We’re in many different places.
For some
It’s a basement
Or a motel room.
For others
It’s a kitchen table
with all the lights off
just the single bulb ahead.
We spend our nights
Smoking and typing
sharpening our senses
with drink or smoke
and typing for hours
night after night.
Klick klick klick ding shhhhhhhht
the typewriter sings it's tune.
For me it always comes back to the porch.
Everywhere I move
I always end up on the porch.
Never without the
Kerr “Self-Sealing” wide mouth Mason jar.
Full of ice cold water
constantly refilled throughout the night.
Always dripping with condensation
even at night.
It’s ******’ burnin’ up outside.
Ya gotta suffer for it
though
That’s what makes the difference.
Right now
someone is alone in a room
pacing back and forth
burning themselves with a cigarette
staring at a page.
They’re the only ones that
will ever see it.
Either the drink or the drug
will take them first.
Or they just slip into and get lost in
the madness.
Then they become as
indecipherable
as the academic intellectuals.
Hell,
It could happen to me too.
We’ll see what happens.
Keeping it going
Every night
standing on the porch
pouring it out
sending off a weekly
5 poems
getting it out there
like so many do.
We’re in many different places.

She could never do anything.
Her parents thought nearly everything
was immoral & blasphemous.
A boy from school had gotten her
a poster for her birthday
of her favorite band Good Charlotte.
It was just harmless pop music
but her parents didnt approve of
all their black clothes, tattoos, spiky hair, and eyeliner
so they were making her tear it down.
It was the only thing
hanging on her walls
that was hers.
Everything else had to do with
Joseph Smith & the Morman Temple.
That's all the two of them ever talked about
but when she actually asked questions
and was critical of the beliefs of the church
they just shut her down
with empty answers & irrelevant metaphors.
"But Mom there isn't anything bad about this band! It's made for kids!"
"That's what worries me Amanda...the media & music companies want to poison your mind. The morals of this country are falling apart, heck they're not even there anymore. Amanda...you and I both know that this band does not follow the teachings of the prophet. You know how we feel, you need to choose the right. Remember?"
With her head down and tears falling, she knew she couldnt win.
"Yes."
"Okay then."
Her Mom said, tearing the poster off the wall.
She held it out to her.
"Come on. Rip it up."
"What?"
"Rip the poster in half."
"No. No way. If you wanna tear it, then you do it. I'm not gonna destroy a gift from my friend. What is the point of this? Am I not allowed to have anything?!"
Her father stormed into the room.
"Young lady....I am NOT going to stand for such disobedience!"
Her mother stood in the doorway, while her father violently ripped the chords for her phone and t.v. out of the wall.
"Three months grounding. To your room, no phone, no tv, and absolutely no theater activities after school. I don't care what it's for. Now sit on that bed, and get out your book of morman. Dinner will be ready soon, you can come down then."
He slammed the door shut and locked it from the outside. They had a special lock installed.
She paced the room, her thoughts going a mile a minute.
If she didnt do something, she would lose her mind, she decided.
Inside a pile of stuffed animals was a phone.
Her secret phone.
One of those prepays, she kept it on with babysitting money.
She didnt know if it would do any good, but she called the cops. She had to try something.
An hour later
they were eating dinner in silence, when the doorbell rang.
Her father shot her a suspicious look, before getting up to answer.
The girl could hear the officers talking to her father at the door.
They came inside and sat in the den
talking
for a good five minutes, maybe more.
Finally he called her into the room.
"Amanda."
"Yes, Dad."
"Did you call the police on me?"
"...yes." She said, looking down.
"Why? I havent hit you. Have I?"
"No. But...you keep me locked up all the time. You wont just let me be a normal kid. You're so into the church, you can't see what it's doing to you. Officers I've spent the past two months locked up in my room. Now they want to ground me three more months. All because I wouldn't tear up a Good Charlotte poster. Just because they're not mormon, doesn't mean that they're bad. Does everything have to be about church? All the time"
The two cops looked at each other, concerned, with wrinkled brows.
They were both young, crew cutted, blond hair, blue eyed, boys in blue.
One spoke up, clearing his throat.
"Amanda...a band like that...doesn't follow or honor the teachings of the one, true, prophet....Joseph Smith."
"Yes, you really must obey your parents. The lord commands it."
"Nooooooooooooo!!!"
The girl shrieked, blood-curdling, up the stairs
to her room.
They were everywhere, there was no escape. Her parents, teachers, neighbors, friends, and even the police.
It was the Mormon Church's town.
She finally embraced the solitude
decided to just ride it out
wait them out
and then get out.
When I finally got a car
I would drive by her house
and she would always be there in the window
waving back at me.
She had two long years of that
before she was finally
granted freedom at eighteen.
My friend in the Tower of Zion
the Morman Rapunzel
Pretty in Pink with her short blond hair.
She had to be free.
Today she lives on a piece of land
with her husband and some dogs.
She made it.

It was a suicide.
He had gotten drunk,
too drunk.
He tried going to the bar he worked at,
it was his night off,
but they turned him away.
“You’ve already had too much to drink. Go sleep it off, pal.”
Instead he went home,
put a glock 9mm to his head
And blew his brains out
on his back porch.
His roommate found him.
There was no note,
no answers,
just questions left behind.
A week later was the memorial service.
He was an atheist,
a vocal one at that.
Had a tattoo of a rotting zombie Christ
on his arm.
But his family was devout Lutherans,
so that was the send off he got.
Standing against the wall,
in the small chapel,
the lines were clearly divided.

Seated in the pews were people
dressed in bright, happy colors.
Pastels.
Blues, greens, pinks, yellows, and lavenders.
Those were his blood relatives
and Lutheran members of the family’s church.

Then on the edges and in the back
Stood and sat his other family,
the metal heads, the punks, the ******* kids, and subculture misfits,
Dressed in black,
arms & legs tattoed with ink.

The pastels
spoke in unison, reciting prayers and scripture,
While the kids in black, stood silent
Unmoved by the minister’s words about Christ.
The pastels bowed their heads in prayer, for the poor boy’s soul.

We in black looked around the room,
studying their pinched faces
while they remained blind.
One woman apparently could feel my stare
cause she opened her eyes, and looked right into mine.
Never will forget that look she had,
like she knew something I didn’t.

The minister in the white and green robe kept talking,
saying my friend was in the loving arms of Jesus.
Guess he forgot that suicides got
a one-way ticket straight to hell.
It was typical.
A spiritual buffet,
take what you like,
ignore what you don’t.
But I don’t blame them, not one bit.
What parent wants to imagine
their child burning in that lake of fire,
never to be held in their arms again?
No one.

His mother went up and said a few words,
Some stories,
funny ones from his childhood.
Then his neighbor went up and spoke,
then an old girlfriend from high school.
And then a great silence.
The podium stood empty.
Before I knew it,
my hands were gripping the wooden podium
and my mouth was talking.
Telling the pastels & black shirts kids
about the first time I saw him.
He was in the mosh pit doing spin kicks and backflips
like a five-foot-six, blonde, ninja in Saucony jazz shoes.
And how I never saw him be unkind or mean to anyone,
that he was a GOOD boy.
My eyes began to burn,
I felt my throat tightening.
“Really gonna miss him,” I managed to choke out.
I took my place back against the wall
as the slideshow & music started up.
They were playing The Beatles.
My friend was a Black Sabbath kind of guy.

Outside I saw faces not seen in years,
not since I was a 17-year-old kid.
I saw Matty standing there.
We had just buried another one
of the boys from the crew,
Munster
less that six months earlier.
Poor Munsey.
Now Matty and I were the only ones left.
Went straight up to him and we both latched on,
sobbing & shaking
hugging each other as tight as we could.
“It’s too much, man. It’s too soon. They’re both ******* GONE.”
He was broken and I was worried about him.
Very much so.

Then we all met at a bar,
his bar.
The one he worked at and got turned away from that night.
We told stories
like when everyone was trying to **** this girl
and he wasn’t, but she pulled him into a room
at the end of the night …
picking him over us all.
Or how he could make his ***** do all kinds of tricks,
disappearing and reappearing in his red *******.
“The popper” he called it.
We slammed down shots & brews
burying our little buddy, one glass at a time.
And the last thing …
His parents showed up at the bar
cradling T-shirts on hangars, his clothes.
I saw someone pick up his Blood For Blood shirt.
It had been OUR shirt, we shared it back and forth.
We both loved that band, they sang about “living in exile” like we both did.
“****, that was our shirt,” I said to the table of drunk and grieving friends.
“Well, go get it, man. Go on.”
I went up to the guy holding it.
“Hey man, that shirt means a lot to me, can I …”
Before I could finish, it was in my hands.
The guy gave a generous smile,
“Then you should have it.”
I sat back down at the table of friends,
holding the shirt up to my face.
He lingered in my nose, one last time.
But my little buddy was gone,
a faded T-shirt and a few funny stories
were all that remained.
We all toasted one last shot.
I said,
“to the lost …”
and the table of old friends all repeated,
“To the lost.”
Rest well in your dreamless sleep, pal.
Down the hatch.
Watch it go
With a black tooth grin.

Just
six years old
when I found out that kids could die.
There was a family at my grandma’s church—
The only black family
in the entire congregation.
The mother
was petite, wore thick glasses, and played piano during church.
The father
was greatly obese, with thinning hair, and a permanent smile.
Their two boys
were four and twelve years old.
The night of their death
I saw them at church.
Service had just gotten out
and I was running wild with my two friends.
Both a grade higher than me.
We ran across the large stage
and jumped into the huge bathtub
they used for baptisms.
The four year old boy,
only an hour away
from Death’s grip.
He said to me with a big, genuine smile,
“Hi Daniel.”
But he was only four.
Practically a baby, I thought.
I was running with the big kids.
No time for babies.
So I turned back to running around with my friends,
ignoring his friendly greeting.
An hour later
that little boy’s dad
pulled the family Lincoln Town car over on the freeway.
Flat tire.
While the dad was walking around the back of the car,
the wife and two boys were waiting inside.
Some ******* drunk
slammed into the car.
The dad watched the car
fly forward and burst into flames.
The smiling four year old
burned to death that night.
The twelve year old
suffered severe brain damage and died two days later.
The mother’s face, chest, back, neck, arms, and hands bore
charred and bubbling skin.
The father died of a heart attack a few months later.
That piano playing lady of the Lord
buried her whole family.
A decade later,
a teenager back at my grandma’s church
for mother’s Day.
The burned
former mommy and wife
still sat and played at that piano.
For some reason
she was still working for the big guy upstairs.
I couldn’t understand it then, and I still don’t.
For not saying “Hi”
to that doomed little boy that night.
That was the first time I’d ever felt like an *******.
When I was six years old.

I keep coming across these guys
on the bus
walking the streets
they’re just about everywhere
I am.

Sitting across from one of ’em
on the city bus
spooks me down to my core.
They’ve got slicked back
greasy hair
that’s turning gray,
tanned skin from walking in the sun
too much.
Old-style tattoos up and down
their arms
that are blurry and faded green
women’s names are no longer legible
in the little banner around
a simple heart tattoo.
I always wonder where
their women went
cause they never have one
next to them.

Sitting across from this guy,
he takes a good look at me too.
My slicked back, greasy hair, pale skin, and new old-style tattoos.
It’s like he’s lookin’ back
and I’m lookin’ forward
to a future that just might end up
being my own.
I see these men
down & out,
rolling ****** Top Tobacco cigarettes
with brown & yellow fingertips
pregnant little toothpick smokes
with loose ends that spill tobacco
all over their laps
on their faded grey-used-to-be-black
rustler jeans
the cheap kind from K-Mart.
I see these men
and it terrifies me
to think
that could be me and my future.
It could be me.
If I don’t get my **** together.
Cause
right now
today
as I get ready to pull this sheet
from the typewriter and catch the
2:48 p.m. bus
I am going nowhere
Fast.
**** me.

I’d get a call over the walkie-talkie, write down what parts were needed, find them in the parts’ warehouse tent, load ’em up, and deliver them to the job site. It was pretty easygoing. In between orders I’d just sit in the air-conditioned truck, listening to Howard Stern and napping here and there. When I could. After a month, they hired another guy to be my partner. He was a computer programming geek, married with kids, and he had these stupid cartoon tattoos all over his arms. Japanese anime **** and Hanna-Barbara characters. The guy really got on my nerves, one of those know-it-all nerds.
Our boss was the biggest Native I’d ever seen. Looked like a Navajo Andre the Giant, only he had a big, black, handlebar mustache. Which as surprising, because, I was under the impression Navajo’s couldn’t grow ****** hair. He stood at nearly 6’6” with long skinny legs, a barrel chest covered in silver and turquoise jewelry. When he got angry, his eyes went wild, like fire raging out of control. Like the time I got the flatbed truck stuck on an embankment and the back axle snapped off. “******* JUNIOR!” he shouted. My old man was one of the foremen there, so everyone just called me Junior. Oh yes, my boss, Darren, was a scary guy to say the least. So me and my delivery partner were making a run to the jobsite one day, the radio blaring “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd, just getting into the fast final part of the song. The good part. Right in the middle of the guitar solo, my partner changed the station to Nickleback, of all things. I quickly switched it back to the Skynyrd.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t change it in the middle of “Free Bird,” I said.
My partner rolled his eyes and switched it back to Nicklecrap.
“Come on, get with the times, man. This is the new ****.”
“Yeah, **** is right.”
I switched it back AGAIN, but the song was ending.
“You made me miss the song, ya’ ******’ *****.’
“Why don’t ya’ just cry about it then?”
“*******.”
We delivered the parts and parked the truck back inside the parts’ warehouse tent. With no calls coming in over the radio, we cranked the a/c and dozed off to Howard Stern talking about an “**** ring toss” game they were going to play. I woke up an hour later to Darren’s angry voice coming in over the radio. “Where the **** are you guys? *******, we got parts that gotta go out. I’m headed to the tent …”
I looked over to my partner, snoring away in the driver’s seat. For a second, I contemplated waking him up. Then I remembered the Lynard Skynyrd/Nickleback incident, and I left him sleeping in the truck. I walked out of the tent, to the Port-John to take a squirt. When I returned to the tent, Darren was staring at my partner, who was still asleep in the truck. Darren’s eyes were big and crazy; he was furious. He turned to me.
“What the ****, Junior?”
“I’ve been trying to get him up, but he just won’t budge. I’m having to do all this work myself!”
“******* …” Darren said, with a heavy sigh, before pounding on the driver’s side window.
“Andy! Wake the **** up, *******! Junior’s carrying all the weight here!”
Andy did wake up. He glared at me, and I smiled back with a ****-eating grin.
You don’t ever interrupt The Free Bird. I don't care what your name is.

Easter Sunday. My mom dropped me off at my girlfriend’s house early that morning. A couple hours before church. I used the key under the mat and went inside. Ashton had said her parents would be gone that morning and to come wake her up when I got there. So, I went into her room and sat at the edge of the bed. I softly kissed her forehead and she slowly opened her eyes, smiling up at me.
“Hey, baby,” she said, rubbing her eyes.
“Good morning.”
“Let me brush my teeth real quick. I got dragon’s breath over here,” she said, covering her mouth and quickly walking to the bathroom.
“Geez. I can’t believe we’re finally ALONE! I can’t even remember the last time.”
“I think it was around Christmas or something,” I said, stretching out on the bed.
Ashton climbed on top of me, straddling me, for the first time in months. She pressed her mouth to mine, hard, breathing heavily and letting out a big sigh. We kept kissing and things really got heated quickly. I gently ran my tongue across her neck, expecting her to stop me, but she didn’t. Off came her shirt and she reached down into my pants, grabbing every inch of what I had. She bit her bottom lip hard and she had that hungry look in her eyes. Finally, she said, “Come on, put it in.”
“What?”
“Come on, just do it. I need it.”
I knew where she was going and what the outcome would be. It happened every time.
“No. Cause then if we have ***, we’ll go to church later, and you’ll start feeling all ‘bad.’ Because it’s a sin and you think it’s wrong. Then during praise and worship time, you’ll fall to your knees and start crying and I’ll feel like an ******* and … no. I don’t wanna go through all that ****.”
In one quick motion, she unzipped my pants and flopped my ****. Looking up at me, she slowly, very slowly, took it into her mouth. Going up and down. I looked up to the ceiling, my jaw dropped. In the entire five months we had been dating, she had never gone down on me. Never. It was too much; she knew exactly what to do. So then I just put it in. Like she asked me too. And in five minutes, I rolled off and we just lay there, staring at the ceiling.
She propped herself up on her elbows. Smiling big.
“You okay?” I asked, recalling the last time we had ***, and how much she sobbed and cried afterwards. Dripping with spit and tears, all red-faced. She went on about sin and how it was wrong. Cause we weren’t married. I thought it was stupid. I was her boyfriend; after all, there was love there. How could that be bad? This time, on Easter Sunday, she was just smiling in the rays of the sun. Finally, no more Christian guilt on her face.
“I just love you is all.”
And then she kissed me. She got dressed and made breakfast for me. Then we woke up her little brother and sister. It felt like a normal day. I was a regular teenager, having *** with my girlfriend. I wasn’t some repressed celibate, Christian, kid. I felt good, I felt ******* alive. Gettin’ those teenage kicks while the gettin’ was good. But then. At church. Like a prophet from the Old Testament, I had predicted the future. It came time in the service when they did “praise and worship.” Singing songs to God, with their arms up in the air. I used to get all into that, but by this time, punk rock had its mighty hold over me. Every day I just thought about it more and more. Was religion just a mechanism of control? To keep the poor from eating the rich? It seemed like it. So when Ashton fell to her knees and stared cryin’, I just groaned and scowled. I wanted to have a good time, not get some guilt trip for following our natural impulses. A week later was prom. The Senior Prom. I expected it to be like the ******’ movies. Poofy dresses and heels up in the air. Ya’ know, backseats steamin’ up on lover’s lane, above the lights of our town. What did I get? Dropped off before ten o’clock. Right before that, at a park, I had tried to get her to take a walk with me, go somewhere dark and quiet. We were on the swings with her best-friend Jesse and her 'just as friends' date. They were talking about just going home and calling it a night. I began to panic, no, no, no, it couldn't end this way for me. Prom was supposed to be it. My wild night of teenage kicks and high school romance. So I tried to make it happen.
"Hey, let's go take a walk and talk a bit. We haven't really gotten much alone time tonight. Ya know?"
“Yeah, I know. But...if we left them alone...I think it would make Jesse uncomfortable. Her and James went just as friends, she doesn’t want him to get the wrong idea. But we can talk right here. ” She said, with that big, bubbly, smile. I rolled my eyes and played along. It was in that moment, that I had checked out. Yes, ma’am, that was the straw that broke the first love’s back. Had to let her go. God too. I haven’t spoken to him since.