Bantamweight Vs. Flyweight

Pivoting round the canvas square
the boxer in blue sweating out every pore
and the one in red’s bleeding through his hair
tearing open each other’s eyes
battering chunks of flesh
from their faces and smiles

Blurring punches through strobe light eyes
flyweight vs. bantamweight bells are ringing
I want that belt
I want that prize
trainers and refs scream in their left cauliflower ear
and in the right is the crowd’s sadistic cries

Scrawny wiry dudes pounding walls of meat
concussion percussion
kidney punches means
pissing blood for weeks
rope-a-dope abandon all hope
and the big money’s riding on them both

Flyweight vs. bantamweight bells are ringing
oxblood leather flying through the shadows
blood in your eyes are stinging
biting down on your mouth guard
lips spitting out murky burgundy
sweating gin, sweating rye, sweating boiling brandy

Well, Marilyn Monroe loved ugly men
Marvin Gaye shot to death by his pop
there’s no such thing as a sure thing
skinny, wiry guys dancing til destiny’s bell rings
a boxer’s best hook is his right
but, it means nothing
if he has to
throw the
fight

Life faking Life

I gave too much. Never enough.
Ask family, ask friends, ask the IRS.

Living not dead. Not that you can tell
The difference unless you are paying
Attention. Who does that these days?
Human interaction required, an action
Better ignored.

I rise. I collapse. I’m not the ocean,
Just drowning. But not drowning alone.

I live in the shadow of anger. Beware my shadow.
It moves as I move.

My shadow prefers black. Me too.
Fashion choices made easy.
Like going to a funeral every day.
Mutually assured mourning.

It’s not you. It’s me. It’s always been me.
Crib to Tomb. Cradle to Grave.
You were just there.
Like I was just there for you
Until I wasn’t.

I wear a mask over my mask.
Partly for me. Mostly for you.
Don’t trust the smile; or the tears.
I don’t.

I love you. I hate you.
Confession overheard at the mirror
And between drinks.

Some readers will question; What is this shit, this nonsense?
Some readers will relate. This is their Gospel.

This poem is for me but also for you, my friends, my flock,
My fellow givers, It was enough, more than enough. Always.
It just wasn’t fucking appreciated.

For Sarri

On my SAT I doodled
pornographic sketches 
because I saw a girl student 
crying over her test form 
and it bothered me to
be amongst them, any of them,
I detested people so overcome 
by anxiety and in my most 
immodest immaturity 
I maintained that I knew not of
the feeling of anxiety.

Few years later 
panic attacks would land me
to the ER were they’d 
inject my ass with liquid diazepam 
because of my frantic heart beats.

Brought things to perspective. 

But back to high school—
those sketches bothered 
the headmaster who saw it
as an attack to the very 
virtuousness of the education system
and troubled Sarri, a theoretics teacher
and the only educator there
who had an affinity to me and a belief
that I suspect stemmed from 
the compositions I’d write that even
with terrible grades because of
the blatant disregard of the word restriction 
she’d always comment on them 
praise them even 
in front of the whole class as wonderful
in meaning alone at least.

At the back tables of the classroom 
I’d wish for her to shut the fuck up
and wondered if I’d have to start a 
fight again to authenticate the fact
I was no dork.

Sarri, who I grew to respect 
with time and even had a soft spot for
had sat me in an empty class room
to explain to me how I was crippling 
my chances with my future education 

She was trying to understand me
and I was trying to explain that
I was not interested in going through 
the hoops, that the world was filled
with educated morons and that 
if there was no passion I felt to pursue
through the appalling structure 
of their systems or societal configurations
there was no reason for me to even try 

I was turning my back to it all.

Sarri had used an Aristotle
quote then, told me
that if a man does not partake
in society, he is either God
or beast.

Surely I must be the latter 
I’d responded.

A disappointed expression on her face 
that had made me  sad to have caused

She has then asked me
what I thought to be
the meaning of life

Don’t have a clue 
yet, I’d respond 

And what about you
Miss Sarri,
what’s the meaning of life
to you?

A pause.

To love and to be loved.

This was a woman that 
was never married in her life
or possibly widowed—
many rumours in that school
but one certainty—
she lived a lonely existence.

Seen many-a times 
feeding straw cats
in night time by students,
been made fun of for this,
going psspssps as the cats
would surround her 
with their tails upwards
and she would speak to them
in a soft voice, a sweet tone

a woman who believed
the meaning of life 
to be to love and be loved.

A woman utterly alone.

Assault

She doesn’t so much arrive
as materialize in a dark corner
of the bar, amid the legs 
turned up to the ceiling stools 
wearing a scent so intoxicating 
no one can resist it.
“What’s the name of that perfume
you are wearing?” The barman asks.
“Assault.” She says, smiling in a way
that might have been beguiling 
if her face were more distinct, 
if the room had been less 
confining instead of like
a cave with swivel chairs, 
drawn blackout curtains that 
no breeze riffled; no light entered.
“What’s a girl got to do to get a drink?”
“Name your poison.”
“That’s my line.” She says, 
her pale white fingers tapping 
the bar, her even paler arms 
extending from sheer black gown.
“I suppose this is where I lean 
over the bar and receive the 
Kiss of Death?”
“I don’t know. That’s up to you.”
Nothing moves. 
Not even the hands of the wall clock.

Cling

The dust covered
Electric fan
Feels good
On my arm
As
During a heatwave
You have draped yourself
All over me
While sleeping

Sleep is the little death
Someone once said

But it’s where we
Love the most

So I watch you 
Quietly dying
Watch the hours
Turn to stone,

The soft heat
Of your cunt
On my leg
Making it hard
To stay still
And you let
Die
A little more.

A Filter for the Modern Age

Beneath the dark-light of night
And the soft daze of rain
It feels as though the world begins to fade
Signs erased by the rhythmic downpour
Shopfronts like blank postcards
Recounting memories never made

The towns which glisten beneath this rain
Run smooth with the melting fat of history
The homogenising filter of the modern age
The streets, clogged arteries of artificial light
Burning shadows into the misery-haunted earth

i was warned

i had a dream i died 
in your arms

don’t ask me how i got to 
new jersey with no money 
and just a few poems left 
in me

i got down on my bad knee

took out one of those toy
rings from my youth

and asked for the hand of the 
loveliest woman i have ever 
known

you told me to get up,
i was being foolish

i knew it would end up this way

we went back to your apartment

drank some bourbon and laughed 
about the old times

made love for the first time 
my fading brain can remember

i felt my soul start laughing

i figured that old fuck was 
just as surprised as me

i was warned if i ever found 
happiness it would be my last 
day on earth

finally got the damn chance
to roll the dice

Inflation

Give me liberty or give me five
‘cuz death won’t buy shit anymore
inflation being what it is and all
Even inflation isn’t worth much
except for tire pressure
and Trump’s ego
and the mouse in your pocket
that tells her you’re glad to see her
And speaking of liberty
we aren’t allowed to laugh enough
They ought to make farting
a competitive sport on ESPN
sponsored by Hormel’s Chili
That’d give those rebel flag-waving
good ol’ boys some serious
wood wouldn’t it?

Notes Toward a Banned Book

Lenore likes the slightly crumpled beak of an origami bird. Justine enjoys removing the silk from an ear of corn. We must carry on as if life is polite. We must hide the contrary evidence in a shoebox under the bed. 

Sometimes I think about attending an ornate church where the priest puts on a show after reading a story by Poe or De Sade. Sometimes I wander this city for years at a time without a single shock.

Gloria likes her ankles bound. Fran likes to watch men drink her urine. We must carry on as if love is sexless, and sex has no theatrical core. Sometimes the bindings are Velcro. Sometimes the men drink Gatorade.

FF

Spain in the 1950s was an odd place.
Under the thumb of the Generalissimo
and the Catholic Church, freedom
was limited, especially for women,
which meant that relations between
the sexes were carefully monitored.
Women were chaperoned, usually
by a male member of her family.
Only the official ‘novio’ was allowed
to hold hands or be discreetly kissed.

It was my lot to suffer this sexual
wasteland in two very Francoist cities:
Salamanca and El Ferrol (del Caudillo),
his headquarters in the Civil War 
and the place where he was born.
I was living in Salamanca and spent
the Christmas holidays in El Ferrol
where I got to know the stationmaster’s 
daughter, which made me think of jokes
like “She was only a wrangler’s daughter
but she knew how to handle a longhorn.”

Back in Salamanca, the 21-year-old me
continued to be frustrated by the regime
in my pursuit of a normal modern sex life.

In those days, young men were expected
to satisfy their sexual needs in a brothel,
a sort of rite of passage sponsored by friends.
In the chilly month of March, a visiting
Professor Vivaldi from Granada University
was well-known in the city’s Chinatown
and its casas de citas. “The road to sin city” 
was fittingly named Broad Street.

What struck me as we entered that seedy area
were the flat roofs with clothes lines hung
with small strips of towelling like bunting.
He took me with him to show me around
one of his favourite haunts, introduced me
to the girls who weren’t occupied with clients
and recommended I get to know Dulce Corazón.
She was young, slender, pale and quite pretty.

The Madame quoted me a price for a “while”,
in other words for as long as the sex act took.
Alternatively, the all-night fee was 250 pesetas.
I remember thinking, “That’s the price of a shirt”.
In for a penny, in for a pound, I opted for all night.
Being eager and thrifty, I thought if I could manage it
five times, it would work out at 50 pesetas a fuck.

In the end I did manage five; oh, those were the days!
After each event, D.C. slipped out of bed,
douched herself in the bidet, and dried herself off
with a scrap of towelling like those on the flat roofs.
The following morning, I was offered a deal:
if I paid a retainer I could have her as often as I liked. 

Looking back, I suppose what comes to mind
is a comparison with Frequent Flyers:
Frequent Fuckers.