The Unlucky

I smoke my last one, 
“the lucky” as they call it, 
in St. Louis or Louisville,
these Midwest towns that share names, 
landscape in between unchanging,
cornstalks as tight as a fresh pack, 
plastic ripped off. 

Rivers converge, widen. 
Oceanless, no coast even close,
they don’t know which way to flow. 

You lit my cigarette in 
the back of Chez Charlie’s 
on a Wednesday like 
the start of any good romance. 
Why did you have to quit?
We played a game- 
I’d hide it from you, I’d lie. 
You’d notice me ashing 
my pen at my desk, 
say you knew I missed it.

Blow smoke up my ass, 
I blow smoke in your face, 
and so on.

I snuck out of the house.
From inside you read 
the messages written in cinder, 
a wayward drill across metallic night. 
We doused it all in lighter fluid,
watched it fume across the moon. 

Now I’m heading back east,
these final few drags like 
you’re hitting the good spot,
cherry to filter like you come too fast.

Resurrection

Heavy rain,
mudslide
at the cemetery,
many coffins exposed,
cracked open,
Uncle Henry, Aunt Madge,
tipped out,
spilled on the sidewalk,
where religion failed,
weather succeeded

I’ve Lost My Head and Gained Sight

he thought the head he gave 
would have me razzle-dazzled
like the others
he thought the head he gave
would make my mind frazzled
when he ghosted
he thought the head he gave
would be all he needed to kill
my spirit one day
let’s hope someone comes
and changes that bulb of his,
that dull, dull light

Homesick

there’s no kids left in the parking lot
no hidden porn in the woods
no stolen kisses beneath the wooden roof
of the playgrounds lonely slide

there’s no mistakes which need to be lived with
no gum to drown out old cigarettes
no pretend friends sleepovers
covering up for dangerous nights

there’s no circus to run away with
no vans waiting at the gates
no threats to the spaces of safety
where the playing is played for free

there’s no chance of getting lost here
no judgement, no curses,
no questions left to ask,
no unknown facts

there’s no fuck ups, no fights
nothing much left to hide
from past generations,
whose ugliness is seen through ironic eyes

there’s no dirty floors left on the high street
no art left on the walls
no home made bombs to wow whispering parents
from their easy chairs

there’s no sex
there’s no hate
there’s no fire
there’s no pain
there’s no need for excuses
when nothing’s left out
in the rain

Skyscraper Soul

This boy is six feet tall
feelin’ like a runt
in front of the drug store
tall, thin pretty black girls
putting the touch
putting the bite on me
for their high school basketball team

I love statue chicks
so my heart 
nearly burst
out of my sunken chest

Pulled out pieces of eight
from my sunken chest
I’m just a pirate primate
for a tall, skinny girl
Statue of Libertines
they need to dribble
need to free throw

Beautiful ostrich ladies
you stole my heart
and my buried treasure
here’s five dollars
and they leaped like
Birds of Paradise
only twice as nice

Georgia On His Mind

Georgia simmers in the heat,
snakeskins swirling at her feet.
Georgia loves the desert sand,
listening to her favourite band.
Georgia, sultry as the sun
was not born to be a nun.
Georgia lies upon her back,
leering men admire her rack.
Georgia turns to one and smiles,
as she displays her female wiles,
opening her legs out wide,
an open invite for a ride.

The rancher wakes up with a start
from his dream, with pounding heart.
He sits there feeling full of guilt.
Not just his spirits seem to wilt.
“What would the preacher have to say?
or my dear wife, sweet Lily May?
That cook’s too hot to have around
or my marriage will run aground
I’d best dismiss the temptress Georgia,
before I become another Borgia!”

Darkness Light

Dad didn’t teach me shit.
Except how to wipe my ass, 
how to throw a rock, drive a nail 
and tell a Phillips from that other kind of screw. 
Dad prized his couple dozen LP’s of symphonies, 
symphonic poems, opera picks. 
On the leadup to his nightly soak, 
he would shake the house 
with – cranked – the New World Symphony, 
rattle the windows with the Ride of the Valkyries, 
clatter the crockery with Caruso arias. 
My earliest memory is: 
in the living room, fantasy sword fighting 
to the Romeo and Juliet Overture; 
then hiding in my bedroom closet 
when the music ceased, and Dad, 
through wolfing his pint, 
rampaged through the house slamming doors, 
punching holes in walls, kicking the dog, 
screaming obscenities, curses, damnations, 
threatening my mother with divorce, 
to see how she liked being penniless 
without his daytime breadwinning skills. 
Had Dad left the vodka alone, 
and done everything else about the same, 
I might have come to respect him as much 
as the music he so diligently, 
if accidentally, inspired me to love. 
The ogre, as it was, scared me nuts till age twelve; 
after which, when I began finding bottles 
all over the house, and I grew taller than him, 
I hated the son of a bitch’s bastard.
Ever since he croaked, 
over twenty years ago, 
and I put on the Brahms, the Vivaldi, the Bach, 
and I hear the mad old fuck’s rising anger sing, 
I thank him, from the bottom of my wretched heart, 
for all the light into my life he cast.   

dead and unfazed

217 days
without speaking
or seeing each other
and suddenly she shows up
knocks on his door and says,
“Hey, we’re still together, right?
Still a couple?”

He didn’t answer,
just ushered her in
through a curtain of smoke
and moldy smells.
His small apartment
looked more like a cave
than ever before.
The walls were dark and irregular
with buildup of grime.

The cockroaches were long dead,
poisoned with cigarette smoke
and ashes

26 years her senior,
he was a modern caveman
Still lived in a cold, dark,
and gross cave,
but he had a laptop
and internet connection.

The screen
was the only thing
alive in the cave.

It showed a compilation
of short videos
featuring brutal executions
from all around the world.

“So how have you been?”
she asked.

His reply was a grunt
as his gnarled hand
reached into his breast pocket
and fished out the pack
of cigarettes and a lighter.

He placed one between
his lips and lit it
and then offered her one.

She took it
and as she stretched
her hand for it
a neat row of self-inflicted scars
shone from her wrist to elbow

“I take it you still haven’t
managed to publish
your writings,” she said.

It drew another
grunt from him,
a louder one
this time.

“So nothing’s changed
in all this time,”
she continued.
“You didn’t make it,
I didn’t make it,
and the world made it
without us.”

Another grunt from him.

He sat down at the desk
and paused the gore videos
that ran with black metal music
playing in the background.
The image that froze onscreen
portrayed a naked man
on his knees, hands tied
behind his back,
while a chainsaw was about
to dig into his belly.

“I was thinking,” she continued,
“you know how people make
those silly promises
that sound something like,
‘if we don’t find partners
by the time we’re so and so years
old we marry each other’?
Well, I was thinking,
what if we make a promise
just like that?
Only, not about marrying
each other.
Rather, if in two years’ time
we don’t make it.
That is, if you don’t get published
as a writer and I still can’t
find a good man to marry…
we suicide together.
What do you say?”

Puffing on his cigarette,
he watched her,
studied her from head
to toe and back,
and after another grunt
and a much needed clearing
of his throat he said,
“Aren’t we already dead?
What’s the point of
suicide now?”

They were both silent
for a long while
and then she said,
“Did I tell you about
the time I aborted
your child?”

He shook his head.
“Pretty sure it wasn’t mine.”

“It was yours,” she said.

He dismissed her
with another grunt
and a slight shake of his head.

Then they smoked
in silence and finished
the whole pack,
letting the ashes fall
straight to the floor
where they joined a gray desert.

He resumed the gore videos
but turned down the volume.

“Some days ago
I slept with a guy
only so I could use his computer
to check out stories of yours
on the internet,”
she said eventually.
“Aside from three or four
very short ones
there was nothing new.
Why did you stop posting?”

“I stopped writing,” he said.

“Oh…”

She came behind him
and they both watched
some poor homeless man
being held down
by a gang of teenagers
as two of them used a brick
to hammer a long screwdriver
up one of his nostrils.

He turned the volume lower.

“Well, I haven’t stopped looking
for a good man,” she said.
“I just hadn’t found one yet.
I thought that maybe if we make
that two-year promise…
maybe it’ll motivate us both,
but I see you’ve already given up.
You are already dead,
aren’t you?
I’m speaking to a ghost.”

He grunted
and lit another cigarette
from a new pack
and offered her another.

They watched gore videos
for the rest of the night
and smoked.

At some point
she said that she
had a loose tooth
and fiddled with it until it
came out of the socket.
There was no blood
and no pain.

She placed it on the desk
and he silently
took it and put it
into his breast pocket
with the pack of cigarettes.

In the morning,
she was ready to leave.

She borrowed
fourteen dollars
and two cigarettes
and stopped by
the corner store
to buy razor blades.

The cashier wasn’t any
more alive than herself
and the modern caveman
she’d left behind
for the final time.

“Say, you wanna marry
in the near future?” she asked
from across the counter.

The cashier just replied
with a grunt.

Gotta Get Back to LA

I gotta get back to LA
With my new old car,
Rusty of empty beer cans
And dentine wrappers
Stuck inside  paperback 
Shakespeare third acts of
Endless stabbings of villains 
And fatal flawed heroes,
Losing its whiskey soaked
Pages in the back seat under 
Dusty memories of what I 
Should have been,

Where I was drunk in sober life,
Longing for a buzz
At Bukowski’s San Pedro
Dream house, writing his mad
And beat poems till the end
Of no unglad post office pension 
And cat lover mysticism, in his
Punch drunk of barfly skid row
Flop house craziness, undone 
By death but never dying,

Where the clarity of smog
Induced sunset blvd call girl 
Lust sings sweetly of soft
Inner thigh promise, where
Miracle mile tattooed legs in 
Thought are cold in the youth
Of Echo Parks murky water,
Rowing chinatown boats to 
Groovy back lots at Paramount,
Before rushing to the next
Sexual conquest, trying to
Find the perfect end line for 
My new spy novel,

When purple evenings
And mid August moons 
Woke me to cobblestone 
Depression remedies with vodka
Inspired early morning shots
Of Silver Lake blue dawns
Before shooting scenes 
With the ghost of sad and stoic
Clara Bow, angel now of
No time silent film heaven
And my invisible love on
Nights when the streets
Were empty of women,

Where Chavez Ravine
Evictions and cries of no home
Latino heart of holy Mary
Became my drunken home
Team fan’s dodging of old
Sadness with ball park beer,
Cheering riot of blue until
Fernando came with his
Mythic screwball, throwing
No hitter pop ups, shutting out
All hate of gringo heart with 
His quiet ways, 
Seeing the lie of countries,
Like a vision suddenly widened,

Where I couldn’t be a hippie
And pet a stray dog’s lonesome 
Head without crying for eternity,
And tears of noble failings drifting
In high places, letting go
Of ancient hate, but
Haunting my own living body,
Seeking forgiveness from whores
And whiskey and penance
In hangover mornings not 
Knowing where I was or how
I got there.

I gotta get back to LA
To remember the song of the
Prophets who sang to me
During all lost years of drunken
Fucking in the cheap hotels
Of Santa Monica boulevard doom
Washing ashore on the fancy
Beaches of Marina del Rey 
Where angels kept me warm,
Wrapped in wings of love,
Whispering softly that I was
An angel too, fallen but not
Forgotten, for LA is the city of
Angels in truth and only angels
Are there living, breathing, walking
The streets, making movies
And playing baseball,
Selling tacos downtown,
The best you can eat
This side of heaven.

Andre Breton’s Massage Parlor

The Head of a Hungry Man

In my favorite massage parlor
Almost Heaven
a razor sharp pendulum
swings above my neck
Riding me
like a Texas cowgirl
a hooded prostitute
takes it slow and easy
tantalizing slow
excruciatingly slow
the pendulum drops

Timed perfectly with my orgasm
the pendulum stops an inch from my jugular
If I desire to have the pendulum tickle my
neck with a hint of blood the price
goes up which just makes sense
If I want to die having an orgasm
it can be arranged and I’ll be a
life time member of the Suicide Club

The pendulum severs my head
blood splatters the prostitute’s face
I stagger around the mirrored room 
look in a mirror my head is still there

I give the temple prostitute a reverent tip
drive home to an empty farmhouse
next to a corn field
Before slipping into bed
I turn my dead wife’s picture to the wall
The house will burn to the ground tomorrow
luckily I wasn’t home at the time     

When I awake in the morning
and look in the bathroom mirror
my head’s reflection is not there
My wife runs from our burning farmhouse
shouting “Surrealista Surrealista
get thee away from me”
I hold my head in my hands
run away from the flames
down a dead end street
named Camino sin Nombre

…………………………….

I am the Prostitute
The lover
The john
A gazelle
The taste of skin
Made of tree