Getting Old

Getting old is no good.
You get the jowls and your bones creak
and you have to wipe your ass for 10 minutes
and then again a half hour later.
Just wait, it gets worse, says my old mother.
Dad’s got two new hips.
Even grandma is still alive 
if you can believe it.
She’s 96. 
They all live thousands of miles 
from this small Mexican town
where I count change for a pack of smokes
and walk to the corner store 
with my 33 pesos.
Chucho follows me jumping and acting a fool.
He loves to go to the store
though I never buy him anything.
He sniffs the garbage everywhere,
chases a cat or two,
old Chucho now 5 years old but still 
a pup at heart.
Except some days he seems tired
and wants to crawl onto my lap and sleep.
He must have some arthritis from when he got run 
over by a car a couple years ago.
Getting old is no good, Chucho.
He looks at me and tilts his head 
and cocks his ear.
I complain to him about not getting laid anymore
because the old lady’s got a sickness 
and says it hurts
but poor Chucho’s probably been laid at best
3 times in his whole life
and he doesn’t even have porn to look at 
like I do
when the old lady goes to the drugstore.

sometimes

sometimes you get by on coffee and tater tots 
sometimes you get well on whiskey and mountain oysters

sometimes the rent check bounces or the master cylinder fails
sometimes you’re flush with cash and you splurge on a night at the casino 

sometimes the pair of you squabble like cartoon all-stars  
sometimes the pair of you screw like Adderall frenzied jack-a-lopes.  
sometimes she chews on the sex toys while you fondle the pork chops 

and sometimes is a long time to live in a world that doesn’t care 
and sometimes is a hard time to live on nothing but sweat and swear words

and sometimes you look back and wonder What were we thinking
and sometimes you look ahead and mutter Holy shit – That’s gonna suck

but you never beg for mercy
you never pray for a do-over
and you never rat out your neighbors
you just lower your heads and you plow through the bullshit

Golden Banquet

after Robert Frost’s ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’

at the end 
of the bar, near where 
the payphone used to be 
& before that 
the cigarette machine

Ponyboy 
holds court 
with the regulars

his real name’s John 
nobody can remember 
why or when 
the nickname Ponyboy 
took

might be 
because he drinks Golden Banquet
or is always talking 
about some blonde 
he’s banging

didn’t stay gold
for long though—
motorcycle crash, wrong side 
of the tracks 
on Bear Spring Mountain 

beyond the end 
of the bar, near where 
the payphone used to be
a train whistle wails 
a lifetime 

& dawn 
goes down 
to day

“BEST OF” COLLECTION 2004-2023 /// 144 POEMS *BIG TRIGGER WARNING*

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Buon Giorno, Stupid

The opera of my dreams continues till dawn,
when the final aria resounds in my braincase.
Look out the window: strange pale faces flash by
and I wonder where industry prods them.
Up goes the window and I cry, “Why go on
with this race you can only win as worm food?”
Hard to watch besuited men and women
hoofing it double time to the blank pages
of their remaining stories: presently microwaves
ripple across time and space and penetrate
my skull. This is why I need to sing now,
why I feel compelled to sing the last aria
of my dreams. La gente sosta e mira …
No one turns to wave or wish me well;
my singing impresses only birds, trilling
back full-bosomed, pumped as hell.
Breakfast is a soft blood orange
leaking over my chest and the floor.
This is like visiting Sicily at Christmas.
Or like tasting sunlight sweetened
with honey and plasma: come listen
one last time, come listen one last time
my love, before the window closes.
E la bellezza mia tutta ricerce in me . . . 

HOW THE COPS FIXED MY ASS

Featuring Free Bass Explosion with Mark Dalton on bass, Tim Leahy on bass, and Michael Hureaux on conga, circa 1992

I was bung out of dung. I was bunged in. I didn’t know where to crap I was gonna get any more dung. I checked inside my wallet and nope – not a turd, not so much as a drop of piss. I was bung out of dung, I was bunged in.

I knew there was a lot of dung downtown. I could smell it. All that dung rolled inside paper assholes, crammed inside cash registers, bung up in the banks, bunged sky high to the lid of the First National Bank Tower.

I tried bunging my way onto a bus. But nope, no soap. The driver slammed the door in my nose because I didn’t have so much as a drop of piss. I was bung out of dung, I was bunged in.

So I hitchhiked and it rained and I got downtown a little later than I had hoped, but Lord – the stench of dung was overpowering! Bunged-out winos crumpled to the sidewalk like men made of turd. Businessmen shiny as piss walked by and grinned at themselves in shop windows across the street. I was sickened. There was nothing else to do.

I entered a bank and shot the teller and stuffed my jeans with clean green dung. Easy as pie. One, two, three. I ran out filthy with dung, and almost made it to the new car I was about to buy, when BUNG! BUNG! BUNG! The cops shot my ass off.

That’s how the cops fixed my ass. 

Before Going To Bed

You must recite
your daily curses
before you go to bed.

These, like prayers,
shall go unanswered.

Still, it is better
to let it all out,

all those hopes
and hatreds,

before you go to sleep
and dream of death,

or strange worlds
almost worth living in.

The Polack

I am a long way from home,
seven hundred miles removed
from the boiled cabbage smell
of an ill lit corner tavern
with Okocim on tap and a 
bartender who answers to “Ski”.

I am two decades beyond
Polka Saturday night
at the St. Casimir rec hall,
tackle football at Pulaski Park,
the taste of a fresh perogi
served by a thick-waisted
woman wearing one sock.

out here where I am now,
Polacks exist as abstractions,
a fucked-up comedic archetype
known to go crazy when challenged
to piss in the corner of a round room,
rumored to change light bulbs in crews
numbering no less than a hundred.

I can imagine THE POLACK
as a problematic tarot card
depicting a blind-folded man
stepping off a steep cliff,
the tarot reader gasping as
the card is laid down, saying
“oh my! you’re about to do something
very fucking stupid in the near future.”

I carry the outline of Poland
tattooed on my shoulder,
hoping the boys under the banner
of the drunken warbird can defend
their border this next half century.
and when I defy established logic
as I sometimes must, I point to
the tattoo as justification.

exiled now, this Polish Mafia of one,
where once were many, now are none,
every round room remains dry,
every light bulb dim,
and even the Polish festival
back home just outside Chicago
is currently celebrated by Mexicans.

cocaine whores and machine guns

she told me she dreams 
of unicorns and waterfalls

i laughed 

i dream of dying under a 
rainbow of cocaine whores
and machine guns

she was fascinated

wanted to tell me what 
my dream was actually 
about and i stopped her

it all goes back to a shitty 
childhood, piss poor father 
and dysfunctional parents
thinking staying together 
for the kids was the best 
thing to do

she laughed, said no
it means you are sexually 
repressed

two more drinks please

Bug Zapper

You could tell me again 
how you love my voice on nights
you can’t stand your own
because a mouse and a lion have traded tails,
not just tales, and jails, oh, you said shadows
You could tell me again 
how you grew bored of predicting 
her every word 
You could say anything at all
But instead, you say everything
by saying nothing
because cowards keep secrets
thinking there are such things
Cowards daydream 
of shopping sprees and gold-digging ditches;
of bronzed beauties and secret winks
serving up blowjobs and foot rubs,
all while jerking off into cracks 
of couch cushions
because it’s summer and they’re not wearing socks
to avoid confession
or even saying anything
they really mean
The weather reports more passive-aggressive hail
All hail the passive-aggressive, they save us
from The Devil
And by Devil, I mean writer’s block
You say everything by saying
nothing, you’re brilliant that way
And by brilliant, I mean
Blinding

It’s cool, new eyes for a poet
are easy to cum by baby
We get off on having nine lives
MEOW   (I wasn’t yet a lion)

Your brilliance once rented a room 
on the ocean floor of my desperate eyes 
Desperate because 
I thought I was drowning at the time
but silly me, I’m a water sign
Anyway, turns out
you’re the desperate housewife
of the mouse house
that played the part of the least convincing 
soul I’ve ever roared inside

Cowards never get to fuck poets for very long
because pretending is exhausting
and because pseudo bug-out panic attacks bore us
One fine day, they just wake up 
zapped