The Painful Sunrise

When you realize, uh-oh, the last two were probably three too many and you should’ve been in bed hours ago, but the music kept playing and the company’s so good! So good! So good! And her skirt, too revealing – her legs, too far apart. And the way she throws her head back with every shot, and every laugh, it’s just the way – aha aha – you like it. So, you chase down one more dark alley and, sure, her lipstick’s too red – her dyed curls, too wet and too coincidental, but you don’t stop ‘til you get enough and it’s not enough ‘til it’s way too much. 

And the moment arrives when you say, “Throw your head back like that one more time, baby, I’ll keep you up all night.” And she laughs a laugh too reckless and bites her lower lip – and so do you – and her eyes roll back in her head, and you taste the lipstick on her teeth… You’re two strangers in the night exchanging saliva… Soon she’s back to doing backstrokes and you’re still keeping up, but her face matches the lipstick now and she starts blowing out the candles, starts pissing on the sparks. You’re not the reason why she came and you’re not the reason why she stayed. There’s a place she needs to be, but you try, “Ooh babe, what would you say we go watch the moonset together?”

And the music keeps playing and you soldier on alone in a company unfamiliar. When another skirt sits down, and your tab’s still open, and you can only see her with your fingers, but she doesn’t seem to mind (your tab’s still open). And you tell her how you really feel in your comfortable despair, but she thinks you’re just paranoid, and she may be right cause there are shadows on the wall that weren’t there before and the light is getting stronger and you wish it would hold off just a little while longer. But the sun is on the rise. It waits for no one. It’s tapping on the window, hurling insults, asking questions you don’t wanna answer right now.

***

Previously published in Dear Booze

Dirty Needle America

Pink plastic singing electric
showtunes from Thailand.

There was an article 
in the UFO rags 
about fentanyl candy from China.

Fat queer whore house America
lit up like the fourth of July,
and was first in line
with all its blood-splotched dollars.

Ugly 

The bar was ugly 
and she was ugly 
and I was ugly,
at least in mood.

Made you wonder where 
the beauty ever went?

Not with her gaggle of 
gorgon friends,
I can tell you that.

Or that creepy comb-over bartender 
with roofies for hands.

The walls were ugly
and the floors were worse.

No one was getting laid,
and if they were,
the sex was ugly, too.

This Was a Blank Page

Words hide, words 
move through walls and fly out
into distant minds.  Words
hide the truth, or burn
through pages and paint walls
with fire-shadows.
They grant and they steal,
or stay up all night
wondering what shape to form.
They raze cities and
raise the dead—They come apart
like pollen spores, or follow us
into our dreams.  Words define themselves 
with other words, and mean nothing 
without them.  They limit the brain, 
but ask deep questions.  
They bring us through grief and betrayals
with cold comfort.  
From a pile of rubble 
they build other worlds.  They name us
and gather in and at
our wake.  They exonerate
or execute.  Words come home to us 
so we can put them in
the right order, but after this
they don’t think of us.  We need them
and we need them to leave
so we can sit at last in peace
and age with the silence.

The Year I Fell in Love with a Dimes Square Girl

the Dimes Square girls are at it again 
reading Lunch Poems 2 over lunches amuse-bouche,
the sky like a mango flavored Juul, Manhattan at noon 

is a wet brain and when I finally heal from the trauma 
of a happy childhood I find every pussy at the corner of Canal 
and Orchard to be a Beaux-Arts shrine

to acronyms and floating signifiers. Here is one hand
of the Red Scare. And here is another 
trembling with the psychic power that Kunst 

is the German world for “art.” 
O to be young, to navigate you 
like an open manhole on Second Avenue, 

you fucked with breakneck inventiveness
aesthetic and artifice,
we shot the dawn like Burroughs

missing badly, because you hated Burroughs 
preferred Ferlinghetti, and besides 
that was the same night Nikki went toe-to-toe

with Death’s six serpent sons,
and Hans got busted doing coke in the Swan Room
and Thom didn’t have a clue about the Sally Fowler Rat Pack

our love was doomed time and time thereafter 
a decade late and a trust fund short,
your desire to be desired so fleeting I couldn’t keep up.  

The Diff

Between a man and a dog?
None, except a man will only get
on his all fours when he’s drunk
or he’s looking for his keys,
a dog will piss anywhere 
there is an upright object,
a man will use a urinal 
or a toilet bowl even
if he misses and sprays 
all over the place,
a dog will bark thanks if you
feed him the tiniest morsel
but a man will rate the meal
and be on his way,
a dog will not budge 
if he’s on his last legs,
and must be carried shamelessly,
a man will soldier on 
till he falls on his face.
So here’s to the nobility in both.

Brunch with Linda

Little Red Riding Should-
that was my name when I knew him;
when I stumbled around 
the dashing Devil’s playground
And oh, I got lost deep in his forest

Yes, I said deep, girl, 
drowning in cosmic fascination
But listen Linda,

Tides turn
and we all know the lyrics to 
Let it Burn;
Passion moves in and out
as we twist and shout and twerk
on Kirk and beam up with Scotty
Reruns get stale as seasons change
and leaves crunch under our feet
to remind us
just how brittle we are

Gag reflexes, gag reels, gag
orders, gag me with a gluten-free
something, anything, make the hunger
go away with the beautiful ones
You can study the beauty you think
you see and suddenly, 
a wild-hearted wind blows
and masks go flying
polluting the trees and the gutters
and the puddles and soon,
your reflection hits different
Oh Linda, tell me more

about YOu. Let’s get another coffee
and call in to work. This is real work;
This is therapy. We are beating hearts
and our empty veins are bored
to death. Let’s go back to my place
and watch Thelma and Louise

We are crying and laughing and 
connecting and your one dress strap
keeps falling
and I just wanna be here with you
right now

Eyes Only

And the safe house was safe
And our words were Eyes Only
And the brush pass had been made
And our hearts were pounding
And the window shone white silver
And the other window didn’t
And we rattled the bed frame in code
And the message was top secret

When is a safe house safe?
When there’s nobody from CIA in it
That’s what the Security guy told us
Which I guess implies
It was a safe safe house
’Cause our two bodies worked for State Department
… And oh yes, this poem is indeed encrypted
Only one other agent could possibly decipher it
Think you know its meaning?
Well then, maybe you’re that agent
In which case you also know

That the brush pass had been made
And the street would soon be quiet
And the window shone white silver
And the other window didn’t
And regimes would fall
Because of this covert action
And the safe house was safe
And our words were Eyes Only

simply a pouring rain

i remember the days
where madness would 
flow like a fine wine

now, simply a pouring 
rain

broken glass

holes in the carpet

and what could have 
been plastered on the 
walls so you never 
forget

failure, a young maiden
dressed in black

the sweetest rose
nothing but thorns

i remember the first 
time my father told 
me he was going to 
take me out of this 
world because he 
was the one that 
brought me into it

and all the times
i called his bluff

all the times i laughed 
like the mad man he 
never had the balls 
to be

drove past his grave 
the other day

was hoping i needed 
to take a shit

Road Tripping With My Gals

Yup, me and the law again.  Round trip crossin’ Kansas.
Got the lights, got the si-reen.  Got the mystified cop.
He say, “Sir, what the heck you doin’?  We have a speed limit.”
Hell, I thought those were highway markers.  Been on 55 forever.
He say, “Kinda dangerous, kids in the open bed of your truck.”
I got him there.  “That’s my wife and her twin sister.  They both 15.
That’s past the legal age to ride in back.  So, no problem there.
Got my girlfriend ridin’ in the cab with me.  She’s twelve.
Pops the tops for me and throws out my empties.
We headin’ out to Yellowstone.  Gonna try the sulfur baths.
Heard on the TV that natural hot baths were good for ya.
Figured, out there, they were free.”
Why do Kansas cops shake their head so much?