Gothic Ghost Story

A 52-year-old librarian and her
15-year-old metalhead boyfriend
who ignites an electrifying passion
within her and who, unbeknownst to
her, is actually her half-brother
are forced by extraordinary
circumstances to kill or be killed
They panhandle, hitch rides, and
crash with total strangers
Generally, in such stories, the person
grows and becomes a good person
but this is no gothic ghost story
When the first reports surface of
the discovery of four skeletons
wrapped in burlap he walks out
of a mental hospital and into
the path of an oncoming train
Her demise in the electric chair is
prefigured by her abusive seduction
of prostitutes who advertised on Craigslist

Coke Guilt

The worst people to party
and do drugs with are the
one’s who are consumed
with guilt. I used to know
a guy like this, every time
he did coke he felt guilty,
had coke guilt, and that’s
ok if you keep that shit to
yourself, but he wouldn’t.
he wanted to talk about his
feelings and his addiction
issues; he’d talk about rehab,
how he went, and how it helped,
momentarily of course. he talked
about going to meetings, and twice
he brought out some sort of
addiction treatment questionnaire,
once asking me to answer the
questions as he read them out
loud, and another time asking
one of my friends. I answered a few
before telling him, I wouldn’t answer
anymore. what a fucking buzz kill!
that’s what he was. I heard he’s sober
now, completely clean, no drugs, no
alcohol. apparently, he’s into fitness
and healthy diets, shit like that; and
anybody who still parties and does
drugs, even if occasionally, should be
grateful for this—I know I am.

the thinness of walls, 2

we sit around a cheap motel table
she & i
cut lines w/ a credit card
borrowed from an unsuspecting saint –

she wears denim shorts, a thin blue
blouse –
smile hangs frozen in place
fingers tremble
just a little –

we trade hits,
trade lies,
trade dreams too naive to repeat,
fall into a rented bed as trucks
ramble down a broken road
outside the motel room door –

i ask her to take off her clothes,
take off her mask,
take off her innocence –
her smile tells me our first embrace
would open up a shiny new world,
but i know, as i enter her in a
traditional way, hell would be
the next world i would know –

Difficult to Love

I am not the kind of girl
Who will lie about my feelings
To spare yours.
It’s a lesson my parent tried to teach me,
But I picked up on so few of those.

My thoughts, my feelings, my emotions
Are kind of like projectile vomit;
That is to say,
They are out of my mouth before I can close my lips.
My thoughts, my feelings, my emotions
Are also kind of like swords;
That is to say,
I don’t always think before I speak.

If I did, I might have learned
To edit my words
To spare your feelings.
And if I’d learned that,
My marriage might have survived.
Or, at least,
Maybe my dad wouldn’t tell me
That I’m the kind of girl
That’s difficult to love.

real men

She told me that women like
men with grizzled,
bestial
faces, men with scars
men with eyepatches
men with very unkempt beards
Mouths that snarl
when it’s time to smile
Eyes that are like eggs buried in
a nest of wrinkles
Noses that are never straight
And the jaw,
oh the jaw has to be big
square
like a drawer
A man’s face must have a chin
that can take sledgehammers

that’s why the luckiest woman
in the world
was Belle
from The Beauty and The Beast.
That was a real man, The Beast.
although the story is a tragic one
because in the
end he turns
into a charming prince
with smooth face and polished
features.

“What a fuckboy,” she said. “If only
he stayed a beast…”

Meanwhile I think about
myself
the most grizzly feature about
my face is the mad
eyestrain I developed
because of my job, after staring
at monitors in a dark room for
all those years and then coming home
to stare at another monitor.
it is now impossible for me to get
outside and keep my eyes
open like a normal person. I die if I
don’t strain them as hard as I
can. Sunglasses don’t even help.
and there’s also the dark
circles below my eyes
they’re not even purple as I’ve seen
in other people

“They have the texture of the
skin around the asshole,” she said,
laughing.

She was right.

She was also right when she pointed
out that if you can’t grow
a beard by the time you’re
twenty you’ll never grow a proper
beard.

“Shit,” I said. “Guess I’ll never
be a beast.”

“It’s never too late to get your
face fucked up
though,” she said. “You
just need
to hang around
the right people.”

“Such as your dad?” I said.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said,
dragging the blanket
over her breasts.

 

Miss Interpretation

“I love you so much,” he said
“you are my rock”

as she thought:

you are my rock too
the rock tied to my feet
pulling me
down
to the bottom of life’s ocean
taking in water
with every p a s s i n g day
immersed in disappointment
asphyxiated with regret

the realization of wasted years
caused rivulets of despair
and hopelessness
down both
cheeks

as he thought:

she really does love me

A Message for the Meek

This is the sunny side of the ghetto;
filled with freaks, musicians with busted guitars,
singers who’ve lost their voices,
dancers with no feet
and the general wandering souls
who’ve completely lost
their fucking minds.

We’re the lost; the bottom of every heap,
the forgotten, the ostracized and the lost.
We’re being pushed out of the world
with bulldozers and flamethrowers;
every time an artist looks up from their canvas
they realize they can’t afford that canvas.

Their systems are solid; the war machines
are shaking the ground, and the only fight
we make is the metal meeting the meat,
carnage through the streets,
children with guns confused
about Santa Claus
and the fucking
Easter Bunny.

on a porch with a glass of something strong

i was never cut out
for the corporate life

i own one tie
mostly used for funerals
i no longer bother
to attend

nothing against those
who feel more comfortable
in a cubicle

but i’d rather be on a porch
with a glass of something
strong

allowing my imagination
to fill some pages

taking a moment to
breathe in some silence
and whatever passes
as fresh air

letting the hours
fade away without
ever punching
a clock

The Nose Job

‘The bone structure of your nose
is completely abnormal, have you
experienced a facial injury?’ the
ENT doctor asked:
‘As a young man I was involved
in countless physical altercations
with guys who seemed to hate
my nose, they’d punch it, kick it,
pulled and twisted it, spat at it
and shouted abuse at it, they
hated my nose’ I replied;
‘I see’ she said concealing a
grin:
‘I don’t get involved in those
scenes nowadays’ I said
reassuringly:
‘That’s good’ she said
unimpressed
‘Chances are you’ve treated
some of my opponents’ I
said smiling: she didn’t
respond as she tapped on a
keyboard:
‘Goodbye Mr Robinson, the results
will be sent to you’ she said without
looking away from the screen.

Cyst

you ever just sit or lay
on your bed and stare at
the ceiling and wonder
if you’ve ever eaten meat from an animal
that was the offspring of another animal
you’ve eaten?

I’ve once read an article about the
food industry’s secret glue
that can paste together the meat
belonging from many animals and
makes it look like it’s from a single one

thus you could eat beef thinking
that it’s from a cow
when in fact it’s from nine different cows
of nine different ages and breeds

a friend of mine declared herself vegan
after she sliced a steak and found
gray slimy puss oozing from it.
The blade struck a cyst

“I’m a vegan forever from now on!”
she screamed

And I said, “I’m a writer.”

“What?” she said. “What’s that have
to do with what I said?”

“I’m a writer,” I repeated. “Meaning I have to
compare everything to writing. Your discovery
of the cyst inside the steak is akin to reading
a really nice book only to reach the most
disturbing scene you’ve stumbled upon in a long
while and be taken by surprise and change your
opinion about the whole book.
There are some books like that. Doesn’t mean
they all are though.
And unlike a meat eater, I like to believe
a writer can tell the difference between a book
written by a single person and a collaborative
project.”

“Boy, you’re scaring me.”

“Can I have that steak?” I said.

“Wah? You… don’t mean to eat it, do you?”

“Nah, my cousin has a dog who surely
won’t mind the cyst.”

she gave me the steak
and she didn’t ask (I only wanted her to),
but the writer
equivalent of this situation would be
to recognize when a story fails
real bad and instead of stubbornly striving
to submit to agents
you just give it away for free,
publish online,
maybe even under a pseudonym

Anyway
the dog loved that steak.