To Her Holiness

I refuse to bow down
To kiss your shoes.

Leather boots
Might change my mind,

But there better be
Scant else above,

And a riding crop
In your hand.

Jerk Off into a Cup and You Are Halfway There 

Making a baby is easy!  Jerk off into a cup and you are halfway there.  
And they give you aids, not the disease, but help.  So many bloody aid workers 
around you get thinking that your life might be one big disaster.  And Felice knew 
she should have called in sick today.  Sat up in bed thinking about it for many hours.  
But here she was, working reception at the sperm bank when this man in a faded 
denim jean jacket walked in.  Are you here to make a deposit? Felice asked the man.  
A withdrawal, the man said.  At first, Felice thought he was trying to rob the place.  
I’d like to speak to the bank manager! the man said excitedly.  It wasn’t long before 
the boys in blue showed up.  Is there a problem here?  Jesus boys, the shield has such 
a lousy pension plan that you have to come down here and make a deposit 
for a few extra bucks?  The few men sitting in the lobby area got up and left.  
Now we can be alone, that is how babies are made, the man said.  The boys in blue 
could try to cuff him, but he wouldn’t make it easy.  Balling up his fists, 
stacks of magazine rolled themselves like a personal thievery. The corporate art on 
the wall grew wet with excitement.  It was time to make a baby.

What I Said Upon Arrival in the USA

I still believe in Emma Lazarus,
and her poem, “The New Colossus.”
So when I reach the land-of-liberty,
I’ll embrace the first stranger I see.

And I’ve long stopped reading the news;
reports of strife I couldn’t take anymore.
The plane’s landing and the tarmac’s in view;
soon I’ll embrace a stranger and maybe more.

Now upon this land where I wasn’t born, 
I utter just to start a conversation,
“I believe in harmonious race relations.”
The stranger sighed, “You watch too much porn.”

An Ode to Malice in Writerland

There are 15 types
Of Literary Criticism

There are thousands
Of writers & poets

None of whom
Actually give a shit

Keep writing 

Malice is boredom
Malice is uninteresting
Malice is dead

Malice lives
Down in a hole
And hides from the
World of it’s own
Opinions

There are thousands
Of writers & poets

None of whom
Actually give a shit

About Malice

At all

Keep writing

No More Crackies

They’ve abandoned 
the 7th Avenue exit of Penn Station
their essence still lingers
the sour smell
stains on the concrete from bodies
and body fluids
the ghosts of the pipe
linger in that long
dank corridor
with hypodermic needles swept
into a pile waiting to be cleaned up

They’ve gone to another spot
this one jammed with police 
they are unable to shoot up
within the peace of the thousands
of people exiting up that staircase
unaffected by a needle piercing
a groin or a leg

All quiet on 7th Avenue
a vein will come back in time 
and so will they 

The Christening  

Pedro is on his way to his baby’s baptism
after working all morning throwing mud 
on cement blocks.
He gets fender-bended on Alameda 
by a drunk Yaqui in a shit-colored bug with a door missing
but he doesn’t have time to fuck around
and just lets it go. 
When he shows up 5 minutes late to the church
the preacher slams the door in his face,
dead-bolts it. 
He’d warned people not to be late
and of the fires of hell.
Pedro is locked out and the rest of us are locked in.
Pedro’s wife Yolanda is with the baby in the front row
with all the other mamas and papas and babies. 
It’s 108 degrees.
Preacher man won’t turn the air conditioning on. 
Nobody knows what his deal is.
Hand fans are going wild,
babies are crying,
murmurs and whispered protests fester in the pews.
Yolanda is pissed at Pedro and preacher man too.
Pedro stands outside yelling and pounding on the door, 
the whole world can hear,
Pedro with hard hands and cement on his pants.
Preacher man does his thing with the babies,
mumbles the words and flicks the holy water
like you’d flick an ant 
all in an orderly assembly-line manner.
Then preacher man splits out the back 
through a secret exit.
A eunuch lackey finally unlocks the front doors
and we all flood outside
where Yolanda hands the baby to Felipe
and slaps Pedro on the left cheek hard.
Each family paid 500 dollars for the ceremony
and there are now 20 new babies in stinky old Hermosillo
waiting to be embraced by the great unknown.

The Astronaut

Martians, my ass
He tells anyone within shouting distance,
Between the quiet and his next shot of whiskey,
As the TV fluctuates between porn and preachers,
Orgasms and the End of Days.

Who knows what’s real?
The bartender ignores the Astronaut.
She’s been ignoring him for a decade.
If he gets out of hand, if anyone gets out of hand, she has a revolver in reach,
A Smith and Wesson, just like Dirty Harry.
Good enough for Clint Eastwood. Good enough for her.
And a Louisville Slugger, signed by Hank Aaron.
She loved the Braves, played softball in college.

The bar itself, a graveyard, most of the stools and booths populated by ghosts.
Sometimes by the random tourists, seekers of greener pastures,
Optimists of a brighter tomorrow.

The Astronaut holds court to anyone willing to listen.
Always eager to sign an autograph, take a photo,
Or have an in-depth one-on-one session back at the hotel.
You’d be surprised how many hotel trips he’s taken.
The End of Days after all.

All he has is time, time at the bar, time for those who remember.
He walked on Mars and survived. The Martians did not.
He and his crew killed all those green-skinned sons-of-bitches.
Every man, woman, and child.
Or so his story goes.

That which shadows Earth now, not fucking Martians. Not even close.
This is not revenge and not his fault.

Fuck the Government. Fuck the Politicians, and their Fucking Lies.
He was there. He shoveled the Martian soil. He buried their green corpses.
He’ll testify between shots. Whiskey preferred.

Between the End of this World and the next.

just another summer

psycho kids
howl on bicycles

melting 
on the hot pavement

as the dumb faced mob
heads for the beach

while i sit here
at forty-eight

sweltering and enveloped
in my own budding irrelevance 

nothing but
a shitting
eating
sleeping
bag of meat
bones
and water

faded glory
and missed opportunity

my belly hanging
over my belt

looking up 
into the pale sky

praying for the
merciless sun

to go ahead

and 
just
die.

First Book

You know, the first book I ever put together
Was really full of crap just to see how a book
Would come out.  It was a true treasure of
The absurd, irreverent, vulgar, mega facetious,
Absolutely filthy purely moronic work that just
Flowed from my sick deranged head to fill pages.
Didn’t do it for money.  Never thought it would sell.
What kind of fool would waste hard earned dinero
On totally worthless absolute dung heap literature?
Shocking surprise, some did with expected results:
Hate mail, damnation to Hell, cast out by relatives.
Shoulda used a pen name.  But I never name my pens.
Sales so good, I had to order more books three times.
The quality of the printing and paper didn’t matter.
I sold most of them at the local church book burnings.

Jane of The Jungle

I remember Him, Him 
and him 
They’d beat on their chests 
and claim my swirling-drain heart;
Claim me with echoed ego,
Mark me as ‘rescued’
But every branch I’d reach for 
after that    would snap
So many branches
when they all just kept a one-track mind
…AVOID EMOTION…
I remember myself too-
Me, myself and I reporting for duty
Surely, with all my personalities,
I can get one of these motherfuckers 
to warm up around here
(words directly from my childhood trauma)
I’m lost again in my constant need to mother

Emotionally unavailable men-
sexy hearts in barbed wire lace
lit up my black hole

Can’t commit, can’t decide on anything
except to hold back? Well honey, 
you’ve got a chance with me!
Feel nothing (give a bit) Say nothing (give a bit)
Admit nothing, push-pull, PUSH-PULL
And I laugh at the fact 
that I never believed in wearing a watch
‘Cause all I get is
motherfuckers wasting my time

Turns out, a jungle man is an idealized good time
but they get boring faster than I can say,
oh, my hero…
Wearing their mommy issues like animal skin,
so, they can pretend they’ve conquered them
Protecting the honor of their toxic mothers
while attempting to dodge every call, every visit
Soaking up mommy’s gossip gush and rumor rush
I’d blow kisses 
while they’d throw banana peels at my feet. 
Trained monkeys!

Still, I’d wrap myself around their thumbs
when they weren’t sucking them
Gimme more, gimme more baby, 
ANY DAY NOW…

Oh yeah, I was Jane of The Jungle,  
swinging from tiny moment to tiny moment
of which I related
Grasping tight to the in-betweens, 
the bones they threw, I’d bury deep

Getting fucked till I was pretty
by distant eyes, 
I remember when I had the energy
But I am choosing now to forget

Finally, clean and dry, I wave 
good-bye to the spin cycle;
to the mucky jungle
with pitted eyes
from a cloud
above
the asylum

Yeah, 
I wear the ‘crazy ex’ label proudly.
I WORKED HARD FOR IT.

***