Hallowed

The prom queen in her skanky tight dress forgetting tonight she is a Catholic Girl
The steamy windows in the back, virginity escaping. Man conquering the Catholic Girl.

They watch her enter for confession; moldy Priests ready to judge what he longs for
Repent! Repent! On your knees! In five minutes, you can still go to heaven, little Catholic Girl.

Restaurants reek with Lent specials on Friday for those who pretend all week they were good
With his family in tow, he stares at the ass of the young waitress Catholic Girl. 

She will bear all your children and bow to you, her purity belongs to you forever
She has no choice but “yes” never “no” to her drunkard husband.  Always his Catholic Girl.

The beads of the Rosary bust from wear and worry, trickling across the floor, piercing silence
The bride’s shaky hands expecting thunder and lightning. Until death dear Catholic Girl.

His Music Box Courtesan Is A Corpse

Shuts you off whenever he is away
to pine in a pearlescent box in the dark. 
Closes the cover.  No arias play.
Leaves nothing but his scent and the marks 
on your naked prone torso, the limbs beneath 
whose ache recedes more each undisturbed day
though a sea aggregates of dripping grief 
beneath that threatens to drown if he delays.
Opens you up one day too late to find 
his music box courtesan is a corpse. 
Immobile blue body he can no longer wind 
to satisfy lust or even remorse.
You start to die when you cease to be hurt.  
How gently he places your box in the dirt. 

You Never Realize You’re Dancing Alone Until the Music Stops 

and you’ve been living in some kind of mirage
playing dominoes with the devil 
you owe the sonofabitch about three fifty
but you both know neither of you are 
good at paying debts, the machinery of night
is the only music you need, the demons are on
now dropping from your shoulder to circle 
the room taking bets and hollering 
you don’t even think to leave the table 
all your angels must be on vacation or worse
have left your side to stay up all night 
with better company, who’re you to judge?
You’re on, you’re here now, the fire in your belly 
is out but you have lightning in your veins
sinister breeze on your scalp and a cock that could 
cut diamonds, but your girl is tired of your shit
too, asleep in the next room, your mama 
always told you no good man is awake at 3 am,
so what does that make you? Flipping tiles 
chain smoking cigarettes and haunting the house
even ghosts have an ambition to scare, you’re
a shell and the devil will leave you too as the sunbeams
wake the goodhearted from their sleeps
you’ll be walking to that same gas station
to get the same pack of smokes watching the same mothers
send the same kids to school and you will walk back
alone to sleep while the world is awake again

Give ’em what they want

No one wants
highfalutin poetry
anymore

They also don’t
give a damn about
how long you might
have spent on some
navel-gazing bullshit

They want the truth,
not some deep down
in the darkness truth,
but the kind of truth
that fits in the toilet

Not deep but true,
like the no nonsense
of a morning dump,
and what it might
mean — or not

Yes, that kind of truth,
or what you might learn
from a crow gouging out
the eyes of a pigeon
it killed just for fun

That kind of
black raven truth,
or the truth of why 
relationships end, and
please don’t bore us 
with some deep 
psychological 
reasoning

No, just say it as it is,
the sex got goddamn
boring, not because
of daddy issues
or mommy hang-ups, 
but because it just
gets fucking stale,
or because your partner
reminds you of someone
that you hate

Not the one you married,
not the one you would
have climbed the sky
to steal the moon for,
no, that person isn’t
around anymore

Yeah, that kind of truth,
ugly, stinking truth
is what the asshole
readers want

No, not what they want,
what they demand

We hunger

We never spoke of love.
Mutual desire masked in animal-skins and scales,
In tooth and fang, bites drew blood and claw-marks,
Scratched the length of the spine.
I was a bar-fly with money and as the clock ticked and tocked,
An increasing appetite.
She was a wasp, not necessarily a White-Anglo-Saxon Protestant.
She belonged only to the insect kingdom. All appetite.
Other lives, different nights, we would have toasted each other
With whisky and cheap beer, maybe even dated, became a couple.
Tonight, we feasted on each other,blood and flesh,
Parasites of one kind or another.
Our union spawned a new predator,our hungers combined.
From the bedroom, a new hunter emerged.
The best and worst of our union.
Our husks could only bear witness to the birth,
With another Happy Hour only a few hours away.

So I Could Have Something Again

The other night I bought a copy 
of her old book of poetry.

I’m not sure why.

I’d been drinking a bit 
and thinking about things 
that have gone.

I’d long since gotten rid of the photographs
the texts, the underthings.

I guess I bought the book 
just so I could have something again.

Like I said, I’d been drinking.

I’m browsing through it now,
hearing her voice.

She’s not as good a writer 
as I remembered her to be 

and there’s some comfort in that.

But when she was on, she was on
which is more than you can say 
for most.

And even the not so good poems
are still uniquely hers, which is 
also more than you can say for most.

On the page she’s tough and mean,
all sex and trouble and above all else
a burning desire to live.

Her softness doesn’t come 
through much, or her humor.
But she was sometimes soft
and I’ve never known truer laughter.

But all of this was years ago.

I don’t think she writes poetry anymore.
You can’t find her on social media.

Just another ghost in a world 
lousy with ghosts.

I guess it’s good that I don’t have to see
who she’s flirting with, her dumbass kids 
or who she’s married to.

I thumb through it a while then give the book 
it’s rightful place on the shelf, wedged in 
between Keats and D.H. Lawrence;

all those tough sexy poems she wrote  
for everyone but me.

Straight Roll Me Some Bangkok Sevens

Debbie did Dallas an’ you can’t go ask Alice
what’s down the black rabbit hole
unless she’s strappin’ liquid gold
inside her suicidal cunt
the last I saw her tho, she was token
on a triple X ‘tasy blunt
with the Ron’s and the Jeremy’s
cock’s more massive than my inner savage
ravagin’ me, and my thoughts have no manners
‘specially when you’re sittin’ there eyein’ my distress
arms folded against your chest … and your biceps
got my soiled lips gyratin’ in between my hips
yeah, Baby, love, I can feel the heat off your heat
masturbatin’ behind your juicy boy jeans
I can bet my life you fuck like a machine
more ruthless than those dildos strapped 
to steel poles where bitches open wide
as those barbaric men slip those rubber dicks inside
depressin’ those hard buttons, whippin’ that zombie pussy
into nothin’ but the wrath coagulatin’ n’ constrictin’
behind somethin’ you couldn’t grasp
not even by the dominance of your shaft ’cause I’m blinded
with such a fury I’m liable to choke rather
than to provoke you into a penile cardiac stroke; 
but hold still to the will of my violence settlin’ in
’cause I don’t want to please ya, in honesty
I don’t really need ya but damn you got me burnin’ hot
and those witchy tubes strapped to my bitchy lubes
need a good lynchin’ like an asphyxiation
the need to feel your strangulation six feet below with
tool’s hummin’ and a strummin’ ‘neath a lyrical undertow
but as Susie weeps with her band of fans & banshees
let it be known it’s all about me
so fuck all this carnal despair
will you be a good gentleman and take me there
to the Devil’s casino, I want to cast its dice  
and straight roll me some Bangkok sevens
tonight I want to see your Hells repent with my orgasmic Heavens 

Blood Honey

Pulled 
into breath,
lingering 
and damp
under nostrils’ slow 
b   u   r   n,
wet tips of tongues
melt,
dart,
and slide
into syrupy tangles,
furious 
with hot spit and
exhales, sweet as
red pomegranate.
Your little gasps
(my little deaths)
fire 
cutting teeth
and hungry lips,
drawing us 
in,
spitting us
out—
blood honey in a syringe—
into the heavenly hell 
of this hypodermic love—the sugar 
in my veins.

***

Originally published at Fugitives & Futurists

always have some liquor nearby

it’s a cold moon 
in a hollow autumn
sky

loud sounds in 
the distance

the freaks like to 
scare each other 
at this time of 
night

a few miles to 
home, car broken 
down again

the old injury you 
never had checked
aching the foot 
once again

an old friend told 
you to always have
some liquor nearby 
because you never 
know

you forgot the 
brown paper 
bag

no one drinks 
this shit anymore 
anyways

My Inopportune Boner

He is a disgraced politician
serving a citizenry of clandestine animals.
He ruins everything
he touches. He comes
into contact with unremarkable strangers and surreptitiously records them
on obsolete technology. On summer evenings,
he often lounges in his leather chair, thumbing a bottle of J&B, adorned
with comically large headphones and uses his venal lips to re-create
the sound of hip bones breaking and reforming.