a shameful uniformity

I can’t quantify my hatred
for the Cub Scouts,
but it is always there,
seething,
just below the surface.

those brightly colored merit badges
and bullshit ribbons,
pseudo survivalist camping trips,
pinewood derby races
rewarding the children
possessing the most industrious fathers.

the cub scouts,
a militaristic outreach program
with the sole aim
of selling Orville Reddenbacher popcorn
to the clueless masses.

so reminiscent of that other
haven for pedophiles,
the Klu Klux Klan
charging $200 to join
another $250 for the fancy robes
then, every year they change the
design of the hem forcing you
to buy new robes if you wish
to remain au currant with your jackass
buddies, only to finally discover
you still have to do a bake sale
and sell rebel flag bumper stickers
just so your klavern can afford
to attend the hate rally
sponsored by the local Chik-Fil-A
down in Pawntatawk, Mississippi.

everything is a racket.

Know Your Season

An aging surfer dressed like he’s still fourteen,
shouting in his cellphone. I can hear him through the ficus
hedges and coconut palms: “I told you I’d have yer
money on Friday, bro. FRIDAY!
That’s when the eagle
shits.”

He clops through the sand in his flip-flops,
passes a voluptuous young beauty
in a black bikini. She struts past me, shaking softly
her three silver bracelets
as the music pours out of the bar across the street.
She moves in perfect rhythm with it,
and will stay in perfect rhythm, just like that, for years,
through love affairs, the changing of seasons, styles,
empires, epochs,
drifting along,
the music brushing lightly
against her hips and shoulders, her silky skin, touching her ears,
becoming her thoughts and words and then…

Well, and then,
going slowly out of time,
like everything that lives long enough. The music attaching
to someone else.

It’s all part of the process,
and when it happens, it just happens, and you have to know
it’s happened and accept and adapt.

I watch as she takes the crosswalk, glides along
the other side of the street.
A few minutes later, she is gone, and the aging surfer is back,
still on his cellphone. A tired old song
from a bygone era.

“Dude, why you gotta
bust my chops?
I told you my situation!
Work with me, bro. Work with me!”

Misery Acquaints a Man with Strange Bedfellows

In bed and at the gym: You can’t even do one?

In bed and in elementary school: Aren’t you a little old for this? 

In bed and in elementary school: What do the instructions say? 

In bed and at a gas station: Meet me at the pump.

In bed and on a hike: This isn’t as enjoyable as I thought.

In bed and at the hairstylist: Boy, now there’s a close shave. 

In bed and at a gas station: Now I’m supposed to pay extra for that?!

In bed and at a religious service: Is that the body of Christ? 

In bed and during a Supreme Court session: Go easy on me. 

In bed and at the gym: Let me slip into something more comfortable. 

In bed and to the Jan. 6 committee: That one guy was like an animal!

In bed and on a hike: Is that a rash?

In bed and on a hike: Did you bring all the supplies? 

In bed and to a telemarketer: What can you offer? 

In bed and to a telemarketer: Please don’t ever ask that again. 

In bed and during a Supreme Court session: I object!

In bed and at the gym: You need a shower. 

In bed and to the Jan. 6 committee: They weren’t supposed to go in there!

In bed and at the hairstylist: Just get everything out of my eyes. 

In bed and in elementary school: Draw what you want. 

In bed and in elementary school: Nice lunchbox. 

In bed and at a religious service: Take off your cassocks. 

In bed and at a religious service: Pray this works. 

In bed and at the hairstylist: Please stop talking. 

In bed and at a gas station: I think I need some air. 

chronic pain

the spanish princess and i trade 
horror stories about chronic pain

she mentions that she has recently 
started to think about suicide

i told her the first time i thought 
of suicide i was eight years old

couldn’t tie a good enough knot

had the rope, the ladder, the tree
in the backyard

damn small fingers

i dream of us slipping away one 
summer evening off to the pacific 
ocean

where i will take the spanish 
princess into my arms, make love, 
drink the wine and may we die 
dancing in each other’s arms

who am i kidding

she lives thousands of miles away
and i don’t think my twenty year 
old vehicle is going to make it 
there

but i do know a few tall bridges
and exactly how gravity works

Mr. & Mrs. Nobodie 

I saw your skeleton 
in every moonlit chuckle; every warm beer  
spilled across my cold and compliant nipples, 
every sun-cursed coffee-kiss-shuffle, every  
was-that-really-the-last-fucking-beer tantrum. 
I saw you, and still counted  
and adored every 
stupid bone. 
You could always dig mine up 
just by walking into the room. In return,  
fuck yes, I was gonna be the disco ball  
in your coffin as you lit the dancefloor 
of my soul. I was dedicated to dying  
more and more each night  
to be the bag of bones you’d imagine  
being buried with; kindred dirt-glam 
kisses, I’d dig you forever and play 
dead on command. 
I wanted to save us from bone-splintering 
boredom. But it seems 
the Moon was only dying 
for a good joke. 

Greg, or Nothing

Greg used to come to my shop to sell stolen tools. 
“You in need of set of needle nose
vice grips?” he’d ask, 
and dredge the set from his backside, 
the packaging still on it. 
“No thanks.” I’d say. 
“Is there anything you do need?” 
“I don’t know, does your supplier
carry diamond blades?”
He’d scratch his head 
as if pondering the word supplier. 
Confucius couldn’t have looked deeper 
in thought. “I’m pretty sure 
they do,” he’d say. 
“I’ll have to check. I’ll get back to you.“ 
He’d then exit the shop and I wouldn’t see him 
until he’d come back with something 
else I didn’t need.
This went on for an entire summer,
and then I guess
he gave up, or something 
happened: prison, rehab, his girlfriend kicked
him out of the house, etc. 
Years went by. Hurricanes happened. 
Presidents changed. 
Wars erupted. Monte Hale died. 
And I’d all but forgotten about 
Greg when one day I glanced at the surveillance 
camera and saw a man 
who looked just like him 
pushing rapidly
an empty 
wheelchair 
along the west 
side of the building. 
At first, I thought it might just be 
the graininess of the camera or the angle
that made it look like Greg. 
But two nights later, as I was walking through 
the parking lot of a strip mall a few miles 
from my shop, I saw the same man 
sitting in the same wheelchair, 
and asking for donations. 
“Greg,” I called out to him.
He looked at me, 
adjusted his legs with his hands.
“What happened?” I asked. 
“You don’t 
even want to know,” he said, and did 
a slow 180°
wheeling 
away from me.

sometimes, writing for yourself just isn’t enough

I tried writing another
children’s book just last night.
it’s titled “Guess What I Do
To Your Mommy While You Pretend
To Sleep” which is a direct sequel
to the yet unpublished YA epic
“Kara Has Two Mommies and a
Drunk Polack Who Likes To
Come Around and Pay Fifty
Dollars To Watch Them Play.”

it is difficult, I have to admit,
to pour so much of my time,
effort and creative spirit into
these works of literature only
to be told time and time again
no audience exists for the art
I have to offer, yet the best
writing advice one can pass
along is to write for yourself
and trust there is an audience
that will find you, eventually.

you understand what temptation means

slip away to the 
bathroom to tie 
one off

life has reached 
the final extremes

a full flask always 
on your hip

most people where 
you live would have 
a gun there instead

you understand what 
temptation means

these slit wrist nights 
of loneliness start to 
stack up

and we all know 
the avalanche 
is coming

brace for impact
or start running 
now

the end will 
blindside you
before you 
know it

A Dryness Hollering Out for Death        

Men that I have known
who once had the strength of the mighty
Pacific in them, with backbones
made of molten organ pipes, and minds in torrid
wakefulness;
to see them now reduced
to the echo of an empty conch shell,
to husks of long departed
insects, thinning, dried-up,
cracked.

Men that I have known
who once were brimming with wild
stories and undiscovered ferocities,
washed-up now,
longing for long-gone
days, subsisting off songs
the world has long since drawn
the spirit out of and left for dead.

Maybe you’ve seen one
standing in line at the supermarket,
mowing his lawn, or driving in the car next to you,
this angry, decomposing,
pot-scraping infertility,
a dryness hollering out for death,
a stone-gray shadow.

With nothing left to say.
With nothing left to be.
With nothing left to give.
(The worse tragedy of them all.)

The men I have known.

Masturbating World Creators

abandoned needles dance in deserted
playgrounds during the crepuscular
hours of dawn; seagulls soar over
parks, hoping for crumbs of food
from hotdogs ordered by fat men in
suits and skinny women in no clothes; amber
alerts ring up on
the television every ten minutes, every minute
someone’s going missing, most never to
return; flaming meadows visited by
knights in dark hoodies and the dolled-up
princesses remain forever imprisoned in
charcoal towers; ships made out of matchsticks arrive
in ports built from bricks of cocaine, the sailors
eat the
ports before they dive back into the
waters infested by carnivorous dolphins; dreams fall
from the black clouds, like poisonous rain scorching
fields and killing cattle; nightmares emerge out of
the planet’s core freezing peregrinating corpses into
monumental statues of a lost age; exhausted from
the same old dances, masturbating gods swill
absinthe and reform the world in accordance to
their wildest fantasies.