
roll in their sockets, tucking my hands
under me while I sit, finally able to feel
something real, something tangible
calmly biting my tongue until I feel
the bitter taste of copper spurt and hit the roof
of my mouth, satisfying my bloodlust and allowing
the sweet serenity of nothingness to wash over me
like a tsunami of infinite sleep.
say hello to depravity
to shit flowing in the streets
girls as young as nine walking these streets
modern slavery right before our eyes
nothing will change
it takes a war in this country for that to happen
tent cities under the overpasses, selling dead
flowers in the middle of an intersection
some keep their windows up and doors locked
but when i have the money, i’ll hand the guy a
twenty and tell him to spend it all on booze
too many homeless die with the needle
still in the arm
at least the bottle should get them through
the night and maybe make a friend along
the way
everyone is in a panic,
buying everything they
can because just in case
could always be right
around that corner
i never have lived
my life in fear
not when my father
would beat me
not when i was the
white kid in a black
high school
and not all these years
later, in the age of fuckers
not knowing how to wash
their fucking hands
First the shadow of that busybody,
androgynous maven mayor Femke Kok
flitting by on her bicycle,
along the esplanades, graffiti only
in invisible ink her first decree,
and now, Quarantine — not without explanations,
from robotic mouths, drone moon
Guillotine slides down along still canals
of the quadrant, where the geese drift
pretending to be swans but fart more often:
district of nectars
where the men paraded, in search of a lost
India flower, lurching
from British jets just cancelled without refund.
Before the Quarantine,
it was almost Florentine:
harlots kept shop in the red-to-
vermilion neon-lined windows,
Alumni of Law, economics
or Art History, faculties
of Bucharest and of Sofia,
goods with degrees, to illumine
seasonal drunks, passersby goaded.
Schools of clownfish swimming, fleeting
between matrix corals–
I fume against the drone,
which interrupts lullaby
against the decadence
such as that of realtors,
the madame-pimp Leandro,
or the daughter of senile Hans
who runs the big hash-dens.
Unlike her,
I shy
from honest arbeit,
and yet I want the very best
gelato in my cone,
and am simply here
for the welfare, art my alibi,
take the money and run
until flight:
welfare-rat with wings,
straddle-riding Pegasus,
“No soy de aquí ni soy de allá”
through the bleakest Northern skies astreak
the crown-shaped red bloom at each
gun-rocked temple
of my satyr’s head,
gunflowers of kamikaze’s widow’s
sweet origami.
the art-world can suck
my proverbial olive-oiled cock,
dreamt of by the wife of Alexander.
Suspicious of the innovation of the bicycle,
though I once scoured these streets
looking for the young Jean Genet, and almost ignoring
all the Sultan’s girls, (they halt my shrugs
though I won’t pay)
of the unfortunate two and a half conditions,
I by far prefer women—
the wheel without spokes, please.
Me gusta cuando callas: this has become heresy
of the warlock, thanks to a censorious lot,
led by the mavens.
If I see the shaved head of an art world imp
near my crotch, I will kick his fashion-sharpened skull
away, down the spiral staircase,
they don’t know was invented by
Leonardo.
Despite degrees,
There is a whole lot
they don’t know
this is not a pipe, this is not a child’s poem, your child’s poem
although words are strewn, a haphazard collage
no capitalization, except for words that shouldn’t be.
look Mommy, you proclaim to your own country club mother, I’m a poet
and I can smear poop and invite. she shakes her head at you, her child
thirty years existent. while you invite the audience to genuflect
words strewn without logic, a poem
boxcars without couplings, moving into
masturbation nowhere, a noodle, your mother, a penis
is your sister
(Your child’s name is stanza paradigm problematic. no dead poets you think)
this is not your child’s poem
even though you ask
why can’t we all just get along
I don’t see color or this or that
and recite your words while
donning an Afro and pissing rainbows on the page. You child
of starched country club Whiskeypalians, whiter than
Wonder. But this is not your child’s poem
because your child will be untrammeled by age, loving
the moon and the stars
(meanwhile you milk your own mother’s neglect. pain is a salve)
a butter-colored streetlamp
and no narrator flings poop in between words
only the moon and the stars
and the stillness, the sorrows exist on terms they exist on
if only you were your fucking child’s future poem
this is not a pipe, this is a prick
this is poop, this is anything
but your child’s theoretical poem
untrammeled by masturbating sister
words without meaning and glory
(your child will don a beret at two. or is baldness more fun?)
why can’t you become a child
and shoot the narrators who are constructs
shoot them until they release their cynical interpretations of
beautiful words. for this is not a pipe, this is not your future child’s poem
shoot the narrator
and look into a moonlit nightscape
while you conceive that child
through untrammeled jizz, birthing flesh
and mind so cheerful, taking to the expanses of
paper and words expanding and naked and dancing.
The badger’s in the kitchen
making chai.
He says he learned how from
his sensei.
My wife and I are settling in
to watch that
new Hollywood blockbuster:
Jackpot Vernacular,
starring the ingénue, Sunday
Lipinsky.
I tell the wife, boy would I like
to and she says her, too.
The movie takes our mind off
the wrecking ball
poised outside our plateglass.
It looks like another
planet, that’s what the badger
says. Only to a
badger, I think, but I smile my
reassurance.
The chai is hot and spicy and
as smooth as a blowjob
so that we forget the holes in the
movie’s plot, the
holes they try to patch with Sunday’s
ample backside.
It’s almost enough.
“Snuffle,” says my wife and the
badger is pleased.
“We have to get rid of him,” she
says when he leaves.
He seduced my secretary.
I contemplate this and decide that
her secretary
looks a lot like Sunday Lipinsky.
I wouldn’t mind, etc.
The movie rattles forward
a little longer
but our concentration is shot,
like Kennedy,
like the moon.
We decide to cover each other with
chai and see what happens
to our sex lives.
It’s not a bad way to spend
the afternoon, even
if you know you have to let
your badger go.
And, when I mount my loving wife
like a cowboy,
I think her ass is as good as
Sunday Lipinsky’s.
It gets me through. It gets me
to the other side.
It gets me and it gets her and we
all muddle along,
as the rain begins to genekrupa
the roof,
and the wrecking ball glows
as if it has conjured Dr. Dee’s spirits.
The arc of its intention
is something to see.
So I cover my wife’s nakedness with
a quick cairn
as the world shatters,
shaking its myrmidon coat, a wet god,
now appearing for the first time,
almost too late.
Sign on the freeway: silver alert.
Another elder said fuck it,
got into a red 2004 Ford
threw IDs out the window
and jammed the accelerator.
She took 1-90 east and
headed for the opposite coast,
laughing as she fiddled with the radio.
Relatives twisted napkins in knots
and punched numbers onto cell phones:
all of them beside themselves,
screaming at law enforcement for help.
Mom should be there for the grandchildren.
Dad needed to stay, so others
could feel superior to him.
Instead, flagrant disregard.
Mom and Dad have fled the scene
like teenagers, but in separate cars.
Dad split six months ago,
and no one ever found him.
He’s an adult and entitled to leave,
even if that does make him
a self-centered bastard.
After a while, we gave up looking.
When Mom left on New Year’s Eve,
the last day of the decade.
she swore she’d head straight into 2020,
and as far as I know,
she hasn’t stopped driving.
The driver:
He’s got the best chance
at survival in a car crash
That’s why he made it
and the other three didn’t
Having the seat belt on
also helped immensely
Knowing that the accident
would happen was also
a plus
Yep, the only minus of the situation
was having to pretend
he had PTSD and depression
and whatnot
for causing the deaths
of three close friends
who had talked his fiancé
into a gangbang
the night before
horror, adj. inspiring or creating loathing, aversion, etc.
sleaze, adj. contemptibly low, mean, or disreputable
trash, n. literary or artistic material of poor or inferior quality
Welcome to HSTQ: Spring 2020, the curated collection from Horror, Sleaze and Trash!
Featuring poetry by John Gartland, Alan Catlin, Judge Santiago Burdon, Anthony Dirk Ray, Robert Plath, J.A. Carter-Winward, Joshua Jordan, Judson Michael Agla, Bogdan Dragos, Leah Mueller, Ben Newell, Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri, J.J. Campbell, John D Robinson, Joseph Farley, Casey Renee Kiser, Willie Smith, Andy Seven, and Puma Perl.
Kindly PayPal 5 USD to arthur.graham.pub@gmail.com for print copies,
or download the FREE ebook instead!
