Plastic Girl 

She could have been a plastic girl.  Left bruise 
blue sheets for an artificial world of 
synthetic putting greens, some lighter use 
by an aged man of means.  He might love 
her if she would submit to rhinoplasty,
breast augmentation or at least a lift,
a tummy tuck, nutritional regime.  The 
nude photos she DM’ed  show an adrift
corn fed abused nineteen year old he’s consoled
so many nights via chat room/telephone 
in her childhood bed.  Could she give control 
to some old man in Hilton Head who’d own 
a waif or a synthetic blowup doll 
just not the ordinary girl he saw?

such luxuries

a parade of rain

high heels on a 
freshly tiled floor

like fingernails 
digging into 
your back

this is why you 
work the extra 
hours

so, you’ll be able 
to afford such 
luxuries

the pain is a gift

enjoy, lean in

with any luck
she’ll give you 
a discount

another punch 
on the card

three more visits 
and you’ll actually
get to use your hands

RANTING AS THE CLOCK STRIKES THREE

It’s another night where it’s too hot
But not so hot that I can comfortably 
Sleep naked
So I don’t sleep and the fan overhead
Whispers almost imperceptibly 
Whir whir whir whir whir

Tomorrow will be another morning
With either the sun like a cudgel
Coming down on my body
Or the rain an endless rasp of tears
Crying down to the oblivious earth
Or, worst of all, both alternating

Sometimes I think no one wants me
Sometimes I can’t be alone enough
Sometimes I wonder when they’ll come 
To get me
And now I can hear them trying to get
Deep inside

They’re in they’re in
I feel like they’ve gotten in

They’re going to kill me because they think
I know too much
And I want to die
Because I think I know nothing

I’m floating in the river of shit
I feel right at home

I’m falling asleep

Waiter Poem #10

you hear all sorts
in kitchens
tall tales
of chefs
fingering 
women
without 
washing 
their hands first
fire! fire! fire! 
mythical sirens
wailing through the ages
passed from employee
to employee
you hear 
of elite professors
& their imaginary dogs
about train drivers
speed stripping naked
of fathers pretending 
to be homeless
about the seemingly homeless
out of breath 
& blotched red 
losing their clothes
in the name 
of Christmas 
hilarity

you hear of spice girls
in hotel rooms
& second hand 
cars that come with 
dinner plate sized 
spiders
free 
of charge
you hear 
all sorts
of weird ass shit

and sometimes
you hear something useful
about wine

The Divide

I want to taste the perfume of your mouth 
until I go numb with pleasure and pain
I have become
An echo of past reckoning
The un-being of a person
Pleasured by my own undoing
By a boy with a vendetta
Against the many wombs
Who conspired against him 
and his brotherly abode
In the world of men this was an unspoken treaty
That man and woman
Lived on separate islands
Bridged between their only similarity
The sex:
That new beginning

I Water My Garden with Thanks to Witches

The dust,
And the ennui of innocence –
At some point they become insufferable.
I thought of summing it up in a boo hoo memoir 
Like, -Diary of a Swatted Fly- 
Yeah, my good news awakening gifted to other 
Ever after at a loss assholes.  
I tell ya, that Catholic soot, ain’t no amount of sin 
That can scrub it off. 
Into the confessional.  
The raspy voice, 
Issuing from the other side of the grille, 
I can still hear it clearly. 
‘And now I want you to say one Our Father, 
   one Hail Mary, and one Glory Be, 
Very s-l-o-w-l-y.’ 
And is the tempo supposed to make it any 
Fuckin’ holier, Father?
Me, any fuckin’ sorrier? 
By tomorrow my soul’ll be dripping wet with the 
Same sorta transgressions.  
And I treasure that wetness, the water right outta Jezebel’s 
Cooze, cuz it washes off the dust of your reset;
Your ‘state a grace,’ which only cakes up under my 
Fingernails.  
No wonder I gotta bad habit of scratching others. 
Let my prey thus be anointed! 
It’s easy, when ya cease to be haunted by a god so 
Breathless running down the centuries he can’t answer 
You in prayer. 
The image of matted hair crowning a rusting antique which, 
If it could speak, might sound like a cross between Dustin 
Hoffman and Russell Crowe- it don’t bother me like before. 
Cuz I left my innocence with a litany of witches, 
Left it drowning in their blood. 
Hey!  Your words, my Lord: 
   ‘Thou shalt not suffer…’ 
I love my modus of twenty-two exits. 
The sharp tip goes in, then comes out.
Out!  Out of time, out of love, out of rust and 
Dust and suffering and penance and…Flies! 
From the witches’ wounds grow the trees of 
My new Eden. 
   ‘Bless me, Father, for I have made a garden where 
neither Lord nor larvae can flourish.’ 
Already I’m bored again. 

I’ll Leave it at That 

What are birds
In the night 
If not air’s flat iron 
Of bone, the river’s mercy 
Sings, a darker cadence – 
Do you know
The place I mean
No trains run there
There are no birds to speak of.

At first glance the world is always terrifying 
Then beautiful, then terrifying again – 
Where do they put all of the things we’ve seen
After we go, who will speak of the snow
That fell across our life
In perfect layers of mute blue hush

It’s dark 
Here. It is morning.
It is almost as it never was.

I was happy to have seen 
What little of the world I saw.
Pain gave me more than it took.

There was never enough beauty 
For any of us.

I could say more
But the words don’t feel right. 
I’ll leave it at that.

The Great Outdoors

Sue slips up to her knee in the muck.
Without admitting it,
we’ve been both, lightly drunk,
looking for a place to fuck
back here in the swamp.
Now we admit to looking for a place
to dry Sue’s pants.

We chance on a knoll
of moss and rotting leaves around
the trunks of a pine and a maple; then
she shuffles off her jeans, hangs them on
a low branch, and I’m  taking mine off,
she’s removing her blouse.
We hold each other naked and smiling.

After rolling and humping in the dirt,
coming, uncaring about anything
but sunshine and sex,
we rest, chatting; realize we followed
into the swamp and embraced
much like the first night
we wound up in bed together.

The sun budges toward dusk. Shadows
lengthen. My underpants
lost, jeans muddied, testily sobering up,
pine needles down our backs,
trudge homeward out of the swamp uphill.

the father and I are one

She got very deep
into spirituality
at her mother’s
sound advice

A lot of people,
including her mother,
got into spirituality
as a means to calm
the feeling of having
no control over life
whatsoever

But behold,
there are those who
go through spirituality
and come out knowing
that it none of it’s true
Suddenly they know
and understand we have
one hundred percent control
over our own destinies

Today she was one
of those people

“It’s all a matter of
how we manage our
thoughts,” she said
“How we organize
our minds. You attract
what you focus on
most of the time.
It’s that simple.”

The guys at the bar all
nodded, each hoping
to get some private
lessons out of her

And one of them did

He took her to his place
where he found out that
she was on her period

And she used her dead father’s
severed thumb as a tampon

“Indeed,” she said
as she put it back in
“I and the father are one.
He had created me
in his image and
I am a part of him.
I am therefore never apart
from him and he is never
apart from me.
Oh, young soul,
please brace yourself.
There is so much I have
to teach you.”

He got into the lotus position
beside her and listened
There was nothing
else to do

The Wild Times Return 

It was just like one of the old nights,
Those nights of chaos and utter
Derangement.  I got in early and began
My often trudged path to total
Obliteration; beer came in pints and
The whiskey came in doubles and one
Followed the other until I didn’t care
Anymore.  I ventured outside for a 
Much needed smoke, smiling, scanning
The scene of St James’s Street on this
A typical early Friday night.  All 
The usual crazies were around and, as
Usual, felt just like one of them as the 
Smoke takes hold but before too long I 
Got back and inside again, returning
Quickly to my throne, my stool, at 
The bar in my delinquent palace of fun.  
I got back into it until my reflection in
The mirror behind the bar is nothing but
A blur and I know, calling the barman
Over, it’ll be time for just one more.
“A god-damn half-pint but always take
The double,” I tell a blur of a person behind
What I hope is the bar and as they come over
I stand to my feet, drain some of the beer
Before hitting the whiskey all the way down
And before anyone knows it the beer is gone
With me not far behind it, down the road to
The safe sanctuary of my room for a smoke
Enjoying the beauty of sweet oblivion.