I like you better with longer hair
When it falls past your ears,
How you occasionally blow it out of your face.
For me it’s those button dimples when you smile.
Yeah, I love you most when you’re drunk
And stumbling in a stall behind me
Where the streams of our piss
Pops in a pool of toilet water.
I remember our kiss
When you were kind enough to say,
No, I don’t want to lead you on.
Reno, Tahoe, Vegas
Buddha, Mohammed, Jesus
from the streets to the sheets
on my heels in my wheels
Reno, Tahoe, Vegas
black sheep to London, New York, and Paris
I went looking for America
but alas, she didn’t want me
no drugs in my jeans for her, you see
she was an opioid whore
gone to seed
sluttony, gluttony and selfish greed
Scarsdale to Scottsdale
Austin to Boston
give me your tired
give me your poor
so I can throw them in prison
that’ll teach them for sure
Come on little son
turn on little girl
pull out your cracked harmonica
let’s go discover America
America cares
like a bandage at a beheading
the lizard eternally shedding
itself from the rest of the world
like a spoiled teenage girl
How can you call this
the land of the free
get me some drunks to spell “liberty”
line my jails with hobos and whores
white people lynching
round the Christmas tree
Never cared much for that city life
didn’t buy into that country hype
All the valleys and the alleys
gaudy sports cars
crashing into gaudier sports bars
kids hawking outdated Maps To The Stars
Come on little son
turn on little girl
pull out your cracked harmonica
let’s go discover America
Didn’t really care for Route 66
all it ever did was dump me off
in the sticks
Fifties diners mobbed by drunken Shriners
This world spin and spun
like carnival art
until it looks like something
that makes you want to throw darts
Come on little son
turn on little girl
pull out your cracked harmonica
let’s go discover America
Aka Disc Over America
earrings in my mouth
air thick with incense
my room is a brothel
and sacred grotto
beneath the tapestry
of Giordorno Bruno
burning with his dream
in constant paradise
your legs on my shoulders
are my wings
my hands are your necklace
wear it, priestess
Babalon, scarlet woman
incarnation
ornament of heaven
feather of Eros
labrodite idol
obsidian flame
on your knees in
supplication
receive my blessing
my curse
my little death
your profession is
longing
and my God is
Desire
Mostly I’m thinking of the two things I half-stole
from Paolo. The book and the knife. I didn’t really
steal them. I mean the book, he let me borrow it,
and when I broke things off he didn’t ask for it
back, so I figured it was mine to keep. The knife
is another story. Let me start by saying: I don’t
know why I was with him. Our whatever-it-was
lasted less than a month and that was a month
too long. Let me start by saying: it was a time
in my life when I flung myself at anyone
and everyone who’d have me, hoping something
would stick, to distract myself from the feelings
I had for this guy I was in love with, like, angel
chorus, slam pit, no amount of whiskey in the
world could get me past this, I want to have
10,000 of his babies, oh God I think he’s The One,
in love with, because I was too scared to tell
him or even admit the truth of it to myself. Enough
excuses. Back to Paolo. He was a jealous
macho jerk wrapped in the body of a scrawny,
swoopy-banged emo kid. He was an asshole,
and also a total dumbass. One example:
soon after our first date, he tried to impress
me by saying he ‘used to be in Yellowcard,
before they got famous.’ Which was a.
a total lie, I checked, and b. dude, if you’re gonna
lie and say you were in a band to try and
impress me, at least pick a band I like. He
could’ve said he was in Black Flag and I
might’ve half-believed him—everyone was in
Black Flag. Another example: the time I
went to the Kwik Mart across the street
from my apartment to buy a 40 oz.
of Icehouse. I was gone all of ten minutes
and in that ten minutes Paolo called me fifteen
times and when I returned his call and
told him where I’d been he accused me
of fucking the Kwik Mart clerk. (You’re right,
dude, I totally fucked him! And when I left,
he said: “Thank you! Cum again!”) Two
weeks in and I already wanted to cut
and run, I mean we’d only been on a few
dates and had only fucked like twice; we
hadn’t labeled our relationship and I was
still seeing several other people, and speaking
of cutting, we’re getting to the knife now—
One night Paolo was lying on my bed, holding
his knife. Not a true switchblade, but it had
a release button which you’d press down
then flick your wrist and snap! The silver
blade—half-serrated, half-not—would pop
out from the shiny black sheath-handle.
Then you’d push it down and click it back
in again. So he’s lying there, idly playing with
his knife, and, flick! “You know,” he said.
Snap! “If you ever cheat on me?” Click. “I’ll
kill the person you cheat with,” flick. “Then,”
snap! “I’ll kill myself.” Click. Flick, snap!
He traced the blade across the veins of
his skinny little wrist, lightly, not drawing
blood, but. What the shit, dude? For me to
cheat on you we’d have to be exclusive,
which we are not, and if you think we are,
you gotta get out of my bed and my life, like,
yesterday. Is what I should have said. Or:
“Oh, you wanna slit your wrists? Be sure to go
down the road, not across the street.
Make it count!” But I didn’t because, look,
I was drunk and yeah, he was scraggy
and pathetic and I could beat him
at arm wrestling but it’s kinda scary when
someone threatens you with murder-
suicide. So I just made some noncommittal
hmmm sound and pretended I hadn’t really
heard him. Did I mention his dick game
was weak as hell? And he was a fucking
whiner. Constantly woe is me I can’t find
a job I’m always broke you’d rather spend time
with your friends than me I’m so lonely the
world is out to get me, blah blah blah, poor
lil’ hipster whiteboy, meanwhile if I said
anything about something shitty in my life
he’d brush it off as so much nothing compared
to what he was going through. About a week
after he’d made those threats he lost
his knife, and that became his newest proof
that the world had it out for him. Yeah.
Paolo was a veritable god damn carnival
of red flags. I finally broke things off about
a week later—because he’d read my
fucking diary and had the nerve to get angry
with me over what he’d read there. Less
than a month after that when I was packing
up my shit, getting ready to leave that
apartment and hit the road, I found his knife
under my bed. And I still had that book
he’d let me borrow. I guess I could’ve called
him but I had less than zero desire to ever
see him again so the book and the knife
went on the road with me. The knife became
my traveling companion; my reward for
having to tolerate that shitface, Paolo.
The book, which was Rocky Horror related
though I can’t remember how exactly, I sold
to a bookstore for store credit, which I spent
on a stack of postcards and an anthology
of stories about Pittsburgh.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Horror Sleaze Trash 