Sat down
late at night and
wrote two poems
They were both
shit
Drank a
whole bottle
out-of-date
port and
punched myself
in the side of the head
Until I
felt sick
and vomited
on the sofa
Wrote this poem
and went to bed
Woke up
and nothing had
changed
Nothing ever really does
I curl up on my favorite bench
in my disgusting blanket
I take another swig of the rancid liquid
A car rolls by playing a familiar song
with that catchy chorus:
I just died in your arms tonight,
it must have been something you said
I sing along as best I can—
I’m
Just
Dying
I’m
Just
Dying
Then everything fades to black
have outlived
six pairs of laces
a wife
and the
banal affections
of seventeen other
wax
suitors.
they’ve seen me though
a suicide attempt
three minor stays in jail
and stints as
a door to door
vacuum cleaner salesman
and hired man
on a hog farm.
they were there
the day my grandfather
died on a hospice bed
from cirrhosis
of the liver
and the evening
my ex said
she was pregnant
and i tried talking her
into an abortion.
before that
they spent ten years
under my father
as a bug man
for presto x.
this morning
my three year old son
gets them
on his feet.
trudging
across the living room floor
of my apartment:
look daddy
look at me
i’m a big boy
just like
you.
I’m pretty desperate
so when she calls
I say OK and go to Pinole
because she was hot ten years ago
and not entirely insane.
“I’ve been arrested
12 times,” she says at the bar
and then calls the police
to ask them if I can park overnight
in a tow zone
because I’m drunk.
Her spine has gone crooked,
she’s partially bald, and
she claws at my chest
when I try to leave.
I get home, shaken,
thanking God I’m not her
as I look in the mirror,
but then I wonder
if she’s thinking
the same thing.
Metallic scraping of machines
Announce the heraldic arrival of sin,
All along the horizon, glittering with despair:
petrol bombs filled with perfume,
The lone renegade wrapped in lace, leaking lilac;
Glistening orifices, await degradation,
Scorched lips, speculating, soliciting for love,
unwelcome, repetitive penetration and devastation,
Slippering into existence, two parts per million,
floodlit orgies, with inconstant waves of medication,
welcome to the fuck circus,
drenched in clown saliva and popcorn cartoon slits,
the stench is overwhelming,
confess to the acrobats,
as they can still see the
sky.
jesus christ, not another love poem.
not another sad miserable prick
with no spit left in his bones
pouring out false emotion.
another dead rose stinking up my nostrils
crying about the one who got away.
shoot me now god, please.
take me away from all this shit
pretending to be the next great thing.
you all sound the same.
you all cry the same.
you all go through pain the same.
you one-dimensional untalented schmucks.
get mad. insult someone.
get politically incorrect.
avoid your comfort zone.
dylan went through seven different phases
plus some.
how many have you had?
fuck love poems.
slap her tits. spit in her mouth.
grab her neck. bite that ass.
naw, fuck that, terrorize that ass.
and by god, go down on her.
squeeze all the juice from her body.
don’t write her a love poem.
don’t be a little bitch.
there’s blood running through her veins.
I bought back my mental health
at my own yard sale
Lady said, ‘out of all this good shit,
w h y do you want that junk?’
I said, ‘because I like rabbits,
now back off bitch.’
Under the agoraphobic sky,
I was the b l u r r e d reality
junkie
Shoot it up all day
and all night
I wink
and fuck
to the twinkle
And now
I AM
rich again, like before
I was born
My Mexican girlfriend says she likes me
because I am not macho.
She says Mexican men are too macho,
too brutal and mean.
We are at the supermarket and I am thinking
about how earlier she had begged me
to fuck her in the ass
hard,
demanded I bite her tits
until they were bruised and
mushy plums,
how she led me
to force her to
her stomach
and squirmed until I held
her arms behind her like a vice,
how she screamed STOP
and then when I stopped she asked
me why I stopped,
how afterwards I was afraid
I hurt her
until I realized she was smiling,
and how she turned
to me and curled up in my arms
and went to sleep.
At the store I reach my hand
into the cooler
for a twelve pack of beer
which makes her frown,
not because it is beer
and that I might get drunk on it,
but because it is LIGHT beer
like I am some kind of
girly man
who sits down
to pee.
red carpets lit with flash bulbs,
strapless Stella McCartneys,
champagne flutes sipping adulation
stretched limousines
private planes
saggy white gorillas in 10 thousand dollar suits.
executive fantasies of painful submission:
movie careers hung on meat hooks
beaten, sliced,
sold in penthouses;
worn like cheap thongs and thigh high boots,
Call me daddy bitch
it’s all bright lights
and blow jobs baby
his hairy gut slapping bubble butts
as bee sting lips deep throat rich meat
totting up costs of fame
entertain us, they
moan at the girl
with green eyes, as she
writes receipts
for herself
I see you,
staring at my tits.
So fascinated.
Nothing has changed
since last you looked.
It’s always when I wear
a dress
made for a smaller chest
that I notice it, your eyes
burrow in.
I spill over,
warm water in a tub.
Do you wonder
how deep you need to dive,
how wide you need to spread me
open by
the ribcage to find my heart?
You have far to go
through my bare, naked armour
into me.
