the silver-tongued casanovas sticking their lying cocks into slippery cunts 

she was late, 2 minutes, 
to the date — 7.02pm 
and she apologised. 
I appreciated her 
candour. later 
back at hers after 
some foreplay 
she told me she 
was a virgin and 
I thought of breaking 
it off then. her first 
some sick fuck like 
me who wasn’t 
planning on sticking 
around. she was a great 
girl mind but she didn’t 
fit my type. she was 
a church girl for 
chrissakes. a different 
kind of Sunday service. 
she never 
said a word when  
I took the lord’s name in 
vain. she was hooked on 
the idea of a future. 
she wanted the lies, 
she’d believe them. 
a relationship, all the 
familiar tropes. the silver 
tongued casanovas 
sticking their lying cocks 
into slippery cunts. and 
here I was, a hypocrite 
doing the same thing. 
I was filling a need, a 
consumer in a consumer 
culture; I was becoming 
a marketing machine. 
and I knew it wouldn’t 
last so I grabbed her 
phat ass with both hands 
and stuck my wet tongue in 
deep. I never fucked her 
though. did us both a 
favour.

Down at Turk and Taylor

You can still go to the Tenderloin 
on a Saturday night and lose yourself

in the noise and the terror 
of the dirty shining streets

the life and the death 

swirling about in the lights 
and the rain

you can evaporate into the cries 
and the laughter of the broken 
and the lost

buy a poet’s heart
down at Turk & Taylor
no more damaged than the next  

stop for a drink  
in some little place

hip hop on the jukebox
pretty girls playing pool 

try and get a few lines down
before they’re gone 

try and give a voice to this

to glean some kind of truth
from the lonely men at the bar

imagining the right word 
the right line 
will open a window 
into something necessary

and trick another moment from the world 
that has already forgotten your name.

a cold wind

three o’clock every night 
at the airport a cold wind 
would start blowing

most never thought 
anything of it

i always said it was the 
ghosts waking up from 
their slumber

they always thought i 
had something a little 
extra in my cigarettes

i use to sit back and 
watch the lightning

see if i could blow 
the perfect smoke 
ring

never could

i once watched a 
woman strip naked
when that cold wind 
started blowing

ghosts for sure

the sex drive never 
ends

The Look

You think you can read minds
when you can’t even read faces, 
assigned readings, or job applications.
Not that I’m bold enough to be as forthwith,
as forthcoming when you waste away weeks 
building forts in fantasy games and 
shedding physical tears 
over magic guild politics.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve left the VR headset 
sweat-stuck to my forehead,
fallen into a dream
and crossed wires,
over worlds
to live this
diametric
to you.

Our last “good time” was our worst,
even though it kept me clean a year.
I thought your friend was joking, 
packed away too many other potions, 
when he said that pill was made of crystal
and puke-splattered our firepit.

Whatever was in that brown sugar
you swatched my gums with,
it wasn’t pure anything,
and least of all ecstasy.

I watched you seize on purple sheets,
blond caterpillar brows sopping like mop pads.
You kicked inside your mom’s curlicue comforter
like you were diseased from a Sudanese mosquito,
too caught in convulsions to mouth “malaria.”

Yet, three hours later, all you could say was “More.”

That’s when mine kicked in.
My perception of you and the world folded in and over, 
double-helixing in freefall.

Forget all the chills and purging and 
paranoia of the floorboards breathing 
and lifting me like the Gravitron at all 
the fairs you wouldn’t attend with me.
Forget the Yellow Feverish comedown 
that wouldn’t let me sleep for days,
and the serotonin-sap that wouldn’t
allow me to smile for almost a month.

What sticks with me the most is me crawling 
to the sitting room to seek solace in the 
rhythmic waterfall and rainbow fish of our aquarium,
and watching them all slowly die, enflamed with
pusy white bumps and transparent clamped fins 
with an ailment too childishly/cruelly named “the ick.”
Our first home purchase, my dream tank,
dissolving in sudsy flesh, sinking into jagged caves, 
not to be seen again until I unclogged the corpses
with bare hands, wishing I had the wherewithal to cry,
as you laughed from the other room.

I never thought much on or mentioned this until a year later,
a whole one sober but somehow sadder,
when we were broken up and I tried to give you 
the only surviving fish before you moved, 
and you said, “Why should I care about a life
that’s just a fish’s?”

That’s when I finally cried,
clutching zebra-zagged little Milo,
hands cupped in the new tank one-tenth the size
even though he’d grown twice the inch he started. 
Milo’s sponge-brown eyes flicked between me and my ex.
His spiney tail splashed against
my weak palms and I thought 
I deserved to be slashed
for ever entertaining this was 
someone to share a life with,
someone strung lower than algae-eaters 
and the detritus they suckle from.

Not long after, you said the same about an actual baby,
busy sucking up more “MDMA” pills, fat green bars, 
and whatever could rattle inside an Rx case.

That’s all that gave you the courage to tell me
you couldn’t get over the way I looked that night 
in the streaming blue tank light,
disgusted and sick and tired 
and how you were to blame
—but not enough to change
like the mulm-molting
creature in my hand,
not enough to love
like the pleco fish
appling my eye.

What Every Poem is Trying to Tell You

Over wine the famous old poet 
tells me how all he can think of anymore 
is the fact of his own death.

It dogs him through his waking hours
and keeps him from sleep.

I’m 20 years behind him
and already spend too many hours 
contemplating the looming 
eternity in which I will not exist.

It’s what every poem is trying to tell you.

It’s why we drink and fornicate
and go to church,

why we fall in love with apathetic bartenders
and assign meaning to the alignment of the stars.

It’s why we read Dostoevsky and Camus

and travel to faraway places
with exotic buildings and food,

why we nod to ourselves reassuringly 
when we read that 56 is the new 37

and scour the internet  
for something to make us
bigger and wiser than death,

desperate for any distraction
from the coming dark

and the old poet’s
haunted dreams.

a mustache of cosmic proportions

the mustache
lounging across my upper lip
like a saucy sasquatch
reclining on a beach chair
on the edge of the sea 
of serendipity
is only an accessory
to my grooviness.
it is not an entity
in and of itself as
it is totally subjugated
to my will.
it goes where I tell it to go.

now, there are those
for whom the mustache
dominates the conversation,
becomes the focal point
of a lame existence,
and what a weak group
of limp-wristed hipsters
they must be
to find themselves
so easily over-ruled
by a few thin wisps of hair
perched beneath their nostrils
like weathered tinsel.

over the years,
my mustache has been described 
as “transgressive,” “Sam Elliotian,”
often times, “discombobulated.”
and because of its 
vaunted position,
the mustache receives
more massages than any
other mustache that has
ever existed with
the possible exception
of “Bucky,”
the churlish mustache
which once belonged to
the legendary John Holmes.
but I can write here
with all the humility
a man with the perfect
mustache can muster,
my mustache is larger
and thicker than John
Holmes’ sleazy caterpillar
ever was which is all
that women have ever
really cared about anyway.

I write this now,
an ode to the old
Warsaw Wazoo,
the mustache which 
defended my health
through the entire
CoVid crisis.
I salute you even
as I refuse to
allow you to define
me any further
than as a subject
to one more epic poem.

Half Way to Hades

“What would the prophet say if he
saw you in a place like this?”
“Pour me one.”

Philip K. Dick

She promised him “a fucking
week of Christmas in hell,” 
but could only manage a few days
of cooking voodoo chili so hot 
their dreams were soaked with 
sweat and blood, sheets torn into
strips for open wounds they nursed on
like succulents, passion fruits
from lands so distant they might
no longer exist.  Nights, after hours
of rough sex, they licked the desert
heat from the short hairs on their
necks, sipping liquid fire from 
the broken neck of Mescal Gusano
Azul, drinking Tecate from chests
half full of chips of dry ice, mist
rising from within to form circles
around the holes between clouds
where a full moon burned,
“I’ll be your Maximilian, if you’ll
be my Carlota.” He said, in the collective
voices of all the no-longer-conscious 
men they’d left behind along the road
they’d traveled of dancing dust devils 
and death, “Shit, man, you take a girl
our for an ice cream sundae and end up
half way to Hades.”
All, the way, he thought, and then some.

A Dancing Flame in the Winter

flickering candle breaking the darkness of midnight, 
pencil gliding against the bourbon-stained pages
of ripped notebooks while more bourbon goes
from the lowball down the throat. only music the
silence
of the night, of the deserted suburban snow-covered
street. away from
everywhere and everyone, the neighbors asleep and
the candle dances under the algid breeze penetrating the
open window. plumes of blue smoke come out of
the mouth, disappear into the wilderness of the
suburb; junkies freeze under
bridges, rich people sip 35-year-old scotch in front
of crackling fireplaces, college students survive
on rye bread and children wipe their milk
mustaches right before heading to bed. I drink
some more, let the falling snow and the cold
seep into my bones, encapsulate my soul. another
smoke, yet another fifth of bourbon empty. another
cracked. it’s alright. the candle’s half-dead, few more
hours till passing out, and the notebook absorbs most
of the insane ideas engendered by the bourbon fire in
my gut.

An Above-Average Sized Penis & Crepes (cherry flavored)

“Do you like crepes?”, I ask because I don’t know what else to say

“I don’t know what that is”, she replies and then she wipes her paper napkin against her lips, though she hasn’t eaten anything yet

“I like cherry”, I continue – “they are thin pancakes with fruit and cheese and other shit in them – they are quite tasty”

Her shirt is a bit tighter than she usually wears –

and I cannot stop thinking about her nipples

“I’d motherfucking fuck a crepe if I could” I say – “I recommend cherry – I’d totally stick my dick in it”

She puts down her menu as she smiles at me, with her decision made (the cherry crepes) –

Nothing compares to an old-fashioned diner…

“They have a jukebox”, she exclaims with celebration –

“They do!”, I reply 

“I’m going to play some god damn bastard tunes”, she says

“you play them god damn bastard tunes”, I say with excitement –

Her ass jiggles magnificently as she walks towards the jukebox 

“Bitch, you gots you some nice titties”, I bashfully tell her when she returns to the table

“you’re a handsome lad”, she tells me – “not sure about that between your legs – you be gentle, ya hear – I’ve heard about you?”

“I am a gentleman”, I reply. “Yeah, I am gentle. I’m better hung than the guys you’ve dated before. I go slow”.

She nods her head knowing this is an obvious fact

“Rock Around the Clock” sings through the diner’s speakers and she nearly pisses herself with delight

“I son-of-a-bitch love this fucking song!” she exclaims with much enthusiasm

“Me, too – it’s a fucking classic – fuck”, I say and we both smile

“I bet you’ve got a beautiful pussy”, I tell her hesitantly and with shyness

“I bet you say that to all the ladies”, she replies with a jeering smile –

“I bet your pussy is more beautiful than all other pussies”, I say while looking at her titties

____

“these crepes are motherfucking fantastic” she exclaims –

“Yeah, right?” I reply

“This is an amazing date”, I say –

“I’m really having a good time”

“Me too”, she says as she licks her lips like she is an experienced hooker

My cheeks turn red because I’m an introvert

“Do you enjoy oral sex?”, she asks as she wipes the cherry off of her lips with her paper napkin

“Yes, I do – very much – I appreciate you asking”, I respond, “that is very kind and thoughtful of you to ask”

“And, the crepes are the best – ain’t they – fucking heaven wrapped in a thin motherfucking pancake, no?”

“They are heaven on a pussy stick”, she replies – and we smile together

***

“yeah, that is kind of a lot – it’s sloppy and ridiculous”, she says while describing my penis with a judgmental smirk

“yeah, I know” I reply

“I haven’t been able to make it smaller”, I say – and then I look at the wall, embarrassed

“it’ll do”, she says – and the ceremonies commence

***

“Maybe we could go to the park tomorrow”, I suggest while we’re snuggling close

“I fucking shit like ducks”, she says while puffing on her hemp cig

“I fucking shit like ducks, too”, I replay with a grin – “we should totally go to the park tomorrow”

“Totally” she replies

The motherfucking ducks are gliding across the water as she and I hold hands and walk along the park-lake

“Christ on a bike, it’s beautiful here” she exclaims –

I lean in close to her and highly suspect she is now a permanent part of my life –

“I enjoy using the word ‘cunt’ in a sentence”, she tells me

and I tell her I agree – it’s absolutely lovely and it’s very poetic…

“perhaps you could try to make it smaller – maybe just a little”, she recommends

“I’ve tried, love”, I replay

“It’s okay” she says, and I am immediately reassured

***

We walk along the shopping plaza hand in hand –

her vagina walking along with her and me – it’s between her legs

“are you staring at my tits?” she asks playfully

“Yeah”, I reply as the sweatpants I’m wearing visually display my intimate thoughts

“that’s so sloppy and ridiculous” she says

“Sorry, love – I’ve tried to make it smaller – it don’t work that way”

“Okay – come over later, yeah?”

“Yeah, okay”, I say

***

The evening moon licks the sky like it’s a pussy

Nature – the beautiful cunt that it is – is nodding off properly for the night

I’m within her and she asks if I can make it just a bit smaller

“Sorry, love, I’m not sure what to do about that”

And she kisses me with tongue and with much affection

“Motherfuck”, she says and she says it loudly

“I love you, too”, I say

“Yeah, that is what I was trying to say”, she replies

“Yeah, motherfuck”, I say

“Yeah”, she says

dungeons and dragons and me

I still wake up from dreams
where I’m rolling five
six-sided dice
picking the three highest rolls.

strength
intelligence
wisdom
dexterity
constitution
charisma

a character page
teeming with attributes,
proficiencies, and equipment,
and a plethora of
polyhedral dice
all conspiring to keep me
from having sex.

it is no coincidence 
rolling dice and jerking off
require the same wrist motion.

I’m still haunted by the
nonchalant way I’d slip my
Player’s Handbook from my
school bag during study hall
oblivious to the pretty girls
rolling their eyes at me.

strength
intelligence
wisdom
dexterity
constitution 
charisma

always the lowest dice roll
placed in charisma,
unaware of the importance
of human interaction.

always the highest dice roll
placed in strength
because I possessed none.

life being so simple
when it’s parsed down
to numbers and
levels of experience.