Godzilla follows
black coal engine billows
battle is coming
A power far greater than atomic blasts on remote atolls
draws the titan from the depths of dark seas to stomp
across America’s untamed west. Spurs that jingle jangle
A reckoning is coming like a pale horse kicking up dust
Dracula’s coffin
bounces riding a boxcar
racing Eastern light
on his first day of community college,
the kid wears
his best Avenged Sevenfold T-shirt
and red contact lenses.
I suppose the maroon eyes
compliment his grayish white hair.
I don’t know.
twenty years ago, I would have thought
he wanted the community college world
to know
he walked the left-handed path
lock step with Beelzebub,
and I could respect that.
I dabbled in the black arts myself
back in my youth,
dyeing my hair black
and quoting Aleister Crowley extensively.
but this kid…
I’m starting to realize
he is more interested in
masturbating to Hentai animae porn
than painting eldritch runes
on his forehead with cat’s blood.
I don’t understand this world any longer.
except to say I blame the Xbox
kids didn’t do this kind of shit
back when they
were hooked up to the 8-bit Nintendo.
I have just bought
a large brown
beer from the smallest brewery in Germany
and am now sitting at one
of their outside tables
across from a currywurst
trailer.
I get out my sketchbook.
I get out a pencil.
I scribble an outline
of the two old ladies sitting to the left of me.
They are eating sausages,
fat ones,
dipping them lengthwise into little sunlit pools
of mustard.
Dipping and chewing and talking with their mouths full.
I start in on their hairdos, but my view is suddenly
obscured by an old man on a bicycle.
He squeezes his airhorn to announce his arrival,
takes off his helmet,
starts chaining his bicycle to the pole.
Then he picks up his phone
and talks to someone.
This lasts for quite some time,
and when he is finished, the two old ladies
are getting up to leave.
I look around for someone else to draw.
Four dour, deranged, alcoholic faces – a parody
of Mt. Rushmore –
leer at me
from the table against the wall.
A middle-aged waitress floats by.
An elderly man appears in the doorway of the little brewery.
He is wearing khaki trousers that are soaked
about the crotch
and down the insides of both legs.
He has pissed himself,
it would appear.
But it’s nothing that seems to matter.
He carries his beer toward
the currywurst trailer
sits at a little table over there.
Next to the trailer, on a little plastic chair,
the proprietor is sitting,
his belly resting on his lap like a medicine ball
someone has placed there.
He looks exhausted.
He looks like he’s eaten too much of his product,
all those sausages
roiling around in his guts.
I dig my eraser from my backpack,
get rid of the old ladies,
and start where the sunlight licks the side
of the proprietor’s fleshy
jowl. Then I get in that massive maw,
the two little outspread legs.
I am almost finished
with the outline when
this beautiful young woman
(the first shot of beauty and youth I’ve seen all afternoon)
rouses him from his plastic
chair. He stands up, lumbers lugubriously
into his trailer which sinks a little
when he steps into it.
He then deals her a sausage,
a large, pale one.
And now others come, more customers,
one after another,
a long line of Germans
anxious to be fed and I’m left
there with my partly finished
outline and my dark
brown beer.
I take a sip and forget
about the drawing.
I write this poem instead.
sun sets on the skyscraper
gold glowing out from some of the many windows
there are people in there
murderers, perhaps
there are people down here too, murders perhaps
but who cares about that
for now I am intrigued by what goes on in the boardrooms and bathrooms and conference rooms of that big impressive tower
looming tall just beyond the other face of the famous Hollywood sign hill
glowing behind it like a great Mars red dune this time of evening
the gold lighted windows together make an indifferent face
as the cool new evening backdrop bears the dark blue of mythic California promise
it’s the same out there by the sea, I’m sure
where death encircles the missing heart of Venice like vultures dressed as shadows
it’s always that dark blue painted around black palm trees
that haunts the thought of leaving L.A.
I imagine the mythic woman’s face framed in that magic mystique night
and know the touch of that colour goes very deep down
between my lungs
I would kill myself in Oklahoma
I would never be found again in Nebraska
I’ve lived in Europe, I’ve loved in Europe
I wonder again
and again
if this could be
the last year in L.A.
where do you go sounds the echo by the door
when every other place seems to make so much sense
maybe it’s in your blood now, you wonder
as you intoxicate yourself towards early death
perhaps that was always
just the point
perhaps you never got it and never could
and it’s all just one long dumb dream to be awakened into the worst practical nightmare
a body drops crashing into a pool nearby
a gun goes off or is it a car
neighbours nearby make no sense as they make sounds
teenagers and children avoid me and only
mothers to newborns give me kind smile
only because they catch me looking too long
that’s alright
I wonder how the hell they’re doing up there
in that great big tower
even as I wonder too
how I ever found that deep dark blue
so true
Listening as trucks on Frankford Avenue
rattle the walls of my home,
I wonder if all these little earthquakes
that occur all day and night
will weaken the structure I sleep in.
Will they sound a warning horn
before the walls come tumbling down?
Or will I wake one morning,
or not wake at all,
covered with crumbling bricks
and shattered timbers?
I don’t worry about it long.
I will never be able to afford to move.
This is my life.
Another risk I have taken.
I need not travel
to India to hunt tigers with a bow.
There is sufficient danger
right at home.
I will go on living
as if each day might be my last,
trying to squeeze joy
from every moment,
until all that is left is a rind.
That will get buried somewhere.
Does it really matter
if it is under mud and grass
or masonry, wood, and roofing tiles?
I can’t respect
a thirty-four
year old man
who calls his mother
“bro.”
repeatedly
over the speaker phone
I have to listen
to his vapid
narcissistic
meanderings.
every sentence
basted with
a sociopath’s
false sauce
of canned emotion.
every plea for money,
every whining excuse
for his every
existential debacle
ends with
“hear what I’m saying,
bro?”
his mother
is trapped between
exasperation
and adulation.
in his entire
“adult” life
he’s never held down
a job longer
than three months.
one of these days
he’s going to grow up
his mother
continually predicts.
it just hasn’t
happened yet.
until then,
she wires him
another hundred dollars
for rent.
two hundred dollars
to help him
make his child
support payments
toward four children
who will never
know the joy
of hearing their daddy
call them
“bro.”
four hundred dollars
to bond him
out of jail
for something
he was totally
innocent of
it’s just bad luck
“bro.”
hear what I’m saying,
“bro.”
thirty-four-years old.
Yellow wallpaper
peels
behind faded pictures
in dusty frames,
falling to the floor
in ashen drifts—ephemeral—
of births and wakes,
stabbing
to the heart
like first kisses
or cold sips
of Orange Crush
but dulled
from memory
(and time)
like giftless Christmases
and old calico,
drying on the line.
What ghosts roam these halls,
haunting bowls
of waxed fruit
and glass doorknobs,
lingering ‘round chicken coops,
dust bunnies,
and jelly jar glasses
like palls
or the bitter of burnt almonds.
As a pale pink echo
of rose
peeks through the air’s must,
a voice whispers, “Remember this. Now,”
leaving me to chuckle and smile.
How silly it is to mourn life as we live it.
***
(originally published at The Gorko Gazette)
I am the crippled saint rapping at the door
of forgiveness, creaky oiless springs
a house of fleeing winds
thoughts darting across a sea of wanton olive skin night
I am the storm rattling iron door handles
stone churches dangling over faded waters, orphaned rains
dark seaport nights
young wives of the sailorhood praying for good to come
no widow’s hand to touch
the merry band shoves out to Brittany wine darkness
I am the star of storms
whipping brewed mists
and mandolin ash bone trysts
sunrise-blue groans
I am the nail in my hop-along cassidy coffin
pining lust busted caverns
in a torrent of rain on dream street
born backwards my dice tumbling rocky roads
eternally awkward in the hall of cracked-eye perfection
zen-headed dottard riding a youth dew vapor throne
in a dime dance parade
oopa oopa cops with maiden-bated breath
hangovers hanging on a thread of orderly
In a nightmare I saw a
warrior of yore darning obedience stockings
Redyard Rudyard cries
‘An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it’.
St Vitus does the jerk over red hot coals
as the earth hums a dirge in the key of catastrophe
the kids chanting Runaway
I saw God
he looked me in the eye from a soft orange cloud
whizzing over rumble town
I am the star of storms escorting you through
red-light servitudes
scorned devil moons, brooding mama’s
lady peppermint fondling the jade egg of Napoleon’s daydream
the messianic bus driver honking with his tin-horn hat
better climb aboard. or run for your life
fast
The doctors thought the solution
To my problems was just a matter
Of splitting my troubled brain.
But that only doubled my anxiety.
Now there’re two moody Jekylls.
One says white, the other black.
Angry words, endless arguments,
One hand gouging at my eyes,
While the other hand chokes me.
Enough! I put a pistol to my head.
They wrestle over which half will
Get splattered across the room.
Escape is the only remedy and
I’m ready to board the plane but,
Damn it! My ticket’s for the bus.
This is a story about drugs and the woman
in my cold midnight room
I think about the one I loved
she was fair she was clean
Every day had a bright tomorrow
but the spiders have their way
And the hangman has a schedule
tik tock and time ran out
But she left me bereft of me
The man had better game, was I to blame – no
8 balls and dime bags
fentanyl and pipes of Pan crack
The way to a woman’s heart is through her vices
She ran with the pipe ran with the smoke
slithered through the powder
CAN I SAY IT ANY LOUDER?
She bought it all, man
the dealer’s promise
the pimp hand
she belonged to the street
she was in the life
drowned in the pipeline
Bloody arms and bloody nose
Where have you been and where are you going?
Empty bed blues
he was at the White Horse Saloon
Sunset and Western
I had my gun all ready
He was lounging in the booth
All his boys were sucking up vermouth
When they saw me they all laughed
I heard them speak but I didn’t hear a word
My head was pounding and I reached into my jacket
Blew two rounds into his head then ran out the back
Lost the jacket ditched the heat
saw an old, familiar face standing on the street
Horror Sleaze Trash 