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. 

Even Clint Eastwood Got Old Bones

The children I knew as children
have children of their own.
The teenagers I knew as a teenager,
have teenagers of their own,
and I am thinking,
even Clint Eastwood got old bones.

The children who wanted to be doctors,
are now practising in underpaid jobs.
The children who wanted to be rich footballers
gave up when girls came along.

The children who loved football,
play on five a side teams, 
between work and going home,
even Clint Eastwood got old bones.

The children who wanted to be famous,
got bitter when opportunity knocked,
and they weren’t at home,
even Clint Eastwood got old bones.

Mellow

Copasetic Christian
Methanolic based
Secondhand squatter
Speaking of Satan
Dining at the table of
The bloodied crimson
Brown-eyed wife.
Letters from the postman.
Eagles blatantly swooping
Into the tail of your kite.
Sweet hoodoo Shakespear
Licking at the bard’s nutz.
So, dude, take another hit
With no ifs, ands, or butts.
Watch in a hazy lazy daze
In the second floor padded
Cell as the naked lady struts.

Candy Necklace

Little corpses stuck
to my glossed-up lips

Pretty dead boy;
hands on my lively hips

Unspoken words
unravel mummy loon

Gravedigger fell in;
Can’t fool a full moon

Wanna push me ‘cause
can’t see what I see

They love me hard-high
on their own darkness

String them together;
Boy-candy necklace

Wanna choke me; shut
up a fantasy?

Laugh at the rope burn
and call it tough love

Dream on boys,
I’m what nightmares are made of…

I wear them well 
and eat them one by one…

Sour and breakable
…then there were none.

A Soldier Off-Duty Overseas

So quiet
That loneliness taps on the shoulder,
Or is it the memory of her warm breath?
Turn, you find her presence in the light
Leaving,
Disappearing into the west,
Drawing each evening thing out of itself,
Coloring the receding vapors with longing.

Each second kneads another diminishing fullness of shape,
Elastic as the invisible hands that stretch
like the rose, purple, dark silver of cloud.
Vapors, the only solids, condense, melt,
Bang the tin of that thing poets call the heart.

The gleam on the glass of a farmer’s irrigation canal
fades.

What is she doing now?

Absence is so much shadow….

No one discerns the intensity of another’s subjective emotion
Except in a poem,
But words are at a loss to console. 

the wrong apple

things are looking bad
for the planet
for the people
for the future
but maybe all we need is each other
and a rat trap old jeep
to ferry us into the desert
where the air hangs hot and still
with the weight of isolation and decay
and the endless sands burn
with the fires of dead civilizations

we’ll strip naked
and we’ll crawl back to what’s left of the garden
and ask the snake
where in the hell did we get it wrong?
did we screw up the translation?
did we eat the wrong apple?
or did we just let god bully us 
out of the garden
because we couldn’t see through
his phony bluster?

and if we can’t find the snake
or the snake refuses to talk
we’ll fuck our brains out
in the shade of an iron wood tree

churches and liquor stores

maybe it is just in ohio, 
but i have always been
able to tell the towns
that are dying by the
number of churches
and liquor stores

now, add in the number
of urgent care places

the part of the county
i live in might as well
be extinct

of course, here comes
another smoke shop
that isn’t allowed to
sell weed

one decent restaurant
and about a thousand
reasons to leave

now i just need to hit
a lottery or a twenty
team parlay

as usual, the odds are
against me

Jupiter’s Scepter

That girl from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Who I chose to have sex with
Put a mechanical device in her cunt
Made with tin lips.
Ouch, ouch, ouch!
I, Silvano, like a brave and brazen satyr
Like an erect and horny donkey
Or a god riding his donkey
Came to the battle of Love.
Before entering it
I was already cumming with pleasure
And the erection was taking me where it wanted.
What a good feed she was going to give me!
I already tore off the tin lips
Of that beautiful and conceited woman
With two gigantic tits.
I already unhinged her Mount of Venus.
The combat was going to be very bloody.
I felt it from that ejaculation
That I introduced red
My hands placed on the poles of her ass
My glans reaching the roof of her vagina
Broken, going through all that junk.
She just shuddered.
Her two tits trembled.
Ouch, ouch, ouch!
You’re breaking it, man!
My ovaries are bursting!
Enraged, I already ejaculated in her like a donkey.
She had a hesitant orgasm.
When I pulled out, I was stunned
Slipping and falling
From her mons pubis.
Her tin pussy hurt my member
Swelling excessively
Having to go to the hospital
So that a urologist could see me
Like a puppet with a huge penis
And with a headache.
Damn the hour when I put
That whore Etna’s cunt on as a hat
For I was thrown into her carnal hell
By joyfully wounding her by penetrating her
A trace or relic of her remained:
A shaving of her tin lips
In the middle of my balls.
The doctor who attended me
Was amazed by such swelling
Asking me the address of this whore
Exclaiming:
This penis looks like Jupiter’s scepter!
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!