Pentecost Dickshorts

In the happy Spain of my innocent childhood
National, repressive, and Catholic
I believed wholeheartedly
When I looked at my cock
That the Spanish priests
Didn’t have cocks
Because my mother had told me so
Because they were apostles sent by God.
-Son, when we pray, when we sing
When Sunday and holy days
Are a joyful celebration of the day
When we carry in our crotch
The best of life
It’s wonderful to know
That beneath the cassocks of our priests
Lives and throbs the bird that died on the cross.
They are celibate, son
But not the German priests
Nor the Dutch priests, the Swedish ones
Those from France, the English
Those from Italy, the Swiss
Those from Russia, the Turks, the Greeks
Those from Portugal, the Mexicans, the Americans, the Caracas
Those from Chile, Peru, Havana, the Brazilians.
All of them, all of them fuck the same
In their accents, successes and failures
Whimsically
As if the winds were blowing bad or good in their asses.
-But, mother, I, without meaning to
At my Confirmation
I saw Father Cortapichas Pentecostés
A big, pretty, beautiful cock
Similar to my father’s
But nothing like
Uncle Flores’s Dapple-Duck Donkey
Who is a good donkey and knows how to bray well
Like the father in his sermons.
-Son, when you grow up
You’ll see that the member of our priests
Is the member of Christ and his Church
And their motto is to say:
“I hold it high up to the Lord
In mystical silence.”
-So, mother, when the force of Lust
Which is hidden
Overcomes me with its power, and wants to burn
Is it good in the eyes of God
When I touch myself and masturbate?
-Yes, son. When Lust breathes within us
When Love propels us into life
It is pleasing in the eyes of God.
-Well, mother, I want to surpass
Father Cortapichas Pentecost.
Priest, priest I want to be!
Take me to the Seminary of Madrid
So that, while I live
Condemn my cock to eternal silence
Although many saints, while they lived
According to passages from the Santoral
Earned from their cock
A clamor or a resounding scream
Fucking adults or children.
But what I don’t want to become
Is a pedophile priest.
-Fine, my son. Your cock will accompany you
All the days of your life
And will dwell in the house of the Lord
For years on end
Unless, one day
God forbid!
You drop out of the Seminary
And start looking for the whores’ shit
In the Casa de Campo.
-If I drop out of the Seminary, Mother
My cock will be my light and my salvation.
No whore will make me tremble.
One thing I ask of you, Mother:
To dwell forever in your house
Of Carabanchel Bajo.

The many depressions of life #2

My schizophrenic grandmother 
has lost her passport and her birth certificate.
She married when she was fourteen.
She bore her first child at sixteen,
it was no biggie back then.

Her age now is anybody’s guess.
She’s mid-relic level old
like a miniature of sorts,
made of wax and wrinkles
and as far as eye sight goes 
she barely sees halfway
across her extended hands.

She lives in a house 
barely livable.
She still washes herself with buckets of water,
a woman a century old,
and never leaves the house anymore—
a house with rotten wooded floors and tore up carpets
and leaking roofs—
A slow poisoning of sorts happens in that house.

One night she wakes me 
from a drunken stupor.
She looks petrified 
even in the dark.
“Can you hear them coming up the stairs?”

It’s a dangerous neighborhood.
I am alarmed.
I go outside shirtless—
nothing. The dead of night.
Some cicadas—
the unbearable heat.

In the dark she heard voices.
Wouldn’t let her sleep
so I always left the television set
on in hopes the noise of the T.V
would drown some of the disease 
that kept talking to her from within.

Ludicrous conspiracies
she wholeheartedly believed in:
“They’re fixing me to get married,
I can hear them through the window,
I’m not stupid! For Shame!
In my age? 
Your grandfather’s grave is still warm.”

My grandfather died 
twenty five years ago 
and I’m pretty sure they’ve dug 
him out and burned him.

You only rent that hole in the ground.
It’s a question or whether 
you want to rot first or burn straight away.

We’ve implanted fake 
surveillance cameras 
all over the house. 
All her five children live abroad.
We’ve persuaded her 
that no matter what, 24/7
we were keeping a close eye on everything.

It seemed to help her.

“Look at my phone” I told her once
and she leaned closer to look
and I said
“Can you see? I’ve connected the phone
with the camera in the room and now
You can see the both of us.”
She leaned closer, still. 
She’s so blind she smiles and agrees.
“Yes, yes. I can see us.”

Sometimes I’d catch her knitting 
and stop midway
staring at something at some corner of the room
or another—
staring with disgust on her face 
Something despicable,
something to be dealt with.

It isn’t the disease that 
torments this poor creature
the most,
it’s loneliness.

Most of the time she lives alone
with the voices 
and the inadequate medicine
or inadequate pension 
or those buckets filled with water.

Last time I’ve seen her
she begged me to stay one night longer.
Begged. But I had to go.

She said
“You cry and you cry and you cry
and then you run out of tears
and you just stare at the wall.
What else is there to do?”

Some people will never be happy 
as others will
and if some people can live
way past the age they should—
some live a tragic amount more.

None of This Makes Him Real

The gate slowly opens after a loud buzzing sound, the guard says what they always do, don’t want to see you back here again, next time he won’t get caught, he walks into freedom, free with nowhere to go, 56 bucks all in singles in the pocket of pants too tight, no one to greet him, no one’s forgiveness, he knows he doesn’t deserve, should have pissed before he was released, now pissing where he stands.

Looking up at the sky, shadeing his eyes with his hand, deciding it looks like rain. Remembering his highschool girlfriend, backseat romance, can’t understand why he has this memory now, his mother will remind him how he ruined his life, ask again why he dropped out of college? 

He and his little sister haven’t talked in years, can’t think of the reason why, it was probably something he said, but most likely money he stole, his bus is at 10 tomorrow morning, has a shot at a job as a painter. if he can show up on time.

All the signs say no sleeping in the bus depot, rent a cop gives him a glare, he steps thru doors to the outside, cars splash puddles when they drive by, his socks get wet from the holes in his shoes, everything he owns amounts to nothing packed in a garbage bag, a cop car slows down checking him out, the cop gives him the once over, he tries not to make eye contact, finds a small smile in between raindrops, good to know it hasn’t been lost. there’s a liquor store on the corner, he’s got nothing to lose, knowing none of this makes him real.

Play depressing songs by female vocalists

Sometimes things are shit
and you can’t make them beautiful
and you can’t see a way to grow from them
and goddamn it you just hurt.

You ache with the impotence of your humanity
and you cling to some diminishing, recontextualized concept of love
and you just have to wait.

You just have to sit with dry tear ducts
because you trained them too well for too long.
You think, I’m cold, without
the energy to get a sweater
and you stare at the wall
and say, “Alexa, play depressing songs by female vocalists,”
to which it responds, “I can’t find any depressing songs,”
probably because some grotesquely rich techie
is afraid someone might sue them if Alexa knew
you might not feel one hundred percent perfecthappyamazing
and hadn’t done something about it.

So it’s silent, inside and outside your head,
just this heavy, bright grey,
like one hundred percent humidity
that never erupts into the storm the weather channel promised
but instead of the whole, unending sky
it’s just imprisoned in your brain
which is too polite to ever erupt so it’s just haunting you
because this world can just be really shit.

***

Previously published in Our State of the Union by Moonstone Press, 2024

eudaimonicus, a.k.a. sir happy                 

I wish our generation of carping
coddled 
identity-crazed poets 
could be as disdainful of their own 
persons
as the greek philosopher anaxarchus 
who after being thrown
into a mortar and clubbed with iron pestles 
said to the tyrant nicocreon “pound the sack 
that contains anaxarchus 
but you will never 
pound anaxarchus.” 

“chop his tongue off!” nicocreon replied
to which anaxarchus
(who I am quite sure had never attended
a poetry reading
on zoom) 

bit off his tongue 
and spit it 
at the tyrant.

Ohh Snap, Now Add it Up!

Oh, I fell in love 
with a broken calculator-con man
It was sure a high
price for cheap, apocalyptic love, man
Well yeah, that’s ok, you know,
‘cause I’m a holy rubber band

My heart stretches so far til’
I snap back…

I can say cheese and 
quickly become a sneaky soul’s mousetrap

Not fuckin’ with the glue babe,
I snap back…

While that headlock is 
permanent, it’s mildly satisfying
Still, only when his 
mouth is shut does he ever stop lying 
Greed is holy like 
swiss; make a wish; get rich or die trying

Oh Big Daddy, I’ll be 
your first last wish

threesome

I dreamt the three of us
were in bed together
and she had her nipples out
so I began to suck on them
and she began to moan
so loud
you woke up and joined in

I could hear you kissing her
as I continued playing
and that was alright
but then, suddenly,
I felt you touching me

your hand
under the covers
running along my neck
my back
my ass
reaching around
to the front

you began licking my ear

I pulled away
but then you jumped on top of me
and kept going

“what’s a matter”
you said
“you worried you’re gay
or something?
doesn’t this feel good?”

and it did feel good,
but I couldn’t get over
how your mustache
felt like sandpaper
and your beard
felt like more sandpaper
and your eyes
drilled into me
with a lust
I could not possibly replicate

“sorry,” I said, “you are
really good with the ear thing,
but I’m just not, you know.
I wish I was, but I’m not”

that killed your momentum
killed her momentum
killed everything
that had been building
between us

and the bed
felt more like a gurney
wheeling us down to the morgue

you rolled off of me,
looking embarrassed,
and she rolled to the side
and put her tits away
and I stared up at the ceiling

until I woke up
with the biggest hard-on
I’ve ever had

The Hardcore Kid

I.
He tied a rag around his boot
spare changes for his loot
still lamenting the death of Sid
he’s The Hardcore Kid

Punk’s not dead
Mohawk skulls hard as lead on Sundays he’s straight edge
and his girlfriend’s all skint
he’s The Hardcore Kid

II.

He breaks in a tornadic sweat
when he slams to Jello and Minor Threat
skanking with his mates in the pit
he’s The Hardcore Kid

His daredevil crowd surfing and volcanic loud burping
got him branded a twat in every hepatitis-filled squat
keeps his diseases well hid
he’s The Hardcore Kid

III.

Louder harder faster
jet propulsion is his master
crude lewd rude and never submits
he’s The Hardcore Kid

Spiked bracelet spiked collar
Dude dude dude can you spare a dollar
going to see Fugazi not all punks are Nazis, fuck off
he’s The Hardcore Kid 

It’s Not Enough

It’s not enough to drink wine outa your pussy
I need to piss on your face n lick it off
To prove how much I love you

I take a shit in your cereal bowl and feed it to the dog
That’s how much I love you

Spent the last a my cash on lottery ticks
Just to tear ’em up in your face
Even if in the future
The jackpot’s $100 million

I’ll sleep in the rain in the park
Get eaten alive by a shark
Undergo alien rectal probes
In the dungeons of space
Stretched out onna rack
Tortured by fascists

It’s not fire making my bellyache
But stray arrowheads
dug up by the dog
I swallowed

To prove how much I love you

italics

one day I would like to do 
what the highbrow poets do 
and write about things the common man 
has probably never seen or experienced 
things that certify me as cultured.
things like plumeria
or escargots de bourgogne 
consumed while suppering 
with a coterie of upper crust intellectuals
at a michelin-rated restaurant in Milan.

one day I would like to show everyone 
my inspiring bridgehampton home
my creature comforts; 
the villanelles I typewrite by candlelight
cinnamon dolce lattes, my garden with its dew-heavy
mustard greens 
and swiss chard
seeding the Japanese birdfeeder, 
gunnison sage-grouse pecking at the basin, 
my socks
and long johns ironed by the wife.
mortgage paid off, zoom interview on tap 
with a likeminded 
editor enjoying similar luxuries.

one day I would like to do away with you
unwashed, uneducated
working-class
pricks
and live a life where everything – including
the people – would be worthy 
of italics.