The Killer Who Never Was

Childhood
was a golden time
of grabbing flies
out of the air
with my tiny hand,
squeezing them unto death,
then pulling off their wings,
tossing away the body,
but saving those appendages
in a jar.

Adulthood was a disappointment.
Annoying creatures buzzed all around –
too big for me to handle,
too complex for me to desecrate.

Thankfully, 
old age is also a golden time.
My bones are weak.
My reactions are slow.
But flies mob my rotting body.
Every swoop of hand
grasps at least one.

The wing jar is full
but it could have been
so much fuller.

DOWN BOY

Burn the witch and all that jazz, eh?
Sit down boy, for a quick lesson today?
This one doesn’t involve any spanking
Sorry to disappoint; you lack ranking.
Do you dare dismiss the poetess?
Fuck up her mind with your toxic kiss?
Do you dare hide the razors and knives
to bore her with your shallow dives?
Do you dare dream of a grand vacation
fucking your side chick at the Days Inn?
Do you dare ask to have your glass refilled
after ordering the hit for her spirit killed?
Do you dare daydream of a life so fair
while making hers a waking nightmare?
Do you dare not answer, darling?
Do you not hear Karma calling?

***

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Deborah Does Dallas

Don’t phone Freud-admit it: When Debbie sheds 
her cheerleading outfit in the opening scene,

pubic hair like some barn animal, 
tan lines stenciled like where Gary’s Oakleys go, 

she is our mother, young again, 
using it while she had it;

every gripe, 
every revelation, 

every dream out of reach
once assigned full parenting duties.

Frankie, question: Are we to believe 
she fucked a whole city?

Slut-shamers! So what if she did? 
We were miracles, Frankie, maculately conceived. 

So why so afraid of what a mother did?

We aren’t the storyboarders of every bedroom,
not romance novelists, not the fuck police,

certainly no angels ourselves; According to our records 
we jerked off 26,142 times since adolescence, 

chalked up one and a half today. 

We presume Deborah never prioritized pleasure,
never went searching for the G spot,

rarely enjoyed Gary flopping on top like 
the smallmouth bass at the bottom of his Jon boat.

We know she elegantly or inelegantly
evaded hundreds, if not thousands 

of men’s advances, several assaults,
and still she kept the Victoria’s Secret Catalog 

in the bathroom, scrubbed the toilet seat, 
hauled baskets of crumpled socks and yellow-stained briefs

to the laundry. Load upon load upon load.
She dutifully waited by the door, Frankie, 

while we used up her fancy hand cream,
the only luxury she ever allowed herself.

How I Met Your Mother

My friend Roger invited me to a pheromone party.
Not a spur-of-the-moment decision.
You had to sleep in the same T-shirt three nights running,
put the shirt in a plastic bag,
bring it to the bash.

It was at the apartment of a woman named Kim,
a friend of Roger’s,
about twenty of us, ten males, ten females.

We all walked around the dining table
where the bagged shirts lay, as if at a laundry, 
casually sniffing the odors. 

A few of the people gagged and left,
apologizing to Kim as if they’d committed some serious faux pas.
Others simply didn’t see the point,
smelled, wrinkled their noses, raised eyebrows,
frowned or laughed, poured themselves a drink.
Some even danced.

But Lori and I found the scent of each other’s sweat
alluring, galvanic.
We separated from the others
like shirts from skin in an air-conditioned room,
talked all night, touched.

Several days later I called her.
The rest is history.
Roger was my best man. Who else?
“We met at a party,” we always say,
whenever anybody asks.

Couldn’t do it

(for Dillinger)

“fire your art director” she ordered
“I can get you places”
“You need me”
“I’m in marketing, sex sells, your covers are unappealing”
25 years old
she had the manuals
the finished product
existence complete
life-hacked
“fire your art director”
we smoked some pot
she drank
I had been booze free
26 days
now narc dazed
“Almost 26 and a professional…fire your art director.”
she sucked me off
tried to stay only to hear her talk and demand
“We’ll be unbeatable, go places you could never go. Fire your art director.”
I got up
put my clothes back on
gathered my grinder, 
my vape
my edibles
wallet and keys
(didn’t want this to be the most expensive blowjob ever)

And Who Among Us

We sing our broken songs

all of us here abandoned 
in the trash heap 
of the 21^st century

adrift in the algorithms

god’s lonely fire
in our veins

caught like flies 

between the last playoff game
and the next celebrity death

the cardboard reality 
of each tired afternoon

a secret we’re too 
afraid to tell

we toss the days aside 
like unwelcome gifts 

imagining we are hungry 

for something other 
than what we’ve known

and what is left alive
in this city but the ghosts?

what music 
what poetry?

what unnamed things
to call our own?

what blood
is left in the sun

and who among us  
remembers how to burn?

Wishbone 

I love you more than Armie Hammer loves a wishbone
& better than Kendall Roy cuts a line of coke. 
But you, my dear, love-me-not & that’s why your love is on loan. 

In my mind your stamp-tramped image butterflies a moan
& like a cage-free egg I spew my yoke;
I love you more than Armie Hammer loves a wishbone. 

The thousand-winged beats of your pleasure zone  
Remind me of pink femurs faintly baroque.
But you, my dear, love-me-not & that’s why your love is on loan. 

With your painted toes & fingers I’ve made a throne
to worship with fire, mirrors & smoke
I love you more than Armie Hammer loves a wishbone.  

A power-grabber’s fantasy succession of squirts and groans 
My cock grows fatter with each fevered stroke.
But you, my dear, love-me-not & that’s why your love is on loan. 

I stole your image, pillaged your stock; it’s too late to atone 
Little Lord Fuckleroy’s one-eye needs a choke. 
I love you more than Armie Hammer loves a wishbone
But you, my dear, love-me-not & that’s why your love is on loan. 

Sacraments of Suffering

They will decorate her suffering with 
a wildflower wreath desiccated in 
the spring, the last season she would drift
anywhere to bloom, pollinated within 
a blacked-out room until her petals can
not hold the weight of brutal desires 
that bruise, contuse, suffocate.  Understand
the sacraments for which she once prayed, dire
needs of other lives, suburban seeds
intended to flower into wives.  Strays 
towards smoke signals, backyard thistles, weeds,
forbidden forests where she at last may 
bleed in preparation for that fabled place 
where good girls go to be erased. 

SLOW

taking it slow
people be slow living
they be slow cooking
I be SLOW IN THE HEAD
s  l o w  w a n k i n g
slow dancing with my hands 
slow dance in my p a n t s

Home of Cold Beer and Killer Women

That’s what the sign reads
out front The Last Resort
outside Daytona Beach,
a seedy biker bar 
now famous for being 
where serial killer Aileen Wuornos
was a regular,
throwing back Budweisers 
and Marlboros 
while her favourite 
Randy Travis song
Digging Up Bones played 
on the juke,
and they scattered some of
her ashes under a tree out back
after her execution, 
so that they say she now haunts 
the bar, which may be true
or just a desperate way to 
drum up business
in The Sunshine State.