fear and loathing at the hibachi restaurant

the suburban goth girl
with the blue hair
and purple eyeshadow
didn’t know you could refuse the side salad
so it sits there coagulating
under the hot lights
as the blonde at the table next to us
drunkenly shouts across the room to her pals
something about ruining her new shoes
from dropping some of her third drink on them
something about her husband’s birthday
and the president being close to god
she’s had three sexy ladies tonight
and if she doesn’t vomit
she says there might be room for a fourth
and
wink
wink
a special surprise for hubby when they get home
as everyone around her
laughs and laughs
doing the puritan end-of-the-work-week rage
and i wonder what a goth girl
with blue hair and purple eyeshadow
is doing in a hibachi restaurant
on a friday night
other than tilting the perfect picture
making things a tad askew
contributing another food waste in wasteful america
but this big, dumb colossus of stolen land
is full of surprises
and growing up in small cities
breeds a kind of useless rebellion
and plastic discontent
that can only be found at the mall
you can make mountains out of molehills
in the knowing light the chain store’s come-hither stare
i wonder what i’m doing here
hundreds of miles from home
anchoring the dead weight of citizenry
unnecessarily sober at a hibachi restaurant
stuck inside of buffalo, new york
with the brooklyn blues again
coming off a panic attack on the i-81
where i couldn’t breathe
and had to pull the car over to the side of the road
as idiot patriots with bumper sticker prophesies
zipped by me
going 90 in a 65
but across from me the hibachi chef
he knows my fate
he’s squirting sake into the mouths of babes
red faced business men
with their necks too fat for their oxfords
frat boys with their hats on backwards
greasing up their dates
for their own patriarchal surprise later
a sea of jaws undulating, filling up with all of that booze
spilling out of their mouths onto the table
because people can never get enough
of the free stuff
the chef asks me if i want a taste
i want to tell him that i think anxiety is just another word for america
i want to tell him that i’m thinking art is dead
how i’m ready to capitulate
move to the burbs
buy a car and complain about the traffic
hoist that fucking flag every morning
learn to live for the weekend
and how to love parades
each a hibachi dinner with my wife and good pals
each and every single friday night
buy the boss a christmas gift
and learn how to change a flat tire
burn all of my books
and walt whitman in effigy
at a neighborhood weenie roast
but i say no
and go back to my flat beer
keeping my flat opinions to myself
as he squirts some oil on the grill
and sets our world ablaze
with a flame that reaches almost to the roof
red and yellow and orange
tickling our fancy
we ooh and awe like cavemen in discovery’s first light
catching broccoli in our mouths
from an expert flip
huffing and huffing
at its heat
filming it all on our cell phones
as dead meat fries and sizzles
as sexy lady number four is presented to the table
to claps and chants
and soft debauchery
as the blonde woman screams and screams and screams
her useless constitution
and hubby knows
that
wink
wink
will just be her passing out again
as he circle jerks the witching hour
toggling between espn and fox news and internet porn
while back here on hibachi mother earth
a mountain of crystal white onion on the grill
burns like a tire fire
from a fizzled-out riot
in an abandoned strip mall
parking lot
of the mind

and to be perfectly honest with you
…i didn’t eat my goddamned side salad either

Grampa Got Bit

There’s a board on the pole for his feet
but the damned things are never still;
always running mid-air marathons.
He lost a shoe in the corn stalks,
kicked it off one day, I reckon.
He keeps the birds away, though,
his gnashing teeth and flailing limbs
far more effective than any man
stuffed with straw

Hang In There, by John D Robinson
126 pages
Uncollected Press

Me and Sal Paradise, by Charles Rammelkamp
56 pages
FutureCycle Press

Ah, youth! Charles Rammelkamp’s ME AND SAL PARADISE is a poetic tale of the hitchhiking adventures of a young man in his early twenties. It’s the early 1970s, when Jack Kerouac’s influenced America’s youth with his romantic tales of cross-country adventures by car. One sequence of poems illuminates a 1971 hitchhiking adventure from the Midwest to Montreal and back, a pair of friends crossing Canada and New York state. Another sequence relates the solo adventures the following summer, also originating in the Midwest, of the author who this time heads to San Francisco, where his twin brother is living in the famed Haight-Asbury district. Through these journeys, we contemplate with the narrator the meanings of youth, friendship, and inevitably personal destiny.

PREVIEW/PURCHASE HERE

The Nature of Flings

As god is my witness
I’ve never been
with anyone
with a body
as hot as yours,
though several came close.
Too bad we will soon
hate each other.
That’s part of the equation,
the balance to all this
love we’re making.
Hate. It grows slow at first,
but grow it does
until it can walk across the room
and pour itself a drink.

And Dim the Lights

You’ll be a lot less disappointed
if you approach life
like an internet hookup:

Go.  Leave the house.
Drive to the motel.
Knock on the door.

Just don’t expect her
to look too much
like her photos.

Give her your best hump.
Don’t let her see
the disappointment
on your face.

Too Sexy For Instagram

I am very shy when it comes to giving women compliments
when i perceive them to be beautiful and intellectually fit and tolerant of my jokes
this one girl posed in fishnet stockings and I felt guilty for admiring her shapely figure
and the relentless buzz of sensuality I got imagining my hands as they caressed
her shapely pins while she crossed them to adjust one of her high heels
panties bright, lace, satin and she was generous enough to show them off
along with a wonder bra made by God himself during a horny episode of one stormy titan clash
of course i want her, but she’s taken so i shyly admit that I’m nervous when
I clumsily compliment her divine figure and just how sexy glasses are
when paired with the right lingerie, and girls like that are rare fish in a sea
that these days leaves little to the imagination, but her foxy thighs dream beauty for you
and you are respectful of her but WOW some lucky man out there gets to go to bed with her,
reading a cutting edge poetry zine and gently massaging her dangerous curves
until you are a dead man, a legend who died making love to a great and powerful muse
who gives me a tingle deep down at the center of it all by fogging up my glasses
in the heat of a computer screen surrounded by poetry, her mind an epic poem
that she teases me with just how much milk she drank to do that fine body good.

Fist Fighting and Fornication
21 pages
Holy&intoxicated Publications

Holy&intoxicated Publications is thrilled to be publishing “Fist Fighting and Fornication”, the latest from David Boski. This book publishes June 21st and can be preordered through johndrobinson@yahoo.co.uk or boski.david.boski@gmail.com.

$5:00/£5:00

The Angel of Love,
In Her Mercy,
Plays in the Dirt

God is love – what love and
which god/dess are negotiable.

The eyes are the windows
to the crotch, and yours say
puppy wants a collar.

Oops – correction: they say busted, guilty
puppy wants a collar.

Yeah-huh, chickenshit –
I’m the fuck police
and I know where you live.
I’ve got a box of crucifixion nails
and a slow hammer
with your name on it, boy,
and if I have to sweat you all night
you’ll spill every sick, submissive thing
your self-disgusted heart desires,
and I won’t give a fuck
until you’re a hopeless mess
of tears, and snot, and shame;

perv.

Then I’ll tenderly clean your face,
kiss your forehead,
and Holy Fuck your filthy brains out;

and such is the power of My grace
that when you come, you’ll come clean –

innocent and shameless,
crying in My arms.

Jezebel / Jellyroll

“Jezebel was the talk of the town,”
a vulgar playground chant began,
one of a string of dirty jokes
adolescents snickered about to each other.

We all knew who Jezebel was –
or thought we did –
some kind of lurid Biblical whore
who seduced men and killed them
when she’d finished with them –
still insatiable after a dozen.

You can see how that would enflame
the pubescent imaginations of teenage boys.

King Ahab’s wife in the Old Testament,
her crime killing God’s prophets,
supporting false gods.
Flamboyant in makeup, jewelry and a wig,
she was defenestrated by her servants,
her corpse trampled by horses.

At the same time
we learned the word “jellyroll”
from 1930’s “negro blues” songs.
I ain’t gonna give you none of my jellyroll.

Something sweet and sticky:
metaphors just out of reach to kids that age.