the women are strong and beautiful
and relentless
the women can withstand pain
far greater than any man
113 pounds of meat walking the streets
they don’t need your muscles
they have their voice
and before you know it
you’re tossed out on the streets
or left alone with roaches
or thrown in a jail cell
or taken to court
or put in a madhouse
after they got inside your head
and tore you down psychologically
or played with your emotions like a puppet
and left you to the point of suicide while
they ride around town with younger men
113 pounds of meat walking the streets
the power they hold
the magic they perform
the voice they use
they can take you to heaven
or send you straight to hell
they can clean the **** stains
from your underwear
or have you sitting on the edge of a bed
in a hotel room, penniless, with the bottle
tilted towards the stucco ceiling,
wondering where it all went wrong
they don’t need your muscles
save them
for whoever or whatever
might be coming next.

words that hang like shutters
from broken hinges.

words that hover like nurses
after surgery.

words that splatter like
thin remorse.

I heave with sickness
when they arrive.

I spring with ebullience
when they leave the ** dunk
parts of my mind.

these words
these ******* words
that show up in Pontiacs,
in Plymouths, in Pintos

these nonsensical,
satirical,
antiquated words.

they charge at you
like a dead bovine
swinging from a meat hook.

they crawl towards you
like a silverfish
out of the sink drain.

they creep up on you
like an old ***
rattling a change cup.

why? I ask myself.

why does this happen?

I don’t want this kind of ailment;
give me
bee stings
or bedsores
or steam burns
but not these words,

these words that linger like shingles
across the ribcage of burning torment.

I pray without ceasing
towards a signified God.

I pray for simple sacrifice;

I want suicide rather than poetry.
I want a cow without milk.
I want a statue without structure.
I want a woman without grace.

I can feel the floodgates opening soon
and I think I’m going to puke my guts
out all over this page again.

I am the same man
in a different bedroom
where the walls are painted a different color
and the furniture is different
and the items are different
and the style is different
and the mirrors are different
yet, I stand before them
and I look the same
and the bed is different, feels different
and the woman is different
and the *** is different,
and I stretch out on the bed
hands behind my head
elbows pointed outward
looking up at a different ceiling
where sometimes
there’s a ceiling fan
staring down at me
and I think about all my little women;
some were so sweet when others were so bitter
yet each one had changed my life in many different ways
either through experience or by mistake
but, like the ***, it’s all the same in the end:
finished.

and I was left alone with their screams
and my imagination
and the pines were full of sap
and the wind blew gently
and the clouds did what clouds do
and the houses were there
and the cars were parked
in the driveways and on the streets
and the people walking by looked more affable
than the ones I grew up with
and I imagined myself
living in their houses,
riding around in their cars,
taking walks with them on their streets
because when the beer can snapped
I knew a beating was waiting for me
over something I did or did not do,
it didn’t matter, it was just my time
and when it’s your time, it’s your time
and after the streetlights came on
everything went black
and the cicadas were silent
and I walked back into the house
because now it was my time
to scream.

all those doughy-eyed, snot-nosed, putty-cheeked, frog-mouthed, bull-headed, cowardice faces: they were born
without sorrow
until they hand over their lives
to someone they truly don’t know
and they do it with a smile
and a gleam in their eye
and then they get sandpapered down
and polished in something
they did not choose,
their freedoms get capsized and
they don’t know what they’ve done
or why they’ve done it.
they become enraged and frustrated
with themselves
but they do not know where
to project their anger.
they can’t do it at home.
they’re too afraid of what they might
lose: their own self-made agony
so they take it to work with them
or to the supermarket or to the restaurant
and aim at anyone over any little thing.
they can’t do it at home.
those poor deluded fools careening towards
the only elusive dream that matters: happiness.
some of them are regretting decisions,
some of them are stewing on mistakes,
some of them are plotting their escape
all that sacrifice, all that pap
all those easy words
whistling like stream;
“I love you.”
“I miss you.”
“I want you.”
“I need you.”
all of it: for nothing
all those droopy, sullen-glared, turkey-necked, warthog faces everywhere;
laying in cold beds, coddling empty blankets,
****** in sorrow, contemplating the error of their ways,
alone with themselves, alone with each other.

smoking a bag full of memories
over the flame of your past
you get high on a girl
you no longer love
but can’t stop thinking about
and there’s nothing you can do
to change the way it went down,
only imagine what could’ve been
if you’d done things a bit differently
which somehow hurts more yet makes
you chuckle on the inside
and now’s she’s out there
with other people,
in other places,
doing other things
that don’t involve you
while you sulk in the corner
with the useless bottle,
the useless tears
and the useless fantasies
that you’ve never lived in.
I say relax kid,
if you look back on the entirety of yourself,
you’ve made it through drug overdoses,
car crashes, untruthful rumors, utter loneliness,
suicide attempts and the impeccable timing of bad luck
I’m fairly certain you’ll make it through this too,
it’s only heartbreak.