you can’t use the public restroom  
without smelling someone else’s ****,
counting smeared boogers on the wall
and reading poetry written by little boys
who will one day run the country.

use the past as a present
for self education of
caution and awareness
on what not to do
in the future
and then continuously
keep making
new mistakes
and ******* up
as life goes on
in front of
perfect eyes.

you are the itch on my *******
and I have use the razor blades
of cheap toilet paper to get rid
of you

you are the dirt and grime
under my fingernails
and I have to dig deep
with a safety pin
to get you out

you are like fiberglass
swimming in the pools
of my porous skin and
consciously reminding
the hemisphere of my
suffering with every
thread that I’m alive

you are the haughty
paint chips that have
peeled off the wall and
lightly floated to the
floor awaiting to taint
the envenomed mind
of toddlers

you are the popped
**** blisters oozing
down my sun poisoned
shoulders

you are the gummy
white film that has
coagulated at the
corner of my mouth

you are the burning rash
on top of my feet and
there is no soothing
aloe that will cure you

you only provide brine
and lemon juice to the
paper cuts of my limitations

and if the choice was mine
to either have another
conversation with you
or take a beheading

I’d sprint towards the guillotine,
impatiently waiting for the
executioner to carry out
the sentence

and my tilted severed head
will slouch peacefully in the
brightly shining sun, smiling
in the woven basket of relief

but I know you’ll be there
painting a mural of
fabricated stories
of aches and moans
in the hallways of
my ear canals

because after I’m long gone
and I’ve said my farewells
to all the foolish molecules
of easily forgotten pastimes
you’ll just keep coming back
like a thunderstorm of
bill collectors
like a kitten to a shoelace
like ****** to your father
and you’ll bring nothing to
the table or offerings to the
gods except exasperation
to our nerve endings and
disdain to everyone and
anyone you fall in with
like a bear claw to the back

so why is it that
the quiet guy who wants
to be left alone, somehow
always attracts the most
bothersome people
of the world who
never
  shut
the
  ****
up?

it began with the two cats

then the dog trotted in

then enough time past
and unfortunately, so did
one of the cats

then we rescued a bearded dragon

and for a while there
it was just a trifecta
of various species

until the new kitten had arrived

and now the bird is on its way

as the animals keep rolling
into this sanctuary
we call HOME

I spend my afternoons
taking care of our pets
feeding them
watering them
picking up their ****
maintaining their
living spaces
making sure they each
get attention

along with working all morning
and taking care of the kids
cooking dinner
tending to the ignored laundry
mowing the lawn
washing ***** dishes

my wife thinks I’m *******
on my leisurely hours
but not taking into consideration
that *** is no longer
an aching mystery

and as I’m ******* about
common domestic work

those pets bring such
rapturous enlightenment
to my spinning brain

but they don’t pull out
my inane thoughts and
put it down on paper

except for maybe
this poem

the gods have spotted me
in the estuary of dreams
and they laugh at me,
they torment me
with their unresponsiveness
but I must outwit them
and I mustn’t let the gods
decide my fate
and the fate of others
lies in the hands of others,
it’s there prerogative to decide
what to make of it
just as well as it is mine.

if I decide to squander the
rest of my days conspiring
for the words of immortality
then that is my privilege and
if the time comes
when nothing comes
from it
then that is my outcome
but I must write everyday
with assertiveness and
guile as if one day I’m
going to tear this job
down brick by brick
before the dogs from
hell come for me and
tear me to shreds but
if my doing is a waste
then our jobs are similar.

we work hard,
make minimal and
produce nothing
that goes to waste
for a profit and
eventually
transmogrifies
into garbage
and no one even
seems to bat an eye.

someone spent time away
from their loved ones,
resenting the minutes that
are massacred by monotony
during the dull, senseless hours
of moil with the other working
stiffs who are hand-picked by
someone else, having to take
a **** and breathing in the
smell someone else’s ****
as a piece of them dies slowly,
all while barely making a living on
base pay just so the product they
manufacture is conveniently
available at your fingertips
but nobody ever thinks
of what happens to
a crashed car or
a candy bar wrapper or
a half eaten hamburger,
it just gets scooped up
and tossed away
without mulling over
or questioning.

but no matter
how remarkable
anything may seem,
everything has already
been written including
this poem and the next
one after but much like
our lives, it’s a waste,
it’s not as much of a
shame that we waste
our lives but that life
is wasted on us and
what we do with it is
anything but extraordinary
and all this is for nothing,
just another add on to the
heap on Garbage Mountain
so the raccoons that defile
this poisoned Earth
will finally
come
to collect

it
takes
a lot to
achieve
the very
difficult task
of boiling the ocean but if you
self-actualize your aspirations
in the grasps of your fingers
like a feather in the cap then you
will execute plans of success
and it's easy enough to fail
but for those who've never
tried hard enough or at all,
there's always someone out
there wanting to employ you
so they can accomplish theirs.

and when you get there,
they'll have you work
in the sweltering heat
without air conditioning

and next to people with an
intelligence level further
below par than ever imaginable

and for an under-qualified
supervisor with soft hands,
who never did the dirt with
no prior experience in the
managerial field, they
just "know people"
and haven't a clue or any
knowledge to your job duties,
yet they could effortlessly,
write you up for neglecting
the daily tasks

and at the end of every
two demeaning weeks of  
having the knife held to my throat
and being fed cookies with no milk,
they've prodded a piece of my mind
mentally,
they've violated a piece of my body
physically,
they've robbed a piece of my soul
spiritually
and in return,
I've recieved a piece of their feeble paycheck
insufficiently.

it may not be much
but it's worthy enough to be
retrieveable, especially when
you've been walking around
without any heads or tails in
your pockets for some time
from this pitiful low-wage job
and after feeling like they've
******* me too many times
like a hate **** on a blistering
hot summers night,
I've felt like ******* off the cap
of this bottle and it will be the only
******* I'll be doing as I settle up
my accounts with all the words that
end in the letter K
while I'm dreaming of delusions
that somewhere out there
there's another
golden opportunity
waiting for me
at some other
low-wage pitiful job
that I know
I'm surely
missing out on
and you might be working there,
feeling just the same and ashamed
as I and wondering the same thing
about my job and maybe,
we as compatriots
of the common cloth,
who never had a chance,
made pliable in the wind
amongst the stiffened trees,
will one day, cross each other's paths

but my aphorisms tell me that...

I shouldn't kiss a pair of ****
after they've been *******
on by someone else.

it begins with a decanter of Rimbard
add 2 parts Villon
and 1 part Catullus
throw a jigger of Whitman
and a pony shot of D. Thomas
put in 3 dashes of Kerouac,
Ginsberg and Burroughs
add a splash of Cummings
for flavor and a float of Rumi,
shake well and pour into the
Nebauchadnezzar of D.H Lawrence
while intermixing Hemingway with
a kick of Yeats and Keats from the
oar stirrers of Celine and Pound,
drop in a few ice cubes of Thompson,
cold and solid and a bendy straw of
Carruth with garnish from Li Po and a
cocktail umbrella of Fante to decorate
and call this mixology a Bukowski
and raise the drink high
and pour it down fast
to honor the dying light
from the struggles of
writers before us and
to help us get through
the moil and toil that
holds us back from
what we truly want
within our guts because
I find living, drinking,
smoking, *******, reading
and writing to be difficult
as it is but breathing
should be the hardest
thing you'll have to do
under this dead moon night