Don’t fuck with the virgin

In the reign of terror, motives are inconsequential 
stained blue, bathed in blood
my veins pulsing 
with vibrancy, don’t look back, keep running forward
It’s always 
right behind you. It’s never a prank
glass shatters,
I will not be right back, curiosity 
killed the cat, I’m no fool
the shed, the garage, the cellar 
off limits
trust no one, but the craziest as the sanest
don’t split up
think meta
check the backseat, 
don’t be a victim, a crazed 
smile 
I am the one who survives, to live to tell the tale 
don’t fuck with the virgin
this is the night, I fought back

my father’s hands

there is nothing delicate
nothing of the luna moth
or geisha
in a japanese tea ceremony
about my father’s poor
hands

they are large and unruly hands
and I can see them
sometimes casting shadows
on my bedroom walls at night

my father’s hands
with their thick and twisted
octogenarian
fingers often panic
when trying to answer
his smartphone hammering the screen
swiping it poking it jabbing it
to no avail
the caller has hung up

my father’s hands
seem to be disconnected
from the rest
of him and are no more 
of the luna moth
when opening cans or closing
cabinet
doors than they are handing pots
and pans or washing 
themselves

anyway
I once had this dream
that my father’s hands 
were evolving in reverse
growing knotted coarse-haired
and finally powerful 
enough to crush 
a honeydew melon 
in one squeeze 

a feat for even 
a neanderthal 

The Word Kept Word

I’ve mistook
whores
for whores
pimps
for pimps and
reading between the lines as
reading between the lines.

I’ve mistook
what I love
and that I’ve loved
but never
what I hate
or that I’ve hated.

At Goodwill once
I saw a one-legged veteran
rise from his wheelchair
drop his shorts
and piss on a crucifix.
As they wheeled him out
he yelled
he wished he had
two cocks
so he couldn’t give
two fucks.

It’s hard to think
he could’ve been mistaken.

Walk of Shame

clambering home at five in the morning, staggering on my
stiletto heels while my mini dress and hair look all
disheveled. the bars were fun, the
patrons hot, and a lot of the free shots and drinks found their way
into my mouth.
the things that happened in the noxious bathroom stall
shall remain unmentionable. it wasn’t the shame
of what had happened that had my stomach
all knotted up when the bus ride
somewhat sobered me up. it was knowing that
Dave was sleeping in my bed—I was hoping
he was sleeping, anyway. most of my friends said he was the best
thing that had happened to me. he was trying to
make me reduce my drinking, to make me stop
snorting coke. I hated him for that, for trying to
destroy my partying lifestyle, but loved him for
everything else. he didn’t mind my going out on
my own, he hated bars and nightclubs but knew I
needed to party and blow some steam just so I wouldn’t
explode, but he had no idea that I often blew more
than just steam, especially after five, and free,
double Wild Turkeys. I made it
home, he was sleeping; got undressed and slipped into the
bed next to him. I made a silent promise that it’d be
the last time, perfectly aware it was one of those
false promises I’d never keep.
and I didn’t. two days later, I was back in
the bars, accepting free drinks from tall, muscular men I
made sure to get under before they got too drunk to function.
eventually, Dave asked me to choose: him or the partying lifestyle.
a few hours after he asked me to choose, I was wearing my shortest skirt
and was dancing on a table in one of the city’s sleaziest nightclubs.

fork in the road

she comes up to me in a rusted banged up honda civic
as i’m emptying my piss cup in the bushes next to my shitty car
i’ve been sleeping in this sketchy parking lot
for the last couple weeks
i light a cigarette  
i’m so depressed
she says ‘do you have one for me?’
‘no, but we can split this one’
we pass it around
‘i’m hungry’ she says, then gives a look
‘i’m not in the mood’ i say
she says ‘come onn’
‘not today’ i say, as she comes closer
puts her hands on my chest
brings them down my waist
we go into my car
and she swallows it
i fondle my gun
she gets out
and she says
‘see you tomorrow?’
…’ok’ i tell her
fuck
i don’t know how to end this

The Motherfucking Boat

a moonfaced kazakh girl displaying
much cleavage; a lank-haired liverpudlian 
of noisy clattering tongue; 
a spanish dj offering african chants to jupiter 
and jupiter responding with a late-night summer 
thunderstorm, the lightning glittering 
in the waters and dancing around the boat like fire,
then following you off it, leading you splashing 
along peachblue cobblestones past neon
burger joints the sleeping u-bahn station
a man with missing fingers lighting a cigarette 
raucherkneipen ugly pre-war buildings 
squatting in the bowels of pink crepuscular dawn. 
it’s 5 a.m when you get home, some crumbling altbau 
in neukölln, the walls eternally damp from the swamp 
this city was built on, a mildew odor rising 
from the cellar, a toilet you can only get to 
if you walk through the shower. you do that, 
careful to step around the puddle that forgot 
to go down the grate, then crash on an ikea mattress 
and wake four hours later, a colony of bees circling 
your head, your hearing eyes
listening to invisible fingers 
roving over a keyboard somewhere. you curse 
the ceiling, look to the floor, observe the damp 
pile of clothes that wore you last night. 
and suddenly you become conscious 
of your thick animal tongue and broken mind. 
is this you? or is this the universe 
happening to you? do you have anything 
to do with any of this at all? you close your eyes 
again and listen.

When We Hit Bottom

We always found someone worse than us
Dave found that homeless hippie camp
when he stumbled along I-95
that summer 
a good 85 degrees
he had been lying by the side of the road
since dusk
he tried to shoot up in the only car 
that stopped for him
the driver freaked when Dave jabbed
his abdomen with the needle
shoved him out the minute he could pull off the road

Homeless hippie camp had collected rainwater
a good stock of needles 
dropped off by the First Baptist Church
a mattress that gave us lice
an abundant supply of acid 
the one night we took it
we ran through the forest 
smacked into vines 
branches whipped us
we rested inside a rotted tree stump
woke covered with chiggers
Dave tried to burn them off
his skin blistered up
bloomed into an infected 
yellow volcano of pus
with constant ooze

We ventured into the emergency room ripe
hungrily scanned for any drug we could snatch
the hospital staff watched us in disgust 
as the nurse injected Dave’s oozy bubbles
with antibiotics and salved his track sores
I covered my arms in shame

Halfway through the long walk 
back to the camp 
a pickup truck pulled over 
offered a ride 
Dave put me in the passenger seat
and watched beady eyed from back seat 
as I coaxed the fat old truck driver 
for twenty bucks 
he pulled over a mile before our stop 
and said nothin comes for free, toots 
as he unzipped his fly

We walked the mile 
and Dave snatched that twenty from me 
with a cold sneer that put a chill through me
he said whores don’t get to keep their money
then disappeared into the dark

I coasted along I-95 for a few months rail-thin
ready to tear apart like an old sheet of newspaper
a torrential rainstorm hit
I ran under a bridge to keep dry
found Dave huddled in a worn 
dirt trodden blanket
shaking and mumbling
sores layered over his face and hands

I walked back out into that rain
half-dead
four miles to the same ER
collapsed in front

Van Gogh’s Left Ear

The more you know
the artist’s biography,
the more boring
their work must be.

The Marquis de Sade had a wife.
Zeno of Elea bit the ear off a king.
Malcolm Lowry had a micropenis.
And Brooks Lindberg, the fuck is that?

Confession #28

When I was first getting sober I used to hang out at this alano club in L.A. A lot of low-bottom people there. Like me. I had put together a little clean time and this guy asked me to sponsor him. Right away I could tell he was a little off. Like touched, you know? Not all there. So I would go over to his apartment to do step work with him, not that this was really gonna help him ‘cause he was barely functional like I said. He lived with a woman, I don’t know if it was his girlfriend or sister. She looked more messed up than him. I only ever saw her in bed watching TV. The whole scene was a drag. Anyway, I was helping him with his fourth step, which was a trip because he was saying all this weird stuff about his dad being John F. Kennedy, then five minutes later it would change and his dad was Walt Disney, and I figured he was like schizo or something, you know? So I said hey, let’s take a break and I headed into the bathroom to piss. When I finished I decided to check out the medicine cabinet. Old habits, right? Inside there was a small fortune worth of painkillers: Oxys, morphine, Vicodin. And without really thinking about it I just stuffed them all into my jacket pockets. I didn’t even try to cover my tracks or leave the bottles, I just grabbed everything. I walked back out and told the guy we were done for the day and I’d see him at the meeting later that night. I split and jumped on a bus and headed down to Long Beach to look for some friends I knew I could sell the pills to. Never went back to that meeting or saw the guy again. The thing I think about, the thing that I’ve always remembered, was I had to pass the woman’s bedroom, the girlfriend or sister or whatever, on the way out of the apartment. As I walked by I looked in the room and she was in bed watching TV, like always, and our eyes met. Her expression never changed, but in that instant something passed between us, a flash of recognition or, I don’t know, shared consciousness, and I knew that she knew what I was doing and there was a moment where I could have turned around and walked back into the bathroom and put the drugs back, a move that would have spared me another five years and everything that went down afterward. 

Instead I looked away and walked out the door.