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
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.
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.
trace her tattoos
with your tongue
fresh ink tastes
like caviar
she seems
fascinated
that you’re
a poet
this search took
how many years
play it cool
hopefully
she bites
hopefully she
wants to play
the game over
drinks
told me i looked
handsome after
cutting my hair
flattery will get
you places in
this world
The wind is blowing,
the moon is high,
the dead and dry leaves
chattering the price of sole in China.
The gibbous moon moves
fishmouth-like through the Virgin.
Spica, star of an ear of wheat,
peers down, drowning in moonlight,
from over two hundred years ago.
The wind, an old song about a youth
killed on a midnight highway,
blows stiff and sad. The oak,
gloomy godzillas and kongs,
stand tall, air-shampooing their hair.
Leaves over the concrete scatter,
cling a moment in the grass,
hoping the coming rain
will raise a memory from their fall.
From a distance, it could be anything
from an overgrown mausoleum
to a blue elephant raging in a garden.
This is the oldest apartment building on the street.
This building was here before flush toilets.
It remembers the First World War,
the forced labor camps down the street,
when that madman
with the funny mustache turned its radios into earthquakes.
This building remembers the families
that were torn from her belly
and dragged off to Siberia,
never to be heard from again.
Cryptic bloodlettings, narcs with ears of schnauzers,
snub-nosed revolvers
hidden under fruit bowls
the papered walls trembling with intrigue
and shotty electricity.
This building doesn’t forget; it remembers
even the nothing years
the sunlight swept under the rug,
the old woman in classy old woman’s clothes
stepping out onto a windy balcony.
This building’s balconies are always
windier on the north side
where delivery trucks rumble into the blood-mist
of the dying day and drunks with pushcarts
piss in blue shadow.
One morning in the White House Situation Room
I gave a briefing that lasted ’till noon
And afterward during the lunch break, I happened to peek
In a drawer where they kept the President’s Daily Briefs
They lay in a stack, all pristine and white
It was said he received new ones each morning and night
What a thrill to imagine our Commander In Chief
Handling those very same President’s Daily Briefs
Who knew what secrets those articles contained
They didn’t appear worn, showed no evidence of stain
As I ran my fingers over each fold and crease
I resolved that I must have the President’s Daily Briefs
Perhaps my brush with greatness had robbed me of my wits
For I found the temptation too strong to resist
So looking both ways, I gingerly reached
And swiped me a pair of the President’s Daily Briefs
I carefully placed them in a folder between
Two Senior Executive Intelligence magazines
Then walked down the hallway to return to my seat
All the while feeling the President’s Daily Briefs
But as I was rounding the corner a man
With dark shades and earphone seized hold of my hand
You should have heard the shouts of anger and disbelief
When I was apprehended with the President’s Daily Briefs
I swore they were my own briefs, that there’d been a mistake
But the presidential seal on them guaranteed my fate
They took me to a back room and made me spread my cheeks
All for purloining the President’s Daily Briefs
The news soon reached Langley, where they placed me on leave
Investigations followed, polygraphs without reprieve
For at first they thought they’d found the source of White House leaks
In the person who had ripped off the President’s Daily Briefs
In the end I convinced them I wasn’t a spy
My clearances were saved, but in ruins my career would lie
For all around Headquarters I was known as the freak
Who tried to leave the White House with the President’s Daily Briefs
So now I sweep floors in the CIA basement
But rather than wallow in my debasement
I dream of a transfer, to launder White House sheets
… And another chance at glimpsing the President’s Daily Briefs
dead strays singe under the purple
sun, abandoned cars release toxic fumes infecting the
pure lungs of kids playing in playgrounds covered with empty needles.
beer-guzzling hobos pass out under collapsing bridges and
wild-haired prophets swill wine out of plastic bottles. nightingales
fall from the sky like enflamed meteors. at the bottom of the
sea dolphins play high-stake poker and gnarling sharks are
being chased away by the bouncer squids. somewhere up in
the moon, in the dark, green side, yellow men with three
arms and two cocks wait for the right
moment to invade. it’s all
happening, right now right here, in the then and here of
tomorroless, and as the whiskey flows, the torrential waves
of insanity grow larger. welcome to
paradise, falsely states the neon sign of the
local dive where strippers come to
unwind and junk dealers to relax.
the place was a hole
it was mean and dirty
dark and smoky
it smelled like ancient feuds
barf and blood
a torrid feeling of anti-social menace
buzzed thru the stagnant haze
Tony One-ton sat at the bar and raged against everything
his ass cheeks swallowed the stool
and Pandora O’Jesus banged home the eight ball
with violence and panache
that permanent glower etched on her face
and it felt like the walls were weeping
because the city threatened to shut us down
they wanted to put up a new fire station
those movers and shakers
always take it out on the tired and the broken
when they catch that revitalization fever
Old Red the bar keep
spun his stories of wheat harvest in the thirties
and smelly Volkswagen Betty
rolled the dice against Larry the Loudmouth
and I kept the beer coolers full
and I mopped the tobacco spit and the grime from the floor
and out in the streets
a summer full of important people and important events
flipped us off as it rolled past
because the pageant of time has no stomach
for a posse of fuckups and failures
not even when they’re snared in one of the gates to hell
Did you Amber Heard your bed again?
I heard the woman yell to her child upstairs.
She didn’t like to swear.
The kid was balling.
I couldn’t tell if it was from being in trouble
or because he had to be Amber Heard.
Into the bathroom!, I heard her demand.
In that angry mother voice
that could be used as paint stripper
in a pinch.
Clunking pipes in the wall.
That sudden rush from a running shower.
If she starts stripping the bed,
I’m out of here, I thought.
The kid already had a father off somewhere.
Probably passing bad cheques and kidney stones
with equal vigour.
The beer was warm as piss.
What the hell was it with this place
and bodily fluids?
I decided right there, that I must have
been a stunt man in a past life.
The kitchen table sitting there in front of me.
Like a line of 27 burning cars waiting
for me to try jump over them.
Horror Sleaze Trash 