Vision

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!

Fuck You and The Horse You Rode in On

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.

Try My Best

“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.

The Fix

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

Big Joke

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

BUY A COPY OR DOWNLOAD FREE

cartoonist

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.”

Never Getting to Pensacola

I left work one evening
and stopped to get gas.
while I was pumping gas,
I observed a man wearing
a fedora, leather jacket,
and pajama pants trying to
get a ride by hitchhiking.
I saw what looked like a
puppy on his shoulder.
then I noticed the red cone,
beak, and feathers.

I thought, this fucker
will never get a ride
with a goddamned live
chicken on his shoulder.
I lost sight of him

and walked inside to
buy an espresso beverage.
upon exiting,
I heard a voice say,
“hey my man, can I
put gas in your truck?
I’m trying to get close
to Pensacola.”
I’m sure he noticed the 5
on my tag denoting that
I lived across the bay
in that general direction.
I looked at the man.
I looked up at his chicken,
then back at him and said,
“I’m sorry, I’m not going that way.”
then,
I got in my truck
and went that way.

Could Have Been

Everything looks nicer
from the outside,
doesn’t it?
Coloured pillows
and layers of blankets,
warmer than it really is.

Inside, underneath
things are covered
in who we could
have been.

Everything looks pretty
from the outside,
doesn’t it?
Coloured lips
and layers of friendship,
colder than it could
have been.

She tells me this is dirty:
the lack of space, the way I taste,
the clothes we forgot to wash
while trying to wash
away our sins.

There’s never enough time
or length between
the last mistake
and that’s why
you sleep next to me
and not with me
anymore.