Grievances

the bottle rockets 
landed on the neighbor’s roof
over and over 

that summer. 
It was the summer the Pearson Girls 
still climbed trees

and the men 
who worked with our father 
gathered in the backyard 

on Saturdays 
to throw horseshoes 
and drink beer

talk about the Union 
and Management 
and who was filing a grievance

and every Saturday as if on cue 
the neighbor would come out 
on his porch

pitch ringers 
about the drinking 
and the foul language 

and the goddamn bottle rockets 
that landed on his roof like memories 
of a summer long ago

To You My Tongue

I can touch your skin again.
No, not the skin, deeper this time, 
the polished hardness of your bones. 

I can trace your eye sockets 
with my tongue and discover
every crevice, worm-worn and hollow,

I can love you again 
with my fingers buried deep in your flesh,
until the scent of your congealed blood
brings both of us back from the dead.

Favorite Things 

Dirty martinis and Cuban cigars
Fishnet  stockings on hookers
Playing my guitar.
Vacationing in Mexico 
Women without wedding rings 
Making a list of my favorite things.

Sex before Breakfast 
Out-running the cops
A judge that grants bail
Then getting bailed out.
Books by Sandra Cisneros 
And Renaissance Art,
All of these things have a special place in my heart.

But when the bars close
And I’m still sober
My dealer doesn’t answer the phone
I think on these things 
To keep from getting pissed off
And I express how I feel
in a poem.

Rock n’ Roll music and classic cars 
Rockford Files reruns  
Deep cuts that leave scars 
My probation officer not making me drop 
Dive bars bad girls and musty bookshops.

A day at Wrigley 
Watching the Cubs
Cool Tucson mornings
And falling in love
My children’s laughter 
and the first day of spring
What a great life 
having these things.

But when I’m hungover
And I’ve got warrants
Or when my car breaks down 
I think about all of my favorite things
And haul my ass out of town.

Bag of Foreskins

Guillermo had this great supplier out of Guadalajara.
Came through every time like a fresh nail
into seasoned wood. 

And the whole gang was over at Holland’s place.
Slamming careless darts into the board like horny 
strip club men that hadn’t been fucked right in months.

Some glacial piss beer from an overactive icebox
in the next room.

When are you finally gonna fuck the landlady 
and get around to earning a break on the rent?
Guillermo poked.

Kasparian laughed in that busy gulag way he did.
A black belt in ju-jitsu, or so he told anyone
who would listen.

Building himself up like a greasy New York skyline.
All those hours in the gym, fighting off Staph infections
and lousy cardio.

You stick anymore roids in your ass,
and that bubble butt will put out the sun,
Guillermo said.

It’s the other things he sticks in his ass 
that I’m worried about,
Holland grinned.

Kasparian was easily flustered.
Threw a dart at the board that missed everything 
but the wall a good three feet away.

Guillermo retreated to the kitchen.
To check on the goodies he left de-thawing
in the sink.

Beside those many dirtied dishes 
that never seemed to clean themselves.

When he came back,
he had an old cd case of these wobbly 
gelatinous lines.

Holland and Kasparian threw down their darts
and sat on the pull out couch.
Like easily bored children with a new toy.

Snorting lines of pure bovine ejaculate.
The ultimate high.

Guillermo went third to make sure there 
were no stragglers.

Threw his head back with that burny Jello-mold feeling.
Bovine ejaculate went straight to the frenzy-finders,  
turned you into a beast.
Made you bullish about everything.

Kasparian challenged Guillermo to a fight.
Holland flipped a table and began goring it 
with imagined horns.

***

The drive down to Mercy Hospital was a blur.
Breaking into the back trash yard with a pair 
of bolt cutters and bulging jumping bean eyes
that threatened to charge right out of the frothing
boom town stratosphere. 

And the garbage bags were set right there beside three angled dumpsters.
Filled with all those unwanted foreskins.
The many screaming baby boys welcomed to the world 
and sent straight to the chopping block.

There was an honesty in that.
No one could be surprised by the cruelty 
that came later.

Holland grabbed a bag and slammed it against Kasparian’s naked leg.
Howling with laughter as it broke apart.
All those little unwanteds flying everywhere.
The excess.

What the fuck?
Kasparian picked up a few errant foreskins
and threw them at Holland’s head.

Holland felt a sudden tap on the shoulder 
and turned to find Guillermo
holding out a bag of his own.

How much did this bag of foreskins set you back, El Presidente?
Guillermo swung the bag in a wild swooning hammer motion.

Slamming it down over Holland’s swoll raving head.
An army of squirmy mush like a sloppy skin waterfall.

Kasparian was ripping on the chain link
and howling at non-existent moons.

As Guillermo and Holland fought it out for bragging rights.
Tiny exploding foreskins shooting off in all directions.

The discarded slipping on piles of the discarded.
Stripping down and beating their chests
in mutilated hysteria.

No retreat from the dropping  
bombshell arena.

Duello at Dusk

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

#satanscoredbelow850onhisSATs

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.

The Smallest Brewery in Germany      

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.

Blondie 

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 To Trucks

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?

mother’s lil bro

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.