The Goddess’ Body

The pure girl walked
From Río Vena to Burgos’ Cathedral
To hear the twelve o’clock mass
Celebrated by the Archbishop.
Behind her followed
A young man who had been courting her
Since they left the Comuneros Institute
To go to the University.
He kept saying to her:
-Our Father God
Who art in heaven…
What a beautiful girl
What beautiful eyes!
Your ass is a swallow’s nest
Where my little bird dreams of nesting.
The girl became arrogant
As if she were a thirty-year-old woman
When she was nineteen.
She said to him:
The garden that I have
The one you call a swallow’s nest
Has many names
And the one that best suits it
Is “the ruin of men.
I hate my female form
For the God who made us
Or whoever was her master
Made me with a split ass
And there, in her two assholes
King Cupid places his flag
Like the Carthusian monks and nuns
They take up their half-sheet
To light up their nights of meaning
As it happened to Saint John of the Cross
And Saint Teresa of Jesus.
I don’t want to get married.
I want to remain single
To dress saints and pray
To the Virgin of Consolation.
However, as I believe
In that true song that says:
“You must love the one who loves you
And love whoever loves you.
I’m going to let you 
Put your joint up to my arsehole
So you can see what a drag I take
And what smoke it makes 
When I open and close it. 
Through the passageway that runs
From Calle La Paloma to Llana de Afuera
Next to the Flora’ s fountain
She bent down very cautiously
As if she were going to pick up a stone
Showing him the pussy
That was without textile
As was necessary
Taking advantage of him 
To put the joint in it.
With her anus
She didn’t take one drag
But three.
Then he took the joint
That began to burn between her lips.
He said to her:
-I know you’ll never be my girlfriend
Because you want to remain chaste and pure.
I’m very grateful to you
Because this joint, now
Is doing me a lot of good.

It’s Just a Fucking Poem

When I read my poem about the shaving kit
my former sister-in-law gave me
at my high school graduation –
Claudette, three years older than me,
hadn’t yet married Mark then,
but they were engaged –
comparing it to a doctor’s bag
and also to a Medieval reliquary,
packed not with safety razor,
shaving cream, toothbrush and comb
but pills, blood pressure cuff, stethoscope,
on the one hand, crucifix, saints’ bones,
bits of clothing, on the other

Rebecca Wertz, one of my classmates,
complained that I had to choose 
one or the other.

“There’s just too much pressure.
The poem can’t carry that much weight.
Choose one metaphor or the other, not both.”

Our other classmates piled on,
sharks sensing blood, chum in the water,
getting their participation points from Nadia,
the teacher, who likewise nodded sagely.

You’re not allowed to respond to comments 
in these poetry workshops, 
just nod and be grateful, 

revise, rinse and repeat.
It’s why we’re here, to improve our work.

But goddammit, this was a poem
about my brother’s failed marriage,
the shaving kit itself a metaphor.
Nobody said even a word about that.

Whore of a Muse

At times, he wonders if it’s worth it.
Never knowing his audience, if and by whom, his work is read.
Still he hopes. Sitting at the typer, long lonely nights, listening to
Monster Magnet, Rollins, and Hank III, drunk on bourbon and Pepsi
And thoughts of what might-have-been and never-was,
And God-Damn-did-I-actually-do-that?
He eyeballs the midget, short skirt (like duh! it wouldn’t be a long skirt),
Those thick, welcoming thighs, her smile, red as Satan’s asshole courtesy
of Cherry Kool-Aid and cheap Russian vodka.
Is it worth it? Word after lonely word, struggling to get the syntax perfect.
He dons the latex raccoon mask and steps forward, memorizing the setting,
Cinnabon incense, and Slipknot posters, everything looks better by candlelight,
Images stored for later. What matter is the Now; his hard-on points the way.
Is it worth it? What he does for inspiration?
At this point, seeing the midget smile,
what comes after is gravy.

Pink Eye

“I’ll send you more pictures of my armpits
when I’m over this pink eye,” she texts
I accept this, as pleading
would only discourage her
“OK, talk to you later,
I have to check my cat,” I reply
The stray cat behind the dumpster
has eaten every scrap
of the tuna I left, even the paper label,
a tin can that bare speaks of starvation
but I’ve brought more
“That’s new,” I say, “you look ridiculous,”
for a sheet of sticky brown paper
has adhered to the cat’s side
The cat hisses when I try to remove it
so I open the cans
as it shows me its pink asshole
hopping into the brambles
when I get too close
We are both starving
but for different things.

What The Mouth Tells

She said, You have scars in your mouth.
I guess the mouth goes through things
in the course of a life. The attempt to
emulate Chuck Smith and uncap a beer
bottle with your teeth; the lobster dinner
at Gerlinde’s cottage after six shots 
of Courvoisier; the three day blow
via Wilson and an eight-ball cut
with powdered glass it felt like;
never mind the session with a lady
from the Red Zone who found 
your lurid longing almost off-putting. 

How bad is it? I asked Amy the hygienist,
who amiably declared I had nothing 
to worry about except oral cancer.

I departed the clinic with a smile
less yellow than an hour before and my
thoughts adrift, recalling Chuck Smith
for instance, who married my cousin Maria
and is still kicking around albeit 
with dentures; and I wondered 
what ever happened to lovely Gerlinde
who my best friend Andy abandoned.
And what ever happened to Andy,
who split for the north without warning?
And Wilson is probably married with kids 
and wearing a girdle and feeling 
pretty good about how things turned 
out for him, given everything. 

And the lady from the Red Zone
back then already jaundiced 
likely grew too cynical
to profitably ply her trade,
not unlike that john many years ago 
who paid her in five dollar bills
for a taste of humiliation
and said that life, too, made him sick.

Fck Me Like a Dyed FlwR

I’ve heard it all but please,
tell me how you know about blending
colors as they run
down this kind of masterpiece;
The finest piece of ass you’ve seen since
running behind at the museum
With all the things running 

down my legs,
tell me you know how to keep the dead
petals from falling all at once
Tell me you know something I don’t 
Your look is killer but I already know
about dying

Have you ever seen the rose 
that grew up between the wolf’s teeth,
but in two worlds-
Up from under the foolery of the wool;
then back 
under the day-drinking trailer park clouds, 
where slashed tires just say afterparty
The rose that grew from inside
a pinball machine, always getting slammed
on both sides by sore losers
Get a good look Daddy,
Is that what you said to call you
Should I do a three-sixty and wink 

morse code come fvck me
Can you get me so wet, my dye 
will challenge my mascara to run,
run, run, run faster
than my cold feet ever could. I know,

You need a gal
with a deathwish, a gal that bloomed 
in the noose fields of mind fuckery, 
in the sad sac 
of bad company, and still aced that escape
artistry. Well, fuck you,

if you think you’re coming over at all
to fvck me. This black blood rose is real,
and worthy of more than your stupid
fantasy. Get out of my garden
and take your dollar store paintbrush

The Three Halves to Sainthood:

I.
A prophet seeks to change the world.
A saint, themself.

I spare neither myself nor others
following my nose.

II.
A prophet blushes at their sins.
A saint, at none.
But both feast on sins
and famish in their absence.

The difference is a matter of gluttony.

I gorge on oysters, pussy, argument, honeycomb.

III.
A prophet needs a devil to overcome.
A saint, their will.

I throw my skinny body into cold ocean—sickness, old age, and death are all I brawl
while knowing this:
I lose.

You do too.

IV. 
I consecrate the earth—
your eyes
your dry skin
every worm in every bowel.

I shall not live posthumously—
I love you now.

Give me a call.

If we are wretched creatures
then friend
fuck salvation.

Speaker Noise

It was Bakersfield, circa 1985.
We were misfits in black,
high school and college dropouts,
jobless as often as not.
Scared of girls,
scared of boys,
scared of most everything
the world had to offer us.
We’d sleep by day
and in the afternoons we’d wander 
the malls and parking lots.
Most nights I’d gather us up 
in my puke-colored Datsun 
and we’d stop by the 7-11 
to grab a case of whatever swill
we favored at the time.
We’d end up somewhere, 
most often a neighborhood park,
where we’d sit at a picnic table
with a boombox and a little suitcase
of cassette tapes.
We’d drink and smoke and listen 
to our punk and our deathrock,
our jangly guitars.
We didn’t talk much,
maybe argue a bit now and then
about what to put on next,
but mostly we’d just lose ourselves
in the speaker noise.
Sometimes the cops chased us away
but mostly they left us alone.
Now and then one of us would bust out
 a mixtape we’d made.
We put a lot of time and thought
into those and I remember the one
I was most proud of. I christened it: 
Shitty Bitch: A Collection of Love Songs.
It was a bunch of noisy tunes 
about being dumped or passed over
because I was mad at a girl
for breaking my sullen 
and misunderstood heart.
It always felt good
watching your friends nod along 
to the songs you chose,
saying fuck yeah now and then
as they sucked at their beer.
It helped a bit to feel
that they understood life
and its trouble 
in the same way you did.
You felt a little less alone
when Rollins screamed
some line that cut straight through you
with its truth,
and your buddy opens
another beer
and says, goddamn right.

Piss in Coffins

What is death?
These days it’s NHS Big Data telling you when.
It’s four months in hospital, flooded in Nordic pharmaceutical statins. 
It’s eight years in a coma, plugged into the Internet.
They play carny music to make you bob back up.
So they want piss in their coffins.
A piss dirty bomb in their blood.
For the Malaysian surgeon, to add his own lethal weapon
of kidney stones.
Stacks and stacks of piss, in boxes, cream of the crop.
Figuring out the best piss like trying to solve a Rubix Cube.
It’s the new death bed crosswords and sudoku.
No cool-out time, no step-out time, no idler time,
every waking death moment – and how they drag –
you think about piss.
Time is longer with resistance.
The resistance is uterine.
Is milk. An assembly line of breast milk.
Is pre-cum, the colour of Oreo cream, pure stuff,
bull-made stuff they take from a whale penis by
the bucket. Semen worth tens of millions 
on rebreeding programmes,
on new animals. 
My life in the Kingdom of Heaven is worth thirty grand,
quality-adjusted. That’s hard to catch your breath for.
The human animal wants piss and uterine stuff in its coffins.
Bury me in piss, it’s all they pray about.
Coroner, please let me be progenitor for this new cultural movement.
It’s facsimile, it’s about smoothing out my face.
I did all I could in my lifetime
but it was genetic. Make me look like a sharp-jawed prince!
Put piss in my coffin!
Put piss in my coffin!
Put commie piss in my coffin!
So, with enough court cases they put several commodes
in the coffin.
And the interns who do it are gagging and laughing.
Don’t they know this meant something to someone?
Stuffing their own turkey cadaver with urine?
Go back from 1776 and at some point, 
there was a President of the United States who 
longed for a golden shower in his tomb.

Litany of Lethargy and Glee  

Ding, dong
     The pristine is dead 
Indeed 
     We believed in beauty 
Under the influence of seaside DMT 
     We pleaded with the Pleiades  
and Nietzsche
     Singing Peace Be to the Bourgeoisie 
ADHD and a peanut allergy 
     upon our eternal return 
Augury in salt-seasoned leeches 
     VIP Ouija boards
Anthropocene elegies 
     In Zombiocene teenzines 
Manspleened peaplant pedagogies 
     The study of the horsie’s doohickey 
to determine what breed she be 
     Beergoggle bestiality 
Greedy andouille sausage fingers 
     picking the bookie’s boogies 
Sublingual glands gleeking out 
     a meager living 
Deemed by some deity
     crash test dummy for The American Dream
The Old Me, The New Me, The Real Me 
     American Memes
Weenie-winking heat-seeking ecofreaks 
     Techies and Trekkies and Taki-teasers 
 Sheeple surely
     G-men in G-strings and pasties eating pastries 
The Easter Bunny screeching carpe misdemeanor 
     in each elongated ear 
Pussy-eating near-death experiences 
     Eons of premature ejaculate 
Buggery and skulduggery 
     The ETA of the EMT irrevocable 
Dopamine to be distributed directly 
      by eager beavers 
licking at the leakage from diarrhea diaries.