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

The Knife-Thrower’s Wife

She said, let’s forget we’re strangers 

Let’s talk about ragged breath
gasps for air

Let’s talk about rope
binding hands, ankles

Let’s talk about pleasure too deep to describe

Let’s talk about exquisite agony, the freedom
of release 

Let’s talk about communion when pleasure collides with pain

Let’s talk about creating a world, our own wide-awake- make-believe-reality

Let’s talk about bruised wrists
flushed lips

Let’s talk about blindfolds 
black/white/red/silk/satin/cotton

Let’s talk about a hand on throat
fingers in pussy

Let’s talk about nails digging into skin

Let’s talk about pulsing sweat and body
pressed tight against the wall

Let’s talk about us

I bet you’re in love with me now

it was anti-climactic like all soft cock stories 

I was staring down the stars
in my mother’s driveway
with your mouth on my listless cock
and my mind was on baseball
and who’d be batting cleanup

You were determined
but so was I
to fly away to Orion’s belt
and live on sexless stars
but you wanted something resembling concrete
and you’d be damned if you couldn’t conjure
my frankenstein-fuck

Despite myself my dick got half hard
and you mounted me
and I swam through memories
from back when this
moaning imperative 
meant something

But then Zach Grienke’s ERA rescued me
while you tried to resuscitate my erection
and I allowed my self
to say Samantha
over and over again
wishing she was on Youtube
so I could see her in motion

And you surrendered back to the drivers seat 
and I got out of the car 
went inside under my sheets
and replayed the fraying memory of being in love
as my cock tried to crawl back into my body
to never be seen again