sullen
white-witch,
white tiger-striped
underbelly, 5-3 eyes spitting
hot chiding ectoplasm with
saber-tooth gaping pessimistic dross
in fear-thinking ear lobes mercilessly
and the inescapable 8 inch slit in
between 5 pound bags of translucent fat.
kneeling down in the soot of ruination
with hands tied in the gypsum torso
the heart carved out
like purple pumpkins,
the ****** hair cinched
by the fire of India and
the head twisted and
pulled off like a chicken
by a Mexican rancher,
scratching in the
unchanging dust
and running aimlessly
in all directions with
no ventilation amongst
these strong cement walls.
the druids of dry spirits
coaxing out the dejection
of the toothpaste epitome,
encapsulated and ******,
with emotional charged
derangement on inner tubes
down the burning rivers
of the gullet strait,
only to regurgitate
barges of empathy
upward through the
injured pharynx and
cutting waves of melancholic
indiscretion
to seep through porous skin
and roll off the bitten tongue
like a silver pinball of
pointless blubbering to
any pair of snapdragon ears
that were willing to listen
but as the burning tears roll
down the succulent cheeks like
broken thermometers of poetry,
spittle hung from lip and chin
onto the circling senseless pulpit
and the obsidian curtains of clarity
parted east and west
like Moses untangling
Roman corkscrew ******,
the candlefat burned brightly
in throbbing pink,
the unappetizing laundry room pizza
tasted like hot needles of preeminence
and the x-rayed skeletal lifeforce
fornicated in rustbrown apathy
while the stars shot across
the blue nights like birds of fire
in our desecrated minds.

being famous isn’t celebrities,
red carpets, flashing cameras
or Hollywood gossip.

it’s a 3am phone from a friend
needing bail money

it’s an old girlfriend writing
“****” on the side of your car

it’s your wife doing a well being
check on you when you’re sick

it’s the toughest guy in town
choosing to fight you over
any one else in the bar

it’s your mothers smile when
you make her laugh

it’s your daughters scream when
you take her down the water slide

it’s an act of thoughtfulness
that you exist
that you are known
that someone out there
possibly many others
care for you
and love you.

a name is a name
like a worn down rug
given to us all by
randomly-picked
unknown strangers.

thereafter, quiet puddles of
insemination and conception
and incubation and cold birth

thus a christening is born,
a label of identity deeply
sotted in our developing minds
and we bear that name like an
itchy tag on the back of our shirt
throughout time
throughout seasons
throughout our entirety
and down the streets
of hot asphalt
and frozen concrete,
in the burning sun
and in the blanket
of lightly falling snow,
we carry our names
under the rows of
coned shaped lights
shone down
through lampposts.


and we give out our names
without hindrance
like a banana peel
to the garbage can,
whether it’s in front
of kindergarten classes
or in front of a judge at
the next court appearance,
at parties or at the corner
bar or AA meetings or on
social media or at church

signing away our names on
checkbooks and grocery bills
and bar tabs and restaurant tabs
with 20% gratuity and UPS packages
and certified mail and co-signing for
car loans

with our names plastered everywhere
on advertisement and airline tickets
and subpoenas and insurance cards
and drivers license and income tax
forms and a summons for divorce

as we enter the adult world
we are given another name, a
label based on the skills of our craft
and the money we make, a becoming,
an occupation if you will, a doctor,
a lawyer, a pornstar, a fortune teller,
a massage therapist, a cartoonist or
the worse of them all... a poet

and then the day will come when the
crowded grandstands will watch your
bones being flushed away in the dirt,
laying down backside in your cozy
casket facing the sun with your
glitzy name etched upon your glitzy gravestone and he may never know
your history
your secrets
your purpose
but your name
will still be there,
remaining.

I could write a bunch of words
and call it poetry
I could write a bunch of words
and call it art
I could write a bunch of words
and call it bad writing

call it what you will but
it doesn’t matter unless
you provoke the reader
to feel something

and I want to be the virus
that infects the reader’s
feelings so much that they
tremble to read it

I’ve got a long way to go
and a short time in life

cashing in
lint ***** and
couch change
I long scrounged for
at Gardenia Liquors
in exchange for a jug of
the cheapest red wine
found on the selves
of pity, this might be the
worst tasting wine I’ve
ever drank but it was
the best I could afford
at the time
and
it may be very little or
hardly anything at all
my dear
but this reconciliation
between me and this
liquid fire is certifiable
and factual.
it won’t make me
feel better
in the morning
but at least
it got me through
another night of
desolate smiles.

always filling

      and emptying

                and refilling

                     again and again

                                   like gas tanks
               to get to our destinations
                          like bank accounts
                 depleting from bills and
                    replenishing from moil
                                 like our bodies
         with stress on the weekdays
                 and relief or excitement
                             on the weekends
                                  like our hearts
          with love in tiny little spaces
   like bottles of cleaning products
                   under our **** vanities
               like barrels of toxic waste
                      dumping into the sea
                             like porch swings
              on lazy spring afternoons
                like pews of worshippers
               at Sunday morning mass
                   like stuffing our bellies
              with 99 cent hamburgers
                  and draining our *****
                              down the toilets
                        of the unconcerned
                              like spit suckers
                        at the dentist office
                      like pills of seduction
                                   relieving pain
                  like centuries of people
                    and trees exchanging
             carbon dioxide for oxygen

                                                 ...and
     it’s hard enough just to breathe
                           but how lovely is it
             to prattle and wail through
    wasted time and non-existence
        and laugh at our faces hiding
                   behind troubled masks
                   because we don’t care
                        to know who we are
               or what we’re doing here
      just keep on filling and refilling
           our embodiment with a sun
       patch of numbing resentment
      

                     it’s just easier to wisp
                        through the willows
                 than to empirically plod
                       through the bogs of
                                    self-reliance.

big ball of burning gas burning brightly
of yellow, red, orange and a hint of blue
and we hardly can stare at it for too long
but we know it’s there because it shines
down on all those wars and the controversy
and the censorship and the beauty pageants
and the sprinkles on the cop’s doughnuts
and the dieting and the President’s hair plugs
and the violence and the buttermilk biscuits
and the golden copulating and the dreams
of ignition and the bank robberies and the
gravel pits and the woman bent over in the
garden with all that voluptuous swaying in
the air and the vicious nature of the animal
kingdom and the dead poets and the living
ones too and all that ugliness and that evil
and the pine tree sap and all those water
bottles and babies and dogs left in hot cars
and at the city landfill where the best poetry
ever written is scribed on some used cocktail
napkin and reclining between some ***** diaper
and your Grandma’s old ****** bag and
all those flags burning, burning, burning
around the world orbiting, orbiting, orbiting
another new year, another Ramadan
resolution after resolution,
fasting and more fasting and….

no one can escape the sun until
they jump off the edge of forever
but at least I can turn my back
from it and close my eyes to
watch the sun spots floating
in the back of my eyelids
and I wonder why
it just sits there
and has been
waiting for so
long.