poems 8

everything but the floppy shoes 

well, I’m unemployed
I don’t shower as often as I ought to
I don’t brush my teeth as often as I ought to
I’m a sad, sad case in the middle of
nowhere America
and I’ve got no one to blame but myself (and my parents)
but all the same, it’s nice lying here in bed
this morning:
white sheets, white walls
a white ceiling with brown water stains
and the sun coming in through the windows
like Nirvana
my friends think I’m crazy
and I suppose maybe I am
but I tell them this head is nothing more
than a half-empty box
(I like to think it’s purple on the inside)
and every once in a while
when some grunge falls out of it
I clean it up
email it to the editor of some magazine
it’s what I do best
all that I can do
so really,
it’s not such a bad life
after all.



paranoia—yeah! 

the latest terror plot
is a figment of my imagination
or a figment of
someone’s imagination
someone with an orange crush brain
that drips onto the pavement
on hot summer afternoons
my sweat is dripping onto the desk
as a fly buzzes from the wall
to the lampshade
oh, I know you were sent
by the devil with hair on his ass
to harass and torment me
you and my rotten family
and the rotten kids who scream
at the pool all day
yes, Travis, someday a great rain
is gonna fall and wash away
all this filth—I mean
the flies and the devils
and the kids and then maybe
I'll get a chance to sit quietly
on hot summer afternoons
and suffer in my room in peace.



disenchanted 

well, sometimes
the muse
comes with her tits
hanging out
and sometimes
she doesn’t cum
at all
my muse gets
around
on a pair of worn-out
angel wings
she’s grown
disenchanted
and disillusioned
with the world
and so have I
we make a nice
couple in our
common despair
and may the Gods
have pity
on us both.



20 years ago 

Communism fell
in Eastern Europe
and the fascists
and the criminals
took over and
they've cut down
all the trees
and sunflowers
and all the young
are leaving cuz
there ain't no jobs
and there ain't
no hope either
so long
as that 3-headed
monster called
America
stomps all over
the world
but there's Fidel
raising his fist
through the
Cuban sky with
the tropical sun
shining down
and Chavez
and Morales
and Ortega and
we'll see what
happens over in
Honduras so
America you may
have won that
other battle
but the war
ain't fucking over.




noise and fury

watching all the smoke and ashes
on TV on 9/11
I didn't feel much of anything
I watched all the noise and fury
like anyone else would watch a movie
I canceled my appointment
with the dentist
I checked out for the day
like I do most days
I felt cut off from all the people
crying on TV
and contempt for all the ones
demanding revenge
I wondered which country or
countries would get it this time
Sudan?
Iraq?
maybe Serbia again
and for some reason
I recalled a night when I was 16
we had each retired
to our separate rooms
all three of us trapped
in a lost place
in a small town
at the edge of nowhere
and I remembered
lying on my bed
wondering
where the fuck am I
and how the hell did we all get here?



when the fuck did I become Travis Bickle?

there's the small living room
the small kitchen
the small bathroom
the one small bedroom
I call “my room”
where I sit at my laptop
and type away
writing what some call poetry
where I hatch plots
to overthrow the government
with a beard and a pen
where I do sex chat with webcam girls
admiring their round tits
while they puff on their cigarettes
and where I sometimes just lie in bed
and think about how much
I hate everyone and everything
wondering which God or Gods
got drunk one night and set
this whole fucking mess in motion
while the dusk turns
a darker shade of purple.



free medical advice 

working the
graveyard shift
at the factory.

there was
a big blonde
maybe 19

cute, but
her face was all
covered in zits.

I wanted to tell
her there’s
a cure for that

but that got me
fired from one
job already

and I was out of
unemployment
benefits.

I admired her ass
for a while
then clocked in.

it’s people like me
who keep the
economy going.



slacker 

the mushrooms of lethargy
are dragging me down
to mind-numbing holocausts
of depression
where the lark muddies its dying soul
where the dead grow their flowers
where Sid and Nancy
pogo to ska
amid the great guru pot dealers
of Kingston
I’m unemployed
dreaming of psychedelic frogs
and great big
samsaras of butterflies
I’m the pot-bellied
Buddha of the robins
in the yard
the great all-knowing
know-nothing
who stares
at the sky
remembering the 90s
when it was OK
to be young
smart
lazy and
worthless
when they played
The Spinanes
every Tuesday
on the radio.



grassy knolls 

if you think the government is
putting thoughts
in your head you're
probably right
they put chemicals
in the food
and bullshit
on the evening news
they put a second
gunman on the grassy knoll
to split open
Jack Kennedy's head
like an Irish watermelon
I believe almost every
conspiracy theory I hear
cuz I've learned over the years
that most of them right
like war for oil
and COINTELPRO
we paranoids
are people with vague ideas
about what's really
going on.



shadow of grief 

nothing outside but
cold sunlight
blinding the snow
I must have the face
of a decent person
most people think I'm a decent person
until they get to know me
I've got photos that I carry around
in the back of my skull
sometimes they break free
storm my cerebrum
and that's when I get into trouble with the law
I don't apologize for anything
what life's done to me
is far worse than anything I ever did
sometimes I get my revenge on decent people
I used to be a decent person myself
well, that'll toughen them up
give them a taste of my world
in short:
fuck you, fuck me, fuck everybody
life's a chain of sucker-punches to the balls
and then you die.



discursive

hitting the pavement
when there’s nowhere to go
the sky is dizzy
and aimless
when you’re crazy
your only friends
are the ones in your head
and maybe the DJ on the radio
the flowers are dying
they last only a week or so
and when I see my face
in the puddles on the sidewalk
I don’t like what I see;
all you normal people
out there—I’m not one of you.



pimps and other capitalists 

you'll see your face
in the half-light
grabbing mouthfuls
of blue sky
and you'll realize
this world
wasn't made for
someone like you
this world is for
the greedy
the power-hungry
and the sadists
to indulge in
to rejoice
in the suffering
they inflict
on others
not you
who gets dizzy
when the
flowers whisper
and the
mourning doves
flutter through
your brain.



unkind 

looking in the mirror
receding hairline
I splash some water
on my face.
I walk to the bedroom
I’ve got a belly
and one leg shorter
than the other.
night coming in
through the windows
I hear something
crash upstairs
something heavy
like a fridge or
some kid jumping
from a couch
or table. I say
what the hell?
hell is other people.
hell is poverty.
hell is my neighbor
and her retard son.
hell is sitting
at the window looking
out at the night,
too insane to go
anywhere
or do anything.



ghost 

learned today
of the death
of Scott Wannberg

I’d read a few of his chaps
a few years back

that a thing that once
lived and breathed
is now dead
is not strange

that a thing that once
wrote poetry
is now dead:
now that is strange

of course
only the body is dead
not the rider

we’re all immortal
as the Buddha said

but death is still
nothing to sing about.



ever do this when you were a kid? 

I remember those nights
when I’d put on
my shoes
and go for a walk
going nowhere at all
there was the black night
and the stars above me
and I felt at home
with the stray cats
and abandoned cars
I liked being alone
and I would do
random acts of
vandalism now and then
I’d look at my watch
and it'd say 3:04 AM
and one of those nights
I realized
that I would always be alone
it was the only time
that I could be myself
so I said to myself
fuck it all and so be it.



pick any spot on the map 

the souls of dead soldiers
come back as crows
I see them sitting in the naked branches
in the last moments of winter sunset
they come back with hollow eyes
seem confused
as though wondering what they really died for
if anything
(their country? religion? Dow Chemical?)
perhaps they remember
the bodies of the dead
men, women and children alike
splayed out in the grass
of so many foreign lands
far too many bodies for counting ...
dead soldiers
haunting this earth
forever.



bad poems

reading
some of my poems
that were been published
here and there
most of 'em are
pretty good but there's
some that are real
shit
the editors musta been
crackheads when they
published them
a bad poem
is a flea bite on my leg
nothing to
worry my balls over
certainly not nearly as bad
as poverty
and the endless wars.