Succubus

Succubus sugar bus ride me
ride me paraglide me
The ghost is a hustler she crawls like a reptile
Sextile percentile her cunt wraps around me
in darkness she found me
I feel her heart beat like a Super 8 film
project’d on a beat brick wall
I was bedridden there was dead rhythm
Is this a bedtime story a Grimm fairy tale
I’m a ghost now you’re a ghost
You’re mine she said
Bit my neck like a vampire
Bit my head like a mantis
By the stroke of dawn
there were two ghosts
not one

Porn Sheik

I miss the old days.
Slumped in a gloomy theater
smelling of old men and semen.
Up on the screen:
Abigail, Annette, Leslie – daisychaining to
beat the band. Sloppy tongues triggering trembles
along nyloned thigh, calf, ankle, toe, scarlet nail.
I’d for hours, taking in the double-bill, gawk.
Pick teeth; swallow now and then dry spit. Reel
after reel, guys, remarkable for their poles,
one by one the starlets take.
Smorgasbord of orgasms faked.
Take, in the end, the bus – breathing innercity funk –
back to my hovel, redolent of mildew, roaches,
mice, poetry read to the walls. Collapse
across the mattress.
Let the pictures behind the eyelids roll,
lapsing into thought trapped in the lap.
Till the nap, delirious as the blank page,
quick death chases.

No Reason

We had been drinking for three days,
we’d hardly slept or eaten: we had
just opened a bottle of wine and he
came at me, I don’t know why:
the punch to my face came from
nowhere and I sprung back in
shock and then fired three
punches to his face and head and he
hit the floor and through his cut
lips he began laughing: I sat
down beside him, poured two
glasses, blood seeping from my
nose, discolouring the wine
as the sun began her descent,
as we embraced and waited
for something else to happen.

Frozen Milk

I never understood the term
colder than a witch’s tit
I’ve known a few witches
in my day and all of their
breasts were a perfectly
normal and pleasant
ninety-eight degrees
give or take
just don’t ask me how
I know the temperature
of a well-digger’s ass

Pussy Whipped

“If she’d given him a shit sandwich,
he’d have asked her
for a chaser of piss,”
Claudette McCoy sighed,
taking a deep drag from her Pall Mall.
The smoke dribbled from her nostrils
as from a pair of hookah hoses.

She sat across the kitchen table
from her husband, Ron,
lamenting her teenage son’s broken heart.
He’d just been dumped
by a girl who considered herself
too good for him.
Amber had moved on
to a more ambitious boy.

Claudette tried not to feel contempt
for her son, having pegged Amber
a climber the moment she met her.

“I felt the same way about you,”
Ron commented, “when we started dating.”
It made Claudette smile.
Her husband always knew
the right thing to say.

attrition

four in the morning
listening to tori amos

remembering all those
years ago, when forever
seemed possible

and then you remember
that those bright days
were reserved for
someone better
than you

you wasted your talents
so, you have to survive
on scraps

enjoy the taste of shit
and failure and debt

embrace a future that
has no rewards

no romantic lead in
some movie that you
always wanted to write

chase down the needle

the train

the last bus to ever
leave this hell

attrition is the slowest
death you could ever
imagine

Dance of Tears, Chief Nobody

I’m old Indian chief story
plastered on white scattered sheets,
Caucasian paper blowing in yesterday’s winds.

I feel white man’s presence
in my blindness−
cross over my ego my borders
urinates over my pride, my boundaries−
I cooperated with him until
death, my blindness.

I’m Blackfoot proud, mountain Chief.

I roam southern Alberta,
toenails stretch to Montana,
born on Old Man River−
prairie horse’s leftover
buffalo meat in my dreams.
Eighty-seven I lived in a cardboard shack.
My native dress lost, autistic babbling.
I pile up worthless treaties, paper burn white man.

Now 94, I prepare myself an ancient pilgrimage,
back to papoose, landscapes turned over.

I walk through this death baby steps,
no rush, no fire, nor wind, hair tangled−
earth possessions strapped to my back rawhide−
sun going down, moon going up,
witch hour moonlight.

I’m old man slow dying, Chief nobody.

An empty bottle of fire-water whiskey
lies on homespun rug,
cut excess from life,
partially smoked homemade cigar-
barely burning,
that dance of tears.

I, Penis

I, Penis,
inherit the Earth.
The meek, not so much.
meek penises are worms
crushed by pusillanimous ambitions,
ambitions too polite
and sensitive. Pardon me,
proclaims polite, pussy penis.

I, Penis,
sound barbaric yawps over the rooftops
of my trousers, the beret my master
wears concealing bald exposure.
commercials and shows offer advice,
take what you need

I trample the bathrooms, the poetry texts, history
I, Penis. I, Penis. A title imperial and full of verve,
insert my ice-cream cone tip into the metaphors
and similes and
visual erasures
erase this.

misbehaved ladies may make history,
but to the penis go the spoils.
Soli Penis Gloria, proclaim the priests
in their collars. for the glory alone
of, I Penis.

problematic, proclaim the snowflakes,
with lyrical predictability,
paradigms, binaries
all these are foreign,
to I, Penis,
I trample, and my head marches
on and on, for the glory

of I, Penis.
don’t stop me now, for there is but one opinion,
I, Penis. There is only the I,
emboldened by the fact that
I am penis.
I, Penis.

Sleep on it

If you should love me in your sleep
It would be a fruitful dream.
And I asleep shall in turn
writhe and sweat and think
who this night came for
and with whom it stayed,
and who found joy this evening
and who found pain
when these ghosts of what we lived
came visiting.