you’re a snuggler
a tangler
a logistical link of limbs
that end up intertwining with mine

you kick me over some of the duvet
in the gentlest of gestures
and fester in the filth of your little sister’s linen
as the full moon sheds shame on our backsides.

but as the sun scowls through the window
that frames the four post
you wrap yourself in the sheets
like a sushi roll of biscuited bitterness

you natter to the bedbugs
the only ones who’ll listen to your curses
whilst me?
I’m basking in the warmth of a Sunday scandal.

I must report the passing of a dear old friend today
I'm not sure when it happened, but I felt I had to say
That the Vegas that's in movies, books, and on TV
Is not the one that you will find, it's not the one you'll see
I know your expectations are of glitter and of lights
Of singers in the lounges that play into the night
The lounges now are empty of the singers and the bands
Instead they're full of djs, and bad magicians badly tanned,
The song that was Las Vegas is not one thats in your head
The one you know with Elvis, is now gone, you see it's dead
The old hotels are gone now, It's not like it was before
The new buzzword in Vegas is now just, MORE, MORE, MORE
It's now a culture aimed at being bigger than the rest
For now it seems that bigger, means you're now known as the best
There's hotels full of bedbugs and the service is the *****
But, the casino doesn't care if there are people in the pits
The strip is nearly two miles long, and almost half is blank
It's like the desert opened up and ten casinos sank
At one end is the Stratosphere, it's got a real cool view
But, because of it's location it's not easy to get to
The Sahara was next closest, but now the Lady's gone
And to walk from this tram stop at night, well I cannot say it's fun
It's dingy and it's ***** and it's not a place to be
I wouldn't recommend this part, it's not a place to see
Freemont Street, The Old Vegas is off the beaten path
It's an hour ride upon the bus, and a taxi...do the math
It's just a place to go to once, there's no reason to return
And if you ever visit here, I think that's what you'll learn
The middle part of the strip is glitzy and spread out
It's kind of close to what Las Vegas is about
It's not all geared to people who have childeren all in tow
These ultra cool casinos is where you might just want to go
The other end is busy, but it's full of gloom and doom
And on every single corner, you can get girls to your room
There's people handing out small cards with women with a price
Who'll come up to your room and well....let's say they don't play dice
On every bridge across the strip, there's beggars and there's hawkers
They're selling everything from cds to bottled dollar water
It's tourist town, a fast food mess, it's Disneyland on crack
There's lots of things to do down here, but you must always watch your back
Did The Mirage **** it?, when Steve Wynn said let's go really huge
Hotels like this were ten times larger than the Moulin Rouge
It wasn't when Hughes came to town and bought the Desert Inn
You know the land that's now the new home of the casino known as Wynn?
It didn't die when Elvis left, it sill was full of life
But at someime since the town has died, it has fallen on the knife
The strip itself is two miles long, but you know that that's not all
In the years since Elvis left, it's become a big strip mall
There's stores here selling plastic , and the people shop in streams
I'm not sure, but to me NIKE is not the Vegas in my dreams
Rolling in their graves, I bet the stars who made this town
Are sitting in heaven or hell, saying when did it go down
There's more shows now of tribute acts and hypnotists galore
And you can find a Circus from Quebec through nearly every hotel door
At some point rigor mortis set into this old girl
I wish they could revive her, at least give it a whirl
There's buffets selling fried foods, obesity....my lord
And if you don't go out to Denny's, the restaurants you can't afford
My mind has got an image of Vegas that is cool
It involves going out late and spending daytime at the pool
You dress to go to dinner, maybe dancing and a show
And the concierge at the hotel is someone you should know
But now, you go out shopping to the outlet in the day
The casinos are all empty, since there's no one left to play
Getting dressed to go to dinner, means you switch from shorts to jeans
And the ways some people act now, well it's borders on obscene.
So, today I'd like to ask you all, for you may know more than I
But, can anybody tell me, just when did Vegas die?

In the burning right hand of the bald city,
denizens frame calories and count instagram blessings
while beacons of hope refund inspiration in USADA *** cups.

Abyssinian maids wail over yesterday lovers
who wore Ginsberg’s skirt with less  pizzazz
and watched bedbugs **** blood off knee caps
wondering, what if Jesus Christ drove a Nissan?

As bullets of paragraphs fall Vietnamese pesticides on my head,
The dusts off my breath sing homilies
With letters of broken leather whiskey,
For even in the most dishonest jest,
clandestine toothbrushes are overrated
and every first false lie is the only truth.

There are bedbugs in my head
And they are singin your song.
I don't know if we're dead
So for now I'll sing along.

"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.
Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some ice, take come snow, take a month of rain
and you would gutter in the dark, cracking up your brain.

Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you loosen it's terrible weight.



2. ANGEL OF CLEAN SHEETS

Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in the madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a choral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.
White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, on fall night, a haystack.

I have known a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.



3. ANGEL OF FLIGHT AND SLEIGH BELLS

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act--that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the ****.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the drreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by.



4. ANGEL OF HOPE AND CALENDARS

Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex,
that hole where the fire woman is tied to her chair,
that hole where leather men are wringing their necks,
where the sea has turned into a pond of *****.
There is no place to wash and no marine beings to stir in.

In this hole your mother is crying out each day.
Your father is eating cake and digging her grave.
In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They break. You are not brave.
You are alone like a dog in a kennel. Your hands
break out in boils. Your arms are cut and bound by bands

of wire. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange.
There are no prayers here. Here there is no change.



5. ANGEL OF BLIZZARDS AND BLACKOUTS

Angle of blizzards and blackouts, do you know raspberries,
those rubies that sat in the gree of my grandfather's garden?
You of the snow tires, you of the sugary wings, you freeze
me out. Leet me crawl through the patch. Let me be ten.
Let me pick those sweet kisses, thief that I was,
as the sea on my left slapped its applause.

Only my grandfather was allowed there. Or the maid
who came with a scullery pan to pick for breakfast.
She of the rols that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon, she of the feather and dust,
not I. Nonetheless I came sneaking across the salt lawn
in bare feet and jumping-jack pajamas in the spongy dawn.

Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that July 21st place.



6. ANGEL OF BEACH HOUSES AND PICNICS

Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only myslef to blame.
My blood buzzes like a hornet's nest. I sit in a kitchen chair
at a table set for one. The silverware is the same
and the glass and the sugar bowl. I hear my lungs fill and expel
as in an operation. But I have no one left to tell.

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rose on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest

at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold.

I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.
It makes me anxious, and it’s not only the chemical interaction.
Somehow, I associate it with “adulthood”—reading the news,
Drinking coffee—I can’t tell you how many days of the last few
Years have been spent entirely in this fashion. The coffee
Growing cold and the news colder still. I don’t even taste the
black, fluid drops. I don’t hear the screams of people I read
about. I just want to hold on to something—so I raise the glass
to my lips. I can’t say

the shocking words when my mouth’s full; I can’t tell

about my experience, my privilege, when I’m drinking it.


The production of the commodity

creates a line from some equatorial region
to central America, and my mouth.
I think about the Autumn I worked in a corn-seed
sorting facility. What a short experience—
and yet,
something that weighs heavy on my imagination.
I was a temp worker.
I chose to work there out of shame and guilt for having
missed the deadline for college enrollment.
I could have done anything else; but there were people
there who wanted nothing more than a job. They needed
to be
there.
And I think of the people involved in producing coffee beans

in much the same way.
Removed
from the thing they’re making, as the raw materials are shipped
to places you pay workers more.
Why shouldn’t I swallow with difficulty when faced with the pro-
spect of a person supporting their entire family with the type
of work
I did
reflexively, as a choice?

Now I sit here, reading about North African riots,
a region, where coffee is produced—
ARABICA COFFEE— and I think about what’s sitting
in my cup, how I have
spent more money than they make in a day
to buy
one container
…
and sit here
for an afternoon
doing nothing but reading about their families’ misery.

I am a human parasite.

And like the bedbugs that have crawled meticulously
between my mattress and bedframe, hiding in a safe spot
until they can come out, undetected, and **** my potency.

I sit here, in the comfort of an apartment furnished
and paid for by my father who grows corn in a highly-
mechanized, agricultural society. I take more and more,
festering to the size of a blistering, red dot
blinking in the dark, in the form of the record light on
my voice recorder.
I expect so much more from myself, simply because of
this position of luxury.

But I don’t take time to think about my reaction to these
stories or how I am involved in them, in shaping their plots.
I’m even eating more now
as I’ve nearly lost my concern with avoiding certain super-
markets.
I smile at the greeters, make small talk with the cashiers
whom I am openly exploiting. But it’s ok, because
I worked for a month at a cornseed manufacturing
facility
and I read Marxist Ideology,
and I know about the Arab Spring
and I was against American intervention in Libya
and I disdain the air strikes from robotic planes
(unauthorized by congress)
and I disdain congress
and I support gay marriage
(I stopped eating chicken).
I don’t drive to the suburbs of my city.
I walk and ride my bicycle as much as I feel like.
I use public transportation at times.
I try to get to know women.
I practiced safe ***, once.
I write poetry.
I tell my mom I love her.
I bought my nieces birthday presents.
I’m not overly nice to people of different
ethnicities.
I voted for Obama.
I’m trying.
All these things make it seem less bad
to smile at the cashier.
But then I think about my black studies Professor
who used a walker to come to class
because she fell
and spelled the word Amendment “Admendment”
on the board when talking about Reconstruction.
I think about the war in Syria.
I think of people dying from cholera in Haiti, in 2012
A.D.
I think about fracking and oil spills and …
irrevocable damage to Indian reservations.
I think about football coaches molesting children
and people eating fried butter.
I read about people
upset
with a movie
who protest in the streets for days.

It makes me realize I shouldn’t smile at anyone.
I shouldn’t be drinking coffee.
I shouldn’t be reading the news.

If bedbugs become  pets~ is there a possibility~someone is spending to much time in the sack~and not stepping out into what the Real World~ "Offers Up"~even tho the Bedbugs seem more friendly.....   If you Cry over White onions~why cry over the Red one ? ?      Turkeys Trot to a dance taught by man~Pretending to be foxes~always close  to the tail .    A Truly honest man~Would~Not be believed~if it weren't for the Falsehoods that Truly exist ! !   Staples when firmly pressed~Usually hold things together~SO_What makes these staples unworthy of being served up at dinner ?    Ever think about yard sticks? ~  and How Come your neighbors don't have any sticking up~   and your the only one that meets the measure. . .      POE only hinted at the torment of Modern  man~Stories in Stupors don't find the center of the heart~ Unless they are really experienced . .   It's sorta like being poured  into a Landfill~But like a Good Cork~You can't seem to sink all the way~Your head just bobbing above~and continually being that ready target~as additional waste'PILES AROUND ! !    It's like walking into a familiar room~But as you turn on the light switch~you discover~that you are now the "Stranger"~in a strange place. .     Life  is like a Trampoline~casting ones thoughts up and down for review~NOT considering that some may be actually measuring the values presented.  . *The *Broken heart of a man'who loves the woman who opened that door~ May Never be receptive to repair~NOT ENOUGH PARTS LEFT ! !    As the Lights "Come-On"~ it's like being at the Helm of the 'TITANIC" ~ assured that all others are off safely~AND~ the Shaking of Life Begins .......

I've shot a hundred rabbits
Made of a gun of dodgy habits
Saw the sky and couldn't grab it
Made a net and tried to catch it
But like a soaring eagle,
Beauty only wants to be free
So I'll just head on home,
Lay down in my bedroom and sleep

Bed bugs and butterflies
Been stuck inside my eyes
Can't seem to see just why
I haven't learnt to fly
Guess I've just learnt to sleep with
Little creatures blocking my view
Rain droplets drizzle down,
Whilst I still dream of you

I dream of rainy mornings,
Cool clouds and daylight dawning,
Sweet sounds of robins calling
Tip-taps of raindrops falling
I know it's somewhere out there
Like its been waiting for me
I see it in my window,
I see it in the trees

We are what we think,             are we not what we see, 
  hanging-tight to that which is thought        to be known.
   Remember the span of time before a       Christmas when it is
     spend, spend, spent.    Now home, cooking, but not happily.
      How many, hopeless, long for the clean-up and swallow
        quick, choosing a later *******-of-the-mind
           rather than a mastication in the now.

The happy full of bliss, fooling self and others, 
  the sad grief hidden.                     Grieving a earlier time when all
    felt good only all being false memory.  Nostalgia. Vagueness,
      holding a bad hand, bluffing in dark glasses.  Chips all-in                                      

The trees that fill the Amazon toppling,     animals and humans
  scatter like roaches missing the boat.           Wishing to the last,
    to conquer the earth. Hoping to be the longest living the life
      of riley, imagining a greatness, a false feeling, a well meaning,
        fooling dream.

The motel rented, a mattress, home to blood-******* ticks,
  hitch-hiking home to invest in an I who believe to be blessed to
    travel. Who's the sucker? Who is the free-bird hanging in the air?
      God clothes in love sublime, feeding those bits of spirit eaten
        with chop sticks and plum sauce, the meal sliding down the
          Cross to be met with intestinal fortitude. (if only)
            Wits in terminal tumultuous slavery.
            
I am Blue, I am not so new, I am the 'egg-man', I am me, I am you
striving to come-together over what to do.       I offer to the poor
   deciding who is worthy and them do I bless with coinage or
     paper taking no receipt for taxing relief. Taking no time or
       courage to meet that one God put in my path, in my face.

No time is the right time. No time hung on the pale-blue wall.
  No time clung to the wrist. No time on the bed-side table.
    No time in the machine that queues robotically.
      Compressed time, an eternal 'now' passed over, missed.
        A sad time in want of a glad time. A bad time's visitation in a
          hallow human shell. Cold. Cold and lonely in Winter's dark.

A home-run hit clear out of Fenway Park, bouncing off the
  windshield of the car you had earlier parked. Looted life, stolen
    goods? Goods!        What good are goods if they be more weight
      that  can be carried.

Parading down the narrow street twilling a baton,
  knee action bending, a goose-stepping military follows.
    For the love of a
     God I live in, free me from this charade. Hold up that Holy day,
       when all creation lay at my feet. Dominion missed,
         an ego with a twisting, a devil in those mathematical details.
           Pressed hard in the cranium, controlling a baton, stared upon
             by shivering parents and children rushing,
               gathering candies thrown from floats
          
Insects who would have one day rule the world become food for
animals with a human mind and a weaken soul. Feasting. Recipe's
   abound, bugs for breakfast, bugs for lunch, Haggis eaten in dark
    Wintery five o'clock nights. Insects prepared in the most curious
      ways.

Cockroaches, bedbugs and me.

http://youtu.be/RGFytiWwsRo
(this is a link to a video that I created for this poem)
Ridgewood (Where We Wait)
We take the most delicious train
to the Queens-Brooklyn border to get here
Where everything is liminal, uncertain, undecided
Even the foundation, Arbitration Rock, at the house on Onderdonk
Was buried for centuries, dug up, and chucked on another imaginary line
The streets are on a grid, and the border on a diagonal
making a stair-stepping hypotenuse of the confused
A challenge to put your time to good use
even on the oz-like yellow brick road on Stockholm
You hear Poles on the street muttering “Marnowanie mojego
czasu tutaj” through the bachata dripping
from the apartments above the stores on Fresh Pond Road

Two of the best restaurants in the boroughs
Rosa’s pizza and Zum Stammtisch mark
the north and south borders of the hill where we wait  
During the seventy-seven riots, Ridgewood
seceded from her stepsister, broke from Boswijk and Breuckelen
-
There’s racism here like carbon monoxide smoke:
at the Ridgewood Y, a man sweats through his shirt
revealing swastikas pierced through the skin underneath
and the Romanian dentist down the street drilling
says “Cred ca am pierd timpul meu aici”
through the machinery scream and burning enamel
she won’t say this if you understand what she means

Walking past the 99 cent stores and the pharmacies,
remembering that there is good, fast, and cheap
But you can only have two of them at the same time,
Crazy Loretta, under her navy knit woolen hat
in her pink sweatsuit and winter coat, smokes
her shaking hand-rolled cigarettes below the train
trestle grinning with her jaw-jutting through
her inch thick specs.  She waggles her chicken bone fingers
saying, “Hiya honey” when you walk by.
If you are brave enough to stop and talk to her,
she’ll tell you that her nephew plays
for the Texas Rangers and her daughter
is a doctor and she’ll probably give you bedbugs
She’ll tell you, fascinated, like a child: “when you squish them - the blood comes out”
She’ll tell you the same thing tomorrow - Loretta forgets.  
In her mind, a phrase like green smoke from her youth
Ich glaube, ich bin meine Zeit hier

The playgrounds are packed with children
practicing how to swear, the girls huddled
reading Twilight like the Bible, and the boys
huddled reading the girls like the Bible
A woman yells to her son to come home a third time
and mutters “Creo que estoy perdiendo mi tiempo aquí”

Buried in Machpelah Cemetary less than a mile from my house,
is the place Houdini is still staging his greatest escape
He has a wide audience.  Sometimes I think there are more dead
residents of Ridgewood than living ones.  The cemeteries stretch
the borders of the appropriate spilling into Christ
the King high school’s front lawn.  Driving Cypress Hills street,
the Manhattan skyscrapers rise looking tomb-toothed parallaxed and
blurry through ephemeral sepulchres, stones, and cement angels pointing at the sky

On one of the stones it says simply: Videor perdo temporis hic
I think we are wasting our time here.

Well, I'm the real thing, baby
I'm the talk of the town
and I'm the one that you taste
when her tongue's in your mouth
and I'm the dirt on your hands
that will never come clean
I'm the bleach that you drink
I'm the stains on your sheets

Well, I'm the blisters screaming
every time that you touch
and I'm the ache that keeps you up at night
the sick you stomach
caught in your throat, you can smell me
I'm the plaque on your teeth
you know there's something in the way you gag
that says you love me

And I'm your bedbugs, baby
I'm that itch that you scratch
you get me caught under your fingernails
I spread to your mask
I'm your disease now, sugar
sickly sweet on your breath
so sweat me out
I'm the fever that you'll never forget

Well, I'm the real thing, baby
I'm that crutch that you lust
and I'm the limp and the cramp
when you're trying to run
I'm your infection, honey
your point-oh-eight percent
you see, I go down easy
and you won't feel regret

And I'm your fleas now, sugar
crawling under your skin
you watch me hatch, I'm starving
baby, feed me again
I'm the body writhing
in antibiotic
swallow me whole, my darling
take it slow, I'll act quick

I'm the rash on your skin
I'm the dust in your eye
I'm the hole in the ground
you tried to crawl back inside
I'm the womb, I'm the host
a parasite with a twist
I'm the maggots crawling in the wound you cut
I'm the stitch

And I'm the ashes burning
on the soles of your feet
I'm the sliver stuck under your skin
you tried to lick clean
I'm the scars on your back
the needle mark on your vein
I'm every thought you'll ever have
I hope you'll have me again

'Cause I'm your bedbugs, baby
I'm that itch that you scratch
I'm caught up underneath your fingernails
and under your mask
I'm your disease, you chose me
muttered under your breath
so sweat me out
I'm the fever that you'd love to forget

He catches rats for a living
The fine young, jolly young man
Says if you can't get rid of them
Call me, because I can

I'll trap 'em, drown 'em, poison 'em,
Hit 'em on the head
Failing that I'll fire some shot;
Fill 'em up with lead

Bedbugs, fleas, ants, pigeons in the loft
Squirrels being troublesome
Tell me, I'll stop the lot

Then he handed me a business card
Said this is me as well
So if you fancy tasty burgers
Just give me a bell