Operation

scalpel in my hand
patient on operating table

I’m about to make him wish
I was a doctor

One Day in August

I’m seated at an outdoor cafe
sipping coffee, reading a novel,
when a thing in tattered clothes stumbles by
pursued by an angry mob
wielding tire irons and baseball bats.

It’s a hot, stifling day.
The beach is closed from contamination.
The blood-bars don’t open until three.
This is bound to happen.

 

Last Memory of Dad

He said,
“Just make it easy on yourself.”

I said,
“I can’t”

He said,
“Look, you’re not getting any more money out of me
while I’m still alive.
So use the pillow and squeeze,
then the inheritance is yours.”

I said,
blink, blink
Eyes open, eyes closed,
and squeezed.

No Way Out Of Here

Rooster

The man evicted
from The Crosby Hotel
sits on the curb
surrounded by drug addicts
but with the patience
of a Buddhist neophyte
waiting for the gates to open

However, every morning at 5am
he explodes,
“I know it was you, Jennifer!”
he screams,
“Mail fraud, Jennifer!
Where are the checks, Jennifer!”

No one knows
who Jennifer is
but we’re all rooting for her
not him
with his crates of books
and crazy eyes
waking us
from our dreams.

Popeye Pops a Boner

Fake tits filling Hollywood
out into silicon valley south
get Popeye in the mood
so he flicks a can of spinach
from his armpit, squeezes it open
in a muscled hand and down
the hatch—prompt effect produced
in trousers as a pup tent pops,
and it’s all Popeye can do
to keep his hands off it for the nonce;
it’s gotta hold
for an explosive vehicle
of blockbuster twister wombs
spinning, begging for implantation
by a real man and not some flea
flicker—so he drives along Sunset
to a red light, picks up momma
needlessly ripe—the time is now—
undoes his trousers
and just for her springs out
a muscled joint pinched and
swollen just like his famous
bicep—I can’t tell you
when she asks
how many implants it took,
but the Industry wouldn’t have
it any other way—movie
ends as he shoots silicon
load onto silicon thighs
and she evaporates into the street
with a fistfull of plastic cash
like a blow up girlfriend
deflating on a careless pin stick—
he guns Camero into setting
sun, leaving a squeal of blue
and a smell of white
jissom

 

Filleting

Just make sure
you don’t slice your finger.
Everything else
will take care of itself.

Yes, that’s an eye,
but it’s really not staring at you.
And those are innards,
not guilt
you’re cutting into.

Off comes the skin.
Out pop the bones.
It’s filleting,
not desecration.

Pretend it’s
just a fish you caught.
Save its name
for the funeral.

Point Blank

the lemon fresh in her mouth
as I kiss her, and the gun in my belly—
she’s a hot one;
the bricks at my back
have been baking in this sun
for weeks without rain—
you are the lover, this time,
stockings pulled up over knees—
and the sun gleaming
on the gun

this one
time I have crossed
the street without looking

the smell of her hair a net
to look through into the crowd,
the cars, shoppers—
gut tightening on the finger
of the gun and she
straightens it perpendicular
to my soul

lover, a peppermint
in your pocketbook is the only
release I desire,
your shooting of me will
have no meaning on a marked
sidewalk with chewing gum—

tigress rippling short fur, striped
beneath a high skirt, white
ruff at your neck, and
the blouse not sticking
to your breasts but I am
caught around your finger,
hooked into steel

have you come for me,
my blood

the lemon passed into my mouth,
and the bricks receiving

all the hot flesh of the world
in strips—this old
lady bids on a choice
rib and you accept
money for the fall

that was paradise, there and this
too could be called
a world

a short summer
love on a bed of nails

a hooked finger leaving
me hanging and the beefeaters
crowding around—
the lemon passing through
me to a crack in the sidewalk,
a taste of you on my lips

the history of man by men,
and the savage blows
to their own kind

redeems us,
as we have made
hell, like chatter,
a waiting room for eternal
reward

she was so right to walk away

Buried Treasure