The Thorazine cocktail is a mean and nasty drink
Chemical sludge, black as hell's deepest dungeon
Enriched with the power of Mighty Thor's hammer
To smash your fragile brain pan and leave your senses numb
Belly up to the bar, boys
Jack Daniels is a school boy writing fifty time I must not
Jim Beam is a bully but he only picks on weaker spirits
80 proof ain't a ******* thang
Thorazine puts them all to shame
Explore new dimensions of bitterness
The Thorazine cocktail is a wrecking ball
You never develop a feel for it
No, it always tastes like half baked death
And smells a pungent metallic drift
Dead animals on the highway, rotting in the sun
Knock 'er back, Jack, drink it to the dregs
The dude in white thinks it's funny when you beg
You plead to take it away, how it's ******* with your head
You can't even remember what any of the voices said
You must be well, Old Jacky boy, don't need it anymore
Then again these things are weird, you can never be too sure
The dude with the cups seems to think it's not time
To kick it cold turkey, the order's been signed
So you might as well resign yourself
To the sledgehammer's blow this fine summer's eve
And shuffle away like a zombie
Hey look, that old John Huston movie about the Bible is on the television in the day room
It's just getting started, the creation scene like outtakes from the last ten minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Isn't that a coincidence?
Doesn't that make a lot of sense?
Jack, you might as well be tripping on Owsley's personal stash

He started feeling sorry for himself
long before he had seen his reflection
in shimmery linoleum tiles
that stretched into blind corners

before the snap of magnetic doors
woke melancholy macaroni people
strapped to rolling recliners
staring past Plexiglas TV's

He wore yesterday on his shirt
a step at a time...

one two, one two

felt breaths collectively stop
when he walked the halls...

one two, one two

like watching a one legged cricket
with your hand over your mouth

As cold as this place was
his head had been on fire

slammed into paper cups
filled with pastel colored
blues and pinks and
why pills
rattled at him like a baby

He fell face first into tomorrows

slobbered on wooden spoons
for vanilla ice cream
that he said tasted like Wednesday

He would get animated
when they ran out of Wednesday
and had many rattle cup nights
****** up through a syringe

hands and thumps
pressed him up against
heavy beds of oak bolted to the floor

gloves pulled his hair
when he smelled like yelling
into plastic mattresses
the same color as his *****

and no one wants him *******
while their eyes are closed

they want to see it

they want to say things like
"we'll talk about this later"

wrap his wrists in sheep's wool, in skin
from his *******, clasped by buckles, pulled
tight enough to close his eyes

He should have **** his pants

because chocolate doesn't have a taste
and neither did feeling sorry for himself

There is no justice on ****-stained floors
which carry the burden of every broken
body-broken-mind-broken-hash-pipe and halo dust
atop a thin mattress soaked with God-knows-what.
Cross our toes and mutter until the next
nurse with the next Thorazine trip in a post-nasal
dripping whine stabs us in the *** again.  (Oh, baby!)
Not allowed to watch the television today
all for flipping off the government cameras
embedded behind the screens
while Barney sings “I Love You, You Love Me”
over and over and over will it ever end?
We know Barney is the Anti-Christ.  And a purple *******.

Let’s pretend to be Batman again, flapping
our hospital gowns and shrieking for no reason.
That needle might seek us out again.
We aren’t getting better days-months-years later
still on every med imaginable and some not even
scientifified yet—or whatever you Docs do
in your spare time.  Roll in money, mix more
chemical compounds that we turn into more defiance
just to get more scientifified dope.  Oops—
Big Bro knows our sullied secret now, but it’s still time for another dose.
Please pass the spoon for—umm—safe keeping.

Sure, rehab works for quitters.  None of the “we” are.
So we sit in group session and talk about Mickey Mouse,
atom bombs, flashback nightmares and melting walls.
Oh, the pretty colors.  Who said LSD wasn’t a beautiful thing?
We say we want to be Mickey Mouse, mousing through dissolving hidey-holes
in bricks of the basement while some ****-freak *******
builds another bomb.  What a nightmare!
Ha, ha: got more Thorazine from that ***** with a beard.
Maybe it’s a moustache, but we can’t tell—too blurry
anymore.  In a minute, she might blink her lips.

Ah, piece and quiet.  Piece of *** while ball-gagged qualifies.
Maybe we can play ping pong tomorrow,
tell more lies for the effect we desire, tap-a-pat-tap
our veins for.  Getting cranky is slow without Speed, but
give us a minute and we can accommodate those mood swings.
Just watch.  No, not the TV because Batman (“The Man”) says so.  Stupid cameras.
We’ll be on that see-saw roller coaster of binge and purge
and pills and withdrawal and manic and depression
and obsessing about the lightbulb blinking in the bathroom
since we know it’s Morse code for something.

Riding highs and lows with every-dose-every-needle-every-body
busted before we ever played ping-pong or swing set steeple chase
to see just who’s the real crazy here—us or “The Man”.
Ten Kool-Aid packages on the guy who invented pills
to “cure” addiction.  Any takers?  We didn’t think so.
Snort the sugar lines and move it along so that we can
have our turn at medical benediction:

to receive the body-of-Christ-in-a-gel-cap across our tongues and rock
side-to-downside in the ******-babble homeostasis chamber
while Doc-the-Man counts his blessing of bills in the collection basket
labeled Incoming and stamped with eagles.  We’ve seen it.

No justice and **** again.  ****** again.  And still, no checkmark on the chart
of getting better.  Maybe Doc and Ratchet-with-******-hair
are close enough to see us for what we are: hopeless/helpless.
But we can play OCD once more if we all hum along.
Why?  We forgot the **** words.  Oh, crap—no,
don’t make us leave.  Doorways are frozen places to ferment in
and it’s awfully hard to keep the candle burning
long enough to make everything right. To fix it all away.

Just for me; that’s all the “we” there ever was.

Way up there
In the thin, thin air
There sits a man
Who laughs and grins
And fiddles with his double chins
A lunatic, if you must know
He paces, paces,
To and fro
Not love, nor hate
Does Steve perceive
But TV programs make him seethe
Xanax, ******, amyl poppers
None of these are Steve's show stoppers
Thorazine would do him good
But he won't take it
Like he should
So Mumbling Steve will grimace/grin
Until it's time to cry again

His mother loved him not a whit
Flushed Steve away, like so much ****
He killed his daddy, uncle, too
He killed that man, with Devil's Brew
Mumbling Steve drank up the rest
Of that that killed the old ******
Then laughed and laughed
And flashed a grin
Then burned off his extra chin


JNc 3-16

My grandparent's house
ten-kid-large and sinking
on the corners of remembrance
Remodeled now, to
...tenements

Honeycomb
...the remnants

Irish immigrant and Scottish orphan's child
She sang on the ferry
He fell in love
"The rest is the history of us...."
Wide
as the Connecticut River, grieving--
in their sunset....
____

This-- chair
is his

I am afraid of it-- of his learning
of the shiny badge pinned to his coat
of his dying...
Golden leather of it
soothes
his memory--
of another continent
of the once warmth-- of a distant hearth
so darkened now--
where his head once rested
...his hands
and,
I fear--
his mind....

I will not sit in it
as if he will come back, to take his place
I am afraid of him--
with his chair--
all worshipful and empty
like a high place, abandoned
to the heart attack
not for grandchild play
Seat of Authority
still stamped
beside the standing cold--
brass ashtray
Pipe smoke imagines itself
against the ceiling in the words
of Yates and Milton
He read to them
and somehow--

Paradise is Lost....
_____

This house is cold now-- even in the summer-- cold
Worn as only large families wear
The War
of waiting shadows
--four brothers who were spared

Anna Mae, in charge, too young,
worries in abrupt dark
of dinning room
Her face, haunted--
an archway-- ever empty
by the large and ghostly table
covered by its web of lace--
a bridal veil
of Catholic impossibility...
Anna Mae, held hostage by her thoughts
of darling, Sean...

Aunt Lil's “breakdown”
with cigarette and thorazine  
quaking quiet in her corner

Aunt Nell,
as blind as smart-*** hell
ironing, darning
with threads that thatch
the wounded socks
Holds it all together, scolding--
Brought the welcomed jelly donuts
sneered as Yankees clobbered Boston
all-- while drinking yellow ale

Uncle Eddie-- laughing hoarsely
cracks nuts over a wooden bowl

You probably think this poem is about
Lisbon, Portugal, where women
dangle your imagination like
a necklace of sun-dried
currants. No,

Lisbon, Iowa, a town twenty-two
miles removed from the 21st
century, where I stopped
for coffee, flipped eggs
and a place to ****
on my way home

from  god what  a day;
a man ordered a plate
of Rice Krispie bars
and tea—shuffled

his wallet for ten minutes,
made me nervous
like he was on
Thorazine;

it was the last
time I visited
Lisbon.

1.

I’m told it’s a “living thing”, a given thing and, moreover, is a terrible thing to lose. ‘Nuff said, ‘kay?

2.

What was she doing at the reception? Why was she so envious of his riches? How many drinks under her belt since she started on that glass of wine she‘s holding in her hand right now? So possessive.

I always seem to run into her at the drug store. I wonder what kind of medication she takes. Some incredibly strange desire to know this floats through my ghost. Some generic anti- depressant or maybe something stronger, along the lines of thorazine or haldol. A bizarre sense of arousal consumes me as I fantasize about popping those pills with her. I don’t care what kind they are…if they cure what ails her then they’ll probably take care of what’s wrong with me.

I remember…it was just a week or two ago. Once again I bumped into her at the drug store. She was looking good. Real good. The prospect of reading the labels on her medicine bottles was overpowering, finally knowing the names of the many prescriptions she had filled once every month.

My plan was thwarted, however, when she ordered a soda. I never did find out those drug names, but I learned something which I felt could very possibly change the odds of she and I hooking up. And that is this: her favorite flavor is cherry red.

I don’t think she has a boyfriend, but there is this guy who is always coming around for no real reason. He seems to think that he’s her old man. I often pretend that I believe it as well. One night the three of us went to a karaoke bar. I got just drunk enough not to care if I made a fool of myself having fun. The other two in our party had no problem nominating me for the opening act.

I walked behind the booth and introduced myself to the DJ.

“Yo, yo,” he said, after I told him my name and shook his hand. “I’m DJ Crackhead. Steady chillin’ and ill feelin’, I got the wax and the tracks if you got the crack, Jack. Now get off my back ‘less you got somethin’ you want to karaoke to.”

“Actually, I do have a request. Do you see that hot little red head in the ******* tank top? The one sitting next to the pimply faced weasel? Well, I’m wantin’ that dame for my own and I need to lose him. I need to shout out respect to my ***** and be dissing this dweeb at the same time. Can you play some Stones? I’m thinking ‘Satisfaction’ or maybe ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’?”

“Gee, G! I can float them joints easier than the pope be funny dressed. ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’, baby?”

“Only seems fitting. Let’s do this, Rider!”

As the short, sharp beats of the song bring down the house, to thunderous applause I strutted to the microphone. “People!!! All 6 of you! That’s not counting the bar tender or the wait staff, so we can’t really count this as the largest crowd we’ve ever had attend one of our shows. But I’m gonna tear the rood off this sucka’ with a brutal Rolling Stones tune I’m gonna send out to my gal’s old man, Jimmy!”

I wailed the hell out of that song. Jagger would have been proud of me, that’s for sure. He would have invited me back to the limo to maybe mainline a little smack with him. Everyone in that place was getting into it, but not Jimmy. Oh no, not Mister Jimmy. You could tell he was getting into the song itself, but not the singer.

As the song faded out I returned to our table, sweat dripping off of me like raindrops that fell into her wine glass. Wiping myself with a napkin, I turned to her and asked, “Did you like that one, babe? Did that spectacle turn you on?”

She replied, “O God, yeah! Yeah on both counts!” She leaned towards me and whispered in my ear, “You know, if we could ditch Jimmy I would sure be up for some kink-a-dee-kink. All the time you sang about “not hanging around” and how “two’s a crowd” on your cloud, I could only think of this leach. You’ve got to help me, sweetheart, you’ve just GOTTA!”

“I’ll do what I can,” I said quietly, then turned to Jimmy. “ Well Ol’ Jimmy, Ol’ Jimmy “ Boy, what did you think?”

He looked me square in the eye. I knew he meant business. You could tell by the squint in his eyes. He blinked once and said one word…”Dead”.

3.

Did we really count to one hundred? Why were we counting and perhaps even more important, WHAT were we counting? Why did the object being counted need to be counted to? Was 100 the exact count? Could we count further than 100? Did we have to keep counting even if there are only 79 units in total? Can you explain? I can’t.

4.

You got a big mouth. You know that’s an undisputed fact. When it comes to informing the town about the fine details of my alcohol problem…well that‘s where I draw the line. You are one hypocritical, self-serving, self-righteous biddy who doesn’t know when to shut up.

Everyone knows I’ve been drinking and foolin’ around. The Lord knows I’m sinning and God knows sinning ain’t right. But we’re gonna chat it up tonight, and if you want to see a change of attitude and tone, well I suggest that you stick a sock in it.

5.

Chewing on a piece of grass.
Walking down the road.
Wishing on a falling star.
Waiting on the early train.
Aging with time
Alligator lizards in the air…

Interlude.

All is quiet, save the ringing in the ears. The darkness envelopes me completely, I’m lying in it’s arms. Insatiable demands we’ll make against the wisdom of the Overlords. Who see it through those eyes that criticize all they don’t understand. They don’t understand me or you. You or me.

6.

Sometimes I just like to sit back and take in a good nostril or two of pungeant skunk stank. Years have come and years have gone but one thing has remained…I ain’t a-offended o’ the smell o’ Pepe LePew.

I don’t know but that my opinion might change if one o’ them little rascals were to saunter up to me and spray his stench on my leg. The buck will probably stop there.

But anymore that stuff just reminds me of the killer bud.

7.

The wolves ain’t the only critters howlin’ at the moon tonight.

That’s what she told me as inspiration swirled down the drainage ditch into the vat of apathy.

“Jump in, Jim, let’s go for a swim.”

She took off her clothes and I couldn’t help but stare.

Blowing a plume of toxic smoke.                  Into the nebulous reflection of a pallid wasted face                                                      He grinsfrom ear to ear.                               The blood painted vulpine smile of a lunatic clown.                                                      The mirror  image confuses the conflicted. Yet it speaks rancorous truths                                                                 This is a very special day indeed.                Fruitcake Day.    We have all been released from the cages   The human zoo has opened the gates of hell.                  Party hats are donned by the very special people as they walk about doomed to mortality. Let them enjoy brief moments of light.  Placid and placated. Walking in a daze. Give them Thorazine lollipops and free passes. The bat cages are lying in wait

I didn't choose to be son of a scared Jew
and angry Irishman

who never laid a hand on her, even when
she turned the butcher knife on him

when he tried to stop her from slashing
her red wrung wrists

this spectacle in plain view of 5 children for whom "woe is the world" was daily refrain

I recall Father's blood trail on the concrete between our house and the neighbor's, a surgeon not expecting a bleeding Sunday guest,

but my mother's madness didn't rest on the Christian Sabbath, nor on her own

after that, the shrinks did their magic: Mom did the Mellaril march, the Haldol hop, the Stellazine stomp, and the less alliterative Thorazine shuffle

none of those chemically induced dances did a thing to increase the chances for my mother's salvation

soon she was behind the locked doors of "Ward 30," where I visited and Mom told me she had found Jesus

a befuddled revelation since I didn't know she was looking for him--her kin had hung him from a cross and taken the heat ever since

the doctors released her to the street, where she made misty retreat to the hills of Saint Francisco's bay

though she found faint solace in Pacific waters, she would never again see her sons or daughters

half a lifetime later, I found a long lost cousin my mother agreed to see, though not with me, for I was too much a reminder of scars which never heal

she sat with Mother near the end of days, sharing silence, the scent of Salisbury steak, and a view of the distant shore

as my patient cousin rose to leave, my mother finally spoke of a sea she watched turn from cerulean to indigo dusk

childhood beaches my mother did recall: the castles she did craft, the crawling ***** she did follow, the sun bathed sand where she made her bed

far from the one where she now lay, the one in which she would go smoothly into the night, perchance returning to blue waters, where hot blood trails cannot follow